Joseph Massino

Who is Joseph Massino?

Joseph Charles Massino, is a former American mobster. He was a member of the Mafia and was the boss of the Bonanno crime family from 1991 until 2004, when he became the first boss of one of the Five Families in New York City to turn state's evidence.

Massino was a protégé of Philip Rastelli, who took control of the troubled Bonanno family after the assassination of Carmine Galante. Originally a truck hijacker, Massino secured his own power after arranging two 1981 gang murders, first a triple murder of three rebel captains, then his rival Dominick Napolitano. In 1991, while Massino was in prison for a 1986 labor racketeering conviction, Rastelli died and Massino succeeded him. Upon his release the following year he set about rebuilding a family that had been in turmoil for almost a quarter-century. By the dawn of the new millennium, he was reckoned as the most powerful Mafia leader in the nation. Massino became known as "The Last Don", the only New York boss of his time who was out of prison.