Material presented on The American Mafia history website (http://mafiahistory.us and http://www.onewal.com/) was gathered through decades of research into the history of American organized crime. A childhood interest in the subject blossomed into a full-time obsession in the late 1990s, when I began organizing collected newspaper clippings, notebook pages and index cards. That effort gave rise to this website in September 2002. The website is more of a process than it is a document. Very often new historical data becomes available and causes old assumptions to be revised or abandoned. Over the past few years, many underworld legends appearing on these pages have given way to more defensible statements. And other revisions are sure to be made in the months and years ahead. It is a pleasure to be able to share my interest with you. I welcome your emailed comments, questions, criticisms. I hope that the site is useful to you and that you check in from time to time to see what is new. Copyright © 2011, Thomas Hunt. All rights reserved.




Monday, December 13, 2010

Cicale testimony added to site

We are indebted to Justin Dugard for purchasing, editing and contributing to The American Mafia website the October 14, 2008, federal court testimony of Stefan Cicale. Cicale was the government's key witness in the racketeering/murder trial of Bonanno Crime Family associate Joseph Young.

Cicale's direct examination testimony is broken up into three web pages for ease of use. A subject index will be added in the near future.

Joseph Young was convicted of the gruesome 2005 murder of Robert McElvey at the historic - and allegedly haunted - Kreischer Mansion on Staten Island (see photo). Cicale was charged as an accomplice and decided to cooperate with federal investigators.

The testimony can be accessed through the website's Articles menu or through this direct address:
http://www.onewal.com/a020/f_young.html

Update begins gradually

Visitors to The American Mafia website may begin to notice changes to certain pages. These are part of the overall site update. Various revised pages are now taking their places on the site. Some aspects of these pages - typestyles and formatting - may not look just right yet. The site's "stylesheet," which deals with these aspects, will be the final element to be brought online. This is necessary so that the older pages remain readable.