Message from discussion Anthony Spero, A Name In The Bonanno Crime Family, 79, NY Times

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Subject: Anthony Spero, A Name In The Bonanno Crime Family, 79, NY Times  
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/nyregion/03spero.html?ref=obituaries

Anthony Spero, a Name in the Bonanno Crime Family, Is Dead at 79

By BRUCE WEBER [New York Times]

Anthony Spero, long a high-ranking member of the Bonanno crime family, died 
on Monday [September 29, 2008] at the Federal Medical Center, part of the 
Butner Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, Norht Carolina. He was 79.

Greg Norton, a medical center spokesman, confirmed the death but would not 
give the cause. He said Mr. Spero was transferred to Butner on August 28 
[2008] from a federal prison in Coleman, Fliruda., where he was serving a 
life sentence for racketeering, including ordering three murders. Before he 
went to prison, Mr. Spero lived on Staten Island [New York].

For more than three decades, Mr. Spero served the Bonanno family, one of 
five Mafia clans in New York City [New York], in a variety of roles, rising 
to consigliere and taking over as acting family boss when his superiors, 
Philip Rastelli and Joseph Massino, were in prison. He was a reserved man 
often described as an old-time gangster, the antithesis of the flashy 
celebrity don personified by John J. Gotti of the Gambino family. Mr. Spero 
was known not for his wardrobe or his conspicuous presence in society but 
for his hobby, breeding racing pigeons.

For much of his life he lived in Brooklyn [New York], operating in the 
Bensonhurst neighborhood, where he tended his birds on the roof of a 
building on Bath Avenue; he held meetings with mob associates, not only at 
the West End Social Club on the same street, but among the rooftop pigeon 
coops. Next to the club, Mr. Spero ran a livery business, the Big Apple Car 
Service, described by crime experts as a cover for illegal enterprises like 
forcing the owners of stores and restaurants to accept video gambling 
machines on which the Bonannos would share heartily in the profits.

The West End Social Club was a hangout for a group of young thugs known as 
"the Bath Avenue crew," who admired Mr. Spero and did his bidding. In 2001, 
Mr. Spero was convicted of ordering three murders - including that of 
Vincent Bickelman, a burglar who had made the mistake of robbing Mr. Spero's 
daughter Jill; and Paul Gulino, the leader of the Bath Avenue crew who was 
said to have received Mr. Spero's instructions to kill Mr. Bickelman and 
subsequently hatched a plot to kill Mr. Spero.

The case against him was largely circumstantial, but Mr. Spero was undone by 
the testimony of other criminals - including the killer of Mr. Gulino, 
Joseph Calco - who cooperated with the district attorney in the hope of 
receiving lighter punishments for their own crimes.

Besides his daughter Jill, his survivors include another daughter, Diana 
Clemente, and a brother.