Bonanno boss to testify against his own

When it happened in December 2004, the end of Randolph Pizzolo drew little attention -- a low-level mob associate found shot in Greenpoint whose death was indistinguishable from dozens of other gangland hits.

More than six years later, however, Pizzolo's killing is the unlikely centerpiece of a high-profile federal mob trial opening Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court that will mark two firsts: the first time an accused mob boss will go on trial facing the death penalty, and the first time a former mob boss will testify in open court as a government informant.

Defendant Vincent "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano, 51, former owner of a Bronx beauty salon called "Hello Gorgeous" who became the acting boss of the Bonanno family, is accused of ordering the hit against Pizzolo -- a young gangster who, prosecutors say, he considered a troublemaker and possible rat.

But Basciano, a stylish, charismatic mobster who has tried to live up to his nickname by arranging prison visits from both his wife and his mistress, will have to share the spotlight with Joe Massino -- the old-school former boss of the Bonanno clan who shocked the underworld in 2005 when he was revealed as an informant.

Massino, 68, had been referred to as "The Last Don" and viewed as a symbol of a vanishing breed of leaders faithful to the old code of silence -- until he cooperated in 2004 against his own family in the face of a threatened death penalty prosecution.

He is expected to describe secretly taped recordings he made of Basciano in prison in 2004, in which Basciano admitted a role in the killing of Pizzolo.

His testimony, mob experts say, will mark a watershed moment in the decline of the American mob.

"Symbolically, from the government's perspective, the trial is a big deal because it will showcase Joe Massino as the first official New York mob boss to defect, and underscore the work the feds have done to decimate the Bonanno family," said Jerry Capeci, editor of the website ganglandnews.com.

For all the murders the mob commits, death-penalty prosecutions are unusual -- partly, experts say, because mobsters usually have information to trade, and partly because their victims tend to be other mobsters.

Seeking it in Basciano's case has raised some eyebrows about costs -- from, among others, presiding U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis -- because he already is serving a life term for previous convictions. Capeci calls him a "nonentity wiseguy who's already destined to get out of prison in a body bag."

In Basciano's case, however, it's almost an open secret in the Brooklyn federal court that the Justice Department's decision to seek death is based not so much on the killing of Pizzolo as on Basciano's alleged plotting in 2004 to kill a prosecutor and his later inclusion of Garaufis on an alleged hit-list in prison.

"That's what would catch their attention, and make it aggravated in their eyes," said Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington.