Philip Rastelli, who once ran the Bonanno crime family, will pretty much be remembered for one thing, his wife Connie.

Rastelli and Ralph Santora were accused of murdering an ex-convict, Michael Russo, in December 1954, after he backed out on a plan to hold up a bank. The hood took Russo for a ride, he was shot four times, but lived.

In 1949, Russo, a professional burglar, was released from a five-year prison sentence he was serving in Sing Sing prison for a botched burglary. He partnered up with Rastelli and Santora, in a series of stickups and burglaries.

After the first shooting, Connie approached Russo after the first shooting and tried to bribe him out of testifying against her husband for attempting to murder him. She offered him five thousand dollars and a free home in Connecticut. She returned twice more and upped her offer only to have Russo turn her down. Finally, she threatened to kill him if he talked.

The next day, Russo was dead. Rastelli and Santora picked him up a second time, took him for a ride and this time successfully killed him and then dumped his body in Bath Beach.

Connie was arrested for the threats and the attempted bribery but so how managed to beat the rap. Connie’s previous record included two arrests for performing illegal abortions.

In 1956 Ralph Santora suffered a heart attack and died while at a public bath. It took the attendants 12 days to identify him. He was 39 years old.

Seemingly no one in the underworld cared for Connie for very much. Even the press was rough on her, calling her “a dumpy middle aged women” and making sure that virtually ever photo of her was a bad one.

On December 18, 1961, Connie tracked her husband down to 221 S. Fourth Street in Brooklyn where he was living with his girlfriend. She was carrying a loaded pistol that Rastelli had hidden in her house. When Rastelli came out on the street, Connie shot him three times wounding him but not seriously. Connie was arrested and freed on bail on felonious assault charges.

Rastelli told reporters at the time that the relationship was over after that but actually it was over because Connie had threatened to talk to the District Attorney about her husband’s drug dealing. The Bonanno’s’ sent over a muscle man to talk to her about but she threw him out of the house.

Soon enough it became clear that Connie was talking to the law after several Bonanno members were arrested. Then it looked like her husband was about to be indicted as well. That didn’t happen because days before he was to be arrested, someone shot and killed Connie.

On March 8, 1962, Connie was in her home at 77 North 7th street, in the Williamsburg section. She apparently had gone to the front door and let some in and then turned and walked back towards her kitchen when the visitor five times in the back of the head. Her son, from a previous marriage, found the body.

Rastelli, a loanshark, extortionist and drug trafficker, moved up inside the Bonanno crime family. In 1969, the national crime commission appointed a three-person panel to rule over the quickly fading Bonanno crime family. Rastelli would share the panel with Joseph DiFilippi, and Natale Evola

Natale Evola died of cancer and the commission named Rastelli to the top spot, however the real powr in the family belonged to Carmine Galante.

On April 23, 1976, Rastelli was convicted of extortion and sentenced to 10 years in prison, served consecutively to a four-year state sentence for conspiracy, criminal contempt of court, and usury.

Galante seized control of the family and declared himself acting boss which didn’t sit right with anyone especially thee ruling commission who saw the move by Galante for what it was, a grab at controlling the US narcotics market. Genovese boss Frank Tieri organized the move to kill Galante. Rastelli, from prison, was now recognized as the undisputed boss.

Bonanno members Alphonse "Sonny Red" Indelicato, Dominick "Big Trin" Trincera and Philip Giaccone quickly grew discouraged with taking orders from an absent boss and began a campaign to revolt and take over. At the same time, Joe Massino and Dominick "Sonny Black" Napolitano, although loyal to Rastelli, were making power grabs within the family as well. It boiled for a while but Massino found out that Trinchera, Indelicato and Giaccone were stocking up on automatic weapons and planned to murder the Rastelli loyalists within the Bonanno’s. Massino moved first and on May 5, 1981, the three capos were murdered.

The three were killed in the 20/20 Night Club in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. Massino had lulled them there under the guise of having peace talks. Massino’s killers, wearing ski masks, hid in a storeroom closet and waited. Among them was Salvatore Vitale and Canadian Vito Rizzuto. Gerlando Sciascia and Frank Lino waited with Messino in the clubs main room.

When the capos arrived, they were brought to the closet and Sciascia brushed his hand through his hair, giving the prearranged signal. Vitale and the others rushed into the storeroom and Massino, an enormous man, punched Giaccone to the floor and then grabbed Indelicato who was making a run for the door.

The bodies were brought to the Lindenwood area of and buried in what was known as The Hole, a Gambino run dumping ground. John Gotti, still a Capo at that point, had given Massino permission to bury the bodies there.

May 28, 1981, police found Indelicato's body. Thirteen years later, in October of 2004, neighborhood children reported finding a body in the Lindenwood lot. It turned out to be Trinchera and Giaccone.

Two years after the Capo’s massacre, Rastelli was released from prison and on April 21, 1983, he ordered the murder of Bonanno soldier Cesare Bonventre. Salvatore Vitale, Louis Attanasio and James Tartaglione were given the order from Messino who was in hiding at the time.

A year later, Rastelli was arrested on a parole violation and sent back to jail. A year after that, in 1985, Rastelli was indicted the New York Mob leadership in Commission Trial although Rastelli was indicted on separate labor racketeering charges. Rastelli had been booted off of the commission because of the Donnie Brasco catastrophe. Regardless he was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison. Rastelli died of liver cancer in 1991. He had been given a compassionate release from federal prison in Springfield Missouri where he was serving a 12-year sentence for labor racketeering.