The rumbling in the ranks of the Bonanno family is that former underboss turned prosecution witness Salvatore Vitale was never much of a stand-up guy to begin with, so there’s no real surprise that he turned on his old pals.

Vitale, 56, (right) who had been scheduled to take the witness stand today, will likely testify next week against his brother-in-law Joseph Massino, the Mafia chieftain on trial for racketeering and seven murders from 1981 to 1987.

One reason for the low opinion of Vitale’s former mob allies stems from the way his son Joel handled a run-in with the law nine years ago – with the acquiescence of his old man.

The incident, Gang Land has learned, occurred when Joel and his girlfriend were arrested on felony charges of criminal possession of stolen property. Joel wasn’t very chivalrous in the matter: He blamed her for the lion’s share of their crimes, and walked away with just a fine for himself.

Young Vitale, then 22, even fingered the young woman – they lived together at the time – as the heavy in the purchase of a pair of roller blades and protective knee pads she bought for him with one of four credit cards they stole from a woman at the Broadway Mall in Hicksville, L. I.

“She used one of the stolen credit cards but I don’t know which one,” he told 

cops who arrested them on July 21, 1995, according to court records.

During a short four hour spree which ended with Vitale and Donna Bevilacqua arrested at the Radisson Hotel in Hauppauge, the couple used a stolen card to buy a Minolta camera, film, a battery, pay for the hotel room, and the meal they shared there before cops nabbed them. Vitale even owned up to buying $20.00 worth of gas for Donna’s car with a stolen credit card, only because he was driving.

Vitale claimed he tried to talk Donna out of swiping the credit cards that came out of a woman’s pocket book they spotted on the floor. Instead, Vitale told cops, “next thing I know, she’s beside me with the pocketbook.”

Vitale, who spent four months under psychiatric care and drug counseling in Miami following his arrest, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge on Dec. 5, 1995, and was fined $590.

For undisclosed reasons, Bevilacqua’s case is sealed. But sources said she eventually pleaded guilty to felony charges, paid a heavier fine than Vitale, and was placed on probation for an undetermined time. Her attorney has died. Vitale’s lawyer did not return calls for comment.

In a tape recorded conversation last November, sources say, turncoat capo James (Big Louie) Tartaglione and capo Anthony (Tony Green) Urso (right) discussed young Vitale’s 1995 arrest and agreed that he “became a rat over the credit cards with his girlfriend.”

It’s unclear whether jurors will hear the conversation – Brooklyn Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis has kept some interesting stuff under wraps (see below) – but the jury has heard about another incident involving Joel Vitale: The mysterious murder of a homeless black man in the early 1990s that was orchestrated by his father.

Massino’s lawyer David Breitbart is sure to explore it again, since Sal Vitale has not pleaded guilty to that killing.

At least three fellow turncoats – capos Richard (Shellackhead) Cantarella, Frank Coppa Sr. and Tartaglione – have told the feds that Vitale boasted of killing a

homeless derelict whom Joel had accused of slashing his face in a mugging.

“Sal went out with a crew and killed the bum,” Coppa (left) testified.

“Vitale was bragging that a fellow he had around him by the name of Larry (Neder) was a better man than some of our friends and he wound up doing what he had to do with the guy,” said Cantarella, adding that he understood that they “killed him.”

Neder was a member of a Vitale crew that turned a European American Bank branch in Melville, L. I. into a one-stop shopping center for loansharking, money laundering and other financial crimes from 1996 to 2001. In a plea deal, Neder, 59, pleaded guilty to gambling charges two years ago. He is due to complete his prison term in September.

In the credit card case, Joel Vitale told police that Donna Bevilacqua’s car, the one he drove that night, had “my uncle Larry Neder’s license plates on it.”

After Bonanno wiseguy Joseph D’Amico began cooperating last year, sources say, he took an overdose of Ambien in a suicide attempt. Breitbart wanted to ask him about it. The Judge sided with prosecutors Mitra Hormozi, Robert Henoch and Greg Andres, who objected.

Last week, sources say, Garaufis bounced a juror – one of four anonymous jurors who have been excused since the trial began – after she talked about the case at a family gathering, and one of her relatives, an FBI agent, reported her transgressions.

Gang Land has no quarrel with either ruling. Neither is unusual, or controversial. But to keep the specifics of both rulings sealed seems to run counter to U.S. Supreme Court mandates that call for a “compelling” reason to stray from openness in the federal courts.

After a life of crime with little interference from the law, things have turned sour at age 60 for longtime Genovese capo Ernest Muscarella. He is plagued by migraine headaches and the gout. Worse, he recently began a five year prison stretch for racketeering.

The last thing the ailing gangster needed was to be publicly labeled an informer by New York Magazine. That kind of a tag can cause much more grief for an inmate in general population of a federal prison than any medical problem.

But that’s what happened in the June 14 issue in a piece by Anthony Haden-Guest. And even though New York noted in its June 28 issue that the author got it wrong, Muscarella’s lawyer John W. Mitchell asked Gang Land to set the record straight.

“Most people won’t ever see the correction. But if it appears in Gang Land, everyone will know for sure that the allegation was false,” he said.

We’ll buy that. As the magazine noted, Hayden-Guest’s assertion that Muscarella had been “talkative” with the feds was “in error. Muscarella’s plea was not based on cooperation with the government.”