Acting Bonanno boss Vincent (Vinny Gorgeous) Basciano secretly floated the idea of killing a federal prosecutor but later thought better of it, according to transcripts of sealed tape recorded conversations obtained by Gang Land.

Pressed to discuss the murder plot by turncoat mob boss Joseph Massino, who had been secretly wired by the feds, Basciano (right) instead invoked a classic New York response. “Fuhgeddaboudit,” the Bronx gangster/hair salon owner repeated over and over. 

The tapes also make clear that Vinny Gorgeous, who has been charged with solicitation to murder in the scheme, readily admitted that he’d once thought a hit on assistant U.S. attorney Greg Andres was worth considering.

Basciano acknowledged his deadly proposal during two talks that took place last January in a federal lockup in Brooklyn where he and Massino, the so-called Last Don, were imprisoned. 

On January 3, he reminded Basciano of a discussion they’d had in a holding pen at Brooklyn Federal Court on Nov. 23, four days after Vinny Gorgeous was hit with racketeering charges and added to a case that was then pending against

Massino. Andres, who was the lead prosecutor in an earlier case in which Massino was convicted of seven murders, was also the prosecutor in a second indictment that had suddenly included both Massino and Basciano.

“Remember? We spoke in the bullpen,” said Massino. (left) “And you want to take the prosecutor out. What are we going to gain by it? What are you gonna gain if we take the prosecutor out?”

“Nothing,” said Basciano, before adding, “Forget about it.”

A few minutes later, obviously trying to get Vinny Gorgeous to implicate himself in a murder plot, Massino brought up the subject of the “prosecutor” again, and asked: “What are we going to gain?” 

Basciano replied, five separate times: “Forget about it,” adding: “Let’s not even discuss it again.” But Massino continued on the same subject.

Massino: “I thought about it. I don’t want to talk, downstairs. In the room there. But

I said to myself, ‘what are we going to gain by hurtin’ him?’ That don’t make any sense. And the more people that get hurt the more heat is gonna come down.”

Basciano: “Yeah, I know that.”  

Perhaps an hour later – the entire conversation lasted about three hours – Massino again brought up the plot against Andres, by contrasting Basciano’s prior mention of it with his failure to alert Massino about the murder of low-level associate Randolph Pizzolo, a slaying that took place a week after their talk “in the bullpen.” 

Massino: “You talked about the prosecutor.”
Basciano: “Right.”
Massino: “And I said give me time, I want to think about it.”
Basciano: “Right. Right”
Massino: “Why didn’t you mention about Randy to me? You never said a word.”
Basciano: “I didn’t think, well…”

Four days later, after FBI agents Jeff Sallet, Kim McCaffrey and James DeStefano wired up Massino for a second time, the turncoat Don used a different approach

to try and get Basciano to implicate himself in a plot to kill Andres. This time, Massino wondered if he Vinny Gorgeous had told others about the plot, and if Massino could be indicted for it. 

“No, Bo. No,” Basciano asserted vigorously.

“Just me and you?” prodded Massino.

“Absolutely,” assured Basciano. 

About 40 minutes later, Massino who was technically facing the death penalty for a 1999 murder still pending against him, used a similar tack to raise the issue again: his concern that he might be charged with the murder of Pizzolo, or a murder conspiracy against Andres, because of Basciano’s big mouth.

“NO, no, no, no, no, no, no, Bo,” protested Vinny Gorgeous, who ripped Andres as “dirty" and "rotten" but insisted that he never told anyone other than Massino about his thoughts of killing Andres, including Basciano’s right-hand-man who was in charge of the Pizzolo murder, capo Dominick Cicale. (left)

Basciano faces trial in January for racketeering charges including gambling, arson, two attempted murders and

a 2001 mob rubout. In a second indictment, he faces a later trial for the Pizzolo murder, the plot to kill Andres and other racketeering charges.

Massino is slated to be a key witness at both trials.

Basciano’s attorney, Barry Levin, told Gang Land his client maintains his innocence of every charge, and ripped the allegations concerning Andres as “Massino’s attempt to entrap Vinny in something he wanted no part of.”

“This entire episode was an invention of Joe Massino, a manipulative, Machiavellian psychotic liar who invented the concept that Vinny conspired to kill a prosecutor so he could have credibility with the government,” said Levin.

“Massino had been trying to cooperate since August (of 2004), and they kept turning him down, even after he led them to the bodies of people he killed in 1980. If anybody wanted to kill the prosecutor, it was Joe Massino. Even before he went to trial, Massino was constantly trying to get personal information on Greg Andres.”

Growing up in Brooklyn, Gang Land was always taught never to speak badly of the dearly departed. They could no longer defend themselves.

Sometimes, however, those rules have to be bent a little. 

We understand what a lousy week that John Gotti was having back in July 1996 when the late Dapper Don ripped Gang Land to his son Junior and noted in an expletive-laden tirade that he would like to have thrown me off the roof of a building. 

In a videotape prosecutors played at the racketeering trial of the Junior Don on Monday, the Dapper Don complained that “Gotti: Rise & Fall,” a book by yours truly and Gene Mustain that was published that month had ruined a visit by his brother Peter, who was “sitting there defending” the book.

Even before then, the imprisoned mob boss was in a foul mood. Two days earlier, Gotti had had his clock cleaned by a younger, muscular inmate who sucker punched him in an indoor recreation-exercise area at Marion Federal Penitentiary and beat him bloody before prison guards could break it up.

Then there was the book that contained many details about his life that he presumably didn’t want to see in print but which were never disputed.

As has been noted here before, Gotti’s bark was thankfully much louder than his bite when it came to Gang Land. My chief gripe is that not once did he ever blame my co-author for any of his grief, even though Gene was an equal partner in both books we wrote about the life and times of the Dapper Don.