Believe It Or Not

Anthony Bruno Indelicato and Catherine Burke are a married couple. I don't know whether or not this union has produced any children. But, hypothetically speaking, a son of Anthony Bruno Indelicato and Cathy Burke can not be inducted into the American Mafia. See: When A Candidate For Induction Into The American Mafia Must Be 100% Italian, Part I, the Tuesday, 4 April, 2006 edition of the Sho'nuff Mob Study.

Who Is Anthony 'Bruno' Indelicato?

Anthony "Bruno" Indelicato served 12 years for the 1979 execution of Carmine "Lilo" Indelicato in Bushwich, Brooklyn while he dined at a restaurant. See: Information, Misinformation, Disinformation...Part I, the Tuesday, February 22, 2005 edition of the Sho'nuff Mob Study.

As Selwyn Raab (August 25, 2005), in the Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires, Thomas Dunne Books, ISBN: 0312300948, tells us:

"The final defendant, Anthony Bruno Indelicato, a Bonanno hit man, also was not charged with being a Commission member. He was on trial for carrying out a Commission order in 1979 to assassinate Carmine Galante, who prosecutors and the FBI believed at that time was a Bonanno godfather (p. 274).

Selwyn Raab (August 25, 2005) continues:

"The most substantial evidence against Bruno Indelicato in the 1979 Galante murder was the palm print lifted from the gunmen's getaway car in Brooklyn. His appearance at Neil Dellacroce's Ravenite Club in Little Italy shortly after the murder was, at best, circumstantial. But the prosecution played Chertoff also pointed out that Indelicato, previously an insignificant foot soldier in the Bonanno family, was promoted to capo after the Galante hit---a sure sign that he had been rewarded for meritorious service" (p. 291).

While serving time for the Carmine "Lilo" Galante hit, Anthony "Bruno" Indelicato met Catherine Burke, the daughter of James "Jimmy The Gent" Burke and sister to Frank James Burke. The Gent is the mastermind of the $6 million Lufthansa Airlines robbery immortalized in the movie, "Goodfellas" (Jerry Capeci, This Week in GANGLAND: The Online Column, February 19, 2004).

Needless to say, Cathy Burke is a product of Irish-American, and Anthony "Bruno" Indelicato is a product of Italian-American, stock. Never mind the fact that any hypothetical children of this couple's are products of patrilineal Italian descent.

Anthony "Bruno" Indelicato and Cathy Burke met in 1985 while he and The Gent were serving time together in a federal prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. She was visiting her father. They married in 1992 while Bruno was in a Terre Haute facility. The couple has lived in Howard Beach, Queens since Anthony "Bruno" Indelicato's 1998 release.

Some Indelicato Genealogy

Dominick "Sonny Black" Napolitano, a Bonanno Cosa Nostra Family capo, allowed Joseph D. Pistone, a/k/a "Donnie Brasco," to become a Bonanno associate and nearly get "straightened out" with the Family. Pistone's undercover operation ended when Black requested that Pistone murder another mobster, Anthony "Bruno" Indelicato, Alfonse "Sonny Red" Indelicato's son.

Alfonse "Sonny Red" Indelicato and two of his associates, Philip Giaccone and Dominick "Big Trin" Trinchera, were shot to death on May 5, 1981 in an ambush in Brooklyn. Sonny Red Indelicato's body turned up three weeks later in a shallow grave in Queens, but the remains of the other two were not unearthed until 2004. It later came out that Sonny Red's corpse was supposed to be hacked into pieces before it was disposed of, but was instead simply hastily buried.

Who Was Alfonse 'Sonny Red' Indelicato?

According to Joe Pistone, it was John "Boobie" Cerasani and Benjamin "Lefty" Ruggiero who killed Sonny Red Indelicato, Philip Giaccone and Dominick "Big Trin" Trinchera. Anthony "Bruno" Indelicato did not turn up at the meeting that saw his father ambushed.

In the United States of America v. Joseph Massino et al. Defendants (2004), Joseph Massino, then Bonanno Crime Family boss, was convicted of murdering Sonny Red, Philip Giaccone and Big Trin.

Selwyn Raab Raab (August 25, 2005), tells us more about Bruno Indelicato, the Carmine Galante hit and the historic Mafia Commission Case (1986):

"A baffling part of the pending Commission indictment centered on the 1979 luncheon murder of Carmine Lilo Galante and his two dining companions. Giuliani and his prosecutors were confident ther was sufficient evidence to prove the Commission had ordered the execution of Galante, who at the time of his assassination had been identified as the Bonanno boss by most FBI and local Mafia investigators. (It turned out the the authorities were mistaken about Galante's actual rank. Twenty-five years later, the FBI would conclusively determine that he had never been the 'official' head of the Bonanno family, but rather, a haughty capo intent on seizing control of the splintered borgata and being recognized as its supreme dictator.) For a motive, the prosecution counted on the theory that Galante's rival godfathers had wanted him dead, fearing that he was attempting a power move to become the boss of bosses. The big hole in the Commission case was finding enough evidence to bring a murder charge against an actual assassin with a direct relationship to the Commission. Agents had a strong suspicion that one of the three gunmen was Anthony Bruno Indelicato, a cocaine-snorting Bonanno button man. About forty-five minutes after the Galante contract had ben fulfilled in a Brooklyn restaurant, a surveillance team from the Manhattan DA's squad videotaped Indelicato being hugged, kissed, and congratulated by high-ranking Bonanno and Gambino mobsters on the sidewalk outside a Gambino club in Little Italy known as the Ravenite. The DA's men were concentrating on Neil Dellacroce, the Gambino underboss, in an unrelated Mob matter, when Indelicato arrived, apparently to report the successful result of the hit on Galante. It was a warm summer day and the videotape showed the outline of the butt of a handgun, covered by a loose-fitting white T-shirt, in Indelicato's waistyband. At best, the videotape could be used as circumstantial evidence but prosecutor's lacked direct proof that Indelicato was one of Galante's executioners.

The getaway car in Galante's murder, a Mercury Montego, had been found by the police shortly after the slayings, but their forensic tests had been unable to match partial palm prints----the only evidence lifted from the car---to any suspect. In the intervening years, the FBI had developed a system for identifying segments of handprints, and Pat Marshall, playing a long shot five years after the assassination, got Indelicato's complete hand prints and ran them through the bureau's forensic system. "Bingo, we have him," Marshall proudly reported to Jim Kossler and the prosecutors. "We nailed him from a left palm print on the inside of one of the doors." They had a shooter, Bruno Indelicato, and on the day of the assassination, they could link him to Dellacroce, the Gambino underboss, who often sat in on Commission meetings. The FBI and prosecutors could now pin the murder on Commission members, accusing them of having issued Galante's death warrant" (pp. 264-265).

Anthony "Bruno" Indelicato's Great Value To The Mob

A hypothetical son of Anthony "Bruno" Indelicato and Cathy Burke, would be the grandson of the late Alfonse "Sonny Red" Indelicato. These facts would allow him to begin his hypothetical underworld career with excellent criminal credentials. While Sonny Red is deceased, both Anthony "Bruno" Indelicato and Cathy Burke are alive and well. The couple remains in good standing with the Italian-American underworld.

Throughout the Mafia Commission Case (1986) and his 12 year imprisonment, Bruno Indelicato proved that he can keep his mouth shut. After his release from prison, Bruno Indelicato made no effort to avenge his father's slaying.

The feds have learned a lot about, and scored a lot of points against, La Cosa Nostra USA. But, there is no telling how much more the feds could learn, and how many more points they could score, from a cooperative Bruno Indelicato.

Like Maternal Grandfather, Like Maternal Grandson?

Even though he is 100% Italian anyway, at the time of his induction into La Cosa Nostra USA, Bruno Indelicato had only to be the son of an Italian father and a white mother. In order to pursue a lucrative career in the American Mafia, a hypothetical Junior Bruno Indelicato must follow in the footsteps of Jimmy the Gent Burke, his maternal grandfather.