Cesare Bonventre
| Cesare Bonventre | |
|---|---|
| Born |
January 1, 1951 Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, Italy |
| Died | April 16, 1984 (aged 33) Garfield, New Jersey, United States |
Cesare "The Tall Guy" Bonventre (January 1, 1951 – April 16, 1984) was a Sicilian mobster and caporegime for the New York City Bonanno crime family.
Born in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, Bonventre was a member of the Sicilian Mafia. During the 1960s, the New York crime families imported young Sicilian men from Sicily to the United States to work as drug traffickers and hitmen. American mobsters soon derisively dubbed the Sicilians "Zips" due to their fast speech. Bonanno boss Carmine Galante brought Bonventre to New York to be his bodyguard. Bonventre soon became the unofficial underboss of the Bonanno family Sicilians. Bonventre's uncle was John Bonventre, a former Bonanno underboss. Bonventre was also related to the first family boss Joseph Bonanno and a cousin of Bonanno mobster Baldassare "Baldo" Amato. In 1979 Cesare and Baldassare were arrested for carrying illegal firearms in their car after being stopped by police at the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream, New York shortly before the execution of Carmine Galante. In April 1981 they were convicted and after serving two months. Ralph Blumenthal wrote in Last Days of the Sicilians: The FBI's War Against the Mafia that Cesare identified himself to law enforcement as "a pizza man from Brooklyn".
He was a regular habituate of his cousin Baldassare Amato's deli run by his family located at Second Avenue and Eighty-fourth Street in Yorkville, New York. The deli had burned down not long before January 1984 but in its place the Amato family built an apartment building with a sleek Italian cafe and restaurant called Biffi. Bonventre's moniker was "The Tall Guy" because he stood close to six feet nine tall. Lean and handsome, Bonventre frequented clubs such as The Toyland Social Club and the Knickerbocker Avenue area with other Sicilian mobsters. In the book King of the Godfathers, Anthony M. Destefano writes that there was something about Bonventre that made him stand out from the other ethnic Italians. His stylish clothing, aviator sunglasses and European man purses embodied Italian couture. Bonventre normally wore his shirt unbuttoned with a gold crucifix hanging from his neck.
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