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Senate the same day he explained the derivation of the elder Cammisano’s nickname.īy then, a revolution had begun with the 1969 riot at the mob-owned Stonewall Inn in New York. My father said he’d have to kill him first,” Fred Bonadonna told the U.S. The dead included David Bonadonna, whose son had declined to help Willie the Rat secure liquor licenses for his new gay bars and strip joints. The dispute was settled with so many bombs and bullets that both plans were scuttled. In the 1970s, Willie the Rat sought to establish some new gay bars, along with strip clubs and peep shows, in an area called River Quay that a rival mob associate hoped to develop into a place of legitimate restaurants and shops. The patrons repaid the mob by buying cheap liquor at premium prices, along with bootleg cigarettes and sometimes drugs. The mob was able to pay off the cops to keep gay bars from being raided. The same was true of the mob in New York and Chicago and a dozen other cities. Willie the Rat operated out of a bar he named the El Reno Tavern after his favorite prison, but the Kansas City mob also ran most of the city’s gay bars back in the benighted time when being gay was considered a crime. Whatever the personal repercussions for Vito, the revelation that he is Willie the Rat’s grandson is not without historical significance. And there have been no rumblings that Vito is anything but completely comfortable with himself and with his lover. The happiest conclusion you could draw from this image is that Gerlarmo knew his son’s sexual orientation and accepted it as an integral part of a magnificent young man.īut even if Gerlarmo was not yet aware that his son was gay, he is now. The son looks equally proud to be with his dad. A Facebook photo from the event shows the manifestly proud papa beaming beside his son. But he was out of jail in time to attend Vito’s graduation from the University of Missouri in 2013. Gerlarmo also was convicted in the Internet gambling case. In my opinion, if they want to indict or investigate, I think they should use their own resources and not use friends or family to testify against other family.” He sounded altogether old school and added, “I’ve seen them do it to nine other people of our neighborhood. “The punishment that I’ve been through was useless, because I would not in any way, shape, or form change my beliefs.”
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“I’d do it all again,” Gerlarmo was quoted saying upon his release. Vito’s father, Gerlarmo (Jerry) Cammisano, proved to be a standup guy in the traditional sense back in 1992, when he spent eight months behind bars for refusing to testify in a money-laundering case. He had previously been convicted in 1978 of obstruction of justice after a wiretap caught him counseling his 17-year-old girlfriend to lie about money being passed under a table to pay off a bet on a Las Vegas golf tournament. The uncle did time after a 2011 conviction for overseeing a multimillion-dollar Internet gambling ring that used a server in Costa Rica. is said to have taken over as the Mafia boss of Kansas City when Willie the Rat died of lung cancer in 1995.