Telling Court He’s Gay, Mob Informer Crosses Line
There are certain rules — explicit rules — that all made members of the mob are meant to follow: No beards. No sleeping with another gangster’s wife. No cooperation with the government in accordance with “omertà,” the Mafia code of silence.
But then there are those customs that are so engrained as part of the mob way that they never need to actually be spoken. High among them — perhaps right at the top — is the ban on being gay.
So when Robert Mormando, a confessed Gambino family gunman, appeared on Monday for a hearing on his sentence for his role in the shooting of a Queens bagel store owner in 2003, he seemed to indicate that La Cosa Nostra’s laws may sometimes be honored less while being practiced than they are while being breached. Mr. Mormando, 44, not only confessed to acting as a government informer, but he also took the extra — and, it should be said, perilous — step of outing himself in court.
Read more from the New York Times.
