I suppose it is ironic that Thomas Manzo got sentenced to prison this week, the ex husband of the Real Housewives of New Jersey Star, and how the Manzo brothers fit into our little drama at the newspaper back during the summer of 2012, when we published weekly updates about the program.
At the time, I believed these posts – most often appearing
in our brief’s section – received the most hits on our website, prompting me to
wonder how these could be all so popular, and led me to suspect that the
numbers were being spiked.
When I asked our boss, she told me that our poet was
connected to the Manzo Brothers – and they were perhaps the high hope she had
for making it in the entertainment industry (as relayed to me by the two office
gossips in whom our poet often confided).
The ex-husband of a former star of the Bravo reality
television show “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” was sentenced this week to
84 months in prison for hiring, then assisting, a soldier in the Lucchese Crime
Family to assault his ex-wife’s current husband
“Whether you’re actually in the Mafia or not, hiring the mob
to assault someone because of your marital problems is abhorrent,” U.S.
Attorney Sellinger said. “Covering up the role you played only makes it worse.
The jury’s verdict, and today’s sentence, make clear that this office will
spare no resources to hold accountable anyone who commits such crimes.”
In the spring of 2015, Manzo, a co-owner of The Brownstone,
a Paterson catering hall, hired Lucchese Crime Family soldier John Perna to
assault his ex-wife’s then-boyfriend, paying for the assault with a free
wedding reception. Perna, a “made man” with his own crew, worked with them to
carry out the assault on July 18, 2015. The Perna wedding, held in August 2015
at the Brownstone, was attended by approximately 330 people, many of whom also
were members of the Lucchese Crime Family. Four years later, Manzo concealed
and falsified documents related to the Perna wedding in response to a grand
jury subpoena.
All this happened while our poet still lived in the area,
although had finally moved onto a job in New York City.
Back in 2012, the Manzo brothers operated out of Hometown,
or at least resided there, suggesting that they may have played a role in the
2013 hometown election since a number of the players seeking to outst the incumbent
mayor had ties to the mob as well.
The scarry part – if what our boss said about our poet’s
ties to the Manzo brothers is true – she really was dancing on the edge,
associating with very dangerous characters, including local operatives such as
the one who owned a club on the main drag of Hometown where cocaine and
prostitution prevailed more or less openly.
All this, of course, is water under the bridge, and our poet
luckily found more legitimate employment that eventually allowed her to
establish herself in a very legitimate career.
I guess we all have to go through the fire in order to get
to a better place, and it appears she has managed to put her demons behind her
at last, leaving dangerous characters like Thomas in the dust.
No comments:
Post a Comment