Veteran crime reporter Anthony M. DeStefano is also a mafia author

Reporter and author Anthony M. DeStefano has been writing about organized crime since the 1970s, including 10 nonfiction books.

In the mid-1970s, New York reporter Anthony M. DeStefano didn’t know much about the Mafia. But while working at Fairchild News Service, he and two other staff members wrote a 10-part series for the Mafia at the request of an editor. Women’s clothing daily about organized crime’s control of the Garment District.

“It caused a stir,” DeStefano said in a telephone interview. “I was a little stunned.”

The series led to criminal investigations and prompted other news organizations to investigate the story. It also launched DeStefano’s career as a crime and court reporter and the author of 10 nonfiction books about the Mafia. His latest, Broadway butterflywas released last summer. Subtitled Vivian Gordon: The Female Gangster of Jazz Age New Yorkdelves into the unsolved mystery of Gordon’s death. Her battered body was found in a Bronx park in February 1931.

DeStefano's latest book, Broadway Butterfly, tells the story of Vivian Gordon, a high-class call girl and blackmailer whose murder is an unsolved mystery. — DeStefano’s latest book, *Broadway butterfly*tells the story of Vivian Gordon, a high-class call girl and blackmailer whose murder is an unsolved mystery.

In addition to making a name for himself as an author, DeStefano, 78, is a special writer for the New York newspaper News Daywhere he first started working in February 1986 after a period at The Wall Street JournalHe has no plans to retire.

“I’m still having fun,” the Bronx native said.

Although he is busy working for the newspaper, DeStefano finds time to do research and write true crime books. “You just do it on the weekends and in your spare time,” he said.

‘A force tto take into account

A media studies graduate of Ithaca College, DeStefano joined the Army during the Vietnam War. He served in the ranks and was sent to Vietnam with the 1st Aviation Brigade, assigned to a news agency north of Saigon, where he assisted civilian reporters. Those reporters, he noted, “had a whole life.” He decided that was the kind of job he wanted.

From there he spent time in Europe, where he did freelance work for American newspapers. “It wasn’t a way to make a solid living,” he said.

He returned to the United States, graduated from New York Law School and completed a master’s degree he had begun earlier at Michigan State University in the film and media program. But his desire to return to the news business was strong. He wanted to keep digging up stories.

“I never lost interest in journalism,” he said.

His work at The Wall Street Journal featured a story he co-wrote with Jonathan Kwitny linking the real estate business of vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro’s husband to certain mob figures. The story further cemented DeStefano’s reputation as an enterprising reporter.

“That was my baptism into great political journalism,” he said.

Around this time, Long Island-based News Day was working on a New York City edition. DeStefano was contacted. He spoke with News Day Detective stalwarts Bob Greene and Thomas Renner. They wanted him on board. DeStefano was told, “You can have a great career here.”

They were right.

Bee News DayDeStefano has covered a long list of sensational stories in the nation’s most populous city, where newsworthy events are a daily occurrence. Under Greene, he played a role in covering the Mafia Commission trial in 1986. Shortly thereafter, he was the lead reporter for the trial of subway shooter Bernhard Goetz. “Both the Commission and Goetz’s trial indicated that News Day was a force to be reckoned with in the media world,” DeStefano said on the newspaper’s website.

DeStefano started working for News Day in 1986, in which he reported on high-profile criminal cases, including the Mafia Commission trial in 1986 and the Bernhard Goetz trial in 1987.

DeStefano’s resume contains many more important stories such as those for News DayHe recently helped cover the Gilgo Beach serial killings and the arrest of a suspect, Rex Heuermann, a 60-year-old Long Beach resident and Manhattan architect.

Over the years, DeStefano’s work has led to accolades for the newspaper and himself. He was on the News Day team that won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Spotlight News coverage of a Manhattan subway crash, and recently won an Emmy for its work on the video presentation “Gilgo Beach Investigations, 10 Years, 10 Bodies, 0 Arrests,” now available on the News Day YouTube channel.

From printed page to silver screen

DeStefano writes about police and courts, and connects with people who give him inside information on big stories. This included the family of Joseph Massino, the first New York City-area mob boss to turn government informant. DeStefano even once gave up a pair of Mets tickets to interview Massino’s relatives. His reporting on this high-ranking mobster led to his first Mob book, King of the Godfathers: “Big Joey” Massino and the Fall of the Bonanno Crime Family.

DeStefano reported on the trial of Bonanno crime family boss “Big Joey” Massino in 2004 News Daywhich led to his first Mob book, King of the Godfathers.

More true crime books followed, including one suggested by journalist and author Nicholas Pileggi when he was researching the life of gangster Frank Costello.

“There’s a book,” Pileggi told DeStefano of the man once known as the “prime minister” of the underworld. By then, Pileggi was the author of two acclaimed Mob books, Smart guy And Casino: Love and honor in Las Vegas. These books formed the basis for the now classic mafia films Good guys And Casino, which Pileggi co-wrote with director Martin Scorsese.

The Costello idea struck a chord with DeStefano. He contacted his publisher and was soon on his way to writing what would become the biography Top Villain: Frank Costello, Prime Minister of the Mafia. Pileggi used that book and another by DeStefano, The Deadly Don: Vito Genovese, Mafia Boss, when researching the script for an upcoming film, Old Knights, Set in 1950s New York, the film stars Robert De Niro in dual roles as Costello and Genovese, and is scheduled for release in March.

Book in the making about ‘Jimmy the Gent’

DeStefano isn’t slowing down. Now that so much information is online, the research needed to put a project together takes less time. The Garment District series he and others wrote in the 1970s took about six months to complete, but could probably be completed in two months today, DeStefano says.

As he notes in his book Gotti’s Boys: The mafia gang that killed for John GottiPreviously unavailable FBI archives have also become available since the 1990s. These developments accelerate the research process and help find new angles on historical stories.

DeStefano has a biography in the works about James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke, the Lucchese associate who orchestrated a brazen armed robbery at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens in December 1978. One of DeStefano’s previous books, The Great Heist: The True Story of the Lufthansa Robbery, the Mafia and Murderexamines that “obsessively reported news event,” but now the author focuses on its mastermind, Burke.

According to DeStefano in The Great RobberyBurke was a sinister figure who ran Robert’s Lounge, a Mafia bar with “a shady reputation” that was teeming with “murderers, hijackers, cigarette dealers, credit card scammers, thieves and all manner of other criminals.” Criminal plots such as the Lufthansa heist were hatched in such settings.

Published in 2017, DeStefano’s The Great Robbery is the story of the Lufthansa robbery depicted in the 1990 film Good guysHe is working on a new book about James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke, the mastermind behind the Lufthansa heist.

In Good guysDe Niro portrays a character based on Burke, described by DeStefano in The Great Robbery as “a complex man who combined murderous terror with gentleness and courtesy while serving his mafia bosses.”

During the Lufthansa heist, Burke’s crew made off with more than $5 million in currency and nearly $1 million in jewelry, equivalent to more than $29 million in today’s money. The loot has never been recovered.

DeStefano’s biography of Burke is expected to be published in late 2025 or early 2026.

DeStefano reflected on why audiences are drawn to stories about gangsters like Burke, saying that these stories have “become part of American folklore,” with both bad and good characters.

“Certain crime stories have a lot of impact,” DeStefano said, adding that “the Mafia became a very big story because of Gotti” that still attracts attention.

Over time, critics and psychologists have offered various reasons for the existence of this attraction—the primal need to understand danger is one theory—but a reader who once spoke to DeStefano defined it in simpler terms: “I just find it interesting.”

Larry Henry is a veteran print and broadcast journalist. He served as press secretary for Nevada Governor Bob Miller and as political editor for the Las Vegas sun and managing editor at KFSM-TV, the CBS affiliate in Northwest Arkansas. He is currently a senior reporter for Gambling.com.