mafioso whose associates inspired Donnie Brasco

With a difficult work meeting looming, Frank Coppa treated his colleagues to a meal of fried chicken. Duly fortified, the men set up a table and chairs in the basement of a house in New York on August 17, 1981.

Coppa opened the door and let in Dominick ‘Sonny Black’ Napolitano, an ambitious manager who had been called in for what he expected would be a nail-biting performance review. Black had inadvertently allowed an undercover FBI agent using the alias Donnie Brasco to infiltrate the Bonanno mafia family, of which Black and Coppa were members. The ruse was dramatized in a critically acclaimed 1997 film starring Al Pacino and Johnny Depp, but Black didn’t want to see it.

Coppa slammed the door and waited inside