The Man Who Paid for the Real Tony Soprano's Freedom With His Life

In 1989, Staten Island developer and former newspaperman Fred Weiss was shot dead outside his apartment building in New Springville. A day earlier, a Gambino crew had waited for him beside a freshly dug grave. John Gotti only suspected that Weiss, a defendant in the Arlington Yard illegal dumping case, was cooperating with the government. The favor went to the DeCavalcante crime family of New Jersey, the real mob most often linked to The Sopranos. One of the men sent that morning was Vincent "Vinny Ocean" Palermo, a strip club owner who would later rise to the top of the family. A decade later, that morning came back to him in a federal courtroom. Built from federal court opinions, U.S. Attorney filings, trial testimony, and the accounts of the cooperators who were there.