- "So now you cut me down to size... I'm not arguing with you, Joe. You're doing what you gotta do. This is the nature of our business."
- ―Rosario LaConti[src]
Rosario LaConti was the boss of a criminal gang in the 1920s and 30s.
Biography[]
By the close of Prohibition, LaConti was one of the few criminals who had not been absorbed in Giuseppe Mariposa's organisation. He fought a bitter war with Mariposa that he was clearly losing, but managed to prolong due to his talent for evasion.
In 1933, after failing to gain information on his whereabouts by interrogating his oldest son Jake, Mariposa finally caught up with him when Rosario’s younger son betrayed him. After taunting LaConti, Mariposa dropped him naked from a multi-story building. This action changed the opinions of many of his lieutenants, who considered this humiliating method of execution was below them. Rosario was murdered by Tomasino Cinquemani.
Real life sources[]
Rosario LaConti may be based on Frankie Yale, who was a major bootlegger in New York during Prohibition. When Yale was murdered, presumably on orders of Al Capone, his organization and territory were absorbed by the Mineo and Masseria families. Yale's murder turned out to be the first in a series of events that facilitated Joe Masseria's attempt to consolidate all of New York's Mafia families under his control, which would eventually result in the Castellammarese War, the real life version of the Olive Oil War. Joe Masseria is in turn thought to have inspired Giuseppe Mariposa's character.