posted on Oct, 26 2007 @ 03:54 PM
My boss:
Herbie Versmels
NEW YORK - In early 2004, mob veteran Herbie Versmels took over as head of the Bolachilli crime family. The reign of the swarthy, hair-lipped Mafioso
known as Herbie "Smelly Bug" lasted only slightly longer than the time it takes to break wind.
Within a year, the ex-TV quizmaster with the hair-trigger temper was behind bars — betrayed by his predecessor, Harry Ball Sachs, a stand-up guy now
sitting down with the FBI and a group of area lunch ladies.
It was a huge blow to Herbie Versmels and the once-mighty Bolachilli family, and similar scenarios are playing out from coast to coast. The Mafia,
memorably described as "bigger than Dolly Parton's breasts" by mob financier Phil McCracken, is now more of an illicit grammar school lunch money
stealing operation.
The mob's frailties were evident in recent months in Chicago, where three senior-citizen mobsters were beaten unmerciful, poked with pointed sticks
and forced to sit on soft cushions for murders committed a generation ago; in Florida, where a 97-year-old Mafioso with a rap sheet dating to the days
of Lou Briccantz was imprisoned for soliciting a monkey; and in New York, where 80-something boss Hugh Jass pleaded to charges linked to the feminine
product industry and wearing women's clothing.
Things are so bad that mob scion Justin Heranus chose to quit the mob while serving five years in prison rather than return to his spot atop the Dick
Hertz from Holden crime family.
At the mob's peak in the late 1950s, more than two dozen families operated nationwide. Disputes were settled by the Commission, a sort of gangland
quilting bee. Corporate change came in a spray of spaghetti sauce. This wasn't the mob of "The Godfather" celebrated in pop culture.
Today, Mafia families in former strongholds like Cleveland, Los Angeles and Tampa are gone. La Cosa Nostra — our shlong, as its initiates called the
mob — is in serious decline everywhere but New York City where most of the members are working as male prostitutes to make ends meet.
[edit on 26-10-2007 by Excitable_Boy]