Interesting! Thanks!
It feels like there should be though. Like there is a fundamental difference between beating somebody half to death with a baseball bat and burying them alive, and shooting somebody quickly in the back of the head. Obviously dead is dead to the victim, but one says a lot more than the other. I could, for example, imagine shooting somebody quickly in the back of the head could be a case of “This guys needs to die, but he doesn’t need to suffer.” I don’t suspect here is a Manual of Whacking (oh my) … if person does X then use Y, but it seems plausible at least that there could be a “Kill dis guy and make it hurt.” Another example from fiction, in The Simpsons, when Smithers is ordering a beating on Homer he says “Beat him up, but no kicking.”
Thinking in terms of “Casino” (and of course it is a bad idea to take anything from a movie), but the bosses first are going to let a guy live because he’s a stand up guy, but then they begrudgingly decide to kill him just in case.
It’s interesting to me that you say “None of that is related to the OP question” and then base your answer to the question on it.
Not complaining; I just find it interesting.
Lots of things are interesting when you misunderstand them.
I understood you to mean that gangsters have nothing “we could call an honorable means of execution” because honour requires them not to. I am interested to know how I should have understood you.
The “honor” aspect of the Cosa Nostra is really a myth. It’s a long read but I refer, as an example, the climb of Sammy “The Bull” Gravano. Over and over you find betrayals and plans of betrayals, hits done without permission, etc. Similar stories about other Mafiaso higher ups is common.
People like this don’t care much about rules.
I have a feeling that the brutality of ones murder is based on how angry they are with you. If they’re just getting rid of you, a bullet to the head is the least work. But if they really hate you, they will take their time… Like how they beat Joe Pescis character and his brother for quite a while because they all were so fed up with him.
It is always the people that you trust the most, who end up whacking you. There was nothing we could do about it. He is just gone.
Not too many Colombians are in the mafia.
Only a problem if you think that both 1) one can only give a Columbian necktie if one has Columbian DNA and 2) you are using the term mafia in the most restrictive sense, in which case you’d have Italians arguing that there is no mafia in America, only in southern Italy and Sicily.
The reference in the OP is Casino, so the context is obviously about the American mafia.
If you can point to any evidence of the American mafia giving its victims Colombian neckties with any regularity, please feel free.
Our chapter did it all the time.
Your first point is quite valid, though to the second point it should be noted that this was the FBI’s exact position for decades. J. Edgar Hoover was adamant that “the Mafia” does not exist in America, that the only proper term for Italian organized crime in the US is “La Cosa Nostra”. I don’t know why, but it was very much a thing while he was alive.
That’s just a point of interest, of course a Colombian Necktie requires only a knife and utter depravity, no Colombian passport is required.
I’ve read a few mob books and seemingly the “best” way to die was to have a friend/relative of yours already in the mob be assigned to kill you.
For the mob this was a “loyalty” test but it had the added benefit that the person who killed you probably won’t go out of their way to make them suffer. The story I read they had a low level mobster get killed by his best friend also in the mob. The friend took him out for drinks, then drove him into a field after his friend was sufficiently boozed up and put two bullets into his heart at close range and stripped him of his wallet to make it seem like a robbery gone wrong.
Interesting! Thanks!
I know it’s not the same, but I can’t read that without hearing the Layla outro in the background.
We would have also accepted the “Mmm Whatcha Say” song.
The Gravano wiki linked upthread has this quote about a hit:
Gravano then granted Simone’s requests to die with his shoes off, in fulfillment of a promise he had made to his wife, and at the hands of a made man.