Gay hit man quits mob and comes out of the closet in federal court

10/20/09-by Paula Brooks Federal Courthouse in Brooklyn
A New York mob hit man stunned a Federal Judge in Brooklyn yesterday after he renounced his membership in La Cosa Nostra and then came out as gay.

When Federal Judge Jack Weinstein asked: “Are you publicly willing to resign that organization?”

Robert Mormando said, “Yes your honor, I already have.”

Then for good measure Mormando attorney, Nancy Ennis added, that Mormando had been living in hiding while he was with the mob, not from the FBI, but from his organized crime associates in the fear that they would find out he was gay and kill him.

Members of the Mafia do not accept gays within their ranks and in 1992 former DeCavalcante crime boss John D’Amato was whacked for being gay.

Ennis told the judge, “He has been openly gay since he left the mob.”

Mormando, who was a member of the Gambino crime family, was being sentenced in Weinstein’s courtroom for his participation for the botched shooting of Angelo Mugnolo, a Queens bagel store owner.

According to Mormando, he shot Mugnolo at the behest of Vincent Gotti, the younger brother of late crime boss John Gotti, because Gotti suspected Mugnolo was fooling around with his wife.

Mormando became a government witness shortly after the Mugnolo shooting, but did not have to testify against his accomplices. Vincent Gotti, his nephew Richard Gotti and Angelo Ruggiero Jr., all plead guilty to murder conspiracy charges last year and were sentenced 8 years in prison.

While he faced up to 17 years in prison for his part in the shooting, Mormando was sentenced to time served.

Mormando’s partner refused to enter the witness protection program, but they have relocated and together they “live a peaceful working life,” according to his attorney.

In 1986 another Gambino Hit man, Vito Arena, also turned on the mob, in part for fear that they would kill him for being gay, and ended up bringing down the Gambino families notorious DeMeo crew that was thought to have been responsible for between 75-200 hits in the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. Arena was later gunned down in Houston after he left the witness protection program and returned to a life of crime.

Arena was however the inspiration for The Sopranos character Vito Spatafore, a gay gangster who was eventually killed after he was outed to his mob pals.