Bonanza
Bonanza is an NBC television western series that ran from 1959 to 1973. Lasting 14 seasons and 431 episodes, "Bonanza" is NBC's longest-running western, and ranks overall as the second-longest-running western series on U.S. network television (behind CBS's "Gunsmoke"), and within the top 10 longest-running, live-action American series. The show continues to air in syndication. The show is set in the 1860s and it centers on the wealthy Cartwright family that live in the vicinity of Virginia City, Nevada, bordering Lake Tahoe. The series initially starred Lorne Greene, Pernell Roberts, Dan Blocker, and Michael Landon and later featured (at various times) Guy Williams, David Canary, Mitch Vogel, and Tim Matheson. The show is known for presenting pressing moral dilemmas.
Cesare Bonventre
Born in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, Bonventre was a member of the Sicilian Mafia. During the 1960s, the New York crime families imported young Sicilian men from Sicily to the United States to work as drug traffickers and hitmen. American mobsters soon derisively dubbed the Sicilians "Zips" due to their fast speech. Bonanno boss Carmine Galante brought Bonventre to New York to be his bodyguard. Bonventre soon became the unofficial underboss of the Bonanno family Sicilians. Bonventre's uncle was John Bonventre, a former Bonanno underboss. Bonventre was also a cousin of the first family boss Joseph Bonanno and Bonanno mobster Baldassare "Baldo" Amato. In 1979, Cesare and Baldassare were arrested for carrying illegal firearms in their car after being stopped by police at the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream, New York, shortly before the execution of Carmine Galante. In April 1981, they were convicted and served two months. Ralph Blumenthal wrote in "Last Days of the Sicilians: The FBI's War Against the Mafia" that Cesare identified himself to law enforcement as "a pizza man from Brooklyn".