Bonanza
The family lived on a thousand square-mile (2,600 km) ranch called the Ponderosa on the eastern shore of Lake Tahoe in Nevada opposite California on the edge of the Sierra Nevada range]. The vast size of the Cartwrights' land was quietly revised to "half a million acres" (2,000 km) on Lorne Greene's 1964 song, "Saga of the Ponderosa." The ranch name refers to the Ponderosa Pine, common in the West. The nearest town to the Ponderosa was Virginia City, where the Cartwrights would go to converse with Sheriff Roy Coffee (played by veteran actor Ray Teal), or his deputy Clem Foster (Bing Russell).
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".