Joe Bruno on the Mob – Jon Roberts (Riccobono) Has No Remorse For His Gruesome Crimes

I never thought Jon Roberts (Riccobono) was a boy scout, but some of the revelations in his new book “My Life — From Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset,” makes me want to puke.

The book, co-written by Evan Wright, has some startling passages, so much so New York Post’s writer Susan Cahalan asked in a recent interview asked Roberts, “So would you call yourself a psychopath?”

“Well, that depends on how you define psychopath,” Roberts said.

“A lack of empathy or remorse.”

“Well, then, yes I am,” Roberts said. “I enjoyed my life. How many other people lived the life I did? Maybe that Bernie guy, but who else?”

That Bernie guy must mean Bernie Madoff. But even Madoff, a different kind of psychopath, didn’t do the things Roberts said he did. Roberts claims in the book that he unemotionally carved up dead bodies of guys he just killed.

Roberts explained the process as such: “Smash the teeth in with a hammer, and sprinkle these in the water. Then take a sharp knife — like a fillet for fish — and cut the body from a–hole up to the solar plexus. The guts will pop out like Jiffy Pop.”

There’s one thing in the Post article below I just don’t agree with. Cahalan claims, “To be fair, Roberts didn’t have much of a shot at normalcy.”

Then she cites the fact that Roberts witnessed his father kill a man when Roberts was only seven-years-old. Plus, Roberts claims he was brought up by an abusive step-father.

Both are hardly reasons for anyone to embark on a life of crime, where chopping up dead bodies is the norm. Roberts had free will, just like we all do. I just don’t buy Cahalan’s reasoning. If she were right, we’d have a heck of a lot more homicidal maniacs on our hands then we presently do.

A scary thought indeed.

You can view at article below at

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/books/confessions_of_psychopath_64mzAOWF9moWdnM6mhiAEM

Confessions of a psychopath

By SUSANNAH CAHALAN

Posted: 13 Nov 2011 08:34 AM PST

– Roberts claims that he drugged Ed Sullivan and tried to blackmail him with a prostitute. –

Unapologetic to the end, a career killer tells of his crimes

American Desperado

My Life — From Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset

by Jon Roberts and Evan Wright

Jon Roberts was a made man, a drug smuggler, a killer. He hobnobbed with OJ Simpson and Ed Sullivan, rubbed shoulders with Pablo Escobar and Carlo Gambino, and made enemies out of John Gotti and Ronald Reagan.

He tortured college students for fun, helped snuff-out “mob accountant” Meyer Lansky’s stepson and admits to brutalizing his ex-girlfriend with a belt when she tried to leave him. He flooded the country with cocaine in the 1980s.

Regrets? He has none.

“So would you call yourself a psychopath?” The Post asked him on Friday.

“Well, that depends on how you define psychopath,” Roberts said.

“A lack of empathy or remorse.”

“Well, then, yes I am,” he said. “I enjoyed my life. How many other people lived the life I did? Maybe that Bernie guy, but who else?”

A new disturbing but intensely enthralling as-told-to memoir, “American Desperado,” co-written and vetted by “Generation Kill” author Evan Wright, gets deep inside the head of a lifelong criminal.

While the book is littered with famous names — a testament to what Wright refers to as his place as the “Forrest Gump of crime and depravity” — there are also passages so dark and violent that you wonder how a man this sinister can sleep at night.

One example is his blithe advice about how to dispose of a body: “Smash the teeth in with a hammer, and sprinkle these in the water. Then take a sharp knife — like a fillet for fish — and cut the body from a–hole up to the solar plexus. The guts will pop out like Jiffy Pop.”

“In a lot of other books, they take these monstrous people and they edit down and shave off the rough edges,” Wright said. “I tried to render him as accurately as possible, as the frightening, monstrous person he is.”

To be fair, Roberts didn’t have much of a shot at normalcy.

In 1955, when Roberts (who was born John Riccobono in The Bronx) was 7 years old, his father, a made man in the Gambino crime family, took him to New Jersey. A car blocked their passageway on a bridge.

“I’ll take care of this,” his father said, pulling out a gun.

“I saw him take it out of his waistband and say something to the man in the car. Then he pushed his gun into the window.”

Bam, bam, bam.

The scene instilled in him his father’s philosophy: “The evil path is the strong path because evil is stronger than good.”

He lived a large portion of his life upholding his father’s credo.

Two years later, his illegal-alien father was deported to Italy, leaving him with an abused mother and an abusive stepfather.

Source: nypost.com

http://www.josephbrunowriter.com/index.html