Joseph Bonanno - Later Career in Arizona and California

Later Career in Arizona and California

Bonanno and his son subsequently moved to Arizona, where he was at one time sent to federal prison to serve time for various offenses during his previous stay in that state.

In the late 1970s, his two sons, Salvatore and Joe Jr., brought high heat in Northern California after getting involved with Lou Peters, a Cadillac-Oldsmobile dealer, in particularly San Jose, Lodi, and Stockton, California. As Joe Jr. grew up, Bonanno Sr. laundered his ill-gotten millions through legitimate businesses, many of them in California. In 1977, Salvatore approached the owner of a Lodi Cadillac-Oldsmobile dealership, Louis E. Peters, with an offer to buy him out for $2 million, in which the dealership was valued around $1.2 million. The Bonannos planned to purchase a string of 13 Central Valley car dealerships and launder mob money. Peters would remain a front man. But Peters decided to help take Bonanno Sr. down. Peters turned into an undercover for the FBI, becoming the Bonannos' friend, taping conversations, even staying at Bonanno's Tucson home. After a paranoid Peters saw Bonanno's nephew flirting with his daughter, he moved to an apartment in Stockton, even Bonanno staying there for three days. Instead, the FBI hit Bonanno with an indictment alleging he obstructed a San Jose grand jury investigation into his California assets. Peters provided key insider testimony. A federal judge smacked the 75-year-old Bonanno with his first felony conviction. Bonanno got five years. Owing to his poor health, he served one.

Despite an arrest record dating back to the 1920s, Bonanno was never convicted of a serious crime. He was once fined $450 and held in contempt of court for refusing to testify in 1985. Assigned federal inmate number 07255-008, he was transferred from the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, Arizona to the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri due to ill health at his advanced age and released on November 1, 1986. Upon retirement, he was allowed to live in peace in at his home in the Blenman-Elm neighborhood of Tucson, Arizona with his family.

In April 1983, Joseph Bonanno and his son, Bill Bonanno appeared on the CBS News TV program 60 Minutes to be interviewed by correspondent Mike Wallace.

In 1983, Joseph Bonanno wrote his autobiography A Man of Honor, which was excerpted in the New York Daily News. The government seized the opportunity and questioned him about the Commission, hoping to prove its existence given that he spoke about it in his book. Technically, Bonanno kept the vow of omertà and answered no questions in government hearings, but many then-current New York Mafia leaders were outraged at what he had said in his book and considered him to have already broken the vow. Bonanno boss Joe Massino was so disgusted and embarrassed by it that he began to refer to the family as the "Massino" family (although Massino himself later became a government witness and the "Massino" family name was never widely used).

Bonanno, the last remaining Mafia don who survived Italian fascism, Mustache Petes, and his own bloody war, died on May 11, 2002 of heart failure at the age of 97. He is buried at Holy Hope Cemetery & Mausoleum in Tucson.