Homicide Is My Business: Luigi the Zip―A Hitman’s Quest for Honor
“Homicide Is My Business is an insider’s look into the life of a Mafia hitman by the prosecutor who flipped him. You won’t be disappointed.”
—Nicholas Pileggi
NY Times Bestselling Author of Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family and Casino
“A must-read true crime thriller.”
—Richard Esposito, Deputy Commissioner, NYC Police Dept.
“From veteran prosecutor Mike Vecchione and award winning journalist Jerry Schmetterer comes a true-crime book that reads like an international suspense novel. Homicide is My Business is a riveting insider's look at the treacherous world of a Mafia killer.”
—Terence Winter, Creator & Executive Producer, Boardwalk Empire
The story of Luigi Ronsisvalle is an intimate look at the life of a professional killer. It is, in some ways, the story of all workingmen and women with ambition who never achieve their ultimate goal. But what makes Luigi unique is that, for him to achieve his goal, people had to die. His ambition, from when he was 12 years old, was to be a made man in the Mafia. He once told a presidential commission, “American child falls in love with baseball, I fall in love with Mafia.”
Co-author Michael Vecchione spent months interviewing the hitman about his life in the Sicilian and American Mafia, finally becoming his confidant. Those days, weeks, and months together brought Luigi to realize that, despite the concept of omertà―the code of silence ingrained in him from an early age―the road to a truly honorable life meant turning on those he once admired.
Luigi had done everything asked of him by his Mafia bosses. This included the murder of 13 people. But unlike other hitmen, whose stories have been told in the pages of bestsellers and on movie screens, Luigi was denied the Mafia recognition he felt he deserved. Drawing on personal files, handwritten notes, and official sources, this book attempts to explain his complicated life.
About the Authors
MICHAEL F. VECCHIONE has been an attorney for over 48 years. For 30 of those years, he was a prosecutor in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. He served as Chief of Homicide, Chief of Trials, and finally as Chief of the Rackets Division. His duties included prosecuting Mafia figures, crooked judges, corrupt politicians, and corrupt lawmen. He has also served as an administrative law judge and as an adjunct professor of law. He is a frequent contributor to documentaries, television news shows, radio shows, and podcasts.
The late JERRY SCHMETTERER, a trustee and past president of the New York Press Club, was an award-winning print and broadcast journalist. Homicide Is My Business is his seventh nonfiction book. During his long career he served as Police Headquarters Bureau Chief and Metropolitan Editor at the New York Daily News and as City Editor at the New York Post. He was also managing editor at CNN and WPIX in New York, and for twelve years he served as spokesman for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.
