They Dared Rob the Mob

NEW YORK CITY - In the annals of New York City crime, few undertakings were more ill-advised, foolhardy and just plain dangerous than the one that prosecutors say was chosen by Thomas and Rose Marie Uva, a young married couple from Queens.

The Uvas set out more than a dozen years ago to solve their financial difficulties in a most unusual fashion: walking into mob social clubs with an Uzi submachine gun and separating the Mafiosi within from their ill-gotten gains.

The crime spree was predictably short-lived. They were killed in 1992 in one of the more public executions in the recent history of organized crime in New York. On Christmas Eve, in broad daylight on a busy Queens thoroughfare, they were each shot several times in the head as they sat in a car at a traffic light.

Yesterday F.B.I. agents and police detectives arrested Dominick "Skinny Dom" Pizzonia, silver-haired at 63, and are looking into the role of another Gambino figure, Ronald "Ronnie One Arm" Trucchio. It is believed a third man drove the getaway car.

Federal prosecutors have said in court papers that John A. Gotti once boasted that his group, the Gambino family, was responsible for the hit, not the Bonannos, who had also claimed credit.

One former high-ranking mob figure, who became a government witness several years ago, said

"It's embarrassing if wise guys get held up."

Adapted from an article appearing in the The New York Times, September 23, 2005.