It was a ghost he couldn’t refuse.
Lucchese mobster John Pennisi says he received an earth-shaking message from the nice past through his deceased grandparents that satisfied him to turn out to be a authorities turncoat.
The paranormal message got here to him in his Lengthy Island dwelling simply as he was praying earlier than a photograph of his late grandparents and in search of their recommendation about whether or not he ought to flip informant, he stated in a current podcast. Simply at that second, Pennisi says, he heard a sudden loud rattling of dishes and glasses. “Every part was shaking in the home,” Pennisi advised podcaster Gary Jenkins.
That was the signal, Pennisi stated, that satisfied him to show himself in to the FBI in October 2018.
Within the three trials the place he has testified since turning into a authorities witness, Pennisi has by no means talked about his “Poltergeist”-style encounter. In his sworn testimony, Pennisi has stated he flipped after Lucchese household leaders wrongly tagged him as a “rat.”
Within the podcast, Pennisi additionally provided dramatic new particulars on makes an attempt on his life that he believes had been ordered by his former Lucchese allies. Shortly earlier than receiving the supernatural message from the opposite aspect, he was chased by “5 or 6 Bloods” at a Manhattan job web site. Pennisi stated the hoodlums had been mendacity in wait to kill him for the Luccheses.
“I couldn’t imagine the extent of disrespect they’d stooped to,” Pennisi stated. He stated the Lucchese clan “had began utilizing different ethnic teams. They started utilizing the Bloods.”
On one other event, he stated, he had chased off one other group of Bloods with “a pistol in a knapsack.”
These encounters, he stated, underscored his uneasiness attributable to blended messages he was getting from the household’s performing boss, Michael “Large Mike” DeSantis.
Pennisi, who had not too long ago moved, stated, “I began seeing folks laying round on the prepare stations within the new city that I lived in.”
He stated that when a cousin steered he go to the FBI, he rejected the notion. However his son steered they “write down the professionals and cons” of the choices he confronted.
“As a final resort,” stated Pennisi, they wrote down the FBI. “That was the opposite choice. It was the primary time that I even considered the federal government or the FBI. We needed to put that down as a final resort.”
Pennisi stated his son, who “misplaced 17 years with out his father” throughout the years Pennisi was in jail for killing a neighborhood rival, “was a nervous wreck.” Pennisi stated his son “knew I used to be both going to go to jail for the remainder of my life, get killed or I’m going to be in some kind of a struggle with these guys and I’m on the dropping finish. I’m one individual. And he advised me, ‘I believe that you need to go tomorrow,’ and it was a Thursday. And I stated, ‘All proper.’ So he left.”
Pennisi stated he felt “sick to my abdomen” from Friday to Sunday and “couldn’t do it.” However on Monday morning, he wakened and prayed to his grandparents who “had handed away” for steering.
“I didn’t stay by a prepare station. You needed to stroll [there]. There was no planes flying round. It wasn’t an earthquake. Gary, I swear to you, I had wine glasses and totally different glasses and dishes in the home. Every part was shaking in the home,” Pennisi stated in a high-pitched voice, imitating the sound of glasses clicking, “bing bing bing bing bing bing.”
“I even referred to as my mom up, and I says, ‘I would like you to hearken to one thing.’ This went on for hours. She says, ‘What’s that?’ I says, ‘It’s the glasses. I prayed to Grandma and Grandpa. It’s the glasses and the dishes and the home is shaking.’ Gary, I can’t even clarify it. And THAT was my signal to go.”
Two attorneys who signify defendants towards whom Pennisi testified stated they need to have been in a position to ask him about his unusual encounters with the nice past in entrance of a jury.
“It’s merely inexcusable that the protection was by no means advised about … the paranormal occasions that he claimed triggered his cooperation,” stated Anthony DiPietro, the lawyer for convicted underboss Steven “Stevie Marvel” Crea.
“Had these supplies, and lots of different issues now revealed by Pennisi, been correctly disclosed by the federal government, no grand jury or trial jury would ever credit score his tales,” stated DiPietro.
“His capitalizing on his cooperation calls into query his prior testimony and his motives to manufacture now.”
Lawyer Gerald McMahon, who noticed Pennisi testify towards his consumer, Eugene “Boobsie” Castelle, had his personal tackle the brand new clarification by the federal government informant. On the witness stand, Pennisi testified that John “Large John” Castellucci made up the declare Pennisi was a “rat” to guard Castelle from being ostracized or worse for violating mob protocol and sleeping with Pennisi’s girlfriend.
“With the current spate of movies of UFO sightings that the Air Pressure and authorities are saying are the actual factor,” stated McMahon, “there’s a little bit of poetry and symmetry in his account. I swear to God that in a type of movies, I believed I noticed Pennisi with a helmet on. This confirms that it was in reality Pennisi touring from a distant galaxy far, distant.”
Jerry Capeci runs Ganglandnews.com, from which this was tailored.
