Bosko Radonjich

Infobox Criminal
subject_name = Bosko Radonjich


image_size = 150px
image_caption =
alias = The Yugo
charge = bombing
penalty = 12-year prison
status = captive
occupation = gangster

Bosco or Bosko “The Yugo” Radonjich is a Serbian-born nationalist, a former operative for the Central Intelligence Agency and later leader of the Westies, a predominantly Irish-American gang based in New York's Hell's Kitchen.

Early life

Before his immigration to the U.S., Radonjich worked in conjunction with the CIA for many years against Communism in his homeland of Yugoslavia.

His recorded odyssey in the U.S. began in 1970, when he moved into the West Side of Manhattan where he worked as a parking lot attendant and became an explosives expert for the Serbian underground.

In 1975, Radonjich took part in a bombing at the Yugoslav mission to the U.N. in which no one was hurt. In 1978, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in the 1975 bombing of a Yugoslavian consul's home in Chicago and for plotting to bomb a Yugoslav social club in the Windy City.

Upon his release in 1982, Radonjich moved back to New York’s West Side and began working as a minor associate of Jimmy Coonan. Radonjich was able to seize control of the gang following the imprisonment of many of the Westies leadership during the late 1980s. Under his leadership, he was able to reestablish the Westies' former working relationship with the Gambino crime family under John Gotti, and was involved in the jury tampering during Gotti's original 1986 trial for racketeering.

He supervised Westie underling Brian Bentley's highly successful burglary ring using two Hispanic gang members until the arrest of Bentley and his group in the early 1990s. Later investigations under Michael G. Cherkasky, chief of the Investigations Division of the District Attorney's Office, would eventually force Radonjich to flee the country in 1992 to avoid prosecution.

While on the run, Radonjich became a close advisor to Radovan Karadžić, the fugitive Bosnian Serb leader charged with war crimes, whom Radonjich described in a 1997 "Esquire" article penned by Daniel Voll as: "My angel, my saint."

After several years of hiding in the former Yugoslavia, he was arrested by U.S. custom officials while on a stopover in Miami, Florida on January 28, 1999. Held without bail, he was tried under a 1992 indictment for jury tampering in Gotti's racketeering trial.

The charges against Radonjich were dropped shortly after because the key witness in his case, Gotti's former Underboss turned FBI-informant Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, was charged with drug related offences while in the Witness Protection Program. Radonjich has since left the United States and currently lives in Yugoslavia.

In popular culture

* He was later portrayed by Stephen Payne in the 1998 television movie "Witness to the Mob".

Further reading

*Davis, John H. "Mafia Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the Gambino Crime Family". New York: HarperCollins, 1993. ISBN 0-06-016357-7
*English, T.J. "The Westies: Inside the Hell's Kitchen Irish Mob". St Martin's Paperbacks, 1991. ISBN 0-312-92429-1

External links

* [http://www.ganglandnews.com/column160.htm This Week in Gang Land: Bosko's Back] by Jerry Capeci
* [http://www.ganglandnews.com/column171.htm This Week in Gang Land: Bull's Case Means A Lot To Bosko] by Jerry Capeci
* [http://www.ganglandnews.com/column176.htm This Week in Gang Land: The Bull's Loss Is Bosko's Gain] by Jerry Capeci
* [http://www.americanmafia.com/Feature_Articles_111.html AmericanMafia.com - J. R.’s Mafia Year In Review – 2000] by James Ridgway de Szigethy
* [http://www.esquire.com/features/radovan-karadzic-1297 Radovan Karadzic: A Deeply Misunderstood Mass Murderer] by Daniel Voll