Gambino captain Joe the Blond dies of cancer in prison
Wiseguy Joseph "Joe the Blond" Giordano was denied treatment before being sent upstate.
A Gambino capo who was a member of the late John Gotti’s inner circle has died of cancer in prison, only six months after a hard-nosed Manhattan judge refused to adjourn his sentencing so the gangster could get a suspicious spot on his lung tested.
Joseph "Joe the Blond" Giordano died early Sunday in an Albany hospital prison ward. He was 64.
“He died alone,” Giordano’s son Michael told the Daily News.
Giordano was sentenced in March to one to three years in prison after pleading guilty to a $50,000 extortion plot.
Defense lawyer Joseph Corozzo had requested putting off the sentencing for medical tests, but Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro refused.
“My father went into jail coughing up blood and they ignored it,” Michael Giordano said. “He told me, ‘I’m not going to make it out of here.’ ”
“The judge could care less and so did the DA (district attorney) and the Department of Correction,” he said. “Everybody ignored the appeals we made.”
Joseph Giordano has an infamous past with the Gambino crime family. He and his now-deceased brother, capo John "Handsome Jack" Giordano, were the nephews of former underboss Joseph "Joe Piney" Armone, who reportedly conspired with Gotti to whack then-boss Paul Castellano in the 1985 coup that enabled Gotti to take over the crime family.
Giordano was a member of Gambino mob boss John Gotti's inner circle.
The Giordano brothers’ stature in the underworld went back to their roots at Armone’s hangouts in the East Village — Lanza’s Restaurant and DeRobertis Caffe on First Ave., sources said.
John Giordano, who had leading-man looks, was a close aide of Gotti’s, in part because the Dapper Don liked to surround himself with matinee-idol mobsters, a source said.
Joseph, nicknamed for the color of his locks, may not have had his brother’s looks but was highly respected among the Gambinos. He held seats on the family’s ruling council and the panel overseeing construction rackets before his arrest this past October.
He began serving his sentence at the Adirondack Correctional Facility near Lake Placid, where the medical staff initially thought he had pneumonia and treated him with antibiotics, according to Michael Giordano.
By the time the wiseguy was properly tested, a large cancerous mass had enveloped his lung and spread to his lymph nodes and voice box. Doctors gave him a few months to live and the family applied for a medical parole for humanitarian reasons so he could die at his Deer Park, L.I., home, but that request was still being reviewed at the time of his death.
“Joe was eligible to come home in February, but he ended up getting a death sentence,” a source close to the Giordano family said.
Three days before Giordano died, he was administered a dose of chemotherapy, Michael said.
The old-school gangster had lost his voice and was barely breathing through a collapsed lung, but was able to say goodbye to some family members in a secure unit at the Albany Medical Center. “He was in a prison ward in shackles,” Michael said, adding that the family is considering legal action against the state Department of Correction.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/gambino-capo-dies-cancer-prison-article-1.1472352#ixzz2gTc2qmjx
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