wanting him to face charges of violating a California conspiracy code and face ongoing allegations that he was skimming thousands of dollars from businesses he was associated with.
Meanwhile his oldest son, Charles—the adopted son who worked as a welder in an auto shop—was taken into police custody on charges of being an accomplice in a ring that traded in the sale of stolen auto parts. While free on bail and waiting to be sentenced, Charles went to his father and confided his plan to flee the country rather than going to jail. “You can run away,” Bill Bonanno told Charles, “but you’re still young, and you’ll be spending the rest of your life looking over your shoulder.” Charles Bonanno served two years in the Jamestown correctional institution in northern California.
Bill Bonanno himself managed to stay out of jail most of the 1980s, thanks to his lawyers’ legal maneuverings and skills in procrastination. But in 1989, after his conviction on charges of belonging to a partnership that had given fraudulent financial information to a bank, he was sent for a little more than three years to the San Quentin penitentiary in California. He was released in 1993 at age sixty-one. Having earlier sold his house in San Jose, he now rejoined Rosalie at their new home in Tucson, a few miles from his father’s residence. Joseph Bonanno was now eighty-eight and still affectionately acquainted with Theresa D’Antonio.
While Bill Bonanno had been away in prison Rosalie had worked for a while as a real estate agent in Tucson and then opened her own business making bridal veils. She had also written in collaboration with Beverly Donofrio a memoir entitled Mafia Marriage that was published in 1990. In it Rosalie explained:
Bill and I were born into an ancient tradition that was carried to America from Sicily. This tradition has meant different things and some of the same things to both of us. For me it meant a large, warm family, where I was protected by a strong father and lived so cloistered that I could venture into the world only if escorted by a male of my own blood. I was educated by pious nuns who contributed to my feelings of being protected and secure….
Bill was raised to be a warrior prince in a secret society. For him the philosophy of life and the lifestyle he believes in and lives by stand for honor, integrity, and loyalty. He has sworn his allegiance to his father and his fidelity to a larger family…. I could never accept the lawlessness, violence, danger, and death the tradition carries with it. I think in his way Bill would have liked to share more with me, but I wouldn’t allow it. Bill knew I did not want to be involved in this part of his life and he did not insist that I do so. I am grateful to him for that, but my blindness has cost me a lot.
I wanted to be ordinary and to have people accept me for me.
In 1995 Rosalie joined her husband and the rest of the family in celebrating the ninetieth birthday of Joseph Bonanno, a black-tie event attended by three hundred guests at a ballroom in a Tucson hotel. I was among those invited by Bill, who served as the master of ceremonies, and seated at the tables around me was a local contingent of businessmen, priests, attorneys, bankers, bail bondsmen, and morticians.
The Arizona Daily Star assigned a reporter and photographer to cover the event, and on the following day the Daily Star published a second story conceding that several readers had complained that the newspaper’s birthday coverage had “glorified Bonanno” and were also upset to read that Governor Fife Symington of Arizona and Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, had sent birthday greetings. Joseph Bonanno had long claimed to be on friendly terms with Arizona’s leading political figures, tracing such relationships back to his earliest days as an Arizona property owner in the 1940s; but now in 1995, following the Daily Star’s birthday article, the offices of the governor and senator both released statements denying that personal greetings had been sent to Joseph Bonanno, explaining that their pro forma acknowledgments had been sent by staff members.
After listening to the tributes expressed by his children and grandchildren, Joseph Bonanno stood at the dais to describe his life as both “romantic” and “traumatic,” adding that his greatest disagreements had always been with the U.S. government—“with your government, with my government; with the