Born in 1954 and raised in Gravesend, Brooklyn, Tommy Pitera was a thin boy with a high-pitched voice who was bullied because of his feminine voice. As a teenager, he became obsessed with martial arts and with a religious fervor began studying karate to protect himself. After winning a karate tournament, Pitera traveled to Japan, where he was trained by a martial arts expert for three years. Upon returning home in 1974, Pitera was a very different human being. Quiet and introspective, sullen and aloof, he had developed his body into a fighting machine. He began associating with gangsters from the Bonanno family and was soon dealing drugs on a huge scale, while simultaneously engaging in a killing spree that spanned almost two decades. In 1992, Pitera was sentenced to life in prison for murdering six people and supporting a massive drug-dealing operation. Yet this covered only a fraction of the crimes he committed. Pitera is thought to have murdered more than sixty people, cutting many of his victims into pieces before burying them on Staten Island. Exhaustively researched and written with the cooperation of the DEA agents who hunted Pitera down, The Butcher is the perfect good-versus-evil story and will send shivers down the spine of even the most hardened true-crime reader.
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"I love this guy, the author of the iceman and gaspipe it was always destined to be good. About a mafia dude who killed people and buried them in the national parks. He even killed a woman and left her head in his freezer. Sick and twisted, just the way I like it " — Matt (5 out of 5 stars)
"I love this guy, the author of the iceman and gaspipe it was always destined to be good. About a mafia dude who killed people and buried them in the national parks. He even killed a woman and left her head in his freezer. Sick and twisted, just the way I like it "
A fine listen for any true crime fan.
" Book about a mafia hitman. Very good. Very detailed and got into the mind of the hitman and how he became who he was. "
" This just might be the most poorly written book I have ever read. "
" Very good read. Pitera was a mad killer "
" I am very interested in the mob and the minds of a killer and this book is awesome I am almost finish...The hings people do in this world. "
" This book was pretty good. Carlo's repetitiveness and overuse of redefinitions and commas gets annoying after a while, but if you can look past that he's really good at getting into these guys' heads... "
" This is a very good true crime story about how DEA officers infiltrated and brought down one of the mafia's most cruel hitmen. You will have to wade through a few gorey details. "
" Pretty decent. If you like mafia reads than you should give this book a shot. "
" This story is compelling and chilling, but I couldn't get into a rhythm reading this book due to the writing style. "
" Wow...great true crime if you like it. "
" Really good read! Super detailed! "
" My least fav of mafia collections. It's draggy and exaggerated. Some of the details are being told repeatedly like broken records. "
" i liked this book, but didn't love it. At times, it became repetitive, but did tell a very interesting story of a psycho mafia hitman. It read more like a novel than a non-fiction book. "
" Not as good as The Ice Man or Gaspipe but still worthy reading, delivered solidly by Mr Carlo. "
" I love this guy, the author of the iceman and gaspipe it was always destined to be good. About a mafia dude who killed people and buried them in the national parks. He even killed a woman and left her head in his freezer. Sick and twisted, just the way I like it "
" Author has a very annoying habit of waxing philosophical on many things not related to the book theme. Very interesting about the development of this psychopathic serial killer. "
Philip Carlo (1949–2010) was the bestselling author of Gaspipe, The Butcher, and The Night Stalker, which chronicles the brutal career of serial killer Richard Ramirez. Carlo grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, amidst the world’s highest concentration of Mafia members. When he was sixteen, he was shot in the head in a gang war, and while recuperating, he read voraciously, discovering the magic of books for the first time. His intimate knowledge of Mafia culture—their walk and their talk—helped him become a successful crime writer. He died in 2010 from ALS.
Dick Hill, named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, is one of the most awarded narrators in the business, having earned several Audie Awards and thirty-four AudioFile Earphones Awards. In addition to narrating, he has both acted in and written for the theater.
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