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| - Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York City in 1960. In the mid-1980s, Zappola joined the Lucchese family, working for the Brooklyn faction that was run by underboss Anthony Casso. Zappola became one of Casso's closest allies and in 1990 was promoted to caporegime. Both his father and a paternal uncle, small-time criminal associates of organized crime, were each murdered by unknown gunmen, in homicides that were never solved. Despite this, George still wanted to become a 'made man' in the Mafia.
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| - Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York City in 1960. In the mid-1980s, Zappola joined the Lucchese family, working for the Brooklyn faction that was run by underboss Anthony Casso. Zappola became one of Casso's closest allies and in 1990 was promoted to caporegime. Both his father and a paternal uncle, small-time criminal associates of organized crime, were each murdered by unknown gunmen, in homicides that were never solved. Despite this, George still wanted to become a 'made man' in the Mafia. A Brooklyn faction-leader, Zappola joined the labor and construction racketeering operation that earned the most money for the family. This operation was run by Steven Crea of the Bronx faction. He helped Anthony oversee his various business enterprises: a bagel factory that supplied local McDonald's restaurants, numbers rackets, and slot machines. Zappola enjoyed watching professional Major League Baseball games and fights in bars around Brooklyn. He was a regular patron of Bruno's Hair Salon in Bensonhurst, where he would get a massage and a pedicure. Zappola was fastidious about his appearance and obsessed about his weight, walking six miles every day to stay trim. He wore a gold watch that was a gift from Casso, inscribed, "To George, a true friend, from Anthony." George was careless about police surveillance and electronic counter-surveillance, and carried a cell phone to which only Casso had the number. Zappola was Casso's most trusted contract killer. In 1987, Zappola participated in the ambush murder of Lucchese capo Michael Pappadio. Lucchese boss Vittorio Amuso and Anthony Casso had ordered Pappadio' death after he refused to give up one of his rackets. After several Lucchese mobsters surprised and beat Pappadio in a bagel shop, Zappola shot him in the head with a .22-caliber pistol. In 1990, Zappola and George Conte shot James D. Bishop, a Democratic district leader and former head of the painters' union in Whitestone, Queens as he was parking his car. The Lucchese family had controlled and looted the District Council 9 of the International Brotherhood of Painters and Allied Trades (IBPAT) for years. The mobsters would receive kickbacks from contractors in exchange for bid rigging and allowing the use of cheaper non-union workers. When it appeared that Bishop might cooperate with prosecutors in a state investigation of the district council, the Lucchese family ordered Zappola and Conte to murder him.
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