This week on #TrueCrimeTuesday, we bring you the story of a one-time famous chef who admitted to a secret life in the mob.
David Ruggerio was a Celebrity Chef who ruled the New York restaurant scene, running the top kitchens in Manhattan, and was an active member of the Gambino crime family. David recently came clean in an interview with Vanity Fair “I’ll Let the Chips Fall Where They May”: The Life and Confessions of Mob Chef David Ruggerio"
Ruggerio described his Brooklyn childhood as a series of Dickensian tragedies. Before he was born out of wedlock in June 1962, his father Saverio, a prolific heroin trafficker, was deported from Brooklyn to Sicily and jailed in Palermo’s infamous Ucciardone prison. When Ruggerio was about four, he says he found his infant sister dead in her crib. “Her coffin was so tiny we didn’t need a hearse,” Ruggerio recalled. A year later he watched his pregnant mother die in bed during an asthma attack: “The last memory of my mother was watching them carry her lifeless body out of the house.”