After years of being identified as a current boss of the Bonanno crime family, Michael Manuso remains a figure whose past includes a conviction for the death of his wife—a killing he long maintained was an accident. Born in July 1955, Manuso spent his early years in organized crime as an associate of the East Harlem Purple Gang, a loosely connected network of criminals involved in narcotics, kidnapping, and murder. Law enforcement sources at the time described him as a gun-for-hire linked to gangland killings. His connection to the group surfaced publicly in April 1976, when he and another gang member were wounded in a shootout with a rival gang in the Williamsburg section of the Bronx.
He was charged with a weapons violation. Many members of the East Harlem Purple Gang would later rise through New York’s Mafia families. Angelo Prisco became a Genovese captain, Daniel Leo became a powerful Genovese member, and Matty Madonna joined the Lucchese family and eventually served as acting boss. In around 1996, Manuso was inducted into the Bonanno crime family, reportedly sponsored by Bronx-based captain Patty DeFilippo.
But years before he became a made man, he was involved in the shooting death of his wife. The incident took place in 1984. According to newspaper reports at the time, Manuso’s wife, Eiviena, 25, was left on a bench outside the Bronx Municipal Hospital emergency room early on a Friday morning with two bullet wounds to the head. She died a short time later.
Witnesses said a man fitting Manuso’s description was seen at the hospital. Police said the shooting occurred in the main bedroom of the couple’s three-story home in the Country Club section of the Bronx. A search determined that attempts had been made inside the house to conceal the crime. The couple’s 18-month-old daughter was at a relative’s home at the time.
Manuso was arrested and charged with murder. He contended that the shooting happened during an argument and that it was an accident. Sources indicate that he pleaded guilty to manslaughter and received a ten-year sentence. Questions about whether Manuso deliberately killed his wife have lingered for decades.
One notable voice has defended him: former Bonanno captain turned informant Dominick Cicale, who had no love for Manuso but insisted the killing was not intentional. “I truly believe in my heart that it was an accident,” Cicale said. He suggested the couple had been partying and that Manuso may have been cleaning a gun or acting out of paranoia. He theorized that a gun went off after a noise startled Manuso, striking his wife, and that Manuso then left her at the hospital out of fear or confusion.
“I truly believe it was an accident because I’ve seen accidents where people shot themselves by accident while watching TV, you know, because they’re high. ”
Cicale added that despite his personal dislike for Manuso, he would not join those who labeled him a wife-killer. “There’s enough stupid things he does that people could see for themselves through those actions, but this was definitely not one of them. ”
Manuso’s rise to the top of a crime family after such an event may seem unusual, but he was not the only Bonanno boss suspected in a wife’s death.
In 1962, mobster Philip “Rusty” Rastelli was suspected of killing his wife, Connie. The couple’s history was fraught: in December 1961, Connie had shot and wounded her husband. Less than four months later, she was shot to death in the hallway of her Williamsburg home. A newspaper report at the time said her body, struck by five bullets, was discovered by a son from a previous marriage.
The murder weapon was recovered, though police did not reveal where. Philip Rastelli had been out on bail awaiting trial on a gun charge at the time. There were rumors that Connie had been involved in her husband’s criminal activities and had been arrested years earlier for trying to bribe a witness. Some speculated she had become a government informant.
No one was ever charged in her killing, but many believed her husband—who later became boss of the Bonanno family—was behind it. Michael Manuso’s own path to leadership followed years after his conviction. Details of his current status remain drawn from law enforcement sources and reporting, and his own account of his wife’s death has remained consistent: an accident, not murder.