Genovese gangster, 95, who once plotted to kill John Gotti, gets compassionate release

John Annese, New York Daily News on Apr 23, 2025

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NEW YORK — A 95-year-old mobster who once plotted to whack John Gotti will be allowed to die at home with his family, after a federal judge granted the ailing wiseguy compassionate release.

Louis “Bobby” Manna — who rose to the rank of consigliere, the number three spot in the Genovese Crime Family, before his 1988 arrest on racketeering charges — has served about 36 years of his 80-year federal racketeering sentence. He was denied release back in 2020.

On April 16, New Jersey District Court Judge Robert Kirsch granted Manna compassionate release under the First Step Act, stating that his grim health prognosis and his efforts at rehabilitation behind bars tipped the scales in his favor.

“Mr. Manna’s well-chronicled severe health problems undoubtedly establish ‘extraordinary and compelling reasons’ for compassionate release,” Kirsch wrote. Those problems include a stroke, high risk Stage II metastatic lung cancer, chronic kidney disease and a recurring infection.

He was placed in a “Fall Watch” room, under 24-hour medical observation, at the Federal Medical Center prison in Rochester, in September.

Manna will be placed on five years of supervised release, on 24-hour house arrest with electronic monitoring, and won’t be allowed to communicate with anyone but his custodians and probation officials.

“The court is satisfied that these conditions, which essentially render Mr. Manna a dying prisoner in his custodians’ home, reflect the seriousness of his crimes and are just punishment for a man at the very last stage of life,” Kirsch said.

Manna, whose criminal history dates back to at least 1952, oversaw the “Manna Faction” of the Genovese family, and answered at times to underboss “Fat” Tony Salerno and boss Vincent “Chin” Gigante,

He was admired in organized crime circles in his heyday for never turning government informant even as he faced down prison terms, and once refused a shot of Novocaine for a prison tooth extradition because he was afraid he’d break omerta.

Manna was convicted of plotting to kill rival Gambino family boss John Gotti and his brother Gene back in the late ’80s. He was caught discussing the plan on a FBI bug planted in a Hoboken restaurant: “Remember I told you it was a big hit? John Gotti.”

The feds warned Gotti about the plot, and the attempt never got off the ground.

He also ordered the August 1987 rub-out of Irwin Schiff, an FBI informant who was also skimming cash from the Genovese family. A masked gunman, selected by Manna, walked out of the bathroom of the Bravo Sergio Restaurant on the Upper East Side and shot Schiff twice in the head.

Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, President Donald Trump’s late sister, handed down Manna’s sentence in 1989. Trump signed the First Step Act, which ultimately led to Manna’s release, during his first term as president.