Edward C. Lato, a longtime Rhode Island mobster who rose through the underworld ranks as the local Mafia fractured under the weight of criminal prosecutions, died Friday with members of his crew by his Johnston bedside, said Steven O’Donnell, a former superintendent of the Rhode Island State Police.
Lato, arrested more than 30 times with 18 convictions for crimes ranging from racketeering conspiracy to running an illegal sports-gambling operation, was 77.
“Eddie elevated [in the Mafia] as a trusted, loyal soul,” said O’Donnell, who spent years working undercover in the mob and who teaches about organized crime at Salve Regina University.
“Eddie never cooperated, never collaborated, with the police,” said O’Donnell. “He was one from the old school who stayed within the [silence] code of omerta.”
In 2011 federal authorities swept up Lato and several other New England members of La Cosa Nostra, including former mob boss Luigi “Baby Shacks” Manocchio. They charged them with shaking down strip clubs for protection money.
The following year, U.S. District Judge William E. Smith imposed the stiffest sentence on Lato – nine years – noting, “You have established yourself as, essentially, a career criminal.”
In 2014, while still in prison, Lato added to his criminal record, pleading no contest in state court to conspiracy charges stemming from a sports-gambling operation. He received no additional time, and in 2019, at the age of 71, Lato was released to a halfway house in Pawtucket.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Longtime Rhode Island mobster Edward Lato dies at 77
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