Westside Waves Goodbye To “Johnny Sausage” Barbato, Longtime Genovese Mob Skipper Gone At 90
May 17, 2025 — Retired Genovese mob capo John (Johnny Sausage) Barbato died of natural causes earlier this week. Without question, he was an underrated powerhouse in East Coast LCN circles spanning multiple generations of organized crime activity.
Cashing in his chips on May 11, the well-liked Big Apple wiseguy was 90 years old and a staple in NYC and New Jersey mafia affairs for more than a half-century. He would have turned 91 on Thursday. The street moniker came from the fact that his dad owned a pork store on Thompson Street on the Lower West Side of Manhattan in the West Village,
“Johnny Sausage” Barbato came up through the ranks of the Westside as eventual Genovese mob underboss Venero (Benny Eggs) Mangano’s bodyguard and driver. Mangano sponsored Barbato for his button in a 1976 ceremony per federal-court records. Barbato ran the Genovese crime family’s Brooklyn and Staten Island factions in the 1990s and first half of the 2000s and oversaw labor-union rackets in New York and his home state of New Jersey. He was a cousin of slain Genovese mob No. 2 man and Jersey faction boss Willie Moretti and iconic Genovese mob boss Frank Costello. His wife was cousins with Frank Sinatra, famously known as Moretti’s godson.
The New Jersey Gaming Commission banned Barbato from all Atlantic City casinos in August 1987. His last pinch was back in 2005 on federal racketeering charges and after a guilty plea to a pair of extortion counts in the case related to shake downs of the roofers’ union (Local 8) he did three years of prison time before returning to his job as a Genovese clan shot caller. In a somewhat controversial move, he confirmed his membership in an organized-crime group (however not acknowledging the Genovese crime family specifically) in open court as part of his plea deal. Federal prosecutors accused the clever, mild-mannered Barbato of sitting on a Genovese mob ruling panel in the 1990s as the borgata’s legendary don Vincent (The Chin) Gigante fought an aggressive legal onslaught by the government. GR sources allege he was active into the 2010s and tapped out into retirement in the past decade.
