They say revenge is a dish best served cold. Joe Glasses waited 16 years to seek his. New York mobster Joseph (Joe Glasses) Datello copped a plea this week in federal court to an attempted murder charge related to a 2017 racketeering indictment aimed at dismantling the Lucchese crime family and fingering Datello (pictured above) in a plot to kill a New Jersey mafia don’s former son-in-law who was hiding in the Witness Protection Program. He faces a 10-20 year prison term. The grudge the near-blind Joe Glasses held dated back nearly two decades. In 2016, Datello, 67, allegedly received permission from Lucchese brass, specifically underboss Steven (Stevie Wonder) Crea to travel to New Hampshire to murder Sean Richard, once married to the daughter of New Jersey mob boss John (The Eagle) Riggi and the point man for joint labor-union rackets being conducted by Crea’s Lucchese clan and Riggi’s DeCalvacante crime syndicate until he flipped in 2000. Datello, Crea and Riggi all did prison time because of Richard’s cooperation in a case dubbed “Operation Textbook.” Riggi died in the summer of 2015 at 90 years old, a free man. Crea and Datello were both busted again in the 2017 case. Crea, 71, is currently awaiting trial. The 54-year old Richard disappeared into the “Program,” alongside his stripper girlfriend in January 2000 after wiring up on his co-conspirators and imprisoned father-in-law via a recording device placed in a fake arm cast for six months. Datello acted as Richard’s go-between in sending messages and money from Riggi to Crea and still considered Richard liable for a $100,000 debt from 18 years ago, according to court documents. Around Thanksgiving 1999, Richard fled a meeting with Datello in Manhattan when he suspected it was a hit. Datello was caught on FBI wires in 2016 lamenting the hassle of being held responsible for Richard’s debt with his superiors in the mob and being worried at the time that he going to get killed over it.
