Giuseppe "Pepé" Costa (1905–) was a soldier in the Vinci crime family. The personal bodyguard to consigliere Leo Galante, Costa was an imposing and menacing criminal, serving as Galante's best fighter at the Hartmann Federal Penitentiary while incarcerated.
Biography[]
Giuseppe Costa was born to an Italian family in Sicily in 1905, later immigrating to the United States by the 1920s. There, he became a soldier and enforcer for the Vinci crime family led by Don Frank Vinci. He worked as a laborer in the longshoremen's union controlled by family capo Derek Pappalardo, and was also arrested for violent robbery and witness intimidation. In his adulthood, he developped an alcohol problem and was eventually arrested for armed robbery and manslaughter in 1927, being sentenced to 20 years in prison. Inside the Hartmann Federal Penitentiary, he met and befriended Vinci's consigliere Leo Galante, who trained Costa to fight in prison scuffles, with Costa eventually becoming Galante's prizefighter. Vito Scaletta surpassed Costa as Galante's best fighter when he was imprisoned in 1945, but Scaletta still used Costa as sparring practice. When Costa was set to have a prison fight against Irish Mob boss Brian O'Neill, O'Neill's gang jumped Costa the day before the fight, leaving him with a black eye and some broken bones. Costa got revenge by cornering O'Neill in the prison gym and calling off the guards so Scaletta had a chance to kill him by slicing his throat. The mobster was released from prison in 1947, and he attended Scaletta and Joe Barbaro's induction into the Moretti family in 1951, later escorting Galante and Scaletta from the New York City observatory after Scaletta killed Don Carlo Falcone.