Such talk rankles Caroline, whose first episode quote, “Let me tell you something about my family: We’re as thick as thieves, and we protect each other to the end,” has become her catchphrase.

In August of 1984 my husband and his family were victims of a horrific crime [Tiny’s murder]. To this day, 26 years later, the family does not know the whys or the hows of that event…the real crime here is the assumptions that are made against this family.

Asked specifically whether she believes Tiny was caught up with the Mafia, Manzo responds: “As far as my father-in-law goes, in his lifetime there was never so much as an accusation of him being involved in organized crime.”
Well, that’s not entirely true. Robert Buccino of the Union County Prosecutor’s Office, who in 46 years in law enforcement has charged more than 450 made members of La Cosa Nostra, says he knew Tiny Manzo. “He was well-known in the Paterson area,” he tells me, “and his association with organized crime was well-known.”

“As far as his family goes, his sons and daughters, there’s no allegations about them that we know of,” he adds. “But the father certainly was a player in the scene with organized crime.”

The gregarious Manzo was well-liked, says Buccino. His only legal entanglement, according to a New York Times article from 1974, seems to be a grand jury investigation over “possible collusion in the awarding of demolition contracts” during what would be an unsuccessful bid to become mayor of Paterson. He ran as a law-and-order candidate who advocated public hangings.

Whatever Tiny was up to in the demolition business, it was the Brownstone House banquet hall, which he bought later in the 1970s, that would become his legacy. “It’s very nice,” says Buccino. “They do a lot of law-enforcement retirements.” Still run successfully by his sons Al (married to Caroline) and Tommy (married to Caroline’s sister and co-star, Dina), the baronial premises were even used as a location on The Sopranos.

To hear Caroline tell it, that’s as close as the two clans some to intersecting. She says she is enjoying being a freshly minted reality-TV star, but admits that some of the Internet chatter about her family has been difficult. “The blogs have been a challenge for me. I am the type of person that ‘needs to know’” what people are saying, she says. “However, I have stopped reading them for the most part, if for no other reason than the fact of the blogs having the ability to literally consume your life if you let them.”

Much like the Gambino family. Allegedly.
I just like fairness.loll

So, yeah, sigh. The book also says she was also apparently hanging out, Alpha Dog style, with a drug dealer who kidnapped a rich kid who owed him money.

A quick public records search shows that Danielle Staub indeed used to go by Beverly Merrill, as well as both Danielle Maher and Beverly Maher, as in the Maher who’s in Cop Without a Badge. Or at least that someone with the same Social Security number went by all four names at dozens of addresses in New Jersey and Miami.

And via ONTD, someone has scanned two of the pages in the book that discuss Merrill. Read them and weep. No, really, weep.

I love her.