Tearing the covers off San Diego’s underside

Niputi (The Nephew): Live under the shadow of a Mafia killer by Joseph Bonpensiero (c) 2014 via Create Space, ISBN: 9780989795005; 438 pages plus appendices and bibliography.

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO – Joseph Bonpensiero’s Uncle Frank, who spelled his last name slightly differently –Bompensiero—didn’t have much use for Jews.  Every filthy name, every negative stereotype came out of his mouth about Jews.  He once told his nephew Joe that he was the hit man who had killed Las Vegas  Mafioso Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel.  Although Joe, Frank’s  nephew (or niputi in Sicilian), doesn’t say so directly, he hints several times  in his memoir that Frank also murdered San Diego real estate investor Tamara Rand, who was a member of the local Jewish community.

Joe Bonpensiero did not admire Frank “The Bomp” Bompensiero. Reading his book, you can understand why he might have despised him.  Frank had never worked, leeched off his younger brother Sammy (Joe’s father), had a big mouth, tried to lord it over everyone he met, and was the reason why many law-abiding citizens shied away from Joe and his parents.  At one large family occasion, Frank tried to intimidate his nephew.  They took their argument outside.  And the nephew beat the Mafioso killer to an inch of his life, as Joe recounts it.  Joe’s hatred for Frank may have been one reason that Joe gravitated toward Jewish friends and associates.

At a later point in Joe Bonpensiero’s life, he went to work for Nate Rosenberg, a San Diego businessman who owned a variety of businesses and always was suspected of operating on the other side of the law, though he was no Mafioso, certainly not the Sicilian branch anyway.  Rosenberg offered an executive position to Joe because he figured Joe could stand up to his uncle Frank, of whom he was deathly afraid.

On one occasion, Frank Bompensiero and his colleague Jimmy “the Weasel” Fratianno tried to extort money from Rosenberg by hanging him by his heels outside a window of the U.S. Grant Hotel until his ankles felt bolts of pain and blood flooded into his head.  Having Joe Bonpensiero on his payroll was an insurance policy for Rosenberg.  And one day, sure enough, Joe threw his uncle and Fratianno out of Rosenberg’s office, which was located across the street from Horton Plaza on the southeast corner of Fourth and Broadway.  They never came back.  It was not long after this incident that Rand was murdered.

While working for Rosenberg, Bonpensiero reports he heard the businessman call the late Congressman Bob Wilson asking him to reverse a decision by a Marine Corps general at Camp Pendleton who declared two of Rosenberg’s businesses in Oceanside—a jewelry store and a photography studio – to be off limits to Marines.  According to Bonpensiero, Rosenberg said to Wilson: “I think I owe you some paycheck for beating me at poker the last time we met.”

Later, according to Bonpensiero, Rosenberg explained to him that he and Wilson had played four hands of “make believe” poker and that Wilson had “won” $50,000 from him.  The faux poker winnings, according to Bonpensiero, were a disguised campaign contribution to Wilson.

Long dead, as are many people in Bonpensiero’s memoir, Wilson cannot respond to the accusation of accepting illegal donations.  The author’s hated uncle also is dead, so is Rosenberg, and, of course, so are Frank Bompensiero’s alleged murder victims.  So, how much of Bonpensiero’s story is the “truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth” is up to the reader to decide.  But whatever the verdict, readers of this memoir will feel they’ve learned quite a bit about San Diego’s seedier underside.

Lest anyone think that Joe Bonpensiero was himself a part of his Uncle Frank’s other “family,” it should be pointed out that throughout his book he expresses utter contempt for the mob. Furthermore, he became a career officer in the United States Air Force, retiring as a lieutenant colonel.  Another planned memoir will cover his experiences during the Vietnam War.

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com