A FORMER Mafia boss who once ordered executions on suspected mob turncoats has made gangland history with his own betrayal, becoming the highest-ranking member of New York’s five Italian organised crime families to testify against one of his own.

A FORMER beauty salon owner, known within the Mafia as Vinny Gorgeous, was jailed for life without parole for the killing of one of his gangland rivals.

The reputed acting boss of the Bonanno organised crime family – a former beauty salon owner known as Vinny Gorgeous – was a mob traditionalist who believed in settling scores with violence, a prosecutor said today in opening statements at his US murder trial.

Jailed don Joseph Massino secretly recorded his successor plotting the assassination of a federal prosecutor, becoming the first head of a New York Mafia family known to have turned government informant, sources familiar with the case said.