Flicking through the book "cosa nostra" the history of the sicilian mafia and saw a picture of a dead woman in a car who was killed by the mafia, i thought it was mafia against rules that women and children must never be harmed?

Each and every "rule" of the Mafia(Italian or American) has been broken countless times over.

I know these days alot of rules get broken, but i didnt think they broke rules back then

The US version of the mafia has those rules,the italian mafia doesnt have rules as far as i know

every rule has been broken, even back in the day. there all psychos what do you expect?

How about the Cosa Nostra 'no bombs rule'. According to Gravano, right before Frank Decicco was blown up by a car bomb, he actually spotted the paper bag in which it was contained. Frank jokingly commented, 'look at that, could be a bomb', knowing that it was unthinkable in Cosa Nostra, not even worrying for a second. Kind of amazed me because at the time I had just read about the Cleveland wars with Danny Greene, as if in Cleveland they seemed to care very little if at all about the heat bombs could attract. Is Cleveland another Mickey-Mouse mafia family? Because the no-bombs rule was in place at Philadelphia too, with Testa and the nail bomb.

Im not 100% but I think in Philly the idea behind the nail-bomb was to throw suspicion towards a local Roofers Union. In anycase it seems like the idea is to cast dispersions on the origin of the attack; since wiseguys dont use bombs, it must be an outside force...?
As has been said though, every rule has been broken by now. & whose rule? In Chicago car-bombs were a viable threat. Nick Calabrese testified about using car-bombs to kill people for the Outfit.

to talk about rules in the Mafia is simply ridiculous, because who enter the mafia does it to get money, power and respect in every way possible, for example, the Sicilian Mafia apparently have a rule don't kill women and children , in the 40's godfather of corleone Michele Navarra, who was a doctor, killed a child with a syringe injecting a powerful poison,because he had seen, the hiddenly of body of Placido Rizzotto, a trade unionist killed on his orders

in 90s, Giovanni Brusca strangled the child of a penitent and the dissolved in acid, he had 8 / 10 years.
In our American mafia there was the ban on drugs, but was bypassed, there was no bombs rule, but was not respected, and above all there was the rule not to kill judges or police, but Carmine Persico ordered Joel Cacace to kill a prosecutor,but the killers murdered the father of prosecutor, because have the same name of his son,cacace ordered to kill a hispanic policeman just because he married the former wife of a made man . As long as there was the old school, the rules were respected, but times changes, and the old rules are destined to be broken

Oh god. I cringe everytime I hear the Brusca story. But still I just fail to understand how Frank Decicco, who had just conspired and succeeded in whacking out Paul Castellano would find a bomb under his car an unthinkable possiblity - while in Cleveland each and every Italian crew was bombing each other to bits. And I know wikipedia is not the most reliable source, but at one point I found a quote claiming that in Philly, bombs were forbidden, which was taken from another site at the time. Sorry I can't find the quote, but pretty sure it was on lacnpd.

How the hell did Cleveland get away with all the bombing is my question. Because they were non-commission?

Cacace really messed things up with the Colombos with the Dols and Aronwald hits. Outta all the five families the Colombos probably have broken the most "rules"

It seems the mob, including mob bosses, have been all about the rules as long as they benefit from them. Once they don't, the rules go out the window pretty fast.

They wont even get near them, Italian/American mobsters are patriotic when it comes to terrorism even when they themselves ripp the government off. But maybe the terrorists will come with an offer they cant refuse, only then they will deal with them

The American Mafia has had rule breakers for years.
Tommy Desimone and Jimmy Burke killed Billy Batts cause Burke didnt want to have to hand a loan shark (or it may have been a bookmaking) racket back to Batts.
DeMeo killed Joesph Broccini after Broccini gave him a black eye in a dust up over porn.
Its ok to break the rules provided you dont get caught.
And even when you do it isnt always the end of the world.
Paul Castellano demanded an explaination from DeMeo after he had killed a car thief and his 19 year girlfriend simply because her boyfriend was in trouble with the cops and knew stuff about the Gemini crews car racket.
DeMeo couldnt be sure that the car thief hadnt told his girlfriend things so to be safe Roy clipped them both!
Castellano let Roy off with a warning.

Things are different in Italy - the Italian mob are far more brutal and dont seem to care who they kill

...and "rules" always apply to your enemies and competitors, not to you. I used to work in a company that was pervasively regulated. We were always crying that we wanted "the dead hand of government off of our backs"--even as we tried to put the dead hand on our competitors.

Lol. I don't know how the hell I posted this message here, but it was meant to be a reaction on a quote of Ivyleague in this topic:

http://www.gangsterbb.net/threads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=598827&gonew=1#UNREAD