Bosko Radonjich - American Years

American Years

Once in America, Radonjich settled in Hell's Kitchen area of Manhattan in New York City. He also joined the Serbian Homeland Liberation Movement (SOPO), an anti-communist and terrorist organization headed by Nikola Kavaja. Sharing royalist and anti-communist views, the two men became lifelong friends. Already known to Yugoslav state security UDBA, Radonjich's activities began to be monitored even more closely by its agents.

In 1975, Radonjich took part in a bombing at the Yugoslav mission to the United Nations in which no one was hurt. In 1978, he pled guilty to conspiracy charges in the 1975 bombing of a Yugoslavian consul's home and for plotting to bomb a Yugoslav social club, both in Chicago.

Upon his release in 1982, Radonjich moved back to New York's West Side and began working as a minor associate of Jimmy Coonan. Radonjich was able to seize control of the gang following the imprisonment of many of the Westies leadership during the late 1980s. Under his leadership, he was able to reestablish the Westies' former working relationship with the Gambino crime family under John Gotti, and was involved in the jury tampering during Gotti's original 1986 trial for racketeering.

He supervised Westie underling Brian Bentley's highly successful burglary ring using two Hispanic gang members until the arrest of Bentley and his group in the early 1990s. Later investigations under Michael G. Cherkasky, chief of the Investigations Division of the District Attorney's Office, would eventually force Radonjich to flee the United States for good in 1992 to avoid prosecution.