Blood Relation is a commendable book, written in 2004, about a really bad guy, Harold “Kayo” Konigsberg, a stone assassin, who was serving a life sentence at the time of the book’s writing. Blood Relation was written by Kayo’s great-nephew, Eric Konigsberg, despite the objection of everyone in Eric’s family, with the possible exception of Kayo himself, who gave his great-nephew several interviews for the book, but was not very happy with the end result.

In Blood Relation, Eric recounts how Kayo threatened his life due to Kayo’s dissatisfaction with his performance in a New Yorker magazine article Eric wrote, and how the nephew took this threat seriously, and should, as he It said that Kayo had killed as many as 20 people for the Italian mafia; and more just for fun. Sadism to Kayo was like candy to a child and some of Kayo’s murders were exceptionally brutal.

To show Kayo’s influence even when she was behind bars, she was able to pull enough strings to gain favors from prison staff that other scammers could only dream of.

In Blood Relation, Eric wrote: “He (Kayo) had a private apartment renovated in the prison library, complete with his own television, telephone, radio, refrigerator, hot plate, desk and sofa.”

To spice up her plate, Kayo did the unimaginable in prison. Got a chippy and knockout to boot.

The News York Daily News wrote: “A young, shapely blonde, Marilyn Jane Fraser, was smuggled into her (Kayo’s) cell in 1965 to provide her with female companionship.”

Accompanying the News York Daily News was a seductive photo of Miss Fraser. I’ve seen less fur in Playboy magazine.

Retired NYPD detective and veteran mob fan Joe Coffey told the New York Daily News that it is a scandal that Konigsberg got out of jail.

“I knew him well and he was the worst of the worst,” Coffey said. “He liked to kill and he liked to get paid for it. He was a nasty bastard and he should have bought the electric chair.”

Kayo’s sadism was also evident in the courtroom. Coffey said Kayo represented himself in an extortion trial in the Manhattan Supreme Court and emphatically told the court that he was insane. Kayo then showed how crazy.

“He sat in a wheelchair and defecated in his pants right in front of the judge,” Coffey said. “I was there and it grossed everyone out and cleared the courtroom, but it was convicted anyway. I remember it like it was yesterday.”

At the 2008 parole hearing, Kayo said the only reason he was still in prison was because in 1963 Attorney General Robert Kennedy offered him an incredible deal in exchange for information about his friends and Kayo rejected RFK outright. .

“There was no way I could break down,” Kayo told the parole board. “The Nazis, the Germans, those people who were not hanged in Nuremberg did not turn 20 years old.”

But alas, all good things must come to an end.

In August 2012, Kayo, at the age of 86, was inexplicably released on parole from Mohawk Prison in Rome, New York, after being denied parole seven times. Kayo spent 49 years behind bars for multiple murders and is now living the good life in a $ 750,000 home in sunny Weston, Florida with her daughter Edie.

New York State Probation Commissioners Sally Thompson and Michael Hagler gave no reason to grant Konigsberg’s release, which isn’t surprising as they couldn’t have sane motivation to let a killer like Kayo out. from the can into something other than a pine box.

One of the men Kayo was convicted of was Anthony “Three Fingers” Castellito, who was beaten by Kayo at the behest of Castellito’s rival union rival, Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano. Jennie Castellito was only 13 years old when her father was killed and she was outraged that Kayo had been released from prison.

“When ‘Tony Pro’ died in prison, he had cancer, that was the best news I ever heard,” he told the New York Daily News. “My father is dead and he did not have the last 49 years to live with his children and grandchildren. I don’t think he should have been released. I don’t understand.”

The question is: Does Eric Konigsberg have to fear for his life now that his great-uncle is a free man?

I wish I knew the answer, and I wish that when I read Blood Relation I had known that Kayo would soon come out of the can and that she would still be a danger to anyone he believed had hurt her. It would have made reading the book even more compelling.

Unfortunately, if I were Eric Konigsberg, I’d be looking over my shoulder for Uncle Kayo or, more likely, someone hired by Uncle Kayo. A man is not born with spots and then dies with stripes.

Or is it the other way around?