Making Her Own Way: Diana Clemente Under the Shadow of Bonanno Dad Anthony Spero

Newsday has a piece on Diana Clemente, the daughter of Bonanno consigliere Anthony Spero, who recently died in federal prison, and offers a sympathetic portrayal of a child attempting to escape the criminal taint of her mob father:

Growing up a child of an organized-crime figure has been a source of conflict her entire adult life - and remained troublesome for her. On the one hand, Clemente insists she made her success legitimately with no help from the Bonanno family, of which her father was once the acting street boss. On the other hand, Spero was still her dad, and even if he died in prison because he ordered other people's murders, she still loved him. 

Clemente is in the news because last week the Daily News reported that Clemente was named as a defendant in a lawuit brought by Jane Sammarco, the surviving mistress of Murray Kufeld, in a dispute involving the limo service Big Apple Car.  According to the allegations of the complaint, Clemente purchased 74 percent of Big Apple Car from Kufeld in 1996, and Kufeld was guaranteed $12,000 a month until 2013:  "[t]he suit claims an unidentified Bonanno 'button man' threatened to put a bullet in Kufeld's head if he didn't sign the agreement[.]"  After Kufeld died last June, Clemente allegedly ceased making payments under the agreement to which Sammarco now claims entitlement for the remaining five years.

Clemente is adamant in the Newsday piece that there was no mob influence in Big Apple Car which operates out of Bensonhurst:

Clemente said she fought for years against what she says is the untrue and unjust perception that Spero owned Big Apple Car, which the government had alleged in the 1990s. She said she divorced herself from the mob life and her father's dealings. "It is not because of my father, it is in spite of my father" that she has built Big Apple Car on Bath Avenue into a business employing close to 100 neighborhood people and using nearly 400 independent livery drivers servicing a host of corporate clients, she said.