Michael Cagnoni
James Mammina was driving to work in his Ford Club Wagon van on the morning of June 24, 1981, heading from his condominium in Downers Grove to his father's plant in Summit.
He stopped for a light just before he pulled onto the on-ramp on I-290 in Hinsdale.
A Mercedes pulled up next to him and pulled in front of him onto the ramp.
What he saw next would never leave him.
All of a sudden, there was a white flash, a loud explosion and a blast of heat through Mammina's windshield.
A car bomb planted by mobsters had turned the Mercedes inside out and killed the driver inside, Michael Cagnoni.
Cagnoni had been paying thousands of dollars a week in street tax for his highly successful trucking business but had run afoul of mobsters.
"The smoke cleared, and I was able to see his vehicle, or what was left of his vehicle," Mammina told jurors in the Family Secrets trial.
The roadway was showered with debris, from the car and from the victim.
Mammina was in shock but wasn't hurt.
Mammina, a regular fellow in the cabinet business, now living out of state, had another connection to the crime.
He is a cousin of the late mobster James DiForti, who prosecutors say played a role in Cagnoni's death.
Michael Cagnoni is a 2nd cousin to me.
I was young when the incident happened and didn't really learn about what happened to him until I was in my late teens.
My father and Michael were close growing up, but my father and him went their own ways well before I came along.
It was just another senseless killing for which no one person has been directly fingered, just a group of people who they say had somehting to do with it. Justice will never be done to the lone individual who committed the crime.