U.S. Open's Bethpage home to birdies and likely a few clipped canaries

To the rest of us, it's a culture familiar only because of the colorful, bloody tales told on the big and little screens.

Accounts of crime families, mob hits, contract assassins and wise guys exerting brutal political influence are merely the irresistible stuff of fiction to the vast majority of Americans, modern-day Wild West fare that few will ever experience except via movies and HBO dramas.

Who knows what's around the grounds of Bethpage. (Getty Images)

Of course, in certain segments of the Northeast, the head- and stomach-turning stories of rotting corpses of Mafiosos, deposed and disposed, are practically the stuff of daily life. In central Long Island, for instance, FBI agents with backhoes have been digging holes and looking for the bodies of dead Wise Guys for much of the month.

Acting on information from a mobster-turned-songbird, a reputed Mafia leader who disappeared in 1999 last week was unearthed at a site located within two miles of the U.S. Open tournament site for 2009, sprawling Bethpage State Park. The news seemingly was received rather casually at Bethpage, where it turns out that golf balls aren't the only things that are whacked and lost.

Highly regarded course superintendent Craig Currier, who will oversee his second U.S. Open in seven years next June at Bethpage's famed Black Course, said law-enforcement authorities have combed through the park grounds in the past looking for mobsters who prematurely, if not violently, reached their expiration date.

The recent past, actually.

"About a month ago, out by the picnic area, they thought they might have had a body out there," Currier said this week, almost casually. "They thought they had something."

The picnic area is located near the Red and Blue courses, he said, two of the five layouts located within the boundaries of the park, which has nearly 1,500 acres of rolling terrain, much of which is heavily wooded and somewhat remote, given the population density of the rest of the Farmingdale, N.Y., area.

Now I suddenly understand why hearty golfers sleeping in their cars overnight in order to secure a morning spot on the vaunted Black are lectured beforehand by park police not to leave the designated course parking lot after dark or they'll face arrest. People wandering around at night could have ill intentions and a trunk full of gawd-knows-what.

Two years ago, Currier said authorities spotted a suspicious and solitary car in the park after dark. Somebody was attempting to turn a dead body into Bethpage compost, but he was nabbed as he dumped the corpse.

"(Police) just happened to be driving by and saw the headlights," Currier said.

Last week, federal authorities rooted around an area located roughly 1½ miles southeast of the Bethpage facility for the bodies of three mobsters, which according to an informant, are buried along the Long Island Railroad line that runs just south of the park through Farmingdale.

Authorities eventually located the corpse of mobster William "Wild Bill" Cutolo, who was reportedly knocked off in a bloody battle for control of the Colombo family in 1999. Two other bodies are believed buried in the same area, the informant said.

FBI agents found the body in an area near Fulton Street, a major artery which feeds almost directly into the south portion of the state park. The area where Cutolo's body was found is located a few yards south of Farmingdale's Republic Airport, which will presumably be used by U.S. Open players with private jets.

Over the phone, though he sounded somewhat inured to the tales, you could almost hear Currier shaking his head over what he reads in the papers. Some of it's been a bit too close for comfort.

"Bodies in freezers, severed heads -- there is some wild stuff out there," Currier said.