Jones - Blog 2.0 - Gangsters Inc. - www.gangstersinc.org
2024-03-28T12:37:29Z
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Full-Time Gangsters Part-Time Rappers
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/full-time-gangsters-part-time
2011-07-16T16:00:00.000Z
2011-07-16T16:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p>By David Amoruso<br /> <br /> What a weird world we live in. A world in which we have celebrities who are famous for no apparent reason, at least not a reason anyone can name, they simply are famous. And those that did make it big, have a strong urge to be something else. In an earlier <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/art-imitating-life-imitating">article</a> I pointed out how many actors that starred in The Sopranos ended up being involved in real crimes. And the gangsters themselves obviously love hanging out with these celebrities. The grass is always greener on the other side.<br /> <br /> Nowhere is this more visible than in the hip hop & rap scene. For decades crime and rap have been intertwined, entertaining an audience of millions with music and lyrics that paint a vivid picture of the violent hoods across the United States. <br /> <br /> A lot of people fail to realize, though, that most rappers either never were involved in crime or only in a minor way. If they were making millions selling dope, why would they even make a career switch? It has become a selling point for them. Embellish or even Invent a violent past and you sell more records. Even if your raps aren’t as good as those of your competition. Image is everything, and that was never more true than in the rap scene. <br /> <br /> In the past decade we even saw real gangsters get involved with the music business. Rap label Murder Inc. felt it was smart to bring crime boss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/drug-boss-kenneth-supreme">Kenneth “Supreme” McGriff</a> into the fold and let him participate in their multi-million dollar business which sold records worldwide. Things didn’t end well, when the real gangster attracted the attention of the police and label executives had to stand trial on money laundering charges. Though they were acquitted, it was a reminder to the wannabe gangsters that there is more to being a gangster than just looking tough and living the good life. There is a lot of stress and that life either ends in prison or the cemetery. <br /> <br /> That’s probably one of the reasons why the following successful gangsters were risking time in the spotlight trying to launch a rap career all the while getting rich as they were dealing multiple kilos of cocaine on the streets of Kansas City. <br /> <br /> The end of June saw the culmination of Operation Blockbuster in which the DEA dismantled a drug-trafficking organization that smuggled hundreds of kilograms of cocaine worth millions of dollars from Mexico to distribute in the Kansas City metropolitan area. A total of thirty-one defendants were indicted. <br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237004666,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237004666,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237004666?profile=original" /></a>The leader of the organization, and the man with all the right connections, was Alejandro Corredor (36) a citizen of Colombia residing in Kansas City. Corredor had an in with a Mexican drug cartel and would order loads specifically for the Kansas City area. A normal load of cocaine would be from 20 to 50 kilograms, which was smuggled in vehicles driven to Kansas City from Mexico. After Corredor sold the cocaine and collected the money, he packaged the cash in bundles that were hidden in false compartments of various vehicles. The vehicles would then deliver the money to the El Paso, Texas area, where it would be transported across the border into Mexico.<br /> <br /> Now you are probably wondering where the rap angle that I mentioned earlier comes from. Well, two of Corredor’s clients were Dandrae “Bird” Jones (35, photo right) and Edward “Black Walt” Jefferson (39) both of Kansas City. <br /> <br /> Besides being one of Corredor’s biggest distributors in the Kansas City area, Jones was a local rap artist and owner of Block Life Entertainment. “Corredor invested from $200,000 to 250,000 in Block Life Entertainment, and allowed Jones to live rent-free in one of his residential properties. Jefferson was also a rap artist and one of Corredor’s distributors,” according to the DEA. <br /> <br /> As Jones was enjoying his successful relationship with Corredor he did not keep a low profile, and his boss dit not mind. During those years Jones and his gang made a lot of noise promoting their music and label. A lot of it can still be found online. YouTube has many music videos (see below) of the cocaine hustler turned rapper and his entourage of intimidating friends and sexy female companions. The label’s <a href="http://www.myspace.com/blocklifeproductions" target="_blank">MySpace page</a> not only shows promotional photos but also contains photos of the gang's luxury automobiles. </p>
<center><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/PLlgXQ7Z6Gw?wmode=opaque" width="560" height="349" frameborder="0"></iframe></center>
<p><br /> For those of us that are used to secretive gangsters who hide behind a newspaper or their hands as they walk into court, this large public cache of videos and photos is mind blowing. Here are two successful criminals dealing in multiple kilos of cocaine who are putting out raps in which they celebrate exactly that gangster lifestyle. <br /> <br /> Jones and Jefferson were among the last to be convicted in this case. Other members of their group had already been found guilty of various charges. One of that group, Dennis “Westcrook” Westbrook, was also a member of the Block Life rap group and can be seen on the cover of the group’s album together with “Bird” Jones. Jones and Jefferson face a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in federal prison without parole, up to life in federal prison without parole.<br /> <br /> The only question left to ask is: Will they now finally hit the big leagues with their rap career?<br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237004698,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237004698,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237004698?profile=original" width="340" /></a></p>
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Man is the Cruelest Animal: The story of “Trigger” Mike Coppola
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/man-is-the-cruelest-animal-the
2011-06-05T14:00:00.000Z
2011-06-05T14:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/man-is-the-cruelest-animal-the"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236991485,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236991485?profile=original" width="406" /></a>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br /> The man who appeared to be always photographed with a perpetual sneer on his face, seemingly had a temperament to match. Like many short men, he made up for lost inches with a bombastic, in-your-face approach to life. He is best remembered by the media for the way he treated women, rather than for his prowess as a gangster, although he was skilled in that field for sure. He probably murdered his first wife and certainly drove the second one to suicide. Legend has it that because of this, the mob disowned him, leaving him to live out his life in exile, cultivating orchards at his home in Miami Beach.<br /> <br /> Being short, fat, mean and ugly was less of a handicap to this man, more an inconvenience, something he would brush aside as he got on with the important things in his life, mostly to do with making money, and lots of it, which is the Holy Grail of men in the Mafia.<br /> <br /> Michael Coppola was born on July 20th 1900, in Salerno, Italy according to some sources, including the government. Professor Alan Block claimed he was actually born in the Naples area, 30 miles to the north. In December, his parents immigrated to America, settling in New York, in East Harlem. He was one of nine children, one of whom could have been Frank “Three-Fingers” Coppola, a man destined to be a major player in the Sicilian Mafia.<br /> <br /> Ed Reid, in his book “Mafia,” claims Coppola alias Frank LaMonde, was just that. He gets things wrong in this history on the mob, and this may be one of them. Frank Coppola was born in October 1899 in Partinico, Sicily to Francesco and Pietra Loicano. Michael was born a year later to father Giuseppe and mother Angelina.<br /> <br /> In 1914, Michael already an unruly teenager, was sent to truant school as “an incorrigible delinquent.” By the time he was twenty-five, he had been jailed five times, including a thirty-month stretch in Sing-Sing. He seemingly did his master’s degree in criminality on the streets, his curriculum involving grand larceny, felonious assault, pick pocketing, disorderly conduct and homicide.<br /> <br /> He claimed various fronts and occupations during his early years developing his crime profile: employment clerk, barber, restaurant owner and by the mid 1940s was referring to himself as a ‘betting commissioner.’<br /> <br /> Details of his early mob career are hazy. There are reports of him working with Dutch Schultz, the Jewish mobster with attitude; others have him linked into the East Harlem mob known as the “107th. Street Gang,” and by the time he was thirty, he had established himself as a soldier in the Mafia crime family that with the settlement of the Castellammarese War of 1930/31, would become controlled by Charlie Luciano. It was during this period that he earned the nickname “Trigger Mike” which helped him establish an image as a tough-guy, a status somewhat restricted by the fact that he stood barely five feet, five inches tall.<br /> <br /> It’s alleged that he joined the unit controlled by Ciro Terranova, (the half-brother of Giuseppe Morello who was probably the founder of the borgata,) referred to generally as the 116th Street mob or to-day “The Uptown Crew.” At some stage prior to 1935, Terranova was “shelved” by the family administration, and Mike Coppola became the capo controlling it.<br /> <br /> In May, 1929, he had attended the gangland convention at the Breakers Hotel, Atlantic City. Some sources claim that he was “allocated” the numbers business in Harlem at this meeting, although like many things written about the mob, this is speculative at best. Crime historians now believe that the gangster convention held in Atlantic City was more to do with ironing out the gang warfare problems in Chicago than anything else.<br /> <br /> Coppola may have been nominated by Charlie Luciano to watch over the family’s gambling and numbers interests, that were operating alongside those of the famous black gangster, Elsworth “Bumpy” Johnson, who had assumed control of another numbers business that had run successfully under the stewardship of Stephanie St. Clair, the woman who was known as “The Queen of Policy”. At this time, it was a very confused situation on the Upper East Side, with St. Clair, Johnson, Casper Holstein, James Warner and Dutch Schultz all vying for a share of the market that could generate well over $100,000 every day in bets. <br /> <br /> On December 7th., 1929, at 1:30 A.M. it’s alleged Coppola led a gang of six gunmen into a dinner party held by The Tepecano Democratic Club in the Roman Gardens Restaurant at the junction of 187th Street and Southern Boulevard in the Bronx. The party was hosting a function for magistrate Albert Vitale. There were some seventy guests in attendance, including at least one armed New York police officer, Arthur Johnson.<br /> <br /> The visitors were robbed of over $5000 and the cop lost his .38 service revolver, although he eventually, somehow, got this back due to the efforts of Vitale. There were some really tough New York gangsters in attendance that night including Ciro Terranova, the boss of the 116th. Street Gang, Joe “The Baker” Catania and Daniel Imascia who was a nephew of Terranova, and whose brother, Anthony, was an officer of the club. Daniel was also a bodyguard to the infamous ‘Dutch‘ Schultz. It’s an early link into the never ending relationship between the hoods and the politicians that seemed at times, to be the glue holding the New York underworld together. The raid by the gang may have been a setup, according to a subsequent police inquiry, although it is so convoluted and far-fetched it’s almost hard to believe. The only recorded account of this affair appeared in the 1940 book 'Gang Rule in New York,' and apparently emerged at the police department trial of officer Johnson. <br /> <br /> In brief: Terranova may have organized the assassination of mob boss Frankie Uale (aka Yale) back in 1927. A goon squad brought in from Chicago had carried out the killing on a Brooklyn street, notable for the first recorded instance when a Tommy-gun was hefted in New York by the mob. The killers were promised $30 big ones for the hit, but only received $5000 as a deposit. Terranova, allegedly was reneging on the balance and had asked to see the written contract he had offered, just to check the figures. The killers fronted up at the club with the paper, and Coppola fronted up with his boys to remove it along with the holdup takings, which of course was just a smoke screen to cover the real purpose of the raid. I can just picture the document: “The party of the first part, hereafter referred to as the killer, hereby instructs the party of the second part, to be known as the killee…..” It seems about as solid as the legend of the Loch Ness Monster, but then, who knows?<br /> <br /> It's possible the plan to rip-off the dinner party was discussed at either Celano's Garden Restaurant, 36 Kenmare Street in downtown Manhattan, or the garage across the street owned by Albert Marinelli, the crooked alderman representing the 2nd Assembly District. Both of these were, according to the New York Police, favourite meeting-places for Joe Masseria and Charlie Luciano and members of their gang, which at this time almost certainly included “Trigger Mike.”<br /> <br /> One certain victim of the “hold-up” was the judge, Vitale. The New York judiciary decided after a lot of public indignation had been expressed, to remove him from the bench in March 1930.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236991879,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236991879,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236991879?profile=original" width="348" /></a>On a hot steamy night, July 28th, 1931, an auto mobile filled with gunmen wheeled along East 107th Street in East Harlem, slowed outside the Helmar Social Club at number 208, and the men inside the car, levied a barrage of shots at a group of men standing outside the building. The targets threw themselves aside, but a number of children playing in the street were hit, one subsequently dying of his wounds. Two of the gunmen were allegedly Vincent Coll and Frank Giordano and they were looking for members of Dutch Schultz's gang.<br /> <br /> In another convoluted scenario, a police informant, trying to avoid prison, claimed that in fact one of the killers that night was Mike Coppola (right) and that another was Joe Rao, who was also identified as one of the targets of the attack! To complicate matters even more, Anthony 'Big Tee' Buzzone a major Harlem bookmaker, claimed he was the intended target, as part of an ongoing mob dispute revolving around control of sports betting in the area. Ironically, it has been alleged that 'Trigger Mike' had tried to kill Rao the previous year as part of the war taking place in the New York underworld between two warring factions lead by Joe Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano.<br /> <br /> In 1933, Coppola made a trip to Europe and was seen on the Italian Riviera with some well-known New York criminals, including Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, another powerful Jewish gangster. A prize possession of crime author, Hank Messick, was an amateur movie showing these men relaxing by the waterfront, shot by Lepke himself. The trip was apparently financed by New York drug wholesalers, who might well have been Salvatore Santore or Dominick Petrelli, who were identified by FBN agents as being part of a major heroin trafficking ring that also included John Ormento, Tommy Luchese and Philip Mangano among others.<br /> <br /> In June of this same year, Mike Coppola was arrested by the police, who were in fact, after his companion, Buchalter. The two men were found in an expensive apartment on East 68th street, in a very Tony area of upper Manhattan. The cops were after proof that Buchalter was in possession of guns, but a thorough search of the thirteenth floor apartment only disclosed closets full of expensive clothes, and a collection of premium golfing gear, but no weapons. It was believed the two men were working closely together in garment industry racketeering. Coppola was also managing other business schemes, including coin-operated vending and gaming machines spread across Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan.<br /> <br /> From February to April 1937, Coppola rented a house on East 5th Street in Tuscon, Arizona, and along with Cleveland mobster Al Polizzi, Lepke Buchalter from New York, Pete Licavoli from Detroit and Joe Zucker, an aide to Frank Costello, spent time socialising with Jewish gangster Moe Dalitz, who went about purchasing a chain of laundries in the area, (Dalitz seemed to have a thing about laundries, owing a string of them in Detroit and Cleveland,) but just what these other gangsters were discussing as they went hunting and partying has never been disclosed, although it's fairly certain they had not travelled all this way just to get a tan.<br /> <br /> It has been suggested that with the Nazi government disrupting traditional drug trafficking routes out of Europe, these men had gathered here, close to the Mexican border, to try to sort out alternate routes for their raw materials source. If in fact this is what they had assembled here for, they were probably dealing with Enrique Diarte, a Tijuana based Mexican narcotics trafficker, who in the late 1930s and early 1940s was probably the biggest drug dealer in Mexico.<br /> <br /> By the early 1940s Coppola had consolidated his position in the Luciano family, growing rich on the proceeds of his gambling activities. His place in the mob was obviously a mystery to law enforcement officials at city and government level.<br /> <br /> The Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN,) who were probably the most active agency tacking the Mafia at this time, wrongly perceived him as a lieutenant in the 107th. Street Mob, which is known today as the Luchese family.The agency had created a file in 1936 showing the group was led by Tommy Luchese assisted by Coppola and Dominck Petrelli. They believed the overall boss of the 107th Street Mob to be Ciro Terranova.<br /> <br /> Petrelli, Coppola and Terranova were part of the Mafia clan that was controlled by Charlie Luciano. The FBN did however, get Luchese’s place in the 107th correctly identified, just not his position. The family at this time was controlled by Tommaso Gagliano. The FBI would never “officially” recognize the existence of the Mafia for almost another twenty years, which no doubt suited Coppola and his mob friends down to the ground.<br /> <br /> Mike Coppola was part of a crew operating in East Harlem that would become famous for at least four of its other members in the years to come:<br /> <br /> Joseph 'Socks' Lanza, who became the czar of the Fulton Fish Market for the mob, making it for many years a major cash-cow for the Luciano crime family. Lanza probably worked for Coppola as a “muscle” man in the early stages of his mob career, but became a man of such standing, when he married in 1941, his best man was Frank Costello, then the head of the family.<br /> <br /> Phil Lombardo, a small, bald, and cross-eyed gangster, who at one time was driver/bodyguard for big boss Charlie Luciano and would become the family boss himself one day.<br /> <br /> Anthony ‘Fat Tony’ Salerno, one of three brothers in the mob, the others being Alfred and Angelo, who would also rise in ranking to be the big cheese in the Genovese crime family, at least the 'front' big cheese.<br /> <br /> And Barney Bellomo who may or may not have reached that exalted position in the 21st century.<br /> <br /> According to informant Joseph Valachi, “Trigger Mike’s” crew was the biggest in the family, which if true, would have made him one if not the most powerful capo in what was perhaps the biggest Mafia unit in New York, at the time.<br /> <br /> In 1943, Coppola married Doris Lehman, a twenty-three year old dancer and hat-check girl at the Copacabana Club in Manhattan. She was tall, with dark hair, flashing eyes and great legs. In 1944 she gave birth to their first child, a boy they called Michael David. Three years later, Doris was pregnant again, but would never live to see her baby grow up.</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236992264,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236992264,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236992264?profile=original" width="420" /></a></p>
<center>
<p><strong>Mike Coppola and Doris Lehman</strong></p>
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<p><br /> A major part of Coppola’s strength and power base in this part of New York, rested on the support he and other mobsters received from the congressman for East Harlem, Vito Marcantonio. They helped get him the votes for re-election, and he made sure things worked smoothly in their favour. He was fighting a primary in 1946, but his position was being jeopardized by the actions of a Republic party captain called John Scottorigio who was a district captain for Marcantonio's Republican opponent, Frederick Van Pelt Bryan. It was believed Scottoriggio had in his possession a record of voter names he intended to challenge the morning of the elections. Coppola and his group decided that it would be a good thing if Scottoriggio's intention was to be nullified.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993055,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993055,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236993055?profile=original" width="194" /></a>In a meeting held in his apartment at 347 East 1116th. Street (right), Coppola decided that Scottorigio had to be put out of action. He was waylaid early in the morning of election day, November 6th, 1946, as he left his apartment, by four men, who beat him so badly, he died six days later in hospital. Present that night at the meeting in the apartment, apart from the conspirators, were Doris and her father David Lehman.<br /> <br /> The police had arrested an ex-con named Emilio Tizol, who had been pinched for physically menacing three of Republican candidate Van Pelt Bryan's 18th Congressional District workers on Election Day. Hoping to mitigate his forthcoming sentence he asked to see District Attorney Frank Hogan, offering him information on the men who were behind the attack on the Republican captain.<br /> <br /> Based on Tizol's revelations, Hogan's detectives on Saturday the 16th of November, five days after Scottoriggio died, picked up Harlem's two most feared racket bosses, Trigger Mike Coppola and Joey Rao.<br /> <br /> They were subsequently released on bail of $250,000 an enormous amount for this time, which was quickly knocked down by a friendly judge, Aaron Levy to $25,000 following their arrest as material witnesses. The police went after other suspects (over 800 witnesses would subsequently be interviewed in the Scottorigio case,) including Doris and her father. But they disappeared, just after Mike was arrested.<br /> Along with the little boy, they first went to stay with relatives in Queens. Then, they headed south and stayed on Palm Island in Biscayne Bay, near Miami until the spring of 1947. From there, they made their way north, staying for a time with Anthony Del Guidice, an ex NYPD officer, and close associate of Mike Coppola, before finishing up at the palatial residence at 315 Mount Pleasant Avenue, Providence, Rhode Island, of Frank 'Butsey' Morelli, allegedly head of the New England Mafia family.<br /> <br /> Eventually the pressure grew too great, and Doris and her father surrendered themselves to the authorities. They both were indicted, facing perjury charges for their lack of co-operation in the investigation, and facing up to ten years in prison after District Attorney, Frank Hogan, had succeeded in having an indictment brought down in November 1947. <br /> <br /> Early in March, 1948, while awaiting trial for perjury, Doris was admitted to St. Vincent’s Hospital at 153 West Eleventh Street, Manhattan, to await the birth of her second child. On March 17th., 1948, at 10:30 pm, a baby girl, Doris Patricia arrived. On March 18th., a little after nine, the mother died, very conveniently in hospital, of complications from childbirth. No autopsy was ever held to determine the cause of death, and Coppola, contrary to his religious beliefs, had his wife’s body cremated. The case against “Trigger Mike” died along with his wife. Charges against her elderly father were dropped. No loose threads; end of story. <br /> <br /> Doris was waked out of the Ferncliffe Mausoleum and Cemetery facility at 207 East 11th., Street, and it seemed as though half the New York underworld came along to say goodbye. Over 5000 people attended the service or funeral. Among the crowds of sombre men in black were Augie Cafarno, Gerardo Catena, Vito Genovese, Big John Ormento, Frank Morelli and Albert Anastasia, who simply signed the register of condolences as “Albert.”<br /> <br /> There was only one Albert of any consequence among these guys after all. The money pledged by the visitors covered the cost of the funeral, leaving the bereaved husband a profit of $1500. Anastasia dropped off a measly $50.<br /> <br /> In 1947, while his wife was hiding out in Florida, and he was no doubt visiting her, he did one of the many deals that helped make him a very rich man. He invested in the Manhattan Cigarette Company a firm founded in 1936 by Joe 'Doc' Stacher, a close aide of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-meyer-lansky-laundered-the-american-mafia-s-dirty-cash-and-ma">Meyer Lansky</a>, and Mike Lascari, a relative of Luciano’s. The business, originally called the Public Service Tobacco Company, was the largest cigarette-vending machine business on the East coast. Other investors in this booming business included Joe Adonis, Gerry Catena and the New Jersey, Jewish gangster, Abner Zwillman.<br /> <br /> The Mason Tenders Union of New York had long been a fertile breeding ground for Mafia control and manipulation. A unit of the LIUNA, Laborers International Union of North America, itself one of the most corrupt labour organizations in America. There are ten locals in the Mason Tenderts District Council of New York, and the Luciano/Costello/Genovese family had a lock on local 13 of Queens and 47 of Brooklyn for years. Mike Coppola seemingly had a turn controlling these union slush funds for the Mafia at some period prior to moving to Florida on a permanent basis.<br /> <br /> By November 1950, Coppola was the owner of a house at 4431 Alton Road, on the Miami Beach peninsular for which he paid $30,000. He had spent much of the war years here, on the Beach, living at 5138 Cherokee Avenue, just south of La Gorce Golf course in the Lake View neighbourhood.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993098,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993098,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236993098?profile=original" width="655" /></a><br /> He purchased the Alton Road property from John “King” Angersola a one-time member of Cleveland's Mayfield Road Mob, a man with many interests in Florida including the Carib, Wofford and Grand Hotels in the Miami area. Angersola and his brother had migrated south to Florida in 1939 to avoid the heat being brought down on the mob in Cleveland by the crusading director of safety for the city, Elliot Ness.<br /> <br /> Mike was soon investing in local opportunities and quickly became a partner with bookmaker Jack Friedlander in a casino called Club Collins.<br /> <br /> He bankrolled at least two of the South Florida on-track bookmaking heavies, Frank Ritter and Max Courtney In December 1955, his activities in this area had him ejected and bAnnd from the famous Tropical Park raceway in Coral Gables and all associated tracks.<br /> <br /> He also cemented relationships with Jewish gangster <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-meyer-lansky-laundered-the-american-mafia-s-dirty-cash-and-ma">Meyer Lansky</a>, also domicile in Florida and Lansky’s friend and partner, real-estate developer Loris Chesler a 300lb obese Canadian multi-millionaire and former prohibition rum-runner. Through him, he linked into gambling ventures via a Grand Bahamas company called Mary Carter Paints which morphed into Resorts International in 1968. Along with Wallace Groves and Chesler, Coppola became a director of the General Development Corporation whose functions was to purchase available land, including complete islands in the Bahamas chain, as potential sites for future casinos. It also became the largest real estate developer in Florida, creating among other interests, three entire small cities.<br /> <br /> Although he had essentially removed himself physically from the North East Coast, he still maintained ties there.<br /> <br /> A 1952 probe by the New York State Crime Commission into waterfront racketeering in New Jersey, named him as a major target for investigation<br /> <br /> Along with Joey Rao and Tony Bender, (the right hand man of Vito Genovese,) he was deeply involved in controlling the waterfront across the Hudson River.<br /> <br /> He was often observed by New York Police investigators, in the company of Tony Bender, meeting up with Frank Costello for meetings at New York’s many racetracks. Costello loved to gamble, and public courses were perfect venues to discuss Mafia business.<br /> <br /> Mike Copolla was also allegedly operating the largest floating crap game in New York which was busted by the police who raided a deserted loft in Harlem on the afternoon of February 5th, 1952, arresting 46 gamblers and seizing over $10000 in cash.<br /> <br /> Coppola like all the men of the Mafia, networked liked crazy. His business, his social life, his very existence, depended upon and was driven by his connections. Joseph Valachi, a mere soldier in the same crime family, had literally hundreds of friends, social links and access to fellow mobsters across the five Mafia crime families of New York, and he was hardly in the same league as Mike Coppola, whose contacts stretched across America-criminals, politicians, cops, grifters, a whole smorgasbord above and below the radar that he used to grease the cogs and ratchets of his life-style engine.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993454,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993454,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236993454?profile=original" width="198" /></a>One of the lesser known, but fascinating in his own right, was Pasquale “Patsy” Erra (right).<br /> <br /> Born in 1915 in Harlem, at the age of twenty, Erra became a professional fighter at the bantamweight level. He fought eight times in New York with a seven win one loss record between 1935 and 1936 until his life turned to custard when he was arrested, tried and convicted of larceny, for which he did time in prison.<br /> <br /> In 1945, Coppola commissioned him to carry out a hit on one Louis Cirello who had robbed one of Mike’s gambling joints. Erra and a partner who may have been one of his brothers, either Mike or Rocco, tracked down their prey and shot him four times as he stood at the back of the Cosmo movie theatre at 176 East 116th Street in Harlem, on Friday evening, June 1st although they did not do that good a job, and Cirello lived to steal another day.<br /> <br /> As a reward for at least trying. Coppola proposed Erra into the Luciano crime family and he became a member in 1949. He became the bodyguard and driver for Coppola until he also decided to move south to Florida.<br /> <br /> Erra was a man who developed some significant contacts himself. FBI “airtels” or summaries of an electronic bugging device, confirmed that he had been in contact with Raymond Patriarca, the Rhode Island based head of the New England Mafia at some time in the early 1960s indicating that he had progressed up the ladder from being just a hit man and bodyguard. <br /> <br /> In Florida, he more than likely kept on working for Trigger Mike, and along the way ended up in ownership along with Vincent Teriaca of the well-known nightspot, the Dream Bar, located in the Johnina Hotel on the beachfront at Collins and 71street in Miami Beach. He died, May 1973, age fifty-eight.<br /> <br /> Teriaca’s son, Craig, a golf professional was shot and killed in a barroom scuffle by Richie Schwartz, the step-son of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-meyer-lansky-laundered-the-american-mafia-s-dirty-cash-and-ma">Meyer Lansky</a>. Schwartz lasted a few weeks until he was also killed, shot-gunned to death as he sat in his car behind his restaurant. Mob vengeance is almost always quick and certain.<br /> <br /> Another mobster Mike Coppola was linked into was Joseph “Pip the Blind” Gagliano a cousin of Vincent Rao, and one of the major drug traffickers on the upper East Side.<br /> <br /> Starting as a street thug and working with petty hoods like Joe Valachi, stealing fabric out of warehouses in the garment district, he soon worked his way up the ladder into a position of authority in the early mob structures following the New York underworld war of 1930-31. <br /> <br /> He and Coppola had shared business and social agendas. On one occasion, in the early 1930s, they made a trip to Colorado, and were photographed on horseback. Spiffily dressed in matching sweaters and knickers, their hair greased back, they sit uneasily on two large horses, holding on for grim death as the photographer freezes them for all eternity. One, the king of the Harlem numbers, the other a drug dealer par excellence, the world was waiting for them, its arms outstretched.<br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993662,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993662,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236993662?profile=original" width="747" /></a></p>
<center><strong>Coppola & Gagliano</strong></center>
<p><br /> Gagliano operated as the narcotics manager for the 107th Street Mob, organizing the smuggling of opium from Mexico up into the New York area where it was processed into heroin by clandestine laboratories, according to the New York office of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics who tracked him through the 1930s before pinning him down and getting him indicted in December 1946 along with Charles Albero, a.k.a. “Charlie Bullets” and others. Facing up to 10 years in prison, “Pip the Blind” hung himself in his cell in the Bronx on April 10th 1947.<br /> <br /> In 1955, “Trigger Mike” flew from Miami to New York to watch a boxing match and find a new wife. <br /> <br /> The boxers were Archie Moore, grossly outmatched by Rocky Marciano. The woman was Ann Drahmann. She was thirty-four, five feet four (about the same height as Coppola,) dark haired, pretty and a solo mother. She had been born of Italian parents in Cincinnati, her father‘s name being Augustine. She had a seventeen year old daughter called Joan. Ann lived in Newport, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, and had been married to Charley Drahmann who managed the Lookout House casino for the mob. In August 1952, he was killed in a plane crash near Atlanta.<br /> <br /> Friends of Coppola’s arranged an introduction between him and Ann at an Italian restaurant in East Harlem. Mike was ready for another woman to share his life, and Ann was looking for a way out of the poverty trap her husband’s death had created for her. She thought at first that the fat, little man, who spent the night watching her table from across the room was the maître d’ and thanked him for a wonderful evening. Coppola was obviously gob-smacked by her presence, and was soon courting her with a fervour that matched his thirst for making money.<br /> <br /> He pursued her, bombarding her with flowers and gifts of jewellery, chaperoned by big Fat Tony Salerno, one of his soldiers, who towered over the diminutive mob boss with the face of a dimpled doughnut. On December 28th., 1955, Ann and Coppola were married, with their wedding reception being held at the Beverly Hills Club, outside Newport, Kentucky. They moved straight into the Alton Road house, which sat on a 100 by 120 feet corner section with three bathrooms, four bedrooms, a gourmet kitchen and a full-sized pool in the backyard. Managed by a housekeeper, a cook and a gardener, thing should have been perfect, but for Ann, it was all downhill from then on. Ironically, because of their wedding location, she found herself locked into a relationship with her own Joe Btfsplk. <br /> <br /> Three weeks after the wedding, Coppola, in a screaming rage with his wife, calling her “a flat-nosed, frog-eyed bastard,” pulled out a revolver and wildly fired a shot at her, fortunately missing his target by a mile. She slept that night in the maid’s room, and was packing a bag to leave, the next day, when Coppola smacked her repeatedly in the face, knocking her to the kitchen floor. It was just the first of many beatings <br /> <br /> Three months into the marriage, Ann found herself pregnant. One afternoon, lying on the kitchen table, an underworld doctor known only as “Doctor D,” a house surgeon for one of the swanky beach-side hotels in Miami performed an abortion on her, at Coppola’s insistence. Trigger Mike even assisted in the operation, smiling with glee as the doctor cut away the foetus. Three more times, over the following months, Ann subjected herself to the pain and humiliation of these unsavoury operations. She came to believe that her husband wanted sex with her, only so that he could indulge himself in these sickening sequels. The doctor walked away each time with a tax-free fee of $1000 for his services.<br /> <br /> Throughout the 1950s, Coppola operated a loan-sharking business from his home, topping up his bank through regular visits to New York, always returning with at least $200,000 in cash. His wife in her testimony to the IRS, claimed her husband stashed at least $350,000 at any one time in five different secret locations throughout their house.<br /> <br /> Following its opening in 1954, Coppola made the Fontainebleau Hotel on Collins Avenue his operating base, not unlike the way Frank Costello in New York used the Waldorf Astoria as a mob headquarters. Coppola went by the name of Michael Kaplan to confuse any law enforcement investigators as he operated from a luxurious cabana, one of 250 that sat alongside the hotel’s 6500 square foot pool. He became a close friend to Ben Novack the flamboyant hotelier who had created the mammoth establishment that re-opened in November 2008 after a one billion dollar refurbishment!<br /> <br /> The domestic beatings and abuse continued, and on one occasion Ann was immobilized for three weeks after her husband kicked her so hard, he damaged tissue at the base of her spine.<br /> <br /> As much as he continually abused his wife, Ann confirmed that through her marriage, Coppola had showered her with jewellery, furs and presents worth at least $250,000, not so much because he loved her, but to show off and prove to people just how big and successful he was. And he was doing all this on a declared annual income of $15000!<br /> <br /> Late in 1956, Ann was searching through her husband’s possessions, and came across some papers. Although she never disclosed the full nature of them, she later told a federal agent that they confirmed her husband had arranged the murder of his first wife.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993891,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993891,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236993891?profile=original" width="124" /></a>By the end of 1957, Mike Coppola had decided to withdraw from New York street activities for good. He would leave his huge, profitable numbers business in the capable hands of Tony “Fats” Salerno (right), who would also take over the running of his crew. They settled the details when “Fats” came down for the winter break, to catch some sun in south Florida.<br /> <br /> Tony would courier Coppola’s share of the profits each month, and he would concentrate his efforts on his other business efforts in the sunshine state and the Caribbean, where along with <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-meyer-lansky-laundered-the-american-mafia-s-dirty-cash-and-ma">Meyer Lansky</a> and Vincent Alo (no relation to Joey), he had interests in Bahamian casinos, and his directorship in General Development Corporation which by now had bought up half of the Grand Bahamas Island for casino and gambling developments, and Nevada, that generated him substantial income from the points he had in various casinos. The money that came in brown paper parcels from New York was supplemented by bundles of money from these ventures as well. Ann estimated that his income from these sources was at least $1 million every year.<br /> <br /> In October, he and Ann visited Las Vegas, and one night at the Riviera casino, Coppola got into a marathon crap game that went on for twenty-eight hours, and cost him $140,000. On October 13th., he was arrested at the Stardust casino. Although no charges were brought against him, as a result of this brush with the law and the authorities, he was essentially bAnnd from the casinos of Vegas. In 1960, he found himself sharing top billing with eleven other men who had also been barred from any and all casinos and places of gambling in Nevada.<br /> <br /> His name was listed in what became to be known as “The Black Book,” created by the Nevada Gaming Board at the instigation of the governor of Nevada, Grant Sawyer on 13th June, 1960. It stayed there until he died.<br /> <br /> According to information supplied by Ann, some of it later confirmed by mob informer, Joseph Valachi, “Trigger Mike” was connected not only to men who would later become notorious as members of what is now known as the Genovese family, men such as Phil “Ben Turpin” Lombardo, Frank Livorsi, Tony Salerno, Joe Stacci and Vincent Alo, but also other such mob luminaries as Charlie Luciano, now residing at 464 Via Lasso, Naples, Italy, Moe Dalitz, Al Polizzi, Vito Genovese, Tom Dragna and <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-meyer-lansky-laundered-the-american-mafia-s-dirty-cash-and-ma">Meyer Lansky</a>, to name only a few.<br /> <br /> His address book was thick with names as was his Xmas card list-Angersola, Bommarito, Scalish, Epstein, Polizi, a list of various Dragnas, an endless cavalcade of criminals and shady politicians who moved in and out of his business and social templates.<br /> <br /> Although Coppola had stepped back from his daily street crime involvement, he kept pursuing other money-making activities.<br /> <br /> In 1959, he came under the scrutiny of New York D.A. Frank Hogan who was investigating corruption in the professional boxing area. Hogan's office were scrutinizing the activities of a number of well-known hoodlums and shady businessmen such as Anthony Salerno, Frank Ericson, Gil Beckley, one of the biggest bookie-handicappers in Florida and the man who had orchestrated the meeting between Coppola and Ann Drahmann, Coppola himself and the arch-manipulator of the sport, New Jersey based Frankie Carbo, the most venal operator in the crooked world of boxing, and in particular their devious control of the famous June 25th 1959 fight between Ingemar Johansson of Sweden and American heavyweight Floyd Patterson. In a sport where it was often said 'only the ring was square' the mob's stranglehold was stifling to the point that nine months after his bout, Johansson had still not received his $300,000 prize money.<br /> <br /> The D.A.'s investigation led nowhere however, and Coppola and his associates were never indicted.<br /> <br /> As 1959 drew to a close, things were coming to a head in the Coppola household. Not only was Mike beating his wife on a regular basis, her twenty-one year old daughter was now, also a victim. Coppola was supplying her with drugs, and possibly even worse than that, sexually abusing her. Ann and her daughter finally gave in, and both left the house for good. On February 17th., 1960, Coppola sued for divorce, charging Ann with “extreme cruelty.” She cross-claimed, citing the same reason, and on March 25th., a final decree was signed off. She was at last free from the monster she had married almost five years earlier, but wasn’t just satisfied with a divorce and the cash settlement that was granted along with it.<br /> <br /> She wanted revenge, some kind of justice against the brute who had tormented her for so long. The Internal Revenue Service was after Mike, and she agreed to co-operate, working closely with one of their agents Joe Wanderscheid, to help build up a case. The IRS investigation carried on from May 2nd. throughout the rest of the year.<br /> <br /> On the evening of October 20th., Ann was kidnapped from the car park of her apartment building, Blair House on Bay Harbor Island, by two men. They drove her to a lonely beach on Easter Shores and gave her a solid beating. The men told her she was “a stoolie,” and “you got to leave Mikey alone, if you don’t, we’ll kill you.”<br /> <br /> She survived the beating, and later called a press-conference, accusing her husband of arranging the abduction. The IRS’s case against Coppola mounted over the months, and largely on information supplied by Anne, a grand jury indicted him on four counts of tax-evasion, involving $385,000.<br /> <br /> On May 25th., 1961, she and her daughter sailed on the S.S. United States to France to start a tour of Europe. It has been alleged that she took with her $250,000 of Coppola's cash. Over the next few months, she flew back and forward between Rome and New York as Coppola’s trial date neared. While in Florida she was secluded at the Homestead Air Force Base, forty miles south of Miami where agents of the IRS mounted what became known as “Operation Babysit” to ensure her safety and carry out their de-briefing of her.<br /> <br /> On one occasion, Coppola flew over his attorney who offered Ann $200,000 to stay in Europe. She turned him down. His first trial which began on November 27th was postponed because of an irregularity with the jury and at the second trial due to start on Feb 12th., 1962 when over two hundred witnesses had been subpoenaed to give evidence, Mike Coppola, literally minutes before the court convened, suddenly changed his plea to guilty. He had been indicted on charges of tax evasion this time to the amount of $966,193.00, but the government settled for 400K.<br /> <br /> The judged fined him $40,000 and sentenced him to serve a period behind bars. It was his first prison sentence in over 20 years.<br /> <br /> It was rumoured that the mob had held a ‘mini’Commission’ meeting somewhere in West Palm Beach and word had been handed down to Coppola to roll over and not cause any more waves.<br /> <br /> Frustrated at not being able to stand up in court and tell the world what a real slime ball Michael Coppola was, Ann eventually returned once more to Europe. Six months later she was dead.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236994076,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236994076,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236994076?profile=original" width="200" /></a>She and her daughter had settled in Rome. Ann (left) stayed in hotels although Joan had moved into her own apartment. Ann, fearful of reprisals because she had informed on such an important mobster as her husband, refused to live with her daughter in case of potential risk to her, and filled her days shopping and visiting Eve’s, a famous and expensive beauty salon on the Via Veneto.<br /> <br /> She had booked into a hotel room in Rome, on September 18th., and started drinking whiskey and gulping down Nembutal tablets. She wrote a letter of farewell thanking her friends in the IRS, extorting the attorney general, Robert Kennedy to keep up his fight on organized crime, sending farewell wishes to her daughter Joan, asking that she be cremated and her ashes strewn over Coppola’s house. And a final message for the man who had ruined her life:<br /> <br /> “Mike Coppola, someday, somehow, a person or God or the Law shall catch up with you, you yellow-bellied bastard. You are the lowest and biggest coward I have had the misfortune to meet.”<br /> <br /> Then, she lay down on the bed and died.<br /> <br /> Interestingly, only a few days before she killed herself, she had signed an agreement to lease an apartment in the city.<br /> <br /> Coppola served his time in the Federal prison at Atlanta. He found himself with plenty of mob company, including John Diougardi, a capo, and Joe Palermo, a soldier in the Luchese family, and the big boss himself, Vito Genovese serving 15 years for drug trafficking. He would have also, no doubt, mingled with a soldier from his own crime family, a small, inconspicuous man, Joe 'Cago' Valachi, who would soon turn organized crime on its head when he became an informant for the government.<br /> <br /> Mike Coppola returned to his home in Florida in December 1962 after serving nine months of his sentence. It seemed that the problems he had allowed to develop, and the resulting bad publicity surrounding the stormy marriage he had endured with Ann, were enough to convince his superiors in the Genovese crime family that he had served out his usefulness, and they basically put him out to pasture. He spent his remaining years looking after his ivory collection, and raising orchids in the big, empty house on Alton Road.<br /> <br /> Authorities did track him, travelling to Europe, Mexico and Central and South America during this period, but were never able to connect him to any obvious criminal activity.<br /> <br /> In September, 1966, he was taken ill, and was admitted into Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He died there from kidney disease on October 1st. His body was shipped to New York where he was buried at the Ferncliffe Cemetery and Mausoleum in Hartsdale, Westchester County, New York. It was so quick and quiet, the Federal agents who had been checking on him since his release from prison, didn’t learn of his funeral until it was over and done with. <br /> <br /> Ferncliffe is the only registered cemetery in the north New York area that is allowed to carry out cremations. John Lennon and Nelson Rockefeller were cremated here, and the cemetery holds the remains of such luminaries as Jim Henson, the creator of “The Muppets,” Oscar Hammerstein III, actors Basil Rathbone, Joan Crawford, Judy Garland and Ed Sullivan. <br /> <br /> Michael Coppola is buried in a crypt under that of his first wife Doris. <br /> <br /> Ann Drahmann was one of many mob connected women who found their lives locked on an unstoppable course leading only to despair. She no doubt loved the riches her marriage brought her, but could never have imaged the despair those riches would generate.<br /> <br /> Renate Siebert in her elegant and arresting book on women and the Mafia, ‘Secret’s of Life and Death,’ recalls German poet Bertolt Brech’s ballad:<br /> <br /> <em>Oh! Moon of Alabama</em><br /> <em>We must now say goodbye,</em><br /> <em>We’ve lost our good old mamma,</em><br /> <em>And must have dollars</em><br /> <em>Oh! You know why</em><br /> <br /> Powerful ambition for social climbing coupled with the urge to acquire wealth even though it was all being subsidised by a demeaning lifestyle at the hands of a chronic and psychopathic bully made the options of Mrs. Mike Coppola very limited.<br /> <br /> A repulsive, obnoxious megalomaniac, a wife beater and worse, there were few redeeming features about this man. His second wife claimed he loved beautiful things and at times could be very gentle, yet she thought of him essentially as egotistical and cruel. His passing would have been mourned by few.<br /> <br /> Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno certainly would no doubt have been grateful for no longer having to cough up a share of the huge numbers business he controlled from his dingy social club on East 115th Street in Harlem, which is alleged to have generated up to and beyond $50 million a year. It’s highly feasible that he was a strong advocator that Mike Coppola be “shelved” so that he could no longer be obligated to keep sending a share of his profits to his former boss. If there is no honour among thieves, there is certainly none among Mafioso. Salerno had another twenty years to enjoy his wealth and station in the family before he went down to the government on the famous 1985 RICO case which sent him away to prison where he died as a result of a stroke in 1992.<br /> <br /> Coppola was without doubt evil by any definition. Alain Badion the French political activist and philosopher believes that abusing the power of truth enables the control of others or the amassing of power. “Trigger Mike” was undoubtedly a master in both arts.<br /> <br /> William Shakespeare claimed “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” The Mafia supplied many of them.<br /> <br /> Mike Coppola was ugly by looks and ugly by nature. Perhaps Friedrich Nietzsch had the true handle on it:<br /> <br /> “Man is the cruelest animal.”<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236994685,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236994685,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236994685?profile=original" width="118" /></a><br /> <em><strong>Thanks to Ed from The Real Deal Forum for his help on some of the research.</strong></em></p>
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La Primula Rossa: The Story of Luciano Leggio (Part 2)
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/la-primula-rossa-the-story-of-1
2011-02-20T11:00:00.000Z
2011-02-20T11:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/la-primula-rossa-the-story-of-1"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237001077,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237001077?profile=original" width="440" /></a></p>
<p>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/la-primula-rossa-the-story-of">Part One</a> - <strong>Part Two</strong><br /> <br /> Through 1958 tensions rose and it was becoming increasingly obvious that Doctor Navarra and Luciano Leggio were heading for a showdown. Navarra, despite being well educated and a man of the world, did not really understand the mentality of the younger man. It is said in Sicily that a man can be as powerful as God, but if someone has the nerve to shoot him, he will die just like anyone.<br /> <br /> The breaking point was water.<br /> <br /> Sicily is a country that suffers extreme temperatures during the summer months, sometimes up to 100 degrees centigrade or even higher. Water is critical to the survival of the agricultural-driven economy of the western regions. Farmers obtained their water supplies from privately held artesian sources. Navarra and his associates controlled most of these wells. <br /> <br /> In the 1950s the Belice River became part of a project created by the <em>Consorzio di Bonifica dell ’Alto Medio Belice</em>-an association of all landowners along the river- to create a huge dam on Piana della Scala, north-west of Corleone. The confederation covered 16000 hectares of land, three provinces, 20 towns and 35,000 owners. The multi-national General Electric Company had indicated it would be interested in being part of the development should it go ahead. This would supply water to a significant area in western Sicily including the hugely profitable fruit growing regions of the Conca D’Oro to the west of the metropolitan area of the city of Palermo. <br /> <br /> The problems surrounding the development of the proposed dam were not confined only to Corleone, but as Salvatore Lupo pointed out in his book on the Mafia, they stretched all the way along State Highway 118 into the biggest city in Sicily. <br /> <br /> For obvious reasons, Navarra as a major owner of artesian water supplies, was against this project, as were many of the major Mafia figures in Palermo who also controlled water rights across north-west Sicily. Leggio on the other hand, could see significant opportunities through lucrative contracts for his haulage business and in the supply of essential goods and services to the main builders and contractors who would be employed in the project. <br /> <br /> He and his group actively supported Prince Giardinelli who chaired the confederation. He was however, overthrown in the annual election, and his place taken by a lawyer, Alberto Genzardi, who just happened to be the son-in-law of Comporeale Mafia boss, Vanni Sacco, a man close to Navarra and someone with as many vested interest in seeing the project stumble. A third of the elected officials in this election turned out to be Mafiosi, or family relatives. <br /> <br /> The doctor and his allies effectively squashed the chance of Leggio making big money. The two men were continually at loggerheads over this. <br /> <br /> In the early days of their relationship, Navarra had looked upon the small, stunted, lop-sided killer with some kind of affection, referring to him as <em>cosa sua personale</em> (his own personal thing.) Now, when talking to his associates, the doctor was so incensed with Leggio he would refer to him as a ‘jerk’ or a ‘tramp.’<br /> <br /> After 14 years, the partnership was about due for termination. Without realizing it, Michele Navarra had according to a local saying, been waiting like a dead man on holiday, to be murdered. <br /> <br /> Angelo Vintaloro was a loyal member of Navarra’s inner circle. A staunch supporter of the doctor and a good friend, as well as a member of the Corleone <em>cosca</em>. He bought an estate of 120 acres and was one of the farmers who resisted the Belice River project. <br /> <br /> Leggio and his group began to badger Vintaloro-breaking into his sheds and destroying casks of wine, and stealing the wheat that had been harvested through the early summer. He even demanded a ransom from Vintaloro to stop the harassment, and it was this that triggered Navarra’s attempt to end the Leggio problem once and for all.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237001652,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237001652,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237001652?profile=original" width="162" /></a>At the doctor’s orders, men under Marco Marino set up a plan to kill Leggio in July as he rode on horseback back to his farm from one of his secret abattoirs, thinking he was going to collect on his extortion plan. <br /> <br /> The group of killers including Marino, Antonio Mangiameli, Giovanni Marino, Antonio Maiuri, Francesco Paolo Streva and others, hiding in a barn, set up an ambush outside Leggio’s place at 7:00 am one morning in July as he and a group of his men, including Francesco Leggio, Leoluca Leggio and Giuseppe Ruffino returned. From visiting one of Leggio’s illegal abbatoirs It was a dismal failure. Because of their fear of Leggio (left), the hidden gunmen opened fire too early. <br /> <br /> Although he was wounded, shot in the hand with buckshot, he escaped through the help of one of his own killers, a goatherd called Salvatore Sottile. Another account of the ambush, according to a report published by the <em>carabinieri</em>, credits Leggio’s uncle setting up the hit, and ensuring no one was seriously hurt, intending to provoke a war between Leggio and Navarra. The double, triple and even quadruple-cross have always been an essential element in the psychology of the Mafia.<br /> <br /> In August 1958, Leggio struck back. <br /> <br /> On Saturday the 2nd Dr. Navarra had an appointment with the Mutual Farmers Fund Co-operative in Lercara Friddi. Famous for almost nothing except perhaps the birthplaces of Frank Sinatra’s paternal grandfather and that of notorious American Mafioso, Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano, it lies fifteen miles south-east of Corelone. He was driven there by a medical associate, Dr. Giovanni Russo. Some sources claim he was a doctor, others, a dentist. They went in the doctor’s car, a black Fiat 1100.<br /> <br /> The meeting ended by lunchtime and the two men were motoring along State Highway 118, back to Corleone, when at approximately 12:30 pm near Porta Imbriaca, a few miles out of Prizzi, an Alfa Romeo 1900 travelling in front of them suddenly stopped. Dr. Russo rammed the back of the other car, staving in the front of his, and damaging the rear of the Alfa.<br /> <br /> At that point, the front car emptied out a group of armed men, and according to some reports, a small, red, covered van appeared behind the Fiat filled with other gunmen. Firing a variety of automatic and semi-automatic weapons the hit-team raked the black car. The windows and windscreen were shattered and both passengers were killed instantly.<br /> <br /> Although dozens, perhaps hundreds of shots were fired, autopsies on the two corpses showed that Russo had been hit eight times, and Navarra seven. Each body contained a variety of different calibre bullets.<br /> <br /> When the police arrived at 3:30pm they found Dr. Russo slumped back in the driving seat and Navarra curled up, lying on his lap. Someone, perhaps Leggio, had given Navarra a final benediction, firing a <em>lupara</em> into his mouth, at close range. <br /> <br /> Numerous fragments of broken, red glass, from the shattered rear lights of the Alfa, were found in the middle of the road and collected as evidence. Forensic examination of the scene, revealing 92 shell casings, confirmed that among other weapons, Breda 6.35mm and Thompson .45 calibre sub-machine guns were used in the shooting.<br /> <br /> Police and carabinieri investigating the killings, believed that the hit team consisted of:<br /> <br /> Luciano Leggio along with Francesco, Vincenzo, Giuseppe and Lelucca Leggio, Giacomo Riina, Giuseppe Ruffino and Bernardo Muratore. Almost certainly along for the ride would have been Salvatore Riina, Bernardo Provenzano and most likely Leoluca and Calogero Bagarella. This was the core of Leggio’s group that he had been developing over ten years.<br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237001683,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237001683,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237001683?profile=original" width="481" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><strong>Luciano Leggio & Giuseppe Ruffino</strong></p>
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<p>The killing of Navarra could be seen to be simply an act of revenge by Leggio, or a matter of self-preservation. However there was another story that went around, that in fact he had been commissioned to carry out the murder by Don Genco Russo, <em>Zi Peppi Jencu</em>, the omnipotent Mafia boss in Sicily, based in Mussomeli, and a leading figure in the honoured society on the island, who wanted the doctor killed for his own, particular reasons. <br /> <br /> The ageing Don was struggling to come to terms with the new, emerging powerhouses on the island, men like Gaspare Ponente, Paolo Bontà, Gaspare Badalmenti, Salvatore Le Barbera, Pietro Torreta, and the Greco cousins- Salvatore and Michele. Navarra was allying himself with some of these and creating heartburn for the old don.<br /> <br /> The ‘Old Mafia’ of Sicily was nothing more than a system of godfathers and clients exchanging favours, services and other advantages; a Mafia as Salvatore Lupo points out, reduced to the general category of clientelism which would gradually wane as the country modernized. Russo was trying to hold back the new wave with a finger in the proverbial dam.<br /> <br /> He had invited Leggio to his home for dinner, and then pronouncing Navarra‘s name, kissed Leggio on the forehead, saying: ‘I give you the life of the traitor in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.’ <br /> <br /> Whatever triggered the act, it set in place events which would change the face of organized crime in Sicily, forever.<br /> <br /> In the house of Doctor Navarra, in the small square in Corleone, down from the mother church, people came and went: ’<em>u vistu</em>, the sympathy visit, The women cried on each other, the men looked stiff and uncomfortable. Everyone exchanged kisses and spoke in hushed voices. The king was dead, but no one knew why, or who would replace him.<br /> <br /> Calogero Vizzini, the Mafia don of Villaba, considered one of the most influential mob bosses Sicily had produced, could see where this was all leading, even before he died in 1954.<br /> <br /> <em>Morto io, morto la Mafia</em>, he told journalist Indro Montinelli, ‘When I die, the Mafia dies.’<br /> <br /> Leonardo Messina, the pentito, or informer, said:<br /> <br /> ‘<em>The rise of the Corleonesi is a tragedy without end</em>.’<br /> <br /> Leggio and his successors began a campaign of organized terror that would turn Sicily into the Lebanon of Italy. This was however, all in the future.</p>
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<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237002088,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237002088,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237002088?profile=original" width="640" /></a></p>
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<p>He was called to account by senior members of the Sicilian Mafia in Palermo, but somehow escaped the normally extreme sanctions they would have imposed on someone with the temerity to carry out an act of this magnitude without their clearance. He simply told the head of this group, Salvatore Greco, the killing was a personal matter, and walked away. <br /> <br /> According to the testimony of Tommaso Buscetta, (<em>Dibattimento</em> Vo 1. P. 37) the important Mafia figure who became an informant in 1984, the underlying cause of the crisis that would come to afflict the Mafia in the years that followed, was the unauthorized killing of Doctor Navarra by Leggio. It created the cycle of murder, intrigue and betrayal which would come to epitomize the Sicilian Mafia in the latter part of the twentieth century.<br /> <br /> It was the start of a dynamic shift in the power politics within the mob that would not only encourage, but in fact make mandatory, a scorched earth policy in their approach to dominating their criminal landscape.<br /> <br /> Nicolo Gentile, the ‘Passepartout’ of Italian organized crime, who never seemingly crossed Leggio’s path, although according to his biography, ‘<em>Vita de Capo Mafia</em>,’ the Corleonesi was probably the only one in twentieth century Mafia history who didn’t, wrote: <br /> <br /> ‘<em>There died in Sicily an honoured society, the Mafia, which had its laws, its principles, an organization that protected the weak and ……its place was taken by people without honour, who robbed without restraint and killed for pay</em>.’<br /> <br /> Following the doctor’s death, Leggio set about systematically destroying Navarra‘s men. They were now led by Antonino Governale with Giovanni Trumbaduri as his counsellor and a group of about twenty or thirty hard-core Navarra supporters and second string <em>picciotti</em>. It became known in the town as <em>la burrasca</em>-the war-between the <em>Liggiani</em> (Leggio’s group) and the <em>Navarriani</em> (Dr. Navarra’s clan).<br /> <br /> Leggio would have gathered his men around and said:<br /> <br /> <em>Org ci rumpemu I corna a tutti</em>-‘Now we are going to break all their heads.’<br /> <br /> And they did.<br /> <br /> In the months that followed, killers led by Riina and Provenzano, murdered dozens of men. They were machine-gunned to death in groups as they stood talking on street corners, kidnapped and slaughtered, their bodies dumped into ditches and wells and blown out of chairs as they sat drinking beer or coffee inside and outside trattorias. Two gunmen, dressed identically in foppish, black velvet suits, actually drew down on each other, as they crossed the main piazza -Garibaldi-in Corleone. In a scene reminiscent of a B grade western movie, they approached each other, shooting simultaneously, and killing each other.<br /> <br /> The dead were everywhere. <br /> <br /> The first to be killed were Marco and Giovanni Marino, and Pietro Mauri and then Carmelo Lo Bue, son of the former capo of the family. The first three went down four weeks after the two doctors, on September 6th during an evening town procession celebrating the Madonna della Catena. <br /> <br /> In a massive shoot-out on the Via Bentivegna, a fire-team consisting of Leggio, Giovanni Ruffio, Bernardo Marino, Calogero Bagarella, Salvatore Riina, Bernardo Provenzano and Franco Mancusco, launched a fierce attack. In the wild shoot-out three pedestrians were injured including 30 year old Anna Santacolomba and her two year old daughter, and the three men were killed. Bernardo Provenzano was shot in the head and wounded, next to the perfume shop owned by Mrs. Santacolomba. Staggering into the hospital, his shirt soaked in blood, he claimed he’d simply been walking down the street on his way to the cinema and someone had shot him. The doctors were far too smart to argue, patched him up, and sent him on his way. <br /> <br /> Carmelo Lo Bue went down on October 13th.<br /> <br /> Mauri owned the only petrol station in the town, causing major headaches until his estate could be reconciled. <br /> <br /> Paoli Riina and Vincenzo Cortimiglia, a gunslinger as fast and deadly as Franscesco Streva, and Biaggio and Giovanni Liggio, Vincenzo the brother of Pietro Mauri, and Anonio Governale, and Salvatore Cammarata an endless list of dead. <br /> <br /> A man interviewed by a Palermo reporter commented:<br /> <br /> '<em>In Corleone they shoot people everywhere, wherever they happen to be. There’s hardly a corner in the town where people were not shot to death as a moist rag. They stove in their heads and cut off their hands. They use their lupara to send the message with buckshot, and 1911 Colts to blow men’s heads off. They killed people in the squares and on the steps of churches.</em>’<br /> <br /> There wasn’t a corner of the town that had not experienced the ‘Red Harvest’ as Dashiell Hammet described the inexhaustible blooding of the streets, in his classic 1929 detective novel. <br /> <br /> Bastiano Orlando, Navarra’s closest confident and right-hand man, went to Palermo to try and reconcile the problems with the big guys in the big city, and never came back-a classic <em>bianco lupara</em>-the white death-missing in action. He was not the only one who disappeared. <br /> <br /> Antonino Governale, the doctor’s underboss and Giovanni Trombatura the family consigliore, or advisor, also went missing, disappearing consecutively on April 5th and 10th 1961. They were followed by Bernardo Raia on September 22nd Giovanni Delo on December 21st and Vincenzo Listi on July 21st 1962. All vanished into thin air.<br /> <br /> When the old men dressed in black congregated on the street corners, they would spit onto the road and say:<br /> <br /> <em>S’u mangier, ‘they’ve done him in</em>.’ And they had.<br /> <br /> No one of course, saw anything. ‘Who was killed?’ asked a reporter of a woman in black, weeping as she followed her son’s coffin in a funeral procession. ‘Why?’ she asked, ‘is anyone dead?’ <br /> <br /> The scourging of the Navarra faction went on until September 10th 1963. On that day, in a lane, high up in the hills, leading to the feudo Strasatto estate, Bernardo Provenzano accompanied by Leggio, Calogero Bagarella, Salvatore Riina and Bernardo Marino, gunned down Francesco Paolo Streva, along with Biaggio Pomilla and Antonio Piraino. Streva had been Dr. Navarra’s number one killer. A fearsome man who could shoot with great accuracy, using a pistol in each hand. Legend had it he could blow out the ace in a playing card at thirty feet, left or right. An ambidextrous assassin. Perhaps the only one in Sicily. There is a saying in the heartland of the Mafia, ‘those with a capacity to kill are left at peace.’ <br /> <br /> In the end, it only helped him live an extra five years.<br /> <br /> The myth handed down from that killing scene is that the three men had been disabled with wounds to their legs. Provenzano then walked among them, executing each man with a gunshot to the head. The corpse of Biagio Pomilla was found kneeling, as though begging for his life.<br /> <br /> More folklore has it that following this event, Leggio would say of Provenzano:<br /> <br /> ‘<em>Brains of a chicken, but shoots like an angel!</em>’<br /> <br /> There had been an earlier attempt to remove Streva.<br /> <br /> On May 9th Leggio and two of his top shooters-Giovanni Ruffino and Calogero Bagarella, along with the Provenzano brothers-ambushed Streva and some of his men at dawn, as they walked along the narrow, rubbish-strewn Via Scorsone, a street where members of the Riina and Bagarella families lived, in squalid houses, which often stabled animals such as goats, pigs, sheep and donkeys on the ground floor beneath the cramped living quarters. Although there were pistol and shotguns fired at close quarters, non one was killed or injured on this occasion except some plastered walls and hens. The local people were used to gunshots. Here, in the San Giovanni district of Corleone, there had been many killings over the years.<br /> <br /> In the carabinieri file392/4 and their report 3508 to the Parliamentary Commission of Enquiry on the Mafia in Sicily/ Document XXIII Volume 2-6th Legislature, is a list of the parents and relatives of the dead who accused Provenzano of the crime against Streva and his associates. It ends: ‘Provenzano-wanted for murder, but untraceable.’<br /> <br /> Streva was the last major player left in the Navarriani. Whatever resistance was left, crumbled and was blown away by a wind of change that had turned into a tsunami of fear and dismay. From 1958 until 1963 there were 153 murders in and around Corleone. On a per capita basis that would be equal to 100,000 in New York. <br /> <br /> In America, the Mafia, when they spoke of Corleone, referred to it as ‘Tombstone’ as though it was like a town out of the Wild West, except of course, it was ten times more deadly there than life had ever been in the days of the American frontier.<br /> <br /> In October 1958, the Communist newspaper, <em>L’Ora</em>, ran a full page exposé on the Mafia war in Corleone. A few days later on Sunday, 19th, at 4.52:am a huge explosion rocked the central Palermo district. Four pounds of TNT had been planted in the basement of the newspaper. A day after, a threatening letter arrived warning the paper off any further reporting in Corleone. It responded by carrying out even more investigations, digging deeper into the confusing situation that had developed in the small rural town, deep in the Sicilian countryside.<br /> <br /> In the years to come, the generic noun Corleonesi, would come to describe men of honour who came not only from the town itself, but from an amalgamation of fifteen or so clans across the island who would group together, working as a team to unhinge the social and political stability of not only Sicily, but at times, the mainland itself. They were cunning, diabolic, clever and ferocious. A rare combination.<br /> <br /> They became a secret and deadly parasite within the body of Cosa Nostra.<br /> <br /> Leggio was now the undisputed king of the melancholy little town of Corleone, leading a pack of killers and hoodlums who would become infamous across Sicily as they became synonymous with savagery and butchery on a scale never ever thought of, even among the most hardened Mafiosi. They had the power of life or death over almost anyone in Sicily, and they exercised it without compunction.<br /> <br /> Between 1944-1962, there were 2000 known homicides or disappearances, recorded in the four provinces of western Sicily controlled by the Mafia, according to Rosario Poma in his book ‘<em>La Mafia: Nonni e nipoti</em>.’ It was a killing field without parallel in the civilized world.<br /> <br /> Dead men were cremated on street corners. Bodies were dumped on the doorsteps of police stations like sacks of forgotten garbage. Killers roamed the streets, shooting their victims with an air of nonchalance that was breathtaking in its insolence.<br /> <br /> In hiding from the law, following his takeover of Navarra’s operation, Leggio spent a lot of his time in Palermo, where he sometimes moved around disguised as a police officer, a monk or a travelling tourist, be-decked in cameras. He visited medical clinics for treatment for his bone problems, shopped at the best salons, and dined in the most exquisite restaurants, where he would always order Ferrarelle bottled water with his food, his favourite meal being steak and white rice. <br /> <br /> Dressed to kill, in linen suits, Panama hats, pinky ring, Rolex watch and gold cufflinks, he strutted through the city. He never carried money, but had someone on hand to pay the bills. He would often socialise at the famous Birreria Italia café, on the via Cavour, near the Teatro Massimo, a restaurant that had been a favourite haunt of another infamous Mafia don, Vito Cascioferro, thirty years before. <br /> <br /> He set up a business as a shipping agent in Piana dei Colli, to the west of Palermo, outside the city limits, and had Giacomo Riina manage it, with help from his young nephew, Salvatore.<br /> <br /> Like the Scarlet Pimpernel of literary legend, Leggio moved freely from place to place, as the police searched for him everywhere. At times, he lived with Lia, the former fiancé of Rizzotto, the man he had murdered ten years before, which would seem to have been an unusual relationship considering its pedigree. She had vowed to eat the heart of the killer when her man was murdered, but when the police came and arrested Leggio in 1964, in a house only a short walk from the Corleone police headquarters, she wept and combed his hair.<br /> <br /> He enjoyed hobnobbing with rich and influential people, wearing the most expensive clothes and always smoking, in public at least, eight-inch cigars. He loved people to call him Il Professore, the professor, even though he had left school at the age of nine. Away from public view, he puffed away all day on America Camel cigarettes. In an article in the August 3rd 1986 edition of the <em>Giornale di Sicilia</em>, he claimed, ‘My life as an outlaw was spent in the salons of Palermo.’ <br /> <br /> Along with his other nick-names, perhaps he could also have been called <em>The Deadly Dilettante</em>! <br /> <br /> For women in the Palermo society, there was a special thrill in being in the presence of someone like Leggio. Highly placed men had their own special reasons for establishing good relations with the little, ugly misfit from the boondocks. Such men, claimed a high-ranking Palermo police officer, were lured into Leggio’s web, ‘held together with the spittle of gold and blood.’<br /> <br /> If nothing else, Luciano Leggio was without doubt, the outstanding Mafioso of the post war period in terms of his media profile. No one grabbed the headlines quite like La Primula Rossa.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237002474,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237002474,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237002474?profile=original" /></a>But he was also creating money, and lots of it. He bought himself a luxurious villa, and tracts of real estate. He got into bed in the construction industry with Salvo Lima, the mayor of Palermo and his public works assessor, Vito Ciancimino (right), a one-time barber from Corleone, (he had worked as a youth in his father’ business,) and the only man who every punched Leggio in the face, and lived to remember it. <br /> <br /> These two men helped create ‘the Sack of Palermo’ issuing over 4000 building permits in just four years, from 1959 to 1963, to only four men- a labourer, a charcoal vendor, a bricklayer and a site guard- all acting as front men for various Mafia dons in Palermo, who then used these as pass cards to literally generate fortunes beyond comprehension. Land was bought at sixty lire a square metre and sold a few weeks later for thirty thousand lire a square metre. Mafia bosses found they could make more money in a day working this scam than a year of smuggling cigarettes.<br /> <br /> Tommaso Buscetta called Ciancimino ‘a pushy Corleonese embezzler.’<br /> <br /> There is a Sicilian proverb:<br /> <br /> <em>La font della richezza è il pubblico denoro</em><br /> <br /> ‘The fount of riches is public money,’ and the mob, including Leggio, generated huge revenues from the purse of the city, funded in turn from Rome, as money poured into Palermo as part of the Italian state’s development aid fund for the <em>mezzogiorno</em>, the poor southern regions of Italy, into which was pumped billions of lire. Giovanni Gioia who became secretary of the Christian Democrat party in Palermo in 1954, acted as the Mafia link into Rome, helping coordinate the flow of money until his death in 1981.<br /> <br /> They knocked down historic old villas, bulldozed entire streets of history, and parks that had been part of the city’s heritage for generations, so that they could erect in the empty spaces, hundreds of concrete monstrosities to house the people pouring into the city from rural Sicily, wanting to be part of the great, new wave of government funded economic expansion. During the ‘Sack of Palermo’ the city had the greatest consumption per capita of concrete in the world. As a bye-product, the ghettos created would become the new breeding ground for the piciotti, the young street thugs the Mafia needs for fresh blood. What the organization referred to as avvicinati-hanger-ons. Youths who would be watched and managed for up to twenty years by a man of honour in the neighbourhood cosca. <br /> <br /> Someone who was part of the Mafia and who knew Dr. Navarra, Leggio, Giuseppe Di Cristina and Stefano Bontade, reminisced:<br /> <br /> ‘<em>Then there came a time when the word millions was heard on the lips of people who five years before were counting the change from a thousand lira note (US$10 approximately). Everybody was talking loudly and nobody was listening. Palermo was like that for ten years or so. All drunk in millions. But the side effects…… it all came at a cost.</em>’<br /> <br /> Leonardo Sciascia had the key to the wealth and the frenzy generated by the Mafia:<br /> <br /> ‘<em>The more wealth grows……the more our own death grows and is amplified. The rhythm of accumulation is a rhythm of death</em>.’<br /> <br /> When Leggio moved to Palermo from Corleone, a young carabinieri officer stationed there, sent a report to his opposite number in the city:<br /> <br /> ‘<em>Luciano Leggio is naturally violent in character and criminal by constitution and tendency, habitually guilty of homicide, theft and extortion, odious to the people of Corleone for the mourning and evil he has spread, held in horror for the cold determination and ferocity of his character, author of countless grave acts and bloodshed, which none of his victims dares to denounce for fear of incurring his violence.</em><br /> <br /> <em> He has now seen fit to live in Palermo, seemingly extraneous to the Mafiosi there…..Actually he is extremely active among Palermo’s chiefs…..bound not so much by his friendship with them, as his ascendancy over them</em>.’<br /> <br /> The young officer was Mario Malausa, the same man who led the squad of six one morning in June 1963 to investigate a suspicious Alfa Romeo Giulietta parked in a country lane in the hills above Ciaculli, near Palermo. A bomb in the car exploded, killing all seven men. Three days later, 100,000 people followed the empty coffins to the funeral held at Palermo Cathedral. All that was found of the seven men were a finger, a ring and a beret, along with a shoe, and a belt and a pistol holster. <br /> <br /> Law enforcement believed the bomb was part of the strategy of warring factions in an inter-family dispute involving factions of the ‘old’ and ‘new’ Mafia in the Palermo province. It may, however, have been simply a convoluted way to remove a certain police officer who was becoming more than just an irritant, but someone very dangerous to organized crime on the island.<br /> <br /> Leggio carried on diversifying and expanding his business, but he was too big for just Corleone; he was probably in retrospect, too big for even Sicily. He needed a greater stage upon which to act, and started to spread his operation outside the island, linking into the Calabria ‘Ndrangheta and Camorra crime families of Naples, and also establishing criminal links in Rome and Milan.<br /> <br /> The Mafia operated in relative harmony through the late fifties and early sixties, apart from the brief period of savage warfare in Palermo that came to be known as ‘The Produce Market War’ dividing up the growing pie of smuggling cigarettes, cattle rustling, construction, drug trafficking, industry extortion and kidnapping, until it imploded under what became referred to as ‘The First Mafia War,’ culminating in the deaths of the seven police officers, killed in the car bomb explosion at Ciaculli. <br /> <br /> This act of terrorism resulted in the first real war against the Mafia since the days of Mori, and the island was flooded with over 10,000 police. The head of the carabinieri, General Aldo De Marco, ordered his men to arrest anyone with a criminal record and if needed, torture them to see what could be discovered about the bombing. He also indicated that his men, if necessary could shoot suspects on sight. Within a few months, between July and December 1963, 2,000 Mafiosi had been arrested and imprisoned.<br /> <br /> Between 1963 and 1970 every leading figure in the Mafia on the island found themselves either in prison, in compulsory exile or on the ‘most-wanted’ list.<br /> <br /> The Ciaculli bombing came close to doing what Mori had almost done forty years before-destroy the Mafia. Cosa Nostra ceased to exist in the Palermo metropolitan area; it was out of business according to Antonino Calderone.<br /> <br /> At a special meeting of the cupola, it was decided that each boss not yet arrested, would lie low or flee the country, and they did. To Brazil, Venezuela, Canada, Mexico and the United States. These became branch offices of Mafia Inc. One of the men who fled the country was Tommaso Buscetta, who one day, would come back, and turn the Sicilian Mafia on its head. <br /> <br /> On the evening of May 14th 1964, Leggio was himself arrested at 9:30 pm in the home of 45 year old Leoluchina Sorisi, in Cortile Mangiameli at Via Orsini 6, in Corleone. She lived just down the road from the state police barracks. <br /> <br /> ‘He was captured,’ as Giuseppe Fava recounts, in his book <em>I Sicilian</em>, ‘at the very house where by any human logic he should never have been able to find shelter.’<br /> <br /> When the law enforcement officials broke into the property, they found Leggio in bed. Next to him were two books: Tolstoy’s <em>War and Peace</em>, and Kant’s <em>Critique of Pure Reason</em>. He was surrounded by two suitcases, medicine bottles, and a duffel bag filled with drugs, pills and syringes. There was a hand-gun, in the draw of the bed-side table, a Smith & Wesson .38, fully loaded.<br /> <br /> There has always been confusion over just what their relationship was. Some sources claim that Leggio killed Rizzotto not as a means to a political end for Dr. Navarra, but simply because he lusted after Rizzotto’s fiance-Leoluchina. In addition, there was a rumour that circulated that he killed Rizzotto in order to satisfy the honour of the Sorisi family who believed that Placido was stringing their daughter along and avoiding marriage with her.<br /> <br /> Rizzotto’s parents however, claimed that their son was never involved with her.<br /> <br /> Sorisi and her sister Maria Grazia, maintained that they had sheltered Leggio out of fear-he had threatened them with injury or worse, unless they gave him sanctuary. <br /> <br /> Renate Seibert wondered if Leoluchina was actually setting up Leggio to kill him and was simply stopped before she could carry out her plan of revenge, or that even some dialectic of passion had developed between the two.<br /> <br /> Searching the house, the police found in the basement, a stash of illegal arms, including Breda and Thompson sub-machine guns which were believed to have been used in the killing of Dr. Navarra six years earlier.<br /> <br /> The lead cop into the house that night was Angelo Mangano, the Commissioner of Public Safety in the town. Posted to Corleone by the chief of police in Palermo, Angelo Vicari, to track down and arrest Leggio, he had apparently received a tip-off from two of his informants, men who had been supplying him information since he had arrived in Corleone on November 15th 1963 to take up his position These men, Carlo and Alberto Ancora would eventually find fate has a way of catching up. They were murdered in May 1973.<br /> <br /> The carabinieri were also in on the arrest, lead by Colonel Ignazio Milillo, who headed a special unit set up to track down Leggio. His <em>own</em> intelligence sources had confirmed that Leggio had arrived in Corleone on November 2nd 1963. There has been bitter dispute and controversy between these two law enforcement groups over the years as to which of them actually arrested Leggio. The photograph taken that night however, clearly shows Mangano leading Leggio who is supported by Biagio Melita, a sergeant in the state police, with no carabinieri in sight. <br /> <br /> The <em>mammasantissima</em> of the Mafia, bleary-eyed and struggling to stand up, as though just awakened from a bad dream that he can’t escape from, staggers from the house (photo below), assisted by the men he hated most-the police.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237002697,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237002697,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237002697?profile=original" width="342" /></a>He had been on the run from the law for sixteen years.<br /> <br /> Many years later Leggio confirmed that he was indeed arrested by the caribinieri, and not by the state police, who took centre stage for the photographers, who had in fact been tipped-off by Mangano about the upcoming arrest!<br /> <br /> Colonel Ignazio Milillo was made an ‘honorary citizen’ by the town of Corleone for his part in capturing Leggio. In addition, he was awarded by the Italian Head of State the Knight Officer of Merit of the Italian Republic, and given a financial reward by the Minister of the Interior for his efforts in arresting Sicily’s most wanted man. <br /> <br /> Ten years down the track, this arrest would come back to haunt Angelo Mangano. <br /> <br /> Leggio had been spotted in Corleone by state police units, driving in a car, on at least two occasions: once with the children of Giuseppe Ruffino, and again with Leoluchina Sorisi, dressed in her nurse’s uniform, returning to the town at dawn. On neither occasion had the police stopped the cars.<br /> <br /> There has always been controversy and innuendo regarding the relationship between Leggio and Mangano. The state police for example knew that Ludovico Benigno, the nephew of Sorisi, had purchased an orthopaedic bed, bed-side table and television set in November, just two days after Leggio had returned to the town. It was claimed they were for an invalid, a family member, returning from America.<br /> <br /> Beningo ironically, was one of the men who had met with Placido Rizzottto at the town square that night in March, 1948.<br /> <br /> There has been speculation over the years that Angelo Mangano had been sent to Corleone not to capture Leggio, but to protect him or at least delay his arrest, in order to protect the interest of people such as Vito Ciancimino, Salvo Lima and Giovanni Gioai. Powerful men with powerful contacts at local and state level. Leggio seemingly had the key to a Pandora Box that was not to be opened.<br /> <br /> Mangano received his orders from the head of the State police, Angelo Vicari, whose name comes up again as the former prefect of Palermo, in the enigmatic and confusing conundrum surrounding the bandit Salvatore Giuliano, and his violent death. <br /> <br /> With the arrest and imprisonment of Leggio, Sicily for the second time in almost a hundred years was close to breaking its ties with the Mafia and asserting state control over law and order. The Mafia’s men of honour were in disarray. Half had fled the country following the massacre of Ciaculli, and were watching to see what would happen to the other half if justice was to prevail. It wasn‘t of course. No one really knew the true nature of the Mafia and the court system was in no way able to determine this. <br /> <br /> Taken into custody and transferred at 2 am on May 15th into the infamous Ucciardone Prison in Palermo, Leggio finally came to court in December 1967 in what became known as ‘The Trial of 114,’ the first real attempt since the 1897 Palermo trials, to try to convict the Mafia as a corporate body. <br /> <br /> The accused included Leggio, Tommaso Buscetta, Gateano Badalamenti (notorious for his subsequent connection in the American Pizza Trial of the 1980s), and Salvatore Catalano, a made man, who would one day become the first Sicilian ever, to help run an American Mafia clan, when he took over partial control of the Bonanno crime family of New York, and who was also indicted in the Pizza Trial. The defendants were a whose-who of the Sicilian Mafia. The hearing lasted over a year and was held in Catanzaro in Calabria in southern Italy, as Sicily was not considered safe enough for the prosecution or its witnesses. All, but ten of the accused, including Leggio were acquitted.<br /> <br /> But presiding Judge Terranova, who had signed the order for the trial in May 1965, and a man who had spent his life fighting the Mafia, was determined to get Leggio, and had him re-arrested to face trial in nine other murders he had been implicated in. The Mafia boss hated the judge with such venom, he would literally foam at the mouth when he spoke about him. <br /> <br /> The second trial opened in February 1969 in Bari, on the Adriatic Coast. Months later as it drew to a close, the judge received an anonymous letter, warning him and the members of the jury:<br /> <br /> <em> To the President of the Court of Assise, and members of the jury: You have not understood, or rather you do not want to understand, what Corleone means. You are judging honest gentlemen of Corleone, denounced through caprice by the Carabinieri and Police. We simply want to warn you that if a single gentleman from Corleone is convicted, you will be blown sky high, you will be wiped out, you will be butchered and so will every member of your family. We think we have been clear. Nobody must be convicted. Otherwise, you will be condemned to death-you and your families. A Sicilian proverb says: ‘A man warned is a man saved.’ It‘s up to you. Be wise……</em> <br /> <br /> Although found guilty of theft, Leggio and almost his entire cosca of 64 men, who had also been indicted, were found not guilty of the main charges. The illustrious judge spent the next seven years working for the Italian judiciary in Rome. He was transferred to Palermo in September 1979, and two days after arriving, as he left his apartment to go to work, he was assassinated by two men wielding Kalashnikov rifles, who caught him helpless in the driving seat of his car. His bodyguard, Lenin Mancusco, died by his side.<br /> <br /> The killers were Giuseppe Madonia and Leloluca Bagarella, assisted by Giacomo Gambino and Vincenzo Pucio, according to pentiti Francesco Di Carlo and Gaspare Mutolo. The killing of the judge had been rubber-stamped by the Mafia commission at a meeting held at the Faverella estate in Ciaculli of Michele Greco, in June 1979.<br /> <br /> Giuseppe di Cristina the boss of Reisi who became an informant, had told his carabinieri handler of Liggio’s plan to assassinate the judge almost two years before the murders took place.<br /> <br /> The judge’s removal was conceived on instructions from Leggio, even though by this time he had been committed to prison for life. His memory was long, and his power in controlling the Mafia, even from a prison cell, was formidable. Terranova was killed because he was convinced of the importance of Leggio in the scheme of things in the Mafia hierarchy, and how his control of the Corleonesi would impact on the emerging dynamics of criminal power. He had also insulted Leggio when he was questioning him before the trials in Catanzano.<br /> <br /> During an interrogation preparing for the trial, Leggio adopting his usual insulting manner, refused to answer questions. When in response to one of them, Leggio replied that he could not even recall his own name or his parents, Terranova instructed the clerk: ‘<em>Write that Leggio does not know whose son he is</em>.’ <br /> <br /> Leggio was infuriated with the implication that he was a bastard. According to the judge, he actually foamed at the mouth and would have killed Terranova on the spot. Leggio as always, never forgot, and ten years later, extracted his revenge. <br /> <br /> It was Terranova’s wife, Giovanna Giaconia, who in an interview after her husband’s murder, referred to Leggio as ‘<em>The Little King of Corleone</em>.’ She also told Rosario Costa whose husband Vito Schifani was killed along with Judge Falcone in the Capaci massacre, ‘Remember, this is a state that has signed a blank cheque with the Mafia, and that this was when the war broke out for the takeover and annihilation of the magistrate’s power of jurisdiction.’<br /> <br /> In October 1997, Giovanna brought a civil case against the instigators of her husband’s death, which including the two surviving assassins, Madonia and Bagarella, and a group of mob luminaries including Toto Riina and Bernardo Provenzano. <br /> <br /> After Leggio was finally released from prison on bail in 1969, he was supposed to be re-arrested by the authorities in Palermo, but instead, he moved into a private hospital in Reggio Calabria for treatment on his bladder. He then simply walked out, avoiding his guards, and did his usual disappearing act, driving off in a black Mercedes Benz provided by his old friend Frank Coppola. <br /> <br /> Accompanied by Salvatore Riina, Leggio went to Bitonto in Puglia, then on June 18th he admitted himself into the Hospital of Santissima Annunziato in Taranto and at the end of September he was on his travels again, this time heading for Rome, checking into the Villa Margherita nursing home where he had treatment for his continuing bladder infection. And then, when he was ready, he headed off back to Sicily.<br /> <br /> He became part of the reformed commission or ‘cupola’ which had been disbanded in 1964, along with Gaetano Badalamanti and Stefano Bontate, two bosses of Palermo clans. (The Mafia in Sicily in fact never referred to the commission as ‘cupola’ this was a media word. They talked about ‘The Region.’) One of the first things on his agenda was to arrange the elimination of another judiciary figure, the first in a long and sorry list that would stretch over the next twenty years.<br /> <br /> The victim this time was the chief public prosecutor of Palermo, Judge Pietro Scaglione, a man with a long and controversial connection into organized crime. <br /> <br /> He had been the examining magistrate who had investigated the mysterious death of the infamous Sicilian bandit, Salvatore Giuliano, shot dead in July 1950, perhaps by Leggio, although the killer has never been identified for certain. <br /> <br /> Gianfranco Milillo, the carabinieri officer who hunted Leggio in the 1960s, in one of his reports, confirmed that in his opinion, the killer of Giuliano was indeed Leggio.<br /> <br /> He had been commissioned to do the hit by Dr. Navarra who had been himself instructed into the conspiracy by the prefect of Palermo, Angelo Vicari, who had been appointed to his high public post at the age of only 40 in August 1948, and was a close friend of the Barone Valenti of Palermo, who had significant estates around Corleone. One of his top managers was Antonino Streva, a lieutenant of Leggio’s. The complex linking of these people in connection with the death of the bandit was referred to in pages 1009-1012 of the parliamentary anti-Mafia Commission of 1963.<br /> <br /> Hunted for months by another carabinieri police officer, Colonel Ugo Luca, who it is reported did everything possible to capture the bandit alive, he was shot dead in mysterious circumstances. Many people in high places wanted the bandit erased so that he could not reveal his involvement with highly-placed political figures and compromise state security, especially in connection with the massacre at Portella delle Ginestre on May 1st 1947, when 8 peasants were killed and 33 wounded by Giuliano’s gang.<br /> <br /> Giuliano had been protected throughout his career by the Mafia families of Monreale under Ignazio and Nino Miceli, Carlo and Vincenzo Rimi of Alcamo, Libero Manna head of the family in Castellammare, and Salvatore Celeste of San Cipirello.<br /> <br /> Sergeant Giovanni Lo Bianco of the carabinieri had closely tracked the structure of Giuliano’s protection shield, and reported on this in September 1947.<br /> <br /> In Jan 1950, Santo Fleres the powerful boss of Partinico was murdered, possibly by Giuliano’s gang, and Frank Coppola took over the leadership of the family. It was the transplanted American mobster who probably masterminded the downfall of Giuliano<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237002880,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237002880,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237002880?profile=original" width="176" /></a>Scaglione (right) had also been reprimanded for ‘sitting’ on a file from the carabinieri in the 1960s that implicated the same Frank Coppola, a well-known Mafioso and major drug dealer, who had been banished from America back to Italy, and three repatriated members of the New York Bonanno family who had been involved in drug trafficking and eventually acquitted after indictment and trial.<br /> <br /> Diminutive Francesco Paolo “Frank’ Coppola (he stood a mere 5’2”) was deported from the United States as an illegal alien, in September 1948. He had fled Sicily during the Mori cleansing, claiming he had been tipped off by Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, the Sicilian born former prime minister of Italy, who in 1925 he had stated in the Italian senate that he was proud of being Mafioso, because that word meant honourable, noble and generous. <br /> <br /> Coppola in his travels across America, had linked into a number of different mob families in New York, Detroit, Kansas City and Los Angeles.<br /> <br /> At one time, calling himself Frank Lomonde, along with Anthony ‘Tony the Pip’ Lopiparo, he had, according to some sources, managed the mob in St Louis. He numbered Charles Luciano, Carlos Marcello and ‘Dandy’ Phil Kastel amongst his many criminal associates. The FBN considered him a major narcotic trafficker, and he was also believed to be involved in prostitution rackets, gambling and hijacking. He was known in the American mob as Tre Dita ‘Three Fingers,’ having lost the ring and little fingers of his left hand in an accident when he was eighteen. He fought his deportation from America on the grounds that he was innocent of all charges, but Senator John McClellan disagreed, commenting:<br /> <br /> ‘<em>Even though he has only three fingers, they are involved in everything</em>.’ <br /> <br /> The day before his death, judge Scaglione had confided to a respected journalist, Mario Francese, that he had papers of a very compromising nature. He told the reporter, ‘You have no idea how difficult a judge’s job is in this city.’ It was never disclosed just what was in these documents and correspondence. Francese was himself murdered by the Mafia in 1979.<br /> <br /> On May 5th 1971, Scaglione made his daily visit to his wife’s graveside in the Capuchin, a Palermo cemetery, on the Via Cipressi, located in the west of the city in the Calatafimi District. <br /> <br /> Concettina Abatae had died in 1965, and the judge tried to maintain a daily vigil at her graveside. This morning as he left, he and his driver, Antonino Lo Russo, were gunned down and killed. Suffering from the effect of Pott’s disease, Leggio was unable to walk, but some sources claim, had his faithful bulldog, Toto Riina, drive him to the graveyard area, shooting the judge and his chauffeur, from his seat in the car. He was good like that Leggio, when it came to murder, up close and personal.<br /> <br /> The authorities tried for twenty years to pin the murder on someone. Scaglione was the first judge to be murdered in post war Italy. The first of the cadaveri eccellenti <br /> ‘excellent cadavers’ or ‘illustrious corpses’ a term coined by famous Italian writer Leonardo Sciascia, and who the press came to call the police, judges, parliamentarians, journalists and members of the state assassinated in the years to come as the Corleonesi enforced their will on the Mafia and the country. <br /> <br /> The pentito Leonardo Messina, described how they organised their rise to power: <br /> <br /> ‘<em>They took power by slowly, slowly killing everyone. We were kind of infatuated with them because we thought that getting rid of the old bosses we would become the new bosses. Some people killed their brother, others their cousin and so on because they thought they would take their places. Instead, slowly, they gained control of the whole system. First they used us to get rid of the old bosses, then they got rid of all those who raised their heads, like Giuseppe Greco 'the Shoe', Mario Prestifilippo and Vincenzo Puccio. All that’s left are men without character, who are their puppets.</em>’<br /> <br /> By January 1991, the courts in Palermo agreed to close the book on the murder of Judge Scaglione. There were many suspects: Gaetano Findanatzi, the boss of the Resuttana clan, Pietro D’Accardio, Geraldo Alberti, the Mafia’s major drug dealer, Francesco Russo, Salvatore Riina, Giuseppe Calo and of course Luciano Leggio.<br /> <br /> There are indications that the killing went down at approximately 10:45 am, as the judged was reported to have left the cemetery after 10:30 am and the first call into the police, reporting the shooting, was logged on at 10:55am. This version states that a white car cut off Lo Russo in the narrow road. Just past the Via Alcamo, the bodyguard pulled his car over to the right, to avoid a collision, into the gated entrance of a building at number 242. <br /> <br /> The driver of the other car may have been in fact Pino Greco, (with Riina as a back-up in the rear seat,) who along with Leolucca Bagarella, was almost certainly the most deadly and prolific killer employed by the Mafia in Sicily. Next to him, was a soldier in the Porta Nuova clan along for the ride, as the shooting was going down in their domain. Pippo Calo, the boss of the family, was a close friend of Leggio’s who was allegedly in the back seat. The two dead men were found to have been killed by 9mm and .38 calibre bullets, indicating perhaps two shooters. The 65 year old prosecutor and his 41 year old driver, who was a sergeant in the prison police, had no chance, jammed into their small car and suddenly surrounded by professional killers. <br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237003255,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237003255,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237003255?profile=original" width="331" /></a>Eugenio and Francesca Tripoli sitting in their apartment, heard the shots, but thought the noise was children playing in the street. There was only one witness to the carnage, an eleven year old boy. When first interviewed, he claimed the car with the killers in it was a white Fiat 850, but then later said it was black. Investigators found the windows of the judge’s car blown out, and nine shell casings on the ground.<br /> <br /> There is a plaque, weathered by age, on the rough, brick wall of the cemetery, opposite the site of the assassination, placed by the Councillors of Palermo in honour of the judge and his bodyguard. It was to be the first of many such dedications that would start appearing all over the city in the years to come, creating an unfinished jigsaw commemorating the honoured dead slain by the Mafia: a pedagogical directory of the condemned and executed, linking up the streets of the city to the victims, so that in years to come, spectators and tourists could track their way around Palermo, body by body, in a city that would soon be oozing corpses, following a route marked by the victims whose blood had soaked into the asphalt and cobbles in such volume, it sometimes stained the roadways for days afterwards.<br /> <br /> Antonino Lo Russo (below) was the first member of the penal police to have been murdered by the Mafia.<br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237003656,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237003656,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237003656?profile=original" width="305" /></a><br /> Tommaso Buscetta and Salvatore Contoro, two of the more infamous, and certainly in terms of disclosures, the most enlightening pentiti, stated categorically that Leggio killed the judge. If there is little doubt who actually killed him, the reason or reasons why, are a little more vague.<br /> <br /> Scaglione had a long career in the judiciary and was involved with many cases involving the mob. These included investigating:<br /> <br /> The killing of notorious bandit Salvatore Guiliano in July 1950.<br /> The mysterious death by poison four years later in Ucciardone Prison of Gaspare Pisciotta, the cousin and main lieutenant of Guiliano.<br /> The murder of trade unionist Salvatore Carnevale.<br /> The Portella della Ginestra, Ciaculli and Viale Lazio Massacres.<br /> Corruption charges against Salvo Lima and Vito Ciancimino, and many more cases.<br /> <br /> His close connection to so many people in and around the Mafia made him particularly vulnerable, due to the secrets he had acquired over the years. One in particular involved the caribinieri officer-Mario Malausa- who had been in charge of the squad sent to investigate the bomb-loaded Alfa-Romeo in Ciaculli, in 1963. <br /> <br /> Malausa had produced a long and damming report on the involvement of the Mafia and politics in Sicily, a document which would cause massive embarrassment if it were to be publicized. He had named important people, including the mayor of Palermo, Salvo Lima, his public works assessor Vito Ciancimino, and even Judge Scaglione himself. The public prosecutor had conveniently filed it away into some dusty corner along with other important reports, including one from the American US Narcotic Bureau detailing the activities taking place between Sicilian and American Mafia families in their booming trans-Atlantic drug trafficking business.<br /> <br /> As previously stated, it has been hypothesized by some crime historians that the Ciaculli massacre was a double-edged weapon, not only to create chaos within the Mafia and the state, but quietly on the side, to get rid of the bothersome police officer. <br /> <br /> Another presumption for the judge’s killing postulates that he was about to give a favourable decision in a case he was hearing involving Vincenzo Rimmi, the Mafia boss of Trapani who was a sworn and bitter enemy of Leggio.<br /> <br /> The assassination of the Chief Magistrate may well have been the first in a long series of intimidatory measures against the government of Italy by the Mafia. He was the very first member of the state to be murdered by the Mafia since the unification of Italy in 1871. However, while there have been many theories on why Scaglione was killed, as is often the case in these matters, the simplest might well be the one nearest the mark. <br /> <br /> Leggio hated Scaglione on a personal level because the judge had sentenced one of his unmarried sisters, the eldest, Maria Antonina, into ‘internal banishment’ to the mainland. The dreaded <em>obbligo di soggiorno</em>. This, for a spinster woman who had never left Corleone throughout her entire life, was a decision of catastrophic dimensions. Leggio, as always, never forgot, and never forgave. <br /> <br /> In addition, he may have been as Rene Seindal observed, simply adopting the logic that the Mafia’s most important reason for killing a state representative was that killing one taught a hundred a lesson. <br /> <br /> A recent disclosure (October 2010) of a three page document created by Vito Ciancimino, and handed over to the authorities by his son, Massimo, suggests that the judge was murdered to prevent him from investigating the murder of <em>L’Ora</em> reporter, Mauro de Mauro, who had been abducted outside him home in Palermo in September 1970 and presumably murdered. His body has never been recovered. <br /> <br /> Mauro had been about to publish a story that would have literally rocked Italy and the establishment, involving the Mafia and a plot to overthrow the government. <br /> <br /> He had stumbled on an amazing scoop. He learned that one of his childhood friends, a blue-blooded ex-Fascist called Prince Junio Valerio Borghese, aka ‘The Black Prince,‘ was planning a coup d'etat with like-minded army officers determined to halt what they saw as Italy's drift to the left.<br /> <br /> And De Mauro had also learned that in Sicily, where he worked for the evening paper as well as for Reuters and the national daily <em>Il Giorno</em>, the ‘Black Prince‘ had enlisted the support of the Cosa Nostra. When the army officers seized key institutions in Rome, he discovered, the Mafia would follow suit in Palermo, occupying state broadcaster RAI and the prefectural headquarters.</p>
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The Evil That Men Do: The killing of Robert Kubecka & Donald Barstow
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-evil-that-men-do-the
2010-12-02T14:29:57.000Z
2010-12-02T14:29:57.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993683,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p><br /> By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Salvatore Avellino recorded by electronic surveillance:</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">'Do you understand me, now when you got a guy that steps out of line and this and that, now you got the whip. You got the fuckin' whip. This is what he, Tony Corallo, tells me all the time, a strong union makes money for everybody, including the wise guys. The wise guys even make more money with a strong union.'</span><br /> </p>
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<p><br /> <span style="font-weight:bold;">Prologue</span><br /> <br /> Tommy Brown and Ducks were talking business over a cup of Joe. Whose heads are going to get cracked; whose legs broken and what trunk music they need to orchestrate to keep the wheels flowing smoothly. Once this was sorted, little Tommy, born in Palermo, capitol of the Mafia, who wasn’t much taller than a dwarf, pointed past Tony Corallo’s shoulder.<br /> <br /> ‘Over there’<br /> <br /> Corallo, who had started out his business life as a tile setter, and knew a thing or two about angles, getting his nickname by always ducking legal indictments, leaned back in the booth, in the Azores bar and restaurant, next to the Lido Hotel, squinting, into the street, expecting to see something hoovering down on him from Suffolk County. Maybe Concetto, Tommy Luchese’s highly-strung wife. They lived just down the road on Royale Street after all.<br /> <br /> ‘Over there, what?’<br /> <br /> ‘Long Fuckin’ Island, over there’ Tommy grunted. ‘I want it. I want it all. Get the nut on everything-trucking, construction, the street stuff and above all the garbage handling. Lot of new houses going up; lot of new factories being built. Lotta rubbish to shift. Go fuckin’ get it champ.’<br /> <br /> Tony ‘Ducks’ Corallo who had a cranium like an 8 ball and eyes that were dead from coping with too much trouble, grinned, exposing a mouth with choppers so big and white his head looked like some kind of manic trick n’ treat pumpkin.<br /> <br /> ‘Way to go Tommy. Way to go.’ <br /> <br /> And he did.<br /> </p>
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<p><br /> In 1989 the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-lucchese-crime-family">Luchese crime family</a>, one of the five Mafia clans operating in New York, killed one of their own, and against all the tenants that these groups are supposed to live by, brutally murdered two innocent civilians. Although widely disparate in their circumstances, both acts illustrates the lengths to which the heads of the Mafia families will go in order to achieve control over their fiefdoms. In May, they killed <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/a-death-in-the-family">Michael Pappadio</a>, a man long part of the Luchese family's tradition and corporate structure who stood in their way, and just three months later, arranged the murder of two other men who stood in their way. They all died in order to satisfy and protect the perverted ambitions of men obsessed by hubris and the believe that greed is good.<br /> <br /> The murder of these men by Cosa Nostra killers, is a classic example of the way that the mob resolves some of their trickier problems. Violent death has always been the ultimate arbitrator in the criminal underworld, the execrable and ultimate act that separates mob management from traditional man management in the conventional business world. It is rare however, to find examples of ruthless assassination taking place outside the tightly drawn boundaries of the Mafia's uniquely dark landscape. Mob bosses as a rule, are more than circumspect when having to deal with outsiders; they know only too well the kind of furore they can generate from the public and the media, by killing someone who is not recognized as one of their own kind.<br /> <br /> Albert Anastasia found that out to his cost when he allegedly ordered the murder of a Brooklyn clothing salesman, a young man called Arnold Schuster. Johnny Dioguardi brought down all kinds of heat and unwelcome attention, when he ordered the acid blinding of Victor Riesel, a crusading anti-mob reporter, as did the murder of another reporter, Jake Lingle in Chicago in 1930 by a killer supposedly hired by the Capone mob. When it came to exercising their ultimate deterrent, Mafia bosses would think long and carefully about who would get their final benediction. Murder could only be authorized by the head of a crime family; protocol had to be observed, no loose ends left dangling, everything ship shape and Bristol fashion.<br /> <br /> So it is interesting to speculate on the mind set of the men who made the fateful decision on that cold, December day in 1988, which set in motion a chain of events that would not only leave men dead and families destroyed, but opened a hornet's nest of deceit, treachery and mind-numbing bureaucratic musical chairs, as county, state and federal law enforcement officials, scrambled to absolve themselves of responsibility for their part in an act of evil that was unique even by the morality starved underworld of America's biggest city.<br /> <br /> The three men who came together at The Surfside Three Motel in Howard Beach, Queens, on that gray, overcast December morning, were surely under more than just the normal, every day, stress that their chosen work generated. They lived under different pressure than most people as they operated their daily schedules, controlling and managing their unique business empire, marshalling their resources to maximize their returns. Captains and kings in their own right, they had a unique way to sort out and settle disputes and problems, and as they sat, drinking coffee, looking out over the drab, saltwater harbourage called Shellbank Basin, they had come to their conclusions and made a decision. Although as always, it was about money, on this occasion there was also something more at stake: the security of their business sovereignty and their own personal safety. They decided to kill these two men who were causing them so much heartburn, and resolve their problems once and for all.<br /> </p>
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<p><br /> Jerry Kubecka came to Long Island in the early 1950s, and started to work for his brother-in-law, who ran a dairy at Northport, a little, one horse town on State Highway 10, a few miles north-east of Huntingdon. Part of his job was to deliver milk to the dairy's four hundred or so customers. Many rural communities scattered across Long Island had not yet organized trash collection services, and people often asked Jerry to take away their garbage. He did this initially as a favour to keep in their good books, until the local health authorities discovered a milk truck was doubling as a rubbish truck as well. <br /> <br /> So to avoid problems, Jerry forked out 25 bucks and bought himself an old fertilizer wagon, left his in-laws, and started a rubbish removal round. For a dollar a week he would visit and collect the household rubbish of people who lived and operated businesses in the area. He branched out and started trucking in hay from upstate New York to supplement his income and the business grew. As he got bigger, Jerry found out that even in these early days there was an industry group in place, trying to control prices and negotiate territories. It was called the Suffolk Carter's Association, led by a man called Salvatore Spatarella, who was known for his connections to the New York Mafia. Spatarella ran his own carting business called All American Refuse Removal Corporation.<br /> <br /> Jerry was also soon in conflict with Local 813, the union that represented garbage truck workers which was headed up by a notorious mob connected figure called Bernard Adelstein, the secretary-treasurer of the union, who became one of the New York crime figures identified by the McClellan Senate sub committee investigating organized crime across America between 1957 and 1959. The committee referred to him as 'an abject tool of organized crime.' As a result of the hearings, Adelstein was indicted and tried and found guilty on three counts of extortion. His verdict was however overruled, following an appeal. He had a side racket through another union he controlled-the Teamsters Local 1034-in which he sold ‘sweetheart’ union contracts to funeral homes and companies that manufactured oil barrels.<br /> <br /> Edelstein, a short, fat, balding one-legged rabble-rouser, deaf in his right ear, who once tried to strangle Robert F. Kennedy, had joined Local 813 as secretary-treasurer in 1951 on its formation, and was for the next forty years its main negotiator. He was linked in his early days to Vincent James 'Jimmy Jerome' Squillante, who worked under his god-father Albert Anastasia when he bossed the crime group now known as the Gambino family. When Squillante was murdered in 1960, his place was taken by James Failla, who operated under the new head of the family, Carlo Gambino.<br /> <br /> Bernie Adelstein was known by law enforcement to be an associate of the Gambino Family, and a man who assisted them and other organized crime groups, including the Genovese Family and the Luchese Family, in controlling and manipulating the private sanitation industry in the New York City metropolitan area. Bernie Adelstein worked closely with Failla, who was also known as 'Jimmy Brown,' to maintain organized crime domination of the private sanitation industry.<br /> <br /> By the early 1980s Local 813 was known as 'Jimmy Brown's Union.'<br /> <br /> The McClellan Committee's 1958 Interim Report found that:<br /> <br /> “Bernard Adelstein, secretary-treasurer of teamsters local 813, the dominant union in New York carting, betrayed every principle of trade unionism by serving as an abject tool in all of [the] empire-building activities [of Vincent Squillante, a narcotics trafficker and mob figure]. With his own authority over Local 813 as absolute as Squillante's over the management side, Adelstein was able to put his union at Squillante's complete disposal in enforcing monopolies, punishing trade association critics of Squillante, and blinking at Squillante-favored nonunion firms.”<br /> <br /> Adelstein's rule at 813 ended on September 7th 1992 when he was banned for life from the IBT.<br /> <br /> In 1967, pressure was building on Jerry Kubecka to fall in line with the demands of Suffolk Carters. He spoke to a reporter called Tom Renner, bitterly complaining that rival firms were threatening his customers, and that pickets had broken his customers store windows; his drivers were being accosted and threatened, one left after a bunch of goons threatened to break his legs, and that his vehicles were being sabotaged by having their windows smashed and sugar or metal shavings dumped into their gas tanks. The Association employed many methods of intimidation.<br /> <br /> One of the most effective was 'haunting.' If an operator like Jerry refused to sign on, they were followed day and night by tight-lipped hoodlums, to their homes, to their offices and yards, every day and every night, week-ends and holidays. Gradually under the pressure, they broke down, and signed up with the union. Jerry, however didn't. He would lay formal complaints with the local police, but he would never press charges or agree to testify.<br /> <br /> In 1974 Spaterella went to prison on a three year sentence for extortion. The vacuum he left was filled by a man called Salvatore Avellino.<br /> <br /> Late in 1977, his health failing, Jerry approached his son, and asked him if he would come in and run the business. A graduate of Huntington High School, Robert Kubecka had a degree in management from the Babson College in Massachusetts and a masters in environmental engineering from SUNY, Stony Brook. He married his childhood sweetheart, Nina, and took a job as an environmentalist for Huntington Town. He loved working for the town, organizing the laying out and planting of gardens, planning new parks and helping generally to make Huntington a better place to live. But he was a loyal son, according to his mother, and did not run from what he saw as a responsibility to his father. He inherited the business and all of its headaches. He was lucky, however, to have someone to share it with. <br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236994254,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />His sister, Cathy, had married Donald Barstow (right), who was five years younger than Robert, and in 1980, he agreed to come alongside and help run the firm. It wasn't his first choice either, he had plans to work as a marine surveyor with his father in a family business.<br /> <br /> When these two men inherited the firm, they also picked up Jerry Kubecka’s war on the Mafia.<br /> <br /> According to friends, they were more like brothers than brothers-in-law. They would meet every morning about 6am for breakfast at the Gaslight, an old fashioned ice cream parlour near their office and yard, at 41 Brightside Avenue, East Northport, backing onto the MTA Long island rail line, and plan the day over breakfast. By the early 1980s, they had plenty to talk about.<br /> <br /> At this time, the private carting industry which picked up 75% of Long Island's garbage, was formed into a trade group which called itself Private Sanitation Industry, Inc., and was based in Melville, about four miles south of Huntington, just over the Suffolk County border. It seemed to be a legitimate organization contributing to campaign funds, representing its members before boards and commissions, but in fact what it really existed for was to suppress competition, punish operators who stepped out of line, rig bids and fatten the pockets of the men who ran it. The Kubecka business was a thorn in their side, a genuine rarity, an honest company trying to operate in the cesspool that was the Long Island garbage industry. And so the men behind the scenes tried to intimidate the son out of the business, having failed abysmally with the father. Some of the Kubecka trucks were damaged, fires were started in the company's garbage skips, and customers were warned that they themselves would become victims if they continued to use Kubecka's services.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236994269,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Robert (left) complained to his family that he was being followed, that his men were being accosted and threatened, their parked cars vandalized when left outside the yard as they worked their routes. He began to sleep over in the office to keep watch over the yard at nights. His father had been dealing with this problem for years, but Robert was prepared to do more than complain about the problem. He was willing to work with the authorities to try to destroy the system that was trying to destroy him and the business.<br /> <br /> As the winter of 1980 began, Robert and Donald had set their course. At a meeting held in Jerry Kubecka's house in Stony Brook, Cathy and her in-laws, Jerry and his wife Joy, and Robert's wife, Nina, sat down for coffee and home baked cookies with Dick Tennien. In his 50s, he had spent most of his life fighting the mob as a cop in the Suffolk County Police Department's Criminal Intelligence Bureau. He was now a special investigator for the Organized Crime Task Force of the state attorney general’s office. He had come visiting, to reassure the family that Robert and Donald would be looked after. They would be protected if they agreed to help the state of New York bring charges against the people who were harassing them and trying to get them to quit their operation on Long Island.<br /> <br /> The OCTF wanted the two men to carry on, and in fact to expand their business with the encouragement and help of the task force. It was an opportunity for the law to see how the mob if provoked, would react.<br /> <br /> 'Don't worry,' Tennien assured the family, 'They'll be safe. I'm a professional. No harm will come their way. We'll keep your boys in the background, there names will never be mentioned.' It was the first of many promises that would come to sound like the echo of a tin drum, beaten in despair, by a lonely drummer.<br /> <br /> Robert and Donald went out and aggressively bid for contracts with private and public utilities. Over the course of two years, Robert recorded dozens of meetings and conversations with other carters and helped produce evidence that allowed the task force to get court permission for wiretaps and electronic bugs. All the time, Tennien kept reassuring them that he had informants operating around the clock, and that Robert and Donald's names would never be disclosed.<br /> <br /> The state investigators heard among the threats and the harassing, the name of one man, cropping up, over and over again-Salvatore Avellino Jnr. He was president of Private Sanitation, ran a multi-million dollar garbage business called Salem Sanitary Carting Company and was also allegedly a capo, or crew boss in the Luchese Mafia crime family, responsible for their interests in the waste removal industry. Among his many business investments, he was a major investor in the company that contracted to operate the infamous Islip garbage barge, whose futile 1987 search up and down the Atlantic seaboard for a place to dump its cargo, made headlines across America and the world.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236994686,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Early in the summer of 1983, having tried numerous times to frighten Robert and Donald out of the industry, the mob tried a different tactic. A man called Fred Lomangino approached them with an offer to buy them out, provided they paid a 3% commission to Avellino (right). He inferred if they didn't sell, they would eventually meet with an accident.<br /> <br /> In the fall of 1983, the state prosecutors prepared their case for a grand jury hearing, and Robert realized that although his testimony would be secret, if it went to a trial he would have to appear as witness. He also discovered that the network of informants Dick Tennien had in place, was himself and Donald, and that was all he had.<br /> <br /> In September 1984, the grand jury indicted 21 people and 16 carting companies on Long Island, alleging that the Gambino and Luchese crime families were divvying up over $400,000 each year from the industry through force, extortion, restraint of trade and brute force. According to federal sources, cash skimmed from the waste haulers was divided between the Luchese family because they oversaw the division of collection routes, and the Gambino family who prevented labour problems through their alleged control over unionized garbage workers.<br /> <br /> Among the defendants indicted were Avellino and the boss of the Luchese crime family, another Long Island resident, Anthony 'Tony Ducks' Corallo along with his underboss, Salvatore Santoro.<br /> <br /> In an organization that produced more frightening men than Hitler’s Third Reich, Cosa Nostra’s Anthony Corallo was singularly unique.<br /> <br /> Born on February 12th 1913, in the teeming slums of East 100th Street, Harlem, Corallo also known as ‘The Doctor’ was a short, squat man with piercing blue eyes. He first came to prominence when he became a protégé of Johnny Dioguardi, who recruited him into the 107th Street Gang in the late 1920s. He soon worked his way up in the rackets and was involved in gambling, bookmaking, narcotics, loan-sharking and extortion. A well-rounded portfolio for any budding gangster. His money lending skills were legendary and at one time he was known as a ‘loan shark’s loan shark.’ His manipulative and corrupting skills were also without reproach as were witnessed in 1941, when although convicted on drug charges over a consignment of heroin worth $150,000, a massive amount at this time, he only served a six-month sentence on Riker’s Island, the prison on Manhattan’s East River.<br /> <br /> His primary criminal talent in influencing enterprises were linked into the trucking industry, but he was also closely locked into the Painters and Decorators Union, the Conduit Workers Union and the United Textile Workers Union. He held executive positions in all of these and through them, amassed a fortune. He was close to Jimmy Hoffa, probably as a result of ties with Johnny Dioguardi and eventually gained control of several unions, including the crucial Local 239 of the Teamsters. He was a zealous instigator in the creation of ‘no show’ employer positions within the locals he controlled, generating revenue by collecting the salaries of workers who did not exist. At one time this was reaching $70,000 per week, some of which he shared with the management of the companies that participated in the scam. <br /> <br /> A foul-mouthed and terrifying man, he was often used by Tommy Luchese to enforce recalcitrant debtors into meeting payments, and to resolve labour disputes. A really bad glare from, ‘Tony Ducks’ was often all that was necessary. Luchese had such a high regard for Coralloo that he promoted him to capo, or crew chief when he was only in his early thirties. This was a rare achievement in an organization that paid great store in creating experienced managers over a long period of time, before promoting them. One of Corallo’s legitimate fronts was the ownership of an automobile agency in Queens.<br /> <br /> In 1958, U.S. Senator John McClellan leading a Senate Committee investigating crime in the labour movement, stated:<br /> <br /> ‘Our study into the New York situation reveals an alarming picture of the extent to which gangsters like Anthony Corallo have infiltrated the labour movement, using their union positions for the purposes of extortion, bribery and shakedowns. Tony Corallo is one of the scariest and worst gangsters we have ever dealt with.’ <br /> <br /> Tony Ducks had a favourite saying: ‘I like to be by myself. Misery loves company.’<br /> <br /> This was the man who led the men who faced off against the two carters on Long island.<br /> <br /> It came as a shock to Robert and Donald to find out how much money organized crime was making off the garbage industry, and just how high up the totem pole the chain of extortion and graft extended. The state attorney general's office followed up the criminal charges with a civil anti-trust case and by this time, the new year had dawned.<br /> <br /> In April 1985, Ronald Goldstock, director of the states Organized Crime Task Force announced to the media one of their biggest coups in the fight against the mob. They had placed a bug in the black Jaguar saloon that Avellino used to chauffeur around his boss, Anthony Corallo, and over months, had recorded many hours of conversation, implicating the men in numerous criminal activities and establishing once and for all, the existence of the mob's board of directors, always referred to as 'The Commission,' since it was first established in 1931. Among the hundreds of hours of recorded conversations, the Kubecka family featured among the foul mouth rhetoric that spewed in a never ending stream from the mouth of 'Tony Ducks.' But no one at the task force thought to warn Robert and Donald about the potential dangers these conversations must have indicated. Another example of promises given, but never fulfilled by the law.<br /> <br /> In the spring of 1985, Robert was getting so concerned for his and his family's safety that he wrote into the task force, demanding some assurances. A lawyer, George Bradleau, who replied on their behalf, stated, '....I can assure you that this office is most sensitive to such considerations and will continue, as it has in the past, to provide Mr. Kubecka with any appropriate protection, when and if the need arises.'<br /> <br /> On October 6th., Robert called in the office, speaking to Tennien's partner, Alvin Jones, reporting that someone had rung him at the depot and said, 'watch out for your family and friends this weekend.'<br /> <br /> Over the next two years, the state's case wandered through the legal system, and Robert and Donald carried on with their lives, trying to run the business, watching their backs all the time. In January 1987, Corallo was sent to prison for 100 years, and in the same month, nine of the people under indictment by the state for coercion against the Kubeka business pleaded guilty. But the sentences were a farce, Avellino getting off with a slap on the wrist, having to do 840 hours of community service, picking up garbage from the poor for free, but being able to nominate someone to perform the actual work itself!<br /> <br /> Towards the end of 1988, Robert Kubecka had been approached by the FBI who wanted his assistance in their investigation on carting and organized crime on Long Island. The mob were still smashing his containers, damaging his vehicles, trying to get him either out of the industry or agreeing to join their union. But they were not getting anywhere, and so the meeting was called in December by the three men most involved, Avellino, and the two who were now running the Luchese family, Vittorio Amuso who had taken over as the boss from Tony Corallo and Anthony 'Gaspipe' Casso his underboss.<br /> <br /> They gathered at the motel in Howard Beach to try to determine what their next move was going to be in their continuing war with the Kubecka family. It seems that not only did Avellino have access to two NYPD detectives on the Luchese family payroll who had kept him updated on the moves the OCTF was planning, but Casso had access to an FBI agent who was able to confirm that Robert and Donald were now going to work for the federal government in their fight to bring the mob to its knees. The two ‘dirty’ cops turned out to be Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa , who have since been convicted and sentenced to life in prison. The identity of FBI agent has never surfaced.<br /> <br /> The three men decided to get approval from the Gambino family, their partners in the garbage industry, to have Robert and his father killed. <br /> <br /> As Casso said later in his debriefing with law enforcement when he had decided to offer his services, '....but he was helping the FBI. So you know in the life we were in, there was no other way, but to kill the guy.'<br /> <br /> Early in 1989, Anthony Casso called a further meeting attended by Amuso and Avellino, this time at a mob social club in Canarsie, Brooklyn, on Flatlands Avenue. He also called in another capo in the family, a man called Anthony 'Bowat' Baratta, who lived in Manhattan. He ran a crew for the family in the Bronx, and by using him, it was felt it would shield Avellino from any direct link to the killings. <br /> </p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236995066,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">(1) Amuso & (2) Casso</span></p>
<p><br /> <br /> The family boss and his second in command, spelled out the problem to this man who they had chosen to organize the killing of Robert and his father. The next day, Avellino and his brother Carmine, picked up Baratta and drove him out to Long Island to show him the critical path that would lead to the hit: the Kubecka and Barstow houses, their office and yard, the routes they used to and from work; everything had to be checked off in order to put the killings together the right way. The hit site had to be determined; they checked and rejected the men's homes, as there was not enough cover. The office was the perfect place, set in a quiet industrial street, bordering onto a park. The killers knew there would be no problem from the police-Avellino's pet detectives had told him that the Kubeckas were never guarded or protected by law enforcement officers. As Casso said later, 'if these guys had the proper surveillance on them, believe me they would have been hard to get to. Between me and you, they might even be alive today.'<br /> <br /> Promises made, promises failed yet again, by the authorities.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236995278,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />By early June, Baratta (left) had chosen his hit team: Rocco Vitulli, in his thirties from Yonkers, a man who walked with a bad limp, and Frank 'Frankie Pearl' Federico, based in Brooklyn, in his early sixties. He escorted them across the proposed killing fields of Long Island, spending considerable time with them, as they scoped out the actual place chosen for the murders in East Northport.<br /> <br /> Throughout the summer, the harassment on the Kubeckas continued. Someone drove by the office and tossed a firebomb into one of the garbage trucks. Robert kept getting menacing telephone calls. A mysterious car tailed members of the family. By now, both Robert and Donald were under severe stress, and more and more, their breakfast meetings at the Gaslight revolved around their thoughts of selling the business. Robert loved to cook gourmet food, and dreamed of becoming a chef with his own place, and they also talked about perhaps opening a boat or car dealership. A close friend of Robert's later recalled, 'He was looking to get out, this wasn't supposed to be a lifetime commitment; it wasn't worth it.'<br /> <br /> On August 9th, Robert received another threatening phone call, and a man's thick, coarse voice told him that he was a dead man. Robert as he had done countless times, called the OCTF office in White Plains, miles away in Westchester County. He spoke to Tennien's partner, Alvin Jones, who told him to dial 911 and get a local police officer over to his house. The policeman arrived about 6 p.m. and wrote up a report.<br /> <br /> That evening, Cathy remembered that when Donald came home from work he looked happy. 'He was such a handsome man,' she recalled. <br /> <br /> They spoke about the threatening message Robert had received (Donald had been there at the office when the call came in,) and Donald reassured his wife, all was well. He told her that Robert had called the task force, and said that everything would be fine. When they had put their daughter to bed they sat and talked, and Cathy begged him not to go to work the next day. Donald told her not to worry, it would be okay. It was the last night they would ever spend together.<br /> <br /> August 10th, 1989, was sunny and warm even before the sun rose. Robert and Donald were at their office in the red brick building early as usual, and their ten trucks were out on the road by 5:15 a.m. The friends were working in the office when two vehicles drove up and parked quietly in the empty street. By then, it was about 6 a.m. Carmine Avellino was in one car, and Anthony Baratta in the other with the two killers, who checked their guns, and walked quickly into the building.<br /> <br /> They caught Donald Barstow in the hallway and blasted him to death. In the small cramped office it didn't go down so easily. Although he had a pistol, it was locked away in the office safe, but Robert wrestled with the two men and there was a massive struggle. Shots were fired wildly, bullets gouging into the office walls and ricocheting off the refrigerator standing in the corner. Furniture was overturned and files and papers knocked to the floor. They left Robert slumped over his desk, but in their haste to leave, left a black duffel bag containing two guns on the floor, in the corner of the office. They also left a pool of blood that was theirs, not Robert's. The mob had tried to intimidate him for twelve years without success, and even when they sent their hired guns to eliminate him, he went down fighting.<br /> <br /> The two men rushed out of the building and Baratta followed Carmine Avellino who took them to a safe house, where they waited until it was cleared for them to return respectively to Manhattan and Brooklyn. The man who had been injured in that last, cataclysmic struggle, had been Federico who went into hiding.<br /> <br /> Although grievously injured, Robert was able to dial 911, telling the operator, 'I've been shot. Two people have been shot. Send help.' When the police arrived, they found him still slumped across the desk. Rushed to Huntington Hospital, he was able to tell investigators that that his attacker was a white man in his 40s, before he died later that morning of gunshot wounds. The killers had not realized that the other man was not Jerry Kubecka: he and his son had been the targets. Still, as Casso later recalled, '.....if three of them were there, they would have shot all three.'<br /> <br /> The day after the killings, the dead men's families read a newspaper report that indicated that the authorities had urged the men to enter the Witness Protection Program and change their identities. The source claimed that Donald had been offered every kind of aid in starting over again, but had refused. Another source close to the state task force claimed that somewhere, some time, they were sure somebody in the mob would deal with the Kubeckas. Donald's wife Cathy, and Nina were outraged. They claimed their husbands had been committed to the project, had trusted the OCTF, had never ever, been offered a refuge in the WPP and had been abandoned by the authorities. They took their grievances to court and the law agreed with them and found the two men had been cast adrift by the law.<br /> <br /> ‘These were two honest citizens who were given assurances that they were going to be protected, and they absolutely weren't,’ said Robert Folks, a lawyer for the men's families. ‘They were killed by the same people they testified against.’<br /> <br /> In July 1998, Judge Leonard Silverman awarded the widows $10.8 million in damages. <br /> <br /> In his ruling, Silverman rejected the state's defence that both men had been offered help from the federal witness protection program. <br /> <br /> ‘If the Organized Crime Task Force was unable to provide meaningful protection to the Kubecka family, it should not have given them these explicit assurances,’ he said. ‘Having given these assurances, the state may not repudiate them now that its beneficiaries have been murdered.’ <br /> <br /> They didn't stop there. In the spring of 2000 they filed claim against the $6.5 million that was forfeited by Salvatore Avellino in a conviction brought down by the federal government. They claimed that the money was rightfully theirs, as the government was only able to secure it through the efforts and deaths of their husbands.<br /> <br /> From the very beginning of the murder hunt, the authorities were convinced that the killings were the work of the Luchese family, but had no evidence. The case stalled for over three years. Then, in January 1993, the FBI found Casso hiding with a girlfriend in New Jersey. He had been on the run for eighteen months, skipping as he was about to be arrested on a case involving a massive fraud involving the New York Housing Authority. <br /> <br /> In May, the federal agents arrested Avellino at his palatial home, in Nissequogue. Casso, seeking a break on what he knew would be a life term prison sentence for the crimes he had committed, including 34 admitted murders, began to cooperate with the authorities, disclosing details about numerous mob killings, including the murder of Robert and Donald. In February 1994, Salvatore Avellino pleaded guilty to racketeering charges that included conspiracy to murder Kubecka and Barstow. He was sentenced to ten and a half years in prison.<br /> <br /> In January 1995, based almost entirely on the evidence of Anthony Casso, the FBI indicted Carmine Avellino, Anthony Baratta, Vitulli and Federico on murder and racketeering charges. But in July, 1996, Carmine Avellino, Baratta and Vitulli were allowed to plead on lesser charges, and all mention of the killings was dropped. Federico was still missing. Some sources said he had fled to Sicily where he was living undercover; other information indicated that he was murdered to remove the one physical link into the killing that connected the Luchese family. The only other evidence to the killings, was the testimony of Casso, which for some reason, bothered the prosecutors, and they decided to drop it. <br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236989455,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236989455?profile=original" />On January 27th., 2003 at 6:50 pm authorities arrested <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/lucchese-soldier-frank-frankie">Federico</a> (right) at a the little Twins Doughnut shop, huddling under the ‘El’ on East Tremont Avenue in the Bronx. Federico was there for a meeting with a mob associate. Later it was confirmed by the authorities that it was Federico’s blood that was found at the East Northport, Long Island murder scene. In September 2004 Federico was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison for the 1989 murders. Attorney William Gurin said that given Federico's advanced age, the penalty was essentially a life sentence. With time off for good behaviour, Federico would be eligible for release at the age of eighty-eight. Brooklyn Federal Judge Frederic Block said it was unfortunate Federico had even a glimmer of hope of freedom someday.<br /> <br /> He is serving time at Allenwood, Pennsylvania, and will be released in February, 2016.<br /> <br /> He always claimed he was not involved in the shooting, and in fact was at work at Pandick Press, America's largest financial printer, on Broadway in Manhattan. According to Joe De Fede a member of the Luchese family administration, 'Frankie Pearls' was made into the Mafia in October 1989 as a reward for his good work in East Northport that August morning.<br /> <br /> The tragic deaths of Robert and Donald, two men fighting the system on Long Island, had strange, deja vu overtones. In 1977, two other men trying to form a competing local to the powerful 813, in an attempt to overcome the same sort of problems, were brutally murdered, their bodies being stuffed into the trunk of car, left parked at Kennedy Airport. Their deaths however, were never solved, or any evidence produced to even suggest who the killers might have been.<br /> <br /> Carmine Avellino pled guilty to extortion and like his brother, got ten and a half years. Baratta, by now was in prison on other charges and received a further four years. Vitulli, one of the alleged killers, for some reason pled on a gambling charge and was sentenced to four years in jail. The prosecutors felt they did not have a strong enough case against him for the murders. It didn't seem like a lot of time for career criminals who had organized the brutal murders of two innocent men. <br /> <br /> Salvatore Avellino was originally scheduled for release from prison in 2006 when he would have been about seventy. He would get the chance to get back on the golf course, which was his first love, outside his life in the 'life,' and his palatial mansion in Nissequoge. Amuso and Casso are gone forever into the wastelands of the federal penitentiary system, Casso, now 70, is destined to spend his days for all time in the sterile confines of America's most stringent maximum prison in Florence, Colorado, locked down twenty three hours a day in a 12 x 7 cell.<br /> <br /> Rocco Vitulli limped out of prison on September 7th 2000 and was last heard of living in Brooklyn. Maybe his reward for his involvement in the killing was to get his 'button,' to be made into the Luchese crime family. He was named on a mob list (it is customary in New York, because of the number of Mafia families, for the names of proposed new members to be circulated among the families so that objections can be raised before those nominated are elected) as a replacement for Salvatore 'Sally Shields' Shillitani, a long time made guy in the family, who had died in 1988 in Florida. <br /> <br /> It has been suggested he was inducted into the Luchese family in 1991 at the home of Peter Vario, son of Paul Vario an old time family capo, deceased. He was apparently sponsored by Baratta, his team leader on the day of the killings.<br /> <br /> Carmine Avellino was released from prison February 25th 2004, and Anthony Baratta is currently serving time for a variety of offences. He has a projected release-date of September 25, 2012 from the FCI Loretto <br /> <br /> Dick Tennien, the OCTF supervisor who promised Robert and Donald all the protection in the world, died in April 2001. He was eulogized at the funeral as a pioneer in the investigation of organized crime. His partner Alvin Jones, the man Robert spoke to the day before he was murdered, retired to Queens. When asked about the case, he simply said, ' The deaths touched me very deeply, I've put it behind me.'<br /> <br /> On September 26th., 1989, the town board of Huntigton, passed a resolution authorizing a name change for the Huntington Organic Gardens, a 15 acre, 3000 square foot plot situated at the junction of Dunlop and Greenlawn Roads, From 1973 until 1976, Robert had worked as an environmentalist for the town, and through his efforts, the garden had been established to provide residents with plots for individual gardens. What in Britain are called allotments.<br /> <br /> It was the first of its kind in America-a place where fruit and vegetables could be grown without the use of chemical fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides. The council's minutes confirm Robert's contribution to the town as immeasurable:<br /> <br /> ‘In recognition of his tragic death resulting from his efforts to remove the influence of organized crime from the carting industry, the council unanimously agreed, in his honour, to rename the garden The Robert M. Kubecka Memorial Organic Garden.'<br /> <br /> Cathy, Robert's sister who had married Donald, left Long Island to start life again, and her sister-in-law, Nina, eventually re-married.<br /> <br /> Jerry Kubecka also died in 2001, in the spring, twelve years after his son was shot dead in cold blood, protecting his business. In an interview not long before he died, he said about his son, ' He was a jewel, a good person. I wish I was half the person he was.'<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">‘The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.</span><br style="font-style:italic;" /><span style="font-style:italic;">William Shakespeare.’</span><br /> <br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Mark Anthony Julius Caesar Act 3, Scene 2.</span> <br /> <br /> <span style="font-weight:bold;font-style:italic;">I would like to acknowledge an article by Steve Wick in Newsday, 2001, as a source of reference for some of this story.</span><br /> </p>
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A Death in the Family
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/a-death-in-the-family
2010-11-24T21:27:29.000Z
2010-11-24T21:27:29.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/10663250486?profile=RESIZE_400x&width=300"></div><div><p>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br /> In those last few seconds, as his life was disappearing like an evanescent breath, nothing to protect him, no salvation at hand, his thoughts must have been perhaps his wife and children; his family to be torn apart by his sudden and awful ending. Did he cry out in frustration at the inevitability of this act of duplicity locking him into this act of ultimate violence; or the venal manoeuvre that enticed him into a cul-de-sac from which there could be no escape? The ultimate treachery which was the hallmark of his chosen profession. Maybe in that split-second he had a glimpse of his older brother, Andimo, dying on the roadway, in front of his home. The shotgun blooming into his face like the orange belch from some dragon of death; killed because he stood in the way, just as he had now found himself. Maybe he saw all those men whose lives had been foreclosed by a bank that offered no line of credit other than the certainty that debts had to be paid, in full, on the due date. Perhaps in that last and fleeting moment, he embraced the finality, but still could not accept the reason.<br /> <br /> ‘Why are you hitting me?’ he screamed out in despair.<br /> </p>
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<p><br /> Saturday, May 13, 1989, dawned as a soft, spring day in New York. Michael Pappadio was awake early; he had a lot to do. The next day was Mother’s Day, and also his birthday. He would be sixty-seven.<br /> <br /> Dressing casually in a yellow polo shirt, tan slacks and a yellow wind-cheater, he pulled on a pair of white sneakers. He had suffered a stroke in August, 1982, which had left him with a permanent limp in his right leg, and he found the soft, leather casual trainers, more comfortable than shoes.<br /> <br /> His wife was organizing a celebration-bash for later in the afternoon, at their big, comfortable, colonial-style home on Little Neck Boulevard in the gated Bayside Gables Community in Queens. There would be a barbecue, out in the backyard, starting about lunch time, celebrating his special day and Mother’s Day, and all their family and some close friends had been invited.<br /> <br /> A little after 8.30 am, he and Frances left their home and drove in the Mercedes-Benz to 35th Avenue and Bell Boulevard. Here, Michael asked his wife to drop him off at The Great Bay Diner where he told her he was going for a coffee, before heading next door to the produce store to pick up fruit and vegetables. They agreed to meet in an hour, and Frances drove off to do her own shopping. She returned about 10 am, but Michael was not waiting for her. She checked the store and diner, and being unable to find him, assumed one of her four children must have collected him. She drove home. <br /> <br /> But Michael was not at home. Frances rang her children and they agreed to come over, and the family sat down to discuss their next move. Guests, and relatives started to arrive at the house, and several of them went off in groups to scour the neighbourhood. Some dropped by the diner and food store, and discovered that Michael had in fact not visited either.<br /> <br /> Later in the day, Frances phoned her brother-in-law Fred, her husband’s only living brother, at his home on 76th Street in Jackson Heights. Towards the end of the afternoon, he came across to the house in Bayside, and with him were his cousins, Victor and Butch Panica. They sat and talked with Frances, the three men speaking softly, with long awkward pauses, like people comforting each other at a wake. One of them suggested that perhaps Frances should notify the police that Michael seemed to have disappeared. After a while, the three men left, and although Frances spoke to Fred on the telephone from time to time, she never saw any of them again.<br /> <br /> At 11am on May 14th, Frances went to the 11th Precinct on 215th Street in Bayside, and filed Form 336, the New York Police Department’s missing person report. Any trace of the man she had been married to for seventeen years, effectively vanished, until February 11th, 1992. <br /> <br /> Frances Ierfino, who was eleven years younger than Michael, had married Joe Fannelli, a garment cutter, in 1955. They had four children, and divorced in 1969. In 1972, she married Michael who legally adopted the children in 1974. This was his first marriage. The year they married, Michael arranged for an imposing, four bed, four bath brick and stone Colonial to be built in the exclusive Bayside Gables complex in Queens. For some strange reason, with all the wealth in the family, Frances worked part-time as a computer data entry operator at Liz Roberts Apparel in Manhattan, and even stranger, as a part-time counter help at The Bagel Club on 35th Street, in Bayside.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236981901,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />At 5’8” and 200lbs in weight, Michael Pappadio (left) was a plug of a man, physically and mentally strong, and someone who did not openly display fear or physical discomfort. Michael handled all the household finances. When anyone needed money, he gave it to them. He was a domineering personality, whose word was never questioned. When anyone asked about his work, he simply told them he was employed in the garment district. He had four different telephone lines installed in his home, and they seemed to ring non-stop every day. <br /> <br /> One of seven brothers, he was born on May 14th, 1922, in New York, and spent a lot of his life working in and around the garment industry, based largely in mid-town Manhattan. He also spent a lot of his life working in and around the Mafia, in particular, the group known on record as the Luchese crime family. <br /> <br /> New York’s garment district and related industries were for many years controlled by the New York mob, and the Luchese family, according to some sources, had primary rights to the district, along with the Gambino family. This was exercised by their hold over the trucking industry, a vital lifeline into and out of the area, and the way they manipulated the unions controlling the thousands of people employed in the business.<br /> <br /> The Luchese family had their roots in the garment district, going back over 50 years.<br /> Following the death of Jewish gangster Arnold Rothstein in 1928, his garment rackets were inherited by Lepke Buchalter and Jacob Shapiro. By the early 1930s, Tommy Luchese, working under Tommaso Gagliano, (who headed up the old 107th Street mob,) as his under boss, was exerting a major stranglehold on the district, through his political manoeuvring with Tammany Hall leader Jimmy Hinds, and indirectly though his contacts in mayor William O’Dyers office. Using men like Jimmy Plumeri, Johnny Dioguardi and Joe Stracci, Luchese filled the vacuum created when Buchalter and Shapiro died.<br /> <br /> Tommy Luchese controlled Champion Trucking, one of the biggest hauliers operating in the district and along with Plumeri’s Ell-Gee Carriers Corporation and Barton Trucking, dominated the movement of goods in and out of the area.<br /> <br /> The garment industry is divided essentially into two parts: the jobbers who design and sell the garments, and the contractors who assemble and sew the apparel. The bulk of the products were made-up in Chinatown, so there was a constant movement back and forth between the garment district located mainly between 34th and 39th Streets and the makers located south of Canal Street, three miles down the island. The trucking operation was the life-blood of the business, connecting the heart (the district) to the limbs (Chinatown.) Whoever controlled the trucks controlled the garment industry, which by the 1950s was employing more than 300,000 workers.<br /> <br /> In 1962, Luchese’s daughter, Frances, married Thomas, the eldest son of Carlo Gambino, the powerful mob boss, and this union cemented close relationships between the two families, including their interests in the garment district. Again, through control of trucking companies, as well as union control, the Gambino family became a major force alongside the Luchese family in this major New York industry.<br /> <br /> Fifteen years later on August 22nd, 1977, Women’s Wear Daily, the ‘Bible’ of the rag trade began a series of articles exposing Mafia influence and control among the apparel manufacturers, trucking companies servicing them and unions representing the workers. <br /> <br /> It leads off:<br /> <br /> ‘The Mafia: Seventh Avenue’s Silent Partner called New York’s multibillion dollar industry their thing, because virtually every piece of clothing made here is touched by the hands, or the money, or the influence of organized crime.’<br /> <br /> The articles explained how the industry was controlled by the mob through loan sharking, shakedowns for labour peace and professional hijackings.<br /> <br /> And this is how things stood in1989.<br /> <br /> Cosa Nostra profits from the industry managed by the Luchese family, belonged solely to the official bosses, the permanent administration members as recognized by the Commission or ruling body, of the mob. Acting bosses, captains and soldiers were not allowed to personally earn from these sources without permission from the head of the Luchese crime family, who at this time was Vittorio Amuso.<br /> <br /> Michael Pappadio had for many years been an inducted member of Cosa Nostra, getting his stripe, or admission into Cosa Nostra, sometime between 1974 and 1977. He wasn’t the only member of his biological family to have been seduced by the lure of easy money and the power of being a wise guy. His elder brother, by eight years, Andimo, also know by his quant nickname, Pop Wilson,’ had served the Luchese family for many years, until he was blasted to death by a shotgun outside his home in Lido Beach on September 25th 1976. A close friend and confident of Tommy Luchese himself, Andimo had been involved in one of the boss’s many legitimate business ventures, serving as vice-president of Bal-Fran Blouse Company, located at 130 West 46th Street in the garment district, between 1947 and 1950, and Ann-Lynn Sportswear at West 35th Street. Andimo had risen through the ranks to be powerful enough to apparently sit on the board of directors of the mob family, a group referred to as ’the administration.’ He was also very tight with many powerful Cosa Nostra figures, including Vito Genovese, who replaced Frank Costello as the head of their family, in 1957. He was even indicted on the drug rap that snared <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/get-the-right-man-how-the-fbn">Genovese</a> and another group of mobsters in 1958, although he was fortunate to avoid prosecution in this case.<br /> <br /> His murder was never solved. Some sources claimed he was killed by Carmine Galante because he had been trying to muscle in on some of the Bonanno crime family mobster’s gambling and loan sharking activities. Other sources believed his killing was ordered by the Luchese family boss of the time, Tony Corallo, who feared Andimo was plotting a coup against him.<br /> <br /> Michale Pappadio was charged with the responsibility of managing the Luchese’s family’s interests in the garment district, his elder brother’s main focus prior to his murder. Michael had been ‘in place’ for many years, taking over the position on the death of his brother, and as such, was one of the most powerful crime figures in the area. Not only did he milk huge revenues out of this bustling commercial centre in mid town Manhattan, he also operated a very lucrative loan sharking business among the teeming streets, one that grossed millions of dollars each year. <br /> <br /> A classic way in which gangsters like Pappadio sapped money out of the area was a ‘bust out,’ a bankruptcy fraud. In one such example, he along with two associates, and legitimate garment operators, incorporated a firm called Fashion Page. In 1975, when the firm’s business began to decline, the associates made a fictitious loan to the company of $275,000. Shortly afterwards, a fire destroyed the business. Most of the insurance money, over $300,000, went to pay off this loan, rather than the numerous creditors of the business.<br /> <br /> Michael Pappadio had a major say in the corruption of all industry operations that would benefit his superiors, including union control, trucking, cutting rooms, suppliers, etc. He had worked hard and successfully, generating massive revenues in his years managing the garment centre business, as well as developing majority or partial interest in at least twelve garment manufacturing companies, but his downfall and ultimate death came about because of his origins in the Luchese crime family.<br /> <br /> Vittorio Amuso and his right hand man, a psychotic killer called Anthony Casso, who were running the crime family in 1989, came from the western Brooklyn faction and because of this, were regarded with suspicion and resentment by the Harlem/Bronx cell which had traditionally ruled the family. There is confusion as to what position Michael Pappadio actually had in the Luchese’s at this time. Some sources claim he was a capo or crew boss in his own right, others that he was a soldier or simply an associate in the crew under Alphonse D’Arco.<br /> <br /> The origins of the Luchese family, sometime near the beginning of the 20th Century, began in the teeming streets of East Harlem, centred on and around 107th Street. Michael Pappadio was originally from this section of the family, and as a result, became one of the targets earmarked for early retirement by Amuso and Casso as they attempted to solidify their hold over the family, once they had wrested control of it following the imprisonment in 1985 of Anthony Corallo, the family boss since the early 1970s.<br /> <br /> In 1986, Corallo knowing he would spend the rest of his life behind bars, made his mind up and decided on a replacement. He chose a senior capo, Anthony ’Buddy’ Luongo to be his successor, and passed the word down to the troops. At least that’s one of the theories that exist. Another is that Corallo sent word out from prison that he was considering this selection. Either way, it was enough. One night in December 1986, Luongo kissed his wife goodbye in their Bronx home, and told her he was off to meet with some friends in Brooklyn. He never returned home. It’s surmised that he was lured into an ambush and killed either by Amuso or some of his aides. The body was disposed of and no trace of him has ever been found.<br /> <br /> Heresy information subsequently confirmed that the killing had taken place.<br /> <br /> Vincent ‘Fish’ Cafaro, a soldier in the Genovese crime family, gave evidence before a Congressional Committee on Organized Crime in 1988. <br /> <br /> This is part of his statement:<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">I also know Vic Amuso who succeeded Buddy Luongo as boss of the Luchese family. I remember discussing Luongo and Amuso with Ralp the General (Ralph Tutino,) a Luchese associate who was recently convicted in New York on federal drug charges. In December, 1986, Ralph told me ‘Buddy’s missing-he had an appointment in Brooklyn with little Vic (meaning Amuso) and he never came back.’ A few days later, Ralph told me that Eddie Coco, ’Mac’ (Mariano Nacaluso) and Vic Amuso were running things for the Luchese family. Luongo was never heard from again. Sammy Santora (at that time the under boss of the Genovese family-not to be confused with Salvatore Santoro, under boss of the Luchese family) later told me that Luongo had been murdered and that he believed that the ‘guy from Brooklyn’ was responsible. I know the ‘guy from Brooklyn’ to be Vic Amuso. The then consigliere of the Luchese family, Eddie Coco is the power behind Amuso. Even though he is the boss, Vic takes counsel from Coco.</span><br /> <br /> A few weeks after Luongo’s disappearance, Tony Corallo was being urged by his family’s administration to sort out the boss replacement situation, with most of the agitation coming from the Brooklyn crew that had been run by ‘Buddy.’ The under boss of the family, Salvatore ‘Tom Mix’ Santora, had grave reservations about Amuso, but was himself in prison, so had little control over the course of events. <br /> <br /> A street thug and major heroin trafficker, Vittorio Amuso was a big earner for the family, and this, as much as anything else, finally persuaded Corallo to endorse the promotion. It would be Tony Corallo’s last decision regarding the family he had served for almost fifty years. And the worst he ever made.<br /> <br /> In due course, Amuso appointed Anthony Casso as his chief aide. Together, like Bill and Ben the demolition men, or maybe more aptly, ’Dumb and Dumber,’ they would effectively almost destroy one of the tightest, best run and efficient Cosa Nostra families in New York, which at this time had perhaps 120 plus made men, and hundreds of associates.<br /> <br /> The power base of the family, long cemented in Harlem and the Bronx, swung over to the Brooklyn faction, by far the most violent and unpredictable bunch of thugs and killers in the clan, with Anthony Casso as perhaps the worst by far. They operated mostly out of Bensonhurst, a small, compact community of mainly blue-collar workers, situated directly north of Coney Island. It’s densely populated three square miles contained thousands of Italian-Americans who considered themselves lucky to live in one of the last New York areas offering wood-burning ovens for pie-making in commercial pizza kitchens.<br /> <br /> Vittorio ‘Little Vic’ Amuso, who was also nicknamed ‘Jesse,’ was a short, slim man of unassuming appearance, but like so many of his kind, very dangerous when scratched. In his early days he had acted as bodyguard and chauffeur to Carmine Tramunti, a.k.a. ‘Mr Gribbs’ who took over the family leadership after the death of Tommy Luchese, and prior to Tony Corallo. <br /> <br /> Moving rapidly upwards on his career path, by the time he was 33, Amuso was a big time heroin dealer, like so many of his peers in the Luchese family. Parlaying his drug revenues into loan sharking, he was soon developing a reputation as a major earner for the family, possibly the highest accolade a mobster could aim for. His rocketing progress came to a temporary halt when he was arrested in 1977 for importing heroin from Bangkok, Thailand. By 1987 he was solidly entrenched, running the Brooklyn crew under Luongo. He lived with his wife Barbara in Howard Beach in Queens. A close neighbour and friend was John Gotti who lived just three minutes to the south by car. <br /> <br /> As he assumed control of the family, Amuso turned more and more to Sidney Lieberman, a personal friend and Luchese associate, concerning matters in the garment industry, and Pappadio and Lieberman began more and more attempting to undermine each other in their dealings with the new administration.<br /> <br /> Michael was using his brother Fred to help him run the complex and demanding business of supervising the family’s garment business, following his stroke in 1982, and Lieberman began a campaign to undermine Michael’s standing in the family, claiming he was hiding over 50 businesses away from the family for his own benefit, and had earned $15 million that Amuso was unaware of. Michael responded by denying it all, and pointing out, quite rightly that Lieberman, being Jewish, could never be ‘made’ as he himself had and that the administration should always support a member over an outsider.<br /> <br /> A meeting called by Amuso in early 1989, was held in the Cleveland Place, Greenwich Village apartment of a Luchese mobster called Angelo ‘Shorty’ DiPaolo. Michael attended accompanied by Alphonse D’Arco. Also in attendance, were Anthony Casso and Michael’s brother Fred. In a violent and heated confrontation, Amuso demoted Michael from his job in the garment industry, demanding he handed over all record books he was maintaining that involved details on the companies and unions that the family controlled. The meeting ended with Michael storming off, vowing to stay on the job, irrespective of Amuso’s dictates. The boss warned Pappadio that if he persisted, he would issue instructions to have him killed. But like a man with a death wish, Michael Pappadio continued to involve himself in the day-to-day running of the family’s garment district affairs.<br /> <br /> His overheads were high-the $2 million Queen’s house; an apartment at 35 Park Avenue, Manhattan; a condo in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a house in the Hampton’s; the cars, Haydesa Severo, the housekeeper-the list seemed endless. Although getting on in years and a semi-invalid, Michael like so many of his fellow mobsters, was drive by the need to keep on making money, the Holy Grail of Cosa Nostra everywhere.<br /> <br /> Al D’Arco met with him on several occasions during March and April, but was unable to persuade him to accept Amuso’s edict. It seemed the die had been cast. Literally. <br /> <br /> In early April, Amuso convened another meeting, this one at the Le Parc Lounge on Rockaway Parkway, in Canarsie, Brooklyn. Present were D’Arco, Casso, Salvatore Avellino a capo in the family, and former chauffer and close confident of now jailed ex-boss Tony Corallo, and his brother Carmine, a soldier in the family. They listened while Vic announced his decision: Michael Pappadio had to go.<br /> <br /> Amuso handed over the working details of the hit on Michael Pappadio to Anthony Casso, a serial killer with possibly dozens of victims to his credit. A man who loved his work, he sat down and prepared a killing plan. Weapons were to be procured along with a body bag, and it was decided to lure Pappadio to a meeting at Crown Foods, a bakery manufacturer, on Rockaway Boulevard in Queens where he would be killed. The body would be disposed of, and he would vanish as though he had never existed. A classic mob hit scenario, one that had been repeated over and over again, for generations.<br /> <br /> The clip was to be carried out on a Saturday morning. The business would be closed over the week-end, so it would be safe and secure to carry out the killing and then dispose of Pappadio’s corpse.<br /> <br /> On that Saturday morning in May, Salvatore Avellino rang Michael and they arranged to meet outside the Great Bay Diner. They were standing talking, shooting the breeze, when Carmine Avellino pulled up in a blue Lincoln Town Car. It is not know what reason was given for Michael to go along to Crown Foods, but he must have felt comfortable with the arrangement to get in the car and travel south across Queens.<br /> <br /> At the bakery, a business owned by Carmine Avellino,( now a lube and auto repair shop,) Al D’Arco and one of the soldiers in his crew, Georgie Zappola, waited to carry out the killing. Zappola, a dyed-in-the-wool hoodlum, whose father and uncle had both been murdered by the mob in 1981, still lusted after the honour of being a ‘made man.’ D’Arco was carrying a copper wire cable wrapped in blue insulation tape, and Zappola was holding a .22 revolver. As Carmine Avellino led Michael through the bakery towards the rear office area, D’Arco sprang out from behind a pillar and started bashing Michael around the head with the makeshift sap. To everyone’s surprise, the man remained standing, blood streaming from his face. He screamed out: ‘Why are you hitting me?’<br /> <br /> Zappola stepped up, presented the revolver and shot Pappadio. The bullet actually ricocheted off his head, striking a door-frame, and amazingly the man remained standing, holding his face between his hands. Zappola then pulled out a snub-nose .38 calibre revolver and shot Michael again in the head. Unbelievably, he still remained on his feet, his legs, now spread wide, to support his dying body, while his three killers stood around him like wild dogs baiting a wounded bear. And then slowly, he sank to his knees, and toppled over, collapsing onto the floor.<br /> <br /> The three men stood there, in that empty warehouse, adrenaline pumping, bathed in sweat, the blue haze of gunshots hanging in the air, dust motes dancing through the beams of spring sunshine that shafted through the overhead windows, the smell of cordite mixing with the smell of yeast and flour, the broken body sprawled at their feet, pumping blood across the concrete floor.<br /> <br /> It could have been a scene from a Tarantino movie.<br /> <br /> Later giving evidence as a federal witness, D’Arco said:<br /> <br /> ‘There was a big mess, and lots of blood on the floor and walls. Everywhere.’<br /> <br /> They checked to make sure he was really dead, and Carmine Avellino searched his clothing, removing a thick wad of money and an old wallet. Amuso had convinced himself that Michael had turned and become an informant for the FBI, and wanted evidence of this, although there in fact was none because he hadn’t. Suspecting a victim of becoming a ‘rat’ was a classic Mob subterfuge to justify the execution of an irritant within a crime family. The body was rolled into the body bag, and carried through the bakery and then loaded into the trunk of the Lincoln, which had been lined with a plastic sheet.<br /> <br /> With D’Arco driving, he and Zapola went to a secluded intersection at Alderton Street and Trotting Course Lane, close to Woodhaven Boulevard. Here, D’Arco left the car and made his way back to the bakery, (flagging a taxi on Woodhaven Boulevard,) to supervise the cleaning of the crime scene. Zappola waited with the car for the arrival from Long Island of the man who would arrange the disposal of Michael Pappadio’s body. It was subsequently cremated, and the ashes scattered somewhere in the greater New York area.<br /> <br /> Alphonse D’Arco eventually made his way home, to his apartment at 21 Spring Street in Little Italy, Manhattan, where he removed all his clothes, cutting them into strips, including his shoes. He bundled the pieces into plastic bags, and dumped them into the apartment building’s incinerator shoot.<br /> <br /> Later in the day, he telephoned Amuso from a public telephone at the intersection of Kenmare and Mulberry Street. They talked, discreetly about the killing, and Amuso finished the conversation by saying:<br /> <br /> ‘Grazie, ai fatto bene’ which translated into English meant, ‘Thanks, you did well.’ <br /> <br /> Three years later, on a cold, miserable spring day in 1992, Frances Pappadio learned some of the details of her husband’s brutal killing.<br /> <br /> Sitting in her comfortable and luxurious home in Bayside, surrounded by her four children-son Michael, and daughters Patricia, Michelle and Jose- with her sister Dolores Saco busy organizing coffee and tea for everyone, she listened as FBI Special Agent Lucian J. Gandolfo told her what the agency had learned about her husband’s death from Al D’Arco. The day before, she had been visited by Agent Gandolfo and Agent Sharon L. Bonville and told that the FBI had information confirming that her husband was in fact dead, and not simply a missing person. She had asked them to return the following day when she would call her children around her and confront the awful news as a family.<br /> <br /> Frances Pappadio claimed she was never aware of her husband’s mob connection. Michael kept his biological family and business family life completely separate. Her thoughts and feelings as the background and fate of her husband were revealed, can only be imagined. After seventeen years of marriage to a man she thought was a successful businessman, she discovered her husband had been prosperous all right, but in a profession she could never have dreamt of.<br /> <br /> On the same day, February 12th, six miles across town in Jackson Heights, Michael’s brother Fred, was also being interviewed by an agent of the FBI, in his modest row house on a tree-lined street.<br /> <br /> He refused to answer questions without his attorney present, but admitted that unlike his brother, he was not involved in ‘that life.’ Special Agent John Flanagan knew of course that Fred had been present at the meeting on Cleveland Place, when Vittorio Amuso ‘chased’ his brother from the garment industry, and that Fred must have known the inevitability of the events that would eventually unfold, almost certainly resulting in his brother’s death. When he had called with his cousins that day in 1989 to the house in Bayside, to sit and talk with his sister-in-law, he surely knew it was all over, and that Michael had gone for good.<br /> <br /> In the twisted and devious philosophy of Cosa Nostra, family members are dispensable as long as The Family carries on maintaining its momentum.<br /> <br /> Although the ultimate fate of Michael Pappadio was resolved, his family will forever be tortured by the knowledge of his final moments and unresolved resting place.<br /> <br /> Like so many mob murders, the mysterious disappearance of Michael Pappadio would have remained just that, except for information revealed by the man from the Luchese family who knew the answers to many of their secrets-Alphonse D’Arco. He had helped to set it up and carry it out. Michael was just one of many victims who were sacrificed to the ambition of this man over the years, as he schemed and manoeuvred up the corporation ladder of the Mafia underworld.<br /> <br /> D’Arco was one of the highest ranking Cosa Nostra defectors when he rolled and came in from the cold in September 1991. Born in Brooklyn in 1932, near the Naval Yards, he had been involved with the Luchese crime family from his teenage years. <br /> His childhood, D'Arco once recalled, was ‘like being in the forest and all the trees were the dons and the organized crime guys.’ A small, balding, bespectacled inconspicuous man, he looked more like a bank clerk than a mobster. He started hanging around Amuso and the Carnarsie crew of the Luchese family, and at 29 went to prison for five years for fencing stolen stock certificates<br /> <br /> He was made relatively late in life in 1982, by the boss himself, Anthony Corallo, in a kitchen in a house in the Bronx, when he was just turned fifty, and had taken over as capo or crew chief from Paul Vario when he died in 1988. Shortly after he was given his button, he was arrested, and pled out on a drug trafficking charge, going back into prison for two years. He was earning $10,000 a week on his loan sharking book, which he had inherited from Vario, and his tributes from his crew of eleven men and dozens of associates was thousands of dollars every week. <br /> <br /> Amuso had transferred Michael Pappadio into this crew from his Harlem based one, in order to keep a close eye on him.<br /> <br /> The reason for D’Arco’s defection speaks volumes about how much the once powerful Luchese crime family had deteriorated in the few years that its control had passed out of the hands of Tony Corallo. In a murderous campaign generated by Amuso and Casso to eliminate anyone they suspected of disloyalty they arranged the murders of nine men, tried, unsuccessfully to wipe out the head of their New Jersey crew along with his son and another aide, and organized the killing, again unsuccessfully, of capo Pete Chiodo,( a man Amuso had himself sponsored into the family,) although he was shot twelve times in the attempt, tried to kill his sister, and finally were setting up a hit on D’Arco himself, when he became aware of the danger he was in and turned himself into the FBI. At one time, Casso showed D’Arco a list of 49 names he wanted eliminated, and almost half of them were members of the Luchese family! In his de-briefing by the FBI when Casso offered to become an informant, he actually admitted his role in 36 killings.<br /> <br /> A classic hit was the one on Anthony DiLapi. An old school Bronx based soldier, he had been a force in the garment district under Tony Corallo as a Teamster’s local union leader. On his release from prison in 1986, he was summonsed to a meet with Amuso. Afraid that as a Bronx based member of the family, he would be facing problems with Amuso, he fled New York and finished up in Los Angeles, where he worked as a second-hand car salesman. In February 1990 he was shot dead in the car park of his apartment building by Joe D’Arco, the 19 year old son of Al, who crossed America in order to get his button in the mob by earning his ‘bones’ in a hit for the family boss.<br /> <br /> Casso a man so twisted and warped, he must have walked outside his own shadow, brought Al D’Arco to the edge, and in doing so, set in motion the events that helped<br /> law enforcement agencies bring down Amuso and Casso himself. D’Arco’s testimony at numerous trials was the final nail in many mob coffins. It was at D’Arco’s de-briefing by his FBI handlers that the details of Michael Pappadio’s murder came to light.<br /> <br /> "Al gave them great value for the money," said his defence lawyer Edward Hayes. "D'Arco is a lunatic, but he has a story." <br /> <br /> And what a story. For ten years, starting in the court action against Vittorio Amuso, he testified at numerous trials against the mob, including the 1997 one against Vincent Gigante, head of the Genovese crime family.<br /> <br /> In 2002, he took down his shingle as mob informant extraordinaire and retired into the obscurity of the Witness Protection Program. <br /> <br /> Salvatore and Carmine Avellino were both indicted on various racketeering charges in the early 1990s and served significant prison time. They were both charged in the murders of the Long Island garbage haulers Robert Kubecka and Donald Barstow which occurred later in the same year that Michael Pappadio was murdered.<br /> <br /> Georgie Zapolla is currently incarcerated at the Allenwood Federal Correctional Complex in Pennsylvania. His projected release date is March 3, 2014.<br /> <br /> Vittoria Amuso and Antony Casso are both in federal prisons and will never be released.<br /> <br /> For some reason, the name of the man who disposed of Michael’s body was never disclosed.<br /> <br /> In the end, Michael Pappadio died not so much because he underestimated the evil of Amuso and Casso, rather he overestimated his ability to swim with the fish, even though they were piranhas. His belief in the sanctity of the rules of Cosa Nostra seduced him into assuming his crime family position was inviolable. An old school Mafioso he was simply a babe in the woods when he was faced with the terrible twins, whose lust for money and mob power, was greater by far than their observance of the rules they were supposed to live by.<br /> <br /> The tenet that absolute power corrupts absolutely could have been written as a job description for Amuso and Casso, two men who somehow could never understand that fear and loathing are really no substitute for grace underfire, but who most certainly would have understood the saying of Soviet revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin:<br /> <br /> ‘A lie told often enough becomes the truth.’<br /> </p>
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Lucky’s Luck: How Charlie Luciano got out of jail and passed go
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/luckys-luck-how-charlie
2010-11-24T20:00:00.000Z
2010-11-24T20:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/10663249480?profile=RESIZE_400x&width=400"></div><div><p>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br /> Any one interested in the subject of Italian-American organized crime, is probably familiar with the story concerning Charlie Luciano’s final departure from New York. <br /> <br /> After serving 10 years of a thirty year sentence for compulsory prostitution, he was released from prison by the very man who sent him away, New York State Governor, Thomas Dewey, transferred to Ellis Island in New York Harbour, and on February 10th 1946, sailed away on a rust-bucket of a steam ship, never to return. <br /> <br /> Charlie had apparently done such a great service for America’s war effort, that the governor (who as a hell-bent New York District Attorney, pursued Luciano and had him sent away for a crime that most observers thought was the biggest frame-up since Sacco and Venzetti were executed for a murder they never did, back in July, 1921,) agreed to a commutation of sentence, subject to a deportation order, and sent Luciano back to his birth place, the small, sulphur-stinking town of Lecara Friddi in the wilds of Western Sicily . <br /> <br /> Luciano’s conviction was so dodgy in fact, that in a memo dated April 18th 1946, R.A. Rosen Assistant Director of the FBI, stated: <br /> <br /> ‘.<span style="font-style:italic;">..... considerable opinion exists to the effect that Luciano was not guilty of the charges for which he was convicted and that Governor Dewey’s parole of Luciano was motivated partially as an easing of Dewey’s conscience.</span>’ <br /> <br /> Luciano’s sentence was the largest ever imposed at that time in the state of New York for compulsory prostitution, and the Feds, who knew a lot about Charlie, but almost nothing about what he really represented, uncharacteristically went to bat for him, at least in an inter-office memo.<br /> <br /> But just how Charlie got his pass, and why he was allowed to sail off into the evening glow so to speak, on that miserable, rainy day in February, has always been a bit of a mystery. There have been lots words written about it, in a number of different books, with the basic premise something along these lines:<br /> <br /> The New York Harbour, the biggest and most important in the USA, and the staging post for any future American involvement in World War Two, was at risk from Nazi attacks, both overt and subvert. The eyes and ears needed to aid Naval intelligence services were the dock workers and fishermen, and everyone knew that the mob controlled the waterfront, and Luciano, a.k.a. Salvatore Lucania, also known as Charlie Lucky, was obviously a very important man in the underworld. Ergo, he should be able to help secure the cooperation of the waterside workers to aid any intelligence operations. <br /> <br /> A FBI report dated May, 1946 states:<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">In 1941, the security of the port of New York was a matter of great concern, not only to the Third Naval District, but to the Secretary of the Navy and the President of the United States, and further that in accordance with the directive issued by the Secretary of Navy, the activities of the District Intelligence Organization (DIO), in the Third Naval District were expanded to afford the required coverage in the port of New York.</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">It was also pointed out that considerable newspaper publicity concerning the Navy’s responsibility in this regard occurred in 1941, and as a result of it, the District Attorney of New York County, invited the DIO to discuss matters concerning the port of New York. At a meeting subsequently held, the District Intelligence Officer was informed that the ‘Rackets‘ Section of the District Attorney’s Office had numerous contacts in the underworld familiar with waterfront situations. Arrangements were made whereby pertinent information would be called to the attention of the DIO.</span><br /> <br /> Then there was Lucky’s part in the invasion of Europe. A letter send to Charles Brietel, Secretary to Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, stated that the author:<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">was confident that the greater part of intelligence developed in the Sicilian Campaign was directly responsible to the number of Sicilians that emanated from the Charlie ‘Lucky‘ Luciano’s contacts.</span><br /> <br /> And so, not only did Charlie save the port of New York from the fiendish Krauts, but he paved the way for a successful invasion of Sicily that helped shorten the war and save untold number of military lives. The least the state could do was give this guy a break and turn him loose from a conviction that was to say the least, a bit dodgy.<br /> <br /> The author of the letter to the governor’s aide was naval officer Charles Radcliffe Haffenden, known more often as ‘Red,’ and he lies, maybe unwittingly, at the very core of what may have been a classic mob scam to get something they really wanted badly- Charlie out of the pen. Sixty years after the event, everyone is dead and gone, so we are never going to know for sure, but this is what may have gone down in those early years of World War Two.<br /> <br /> Charlie was incarcerated in one of America’s more dismal penitentiaries, located not far from Canada; a bleak, inhospitable place known as Clinton, an armpit of a prison. Situated in the small township of Dannemora, twenty miles south of the border, it had opened in 1845, housing prisoners who were free labour for the iron mines of Clinton and Essex counties.<br /> <br /> After his conviction on the prostitution charges, he was sent first to Sing Sing prison arriving there on June 18th 1936. On July 2nd he was moved north, to the prison the American underworld referred to as Little Siberia, and it looked as though he would spend the rest of his life, or at least twenty years of it, stewing here in the summer and freezing in the winter. He would not be even considered for parole until 1956. <br /> <br /> Inmate 24086 settled down for a long and miserable stay, at this bleak and depressing facility, hidden away behind fourty-foot high walls and watch towers manned by armed guards. <br /> <br /> Warden William Snyder assigned Lucky a cell in ‘the Flats,’ the first-floor gallery in West Hall, which came to be equipped with an electric stove, curtains and a pet canary.<br /> <br /> In March 1937, Luciano was transferred to C Block, ‘one of the best and cleanest blocks,’ according to James D. Horan, a fellow inmate who recalled his hard time with Luciano in his 1959 autobiography, ‘The Mob's Man.’ Horan was happy to have the daily job of cleaning Lucky's cell and pressing his clothes (silk shirts and creased slacks,) for which he was paid handsomely in cigarettes, and other valuable contraband.<br /> <br /> ‘Little Davie’ Betillo, one of Lucky’s associates, who had received 24 to 40 years for a supporting role in Luciano's prostitution ring, often prepared Charlie‘s food, in a corner of the prison kitchen that had been made available to him. Betillo cooked Luciano's meals, before serving them to him in his cell, where the mob boss would listen to comedy shows on the radio. (Lucky's favourite was apparently Abbott and Costello.) <br /> <br /> Something went badly wrong with their relationship however, for Betillo corned Luciano one day, and beat him badly with a baseball bat. ‘Little Davie’ headed up a group of Italian-American convicts who were constantly fighting with another group of non- Italians. Luciano warned Davie off a number of times, and one day ordered him to stop the brawling. Betillo took umbrage and went for Luciano. Charley was saved, only by the intervention of another prisoner, who came to his aid, and as a result, apparently was awarded an early release. Betillo spent some time in solitary. It seems Charlie was incredibly lucky to escape with little injury. Betillo had started his career in the Chicago mob, working as a bodyguard for Al Capone, and was a seasoned killer. From that point on, Charley always had at least two inmates act as his bodyguards, no doubt rewarding them well for their trouble.<br /> <br /> He seemingly accepted and adjusted to his incarceration, making the best of his situation. On a hill overlooking a recreation area called ‘the Courts,’ he drank coffee, played gin rummy and held daily counsel with the prison's extensive Italian population. <br /> <br /> By 1937, New York District Attorney Dewey’s newest target was racketeer Louis ‘Lepke’ Buchalter. Luciano had allegedly arranged maximum security for Lepke in New York, on the run from the law, through underworld contacts Albert Anastasia and Louis Capone, and Buchalter operated without impunity for the next two years. In 1939, an FBI agent paid Luciano a visit over the still at-large ‘Lepke,’ and it’s possible that Luciano agreed to disclose his whereabouts (an apartment in Brooklyn,) but only if J. Edgar Hoover would arrange to have his sentence commuted. The agent refused. Not long after, Luciano, whose freedom was increasingly dependent on gubernatorial parole, may have tricked Buchalter into surrendering so that Dewey, an as-yet unannounced candidate, would owe him a favour. <br /> <br /> Lepke had jumped bail on July 6th 1937 while indicted by a Federal grand jury for violation of the Sherman Anti-trust Act; the first time the government had used it to try a convict a racketeer. A deal was set up, it seems, by Frank Costello, using the only man Lepke trusted- Moe ‘Dimples’ Wilensky-a long time associate of Bucahalter in the garment industry, to persuade Lepke to surrender to J. Edgar Hoover.<br /> <br /> Louis Buchalter would ultimately die in the electric chair in 1944, the first and only New York mob boss to-date, to have met this fate. If this is actually what did transpire, then Charles Luciano would have been the first major ‘rat’ or informer in the Italian-American underworld: One boss squealing on another boss in order to gain some kind of benefit for himself.<br /> <br /> This may have been the first, in a series of attempts by Luciano, to gain clemency on his prison sentence by becoming a government informer.<br /> <br /> The second, involved Dixie Davies, the lawyer who represented Dutch Schultz, the notorious New York numbers racket king. Davies was arrested in his hideaway, a Philadelphia hotel, where he had been in hiding with his mistress, Hope Dore, in February, 1938.<br /> <br /> Schultz had been murdered in 1935, and it seems Luciano had arranged protection for Davies following the murder of his boss. In 1939, Thomas Dewey, mounted a major indictment against corrupt Tammany leader, Jimmy Hines, who was allegedly a major player in Schultz’s gang. The underworld gossip was that Lucky had turned in Davies, allowing the law to catch him, so that he could provide the damming evidence needed to convict Hines.<br /> <br /> More Brownie points for Charlie, maybe?<br /> <br /> It is also possible that while in Clinton, Lucky was approached to help out a new, up-coming Italian-American singer, a crooner from Hoboken, called Frank Sinatra. Legend has it that Lucky financed Frank into the big time, and that Sinatra would later show his appreciation by singing at Luciano’s mobster conclave in Havana on Christmas Eve 1946.<br /> <br /> Sinatra’s wife, Nancy Barbato, was related to a senior member of a Luciano crew, controlled by New Jersey gangster, Willie Moretti, who himself was close to both Charlie and Frank Costello. Frank also had an uncle, on his mother’s side of the family, Babe Garavante, who was also allegedly linked into Moretti’s team. The links between Sinatra and Luciano went even deeper than that. Frank’s father may have actually been born in the same street in the same small town where Charlie Luciano had been born, in Western Sicily.<br /> <br /> This wasn’t the first time Charley had been into the ‘North Country.’<br /> <br /> In 1920, he’d helped to manage an upscale casino called ‘Brooks,’ opened in 1919 and owned by <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-big-bankroll-the-rise-and-fall-of-new-york-mob-boss-arnold-ro" target="_blank">Arnold Rothstein</a>, which was located in Saratoga Springs. Rothstein had also helped finance Charley, and his good friend <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-meyer-lansky-laundered-the-american-mafia-s-dirty-cash-and-ma">Meyer Lansky</a>, and a group of other investors, into their own place-‘The Chicago Club’- located near the railway station in the Springs.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236979276,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Luciano (right) had been one of the pivotal players in the establishment of what we now recognize as the Mafia crime families of New York. Born in Sicily in November 1897, he came to America in 1905 or 1907 depending on which source you choose to believe, along with his parents, Antonio and Rosalia Cafarella and his brother Bartolo. Charlie said in his autobiography it was April 1906, but there are so many things in that book that are suspect; perhaps he even got this date wrong as well! By 1931 at the early age of 34, he was heading up the Mafia clan formerly under the command of Giuseppe ‘Joe the Boss’ Masseria, who had been gunned down in a restaurant on Coney Island. This was the penultimate act of violence bringing to a close what has since been referred to as The Castellammarese War of 1930-31.<br /> <br /> Charlie was developing a nice little business, running what may have been the biggest mob in a city full of mobsters, when D.A. Dewey came along and upset the apple cart, which resulted in Charlie spending winter 1936 in the can, freezing off his tootsies, and knowing the only way from there, was down. He kept on running his criminal empire through intermediaries like Frank Costello and Vito Genovese, and kept closely in touch with the little Jewish criminal kingpin, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-meyer-lansky-laundered-the-american-mafia-s-dirty-cash-and-ma">Meyer Lansky</a>, dubbed ‘the Mafia’s Henry Kissinger’ by comedian Jackie Mason. They had been close friends and confidents since their youthful days growing up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Moses Polakoff, Lucky’s attorney, visited him at the prison, on a regular basis, and along with another outstanding trial lawyer, George Wolfe, he was working around the clock on Luciano’s appeal against his sentence, but not getting anywhere fast.<br /> <br /> While imprisoned in the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, Charley would use his influence to help organize the necessary materials to build a church at the prison in 1941, which became famous for being one of the only freestanding churches in the New York State correctional system and also for the fact that on the church's altar are two of the original doors from the explorer Magellan's ship. This church of St Dismas was called, not unsurprisingly, ‘The Church of the Good Thief!’ No doubt many of the convict penitents would kneel here in supplication to the mob prayer:<br /> <br /> ‘<span style="font-style:italic;">O Lord, give me the strength to rob again.</span>’<br /> <br /> And then on March 25th 1942, a meeting took place in the office of New York District Attorney Frank Hogan, that would trigger a sequence of events leading up to the release and deportation of Charlie Luciano.<br /> <br /> The meeting was held between Hogan, ADA Murray Gurfein, head of the DA’s racket squad section and three Naval men-Lt. James O’Malley Jnr., Lt. Anthony Marsloe and Lieutenant Commander Haffenden. <br /> <br /> Between December 7th 1941 and February 1942, the United States and its allies had lost 71 merchant ships to marauding Axis U-boats operating in the North Atlantic Ocean. It was suspected by Naval intelligence, that German U-boats were being refuelled and supplied with provisions by fishing smacks. <br /> <br /> Rear Admiral Carle Espe, Director of Naval Intelligence, believed the outcome of the war appeared extremely grave. There were serious concerns over possible destruction of essential ports. It was necessary to use every means to prevent and forestall sabotage, and to prevent this supplying of and contact with, enemy submarines.<br /> <br /> The Atlantic sea-lanes had to be made safe if the basic strategy of the war -Victory in Europe-was to be achieved. Also, on February 9th the S.S Normandie, a luxury cruise liner waiting refitting into a war vessel, caught fire, burnt out and rolled over on her moorings in the Hudson River. There was a very strong possibility at first that it was an act of sabotage, carried out right in the heart of New York, although in fact subsequent inquiries revealed it was simply an accident.<br /> <br /> At the meeting in Hogan’s office, it was suggested that the New York waterfront was very much influenced by Italian-Americans, as was the fishing fleets that operated out of the upper North East seaboard harbours. A name came up in the meeting, a man who was very important on the New York piers, a man who ran the biggest fish market in America, at the Fulton Street complex, on the lowers East Side of Manhattan. His name was Joseph Lanza, known to his friends as ‘Sox.’ He was a mobster, working in the crime family run by Luciano, and he was also, currently under indictment on racketeering charges. <br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236979698,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />It was proposed that Lanza (left) be approached initially through his lawyer, Joseph K. Gueria.<br /> <br /> Gurfein and Gueria met the next day, and the mobster’s attorney was asked if he would approach his client to see if he would help the government, through his contacts on the waterfront, to find out how German U-boats were being supplied and refuelled, and by whom and where. There was apparently no offer made by the DA’s office to go easy on the indictment looming over Lanza. Gurfein was in fact laying the ground to persecute Lanza on seven counts of extortion and conspiracy, charges which had been two years in development, in connection with racketeering activities in the Fulton Fish Market, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. What Lanza was being asked to do was simply be a patriot, and help out his country in a time of deep need. <br /> <br /> Following this meeting, Haffenden was appointed as Naval Intelligence Officer in charge of the project, working directly under the officer in control of the Navy’s 3rd District, Captain Roscoe C. MacFall, who was Chief Intelligence Officer of the Third Naval District, covering New York and New Jersey, which Navy wags in the intelligence department referred to as S.S. Concrete. A few days later, ADA Gurfein, attorney Gueria and Lanza met at 11.30 p.m. and drove to Riverside Park. Lanza wanted this level of secrecy. He did not want anyone to see him conferring with someone from the District Attorney’s office.<br /> <br /> Seated on a bench, they discussed the proposal, and Lanza agreed. The following day, he met up with Haffenden at an office the Naval Commander maintained at the Astor Hotel on West 44th Street near Broadway. As a result of this rendezvous, Haffenden and ‘Sox’ Lanza agreed to work together in one of the strangest alliances of the war: the Mafia and Naval Intelligence combing to fight another, different kind of enemy.<br /> <br /> Haffenden hired two brothers, Dominick and Felix Saco to act as his liaison with Lanza in the unusual arrangement that was about to be set up.<br /> <br /> An associate of Haffenden’s remembers him saying at some time in the early stages of the strange alliance between the government and organized crime:<br /> <br /> ‘<span style="font-style:italic;">I’ll talk to anybody, a priest, a bank manager, a gangster, the devil himself, if I can get the information I need. This is a war. American lives are at stake.</span>’ <br /> <br /> Lanza and Haffenden were the left and right bowers in a game of hide and seek that perhaps went deeper than just naval intelligence. Lanza was forty-one years old and had been a career criminal most of his life. He had been in trouble with the law since he was seventeen. His arrest record read: juvenile delinquency, conspiracy and extortion, theft, breaking/entering, homicide, unlawful possession of a weapon, coercion and conspiracy and violating antitrust laws. He was firmly established in the crime family controlled by Luciano, and lived at 101, West 65th Street with his second wife, Ellen Connor. As head of Local 16975 of the United Seafood Workers, he ran the Fulton Fish Market like a dictator, nothing moved in or out without his permission. A fearsome plug of a man with premature gray hair, he was a street brawler, who tended to solve problems with his fists, hence his nickname, and a man who also mixed with the upper echelon of the Mafia, associating with the top men in most of the five Cosa Nostra crime families operating across the city.<br /> <br /> Joseph Lanza was born in Palermo, Sicily around the turn of the 20th century, according to some sources. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics has him listed as being born in New York in August 1900. At the age of 14, he went to work at The Fulton Fish Market, as a fish handler. In the early part of the 20th Century, workers at the market were mainly Irish. By the 1920’s they had been replaced by the Italians. <br /> <br /> Established in 1835, it started business in a large, wooden shed in 1848 and grew to become the biggest wholesale market of its type in America, eventually establishing a complex covering five square blocks near what is now the South Street Seaport, between Fulton and Beekman Streets. In the period 1920-1930, it was estimated one quarter of all seafood sold in America passed through the Fulton. <br /> <br /> A reporter at the New York Times, Emanuel Perlmutter, claimed Lanza earned his nickname ‘Sox’ or sometimes ‘Socks’ because of his propensity to settle disputes by using his fists. Ralph Salerno, who headed up the NYPD organized-crime task force between 1946 and 1967, claimed the nickname came from Lanza’s habit of thumping fish wholesalers and deliverers who refused to pay him for permission to do business. <br /> <br /> He also acquired some other nicknames along the way: The Czar of the Fulton Market; Sea Food Papa and Joe Zotz.<br /> <br /> Tough as he undoubtedly was, he had a soft side as well. One of the workers at the market bred Pomeranian dogs, which curiously, seemed to be a favourite pet of mobsters during the 1930’s. Joe Lanza bought one of the pups, and the dog was his constant companion for years. He apparently doted on the animal.<br /> <br /> Short, stock and immensely tough, by the age of 20, Lanza had become involved in labour union activities, and an organizer for the United Seafood Workers Union (USW) through Local 359 which represented almost 1000 workers employed at the market. <br /> Lanza started his operation from a shoe-shine stand in the market, demanding a penny for every fish sold, and charging a $10 tax on every boat unloading. He also levied every stall holder an annual fee of $2500 to keep the peace.<br /> <br /> Sometime between 1920 and 1930, he also became part of the Mafia crime family that would come to be headed by Charley Luciano, and during this period, may have worked as an enforcer for Michael ‘Trigger Mike’ Coppola, a psychopathic capo regime, or crew captain, in the family, who was based in Harlem.<br /> <br /> Lanza had three brothers, Nunzio (Harry) Anthony and Salvatore. Harry joined him at the market and it’s thought he also joined the Luciano family, rising in rank to sit alongside his brother as a capo. Salvatore, often called ‘Solly’ was also connected into the mob, but probably as an associate rather than a ‘made’ man.<br /> <br /> The 1963 Valachi hearings inferred Lanza was a soldier in the crime family, working under Michele Miranda, although most sources believe by the 1940’s, ‘Sox’ was in fact a capo himself, and generating huge earnings for the mob. <br /> <br /> ‘Sox’ Lanza created his own fiefdom at the Fulton Market. All fish, either landed from sea at the nearby docks, or shipped in by ‘reefers,’ the huge refrigerated trucks, hauling shrimp from Florida or Georgia, had to be unloaded and distributed to the fish wholesalers in the market by union workers, supervised by Lanza or his brother Harry. Lanza also operated his criminal control beyond the confines of the market walls, through a security force operating a watchman’s service for retail shops and vehicles parked around the perimeter of the waterfront complex; in addition, fish processing plants in the area paid Lanza thousands of dollars annually to ensure their shops stayed non-union.<br /> <br /> In 1933, along with Local 954 president Charles Skillen, Lanza was indicted by a federal grand jury for racketeering, but due to witness tampering, the case was dismissed. Tried again, in 1935, he was the beneficiary of a mistrial. Tried again in the November, he was found guilty and sentenced to 2 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. He final went to Flint Prison, Michigan, in 1937.<br /> <br /> Although a thug and part of the New York Mafia underworld, Joe Lanza was a man with strong political ties. His brother-in-law, Vincent Viggiano, was a Tammany leader of the 2nd Assembly District in Lower Manhattan. Lanza was also very close to Frank Costello, himself a consummate political fixer, known as ‘The Prime Minister’ of the underworld, and Joe was often a guest at Costello’s luxurious apartment at The Majestic on West 72nd Street, across from Central Park. Frank and Joe were so close, that Costello had been the best man at Lanza’s wedding, to his second wife Ellen.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236980257,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Charles Haffenden (left) was an unorthodox, controversial Naval Reserve Officer, heading up the B-3 investigating section of the district intelligence office. His superiors considered him to be zealous, loyal, energetic and a gifted intelligence officer. His civilian aides worshipped him because he cut the bull and avoided the red tape inherent in any government bureaucracy.<br /> <br /> Running into his 50’s, he was not only an intelligence buff, but also an underworld one as well. Flamboyant and gregarious, some considered him a blowhard whose judgment needed constant supervision. He had joined the navy during World War One, winning his commission on active service. Between the wars, he held down a variety of jobs, working as an agent, in advertising; general manager of a gasoline pump manufacturer and as a vice-president for a construction company. His other main activity during the 1930’s was as a coordinator for the Executive Association of Greater New York, an organization with similar aims to the Rotary Club. <br /> <br /> His office was at the Astor Hotel, where he maintained a suite of three interconnecting rooms. He had held his commission in the Naval Reserve, re-joining the service and being transferred into the 3rd District intelligence office based at 50 Church Street, on July 8th 1940.<br /> <br /> The B-3 investigation section was known as “The Ferret Squad,” and Haffenden answered only to his immediate bosses, Captain William B. Howe, and Roscoe MacFall. He had initially, a staff of eight to help him run his operation, which grew into 150 agents dispersed around the New York area.<br /> <br /> Lanza carried out a lot of inquires searching for the information the Navy wanted, travelling as far north as Maine and south down to Virginia and North Carolina, checking out information from fishing fleets. He reported in to Haffenden at least a dozen times at the Church Street office with his findings. <br /> <br /> Lanza arranged for some of Haffenden’s men to work in a trucking company run by Hiram Swezey, out of Long Island. Swezey also introduced agents to fishermen who agreed to act as observers, searching for any signs of enemy activity, when they went fishing in the Atlantic.<br /> <br /> In April 1942, Lanza told one of the many undercover informers being used by section B-3, that due to the indictments pending against him, he was not getting total support from the Italian underworld. Because he was asking so many questions, some people believed he was in fact, working as an informant for law enforcement in order to get a possible deal on his impending case. <br /> <br /> He knew that he could really kick-start things by contacting the man who “could snap the whip in the entire underworld,” and that this person should be introduced to Haffenden. The man was Charley Luciano, and the contact in B-3 passed the word on down to Red. There are some sources that believe that Lanza was ‘coached’ in this approach by Frank Costello, who may have been the first one to see the opportunity to use the situation as leverage in springing his old partner from prison. Frank Costello at this time was the street boss of the family, running it for Luciano. They were partners in crime, going back over twenty years.<br /> <br /> At the end of April, Lanza confessed he had reached a dead-end and that the section really needed the help of the mob boss up in Dannemora Prison to open the doors into the Longshoreman’s Association and access all the potential information in the teeming docks and waterfronts of New York. By May 1942, shipping losses were reaching epidemic proportations-272 ships had been sunk along the Eastern Seaboard Frontier, since the war started. Drastic action was needed, unorthodox as it might have to be.<br /> <br /> The danger facing America was dramatically highlighted on June 12th 1942, when a German U-Boat, U-202, landed a team with explosives and plans at East Hampton, Long Island. The group of four men, led by George John Dasch, had a mission to destroy power plants at Niagara Falls and three Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA) factories in Illinois, Tennessee and New York. However, Dasch and his team were observed by coastguards and Dasch was apprehended, whereupon hr decided to turn himself in to the FBI, providing them with an account of the planned mission, which led to the arrest of the complete team. Four more secret Axis agents were discovered in Florida at about the same time. They had landed with cash and explosives, along with maps and plans for a prolonged attack on railroads, waterworks and bridges up the eastern seaboard of the United States.<br /> <br /> The security operation in New York was not the first time that the government would become involved with the mob in its desire to try and safeguard its shores from foreign invasion at the beginning of World War Two. In the Gulf of Mexico, between May 1942 and December 1943, German submarines attacked 72 Allied merchants’ ships in the Gulf, killing over 500 crew members, and sinking 56 vessels. U.S. Custom Agent Al Scharff enlisted the help of Galveston mob boss Sam Maceo to use his contacts to watch out for submarines along the coast line. Maceo worked closely with Silvestro Carollo, the boss of the New Orleans Mafia family, and through these connections, Scharff received numerous sightings of enemy vessels, information that was fed into the Naval defence system, allowing attack frigates to concentrate their efforts around the danger zones.<br /> <br /> Back in New York, Charlie Luciano was emerging as the key to any strategy in obtaining information from the New York waterfront sources, but getting to the mobster would be tricky. Haffenden contacted a senior upstate police officer, Inspector Howard W. Nugent, and he suggested that the man to reach out to was Commissioner of Correction, John A. Lyons. Haffenden then went back to ADA Gurfein, and suggested that Lanza be allowed to visit Luciano in prison. However, approval on a higher level was needed for this, and so Gurfein made a visit to District Attorney Hogan. The D.A. agreed to the proposal, but suggested that to keep legal lines of communication clear, Luciano’s attorney, Moses Polakoff be contacted with the suggestion.<br /> <br /> Gurfein met Polakoff, and explained that in the interests of national security, Naval Intelligence needed to enlist the help of his client. However, Polakoff said he did not feel either comfortable or qualified to broach Luciano with the proposal, suggesting instead, that another contact would be eminently suitable, a patriot, and a prince of the underworld, called <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-meyer-lansky-laundered-the-american-mafia-s-dirty-cash-and-ma">Meyer Lansky</a>, who was a man Luciano trusted explicitly.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236980293,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Gurfein and Polakoff met up with Lansky (left) at Longchamps Restaurant on West 58th Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues for breakfast. After their meal, they all made their way to the Astor Hotel to talk with Haffenden in his suite of offices.<br /> <br /> Following this meeting, the Office of Naval Intelligence sent a letter to John A. Lyons, the prison commissioner, requesting that Luciano be transferred to a ‘better facility, where he could be interviewed by ONI officers and others. It needed to be somewhere closer to New York; more convenient for people to visit him.’ <br /> <br /> A Naval Intelligence internal memo recorded this request, and also states ‘<span style="font-style:italic;">…..we are advised that contacts were made with Luciano thereafter, and that his influence on other criminal sources resulted in their co-operation with Naval Intelligence which was considered useful to the Navy.</span>’<br /> <br /> In view of later events, this letter and internal memo would become highly significant.<br /> <br /> On May 12th 1942, Lucy Luciano was transferred from bleak Danemorra Prison to the more comfortable restrictions of Great Meadows, in Comstock, 60 miles from Albany.<br /> To avoid any publicity, or media interest in this move, Luciano was accompanied by a number of criminal inmates who were also moved. Although it was a high-security prison, it was a lot more acceptable than the place he had left. He was told by the Governor that the move was for ‘administration purposes.’ A week later, he had his first meeting with Polakoff and Meyer Lansky.<br /> <br /> On June 4th ‘Sox’ Lanza at last got his audience with Lucky. He travelled to Comstock with Polakoff and Lansky, and met up with the man who in many ways still controlled his destiny, even from a prison cell. The meeting started at 10 a.m. and lasted until 1.30 p.m. By the time the meeting was over, Luciano had his organization plan primed, and one of the leading players would be Frank Costello. Following this meeting the word got out to the movers and shakers on the New York waterfront, guys like Johnny ‘Cockeye’ Dunn boss of the West Side piers, the men who controlled Brooklyn’s waterfront, and Jerry Sullivan the leading ILA organizer, and their cooperation was formally established.<br /> <br /> By June 27th dividends were already paying off, with 8 German secret agents arrested in New York and Chicago thanks to information supplied by underworld contacts established on the docks of New York and New Jersey.<br /> <br /> On July 17th Lansky, Lanza and Polakoff again visited Luciano, but this time they were accompanied by Mike Lascari, an old boyhood friend of Lucky’s and a power on the New Jersey waterfront. On August 25th another meeting was convened at Comstock that involved seven visitors, again including Frank Costello.<br /> <br /> In December, on the 29th, Meyer Lansky, Polakoff and Lascari again visited, and this time they came with a newcomer, Michael Miranda, a business partner of Longy Zwillman, the New Jersey Jewish mobster. Miranda, born in Naples, had been a major player in Luciano’s crime family for a number of years. Forty-six years old, short and stocky, Miranda had been involved with Vito Genovese in the murder of Ferdinand Boccia eight years before, a crime that had force Genovese to flee New York and settle in Italy. Miranda had a prison record that dated back to 1915, including arrests for murder and obstruction of justice. The meeting lasted for over three hours, but what possible connection could Miranda have with the Naval Intelligence project? Polakoff claimed that he was very influential with the Italians in New York, and that was why he was there for the meeting. He may also have attended the meeting to receive instructions from Luciano regarding their crime family activities.<br /> <br /> Into December 1942, Haffenden’s administrative staff had grown to fifty commissioned officers and eighty-one enlisted and civilian men. Emissaries were spread out across New York, working closely with their underworld connections, set up through Lanza. District Attorney Hogan, the man who had helped to kick-start the operation, was keeping his own, surreptitious watching brief on the way the operation was proceeding. Probably highly conscious of the ramifications if something went badly wrong, he arranged, on November 23rd to have telephone wiretaps installed in Meyer’s Hotel, at 117 South Street, which Lanza used as an office base from which to oversee his activities at the fish market. The transcripts of the intercepted calls confirmed that the Mafia was keeping up its end of the unwritten agreement. But in return, it was equally obvious that Luciano was extracting every concession and favour in respect to visitors and unregulated conferences, to conduct his own Mafia business from the prison.<br /> <br /> Towards the end of the year, the verdict was that the Navy-Mafia alliance was helping to secure the New York waterfront. Intelligence reports were flowing in; there was no active sabotage, no labour disputes, and no disruption of shipping. The Port of New York seemed secure. As one B-3 agent recalled, ‘<span style="font-style:italic;">We had everything sewed up tight: unions, docks, trucks, everything coming and going out of New York</span>.’<br /> <br /> With New York safe and secure, attention now zeroed in on efforts to help the Allied invasion of Sicily. During the Casablanca Conference of January 1943, the combined chiefs of staff had decided to invade Europe from North Africa, via Sicily as they built up their resources ready for the major assault on Germany, across the English Channel from Great Britain.<br /> <br /> The Office of Naval Intelligence set up a new department called F-Section which was created to collect strategic information that would assist in the invasion of Sicily. Lt. Commander Haffenden was transferred from Section-B and placed in charge of this new unit. <br /> <br /> The ONI was the oldest military intelligence unit in the USA, dating back to 1882.<br /> Set up to collect and disseminate information on technological developments abroad, by 1916, one of its primary functions was domestic security, including protection of America’s ports, harbours and defence plants from enemy infiltration, subversion and sabotage.<br /> <br /> Data was collected on military and economic installations in Sicily, and Italians who had emigrated from the island to live in New York, were interviewed to gain background knowledge on the island. Moses Polakoff brought numerous people into Church Street, with photos and other items of information on the places they had left behind, which where added into the intelligence pool. Haffenden later recalled that dozens of Sicilian men, many with long, flowing moustaches, who were referred to as padrones, visited the office, supplying an amazing amount of delineation and extremely valuable information of the most minute nature, regarding the Sicilian terrain.<br /> <br /> Meyer Lansky was again approached, and he introduced another well known underworld figure as his aide. This was Joe Adonis, a handsome, suave forty-one year old career criminal who had risen high in the New York Mafia. He was the primary player in the gambling industry in Brooklyn and was a close friend of Meyer and Luciano who he had known for at least a dozen years. He was even closer to Frank Costello. <br /> <br /> Adonis also arranged for dozens of Sicilians to come in and be interviewed with ONI officers Paul Alfieri and Anthony Marzulla. They were assisted by navy cartographer George Tarbox. These interviews produced over 5000 files, copies of which were sent to the war planners in Washington D.C. Tarbox created dozens of large-scale maps of Sicily, showing roads, mountain passes, docks and Germany installations. When Allied troops landed in Sicily, Lt. Alfieri was in the vanguard, making contact with members of the local Mafia clans who would help the invasion force, providing intelligence and surveillance reports on the Germans.<br /> <br /> Also brought into the scheme of things was Vincent Mangano, who headed up his own powerful Mafia crime family, based in the Red Hook area of Brooklyn, close to the huge, sprawling waterfronts and docks that were one of his prime interests. He had come to New York from Palermo, where he had been born in 1888, arriving in 1905 as a callow youth of seventeen. By 1942 he was heading up one of the five New York Mafia crime families, and it was claimed he was a major link between the old Sicilian and new American Mafias. He apparently supplied hundreds of informants. Mangano was a close friend of Michael Miranda, but he knew Luciano as a fellow mob boss. They were in fact, two of the foundling fathers of the Mafia’s Commission, the governing body set up in 1932 to arbitrate on mob disputes on a nation wide basis. Mangano had been appointed the chairman of this commission, a position he still held at this time.<br /> <br /> According to ‘Sox‘ Lanza, ‘ <span style="font-style:italic;">That’s where all the Italy stuff was put together-with the Commander, and this fellow Vincent and Joe Adonis, to my knowledge</span>.’ <br /> <br /> As part of his strategy in the creation of intelligence gathering, Haffenden in 1943, put forward one of his more audacious proposals, that Charlie Luciano be released from prison and be sent to Sicily in advance of the Allied invasion, to gather support from the local population, in particular during the amphibian phase of the operation. Haffenden even intimated that Luciano had suggested the ideal place for this to take place, the Bay of Castellammarese del Golfo, about eighty miles west of Palermo.<br /> <br /> The top brass in the Navy department, already highly uneasy about their service’s involvement with the criminal underworld in the securing of New York harbours, turned Haffenden’s proposal down flat.<br /> <br /> Charles Haffenden had no doubt that Lucky was an essential element in the creation of information that would be of great value to America’s war effort. In a letter he wrote to Charles Breitel, counsel to the Governor of New York, dated May 17th 1945, he stated:<br /> <br /> ‘<span style="font-style:italic;">I am confident that the greater part of the intelligence developed in the Sicilian campaign was directly responsible to the number of Sicilians that emanated from the Charlie ‘Lucky’ contact</span>.’<br /> <br /> In 1946, in receipt of an enquiry from the office of the FBI, the Navy stated:<br /> <br /> ‘<span style="font-style:italic;">A thorough search of the files of the District Intelligence Office, Third Naval District, failed to indicate that Luciano furnished any information to that office</span>.’<br /> <br /> The naval bureaucrats were already running for cover.<br /> <br /> On January 29th 1943, Joseph Lanza ran out of time and was sentenced to a lengthy prison term on the counts of extortion and conspiracy, charges which had been hanging over him for two years. He went down for fifteen years, although he served only seven of them. Shortly after, Hogan's wire-tap at Meyer’s Hotel heard Haffenden commiserating with Ben Espy, one of Lanza’s associates, suggesting it was a “damn shame” that the judge had hit his chief informant with such a heavy sentence. Fortunately for the Commander, the information was never passed on to his superiors in Naval Intelligence. There had been a number of indications that perhaps Haffenden was getting too close to the mobsters, and he had on one occasion, even accepted a parcel of fresh caught lobsters and crabs from the Fulton Fish Market king. <br /> <br /> On February 1st a motion was made to be argued before Justice Phillip McCook (the same judge who had sent Luciano down, 7 years before,) to modify the mobster’s sentence. Along with affidavits and memorandum of law to support their case, lawyers Polakoff and Wolfe submitted the names of Haffenden and Murray Gurfein (now a captain in the Army,) who could support their claim that Luciano had been of help and assistance in America’s war effort. Although the judge subsequently interviewed the two men, he denied Luciano’s application for sentence modification. He did however, leave the door open, stating in his opinion: <br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">‘If the defendant is assisting the authorities and he continues to so, and remains a model prisoner, Executive Clemency may become appropriate at some future date.’</span> <br /> <br /> On July 10th 1944, the U.S. Seventh Army landed in Sicily, and less than a year later the war with Germany was over. Two month’s earlier, on May 8th 1945, Moses Polakoff issued a petition for the grant of executive clemency for Charlie Luciano. It was addressed to the man who had lead the trial against the mobster in 1936, Governor Dewey. As part of the appeal, the lawyer stated, <span style="font-style:italic;">‘that his client had caused to be furnished valuable, substantial and important aid to the United States Military Authorities.’</span> <br /> <br /> As part of the application, Polakoff had enlisted the aid of Haffenden who was recuperating in the Naval Hospital in Brooklyn. He had volunteered for active service in June 1944, and had been sent home from Iowa Jima, following problems he received with internal bleeding resulting from a shell exploding near him on the beach, in February 1945.<br /> <br /> Haffenden wrote a letter to Charles Breitel, the governor’s counsel, confirming that in his opinion the greater part of the intelligence developed in the Sicilian campaign was directly responsible to the number of Sicilian informers that emanated from the Charlie Luciano contacts. The letter was highly irregular since it did not go through the correct Naval bureaucratic channels, and would later cause Haffenden a lot of grief. He was subsequently censored for his lack of judgment by the Navy, which went on record to state that his actions were expressions of his personal opinion which official records failed to substantiate. The Navy in fact, went out of its way to be obstructive when the parole board decided to examine Luciano’s background. Files were destroyed, personnel were shifted around, Haffenden was ostracized, and Luciano’s assistance was denied. As far as Naval intelligence was concerned, ‘Operation Underworld’ never even happened.<br /> <br /> The word that the mobster Luciano was seeking executive clemency soon hit the news stands, with the New York Herald-Tribune running an article on May 23rd headlined: <br /> <br /> ‘<span style="font-style:italic;">Luciano Seeks Clemency. Says he helped Navy.</span>’<br /> <br /> Moses Polakoff had in fact sworne out this petition for a grant of executive clemency on behalf of his client on V-E Day, fifteen days earlier.<br /> <br /> Following an initial investigation of the application by the State Board of Parole, its chairman, Frederick A. Moran visited Luciano and interviewed him at Great Meadows Prison on June 13th. Then followed months of further protracted inquiries and investigation, and eventually on December 3rd 1945, the board of parole reached its verdict. Chairman Moran wrote to Dewey recommending that commutation of the sentence be granted for deportation only. Charlie would go free, but would not be able to stay in America. Unlike his father Antonio and brother Bartolo, he had never taken out citizenship in his own right. <br /> <br /> Dewey followed the board’s recommendation. <br /> <br /> Deporting foreign-born citizens as a stipulation of parole or commutation was quite common; Dewey actually signed seven such commutations on the same day as he signed off Charley Luciano.<br /> <br /> Maybe also deep down, he had always harboured a feeling of guilt for dobbing Charlie on a charge that in the first place was to say the least, questionable.<br /> <br /> Early in January 1946, Luciano was transferred to Sing Sing prison, and from there he was shipped to Ellis Island in New York harbour to await transfer to the vessel that would take him for ever from the city he loved so much. His attorney Polakoff, his old New Jersey friend Mike Lascari, Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello met up with him there, on February 2nd. According to an FBI informant, the gangster friends brought along a new wardrobe for Lucky and $2500 in unsigned traveller’s cheques.<br /> <br /> Sometime during the night of February 8th Luciano was moved from the island to a vessel moored at pier 7 on the Bush Terminal, at the mouth of Gowanus Bay, part of the Brooklyn waterfront. The S.S. Laura Keene, a converted liberty ship, was to take on a cargo of flour to ship into the port of Genoa, Italy. It was under the command of Captain R.H. Salter and was scheduled to depart on Sunday, February 10th. The day before, the pier was besieged by newspaper reporters desperate to get an interview with the man who was probably the most famous mobster in America. They found their way blocked by a line of tough longshoremen who would allow no access to the ship. It must have been a real donnybrook! James Reardon, the executive in charge of all the piers for the Universal Terminal Stevedoring Company claimed that one of his men had been abused by a woman reporter whose language was ‘foul and filthy.’ Coming from a tough stevedore, it must indeed have been something to hear!<br /> <br /> Later, in the afternoon of that miserable and wet Saturday, a group of men did indeed board the ship, flashing longshoremen’s cards. The group included Frank Costello and his top aide, Wille Moretti, but none of the others has ever been positively identified, although they were described as ‘being very well dressed and wearing diamond rings.’ Hardly the kind of gear you would don to load a consignment of flour onto a freighter. Some of these men may have been Joe Adonis and the group that had met on February 2nd. One who was definitely not there, was Meyer Lansky. On the night the men gathered in the dining room, on board the ship, Lansky was 200 miles away, registered at a hotel in Maryland. Along with Moses Polakoff, he’d said his final good-byes at the meeting on Ellis Island.<br /> <br /> Immigration guard, Dave Incarnato stated later, that food was brought on board from the Fulton Fish Market-lobsters, spaghetti and several bottle of wine, and Luciano and his friends ate and talked quietly in the mess hall. The visitors stayed until midnight, making their farewells. <br /> <br /> At about 9 p.m. on Sunday, February 10th the Laura Keene, built by the Kaiser Company in Vancouver, and weighing 7,000 tons, sailed out of New York harbour, safe and protected through the war years, perhaps in some way because of the man who probably stood at the stern rail and gazed with pain and sadness as the Statute of Liberty disappeared into the haze and rain. It was the last vision he would ever see of America. Perhaps he was even remembering that it was also the first sight of America he ever had, as well. <br /> <br /> I can picture him, standing there, smoking a cigarette, watching the lights of lower Manhattan fading into the gloom, then flicking the butt, out and over into the aft-wash, a crazy fire-fly of a light, shining bright and then extinguished, just as his time in American had been.<br /> <br /> He would never get a chance to return, although he did get close, when he visited Havana, Cuba, towards the end of 1946 for the famous mob conference held in December at the Hotel Nacionale. <br /> <br /> Stories circulated in July 1946 that he was in Tijuana, Mexico trying to establish residency. There was also, a possible sighting of him at Ensenada, in Baja California earlier in the year in May. This whole area of Northern Mexico was classified as a ‘free zone‘ following World War Two, and did not require a visa for entry. It was used often as a haven by mobsters from the United States.<br /> <br /> As Luciano’s story had unfolded over the years, the FBI had been keeping a close watch on the development. On May 17th, 1946 in an inter-office memorandum, J. Edgar Hoover scrawled across the report: <br /> <br style="font-style:italic;" /><span style="font-style:italic;">‘This is an amazing and fantastic case. We should get all the facts for it looks rotten to me from several angles……..a shocking example of misuse of Naval authority in the interests of a hoodlum. It surprises me that they didn’t give Luciano the Navy Cross.’</span><br /> <br /> The Feds also dug up some interesting scuttlebuck on Commander Charles Radcliffe Haffenden.<br /> <br /> On January 1st 1946, he was appointed Commissioner of Marine and Aviation for the city of New York. This was a position of extreme importance, for in addition to having control of the docks of the city, the Commissioner also had under his jurisdiction, the LaGuardia and Idlewild Airports. Democratic leader James A. Roe of Kings County, Queens, who lived across the street from Red, was the driving force in persuading newly elected Mayor William O’Dwyer that Red was the man for the job. There were some interesting rumours that the man behind Roe was none other than Frank Costello, the man who had run the crime family while Luciano had languished all those years in prison. <br /> <br /> Haffenden had been interviewed at one time and asked if he knew Costello; he had denied this until it was pointed out that he had been seen playing golf with Frank at the Pomonk Country Club in Flushing. He then admitted that he was familiar with Costello, although not strictly as a friend, more a casual acquaintance. Frank Costello was probably at this time the most powerful mobster in New York, perhaps even in America. His political clout was unequalled. <br /> <br /> If ‘Sox‘Lanza and Charles Haffenden were the left and right bower, Frank Costello was the Ace card in the game of intrigue that involved Charlie Luciano.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236980300,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /><br /> <span style="font-weight:bold;">Photo: Frank Costello - Credit: NYPD</span><br /> <br /> O’Dwyer was also a friend of Costello’s and had visited him at the mobster’s opulent apartment: 18F, 115 Central Park West, in Manhattan, in December 1942. After drinks and conversation they had gone for dinner to the famous Copacabana Club. According to lawyer George Wolfe ( who also represented Costello,) O’Dwyer met up with Costello for the simple purpose of getting the mobster’s approval to run for the mayor of New York City at the next election. That’s how powerful a guy Frank Costello was!<br /> <br /> A report on the FBI files states that ‘Costello was largely responsible for Haffenden’s appointment as Commissioner of Marine and Aviation.’ The same report also indicates that a FBI informant disclosed that it was common knowledge in the Luciano crime family that a large sum of money ($250,000) had been paid to aid Luciano’s release. Mike Stern, an American author living in Italy, in his book No Innocents Abroad, claimed that Luciano stated a bribe of $75,000 had been paid to the Republican Party in New York State in return for Dewey’s commutation of the sentence. Was it just rhetoric as a form of revenge against a man Luciano loathed and detested, or was there something in it?<br /> <br /> According to George White, the infamous FBN agent, the parole fix on Lucky was arranged by Frank Costello through James Bruno, a Republican ex-Deputy Commissioner.<br /> <br /> On May 24th, 1946 just four months into it, Charles Haffenden lost his job as the boss of the docks and airports. He claimed he resigned over a difference of personality; in fact he was served a notification of dismissal, delivered to his home by a New York Police officer. Haffenden stated in a response to this:<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">‘I am making a statement that I no longer wish to serve in the present City administration…….I hereby order all advertised contracts at Idlewild Airport are cancelled and they must be re-advertised under my successor</span>.” <br /> <br /> A rumour spread that Haffenden and two Congressmen from Brooklyn had plotted to get a monopoly on all the concessions coming up for tender at Idlewild as the airport was expanded. They were then going to sub-lease them off at huge profits. A scam worthy of a mobster had it eventuated. So was Red Haffenden the beneficiary of Frank Costello’s largess, and did he then get too greedy, too soon? Why did the Navy disassociate itself entirely from the very operation they had instigated in the first place? Did Luciano in fact get out of jail and pass go because he was able to bribe the people who counted, or was his help in securing the Eastern Seaboard enough to convince the powers that be, that he should go free? <br /> <br /> There is a third and even more Machiavellian interpretation of the springing of Luciano. In his autobiography, which admittedly is highly suspect, he claimed the main lever he used was to get Costello to dig up all the dirt he could find on Dewey and the witnesses who had buried him at his prostitution trial. The people apparently recanted their testimony, claiming they perjured themselves because they were drug addicts and their supplies had been withheld from them by the prosecution, and that Dewey’s staff had fed them testimony which they simply repeated on the witness stand. He also claimed Dewey’s men went out visiting all the ‘madams’ running the prostitution ring and told them if they wanted to stay in business they would have to testify that they were paying protection money to Luciano.<br /> <br /> He also made this claim to Sal Vizzini, an agent of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, who was working undercover in Italy, and became involved in a three-year operation, investigating Luciano, the bureau called ‘Operation Lepo’ which ran from1959 until Lucky’s death.<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">‘My lawyer walked right into Dewey’s office in the State House in Albany,’ Luciano claimed, ‘he was governor of New York by then……..my lawyer threw the file down in front of him and told him if I didn’t get out we were going to make it public. So he deported me.’</span><br /> <br /> With this dossier of evidence, Luciano’s idea was to use it to demand a re-trial. He didn’t necessarily expect to win, but knew it would cause Dewey embarrassing publicity especially as he was looking towards a second try for the Presidency, and the move might push him into agreeing to a deal. <br /> <br /> Polakoff had seemingly told some of his friends: ‘While there is no question that the information created through Luciano for Naval Intelligence was useful, that was the excuse given for his release, but certainly not the reason.’<br /> <br /> This story was confirmed years later by syndicated columnist Drew Pearson, and was also stated as a fact by Leonard Katz in his autobiography of Frank Costello.<br /> <br /> In 1950 a story appeared in ‘True Parade’ magazine quoting Luciano as confirming that he had donated $75,000 to the New York Republican Party in return for their help in springing him from prison.<br /> <br /> Senator Estes Kefauver, Chairman of the Senate Crime Investigating Committee 1950–1951, referred in his book Crime in America, to the background of the rumours surrounding Luciano and the security of New York’s docks:<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">‘During World War II there was a lot of hocus-pocus about allegedly valuable services that Luciano, then a convict, was supposed to have furnished the military authorities in connection with plans for the invasion of his native Sicily. We dug into this and obtained a number of conflicting stories. This is one of the points about which the committee would have questioned Governor Dewey, who commuted Luciano’s sentence, if the Governor had not declined our invitation to come to New York City to testify before the committee.</span><br style="font-style:italic;" /><br style="font-style:italic;" /><span style="font-style:italic;">One story which we heard from Moses Polakoff, attorney for Meyer Lansky, was that Naval Intelligence had sought out Luciano’s aid and had asked Polakoff to be the intermediary. Polakoff, who had represented Luciano when he was sent up, said he in turn enlisted the help of Lansky, an old associate of Lucky’s, and that some fifteen or twenty visits were arranged at which Luciano gave certain information.</span><br style="font-style:italic;" /><br style="font-style:italic;" /><span style="font-style:italic;">...On the other hand, Federal Narcotics Agent, ((the ubiquitous George White,)) who served our committee as an investigator for several months, testified to having been approached on Luciano’s behalf by a narcotics smuggler named August Del Grazio. Del Grazio claimed he ‘was acting on behalf of two attorneys... and... Frank Costello who was spearheading the movement to get Luciano out of the penitentiary,’ White said.</span><br style="font-style:italic;" /><br style="font-style:italic;" /><span style="font-style:italic;">He [Del Grazio] said Luciano had many potent connections in the Italian underworld and Luciano was one of the principal members of the Mafia,” White testified. The proffered deal, he went on, was that Luciano would use his Mafia position to arrange contacts for undercover American agents and that therefore Sicily would be a much softer target than it might otherwise be.’</span><br /> <br /> There have been many apocryphal versions of what followed these government and legal machinations, some of them wildly improbable. It has, for example, been reported that Luciano was secretly released from prison in 1943 to accompany the invasion force into Sicily, that he was freely to be seen in the town of Gela where the Seventh Army’s first headquarters were established, and even that he was a member of the crew of the tank that picked up Don Calò Vizzini, the island’s major Mafia boss, at Villalba. There is no real evidence of Don Calò and Luciano getting together, however, until late in 1946, when they occupied adjoining suites in the Hotel Grande Abergo Sole on the Corso Vittoria Emanuele, during the formation of the Sicilian Separatist Party.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236980682,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Luciano and his connection to the war effort is a complex and fascinating story. The first and only time that the government of the United States worked hand in glove with the Mafia, at least with enough records and links to establish that it actually happened (unlike the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the alleged mob involvement in that,) and then eventually, let one of their top leaders out of prison for being part of the exercise.<br /> <br /> In 1947, famous media reporter and commentator Walter Winchell, the man who had helped arrange the surrender of Louis ‘Lepke’ Buchalter, actually suggested that Luciano should be nominated for a Congressional Medal of Honour for his work in connection with the defence of New York and the successful invasion of Sicily.<br /> <br /> In 1954, William B. Herlands, the New York Commissioner of Investigation, who had worked under Dewey (right) as an ADA in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, carried out an enquiry, at Dewey’s request, into the events surrounding Luciano’s part in the Eastern Seaboard security operation. Dewey had become concerned that rumours were spreading, allegations that his part in the commutation of Lucky’s sentence was part of some crooked scheme, an act of duplicity on his part for some unknown benefit.<br /> <br /> The Navy agreed to allow the O.N.I. to cooperate, but under three conditions:<br /> <br /> 1. No classified information was to be released for general publication.<br /> 2. Naval security officers would monitor all interviews with former agents.<br /> 3. The final report would not be released for public viewing.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236981474,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Herlands (left), a short, stocky, and very methodical lawyer, agreed to the terms. Thomas Dewey had every confidence in the ability of the man who had served under him as head of the rackets squad in the 1930’s.<br /> <br /> Herland’s investigation included testimony from Captain McFall, 3 other captains, five commanders, two lieutenants, a Marine Corps colonel and an army colonel. Hearing documents ran to 2993 pages, and the investigation was completed September 17th 1954. The main conclusion of the report, which in itself, ran to 101 pages with appendices, was:<br /> <br /> ‘<span style="font-style:italic;">The evidence demonstrates that Luciano’s assistance and cooperation was secured by Naval Intelligence in the cause of developing requirements of national security.’</span><br /> <br /> Following the successful implementation of the operation to secure the Eastern Seaboard, the top brass in the military became concerned about the image of a government agency working in tandem with the New York mob to guarantee the safety and security of the nation’s docks and seaways, and consequently did not want the report made available for public dissemination. After the act, it was a lot more circumspect to close the door on this episode and pretend it never happed. When push came to shove, the Faustian pact Naval Intelligence made with a man who may have arguably, been the most important gangster in America at the time, was a potential scandal that none of the generals or admirals wanted on their conscience, let alone their obituaries. <br /> <br /> Dewey accepted the results of the inquiry, and the papers were stored by him in his personal files, where they remained until discovered by author Rodney Campbell in 1974, filed away at the Thomas E. Dewey archive in the University of Rochester Library, State of New York. Campbell had been commissioned by the Dewey family to write the official biography of the late politician, and his discovery of the Herlands Report was the basis for his book, The Luciano Project, the first in-depth investigation into the whole affair.<br /> <br /> During the Herlands Investigation, Charles Siragusa, a senior agent in the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, claimed he had a source in the New York County D.A.’s office who had been given information that Lucky Luciano, knew the identity of the men involved in the murder of Carlo Tresca, the radical newspaper owner who had bee shot dead on 5th Avenue in 1943. Luciano it was claimed, offered to disclose the identities of these murderers in return for outright parole and permission to remain in the United States. Dewey allegedly rejected the offer. (Kenny Link into the Galante Story here please.)<br /> <br /> If this disclosure was in fact true, it may have been the third example of Luciano, a so-called man of honour, attempting a release from prison, or some form of clemency on his sentence by becoming a government informant. Evidence that perfidy at the highest level of mob management may well have existed, fifty years before Sammy Gravano, and Joe Massimo flipped and became government witnesses to try and cut themselves a deal. The image that Mafioso projected as ‘Men of Honour’ was tarnished even before it was imbedded into the myth.<br /> <br /> Anthony J. Marsloe, a fourty-year old lieutenant in the Navy, assigned to work under Haffenden, was under no illusion about the morality of the task at hand during the early 1940‘s in New York. He told Herlands:<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">‘The exploitation of informants is not only desirous, but necessary when the nation is struggling for existence. Intelligence, as such, is not a police agency. Its function is to prevent. In order to prevent, you must have a system…..which will prevent the enemy from securing aid and comfort from others….by any and all means in which I include the so-called underworld.’</span><br /> <br /> Marsloe would subsequently operate in North Africa and Sicily, where he came into contact many times with (Mafioso) on the island. Giving testimony to the state inquiry into the Luciano affair, he also stated:<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">‘Commander Haffenden’s theory was correct….it neutralized the possible use of the underworld by the enemy…..and was used as a possible means of obtaining information in order to aid our war effort……every source of information is warranted by the unusual circumstances.’</span><br /> <br /> Charley Luciano spent the rest of life in exile, and died of a heart attack at Naples Airport on January 26th 1962. <br /> <br /> He was ranked among the top 100 most important people of the 20th century by Time Magazine. Now there's a thought.<br /> <br /> ‘Sox‘Lanza died of cancer in October 1968, at Memorial Hospital, New York. <br /> <br /> Meyer Lansky also died from cancer, January 15th 1983, in Miami, Florida.<br /> <br /> Frank Costello an old man of eighty-two, passed away peacefully, at the Doctors Hospital in upper Manhattan, on February 18th 1973. <br /> <br /> Thomas Dewey tried twice to be president. He was beaten by Roosevelt in 1944 and then again by Harry Truman in 1948. He went back into private law practice, and died in Florida on March 16th 1971. He was sixty-nine years old. <br /> <br /> Following his dismissal from his city job, Charles Haffenden’s career slid downhill and his health deteriorated. He was working as a Dictaphone salesman when he died on Christmas Eve, 1952. <br /> <br /> If his involvement with Operation Underworld was more about making money that serving his country, as some sources have indicated, it was not apparent in his wealth. At his death, his assets, including his home in Flushing, on 167th Street, a number of insurance policies and a 1951 two-door Hudson sedan, came to $27,061.66.<br /> <br /> A few weeks before he died, Charley Luciano gave an interview to an A.P. reporter, who asked him why he had gotten his release from prison.<br /> <br style="font-style:italic;" /><span style="font-style:italic;">‘I got my pardon because of the great service I rendered the United States,’ said Lucky. Then he grinned at the reporter. ‘And because, after all, they realized I was innocent.’</span><br /> <br /> When the reporter wondered, if he could live his life over, would he do it again the same way, the mobster replied:<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">‘I’d do it legal. I learned too late that you need just as good a brain to make a crooked million, as an honest million. These days, you apply for a license to steal from the public. If I had my time again, I’d make sure I got that license first!’</span><br /> <br /> In light of the financial earthquake that shook the world in October 2008, it seems he was right on the button!<br /> <br /> 16 years after leaving America, the body of Salvatore Lucania, aka Charley Luciano, aka Lucky Luciano, was flown into New York’s Idelwild Airport. His brothers, Bart and Anthony waited there, with a hearse. The body was driven to St. John’s Cemetery, in Middle Village, Queens, and placed in the family crypt in the mausoleum Charlie had purchased in 1935. His mother and father lay there, along with an aunt and an uncle.<br /> <br /> Bartolo Luciano is recorded saying, as the coffin was interred:<br /> <br style="font-style:italic;" /><span style="font-style:italic;">‘Tutti finito, Salvatore.’</span><br /> <br /> It’s all over.<br /> </p>
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Get ’The Right Man’: How the FBN nailed Vito Genovese
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/get-the-right-man-how-the-fbn
2010-11-24T19:59:33.000Z
2010-11-24T19:59:33.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/10663249884?profile=RESIZE_400x&width=372"></div><div><p>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br /> It begins and ends with a man who had a name that sounded like a musk melon.<br /> <br /> His impact on the American Mafia was much more than to just have helped the law incarcerate a man who at the time, they considered perhaps the most powerful hoodlum in the country. By helping to nail him and thus sending him to prison, he created a chain of events that would have perhaps, the most significant repercussions on Italian-American organized crime since its recognized inception in 1931. <br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236978491,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236978491?profile=original" />The Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) had been following Vito Genovese (right) for some time.<br /> <br /> Henry Giordono, the Commissioner of the bureau said:<br /> <br /> ‘We have to go after him. He’s too big to be ignored. We have no choice, and we’ll get him, not matter how long it takes.’<br /> <br /> Following the ill-fated <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/mob-meeting-at-apalachin-the">Apalachin mob meeting</a> held towards the end of 1957 in up-state New York, the largest office of the FBN was instructed to target Genovese as a main opportunity to take down in the bureau’s never-ending war on drug trafficking. Their underworld informants kept pointing to him as a major link in the heroin trail that stretched north into Canada, and from the biggest city in the United States, outwards across the entire continent.<br /> <br /> The agents, men referred to as ‘The Wolves’ by the mob underworld, kept digging away, following up leads, questioning hundreds of suspects, looking for the missing link that would connect them into a conspiracy of drug trafficking which would help them nail the top New York hoodlum who was known to his peers as ‘The Right Man.’<br /> <br /> It was Agent Anthony Consoli who first came across the name of Nelson Cantellops.<br /> One of the agent’s informants, a small time Puerto Rican drug-pedlar, told him about the man who was his supplier. A man who was apparently linked into Vito Genovese through his drug activities. A dealer who was, therefore, through this connection, well-linked into the New York underworld. It took a while to track him down, but Consoli finally found Cantellops in the Tombs, the big, dank and depressing city jail in Lower Manhattan, on the corner of Centre and Franklin. He’d been charged with possession of narcotics. <br /> <br /> It was 1957.<br /> <br /> The prisoner, whose full name was Nelson Silva Cantellops, was short and chubby, with bulging eyes set deep in a sallow face. He was also a Puerto Rican, in his early thirties, and had an arrest record in New Jersey going back to 1949 when he was first indicted and served three years at Trenton State Prison for obtaining money under false pretences.<br /> <br /> He was back in prison in 1952 for attempted forgery, and in 1956, received six months for marijuana possession. At this point in his career, he moved his area of operations over to Manhattan, where he worked as a card-sharp, con-man and drug trafficker. Nelson was your everyday low level scumbag street criminal, a man destined for an early grave or a finite jail sentence, whichever came first. <br /> <br /> He did however, have a major part to play in the bureau’s war on drug trafficking.<br /> <br /> For some reason, Consoli sensed something tangible could be wrested from this little man with the funny name. Agents questioned him daily after he was transferred to a federal detention centre, but they got nowhere. He put on a brave front, claiming he would be ’looked after’ by his friends in the underworld. His trial came up, he was found guilty, and with his long record as a recommendation, the presiding judge sent him away to Sing Sing Prison, in upstate New York, for four years. Nelson had a lot of baggage-a wife, children, girlfriend, mistress, they all needed him for something.<br /> <br /> Two weeks after he was locked away, the bureau arranged to have him transferred to the Westchester County Jail, a much more pleasant venue than the grim prison at Ossining, and Cantellops began to co-operate with them. No one had come forward to ’fix’ his arrest, as he had been promised. It was par for the course with mobsters. They promised the earth and most times delivered nothing. And so because of their laxness, things rebounded on them, often with a terminal velocity. <br /> <br /> Following an in-depth interrogation by William Tendesky, an Assistant U.S. Attorney specializing in drug cases, the prosecutor came out of the interview room and told FBN agent John R. Enright:<br /> <br /> ‘We’re going to indict Vito Genovese!’<br /> <br /> Cantellops claimed he’d moved into the narcotic business in the spring of 1955 as a way of paying off a loan shark, a man called Charles Barcellona. Known to his peers as ‘Charlie the Wop’ the fourty-year Sicilian born, was a member of the crime family run by Albert Anastasia. A seasoned criminal with an arrest record dating back twenty years, which included violation of Federal and State Narcotics laws, Barcellona was, according to mob informant, Joe Valachi a ‘hitter‘ for the family. Also known as ‘Jacky Balls,’ his close friends for some reason, called him ‘Dummy.’ He’d spent a lot of time in prison, and had a particular hatred for cops, having taken his first beating from them when he was only nine years old. He in turn, introduced Cantellops to a man called Joe Di Palermo who set up the drug arrangement. The deal was that Nelson would deliver a ‘package’ to a man in Las Vegas. The package was ten pounds of heroin with a street value of $250,000, and the man it was destined for was Louis Fiano, a California narcotics trafficker. <br /> <br /> In March, 1955, Cantellops had attended a meeting at Al's Luncheonette at 34 East 4th Street, New York, to be briefed on his assignment. At this meeting along with Charles Barcellona, were Ralph Polizzano, his brother Carmine, Joseph Di Palermo and Anthony Colonna. Men whose lives were lived dangerously, moving in and out of drug deals with a confidence born of long experience. Cantellops agreed to transport the narcotics for the group. At the airport bus stop, in New York while Barcellona was talking to Cantellops, an unidentified man handed Cantellops the package. For this delivery, Cantellops was paid $1000 by Barcellona. <br /> <br /> He travelled by air to Los Angeles, on to Reno, and then by bus to Vegas. It went smoothly, and other ‘trips’ followed: to Miami, Tampa, Key West, Philadelphia and the Virgin Island. Nelson was a busy boy. His loan shark debt cleared, he earned $500 for each trip he made, sometimes as high as $1000. On his first visit to Cleveland, in July 1956, he was taken there by a man called Vincent Gigante, a young hoodlum working at the bottom of the ladder in the crime family that included Genovese. People called him ‘Chin,’ but not because of his large, jutting jaw line. ‘Chin’ was a nickname his mother, Yolanda, had given him as a child, “Cincenzo,” abbreviated to Chin, and it stuck with him through the rest of his life. <br /> <br /> Although Cantellops was driven on this occasion by a man from the Genovese family, he was apparently doing a job for John Ormento, a capo in the Luchese Crime Family. In what now seems an extraordinary breach of mob protocol, Joe Di Palermo a soldier in the family, had introduced Cantellops to Ormento, and subsequently to Carmine Galante, the then under boss of the Bonanno crime family. <br /> <br /> ‘Big John’ as he was known to his peers, was the consummate drug trafficker of his time, and had been a dealer since his teen years, operating initially in East Harlem, the traditional home of the 107th Street Mob, which morphed into the Gagliano and then the Luchese Crime Family following the underworld struggle now referred to as the Castellammarese War of 1930-31.<br /> <br /> In a complex operation, typical of the drug dealing mentality, Gigante dropped Nelson off at a bus stop at a town called Loraine, about thirty miles west of Cleveland. He then caught a bus into the city and went to a hotel with the drug package. He left this with the hotel room clerk, telling him it was for his wife and then went outside to be met by Di Palermo’s brother, Charley. Nelson went back into the hotel, retrieved the package, and the two men caught a cab, stopping to pick up a woman at a pre-determined spot. The cab drove back to the hotel, the two men left the cab, the woman, and the drug package. Cantellops then took a Greyhound bus back to New York.<br /> <br /> The FBN needed to check Nelson’s story, which they did in meticulous detail, cross-referencing schedules on aircraft, buses, taxis, whatever form of transportation he claimed to have used in his various drug courier travels. They even verified weather conditions against his claims, looking for anything that would discredit him. He checked out to their satisfaction.<br /> <br /> In October, 1955, Carmine Polizzano's had asked Cantellops to investigate the policy banks in the Eldridge Street area on Manhattan's lower East Side to find out whether they might be used as a front for narcotics distribution. After Cantellops had carried out his survey, Polizzano then invited him to a meeting at his brother Ralph’s apartment at 57 East 4th Street. This meeting was attended by Ralph and Carmine Polizzano, Joseph Di Palermo, John Russo, John Ormento and Benjamin Levine. The group discussed taking over and operating these policy banks as a cover for the distribution of narcotics. Cantellops told the men assembled in the apartment that it might cost between $100,000 and $150,000 to purchase the banks in the Eldridge Street area. The group reached no final decision as it was agreed that the matters would have to be discussed with ‘The Right Man,’ who was Vito Genovese. <br /> <br /> At this time, Genovese was a senior member of the family administration, maybe the underboss to Frank Costello who had taken over the running of the family in 1937 when the then street boss, Genovese, had skipped the country to avoid arrest in a murder inquiry. Genovese had returned in 1946 and been cleared of his involvement in the killing of an underworld hoodlum called Ferdinand Boccia. <br /> <br /> The meeting at the East Village apartment also discussed the possibility of importing narcotics through Puerto Rico because of turmoil in Cuba and recent misfortunes regarding two shipments by boat. Cantellops suggested the use of the Island of Vieques, off Puerto Rico, as a distributing point, a suggestion that was never acted on.<br /> <br /> According to Cantellops, his first contact with ‘The Right Man’ was initiated when he was approached by Carmine Polizzano, a man who was seemingly close to Vito Genovese. Nelson claimed that the first time he saw Genovese, he was sitting in a car with Polizzano, in Greenwich Village. This was in December, 1955. He saw him again, he claimed six months later. Some sources, including court transcripts, claim this second conclave actually took place nine months later, in September, 1956.<br /> <br /> This meet seemingly revolved around discussion to take over the East Bronx policy banks, which were operated by independent, Spanish speaking mobsters. Genovese wanted to take control, to use these networks to also distribute heroin in this area of upper Manhattan. The Eldridge Street operation had apparently never been consummated, and this may have been an alternative that Genovese wanted to explore.<br /> <br /> At some point in August, 1956, Cantellops visited a German restaurant in Manhattan with Ormento and a man called Joe Evola. While in the restaurant, Ormento went over and spoke to Vito Genovese who was sitting, dining with a woman. Genovese allegedly looked across at Nelson and remarked something like ‘he looks okay to me,’ signalling Genovese’s approval.<br /> <br /> Sitting at the bar, close enough to hear the conversation, were two agents of the FBN, Francis Waters and John Hunt. The subsequent Genovese drug indictment was actually formed around their corroborating testimony. <br /> <br /> At the end of August, or early September 1956, Cantellops attended a meeting at the home of Rocco Mazzie, at 2332 Seymour Avenue in the Bronx, where plans were made for extending the distribution of narcotics. <br /> <br /> Earlier, the same evening Cantellops drove to the same German restaurant on East 86th Street with Joe Evola, Ormento, Carmine Galante and Andimo Pappadio, a capo in the Luchese family, and a man close to John Ormento and Genovese. <br /> <br /> Galante was with the Bonanno family, along with Evola; Ormento, and Pappadio were with the Luchese’s, and Mazzie was tied into the crime family known to-day as the Gambino family, run then, by Albert Anastasia. <br /> <br /> After Ormento made a telephone call, they all drove to the West Side Highway and met another car. Cantellops and Ormento entered the other car which was driven by Vincent Gigante. Ormento introduced Cantellops to Genovese, who was sitting in the back seat, saying to Genovese ‘This man is doing a good job for us. He is helping us and doing a good job for us.’ Ormento told Cantellops ‘This is the Right Man.’ Genovese said to Cantellops that they were going to a meeting where territorial control was to be discussed; that the people at the meeting were counting on Cantellops to help them and that Cantellops could earn some money by doing so. <br /> This three-minute conversation was to be perhaps, one of the most significant encounters in mob history.<br /> <br /> The two automobiles drove to Mazzie's home and everyone entered except Genovese and Gigante, who stayed outside. <br /> <br /> Joe Evola, Mazzie, Ormento, Pappadio, Galante and Cantellops discussed the distribution of narcotics in the Spanish market in the East Bronx,(( the area bordered by Longwood Avenue and Fox Street, west of Hunt’s Point)) by use of policy banks, and sealing off the area to eliminate competing narcotics peddlers and policy operators so that they could control the narcotics traffic in this area. Evola and Pappadio thought that the plan would take a month or a month and a half to complete and the others agreed. <br /> <br /> After twenty or thirty minutes Genovese came in. He wanted to know ‘what was the decision on the plan; what they had in mind.’ When he was told about the discussion which had taken place, Genovese said that he needed this information because he wanted to know when to send his men into the area. Later, in the presence of Evola, Ormento, Pappadio and Galante, Cantellops was advised that he would be the contact man for the distribution of narcotics in this area. Cantellops later delivered narcotics in this area at Ormento's request. <br /> <br /> For the next nine months, Cantellops continued to work with Ormento and other mob traffickers, until he was arrested in early July, 1957. Although Ormento had promised Cantellops that he would be taken care of in the event of an arrest, nothing transpired. He was convicted and sent off to Sing Sing. While these events were developing, Genovese, Ormento, Evola and many other members of the American Mafia had their lives seriously disrupted in November, when they were corralled at the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/mob-meeting-at-apalachin-the">Apalachin mob meeting</a>. <br /> <br /> The FBN spent a full year screening Cantellops and validating his story, before submitting the facts to a federal grand jury and obtaining indictments against Genovese and 16 of his associates, One of these, was Vincent Gigante, who was arrested only four weeks after his acquittal in the attempted murder charge on Frank Costello.<br /> <br /> On July 7th, 1958, FBN agents arrested Genovese and 53 other defendants and 14 co-conspirators involved in the conspiracy. Of this group, only Genovese and 16 others were actually indicted. Two of them, evaded the law and did not appear for trial. The two who escaped arrest were Carmine Galante and John Ormento. Those detained were charged with conspiracy to import, conceal and sell heroin.<br /> <br /> On January 5th 1959, the group went on trial. The charges laid against them, in full, were:<br /> <br /> Conspiracy to import and smuggle narcotics into the United States.<br /> To receive, conceal, possess, buy and sell the drugs.<br /> To dilute, mix and adulterate the drugs prior to distribution.<br /> To distribute the drugs.<br /> <br /> On April 17th they were all found guilty and sentenced from five to twenty years. Vito Genovese was given fifteen years. He was initially confined in the Atlanta Penitentiary. The rest of the conspirators were sentenced as under:<br /> <br /> Vincent Gigante-7 years. Soldier, Genovese family.<br /> Joe Evola-10 years. Capo, Bonanno family.<br /> Carmine Polizanno- 8years. Associate, Genovese family.<br /> Ralph Polizanno-7 years. Associate, Genovese family<br /> Salvatore Santora-20 years. Capo, Luchese family.<br /> Joseph DiPalermo-15 years. Soldier, Luchese family.<br /> Charlie DiPalermo-20 years. Soldier, Luchese family.<br /> Rocco Mazzie-12 years. Soldier, Anastasia family<br /> Charles Barcellona-5 years. Soldier, Anastasia family.<br /> Daniel Lessa-14 years. Associate, Luchese family.<br /> Nicky Lessa-12 years. Soldier, Luchese family.<br /> Alfredo Aviles-10 years. Associate.<br /> Benjamin Rodriques-10 years. Associate. <br /> Jean Capece-5 years. <br /> <br /> For his help in making the case Cantellops had his prison sentenced commuted by New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. There was a story that went around following the case, that the inmates of the federal Atlanta Penitentiary, refused to be served cantaloupe melon at meal times.<br /> <br /> The FBN kept after Galante and John Ormento, A line of enquiry followed by agents Martin Pera and James Hunt lead them to a homicide enquiry in the NYPD 48th Precinct in the Bronx. An elderly man had been attacked in his apartment. He’d worked as a processing chemist for one of the drug groups linked into Genovese. Detectives theorized he’d been killed to stop him testifying at the upcoming trial. Before he’d died, the man had given the police a description of his killer, and through their investigation, the agents determined he was a known criminal called Nicolas Tolentino. Often called ‘Big Nose’ for fairly obvious reasons, Nick Tolentino, a fifty year old New Yorker, was a soldier in the Luchese family, and like so many of its members, a consummate drug trafficker<br /> <br /> Interestingly enough, a detective at the precinct house, Tommy Martino, had actually met this man at a function held at the home of a local, and well-known building contractor, David Giampa.<br /> <br /> The agency carried out surveillance on Giampa, who was seen making frequent visits to an apartment building at 1466 East Gun Hill Road, in the Baychester section of the Bronx. A three story red-brick building, it stood on the corner of Adee Avenue. The agents saw Giampa carrying in bags of groceries and laundry, obviously supplying someone who was hiding out in the building.<br /> <br /> One evening, it was April 1st 1959, the agents followed Giampa to an apartment on the third floor, and there, surprised Ormento and Nick Tolentino. They, along with Giampa were arrested and taken into custody. <br /> <br /> Exactly two months later, Agent Pera and his current partner, Bill Rowan, organized and helped carry out the arrest of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/death-in-the-afternoon-the">Carmine Galante</a> on a New Jersey freeway.<br /> <br /> In due course, both Ormento and Galante were indicted, tried and convicted on narcotic charges. John Ormento went off to prison where he died in 1974. Galante also spent time, serving a twelve year sentence, before being released in early 1974.<br /> <br /> The investigation and trial of Vito Genovese had been long and torturous. <br /> <br /> It is not generally realized that Cantellops’ testimony, resulted in the indictment and incarceration of a bigger, and much more important group of drug traffickers than the famous ‘French Connection’ case that was to follow a few years later.<br /> <br /> For the last fifty years, crime historians have argued over the validity of the conviction and sentence. Frank Selvaggi, a senior agent in the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, called it ‘The frame of the century.’<br /> <br /> The late Ralph Salerno, famous NYPD organized crime detective, believed it almost in conceivable that Vito Genovese would deal with someone like Cantellops.<br /> <br /> On appeal, the government admitted it had suppressed evidence in the trial. Edward Bennett Williams, one of the best criminal lawyers practising at this time, argued brilliantly for Genovese. When he was congratulated him on his performance, he said, ‘Thanks, but there's not a chance. They won't let Genovese out. They'll call it harmless error.’ Which they did, and generally do, when they know the error is harmful in Mafia cases. <br /> <br /> Rumours have long existed that Cantellops had been approached by a cartel of mobsters anxious to remove Genovese from the frame, for their own personal reasons.<br /> <br /> These four men, according to these underworld rumours, Charley Luciano in Naples, Italy, and Frank Costello, Myer Lansky and Carlo Gambino in America, had put up a $100,000 bribe to induce Nelson to co-operate with the narcotic bureau and help convict Genovese. Costello would obviously have a vested reason in doing this, bearing in mind that he almost certainly knew Genovese was behind the attempt on his life. A rider to the bribe was that it had to include Gigante in the conspiracy so that he would do time as penance for his bungled attempt on Frank. Jimmy ‘Blue Eyes’ Alo, a senior capo in the Genovese family, is alleged to have arranged for an intermediately to travel to Sing Sing prison, and present Cantellops with the deal. It’s cute and cheesy, like a plot out of a Hank Jansen novel. But as a compelling reason upon which to build a hypotheses, about as ephemeral as a butterfly.<br /> <br /> Costello presumably had little or no respect for Genovese following the abortive attack on him, carried out on the night of May 2, 1957. The man who allegedly shot Frank was tentatively identified as Vincent Gigante, a soldier in the crew of skipper, Tommy Eboli. The attack on Frank was part of an orchestrated plan by Genovese to take back control of the family, which he had relinquished when he fled to Italy in 1937 to avoid prosecution. <br /> <br /> Frank would have realized only Genovese would have had the nerve to make a strike against him. So it’s certain Costello would have lost no sleep over Vito and Gigante going down and doing time, but there is no evidence whatsoever that links these two men into some convoluted drug conspiracy deal involving two sitting New York mob chiefs, one exiled in Italy, and a major Jewish gangster like Lansky. <br /> <br /> Also, what this theory overlooks of course, is the huge amount of detailed information Cantellops supplied to the FBN covering people, places and dates, which allowed the agency to construct the case. In addition, although his command of English wasn’t the best, Cantellops spent a week on the witness stand at the trial on direct, and four weeks undergoing cross-examination by the numerous lawyers employed by the defendants. He was so convincing, the jury had no hesitation in bringing in guilty verdicts against all those charged.<br /> <br /> In one of the numerous appeals that resulted from the trial, it was stated that Cantellops was a key witness for the Government, and that he had a long criminal record, including perjury before a grand jury. On this appeal the appellants laid great stress upon the character of Cantellops. <br /> <br /> The Court in its opinion stated (p. 190):<br /> <br /> ‘They argue that his testimony should have been stricken, that no defendant may be convicted on Cantellops' uncorroborated testimony, and that the indictment should have been dismissed. We do not agree. It was for the jury to judge the witness Cantellops on the basis of all that was brought out about his character, his previous activities.’ <br /> <br /> The Court further stated on the same page:<br /> <br /> ‘It is for the jury to say whether his testimony at trial is truthful, in whole or in part, in the light of the witness' demeanour, his explanations and all the evidence in the case.’<br /> <br /> It has been claimed that there was no way Genovese would have allowed himself to have been seen in the company of a low level drug dealer like Cantellops. On the other hand, had this low level dealer been the potential conduit to huge amounts of money, it strikes me as more than likely Genovese would have wanted to check him out. Also, the powerful mob boss was almost certainly arrogant in his use of power. He knew, as did everyone around him, that he could have squashed Cantellops like a bug (or a melon.) This kind of attitude could well have made Genovese careless. And, in all fairness to Nelson Cantellops, he admitted that he only actually physically met Genovese briefly, on that one evening on the way to the Bronx meeting.<br /> <br /> At the end of the day, maybe the case against Genovese was not unlike the one that banjoed his former boss , Charley ‘Lucky’ Luciano. He was tried and convicted on a prostitution case, which put him away for thirty years in 1936. Cynics at the time said that the government, unable to lock one on Lucky for all the bad stuff he had actually done, found a way to convict him and put him away for something he hadn’t really done. The ends justifying the means so to speak.<br /> <br /> Et tu Don Vitone perhaps? <br /> <br /> Maybe, but I think unlikely.<br /> <br /> Nelson Cantellops did more than just help send Vito Genovese to prison however. He set in motion a chain of events that would have a devastating impact on organized crime across the United States.<br /> <br /> Joseph Valachi, was the first member of the Mafia, in America, to reveal publicly its history, structure, and membership in significant detail, at least in New York. Interestingly enough, no one was ever indicted or convicted as a result of his revelations, but he set the precedent for mob informants that would not be matched again until the early 1990s.<br /> <br /> ‘Between Scylla and Charybdis‘ is the origin of the phrase ‘between the rock and the whirlpool‘ (the rock upon which Scylla dwelt and the whirlpool of Charybdis). These two monsters in Greek mythology inhabited opposites sides of the Strait of Messina, between Sicily and Italy. Odysseus, during his great quest, had to sail through these waters and choose which monster to confront. The saying may also be the genesis of the phrase ‘between a rock and a hard place.’<br /> <br /> That’s where Joe Valachi found himself on the morning of June 22, 1962 <br /> <br /> A soldier in the crime family controlled by Genovese, he’d had to graft his way through life, like all of its members. The strength of Cosa Nostra as the mob called itself, was the fear it generated among ‘ordinary’ citizens, giving its soldiers and captains an edge in their business activities. Many of the lower-level members of the mob however, struggled daily to make a decent living. Just being a Mafioso wasn’t a guarantee of success.<br /> <br /> Valachi probably lost more than he won in his years as a member.<br /> <br /> He was inducted into the family that eventually was to be controlled by Joseph Bonanno, in November 1930. Subsequently, he transferred to the crime family of Charley Luciano, after the murder of Salvatore Maranzano, who had in fact headed up the group that had organized his initiation. This transfer took place sometime in late 1931, maybe September or October.<br /> <br /> Interestingly, Joe Valachi had actually started his mob career as an associate of yet another mob family in New York, this one led by Gaetano Gagliano, (now know as the Luchese Family,) and it’s from this group that he transferred his allegiance to Maranzano, who had allied his men with Gagliano in what was to become known as ‘The Castellammarese War,’ an underground struggle for dominance between at least four warring factions made up of Sicilian, Neapolitan and Calabrian gangsters in the New York underworld.<br /> <br /> Joseph Valachi was one of very few men in mob history who multi-tasked his way through multiple crime families in the Mafia as he burned a career for himself as a hit-man, extortionist, drug dealer and all-round hoodlum.<br /> <br /> Over the next twenty-eight years, he became involved in loan-sharking, slot-machines, pin-ball machines, the numbers racket, owning and running restaurants, dress manufacturing and linen-hiring businesses, owning racehorses, and during World War Two, the lucrative gas-rationing stamps fraud activity.<br /> <br /> His downfall had been brought about by drug trafficking. Frank Costello, then head of Valachi’s crime family, had in 1948, laid down an order forbidding his members from handling drugs. He recognized the danger that the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was to the mob and wanted no part of it. But a lot of the members could not resists the huge profits and relatively easy money to be made out of narcotics.<br /> <br /> The FBN had Valachi listed in their ‘Black Book,’ their directory of known and suspected drug dealers. They’d been observing and tracking him since the mid-1940s, and by 1956 he was eventually arrested, convicted and sentenced to prison for five years for his part in a drug conspiracy, that also involved his brother-in-law, Giancomo Reina. Reina was one of 8 children, and one sister, Mildred, was Valachi’s wife. Their father, Gaetano, had headed up one of those four mob families back in the 1920s, the first that Valachi had been attached to, and his death may have in fact triggered off the Castellammarese War.<br /> <br /> Valachi managed to evade this particular indictment however. Released on bail pending an appeal, his conviction was reversed. He had in fact been linked into his first drug deal as early as 1952, which escaped detection by the FBN.<br /> <br /> By 1957, strapped for money ( a not unusual occurrence for mobsters due to their flagrant lifestyle, gambling habits and often on-going high legal expenses,) he turned again to narcotics for a quick fix. However, in May 1959, he learned that the FBN were after him, and fled New York, moving upstate to live in hiding, and then east across into Connecticut, settling at a trailer camp in a small community in Thompsonville, squeezed in between the Connecticut River and State Highway 91, close to the border of Massachusetts. <br /> <br /> In the middle of November, one of Valachi’s associates, a man called Ralph Wagner, who’d made heroin deliveries for Joe, literally dropped a dime on Valachi. Arrested by the FNB, Wagner found a way to contact Valachi, who gave him a pay phone number near the caravan park. When Joe went to the station at a pre-arranged time to accept a call from Wagner, FBN agents were waiting to arrest him.<br /> <br /> Assured by his mob bosses that the fix was in, and that incarceration would be light, Valachi was in fact sentenced to a term of fifteen years, and sent to serve it at the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia.<br /> <br /> In August 1962, Valachi was returned to New York as a co-defendant in yet another narcotics case, this one involving Vincent Mauro and Frank Caruso, along with Albert and Vito Agueci. Mauro and Caruso were part of the crew headed by Anthony Strollo, Genovese’s right-hand man. The Agueci brothers, from Sicily, were connected into the Buffalo mob, headed by Stefano Maggadino. Joe lost out on this one again, and received a further twenty year sentence, to be served concurrently with the one he was already doing.<br /> <br /> While in New York, the FBN put pressure on him to roll-over and become an informant, telling him that Strollo had gone missing, and was believed murdered on the orders of his best friend and boss, Vito Genovese. The agents also inferred that Joe was next on Genovese’s list of house-cleaning. With these thoughts pressing down on him, Joe was returned to Atlanta.<br /> <br /> Here, he became the central character in a bizarre theatre of manipulation, hidden threats and Machiavellian manoeuvres orchestrated by Vito Genovese.<br /> <br /> The Don suggested that Joe move into his cell, and share it with the other inmates there, a group of four or five. Genovese kept on at Joe, questioning him about his latest drug conviction, hinting that perhaps he had collaborated with Mauro and Caruso, insinuating that he had not received his cut from these various narcotic transactions and also confirming in an indirect way, that he had been responsible for the death of Strollo. <br /> <br /> Vito Agueci was also sent down to Atlanta following his conviction, and began associated closely with inmates Johnny Diouguardi, and Joe DiPalermo, both members of the Luchese family. Valachi began to believe that Agueci was feeding Genovese information through these two men that he was talking to the FBN (which at this time he wasn’t.) Gradually, Joe started to think that Genovese and the other mob inmates were shunning him, isolating him away from the few prisoners he had become close to. One day, DiPalermo offered him a steak sandwich, claiming he had smuggled it out of the prison kitchen. Fearing it was poisoned, Joe threw it in the trash. He stopped using the showers, especially after he was encouraged by Diougardi to do so, fearing the isolation and exposure there, and the possibility of attack. <br /> <br /> One night in June, in the cell, Genovese sat talking to him, rambling on about bad apples and how they should be removed; then kissing Joe, for old time’s sake, and asking after the health of his grandchildren, planting seeds, sowing doubts and fear into the mind of a man already on the breaking edge.<br /> <br /> In desperation, Joe demanded that the guards incarcerate him in a solitary cell, claiming his life was in danger. This gave him a few days respite, but then he was released, as the prison governor could not be convinced there were grounds for his fears.<br /> <br /> Joseph Valachi reached his epiphany early in the morning of June 22, 1963. Wandering around the prison grounds, terrified of each and every inmate who passed him, he saw three men moving slowly towards him. There had been construction taking place in the complex, and he grabbed a piece of iron piping as a weapon to defend himself. As Joe DiPalermo, the man he considered his principal tormentor, walked past, he lashed out, striking him in the head. Joe then chased off the other three men, returning to beat DiPalermo to death. Except he killed the wrong man.<br /> <br /> His victim, John Saupp, was in prison for mail robbery and forgery, a minor, inconsequential petty criminal. His misfortune was to bear a striking resemblance to DiPalermo, especially in profile. Distraught and full of remorse for killing an innocent man, Valachi eventually began cooperating, first with the FBN and then the FBI, who took control of him on behalf of the Justice Department. And the rest is history.<br /> <br /> After a massive, lengthy de-briefing by the government, Joseph Valachi, guarded by agents of the FBI and the US Marshalls, was taken to Washington D.C. in September 1963 to appear before an investigative subcommittee headed by Senator John McClellan of Arkansas. It was here that the world first became aware of Joseph Valachi, who was also known in the New York underworld as Joe Cago and Joe Cargo, Joe Kato and Joseph Siano. On his first arrest in November 1921, he had called himself Anthony Sorge.<br /> <br /> Short and squat, with crew-cut gray hair, sucking on a lemon, to help his drying throat, Joe Valachi spoke for thirty-one hours over a seven day period, from September 27th. <br /> <br /> Introduced by Robert Kennedy, the US Attorney General, he sat facing the committee, under the glare of lights and the gaze of three major television network cameras, answering questions and explaining the structure of organized crime ‘families’ in the USA, and for the first time, confirming the hierarchy by names, and especially the heads of the five New York mobs. <br /> <br /> Republic senator Karl Mundt was so confused by the litany of death, mayhem and Joe’s scrambled Bronx vocabulary, he said at one point:<br /> <br /> ‘You’re getting me all confused. It sounds like a Chinese Chess game.”<br /> <br /> To some in the hall, it sounded like a fairy tale. No one had come prepared for the intensity of Joe’s revelations. Democrat Edward Muskie thought the whole thing a waste of time.<br /> <br /> Much of what he disclosed, confirmed information that the FBI and the FBN had already obtained, from illegal wiretaps. He described in detail, hundreds of members, specifying minute trivia about them: who they worked for, their knick-names, their social contacts. <br /> <br /> ‘They eliminated the term boss of all bosses’ said Joe at one point in his testimony, ‘but Vito Genovese is just that, under the table.’<br /> <br /> In his defence, he was rarely if ever, caught short by his handlers. Although a lot of what he described was already known to the law enforcement agencies, his real danger to the mob was an ability to create a schematic view of the structure of organized crime, describing chapter and verse, how it functioned. Opening up a book that had forever been closed until now. In essence, he was able to convince law enforcement to stop looking at the Mafia’s criminal acts as simply isolated, unconnected crimes; instead, he forced them into approaching organized crime as a huge, inter-locking matrix of self-serving dimensions, allowing the law to adopt a radical new philosophy in its fight against this so-far almost hidden enemy, on an intercontinental scale never before contemplated.<br /> <br /> It was generally assumed that Valachi disclosed the term ’Cosa Nostra’ for the first time. In fact, the FBI and other federal agencies had heard the denomination used before. <br /> <br /> In 1961 and 1962, these agencies were spelling it in their reports as:<br /> ‘Causa Nostra.’ It was an expression mainly used on the Eastern Seaboard, and seldom, if ever heard in cities like Chicago or Philadelphia or Detroit. <br /> <br /> Although Valachi had seemingly never intended to disclose what he eventually did, planning to tell only enough to get revenge against Genovese, as he talked to agents of the FBI, his frustrations and resentments over perceived slights and lack of recognition for his many years of service, by his various bosses over the years, finally pushed him into disclosing everything he knew, or almost everything, about Cosa Nostra.<br /> <br /> A foot soldier and therefore limited in his scale of knowledge, he knew enough however, to give his friends in the mob plenty of heartburn. It is fascinating to imagine being a fly on the wall in Genovese’s cell when Joe’s revelations were broadcast. How the mighty Don would have coped with his peers had he been released just then, is interesting to contemplate. According to author Nick Tosches, Vito ‘was the most violent, most grasping and most treacherous of his breed.’<br /> <br /> It was not to be of course. Vito Genovese died in the Federal Medical Centre for Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri from heart disease, on St Valentines Day, 1969, before he finished his sentence. Had he lived and served this out, it is almost a certainty that the government would have arranged to deport him back to Italy. He had been denaturalized in 1955 for concealing his criminal record when he applied for citizenship. Up to 1959, he had avoided deportation with a series of legal manoeuvres, but it was almost a given the state would have kicked him out of the country as soon as he was released.<br /> <br /> If all Joe wanted was revenge against the man and the system, he managed to get that, in spades. He lost his job, his lifetime, his wife and son, who left him, and for this he laid the blame square on Genovese.<br /> <br /> ‘Vito Genovese is responsible for everything,’ he told author Peter Maas.<br /> <br /> In 1964 Joe was encouraged by the justice department to put down on paper his life story and his knowledge of the Mafia. The 2190 pages he wrote, are held in 20 folders in two boxes at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.<br /> <br /> Headed:<br /> <br /> ‘The Real Thing: The Expose and Inside Doings of Cosa Nostra,’ they document his life from 1920 until 1964.<br /> <br /> Like his nemesis, he died of a heart attack, at the La Tuna Federal Correctional Institution in Texas, on April 3rd 1971.<br /> <br /> He is buried in a nondescript grave at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery, in Lewiston, Niagara County, in upstate New York. How he came to be here is an interesting side note to his life and death. <br /> <br /> It is generally believed that sometime in the late 1960s he entered into a correspondence with a woman called Marie K. Jackson, a housewife, who lived in Niagara Falls, New York. Abandoned by his wife and son, this relationship was all Valachi had in his final years. When he died, she claimed the body and had it shipped north, at the government’s expense and the body was buried in Lewiston, on or about May 6th. The cemetery sits right on the border of Canada, wedged in between the Niagara River, freeway loops and two massive hydro lakes. Marie Jackson died in 1999 and lies buried next to Joe.<br /> <br /> She had been married at one time, and apparently had children, according to her attorney, Bernard Sax, but details about her are scarce. Originally Marie Murray, she was a Niagara Falls native and attended local schools before taking a job at the Amberg's Men's Shop, where she met her future husband. The marriage was not a happy one apparently, and was annulled by the Catholic Church after three years. He was Jewish and she was Catholic, and their religious differences made the marriage impossible, she later claimed. <br /> <br /> She and Valachi had first begun corresponding when he was incarcerated at the Federal prison in Milan, Michigan, in 1966, and maintained a relationship, by mail; she would write him at least twice a week, until his death. She was apparently attracted to him by his performance at the McClellan hearings, which like millions of Americans, she watched on television. Seemingly, she never physically, visited him in any prison. She filed probate on his will at the Niagara County Surrogate’s Court in Lockport, N.Y. in August 1971. His estate was valued at $30,000, the bulk of it, his share from the Peter Maas autobiography. Most of this however, was escrowed by the U.S. government to meet back-tax obligations; some of the remaining money converted into bonds was sent to Valachi’s ex-wife, Mildred. <br /> <br /> However, Marie claimed in an interview with a reporter from the Buffalo News in 1995 that not long after her marriage broke up, she met Valachi at a house party thrown by a mutual friend in the Falls city. Joe seemingly visited her regularly and paid the rent on her apartment. They met and travelled together often, she claimed, and he took her shopping in New York when she visited him there. None of this information was ever disclosed by Valachi himself. If this is true, it may well explain Joe’s knowledge of the Buffalo Mafia family, information he disclosed at the senate hearings in 1963. His links into the Agueci brothers is perhaps confirmation of his connection into the Mafia family headed by Stefano Maggadino.<br /> <br /> Nelson Silva Cantellops, on his release from prison, disappeared into obscurity, emerging in 1965, dead on a bar-room floor, the result of a bad meeting with someone’s knife. His killer was never apprehended.<br /> <br /> It’s interesting that although he was the main instrument in the government’s fight to indict and imprison a man considered perhaps the biggest criminal in America at the time, there does not appear to be a single photographic image of him, anywhere, and the details of his life after the Genovese case, and his death, do not seem to have been recorded in any detail. The short, chubby Puerto Rican criminal, wanders through this story as almost a will-o'-the-wisp, a flickering light, always receding, whenever the search is on.<br /> <br /> Like Dick Datchery in Charles Dickens’ last and unfinished novel, ‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood,’ Nelson comes and goes in the story of Vito Genovese’s drug bust, as not only a conundrum, but seemingly a lost and forgotten figure in the history of organized crime. A few, yellowing pages in a long disused case file, lying in a dusty corner of an archive room somewhere, he lives on only in the memory of those of us searching for the Holy Grail of Mob lore: <br /> <br /> The perfect certainty, the Gospel according to St. Paul-the truth; or maybe to St. Rita-the saint of the impossible; or most probably, St. Jude-the saint of hopeless cases.<br /> </p>
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Death in the Afternoon, The shadow of a Dream: The Story of Carmine Galante
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/death-in-the-afternoon-the
2010-11-24T10:00:00.000Z
2010-11-24T10:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a></p>
<p>Before Lunch<br /> <br /> It was not quite the dog days of August, but almost. The temperature was in the upper eighties by mid-day, baking the cracked asphalt that shimmered under the relentless rays of the noon-day sun, beating down on the city like a blow-torch, tempered by the 80 degrees of humidity. <br /> <br /> In Bushwick, Brooklyn, inland from whatever on-shore breezes may have been blowing in from the East River, there was no relief from the wilting heat. Granita peddlers pushing carts of shaved iced, held umbrellas over their wares, as they passed by men in undershirts, sitting on basket-weave chairs, playing radios, and swigging beer from paper-bagged bottles. Women gossiped on street corners, wafting their babies with fans; laundry hung limply from lines strung between alleys, starched stiff by the sun’s heat.<br /> <br /> A brown Lincoln limousine, carrying two men, meandered down Knickerbocker Avenue, cruising past Bushwick Park where men were playing the bocci courts and barbecuing chicken and chops on portable grills, the blue smoke hardly lifting in the heavy air. <br /> <br /> It was Thursday, July 12th 1979, just another summer day in this part of New York. <br /> <br /> Bushwick, which derived from the Dutch word for refuge, originally settled by mainly German immigrants, had a huge influx of Italians between the two world wars. Many of the inhabitants still did not speak English, and lots of them were of Sicilian descent, living in rows of mostly three-story, six-unit, wood-frame or brick-faced walk-ups. However, the population was down to 120,000 from the 1970 census, many people moving south to Staten Island or east into Queens, giving way to the influx of Hispanic groups gradually taking over the district. <br /> <br /> In the not too distant future, the avenue would become known as ‘The Well’ for its never ending source of drugs and narcotic arrests.But although things were changing, one thing was constant- this area was still the lair of the Bonanno crime family- a fearsome group of Mafia mobsters, who had claimed these streets over sixty years before, and the passenger in the car was probably its most fearsome member.<br /> <br /> The Lincoln pulled up at number 205, a small, nondescript building, wedged in between a neighbourhood law office and a pizza parlour, on the north side of the avenue, between Jefferson and Troutman Streets. The sign above the door said 'Joe and Mary, Italian-American Restaurant,' the windows clouded by dingy yellow curtains. <br /> <br /> The passenger nodded goodbye to the driver, his nephew, 43 years old James Galante, and stepped out into the street. <br /> <br /> As the car rumbled off towards Flushing Avenue, the man checked his cash roll- $860, slipping it into the pocket of his pale blue slacks, along with his Medicare and social security cards. He was wearing a white short sleeved knit shirt, and as always, was sucking on a cigar. Small, somewhere between five-three and five-five, and a stocky 170 pounds, what hair he had left, was wispy and gray to white, strung around his swarthy head like a monk’s tonsure. He was 69 years old, and could have been anyone’s grandpa checking in for a cheap lunch. In fact, he was Carmine Galante, one of the most dangerous hoodlums ever to operate in the organized mob underworld of New York. <br /> <br /> Here in the heartland of his criminal empire, he probably felt as safe as houses. He had less than three hours to live.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236990455,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Galante was born on the lower East Side of Manhattan on February 21st 1910, at 27 Stanton Street. His parents both came from Sicily, from the seaside village of Castellammarese del Golfo. His father Vincenzo had been a fisherman there before immigrating to America. He was twenty-eight when Carmine was born, and was then working as a labourer. Carmine’s mother, Vingenza Russo, was twenty-five when he was born. He was one of five children, brothers Sam (Rosario) and Peter, and sisters Angelina and Josephine. He was christened 'Camillo,' but as he grew up, his school friends changed this to Carmine, and it stuck with him the rest of his life.<br /> <br /> He also called himself at various times: Joseph Russel, Carmine Galento and Louis Volpe. These were just three of the nineteen aliases the FBI, and the five the FBN pinned on him over the years they investigated him. He attended Public Schools 79 and 120, quitting at age fifteen. <br /> <br /> He was soon in trouble. His first arrest occurred in 1924, when he was fourteen, for stealing trinkets from a store counter, but as he was a juvenile, the actual charge is not included in his police record. He was sent to a reform school as an incorrigible delinquent. From 1923 until 1926, he was employed by Lubin Artificial Flower Company at 270 West Broadway. This was one of the many legitimate jobs he recorded for tax purposes and for the benefit of his various parole officers in the years to come. By 1930, he was working as a sorter at the O'Brien Fish Company at 105 South Street, near the Fulton Fish Market.<br /> <br /> On December 12th 1925, he pleaded guilty to an assault charge, and a year later, again in December, was sentenced to prison for a two to five year period for second degree assault and robbery. <br /> <br /> On the morning of Saturday, March 15th 1930, police officer Walter O. De Castillia, reported for duty at the 84th Precinct house at 72 Poplar Street, in Brooklyn Heights. A nine year veteran, married with a young daughter, he lived in Jamaica, Queens.<br /> <br /> The station sergeant sent him around to Martin Weinstein’s shoe factory in the seven-story red-brick building on the corner of York and Washington Streets, just a few blocks to the east, to watch over the owner who was making up his factory payroll this morning.<br /> <br /> At about eleven o’clock, De Castillia was sitting in an inner office on the sixth floor of the building, with the owner. $7500 was laid out on a desk and Martin Weinstein was personally assembling his employees wage envelopes, when four gunmen burst into the main office and strode across to where the two men sat. As officer De Castillia rose, reaching for his holstered revolver, he was struck twice in the chest and once in the leg by a fusillade of at least six shots. He died instantly. The gunmen turned, walked back out of the office along the corridor to the elevator, where a fifth gunman was guarding Louis Sella the lift operator. The men entered and went down to the street level, casually walking to a parked car, in which they drove off. At no time did any of the gunmen attempt to retrieve the small mountain of cash that was stacked on the owner’s desk.<br /> <br /> Sella described the gunmen as young, early to mid-twenties, dark skinned with dark hair, and all well-dressed. Although a small army of uniformed officers and detectives descended on the scene, no trace of the gunmen was found. It was thought at one stage in the investigation that the killing was personal, a grudge killing by one or more of the shooters, although this theory never developed legs.<br /> <br /> Five months later, on August 30th 1930, Carmine Galante was arrested and indicted in the murder of the officer. He was later released for lack of evidence. Arrested along with Galante and also released, were twenty-seven year old Michael Consolo, who subsequently became Galante’s bodyguard, and one of his cousins, Angelo Presinzano, who stayed close to him for many years, right up to his death in fact, and was his best man when Galante married in 1945. <br /> <br /> It's possible that about now, Galante started to work under capo Frank Garafolo, who was also the under boss of the Bonanno crime family at this time.<br /> <br /> Michael Joseph Consolo, however, didn't last the full nine yards with 'Lilo.' A Sicilian born and naturalized American , at the age of 65, in April 1968, he was shot dead on the street near his home on 76th Street in Rego Park, Queens. Two in the head, four in the back. He'd apparently picked the wrong side in the Bonanno War which had been rumbling along for the previous two years. It was rumoured he'd teamed up with Frank Mari to form an alliance with Paulo Gambino, Carlo's elder brother, on behalf of Gaspare Di Gregorio, who had taken over the ruling of Bonanno family, following a convoluted inter-family dispute revolving around Joe Bonanno appointing his son, Salvatore, (Bill) as the family counsellor, after a majority vote by the crew skippers confirmed it. <br /> <br /> Consolo may well have been killed for all the wrong reasons. He had been seen talking to Bill Bonanno outside the Brooklyn Superior Court, as both men waited to give evidence regarding a confused shoot-out that had occurred on Troutman Street, on January 28th 1966. The Di Gregorio faction may well have come to believe he was switching sides so had him killed. He may also have been killed by another, second group of Bonanno dissidents who were also involved in the ongoing struggle that became known among law enforcement circles as 'The Banana Split.' <br /> <br /> Another victim of this inter-family struggle was Calabrian born, Frank Mari, a close friend of 'Little Angie' Tuminaro, the linchpin in the famous 'French Connection' case. He disappeared in September, 1969. Mari was the top killer in the Di Gregorio group, who had been the lead shooter at Troutman Street, and had allegedly killed Bill Bonanno’s bodyguard, Sam Perrone in March 1968. <br /> <br /> Frank ‘Frankie T’ Mari had been inducted into the Bonanno family in 1956, in a ceremony conducted at a house in Elizabeth, New Jersey. At the age of 30, he made his bones. His sponsor, the man who would vouch for him, was Carmine Galante. <br /> <br /> ‘Frankie T’ was one of the last men to get into Cosa Nostra before the Commission, the governing body of the American Mafia, ordered the books to be closed. That day, in the basement of the house, watched over by Tommy Luchese, Albert Anastasia, Richie Boiardo, ‘Lilo’ and others, the induction ceremony was performed. Galante insisted, according to a news report by Nicolas Pileggi, that Mari become part of his crew. He knew a good earner when he saw one, and Mari had a taste for the drug business, dealing through Tuminaro and Anthony DiPasqua.<br /> <br /> It looked as though Mari’s murder was a ‘reprisal’ killing, but again, he may have been hit not by the Joe Bonanno faction, his apparent enemies, but in fact by his own people, led by Philip Rastelli, who could have been making a play to set in place his own bid to take over the family, which in fact he did a few years later. Frank Mari was the heir successor to Paul Sciacca, a man to whom he was very close. He was the man who headed the family after Di Gregorio stood down. Mari’s niece had married Sciacca’s son. Blood is thicker than water. Never more so than in mob families.<br /> <br /> Mari and Frank Adamo were last sighted at the 19th Hole Bar and Grill on 86th Street in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, and then just disappeared off the face of the earth. <br /> <br /> The 1960s were confusing times for the crime family of Joseph Bonanno.<br /> <br /> On December 25th 1930, a police detective, Joseph Meenahan, had his suspicions aroused by the actions of a group of men in a green sedan parked on Driggs Avenue, just a few blocks north of the Brooklyn Naval Yard. Drawing his gun he approached the car, at which point, one of the men shouted at him, something like: 'Stop right there copper, or we'll burn you.' The redoubtable detective then busted a few caps as a shoot-out occurred. The officer’s overcoat was riddled with bullets, and he was wounded in the leg. A six-year old girl walking nearby with her mother, was seriously wounded in the cross-fire. Unable to start their car, three of the four gunmen escaped by leaping onto a passing truck. The detective was able to catch and disable the fourth, who turned out to be Carmine Galante, who had missed his footing and fallen into the street. <br /> <br /> Taken to the police station, he was worked over by a group of detectives and brutally beaten. He was later identified as one of a gang of four who had robbed the Lieberman Brewery in Brooklyn. He never admitted to anything, including the identities of his accomplices, and after a trial, was sentenced by Judge Conway in King’s County Courthouse, Brooklyn, on January 8th 1931, to Sing-Sing prison, and then to Clinton Prison, Dannemora, where he remained until his release on May 1st 1939.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236990286,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />In prison, he was tested, and a medical report indicated that he had a low IQ (90) and the mental age of a 14 year old (Galante (right) was into his early twenties at this time,) was emotionally dull, and diagnosed as a neuropathic psychopathic personality. Dr. Baker, who carried out the examination, also stated that Galante was shy, had no knowledge of current events or any items of common knowledge. A medical check revealed that he had injured his head in an auto accident when he was ten years old, had fractured an ankle at eleven and by the time he had reached twenty, was showing signs of gonorrhoea in his system. He'd lead a busy life up to this point! <br /> <br /> On his release from prison, he went back to his old job at the Lubin Artificial Flower company. On February 3rd 1941, he joined Local 856 of the Longshoreman’s Union, sponsored by his elder brother Sam, and for a time, worked as a stevedore on Piers 14 and 21 for the New York and Cuba Steamship Company. <br /> <br /> Sometime in September, he had either left that job, or was moonlighting on another, because he showed his employment as a labourer at the General Electric Plating Company on Grand Street, in Manhattan’s Little Italy area, a business owned by Sal Farranto.<br /> <br /> By August 1943, he was working for a cartage company, called Knickerbocker Trading, operated by one Nate Mesovetsky. The job was apparently organized for him by Johnny Dioguardi, an up-coming hood in the Mafia crime family we know today as the Luchese, and it paid him the princely sum of $27 a week. According to police records he lived on his release, either with his mother or sisters, which might account for the variety of address he often quoted: 329 East 101 Street, New York; 876 New Lots Avenue, Brooklyn and 202 Mott Street, New York. <br /> <br /> He was working this job, when he was pulled in and questioned by the police in connection with the murder of Carlo Tresca, the anarchist newspaper publisher, whose brutal killing on a New York street, back on January 11th had made international headlines. <br /> <br /> Leaving his office in a building on the corner of 15th Street, at 9.45 p.m., Tresca and a friend had crossed to the corner of 5th Avenue when a small man, dressed in a brown overcoat, ran down the street, shot Tresca twice, and then leaped into a waiting car, that sped off west in the direction of Chelsea. Two men employed by the Norwegian consulate, were walking east on Fifteenth Street, and heard the shots. One of them, Mentz Von Erpecom, later described the car. He had served in the Automobile Corps of the Norwegian army, and he knew his motors. A .38 calibre revolver was found in the doorway of the 5th Avenue entrance to Tresca’s office building, indicating a second killer was waiting there to cover that doorway. The gun was traced to Philadelphia, but there, the trail went cold.<br /> <br /> No matter how hard the police and federal authorities tried, they could not pin the murder on Carmine Galante. They followed him around for days, spotting him meeting with friends and associates at his favourite haunts: the Spring Valley Social Club on Elizabeth Street; The Musical Club at 18, Prince Street; a candy store on the corner of Mott and East Houston Street, and Jean’s Clam Bar on Emmons Avenue, in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. They hauled him in for questioning, catching him leaving a restaurant on Elizabeth Street and pulled in his criminal associates, but to no avail. <br /> <br /> There were so many rumours surrounding him, according to police intelligence:<br /> <br /> Galante was a bootlegger, and he was part of a gang headed by Frank Garofalo. <br /> <br /> Garofalo was said to be his cousin (possible, they both had strong family ties to Castellammarese del Golfo.) <br /> <br /> Galante was associated with Frank Citrano, a.k.a. ’Chick Wilson,’ who apparently lead a gang on the Lower East Side out of a building at 250 Mott Street. <br /> <br /> Underworld sources claimed that the driver on the night of the killing was possibly 'Joe Beck' Di Palermo, Galante's life long drug partner, or maybe he was just in the car at the time. Witnesses testified that there were at least three people in the Ford that drove away from the scene of the shooting. Two days earlier, the same car had tried to run Tesca down as he crossed a street.<br /> <br /> The car, a Ford, registration IC-9272, was identified by reliable witnesses as leaving the scene of the crime. A few hours before Tresca was shot, Galante, wearing a brown overcoat, was seen in this vehicle, driving away from a meeting with his parole officer, Sydney Gross, from the agency office at 80 Centre Street, in downtown Manhattan. His behaviour this particular evening, aroused the suspicion of Gross, who alerted two of his agents. A parole investigator called Fred Berson followed Galante to the car, parked in Lafayette Street, but was unable to tail him, because war time petrol rationing restrictions had grounded all but essential city officers. He did however, note the plate number on the vehicle.<br /> <br /> Berson was convinced Galante was tied into the Tresca shooting and made waves. He was subsequently dismissed from the service following a letter sent to the board by a fellow parole office, who a few weeks later shot himself, leaving a suicide note stating he had killed himself because of what he had been forced to do to Berson.<br /> <br /> Files in the New York District Attorney's office contain information in memos dated January through August 1944, that Carmine Galante, Frank Citrano, Tony Garappa and Joe and Pete Di Palermo, were paid $9000 for carrying out the hit on Tresca, the money coming to them via Joe Parisi, a member of the Teamsters Union, and close associate of Albert Anastasia and Vincenzo Mangano, the administration of what is now known as the Gambino Family.<br /> <br /> In addition to files held by the FBI, ( Tresca was apparently an informant for the agency, and had in fact had a meeting with his case agent the day he died,) which confirmed that Galante worked for both Garafola and Joe Bonanno, an unsigned 8 page document, copies of which are held by several research libraries, advances what could be the most in-depth scenario of the men and organizations behind the killing of Tresca. It was most probably written by Girolamo Valenti, a member of the Italian-American Victory Council, and a close friend and associate of Tresca’s<br /> <br /> In 1946, Louis Pagnucco, an assistant district attorney investigating the murder, got around to interviewing one of the dozens of minor characters that filled so much space throughout the inquiry into Tresca’s murder. The man was a low level street hood, who had just come out of prison for attempted murder, called <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/being-ernest-the-life-and-hard">Ernest 'The Hawk' Rupolo</a>. According to his testimony, shortly after his release, he had met two old friends at the Mapleton luncheonette in Brooklyn. <br /> <br /> His friends, Gus Frasca and George Smurra, had filled him in on the latest news. They claimed that they, along with Galante, had killed Carlo Tresca and had been well paid for the job. Rupolo also picked out of a photograph line out, the face of Frank Garofalo who he claimed he had seen often at the Mapleton luncheonette with his friends. <br /> <br /> Ten years later, Rupolo retracted his story, stating that all he knew was about a rumour going around that Vito Genovese had given the order to kill Tresca and that Galante had done the job.<br /> <br /> Finally the Parole Authority had Galante re-committed to prison on November 23rd 1943, for 'cohabiting with known criminals', in particular his bosom buddy, Joseph Di Palermo. It was the classic manoeuvre, still used to-day 60 years down the track, when the law wants to put some one away, but has no real case against him.<br /> <br /> However by now, Carmine obviously had some powerful friends, because just a year later, on December 21st 1944, he was released, after months of lobbying and legal procedural work by a number of very high-powered and influential attorneys. He may have also been supported financially, by donations from the American Labour Party, controlled by Luigi Antonini, who had formed an allegiance with Generoso Pope the head of the popular Italian newspaper, Il Martello, published in New York. Both of these men had seen Tresca as an obstruction to their political ambitions. There was also rumours floating around that the Teamster’s Union funnelled money through Joe Di Palermo to the Galante defence fund. <br /> <br /> Closer to the root of the affair, Tresca had publicly humiliated Frank Garofalo, about having an affair with an assistant United States attorney, called Dolores Facconti. Also, on September 8th 1942, a dinner party was held in the Manhattan Club Hall by the War Savings Bond Committee of Americans of Italian Extraction. When Tresca entered and saw Garafola was present, he shouted, ‘ Even that gunman is here,’ and turned and left.<br /> <br /> Garofalo and Pope were close, in business and on a personal level, so the killing of Tresca perhaps suited them both, for perhaps quite different reasons.<br /> <br /> In 1954 William B. Herlands, the New York director of investigation under Thomas Dewey, governor of the state, carried out an inquiry into events that had taken place during the early years of the Second World War, regarding the security of America’s eastern seaboard and possible Mafia connection. During this investigation, Charles Siragusa, a senior agent in the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, claimed he had a source in the New York County D.A.’s office who had been given information that Lucky Luciano, the then head of what is now known as the Genovese Crime Family, knew the identity of the men involved in the murder of Tresca. Luciano, it was claimed, offered to disclose the identities of these murderers in return for outright parole and permission to remain in the United States. Luciano was at the time in prison on a 30 year prostitution sentence, facing deportation, if ever released. Dewey allegedly rejected the offer.<br /> <br /> Carlo Tresca and Carmine Galante remain inexplicably linked into one of the most complex political murder mysteries of war time America. As Eric Ambler states in his book A Coffin For Dimitrious, ‘in these affairs what counts is not who pulls the trigger, but who pays for the bullet.’<br /> <br /> At the relatively young age of 34, Carmine Galante had come of age in the Italian-American underworld. Some sources state that he was taken directly under the wing of Joe Bonanno himself, the head of what the NYPD called ‘The Castellammarese Gang‘, or 'La Marese', becoming the boss’s driver and bodyguard.<br /> <br /> On February 10th 1945, he married Elena Ninfa Marulli, always referred to as Helen, who was 28, and lived on Shepherds Avenue, Brooklyn, at Our Lady of Sorrows Church, on Pitt Street in the East Village. She had been his alibi the night Tresca was killed, confirming they both had been to the movies near Time Square, watching the new release, ‘Casablanca,‘ then spending the rest of the evening at a hotel. His best man was his cousin, Angelo Presinzano, also known as 'Little Moe' who was two years older than Galante. <br /> <br /> 'Moey' as Presinzano was also called, was a short-ass like Galante, and had a rap sheet dating back to 1927 for rape, homicide and violations of the narcotic law . He was, later in life, big in the drug business, which was par for the course with many of the members of the Bonanno Family.<br /> <br /> Lilo and his wife moved into 274 Marcy Avenue, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, only a few blocks from where the Irish cop had arrested him in that wild shoot-out fifteen years before. They shared the three-story house with some of Helen’s family and another group called Leggio, who were related to Helen. Like almost everything in Galante’s life, the house was not registered in his name, but rather these other boarders. It is fascinating to speculate on Galante’s early married life- a typical New York couple starting out on their big adventure- Helen, frying bacon and eggs for breakfast, and then heading off each morning to work as a saleslady at the Cambridge Grocery Store, at number 104 on 1st Avenue, and Carmine, jumping into his car and heading off somewhere to kill someone.<br /> <br /> Galante was caught by the law one more time in the 1940’s when he was arrested outside number 5, Berkley Place, near Prospect Park in Brooklyn on September 4th 1947, loading up equipment into a Cadillac. The gear had been used in the operation of an illegal alcohol still. He and three others, including his old pal, Joseph Di Palermo, were released on bail of $500 on charges of alcohol tax violation, pending action by a Federal Grand Jury (see photo below). <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236990665,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236990665,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236990665?profile=original" width="567" /></a><br /> Throughout his criminal career, Galante and 'Joe Beck' as Di Palermo was known in the mob, worked closely, especially in the field of narcotic trafficking. Di Palermo was one of the mob’s consummate drug operators, still being chased by the law for his drug dealings, even well into his 80’s. His other claim to fame of course, was that he was the guy Joseph Valachi tried to kill in Atlanta. But Joe bonged the wrong guy, which kick-started a whole chain of events setting the Mafia on its ear. That's an entirely different story for another time. <br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236991279,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />By the early 1950’s, Carmine Galante (right) had solidified his position in the Bonanno crime family, and was still getting into trouble with the law. On Dec 16th 1950, the cops raided a crap game operating out of 235 West 18th Street, in the Lower East End of Manhattan, arresting 51 people, include Galante, who was charged with operating the game. By now, he had acquired the nickname that would stick with him the rest of his life. Addicted to cigars, especially the big, fat Cuban Presidente brand, he was hardly ever seen without one stuck in the side of his mouth. He became known as ’Lelo’ or 'Lilo', which can mean cigar, or little cigar in Italian slang. <br /> <br /> At this time, Joe Bonanno's crime family numbered perhaps 300 made or inducted members, and an unknown number of associates. It was one of the smaller of the five New York Mafia clans, but was highly unified and well organized. <br /> <br /> Joe's principal administration consisted of Frank Garofalo, John Bonventre and Carmine Galante. There were at least eight capi or crew skippers, each controlling thirty or more soldiers and the capo closest to Joe Bonanno was a man called Gaspar Di Gregorio, the same one who would come to replace Joe when the family dispute arose in the 1960's. The family's bookmaking and number business in Brooklyn and Manhattan's Lower East Side had grown significantly during the 1930's and through the years of the second World War.<br /> <br /> The police were also after Galante again, this time, for a killing that went down early in 1950. On January 2nd Dominick Idone was telephoned at his home at 171, Mulberry Street. He left late in the evening, and was shot dead. Just why he was murdered, has never been established.<br /> <br /> He'd had a long, and honourable career in the mob, going back to August 17th 1913, when he had been arrested for his part in the massive gang brawl between 'The Gopher Gang' and 'The Hudson Duster Gang', at the Bay Hotel in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.<br /> <br /> In addition to sighting Carmine Galante for the hit, the cops put out an all-points bulletin on the Di Palermo brothers, Joe and Charlie, Louis (Gigi) Armonte, Sal Megrino and Joe Mistratta. This could have been one of up to 80 killings attributed to Galante by various law enforcement authorities, and another one that of course, was never solved. <br /> <br /> Sometime in 1952 or perhaps 1953, Joseph Bonanno made the big decision to leap himself, into the world of drug trafficking. He sent Galante north into Canada to establish a bridgehead in Montreal. <br /> <br /> Here, he linked up with Luigi Greco, a Sicilian who had taken over the narcotic business of Harry Davis after he had been murdered in 1946. Greco worked alongside the Cotroni brothers, Vic, Joe and Frank, and had a partner called Frank Petrula. <br /> <br /> Calabrian born Vic Cotroni, who may have been the first Mafia boss of the city, with an arrest record dating back to 1928, became so close to Galante that he became godfather to one of his children. By 1954, Galante had developed such a power base in Montreal, the underworld referred to him as a mammasantissima, a big boss. According to the FBN, Galante at this time, also formed an alliance with John Ormento, a capo in the Lucchese crime family, and they began moving massive amounts of drugs from Cuba and Montreal into New York, Chicago and Dallas. By 1959, the Cotroni brothers were supplying Galante and Ormento with up to 50 kilos of pure heroin a month.<br /> <br /> Joe Bonanno and his son Bill, have both written books about their lives in the Mafia. Among other things, these two volumes are noticeable for their lack of reference to Galante. Joe, the boss, and foundling father of the family that still bears his name, 78 years after he assumed command over it, does not mention Carmine Galante once in his 400 page plus epic. Son Salvatore (Bill) offers up a few words on an 'ex-group leader' <br /> <br /> ‘of ours who had been committed of drug trafficking and whose case we maintained an active interest in for a variety of reasons…we were only marginally interested in how Lilo’s case stood.’<br /> <br /> Interestingly enough, The New York Times in July 1979, printed an article in which Bill Bonanno claimed to be a godfather of one of Galante’s children, and he also stated in regards to Galante’s killing:<br /> <br /> ‘It got my attention, but there was no emotional stress. That is just part of the risk of living that life style.’<br /> <br /> This is the man Carmine Galante, who was apparently Joe’s bodyguard, driver and confident, the man who most probably assumed the under boss position after the retirement of Frank Garofalo and then John Morales. <br /> <br /> It’s not that the father and son lied, more that their version of the truth was less than perfect, and that they saw things the way they wanted them to be rather than as they where. These were two men who would whisper to the deaf or wink at the blind.<br /> <br /> Carmine Galante and his lock on the heroin trafficking business that brought huge rewards into the family, was not an image the Bonanno father and son wanted to perpetrate as part of their legacy being men of honour.<br /> <br /> Galante while in Montreal, lived at 4069 Dorchester Street, with Luigi Greco as a flat mate. He opened the Bonfire Restaurant at 546 DeLane Boulevard in partnership with Harry Ship, a local gambling czar and long time underworld figure, and operated a business called Alpha Investments, registered in Doral Province, Quebec, with Helen his wife, listed as an officer of the company. Lillo brought up from New York, Earl Carluzzi, a professional criminal, and ex-thief, to help him organize the unions for the hotel, restaurant and nightclub workers.<br /> <br /> Galante’s mission in Canada was seemingly to make it a major staging post in the importation of heroin from Sicily and Marseilles, for forward shipment into New York. In a report to J. Edgar Hoover from the SAC (Special Agent in Charge) New York Office, it states that, 'Carmine Galante was the Mafia’s No 1 man in Montreal and that he takes 10% out of all the rackets in the city.' <br /> <br /> While living in Canada, Galante became a good friend and mentor to an up and coming hoodlum, called Johnny "Pops'' Papalia, who one day would become the Mafia boss of Hamilton, Ontario, and who in turn would also get shot dead, in 1997, in a Canadian version of one group of gangsters trying to take control of another. The gangland version of Médecins Sans Frontièrs. <br /> <br /> But all good things must come to an end, and in 1955, Carmine gets deported from Montreal as an undesirable alien. He placed Helen’s brother, Tony Marulli, in his place to oversee his interest, but he got kicked out as well, in 1956.<br /> <br /> Through the 1950’s the FBI kept an eye on Galante, not as a member of the Mafia, but as a 'hoodlum.' Hoover never acknowledged the existence of a nationwide organized crime group that we now know as Cosa Nostra, until after Joseph Valachi’s disclosures in 1963. <br /> <br /> Carmine Galante operated a number of legitimate business that kept Hoover's men busy in terms of surveillance. One, Rosina Costume Co. Inc. was a contract cutter for major dress manufacturers. Galante was listed as its Secretary-Treasurer and his wife Helen, as Vice-President. Another was Latamer Shipping Company based at 10, East 49th Street, New York. This was set up as an import-export company, but the feds were convinced he was using it as part of a world-wide distribution network involving his drug business. And then there was ABCO Vending Machine Company located at 501 New York Avenue, Union City, New Jersey. This business was interesting for a number of reasons: <br /> <br /> It manufactured, sold and placed pin-ball and cigarette vending machines across New Jersey. At one time 'Bayonne Joe' Zicarelli a powerful capo in the Bonanno family and archetypal political fixer, worked with Galante in the business. There was a scandal involving a link by telephone direct from the company into the West New York police department, but the most interesting thing about it was a particular member of the board of directors, which consisted of Sam Atkins, B.B. Azarow and Steven Schwartz. <br /> <br /> Sometime, perhaps as early as 1949, certainly from 1953, Carmine Galante was leading a double life. He had a wife and three children, in Brooklyn, and another 'wife' and two children in New Jersey. His second 'family' lived with him at Apartment 2D, 2330 Linwood Avenue, in suburban Fort Lee. The new woman in his life, who he could have been involved with as early as 1948 or 1949, was called Anne or Antoinette Acquavella, formerly Caputo. She was small, dark haired and very attractive, according to the neighbours. Just what she saw in a stump like Galante is hard to imagine. The union produced two daughters, Mary Lou born in 1950 and Nina, born in 1954. Galante stayed with Acquavella for the rest of his life, although they were never formally married. Being a staunch Catholic, he never divorced his wife Helen. However, an underworld source claimed, he 'would shoot you dead in church during High Mass.' <br /> <br /> According to the neighbours, Galante was back and forward into his New Jersey home, but most often, arrived about five in the morning. During this period, he was driving a black Cadillac. In order to legitimize his two daughters, he arranged for Anne to marry Steven Schwartz, the man who served as a director of ABCO Vending, in New Jersey, although this was purely a marriage of convenience. Schwartz had also been closely involved with Galante in Montreal. While they lived in New Jersey, Galante’s de facto wife worked as a dispatcher for the Calandrillo Trucking Company located in Lodi. In 1955, Galante was also partners in a pastry shop at 13, Prince Street in Lower Manhattan, called De Matteo and Galante. <br /> <br /> During 1956 and 1957, agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, another agency with a keen interest in him, tracked Galante as he travelled from New York to Miami, and in 1958 to Cuba to meet with French, Canadian and American drug dealers.<br /> <br /> On November 9th 1956, Galante was in court again, this time in rural northern New York, where Judge Klausner sentenced him to 30 days in the Broome County Jail and fined him $100 for speeding. Galante had many such speeding infringement throughout his life and was seemingly a pretty careless and reckless sort of driver. But this particular infringement stirred up quite a hornets nest.<br /> <br /> In October 1956, a State Trooper patrolling the highway near Binghampton, at about ten in the evening, pulled a car over that was speeding through the town of Windsor. There were four men in it, and the driver produced a license that was obviously not his. It turned out to belong to the front seat passenger, a man called Joseph Di Palermo, of 246 Elizabeth Street, Manhattan. Trooper Leibe escorted the car to the police substation in Binghampton, where the driver was identified as Carmine Galante.<br /> <br /> Inquires revealed that he and Di Palermo, along with Frank Garofalo and John Bonventre, the other occupants of the car, had spent the previous night, October 17th, at the Arlington Hotel, as hosts of a local businessman called Joseph Barbara. Galante was held in the station jail while further inquiries were being conducted. Within 24 hours, phones were ringing hot, as a battery of lawyers with connection, were telephoning politicians in Albany trying to get them to intercede.<br /> <br /> A couple of days later, a group of police officers from West New York arrived in Binghampton, and tried to bribe Sergeant Edgar Croswell of the State police into letting the case drop. The offer was $1000 in cash. In due course, indictments were laid against the Public Safety Commissioner, the police chief, a detective captain and a detective sergeant of West New York, a town in New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York. A report subsequently issued by the New Jersey Law Enforcement Council stated that the involvement of these four senior city officials with organized crime went much deeper than just trying to fudge a traffic ticket.<br /> <br /> Interestingly enough, the lawyer who represented Galante at his hearing was none other than Donald W. Kramer, the mayor of Binghampton! Carmine did his 30 days in the local nick- the Broome County Jail- which he served through November, and while there, was visited by his wife, his brother Sal and someone unknown to the authorities-one Nicholas Marangella. 44 year old Nicky 'Glasses' Marangello, a small man, with slicked-back hair and thick glasses, would have his moment of fame twenty-three years down the track, when he operated as the family under boss alongside Philip Rastelli, at the time Galante was murdered.<br /> <br /> In August 1957, almost a year after the debacle at Binghampton, Joseph Bonanno took a holiday to Rome and Sicily. He claimed in his biography, that he was invited to do this by Fortune Pope, who would shout him the trip. Pope’s father, Generosso, a very wealthy Italian publisher, had been at the centre of the Carlo Tresca murder case, linking Bonanno and Galante through Frank Garofalo who had retired as the under boss of the family, and returned to live out his life in Sicily. <br /> <br /> Joe makes no mention of the historical meeting that brought together the Mafia chiefs of the old and the new countries, except very obliquely. He goes on about a meal at a restaurant and the altercation he has with a cheeky waiter, but that is all. No mention of Galante, no mention of Charley Luciano, no mention of Genco Russo, the top mafioso in Sicily. Another lapse, another shifting of light and shadows; the cup is not half-filled it is half empty. Joe's biography, interesting though it appears on first reading, is a cornucopia of information deflected from the straight and narrow.<br /> <br /> The meal, which lasted twelve hours, occurred on October 12th at Spano, a famous Palermo fish restaurant on the Piazza Politeama, near the waterfront. The group ate in a private alcove, starting their gargantuan meal with pasta con le sarde, a classic Sicilian dish, created around pasta, sardines, anchovies and fennel, a meal that traces its history back to the Arab occupation of the island.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236991471,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />The diners that night at this private party were all Sicilians, but half of them were oriundi, long time residents in America. They had gathered together, two days earlier, in the Sala Wagner, a sumptuous suite on the mezzanine floor of one of the oldest hotels in Palermo, Albergo e delle Palme, The Hotel des Palmes, once the grandest of Palermo’s mansions, on October 10th for a convention that would last four days. It has been suggested that the conference was instigated by Charley Luciano, the Naples based former head of his own Mafia family in New York, exiled from America in 1946, and now living permanently in Italy.<br /> <br /> The American contingent included in addition to Bonanno, Carmine Galante, John Bonventre, Frank Garofalo, Antonio, Giuseppe and Gaspare Maggadino from Buffalo, Johnny Priziola who ran Detroit, John Di Bella, Santo Sorge and Nick Gentile, who strictly speaking was Sicilian but who had spent over thirty years as part of the American Mafia, before returning to his homeland. <br /> <br /> Sorge is one of those figures that moves through the Mafia landscape like some kind of Van Helsing, a mythical character, searching not to destroy vampires, but to kill off, by guile and corruption, the bureaucrats in the law enforcement organizations that were seeking to eliminate his agencies of power and prestige. A man with contacts into the most important Mafia heads in America, equally at home with their counterparts in Sicily and most of all, a man with huge political influence in Italy. He maintained a respectable front in America, through directorships in Rimrock International Oil Company of New York and the Foreign Economic Research Association. Born in Mussomeli in Caltanisetta province, Sicily, he had become a naturalised American nine years before this meeting. <br /> <br /> In 1967, Sorge brought a libel suit against the City of New York and two senior police officers, both retired. Chief Inspector John F. Shaney, former head of the C.I.B. and Ralph Salerno, former supervisor of detectives, were also named in the defamation and libel case asking $418,000 in damages.<br /> <br /> Sorge was under indictment in Palermo, Sicily for criminal conspiracy as an alleged member of the Mafia, and the two police officers had given expert testimony for the prosecution. Salerno had testified that Sorge had close relationships with both Vito Genovese and Charley Luciano, when he had been alive, Carmine Galante and Joseph Bonanno. The two police officers had in fact been instructed by Police Commissioner Vincent L. Broderick to testify before Judge Aldo Vigneri of the Palermo Penal Court, who had visited America in order to accept depositions. The judge had also gone to visit Joe Valachi in Washington. <br /> <br /> According to Joe:<br /> <br /> ‘Santo Sorge belongs to the the Cosa Nostra. It is my personal knowledge that his function was to go and come from America to Italy and vice-versa, carrying out tasks that I don’t know. I was never able to understand to what family he belongs. He was a close friend of all Cosa Nostra bosses.’<br /> <br /> Sorge was also deep into another libel suite brought against Parade Publications for $1,160,000 on the basis of a magazine article which had said that Sorge was listed by former FBN Commissioner, Harry Anslinger, as the number 5 boss in the top 10 bosses of the American underworld.<br /> <br /> The libel suit against New York and the two officers was dismissed on March 19th 1968.<br /> <br /> Santo Sorge was without doubt, one of the great 'unknowns' of the American Mafia.<br /> <br /> Sorge’s cousin in Sicily, Giuseppe Genco Russo, led the Sicilian contingent at the Palermo meeting, along with the two La Barbera brothers, Salvatore and Angelo, also Vincent Rimi of Alcamo and Diego Plaja, Don Mimi La Fata, Calcedonio Di Pisa, Salvatore Greco, and Charley Luciano. Almost every man in the meeting was a drug trafficker. Some years later, Italian judge, Aldo Vigneri, issued warrants, indicting them for 'organizing the drug traffic to the United States via Sicily.' <br /> <br /> Also present during these four days of high level power talks was one Tommaso Buscetta, (Don Massino,) a member of the Porta Nuova Mafia family of Palermo city, and the most important pentiti or Mafia informer in Sicily, when he broke the code of omerta in 1984. It was he, who revealed that the meeting took place and disclosed for the first time the link between the American and Sicilian arms of the Mafia.<br /> <br /> Just what went on here for four days has never been disclosed in detail, but what went on over the next thirty years seems to indicate that the American delegation asked their Sicilian counterparts to take over the export and distribution of heroin into the United States. It may also have been the time that Galante discovered the benefit of using home grown boys from Sicily, back in New York, and the beginning of the flow from Sicily into America, of the men who came to be known as the zips. <br /> <br /> Salvatore Greco ran a fleet of merchant ships, under Honduras flags, that transported huge amounts of heroin, purchased through Frank Coppola, an old friend of Luciano, into Cuba, and the Sicilians were going to be flooding drugs into the United States with or without the American Mafia's help, so it probably made sense for everyone to cooperate. The zips would be a vital link in the chain connecting the importation and distribution of heroin on the eastern seaboard in the years to come.<br /> <br /> Another interesting bye-product of the meeting in Palermo was the suggestion that it determined and organized the murder of Albert Anastasia, who was gunned down in a barber shop in a mid-town Manhattan hotel, eleven days after the convention in Palermo had ended. Italian police documents submitted to Judge Vignari in 1964 stated that the Palermo meeting confirmed the elimination of Anastasia, to be organized by Vito Genovese and Carlo Gambino, and that two sicari (assassins) were to be sent over to New York to do the shooting. <br /> <br /> Every man and his dog seems to have killed 'The Mad Hatter,' so why not a couple of Sicilian hit men?<br /> <br /> Eighteen days after Anastasia’s death-on November 12th 1957- an elite group of Cosa Nostra members met secretly in Livingston, New Jersey from about noon, until five the next morning. Twenty four hours later, Sergeant Edgar Croswell, the same state trooper approached in 1956 and offered a bribe to release Galante, stumbled over almost the entire American Mafia leadership attending another conference at the home of Joseph Barbara near the village of Apalachin. (David link in here to my Apalachin Story.)<br /> <br /> Like some hoodlum college of cardinals, they had come to congregate at the See of Apalachin to convene something, no one ever learned just what, as the meeting broke up in chaos and men fled or were arrested, leaving the property.<br /> <br /> It is more than possible, that both Bonanno and Galante attended this meeting. Joe claims he wasn’t there; a man detained simply was carrying his driving license. Galante was certainly not detained, but may have been one of the possible 40 or so men who escaped the police blockade. FBI files indicate he avoided police by hiding in a cornfield. One of Barbara's housekeepers tentatively identified Carmine Galante, as being one of several men who were still at Barbara's a day after the fiasco.<br /> <br /> One of the men who was detained, was a 60 year old Sicilian called Salvatore Tornabe, who lived on 2nd Avenue in Manhattan. He was employed as a salesman by the Sunland Beverage Company, which was owned by Joe Magliocco, the under boss of the Profaci Mafia family. Both Magliocco and Joe Profaci were among the men detained by the state troopers lead by Croswell. Among Tornabe’s effects, the cops found a note written partly in English and partly in Italian by Tornabe. It kept referring to and 'Acqua-Velva', which may have been a phonetic spelling of Acquavella, and not a reference to the after shave lotion. The note seemed to suggest that both Tornabe and Galante may have been staying with Barbara on the night before the police raid.<br /> <br /> According to Douglas Valentine in his biography of the FBN, one of the attendees at the hotel summit meeting in Palermo, was Philip Buccola, who had headed up the Boston branch of the Mafia before returning to live permanently in Sicily in 1954. He made a return visit to the USA, arriving in Boston two weeks before the mob meeting took place, and the FBN, while bugging his phone, discovered about Apalachin, and that in fact agents of the bureau had tipped off Sergeant Croswell about what was about to take place. This was never confirmed by Croswell. <br /> <br /> After the disclosure and publicity generated by the Apalachin bust, Galante disappeared from view. An article in the New York Herald Tribune dated January 8th 1958, claimed he had fled to Italy to link up and seek refuge with Charley Luciano, for whom he 'used to run drugs in Harlem.' Another report had him meeting up with Joe Adonis, another major ex-New York mobster living in exile in Italy. On January 9th the New York American Journal reported he had been seen in Havana on January 7th and it was suggested he was seeking to move in on the lucrative gambling concession at the Sans Souci Hotel and Casino. He may also have detoured to the Dominican Republic. For a man with a reported IQ of 90, he was fluent not only in a number of Italian dialects, but also in French and Spanish, and sure knew how to handle air line schedules. <br /> <br /> By April 1958, he was back in New York, and reportedly staying in suite 10A of the Alrae Hotel on East 64th Street. <br /> <br /> In July, he was indicted as part of a major, and complex drug bust carried out by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Among the many gangsters who were hauled in on this, were Vito Genovese, John Ormento, Joe Di Palermo, and Vincent Gigante. Released on bail, Galante went on the lam, staying free until June 2nd 1959.<br /> <br /> It's interesting to observe that both the FBN and the FBI were both keeping tabs on Galante at this time. Special Agent in Charge E.J. McCabe, (FBI,) noted in an internal memo, that 'Carmine Galante is one of the most important hoodlums we have under investigation.'<br /> <br /> The FBN (Federal Bureau of Narcotics) received a tip-off, and working in conjunction with the New Jersey State Police, two of their top agents, Marty Pera and Bill Rowan, set out to arrest him. They tracked him down to a home owned by Gary Muscatello of Union City. With two companions, Galante drove away from this property at 212, North Sunset Drive on Pelican Island, on the south Jersey shore, in a white Chevy convertible, plate number-RI 8208. <br /> <br /> On the Garden State Parkway, near Holmdale, the cops pulled him over. With him in the car, was the ubiquitous Angelo Presinzano, and another cousin, Anthony Macalusco. They were all arrested. <br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236991661,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Just how Galante got caught on this occasion, reveals a fascinating insight into the machinations of the Bureau of Narcotics, the only federal agency at this time, that really understood the Mafia and how it worked. George Gaffney, who headed the New York office of the bureau for four years, claimed that although 'their entire national budget was only 4% of all federal law enforcement expenditure, and their force only totalled 187 agents nationwide, they were responsible for 20% of the federal prison population, and put away more Mafia hoods than all other agencies combined.'<br /> <br /> Agent Pera, through a New York Police contact, obtained a wiretap on the telephone of Joseph Notaro, a skipper in a Bonanno crew based in Newark, New Jersey. ('Bayonne Joe' Zicarelli was a soldier in his crew at this time.) Notaro acted as a message centre for Galante. Checking calls, Pera discovered the name of one Sal Giglio, a fifty-three year old mobster connected into both Notaro and Galante. He was in essence their point man in Cuba, linked into a group of Corsican drug smugglers based there. He had also operated out of Montreal, replacing Tony Marulli, as Galante’s manager, sometime in 1957, working closely with Quebecois gangster, Lucien Rivard, who was a major drug dealer and illegal arms importer into Canada from Cuba, where he ran a casino.<br /> <br /> Giglio also worked with Peppe Cotroni, and his brother Vic, the major drug smugglers, to re-establish the drug pipeline between Montreal and Marseilles, France.<br /> <br /> While this was going on, Pera's partner, Agent Bill Rowan, had come across a copy of a Canadian newspaper, that featured a wedding photograph of Giglio, and his new bride, Florence Anderson, a waitress at the El Morocco Casino, in Cuba, ( a favourite meeting place for Galante, Giglio and their European dealers,) taken on March 22nd. The problem was, Sal's first wife, Mary Fanale, wasn't in on the plot. <br /> <br /> Pera visited Giglio at his home at 2760 Grand Concourse, in the Bronx, and while Mary was happy, cooking away in the kitchen, the two men sat in the living room, where Pera disclosed the incriminating photograph.<br /> <br /> Using this as a hard edge, he persuaded Giglio to drop a dime on his friend and partner, Carmine, and in return, Mary would hear nothing about this other bride down in Cuba. Sal presumably kept on doing what he did best, drug trafficking through Cuba and Montreal into New York. Somehow, Galante never learned of his perfidy, which would have resulted in instant death for Giglio; seemingly the FBN kept its word, and Giglio was still alive in 1970, when he surfaced in Los Angeles, and was arrested on an old 1959 drug charge still outstanding against him. He was last heard of living in Florida in 1998, at the grand old age of 92!<br /> <br /> On June 3rd Carmine Galante was released on bail of $100,000, by Judge Sylvester Ryan of the Southern District Court. It would take almost a further two years before he came to trial on his drug trafficking offences. He surrendered to the Federal Court, Southern District, on May 17th 1960, pleading not guilty before Judge M.C. Cohey, and again was released on bail. During this period, he was living at 40 Park Avenue, in Manhattan. He finally went to trial on January 20th 1961, the presiding judge, Thomas F. Murphy, revoking his bail. On May 15th there was a mistrial declared. One of the jurors, the foreman in fact, a man called Harry Appel, a 68 year old dress manufacturer, fell down a flight of stairs, in a building off 15th Street in Lower Manhattan, and broke his back injuring himself severely. It was generally believed that he fell, mainly because he was pushed. This time, Galante was allowed bail, and went free on bond of $135,000. <br /> <br /> His second trial began in April 1962, and there was chaos in the courtroom when one of the defendants, Anthony Mirra, an upcoming associate of the Bonanno family, and a man as equally as vicious and unstable as Galante, picked up a chair and threw it at the prosecutor. It missed him, and smashed into the jury box. Other defendants screamed and shouted throughout the proceeding, but in the end, to no avail. Galante was found guilty.<br /> <br /> On July 10th 1962, he was sentenced to thirty years in prison. The U.S. Congress had passed a draconian Narcotics Control Act in 1956, signed by President Eisenhower on July 18, and Galante was one of 206 big time Mafia gangsters caught by authorities under this law, according to testimony given by Henry Giordano, commissioner of the FBN, at the McClellan Committee Hearings in 1963. Galante was held in the Federal Detention Centre, at 427 West Street, New York before being sent first to Alcatraz and then to Lewisburg Penitentiary, Leavenworth and finally Atlanta to serve out his sentence. It would be the longest time he was to spend behind bars. He was eventually released from prison in January, 1974, but would remain on bail until 1981.<br /> <br /> His time in Lewisburg Penitentiary was not totally unpleasant. He had his own cell in G Block, known by the inmates as Mafia Row, and it was here that he developed a life long interest and pleasure in growing plants and flowers. He was also allowed three cats as company, and spent many hours in the prison jail, keeping fit. He became a close friend of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-disappearance-of-jimmy">Jimmy Hoffa</a>, and apparently ruled the block with an iron hand.<br /> <br /> Back in New York, he was ready and anxious to resume his life of crime, take over the Bonanno crime family and become the dominant mobster in the city. To make a point that he was back, he allegedly arranged to have the bronze doors on the tomb of Frank Costello, (who had died the previous year,) in Greenwood Cemetery, blown off their hinges. He also threatened to do some awful things to Carlo Gambino, who he hated with a passion for his part in the Commission’s (the ruling council of the American Mafia) decision to overthrow Joseph Bonanno. According to police informers, when he spoke of Gambino, he would literally quiver with rage. In addition, he had to resolve the problem of the leadership of his own crime family.<br /> <br /> Following the ‘Banana War’ and the de-throning of Joe Bonanno in the late 1960’s, there had been a series of boss re-placements in the family. On August 28th 1973, the current head, Natale Evola died of cancer, and was replaced by Philip 'Rusty' Rastelli. When Galante emerged from federal prison, he made it quite clear he was going to be the top dog. Rastelli, who was no slouch himself in the toughness stakes, resisted the move, until one day his son-in-law, James Fernades was gunned down in broad daylight on a Brooklyn street. 'Rusty' got the message and moved aside gracefully, but as it turned out, only temporarily.<br /> <br /> Galante listed his official residence at this time, as Apartment #8, 160 Waverley Place, in Greenwich Village, but in fact lived with Anne his live-in partner, at apartment #20B, 155 East 38th Street in Murray Hill. The FBI kept him under observation, jogging near the East River Drive, moving in and out of L & T Cleaners on Elizabeth Street in Little Italy, one of the business’s he owned, stopping to choose fruit at his favourite store in the village, Balducci’s, or lingering over an espresso and pastries at De Roberts on First Avenue before lunching at Tre Amic restaurant on Third Avenue. Sometimes they watched him as he walked through the teeming streets of Lower Manhattan, like a patriarchal Don moving through a village in Sicily, balding and with a bent walk, puffing on the perennial cigar, his people, the paesani, approaching him to touch his arm or bow in reverence, like a scene out of some Mafia movie. <br /> <br /> Mobsters in New York, salivated over the thought of what they thought they were, rather than accepting the reality of what they in fact, really were-dysfunctional criminals on the road to nowhere. The line between myth and reality blurred considerably following the screening of The Godfather in the earl 1970’s.<br /> <br /> Nearing seventy, Galante seems to have given up driving, and when he needed to travel by car, he used a bodyguard, or often his favourite daughter, the beautiful, dark-haired, Nina, his youngest child by his de facto wife, who would chauffer him in a gold coloured Eldorado. At least every two weeks, he would cross over to Brooklyn, and visit a business run by his son-in-law, Louis Volpe, called the Magic Lantern Bar, at 1625 Bath Avenue, in Bensonhurst, and would sit all night conducting what seemed to be business meetings with his associates. <br /> <br /> He was often observed with dark-skinned, swarthy Italians, and they spoke only in the Sicilian dialect as they discussed their business. These were the hungry and ambitious young Mafiosi he had imported from the island following his visit there in 1957. He was allowing them to set up their own crews and establish business interests, especially on Knickerbocker Avenue in Brooklyn- bakeries, pizza parlours, pastry shops, and cafes. These were the zips, men who would become his right arm- soldiers and bodyguards- who talked so fast, they had this nickname pinned on them by the Italian-American gangsters, who formed the main structure of the Bonanno crime family. The imports were a different breed to their American counterparts. Some sources claim the knick-name also referred to the Sicilian term for 'bumpkin,' others that is was a verbalization of the Italian food ziti. The zips were also known as siggies or geeps. Ironically, the older, original Sicilian Mafiosi who operated before Prohibition, often called ‘Moustache Petes,’ were also referred to as zips.<br /> <br /> According to Vincent Teresa, a Boston hoodlum who had served time in prison with Galante, '…these Sicilian mafiosi will run into a wall, put their head in a bucket of acid for you if they’re told to, not because they’re hungry, but because they’re disciplined. They have been brought up from birth over there to show respect and honour, and that’s what these punks over here don’t have. Once they’re told to get someone, that person hasn’t a chance.'<br /> <br /> Between his release from prison in January 1974, and his lunch appointment on July 12th 1979, Carmine Galante lead a hectic schedule.<br /> <br /> He took over a betting and loan-sharking racket operating in Pennsylvania Station that netted $500,000 a year. He put the pressure on a number of associates of Annielo Dellacroce, the Gambino family under boss, to sell him their interests in sweat shops in Manhattan, at heavily discounted rates. This may have been in retribution for Dellacroce ordering the murder of some of Galante’s drug dealing associates. The two men apparently hated each other with an unbridled passion <br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236991880,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />In March 1975, he travelled to Miami, Florida, booking into room 110 at the Diplomat Hotel on South Ocean Boulevard. He was registered there from the 27th until April 4th. On April 2nd he was arrested by agents of the Broward County Organized Crime Task Force for failing to register with the police that he was a convicted felon. <br /> <br /> Galante travelled to Los Angeles in August, 1975, to meet up with his contacts in Orange County. According to a source close to the Anaheim Police Department, he was organizing a possible take-over of the pornography rackets in Southern California. <br /> <br /> ‘Lilo’ was spotted meeting with people at Disneyland, dressed like a tourist in a white T shirt, sporting a ‘Coney Island hat’ and puffing away on his usual cigar. He was first spotted strolling down Main Street, and then he was seen in earnest conversation with a group of men as they banged around on the go-cart stand. He also spent time on payphones located outside the park’s main entrance, near the Mickey Mouse train stop.<br /> <br /> The major mob player in the porno business of Southern California, up to this time, was the Gambino Family through their capo, the seventy-one year old Ettore ‘Tony Russo’ Zappi. He and his son, Anthony, were managing the business using North Hollywood based William Haimowitz, a protégé of Zappi’s, who had moved from New York and set up shop with the help of Jimmy ‘The Weasel’ Fratiano, a member of the L.A. family, and Anaheim based John Lombardozzi, the brother of another powerful capo, Carmine Lombardozzi, who belonged to Carlo Gambino‘s crime family back in New York.<br /> <br /> Galante’s man in the porn business, Mickey Zaffarano, was making major inroads into the industry, stealing business away from the Gambino representatives, and one of the reasons for Galante’s visit, may well have revolved around these activities. Galante was also seen with these people at a restaurant in a major city in Los Angeles County, and meetings between porn operators and the Mafia representatives took place while Galante was visiting the area. Underworld sources indicated that Galante also had ambitions to consolidate Colombo and Luchese family members who operated here in Southern California, into one super family.<br /> <br /> In the early 1960s, organized crime had established a west coast base of operations in the San Fernando Valley. The Colombo crime family sent people out with money to start their west coast operations. It became the very first pornography business that created a corporate structure for the different parts of the business - distributing, producing, recruiting participants for the movies, filming, packaging, advertising, they created different corporate identities to make law enforcement think it was all owned by different people. Joe ‘The Whale’ Peraino and his brother Louis, both made men in the Colombo crime family, were the producers of the innovative and ground-breaking film, ‘Deep Throat.’<br /> <br /> There was obviously a deep load of potential money-making opportunities to be mined in Southern California for someone like Galante. He also was casting his ambitions beyond Los Angeles, and was tracked making visits to both Reno and Lake Tahoe.<br /> <br /> A few weeks before he made this trip, on June 28th, his eldest daughter by Anne Acquavella, Mary Lou, married Craig Tobiano at Our Saviours Catholic Church, on Park Avenue. The wedding was followed by cocktails at 5.30 p.m. then dinner, in the Cortillion Room of the august Pierre Hotel, across the street from Central Park. As mob weddings go, it wasn’t that big a deal, with only 160 guests attending.<br /> <br /> Dyker Heights is a quiet, residential neighbourhood in south-west Brooklyn, butting onto Bay Ridge. Its population is 70% Italian-American. When it was first developed as a housing area in 1895, it was listed as ‘The handsomest suburb in Greater New York.’ It’s home to the Scarpaci Funeral Home on 86th Street, long a final resting place for many New York Mafia mobsters.<br /> <br /> A few blocks to the north-west, 80th Street, runs between 10th and 11th Avenues. Here, on this narrow, one-way road, lined by neat, red-bricked houses, with orderly front yards, the sidewalks lined with maple trees, a van was parked, sometime between the evening of Monday October 6th and Tuesday, 7th 1975 . When police came to investigate what seemed to be an abandoned vehicle, they found inside, the bodies of two men, each wrapped in a blanket, secured by a cord. Each victim had been shot in the head, and according to the medical examiner, had been dead at least 24 hours.<br /> <br /> The van had been reported stolen from the Bath Beach area the previous weekend.<br /> <br /> The men were identified as George Adamo, aged 33, of Brooklyn, and Charles LaRocca, aged 28, of Jackson Heights, Queens. They were both associates of the Gambino family, and known narcotic traffickers.</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236992098,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p><br /> <br /> They may well have been the victims of a complex mob message sent to Galante by a man he apparently hated and feared-Annielo Delacroce- the underboss of the Gambino crime family, using the boss of another family to get the point home. <br /> <br /> It’s likely these two men had been dealing drugs with ‘Lilo,’and Carlo Gambino, a close friend of ‘Funzi’ Tieri, head of the Genovese family, finding out, had arranged with him to have the men killed by some of Tieri’s top killers. These men were part of a New Jersey based crew of the Genovese family, that had shifted its power base over to Brooklyn, following the death of it’s capo, notorious and legendary Mafioso, Angelo ‘Gyp’ DeCarlo. The new skipper, Frank Casina, was very close to Tieri, and another soldier in this crew was Tommy Lombardi.<br /> <br /> ‘Funzi’ Tieri, it’s believed, contacted Angelo Presinzano, using Tommy Lombardi as a go-between, and gave him a message to deliver to his cousin : <br /> <br /> ‘Tell ‘Lilo’ if he has anything coming, let him come round and see me.’<br /> <br /> Whatever else he was, Galante certainly was not a fool, and never bothered to try and recover whatever was outstanding. Alphonse Tieri, slight in stature, well into his sixties, was not only the boss of probably the biggest Cosa Nostra family in America, he also had a reputation for unbridled ferocity. A man who dressed in $1000 suits and sported mountains of expensive jewellery, he could turn a monster hoodlum into a puppy with a well-chosen word or even just the right look.<br /> <br /> The two dead men had been close to Carmine Consalvo, another underworld drug dealer, a major cocaine trafficker, who had taken a dive off his condominium in Fort Lee, New Jersey, a month earlier, to be followed later in the year by his brother Frances, better known as Frank, who went free-fall from the fifth floor of a high rise in Little Italy, Manhattan. Underworld sources claimed the men were killed by members of Vincent Gigante’s crew. The authorities came to dub these two killings, ‘The Murder of the Flying Consalvos.’ Frank had been a driver for Dellacroce in the early ‘70’s, and both men were thought to be associates of the Gambino family.<br /> <br /> These four killings in 1975, may have been only part of a series of underworld hits that went down following Galante’s release from prison, as he fought to re-establish his power base on the streets of New York, and other mobsters like Dellacroce and Alphonse Tieri went out of their way to make it difficult for him to do so.<br /> <br /> The New Jersey based Bank of Bloomfield went into receivership in December, 1975, mainly, by offering unsecured loans to mobsters from New England to Florida via various Teamster’s locals. Arnold Daner a business associate of the bank’s chief executive, Robert Prodan, gave evidence that $25000 was paid from the bank’s funds via intermediaries, to Carmine Galante during 1975. ‘Lilo’ was a man who looked at any source it seems, to provide him with the lubrication necessary to keep the wheels of his empire rolling. <br /> <br /> In August 1976, Galante organized the purchase of a summer home for his newly married daughter, paying $60,000 for a property at the corner of Tulip Avenue and Wakeman Road, in Hampton Bays, Long Island. He would often spend his weekends here gardening, enjoying his love of plants which he had developed during his long incarceration in federal prison on his drug conviction. On Labour weekend he organized a meeting among crime bosses at this secluded holiday hideout. Among those attending was Russell A. Bufalino, the mob boss of North East Pennsylvania, and the ubiquitous Angelo Presinzano.<br /> <br /> On Friday, September 25th 1976, 62 year old Andimo Pappadio and his wife returned home in his Cadillac, from an evening out. As he was parking his wife’s Cadillac into their garage, prior to moving his own onto their driveway, he noticed a maroon coloured sedan sitting across the street from his luxurious home on Eva Drive in Lido Beach. He went across to investigate and was felled by shotgun blasts fired from with the car, which roared of down the street, as his wife Eleanor Rose came running and screaming out of their house.<br /> <br /> Pappadio, a capo in the Luchese Family, and a major enforcer of his family’s interests in the garment centre of New York, had worked with Galante in the 1950’s, in the junk business. NYPD intelligence units posed that Pappadio had moved in on some of Galante’s gambling business, when ‘Lilo’ was away in prison, and this was pay-back time. Like so many underworld killings, this one was never solved.<br /> <br /> In April, 1977, ‘Lilo’ was back in the south, this time visiting a sick crime associate who was hospitalized in Dallas. In August he was again in Miami, appearing in the US District Court before a Grand Jury. As he always did, Galante took the 5th and was then taken into custody, being released on bail of $50,000 on September 3rd. <br /> <br /> Returning to New York, he went to stay at the summer home at Tulip Lane, on Long Island, and fell down some stairs. He was taken to the local hospital, treated for a groin injury, and released. Four days later, the FBI surveillance team tailing him, saw him go into a mob social club at 1657, Bath Avenue, in the Bensonhurst district of Brooklyn.<br /> <br /> On the night of July 6th 1977, two men humped 210 gallons of gasoline into Giuseppe’s Pizza Restaurant in Ambler, Pennsylvania. They had intended to light a fuse and watch the building go up from a safe distance. Instead, they got careless, and ‘boom’. There was nothing left of one of them but biscuit size pieces, but the second was identified as Vincenzo Fiordilino of Brooklyn, the 22 year old nephew of Giovanni Fiordilino, a member of the Bonanno family. The bombing, according to police intelligence, was one of dozens of torch jobs blowing up pizza parlours in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and New York. They believed Carmine Galante was orchestrating a move to push the Gambino family out of the cheese business, a hugely lucrative operation supplying hundreds of restaurants across the tri-state area, one that Joe Bonanno had controlled in his halcyon days, through companies like Grand Cheese Products Inc. of Font Du Lac, Wisconsin. It was another example of Galante’s determination to aggravate Dellacroce and the administration of the Gambino family. <br /> <br /> Before his visit to Florida, a year following the first of the six killings that would occur across New York, a story circulated that Galante had put out an A.P.B. on ‘The Son of Sam’ killer, ordering his small army of Mafiosi and associates to use all their underworld contacts to help track down the killer. David Berkowitz was in fact captured on August 10th but as a result of detective work by the Yonkers police department and not as a result of some mob informant. <br /> <br /> On October 11th Galante was arrested by US Marshals operating out of the SDNY office and taken into custody on charges of parole violation. He had been caught in a surveillance sweep meeting with known mobsters. He was committed to prison in 1978, at the medium-security federal prison at Danbury, Connecticut, and placed under 24 hour a day guard as threats had been made against him.<br /> <br /> During the time he was in prison, he was visited often by Anthony Spero. He had became the consigliere, or counsellor of the Bonanno Family in 1968 after Joe Bonanno and his immediate family left New York for Tucson, Arizona., at the end of the Bannana War. The diminutive Spero dated back to the 1950's, when he was a soldier under Carmine Galante in Brooklyn and later moved up to Capo, or crew chief. A serious money-maker for the family, he generated revenue in gambling, loan-sharking, hotel and motel franchising and in the taxi-limousine service. An avid bird-fancier, he kept 300 exotic birds on the roof of his social club on Bath Avenue, in Brooklyn. He had been seen making frequent trips to Lewisburg to visit the imprisoned Carmine Galante in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. Through Spero, Galante kept control of his troops, issuing messages and orders.<br /> <br /> The court ordered the release of Carmine Galante in October 1978 on the basis of a brief filed by Jerry Rosenberg as Galante's petitioner. Rosenberg, serving life without parole, known in the prison system as ‘Jerry the Jew,‘ was convicted of killing two policemen in New York City during a hold up in May 1962. But a correspondence school in Illinois has granted him two law degrees. A paperback has been written on his life, and Hollywood turned that into a TV movie titled ‘Doing Life.’ The diminutive Galante and hyper-active Rosenberg would indeed have made an ‘odd couple’ at Auburn Prison, in upstate New York.<br /> <br /> On March 1st 1979, Galante left Milan Prison in Michigan, and flew into La Guardia Airport. He was back in the volcano, as Joe Bonanno used to refer to New York, and had four months to live.<br /> <br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/death-in-the-afternoon-the-1"><span style="font-size:x-large;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">READ PART 2</span></span></a></p>
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Death in the Afternoon, The shadow of a Dream: The Story of Carmine Galante (Part 2)
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/death-in-the-afternoon-the-1
2010-11-24T10:00:00.000Z
2010-11-24T10:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><span style="font-weight:bold;"><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/death-in-the-afternoon-the">Back to part 1</a><br /> <br /> During Lunch</span><br /> <br /> As his nephew drove away from the drop-off, Galante walked into the restaurant, whose front windows were masked by yellow curtains. It was a favourite meeting place, where he often arranged sit-downs with his closest associates. Knickerbocker Avenue had for over 50 years been the turf of the Bonanno crime family, according to FBI files, and an ant-heap of underworld activity.<br /> <br /> Galante had placed Salvatore ‘Toto’ Catalano, who had moved to New York from Sicily, in 1961, and was now one of his capos, in charge of the area. He based himself at Colosseo Imports, a magazine and record store, run by his brothers, Vito and Domick. ‘Toto’ had stepped up after Peter Licata, an old time Bonanno skipper had been shot dead in November, 1976, allegedly by Cesare Bonventre, now one of Galante’s bodyguards. Licata had been deep into drug trafficking along with Galante and Cristoforo Robino, a powerful capo in the Colombo crime family, until he was murdered. Catalano would himself become notorious for his connection into the famous ‘Pizza Connection’ case, a Mafia-backed drug racket, operated in part through pizza parlours, that imported an estimated $1.6 billion worth of heroin into the United States up to 1984, when Federal Bureau of Investigation raids broke the case.<br /> <br /> The avenue was filled with violent and improbable mobsters, crowding the sidewalks and meeting at the major intersection points for the Bonanno family members in this part of Brooklyn-the Café Del Viale, Café Dello Sport and Café Bella Palermo.<br /> <br /> Joe Turano, the owner of Joe and Mary’s restaurant, did a thriving business in hi-jacked meat. There was Luigi Ronsisvalle, an imported killer from Catania, with 13 hits to his credit. Paolo Laporte, an armourer for the hoods who filled the cafés and pizza shops. Vinceno ‘Enzo’ Napoli, a member of the Gambino family and a major fence for the New York underworld. Giusepp Ganci, known as ‘The Buffalo,’ a big time drug dealer working closely with Catalano. He had moved to Brooklyn from San Giuseppe Iato, the Sicilian Mafia stronghold across the hills from Corleone. Anthony Aiello, aka ‘Commerciante,’ a premier loan shark at the baccarat game held in the Café Del Viale, after it closed for normal business, on a busy block near Hart Street. Felice Puma, the godson of Carmine Galante, who ran the Café Scopello, and another drug dealer, who used Ronsisvalle as a driver and bodyguard, and Dominic ‘Mimmo’ Tartamella, who drove a red Porsche that was used to transport drug consignments between Florida and New York.<br /> <br /> Inside the small, two dining room eatery, walls papered in brown velvet and tables covered in yellow oil cloth, two men, Joe Paravati and his friend Joe Polizzi, along with another man, were eating at a table in the rear, just to the left of the door that lead out onto the two hundred square feet patio in the back yard. Here, a table was laid out for lunch- fish, salad and a jug of red wine. No pasta to-day.<br /> <br /> Galante stopped to talk to the old grandmother of the family, Constance, who was knitting at a table, and greeted his 48 year old cousin Joe, and his son and daughter, nodding at the cook-counterman, and then went through to sit outside, his back to the yard, a small garden of tomato vines. Here, he engaged in conversation with his other cousin, Angelo Presinzano, who was now aged 72. <br /> <br /> They had been together a long time, but although he was getting on in years, 'Moey' had still not lost his quick and fiery temper. During the 'Banana War' in the 1960s, he had been on one occasion, a patient in University Hospital, Manhattan, and kept a loaded .38 calibre revolver in his bedside cabinet. There's no doubt had someone come after him, there would have been a shoot-out in the ward.<br /> <br /> Galante and his cousin Joe, were also here to-day to meet with 40 year old Leonard 'Nardo' Coppolla, a close associate of Galante’s and former friend of Turano’s. <br /> <br /> In February, 1979, Coppolla and Turano had fallen out over a dispute involving Mary Turano, Joe’s wife, and Coppolla had been banned from ever entering the restaurant again. The dispute had been brought to Galante’s attention, and he had decided to arbitrate in the matter over lunch on this day. Also, Joseph was scheduled to leave later in the day and travel to Sardinia to meet up with his wife and another daughter who were both there on holiday, and Galante had come to wish him 'bon voyage.'<br /> <br /> At about one-thirty in the afternoon, the street door to the restaurant opened, and Coppolla walked in, accompanied by two tall, good-looking young Italians, both despite the heat, wearing heavy leather jackets to conceal handguns in their belts. They were two of Galante’s special, hand-picked bodyguards, Baldo Amato and Cesare Bonventre, cousins, who like Galante’s parents, came from Castellammarese del Golfo. The three men went out onto the patio and joined Galante, Turano and Presinzano. They chatted for a while, then the three newcomers went back into the restaurant and ate lunch. Galante and the other two met had already eaten and sat under the shade of a yellow-and-turquoise checked umbrella, smoking and talking among themselves. <br /> <br /> It was by now a stinking hot afternoon. <br /> <br /> Galante was still sitting, in front of the table, with his back to the small garden. The three newcomers, having finished their meal, went out onto the patio and joined the group there. Amato sat to his left and Bonventre on his right. Joe Turano, who had stripped off his shirt and was only wearing pants and his undershirt, lounged on a chair with his back to the open door leading into the restaurant. Coppola, a tall, slim man with heavy black hair, wearing a white shirt, light coloured slacks and black shoes, sat across from Bonventre, tucked into the corner, between the wire fence that divided off the next door property, and cluster of potted plants sitting against the outside wall of the restaurant.<br /> <br /> About two-thirty, the restaurant telephone rang. John Turano, the 18 year old son of Joe, answered it. He listened to the caller, James Galante who was calling to see if his uncle was still there. ‘I’ll be right over,’ he said. <br /> <br /> 'Little Moe' had been complaining about stomach pains, and Galante suggested he go home. He said his farewells and left. His were the most fortuitous cramps ever endured by anyone.<br /> <br /> It was now approximately 2.40 in the afternoon as a four-door, blue Mercury Montego, registration 270 NYU, pulled up outside the restaurant and double-parked in the street. The car had been stolen from Ozone Park, Queens, on June 13th. The driver, a red-striped ski mask covering his face, stepped out. He was hefting a .3030 M1 carbine. Three men, also wearing ski masks, left the car and jogged into the building.<br /> <br /> Just inside the doorway, hung a picture of 'The Last Supper.' On another wall was a signed, and fading photo of the old movie star, Fernando Lamas.<br /> <br /> The first gunman in, was carrying a pump action shotgun. He was tall and slim in dark clothes, his face covered by an olive gray ski mask. Behind him, came a medium sized man, swinging a double-barrelled shotgun, also masked. The third masked man, was smaller, but solid and heavily built, with a pot-belly. He was hefting a pistol. The first man stopped, and said, 'In the back, Sally.' As the men rushed the patio, John Turano screamed out in warning: 'Pappa,' and then ran towards a storeroom alongside the kitchen. He knew there was a loaded .38 revolver here, on a shelf, just inside the door. As he struggled to reach it, and keep the door closed, the pot-bellied gunman turned, forced open the door and shot him twice, in the back.<br /> <br /> Outside, Joe Turano was screaming: 'What are you doing?' The middle gunman stepped out on to the patio and levelled the double barrel shotgun and fired first, thirty pellets of buckshot catching Galante as he was rising from his chair. <br /> <br /> Joe Turano yelled again: 'What are you doing?' The first shooter jacked his pump action, pressed it towards Turano’s chest and blew him off his feet, the buckshot going through the upper body, leaving the paper wadding from the shell, embedded in the flesh, the shot going through the chest, passing through the lungs and severing major blood vessels in the neck and heart, tearing away the side of his face and part of his right shoulder. The gunman then swung away from Turano, jacking and firing three times into Galante, tearing lumps of muscle from his right arm, ripping into the side of his face and blowing out his left eye. As the old man pitched from his patio chair, the killer with the double-barrel fired a final blast into his back.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236976670,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236976670?profile=original" />Nardo Coppolla was pushing himself up and away from the table, as the man who had been sitting alongside him, pulled out a .30 calibre automatic and shot him once in the face, and then five times in the chest, tumbling him off his feet onto the concrete patio. As he sprawled face down, the killer with the pump action stepped forward, around the table, racked up a shell, and blasted off the top of his head, blowing his brains across the patio onto the restaurant wall, and then fired a final round into his back.<br /> <br /> Constanza Turano, 18, the other daughter of the family, crouched in terror behind a refrigerator in the kitchen area. She stared in horror through the doorway at the carnage taking place outside on the patio. The noise was deafening; there was gun smoke everywhere. She saw the other leather-jacketed man, the one with dark hair, kneeling behind an overturned table, a .38 revolver in his hand.<br /> <br /> Across the street at 202 Knickerbocker Avenue, a young woman, Migdalia Figuero, was preparing lunch. She looked out over the street on hearing the sound of gunfire, and saw the three gunmen race out of the building and jump into the car which sped off down the Knickerbocker, turning right into Jefferson Street and disappearing up towards Flushing Avenue. She memorized the plate number. She then saw two, tall, young men in leather jackets leaving. One, with dirty blond hair holding a handgun by his side, walked stiff-legged, as though he had wet himself. They quickly moved away down the Avenue, towards a blue Lincoln saloon, which they then climbed into, and then, they drove away. These two had been in an absolute blizzard of bullets, yet walked away dry. <br /> </p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236977264,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236977264?profile=original" /></p>
<p><br /> <br /> Over the next few minutes, police emergency service operators received twenty-three calls reporting that there had been a shooting at 205 Knickerbocker Avenue. <br /> <br /> A crowd was gathering outside the restaurant at exactly 3.20, as the first 83rd Precinct patrol car arrived. Officer John Bobot, gun drawn, was the first into the building. Soon ambulances arrived and Joe and John Turano were rushed away by ambulance. The son would survive. His father was not so lucky. He died on the way to Wyckoff Heights Hospital.<br /> <br /> By four o’clock, detectives from the Queens Homicide Task Force were clustered around the two bodies outside in the backyard. The patio was splashed with blood, and littered with double-0 shotgun and pistol shell casings; nineteen in all would be recorded. The concrete wall to the left of the door was splattered with brain matter. Wedged between the garden wall and the dining table, his head cocked over, his right handing resting on his hip, and a cigar shot to pieces, but still clenched between his dead lips, lay the body of Carmine Galante, flies crawling across his face as his blood oozed away down the six-inch drain in the concrete floor. On his left wrist his Cartier watch was still ticking. On the table, a half finished lettuce and tomato salad, some rolls, a peach and a half-empty carafe of red wine were standing on the floral-pattern, plastic tablecloth. One like it, from an adjoining table, would later be used to cover Galante’s corpse. Cops from the intelligence unit and agents of the FBI started arriving, and soon the restaurant was crowded with hard-faced men, taking notes and talking quietly to each other. Twenty New York City police detectives would be assigned to the inquiry<br /> <br /> The press arrived, and photographers were soon scrambling onto adjoining rooftops, anxious to get the best shots of the carnage carnival, photos that would fill the New York dailies the following morning. <br /> <br /> The detectives stepped gingerly around the debris littering the courtyard. One of the cops estimated a piece of Coppola’s brain, from the body, by tape measure, recording the distance as over eleven feet. <br /> <br /> Bill Clark, a lead detective on the investigation, attached to the organized-crime intelligence division, years down the track, became the executive producer of NYPD Blue, the popular cop show that ran for twelve years from 1993.<br /> <br /> Galante’s body was eventually carried out to a waiting hearse, four hours after he was gunned down, under the sign across the front of the restaurant: ‘We give special attention to Outgoing Orders.’<br /> <br /> The day after the hit, detectives from police intelligence, called on ‘Little’ Moe’ at his home on South 10th Street, in Brooklyn, not far from the East River.<br /> <br /> ‘We’re here to talk to you about Mr. Galante’s killing,’ one of the cops said.<br /> <br /> ‘Come back when I’m dead,’ said Moe, slamming the door in their face.<br /> <br /> There had been rumours of an impending hit on Galante for over two years. Like the man he most probably killed thirty-six years earlier on the streets of Manhattan, Carlo Tresca, he had many enemies. When someone asked him about the risk of assassination, he boasted, 'No one will ever kill me, they wouldn’t dare.' He couldn’t have been more wrong. The instrument of his ambition, the zips, the men he had encouraged and nurtured within the Bonanno family, became the implement of his destruction. It had never apparently occurred to Galante that the best bodyguards also make the best killers. <br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236977467,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236977467?profile=original" />After the autopsy, Galante’s body was laid out in Chapel B, on the second floor of the Provenzano-Lanza Funeral Home at 43 Second Avenue on the Lower East Side, and he was buried on July 17th at Saint John’s Cemetery in Queens, in section twenty-five. It was a small funeral, only fifty-nine mourners attended, including Helen Marulli, Nina in a black dress, and Galante’s lawyer, the infamous Roy Cohn. At the grave side, the priest pronounced that he would leave 'judgment to God,' as Nina placed a red rose on her beloved father’s coffin. Thirty four wreaths of flowers were delivered to the funeral home. One was contained in a purple ribbon that read ‘Dear Don Galante.’<br /> <br /> His gravestone is relatively unassuming, unlike some of the monolithic monuments to mob bosses like Joe Profaci and Charley Luciano, who also lie here in everlasting sleep, and located on the far south of the cemetery close to the never-ending traffic stream on Metropolitan Avenue. The granite block carries the inscription: ‘Love goes on Forever.’<br /> <br /> A federal agent who tracked the procession, remarked on the small entourage. <br /> <br /> ‘Galante was so bad,’ he said, ‘people didn’t want to see him, even when he was dead.’ Another commented on that fact that there wasn’t a made man to be seen.<br /> <br /> Even the men of his own crime family didn’t like him. Funerals tell observers a lot about the wise guys. This one was simple a blank screen.<br /> <br /> ‘Was he an actor?’ a young boy asked one of the police officers on guard duty.<br /> <br /> ‘No,’ replied the cop. ‘He was a gangster.’<br /> <br /> In a strange quirk, the mortician in charge of Galante’s embalming, moonlighted as the maitre’d at one of Lillo’s favourite restaurants, on the corner of 1st Avenue and 10th Street, also called Lanza‘s. Here, was a man who truly served Carmine Galante in life and death!<br /> <br /> Five days earlier, another epitaph had been recorded at the site of his murder. As the van taking Galante’s body drove off from the restaurant, a man in the crowd that had gathered, leaned forward and spat on the hearse. Someone asked him why he had done so. 'It was during the war and I was working very hard against the fascist Mussolini with my friend and hero, Carlo Tresca,' said Joseph Bricolli. 'Galante was the man who killed Tresca…..Garbage is what he was. He killed a hero and sold heroin to children.'<br /> <br /> Just why Galante was really killed and who all the killers were, will never be officially known. Benjamin Ruggiero, a soldier in the Bonanno family, claimed 'he got hit because he wouldn’t share his drug business with anyone else in the family.'<br /> <br /> According to Robert Stewart, head of the Newark Organized Crime Strike Force, and one of the lead prosecutors in the famous 'Pizza Connection Trial,' Galante was killed because he stood as an obstacle to Sal Catalano, Giuseppe Ganci and other major zips who were orchestrating the Bonanno family’s main drug distribution ring. <br /> <br /> In fact the government's allegation, in its opening statement to the jury during the famous 1985 'Pizza Connection Trial,' stated that Catalano was involved in the 1979 murder of Carmine Galante. Luigi Ronsisvalle told FBI agents that if they were looking at Catalano for the hit on ‘Lilo,’ they were on the right track.<br /> <br /> The Commission Case indictment, unsealed on February 26th 1985, included as one of the predicated acts of racketeering: ' that the murder of Carmine Galante and two of his associates was in furtherance of the Commission’s efforts to resolve a Bonanno family leadership dispute.'<br /> <br /> So as often in gangland hits, you pays your money, and takes your pick.<br /> <br /> <span style="font-weight:bold;">After Lunch</span><br /> <br /> The law did however, get one of the killers, and it is safe to assume the identity of the other two, or at least an educated guess. Bruno Indelicato, son of 'Sonny Red' a capo in the family, had certainly been in that blue Mecury Montego saloon. His palm print was found on the car when it was discovered abandoned only a few blocks away, on Ingraham Street, near Gardner Avenue, less than half a mile from the scene of the shooting, in an industrial area to the north of the restaurant. That was enough to get him tracked down and arrested. Underworld sources claimed his father was in on the hit also, maybe the driver. Then again, the driver, or indeed one of the killers, may have been Louis ‘Louie Gaeta’ Giongetti, who was named in a U.S. Court of Appeals judgement determined on January 13th 1989 as part of the conspiracy. He may however, have only been the armourer for the hit.<br /> <br /> Bruno was tried as part of the Commission Case, for the murder of Carmine Galante, and sentenced to forty years in prison. A fingerprint clue on a door handle, led to another soldier in the Bonanno family, a man called Santo Giordano, an auto-mechanic and part-time pilot, but he died in a plane crash in 1983, at Edwards Airport, near Blue Point, Long Island, before a case could be developed against him. The third shooter, the thickset thug with the big belly, may well have been Dominic Trinchera, who was promoted to the position of capo, or crew boss, in the family, not long after Galante was killed. The identity of the car driver was never established for certain.<br /> <br /> In a Supreme Court appeal judgment on petition for a writ for certiorari Number 88-1881 in 1989, following the prison sentence of Bruno Indelicato, the following information appeared: <br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">Petitioner, a soldier in the Bonanno family, and fellow Bonanno soldier Dominic Trinchera, among others, carried out the Commission's plan to assassinate Galante and his associates. They prepared for the murders for several months, obtaining a stolen getaway car and a cache of firearms. The man who supplied the weapons testified that Trinchera had boasted that his position in the family would improve after the executions. Pet. App. 7a, 47a, 49a; Gov't En Banc Br. 9-11.</span> <br /> <br /> Trinchera’s dizzy rise to power didn’t last for long. In 1981 he, and two other family capi, 'Sonny Red' Indelicato, Bruno's father, and Philip Giaccone were all murdered as a result of a power struggle taking place in the Bonanno family, which may have had its roots in the events leading up to Galante’s murder. Interestingly, in the wild shoot out that occurred in a building owned by Sammy Gravanao of the Gambino Family, one of the shooters, was Santo Giordano, who was accidentally hit, and as a result became a paraplegic. Because of his disability, whenever he flew his aircraft, he always needed a co-pilot, who unfortunately was with him that day when the plane did a nose-dive, shortly after take off.<br /> <br /> As the shooting was taking place in Brooklyn, across the East River in Manhattan’s Little Italy, Detective John Gurnee of the NYPD was staked out on surveillance of the Gambino crime family’s Mulberry Street headquarters. <br /> <br /> Sitting in an apartment across the street he and his team, had cameras zoomed onto the frontage of the Ravenite Social Club, the base of Anniello Dellacroce, the powerful under boss of the family. About thirty minutes after the shooting went down, Gurnee filmed a brown Lincoln limousine pull up and double park on the sidewalk. The driver, a tallish, thin man, was observed taking a pistol from the dashboard and tucking it into his waistband. The cops on surveillance recognized him as Bruno Indelicato. Then, his father, 'Sonny Red' arrived followed by the Bonanno consigliere, Stefano Cannone, J.B. Indelicato, the brother of ‘Sonny Red,’ and Phillip Giaccone. They were all welcomed and hugged by Dellacroce. What was the possible connection to this meeting and the death of Galante? <br /> <br /> Were the Gambino and Bonanno families working in conjunction? According to indictments in the Commission case, the hit on Galante was cleared specifically by Aniello Dellacroce, in conjunction with Philip Rastelli.<br /> <br /> Only a few days previously, the ‘other’ ruling head of the Bonanno family, 'Rusty' Rastelli, imprisoned in the MCC building in Manhattan having been convicted of Hobbs Act and criminal anti-trust violations in 1976 and sentenced to ten years imprisonment had been inundated with visitors, including Joey Massino and Dominick Napolitano, both seasoned veterans in the family, Nicky Marangello, Stefano Cannone, Philip Giaccone, Armand Pollastrino and Frank Lupo. <br /> <br /> Underworld informers confirmed that a top level meeting had gone down in Florida, at the Boca Raton home of Gerry Catena, the retired Genovese family capo, who many believed actually ran the family, after Vito Genovese was sent off to prison on drug charges in 1959. <br /> <br /> It was rumoured that Frank Tieri, the current boss of that family, along with Paul Castellano, head of the Gambino crime family, and Anthony Corallo, boss of the Luchese family, were among the powerful underworld heads of state who arbitrated, then agreed that Galante had to go. It was even rumoured that Joseph Bonanno, the seventy-four year old, disposed former family boss, was contacted at his home in Arizona to put the final stamp of approval on the plan. It's possible that Aniello Dellacroce himself, travelled to Tucson, where the elder Bonanno lived, to confirm that the hit was going down and to ensure that Joe would not use the killing as an opportunity to re-ignite his interest in the families affairs. <br /> <br /> Vito De Filippo, the nephew of Joe Bonanno, was a capo in the family. He had moved to New York from Sicily in 1955, and may have been running a casino in Port au Prince, Haiti for Joe. He was family, and he was close to the patriarch. Some sources claim it was he in fact who was ordered by the Commission to make the journey to Tucson and break the news about the intended Galante killing.<br /> <br /> The only reigning family head in New York to oppose the hit was apparently Carmine Persico, leader of the Colombo family. This came out in the 1986 Colombo Family trial testimony of Fred DeChristopher, the cousin of Persico, who recalled a conversation he’d had with Persico, who’d said, ‘……quite frankly, I voted against him getting hurt.’<br /> <br /> In the appeal hearing following the famous ‘Commission Case’ the judges of the 2nd Circuit found in 868 F. 2nd 524 1989:<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">Finally, there was testimony from an undercover agent that, because of the Bonanno family's internal dissension and instability, the Commission controlled that family very closely. At the time of the murder, there was an internal dispute between rival Bonanno bosses Philip Rastelli and Galante. [**25] There was specific testimony that after Galante was murdered, the Commission actively reorganized the Bonanno family under Rastelli and returned autonomous control to the family for the first time in a decade. The jury could reasonably conclude that the Commission approved the murder of Galante in order to resolve the Rastelli-Galante dispute and to restore order and autonomy to the Bonanno family.</span><br /> <br /> So, putting the pieces together, law authorities concluded that the murder of Galante was an organized hit, with consent and approval coming down from the highest level. <br /> <br /> Whatever his crime, he had paid the ultimate price. He joined an illustrious alumni of New York mob bosses who had all completed a baccalaureate in the art of dying on the job, so to speak:<br /> <br /> Vincent Terranova gunned down 1922<br /> Salvatore D'Aquila shot dead on an East Village street in 1928.<br /> Joseph Morello (perhaps the foundling father of the New York Mafia) killed in his office in East Hartem in 1930<br /> Tom Reina, gunned down in the Bronx, in 1930.<br /> Manfredi Mineo dropped by a shotgun blast as he left an apartment in the Bronx, also in 1930. <br /> Giuseppe Masseria hit in a Coney Island restaurant in 1931. <br /> Salvatore Maranzano shot and stabbed to death in his office, in Manhattan, in 1931. <br /> Vincent Mangano, “disappeared” in 1951. <br /> Frank Scalice shot by two killers in a Bronx fruit shop.<br /> Albert Anastasia shot out of his barber chair at a Sixth Avenue hotel, in 1957. <br /> Joe Colombo gunned down and vegtableized on Columbus Circle in 1971. <br /> Tommy Eboli, blown out of his socks in Brooklyn, in 1972. <br /> And yet to come, six years down the track, the same Paul Castellano who had voted on Galante's death, who never got around to celebrating Xmas, 1985, dyeing in the gutter of East 46th Street in mid-town Manhattan on December 16th.<br /> <br /> Some sources claim Galante was in fact never elected head of the family that he was simply a capo, or crew boss, and that Rastelli stayed in the position until his death in 1991. If that was the case, it's hard to fathom why so many top bosses had to gather in concave to arbitrate on ways of removing him. Soldiers and capi were regularly killed in mob families, simply on the order of their administration. There had to be something special about 'Lilo' and I'm sure it just wasn't his bad temper.<br /> <br /> Crime historians postulate that his hatred of the Gambino family, his frenzy to control the drug trafficking trade in New York, his passion to head up the Bonanno family and his apparent dominance of the uncontrollable zips, was a mixture that was surely going to lead to serious indigestion among the other four mobs, maybe even lead to another war to equal the one back in 1930-31. That being the case, his removal, obviously took up a lot of time and generated some serious thinking by his peers. <br /> <br /> After long and careful debate, these powerful mob bosses no doubt came to the conclusion that people don't change when they see the light. They change when they feel the heat. Lillo had forgotten one of the basic tenets that rules the life of the mobster:<br /> <br /> ‘There’s one thing to be said for inviting trouble. As a rule, it generally accepts the invitation.’<br /> <br /> Galante was a strange little fellow. <br /> <br /> Redoubtable, fearless, daunting are just some of the adjectives that were used to describe him. Remo Francescheni, a New York police officer, one time head of the NYPD organized crime squad, said of him: <br /> <br /> ' He was into everything-narcotics, pornography, loan-sharking, labour rackets. He was trying to turn all the other crime families upside down. He was a vicious guy. A cold, cold fish. Very perceptive. He paid his dues. You don’t get many people who spend as much time in jail as Galante did, and still retain and build power. The rest of them are copper. He is pure steel.'<br /> <br /> Ralph Salerno, the New York detective, long considered one of the top experts on organized crime in New York, said, ‘If someone got out of line, Carlo Gambino would say, Lean on him a little. Galante would say, Hit him!’<br /> <br /> Lefty Ruggerio, a soldier in the crew skippered by Napolitano thought of Galante<br /> ‘as a mean son of a bitch. Lots of people hate him,’ he told FBI undercover agent Joe Pistone. ‘They feel he is only out for himself…..There’s a lot of people out there who would like to see him get whacked.’<br /> <br /> Like many men who are vertically retarded, he made up for his lack of inches by a precocious nature that was driven, in his case, by a fierce and frightening unpredictability. Over and over again, FBI reports compiled over many years, are captioned:<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">in view of subject’s record, that he has carried firearms in the past and is known to have shot a law enforcement officer, HE SHOULD BE CONSIDERED ARMED AND DANGEROUS.</span> <br /> <br /> His nemesis, The Federal Bureau of Narcotics, knew him only too well. Their agents characterized him as paranoid, and ‘the most violent of racketeers. A real freak.’<br /> <br /> And yet, a man assessed by a prison psychiatrist as being almost an illiterate moron, could find times to sit and talk at length almost like a college professor, quoting St. Augustine, Plato and Descartes, often emphasizing the point he was making by waving around one of his innumerable cigars. Something would trigger him off however, and he would fly into a white, spittle inducing rage. He was at times, a real Hotspur of a man. People who came into contact with him, called him a psychological gamesman. He hated to lose arguments or to be humiliated. He would offer praise one minute and be abusive the next in order to unnerve those around him. He had a reputation in the mob as a stone killer, a man who would murder without fear or compunction, any time, anywhere, with a clinical detachment which made him even more deadly and effective.<br /> <br /> He was a person of almost total contradictions. Although the mob stressed honour, but turned a blind eye to a member’s proclivity to extramarital relationships, assuming he would remain faithful to the family ethic, Galante spent the last thirty years of his life separated from his wife, enjoying the fruits of an illicit relationship. <br /> <br /> The standard tenet in the Mafia was no to drugs, although many members circumnavigated this. Galante’s approach was to embrace narcotic trafficking with open arms, as an acceptable income earning objective. He was one of America’s most consecrated and rapacious drug dealers, and was reported to be the inventor of the black man test, an infallible experiment devised to ascertain the purity of heroin. A black addict would be kidnapped and injected with a double-bag. If he became comatose within a specific time, the narcotic was judged to be the correct purity.<br /> <br /> Carmine Galante had told his friends that his boss, Joe Bonanno had taught him the one great rule in organized crime was that there was nothing that came close to making money like dealing in heroin.<br /> <br /> He had a fierce reputation for meanness. According to a conversation recorded on a wiretap, Joe Zicarelli was overheard saying: ' I only learned here of late that Don Peppino (Joe Bonanno) is of this nature (mean.) But I got my lesson from Lilo and Lilo got his lesson from trying to duplicate him (Bonanno.) The more work you did, the broker this guy kept you.' Another FBN enquiry revealed that Zicarelli may have taken over as the narcotics manager for the Bonanno family when Galante was sent to prison in 1962.<br /> <br /> Carmine Galante developed a reputation for giving his men a loose rein in running their operations, provided they kept their tributes flowing in. In 1962, law enforcement placed a bug in the office of Angelo ‘The Gyp’ De Carlo a crew captain in the New Jersey Genovese family. He was heard musing on this, with two of his men, Joe ‘The Indian’ Polverino and Carl ‘Lash’ Silesia, talking about Harold ’Kayo’ Konigsberg, a ruthless killer and mob enforcer, who is near to being whacked for some mob transgression. Konigsberg worked for Joseph Zicarelli, based in Bayonne. <br /> <br /> ‘It’s Joe’s fault,’ says De Carlo on the tape, referring to the lack of control exercised over Konigsberg. It’s also Lilo’s fault, that’s who it is. Lilo gives his men a wide latitude, tells them they can do anything they want, go anyplace they want.’<br /> <br /> He was also a big softy when it came to his favourite child, Nina. Evidence that emerged from the Commission Trial, showed that he had this wistful dream of uniting the Bonanno and Colombo families through a marriage between Nina, and Alphonse Persico, the son of Carmine 'The Snake' Persico, the boss of the Colombo family. <br /> Nina apparently had a ‘crush’ on Allie.<br /> <br /> Galante apparently, even thought of making Nina the first ever, female button, or made member of the Mafia. <br /> <br /> If nothing else, Carmine Galante’s passing calmed things down for a while in the New York underworld. Rastelli was re-confirmed as boss of the Bonanno family, a position he maintained, although either in prison or on bail, until he died. His place was taken by big Joey Massino, who ran the family until his own arrest. He had eased off on the drug dealing, reverting to the more traditional mob activities, loan-sharking, extortion, hi-jacking, gambling and has also got his members into white collar crimes, such as pump-and-dump stock scams on Wall Street.<br /> <br /> Nicky Marangello, the dark haired, unassuming gopher who had visited Galante all those years before in Binghampton, was seen as a potential threat to the conspirators who had arranged Galante’s killing, and he was also marked for death. Reason prevailed however, and instead of killing him, Rastelli simply demoted him down off his position on the family’s administration, from under boss to capo. He died of natural causes in 1999.<br /> <br /> In 1987, the Federal Government, for the first time, under the R.I. C.O. law, filed a civil racketeering suit against an organized-crime family-the Bonannos- to prevent it from enrolling new members and to stop it from reaping ‘enormous financial windfalls’ through unlawful and even legal business activities.<br /> <br /> Joe Bonanno kept on going, and eventually died at the age of 96, in 2002. He had lived in seemingly perennial retirement in Arizona, no doubt still agonizing over the ethics of honour, and regretting the passing of the true age of mobsters.<br /> <br /> Perhaps, at times when he reflected on his past glories, over a snifter of his favourite brandy, he gave a passing thought to the man who, all those years ago, drove him around New York- the little guy with the hard, arctic stare and the tightly strung temperament- who was always chewing on a stogie.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236977866,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236977866?profile=original" />After the death of her husband, and the shooting of her son, Mary Turano presumably had enough of the food trade, and closed the restaurant. At some stage, certainly by 1989, it was an Asian take-away, called 'Ko-Kei,' and to-day, it is one of the very few shops on this busy thoroughfare that is closed and empty.<br /> <br /> Just about everyone involved in the whack-out on Carmine Galante is dead and gone, or in the slams.<br /> <br /> Rastelli died from liver cancer, not long after he was released from prison. Paul Castellano was extremely surprised to be shot in the face one cold, December night in 1985, as he climbed out of his limo, en-route to a prime rib at Sparks Steak House in mid-town Manhattan. Annielo Dellacroce had pre-deceased him by a week or so, another victim to cancer. Sonny Red, if indeed he was part of the hit team, got his, along with Trinchera and the other family capo Philip Giaccone, in a Bonanno double cross a couple of years after Galante was hit. Cesare Bonventre was a further victim of the family's duplicity. He was shot and then his body cut up and sank into three drums of glue. <br /> <br /> It's what's known in the underworld, ‘as coming to a sticky end.’ <br /> <br /> Twenty years after his murder, authorities charged Louis "Louie Ha-Ha" Attanasio, 59, of Toms River, who they said was later promoted to acting underboss of the Bonanno family. Also charged were Attanasio's brother, Robert "Bobby Ha-Ha" Attanasio, 57, and Peter "Peter Rabbit" Calabrese, 55, both of Staten Island. <br /> <br /> The only major players in Galante's actual killing, still around, are Bruno ( well, perhaps the driver of that blue Mercury is maybe kicking,) and Baldo Amato. <br /> <br /> Amato went down in October 2006 for a double murder. <br /> <br /> 'Mr. Amato,' said the presiding judge, making no effort to mask his disgust, 'you’re just a plain, wanton murderer and a Mafia assassin. The sentence I’m going to give you, as far as I'm concerned, is a gift.' <br /> <br /> The gift was life in prison.<br /> <br /> Bruno Indelicato went to prison on his conviction, at the famous 'Commission Trial,' and stayed there until 1998, serving thirteen years for his part in the murder of Galante. While in prison, he met up with Cathy Burke, daughter of another famous New York mobster, Jimmy 'The Gent' Burke, when she was visiting her father who was in the same federal facility, and they married in 1992, while Bruno was serving out his sentence at Terra Haute. <br /> <br /> On his release, he went to work as a salesman in the garment industry, and according to the feds, went back into the life. He had been promoted to capo in 1981, but on his return to the streets, went into his uncle, 70 year old Joe Indelicato’s crew, as just a soldier. It was an interesting move because by all accounts he hated his father's brother, with a vengeance. <br /> <br /> He was seen on a number of occasions meeting up with mobsters, including another Bonanno soldier, Vince Basciano, who subsequently became a capo in the family and then it's de-facto boss when big Joey Massino went down and rolled over like a beached whale, in 2004, the first sitting mob boss in New York to achieve this distinction. <br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236978090,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236978090?profile=original" />Bruno has been arrested and imprisoned a number of times for parole violation since his release in 1998.<br /> <br /> At the moment, that's where he is, prison, in a federal detention centre in Brooklyn. He's awaiting trial, on a charge of plotting to kill a rival by masquerading as a police officer, along with Michael "Mikey Nose" Mancuso, the acting, acting boss of the family, after Basciano was arrested and jailed. <br /> <br /> In the mob, what goes around comes around. <br /> <br /> Looking for these kinds of people, the best place to start is the B.O.P.- the Bureau of Prisons. Chances are, if you can't find them anywhere else, that's where they will be living.<br /> <br /> Like the man who brought this group altogether, their sticky fingers lead them less into the honey pots than the mousetraps.<br /> <br /> Under the FOIA, the F.B.I. have made available a file on Carmine Galante that contains over 1200 pages. Most of it, probably in excess of 80%, is useless, so severely redacted as to be incomprehensible. There are the occasional nuggets worth scavenging for, and this is one incorporated in an agent's report dated December 1974:<br /> <br /> 'Galante has long been considered a vicious, cold blooded killer who talks and acts like the movie conception of a gangster......'<br /> <br /> How could a movie even come close to exploring a man like this?<br /> <br /> Perhaps Carmine Galante felt he was somehow, anointed, consecrated as a king of crime, his whole life destined to be a kind of tragic Sicilian theatre, playing out images and scenes that fulfilled the nourishment of the demands he found himself compelled to fulfil. The killings, the drug dealings, the never ending quest for power within the underworld, the seemingly endless banishment to various penitentiaries, the abuse of his marital status, everything was perhaps part of an enduring sacrifice he forced upon himself; forever searching for a rate of exchange in a currency system that would leave him in credit, and never did.<br /> <br /> Then again, maybe it simply all came down to the fact that he was short. He was undoubtedly a man displaying a classic Napoleon complex, being small in stature, but aggressively ambitious and seeking absolute control to indemnify for this failing. It’s therefore quite possible, something in his ego, compensating for his lack of inches, might have driven him beyond the edge of reason in order to achieve his aspirations.<br /> <br /> It’s interesting to consider whether a man as widely read as Carmine Galante ever read any of the works of Shakespeare. If he did, he may have come across one of the Bard’s more famous quotes:<br /> <br /> ‘The very substance of the ambition is merely the shadow of a dream.’<br /> <br /> <span style="font-weight:bold;">Acknowledgements:</span><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">My thanks to Jim Ruffalo for the information on Galante in Southern California.</span><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">To Mora for pointing me to the right copy of the New York Herald.</span></p>
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Whack Out on Willie Moretti
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/whack-out-on-willie-moretti
2010-11-18T12:36:28.000Z
2010-11-18T12:36:28.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/10663251668?profile=RESIZE_400x&width=300"></div><div><p>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc</a>.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236996881,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />He went to church every Sunday in Deal, New Jersey, with his wife and three daughters. The kids in the neighbourhood called him 'cump.' He had a home there on five acres, where he raised prize ducks, that was valued at $400,000. By to-days standards, many millions. He was short and squat with thinning hair, brushed straight back and whenever you see a photo of him, he's wearing the most hideous, hand-painted silk ties.<br /> <br /> One of a kind was Willie (right).<br /> <br /> Then one day, in October 1951, he arranged to have lunch with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, but before he could keep that appointment, he had another, with four guys in Joe's Elbow Room at 793 Palisades Avenue in Cliffside Park, New Jersey. Dino and Jerry never got to sit with the man that day. His other friends shot him a number of times and left him sprawled on his back, on the floor, dead and bleeding, sporting another awful tie.<br /> <br /> He was a best friend to Frank Costello, who had been his best man at his wedding and a godfather to at least one of his children, led a gang of really tough guys, 60 at least, in the Garden State, with a lock on gambling that had made him and Frank very rich, was allegedly the under boss of the mob Frank controlled, now called the Genovese Family, never carried less than $2000 in his money roll, drove the best cars money could buy.<br /> <br /> So why did it all go horribly wrong that crisp, clean morning of October 4th?<br /> <br /> There was a rumour going around that he'd gone a little off his mind, more than a little really, because of the damage done by syphilis that he'd contacted in his younger days, and that he had to be put down before he did irreparable damage to Cosa Nostra, babbling away at the Kefauver Hearings, telling reporters little tit-bits of information, that kept stirring the pot on organized crime in New Jersey. That wasn't the reason of course. As always in the Mafia, what you see and hear is not what you necessarily get. Willie had to go because Vito Genovese was sick of waiting to take back the family he'd left in Frank's hands in 1937, when he did a runner to Italy to avoid a murder rap. He'd been back four years, and now, he was ready to make his move.<br /> <br /> Then again maybe there was an even more basic reason Willie got the clip that morning. Some sources claim he had reneged on a drug deal, and the party of the first part decided he no longer needed the party of the second part.<br /> <br /> Quarico Moretti grew up in East Harlem on East 108th Street, just up the block from Frank Costello who became one of his closest friends. His first, probably his only, legitimate job, was delivering milk for 25 cents a week. He tried his hand at prize-fighting but at 5'4'' he wasn't big enough or heavy enough to go anywhere there, so he got into crime like so many of his peers, and found he was really good at that. At some stage during this period of his life, people started calling him Willie Moore, a knick-name he came to use more and more often himself. He became so well established and trusted in the mob, that he was sent to meet and escort back to New York, Joe Bonanno, when he landed illegally in America The Federal Bureau of Narcotics kept tabs on Willie, and he was listed by them in 1931 as a major narcotics violator, with his own ID number: 138-A. By the time the Castellammarese War was under way, he was 36 years old and a seasoned veteran of the New York underworld. Along with Frank and Vito and big Al and little Tommy Luchese, he backed Masseria, then changed sides when the momentum shifted.<br /> <br /> After the dust settled, he moved over to New Jersey and started what was to become one of the biggest gambling and sports betting operations in the state. He worked in conjunction with Longy Zwillman and Anthony Sabio aka 'Chicago Fats'.<br /> <br /> In 1944, Joe Doto, another major player in the crime family then run by Charley Luciano, upped and left Brooklyn and moved across the Hudson and joined them. They creamed huge revenues from the numbers business and bookies working for them in factories, at the ports and offices in Bergen County, the New York wide spread wire system and the illegal casinos and 'sawdust' dice barns they set up in New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania. Moretti expanded into legitimate areas: laundries, cigarette vending companies, trucking companies, wherever there seemed good opportunities to launder money.<br /> <br /> He was a consummate gambler, to the point that he converted his family room in the big house down in Deal into a sports betting room, and would often hosts groups of other gamblers who would spend the day betting on horses and sports events.<br /> <br /> Willie was a man of respect in every sense, important enough to attend the mob convention in May 1929 at Atlantic City, and fly down to Havana, Cuba to meet up with Lucky Luciano at the Hotel Nacional, having been one of the twenty or so senior mob figures who waved Lucky goodbye when he was deported on February 2nd, 1946 from New York. No doubt, if he'd lived long enough, the cops would have caught him running his chubby little legs off, through the woods at Apalachin.<br /> <br /> That morning, Thursday, October 4th., Willie drove himself to the restaurant, parking his new, cream coloured Packard convertible outside the building. His chauffer, Harry Shepherd, had been loaned out to one of Willie's associates, Albert Anastasia, who'd claimed his own driver was sick, and he had to go for an X Ray appointment that morning to St. Mary's Hospital up in Passaic. He'd make sure he stayed there until the afternoon, thereby setting up the perfect alibi.<br /> <br /> As Willie stepped from his car, a man came out of the restaurant. They shook hands, and went inside. There, three other men were waiting. According to the waitress on duty that day, Dorothy Novack, the group chatted awhile in Italian at a table by the window, then asked to see the menu. She went into the kitchen, and a moment later heard gun shots. Smart woman, she waited awhile, and when she came out, found Willie dead on the floor, lying next to one of the tables. It was 11.25 am.<br /> </p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236996890,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p><br /> <br /> The cops arrived, and the dicks wandered around, taking a few photos, smoking, chatting to themselves. They seemed more interested in the re-play on a radio, of the historic baseball pennant match fought out the day before, between the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers, than the corpse they had come to inspect and evaluate. He was after all, just another guinea. Gone.<br /> <br /> There was a cafe sign above the body, advertising the special of the day: Chicken in the Rough-$1.50<br /> <br /> Willie lay in quiet repose on the black and white lino floor. His left arm was crooked, thick, ham fist holding onto his heart long stilled; his ankles neatly crossed, a hint of sock showing, his eyes closed to the violence of that final moment, as his killers shot him, face on, a mark of respect- he had the right to see what was happening- the blood pooling out from under his shattered head, one of those awful ties, soaked in red, crumpled over the shoulder of his open jacket. They killed him with respect because it was to be seen as an act of pity, putting a sick lion to sleep. It wasn't of course. Imprudent as he may have been, Willie died to satisfy ambition, or maybe revenge, rather than to ameliorate a sad case of loose lips.<br /> <br /> The cops never caught the guys who did it, which in mob killings is almost a given. They found a couple of fedoras, carelessly left on tables by the gang, and one of them was traced to a dry cleaners on 6th Avenue in Manhattan, which interestingly enough, lay just across the street from the apartment of the brother of one John 'Johnny Roberts' Robilotto, a guy well know to the cops.<br /> <br /> Forty seven year old Johnny Roberts was originally sponsored into the Luciano organization by Tony Bender, a shifty, double-dealing crew boss, close to Vito Genovese, but Costello vetoed him on the grounds his brother was a cop. Albert Anastasia took a liking to him and worked him into his own family. Johnny was therefore a big supporter of Big Al; probably when Al said 'jump' Johnny would have said 'how high?' <br /> <br /> In due course, the police arrested one Joseph Li Calsi and charged him and Robilotto, but the evidence against them didn't stack up, and they were subsequently released. So did Johnny kill Willie and if so, why would Albert A. sanction this? He was supposedly a close friend and ally of Frank Costello, hated Genovese with a vengeance and logically would have done nothing to help him in his attempt to dethrone Frank, which the killing of Moretti would surely have helped along.<br /> <br /> But Al had gone to all that trouble to establish an alibi so must have known what was going down that morning. Did 'The Commission' ratify it, as has been supposed. Who knows? Maybe they did, maybe not. If they did, then surely Frank Costello had to be one who voted against the motion, but got lost in the numbers.<br /> <br /> It's complicated, as are most mob politics. Everyone involved is long dead and the mob don't keep minutes, so all we have is hypothesis, a dangerous quicksand to navigate when dealing with Cosa Nostra lore.<br /> <br /> Some sources claim there was an 'open' contract out on Willie, so anyone could kill him if and when the opportunity arose. But for Anastasia to go to the trouble arranging that alibi, indicates that he knew the killing was going down that morning.<br /> <br /> Did Al hope to move in and take over Willie's very lucrative operations. Hardly. There's was Willie's brother Salavator 'Solly' the right bower, to contend with and 'Johnny Caboos' the left bower, Willie's trusted number two. Both tough guys, and don't forget the heavy hitters in the crew who respected and supported the boss. How would they react? Another theory that went around, was that Anastasia, worried about Moretti's behaviour insofar as it might impact on his own safety, had him killed before Willie killed him. But why would Willie lend a guy his driver, then kill him?<br /> <br /> The other thing that’s worth some thought is just who were the guys Willie had arranged to meet and for why? He was a busy man, pushed for time. He had this big lunch date with two of America's top movie stars, so this detour into Cliffside Park had to be important. What was it about? He surely knew one, if not all of the men waiting for him. What was so important that morning that couldn't wait until another day?<br /> <br /> Shifting sands, broken mirrors, circles going nowhere.<br /> <br /> The thing that is intriguing is why would gunmen from another mob be used? There were plenty of tough guys in the family over in Harlem and down on the west side. In the Gambino Family, there was a long history of bosses getting killed by their own guys-Mangano, Anastasia, Castellano. It makes more sense to use your own troops surely, easier to control and manage.<br /> <br /> It's a puzzle, and it's logical to suppose the missing pieces will stay just that.<br /> <br /> They gave him a funeral on October 9th. fit for the king of Bergen County- over 5000 people attending either the ceremony or internment- as his family and friends travelling in 75 cars, buried him in a $5000 coffin inside a sepulchre in Saint Michaels Cemetery, on South Main Street, in Hackensack. It sits there to-day, squat and gray, with a cross on the roof, towering over the tombstones that stretch away on all sides.<br /> <br /> In life, Willie Moore never towered over anyone. He's made up for it now.<br /> <br /> The place where Willie got whacked is still a place where you can go to eat. The building, on the corner of Palisade and Marion Avenue, was bought and renovated by the Esposito family from Amalfi, Italy, who turned it, sometime in the 1980's, into the Villa Amalfi, one of the better Italian restaurants in this part of New Jersey. There's music and good food, friendly service and the only thing that gets whacked there to-day is the steak.<br /> </p>
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The Trouble With Harry
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-trouble-with-harry
2010-11-18T12:21:21.000Z
2010-11-18T12:21:21.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/10258186468?profile=RESIZE_400x&width=400"></div><div><p>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br /> Way back in 1955, Alfred Hitchcock made this great movie called ‘The Trouble with Harry’ starring John Forsythe. An offbeat, hilarious black comedy about a bothersome corpse that keeps getting buried and then keeps re-appearing, causing all sorts of problems for peaceful neighbours in a New England township.<br /> <br /> There was another Harry who caused all sorts of people, all sorts of problems, often involving dead bodies, but for quite different reasons.<br /> <br /> At four eleven and about 110 pounds, it’s hard to believe Enrico Riccobene could have been a tough guy, let alone a wise guy, but he was apparently made into the Philadelphia family of the Mafia when he was just sweet sixteen, maybe seventeen, depending on which source you prefer to consult. With a high-pitched, squeaky voice, and a long white beard, in his later years he must have seemed more like Santa Claus in tight pants, or one of the seven dwarfs than a hoodlum with attitude.<br /> <br /> Thirteen years before his induction into the Mafia, his mother and father had packed up and left their home in Enna, geographically the heart of Sicily and the highest regional capital in Italy, and made their way west across the island to Palermo. Mario the father, left for America first, finding a job in the coal mines of West Virginia, building up a nest egg, before sending for his wife Anna Cimmarri and three year old son, Enrico, who came across and joined him in 1913.<br /> <br /> The son had been born with a birth defect that caused a curvature of the spine, and would also stunt his growth. It may have been lordosis, kyphosis or Pott’s Disease, which also affected Luciano Leggio, the infamous Mafia boss of Sicily who terrorized much of the island from 1948 until 1974.<br /> <br /> Perhaps it was this acute physical deformity, combined with his Lilliputian appearance that would shape his future, creating a solipsistic crankshaft driving his personality through a lifetime filled with criminal endeavours. Strange and disabled as he was, it may be he looked into the badlands of his uncertain future and decided he’d play life a full-hand and to hell with the consequences.<br /> <br /> The family moved to Philadelphia where Mario found work as a stonemason, settling in the South side of the city which had become an Italian enclave. In 1925 Anna died. By then, the family had become extended when Mario had adopted his brother’s two sons, Robert and Mario, on the death of their mother during the great influenza epidemic of 1918. In 1928, Mario Riccobene (the senior) remarried, and he and his wife Jennie, had eight children.<br /> <br /> A year before, Enrico, now known by his English name of Harry, had become ‘mobbed up.’ He had left school in the fifth grade and went to work on the streets, some of his earliest criminal activity involving drug trafficking, an enterprise that stayed with him throughout his long and industrious career.<br /> <br /> Sometime in 1927 he was ‘made’ or inducted into the Mafia family of Philadelphia, (referred to as ‘The Greaser Gang’ by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics,) apparently by its current boss, Salvatore Sabella who had taken over control of the family in 1911. There may have been a number of leaders before him, dating back through the family’s tenebrous development, perhaps as far back as the 1890s. The Philadelphia Inquirer indicated in an article in 1903 that the Mafia existed in the city, although it did not name names.<br /> <br /> Sabella had fled Palermo after the law had closed in on him for his part in a 1905 murder. He killed a violent and unstable butcher he worked for in Castellammare Del Golfo. Although only a young teenager, he was sentenced to prison, and sent to Milan to serve his sentence.<br /> <br /> Immigrating to New York after he served his time, he arrived there at the age of twenty only a couple of years before the Riccobene family arrived in America. He at first settled in New York, before moving to Philadelphia and then becoming the head of the Mafia clan. He stayed in control of the Philadelphia family until at some point in the early 1930s, when for an unspecified reason, he abdicated and returned to Sicily. It has been claimed this was because he had been an ally of Salvatore Maranzano the powerful New York mob boss who had been gunned down in 1931, and he felt vulnerable as a result. His brother Dominick Sabella, a member of the New York Mafia, had apparently convinced him to join in the war. (1)<br /> <br /> Harry claimed that he had been an ‘active’ participant in the New York underworld war that ultimately claimed Maranzano, to one source, but denied it to another. (2)<br /> <br /> Sabella had taken some of his soldiers to help his old friend, and to fight in the struggle. There are organized crime sources that suggest Sabella became disenchanted with the American version of the Mafia following the alleged restructuring of the Italian-American underworld after Maranzano’s death, a move allegedly driven by Charlie Luciano, who had encouraged the recruitment of Calabrians and Neapolitans into the ranks, an affront to Sabella who believed the Mafia should be staffed only by Sicilians like himself. This in itself was enough for him to make the decision to leave Philadelphia and America.<br /> <br /> Then again, it is quite possible that Sabella simply left following his arrest for assault in New York in 1930. A couple of years before he and two of his associates, John Avena and Joe Ida, (who would both, in due course, become heads of the family,) were arrested and charged with the murder of two hoodlums, Joe Zanghi and Vincenzo Cocuzzo, in South Philadelphia. The case against the three men was subsequently dropped. By the end of 1931, for whatever reason, Sabella was gone, returning to his roots in Castellamare del Golfo, in Sicily. (Some crime historians say he was deported when investigators of the murders discovered he was an illegal alien. He had arrived in America as a stowaway.) Just to confuse thing even more, he may have retired to Norristown, ten miles north of the city, and lived out his life as a butcher!<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236994660,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />It is almost 100% certain that Harry Riccobene (right) was the youngest man ever made into the Mafia, at least in America. When he died, 73 years later, he was undoubtedly one of its oldest, actively serving members. Just how or why Harry got his button at an age when most juveniles are just getting acne, is something we will never know.<br /> <br /> His father, Mario, himself a soldier in the Mafia, both in Italy and in Philadelphia, must have been blown out of his socks when little, teenage Harry came home, not from the corner drug-store and an ice cream sundae, but a mob meeting, where the big boss himself, Sabella, had metaphorically, pinned a ‘button’ onto his chest.<br /> <br /> ‘My father’, said Harry, ‘was very proud.’<br /> <br /> Perhaps Harry ‘made his bones,’ killed someone for the mob, and proved he had gumption and heart. Although he was short he could be as deadly as a stick of dynamite. He would show proof of that in his later life. Diminutive, bent like a banana, he apparently never backed away from anyone. Once after a gunman, a foot taller and one hundred pounds heavier, had shot him five times, he actually attacked his assailant and wrestled the handgun away from him.<br /> <br /> Throughout the twilight years of prohibition, in the late 1920s, Harry developed a prosperous bootlegging business, tied up the zignetti games in his neighbourhood and built up a thriving loan-sharking business. In addition, over the years he moved money into legitimate business areas such as garbage haulage, jukeboxes, television tube companies in Philadelphia, New York and Richmond, Virginia, vending machines and somewhat incongruously, a talent agency. He moved comfortably between the Philadelphia Italian, Jewish and coloured crime groups, operating for many years as a liaison between black number operators and the Mafia hierarchy.<br /> <br /> He had learned a lot about his trade working alongside Jewish hoods. In his bootlegging days, he had associated closely with Max ‘Boo Boo’ Hoff, who was one of his main booze suppliers. Hoff was a major player in the Philadelphia underworld, known as the ‘King of the Bootleggers,’ with a large, well-organized gang, and had criminal roots going back to the start of the roaring twenties. Harry had developed his gambling and numbers business under the patronage of another Jewish gangster, Harry Stromberg, alias ‘Nig Rosen.’ Also known as ‘The Mahoff,’ Stromberg, a Russian Jew, was a New York import, who moved to Philadelphia during the prohibition period to stake his claim in the city’s booming illegal potential.<br /> <br /> Harry claimed that in these early years, he was considered an independent, doing a bit of everything. Diversification was the thing. ‘You had to be flexible,’ he recalled, ‘there was always a lot of competition on the streets.’<br /> <br /> Was there ever!<br /> <br /> There was the Duffy gang led by a Polish immigrant called Michael Cusick, who adopted a sobriquet of Mickey Duffy to sound like he was Irish. Irish was the thing before the Italians muscled into the street scene. There was the O'Leary gang, led by a real Irishman called Danny O'Leary. Boo Boo had his own gang who were in competion with the Haim brothers, Charley, Irving and Albert. Then there was the Sicilian Zanghi brothers, four or five evil gunmen who terrorised their neighbourhood until they were eventually put down or chased from the scene and last but by no means least, the infamous Lanzetti brothers-six gunmen, gamblers, drug traffickers and bootleggers-who caused all kinds of heartburn during the 1920s and 1930s, until three of them were dead, one was in prison and the remaining two headed north for Alaska, but getting no further than Detroit.<br /> <br /> Harry had to work hard with all of this competition.<br /> <br /> He developed and expanded his business interests in waste-removal, vending machines, illegal gambling through a numbers operation, ticket-agencies and drug trafficking. In the 1960s he allied himself with the notorious Harold Konigsberg, loan-sharking in New Jersey. Just what part he played in ‘KO’s’ operation has never been disclosed. Maybe Konigsberg used Harry as a club to beat his recalcitrant debtors over the head!<br /> <br /> Tyrone DeNittis ran The Tyrones a popular Philadelphia rock and roll group of the 50s that recorded several hit songs including ‘Blast Off‘ and ‘I'm Shook‘ and appeared singing ‘Blast Off‘ in the film Let’s Rock with the Tyrones. Several Tyrones classics were used a few years ago on the soundtrack of the animated film The Iron Giant.<br /> <br /> Later on, Tyrone DeNittis was listed in the 1980 Pennsylvania Crime Commission report as a mob associate of crime boss Angelo Bruno. According to the Crime Commission, DeNittis was the owner of a South Philadelphia talent agency which booked acts at various bars and clubs in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. At the time of the report, DeNittis counted among his employees Harry Riccobene and his half brother Mario. The FBI claimed that Harry Riccobene was using the talent agency business as a front for his gambling and loan-sharking business. In the late 1970s, FBI wiretaps in the DeNittis Talent Agency recorded several meetings between Harry Riccobene, mob underboss Philip ‘Chicken Man‘ Testa and capo Nicodemo ‘Little Nicky’ Scarfo.<br /> <br /> Recognized among his fellow mobsters as ‘Little Harry,’ or Il Gobbe, ‘The Hunchback,’ it was apparently a Philly cop who first tagged Riccobene with the derisory cognomen, ‘Harry the Hump,’ a nick-name he hated all his life. Considered a tight-wad with his money, he always complained that people considered him a lot wealthier than he really was.<br /> <br /> According to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, 709F 2d.215, 1983, Harry’s interest rate on the vig or interest on the loans he made was 5% per week, which would indicate he was no sloth at generating money!<br /> <br /> The little gibbous mobster developed contacts in other parts of America, including New York, where he was a friend and confident of Charlie Luciano, and he also mixed with other powerful gangsters there, like Meyer Lansky. According to law enforcement sources, he was also a close friend and business partner of Russell Buffalino, the shadowy mobster who headed up the North-eastern Pennsylvanian office of the Mafia, from his base in Pittstown. The fact that he was close to the boss of other crime families indicated just how powerful Harry was in the ranks of the mob.<br /> <br /> He operated all his working life as a ‘soldier’ in the Mafia hierarchy. Although he was never, apparently, promoted to capo or crew chief, he did in fact run and control a group of street-smart, tough hoods, including his two step-brothers, Mario and Robert, who he never allowed to be ‘made’ into the mob, he always claimed, for their own good. He knew what the life was like and didn’t want them tied into it in perpetuity the way he and other Mafiosi had to be. The police also claimed that Jennie, his step-mother was part of the gang. She and Harry were close all their lives and she was in fact, only two years older than he was.<br /> <br /> Having a woman member as part of organized crime was not setting any kind of precedent. Rusty Rastelli, one time boss of the New York Bonanno crime family was married to a woman called Connie who drove his getaway cars and was deeply involved in mob business, to the point that it apparently cost her life. Midnight Rose who ran the famous candy store in Brownsville, Brooklyn, used as a hangout for the boys in Murder Inc. worked closely for Abe Reles, as did her daughter. In to-day’s Sicilian Mafia and in the Camorra of Naples, women are more and more taking a dominant role, moving from the kitchen and nursery into the front lines of organized crime. In May, 2002, a shoot-out near Naples, left a number of women dead, shot by other women, all part of a warring crime family dispute, illustrating that the ‘gentle sex’ are not so gentle when the chips are down.<br /> <br /> Considered ‘pretty smart,’ and a ‘risk -taker’ by the underworld, Riccobene took one risk too many in 1956 and was arrested along with nineteen others in Cleveland for drug trafficking. Not the first time. His narcotic arrest-sheet went back to 1932. Convicted, he spent the best party of twenty years in prison, and was released in March, 1975. Harry and drugs were like apple pie and ice cream, although he never used them himself, even to alleviate the crippling illness that plagued him in his later life. He did however, make money from drugs, using any and every source available. He had a long and loosing battle with the law throughout his life, being arrested and convicted 34 out of 35 times.<br /> <br /> He dealt with the black criminal underworld for many years. Black numbers bankers in South Philadelphia had traditionally relied on the Jewish and Italian mobs for protection and financial backing, and Harry used this connection to help him in his drug trafficking operation. But the riots and black power movement of the 60s ruptured the relationship between the Mafia and African-American mobsters in Philadelphia.<br /> <br /> Through his long connection to mobster Saul Kane, Harry even operated with the Pagan motor cycle gang. Kane a bail bondsman, and consummate drug trafficker was an Atlantic City mobster known as ‘The Meyer Lansky’ of the Boardwalk. That Harry reached out to biker gang members to help him, was in itself no way revolutionary. Law enforcement officials have long believed that the Bonanno crime family of New York is linked into the notorious Hell’s Angels, the biggest motor cycle gang in the world <br /> <br /> The Mafia crime family that Harry came back to in South Philadelphia was changing for the worse, although the catalyst was almost five years away. As always in the mob, it would be based on greed, triggered by violence and soaked in treachery.<br /> <br /> There was to be, as Albert Camus, the French philosopher wrote:<br /> <br /> ‘Four quick knocks on the door of unhappiness’<br /> <br /> And when opened, it unleashed a veritable Pandora’s Box of death and destruction never witnessed on this scale since the crazy days of Al Capone’s Chicago.<br /> <br /> The war that tore apart the Philadelphia underworld, began after a meal at a landmark South Philly restaurant known then, as Cou’s Little Italy at 901 South 11th Street. Shortly after 9.30 in the evening of March 21st 1980, Angelo Bruno, the Mafia boss of the city, having enjoyed an early dinner, climbed into the passenger seat of a maroon Chevrolet Caprice belonging to a man called John Stanfa, a low level associate of the family who was in the construction business.<br /> <br /> A forty-year old Sicilian, he had immigrated to America in the early 1960s and was inducted into the Philadelphia Mafia, soon after. He became the driver and bodyguard of the family’s boss for a period of time.<br /> <br /> Stanfa lived just a few blocks from Bruno’s home and volunteered to be the taxi driver as the usual chauffeur that night, Ray Martorano, had been called away on business. Stanfa drove his boss the couple of miles or so down South Broad Street to Bruno’s modest row house and stopped outside it at 934 Snyder Avenue. He parked the car so that Bruno was sitting close to the sidewalk, and at some stage, the window on Bruno’s side was opened to help clear the air as both men sat and smoked.<br /> <br /> Stanfa later claimed that after they had been talking for a few minutes, a man walked out of the shadows up to the car, jammed a sawn-off shotgun through the window, thrust it under Bruno’s right ear and fired, killing him instantly. At that range it would be logical to assume that the blast would have blown off Bruno’s head; however it was left it intact. It can only be supposed that the weapon was a small bore shotgun, like say a .410 calibre, (although some newspapers claimed it was a sawn-off 12 gauge) and this was used to avoid any damage to Stanfa, who I believe was in on the plot to murder his boss. Stanfa was slightly wounded in the arm and shoulder by spraying shot, and claimed he was unable to give a description of the unknown shooter. It has been claimed that Stanfa was unaware that the shooting was to go down that night and was simply an innocent party, if so, he was remarkably lucky not to be included in the damage wrought by the gunman.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236994282,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Bruno’s murder was the first in a series of killings that would stretch into 1985, taking at least twenty-eight lives, including a woman’s, as violent men fought each other across the streets of South Philadelphia and into the gray suburban masses of the grimy industrial north New Jersey landscape and even onto the streets of New York.<br /> <br /> Angelo Bruno (right) died for a number of reasons.<br /> <br /> Some of the complaints levied against him were that he was too much a traditionalist, too conservative, too insulated from the changing facing of his mob family (he had closed the books in the 60s, and refused to consider new and younger men for admittance,) and above all, was too strict in trying to restrict drug trafficking activity. The 1977 passing of the New Jersey Casino Act which predicated the explosive boom in the casino and gambling development of Atlantic City should have rung warning bells, but didn’t.<br /> <br /> Capt. Charles Bloom of the police department's Central Intelligence Bureau said.<br /> <br /> ‘If you had to describe Bruno, you could say, ‘make money, don't make headlines,'<br /> <br /> Things just festered in the fifty strong mob family, and got worse. (3)<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236995263,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />The man who undoubtedly was behind Bruno’s killing (and in fact may have actually carried out the hit himself,) was a street smart, tough, 67 year old mobster called Antonio Rocco Caponigro (left), often called ‘Tony Bananas,’ or sometimes ’Tony Biase,’ who lived in Verona in Essex County and ran a club called ‘The 311’ in the Ironbound district of Newark. He owned a massive farm, with a lake stocked with trout and kept thoroughbred horses and employed gamekeepers to maintain the estate. He owned a huge, three hundred unit motel complex with a restaurant and according to Nick Caramandi, a capo in the Philadelphia Mafia family, he was worth $70 million and kept a loan book on the streets worth $8 million.<br /> <br /> He had been promoted into the post of consigliere, or family adviser, in 1978, following the death of the current counsellor, Joseph ‘Joe the Boss’ Rugnetta. Phil Testa, the family under boss had wanted to promote one of his own protégés into this job, a small, skinny, tightly-wound hoodlum called Nicodemo Scarfo.<br /> <br /> Bruno however, distrusted the man, and in fact had banished him down into the wilds of Atlantic City in 1963, following a messy and much publicized killing committed by Scarfo, who along with Salvatore Merlino, attacked a longshoreman Joseph Dugan, and Scarfo in the scuffle, stabbed him to death, in the Oregon Diner in south Philadelphia.<br /> <br /> Caponigro managed a huge bookmaking business in Jersey City that perhaps grossed as much as $2 million a week, according to mob informant, Tommy Del Giorno. Sports betting is the ‘cash cow’ of organized crime. The enormous profits it generates fund a host of illegal activities - for example loan-sharking, hijacking, drug trafficking-and it helps mobsters achieve the holy grail in their illegal careers-the entry into honest business which is particularly important as crime families as a rule, hold no liens over legitimate enterprises run by its members, so none of it has to be ‘kicked up-stairs.<br /> <br /> Sometime towards the end of 1978, Caponigro was involved in a major dispute with the Genovese crime family of New York, who claimed the rights to this bookmaking operation as it was mainly based in an area they considered theirs. A sit-down in Manhattan was arranged between Bruno and the Commission heads and it was eventually decided that Caponigro held on to his business. (The Commission was formed sometime in 1931, as a kind of Board of Directors of the American Mafia, although most of its members came from New York or the Eastern Seaboard.)<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236994875,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />After the meeting, there would have been much kissing of cheeks and shaking of hands as the gangsters departed, but Alphonse ‘Funzy’ Tieri (photo right), boss of the Genovese family, and its representative on the board, who had lusted after the behemoth gambling franchise, never forgot, and never forgave.<br /> <br /> Restless for power and seeing his clock ticking away, Caponigro decided to make a play to take over the family, once Bruno was murdered, but first approached the powerful Genovese crime family again, this time for their blessing and support, hoping they would secure him the approval of the Commission, in his attempt. He had meetings in New York with Anthony ‘Fat Tony‘ Salerno who was a major powerbroker in the family. Salerno answered to Phil ‘Ben Turpin’ Lombardo who was second in charge to Funzi. Also along in the coffee sit-downs, was Vincent Gigante, one of the many peripheral figures who operated in the shadows of the Genovese family’s convoluted top management structure. Tieri, who like his contemporaries at this time, had a doctorate in the science of manipulation and deception, played a royal flush against Caponigro’s pair of aces, in a game of poker that was never played, except in each man‘s head.<br /> <br /> ‘Funzi’ had little time for Caponigro, and had long lusted after the enormously profitable gambling business the Philadelphia consigliere controlled, especially since the 1978 meeting that had gone against him. Tieri in effect gave his approval for the hit on Bruno, but after the act denied this, and was in fact probably instrumental in setting up the events that followed. Tieri wanted the Caponigro gambling concession and the Genovese family wanted access into the potential gold mine that would become Atlantic City. The stage was set for a theatre of treachery, deceit and death.<br /> <br /> The Commission appointed Salerno, Gigante and the Genovese family consigliere, Bobby Manna, to investigate the murder of Bruno, and it has to be a fair assumption that their inquiries would lead only in one direction.<br /> <br /> After the killing of Bruno, Scarfo himself had travelled to New York a number of times to meet with members of the Genovese family. He was comfortable dealing with the mobsters in the big city, his father after all had been a soldier in the same family. At this meeting, Bobby Manna told him that the Commission wanted him to be the new boss, but he turned it down as he felt Phil Testa deserved it more, and Testa was subsequently approved as the new head.<br /> <br /> Less than a month after the Bruno killing, Caponigro and his brother-in-law, Alfred Salerno, who owned a jewellery business in Manhattan, also went across to New York. They met up that morning at the social club on Clifford Street, Newark, ran by Patty ‘Specs’ Martorano, a capo in the Northern New Jersey area for the family, and were chauffeured from there into the city. They had arranged to meet with the Genovese administration and liaised outside the New York Diamond Exchange on 47th Street, with a capo in the family, called Dominck Cantarino. He was supposed to take them to Vincent Gigante. They were never seen alive again, except by their killers.<br /> <br /> Antonio Caponigro, the Chicago born hoodlum, who amassed a fortune first from bootlegging then gambling and loan-sharking, built himself a ship of death and sailed it into oblivion.<br /> <br /> On April 18th, Salerno’s body was found in the trunk of an auto in the South Bronx. Stuffed into a mortuary bag, he had been so badly beaten, most of the bones in his face were shattered, and he had been shot in the head three times. A couple of days later and just a few blocks away, another opened car trunk revealed the naked corpse of Caponigro. He had been shot thirteen times in the head and his body repeatedly stabbed. His mouth and anus were stuffed with $20 bills, a message that ‘Tony Bananas’ was just too greedy for his own good. It was speculated from the wounds on his body that Caponigro had been brutally tortured to try to get him to disclose the identity of any other conspirators in the death of Bruno.<br /> <br /> There are sources that claim the two murdered men had been taken to an isolated house in rural New Jersey, or upstate New York, where they had been killed by Gigante’s crew.<br /> <br /> On the surface, it appeared the killing of Caponigro and Salerno was to avenge the ‘unlawful’ murder of Anthony Bruno. It was however, housekeeping by the Genovese mob to clean up the loose ends of a two year inter-family dispute. Funzi got his hands on the bookmaking business in Newark. The Genovese family consolidated their hold on New Jersey and Atlantic City and justice appeared to have been done in regards to the unlawful killing of a family head. Life has a way of setting things in order and leaving them be. Very tidy, is life.<br /> <br /> Jersey State Police believed that Genovese mobster, John DiGilio who operated in the Northern New Jersey branch of the family, was a prime suspect in the double homicide.<br /> <br /> ‘Johnny Dee’ was a powerful capo in the family. Listed by Forbes magazine in 1986 as one of the richest Mafiosi in America, he was also unique in the mob in that he wore a moustache and full beard. However, he himself was murdered in May 1988 in an inter-family dispute before he could be indicted or brought to trial. His killer, Louis Auricchio, was the brother-in-law of New Jersey State senator, John A. Lynch, Jnr. At least two other members of the Philadelphia crime family went down for their part in the plot that surrounded the killing of Bruno- veteran mobsters Frank Sindone and John Simone. It is probably safe to assume that Caponigro gave up their names before his execution squad finished him off. <br /> <br /> Sindone was recognized as the Bruno family’s number one loan shark in Philadelphia and claimed he had more money than he could ever spend. He operated out of a small eatery called Frank’s Cabana. The FBI planted a bug there, and in 1976, heard conversations which indicated that Sidone was less than happy with Bruno and his style of management, and wanted out. Maybe he saw Caponigro’s grab at the throne as his own ticket to ride, maybe he even got greedy for it himself. Either way he must have seemed a threat to Testa. Sindone’s body was found behind a store on Oregon Avenue in South Philadelphia. He had been shot in the head, three times. He had been lured to a house owned by mob associate Virgil Mariutti, and killed by Salvatore Merlino.<br /> <br /> ‘Johnny Keys’ Simone was a long-term member of the Bruno mob, and in fact a cousin of the late family Don. He had made overtures about making a play himself for the family leadership, reaching out to some contacts he had in the New Jersey branch of the Gambino crime family including Nicky Russo, an elderly soldier in the family, who apparently supported him in his objective. The late Carlo Gambino and Bruno had been close friends, to the extent that Bruno’s wife, Sue, owned property in Florida jointly with Carlo, and Bruno, until his appointment onto the Commission, had always used Gambino as his proxy server on matters of policy.<br /> <br /> Paul Castellano the current head of the Gambino family was outraged when he became aware of the moves Simone was making, in view of the fact that he had been one of the Commission members who had voted in favour of Scarfo to replace Bruno as the family head, then accepted Testa as the alternative. In order to placate Testa and assure him that New York supported him and no one else, he ordered Sammy Gravano, a soldier in the family with a reputation as a stone-killer, to organize the hit on Keys. He was murdered on Staten Island in September 1980.<br /> <br /> Castellano, like so many mobsters, obviously strongly believed in the writing of Nicolo Machiavelli:<br /> <br /> ‘If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe his vengeance need not be feared.’<br /> <br /> Sometime in early May, Bobby Manna travelled to Philadelphia and called a meeting at Cous, the restaurant were Angelo Bruno had his last supper, and informed a group of senior men in the family that Philip Testa was moving up from his position as under boss to head the family, making his under boss Pete Casella, the family’s major drug trafficker, and Nicky Scarfo his consigliere.<br /> <br /> Testa lasted only until March 1981, when he was killed by a bomb hidden under the porch of his South Philly home, in Porter Street. The blast blew off or burnt off most of his clothes, and his semi-nude body, shredded below the waist, was propelled fifteen feet into his wrecked home like a pulped mango. Amazingly, he survived the explosion, but died in hospital an hour later.<br /> <br /> A cop on duty at the scene said to a reporter:<br /> <br /> ‘Hell of a bang. Looks like he went through a giant paper shredder!<br /> <br /> Testa has a claim to fame beyond his violent death and place in the confused and chaotic happenings that occurred in Philadelphia after the murder of Bruno. In 1982, Bruce Springsteen included in his album ‘Nebraska’ a song he called ‘Atlantic City’ that covered in the lyrics Testa’s pyrotechnical departure.<br /> <br /> Pete Casella, reported to the Commission that Nicky Scarfo and his group had killed Testa, when in fact, he had engineered the killing himself, greedy to get his own hands on the top job. However, by the time that Testa’s remains had been buried, the Commission had considered the situation, and heavily influenced by the Genovese management’s recommendations, had given their okay for Scarfo to jump a position and head up Philadelphia.<br /> <br /> Nicky was called to a meeting sometime in May 1981, in New York with Salerno, Gigante and Bobby Manna, and told the Commission had approved him for the post as boss of the Bruno family.<br /> <br /> Casella had built up enough brownie points to avoid being part of the ongoing murder trail, and was eventually banished to Florida, where in due course, he died of natural causes, two years later at the age of seventy-six, after living almost destitute with his daughter.<br /> <br /> No one ever doubted that Scarfo was a real gangster and a ruthless killer. Law enforcement sources believed he personally killed at least 26 people, and probably ordered many more deaths in addition. <br /> <br /> Like another diminutive Don, Carmine Galante, who reached his own eschatological appointment with destiny nine months before Anthony Bruno, Nick Scarfo was driven by demons that could never be satisfied. His was a much different style from that of Bruno who had always favoured conciliation over violence.<br /> <br /> It’s probably safe to say, Nicky Scarfo gave the Mafia a bad name.<br /> <br /> According to Philadelphia lawyer, Charles Peruto Jr., ‘The guy changed the meaning of La Cosa Nostra from 'family' to 'me.' He's used everybody he's ever come in contact with. One of his sons hanged himself. Another changed his name. What does that tell you?’<br /> <br /> Scarfo’s predilection was to go straight for the jugular: ready-shoot-aim, as a solution for any problem. And one of these problems was Little Harry.</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236995653,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
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<div style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Nicky Scarfo</span></div>
<p><br /> Riccobene hated and loathed Scarfo. He saw in him all the things that were wrong with the changing face of the mob. He thought of him as a “brash, violent dope.” As he told a Philadelphia detective called Frank Fiel, ‘…..this new breed, they’re not like us old guys who know what we’re doin; we took our lickin’s and kept on tickin.’<br /> <br /> Not only did Harry despise Nicky Scarfo, what was worse, he refused to acknowledge him, pay him tribute and cough up part of his illegal earnings as was the way that things worked in the mob. The Mafia is the original pyramid scheme. Those at the bottom support the next layer up who do likewise, and the guy at the top gets all the cream. But Riccobene was not going to play ball with a man he had no respect for.<br /> <br /> ‘I never respected him. I didn’t think he was material for that position,” Harry once said. More significantly, ‘I thought he was a weasel.’<br /> <br /> George Anastasia’s book ‘Blood and Honor,’ one of the better books written on the subject of organized crime, gives this overview of the war that moved inevitably into deadly set-pieces:<br /> <br /> ‘This might seem strange to someone not familiar with the workings of the criminal underworld. But life inside the Scarfo organization was a three-dimensional chess game. Plots and intrigue unfolded on several different levels, and collisions occurred on various planes. So for months during the Riccobene war, protagonists would be in each other’s company and, on the surface at least, appear to be getting along famously. They would socialize at weddings and funerals. If they happened to be in the same restaurant, they’d greet each other warmly and buy each other a round of drinks. It was all part of the Mafia machismo that had taken over the Scarfo organization, all part of the battle being fought on Scarfo’s terms, a battle of cunning, guile and deceit.’ <br /> <br /> Under the old regime, Harry would send Angelo Bruno a tribute every Christmas, and they were both happy with that arrangement. And that’s how Harry intended to carry on. But Nicky Scarfo wanted his cut weekly, so Harry offered him instead, the proverbial finger.<br /> <br /> So Scarfo decided not just to get mad, but to get even. The hostilities between Scarfo and Riccobene started in 1982. As it happened, Nicky Scardo would be in prison on charges of illegally possessing a hand gun, and most of his ‘war’ on the Riccobene faction was supervised by Salvatore Testa. <br /> <br /> Soldiers, Charlie Iannece, Nicky Caramandi and Pasquale Spirito were instructed to get Harry. They would drive across the city, stalking out Jennie’s home, the apartment of Harry’s girlfriend and the homes of friends and business associates in the hope of pinning the little guy down. After several abortive attempts, Scarfo decided on a new tack and the family’s consigliere, Frank Monte, was called to a meet and ordered to personally handle the killing of Little Harry. Monte then turned to one of his close associates, Raymond ‘Long John’ Martorano, and both men contacted Harry’s half brother, Mario ‘Sonny’ Riccobene. They promised him big time if he would arrange to set up Harry and he agreed. But Mario wasn’t playing fair, like almost everyone who thought of themselves as a hoodlum, and let Harry in on the plot.<br /> <br /> Harry called a group of his closest associates together, including Mario, Joe Pedulla and Victor DeLuca and worked out their own game plan. At this meeting, held on April 25th at the Cherry Hill, New Jersey home of Pedulla’s mother, they laid plans for the first hit on Scarfo’s mob.<br /> <br /> On May 13th, crouched in the back of a hooded pickup truck, Pedulla aimed and fired a scoped .22 calibre rifle, killing Frank Monte with eight shots as he was parking his car at a service station car wash in South Philadelphia at 9:30 pm. Monte died instantly. He was casualty number fourteen in the mob conflict following Bruno’s death.<br /> <br /> Beside himself with rage, Scarfo arranged contact through Raymond ‘Long John’ Martorano with a Pagan motor cycle gang member called Jimmy DeGregorio who trafficked in drugs with Harry, and offered him $20,000 to kill Riccobene.<br /> <br /> In keeping with all the double-crosses that seemed to go on in the South Philly mob scene, DeGregorio decided to try and up the ante. Cornering Harry, he tells him:<br /> <br /> ‘Longy gives me 20 [thousand dollars] if'n I off you, Harry,’the biker tells Riccobene. ‘Ah, go an' kill Longy instead,’ says Harry. The hit man, an ex-football player, picks him up by the lapels. ‘I can kill you right now, you little assbag,’ he says. ‘Nah, nah,’ says Riccobene. ‘You don't kill me. You go kill Longy and then you come back. We'll talk about it then.’<br /> <br /> The shocked Pagan let Harry down and walked away in disbelief. As it happened, he didn’t kill anyone. After all, he was a government witness. <br /> <br /> Angry that the biker had not followed through on the hit, Scarfo next turned to his godson, Salvatore Testa, the son of the late boss who had become shredded wheat that day in March the previous year. On June 8th 1982, Testa and another of Scarfo’s killers, Wayne Grande tracked Harry to a telephone booth, where the 74 year old was chatting to his 22 year old girlfriend. Grande ran up to the telephone box and shot Harry five times with a revolver. Incredibly, Harry barged out of the box, attacked Grande and wrestled the handgun away from him, before collapsing. Grande jumped into a waiting car driven by Joe Pungitore which screamed off. When a cop later congratulated Harry as he lay covered in bandages in a hospital bed, on his survival, and the way he had grabbed the gun, Riccobene replied with understated elegance: ‘He was done with it. It was empty.’ <br /> <br /> Seven weeks after the abortive attack on Harry, DeLuca and Pedulla driving a Ford through South Philadelphia, spotted 26 year old Salvatore Testa perched on a stool outside a restaurant, Lornezo’s Pizza, at the corner of 9th Street and Christian in the Italian Market. He was eating a bowl of clams. DeLuca pulled the car over and Pedulla leaped out racking up a shotgun and firing it three times at Testa who was blown off his chair. Although badly wounded, with an arm almost severed, he somehow survived the hit.<br /> <br /> As Pedulla jumped back in the car and DeLuca gunned the engine, a passing police patrol car gave chase, and the two cars hurtled through the narrow streets until DeLuca lost control and the Ford hit a lamppost and overturned. The two mobsters were pulled unhurt from the wrecked car and arrested.<br /> <br /> They were released from custody surprisingly quickly, in fact that day, and then took off, on the lam, so to speak. Riccobene contacted the fugitives through one of their wives, and agreed to negotiate their surrender back to the authorities on July 31st. In retrospect, Harry came to realize it was the worst thing he could have done. Tried and convicted for the attack on Salvatore Testa, both men rolled and became government witnesses. It was a breakthrough for the law enforcement agencies who finally discovered that all these killings and attempted killings were parts of a pattern which they came to call ‘The Riccobene War.’<br /> <br /> On Saturday, August 21st, Scarfo’s team had another go at Harry; he was attacked as he waited at a set of traffic lights at Broad and Ritner Streets. A man in a jogging suit ran up to his car and emptied a revolver into it. Although bloodied by shattered glass fragments, Riccobene survived yet another attempt on his life. When police came calling on him at his home, and pointed out the damage to the car, he blamed local vandals. Throughout the rest of 1983 and into 1984 the violence continued.<br /> <br /> Mario Riccobene was shot at while shopping in a jewellery store, at his home and even when he visited his girlfriend’s place. On April 23rd 1983, Pasquale Spirito was shot in the head as he sat in his car. Scarfo had instructed Spirito to kill Mario Riccobene for his treachery in pre-empting the first planned hit on Harry back in 1982. Spirito had for some reason held off on this, and then to compound matters had started to skim profits from the family’s street-tax collecting.<br /> <br /> ‘Pat the Cat’ had at one time worked with Harry and Mario, loan-sharking and bookmaking with the brothers, but had switched sides when the war stated brewing.<br /> <br /> Thomas ‘Tommy Spats’ Auferio an ally of Harry’s was attacked and his car shot up, although he was not seriously wounded, then on October 14th, two of Scarfo’s hoods, Eugene Milano and Charlie Iannece attacked Frank Martines, a bookmaker and loan-shark in Harry’s gang. Martines miraculously survived although Milano apparently fired at him point-blank five times, shooting him to a moist dish-cloth.<br /> <br /> The ‘blocker’ driver, there to head off any cop car or conscientious citizen, was Joe Pungitore. Another Riccobene ally, Salvatore Tamburrino was shot dead in his family’s variety store in southwest Philadelphia on November 3rd. One in the head, one in the chest and two in the legs courtesy of Phil Narducci and Nicky Milano.<br /> <br /> A month later, a Scarfo gunman Francis Iannerella, cornered Harry’s other half-brother Robert, and blew him away with a shotgun blast.<br /> <br /> At approximately 10 pm on the night of December 6th., Robert and his mother Jean, returned to her home in southwest Philadelphia. As Robert unlocked the back door, Faffy Iannerella stepped out of the shadows. In the struggle that followed, Jean was clubbed with the butt of a sawn-off 12 gauge shogun, and Robert trying to escape the gunman, scrambled over a Cyclone fence that separated his mother’s home from her next-door neighbour. The killer followed Robert and blasted him to death with one shot to the back of the head. Faffy had used high-powered buckshot to make sure. Discarding the gun, he raced to a blue car, parked nearby, containing the ubiquitous Joe Pungitore and Charles Iannacce, which sped off into the darkness.<br /> <br /> A couple of days later, some of Harry’s shooters ambushed Nick Milano, Pugnitore and Sal Testa as they drove through the streets of South Philly. Ambushed at 11th and Catherine Streets, no one was injured, except the car, in what proved to be the last skirmish in the war.<br /> <br /> On December 14th, Mario’s twenty-seven year old son, Enrico, who was not connected into the mob in anyway, committed suicide, apparently terrified by threats being made against him by Salvatore Testa and his pals. Late in the afternoon, he shot himself in the head in the walk-in safe of his jewellery store on Jeweller’s Row, Sansom Street. Phil Leonetti, Sal Testa and Laurence Merlino had been seen loitering outside the shop, and word had come down that Enrico was next on their hit-list. He had apparently received frequent telephone calls from Sal Testa telling him to come and meet them or do the job on himself. Literally frightened to death, the young man put himself out of his own misery.<br /> <br /> Not longer after this, Salvatore ‘Chuckie’ Merlino sent word to Harry’s gang that the war was over. Scarfo, from his prison cell had decided enough was enough, and he was no longer chasing them.<br /> <br /> It was the end of a less than perfect year for Little Harry. 1984 wouldn’t be that hot either.<br /> <br /> Harry was arrested March 21st for the murder of Frank Monte. He was already in prison for illegal possession of a hand-gun. The main witnesses against him were Pedulla and DeLuca, and worse of all for a man as staunch as Riccobene, his half-brother Mario, who had himself become a government informant and like the other two, agreed to testify against Harry in return for shorter prison sentences.<br /> <br /> Harry Riccobene, criminal, recidivist drug dealer, loan-shark et al was above all a man loyal to the code of his profession. Cole Younger, outlaw of the Wild West, after the Northfield bank robbery turned to custard, was asked by Sheriff Glispin to name the two who escaped capture. Cole responded by handing him a note saying, ‘Be true to your friends if the Heavens fall.’ It was this very credo that kept the little fellow straight and true, even though his back was bent. He was what the mob called ‘a stand-up guy’ one who did his time whenever his crime caught him out. It’s hard not to admire the way he never ‘rolled’ or became and informant in order to cancel or ameliorate the prison sentences he served over almost 50 years. It’s not that he was some kind of martyr, rather that he believed strongly in the substance of the oath he had taken as a young boy, to honour and obey the rules that governed his strange, almost medieval calling. As in the military, he saluted not the man in uniform, rather what the uniform stood for.<br /> <br /> In one of the many ironies of the Riccobene war, Frank Monte had been the godfather to Mario’s son Enrico, the same one who killed himself in the week before Christmas, because he was in mortal fear of the men who had been under Monte’s control at one time. In another, long-time ally Joseph Casdia, who Riccobene had ordered to be killed and buried with lime because he couldn't trust him, stood by him.<br /> <br /> Harry was the first mobster in the history of the Philadelphia Mafia family to testify in his own defence. He denied he headed any mob faction. He was a retiree ‘with a lot of time on my hands.’<br /> <br /> ‘There was no plot to kill me that I know of,’ he testified.<br /> <br /> Following his trial, Harry Riccobene, the little guy, with a long white beard, and high-pitched, squeaky voice, was found guilty of the murder of Frank Monte. The jury deliberated for five days, presumably unable to come to terms with the fact that this, strange, diminutive, aged human being, was in fact the monster the prosecution had been painting him to be. He was handed down a mandatory life sentence.<br /> <br /> As he was led away, Harry’s response to a reporter’s question on the verdict was:<br /> <br /> ‘I was railroaded.’<br /> <br /> Mario ‘Sonny’ Riccobene (photo right below) entered the Witness Protection Programme after he finished<br /> his prison sentence for his part in the killing of Frank Monte. Against their advice, he left the programme and returned to live in South Philadelphia in 1992.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236995689,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />On the evening of January 28th 1993, he was sitting in his red Ford Taurus station wagon, in the car park of the Brooklawn Diner in New Jersey, when according to Sergio Battaglia, a mob associate under John Stanfa, Raymond Esposito a gunman who was blind in one eye and deaf in one ear, and known disparagingly as “Fredo,’ a mocking reference to the wimpy middle brother in the Godfather movies, walked up to the car and shot Mario dead. Mario had presumed no one would be interested in him for what he had done and been all those years before. He found out the hard way, the phys-co’s who made up the Philly Mafia had long and wrathful memories. Maybe whoever was behind his killing had read the musings of Salvatore Riina, the Sicilian Mafia boss who brought death and destruction on a scale never seen before on that troubled island:<br /> <br /> ‘Someone who betrays once can betray twice.’<br /> <br /> Victor DeLuca, Harry’s one-time ally, who had double-crossed his partner of many years, had a tracheotomy removing his supraglottic or cancerous voice box. Harry sent him a message:<br /> <br /> ‘You should have lost it a long time ago.’<br /> <br /> The Philadelphia crime family kept self-destructing in the years that followed the end of the Riccobene War. By the time the in-fighting in the Philly mob ended, it left at least 28 dead, dozens in jail and half a dozen rats who had been fully fledged members.<br /> <br /> Nicodemo Dominico Scarfo, the mobster with a name only Hollywood could have dreamed up, eventually went to jail for good, the first time ever a Mafia mob boss had been convicted on a charge of first-degree murder. His acting boss, cousin Anthony ‘Tony Buck’ Piccolo also got the chop. John Stanfa the low level associate and one time chauffeur, suddenly made it to the top and became the next boss, but then, one day, he also went off to jail. His successor Ralph Natale went into the slams in due course, then like so many before him, flipped; the first time ever a mob boss had done this. Next in line was Skinny Joe Merlino, and in true tradition he is now serving time. His acting boss, Joe Ligambi is under indictment and no doubt will follow the well-worn path of his predecessors in due course. The acting underboss, Joey Massimino has already been indicted on gambling and loan-sharking charges.<br /> <br /> As is often the case in to-days war against the mob, law enforcement’s greatest weapon was the use of informants, and there were plenty of them popping up out of the woodwork in the city of brotherly love.<br /> <br /> There were John Veasey, and Tommy Scafide, Peter Caprio, Ron Previte, Robert Luisi, Philip Casale, Nicky Caramandi, Phil Leonetti, Tommy DelGiorno, Gino Milano, Larry Merlino, Norman Lit, Michael Madgin the list went on and on. Frantic men, who looked once too often into a mirror and saw faces of quiet desperation staring back with the realization that their depraved quixotic idea of what the mob was had turned into a harsher reality of betrayal and lies. When push came to shove, the so-called ‘men-of-honour’ quickly switched sides to save hides.<br /> <br /> George Anastasia, the news reporter and author, claimed that ‘Omerta in Philadelphia is like the Liberty Bell-cracked and inoperative.’<br /> <br /> Another renowned writer of mob mythology, Jimmy Breslin, reminisced on the mob in his recent book ‘The Good Rat.’<br /> <br /> He called them: ‘Grammar-school dropouts who kill each other and purport to live by codes from the hills of Sicily that are actually unintelligible or ignored.’<br /> <br /> Probably as good a definition as you will find anywhere for the American Mafia.<br /> <br /> The FBI considers the war against Italian-American organized crime in Philadelphia is just about done and all that’s left to do is mop up. The PPD organized crime unit believed their evidence indicated that the New York Lucchese crime family was waiting in the wings ready to pick up any worthwhile pieces left over, although that has not happened as of yet. No doubt Angelo Bruno is turning over in his grave in disgust. How could a mob family that may well date back to the 1880s be destroyed in such a short space of time? <br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236996263,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Enrico Harry Riccobene (left), perhaps the only homunculus Mafioso in American history, died in the Dallas State Correctional Institute, Luzerne County, on Monday June 19, 2000. He had lived a long and tumultuous life, although a significant amount of it had been spent behind bars. Towards the end, he worked in the prison’s tailor shop, keeping the records. He lived on I-Block, and the inmates and guards treated him with respect- the kind that is reserved for men who have become more than just a legend in their lunchtime.<br /> <br /> It seems that he found peace and contentment in the last years, although he was plagued by illness: osteosclerosis, diabetes and the cancer that would eventually kill him. It seems he actually enjoyed the tranquillity of life behind bars compared to the chaos of his life on the outside. He is reported to have said: ‘I never felt safe until I came to jail.’<br /> <br /> Perhaps, if he read a lot, he may well have found time to contemplate the works of T.S. Eliot, who wrote:<br /> <br /> ‘I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,<br /> And I have seen the eternal footman hold my coat and snicker,<br /> And in short, I was afraid.’<br /> <br /> A Mafia man, the son of a Mafia man, Harry was a traditionalist and staunch supporter of the code that he followed with unswerving loyalty. But by the time he went off to prison for the last time, the secret society that he had joined and served in all those years, was not just a shadow of its former self, it was in a sense something even worse, it was becoming simply a piece of history.<br /> <br /> Big Ron Previte, an ex-cop and mob informant made into the family by John Stanfa, said:<br /> <br /> ‘The Philly Mob is over. You’d have to be Ray Charles not to see it.’<br /> <br /> If, as philosophers have mused, we are the dust of long dead stars, the mobsters of South Philly have most certainly lost their place in the firmament.<br /> <br /> Some of the information used for this story came from articles in the Philadelphia Daily News which I acknowledge as the source, and the works of George Anastasia and Kitty Caparella, two of the best reporters to have covered the mob in Philadelphia.<br /> <br /> (1) The Origin of Organized Crime in America. Critchely, David. Routledge. 2009<br /> (2) Ibid<br /> (3) Pennsylvania Crime Commission Report 1980<br /> </p>
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Dead Men On Leave: The Mafia Murder of Carlo Tresca
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/dead-men-on-leave
2010-11-18T11:30:00.000Z
2010-11-18T11:30:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br /> The man with the heavy black beard had left his comfortable, six-room apartment at 130 West Twelfth Street. It was late in the morning, and he had to go to his office; but first he had a lunch meeting.<br /> <br /> It was January 11th, 1943.<br /> <br /> There were four of them gathering late on this morning, and they went to eat at one of his favourite restaurants- John’s- also on Twelfth Street, a few blocks east from where he lived. Opened in 1908, it still to this day serves traditional northern Italian cuisine in an atmosphere largely unchanged over generations: dim lighting, old wooden booths, tiled floors and a giant candle centre piece that has been building up wax for over seventy years.<br /> <br /> The restaurant had been founded by John Puciatti, an immigrant from Umbria, and soon became a favourite meeting venue for New York’s Italia-American souvveusivi -subversives.<br /> <br /> Until 1940, its adverts carried a phrase: ‘A place for all radicals.’<br /> <br /> The man often ate here, sometimes lunching with the owner upstairs in his private apartment.<br /> <br /> An iconic landmark in this part of the city, twenty years before, it had been the scene of a crucial gang-war confrontation.<br /> <br /> In August 1922, Umberto Valenti, fighting for control of New York’s Italian-American underworld, was murdered near John’s. Called to a peace conference with Giuseppe Masseria, another mob boss, to be held in the restaurant, Valenti, ambushed by a group of gunmen at 11:45 am, was chased down to the corner of 2nd Avenue and then, shot dead as he tried to escape in a taxi.<br /> <br /> The portly man sat next to his old friend, John Dos Passos, the author, social historian and radical critic of the quality of American life. Across the table, sat Margaret De Silver, the woman the man had lived with since 1931. They had relocated to the Manhattan from Brooklyn Heights in 1939 or 1940. With them was her son- 27 year old Harrison. Although his doctor had been urging him to lose weight, to help overcome the various health problems he suffered from, the big, bearded man- Carlo Tresca- ate with a formidable appetite, enjoying a meal of veal scaloppini, spaghetti and cheese, all washed down with red wine and coffee.<br /> <br /> The lunch was long and noisy. The restaurant owner remembered how the company at the table almost vibrated with the noise and excitement of their excited conversations. They were discussing the war in Europe and the inevitability of Benito Mussolini’s collapse in Italy. The man who was the heart of the most intense discussions, was Tresca himself, and he reiterated how committed he was to making sure that the vacuum created by the Italian dictator’s fall, would not be filled by the communists.<br /> <br /> He was an old time revolutionary, and once had in fact supported the communists-seeing them as valuable allies in the fight against fascism. However, when the Stalinists crushed the anarchist movement in Catalonia and Aragon, during the Spanish Civil War, Tresca became an implacable enemy of Stalinism.<br /> <br /> Sometime during the meal, an old friend, Luigi Antonini, stopped by to speak. The head of Local 89 of The International Ladies Garment Workers Union, which had 34000 members, he was one of the foundling members of the American Labour Party, created in the summer of 1936 to provide support for the re-election of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.<br /> <br /> Since at least 1908, Carlo Tresca the elder statesman of the Italian-American radical world had been closely involved in the struggles of the American worker. In Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Massachusetts he had actively campaigned in the mainstream of American extremism and labour disputes, and he had many friends, and enemies among the thousands of workers and hundreds of officials who formed the core of the New York labour movements.<br /> <br /> The lunch lasted for several hours and, it was late in the afternoon, when Tresca left his party then walked the three blocks north, to his office. He ran a newspaper called Il Martello, (The Hammer), which he had used since 1920 as a propaganda tool against Mussolini. His office was located on a floor of a building at 96, Fifth Avenue, on the corner of Fifteenth Street, in lower Manhattan.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236992457,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Carlo Tresca (photo left) was sixty-four years of age. A hulking, overweight man, with a distinct mass of black hair, he also sported a beard and full, flowing moustache. A writer and human rights activist, he had waged a lifelong struggle for social and economic justice and individual rights. Born in 1879, in Sulmona in the province of Abruzzi, Italy, he had from an early age, embraced socialism and developed a powerful, belligerent stance in his beliefs that characterised his whole life.<br /> <br /> His political views developed in his early days, in Abruzzi, and by the age of twenty-two, he became elected secretary of The Syndicate of Firemen and Railroad Workers Union, the largest labour organization in Italy; he was also the editor of a newspaper called Il Germe, (The Seed). He was continually in conflict with religious, political and economic figures of power, and in 1904, he had been condemned to two years in prison for creating political agitation. Rather than serve this sentence, he escaped from Italy and travelled via Switzerland to America, arriving in New York on the SS Touraine, in August 1904.<br /> <br /> In the 39 years he lived in America, he published at least four newspaper. His activities in the labour movement brought him into contact with The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) also known as ‘The Wobblies’ and he became closely involved in the New York hotel workers strike (1913), the Paterson, New Jersey silk workers strike (1913) and the Minnesota miners strike (1916). He was constantly under attack by the federal government, and time and time again his newspapers were either suppressed or closed down.<br /> <br /> In 1921 he became interested in the famous Sacco-Vanzetti case, and was responsible for bringing the controversial IWW lawyer, Fred Moore, into the struggle for the defence, and also in generating considerable publicity and financial aid promoting the innocence of the doomed anarchists.<br /> <br /> By the 1920’s, Tresca had become obsessed with the fight against fascism, and was a key activist working against Mussolini’s efforts to organize American-Italians into support groups promoting fascist ideas within America. Pressure by Mussolini’s government eventually persuaded the State Department to suppress Il Martello, and Tresca was imprisoned in 1925 on charges that were so patently false, he was pardoned by President Coolidge after having served only four months of his sentence.<br /> <br /> His tireless advocacy of direct action had led through his life to thirty-six arrests during various working class struggles. <br /> <br /> Unable to eliminate Tresca from the scene of action by legal process, the fascist's tried to stop him forever. He was the recipient of a number of bomb attacks; there were repeated threats on his life, and he once had his throat cut in an unsuccessful assassination attempt. These assaults encouraged antifascist responses among his supporters, and there were several mass demonstrations and street fights, in New York and other leading industrial cities, between the two warring factions. By the end of 1930 Tresca and his supporters, had to all intents effectively derailed Mussolini’s plans for the creation of a subsidiary of his fascist movement in the United States.<br /> <br /> A few hundred yards south of the office Tresca would come to occupy, located on 5th Avenue, and just north of the Little Italy district, was a building at 225 Lafayette Street. Here, once described as a ‘beehive’ of fascist activity, was a concatenation that might come to exert pressure on the events that would take place a few years down the way.<br /> <br /> Edward Corsi, a notorious fascist sympathizer, founded an Italian weekly magazine called La Settimana, and moved his office here in 1936. Files in the New York District Attorney’s Office indicate that he attended a meeting in which the murder of Carlo Tresca was discussed.<br /> <br /> Vincenzo Martinez, a reporter for Il Progresso, a popular daily Italian newspaper owned by millionaire businessman Generso Pope, was allegedly part of the New York Mafia. He also acted as secretary of the Macaroni Employers Association, whose office was based in the building. In addition he was close to a man called Frank Garofalo, a powerful mob boss allied to what we now know to-day as the Bonanno Crime Family. Martinez was also a confidant of a young, tough gangster called Carmine Galante, who was making a mark for himself in and around the same crime family<br /> <br /> Garofalo often dined in a restaurant on the top floor of the building, sometimes holding meetings here with Pope, for whom he worked in at least one capacity.<br /> <br /> The building also housed at various times an assortment of men, all linked into the New York underworld.<br /> <br /> The Five Borough Truckmen’s Service Association had their office in the building. It was a group of hoods headed by Dominick Didato, Johnny Diougiardi, and his uncle Jimmy Plumeri. They were all part of another New York Mafia crime family then run by Tomasso Gagliano. As extra muscle in enforcing their demands on independent truckers in the city, they used a hoodlum called Natale Evola, someone else who would have known Garofalo, and who in fact one day in the distant future would himself, come to lead the Bonanno’s for a brief period.<br /> <br /> Albert Marinelli, the county clerk of Manhattan and leader of the 2nd Assembly also had an office in this building. Some sources claim he was the most powerful leader in Tammany Hall. He was also linked into one of the most extensive mob combinations then operating in the New York area, in the early 1930s consisting of Vito Genovese, Charley Luciano, Johnny Torio, Vincenzo Mangano, Anthony Strollo, Joe ’Socks’ Lanza and Ciro Terranova. It was suggested he often met with Garofalo and Galante and there was a strong possibility that he was mixed up not only in the politics of the mob but also the murky, shifting-sands of Soviet espionage and intrigue rampant in New York in the late 1930s.<br /> <br /> Thomas Dewey, the crusading district attorney, referred to him as:<br /> <br /> ‘…..a political ally of thieves, pickpockets, thugs, dope peddlers and big-shot racketeers.’<br /> <br /> Luciano went to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1932 with him as his guest, sharing a suite at the Drake Hotel with the crooked assemblyman.<br /> <br /> In the 1930s, Tresca fell in and then out of love with the communist movement. Their devastating brutality in the Spanish Civil War turned him into an implacable foe. By the end of the decade, the communists were conducting a strategy of character assassination against Tresca in the hopes of mitigating and destroying his influence in the anti-fascist movements. Tresca's political views became increasingly more radical over the years, and he soon came to identify himself as an anarchist.<br /> <br /> In its simplistic form, anarchy is a culture of free individuals, combining all social and economic activities, unencumbered by any form of ruling authority. The term first came into common practice in 1840, adopted by a Frenchman, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, in an essay he wrote called What is Property? Although closer to communism in terms of its doctrine, anarchy is diametrically opposed to fascism and its extreme right-wing authoritarian principles. <br /> <br /> By the time Tresca arrived in the United States, the federal government had already enacted the Anarchist Exclusion Act of 1903 and President William McKinley had been assassinated by Leon Czologosz, a radical anarchist. Mario Buda, an Italian anarchist, would be responsible for the massive Wall Street bombing in September 1920. America was finding out just how committed political activists could be, when often, all they had to look forward to were their dreams.<br /> <br /> As 1943 dawned, Carlo Tresca had become a thorn in the side of many people and organizations. The N.Y.P.D. had long listed him as a terrorist. He had a lot of enemies. Historical records indicate for example, that Mussolini had put Tresca’s name on a death list as early as 1931. He was at war with the communists and the fascists, as well as the unions and employers. There were probably enough names to fill a telephone directory. He knew that he lived on the cusp of a perilous mountain of intrigue and danger. He could easily have been the subject of the statement of German leftist Eugene Levine, who at his trial said: ‘We revolutionaries are all dead men on leave.’<br /> <br /> Earlier in the year, Tresca had lunched at John’s with two of his associates, Vincenzo Lionetti and Ezio Taddei. They had tried to persuade him to accompany them to Boston to attend a rally.<br /> <br /> ‘I will come,’ he said: ‘if they do not kill me first.’<br /> <br /> They did.<br /> <br /> At his third floor office he met up with a number of visitors, and then waited for a meeting that was to assemble at eight-thirty that evening.<br /> <br /> He sat there, with Giuseppe Calabi, an attorney and exile from Italy, waiting for four other men, who along with Tresca and Calabi had been recently chosen by the New York chapter of the Mazzini Society to establish an expanded committee for anti-fascist campaigning.<br /> <br /> The society, the most influential anti-fascist organization in America, had been founded in 1939 by Count Carlo Sforza and Max Ascoli in New York and had established over 40 branches across the country within excess of 1000 members.<br /> <br /> The four others to whom Tresca had written, inviting them to meet him in his office, were Vanni Montana, secretary to Luigi Antonini, president of the Italian-American Labor Council; John Sala, an organizer for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America along with Giovanni Profenna and Gian Mario Lanzilotti. However they did not appear. No word came from them, and phone calls by the editor failed to locate any of them.<br /> <br /> At nine-thirty, Tresca decided they would wait no longer, and suggested that he and Calabi both go to a nearby bar for sandwiches and a drink. It was situated diagonally across Fifth Avenue from Tresca’s office building. The two men exited by a door on Fifteenth Street and arm in arm, walked over to the north-east corner, stopping, before crossing the avenue.<br /> <br /> The streets of New York were dark. All the lights were either switched off or dimmed under the war time emergency regulations. It was gloomy on this corner as the two men stopped under a street lamp, next to the trash can. It was now nine-forty five.<br /> <br /> A figure moved out of the darkness, down Fifth Avenue, towards the men. He was holding a .32 calibre semi-automatic pistol. Suddenly the blackness of the night was<br /> <br /> illuminated by streaks of blue light. Shots rang out, first one, then three more. At the sound of the first discharge, Tresca turned towards the gunman, and then, his body jerked with the impact of the bullets, and he stiff-legged backwards off the sidewalk onto the roadway. As he collapsed onto the ground, his friend, Calabi, leaned in towards him, trying to support his falling body. He saw the killer, a small man, barely five feet four inches in height. His face was pale, with regular features, partially hidden by a fedora, pulled low over the forehead. Long overcoat, dark clothes, slender build, moving fast.<br /> <br /> The killer turned, and ran south across Fifteenth Street towards a car that was already pulling away from the curb. He ran with the ease of an athlete, taking long steps, jumping into the opened door at the rear of the vehicle. It accelerated and sped through the gloom, west towards Chelsea, and then like a wraith, was gone.<br /> <br /> Samuel Sherman who owned a clothing store at 100 Fifth Avenue also heard the shots and called the police. By the time they and an ambulance from Saint Vincent’s Hospital arrived, Tresca was dead. One shot had blasted into his left side, from the back, scorching through his dark Burberry overcoat and tearing through his lung; the other, hit him on the right side of the face as his body swung under the impact of the first shot. This second round passed through his brain, stopping at the base of his skull. There were powder burns on the skin, and his broad-brimmed black hat was bloodstained across the brim and crown. The killer had come within inches of his target to shoot him dead.<br /> <br /> As the killer disappeared, Calabi had called out for help. A cab stopped, and people gathered on the sidewalk to stare at the body sprawled in the gutter.</p>
<p style="text-align:left;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236992501,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236992501?profile=original" /></p>
<p><br /> <br /> A newspaper photograph of the scene shows Carlo Tresca sprawled on his back. His feet are touching the curb and his chin is pointing towards the sky. His left arm is tucked into his body, under his dark overcoat, and his right hand lies relaxed across his chest. Beneath his head, blood forms a widening pool across the black asphalt of Fifth Avenue. His hat and ubiquitous pipe lay near him.<br /> <br /> There were other witnesses to the murder. A teacher, Rosco Platts, heard the gunfire and saw the group of three men under the lamppost. His description of the gunman closely matched that of Guiseppe Calabi.<br /> <br /> Two men employed by the Norwegian consulate, were walking east on Fifteenth Street and heard the shots. One of them, Mentz Von Erpecom, later described the car. He had served in the Automobile Corps of the Norwegian army, and he knew his motors:<br /> <br /> ‘I judge by the sound of the engine,’ he said, ‘I am absolutely sure it was a Ford. As to the year, I think a ’38 or ’39. It was a dark Ford sedan.’<br /> <br /> Tony Ribarich, a close friend of Tresca’s, later told the police that he and his friend had been walking, two days earlier, past the New School for Social Research on West 12th Street, near 6th Avenue when they were almost run over by a similar Ford.<br /> <br /> Tresca had changed his routine this evening, which may well have cost him his life. If he worked late, he generally had the support of one or two bodyguards: Vincenzo Lionetti a longshoreman, and Tony Ribarchi, another tough guy, although a tailor by trade. Neither men were present. Presumably had everyone attended the meeting, Tresca would have felt safe in the numbers around him.<br /> <br /> After an autopsy had been carried out, Tresca was removed to The Campbell Funeral Parlor on Madison Avenue. Two hundred people tried to cram in to view the body, before the doors were closed.<br /> <br /> On January 16th, Tresca’s corpse, dressed in a dark suit and enclosed by a grey, metal casket, was moved to Manhattan Centre on Eighth Avenue. By noon, 5000 people had filed past the open coffin. Fifteen speakers eulogised the dead man, all claiming that the murder was an act of political assassination.<br /> <br /> At 2.30 in the afternoon, a cavalcade of 75 cars carrying friends and family, 15 carrying floral tributes, and 10 more, police and reporters, followed Tresca’s body as it was carried across the Williamsburg Bridge to Fresh Ponds Cemetery located in the borough of Queens, where he would be cremated. As the funeral procession made its way through Manhattan, 500 people gathered in silence on the corner of Fifteenth Street and Fifth Avenue, to mourn at a shrine of 500 red carnations.<br /> <br /> The funeral and burial left everyone wondering the same question:<br /> <br /> Who killed Carlo Tresca, and why?<br /> <br /> The man who became the prime suspect was a small-time hoodlum from Brooklyn. Although he was arrested, detained and questioned, off and on for three years, the police were unable to gather enough evidence to indict him. The murder of Carlo Tresca has never been solved, and in due course his life and death were consigned to the history books. His murder may have resulted from political pressure originating from Italy; the result of a conspiracy involving either the Communist or Fascist Parties; an overt act against a known enemy by the Russian secret service or then again, it may have simply been the consequence of one man doing another a favour.<br /> <br /> As author Eric Ambler has it in his novel ‘A Coffin For Dimitrios,’ in these affairs what counts is not who pulls the trigger, but who pays for the bullet.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993276,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />The man who undoubtedly killed him however, was to become one of the most notable figures in a criminal group that has operated in New York, and beyond, for over eighty years. On that dark, miserable January night when he gunned down his target, the probable killer, Carmine Galante (photo left), was already associated with or indeed perhaps a member of a Mafia organization that to-day is known as the Bonanno Crime Family.<br /> <br /> Link: Death in the afternoon. The shadow of a dream. The story of Carmine Galante<br /> <br /> Joe Bonanno the family head, used the wealth he had accumulated during Prohibition to help fund his way into legitimate businesses. In time he became a partner or whole<br /> <br /> owner of a wide range of interests: clothing factories, laundries, a funeral home, and one of the most extensive- the Grande Cheese Company of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. He kept these business ventures clean and tidy, paying his taxes on time like any respectable citizen. He also operated on the other side of the law, running the Italian lottery, operating gambling and ‘numbers’ ventures, and no doubt generating cash through loan-sharking, always a speciality of the mob. He based himself, initially in a social club called the Abraham Lincoln Independent Political Club on Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.<br /> <br /> The years that followed Prohibition were productive and relatively peaceful among the five rival families, as they manoeuvred around each other, competing for a bigger slice of the Big Apple. Joseph Bonanno claimed that the first thirty years were the balmy days and that until the mid-1950s he was hardly known to the press, and that likewise other members of his crime family generated no publicity.<br /> <br /> Then there was the murder of Carlo Tresca in 1943.<br /> <br /> Almost fourty years later, General Alberto Dalla Chiesa, carabinieri officer and newly appointed prefect of Palermo, reminisced shortly before his own murder at the hands of the Mafia, on the template for what came to be know as excellent cadavers-the illustrious servants of the state killed by the secret society:<br /> <br /> …..‘the powerful man is killed when factors come together to make a fatal combination-when he becomes too dangerous but can be killed because he’s become isolated.’<br /> <br /> The killing was investigated by the Manhattan District Attorney who appointed ADA Jacob Gramet to oversee the case handling. He was in turn assisted by six assistant district attorneys, and addition six special investigators headed a task-force supported by thirteen police officers under the direction of Deputy Chief Inspector Conrad Rothengast. Alongside them, worked ten detectives from the Grand Jury Squad, and added to this, were specialist assigned from the Alien Squad, the Police Technical Research Unit, the Manhattan and State Department of Corrections, the State Police Commission, the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics and officers from the Special Investigation Bureau of the U.S. Alcohol Tax Unit. A veritable army of gumshoes.<br /> <br /> Interestingly, the F.B.I. sat in the wings, watching the developments unfold. At this point in its history, the agency was not too bothered about mobsters. It was interested in Tresca’s murder, more for its political undertones, particularly in connection with any possible communist involvement than anything else<br /> <br /> Their main file on Tresca must have been immense because the collateral documents alone run to 1500 pages. In their generosity and benevolence, they sent DA Frank<br /> <br /> Hogan a twelve page summary that in their wisdom they deemed,’ this is all the information in the Bureau’s files which it is believed may be of value to the New York authorities in possibly solving the Tresca murder.’<br /> <br /> Late in the evening of Tuesday January 12th, at 10:30 pm, the police picked up Carmine Galante as he waited on the corner of Elizabeth and Prince Streets in Manhattan’s Bowery district. He had just left a candy store, fronting as a gambling club, and was in the company of Joseph De Palermo, alias ‘Joe Beck,’ a notorious criminal, and a man who would have a life-long involvement in drug trafficking for the mob. Galante became an primary suspect in the murder investigation because of events that had occurred the previous evening.<br /> <br /> Galante had gone to prison on a twelve year stretch for the armed robbery of a Brooklyn brewery. He was currently out on parole, and had to attend his parole office on a regular basis. This was situated at 80 Centre Street. It was common practice for parole officers to follow their parolees in the hope of catching them consorting with known criminals. Galante, after checking with his parole officer, Sydney Fross at 8:15pm in the evening of January 11th, was followed to a car that picked him up. The two parole officers tracking him, Fred Berson and George Talianoff, could not continue the chase by vehicle, because of restrictions placed on such activity by the wartime gas shortages.<br /> <br /> They did however, take down a description of the auto- it was a black, 1938 Ford sedan- its registration plate number was IC-9272. This car had been found abandoned about five blocks from the murder scene at West Eighteenth Street, near the Seventh Avenue subway station, by Patrolman Dave Greenberg in the early hours of January 12th. The police were able to trace through the ignition keys that the car had been stored in an eight-vehicle sized garage, leased to one Frank Nuncio, at 265 Elizabeth Street, less than a block from where the parole officers witnessed the pick-up of Galante, an hour or so before the murder occurred.<br /> <br /> Nuncio, 24 years old, was arrested in the first week of September by detectives of the Tenth squad, and held on $25,000 bail at The House of Detention in The Bronx. A<br /> <br /> small-time bootlegger with a number of arrests, he was not a big league criminal. According to the records, the police held on to him as long as they could because he was their only direct link to Galante, but eventually, after two months, they had to release him for lack of evidence.<br /> <br /> Galante was remanded by the police for violating his parole conditions, and consorting with a known criminal- Palermo. Questioned off and on for several months, he always denied any knowledge of the crime. He claimed the night of January 11th after seeing his parole officer, he had taken the IRT uptown and gone to see the movie, Casablanca, at the Hollywood Theatre on Broadway. He confirmed that he went there with his girlfriend, but refused to give up her name, not wanting to get her into any trouble. She turned out to be Helen Marulli, the woman he would eventually marry.<br /> <br /> Incarcerated in the massive granite edifice on Centre Street called the Hall of Justice, but usually referred to as the Tombs prison, he was identified in a line up by Guiseppe Calabi, as the man who shot Carlo Tresca. In order to try and prise information out of Galante, the police used an informant called Emilio Funicello, a two-time loser serving a life sentence. A low-level member of the mob, his wife had died while he was in prison, and he blamed his former associates for failing to provide her with medical care. He wanted his freedom to take care of his children, and had been used before by the police as a contact or informant to help break difficult cases.<br /> <br /> Funicello eventually was able to gain Galante’s confidence, and at different times, heard versions of what happened that night. In one, Galante referred to the car driver as ‘Buster‘ and another man in the car he called ‘Pap’ or ‘Pep’ They went for a meal that night to a bar and grill on Fifth Avenue, between Fifteenth and Sixteenth streets.<br /> <br /> In another account, he said that he met Helen Marulli at the Hollywood Theatre, leaving her there to see the movie, while he had gone to meet ‘Buster’ and ‘Pap’ and driven with them down to Fourteenth Street. There, ‘Pap‘ had left the car and gone to stand in the doorway to Tresca’s building, on the Fifth Avenue side. Galante and ‘Buster‘ had then driven around to park the car in Fifteenth Street.<br /> <br /> Galante went after the two men as they left the building. According to Funicello’s statement, Galante said to him: ‘I let him have the first shot in the right side of the head. It looked like I didn’t hit him because he kept on walking. I let him have another….His little friend there……..He was looking at me, but he looked like he was in a daze because he didn’t move……I ran after the car and jumped in. I saw ‘Pap’ standing on the corner. I got out at Sixteenth Street, went uptown.’ There, he went to the theatre, picked up his girlfriend and went with her to a hotel where they spent the night.<br /> <br /> ‘Pap‘ apparently dropped his gun, a .38 police positive revolver near the Fifth Street entrance to the building. Patrolman Charles Clarke found it hidden here behind some trash barrels. There were no fingerprints on it and it was untraceable. The police were also unable to trace ownership of the getaway car, which had been purchased weeks before in the New York car lot of Con-Fed Motors by a man who gave his name as Charles Pappas. Both the name and address turned out to be bogus. Although ‘Pap‘ was never identified, the New York police were convinced that the driver ‘Buster‘ was in fact Bastiano Domingo who had been one of the ushers at Joseph Bonanno’s wedding in 1931.<br /> <br /> Whoever it was, it could not have been this Buster. He’d been shot dead on the evening of May 30, 1933, in a cafe on First Street, Manhattan. (1)<br /> <br /> Following Galante's arrest, informants told investigators that a collection had been taken up to pay his legal expenses. Shopkeepers in and around Prince and Mulberry Streets where Galante operated, had been encouraged to contribute and remarkably few refused. The man who apparently organized this was Frank Citrano, alias ‘Chuck Wilson’ a man known to have ‘powerful pull’ with New York leaders and judges. Interestingly enough, he also had a son, called ‘Buster.’ <br /> <br /> Citrano pops up again in files in the New York District Attorney’s Office. These indicate that the American Labour Party, which Luigi Antonini helped to establish,<br /> <br /> contributed funds for Galante’s defence. Memos on file throughout 1944 also reveal that Citrano, Tony Garappa, Galante, and the Palermo brothers- Joe and Peter- were paid $9000 for Tresca’s killing, the money passed over to them by Tony Parisi, a member of the Teamsters Local 27.<br /> <br /> It was believed that DA Hogan would present the case to a grand jury in May, but this never eventuated. Galante was jailed for almost a year on violations of parole charges, and then released in December 1944 with no additional charges laid against him. If Galante was the shooter- and it seems certain he was, documents released under the F.O.I. Act establish the N.Y.P.D., F.B.I. and the Manhattan’s D.A. Office had quickly concluded Galante shot Tresca- what was less obvious was who was behind the killing?<br /> <br /> In the months immediately following the murder, there was much speculation as to the reason for Tresca’s murder.<br /> <br /> Ezio Taddei, who had lunched at John’s earlier in the year with Tresca, made a statement to the police the day after the killing. He said: ‘My conviction is the Communist Party killed Carlo Tresca……they are trying to get control of The Mazzini Society……I am convinced the murder was politically inspired, nothing more.’<br /> <br /> Luigi Antonini, the union official who had spoken with Tresca at that last lunchtime meal, also implied that the Communist Party was behind the killing. In turn, the Communist’s countered with allegations that an agent of the Italian Secret Service was behind the crime. They covered themselves with a two-way bet when Benjamin Gitlow, secretary-general of the party, claimed that Tresca was murdered as a result of conflict between himself and Enea Ormenti, aka Vittorio Vidali, an agent of the OGPU (Russian Secret Service) later absorbed into the NKVD. Their dispute stemmed, apparently, from the murder of one of Tresca’s closest friends, killed in Spain during the Civil War in 1937- Italian anarchist writer Camillo Berneri- and the possible abduction and murder also in 1937 of Juliet Stuart Poyntz, a well known Communist agitator and intellectual, who disappeared while walking in Central Park,<br /> <br /> one night in June, However the secret agent Ormenti , had an air-tight alibi for the night Tresca was shot. He was seen attending a banquet in Mexico City.<br /> <br /> Another story that surfaced lay the responsibility for the murder at the door of Vito Genovese. The under boss of the Mafia crime family headed by Charlie Luciano. Genovese had fled to Italy in 1937 to avoid prosecution on a murder charge. In 1957 the F.B.I. received an anonymous letter stating that Genovese had become extremely close to Benito Mussolini. He had developed strong ties to the Fascist Party, and had arranged the killing of Tresca as a personal favour for the Italian dictator, after being approached by senior members of the group who were deeply concerned about the damage Tresca could do to them in New York..<br /> <br /> Ed Reid, the reporter and crime writer, was the first to advance this theory in his articles in the now defunct Brooklyn Eagle newspaper and the New York Post.<br /> <br /> Tresca and Genovese had crossed swords seven years earlier according to Nino Mirabini, one time chauffeur and bodyguard to Genovese. In a statement made in 1946, he claimed Carlo Tresca had stirred up a hornets nest on discovering Genovese was opening a Fascist club for Italian sailors in Manhattan. It was it seems, to be merely a cover for Genovese’s burgeoning drug trafficking organization. The plan never went ahead, and a year later Genovese fled New York while under suspicion for being involved in the murder of minor mob figure Ferdinand Boccia.<br /> <br /> Louis A. Pagnucco, the assistant district attorney in charge of the Italian side of the Tresca investigation, interviewed an underworld character called Ernest ‘The Hawk‘ Ruppolo, in 1946. He claimed that the murder had been organized by Anthony Bender, aka ‘Tony Strollo‘ and Mike Miranda two captains in the Luciano crime family, and that Galante was accompanied that night by Gus Frasca and George Smurra.<br /> <br /> <span style="font-weight:bold;">Link:</span> <a style="font-weight:bold;" href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/being-ernest-the-life-and-hard">The Life and Hard Times of Ernie 'The Hawk' Rupolo</a><br /> <br /> In 1963 a U.S. Senate subcommittee on organized crime, heard testimony from Deputy Chief Inspector John J. Shanley of the New York Police Department, confirming that the Tresca killing had been organized by Strollo and Miranda acting on behalf of Vito Genovese.<br /> <br /> A compelling, if true, allegation by author Dorothy Gallagher, is that two of the most notorious and extreme Stalinists in the history of American Communism, waterfront labour thug Frederick N. (Blackie) Myers, an official of the National Maritime Union (NMU), and Soviet spy Louis Goldblatt, an officer of the West Coast dockworkers' union movement controlled by Harry Bridges of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU) were questionably close to Galante on the night of the murder. They were allegedly reported visiting the parole office of Sydney Fross at 80 Centre Street at the same time Galante was checking in.<br /> <br /> Myers and Goldblatt were part of unions that employed extensive violence against their political adversaries, including supporters of anarchy-syndicalism such as Carlo Tresca. They would also have had strong ties with the unions represented by the two men who did not turn up that night for the meeting with Tresca-Montana and Sala.<br /> <br /> Was there somehow, some connection through this? How for example, did the killer of Tresca know exactly where he would be that night, at around that time?<br /> <br /> Another predication generated was that Albert Marinelli, the crooked assemblyman from the 2nd District had also been involved in a Soviet espionage and terror campaign in the U.S. For years after the killing of Tresca, Italian-American anarchists and anti-Stalinist Socialists declared that the Communists had worked out a quid pro quo with the Mafia in New York: the former agreeing to mob rule over certain unions while the latter would ‘rub out’ certain political enemies of Moscow.<br /> <br /> There was another person, a man who passed through the last day of Carlo Tresca’s life; a man who perhaps also had a reason to shut down the activities of the radical anarchist.<br /> <br /> In a report sent to J. Edgar Hoover, on February 5th, 1943 by Special Agent E.E. Conroy, was information that the nexus connecting Carlo Tresca, Frank Garofalo and Generso Pope was perhaps complemented by the inclusion of Luigi Antonini forming an alliance with Pope. This had come about through a deal brokered by Garofalo to legitimize Pope and help him win a seat on the Italian-American Victory Council. This had been set up to determine the coordination on the establishment of a post-Fascist government in Italy following an Allied victory in Europe. It was based initially in Washington D.C. under the authority of The War Office of Information. Carlo Tresca was vehemently against the inclusion of communists and their sympathisers in this organization.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993295,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Pope had secretly been contributing funds to an ILWU hospital being built in Los Angeles. 18 months later a Bureau report confirmed that ‘the only thing that kept Luigi Antonini from publicly joining faces with Generso Pope was Carlo Tresca and once he was out of the picture, there would be no one to impede his move.’<br /> <br /> However, the man who rates as the most logical suspect behind the elimination of Carlo Tresca was the under boss of the Bonanno Mafia crime family.<br /> <br /> In 1943, Frank Garofalo (photo right) was 52 years old. The son of a leather worker, he was born, like so many of the main characters who populate this story, in Castellammare del Golfo. Apart from anything else, he had an endlessly confusing surname, being referred to as Garofalo, Garafola, Garafalo and Garofolo, as well as using the name Frank Carrol just to confuse the issue even more.<br /> <br /> He came to America in 1910 and was naturalised in 1930. A single man, he lived at 339 East Fifty-eight Street, in Manhattan. He was a wholesale distributor of cheese, with an office at 176 Avenue A, and had a police permit to carry a gun. Joseph Bonanno refers to him as an urbane and sophisticated man, fond of opera, good food and lively conversation. He had an particularly strong grasp of the English language (something which evaded Bonanno all his life) and as a result, Joe came to rely upon<br /> <br /> him heavily in serious negotiation situations. He also called Garofalo, ‘my right hand man.’ According to some sources, he acted as Bonanno’s second-in-charge for over 25 years. He may also have been instrumental in helping the crime family establish a bridgehead in Montreal, through which they would come to ship heroin, imported by sea from Sicily. Although of average height and build, Don Ciccio as Garofalo was also known, inspired much fear in people.<br /> <br /> In an inter office F.B.I. memorandum from D.M. Ladd to J. Edgar Hoover dated February 1, 1946, it states: ‘Frank Garafalo is the head of a large syndicate known as the Castallammarese gang of which Frank Nuccio is a member. Garafalo is reputed to be a big-time racketeer in New York City who allegedly is in control of the Italian section of the New York underworld…….he is thought to be criminally dangerous.’<br /> <br /> Apart from spelling his name and the gang’s name wrong, wrongly identify him as the head of the Bonanno family, and the man who controlled all the Mafia families in the city, Mr. Ladd hit it right on the button.<br /> <br /> Frank Garofalo went back and forth between New York and Italy several times during the 1930s- in 1929, 1932, 1937 and 1938 at least. No one knows for sure why he made these journeys. He had legitimate business interests and was a key player in the importation and distribution of Italian cheeses into the United States. Joe Bonanno also apparently made frequent visits back to his homeland, although history only seemingly records his famous travels in 1957, which he claimed was a holiday funded by Generso Pope. The two men were also close to Santo Sorge, a powerful business man in New York with major ties into the Mafia in Sicily, and Gaetano Russo who headed up the famous Cusimano and Russo Funeral Home in Brooklyn. Although ostensibly a well-known and respected member of the business community, he apparently had links to just about every key Mafia figure in the country and according to the Federal Bureau of Narcotic set up a substantial drug trafficking arrangement with Charley Luciano in 1955.<br /> <br /> Why would Frank Garofalo, one of the most powerful mob bosses in New York want to see Carlo Tresca dead? There were two reasons. One was called Generoso Pope (photo below) and the other Dolores C. Faconti.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993870,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Generoso Pope (right), born of peasant stock and originally carrying the name Pappa, in Beneveto, Italy in 1891, emigrated to America in 1906. His life was the stuff of immigrant’s dreams. Starting work as a labourer, he eventually became owner of Colonial Sand and Stone, the biggest construction company in America. He was the first Italian-American multi-millionaire. He owned and published two prominent Italian language daily newspapers and became America’s most prominent pro-fascist. He spearheaded numerous fund-raising drives in support of Mussolini. One of his sons, Fortuna, published Il Progresso, the largest circulation Italian language newspaper in America. His other son, Generoso junior, one day would publish The National Enquirer, funded initially with financial support from Frank Costello, one of New York’s leading underworld figures.<br /> <br /> On February 14th, 1943, at a commemorative rally honouring Tresca, Ezio Taddei changed direction away from the Communist Party and accused individuals in the underworld of Tresca’s murder. He also introduced Pope as a key player in the conspiracy. In a pamphlet put out by Taddei called “The Tresca Case,” he described the relationship between Garofalo, Galante and Pope.<br /> <br /> Famous columnist, Walter Winchell inferred in one of his Daily Mirror articles that ‘another publisher arranged the assassination through his bodyguard.’<br /> <br /> Taddei also drew attention to Miss Dolores Faconti Assistant US Attorney in the Southern Division of New York, who he implied was Garofalo’s girlfriend.<br /> <br /> Frank Garofalo had known Pope for a number of years. Some sources claimed that the two were ‘joined at the hip’ so close was their relationship. Garofalo operated a newspaper agency business that distributed Il Progresso throughout New York, and allegedly acted as a intermediary for Pope in times of industrial unrest. In 1934 he had visited Tresca, threatening him with violence if he did not stop haranguing Pope.<br /> <br /> Generoso Pope was a leading promoter of Mussolini. He raised $800,000 in support of Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia, and because of his political power with the Italian vote in New York, he had a lot of influence in the policy of Albany and Washington. Pope’s business and political fortunes depended on his continuing good relations and influence with public officials. The attacks by Tresca were causing him continuing damage.<br /> <br /> Tresca, in one of his articles in Il Martello, wrote, ironically: ‘…….who Generoso Pope is and what gangster methods he employs…..In any case we are ready, either to face the courts, or Pope’s assassins.’<br /> <br /> In 1942 in a public confrontation, Tresca berated Garofalo, not only for his association with Pope, but also his relationship with Dolores Faconti. He criticised the lawyer for associating with ‘that gunman.’<br /> <br /> On September 10th, a dinner was hosted at the Manhattan Club by the War Bond Savings Committee of Americans of Italian Origin. Assured that Generso Pope would not be attending, Tresca went as a guest. He was infuriated to see Pope seated on the main dais with committee members, but then Garofalo came in accompanied by Dolores Falconti. Disgusted, Tresca rose from his seat shouting ‘Not only is there a Fascist here, but also his gangster. This is too much, I’m leaving!’ He stormed out shouting in a loud voice, accusing Garofalo of being a notorious killer. Tresca subsequently threatened to expose Garofalo in Il Martello and his connection to Pope.<br /> <br /> Garofalo allegedly replied to the effect that before that would happen, Tresca would be found dead in a gutter.<br /> <br /> This outburst by Tresca may well have been the final straw for both Garofalo and Pope. Partly as a result of Tresca’s constant haranguing, the attorney general’s office opened an inquiry on Faconti in 1942, although nothing could be proven against her because of her relationship with Garofalo, and she did not in fact resign her role as an assistant district attorney until 1947.<br /> <br /> Faconti is an crucial link in the chain connecting Tresca’s murder to the man believed to have set up his killer, although there is little known about her. She had graduated from Fordham Law School prior to her time in the DA’s office. By 1949 her relationship with Garofalo had run its course and she married a musical conductor called William Scotti, a prominent saxophone soloist and composer, who led the band at the Cotillion Room in the graceful Pierre Hotel near Central Park.<br /> <br /> Following the angry outburst at the Manhattan Club, Faconti phoned and then visited Tresca, a number of times, begging him not to publicise what had taken place that night, and exposing her relationship with Garofalo. Tresca agreed not to write about Facconte‘s affair with Garofalo, but that he intended to crucify the Mafia leader, and his patron-Generoso Pope. However, when she eventually disclosed this meeting to her lover, he allegedly beat her black and blue for humbling herself to Tresca.<br /> <br /> Garofola was a dangerous man with access to even more dangerous men to do his bidden. Combine this with the almost indissoluble hubris that no doubt was part of his Sicilian personality, and it augured badly for anyone who would cross him, especially in the way Carlo Tresca had done.<br /> <br /> On April 28th, 1950, Generoso Pope died of a stroke. His obituary in the New York Times described him as a ‘colourful and sometimes controversial figure in New York’s business, political and philanthropic life…….an outstanding example of an immigrant who made good in America.’<br /> <br /> His death finally closed the case on Carlo Tresca. By then the F.B.I., New York Police and the District Attorney’s office had more or less given up on the mystery of Tresca’s death. The SAC (Special Agent in Charge) of the New York office of the F.B.I. who followed the developments in the Tresca case closely, in memos to Hoover, speculated that because of the political ramifications, the New York authorities may well have ‘soft pedalled‘ the investigation.<br /> <br /> Carmine Galante and Frank Garofalo continued with their own agendas, and Joseph Bonanno’s life seems not to have been disturbed in the slightest by the Tresca affair, other than that for a while he moved to Arizona as the New York police activity gathered strength and up to 1000 officers were called in to support the investigation.<br /> <br /> If the Bonanno family had been involved in the elimination of such a public figure as Carlo Tresca, it seems inconceivable that it proceeded without authorization from the man who had been leading it now for so many years.<br /> <br /> Carmine Galante carried on being a hot-headed, rambunctious hoodlum, moving up the ranks of the Bonanno crime family, until he became second-in-command to Joe Bonanno. A consummate drug trafficker, Galante was in an out of prison, following his first arrest in 1921, a major suspect in the murder of a police officer in Brooklyn, and a continual target for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Hated and feared by many of his mob contemporaries, his day in the sun, came, literally one hot and sunny afternoon in July 1979. Lunching with two of his associates in a small, family restaurant on Knickerbocker Avenue in Brooklyn, he was shot dead by a group of killers armed with pistols and a shotgun. <br /> <br /> Frank Garofalo eventually moved back to Sicily in 1955 where he lived out the rest of his life in relative obscurity. He apparently returned to America, because on 17th October 1956, a State Trooper patrolling the highway near Binghampton, in northern New York State, at about ten in the evening, stopped a car that was speeding through the town of Windsor. There were four men in it, and the driver produced a license that was clearly not his. It turned out to belong to the front- seat passenger- a man called Joseph Di Palermo, of 246 Elizabeth Street, Manhattan. Trooper Leibe escorted the car to the police substation in Binghampton, where the driver was identified as Carmine Galante.<br /> <br /> Inquires revealed that he and Di Palermo, along with Frank Garofalo and John Bonventre, the other occupants of the car, had spent the previous night, at the Arlington Hotel, as hosts of a local businessman called Joseph Barbara. <br /> <br /> Garofalo also in 1957, most likely attended the infamous November Apalachin mob meeting following his participation as one of the thirty or so Mafioso who had maybe gathered for a conclave that lasted four days in October, at the Grand Hotel des Palmes in Palermo, Sicily.<br /> <br /> Link: Mob Meeting at Apalachin<br /> <br /> On August 2nd, 1965, 74 year old Garofalo was arrested by the Italian police as part of a group of ten, the authorities claimed were an international association linking the Sicilian and American Mafia. The group included some of the most powerful and iconic Sicilian mob figures, such as Frank Coppola, Vincenzo Martinez ( the same one connected into 225 Lafayette Street) Giuseppe Magaddino, Calogero Orlando and Diego Plaja. Some men escaped the net that had spread across Italia from Bologna in<br /> <br /> the north to Taormina on the east coast of Sicily. One of these was Joe Cerito, the 54 year old mob boss of San Jose, in California, who had been observed by the police meeting with Garofalo in Palermo in October 1964.<br /> <br /> The trial of the men in Palermo, for drug trafficking and criminal conspiracy began in 1968, and the Italian authorities wanted Joseph Valachi, the infamous Genovese Family mob informant, to testify as a witness for the prosecution.<br /> <br /> The authorities in America rejected the request, as they were worried about Valachi's security issues. Frank Garofalo never saw the proceedings unfold, as he died of natural causes sometime prior to June 1968 when the case was dismissed by the presiding judge.<br /> <br /> Murder for political expediency is rarely found in the history of the American Mafia. There have been few examples, the most notable perhaps being the assassination of the John F. Kennedy and possibly that of Martin Luther King.<br /> <br /> ‘The Cosa Nostra agreed to 'broker' the assassination of Martin Luther King for an amount somewhat in excess of $300,000 ….... James Earl Ray's contact in New Orleans was with a lieutenant of Carlos Marcello, the Southern Mafia chieftain in New Orleans.’ <br /> <br /> So says a 1968 Justice Department memo that the F.B.I. withheld from the Louis Stokes 1979 congressional investigation into the killings of Dr. King and JFK.<br /> <br /> There was another possible link through the mob boss of Chicago, Sam Giancana, who allegedly used a messenger, Myron Billett, to arrange a meeting in Apalachin, upstate New York, in 1968, between Carlo Gambino, perhaps the biggest American Mafia figure of the time, and three representatives of the CIA, who supposedly offered him $1,000,000 to arrange the killing of King. Gambino apparently turned it down. (2)<br /> <br /> The deaths of these two major public figures may well have been linked by a thread connecting ambitious and ruthless men determined to achieve their own ends, with an organization equipped to supply the manpower and logistical support to carry out overt acts of terrorism that could however, never be directly linked to the originators.<br /> <br /> Not unlike the way the hit had perhaps gone down on Carlo Tresca.<br /> <br /> Dorothy Gallagher, who wrote what may be the definitive biography of Carlo Tresca, called her book: ‘All the Right Enemies.’<br /> <br /> Between Communist sympathisers, fascist radicals, an Italian dictator, political extremists of both left and right wing ideals, big business conspirators, Stalinist sympathizers, a vengeful Italian newspaper magnate and the Force Majeure acting as an overwhelming impetus that effectively blocked any compromise between Tresca as the victim and Pope/Garofalo as the unequivocal instigators, and no doubt indirect perpetrators of his violent death, there was probably never any doubt that at end of day, Carlo Tresca had them in spades. <br /> <br /> A man who spent so much of his life walking around like a bandaged thumb, he perhaps needed to have paid respect to one of Niccolò Machiavelli’s more profound maxims:<br /> <br /> ‘The gulf between how one should live and does live is so wide that a man who neglects what is actually done for what should be done learns the way to self-destruction rather that self-preservation.’<br /> <br /> <span style="font-weight:bold;">Acknowledgement:</span><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">(1) David Critchley. The Origin of Organized Crime in America. Routledge. Taylor & Francis Group. 2009.</span><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">(2) A Letter to the American People (and Myself in Particular) On the Unspeakable.</span><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Copyright James W. Douglas</span><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">I would also like to acknowledge the help of ‘Felice’ from Real Deal who helped me track down some of the Italian end.</span><br /> </p>
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Hit in Harlem: The Life and Times of Eugenio Giannini
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/hit-in-harlem-the-life-and
2010-11-17T14:53:40.000Z
2010-11-17T14:53:40.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br /> By all accounts he wasn’t that nice a person.<br /> <br /> Described as small, lecherous and ugly, with a temperament to match, it’s hard to find anything redeeming in a life like his, cut short by the mid forties. He played one shady card too many, and found out the hard way that the mob doesn’t tolerate rats or double-crossers. It was only because of Joe Valachi that he made more than just a mention in the New York daily papers: another gangster taken for a one-way ride and dumped in the street. Another sad sack, emptied by the ill fortunes of bad timing and egocentric judgment. It was Joe who let us in on the details of that last night in Harlem, and helped the cops close their case on the body found on 107th Street early on the morning of September 21st, 1952.<br /> <br /> Eugenio (sometimes referred to as Eugene) Giannini was born in 1906 in Bari, Calabria, on the southern tip of the Italian peninsular. His parents immigrated to America, and he grew up in New York. Some sources claim his family settled in the Harlem or Bronx area, others that they laid down roots down in Greenwich Village. For a time as a teenager, he earned his living as a boxer, claiming 13 victories by knockouts. There is no record of just how he drifted into the criminal underworld, but in 1927 in Newport R.I., he served time for robbery, and again in 1928, he was arrested for carrying a revolver and pulled a five to ten year term in Dannemora prison. It was here, that he undoubtedly teamed up with at least one or more of the small group that later formed themselves into a ‘cowboy’ group that cruised the streets of New York looking for potential hold-up targets.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236989690,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Released, he was again arrested in 1934 for armed robbery, but this time it also included a charge of first-degree murder for having shot and killed a police officer during the course of a hold up.<br /> <br /> Giannini (photo right) and his partners had been confronted by the patrolman, and in the ensuring shoot-out, the officer was killed and three people were wounded. Somehow, in the make-believe world of the New York jurisprudence system, charges were dismissed and Giannini went free.<br /> <br /> It’s a given in the Mafia underworld that you don’t kill law enforcement officers. Too much, far too much heat. Giannini was almost certainly not yet linked into that strange, mysterious brotherhood that afternoon when he went to meet his associates.<br /> <br /> The man who would become their main victim, left his home at 40 Pendelton Place, New Brighton, on Staten Island, a curved, tree shaded residential street, probably sometime after lunch, as he was working the four to midnight shift on this day, May 4th 1934. I see him playing with his young sons, then kissing his wife good-bye, forever as it turned out.<br /> <br /> Standing by the door to their small, neat house, watching him stroll down the street towards the sea, maybe she waved to him, one last time. He lived only about a mile and a half from the ferry terminal, so it’s possible he walked the journey. The five cent fare would take him to lower Manhattan in about thirty minutes.<br /> <br /> It was going to be a hot day-temperatures would get up into the 80s by late afternoon in Central Park- perhaps even hotter where he would be working. It could be he stood on the ship’s deck, letting whatever breeze there was cool things down; the wind blowing through his short, dark hair, brushed back from his strong, oblong- shaped Scandinavian type face. As likely as not, he caught a street car from South Ferry Terminal, reaching the precinct building at number nine Oak Street in plenty of time to get ready for his watch.<br /> <br /> Some of the streets he walked no longer exist to-day because of the redevelopments in the area: the new off ramp for the Brooklyn Bridge, and the massive twelve apartment buildings that make up the Governor Alfred E. Smith Housing projects.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236990063,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />That afternoon however, after signing in and getting ready for his shift, he left the station house, walked the short distance to New Chambers Street, turning east to Cherry and then north up Cherry before turning into Oliver, and that’s where it all turned bad.<br /> <br /> Patrolman Arthur P. Rasmussen (right), Badge No. 13779, was 31 years old. An eight year veteran of the New York Police Department, his beat was the teeming, cramped streets and thoroughfares of the old Fourth Ward on the Lower East Side, sometimes referred to as ‘Little Spain.’<br /> <br /> Like police officers the world over, his daily routine would be 97% boring routine, with maybe 3% of sheer terror and chaos kicking in.<br /> <br /> For Arthur Rasmussen, to-day would be a three per center.<br /> <br /> Unknown to him, just a few hundred yards away events were shaping up that would change things forever.<br /> <br /> At 83 Oliver Street, Leonardo and Orizio Mangano were busy serving customers at their grocery store, a few hundred feet north of the Cherry Street intersection. Three men walked into the shop. They were, according to witnesses, almost identical: short, swarthy, with black hair under their fedoras, slim and well-dressed in dark coloured suits The men produced revolvers and demanded money. The two brothers handed over their day’s takings-$147-and although the thieves warned them to stay quiet as they left, Orizio threw a milk bottle through the storefront window, shouting out an alarm.<br /> <br /> The robber’s startled by this, began running away down towards Cherry Street brandishing their guns, clearing a way through the crowded sidewalk..<br /> <br /> Meanwhile Officer Rasmussen continued his beat, actually walking past the robber’s getaway-car, a tan coloured Auburn, parked at the northwest corner of Cherry and New Chambers Street-the driver sitting there- the car engine ticking over as the police officer walked past him.<br /> <br /> As he approached the corner of Oliver Street, Rasmussen heard the noise of people screaming and saw crowds running, scattering across the street and sidewalks. The three men appeared running towards him like crazy, their little legs pumping like pistons looking for a con rod.<br /> <br /> As soon as they saw the blue uniform they started shooting. By the time Officer Rasmussen had cleared his revolver, he had been shot three times- in the jaw, chest and abdomen. He collapsed onto the sidewalk as the robbers leapt over and around him, in their mad rush to their car. Struggling to his knees, the police officer fired his .38 revolver repeatedly after the crooks, until it clicked empty. Due to the street being so crowded, he must have strained to pick his targets without endangering any of the dozens of people milling about.<br /> <br /> Caught in the cross-fire, three civilian victims were injured:<br /> <br /> Ten month old Thomas Farino, the son of another Oak Street officer, who was being taken for a walk by his aunt, Sue Farino, was grazed in the face by a wild shot; Joseph Gaetano, over from Brooklyn for the day, received a wound above his left eye as he was playing ball in the street with some pals. Officer Rasmussen had stopped briefly and taken a friendly swat at the ball with his nightstick. Leonora Albanese, who lived on Cherry Street was with two of her girlfriends. It was her birthday and she had just purchased a cake. The girls were walking three abreast, Leonora in the middle, when she was hit just above the heart. Shots ricocheted off parked cars, and fire escapes and one shattered the window of a barber’s shop.<br /> <br /> Arthur Rasmussen finally collapsed in a heap outside a Greek coffee shop. He was bundled into a taxi by some people in the street and rushed half a mile south to the Beekman Street Hospital, but was dead on arrival. As doctors tried to resuscitate him, the three wounded victims started arriving, also by taxis.<br /> <br /> The murder of Officer Rasmussen was the latest in a series of shootings involving New York Police officers. Two other patrolmen had been killed and four seriously wounded since the first day of the year. One of the wounded, Patrolman Lawrence Ward gunned down on 101st Street in Harlem the same morning of the day Officer Rasmussen was shot, died of his injuries on May 6th and the city was in an uproar.<br /> <br /> Mayor LaGuardia issued an edict from City Hall demanding the police ‘shoot to kill’ any bandits plaguing the streets. All available detectives and patrolmen were launched on a manhunt for Rasmussen’s killers. Dozen of cops congregated in the area to help search for them. Patrol cars from the Battery to Fourteenth Street were ordered to converge in a huge dragnet around the area. Detectives were assigned to cover all railways stations, ferries and main highways out of the city.<br /> <br /> It took the police fifteen days to make the breakthrough in the case.<br /> <br /> Two ace detectives, from Oak Street-Gunson and Kaplan- were given one job: trace that brown coloured Auburn getaway-car.<br /> <br /> No one had remembered the plate number, but some witnesses swore it started with a ‘U.’ That brought the two cops into the Bronx, where it might have been registered. After a lot of footwork, the detectives discovered a car like this may have been parked on Second Avenue in Harlem, and eventually tracked down a young boy, Joseph Borello who lived with his mother in an apartment at number 2165. He knew the car-and even better-who owned it. His name was ‘Whitey’ and he lived on East 109th Street, two blocks south. Calling up reinforcements, the officers rushed to the apartment and found Ralph DeLillo.<br /> <br /> Taken to the Oak Street precinct, DeLillo was ‘vigorously’ questioned by the detectives, finally confessing to his part in the robbery and implicating two of his associates, Alfred Luicci and Gene Giannini who was also using the alias ‘Eugene Giovanni.’ Both men were quickly arrested and booked. They were held without bail as the prosecutor’s office and the police kept investigating, looking for others who might have been involved in the robbery and shoot-out.<br /> <br /> It was believed by the authorities that the gang had intended to hold up the construction office of the huge Knickerbocker Village complex being erected at 137 Cherry Street. The worker’s payroll was due to be delivered on Friday afternoon, but police assigned to guard it became suspicious and delayed its delivery. This may have forced the killers to pick another target in the neighbourhood.<br /> <br /> Interestingly enough, Giannini was found to have an infected wound on his right leg, which may have been a gunshot wound, indicating that although dying, as he fired off his revolver, Police Officer Rasmussen may well have hit one of his targets.<br /> <br /> On May 7th, Police Officer Arthur P. Rasmussen was buried at 3 o’clock with a full Inspector’s funeral in the Moravian Cemetery in New Dorp. Over one hundred police officers attended along with family and friends. He lies buried in the single grave section, number 2819. His wife Sophie and his sons, Eugene and Charles have joined him there, over the years.<br /> <br /> Officer Rasmussen's grave is on the westerly edge of the cemetery. At night, on an adjoining property, the New Dorp Lighthouse’s beacon of light shone out into the Atlantic Ocean guiding vessels into New York Harbor past the notorious West Bank, protecting ships as Officer Rasmussen had protected people in his life as a policeman.<br /> <br /> A year later on May 2nd, Ralph DeLillio, the twenty-seven year old Harlem gangster was sentenced to thirty years in the penitentiary at Sing Sing for the murder of the police officer.<br /> <br /> From records available, he seems to have been the only member of the gang of four that actually did any time for the killing. Eugene Giannini managed to escape this one, although arrogant and filled with a sense of self-importance, he apparently confessed to his mob pals, in years to come, chatting over card games of briscola and trisette in social clubs, how he ‘had knocked off that cop bastard.’<br /> <br /> Joe Valachi, the mobster who turned informant, claimed that Giannini was part of the 107th Street Mob, the group we recognize today as the Luchese Crime Family, under its boss, Giacomo Reina, although it’s possible he was actually connected into the crime family run then by Charley Luciano.<br /> <br /> He was known to his mob associates as 'Gino' or sometimes 'Genie,’ and worked off and on with a tight-knit gang of drug traffickers which included 'Big John' Ormento, Joe Valachi, Fiore Sano, Salvatore Shillitani, Pat Pagano and Pat Moccio.<br /> <br /> Some researchers claim he was a close friend of Luciano and at times, he did business with Anthony Strollo, also known as 'Tony Bender,' a capo, or crew chief, in Luciano’s group, a crooked wheeler and dealer who was also an immediate and personal friend of the mob Machiavelli, Vito Genovese. Giannini, along with boyhood friends from the Greenwich Village area, Pasquale Moccio and Vincenzo Mauro, apparently also helped Strollo in his drug dealing activities.<br /> <br /> Shillitani went back a long way with Joe Valachi. An early associate of Tommy Luchese, he had been part of a street gang formed by Joe, running burglary and break-in teams in the late 1920s. Shillitani was inducted into the Mafia at the same time as Joe, and another tight buddy, Frank Calluce in 1930. Valachi eventually shifted allegiance from the group he was initially elected to, run by Joe Bonanno, into the one run by Luciano. He actually started his mob career with the crime family run by Reina, and may well have been the only hoodlum in the mob to shift base three times throughout his criminal career.<br /> <br /> Shillitani had been born in 1906 in Sicily, his given family name being Scillitano (1) and had immigrated to New York with his family as a child.<br /> <br /> He was hardly that successful as a mobster, spending a lot of his time in prison for various crimes, including drug trafficking that always seemed to go wrong. On a scale of one to ten as a success in his chosen career, he probably rated 100.<br /> <br /> His mob pals called him ‘Solly Shields’ and after limited schooling, he had gone to work as a butcher. He left this job and then linked into Valachi’s street gang. He first served a 2-10 year sentence in prison for attempted robbery in 1925. Paroled from Sing Sing prison in 1928, he was quickly re-arrested for petit larceny and found himself back in the familiar granite building up the Hudson River. Released, he was back there yet again in 1929 for parole violation. He somehow managed to stay clear of the law for a while, but then on January 28th 1932, he and Nicky Paduano were part of a group involved in a shoot-out at the corner of Mace and Paulding Avenues in the Bronx. Twenty-year old Benedetto Bellini got the worst of this and laid down and died. Chased by Police Officer Thomas Qualles, Police Commissioner Muldoon’s driver, Nicky also ended up dead, courtesy of the cop’s .38, and Solly finished up in cuffs.<br /> <br /> On May 25th., in front of Judge Barrett in the Bronx County Court, 27 year old Shillitani was found guilty of the manslaughter of Benedetto Bellino, and went away on a twenty year sentence, serving fourteen, and being released in 1946. At this point, never obviously a good learner, he decided to go donkey-deep into drug trafficking.<br /> <br /> A police officer whose path kept crossing Shillitani’s said of him:<br /> <br /> ‘He’s been a bum and a hood all his life. His associates are all bums and hoods and he’ll die a hoodlum. He’s just no good.’<br /> <br /> He and Joe had less than a stellar relationship as they moved through the Mafia underworld, scuffling for their share of the money-making opportunities all mobsters seem to devote their lives to finding. They also had their run-ins on numerous occasions.<br /> <br /> Sometime in August, 1951, Sal went up to Joe’s bar and grill, The Lido Bar on Castle Hill Avenue, in The Bronx. A few days before Valachi had supplied his friend with a quarter of a kilo of heroin, which Shillitani had on sold, unknowingly to an agent of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics code-named ‘Pocoroba.’ The drug however, turned out to be less than perfect.<br /> <br /> ‘Joe,’ Shillitani said, ‘that merchandise you gave me, that is not on par, it’s not what you said it is. I got the guy "‘Pocoroba’" with me, out in the car, and he is kicking like hell.’<br /> <br /> ‘I can’t do nothing,’ said Joe, ‘it’s the way I get it, and the way I give it. I give you my word, I never touch it. The way I get it is the way I give to you. Any future time I can make good for it, let us see.’<br /> <br /> ‘Solly Shields’ spent a lot more time in the pen than Joe, but managed to outlive him by almost twenty years, dying in a Miami hospice in 1990, aged 84!<br /> <br /> By the early 1940s, Giannini was running a variety of legitimate businesses, including a venture in restaurant supplies, and a garbage collection firm called the Eagle Waste Company. These were convenient covers for the illegitimate operations he supervised from his office at East 74th Street, which included gambling, loan sharking and the wholesaling of drugs. In between his frequent sojourns in the state prison, Shillitani also ran horse-betting and policy books with Giannini from these premises.<br /> <br /> Giannini got himself married to a woman who had come to America from Sicily and they had two children.<br /> <br /> He was arrested again in 1942 by agents of the Federal Narcotics Bureau for peddling drugs, and served fifteen months in prison. He kept clear of the law through the rest of this period, and early in 1950 was apparently putting together a deal with two of his close associates, Shillitani and Giacomo Reina, members of the 107th Street Mob, now working under the control of Gaetano Gagliano.<br /> <br /> Reina’s father, Gaetano, had been the family head until he was gunned down in February 1930 during the mob war that perhaps resulted in the restructuring and formation of the New York Mafia crime families that operate to this day.<br /> <br /> The deal Giannini and the other two family members had set up, involved him personally shipping high demand medical drugs such as penicillin and sulphur based medicines, both in short supply following the end of the world war, into Italy, and using the profits from this to purchase heroin to bring back into New York.<br /> <br /> Giannini would in addition, take along on his trip, 15000 dollars in forged US currency for sale to the highest bidder, to help bolster the pot. He also wanted to take the opportunity to re-establish contact with members of the Paris and Marseilles French-Corsican drug gangs, people he had associated with during the late 1940s, frequenting bars and taverns on the New York waterfront. Men like Joseph Orsini, Marius Ansaldi, Francois Spirito, and Jean David, veterans of the European drug-trafficking business, who had operated prior to, and then after the end of the Second World War. These men controlled the flow of narcotics through Paris and Marseilles, and the major ports of Cherbourg and Le Havre.<br /> <br /> The big and balding Ansaldi dominated the Paris branch of the Corsica/French junta which was based in Marseilles and around the Place Pigalle in Paris, and he had been involved in drug trafficking for over thirty years. One of the reasons behind Giannini’s visit to Europe was to meet up with Ansaldi and consolidate his New York-French connection with him.<br /> <br /> Linked to the European based group in North America was Tony d’Agostino, who headed up and oversaw the importation of cargo into Canada and New York. He was based initially in Montreal from 1946, moving to Mexico City in 1948. He was another major contact that Giannini had developed, and the Algerian-Frenchman also counted many other mob family notables as friends and customers, including Frank Scalice, a senior capo in the New York Mafia family run by Vincenzo Mangano<br /> <br /> With his wife and children, and a big, roomy Cadillac full of product hidden away in secret compartments, Giannini drove up into Canada. Sailing from Montreal early in 1950, he landed at Le Havre in France. This was the first of three trips he would make to Europe in the next two years.<br /> <br /> He first travelled to Paris where he met up with his Corsican connections, and then drove south into Italy and to Naples to touch base with his old friend Charley Luciano, now living there in exile since his deportation from America.<br /> <br /> According to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Luciano was knee deep in drug peddling, acting as a vital link between Italian and American mob interests. He was undoubtedly at the great Mafia gabfest that was held at The Grand Hotel des Palmes in Palermo in 1957, that amongst other things, perhaps helped solidify drug dealing arrangements between the two countries.<br /> <br /> Charley Luciano aka Lucky Luciano aka Charles Ross, aka Salvatore Lucania lived in Italy, not from choice, but by default. Convicted on prostitution charges in 1936 in New York, he was sent to prison, effectively for the rest of his life. By what could be called an amazing series of coincidences, or as some referred to it: ‘Lucky’s Luck,’ he found himself free after ten years, although having to suffer the indignity of forced deportation back to his place of birth.<br /> </p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236989867,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
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<div style="text-align:center;font-weight:bold;">Photo: Charley Luciano and two of his young admirers</div>
<p><br /> He left New York early in 1946, on a scuttlebutt cargo ship called the ’Laura Keane’ and stepped off it in Palermo, Sicily. Legend has it, getting on the boat he had $150, getting off, wrapped in his underwear in one of his suitcases was stashed $150,000. Like so many mob fables, this may be true, then again, it may be simple fiction that has turned into fact because it has been repeated enough times over the years.<br /> <br /> Charley in due course, settled in mainland Italy, eventually in Naples where he lived the rest of his life leaving only briefly towards the end of 1946. Using a most circuitous route via Venezuela, Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro, he travelled to Cuba, arriving there on October 29th.<br /> <br /> He stayed firstly at the Hotel Nacional, and then at a spacious private residence in the exclusive neighbourhood of Miramar, only a few blocks from the home of the Cuban president. This house belonged to General Perez Damera, chief of the Cuban general staff. Indalecio Pertierra, a Cuban parliamentarian and manager of the Havana Jockey Club, used his clout to arrange legal residence for Charley.<br /> <br /> When the FBN discovered Charley was in Cuba, they brought pressure to bear through their own government to have him deported, and he was kicked out on March 20th 1947<br /> <br /> In the meantime, in late December, mob bosses from America- Italian and Jewish- descended on the Nacional and some kind of underworld conference took place over the next few days. We really have no idea what was discussed at this conclave as there is no hard evidence from any reliable source.<br /> <br /> It is logical to assume however, that on the agenda may well have been narcotic trafficking from Italy into America. Luciano had probably decided this was his route to wealth, now that he had lost the jewel in his crown-New York- and this meeting was the rational venue to lay down some rules and maybe establish contacts.<br /> <br /> From that meeting probably grew Luciano’s eventual complex, interlocking network of dealers and managers, who helped him run his drug trafficking business. They included:<br /> <br /> In Sicily, possibly Nicola Gentile and Giuseppe Settecasi in Agrigento; Frank Coppola in Partinico, and Sal and Ugo Caneba, who supervised the many illegal heroin labs located on the island, creating the heroin from the raw materials shipped from the Far East through the ‘Corsican Connection.’<br /> <br /> On the mainland, he had Joe Pici, an alleged former soldier in the Vincent Mangano crime family that was based in Red Hook, Brooklyn. He looked after Genoa and Milan, along with Giovanni and Corrado Maugeri; Frank Barone and Joe Arena handled things in Rome. Then, there was Alberts Barras and Antonio, Giuseppe and Sebastiano Bellanca and Tommy Martino another expatriate Mangano soldier, helping to feed the shipments from the ports of Italy into New York, Detroit and Canada.<br /> <br /> A bewildering multitude of men from all over Italy and New York. Short, squat, dark-skinned, black-haired characters who look at you from mug shots with eyes that crepitate with the venom you would expect from serial killers waiting to pounce on their next victims.<br /> <br /> The Federal Bureau of Narcotics had been trying for over 20 years to bust the American Mafia’s hold on the dope trafficking business. They were extremely successful in this respect. Between 1956 and 1964 they were responsible for the arrest and conviction of 206 Mafia members for crimes involving drug trafficking, some of the more notorious being Vito Genovese, Big John Ormento and Carmine Galante.<br /> <br /> The FBN was abolished, and incorporated into the BNDD Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs in 1968, and then the DEA Drug Enforcement Agency in July 1973.<br /> <br /> Formed originally in 1930 under its commissioner, Harry J. Anslinger, the FBN had recognized the mob for what it was long before Hoover and his Federal Bureau would even acknowledge that the entity even existed. The FBN believed that the Mafia was ideally situated to operate in the illegal narcotics business which by its very nature is international in dimension. The Sicilian arm of the honoured society liaised with the many Mafiosi who had been deported back into Italy from America and who had the contacts still in place in the major cities like New York. They also used connections in Turkey and the Middle East, as well as their Corsican allies, and their links into the French drug laboratories, to ensure a continuous flow of the raw opium material and its processing into the finished powder base.<br /> <br /> After his stay in Naples, Giannini and his family, motored down through Italy, crossed the Straights of Messina and travelled across Sicily to Palermo. There, a Packard convertible, bought with some of the proceeds of the drugs and counterfeit money, was packed with heroin, stashed away and welded into secret compartments under the car’s wings. The vehicle was taken back into North America by a courier who brought along his aged mother as a decoy for any inquisitive custom agent. The car came ashore in Montreal aboard the S.S. Empress of Canada . It was then driven down into Vermont, where Giannini himself was waiting, having returned from his own travels in Europe. The car and its contents were taken to New York, where the drugs were disposed of.<br /> <br /> The success of this first venture encouraged Giannini into his further visits into Europe, but on these, he travelled alone, leaving his wife and children in New York. During the spring and summer of 1950 he moved between New York, Paris and Palermo. It seems that through the rest of 1950 and into 1951, he organized a steady stream of American-Italian tourists, bringing their big, cavernous automobiles with them, into Europe, mainly via the port of Le Havre, in northern France. Groups which a cynical FBN agent referred to in a report as ‘Giannini’s European Tours.’ The cars would be driven into Paris or Palermo, and while they were being serviced at a pre-selected garage, loaded up with packets of heroin. The couriers would then make their way back via liners such as The Queen Elizabeth or The Queen Mary which would dock in New York. Giannini would also use theSS Scythia , which came into North America at Quebec.<br /> <br /> This routine went on without a hitch until April 1951. Giannini, on one of his European visits, was driving from the French Riviera into Italy, when he was stopped at the San Remo checkpoint by the Guardia di Finanza , the Italian Financial Police, who also operate the custom service and man the border check points. Arrested and taken before a magistrate in Ventimigila, near Liguria, he was remanded to await trial on a charge of complicity in distributing counterfeit money. One of his associates in the scam the previous year had been arrested and had named Gino as his supplier.<br /> <br /> This may have been Pierre Lafitte, who approached the FBN to help him avoid deportation, from New York, by offering to help the agency set up a major sting operation that would help snare Joseph Orsini, the fourty-eight year old fellow Corsican.<br /> <br /> A one-time resident of New York, living in a Brownstone at 26 W. 85th Street, near Central Park, Orsini was now based in France, working closely with a number of major heroin traffickers and their chemists. With his melon shaped head, and pencil-thin moustache, he looked like a worn out version of Inspector Clouseau from the Pink Panther movies. A former merchant seaman, with a long criminal record and convictions for fraud, robbery and collaboration with the Germans during World War Two, he used his contacts in the maritime trade to have drugs smuggled from Europe into New York, using seamen as couriers.<br /> <br /> He was imprisoned on Ellis Island awaiting deportation as an alien. Knowing he would have to leave America, sooner than later, Orsini persuaded Lafitte, also in custody on the island, to become a partner in his latest drug importing deal that also linked Shillitani, Pat Pagano, Moccio and another drug dealer, Larry Quartiero. Because they both came from Corsica, maybe Orsini felt a bond with the other Frenchman; felt he was a man he could trust because of his roots. He couldn’t have been more wrong as it turned out.<br /> <br /> Concurrently, the FBN’s European office was launching its own investigation into Frank Callace and his major chemist contact, Carlo Migliandi, who was eventually charged with arranging the exportation of over 800 kilos of heroin into America between 1946 and 1953. Through Charles Siragusa, the FBN’s head of its first European office in Rome, the agency kept up so much pressure on the expatriate New York mobsters resident in Italy, that Charley Luciano even confided in his family to check his suit pockets when he died and was laid out, in case agents planted drugs on his corpse!<br /> <br /> Dominic ‘The Gap‘ Petrelli who was a good friend of Joe Valachi, and a previous member of the Mafia underworld in New York, now lived in Italy, having been deported there after his arrest and conviction in 1942 for drug trafficking in Arizona, in one of the first major cases built by the FBN against the mob. He had purchased some of Giannini’s counterfeit dollars, and had been arrested in Naples trying to pass them on. Questioned by the Carabinieri, the Italian military police, he himself then had turned informer and also blew the whistle on Giannini.<br /> <br /> Swamped by this bow-wave of treachery, Gino was imprisoned in one of Italy’s worse penitentiaries: the Poggio Reale Prison in Naples. Held here for ten months as the slow cogs of the Italian judiciary system ground along, he eventually began sending letters to the FBN’s Italian director, Charles Siragasu. Some were abusive, many pleaded for help to get him released. He thought the FBN would oil the wheels of justice for him because in addition to being a killer, a Mafiosi and a drug dealer, Eugenio Giannini had, for a number of years, been a confidential informant for the FBN.<br /> <br /> Although he was selective in what he offered the bureau, they were aware of his strategy and kept a discreet, but close watch on him, while using his information to help nail other drug smugglers. It’s possible he went with them sometime in the 1930s, following yet another arrest, this time in a narcotics-conspiracy case, as a means of mitigating his sentence.<br /> <br /> One of the letters he sent Siragasu, referred in some detail to his knowledge of and transactions with Charley Luciano, and his associates Joe Pici and Frank Callace, in their drug dealing activities, and inferred that Giannini could offer the FBN a lot of confidential information linking Luciano into various narcotic deals that had gone down.<br /> <br /> Giannini finished his dispatch, ‘Destroy this letter after reading it. If it gets into the wrong hands I might as well buy a slot in a cemetery.’ It was a prophecy with an ominous ring of truth about it.<br /> <br /> Early in 1952, he was eventually brought to trial and released for lack of evidence.<br /> <br /> Petrelli, the hood who had originally denounced him, had retracted his testimony, a not unusual occurrence in mob trials. In addition, a New York lawyer had visited Italy and may well have come to an ‘arrangement’ with an Italian member of the judiciary system. Whatever the trigger was, Giannini was released from Poggio Reale in February, 1952.<br /> <br /> Although he had spent months in prison, he had not been idle. Just before his arrest, he had purchased 10 kilos of heroin from Marius Ansaldi, one of the redoubtable members of the Corsican criminal mob, the bald, giant of a man who dominated the Paris drug trade. The money to finance this had been supplied by his New York associates, Shillitani, Reina and possibly his Greenwich Village boyhood pals, Moccio, all soldiers in the Luchese crime family, and Mauro who was linked into Strollo and the Mafia clan of Luciano, controlled by Frank Costello at that time.<br /> <br /> Mauro was tight with Vito Genovese, a man so devious, he kept his right hand in his pocket while shaking hands with his left, and they were both partners in a pin-ball machine company called New Deal Distributors. Mauro also known in the mob as ‘Vinnie Morrow,’ was also a close aid and confident of Tony Strollo, and through him, may well have been involved in the attempted hit on Frank Costello in 1957, acting as the ‘point man’ for the Vincent Gigante the alleged gunman, who couldn’t shoot straight, and although firing a .38 calibre revolver at Frank from no more than ten feet, did no more damage, than to create a new hair parting for the family boss.<br /> <br /> It was not unheard of for mobsters from different crime families to work together on a project like this intercontinental narcotic conspiracy. Giannini had organized for the dope to be taken to Milan and stored in a tailor’s shop on the Via Durmi. He then arranged for his brother-in-law, Giuseppe Pellegrino one of the many expatriate New York mobsters based now in Europe, and who may have acted as a kind of ‘chief-of-staff for Charley Luciano in Italy to visit him in the Naples prison, and asked him to uplift the dope and take it and store it at his own home at #27 via Alfaro in Salerno, south of Rome.<br /> <br /> Freed from prison, Giannini was in no rush to return to New York. His friends Shillitani, et al. had been arrested in late 1951 on a narcotics indictment, and Gino thought it a smart move to stay in Italy and apply for citizenship based on his parentage. But the FBN got wind of his scheme, and brought political pressure down on the Italian government to block the application. Giannini was subsequently expelled from Italy.<br /> <br /> Charles Siragusa, the head of the Rome office, was largely instrumental in organizing Giannini’s deportation. He harboured an especially strong dislike for the drug dealer, to some extent generated by an unusual and capricious event he had experienced.<br /> <br /> He had hired a young, pretty woman to be his secretary. She was an American, living in Rome with her husband, who was studying there under the G.I. Bill. One day, he was dictating a report to her on the drug dealer when she suddenly burst into tears. It transpired she was a niece of Eugenio Giannini, and she hated him with a vengeance. As a teen-ager, he had continually harassed her with his sexual advances and lewd gestures, and it had left an indelible print on her memory. Siragusa could never get over what the odds were that out of the millions of people in Rome, he would choose this particular woman for this job. To him, it simply confirmed what a low-life philistine he was dealing with, and in terms of Eugenio Giannini, we can see to-day, how Murphy and his law, operates at all levels of the spectrum.<br /> <br /> Giannini arrived back in New York, touching down at 12.30p.m. on April 8th, 1952 at Idlewild Airport. As he left the plane, he was taken into custody by FBN agent Al Giuliani. Named as a defendant along with twelve others on the narcotics case that had bagged Shillitani- docket number 136-148 in the Southern District of New York- he was arrested and then released on bail of $15000. He had five months to live.<br /> <br /> From this point on, the details regarding the ultimate fate of Eugenio Giannini comes from the testimony of Joseph Valachi (below), arguably one of the most famous mob turncoats ever. He claimed he was called to a meet with Tony Bender. They joined each other for dinner at Rocco’s, the famous Greenwich Village restaurant run by the Respinto family, on Thompson Street.<br /> </p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236990494,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p><br /> <br /> Bender told Valachi that word had come down from Charley Luciano that Giannini was an informer, talking to the ‘junk agents.’ Under normal circumstance, Giannini’s own crime family would have taken care of the problem, but Vito Genovese, back from his self-imposed exile in Italy was working hard to re-establish himself as a power in the New York mob, and regain control of the Luciano crime family, now under the control of Frank Costello, and he was as Valachi explained it, ‘anxious to throw the first punch.’ Luciano being the injured party, and still the titular head of the crime family that Valachi, Bender and Genovese were all part of, created the opening needed.<br /> <br /> Valachi was between a rock and a hard place. He had known Giannini for years, and the little, ugly mobster in fact owned him $2000. He knew that this would be used against him if he tried to shield Giannini in anyway, and so to forestall that, told Bender that he would find him. In the convoluted and devious universe of the Mafia, to ‘find him’ meant to seek him out and kill him. According to Bender he and his associates had been unable to locate Giannini who was moving about town.<br /> <br /> Valachi simply picked up the telephone and dialled Gino’s home, reaching the mobster immediately, proving beyond any doubt that Bender‘s IQ was perhaps not that of a genius..<br /> <br /> They met that night in the Bronx, but Valachi spotted a suspicious looking car parked in the vicinity of the bar where they sat drinking, and called the meeting off. A few days later, Valachi arranged another get-together, and this time, brought along one of the men he had chosen to carry out the hit on Giannini, a mobster called Joe Pagano, the brother of Pat, his drug-dealing associate.<br /> <br /> The killing of Giannini is a classic example of how the hierarchy in the Mafia insulate themselves from any direct contact with their victims. The order may have originally came down from Luciano, safely ensconced thousands of miles away in Naples. His instructions were relayed to Vito Genovese who then passed the word down to his subordinate Tony Bender. He would be nowhere near the scene of the killing however, as he would simply pass on the command to Valachi who himself who not be directly involved.<br /> <br /> For the actual hit, Valachi choose three men: Joe Pagano and his brother Pat, and his young nephew, his sister Filamino's son, Fiore Siano.<br /> </p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236990677,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p> </p>
<div style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Photo: The Pagano Brothers, Pat on the left and Joe on the right</span></div>
<p><br /> This second rendezvous took place in a bar in the Bronx, called The Casbah. Joe Pagano was along for two reasons. First to get a good look at the man he was going to kill, and also, to make the next meeting between Giannini and Pagano go down smoothly. Valachi bought the drinks, and even lent Giannini $100 as the gangster claimed he was running short of cash. That must have really hurt Joe, knowing he would never see any of his money again.<br /> <br /> A few days later Valachi learned that Giannini was working as a ‘drop escort’ at a dice game in Harlem. Escorts would meet prospective gamblers a block or so from the actual game, check them out, and if okay, escort them to the game site.<br /> <br /> Valachi decided this would be the window of opportunity he would open to have the hit carried out, but then ran into another problem. The dice game was operated by Paul Correale, a soldier in the same family as Giannini and mob protocol demanded that something like a killing going down in its vicinity had to be cleared through the proper channels. Valachi again contacted Bender who promised to sort it out with his boss, Genovese, who in turn would seek out and clear it with Tommy Luchese, head of the family that Gianni and Correal were part of.<br /> <br /> As it happened, Bender never got around to sorting the problem out, and some time later, Joe Valachi was called onto the carpet by Vito Genovese, who apparently gave him a dressing down at his office in Erb Strapping Company, one of his legitimate fronts at 180 Thompson Street. It operated as one of the largest service companies in the frozen and tin meats business in the Port of New York. It also acted as a major transhipment points for heroin smuggled into New York.<br /> <br /> Correale, also know in the underworld as ‘Paulie Ham,’ was another major junk pusher in the Luchese family, and complained to Genovese that because the murder had been committed so close to his crap game, it had cost him $10,000 to straighten things out with the local police precinct. Just how Valachi, incessantly broke, and Bender tighter than a virgin’s daughter handled this one, was never disclosed.<br /> <br /> Late on the evening of September 19th, Giannini left the terraced row house where he was currently living, at 282 West 234 Street in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx, and drove south into Harlem. The 8 mile journey might have taken him 20 minutes, depending on the traffic that Saturday.<br /> <br /> The two Pagano’s and Siano Fiore met up with Giannini at the drop and walked with him towards the site of the dice game which was located close to 112th Street. Somewhere near the game, at approximately 5 a.m. on the morning of the 20th, someone shot him, twice in the head, with a .38 calibre handgun. The classic mob hit: a double-cap.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236991460,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />It is almost certain the shootist was Siano (right). Tall and slim, with a shock of thick, black hair, the 25 year old was a hit-man in anticipation, anxious to make his bones for the mob. Valachi knew Siano’s pedigree was just waiting to be proved and it’s more than likely he did just this that early morning in some dark, fetid alley in East Harlem.<br /> <br /> In a police photo he looks at the camera with a sneer across his face; left eye drooping slightly, contempt for law and order emanating from him like the calefaction from his life’s ambition to be a wise-guy, whatever the cost.<br /> <br /> He got his wish in 1954, after the Mafia opened the books-allowing in new membership after a 25 year hiatus. Joe Valachi sponsored his nephew, along with the Pagano brothers and Vincent Mauro, allcugines or young men in waiting, who were made into the crime family now referred to as the Genovese or West Side Mob. He joined a crew of hard-nosed guys, under Tony Bender the skipper, one of whom, down the track, would became relatively famous in the crime family. A thick-set, ex boxer called Vincent Gigante. The same one who spent weeks practicing his marksmanship with a .38 revolver in a cellar in Greenwich Village, and still couldn’t his squat at ten feet when he tried to make Frank Costello go away.<br /> <br /> A year down the track, Siano would again help his uncle Joe kill another man, Steven Franse, in the kitchen of Joe’s restaurant in the Bronx. Siano had a somewhat chequered career in the mob, being arrested numerous times, for burglary and robbery with a gun, and received a eight year stretch in 1954 for violation of the Federal Narcotics Laws. He went down for being as assistant district attorney Fred Nathan claimed: ‘the principal dealer in cocaine along the Eastern seaboard.’<br /> <br /> Fiore disappeared from Patsy’s Pizzeria on 1st Avenue, between 117th and 118th Streets early in 1964. The first pizzeria to open in New York in 1933, it was a preferred mob hangout for the wise guys uptown. Three men stopped by to talk with him and they all left. It’s quite possible, two of the men were the Pagano brothers, as Patsy’s was Joe Pagano’s favourite pizza place in New York until he died. The underworld thought Fiore was talking to law enforcement, always a one-way ticket to somewhere unpleasant for anyone in the mob.<br /> <br /> In Sicily they call it Lupara Bianca, a Mafia killing in which all traces of the victim are removed. The New York underworld inhabited by Italian-Americans referred to it as goingsquadoosh .<br /> <br /> Joe Pagano and his brother Pat, would each eventually become a capo in the Genovese family, and powerful members of the mob.<br /> <br /> In 1959, Joe Pagano landed a job as an 'executive' at Murray's Packing, a meat dealer run by Murray Weinberg. In 1961 he somehow got himself promoted to president of the company. In a 'long-firm' fraud scam "buying heavily from suppliers, selling off everything and not paying creditors" the company went bust. The fraud included the crime family of Carlo Gambino, managed by their financial whiz-Carmine Lombardozzi- and when it went to court, Joe tried to accept full responsibility for the losses incurred: somewhere between $800,00 and $1,000,000. The jury however refused his excuse that he had 'gambled it away.' In a civil law suit brought in 1964, Joe was convicted went to prison, being released in 1970 when he agreed to a token payment in retribution of $70,000. From the meat scam he moved seamlessly into another involving illegally factoring Medicaid claims, mainly in the Bronx.<br /> <br /> He was also very involved in the entertainment business. There is an apocryphal story that when Frank Costello stepped down after the attempted assassination attempt in 1957, Vito Genovese made him pass over his shares in the famous Copacabana Club in New York to Joe. Joe Pagano died of natural causes in 1989.<br /> <br /> His brother Pat, started off his working life as a bricklayer, following in the path of his immigrant father, Donato. The elder brother eventually became a power in Local 59 of the International Bricklayer's Helpers. He worked closely with Tony Strollo managing his interests on the New Jersey docks. He was murdered on April 27th., 1974, in the Bronx.<br /> <br /> His killer was never identified, although brother Joe claimed he knew who did it but had to 'pass on it,' inferring he had been instructed not to get involved by his crime family's administration.<br /> <br /> Back in Harlem, police were alerted by someone to the sound of gunshots in the early hours of Saturday morning, and arrived outside the Jefferson Major Athletic Club on 2nd Avenue between 111th and 112th Streets. There was blood on the sidewalk but no body. Thirty minutes later another call brought a police car to 107th Street, five blocks south, and there, the responding cops found a body lying face up in the gutter.<br /> <br /> A deli owner, opening his shop, had found Eugenio Giannini sprawled in death. Dressed in a light tan jacket, brown slacks and shoes, he was wearing an expensive Swiss watch and had a billfold containing $140 in his pocket.<br /> </p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236991500,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p> </p>
<div style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Eugenio Giannini dead on 107th Street</span></div>
<p><br /> At first it was thought the dumping of Giannini on 107th Street was some kind of symbolic gesture, the area being the heartland of the Luchese family, but Valachi confirmed it was much simpler. After his hit squad had done their job and left, two other men working the drop with Giannini had found him still breathing, and were rushing him to the Flower and Fifth Avenue Hospital at 5th Avenue and 106th Street, but he died en route and they simply ditched the body into the street.<br /> <br /> That Eugenio Giannini’s body lay cooling in death that early September morning is not in doubt. What is in doubt, is exactly how he came to be in that fetid gutter in Harlem. Joe Valachi’s story has the ring of truth in terms of the mechanics of the hit, but it is entirely possible that the driving energy to see Giannini killed was more about money than honour or dishonour.<br /> <br /> It is a given in the Mafia that the number one abuse of power is betrayal of the oath, and ratting out someone has only one punishment. But screwing a mobster out of his precious money runs a close second. Cosa Nostra might literally mean ‘Our Thing,’ but a more metaphysical interpretation could easily be ‘Our Dough,’ for the mob exists for one thing and one thing only-money.<br /> <br /> It is the Sacred Grail of all made men, the very reason for the existence of the modern day Mafia, and Giannini had broken the boundaries on that second revered covenant. Although Tony Bender had told Valachi that the hit had to go down to avenge the wrong done to Luciano, back in Naples. the FBN believed that Gino was killed not because he was an informant, but because he had tried to screw his associates out of most of their share of that ten kilos of heroin he had purchased just before he was arrested at San Remo.<br /> <br /> He maybe got the clip not because he dropped a dime on Charley Luciano, but because he double-dipped his drug partners. The bureau believed that Giannini had organized someone to visit his brother-in-law, Joe Pellegrino, collect six of the ten kilos and bring them back to America to him alone. To Giannini, this could have been worth almost $100,000 a fortune then, and a huge sum for a man who was terminally broke. The FBN had in fact just this gem of information from another one of their hundreds of informants within the mob who had passed on this tit bit of intelligence to his handler.<br /> <br /> George White, the infamous FBN agent, revealed this piece of information at the State Crime Commission hearings, in November, 1952, although he was perhaps necessarily vague on the actual motive for the killing of Giannini.<br /> <br /> The agency substituted one of their agents, Tony Zirillo, into the role of pick-up man, and he left New York in August and flew to Rome. In a complex sting operation organized by the FBN and the Guardia di Finanza , Pelligrino was arrested with the six kilos of heroin. Although the New York media did not cover the operation, the Italian press did. Within a few days, the men back in New York who had financed the deal, knew what had gone down.<br /> <br /> So it’s quite feasible that Bender, knowingly or otherwise, only told Valachi part of the story. At the end of the day, the semantics of the hit were really less significant than its ultimate outcome. How Eugenio Giannini got it, was perhaps a lot more relevant than why. And we owe a debt of gratitude to Joe Valachi for sharing the details of that with us.<br /> <br /> Informants like Valachi are enduringly important to law enforcement and Mafia historians trying to make sense of the seemingly senseless mob hits that go down with illimitable regularity. He and his like, are a kind of Rosetta Stone, helping to unlock the process of decrypting the almost always impossible code of silence that helps to protect the men who make the decisions to remove the irritants and the killers who carry out the dematerialization.<br /> <br /> In the never-ending saturnine maze that constituted the New York Mafia’s convoluted mob politics, Giannini was more a 60 watt light bulb than a chandelier. When he tried to shine his light into the dark corners, it led him, unerringly down a one-way street, and all too soon, he found himself short-circuited for good. A man who lived a life of unremitting perfidy, lying, cheating, stealing, double-dealing and womanising, wearing his lack of conscience as an attachment deficit like the trousers he pulled on every morning, he found out that treachery was synonymous with betrayal, and both traits could only ever lead to the inevitable two in the head.<br /> <br /> A not uncommon occurrence that occurs with monotonous predictability in the world that people like Giannini inhabited.<br /> <br /> Joe Valachi, who comes in and out of Giannini’s story like a recurring bad dream, gave evidence at a senate hearing on organized crime in 1963. Among the dozens of atoms of mob intelligence and underworld mythology he offered, some true, some not so true, there was this, which probably speaks louder about Mafia mores than any FBI report or Intel ever did:<br /> <br /> ‘In the circle in which I travel, a dumb man is more dangerous than a hundred rats.’<br /> <br /> There is a saying in Ecclesiastes:<br /> <br /> ‘……..and there is a man that prolonged his life in his evil doings.’<br /> <br /> For Gene Giannini it just didn’t work out that way. He never got around to living the long haul. He was a dead man in waiting. His never-ending search for the pot at the end of the rainbow supply chain brought him only a non-returnable one-way ticket out of the remorseless and implacable world of Cosa Nostra . He was a man who had ceaselessly searched for the best room in the mansion of life and always ended up in the bathroom.<br /> <br /> The pay-day for the killing of that brave New York Police officer was eighteen years in the making, but all the more satisfying when it eventually arrived.<br /> <br /> <span style="font-weight:bold;">Footnote</span><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">(1) The Origin of Organized Crime in America. David Critchley.</span><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Taylor & Francis, 2008</span></p>
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The Color Purple: Detroit's Early Mob
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-color-purple-detroits
2010-11-17T14:01:49.000Z
2010-11-17T14:01:49.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br /> Whatever they amounted to as a bunch of criminals, the derivation of their name is intriguing enough in itself. There seems to be more versions of its origin and meaning, than combinations of a Rubik Cube.<br /> <br /> One story goes that two Hastings Street shopkeepers, whose places had been targets for the gang, said something like:<br /> <br /> 'These kids, they’re tainted, they’re rotten, purple, like the colour of bad meat, they’re the Purple Gang.'<br /> <br /> Detroit Detective Henry Gavin claimed the gang was named after an early leader, Sammy Purple. Another theory that went around suggested that one of the group called Jacob 'Scotty' Silverstein was wearing a purple sweater when they chose the name. One of their more boisterous members, Eddie Fletcher, fought as a featherweight at Harry Harris’s Fairview Club, and he and his seconds wore purple tops, and so this is how the name stuck, or so the legend goes.<br /> <br /> There was a particularly complex explanation that emerged during the Detroit Cleaners and Dyers Wars. Dyers had always been connected to purple dye, since it originated during the Phoenician period, and purple has long been the symbol of dyers. So the 'Purple Gang' became a 'dyers' gang as they operated their protection racket during this 1928 dispute.<br /> <br /> Lou Wertheimer, a gang member, claimed the name originated from a taxi-cab war in Detroit, resulting in attacks and bombings on cabs and depots. One company known as the Purple Line, were successfully protected by a gang of toughs, who became known naturally, as the Purple Line protectors, or the Purple Gang.<br /> <br /> A wag claimed they were called 'Purple' because they were not quite straight, and some gang members even said the name was dubbed on them by the cops. My favourite analogy has to be that some of the men wore purple swimsuits on their week-end breaks away from mugging, hijacking and killing each other. It’s tempting to contemplate where they stashed their .45’s as they frolicked in the swimming baths, or on the shores of Lake St. Clair.<br /> <br /> A group of the gang interviewed in 1929, unanimously agreed to denying the name. Joe 'Honey' Miller told a reporter 'This Purple Gang stuff makes me sick... who got up that name?'<br /> <br /> Probably the same kind of guy who originated 'Murder Inc.' and 'The Good Killers,' a newspaper reporter.<br /> <br /> Whichever way the name came about, that’s what they got tagged with, and it stuck with them until the end. The beginning was somewhere in and around Hastings Street, which lay about six blocks west of where the GM Cadillac Assembly Plant now stands, in Detroit’s lower East Side, and perhaps was sometime around 1915-1917. For some weird reason, this parish became known as 'Paradise Valley.'<br /> <br /> The Detroit News reported that the gang didn’t start up until 1919, but some sources allege origin dating as early as 1908. The Purples came about through an amalgamation of two groups- the Oakland Sugar House Gang, operating out of the Holbrook and Oakland Avenue district and lead by Charles Leiter and Henry Shorr, and a mob under the control of nineteen year old Sammy Coen, who was also listed as George by the DPD, and carried the nickname of Sammy Purple. He, along with Sam 'Sammy K' Kert, subsequently become the overseers of the Purples speakeasies and blind pigs, which numbered over one hundred in and around the city.<br /> </p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236986074,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p><br /> <br /> At their peak they numbered less than a hundred, out of a Jewish citizenry of over 35,000, so could hardly be called a significant demographic profile in the population of Detroit. Oakland Avenue was a run-down thoroughfare near the Eastern Market in a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood. Until the Purple Gang came along, nothing of any consequence ever came out of here, an neighbourhood known primarily for its drunks, bums and deadbeats. This Jewish quarter of Detroit, sometimes called, New or Little Jerusalem, or more aptly 'The Ghetto', by the city press, was regarded as so bad, as being unfit to live in. It's not that difficult to comprehend how a gang like this could have developed in the dark, fetid apartments and filthy rubbish strewn streets and alleys that composed this area.<br /> <br /> Irrespective of where they came from, they grew into an extremely effective group. The Detroit police department credited the gang with over 500 killings, a lot more than the Capone mob over in Chicago. Herbert Asbury, the highly respected author of 'Gangs of New York,' called them the most efficiently organized gang of killer in the United States.<br /> <br /> They might easily have left the alleged infamous 'Good Killers Society' for dead. Literally.<br /> <br /> They weren't however invincible. In 1928, a group of them attempted to take over the bootlegging business in Rochester, New York, and were violently repulsed by the current liquor kings- the Staud brothers, Midge, George, Carl and Ed- who allegedly tossed two of them from the seventh story of the Seneca Hotel, and chased the rest of the crew out of town.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236986482,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />There has been much speculation as to the head of the group, but most consensus has it, that if they actually had a leader, it was one of the four Bernstein brothers, Abe (right). He was probably Detroit's first and only Jewish godfather. He was close to Meyer Lansky and Joe Adonis, respectively, two of the biggest hoodlums in America, representing the Jewish and Italian-American fraternities.<br /> <br /> One of the early associates of the Bernstein brothers was Morris Barney Dalitz, best known as 'Moe,' who subsequently moved across to Cleveland and helped organize the Mayfield Road Mob. Dalitz of course, is best known for his Las Vegas connection, and no one every seriously doubted how tough he was. An apocryphal story has it, in 1964, he got into an dispute with Sony Liston at the Beverly Rodeo Hotel, in Hollywood, and told the fighter, 'You better kill me, because if you don’t, I’ll make one phone call and your dead in twenty-four hours.' Liston departed with his tail between his legs.<br /> <br /> Like so many of them, Abe was small, almost dainty in appearance, with soft, feminine-like hands, and delicate features.<br /> <br /> At its peak, in 1932, Detroit Police Department Inspector Charles C. Carmody, had 49 'known' members of the Purples listed on his files. When you look at their mug shots and read the vital statistics, you are struck by the sameness of them all. Most were smallish in stature, hardly any reached six feet, youngish in age, between twenty-three and twenty-eight, and light in weight. Seventy years or more down the track, they stare out on the world with vacant, bleak stares, posing almost like mannequins, for the harsh lights of the police photographer’s bright bulbs.<br /> </p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236986501,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p><br /> <br /> The heaviest was Sam Bernstein, a squat five-five but solid two-twenty five pounds, referred to by the gang, not unnaturally as 'Fat Sammy,' and the smallest was the dainty Sam Davies, 24 years old, barely five feet and a paper weight one hundred pounds, who for some reason was referred to incongruously, as 'The Gorilla.' Sammy was a tough Jew, with a lengthy police record that included robbery, armed extortion and the ubiquitous 'violating the U.S. Codes!' He also murdered one Harry Gold on the evening of February 17th., 1932, and was clearly a lot more violent than he appeared.<br /> <br /> Most of the crew were children of immigrant Russian Jews, with names like Ziggie Selbin, Abe 'Abie the Agent' Zussman, Jacob Willman, Jack Budd, Charles 'The Professor' Auerbach, Hyman 'Two Gun Harry' Altman, Jack Stein, Issac Reisfield, Michael 'One Arm Mike' Gelfand, Isadore 'Uncle Izzy' Kaminski, or Sam Potasink; what a name to conjure around. I wonder if he ever shot out a basin in rage, against the cruel irony of a gangster with a moniker like that?<br /> <br /> You can image Abe the boss telling him, 'Hi Sammy, go shoot out that porcelain basin that’s late with the vig.'<br /> <br /> Starting out as small-time hustlers, thieves and malcontents, the Gang grew into manhood with the emergence of Prohibition, an act of political madness that was the alchemy turning the streets of concrete into pathways of gold for the mobsters of the 1920’s.<br /> <br /> The 18th Amendment was ratified in 1919, to take effect from January 16th, 1920. It had been passed in 1917 through the Senate by a one-sided vote after only thirteen hours debate. A few months later, the House of Representatives debated it for a full, whole day!<br /> <br /> A poem in the New York World newspaper summed up America’s reaction to one of the most pathetic acts of any American federal administration, an bill that would create more damage and dislocation to America than almost any action of any government before or since:<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">Prohibition is an awful flop. We like it. It can’t stop what it’s meant to stop. We like it. It’s left a trail of graft and slime, It’s filled our land with vice and crime, It don’t prohibit worth a dime, Nevertheless we’re for it.</span><br /> <br /> The Act closed down Detroit’s 1500 saloons, but by 1925 there were over 15000 speakeasies, or 'blind pigs' as they were called, and many of them came under the control of the Purples.<br /> <br /> According to reporter Malcom Bingay, 'it was absolutely impossible to get a drink in Detroit, unless you walked at least ten feet and told a busy bartender what you wanted in a voice loud enough for him to hear you above the uproar.'<br /> <br /> By 1929, smuggling, making and distributing booze had become Detroit's number two industry, after motor car production. Larry Engleman in his book 'Intemperance,' estimated its gross revenue worth as in excess of $300 million a year. Using the C.P.I as an indicator, that's over $3.5 billion dollars in to-days money!<br /> <br /> Estimates suggest that 75% of all liquor smuggled throughout the United States, during Prohibition, first passed through Detroit. Not only did the gang play a vital part in controlling liquor supplies and prices in Detroit, they became the leading supplier of illegal alcohol to the New York and Chicago underworld. The Purple's principal link man into the Big Apple underworld was Samuel 'Uncle Sam' Garfield.<br /> <br /> An academic study of ethnic groups involved in bootlegging operations in the United States at this time, found 50% were Jewish, 25% Italian, and the remaining 25% split between Irish, Polish and other minority groups. The Italians, although they had a minor percentage compared to the Jews, had the major advantage in that they were evolving into regional organizations based on Mafia affiliations, which would give them enormous power and leverage.<br /> <br /> The FBI reported the Purples as,' a group of choice racketeers and hoodlums who derived the greater part of their income through bootlegging, shakedowns, and hold-ups of gambling house, bookies and places of prostitution.' They also made a lot of money by controlling the malt industry, owning breweries, smuggling whisky from Canada and dope trafficking.<br /> <br /> In all likelihood the Gang was never a structured crime family such as the kinds operated by the Mafia, but more a loose, shifting allegiance of professional, career criminals, who came together and drifted apart when the needs arose. Although primarily Jewish in makeup, there was at least one Gentile in among them, Salvatore Mirogliotta. He'd found his way into the Purples from his association with the Oakland Sugar House Gang. He came originally from Ohio, where he was wanted for the murder of a police officer.<br /> <br /> In January, 1927, the Gang were the prime suspects in the murder of another police officer Vivian Welsh, shot nine times either in, or next to a Chevrolet coupe. Welsh, a crooked cop, had been putting the squeeze on a bootlegger allied to the Purples. Abe and Ray Bernstein were arrested. The Chevrolet belonged to Ray. However the case folded for lack of evidence.<br /> <br /> In March 1927, Eddie Fletcher and Abe Axler, two of the Gang who had joined it from New York, rented a suite at The Milaflores Apartment Building at 106 East Alexandrine Avenue. It was to be a meeting place, convened to settle a dispute between the Gang and three men who had set themselves up in opposition to the Purple’s activities. The men-Frank Wright, Reuben Cohen and Joe Bloom-were ex-members of the famous St. Louis mob, known as 'The Egan’s Rats.' They had moved to Detroit, and started muscling in on the Purple Gang’s local interests, becoming such a pain, that soon, people were referring to them as 'The Third Avenue Terrors.'<br /> <br /> When the three men arrived at the apartment building, they were machine-gunned to death, over 100 shots perforating them and the apartment. Fletcher and Axle, along with Fred 'Killer' Burke, were subsequently arrested, but no charges where ever laid. Burke, also at one time, part of 'Egan’s Rats,' was most likely one of the gunners at the infamous Chicago St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, two years later; it is also quite possible, that the other killers in this Detroit 'massacre,' were Phil and Harry Keywell and George Lewis, all part of the Purple Gang at one time or another. Some sources maintain this was the first time the Thompson sub-machine gun had been used in s gangland killing in Detroit. There may well have been more to the killings that just the settling of business disputes. Three months earlier, in December 1926, Wright had allegedly killed Johnny Reid, a good friend of Abe Bernstein's.<br /> <br /> It was rumoured that the killing of the Moran gang that day in North Clark Street, Chicago, in 1929, was triggered by them hijacking a load of Capone’s Old Log Cabin Canadian whiskey which had been supplied by the Purples. Another version has it that Abe Bernstein set up the hit by telephoning George Moran the day before the killing, and then arranging to deliver a shipment of liquor into the garage that day, hoping Moran would be there himself, to receive the delivery. Some sources contend that Police records confirmed that four members of the Purples, the Fleisher and Keywell brothers stayed at a boarding house at 2119 Clarke Street, directly across from the garage where the killings took place, before, during and after the shooting. They were there for a reason, that's for sure. Assuming of course they were there.<br /> <br /> Helmer and Bilek in their book 'The St. Valentine's Day Massacre claim that only one of the Keywell brothers was 'partially' identified by a witness, from a police photograph, but subsequently, the woman, Mrs. Michael Doody, changed her mind.<br /> <br /> The triple Detroit shooting in March 1927, was incredibly, the first of two such incidents that involved the Purple Gang, helping to create part of the myth about their savagery and lawlessness.<br /> <br /> Fletcher, known also as 'Honey Boy,' ( which always confused the cops, because there was another Gang member called Joe Miller, alias Joe 'Honey' Miller, who was really Sal Mirogliotta,) was one of the most proficient killers found in the Purples. He had served his apprenticeship in New York, and was particularly well known for a killing he supposedly carried out there in 1921. On March 19th., he allegedly stabbed to death one Eddie McFarland in a movie theatre called The Para Court, in Brooklyn.<br /> <br /> 'Honey Boy' had been commissioned for the job by Frankie Uale (Yale,) a leading mob boss in New York's Italian underworld. 'Charleston' Eddie McFarland had been part of a group that had killed five people at a dance hall on Coney Island a few weeks earlier, which in turn was retaliation for a shoot-out at a ballroom on Smith Street, in Brooklyn. It all revolved around in-fighting between Yale’s Italian mob and the Irish toughs led by William 'Wild Boy' Lovett.<br /> <br /> There is a wonderful description handed down about the sartorial elegance of Fletcher, who was described as dressed in a dark gray Chesterfield overcoat, pearl-gray spats over patent leather shoes, wide-brimmed gray fedora and snazzy mauve double-breasted suit, whose lapels where made from pale purple satin. To finish off the outfit, he had a 4 carat diamond stickpin securing a yellow silk ascot in place. And this is what he wore to go to the movies and kill a guy!<br /> <br /> In the what-goes-around-comes-around philosophy, more commonly referred to these days, as degrees-of-separation theory, Fred Burke, who could have shot down the ex Egan Rats at the Milaflores Apartments along with Eddie Fletcher, may well have been the man who gunned down Frankie Yale, (who had once employed Fletcher as a hired killer,) on a Brooklyn street, in July 1928.<br /> <br /> It is indeed, a small world.<br /> <br /> The Purple Gang consolidated its reputation in the late 1920’s with their involvement in what came to be known as 'The Cleaners and Dyers War.' In 1925, Sam Polakoff, president of the Union of Dyers and Cleaners, and another cleaner, Sam Sigman, led a group that wanted to increase their charges. They knew it would only work provided all the other cleaners in Detroit joined in with them. Those that rejected, had their premises attacked, and sometimes bombed, by members of the Purples. The 'War' dragged on for over two years. Polakoff and Sigman were murdered, and after this, the whole thing spluttered out. A number of Gang members, including two of the Bernstein brothers, Irwing Milberg, Harry Keywell, Eddie Fletcher, along with one of the militant cleaners, Charles Jacoby, were indicted and tried in 1928, but acquitted.<br /> <br /> Towards the end of the 1920's, the Purples were steaming.<br /> <br /> From May 3rd., until the 16th., 1929, reports claimed them as being attendees at the Atlantic City Crime Conclave. Along with the top men from Chicago, Kansas City, Cleveland, Boston, Rhode Island and New York, and probably other places as well, they spent hours in discussion with their peers trying to work out some kind of franchise of consent-divvying up liquor and gambling concessions, and trying to work out ways to reduce the inter-gang violence that was causing them all so much aggravation from law and order. Ignoring the Cleveland Meeting of two years earlier, this may well have been the first major meeting of the mob held in America, and The Purple Gang were there in all their finery. They had truly arrived!<br /> <br /> In 1930, Philip Keywell murdered 15 year old Arthur Mixon, an ice-peddler, who they found poking around in one of their 'cutting plants,' buildings where liquor was watered down to produce higher volume. Arrested and indicted, he was possibly the first Purple gang member to be convicted of murder.<br /> <br /> In 1931, an inter-gang dispute resulted in the second triple murder committed by members of the Purple Gang. Three of the gang worked together in a separate clique that associated itself with another group that was known as the 'Little Jewish Navy.' They owned and operated several power boats that they used for rum running across from Canada. They and the three other men, formed a group that went into competition with the Purples, who came to believe that the trio were hijacking shipments of alcohol that was destined for Al Capone in Chicago. They were also selling off bootleg into territory that was claimed by the Purples and in addition, extorting 'blind pigs' and bookmakers that were under the protection of the Purple Gang. The three men were Herman 'Hymie' Paul, Joe 'Nigger Joe' Lebovitz and Isadore Sutker. They had all originated out of Chicago, before linking in to the Purples in 1926.<br /> <br /> Ray Bernstein got a local bookmaker, Solly Levine, a long time acquaintance of the Purples, and the man who originally brought Sutker, Lebovitz and Paul into the gang, to take the three men to Apartment 211 at 1740 Collingwood Avenue, a few blocks from the Gang’s home base on Oakland Avenue. There was a big business convention on in Detroit, and the meeting was seemingly called to discuss liquor supplies. Ray got the guys comfortable. They lit up cigars and were puffing away merrily when three of the Gang present, blew them into eternity. The shooters were Irving Milburn, Harry Fleischer known to the gang as 'H.F.' and young, eighteen year old Harry Keywell. They made sure they missed out on Solly, who made his own way from the apartment at a rapid pace.<br /> <br /> Leaving their victims sprawled in death-- one had tried to crawl under a bed as bullets were pumped into his back, and the other two lay face down in the hall way between the main room and the bedroom—the killers rushed out, down the back stairs, colliding with young Frank Egan and his pal Chick, who were on their way into the building to deliver groceries from the local A&P store. When the two young boys walked down the hallway of the second floor, they came across the open door of room 211, its entrance pooling blood into the passage, and saw the three bodies scrunched over like broken, discarded dolls. When the cops arrived, they found the murder weapons in the apartment kitchen, dumped into a pail of green paint, with the serial numbers filed off, and any finger prints, well and truly erased.<br /> </p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236987067,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p><br /> <br /> Although Bernstein and his boys had been extra careful in getting rid of the guns, they were less than circumspect in their treatment of Solly Levine, the patsy who had set up the hit. For some unknown reason, they let him go. He was soon arrested, and coughed up the quartet as the killers. Little Frank was more than anxious to help the cops and quickly laid the finger on them from police mug shots.<br /> <br /> Bernstein and Keywell were arrested on September 15th., and Irving Milburn was caught four days later. Harry Fleischer disappeared, resurfacing some months later. In November, with Solly Levine as the main prosecution witness, the three Purples were found guilty of the triple homicide and sentenced to life by Judge Donald Van Zile, who commented: 'The crime which you have committed was one of the most sensational that has been committed in Detroit for many years. It was, as has been said, a massacre.' He sentenced them to life. Fleischer was subsequently charged, but never convicted of the Collingwood Avenue shooting.<br /> <br /> The judge had a short memory, or perhaps he was new to Detroit. It was only four years since the Purple Gang had carried out a similar 'massacre,' only three miles to the east of where they had whacked their three latest victims. Six in four wasn’t a bad score by any underworld reckoning.<br /> <br /> In 1932, the Purple Gang were even suggested as a possible link in the infamous March kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby. The baby’s nurse, Betty Gow, was the sister of Scotty Gow who was one of the Gang’s ace fences. In addition, on March 4th., 1932, newspapers announced that the baby had been kidnaped for the purpose of helping in the release from prison of Al Capone, and the Purples were representing Al in the kidnap plot. However the investigators in the crime could not come up with any evidence directly connecting the Purples. The newspaper reports were simply speculation or hot air, no doubt hoping to increase circulation because of the huge interest the baby's disappearance had generated.<br /> <br /> By now however, the mob was starting to implode under the weight of its own momentum.<br /> <br /> Irving 'Little Irv' Shapiro (photo below) had been killed and dumped from a car onto Taylor Avenue. It was thought he was being turned by the police and would become an informer. Another theory had it that he'd threatened some other members of the gang over a a scheme that had turned sour.<br /> <br /> He was only twenty three, but was one of the toughest of the gang. On one occasion, involved in a dispute with a man, he sorted the problem by simply gouging out one of the man's eyes. Small in size, he made up for that with a violence out of all proportion to his build. His forte was 'putting the muscle' on the blind pigs, and he made the gang thousands each year from this. At his death, he had a police record that included twenty-four arrests for almost everything, including murder. He'd extorted construction sites through control of a plumbers union, earning up to $8000 a month from this one scam, alone. He ran a kidnap gang, specializing in seizing businessmen, and a protection racket that was another huge earner for the gang. He may well have been the first Purple to be taken for a one-way ride, getting three behind the ear for aggravating someone.<br /> </p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236987089,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p><br /> <br /> Zigmund 'Ziggie' Selbin, one of the gang's enforcers, was gunned down in the doorway of a blind-pig on 12th Street in April 1929. No one really cared too much about 'Ziggie,' he was over the top even on a good day. He had been drinking one night with a good friend, admiring the man's ring. When he refused to surrender it, Jackie solved the problem by decking the man and simply slashing off the man’s finger with a razor sharp knife he always carried.<br /> <br /> Sid Markman was one of the few Purples who got it from the law. He was executed in New York in 1930 for the murder-robbery of a Jewish merchant, Isadore Frank, in Brooklyn. Moe Raider shot down Earl Passman on Oakland Avenue in July 1931 and went to prison for life.<br /> <br /> Henry Schorr disappeared in December 1933, after having dinner with Harry Fleischer at a restaurant on 12th. Street. He may have been killed by Izzie Swartz and Charlie Leiter as a favour for Harry.<br /> <br /> In 1934, according to the FBI, Tony Frigi, Bill Mylan, Johnny Gallo, Al Paradis and Joe O'Donnel fled to California and set themselves up in business there. They formed the Co-op Dairymen’s Loan Association and a dry-cleaning association, intimidating other cleaners to join them by blowing up the premises of those that refused. A classic example of transferring business skills, interstate. The Los Angeles police kept them under close observation and noticed that they often frequented Al Lang’s Gymnasium where they seemed to spend more time exercising their drinking skills than their muscles.<br /> <br /> Lou and Al Werheimer had also moved west, earlier, in 1930-31, opening up the Clover Club, one of Los Angels’ finest gambling houses, with a branch of their activities in Palm Springs, called 'The Dunes.'<br /> <br /> Harry Fleischer, who had started his career as a driver for George C. Goldberg, one of the leaders of the Oakland Old Sugar House mob, finally got his, along with brother Sam, in 1936. They each got eight years in the slammer for liquor violations. Convicted again in 1944, not long after his release, ( you can’t keep a good dog down,) he eventually came out of prison in 1965, aged sixty-two. The third brother, Louis, went away in 1938, and was paroled in 1957, but was back inside again by 1958, where he died in 1964. He had long been looked upon as the court jester of the Purples. One of his pranks was to drive his car at his friends walking across Twelfth Street, near to where the Purples favourite restaurant was located, pretending to knock them down. If that didn't work, he would career after them, sometimes down the sidewalk.<br /> <br /> Must have been a hoot to watch.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236987865,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Harry Millman was blown all over the place, as he stood drinking with some friends at Boesky’s Deli on Hazlewood and Twelfth, perhaps the gangs favourite drinking place in Detroit, one November night in 1937. It was said that his two killers who strolled in and really shot up the place, perforating not only Harry, but five other people, were the Mutt and Jeff of Murder Inc., Harry Strauss and Happy Maione. According to a report in the Detroit Press, dated November 28th., Harry was clipped, it was rumoured, because he was knocking off whore-houses under the protection of the Detroit Mafia, and they had arranged his removal. <br /> <br /> In fact, the thing that got Harry killed, was a dispute he'd created with Pete Licavoli. He was a hoodlum, who would eventually become a major power in the Italian-American underworld of Detroit. With a record dating back to 1912 for everything and the kitchen sink, he was hardly a man to be trifled with. He was close to a man called Joe 'Scarface Joe' Bomarito and the two got into a beef with Harry who mistakenly thought he was entitled to a piece of their action. Abe Bernstein tried a number of times to smooth things over between the three men, but it all came to a head when Millman sucker punched Bommarito in a bar scuffle, creating a deep gash on the right corner and upper lip of Joe's face, and hence the lifelong knick name. The two Italians got the okay from Abe. They would never had gone ahead without his sanction, and the hit was in.<br /> <br /> The newspaper also stated that Millman was the last survivor of the Purple Gang. He wasn’t of course.<br /> <br /> Abe Bernstein kept going for years. By 1939, he had a luxury suite at the Book Cadillac Hotel, where he lived until he died peacefully, in March 1968, well into his seventies. He and his brothers, Joe and Izzie, made big dough running a race track wire-service in Detroit.<br /> <br /> Abe was highly regarded by the Italians, they used him as a kind of 'counsellor' within the various Mafia factions, and Joe Zirelli himself, thought so much of Abe, he arranged to have his Cadillac Hotel housing dues and personal effects charges sent to him for payment.<br /> <br /> The fourth boy, Ray, was of course still doing time in Marquette state prison for his part in the Collingwood Massacre. He came out in January 1964, in a wheelchair, and died two years later.<br /> <br /> In March 1950, the FBI interviewed ex Purple, Joe Arbus, who claimed that he was in retirement, but did admit that the gang originally formed around himself, Abe, Ray and Joe Bernstein, Eddie Fletcher, Abe Axler and Irving Willberg.<br /> <br /> Off all the bodies falling down, the killings that fascinate me the most were the murders of Eddie Fletcher and Abe Axler. These two, who had set up and probably committed the 'Detroit Massacre, circa 1927,' both served time, getting two years in 1927 for liquor offenses. They had built up a fearsome reputation doing the crimes together and the jail times together. Fletcher, a New York hoodlum, had left Brooklyn and moved to Detroit in 1923. He had fought as a featherweight boxer at 118 pounds. Axler moved to Detroit in 1925.<br /> <br /> In the Detroit underworld, they were known as 'The Siamese Twins,' and were considered the top hit-men for the Purples.<br /> <br /> Fletcher had been a non-event as a boxer, but developed into a top gunman for the gang. Of the two, Axler was in fact the more vicious, a stone-killer, who could also be handy with his fists as and when it was required. Some reporter in the Detroit Times, described them as 'sawed-off Napoleons with dark, furtive, beady eyes and ears beaten out of shape (Fletcher,) or in Axler's case, overgrown by nature.' They had what was referred to as 'crazy nerve,' in other words, they were probably psychopathic, or more likely by to-days understanding, socio-paths.<br /> <br /> At 3 a.m. on the morning of November 26th., 1933, Fred Lincoln was doing his rounds as the residential policeman of Bloomfield Township, to the north of Detroit. Down a quiet lane in Oakland County, near to the fashionable Bloomfield Hills estates, he came across a motor car parked by the roadside, close to the Quarton and Telegraph Road intersection.<br /> <br /> Flashing his torch, Fred crept up to the vehicle expecting to surprise a couple of 'petters.'<br /> <br /> At least that’s what his report said. Perhaps he got his late night kicks at what he found in the back of autos, down dark rural roads. What he found in this car must have been a major shock. Sprawled on the back seat, clutching each other’s hands, but more in morte than amore, were two men. According to Fred, when he touched the bodies, they were still warm. According to an autopsy, they had been dead maybe 30 minutes at this time.<br /> <br /> They had each been shot numerous times, at close range, mostly straight into their faces, their bodies scattered with powder burns, indicating that they had been killed up close, probably by the driver and front seat passenger. The two men had only been back in the city ten days, after skipping bail on various charges.<br /> <br /> The bodies were identified as Axler and Fletcher, Detroit's Public Enemies numbers one and two. They had spent the previous night drinking in a Pontiac beer garden. As they were leaving, they were joined by two other men and drove off into the night.The car belonged to Abe’s wife, Evelyn, and of course the identity of their killers has never been established, or why the two men died, holding each other in their final embrace, like lovers going off on one big, last adventure. <br /> <br /> Which I guess, in a way they were. Not lovers in the sexual sense, but two gangsters who simply embraced the inevitability of one double cross too many, and held each other tightly into eternity. Friends in life and friends in death. <br /> <br /> It was generally believed that the Detroit Mafia had set up the hit, using Purple friends, because the two men were muscling in on the mob's narcotic business. It's as good an explanation as any.<br /> </p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236987697,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p><br /> <br /> Although the Purple Gang were essentially based in Detroit, some of their members moved around. In August 1935, Louis Fleischer moved to Albion, a small, country town about 90 miles west of Detroit. He rented an apartment at 108 South Monroe Street. He and Sam Bernstein bought a junk yard, called Riverside Iron and Metal Company from a M. Pryor. Sam lived at 803 East Caso Street. Louis’s brother, Sam, also moved to the town, but in April 1936 went down on tax and liquor charges.<br /> <br /> The gang members who came to visit, would hang out at the Streetcar Tavern on Austin Avenue, and two of the Purples, Abe 'Buffalo Harry' Rosenberg and his brother, another Louis, owned the apartment building that the bar was located in. The Purple Gang had been coming to Albion since the advent of Prohibition to buy homemade grog on Austin Avenue and at the Parker Inn. Albion was also a chosen drop off point for mobsters travelling to and from Chicago, a kind of gangster’s truck stop, where they could freshen up, grab some chow and check their side arms, prior to hitting the big city, whichever one they were heading for.<br /> <br /> Sam Fleischer would often visit the local cinema called the Bohm Theatre, with his girl friend, who the locals called 'Flapper Susy,' along with groups of out of town strangers- hard looking guys, with snappy suits and well creased fedoras. The local police believed the Gang used the cinema to conduct business meetings, out of sight and sound of the law.<br /> <br /> Early in the hours of Wednesday, June 3rd., 1936, a massive police raid by 25 officers at the junk yard, resulted in the recovery of a Graham-Paige sedan that had been used extensively by a gang of raiding burglars, roaming across southern lower Michigan. The police arrested Louis Fleischer and his wife Nellie, and Sam and Lillian Bernstein.<br /> <br /> They found the car stacked with house breaking tools and weapons of all kinds and calibres. It also had a dozen bullet holes in it, evidence of running fire-fights with the Michigan police.<br /> <br /> Following the raid, Louis and Nellie were both tried and convicted for various offences and sentenced to 36 years in prison.<br /> <br /> By the end of the 1930’s, the Purple Gang had outlived its usefulness, fragmented and become simply a memory to lawmen and the people whose paths had crossed theirs.<br /> <br /> The memory they evoked, would be rekindled in 1960, with the release of an Allied Artist’s movie about them, called, not surprisingly, 'The Purple Gang.' It starred Barry Sullivan, and Robert Blake, who hit the news in connection with the mysterious killing of his wife, Bonny, in 2001.<br /> <br /> A reference to the gang turned up in one of Ian Fleming's immortal Bond novels. Helmut M. Springer, noted as a member of The Purple Gang of Detroit, is a character in 'Goldfinger,' hired to help with the Fort Knox robbery.<br /> <br /> They even found immortality in of all places, a 1957 rock and roll song by Mike Stoller and Jerry Leiber, when Elvis Presley sang:<br /> <br /> …The drummer boy from Illinois went crash, boom, bang,<br /> <br /> the whole rhythm section was The Purple Gang.<br /> <br /> A so called new Purple Gang emerged in New York in the late 1970’s, involved with large scale drug distribution and extortion in the South Bronx and Harlem. Membership was apparently mainly restricted to young Italian-Americans who came from Pleasant Avenue and its surrounding streets in East Harlem. Originally affiliated with the Luchese crime family, they had links into the Genovese and Bonanno families also, according to the NYPD, and had a membership at their peak, of over one hundred They were so vicious, they even intimidated mainstream Mafia mobs. Among other things, the new Purples became famous for pioneering the use of low calibre .22 pistols as hit weapons, as they went about killing and eliminating their rivals.<br /> <br /> Daniel Leo who reportedly took over the leadership of the Genovese crime family in 2006 was one of its members, as was Vincent Basciano, who assumed the top role in the Bonanno family when Joe Massino was arrested and imprisoned. Arnold "Zeke" Squitieri, a powerful Gambino captain, was also a Purple Gang affiliate in the early 1970's.<br /> <br /> One of its most notorious members was non-Italian, Joseph Meldisch, who police suspected of at least one hundred murders across the eastern seaboard.<br /> <br /> No group ever rose up out of the East Side Detroit Jewish community to take the place of the Purples. Although they had plenty of muscle and weren’t afraid to kill, they lacked the essential organizational and management skills of the Sicilians who would replace them in the Detroit underworld for the next 70 years.<br /> <br /> To-day, Hastings Street where it all began is gone, buried under Interstate-75, along with the memories of Jewish gangsters and their wild women, the scent of rot gut whiskey and the dreams of those who gave a whole new meaning to the colour purple.<br /> <br /> 'Shalom aleichem.’<br /> <br /> Many thanks to Scott M. Burnstein, author and crime historian, for his usual invaluable help into the dark corners of Detroit.<br /> </p>
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Being Ernest: The Life and Hard Times of Ernie 'The Hawk' Rupolo
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/being-ernest-the-life-and-hard
2010-11-17T14:00:00.000Z
2010-11-17T14:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br /> I think he is one of my favourite mobsters of all time. The one-eyed killer who couldn't shoot straight.<br /> <br /> Most people have never heard of him. He never achieved any immortal status as a big player in the Mafia crime families of New York, although he longed for and lusted after it. He was probably the rule rather than the exception when it came to setting the standard for the street hoodlums that made up the rank and file of organized crime. A grifter, struggling through the interminable days that made up a year in a journeyman crook's life, constantly looking for the perfect score and never finding it. Doing the dirty jobs for a pittance and getting screwed from every angle by whoever was higher up the rank in the mob hierarchy than he was, which was basically everybody. He had a reputation for being a tough guy, but Ernest Rupolo was basically an idiot looking for justification for his very existence. Alan Block in his book East Side, West Side, calls him a dope and a criminal incompetent; Peter Mass, in The Valachi Papers, says, ' Rupolo apparently carried around his own built-in banana peel.' <br /> <br /> I mean he had dreams of being the head of the Mafia, at least according to his de facto wife, Eleanor. She'd said to him how could he tell anybody what to do, he couldn't even tell her what to do. Talk about a ram butting a dam. High hopes indeed. Still, there was something about him that makes me feel he deserved better than the multiple gunshot holes and knife cavities all over the place, and a concrete block to go skateboarding on in Jamaica Bay.<br /> <br /> Whatever you say about 'The Hawk,' he did achieve a certain kind of fame in a way. Because of him, one of the toughest mob bosses in New York, who ran away, with his tail between his legs, and then came back, almost went to prison, which would have dramatically changed the future of organized crime in New York; and in death, he almost got even with a mobster, a guy he really hated, who ultimately spent more time in jail than Willie Sutton. And at the end, he was centre stage in a courtroom drama that was unique for its rareness. So perhaps his life was not completely a wasteland of opportunities lost. Fourty years plus after the event, I'm probably looking at it all with the eyes of a weary cynic, who has searched too long and too hard to find some kind of redemption in a class of unredeemable people.<br /> <br /> The real mob. The Godfather it ain't.<br /> <br /> Being one of the underworld's least charismatic people, or spectacular successes, there is little information about the man, except, a beautifully written section, in a book by an associate editor of Life magazine, called James Mills. That, and an article in the same magazine, plus there's also a bit in Dom Frasca's book about Vito Genovese, the odd, old newspaper report, and that seems to be the best there is to search out the painful history of a man who seemed destined to always be the guy to get the sand kicked into his face, down on the beach.<br /> <br /> It began for the law on a hot, sultry day-- August 24th., 1964-- off Breezy Point, the terminus of the Rockaway peninsular, at the entrance into Jamaica Bay, in Queens, New York. A body was found, floating in the shallow waters by two men, Nicky Caputo and Butch Spyliopolous, and dragged ashore. There is a photograph of this misshapen, bleached white, bloated heap that was once a human being. It lies face down in the sand, washed by the ebb-tide. The hands are lashed together with rope or plastic line, a dirt stained shirt is clinging to the torso. The lower limbs are nude, although it looks as though his trousers have collapsed around the ankles, and there is a large, concrete building block at his feet. The head is bald: presumably the action of the water along with the decomposition of the body, has leached the hair from his head because in life, he had a full head of hair, dark, though greying at the temples. His right eye socket is open, glaring up at the world in indignation at being exposed like this. 'Go away, and leave me alone,' he seems to be saying, 'I'm just having a break between scams.' According to the pathologist's report, the body had probably been water bound for at least three weeks.<br /> </p>
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<div style="text-align:center;font-weight:bold;">Ernie's dead body</div>
<p><br /> The corpse was taken to the 100 Precinct of the Queens, NYPD, on Rockaway Beach Boulevard. There was enough in the way of identity items to make the police believe it was the body of a known criminal, Ernest Rupolo, and his brother Willie was contacted and brought in to try and confirm this. Willie, a mob groupie, and part-time bookie found it hard to be sure.<br /> <br /> 'It was just-like a skeleton with some stuff on it,' he said.<br /> <br /> But he told the cops to check on a mesh in the stomach, a relic from a hernia operation his brother had when young, and that also, when he was just a kid, a punk had shot out his right eye, and the bullet was still in there, somewhere. Willie also identified the clothes on the body as his own. His brother had been so broke, he had loaned him a shirt, pair of pants even some shoes. Being semi-destitute was par for the course for Ernie, the big-time gangster.<br /> <br /> An autopsy carried out by Medical Examiner Milton Helpern, revealed that Ernie had gone down hard. He had been shot in the head and upper chest four times, and stabbed another eighteen. Digging in among the macerated and putrid flesh, the doctor found five misshapen slugs: four .38 calibre and one, a .45. The big one had in fact been inside Ernie's head for at least forty years since the day he had got into an argument with another young tough, who had settled their dispute by clocking him with a .45 automatic. Somehow, Ernie survived that one, although he lost his right eye, and for the rest of his life had to go around with a patch stuck over the empty socket. True to the underworld code, Ernie would not identify his assailant, but promised to even the score in due course. This proved a lot harder said than done, as whenever Ernie was out on the streets, the punk was in jail and vice-versa. Somehow, the dispute never seemed to get resolved. It was Ernie's first encounter with the fickle finger of fate that would dog him for the rest of his life.<br /> <br /> He was born in New York, in Borough Park, in 1908, and grew up in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. There is little concrete evidence about his early life. Dates and places are vague. He claimed he left school at twelve, fudging his birth certificate, making out that he was in fact fifteen. He got his release from school, and started to do what he always wanted to do, a career of crime.<br /> <br /> His first foray, was to organize a gang, and they racked up perhaps as many as 100 burglaries, before he got arrested at thirteen, receiving a three year suspended sentence. He kept going, and eventually was caught and sentenced to 1-3 years in the New York Reformatory. He was out in ten months, and the first thing he did was buy himself a gun.<br /> <br /> Seemingly, it didn’t help, because the law caught up with again, this time allocating him eight months detention. Sometime during this period, he acquired the nickname, 'The Hawk' because when out robbing, he never missed anything of value to steal. Before he turned twenty, he had a record of six juvenile arrests, and had served two terms in the reformatory.<br /> <br /> By the time he was sixteen, he was a well-seasoned street criminal. At some point during this period, he found himself in a west side Manhattan hotel having a barney with a group of his associates that somehow involved a young girl. According to the way Ernie recalled it, when he told this guy to stop bothering the girl, the response was: 'Shut up. Mind your own business or I'll let you have it.' And Ernie says, 'You punk I wouldn’t' care what you did.'<br /> <br /> So the guy, who was called Eddy Green, pulls open a drawer in a desk, takes out a .45 and wham, locks one onto Ernie. As he goes down, he remembers, the radio in the room is playing 'My Blue Heaven.' Somehow, he survives the shooting, but looses the eye. A reasonable trade I guess, under the circumstances. According to brother Willie, after Ernie was shot, and his face was disfigured, he didn't really care anymore, about anything. That's when he went on the mob's payroll and from the age of seventeen, became a hit man.<br /> <br /> By his late teens, he acquired a reputation as a wild cannon, forming a gang of four that specialized in robbing members of the mob, holding up their bookies and terrorizing their numbers runners. Just why the bosses allowed him to get away with this is a bit of a mystery. Ernie claimed he was often called on the carpet and warned by the top men, but somehow, always avoided the obvious fatal consequences of such acts. Brother Willie, claimed that the bosses were afraid of his brother, the kid was good at his job, and if they missed him the first time there would be no second chance, and he did good work for them after all. But he knew it couldn't go on forever. When he got drunk ( which apparently was often,) he would say to his brother, 'You know, Willie, I'm living on borrowed time. How much more do you think I can go around takin' people?'<img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236988497,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /><br /> <br /> The events that gave Ernie (right) his moment of fame began sometime in 1932. The huge, underground earthquake that came to be known as 'The Castellammarese War,' was over by then, and the New York Mafia had settled down into five well-defined groups: criminal enterprises that would go on, developing for the next seventy years. <br /> <br /> One of the bigger mobs was led by Charlie Luciano, and his alleged underboss, Vito Genovese. Vito had a good friend, fellow gang member, Anthony Strollo, also known as 'Tony Bender.' He was robbed one day, while attending one of his bootleg liquor stashes at a garage he leased. Two men, Ferdinand 'The Shadow' Boccia and Willie Gallo, relieved Tony of $5800. This was an act of madness by the men, who were basically taking on what could well have been the most powerful organized crime group in America. Genovese decided Ferdinand and Willie had to go, and Ernie Rupolo was approached to handle the hit. 'The Shadow' was apparently brassed off with Genovese, because a scam he had created and which brought in $116,000 was shared by everyone and his dog, except him. The strike on Bender was something in the way of compensation in lieu. <br /> <br /> Underworld hits are often convoluted, complicated exercises that can drag on for months, and this one was no exception. There was, however, an added ingredient here, and that was the ineptitude of the principal assassin. Numerous meetings held in bars, coffee shops, and dance halls across Brooklyn, all led, finally to a rendezvous in a restaurant on the corner of Mulberry and Kenmare Streets, in Manhattan's Little Italy district. This was in early spring, 1934. The program was delayed by 90 days, when Rupolo was arrested on a vagrancy charge and locked up in jail. While there, he bumped into an old pal, Rosario Palmieri, known also as 'Solly Young,' and offered him time shares in the killing. For $1000, Solly was happy to be in on the hit.<br /> <br /> At the meeting on Mulberry Street, Ernie was promised $5000 for the killing of Gallo, but only received a down payment of $175 from Michele Miranda, an associate of Vito Genovese, and also one of the major beneficiaries of the Boccia scam. It was unfortunately, all he would ever see in the way of a reward. Fortunately for the organizers of the hits, the Shadows' contract was hired out to other killers who turned out to be seriously good at their job.<br /> <br /> It was decided to set up the murder of Boccia at a card game, and that would be orchestrated by one Peter LaTempa also known as Petie Spatz. The killing would go down on September 19th., 1934. At least two, possibly three shooters had been allocated that one. Gallo was to be hit simultaneously by Ernie and his pal, Solly. <br /> <br /> On the day before, Peter DeFeo, apparently the mob's armourer, later to be a powerful capo, or crew chief in the Genovese crime family, and indelibly linked in through a relative to the infamous 'Amityville Horror' case of the 1970s, supplied Ernie with two .32 automatic pistols. He also delivered two guns to George 'Blah Blah' Smurra and Cosmo 'Gus' Frasca who had been earmarked as the killers of Boccia, who was to be hit at his uncle's coffee shop at 533, Metropolitan Avenue, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.<br /> <br /> Ernie stashed his two guns in the cellar of a friend, Louis 'Chip' Greco, who lived on 65th. Street, in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Later, he met up with Solly who was chaperoning Gallo, and the three men spent the next twenty four hours eating, drinking and partying from Bensonhurst to Coney Island and back to Williamsburg. Gallo decided he wanted to visit the sister of Boccia, and there, something occurred, something so Kafkaesque in its conception, as to almost defy believe.<br /> <br /> They arrived at the house about seven in the evening, and mixed with the people who were partying there. At some time that night, Gallo, for some reason, decided to try on a suit of Boccia's that was hanging in a closet. Ernie claimed it didn't look right on him, and suggested that he himself try it on. So Ernie takes off his own suit and gives it to Gallo, and then puts on the suit of 'The Shadow.' When Ernie testified some years later in a King's County court, Judge Samuel Leibowitz asked:<br /> <br /> 'You gave Willie Gallo, the man you were going to kill, your suit?'<br /> <br /> 'Yes.'<br /> <br /> 'Was he wearing your suit when he was found on the street full of lead?'<br /> <br /> 'Yes, sir.'<br /> <br /> 'And you were wearing 'The Shadows' suit, the other man who was killed that night?'<br /> <br /> 'Yes, sir.' <br /> <br /> No one ever bothered to find out who was the final recipient of Gallo's original suit.<br /> <br /> Following this grotesque charade party, Rupolo, Gallo and 'Solly Young' and a couple of young ladies, headed off to the movies. Half way through the program, Ernie, the consummate hit-man, suddenly remembers that he has forgotten to bring along the pieces. He slipped out of the theatre, called a cab, raced to 65th. Street, retrieved the guns, and raced back to the cinema.<br /> <br /> Now you can see why I love this guy?<br /> <br /> Dropping off the girls, the three men then began another interminable migration around New York, first across the East River to Hester Street in Manhattan, then back to Coney Island, and then finally, by subway up to 71st. Street in Bensonhurst, the place Ernie had chosen as the killing field. On the way into Little Italy by subway, he slipped his pal, Solly, one of the automatics.<br /> <br /> It was now, about 2 a.m. on the morning of September 20th., 1934. 'The Shadow' was already dead; he had been dispatched with maximum efficiency by Gus Frasca and George Smurra over in Williamsburg, hours before. Although there were eleven witnesses to the shooting, nobody, as usual in a mob hit, knew anything. <br /> <br /> Walking north from the subway station, Ernie’s group reached the corner of Sixty-eight Street and Fourteenth Avenue. At this point, Ernie pulls out his gun, shoves into Gallo's ear and pulls the trigger. Nothing happens. Again, zilch. Third time, nada. Gallo, even though drunk, wonders what is going on. 'What the hell you doing?' he asks Ernie. 'Nothing,' says 'The Hawk,' I'm only kidding you, the gun ain't loaded.' It was of course, it just wasn't co-operating. <br /> <br /> Now even drunk, and having a gun stuck in his face, Gallo shows consideration for his friend, telling Ernie with his record, he shouldn't be wandering around with a gat in his belt, what if the cops stop him? So Ernie promises to get rid of it and walks away a few blocks. In fact, he went back to his friend 'Chip' Greco's home, banging on the door, getting his bleary-eyed friend out of bed, and demanding some oil to grease up his weapon.<br /> <br /> 'Hello,' Ernie says, ' get me some gun oil quick, I'm in need of a fix.' Greco obliges, and Ernie douses the weapon, checks the slide and mechanism, and off he goes for try number two.<br /> <br /> He meets up with Solly, and says, 'We'll get the bastard this time, and just don't forget, this is a double-banger.' They walk Greco down to Sixty-sixth street and on the corner of Thirteenth Avenue, out come the pistols, and bang, bang, bang.<br /> <br /> When Judge Leibowitz asked Ernie:<br /> <br /> 'How many times did you fire at Gallo?' Ernie replied ' Oh, about nine times, but we had some misses.'<br /> <br /> Picture the scene: A street corner in Brooklyn, maybe the moonlight reflecting off shop windows, street lamps dimly lighting the shadows, two men shooting vainly at a standing target, weaving in a drunken stupor, from perhaps only inches away, and still they manage to miss with some of the shots. Talk about the gang that couldn't shoot straight!<br /> <br /> Gallo goes down at last, according to Ernie, gasping out the immortal words all good New York hoods part from this mortal coil with, ' Oh, Ma!' just like Jimmy Cagney in the movies. Solly and Ernie drift off, and go and get a few hours well deserved sleep at the home of poor old 'Chip' Greco. The next day, Ernie goes over to Manhattan to collect his reward for a job well-done, and receives the bad news from an understandably irate Miranda. After all that time and energy expended, Gallo is still alive. Genovese arranged for Ernie and Solly to go into hiding, and they were sent up to Springfield, Massachusetts. After a few days, Solly cuts loose and returns to the city. A couple of weeks later, Ernie follows suit. As he gets off the train at Canal Street, the cops are waiting there to pick him up. Gallo has identified him and Solly as the men who shot him.<br /> <br /> Ernie was taken to Gallo's bedside in the King's County Hospital, where he is literally fingered by the wounded man.<br /> <br /> Gallo says to Ernie, ' Why did you shoot me?'<br /> <br /> Ernie's response is, 'Why did you tell on me?'<br /> <br /> Gallo remonstrates, 'But that ain't the question I am asking you?'<br /> <br /> To which Rupolo replies, 'What's the difference what I shot you for? You could get revenge later on, instead of talking, saying I shot you.'<br /> <br /> In gangland, you can do anything but be a rat informer. You can rape and pillage and loot and murder and double-cross, but woe betide anyone who has the temerity to tell the truth to the law, especially about another member of the fraternity. And so, Ernie goes away to prison for eight years and six months. When he comes out in 1942, he is twenty-seven years old. <br /> <br /> In 1944, operating a luncheonette in Borough Park, Brooklyn, which he had somehow found the funds to purchase, he gets involved in another situation this time with a target he later described as 'a real-good looking guy, one of my best friends.' He was Carl Sparacino, and he had got on the wrong side of the mob, holding up and robbing their organized dice games. He led a group of two-bit mobsters, including Louie and Al Leffredo and Dominick Carlucci, who had hit a number of games including one operated by Andy Ercolino, at his home in Borough Park, Brooklyn, on March 28th., 1943. So Ernie gets the contract, which pays him $500, and he and the target go off one night in Sparacino's car, and Ernie shoots him four times. But as usual, in Ernie's case, the heart was willing, but the aim was weak. The victim survived long enough to finger Rupolo, and he is arrested, tried, convicted and it looks like he is going off for another long prison spell again And this is when it gets really interesting. <br /> <br /> In prison, on his second botched shooting, Ernie Rupolo decided to reveal his role in the Gallo shooting and the details behind the killing of Boccia, in the hopes it might work towards mitigating his sentence. Here he was back in jail yet again, leaving his wife behind at their home at 1947 65th. Street, in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. No doubt he was broke as usual. As in the Gallo shooting, the mob bosses had assured Ernie that he would only serve short time for the Sparacino hit, and as usual they were wrong. Facing another long session of jail time, forty to eighty years as a second offender, lacking any confidence in the promises of the guys who always seemed to promise but not deliver, Ernie probably thought, what did he have to lose?<br /> <br /> Since in the absence of physical proof, New York State laws required corroborating witnesses in the planning and carrying out of crime, Ernie's statement in itself was not enough, but he came up with the name of Peter LaTempa, who under pressure, reluctantly confirmed Rupolo's story.<br /> <br /> One of the reasons both men may have agreed to testify, was that the prime target of the murder inquiry, Vito Genovese, was no longer in America, and the authorities had no idea where he was.<br /> <br /> In fact, where he was, was Naples, Italy. He had gone there in 1937, hefting a suitcase packed with $750,000, at least according to his wife, Anna. He had decided to disappear when District Attorney Thomas Dewey had started a probe into the murder of Boccia on December 1st., 1937, as part of an intensive investigation into Genovese and his associates. Dewey had successfully prosecuted Luciano, who had been sent to prison for 30 odd years, and the DA's office was now after the second tier management of the crime family. Vito takes a powder until things cool down. The family business is left in the capable hands of Frank Costello, a.k.a. 'The Prime Minister,' and things are cool until 'The Hawk' starts stirring up the pond with his tales of death and deceit.<br /> <br /> Among the various titbits of information that emanated from Ernie, was one concerning the mob itself. According to Turkus and Feder in their book Murder Inc., Rupolo confirmed that Genovese was a national power in what he referred to as the Unione Siciliano, an organization, Ernie claimed that was the self-appointed successor to the Mafia. Ernie had been involved with the crime family of Genovese for at least twelve or thirteen years, so it is interesting to speculate on what he had to say. He also confirmed the legend of the Night of the Italian Vespers, the so-called mass killings of the old moustached Petes of the American Mafia, across America, following the murder of Salvatore Maranzano in 1931, but that one has, I think, been firmly put to bed as an old-wives tale. The other myth about the Unione, continues to be debated to this day, but it seems safe to assume that it's fiction based on fantasy as well. Like most of the guys at his level in gangland, Ernie heard gossip, but rarely the true facts about anything. <br /> <br /> Ernie started talking to the DA's office, initially with A.D.A. Edward A. Hefferman, on June 13th., 1944. He first gave up the three men involved in the dice game stick-up, the Leffredo brothers and Dominick Carlucci, then started verbalizing about the Boccia case. The man who would be largely responsible for trying to put together a case against Genovese and his accomplices in the Boccia killing, was Assistant District Attorney Julius Helfand, the city lawyer who would gain notoriety as one of the leaders in the investigation into the New York Police Department corruption probe involving bookmaker Harry Gross, in 1950.<br /> <br /> It was Helfand's probing that finally surfaced LaTempa as another independent witness to the events that night in the coffee shop on Metropolitan Avenue. It is interesting that the DA's office thought he was a suitable candidate for this role. Under New York Law, in order to obtain a conviction, it is necessary to secure a second witness who had nothing to do with the commission of the crime. Clearly, Petie Spatz did not fall within that category; he was in fact an accessory or accomplice to the crime. There were however, eleven other witness to the murder, but none were ever called to fill that role. Nevertheless, with Ernie's testimony identifying Genovese as the man behind the hits on Gallo and Boccia, and Petie Spatz to back it up, Helfand seemed sure he had a way to go. Subsequently, a Brooklyn Grand Jury indicted Genovese, Miranda and four others, De Feo, Smurra, Frasca and Sal Zappola for the killing of 'The Shadow.' <br /> <br /> The problem was Vito was still incommunicado, and then, wham, like a miracle, two months later, who should come out of the woodwork, but the man himself. On August 22nd ., he was arrested in Naples, Italy, on charges of running a black market ring. It was another nine months before the maze of official red tape could be untangled enough for extradition proceedings to begin, and he was escorted back to New York to face trial. But by then, the case against him had gone out of the window. LaTempa had been taking pain-killers to relieve his distress from gallstone problems. On January 15th., 1945, in his cell at the Brooklyn Civil Prison, he had his usual dose, and dropped dead. An autopsy disclosed he had taken enough poison to kill eight horses. Vito Genovese docked in New York aboard the S.S. James Lykes, on June 1st.<br /> <br /> For him, summer had indeed arrived early.<br /> <br /> When he finally came to trial on Thursday, June 5th. 1946, in the King's County Courthouse, in Brooklyn, it was almost a foregone conclusion he would beat the rap. Four days after the trial opened, a bullet riddled body was found in underbrush off Highway 303, about fifteen miles north of the George Washington bridge. It was identified as Jerry Esposito, a thirty-five year old criminal, recently paroled from Elmira Reformatory, 200 miles north-west of New York City. He was scheduled to appear as a witness in the case against Genovese. For the Mafia boss, it was another loose end safely disposed of. On June 11th., Judge Leibowitz, after having studied the evidence and law governing the area of corroborating testimony, dismissed the case against Genovese. <br /> <br /> In his closing comments, the judge said:<br /> <br /> 'I cannot speak for the jury, but I believe if there were even a shred of corroborating evidence, you would have been condemned to the electric chair. By devious means, among which were the terrorizing of witnesses, kidnapping them, yes, even murdering those who would give evidence against you, you have thwarted justice time and time again.'<br /> <br /> Genovese smirked, and walked out of the courtroom. He must have felt immune from the law by now.<br /> <br /> Earlier, during trial proceedings, Judge Leibowitz questioned Ernie at one time:<br /> <br /> 'What was your occupation?' he asked.<br /> <br /> 'I was a gambler,' Ernie said.<br /> <br /> 'And a killer?' queried the judge.<br /> <br /> 'Oh, sure,' 'The Hawk' confirmed.<br /> <br /> On September 23rd., 1949, Rupolo because of his testimony and cooperation, was released from Dannemora Prison in accordance with the promises made by the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office, and went back into the jungle. And for some strange reason, Ernie was allowed to live. One account says that the bosses sat down and agreed that he had given up plenty of years, and for that he got a reprieve, or as they call it in the mob, a pass. Willie Rupoli claimed in later years that Michele Miranda, now a very powerful member of the Genovese family administration, had said to his brother, 'Take care of yourself, kid. Don't worry about nothin. If you need anything, come to me.'<br /> <br /> There is another scenario as reported by newspaper reporter Ed Newman of the New York Journal-American. He claimed that while having a drink with Ernie in a Borough Park tavern one day, he questioned why Ernie was still alive and well. 'Whatta you mean? Ernie asked, 'you mean when I testified against Vito. He beat the rap didn’t he? The other guys got off the hook too, didn’t they?' He looked slyly at the reporter out of his good eye and added: 'Don't you know I did Vito a big favour. A man can't be tried twice for the same murder.'<br /> <br /> And so, Ernie Rupolo, big time gangster who couldn’t shoot straight, faded into the obscurity of the naked city, with its eight million stories. He operated as a shylock and a bookmaker, and made up his income by muscling in on bars and whatever other opportunities presented themselves. Sometime by 1957, he had left his wife and moved in with another woman, a big, brassy, loud-mouthed babe with a hair-trigger temper called Eleanor. His pet name for her, was 'My Heaven.' Maybe she reminded him of the Popsicle he was with the night he became one-eyed Ernie, all those years ago.<br /> <br /> They had a baby girl they called Ellen, and according to Eleanor's later testimony, seemed to spend an awful lot of time moving from one apartment to another across Brooklyn. His relationship with Eleanor was less than placid, and six, seven times a year she would kick him out. Perhaps during this period, Ernie was still carrying out work for the Genovese family, if so he must have either improved his marksmanship, or developed a much more circumspect profile, because as best as I can figure, he did not appear again in any major police investigations, until the final one.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236989083,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />He was last seen alive early in August, 1964 (photo right). Six months before he disappeared he had told his de facto wife that he knew he was going to get killed. 'Honey,' he said, 'there gonna kill me. Eleanor recounted a strange tale about Ernie having papers that another woman was holding in her safe. '<br /> <br /> ‘They will never do anything to me because I've got these papers,' he would say. 'Then all of a sudden, the stuff she's holding for about eight years is gone. And two weeks later, so was Ernie.'<br /> <br /> At the time he was killed, having been kicked out yet again by Eleanor, he was living in an apartment that belonged to his best friend, Roy Roy, on Berkley Place, just off the Grand Army Plaza, west of Prospect Park, Brooklyn. He made his last visit to Eleanor on Friday, the last day in July. He spoke to her by telephone on the Sunday night, and that was the last time she ever heard from him. Both she and Ernie's brother Willie, were convinced that Ernie was set up by his best friend Roy Roy. 'That's what they do,' Willie said, ' they take your best friend, and he has to do what they say, even if he is your best friend. Roy Roy had to be the one.'<br /> <br /> The murder of Ernie 'The Hawk' Rupolo would probably have been just another unsolved gangland killing, one of the hundreds that have littered the New York crime scene since the turn of the twentieth century, except for four men who got themselves arrested in October, 1965 for bank robbery. They would be the focus of a murder inquiry that would take almost two years before it came to trial. The man they would finger as the force behind the hit on Ernie Rupolo, the man they claimed was their boss, was a top echelon mobster in one of the five Mafia crime families that dominated New York's underworld. This group was led by Joseph Colombo, and his right-hand and obvious successor, was one of the toughest gangsters ever, John 'Sonny' Franzese.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236988694,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Born in Naples in 1919, he was one of eighteen children, and grew up in Brooklyn, working as a youth for his father, who owned and operated a bakery. ’Carmine the Lion’ Franzese was a feared member of the mob, and legend has it that he disposed of his victims by converting them to dust in his bakery oven. By the time he was thirty, John Franzese (left) was a soldier in the Mafia family, then run by Joseph Profaci. He was sponsored into it by a capo, Sebastian Aloi, and quickly rose to a position of power following the promotion to the boss position of Joe Colombo at the death of Profaci. One of the bank robbers who would later finger Franzese, claimed he was so powerful that an FBI agent had let slip that 'J. Edgar Hoover would give his left nut for Sonny Franzese.'<br /> <br /> But why would a senior member of the Colombo family get himself involved in the killing of an insignificant artisan like Ernie Rupolo? Surely there were plenty of killers in the Genovese family that could have eliminated 'The Hawk' if that was the wish of Vito Genovese, as he languished in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, serving out a sentence for drug trafficking. Searching for the truth in matters of the mob is often like trying to eat spaghetti with chopsticks, possible, but most times, too exhausting to contemplate. In the case of Ernie's whack-out, perhaps the truth was a lot more simple. Brother Willie probably put the finger on it.<br /> <br /> 'I don't think Genovese had a thing to do with killing my brother,' he said. 'You see, Ernie knew Sonny from when they were kids. And he hated him. The reason, he said, "While I was away doing sixteen years that bastard was out making money." Sonny never did a day, so Ernie figured Sonny was reaping the harvest while he was away doing time. They hated each other. They really, really did. Also, I think Ernie was stepping on Sonny's feet. Ernie couldn’t make money in Brooklyn anymore and he needed money and he figured he'd go out into Queens and start in Queens in whatever Sonny was doing-bookmaking, muscling in on bars, whatever. And Sonny didn’t want that.' <br /> <br /> So rather than an act of revenge on a man who had the temerity to expose a mob boss for what he was, the hit on Ernie Rupolo was simply an act of housekeeping, clearing the streets of an inconvenience. <br /> <br /> On November 2nd., 1967, the trial to determine the guilt or innocence of the men accused of the murder of Ernest Rupolo, began in the Queens County courthouse. It was the first time in twenty years that a murder trial involving the Mafia had come before the courts in New York. The defendants were, John Franzese, Joseph 'Whitey' Florio, William 'Red' Crabbe and Thomas Matteo. There was a fifth defendant, the chauffeur and bodyguard of Franzese, a man called John Matera, but he was not in court, as he was serving time in a Florida jail, for armed robbery.<br /> <br /> The main witnesses for the prosecution were, Charlie Zaher, Richie Parks, Jimmy Smith and John Cordero, all members of a robbery team that specialized in hitting banks in Queens and Brooklyn. Cordero, was now the live-in boyfriend of Eleanor, the ex-de facto wife of Rupolo. It was her hair-trigger temper and rumbustious nature that triggered off the events that led to all these people being gathered in the courtroom on this day in the first place. <br /> <br /> In July 1965, Eleanor went drinking with her new boyfriend, John Cordero, in a bar in Queens called the Kew Motor Inn, frequented by the mob. She started bad-mouthing Joe Florio, who was a soldier in the crew led by Franzese, accusing him of being the murderer of Ernie. Cordero hustled her out, and in the car park, an altercation developed and shots were fired, Florio disappeared, and Eleanor and Cordero were picked up by Charlie Zaher, a friend of Cordero, who drove them away. <br /> <br /> The next night, 'Sony' Franzese called a 'sit-down' at another mob hangout, the Aqueduct Motel. He called into the meeting, Cordero, Zaher and Florio, who testified as to what had happened at the bar. Cordero and Zaher were allegedly part of the gang that Sonny supervised, who specialized in robbing banks. Apparently, during this rendezvous, Franzese made a number of incriminating remarks linking himself to the murder of Rupolo. And that became the heart of the case that the Assistant District Attorney for Queens, James Mosley, began to build, to indict Franzese and his gang of four for the murder of Ernest Rupolo. When Cordero and his group were arrested in connection with the bank robberies, they had not only implicated Franzese in that one, they also dragged him into the killing of 'The Hawk.''<br /> <br /> The four bank robbers had originally offered up as the sacrificial lamb for their cause, one Tony Polisi, who was arrested, tried and convicted. However, that didn't get them quite the reduction in sentence they were looking for, so their next gambit was Franzese. On the basis of their evidence, he was arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit bank robbery. Although every man and his dog was adamant Franzese would never be mixed up in something like this, the government tried the case, the robbers testified and Franzese was found guilty and sentenced by Judge Jacob Mishler to fifty years in prison. Sonny was out on bail, pending an appeal when he was arrested and charged with ordering the hit on Rupolo.<br /> <br /> According to evidence presented at trial, from the chief witness, Ritchie Parks, the four defendants, John Florio et al. arrived at a car park behind the Skyway Motel, in Queens, at about 2 a.m. in a car. They pulled Ernie's body out of the trunk, and as they were transferring it into the rear of another car, this one previously stolen by Parks, Ernie apparently came back to life, screaming 'No!' 'No!'<br /> <br /> Red Crabbe snatched a knife from Florio's hand, knelt over the body and repeatedly stabbed it in the chest. Finally dead, The Hawk was bundled into the stolen car and three of the men, Matera, Crabbe and Thomas Matteo drove off into the night, to dispose of the body.<br /> <br /> The way Willie Ruppoli, Ernie's brother, saw it, the killing was set up by Roy Roy, Ernie's best friend. Roy Roy may have been at this time, part of the Joey Gallo crew, over in Red Hook, along with Kid Blast, Bobby Boriello, Tony Bernardo and Louis Hubela, among others. Ernie had hung around with these guys, off and on for years, and had in fact at one time been arrested along with them. Roy Roy had a cafe on President Street, which was the ‘hang-out‘ spot for Joey Gallo and his crew .<br /> <br /> Willie said his brother was conned into the killing zone. 'That's what they do,' he claimed. 'They take your best friend....and they make him walk you into something.....wine and dine you first, then walk you into it. Roy Roy had to be the one."<br /> <br /> Maybe Willie wasn't such a mob groupie after all. <br /> <br /> More than likely, Roy Roy had driven Ernie to the Aqueduct Motor Inn, in Queens, owned by Polisi, another member of Franzese's crew, and the hit had gone down there, before Ernie's body was transferred to the getaway car. Franzese used this motel for meetings with his men, so it's logical to assume that is where they would take him.<br /> <br /> To paraphrase a saying of a famous New York cop, 'When you live in the sewers, you don't mix with bishops.' Franzese was less than fortunate, not only operating in the sewers, but cohabiting with some of the worse kind of low lives imaginable. Although he would go down on the robbery conviction, entering a federal prison in 1970, he and his co-defendants were acquitted on the Rupolo charge after a four week trial. Sonny would be back with his wife and family in their Long Island home for Christmas. With the best will in the world, D.A. Mosley was pushing it up a hill, trying to convince the jury on the evidence of a bunch of shiftless drug addicts and scum bags that made up the thrust of his case. He was also badly handicapped by a judge who bent over backwards to help the defence.<br /> <br /> I have no idea what became of three of the principal witnesses for the prosecution. On the basis of their backgrounds, they are probably dead or serving time in prison.<br /> <br /> Crabbe, Florio and Matteo have disappeared into oblivion. Johnny Matera was listed as a soldier in the Colombo Family as recently as 1988. However, some sources indicate that Johnny 'Irish' stayed on in Florida following his robbery case, and based himself in Fort Lauderdale. He subsequently became a capo in the Colombo Family, following the death of Nicholas 'Jiggs' Forlano, of a heart attack at a racecourse, in 1977.<br /> <br /> A few years later, goes another scenario, Johnny was possibly killed by the Colombos for a major breach of mob protocol. He had flown up to New York to attend a meeting with the family boss, Carmine Persico, at a house on Long Island, and failed to notice he was being tailed by FBI agents. As a result, Persico was arrested for violation of probation conditions, and imprisoned. Matera disappeared in June 1980, and is presumed dead. The Broward Sheriff's Office claims his body was cut up and buried at sea by Bert Christie, a Jewish bodybuilder and gym owner.<br /> <br /> So as so often in the convoluted world of the hoodlum, there's always money to be paid, and choices to be made.<br /> <br /> John 'Sonny' Franzese is now over ninety, not only still active in mob affairs, but back in prison yet again on another parole violation. He has been in and out of jail a half a dozen times since 1970, but is apparently still fit, and tough and just as dangerous as he was all those years ago.<br /> <br /> If she is still alive, Eleanor Rupolo/Cordero will now be well into her seventies. Perhaps she is holding on to her memories, somewhere in Queens or Brooklyn, of the one-eyed gunman who couldn't shoot straight, or maybe waiting for her latest paramour to return from the lock-up.<br /> <br /> And Ernie, The Hawk?<br /> <br /> In 1931, Ernie was a good looking kid, and the world was his oyster. Then, it all changed with that shot to his eye. From then on, he stumbled through life like a blind roofer. When he died, he was burnt-out, old before his time, and, as usual, so broke, he had to clothe himself in someone else's threads. Maybe he is wandering around in the gangster's afterlife, searching desperately for someone with a roscoe that works, and a target that will just accept the slugs and then lie down like all good victims are supposed to, so Ernie can spend the rest of eternity dreaming of being the boss of the Mafia.<br /> </p>
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The Disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-disappearance-of-jimmy
2010-11-17T13:30:00.000Z
2010-11-17T13:30:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236983665,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236983665,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236983665?profile=original" width="491" /></a>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br /> Missing Person #75-3425.<br /> <br /> To paraphrase that famous line from The Scarlet Pimpernel, 'they seek him here, they seek him there, trouble is, Jimmy’s buried everywhere.'<br /> <br /> There never really was any serious doubt about why he was killed. There is somewhat less doubt about who was behind the killing. The thing that has really perplexed investigators, and not unnaturally his family and friends, is what happened to the body? He was questionably, the most famous trade unionist in American history, certainly one of the most contentious, and thirty-three years after his alleged death, he's still a pain in the proverbial.<br /> <br /> His name was James Riddle Hoffa, and his mysterious disappearance in July 1975, triggered off one of the most intensive investigations in the history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Their inquiry generated thousands of leads and over 16000 pages of documents. In the last fifteen years, the FBI has added more than 500 new pages to its Hoffa file.<br /> <br /> It is generally believed that Hoffa was killed by the mob because he wanted to make a come-back and recapture the presidency of the biggest union in America, a position he had relinquished when he was sent to prison in 1967, after being convicted of fraud and jury tampering. His comeback was something the mob did not want, and organized things accordingly.<br /> <br /> Hoffa’s rise to power in The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, was as relentless as a steam roller.<br /> <br /> He was born in Brazil, Indiana on St. Valentine’s Day, 1913. In 1924, his widowed mother moved her family, Jimmy, a brother, and two sisters to Detroit. Quitting school at 14, Jimmy started work as a stock boy with Frank and Cedar Dry Goods and General Merchandising. From there, he moved to a job as a loader at the Kroger Food Company, in 1932. In 1936, fired from Kroger because of his rabble-rousing, he became a joint council organizer for Local 299, part of the Detroit Teamsters Joint Council 43. It was the start of a tumultuous career in the union field.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236984257,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />He was often jailed for his union work and harassed by management thugs, as the bosses saw him as a growing threat to their control of labour. He transformed Local 299 into a regional powerhouse, building up its membership to 15000. By 1942, Jimmy Hoffa (photo left) was president of Detroit Joint Council 43, and he was also linked into the Mafia.<br /> <br /> According to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), Detroit, after the end of the second world war, was a primary point in the drug importation chain, feeding into the rest of America, and in particular, New York, the biggest market for illicit drugs.<br /> <br /> Heroin, was routed from Sicily, via Marseilles, by an organization headed by Frank 'Frankie Four Fingers' Coppola and Salvatore 'Toto' Vitale, who became closely connected to Hoffa. The two men were both powerful figures in the Detroit Mafia, before Frank's deportation back to Italy and Vitale's disappearance in 1956. He may have been murdered and his body buried in a California vineyard. According to Charles Siragusa of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, he was killed by Johnny Priziola and Raffaele Quasarano over a dispute involving payment on a heroin delivery. <br /> <br /> Interesting footnote: Vitale was the grandfather of 'Good Looking Sal' Vitale the ex underboss of the Bonanno family and mob informant.<br /> <br /> The drugs they organized, were shipped into Detroit under the control of Johnny Priziola, who succeeded Coppola as the Detroit head of the Sicilian Partinico Mafia family in Detroit, and Raffaele Quasarano, aka Jimmy Q, the son-in-law of VitoVitale, of Sicily, another major drug dealer, but one who never made it into America, and stored in fish markets run by Peter Tocco, who was the son-in-law of Priziola, having married his daughter Ninette.<br /> <br /> He also happened to be the nephew of Angelo Meli, a Detroit mobster with close ties to the old Purple Gang and the New York Mafia families. The FBN suspected that Meli was another major link in the Detroit-New York drug chain, working closely with Frank “Cheech” Livorsi, Long Island based, whose daughter Dolores was married to Meli’s son, Sam. Another daughter Rosemary was married to Tommmy Dio, brother of Johhny Dio a powerful figure in the Luchese family in New York, some of the biggest drug dealers in America.<br /> <br /> Livorsi, a soldier in the crime family of Charlie Luciano, headed up a company in New York, based at 19 Rector Street, in Lower Manhattan, that was involved in a massive black market sugar deal, just after the end of World War Two, that grossed $6 million, an enormous amount of money in those days. One of his in-laws, John Ormento, a capo in the Luchese family, ran trucking companies that were used to ship the drugs from Detroit to New York, and his son, Thomas, was married to Livorsi's daughter Patricia.<br /> <br /> These people really knew how to network. Family wise that is. Their genealogical links are more complicated than a Braille version of Rubik's Cube, but help to illustrate the way the 'old' mob glued themselves together through blood ties, thus minimizing the risk of danger caused by informants.<br /> <br /> In 1945, Angelo Meli’s niece married William Buffalino, a cousin of Russel Buffalino, who was then underboss of the Mafia crime family centred in Pittston, Pennsylvania, and headed by Joseph Barbara. He of course, would make world headlines when he hosted the infamous Apalachin mob convention in 1957. Russel Buffalino, often referred to as 'The Quiet Don,' may also have been involved in the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa. He was certainly on the suspect list of the FBI.<br /> <br /> By the end of the second world war, the Mafia drug traffickers of Detroit were expanding into other activities, including juke boxes, cigarette smuggling and gaming machines. Hoffa’s Local 299 financed the re-establishment of a dormant Local, 985, a garage worker’s union, which once up and running, moved into the gaming machine business. Hoffa’s wife was placed on the company payroll, but under her maiden name, Josephine Poszywak.<br /> <br /> Through his relationship with the Detroit underworld, Jimmy Hoffa became acquainted with the New York mob, in particular Frank Livorsi and his biological family, which included Thomas and Johnny Diourgardi and their uncle, James “Jimmy Doyle” Plumeri, a tight-knit clan, who were all connected directly into the Mafia crime family run by Gaetano Gagliano and Tommy Luchese.<br /> <br /> Livorsi was also close to Frank Coppola, who had a mistress at one time in Detroit called Fay Tavolacci. Frank got the heave from the United States in September 1948, but continued in the drug business in Italy, operating what the Federal Bureau of Narcotics referred to as 'the Mafia second line.'<br /> <br /> Hoffa’s earlier links to the underworld in Detroit had come about through his relationship with a woman he had known, called Sylvia Pagano who had a clerical job with a union. They had carried on a relationship prior to Hoffa’s marriage.<br /> <br /> Sylvia moved to Kansas City in 1934 and married a man who was called Sam Scaradino, who was a driver/bodyguard for a local mobster. Scaradino subsequently changed his name for some reason, to O’Brien. Sylvia had a child, a boy called Charles, by a previous relationship, who also adopted this new name.<br /> <br /> When Scaradino died, Frank Coppola met up with Sylvia and became the boy’s godfather. It was through Sylvia in fact that Hoffa met Coppola, and made his connection into the Detroit underworld. In due course, after Coppola disappeared from Sylvia’s life, Hoffa informally adopted Charles known generally as “Chuckie,” making him a foster son. He and his mother actually moved in with Hoffa and his wife, living in a kind of extended family situation for a number of years. It was not that unusual, as Hoffa's wife Josephine, and Sylvia were old friends, who had walked picket lines together back in the 1930s.<br /> <br /> However, adopting Chuckie may have been the worst decision Hoffa ever made in his life.<br /> <br /> Sylvia Pagano also introduced Hoffa to Maurice “Moe” Dalitz, a close associate of Detroit’s Purple Gang, and a man who would become a major player in Las Vegas, where the Teamster’s would invest a lot of money in the years to come. Sylvia was also linked into another mobster who would have a big influence on the events as they unfolded down the years. By the early 1960s, although re-married to a man called John Paris, an executive in the laundry industry, Sylvia Pagano Paris was having an affair with Anthony Giacalone, a former numbers runner for Detroit mobster Peter Licavoli, and an enforcer for Joe Zerilli, aka 'Joe Uno', undisputed head of the Detroit mob and William 'Black Bill' Tocco, his brother-in-law and perhaps the de-facto underboss. Sylvia was made to report on Hoffa's activities back to Giacalone, who was not only close to another man who was to play a big part in the Hoffa story, Anthony Provenzano, he was also his brother-in-law.<br /> <br /> Yet more Mafia related blood-ties.<br /> <br /> In 1952, Dave Beck was appointed head of the Teamsters, and Jimmy Hoffa was given an IBT vie-presidency and a seat on the Teamsters’ general executive board. In due course, Dave Beck, like so many other Teamster presidents, would go to jail, in his case for embezzlement. In 1956, Hoffa used his connections to Johnny Dioguardi to gain control of the New York IBT locals though the illegal creation of 'paper locals,' in New York city. Passing control of these non-existing locals into the management of Dioguardi’s associates, Hoffa was able to engineer the take-over of the city’s Joint Council 16.<br /> <br /> How organized crime gained control over Hoffa remains a matter of conjecture, even among those people who were close to him at the time. He perhaps, began his unholy alliance in order to obtain 'mob muscle' to fight management in the rough and tumble years of the Teamsters organizational drives of 1930s and 1940s, and then, seduced by the power he'd created for himself, kept close to the hoodlums who for favours rendered, would guarantee him support and through that, the continuation of the hegemony he'd generated. His status in the union movement of America was not unlike that of the Christian Democratic Party of Italy in the post war years. Both Hoffa and the CD needed Mafia clout to engender votes, and maintain their survival.<br /> <br /> In 1957, at the IBT annual convention held in Miami Beach, Florida, James Hoffa was elected General President of the Teamsters. In the next ten years he would work relentlessly, developing not only the union’s, but his own image, as hard driving, successful entities. Many of the rank and file looked on Hoffa as a legend in his own lifetime, the man who had made their union one of the most influential America has ever seen. As the president, in 1964, he negotiated the first ever-industry wide contract, the National Master Freight Agreement.<br /> <br /> In that same year, he was convicted in a federal court in Chattanooga for tampering with a jury, and was sentenced to eight years in prison. On May 11, 1964, he was also found guilty on further charges of fraud and conspiracy, getting a further five years.<br /> <br /> On March 6th., 1967, all his appeals exhausted, Jimmy Hoffa was assigned to serve his sentence at Lewisburg Penitentiary in Pennsylvania.<br /> <br /> There were a number of organized crime figures doing time here, including Carmine Galante, the fearsome mob boss from the Bonanno family, Anthony 'Tough Tony' De Angelis, perpetrator of the great salad oil swindle of the 1960s that almost destroyed the American Express Company, and Anthony Provenzano, a caporegime in the New Jersey faction of the Genovese family, who was serving time for extortion.<br /> <br /> Although Galante befriended Hoffa, Jimmy had little time for Provenzano. According to inmate Eddy Edwards, bank robber, escape artist and former headliner on the FBI's 'Ten Mosted Wanted' list, Hoffa once told him '.......that guy Provenzano is nuts.' In August 1967, in the prison mess hall, the two men came to blows. As they were separated, Provenzano was apparently heard screaming, ' ...... old man! Yours is coming! You know it's coming one of these days.....You're going to belong to me!'<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236984461,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Anthony Provenzano (right), most often referred to as 'Tony Pro,' had been part of the Teamsters for many years. Between 1948 and 1958, he was a business agent there, and in 1958 became president of Union City's Local 560, a position he held for the next ten years, before moving up to be president of New Jersey's Joint Council, and then to IBT vice president.<br /> <br /> Local 560 was one of the biggest in America with over 10,000 members representing over 425 companies. It was also listed by the Justice Department as the most corrupt. Tony along with his brothers, Sal, Nunzio and Angelo, were all deeply involved in the labor movement, certainly not out of altruistic inclinations, but more for what they could screw out of the organization for themselves and the patron saint of their underworld endeavours, the Genovese crime family, often referred to as 'The West Side Mob,' into which 'Tony Pro' was inducted, sometime in the early 1960s. For almost twenty years 'Tony Pro' ran Local 560 with the proverbial fist of iron, wielded in his absence, by his brothers.<br /> <br /> Anthony Provenzano had risen in the mob with the help and support of Anthony Strollo, also known in the underworld as 'Tony Bender,' himself a close associate of Vito Genovese. Bender and Provenzano grew up together on the same street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and when Bender moved his base to New Jersey to take control of the waterfront, among other things, 'Tony Pro' saw an opening and went with him. Both men were allegedly involved in criminal activities on the wharves, and may well have been into drug trafficking.<br /> <br /> With Bender's clout and Provenzano's contact with truckers, it would seem to have been a perfect combination. Access to well controlled transportation was a vital ingredient in the drug business. It was no coincidence that when Vito Genovese went down on his drug bust in 1958, Big John Ormento of the Luchese family, who ran O & S Trucking Company and Long Island Garment Trucking Company, was right there with him.<br /> <br /> Anthony Provenzano's power was so absolute that throughout the Eastern Seaboard, few contracts were signed, pension fund dollars invested, or major grievances arbitrated without his input. The Teamster’s offices at Local 560 in Union City operated not only as a union headquarters, but also as a base for loan sharking, counterfeiting, sports betting and many other crimes, including contract killings. The men who reported to Anthony Provenzano were believed responsible for many mob murders.<br /> <br /> Provenzano operated as a 'skipper' or crew boss for the Genovese Family in Northern New Jersey.<br /> <br /> Members of his team included his brother Nunzio, the Andretta brothers, Stephen and Thomas, Gabriel and Salvatore Briguglio, Salvatore Sinno, Harold Konigsberg, Armand Faugno, Ralph Picardo, Ralph Pellecchia and Frederick Furino. The crew operated illegal Monte card games in New York and Hoboken and in Jersey City, in addition to their other criminal activities.<br /> <br /> The building, at 7070 Summit Avenue that housed the headquarters of Local 560, almost proved to be a death trap for Provenzano himself, on one occasion.<br /> <br /> On a Sunday morning, June 24th., 1962, he was found injured and unconscious on the floor of the building's elevator shaft. Taken to hospital with injuries that included six broken ribs, he told police had gone to the office to do some paper work and tend to his racing pigeons (a sport beloved of mobsters for some reason,) which he kept on the roof of the building, and had accidentally fallen into the shaft. Fifteen years later, a criminal associate claimed he had pushed Tony into the elevator opening. It was seemingly over a heroin deal that had gone bad.<br /> <br /> Provenzano, ever the resourceful mobster, claimed the fall an accident, and received $17,000 in compensation. The story may or my not be true. What is more interesting, is that just a few weeks earlier, his mentor 'Tony Bender' disappeared from his Fort Lee, New Jersey home and was never seen again. Rumour has it he went on a one way trip and was murdered by Tommy Eboli, on the instructions of Vito Genovese.<br /> <br /> Was Provenzano's 'accident' in some way connected to this?<br /> <br /> Provenzano's grip on Local 560 was unassailable. In 1962, his official salary was $20,000. A year later it had increased to $95,000. Along with stipends from his post at the Joint Council 73, and as vice president of the Teamsters, he was earning over $113,000. More than Hoffa earned as leader of the union. Using the consumer price index as a measure, that's $800,000 by today's standard.<br /> <br /> Tony Pro may well have been, at this time, the highest paid union official in the world. He was certainly one of the most crooked.<br /> <br /> By the late 1960s, Provenzano had allied himself to Frank Fitzsimmons, the man who took over control of the Teamsters when Hoffa went off to prison. The two men became good friends, socializing to the extent that they often travelled the country, playing golf together.<br /> <br /> Hoffa obviously hated the thought that a man as powerful as Provenzano was backing a man who Jimmy obviously thought of as a temporary back-stop for the job of running the Teamsters, until such times as he himself, could regain control. At a Teamster’s convention held in Miami in the early 1970s, after both Provenzano and Hoffa had been released from prison, the two men had another go at each other. According to Dan Sullivan, a New York teamster, Hoffa told him, 'Pro threatened to pull my guts out and kidnap my children if I attempt to return to the presidency of the Teamsters.'<br /> <br /> Jimmy Hoffa's dream to make a comeback and take over the presidency of the Teamsters, was just that, a dream, according to Michigan organized crime expert, Vincent Piersante, head of the Michigan attorney general's office.<br /> <br /> Because of the mob's tremendous influence on the Teamster’s Union, Hoffa had no chance of returning to power, unless the mob agreed. And the Mafia was not going to do that. The fact that Fitzsimmons and other top officials of the union had been in the pocket of the Mafia was almost indisputable. A new, and different relationship had developed in the union since Jimmy Hoffa had gone off to prison in 1967, and as always with the mob, it was tied into money. There were millions of dollars from the Central States Pension Fund that could be made available to the Dons to fund their schemes and help them grow bigger and more powerful, and Hoffa would not be allowed to stand between it and them.<br /> <br /> He'd made a statement on his release from prison: 'Tell the rats to get off the ship because I'm coming back.' He may have thought it was a call to arms. In essence, it was his own personal valedictory.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236984485,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />By early 1975, it appeared that Anthony 'Tony Jack' Giacalone was trying to arrange some kind of sit-down with Hoffa and Provenzano to try and resolve their differences.<br /> <br /> Married to Provenzano's cousin, Giacalone was also making the rounds of the golf courses with 'Tony Pro' and Frank Fitzsimmons. Giacalone was currently under investigation by a federal grand jury, in Detroit, for income tax fraud and extorting a Teamster’s pension plan. He would go down in June 1976 for ten years on another tax fraud case.<br /> <br /> 'Tony Jack' (right) and 'Tony Pro' were to be the key elements that on combination, created the fusible mass that led to the destruction of Jimmy Hoffa.<br /> <br /> On July 30th., 1975, Jimmy Hoffa dressed casually in a dark blue pullover shirt, blue pants, black Gucci loafers, and trademark white socks. Sometime that morning, he received a telephone call at his two storied, cottage-style summer house on Square Lake, in Bloomfield Hills, about 20 miles north of Detroit. It apparently confirmed a meeting he was waiting to hear about. He kissed his wife goodbye, and drove off at 1.15p.m. in his big, green, two-door Pontiac Grand Ville. He told his wife he was going to the Machus Red Fox restaurant, next to a shopping strip on Maple and Telegraph Roads, in Bloomfield Township.</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236985055,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p><br /> <br /> He had told Josephine that one of the men he was going to have lunch with was Anthony Giacalone, and that he and some other associates were waiting for him at the tony, 270 seat eating place which had been opened in December 1965, by food entrepreneur Harris O. Machus. The Red Fox (above) was one of eight restaurants and pastry shops he operated in the Detroit area. Jimmy had often used the place for dining and entertaining. It had in fact, hosted his son, James P. Hoffa's wedding reception.<br /> <br /> According to the manager of the Red Fox, Hoffa never entered the building that day. He parked his Pontiac at the north end of the restaurant's lot, and waited. At 2.30 p.m. he telephoned his wife from a hardware store, in the strip mall, behind the Red Fox, to see if Giacalone had rung in. The last legitimate sighting of Jimmy Hoffa on that day, was sometime about 2.45 p.m., still waiting in the parking lot. A real estate salesman stopped by to talk with him for a few minutes. Hoffa then disappeared off the face of the earth, falling over the edge, missing in action to this day, thirty-three years later. His family filed a missing person report with the Detroit police at 6 p.m. on July 31st., and it is still listed there as:<br /> <br /> Missing Person #75-3425<br /> <br /> So what happened to Jimmy Hoffa?<br /> <br /> Well, it's safe to assume that he probably died that day, some time.<br /> <br /> According to Rolland McMaster, a close friend and mover and shaker in the Teamsters, who had turned against Jimmy in 1967:<br /> <br /> 'Jimmy ran off to Brazil with a go-go dancer.'<br /> <br /> That would have to be one of the more fanciful interpretations of Hoffa's ultimate destination.<br /> <br /> Here are some of the others:<br /> <br /> * Mixed in concrete and now part of the Giant's Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.<br /> <br /> * Dumped into the Au Sable River in Michigan in 30 feet of water, between two dams.<br /> <br /> * Run through a mob operated fat-rendering plant that was subsequently burned down.<br /> <br /> * Buried under the helicopter pad at the Sheraton Savannah Resort Hotel.<br /> <br /> * Crushed in a steel compactor for junk cars at Central Sanitation Services, a company owned by Raffaele Quasarano in Hamtramck, East Detroit, which was destroyed by fire in 1978.<br /> <br /> * Ironically, part of the site now occupied by the Wayne County Jail.<br /> <br /> * Stuffed into a 50 gallon oil drum, and taken on a Gateway Transportation truck to the Gulf of Mexico.<br /> <br /> * Ground up into little pieces and dumped into a Florida swamp.<br /> <br /> * Buried in a field in Waterford Township.<br /> <br /> * Disposed of in the Central Waste Management trash incinerator, again at Hamtramck, owned by Peter Vitale and Raffaele Quasarano.<br /> <br /> * Buried at the bottom of a swimming pool behind a mansion in Bloomfield Hills, near Turtle Lake.<br /> <br /> * Buried under a public works garage in Cadillac, Michigan.<br /> <br /> * Dumped into a 100 acre gravel pit, owned by his brother William, near Highland. Infra- red photos were taken of the site from a military plane. No luck.<br /> <br /> * In May, 2004, authorities in Oakland County, Michigan, removed floorboards from a Detroit house and found blood stains that they thought might be linked to Jimmy. They weren't.<br /> <br /> * In 2006, the FBI spent a lot of time digging up parts of an 80 acre horse farm near Milford Township, 30 miles west of Detroit on the basis of 'strong evidence.'<br /> <br /> Squads of FBI agents fanned out across the Hidden Dreams farm outside Detroit and special agent Daniel Roberts, who lead the operation, expressed guarded optimism about solving one of modern America's greatest crime mysteries, which has endured for 30 years. "This is the best lead I've come across on the Hoffa investigation," he said. It wasn't.<br /> <br /> And my favourite. According to Johnny Carson in a monologue on his late night show, Hoffa was buried under Tammy Faye Baker's makeup.<br /> <br /> Jimmy was gone, so who killed him?<br /> <br /> The most likely suspects were a number of men working for 'Tony Pro,' who along with Tony Giacalone, had set up this meeting at the Red Fox, in order to lure Hoffa to his death. He had become just too much of an embarrassment and irritation in their desire to control the Teamster’s pension fund, and as usual, with the Mafia, when they had a problem, they simply removed it. For good. <br /> <br /> In 1985, the FBI issued a 50 page summary of the case of Jimmy Hoffa, referred to as The Hoffex Memo. In essence, it lists Chuckie O'Brien, Anthony Provenzano, Anthony Giacalone, Thomas and Stephen Andretta, Russel Buffalino (eastern Pennsylvania and upstate New York Mafia boss,) and Salvatore Briguglio and his brother Gabriel, as prime suspects in the murder.<br /> <br /> According to the bureau, Chuckie O'Brien arrived at The Red Fox lot in a borrowed car, a 1975 maroon Mercury Brougham, that belonged to Joey, son of Anthony Giacalone. He picked up his adopted father, who obviously thought they were going to a meeting with Provenzano and Giacalone senior. Instead, somewhere along the way, the car detoured to a pre-arranged spot, and Jimmy Hoffa was murdered.<br /> <br /> Remember, Chuckie's mother had been in a close relationship with Giacalone for many years, to the point that Chuckie referred to him as 'Uncle Tony.' Did a hoodlum's demands outweigh a step son's loyalty?<br /> <br /> Sniffer dogs subsequently picked up the scent of Hoffa from inside the vehicle, and years later, a DNA test on a human hair found inside the car, confirmed it was from the missing man.<br /> <br /> Of course, none of these suspects ever admitted to any involvement in the murder or disappearance of Jimmy. To my knowledge, only two men have actually confessed to the killing.<br /> <br /> Donald Frankos, an alleged hit man for the mob, stated in his biography, 'Contract Killer' that he John Sullivan, an infamous New York criminal, and Jimmy Coonan, a member of the notorious Hell's Kichen mob, who called themselves 'The Westies,' ambushed and shot Hoffa dead in a house in Mount Clemens, Macomb County, about 25 miles north-east of Detroit. Frankos claimed they cut up the body and stuffed it into a freezer in the house.<br /> <br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-irishman-teamsters-boss-jimmy-hoffa-s-friend-and-the-man-who" target="_blank">Frank 'Frankie the Irishman' Sheerhan</a>, a hit man who apparently worked for Russel Buffalino, also confessed to killing Jimmy, in a death-bed confession recorded in a book called 'I heard you paint Houses.' The killing he orchestrated, went down in a house on Beaverland Street, off Seven Mile Road, in Detroit. That was the May 2004 FBI investigation which confirmed nothing at all.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-irishman-teamsters-boss-jimmy-hoffa-s-friend-and-the-man-who">The Irishman:</a> Jimmy Hoffa’s friend and the man who put two bullets in the back of his skull</strong></li>
</ul>
<p><br /> From another source, a different theory emerges about the events surrounding the lead up to the killing.<br /> <br /> Among all the claims, counter-claims, innuendoes and suppositions that surround and at times, stifle the story of Jimmy Hoffa, this one is from the horse's mouth, so to speak. To my knowledge, this information has never been published before, anywhere.<br /> <br /> Jimmy was released from prison at the end of December, 1971 following a Presidential pardon. His commutation of sentence however, barred him from any active union activities until 1980, when he would be 67 years old.<br /> <br /> By 1975 he was perhaps, facing many financial pressures. Frank Fitzsimmons who had taken over as head of the Teamsters when Hoffa went to prison, fired Josephine from her $40,000 a year job as head of the IBT women's DRIVE committee, and then Jimmy, from his $30,000 a year position as a counsellor for the IBT.<br /> <br /> Conceivably, under these strains, Jimmy Hoffa started to put pressure on many important people within the Teamster’s union and their powerful associates. Was he shaking these people down for money using as a threat, his intimate knowledge of all the skeletons in all the closets? Anthony Giacalone apparently tried to persuade Jimmy away from this course of action, without success.<br /> <br /> Provenzano would have been one of the biggest fish Jimmy would try and land, a man with plenty of secrets to hide himself, and a man that Jimmy Hoffa had little regard for. In addition to all of this, Hoffa had allied himself to Bonanno underboss Carmine Galante a fearsome man, hated by the Gambino and Genovese crime families in New York. Galante had offered friendship and protection to Jimmy when he arrived at the federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, and Jimmy had maintained ties with the mafioso.<br /> <br /> Somehow, Jimmy had hoped Galante would be able to help him in his struggle to regain the leadership of the Teamsters. But 'Lillo' as he was known throughout the underworld, had a basketful of his own problems to handle in 1975, and helping Jimmy was low on his priority list.<br /> <br /> Aware of Hoffa's manoeuvrings and the moves he was making, and maybe under more pressure from the rumors that 'Sally Bugs' might be going to roll-over, Anthony Provenzano visited Anthony 'Fat Tony' Salerno at his headquarters, the Palma Boys Social Club, at East 115th Street in Harlem, to seek his help in solving the problem. Salerno at this time was the consigliere or counsellor, of the Genovese Cosa Nostra family.<br /> <br /> The boss in this period was Frank Alfonso Tieri, also known as 'Funzuola,' and Salerno would need his approval and blessing to set up a hit this big.<br /> <br /> 'Fat Tony' rarely strayed from his club, except when he went home for the weekends to his luxurious horse farm in upstate New York, but it's reasonable to assume he got off his rather large ass and went somewhere to talk to 'Funzi,' either at the Rio Grande Social Club in Brooklyn, or perhaps across the Hudson to one of Tieri's favourite restaurants, Sorrentino's in Newark. Either way, the blessing came down, and Provenzano was given the okay to liaise with the men in Detroit. There is no doubt that Joe Zerilli, the Sicilian born, seventy-eight year old Don of Detroit would have had to okay the hit, and 'Tony Jack' got the word to 'go with the flow'.<br /> <br /> So what became of the other players in this complex and disturbing story?<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236985090,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Salvatore 'Sally Bugs' Briguglio (right), ostensibly a business agent for Local 560, was apparently a strong arm man for Provenzano. Although small in stature, and looking more like a civil servant or a professor, with his dark, horn-rimmed glasses and short hair, one, however with a strong New Jersey accent, he was it seems, a dangerous and very capable killer. If he did help to kill Jimmy, it wouldn't be the first time that he may have been involved in the murder of a union official.<br /> <br /> Fearing that 'Sally Bugs' might weaken under the constant police pressure during a 1978 investigation into yet more kickbacks and extortion charges in connection with the Teamsters, Tony Pro apparently arranged to reduce his exposure by having his friend and colleague removed, for good. He may well have also been disturbed by a rumour that Briguglio was talking to the FBI, feeling out their reaction to him becoming an informant. This was apparently known to agents in the Detroit office, before 'Sally Bugs' got swatted.<br /> <br /> Late in the evening of March 21st, Briguglio was blasted off his feet by five .45 calibre bullets as he stood outside Benito's Restaurant on Mulberry Street in Manhattan. Amazingly, the killing was witnessed by two NYPD Intelligence cops who were busy trailing one of Briguglio's dinner guests, Genovese capo, Mathew Ianiello, and for some reason these cops were unable or unwilling to intervene. The killers, as always, disappeared, although another eyewitness to the shooting, identified underworld figure Joe Scarborough as a potential suspect. The eye-witness, a young Chinese student, also helped to describe a getaway car used in the hit, a 1978 Lincoln Versailles, eventually traced to a small town in Georgia. Nothing developed from these investigations.<br /> <br /> There is another theory to explain the killing of 'Sally Bugs.' The day after the hit, Pasquale 'Paddy Mack' Macchiarole, a capo in the Genovese family, was murdered. His body, shot in the head multiple times, was found stuffed in the trunk of his new Cadillac alongside the Rockaway Parkway in Brooklyn. Police posited, on information they had received from an underworld source that the two men were about to make a power play to take over control of Local 560, in the event that Tony Pro would go to prison (which he did,) for the murder of union leader Anthony Castellito, the previous leader of 560, who had been murdered in Kerhonkson, Ulster County, New York, in 1961, by 'Sally Bugs' and Kayo Koningsberg, on the orders of Provenzano.<br /> <br /> Another underworld source however, indicates that 'Paddy Mack' got whacked because of his big mouth, and his habit of belittling Genovese mob boss Alphone 'Funzi' Terri.<br /> <br /> When he was questioned by the police and F.B.I., Thomas Andretta denied any knowledge of Hoffa's disappearance. He claimed he was playing gin rummy with Anthony Provenzano in the hall at Local 560, in Union City, 700 miles from where Jimmy vanished.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236985299,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Ralph 'Little Ralphie' Picardo, one time driver for Tony Pro, testified that the Briguglio brothers and Thomas Andretta (right) had personally killed Jimmy, and that they had arranged for the body to be loaded into an empty oil drum and transported out of the Detroit area on a truck belonging to the Gateway Transportation Company, but they were never indicted on this evidence. By way of supporting evidence on their aptitude for violence, he also stated that Andretta and 'Sally Bugs' had murdered a loan shark in 1972 and fed the body into a tree shredder before burying the remains under the Hackensack Bridge in Jersey City.<br /> <br /> Stephen Andretta was indicted in New Jersey on RICO charges in connection with 'labour peace' payments from trucking companies which serviced Seatrain Lines out of the port of New Jersey. On July 10th., 1979, he was sentenced to a prison term of ten years.<br /> <br /> The two Tonys eventually went down for some of the dozens of crimes they had committed over the years. In 1976, Giacalone was convicted of income tax evasion and served ten years in prison. In 1996 he was charged again, this time with racketeering, but died in February, 2001, at the age of 82, before the case was tried.<br /> <br /> Anthony Provenzano was arraigned for trial in the summer of 1978 for his involvement in the murder of Anthony Castelito. As a reward for his part in the killing, 'Tony Pro' had rewarded Salvatore Briguglio with the sinecure of business agent in Local 560. The government, on June 21st, 1978, rewarded 'Tony Pro' with life in prison, where he died aged 71, on December 12th., 1988. His conviction was the first time that the famous RICO law was applied and used to convict a member of the Mafia in America. Alphonse Tieri would subsequently become the first mob boss to be indicted under this law, but he died before his case was finalized.<br /> <br /> The Machus Red Fox at 6676 Telegraph Road, is also no more. It folded in February 1996, and was replaced by an outpost of an Italian restaurant chain called 'Andiamo's Italia West.' The former button-down premises, linked ineluctably with the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, is now a trendy Italian eating house in shades of purple and gold, a gourmet trattoria with hand-painted chandeliers and sunflower-filled urns. Instead of gangsters cutting deals, it now hosts stock brokers watching share prices on the bar television sets.<br /> <br /> However, it still has links back into the days of Jimmy H.<br /> <br /> The owner of the chain, Joe Vicarri, is the son-in-law of modern day Detroit Cosa Nostra consigliere, Anthony 'Tony T' Tocco, son of the late 'Black Bill' Tocco. And a former silent partner in the business, who died in March this year, was Vincent 'Little Vince' Meli, the nephew of that long ago underboss of the Detriot Mafia, Angelo 'The Chairman' Meli.<br /> <br /> It's hard to get away from these guys, no matter which way you turn.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236985490,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Chuckie O'Brien (photo right) left Detroit and moved to Florida, into a job provided for him by Teamster president, Frank Fitzsimmons. As of May 2006, he was living in a town house in a gated Boca Raton, Florida, community, working as a janitor at the University of Miami. Chuckie was kicked out of the union by a review board in 1990 for his connection to Detroit mobsters, including Giacalone. In 1976 he had been convicted in federal court for accepting a free car from an auto dealer. In 1978 he was convicted for lying on a loan application. He has served at least one year in prison. Now, in ill-health, he has had two cancer surgeries, a gall bladder operation and four heart by-pass operations.<br /> <br /> He has always denied being anywhere near the Red Fox that day, and driving Hoffa away in Giacalone's car.<br /> <br /> There is finally, yet another scenario we can consider in the matter of Jimmy's disappearance, and that suggests that yet another man met Jimmy that afternoon. This was Vito 'Billy Jack' Giacalone the fifty-three year old brother of 'Tony Jack.' and another good friend of Hoffa's, who may have accompanied Chuckie to that fateful meeting. Whoever was going to kill Jimmy, it's certain that Zerilli, the boss of the Detroit Mafia, would have wanted one of his senior men on the job, supervising. If that's the case, it's highly likely that Jimmy's last drive was probably a very short one, not more than say five miles.<br /> <br /> Carlo Licata, a relative of 'Black Bill' Tocco, (he'd married his daughter Grace,) was the son of Nick Licata, the right hand of mob boss Jack Dragna in Los Angeles, and a soldier in the Detroit Mafia family. He owned a house that distance from the Red Fox, at 680 Long Lake Road, not far east from the intersection of Telegraph, and there is a theory that Jimmy was taken there, and then killed by Sally Bugs, the Andretta brothers and 'Billy Jack.' The house stood back from the highway among trees, and was very secluded. An ideal place to carry out the hit. If that's the way it went down, his body would have been disposed of fairly quickly. It's standard mob procedure, no one travels 'easily' with a body in the car, so Jimmy's cadaver would have gone somewhere for burial, reasonably close, and quickly.<br /> <br /> Jimmy Hoffa would have been relaxed going to this house. He had been there many times before for similar meetings, with mobsters and union associates, so would not have been suspicious of it as the venue.<br /> <br /> For the FBI, the file remains open. Case No HQ 9-60052 has an agent assigned to it in the Detroit office. In the ten years up to 2002, it added a further 377 documents to the more than 16000 pages on file. After Hoffa vanished, the United States government went after the mob, big time. It added hundreds of agents and federal prosecutors to its roster, used wiretaps, undercover surveillance and adopted a policy of developing underworld informants on a national scale. Hoffa's disappearance led to the government's take-over of local 560 in Union City, and eventually, their investigation of all aspects of the Teamsters organization.<br /> <br /> In 1985, the FBI Special Agent in Charge, Detroit, told reporters that the bureau knew who was responsible for the murder of Hoffa. By then, he had been declared, legally dead. In June 2001, the head of the FBI's organized crime unit stated his belief that a decision would be made within two years whether or not to prosecute anyone for the murder. It hasn't happened yet.<br /> <br /> They better get a move on. There are not many people left alive, to charge.<br /> <br /> To me, the fascinating thing about Jimmy Hoffa is that as a victim of lupara bianca, the 'white death' as the Sicilian Mafia refer to dead men disappeared, he probably became a bigger brand name in his passing than he ever was in life.<br /> <br /> More than once, he said that no one would remember him ten years after he was dead. He also said 'I may have my faults, but being wrong ain't one of them.'<br /> <br /> Well he was incorrect on both points as it turned out.<br /> <br /> And then of course, there is the conspiracy theory. It's long and complicated and includes lot's of sudden deaths, and like all conspiracy theories, it feeds off its own blarney, but in essence it goes something like this:<br /> <br /> Hoffa was killed, not because he was a carbuncle on the ass of the Teamster's Union, an irritation that just wouldn't go away, but a much bigger problem than that. An integral part of a huge, intercontinental collusion to destroy Fidel Castro.<br /> <br /> William Eugene Buffalino, a hot-shot lawyer and the cousin of Russell, once said, 'Tell the FBI to look into the CIA. And tell the CIA to look into the FBI. Then you'll find the real answer to the Hoffa case.' He was referring to the Church Committee's closed hearings on the CIA/underworld plot to kill Castro.<br /> <br /> The CIA was apparently involved in a scheme, using mob muscle, expertise and men, to take out the Cuban dictator. At the top of the tree, the management committee as it where, organizing this event, were Sam Giancana, mob boss of Chicago, along with Johnny Roselli, mob gopher extraordinary, Russell Buffalino, Santo Trafficante, boss of Tampa, Florida, Joey 'Doves' Aiuppa of Chicago, Carlos Marcello the head of the Louisiana mob, and last, but not least, Jimmy Hoffa.<br /> <br /> Charles 'Chuckie' Grimaldi, a self-confessed hit-man for the Chicago Syndicate, claimed in his biography, 'Momo Giancana was hit by the CIA.'<br /> <br /> He claimed that the same man who killed the Chicago mob boss also killed Hoffa, who he claimed was the original contact between the mob and the CIA on the Castro conspiracy. Jimmy, Sam and Johnny got popped because people in high places started to worry that they might falter and become informants to this conspiracy. There's a lot more to it, but that's the bones of the intrigue.<br /> <br /> Maybe it's all linked into the hit on J.F.K., but let's not go there.<br /> <br /> If you type 'Jimmy Hoffa' into Google, you'll get almost 400,000 hits. There has been at least two movies based on his life, dozens of television references to him in all kinds of shows, at least a dozen songs that mention his name, books and articles by the score and even an acknowledgment to him in the massively popular video game 'Grand Theft Auto,' indicating that in his death and disappearance that has fascinated the world for over thirty years, he has truly transcended the generation gap.<br /> <br /> Jimmy Hoffa may be dead and buried, somewhere, but the legend of Jimmy Hoffa looks to be around for a long time to come.<br /> <br /> <span style="font-weight:bold;">Acknowledgments:</span><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">I would like to thank MC Scott, author, from the real Deal Forum, for his invaluable help in making sure all the Detroit ends of the story made sense, and introducing me to parts I never knew existed. Also Picasso, for pointing me in a direction that I think has never been explored before in the story of Jimmy Hoffa.</span><br /> </p>
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Some Good Killers
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/some-good-killers
2010-11-15T17:46:21.000Z
2010-11-15T17:46:21.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br /> No body knows for sure, just how the name came about.<br /> <br /> I picture it a bit like this:<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236981694,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Michael Fiaschetti (photo right), 'Big Mike,' the boss of The Italian Squad, lounging back in a chair in his office, Police Headquarters, at 240 Centre Street, in downtown Manhattan, feet up on a pillar, doing a Henry Fonda like in 'My Darling Clementine,' jiggling his boots back and forth, doing a polka on the woodwork, the sharply creased hat, he always wore, tilted forward over this eyes, a stogie sticking straight out of the side of his mouth, like he always sucked on them, his big, ham fists, locked behind that slab of a head, talking to his squad, sitting around doing the bull. Nodding at Irving O'Hara, the plug of an Irishman, his personal bodyguard.<br /> <br /> 'They're smart, that's for sure. Got to give 'em that. Good at what they do, the guys. Good killers, no doubt on it.' Nodding his head, 'The Good Killers, that's what they are. Irv,' turning to his Irish aide,' why don't you scoot down to the front desk; see if that Times reporter is hanging about. He's always around looking for information. We'll give him something to wet his pencil.<br /> <br /> It's a thought.<br /> <br /> Castellammare del Golfo.<br /> <br /> Castle by the Sea, in English, one hundred forty feet above sea level at its highest point on Monte Inici, above the town, a fishing port on the north west coast of Sicily. Settled over a thousand years ago by the Arabs, sailing in from Tunisia, leaving behind their legacy in the brilliant blue painted door and window frames on the hundreds of houses, jostling for space above the sea. Seafood restaurants crowding the sandstone harbour, crammed with fleets of blue and white fishing boats, moored and bobbing, on the tranquil, turquoise waters. Hot Scirocco winds blowing from the Libyan deserts across the Mediterranean Sea, over the mountains and hills of Trapani, carrying the scent of grapefruit and lemons.<br /> <br /> To-day, a seaside resort of maybe 14000 people, a favourite tourist spot for travellers eager to leave the dirt and noise of Palermo behind, a town where you can eat some of the best fish in Sicily and see some of the best sunsets. <br /> <br /> A place to start looking for the provenance of The Good Killers.<br /> <br /> For this small, bucolic town, well off the beaten path, has produced, for its size, an disproportionate number of members of the Italian-American underworld, and it was these kind of men who probably made up this other secret organization, that became known as The Good Killers.<br /> <br /> Petro Bosca of Detroit, Antonio Magadino of Buffalo, Bartolo Guccia from Joe Barbara's bunch in upstate New York, (Joe was also from the gulf,) Pasquale Turrigiano, Michelangelo Vitale, maybe a round dozen or more who made their mark in New York, these were just some of the men who came from this location, into what we know today as the American Mafia. Gavin Maxwell, the famous English author, claimed that in the early, 1950's, 80% of the male population of the town had spent time in prison, and that 30% had committed murder.<br /> <br /> Striking statistics for a town that in those days numbered less than 10000. How it must have been fifty years earlier? It's hard to know for sure, but just as bad if not worse.<br /> <br /> Ten miles north-west of the town is the fishing village of Scopello, where every year, the fishermen would take part in La Matanza, the massacre of the fish. Thousands of tuna would be herded through the gulf by boats linked to each other by nets, to men waiting in waist -deep water, armed with clubs and spikes. They would club the fish to death, turning the blue sea a rusted red.<br /> <br /> Sixty years after the Good Killers were a forgotten memory, La Matanza would become a metaphor to explain how the Mafia slaughtered the social conscience of a country, as they went to war against the state.<br /> <br /> There are at least three men of the American Mafia, whose names are perpetually linked into this community in Western Sicily:<br /> <br /> Joe Bonanno, who led his own crime family in New York for over thirty years, his cousin Stefano Magadino who headed up the Buffalo mob, 'The Arm' as it was sometimes called, along with his brother Antonio, and was probably the longest ever serving Don in the American Mafia, fifty-two years in the chair, and Carmine Galante, who although not born in del Golfo was linked into it through his parents who came from there. The man who probably killed Carlo Tresca; one of the FBN's biggest targets, a drug dealer and trafficker without equal, except for the times he got caught!<br /> <br /> Joe Bonanno assumed the leadership of his crime family from Nicola Schiro, another del Golfino, and was at times, helped and advised by Frank Garofola, born and raised in the port. Joe's cousin, John Bonventre, was a close aid, and in the years to come, his own great nephew, Cesare Bonventre would come to play an crucial role in not only the ultimate fate of Galante, but also the biggest drug investigation in American history, we now know as 'The Pizza Connection.'<br /> <br /> Salvatore Maranzano, the man who would claim the first ever shot at the Boss of Bosses title in America after the conflict in New York in 1930-31 which came to be known as 'The Castellammarese War,' was born in the town in 1886. Gaspare Milazzo, who rose to prominence in Detroit before he was gunned down having lunch in the Vernon Highway Fish Market, grew up on the gulf.<br /> <br /> So many of them.<br /> <br /> They almost all, started their lives in this small fishing town, far away, so isolated, and yet important as a link into the history of America's never ending obsession with a criminal organization, so unique and in some ways chimerical in its concept, that it's hard to truly understand how it came about in the first place.<br /> <br /> The other point you have to understand about Sicily, is that long before the Mafia, there was this thing called vendetta. In its simplest form this was a bitter, destructive feud between families or clans that arose out of a killing, something perpetuated by retaliatory acts of revenge. What we would call a blood feud.<br /> <br /> And at the heart of the story about The Good Killers that's what we will find.<br /> <br /> A killing for a killing, which leads to more killings. Eighty years down the way, it's hard to know for sure just where it all began, but there were maybe three or four families at the heart of the matter:<br /> <br /> The Bonannos, Magadinos, Bonventres and the Bucellatos. The first three were allies against the fourth, in some form of feudal altercation whose origins are lost in the torturous social history of the island of Sicily. Interestingly, in to-days town records at del Golfo, the most common surnames include Galante and Bucellato, but not Bonanno and Bonventre.<br /> <br /> Both the patriarch of the Bonanno crime family, Giuseppe, or as he is more commonly referred to, Joe, and his son Salvatore, better known as Bill, refer to these early days in their separate biographies. Bill's is clouded by the passage of time, and Joe's, like a lot of his book, is narcissistic in its application to examining the truth. He touches on parts of the family feuds, yet never allows us the whole picture of just what was going on among these different clans.<br /> <br /> There was without doubt, killings in and around Castellammare during the period towards the end of the nineteenth century and into the first decade of the twentieth, that involved these families, and an desire to perpetrate revenge followed some of the men as they made their way to America and New York and other cities, and new lives as criminals in the promised land.<br /> <br /> New York.<br /> <br /> One of these acts of vengeance was the murder of a man in New Jersey. He was called Camillo Caiozzo, sometimes reported as Carmelo Caizzo.<br /> <br /> Information had been forwarded from Sicily by cable, that Caiozzo was on his way to live in New York, fleeing from retaliation for a vendetta murder which had occurred near Castellammare del Golfo.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236982458,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Stefano Magaddino's brother Pietro had been ambushed along with their father, Stefano Snr. (photo right) The father escaped unhurt, the son was killed. Carmelo was the supposed murderer, or maybe just related to the killer, maybe his uncle, maybe a cousin, either way, he was marked for death by his enemies. Joe Bonanno claims in his book Pietro was killed in 1916. Other sources say 1920.<br /> <br /> Whatever the date, Caiozzo carried the stigmata.<br /> <br /> His killing set in motion events which for three months gripped the American public, as little by little, they learned through breathless newspaper reports, of a putsch taking place in the criminal underworld involving dozen of men, and so many bodies falling down, it was just too hard to keep track of it all. Corpses were turning up or disappearing all over New York, and Detroit, and New Jersey along with those going down in Chicago and Pittsburgh, Bridgeport and Buffalo, along with stiffs turning up in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Illinois. The only region these guys weren't killing anyone looked to be Greenland. <br /> <br /> Caiozzo's murder which occurred in July 1921, near Neptune City, was in fact the latest in an ongoing series of killings that may have dated back fifteen years. The police departments of the various cities involved, and the press, never quite got to the bottom of the complex, interrelated series of historical assassinations that may have been going down for so long, and eighty odd years after the events, it's impossible to say with any degree of confidence just what was happening to who and for why.<br /> <br /> Newspapers of the time, raised the ante from 17 reported killings in early August, up to 125 by August 23rd. Some of these men, shot, knifed, garrotted, chopped up and buried alive, may have been victims of The Good Killers, some, the result of internecine warfare among the various Italian-American criminal gangs infesting these cities. There is no way of knowing for sure the exact body count.<br /> <br /> But I think it's save to assume it was considerable.<br /> <br /> Official records are sketchy. Newspaper publications are filled with names and dates and assumptions, but the actual connecting facts are few and far between. None of the dots can be linked together to give us an accurate picture of what might have happened. As in a lot of newspaper reporting, information changes from paper to paper, along with names and dates and events. No two newsmen ever see the same image in the same frame. These guys are lousy at getting the names right. Vowels change places. Consonants get lost along the way. It makes it difficult to sort out the wheat from the chaff. <br /> <br /> I find it in a way, like 'Alice through the Looking Glass' played out in a steamy bathroom. There's images there, but it's hard to conceptualize the changes in time and spatial direction that are taking form. There's substance without weight, energy lacking mass. It's a mythological fable, but without an Aesop to lead us through it. It's a compelling story, but that may be all it is, a story.<br /> <br /> Once the initial rush of interest abated, the media went off to pursue more headline- grabbing stories. There was no good paradigm in the story of the Good Killers. Everyone was a bad guy, so Joe Public soon lost his curiosity.<br /> <br /> Prohibition was moving into its first year, filling news spots with tales of bootlegging, gangland killings and more. Al Capone was waiting in the wings in the Windy City. The first Miss America pageant was being held in Atlantic City, and Mongolia declared independence from China.<br /> <br /> There was plenty of other things to keep the readers occupied.<br /> <br /> And so, no one actually cared about digging real deep into this particular story, following it through, investigative journalism like we know today. It's a shame, because what went down with the Good Killers through those early years of the twentieth century was quite possibly the growing pains, part of the developing architecture creating the framework for the foundation of Mafia America. If only there had been Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein on the job, or Murray Kempton or even Jimmy Breslin, what more would we know today?<br /> <br /> Big Mike Fiaschetti the detective sergeant, brevet captain in the NYPD, head of the famous Italian Squad, reformed in 1918, became connected into the Good Killers case by spending the night in a hotel bedroom on Broadway, with a man called Bartola Fontana.<br /> <br /> He was the one who murdered Camillo Caiozzo. That seems to be one fact that is undisputed.<br /> <br /> Mike had made contact, some days before in early August, with a young woman called Carmela Pino who was in a relationship with this young barber who worked in a shop on Kenmare Street in Lower Manhattan. Her name may have been Pinto. She was, apparently nineteen and part of the mystery. She kick-started the whole thing.<br /> <br /> The press naturally, would come to call Bartola, 'The Bloody Barber of Kenmare Street.'<br /> <br /> She told Mike that Bartola, tortured by his guilt, had confessed to her the killing, a few weeks earlier, of his boyhood friend, who had arrived in New York the previous year. The murder had occurred across in New Jersey. The detective courted the barber, meeting up with him first in the Bronx Park, talking to him, gaining his confidence, taking him out to shows, treating him to meals, and when the nights got too late, staying with him in the Broadway Central Hotel, on Broadway and Third Street. He was also maybe guarding the young barber, who had confessed to being a target for the criminal underworld, and obviously had something he desperately wanted to remove from his conscience.<br /> <br /> On the third night, Fontana cracked under the pressure, and confessed to murdering Camillo.<br /> <br /> Fiaschetti wrongly identified Fontana as a Camorist, a member of the dreaded Naples based Camorra gang. He also gets him mixed up with the Black Hand movement somehow.<br /> <br /> Bartola Fontana was from Sicily, from that port in Trapani province. If he was anything, he was a mafioso, but maybe, he wasn't even that. Just a man in waiting, connected into the Good Killers, originally in Detroit where he was part of a Castellammarese community based there. He'd become associated with their organization around 1914, two years after he'd arrived at Ellis Island in New York, and when a group of these men shifted to New York, he had moved there also.<br /> <br /> Tormented by his anguish and despair over the terrible crime he had committed, Fontana a small, scrawny twenty-eight year old, confessed to the murder, and in doing so, disclosed for the first time, the existence of this society of Good Killers. The name of the band, looks to have first appeared in the New York Times edition of August 17th., and seems to infer that Fontana called them by this title. <br /> <br /> But did he, and why?<br /> <br /> As far as I can find out, no one actually knows. He could easily have called them 'The Evil Brothers,' or 'Men of Death,' or any number of combinations, but the Good Killers has a ring to it. It's a name like 'Murder Inc,' to be dreamt up by a newspaper reporter. Its fanciful, like the way Joe the Boss was found clutching that black ace, rimmed in red blood, or 'Lillo' Galante gets his last photo, in that grubby little garden in Bushwick, face up, left eye blown out, ubiquitous cigar sticking out at the port, or the way Tommy Billoti stretched himself into a forked cross, on the tarmac outside Spark's Restaurant.<br /> <br /> It's good theatre.<br /> <br /> Mike saw an opening and went for it. This could be the big one for him and the team. The one that would make his name. Get him up there with Joe Petrosino, the first head of the squad, twelve years before. The only New York cop ever to get himself murdered in the line of duty, outside America.<br /> <br /> During his confession, Fontana identified six men who he claimed had forced him, under the threat of death, to carry out the killing. In the classic Mafia approach to removing a target, the mob set up the victim to be hit by his best friend.<br /> <br /> It's also possible of course, that the murder was to enable Fontana to lay his claim to membership of this clan of killers. By doing this piece of work, clipping this man, Fontana would earn his badge, his membership into the Mafia.<br /> <br /> Neither Fiaschetti, or anyone else as far as I know, ever pursued this line of investigation.<br /> <br /> The barber claimed the men were leaders of this Good Killers society, and provided their names and addresses.<br /> <br /> The group consisted of: Stefano Maggadino, his brother-in-law Bartolo DiGregorio, Vito Bonventre, Giuseppe Lombardi, Mariano Galante, whose family was related by marriage to Magaddino, and Francesco Puma. By the afternoon of August 16th., all of these men had been apprehended and arrested. They called themselves painters, and bakers and salesmen and barbers, and one identified himself as a 'merchant.' Three lived in Brooklyn, the others across the East River, in lower Manhattan.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236982298,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />There was a scuffle in the police fingerprint processing area, known as the Bertillon room, and Magaddino suddenly attacked Fontana. In the struggle that followed, Fiaschetti whacked Magaddino on the head with his billy stick. The police photograph of the men, taken the next day, shows Magaddino with a giant bandage across his head, under his soft hat. He looks (photo right) a bit like how I imagine 'Humpty-Dumpty' would have looked after his big fall, cracking his noggin.<br /> <br /> Fontana was sent over to Brooklyn to be isolated at the Raymond Street Jail, and the others were locked up in the dreaded Tombs Prison, the Manhattan House of Detention, on the corner of Franklin and Centre Streets.<br /> <br /> While incarcerated at the Brooklyn prison house, Fontana was transported back into Manhattan, to the police headquarters where he was interviewed by a detective from Detroit, Lieutenant Bert McPherson.<br /> <br /> Some time on the 18th or 19th of August, the barber disclosed to the visiting police officer what he knew about a series of murders that had taken place in that city.<br /> <br /> There had been at least seventy gangland killings in Detroit in the previous four years none of them solved. Fontana offered information on eleven men, including two bands of brothers and one father and son set. He was sure the Good Killers had done these hits. There may have been a additional five he knew about, including another family killing, that of John and Joe Vitale, but he wasn't able to provide much detail on these. The killings, he claimed were 'automobile jobs,' committed by gangsters in high-powered cars.<br /> <br /> Shades of Robert Stack and 'The Untouchables!'<br /> <br /> He either had been an extremely industrious gopher for the Good Killers, or a remarkably good listener.<br /> <br /> One of the men killed, Andrea Lacatto, also known as Licato, was a fearsome killer, who had been part of the Good Killers, according to Fontana. Interestingly, Bert McPherson revealed to the press that Lacatto may have been tortured- his arms cut off, and then buried alive- extreme treatment indicating some form of gang retribution, sending out a message to others. Strangely, other sources state that Lacatto was shot dead on Joseph Campau Street, the long, main thoroughfare that leads down to the Cadillac Motor works in Detroit city. If the one-eyed man is king in the world of the blind, it goes without saying that the pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple, especially when delving into the confusion of mob history. <br /> <br /> Things got so complicated, that at one point, The New York Times reported that two victims of the gang, Antonio Nazzara and Antonio Di Denetto, were ambushed and killed in Brooklyn, by two men, especially imported for the job from Detroit, one of whom was Giuseppe Buccelage ( Bucellato, I'm sure), who were then later killed by other nemesis of the gang. So here was the Good Killers, apparently hiring one of their arch enemies to shoot two other enemies, who then in turn got himself killed by some other enemy.<br /> <br /> Charley Chan. Were where you when we needed you?<br /> <br /> By this stage in the game, the police had also narrowed it down a bit, and were referring to the suspects as '......the Bonventre gang of good killers.' So at least someone had chosen a titular head to hang a hat on.<br /> <br /> By the time it was all over, there didn't seem to be a lot to show for it.<br /> <br /> Of the seven men arrested for the murder of Camillo Caiozzo, only the skinny little barber of Kenmare Street did any time. In March 1922, sentenced under his legal name, Bartolomeo Fontana entered the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton and would remain there until his release on January 21, 1941. He was last heard of living with a sister at 860 Sutter Avenue in Brooklyn, and then disappeared, from public record, at least.<br /> <br /> The rest of the arrested suspects, eventually were all either acquitted, or their cases delayed, and atrophied under cumbersome legal manoeuvring in New Jersey. Francesco Puma was shot and stabbed to death on the night of November 4th, 1922. Vito Bonventre, the uncle of Joseph Bonanno, became a leading figure in the New York underworld and also became a victim of the ultimate violence himself, murdered in Brooklyn in July, 1930.<br /> </p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236983070,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p><br /> <br /> Of the remaining four, only Stefano Magaddino went on to become a figure of considerable importance within the American Mafia. He moved from New York, shortly after an attempt was made on his life. Some sources say he and his faithful friend Gaspare Milazzo, were coming out of a Brooklyn department store when a group of men, presumably Bucellato's or their allies, attacked them, firing at them. They both were unharmed although some people passing along the street were shot and injured, two of them dying of their wounds. Many crime historians maintain this incident never happened. There seems little evidence to support it, at least in newspaper files. Either way, Magaddino moved north to upstate New York and eventually became the boss of the Buffalo crime family based there. Like most of the major Mafia figures of the period, he operated in almost total obscurity, in terms of public awareness, until exposed in the May 1952 edition of 'Look Magazine.'<br /> <br /> The Good Killers also disappeared, at least from public view. There was no further media activity of any consequence, and the public soon lost interest.<br /> <br /> So just who were these Good Killers?<br /> <br /> Were they a gruppi di fuoco, a fire-team, similar to the ones that would emerge fifty years later in Sicily under the direction of Luciano Leggio and then Salvatore Riina? Highly trained killers used by the Corleonesi to enforce their control and dominance not only of other Mafia clans, but to facilitate the killing of police and other state officials across Sicily. If the Good Killers were this kind of hit squad, how many of them were involved, and could there have been more than one group for each geographical region?<br /> <br /> How did they choose their targets?<br /> <br /> If as it has been suggested, they were in it for revenge, did they only go after Bucellato's and their associates? Of all the names listed in reports, that I have traced, only the three Bucellato brothers, Joseph, Felice and Salvatore murdered in Detroit between 1917 and 1919, carry that family name.<br /> <br /> Like the characters in Michael Shaara's famous historical novel, 'The Killer Angels,' the Good Killers were soldiers in an army, fighting a war without a legitimate cause. A war they could never win, because it was endlessly driven by engines of revenge and hatred, un empowered by the consequences of the acts, obsessed only with its appetency to succeed. Some newspaper reports suggest that they hired off the jobs and then killed the men who did the killings. It's almost impossible to grasp the complexities of an operation of this magnitude. Yet other newspapers referred to them as '...the Camorra murder gang,' loosing the plot entirely in their misidentification of the real roots of the Good Killers. <br /> <br /> Maybe, they were the Praetorian Guard of some major mob boss, whose identity has never been revealed. The New York press suggested he was based in Buffalo, and acted under direction from head office back in Sicily.<br /> <br /> In August 1921, it reported:<br /> <br /> " .......This is the man, the police have been informed, who has control of the $200,00 fund for the protection of members of the death syndicate and for the payment of hired assassins, who in turn, have been done away with, lest they confess to the police."<br /> <br /> Not unlike headlines from 'Ripping Yarns.'<br /> <br /> But just who was this 'big chief?'<br /> <br /> Nothing ever emerged to identify him, if he indeed existed. There were only two men in Buffalo or nearby Niagara Falls at this time who might have fitted the bill, and neither ever stepped forward to claim the title. Hardly surprising.<br /> <br /> Were the killings in Detroit, New York and other major centres, part of a coordinated ongoing project for the Mafia to discipline itself across the north-east area of the United States?<br /> <br /> Some press coverage inferred the gang was a murder-for-hire outfit, hit men for sale. One suspect, Joseph Napoli, extradited from Detroit to New York on September 10th., 1921, allegedly confessed to Inspector Fiaschetti that he had been paid on at least two occasions, $30 to murder a target. One of these was Rosario Brigandi, shot dead at 21 Chrystie Street, near the Bowery, on June 27th., 1919. Was there any relevance in this theory, or were these killings just revenge on a personal basis, or more likely muggings gone bad?<br /> <br /> Luigi Barzini the elder, father of the famous Italian journalist and reporter, emigrated to America and tried, without success to establish an Italian newspaper in New York. Amazingly, he and his family returned to re-settle in Italy, finding America too tough a place in which to live. On one occasion, he saved the life of a young criminal called Mike, who arranged for him to meet up with an powerful mob boss. This man lived in Brooklyn, and was referred to as 'Don Turi,' which could place him possibly as Salvatore Sarancino, a close friend of Salvatore Bonanno, the father of Joe, and apparently, a senior and much respected member of the Castellammarese community in Brooklyn. Barzini had told Mike that he wanted to explore the culture of the Mafia and find out how it had transplanted to America.<br /> <br /> In point of fact, he was after an exposé.<br /> <br /> 'Mike says you want to defend the Sicilians' name from defamation,' said the Don, 'explain to the American public what laws we obey, and how we help each other like brothers in this strange, difficult and hostile country. It is a noble wish, we commend you. But I'm afraid the moment is not opportune. We're at war. We Sicilians in America must think of ourselves like the Jews in Egypt before the Exodus. Everybody around us is our enemy and our oppressor. We have to be very prudent.'<br /> <br /> 'Don Turi' may well have had a legitimate gripe. The Italians were the third most persecuted minorities in U.S. History.<br /> <br /> If this was the perspective of a major crime leader in New York, it's a relatively short step to accepting The God Killers as defenders of that philosophy, and perhaps with a powerful boss in charge.<br /> <br /> And finally, and most intriguing of all, where did they go?<br /> <br /> After the Caiozzo investigation had run its course, it seems the Good Killers vanished. Was there a reason for this?<br /> <br /> Had the heat generated by the arrests and trials convinced whoever was in charge, to call it a day and disperse the killers, or did they by natural attrition, simply blend in with the Castellammarese groups, which would gradually develop in different cities as Mafia crime families?<br /> <br /> Perhaps, they kept on killing people, which apparently was what they were exceptionally proficient at, and law enforcement agencies just could not connect them into any kind of pattern. After all, they'd apparently been doing just this for nearly fifteen years without anyone latching onto it.<br /> <br /> Following the New York underworld war of 1930-31, the biggest Castellammarese Mafia family by far, emerged under the leadership of Joe Bonanno, with its headquarters in their traditional neighbourhood of Williamsburg, in Brooklyn. The second largest was probably the one in Buffalo under Magaddino, Joe's cousin. There had also been one that had evolved in the motor city, controlled by Milazzo, Magaddinos friend, who had himself left Brooklyn after that shooting outside the store, and gone to live in Detroit. After his death, this one merged in with other factions that would be headed by Joe 'Uno' Zerilli.<br /> <br /> Maybe, the men who had made up The Good Killers retired, and became part of these groups.<br /> <br /> Then again, perhaps The Good Killers never actually existed.<br /> <br /> At the heart of the matter, there is a lot of smoke, but not much combustion. The only evidence that I can see that pointed to this gang came from Fontana. It was his declaration made on the evening of August 16th., 1921, at police headquarters in New York, that started off the entire investigation. To my knowledge, no other member of the gang confessed and confirmed that these exterminators even existed, although The New York Times on August 18th., proclaimed that Bonventre, Galante and Maggadino had admitted complicity in Caizzo's murder.<br /> <br /> They hadn't of course, but it made good copy.<br /> <br /> No member of the so called Good Killers, other than Fontana, was ever convicted of any crime of any manner, least of all, multiple murder, that might have connected into this investigation. The links into the sudden deaths of Italians across that immense geographical region, in this possible time frame of 1905 to 1921 are insubstantial and stretch credulity when examined in close details. Lot's of men whose names ended in vowels died suddenly. Lot's of violence, plenty of hypothetical connections, but no real, solid evidence that groups of killers were roaming cities and countryside, assassinating on command, targets they had been assigned. An abundance of names on paper, but confirming no solid facts, no successful prosecutions, anywhere.<br /> <br /> Even The New York Times, which covered the story in slavish detail, confessed:<br /> <br /> 'While the confession (Fontana's) was voluble and free, and backed up with a murder paper, on which Fontana had listed in ink the killings he said he knew the gang had achieved, it was sketchy in places.'<br /> <br /> Sketchy indeed. One dimensional transparent is another way to explain it.<br /> <br /> It was just the word of one, scrawny Sicilian nonentity, who worked as a barber on the teeming streets of New York, and one hot, Sunday afternoon, took a shotgun and blasted his friend in the back.<br /> <br /> Perhaps he murdered this friend of his for another, entirely different reason?<br /> <br /> They had lived together in Fontana's fourth floor apartment, at 36 St. Mark's Place, in lower Manhattan.<br /> <br /> Did Caizzo perhaps make a pass at Fontana's girl friend, Carmelo Pino on the many times she must have visited?<br /> <br /> Men have killed other men for far less.<br /> <br /> Also Fontana had found out that his friend had just come into $700, a tidy sum when you consider the average hourly rate at that time for workers, was just forty-two cents. It's possible that Caizzo had brought the money with him the day of his murder. Fontana claimed he was trying to get Caizzo interested in a business proposition in the neighbourhood they were visiting that afternoon.<br /> <br /> Maybe he killed his friend for a combination of greed and jealousy.<br /> <br /> It is also feasible that having landed Fontana and having found out his background, Captain Fiaschetti convinced him to turn on the other six men. The detective perhaps was aware of them, regarding their criminal pedigree, men who might well be known to the Italian Squad. Having promised that he would make sure Fontana did not get the death penalty for the murder he had committed, perhaps the barber cut a deal.<br /> <br /> Tenuous stuff no doubt, but hardly more so than the great, sprawling epic of mythical killers, roaming the Tri-state area and beyond.<br /> <br /> Maybe Michael Fiachetti was just too eager to make his name on this investigation.<br /> <br /> Newspapers reporting him as saying, the Good Killer arrests were ' the most important capture ever made by him and his squad.' Worth noting is the fact that he used almost the exact same wording two months before the arrest of Fontana, in connection with a Black Hand kidnapping and extortion plot involving five year old Giuseppe Varotta.<br /> <br /> Fiaschetti managed to solve that one however, except poor young Joe turned up dead. An interesting fact about the case is that Big Mike, again used his billy club on the suspects, which helped bring forth the required confessions, although because of the use of force, their lawyers were able to arrange that the killers went away for life, instead of the mandatory big fry up at Sing Sing.<br /> <br /> In the end, this Good Killer thing was all a bit of a fizzer.<br /> <br /> Did Inspector Fiaschetti try too hard to make the facts fit the theory?<br /> <br /> Did he want Fontana's evidence to make a case, or did he want to make a case out of the evidence, wherever it might lead him?<br /> <br /> We'll never know.<br /> <br /> The Good Killer phenomenon was unparalleled in the annals of the Italian-American criminal underworld. Nothing like it ever existed before, or has since.<br /> <br /> In a way, imaging Sergio Leone's masterpiece of film making, 'One Upon A Time In America,' the story seems more like a illusion filled with pictures of dark, swarthy men, sporting bushy moustaches, heads adorned with boaters or bowlers, whose eyes never stopped moving, whose voices carried a patina of menace, and whose mere existence guaranteed their victims panic and terror.<br /> <br /> Then, like some mythical creatures of someone's worst nightmare, they were gone on awakening.<br /> <br /> <span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">Acknowledgments</span>:</span><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Thanks to Tom Hunt and Mike Tona for their generous help and support. However, opinions expressed here, are strictly mine.</span><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">If you want to read a exceptionally good, in-depth report on The Good Killers, go to Tom and Mike's, at: <a href="http://www.onewal.com/a014/f_goodkillers.html">http://www.onewal.com/a014/f_goodkillers.html</a></span></p>
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Yidfellas: The Kosher Nostra
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/yidfellas-the-kosher-nostra
2010-11-14T18:00:00.000Z
2010-11-14T18:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /><br /> In the history of New York’s underworld, buried among the mythology that has created the people and places making up this often confusing landscape, there is one story that has grown much bigger over the years than the sum of its parts. <br /> <br /> There have been countless narratives, and articles and at least two movies- the 1950 classic, 'The Enforcer,' starring Humphrey Bogart, and one with Peter Falk in 1960- perpetrating the legend of a group of Jewish criminals who banded together to prey like a pack of wolves on their victims, across the continent of North America, murdering a thousand people until they were brought to bay. <br /> <br /> Or so the legends tell us. <br /> <br /> It became known as Murder Inc. a name coined by a tough, chubby little leprechaun of an Irish reporter called Harry Feeney, when he broke his story in the now defunct New York World-Telegram.<br /> <br /> When the news of their crimes did hit the streets, it was a refreshing change to see that all of the hoods and killers had names that did not necessarily end in a vowel. Although Jewish gangsters had been around for years, they had taken second stage over the years to the growing profile of the Italian-American criminals, who were called The Black Hand, or rarely, the Mafia, and most often the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Mob">mob</a>, particularly in the early 1900s when New York newspapers reported daily on the demise of someone called Louis or Salvatore or Giuseppe. <br /> <br /> Gangsters ruled the roost by 1930 in the Big Apple. And there was nothing anyone could do about it. <br /> <br /> The DA said so himself. <br /> <br /> Thomas Crain, appearing before Judge Samuel Seabury, said that the racketeers were out of control, and that neither he or the police force could think of any way to curb them. There were 421 murders, up 18% on the previous year, and at least 66 of these where gangland rub-outs, all of them unsolved. Bodies were being dumped weekly on street corners, left in the trunks of autos, flopped into the Hudson or East River. Most of these stiffs were turning out to be Italians, and when Joe the Boss went for his last lunch at the Villa Tammaro restaurant on Coney Island, the Daily News reported that, 'Police believe the Masseria killing will be the beginning of gang warfare that will exceed anything New York has yet experienced.”<br /> <br /> It was as it happens the end of one, but nobody in authority knew anything, especially the cops. In east Brooklyn, things were starting to heat up a bit as well. <br /> <br /> Especially in Brownsville. <br /> <br /> Brownsville covered just 2.19 square miles but packed in over 200,000 people. It was then, the most densely inhabited community in Brooklyn. Predominately Jewish, there were over seventy synagogues dotted about the borough, which also, incidentally, contained the only Moorish colony in the whole of New York. <br /> <br /> Pitkin Avenue, the main drag, was packed with shops, food halls, delis and variety shops and the language heard on the sidewalk was predominately Yiddish; the food in the shops, mostly kosher. In 1916, Margaret Sanger established the first birth control clinic in America, here on Amboy Street.<br /> <br /> On the corner of Livonia, just up from the park, at 779 Saratoga Avenue, sat Midnight Rose’s candy store. Here, was where the boys would meet up each day to think up scams, pick up an assignment to go out and shoot a mug, or just shoot the breeze over a chocolate malt and a game of pinochle. To-day, the building store-front is still there- the store now a deli-grocery- partially boarded up, adorned and decorated with the mindless graffiti that characterizes inner city urban decay, the sidewalk in front carpeted with the detritus of people who have lost all hope and are not afraid to show it. It sits there, waiting for some construction crew to come along and put it out of its misery. <br /> <br /> The boys, who referred to themselves as 'The Brownsville Troop,' and at their peak may have numbered as many as thirty, were an unreal assortment of misfits, muggers, dead beats and killers, with names equally as wondrous, including: <br /> <br /> Frank 'The Dasher' Abbandano, Seymour 'Blue Jaw' Magoo, Mandy Weiss, Moitle 'Buggsy' Goldstein, Vito 'Chicken Head' Gurino, 'Oscar the Poet,' 'Pittsburgh Phil,' a.k.a. Harry 'Pep' Strauss, 'Little Farvel' Cohen, 'Happy' Maione, Sholem Bernstein, Dukey Maffeatore, Alli 'Tick Tock' Tannenbaum and of course the bete noir of the crew, the man who would help to bring it all tumbling down one day, Abe 'Kid Twist' Reles. <br /> <br /> Some of these guys might have worked independently, linking up with others to perform specific jobs; some may have worked in packs, forming new relationships as opportunities arose; others undoubtedly stayed together for the course. <br /> <br /> Moving about on the fringes of the troop, a thermometer looking for a temperature, was Gangy Davidoff, a tough Jew in his own right, a personal assistant to another major hood, nicknamed 'Lepke', but more famous in history as the older brother of Bummy Davis, one of America's toughest welter weights, rated by Ring Magazine as one of 100 greatest punchers of all time. Gangy's role in the pack is vague and uncertain, but I have always believed him to have been more than a supporting player. </p>
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<p><br /> <br /> The store was run by a hard-bitten sixty year old, domineering European immigrant called Rose Gold, always called 'Midnight Rose,' as she kept a light burning for the boys late into the night, to show them the way home. She and her son, Sam 'The Dapper” Siegal' helped Reles’ in his extensive loansharking operation, and just to keep things in the family, her daughter, Shirley Herman loaned a hand when things got busy. Rose was illiterate, unable to read or write English, but an investigation of her bank account once showed that over $400,000 had been deposited and withdrawn in a twelve-month period. <br /> <br /> The locals knew who was who of course, and spoke about the boys the way plebes talk about big-shots. Because for most of the poor people in East New York, Brownsville and Ocean Hill, the 'Troop' that dominated that dreary, filth ridden corner, around the candy shop, cowering under the shadow of the elevated track of the number 3 train, was the only group of prosperous people they ever came into contact with as they went about their miserable lives. <br /> <br /> They knew that the folk who shaped the world were ruthless, ambitious and without any scruples. The boys might not be able to conjugate a verb, but they could break a leg or carry out a hit quicker and smoother than any MBA from Harvard. These hard-eyed guys believed in money and attitude. When push came to shove, these were tough Jews; but did they constitute an organized gang of killers, and murder hundreds of people, stretching out and utilizing their talents across the continental United States? <br /> <br /> As Shakespeare would have said: 'Now there’s the rub.'<br /> <br /> Making sense of this goulash of dysfunctional human beings is like peering through a telescope, the lens of which is covered in Saran-wrap. <br /> <br /> If they killed anywhere near the 1000 people many sources allege, most of the hits took place outside of New York. <br /> <br /> According to Professor Alan Block, criminal historian of Penn State University, 82 murders occurred in the metro New York region between 1930-1939 that could be attributed to organized crime. Another celebrated crime historian Allan May, has pinpointed 50 killings by victim’s name, between 1933-1941 that might be linked directly into the Troop. The New York District Attorney claimed 66 gangland killings between 1930/1931. <br /> <br /> There is also a memorandum on file in the New York Municipal Archives that states a conservative estimate of 85 murders. Brooklyn DA William O'Dwyer actually publicly announced on June 4, 1940, that ' 57 murders involving that ring (the troop) had been solved.' However, according to the Daily News in its March 19, 1940 edition, O'Dwyer claimed 21 murders had been committed during 1939 by the troop, so I guess we have to assume that 36 murders occurred prior to 1939 and in the first six months of 1940. Of course, some of the killing might have been registered outside the Brooklyn jurisdiction and probably were. <br /> <br /> It can make the head spin, coming to grips with it all. <br /> <br /> There was Harry Greenberg, whacked-out in Los Angeles in 1939 as he sat in his car outside his home; Harry Millman, put down in Detroit in 1937, riddled like a salt-cellar while enjoying a drink in a bar, and Al Silverman, who went bye-byes in Connecticut, also in 1939, dangling on a barbed-wire fence in Somers, sliced like diced ham. Maybe we could add to the out-of-state list Abe Wagner, killed in St Paul's in 1932 by George Young and Joey Schaefar, who might have been associates of the troop; but it's a long shot. Still, you can not stretch four into hundreds regardless of how bad you are at mathematics. Two hundred, two fifty tops within the New York area, four known across the country, where did all the rest take place? It's a mystery for sure.<br /> <br /> So what was with these Jewish entrepreneurs of death? Just who did they work for and what was their function?<br /> <br /> To understand the makeup of the <span style="font-style:italic;">'Brownsville Troop,'</span> you have to look at the broader view of just where they sat within the structure of the Jewish/Italian-American underworld power syndicates that operated in this period in New York, and this is as complicated as a jigsaw puzzle put together by a blind man with palsy.<br /> <br /> The first 30 years of the twentieth century saw the New York crime scene dominated by gangland turmoil involving Italian-American groups. This essentially ended in 1931 with closure on what has since become known as the Castellammarese War. The <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Mob">mob</a> sorted itself out and settled down into five distinctive groups, each headed by a boss, four of whom came from Sicily. <br /> <br /> There is some confusion as to the origin of the fifth, Gaetano Gagliano, who ran what we now know as the Luchese crime family, as so little is known about him. David Critchley, the author of ‘<span style="font-style:italic;">The Origin of Organized Crime</span>’ claims he was born in Corleone, if so, that would make it a quintuplet of Sicilians who headed up the Mafia crime families. The Jewish mobsters operated alongside their Italian counterparts, and may have superseded them in terms of a historic time frame. Monk Eastman for example, ran a gang of leg-breakers, extortionist and murderers as early as 1893.<br /> <br /> In the 1920s, Arnold Rothstein, a big-time gambler, with lots of money, street smarts and all the right connections, was setting his own stamp on the Jewish opportunity criminal activity that bubbled on every street corner, especially in the illegal booze business, following the Volstead Act. It was ‘AR‘ as he was known, who might have fixed the 1919 Baseball World Series, and he was also known to have been a financial minder to prohibition gangsters like Legs Diamond, Owney Madden and Waxy Gordon. He owned night clubs, casinos, racehorses, and may also have been involved in narcotics linked through Lucky Luciano, one of the most prominent hoodlums of the time. Rothstein’s political skills were much in demand, and he was quite possibly, gangland's first dispute arbitrator.<br /> <br /> In 1929, Rothstein was out of the picture; shot dead in his suite at the Park Central Hotel, on November 28th. By then, two other Jewish gangsters had grabbed the headlines-Arthur 'Dutch' Flegenheimer, who ran a hugely profitable numbers business on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and Louis 'Lepke' Buchalter, who along with his partner, Jacob Shapiro, effectively controlled the garment industry in midtown Manhattan, through their dominance of labour relations by criminal extortion. There is evidence to suggest that Buchalter may have inherited his rag trade interests from Rothstein after his sudden death.<br /> <br /> It was Buchalter in fact, who would come to play an pivotal role in the life of 'Kid Twist' and his goons in the <span style="font-style:italic;">Brownsville Troop</span>. Born in February 1897, he had started out as a teenage enforcer and petty thief, before locking in with another violent street thug, Jacob Shapiro, sometime in 1914. 'Gurrah' as he became known, was two years older than Buchalter, and they became a formidable duo on the mean streets of Manhattan. <br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236979079,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />By the early 1930s, they were controlling enterprises in the garment trade, baking, trucking and window cleaning industries, and the motion picture operatives union, extorting millions of dollars annually. <br /> <br /> Buchalter (right) became the most influential Jewish gangster in the New York area. He was unique in another sense also, being the only <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Mob">mob</a> czar who would have to pay the ultimate punishment for his years of sins and transgressions. On March 4th., 1944, he was executed in Sing Sing prison for his involvement in the 1936 murder of Joe Rosen, a former garment trucker, gunned down in his candy store in Brooklyn.<br /> <br /> By this point, Murder Inc. had gone the way of the dinosaur. <span style="font-style:italic;">The Troop</span> was history. Seven of its ace hit men were fried by the state, and one had found out, the hard way that cloud walking worked only for fairies.<br /> <br /> The man who you could say became the canary who could sing but couldn't fly was Abraham Reles. Born in 1905, in New York, of Austrian immigrants, by the time he turned stool pigeon in 1940, and started blabbing, 'like a victrola with kinky hair and a non stop switch,' as the Brooklyn D.A. described him, Abe had been arrested 38 times, on charges ranging from malicious mischief to homicide. Standing five feet two inches in all his towering height, with a fire-plug of a body, he looked like anyone's worst nightmare. <br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236979693,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />With his beady, close set eyes, broken nose, thick, podgy face topped with that Rastafarian bob, body odour to make a horse sneeze, long arms hanging way past his waist, and fists bigger than Texas, he was a man not to mess with, under any circumstances; someone who would write his name on a bullet, so you knew the last thing on his mind. His fingers were so thick, they each averaged over an inch in diameter at their tips. He talked with a strange off-key lisp, and when he walked, it looked as though he was trying to shake off his shoes. Abe Reles (left) was a <span style="font-style:italic;">lusus naturae</span> in a cheap woollen suit and check cap, sucking on a Chesterfield.<br /> <br /> Muddy Kasof and Jake 'The Painter,' and Rocco Morganti and Moe Greenblat and Jack Paley along with the brothers Shapiro, Joey Silver and Ruben Smith did try to mess with him, and he helped them onto the elevator to heaven without loosing a breath. It's unlikely any of them would have had time to hear the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, as Abe eased them on their way.<br /> <br /> Abe and his closest followers, guys like Bugsy and Happy, the Dasher and Pep, were in essence a loose confederation of career criminals. Strong-arm artists, shy-locks, extortionists-they were a charming mob of psychopaths-who had banded together early in the 1930s and at some stage, made the decision to take over the action in Brownsville, by removing the then current crime cartel headed by the Shapiro brothers. This, they achieved in 1934, when they dumped the last man standing, Willie Shapiro into a grave on a Canarsie beach. They shot him and strangled him for good measure, but poor Willie eventually suffocated in his sandy coffin.<br /> <br /> Reles was a loyal buddy of Louis Capone (no relation to Big Al over in the Windy City) who ran a <span style="font-style:italic;">pasiticceria</span> shop in Ocean Hill, just off the Eastern Parkway, a hop, skip and a jump from Midnight Rose's. Lou served the best java and Italian pastries in town, and along with his brother Gesuela, a union delegate, worked on the shady side of the street. Louis was short and stocky with watery blue eyes and hair that was turning gray, although he was only mid-thirties. Sometime prior to 1928, he and Albert Anastasia formed a relationship, and Al was a frequent visitor to the cafe.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236979864,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Louis (right) had made some serious contacts in life, like Albert and Buchalter. Al was perhaps at this time, the underboss in the Mafia crime family run by Vincent and Phil Mangano, based in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn. Anastasia was one of the most dangerous men in the New York underworld, and could have been the contact that stitched in the deal between Capone, Buchalter and Reles, leading to the establishment of the executive, or should that be execution arm of the <span style="font-style:italic;">Brownsville Troop</span>. It seems unlikely that Anastasia was ever the boss of any of these Jewish goons. His position was I think, that of a dominant figure in a power base that used the Troop as and when it suited them. He was only ever, in my opinion, one of three, not one of one, in his link into the cartel. <br /> <br /> In essence, Murder Inc., was just the means to an end for Anastasia, Buchalter and their associates. In the shifting and ever changing sands that formed the treacherous New York underworld, where men ratted on each other as easily as they killed one another, there was a definite need for an enforcement branch, a group of hard-ass killers who would drop a mug on the nod anytime, anywhere, as the need arose. And this was what the Troop was accomplished at doing. Murder was a commodity to trade, merchandise to be marketed. They did more than kill people of course. They loan-sharked and extorted and boosted, ran the slot-machine business, crap games, provided strong-arm muscle for union extortion business and all those other things that unscrupulous people do to make a living, but their propensity for violence was unquestionably their <span style="font-style:italic;">raison d'etre</span>. <br /> <br /> However, the linkage between the leading players in this Little Shop of Horrors was nowhere near as far-fetched and widely spread as tales about it have suggested. There is for example, no evidence, that I know of, to suggest that Abe Reles and any of his accomplices killed for Buchalter (the link that gave them their greatest notoriety) prior to 1936, and it was all over by 1940.<br /> <br /> Logically, I think it would follow to the Brownsville boys that as Louis Capone was a loyal friend and supporter of Anastasia who was a powerful crime boss, then by default, Al who was bigger by far than Louis, was their boss as well. These two powerful men were patrons as well as customers of the troop. It was a given that Al would be consulted before they did any hits, or in the euphemism of their very unusual trade, 'take' a guy, or 'drop a package.' <br /> <br /> However, I have never found any evidence to suggest that Anastasia led the boys. If they thought they had a snitch in their ranks, they might check with Albert first, and he would okay the hit. Often, on jobs, they would consult him just as a matter of respect. After all, they did not want to go around inadvertently killing someone who could turn out to be a friend or business partner of a powerful Mafia boss. In the strange and noxious world they inhabited, men often killed each other to settle a personal grudge; or a slight, under the guise of group safety planning, so everyone had to be extra careful, especially around Albert.<br /> <br /> As Professor Alan Block pointed out in his book <span style="font-style:italic;">'East Side, West Side,'</span> very few of the <span style="font-style:italic;">Troop</span>'s killings were done at Anastasia's request; the Brownsville syndicate was a group making money from a variety of extraordinary activities, but never a dime from murdering anybody. The people they killed, with few exceptions, were competitors or informers, actual and potential, who threatened their interests, especially in the garment trade. <br /> <br /> To add more shades of complexity to an already complicated environment, Anastasia also operated through his own family of enforcers, hit men like Giaocchino Parisi and Tony Romeo, and Joe Coppola. Buchalter employed his personal, individual pack of killers, hoods such as Charlie Workman, Mendy Weiss and Albert Tannenbaum, who just to make things absolutely confusing, sometimes worked with the <span style="font-style:italic;">Troop</span> on hits. It's easy to understand how the police had such difficulty pinning down anyone, any time, for any killing connected into this mob, whatever its generic origin. It must have been harder than picking peas out of a pod wearing garden gloves.<br /> <br /> The cops however got their big break early in the new year of the new decade.<br /> <br /> On January 24th., 1940, a low level street thug called Harry Rudolph dropped a dime to the District Attorney's Office. Harry, who was sometimes called a 'full-mooner' because he was ten cents short of a dollar, was in the jug doing a short one for a misdemeanour, locked away in the City Workhouse, on Rikers Island, on the East River.<br /> <br /> It's hard to figure out just why he opened this can of worms. His sentence was lightweight, and the Island was one of the city's better slams. However, he did hate the guys in the Troop. He told Burton Turkus, an assistant district attorney for Brooklyn, that he could clear up a murder case dating back to November, 1933. The victim was one Alex 'Red' Alpert, who had been his trusty friend, and who was apparently whacked out by Reles, Goldstein and Dukey Maffetore.<br /> <br /> In a sequence of events, when they brought him in for questioning, Dukey broke down like scrambled eggs, and implicated one of his friends, Abe 'Pretty' Levine, in another hit which had gone down in 1937. And when 'Pretty' was hauled in for the third, he fell apart like a roll of wet toilet paper. He ratted on the big ones, implicating Maione, Abbandano, Capone, Goldstein and Reles, naming them all as members of a complex and widespread criminal conspiracy that specialized in the removal business. Human removal that is. <br /> <br /> For the <span style="font-style:italic;">Brownsville Troop</span>, bad would only get worse.<br /> <br /> Arrested in February, and detained in the infamous Tombs prison, Abe Reles reached his own epiphany sometime during March. Although his indictment was doubtful to say the least, based as it was on the uncorroborated testimony of accomplices to those crimes, for some reason, 'Kid Twist' wanted out. His first arrest was on March 3rd., 1925, for felony assault, and between then and February 2nd., 1940, when he came in for the last time, he had averaged a collar once every 78 days, excluding the time he spent in prison.<br /> <br /> Maybe in the loneliness of his prison cell he had been reading the works of the formidable medieval Talmudic scholar, Rabbi Schlomo Yitzchaki:<br /> <br /> ‘Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you.’<br /> <br /> When questioned by a attorney in court, he replied: 'I was disgusted with the way I was living. It was my life. I was fed up with my life.'<br /> <br /> Maybe, and it’s a lot simpler to understand this, Abe could see the writing on the wall. Everyone else was blabbing as quickly as a stenographer could record, but none of them had the knowledge that Reles had, locked away in his curly headed slab of a skull.<br /> <br /> So the canary sang, for twelve days, non stop; keeping a bank of secretaries employed filling twenty-five notebooks, cramming pages with thousands of words- an encyclopaedia of mobs and murders. <br /> <br /> He became his own personal Wikipedia of criminal knowledge, a reservoir fed by the independent input from years of mixing with people doing terrible things to each other; stupefying his audience with so much information on murder and mayhem, their eyes watered, and their throats wilted and shrunk. He saw his life, as Charles McCarry once remarked, ‘with the joyful clarity of the incurably insane.’ <br /> <br /> He was the key witness in helping to send Goldstein, Maione and Abbandano to the electric chair. <br /> <br /> Abe knew where the bodies had been buried, and the cops were digging them up from all over the place as a consequence. He told them about Peter Panto, the Brooklyn docker who fought against the mob domination of the ports, and as a result, went missing in 1939; Irving Penn a wholly honest citizen shot in error for union leader Phil Orlorsky that the mob wanted removed and Joe Rosen in the trucking industry, who had been forced out of his business and had to start a candy store to survive, and then did not.<br /> <br /> These were only the tip of the iceberg: <br /> <br /> Ambery and Cooperman, and Landau and Kasoff, and Krakower and Friedman, and Shulman and Shapiro, and Tannebaum and Tietlebaum, the list was endless. A Jewish telephone directory of the dead waiting for their numbers to be disconnected.<br /> <br /> The DA was leading up to the big fish, Anastasia, when it all, literally, flew out the window. Along with three other informers, Abe was held in protective custody in a ten-room complex at the Half-Moon Hotel on the boardwalk at Coney Island. He lived there for a year, with shifts of New York Police uniformed cops watching his every move. Except one.<br /> <br /> Early in the morning of November 12th., 1941, Abe Reles went out of his bedroom window, Room 623, falling forty-two feet onto a gravelled extension roof that covered the hotel kitchen. He landed on his butt, bouncing forward to smash face down onto the granite chips. Like Tom in Tom and Jerry, getting the bad end of another caper gone wrong. <br /> <br /> The impact, according to the autopsy of Dr. Gregory Robillard, fractured his spine, ruptured internal organs and flooded his lungs with blood. The canary had landed. The man who had never obeyed a law in his life, finally paid homage to the one that counted the most. <br /> <br /> For him that is: Newton's Law of Gravity,</p>
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<p><br /> <br /> Although investigations carried on until 1951, no clear evidence ever emerged as to how he took that final flight, down onto the dew-soaked roof. Sometime after 7 a.m., the cops paid to protect him in life, found him crumpled in death, his white, puffy face snuggling into the crushed stone, the wind flapping his white shirt, his new black Gibson shoes scuffed and scratched from the impact.<br /> <br /> Joe Valachi, a soldier in the Genovese crime family, who became the first serious mob informant of the twentieth century, saw no mystery in the demise of Reles.<br /> <br /> 'I never met anybody,' he said, ' who thought Abe went out of that window because he wanted to.'<br /> <br /> When they put Abe Reles in the ground, in his understated pine casket, at the Mount Royal Cemetery, in Ridgewood, Queens, a small animal scurried across the earth piled up at the grave side. 'That's a gopher....the rat's in the grave,' shouted one of the mourners. Abe's wife screamed like a banshee. She would spend the rest of her life carrying despair around, like a shopping list, ticking off items of grief as she wandered through her own landscape of never-ending sadness and regret.<br /> <br /> Abe'Kid Twist' Reles was thirty-four years old when he died, leaving behind a six year old son, and memories that filled some people like a chest full of rusty nails.<br /> <br /> There was a rumour going around a few years back that one of the cops guarding Reles was Charley Burns. He'd been implicated in the kidnapping, murder and body disposal of New York Judge Joseph Force Crater, who vanished off the face of the earth in 1930. He became the most famous person in American history to disappear, at that time, earning news headlines such as ' The Missingest Man in New York.' Burns may well have guarded Abe at some time, but wasn't there the morning he went out of the window.<br /> <br /> Years after Abe died, innuendo suggested that Frank Costello the powerful Mafia boss, had paid $50,000 to make sure the Kid never got around to finishing off his testimony. Maybe he did. There were many other people in high places who wanted to make sure that nothing in the way of evidence would come to incriminate Albert Anastasia, who at the age of thirty-eight had risen high and mighty in the New York underworld. One of these was James J. Moran, the venal and manipulating Chief Clerk of Brooklyn DA, William O'Dwyer. Close friends of Joe Adonis, another powerful New York mobster, Moran and Frank were pals for over forty years; Moran was also close to Tammany Hall's manipulating Irving Sherman, who in turn was in deep with Costello. I can quite easily envisage a changing of brown envelopes stuffed with cash between all or either of these men, to ensure that Abe went on that one-way flight. We'll never know in this instance, but it's tempting to believe that sometimes crime actually does pay.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236980660,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Anastasia (photo right) had left Calabria, in southern Italy, an uncouth young man of seventeen, and at the time of Abe's death, his influence was so great, some sources believed it even led into the department of the Brooklyn District Attorney, via Moran, as well as the inner reaches of the NYPD. A man with such clout, he might easily guarantee a sergeant and five police officers would sleep soundly into a winter’s dawn, as their charge, like Icarus, found his wings of wax no match for the heat of a determined mobster’s revenge.<br /> <br /> Abe 'Kid Twist' Reles was the third to go. Bugsy Goldstein and Pep Strauss had gone to their maker via the electric chair, at Sing Sing, on June 12th. Happy Maione was next on the time-to-go list, connecting into his final appointment with death a couple of months after Reles died, in the same hot-seat as his friends, on February 19th., 1942. <br /> <br /> Finally, late in the evening of March 4th., 1944, their execution having been delayed 48 hours by order of Governor Thomas Dewey, Louis Capone, Mendy Weiss and last, but certainly not least, Lepke Buchalter, their heads shaved, dressed in white socks and white shirts and black pants, went off in sequence, in death row, like the Three Stooges, wondering perhaps, what to do for an encore. <br /> <br /> Frank Hogan, the Manhattan DA tried to make a deal with Lepke before his execution, but Buchalter was staunch to the end. He wouldn't snitch even to save his life. He had let it be known that he had information that could bring down New York City elected officials, national labour leaders, and public office holders. There was speculation in the newspapers that Buchalter could finger someone in the President Roosevelt administration. This could help Dewey in his anticipated presidential campaign. Dewy decided not to engage with Buchalter, and at the end, the Jewish mob boss folded his hand and accepted the inevitable..<br /> <br /> At 11:16pm, the executioner threw the switch, and the man who might have been the toughest Jew of them all found out the hard way in a bewildering brilliance of noise and sensation that as noted British journalist Gillian Reynolds once remarked, ‘the arithmetic of ordinary life became the algebra of universal human experience.’<br /> <br /> If it ever had been incorporated in the technical understanding of the word, by the early hours of March 5th., 1944, Murder Inc. was without doubt, fully and finally liquidated. Sholem and Blue Jaw, Dukey and Mikey, and Gangy Cohen and the others who escaped prosecution or the electric chair, disappeared into the wastelands of America to live out their lives in quiet desperation; Alli Tannenbaum, shame on him, finished up selling lampshades in Georgia in the 1950s. <br /> <br /> All that would remain, would be the years of speculation and innuendo, weaving itself around the legend, growing stronger through time, as writers and crime historians speculated on the haunting image of an organization whose sheer existence was so extraordinary as to make it almost incomprehensible.<br /> <br /> Euhemerus the Greek mythographer believed that fables were based on traditional accounts of real people and events. He may have been no slouch in his field, but if the author Thomas Wolfe was right, and <span style="font-style:italic;">Only the Dead know Brooklyn</span>, then they are certainly, and without a doubt, the only ones who know the real truth about The Brownsville Troop.</p>
<ul>
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A Kiss is Just a Kiss
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/a-kiss-is-just-a-kiss
2010-11-10T21:14:18.000Z
2010-11-10T21:14:18.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><span style="font-style:italic;">‘Man lives with the society he finds around him.’</span><br /> <br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Salvatore Lima, Christian Democratic politician,</span><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Murdered by the Mafia, March 1992.</span> <br /> <br /> By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br /> If he was right in what he said, it happened on the afternoon of September 20th 1987; if it did happen, it represented very bad taste, at least. It is not after all a crime to kiss the boss of the Sicilian Mafia, perhaps very bad taste, but hardly a crime, However, the deeper implications of this embrace between two people, went far beyond the boundaries of personal behaviour.<br /> <br /> Although one of the men, Salvatore ‘Toto’ Riina was the undisputed head of what could perhaps be called the most significant organized crime association in the world, the other recipient of the kiss was a man once referred to as ‘the finest political mind in Europe.’<br /> <br /> He had served the Italian government for over forty years. A member of the Christian Democratic Party, which was born out of the ashes of World War Two, he had held a variety of ministerial positions, including premier, foreign minister and seven times prime minister, holding cabinet posts in thirty governments since 1948. His name was Giulio Andreotti. <br /> </p>
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<div style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Giulio Andreotti</span></div>
<p><br /> On that day in September 1987, he had come to Palermo to give two speeches at the annual Friendship Festival of the Sicilian branch of the DC party. Sometime during the day, if the story is true, between the first and second presentation, he went to a palatial home at number 3, piazza Vittorio Veneto, the residence of Ignazio Salvo, one of the richest businessmen and most powerful Demochristians on the island. <br /> <br /> He and his late brother, Nino, had made their fortunes by operating a government sponsored private concession, as esattorie, agents collecting taxes in western Sicily—a primitive, but unbelievable lucrative operation and one that was supposedly also, a great source of corruption. The Antimafia Commission in 1976 had stressed that this tax revenue system was parasitic and a nest where the Mafia thrived. The brothers had been allowed to retain 10% of all taxes they gathered, as against the standard 3.3% levied in mainland Italy. <br /> <br /> The two men had been identified by the Carabinieri in the early 1960’s as Mafiosi, but by the mid 1970’s, had risen to such a level of political power and wealth as to be seen to be above suspicion. At the time of the alleged meeting between Riina and Andreotti however, Ignazio Salvo was under house arrest, awaiting his appearance in the Mafia maxi-trial that would run in Palermo, from February 10th 1986, until December 17th 1987.<br /> <br /> The man who would claim to be at the confluence of this political and Mafia power embrace on that sunny afternoon, September 20th 1987, Baldassare (Balduccio) Di Maggio, the reporter of the meeting, had started out life as a mechanic, before embarking on a career as a soldier in the Mafia cosche, or family, of Bernardo Brusca, based in San Giuseppe Jato, a small town located almost midway between Palermo and Corleone. <br /> <br /> He had done his first homicide for the Mafia in 1981. Four-month’s later, he was initiated into the cosche by Brusca himself. By 1986, his personal killing count had risen to twenty-four; he had burned down the house of an ex-mayor of Palermo, done significant business in drug trafficking, and was involved in extortion in the construction business.<br /> <br /> He became a personal favourite of Salvatore Riina, who himself was close to Brusca, and Riina often said of Di Maggio, Baldo’s in my heart. He made him his chauffeur and bodyguard. But things aren’t always what they seem, especially in the Mafia.<br /> <br /> When Bernardo Brusca and his son, Giovanni, were sent to prison, Di Maggio became acting head of the cosche. It was a good time for him; he prospered, built himself a million dollar villa complete with swimming pools and original art works to decorate the walls. Then it all turned sour. Tiring of his wife, he fell for a girl that Brusca junior also lusted after. It started to turn nasty when Giovanni came out of prison in 1992 and wanted to take back his crime family. Riina presided over a sit-down between Di Maggio and the young Brusca. <br /> <br /> When it was over, the Sicilian godfather kissed Di Maggio saying, ‘ Balduccio non e’ un’avancia buttat via!’ (Baldo’s not some old orange to chuck away!)<br /> <br /> But Di Maggio knew a Judas kiss when he saw one, or at least, tasted it. He knew “Toto” Riina was at his most devious and dangerous when he came across like an old country boy. He read the lines not they way they were written but the way they were spoken. Uncle ‘Toto‘ had Baldo in his heart and would surely have him killed in due course. The Godfather’s link to the Bruscas was far more important than his affection for his driver. They were after all, his oldest and closest allies.<br /> <br /> Taking his pregnant girl friend, he fled to Canada, but unable to get a visa, they returned to Italy, heading north to Novara, which lies close to Milan, where Di Maggio had friends.<br /> <br /> The police arrested him there on January 8th 1993, and the thirty-nine year old Mafia boss sat down with the provincial commander of the Novara constabulary, Lieutenant Colonel Vincenzo Girliani, and started talking. He became another pentito, an informer, one of over two thousand who have emerged from the tortured killing fields of the Mafia in Sicily, since the first one, Leonardo Vitale, told an unbelieving Italian court about this thing, Cosa Nostra, called thing, in 1973. <br /> <br /> The thought of being returned to Palermo’s Ucciardone Prison, populated by Riina’s killers, was what finally turned Di Maggio. I’m a dead man, but I’m a man of honour, and I can give you Riina, he said. And he did. He provided information that helped a special team of carabinieri, known as the ROS- Reparto operative Speciale, under the command of Brigadier Mario Mori- track down the most wanted criminal in Italian history. On January 15th 1993, Salvatore Riina was arrested in a Palermo suburb. He had been on the run from the law for over twenty-three years. He was also a monster of the first order, known across the Sicilian landscape as the beast.<br /> </p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236977871,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
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<div style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Salvatore Riina</span></div>
<p><br /> He was born November 16th 1930, in Corleone, the small desolate town, set among the dry and barren landscape south of Palermo. He was one of five children of a poor peasant labourer. Riina never attended school, working first as a child then as a youth, in the fields of the vast estates that surrounded the town. He committed his first recorded crime in 1948, killing a man and wounding another in a brawl over a woman. He served only 6 years of a 16-year sentence, and on his release was taken under the wing of Luciano Leggio, who most likely brought him into the Corleone cosche. <br /> <br /> Leggio was one of the most formidable and deadliest of Mafiosi, who grabbed control of the Corleone family after slaughtering its head, Dr. Michele Navarra in June 1958. With Riina by his side, Leggio pumped over a hundred bullets into Navarra, his car driver, another unfortunate doctor who just happened to be along for the ride that day.<br /> <br /> Over the next five years, Leggio, along with Riina as his second-in-command, purged the Corleone family of its Navarra henchmen, killing at least 140 men in the process. With Leggio as the undisputed head, and Riina as his pit bull, the Corleonisi presented the younger, more viscous face of Cosa Nostra, earning for the town that nurtured it, a unique sobriquet from the Mafia’s American counterparts. They referred to it as Tombstone.<br /> <br /> The seat of power for the Sicilian Mafia had always been Palermo, where at least nine different families operated, competing with each other for the spoils from smuggling, kidnapping and the huge rewards growing out of the contracting boom, fuelled by massive government subsidies following the end of the second world war. These cosche’s looked down on the Corleonisi, treating them as viddami, or peasants, as they waged their own internal wars. These culminated in the incident at Ciaculli in 1963, when seven carabinieri where blown to pieces by a bomb planted in a car. The deaths sent shockwaves through the Mafia, and an unprecedented crackdown by the authorities. 10,000 extra police flooded Sicily and over 1000 Mafiosi were arrested. Included in this sweep, were Leggio and Riina. They went to trial eventually, in 1969, and were acquitted.<br /> <br /> In 1970, Leggio was again arrested, and this time, tried and convicted of the murder of Michele Navarra, and sentenced to life imprisonment. He disappeared before the verdict could be rendered, living the good life in exile until the police caught him in 1974. Moved to a top security prison on the island of Sardinia, he died there in November 1993.<br /> <br /> <br /> Riina, after his 1969 acquittal, was deemed an undesirable, and ordered off into exile for four years to a village near Bologna, on the mainland. He never surrendered himself to the authorities however, disappearing on July 7th 1969. It was the last time that the police would see him until that morning in Palermo in 1993. <br /> <br /> In that almost quarter of a century, there had been many changes in the Mafia. Something akin to a tsunami wave had swept away the old order, replacing it with a monstrous killing machine that would destroy literally anything that would dare to stand in its path - - police officers, politicians, judges, reporters, parliamentarians, even little children. Between 1979 and 1982, the ferocious Corleone Mafiosi killed all the top authorities in Sicily: the President of the regional parliament, the prefect, the chief prosecutor, the top investigative judge, and the head of the opposition Communist party. <br /> <br /> There was even worse to come in the next ten years up to 1992. They killed the head of the Palermo investigative office, the head of the Palermo fugitive squad, an anti-Mafia investigator based in Palermo, the prosecutor of Palermo, businessmen, bureaucrats, Salvatore Lima, a top aid to Andreotti and then in two short months committed perhaps the most infamous assassination of all, destroying in massive bomb blasts, Judges Giovanni Falcone in May and Paolo Borsellino in July.<br /> <br /> Giovanni Falcone had become a symbol in Italy’s prolonged and often fruitless struggle against the Mafia. He had long been on Riina’s hit-list because of his triumphs against the secret society, including the 1986 Palermo maxi-trial, which indicted 338 Mafiosi. Borsellino took over the job of the Sicilian standard bearer of the anti-Mafia crusade on Falcone’s death, and from his first hour in office, his days were also numbered. <br /> <br /> The murders of Falcone and Borsellino were a watershed in Italy’s recognition of just how much a state of siege existed in Sicily. Public revulsion and anger at the massacre of these two brave and resolute magistrates helped remove once and for all, the mystique that had surrounded the Mafia for so many years. They were seen at last, to be simply savage, unmitigated killers, without conscience or scruples of any kind. A monstrous killing machine and Riina was the engine driver at the controls. And then there was the kiss.<br /> <br /> The disclosure of Di Maggio about the meeting between Andreotti and Riina was to say the least, of more than passing interest. It was an event that could be likened to President Ronald Regan meeting John Gotti in that chintzy little room above The Ravenite, and exchanging hugs and kisses. <br /> <br /> Riina, arguably, the most notorious mobster in the world, cohabiting with a man who represented law and order at the highest level, a man who had been the actual head of a country. Could it possibly have happened?<br /> <br /> At a famous trial in 1947, following the massacre of peasant farmers and their families enjoying a Labour Day picnic at Portella della Ginestra, one of the defendants had cried out in his statement, ‘Mafia, police, state, they are all one body, like Father, Son and Holy Ghost.’ <br /> <br /> Did the meeting between Andreotti and Riina simply confirm that this unholy trinity was still alive and well forty years later?<br /> <br /> Andreotti’s link into the Mafia had first been disclosed in 1985 by the ‘Prince of Turncoats,’ Tommaso Buscetta, the Palermo mafioso, who was the first major pentito. After the extermination of the greater party of his biological family, and his cosche by the rival Greco-Corleonesi families between 1981 and 1984, he decided to collaborate with the authorities. Over the years, a further twenty-six Mafiosi would give evidence linking the politician to the secret society. But the evidence of Di Maggio was the most startling.<br /> <br /> On that balmy, September afternoon, he drove a white VW Golf turbo to a warehouse in Palermo, picked up his master, Riina, and delivered him to that address in the piazza Vittorio Veneto. Another Mafiosi met them, a man who he remembered was called Rabito, Salvo’s personal assistant, who led them through the building, and into a room with a parquet floor covered by a big carpet. The room was stuffed with bookcases and tables and sofas, and the walls were hung with painting. On one chair he recognized Senor Salvatore Lima, arguably the most powerful Christian Democratic politician in Sicily. The ex-mayor of Palermo, he had been mentioned by the Italian Parliament anti-Mafia commission 149 times, and had been described as one of the pillars of the Mafia. On another chair sat the Honourable Giulio Andreotti, who he recognized without a shadow of a doubt. His testimony was quite explicit:<br /> <br /> ‘I shook hands with the parliamentarians and kissed Ignazio Salvo…Riina, on the other hand, kissed all three persons, Andreotti, Lima and Salva.’ <br /> <br /> And there was the kiss: a sign of respect, a bonding between and a confirmation among men of equals, an embrace that would come to shake the very foundation on which stood the history and democracy of one of the oldest, civilized countries in the world. On that hot, summer Sicilian afternoon, the small, fragile, hunchbacked minister of foreign affairs rising from the velvet softness of the sofa, to be enfolded by the equally small, but thickset and stocky uncouth mass murderer, who had terrorized part of Italy for almost a quarter of a century. lo Zio Giulio, Uncle Giulio, as he was known in the Mafia, and ‘Toto’ the beast, its omnipotent head.<br /> <br /> The Palermo chief prosecutor, Giancarlo Caselli, compiled a dossier on Andreotti, and in February 1995 laid 96 formal charges against the life senator, alleging his association with the Mafia, not in the passive tense, but as a man active within its power structure. <br /> <br /> The case began on March 27th. 1993 when the office of the Palermo Public Prosecutor requested authorization to investigate Andreotti. The indictments ran to 90,000 pages and Andreotti was ordered to stand trial in September 1995. The thrust of the prosecutor’s case was that Andreotti, in exchange for a key bloc of Sicilian votes, delivered by the Mafia, aided and abetted them from his position of vast influence in Rome, serving in essence, as the Mafia’s protector. <br /> <br /> The major witnesses against the defendant were Mafia informers, including Di Maggio; the prosecution devoting seven pages of their indictment testimony to that kiss. It was a long and torturous litigation that came to be known in Italy, as ‘The trial of the Century.’ There would be 250 hearings, 340 witnesses, and 800,00 procedural pages of testimony spread over the next six years.<br /> <br /> In 1996, Andreotti went on trial again, this time, in Perugia, 150 miles north of Rome, accused in the complicity in the murder of investigative journalist, Mino Pecorelli, who had been gunned down in March 1979. <br /> <br /> A poll in Italy at the time of the trials, showed 67% of the population believed that Andreotti was in bed with the Mafia, but that 54% were sure he would be acquitted; perhaps Italians were simply resigned to that fact that crime and politics in their country were long time bed-fellows. The Sicilian Mafia is perhaps the original and incomparable prototype of what organized crime and politics can achieve when working hand-in-hand. <br /> <br /> On September 24th, 1999, Andreotti was acquitted on the murder charge in Perugia, and a month later, a panel of three judges in Palermo, also acquitted him in his trial on the Mafia conspiracies charges. The complex Italian judiciary process was unable to accept proof of guilt, based as it was almost entirely on the words of the penitenti. <br /> <br /> The public were less than impressed by the fact that Di Maggio for example, had been awarded 500 million lira by the government (less than 200,000 US dollars), and that while in the state protection program, he had somehow been able to stalk, and murder an opponent. <br /> <br /> Riina is serving twelve consecutive life sentences for his life of crime and terrorism. It is save to assume he will never be released. Things wouldn’t get better either. In November 2001 his eldest son, Giovanni, was convicted in the homicide of Giuseppe Giammona, killed in Corleone, on January 28th. 1995, along with his sister, Giovanna and her husband Francisco Saporito, and sentenced to life in prison. The younger son, Giuseppe, went down in December 2004 for 14 years on various charges. Things would not turn out so hot for Di Maggio as well. <br /> <br /> He was arrested on October 14th. 1997 for accessory to murder. In the May of 1996, he had slipped away from his police guard, and travelled to Altofonte, a small town eight miles from Palermo, and on August 30th. had murdered Giuseppe Carfi, a brother-in-law of local Mafia boss, Andrea Di Carlo. Less than six months after Di Maggio’s arrest, on March 21st. 1998, his brother, Emmanuelle, was riddled with eleven bullets while driving on a highway near Palermo. Within two years, Di Maggio would be confined to a wheel chair, suffering from progressive paralysis, the government moving him from prison to prison, as it agonized over whether or not to release him on compassionate grounds.<br /> <br /> Andreotti finally gave up politics and retired from public life. Although his last Hurrah in 2008, helped to tumble the Italian government and the resignation of Romana Prodi, making way for the re-election of Silvio Bersculoni, a man who has almost as many connections to the Mafia as Andreotti himself. He writes regular articles for the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera and apparently keeps himself busy even at the age of ninety-one. If ever there was a survivor it is him. Italians would say, <br /> <br /> ‘He’s behind everything, but he’s so smart, he never gets caught’ <br /> <br /> There was even a popular song about him, and one of its lines went: ‘Who stole the cake? Andreotti. Who’s behind the Mafia? Andreotti.’<br /> <br /> But some things never change. Visit the bleak and barren countryside near Corleone today, and you will still see herds of sheep, goats, cattle and horses being driven by men on mules, everyone carrying a lupara, the traditional Mafia sawn-off shotgun, slung over his shoulder. These are the operators in the old-style Mafia, ripping off the landowners and the contadini, the peasants, with their schemes of extortion, rustling and whenever necessary resorting to violence and murder.<br /> <br /> In an interview before he died, Judge Falcone said, ‘The Mafia is a human phenomenon, and like all human phenomena, it has a beginning, it has a peak and it has an end.’<br /> <br /> It may have been wishful thinking.<br /> <br style="font-style:italic;" /><span style="font-style:italic;">The Mafia is oppression, arrogance, greed, self-gratification, power and hegemony above and against all others. It is not an abstract concept, or a state of mind, or a literary term. It is a criminal organization regulated by unwritten but iron and inexorable rules. The myth of a courageous and generous ‘man of honour‘ must be destroyed, because a Mafiosi is just the opposite.</span><br /> <br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Caesar Terranova, Italian magistrate murdered by</span><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">the Mafia, September 25th. 1979.</span></p>
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The Sun King of the Mafia
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-sun-king-of-the-mafia
2010-11-10T21:08:40.000Z
2010-11-10T21:08:40.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br /> He could easily have been the first Mafia boss of bosses from Sicily to come to the United States, although when he hit New York, he may not yet have reached that lofty position. There were at least three men whose lives crossed his, who would have a crucial impact on the face of organized crime in America. One would try to destroy him, one would emulate him and one, acting as his missionary, would perhaps help establish the foundation for what became perhaps the greatest criminal organization in the nation's history. He was semi-illiterate, but at the height of his power, was one of the most powerful men in the kingdom of Sicily, ruling for over 25 years, helping to nurture a criminal dynasty, laying the foundation for the modernization of the Sicilian Mafia.<br /> <br /> He was Vito Cascioferro. His name is often spelt incorrectly as Cascio Ferro and sometimes even as Vito Cascio Iron. Ferro, translates into English as iron.<br /> <br /> He was born on January 22nd. Some sources say June 25th. All agree on the year-1862- maybe in the city of Palermo or in the Bisacquire province of Palermo in the small town of Sambuca Zabut ( its name changed in 1923 to Sambuca di Sicilia ). His father was a coltivatore diretto, that is, he owned a smallholding and also came from traditional tough campiere stock, the private armies retained to protect the vast estates of Western Sicily. He was a close friend and associate of a local landowner, Baron Inglese, whose holdings included the town of Bisacquino, about 80 miles south of Palermo city, not far from where Vito was born. The town is also noted as the birthplace of a particularly distinguished America, the late and much admired movie director, Frank Capra.<br /> <br /> Vito grew up into hot-headed, illiterate and rebellious youth, a natural candidate for the ranks of the brotherhood, and was a made member by his early twenties. His branch of the Mafia had perhaps grown out of an organization called the stoppaglieri or “the draughtsmen,” formed in Monreale, west of Palermo, sometime prior to 1870. His criminal resume which started in 1894, would come to include charges of participating in twenty murders, eight attempted murders, five robberies with violence, thirty-seven acts of extortion and fifty-three other offences including arson, kidnapping and threatening behaviour. And that's only the ones the law knew about. <br /> <br /> No run-of-the-mill hoodlum, he was in his youth, tall and handsome with bronze skin and dark, chestnut eyes that matched the colour of his flowing hair. He did not learn to read or write until well into his adulthood, coached and tutored by his wife, a schoolteacher in Bisacquino.<br /> </p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236975893,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
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<div style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Vito Cascioferro</span></div>
<p><br /> <br /> In 1893, the former mayor of Palermo, and one-time director of the Bank of Sicily, Marquis Commendatore Emanuele Notarbartolo, had been attacked while on a train journey between Caltanissetta and Palermo city. Stabbed to death, his body was flung from his carriage into a field. A powerful Mafia Don, called Raffaele Palizzolo was accused of complicity in his murder, and the plot somehow also revolved around Cascioferro. The actual killer was probably a notorious Mafioso called Giuseppe Fontana, who would reappear in connection with another highly publicized murder sixteen years later. Vito disappeared for a time, and travelled to Tunisia to avoid the heat from the police investigation.<br /> <br /> Back in Sicily, in 1899, he was again under investigation by law enforcement officials in connection with the kidnapping of a well known Palermo socialite, Baroness di Valpetrosa. Probably as a result of this, Cascioferro made the decision to once again leave Sicily and travel, this time to America. According to an intelligence report written by the Royal Carabinieri, he had a sister, Franscesca, who lived there, in New York, in an apartment above a drapery shop on 103rd. Street, in East Harlem. Vito travelled to New York from the French port of Le Havre on the SS La Champagne, embarking on September 1st. and arriving in New York on September 30th. 1901. According to the ship's manifest, he claimed to be a 'dealer' and was carrying $30. He listed his contact in New York as: 'cousin on Main Street.'<br /> <br /> There was a lot of logic in this move, at this time. Through his local power, and his many connections, Don Vito may well have been pivotal in the accord between the Sicilian Mafia and the Black Hand movement, especially in New York. Prior to him, allegiances had been between people rather than conventional groups. He may have perfected the links between different Sicilian Mafia families and the many and confusing Black Hand factions and taken it up to the next notch once he settled in America, except for the actions of a little, tough Italian-American cop who had an abiding hatred for Italian criminals. <br /> <br /> Vito soon became involved with the criminal underworld in New York, a seething, shifting mass of conflicting forces and alliances that was constantly at war. The conflict between Manhattan based Mafiosi and Brooklyn's numerous Camorra gangs, would rage off and on for nearly thirty years, culminating in what crime historians refer to as “The Castellammarese War” of 1930-31.<br /> <br /> Cascioferro linked into the loose knit coalition of Sicilian gangsters headed by Giuseppe and Nicholas Morello, working alongside Vincent and Ciro Terranova. They in turn, used as back-up, the terrifying enforcer, Ignazio Lupo, often erroneously referred to as Saietta, the brother-in-law of Giuseppe “Joe” Morello. Soon after he arrived in New York he was working with a gang of forgers and counterfeiters led by a woman named Stella Fraute, narrowly escaping arrest when she and her gang were rounded up by U.S. Secret Service agents.<br /> <br /> Vito’s future in the New York underworld may well have been assured and his continuing presence there would undoubtedly have had a notable impact on its future, except for the actions of a man, whose naivety or cupidity cost him his life, and also indirectly led to Vito Cascioferro hitting the trail again.<br /> <br /> On April 14th., 1903, a woman called Carmelina Zillo, was emptying trash onto a vacant lot at the corner of Avenue D and East 11th. Street, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, when she came across a barrel into which was stuffed a man who resembled chopped liver. Stabbed 17 times, his head was almost severed from the body. The corpse in the barrel became famous for a number of reasons, not the least being that it formed the basis for the first story ever produced in America about the Mafia, called, “The Barrel Mystery”, written by William J. Flynn, a Secret Service Agent, and published by McCann in 1919.<br /> <br /> The dead man was eventually identified as Benedetto Maddonnia, who had occasionally used an alias, Ben Morris, and who lived in Buffalo, New York. He had it seemed, been trying to threaten the Morello brothers over their treatment of another member of their gang, a suicidal tactic, that brought him nothing but expected trouble. Interestingly, Maddonnia was not the first mobster in New York to turn up dead in a wooden tub. In 1902, Joe Catania, a Mafia associate, was found with his throat cut, crunched up in barrel in a swimming hole, where 73rd Street met the bay in Brooklyn.<br /> <br /> The man thought to have solved the Maddonnia murder, was a short, thickset, tough and extremely aggressive NYPD officer, a lieutenant called Giuseppe “Joe” Petrosino. He headed a distinct “Italian” squad in the detective bureau, the first and only secret service unit in the force's history, and went after the Mafia and Camorra mobsters as though he was working a personal crusade to cleanse the city of Italian criminals. Through his efforts and detective work, he tracked down the killer of Maddonnia- a hulk, who also hailed from Buffalo- called Tomasso Petto, also known as “Petto the Ox.” Maddonnia had been part of a currency counterfeiting ring run by the Morello brothers; at the time he tried to screw his partners. His death and the manner in which he was delivered into it, was clearly intended to be a message to others.<br /> <br /> Although Petto was arrested, the evidence against him was not strong enough to convict, and he went free. He changed his name to Luciano Perrino, moving away from New York, and was subsequently gunned down by an unknown assailant on the door step of his home in Brownstown, Pennsylvania.<br /> <br /> The pressure Petrosino brought to bear on the barrel murder mystery and its ongoing developments involving the Morrello gang, also pointed to Don Vito as a key player in the gang. Before the police could arrest him however, he slipped out of New York, taking up residence in Brooklyn and then upped stakes and left town, moving south, and living for a time on Royal Street in New Orleans, home to one of the oldest Sicilian immigrant communities in the United States. He stayed there until embarking for Sicily on September 28th. 1904. He had been in America, exactly three years short of two days. It's tempting to try and imagine how the future shape of the American Mafia might have changed, had he stayed on.<br /> <br /> In the Crescent City, he connected in with Paul di Christina, head of the local Mafia clan that was operating under a low profile, following the murder of police chief Hennessey on Girod Street in 1890, and the subsequent public uprising and lynching of eleven Sicilian suspects suspected of participation in the assassination. Christina had been a partner in Palermo, of Francesco Matesi who went sometimes by the name of Francesco Genova, and the two had fled Sicily following their involvement in the murder of seven members of the Sienna family in 1900. Paul di Christina finished up in New Orleans, where he became a major Mafia boss until shot-gunned to death by one Pietro Pepitone, a grocer, in 1909.<br /> <br /> Cascioferro's hatred of the tough New York detective would fester on for five years, and then he would be presented with the perfect opportunity to exact revenge. According to the Royal Carabinieri, Vito always carried with him a snapshot of the American policeman, Petrosino, to remind him how much he hated the cop.<br /> </p>
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<div style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Joseph Petrosino</span></div>
<p><br /> Christina, whose real name was Paulo Marchese, had arrived in America originally at the port of New York. He had likewise tangled with Petrosino, and left the city as a result, also harbouring a hatred for the courageous cop. He may have been involved in the events that subsequently unfolded in March 1909, in the capital of Sicily.<br /> <br /> By 1909, the unit New York Police Commissioner Theodore Bingham had established, a 15 man Secret Service branch of the agency, exclusively “to crush the Black Hand and Anarchists of the city,” was operating at full steam. Lieutenant Joe Petrosino persuaded Bingham to let him travel to Italy to collect accurate intelligence from his contemporaries there, about the Italian criminals who were creating so much mayhem in New York, and to also set up an espionage ring in Sicily to gather information ongoing. He may also have been researching a counterfeiting ring out of Italy which was a cause for concern of the U.S. Treasury, and linked into the New York activities of the Morrello's. It all seemed a good idea at the time and ear-marked as a highly sensitive exercise, but word of Petrosino's visit became public knowledge before he had even arrived at his destination.<br /> <br /> Early in February, 1909, he sailed for Italy, aboard the liner Duca di Genova, travelling first class, arriving in Rome on February 21st. It was a difficult passage due to the bad, winter weather. After meeting various officials in the Italian government and police departments, he travelled south to Palermo, arriving there from Naples on February 28th on a mail boat.<br /> <br /> He checked in to Weiner’s Hotel de France, room number 16, at five lire a night, registering under the name of Simone Valenti di Giudea. His attempts at camouflaging his presence were unsuccessful. His arrival in Palermo became known to his enemies before he even stepped off the boat. It would seem, from that moment on, everywhere he went, and everyone he met, was on record with the people who hated him the most. <br /> <br /> At approximately seven-thirty on the evening of Friday, March 12th. he left the hotel and sought out his usual place for an early dinner. Dressed in a black suit, and a long gray overcoat, sporting a derby and with an umbrella hooked over his arm (light rain was falling that evening), he crossed the Piazza Marina, walking from his hotel to the restaurant he had been using since his arrival.<br /> <br /> At the Café Oreto, he sat at a corner table, with his back to a wall enjoying pasta, fish, potatoes, cheese with peppers, fruit and a half-litre jug of wine. At some point in the evening, two men approached him and spoke with him. Petrosino listened and then waved them away. Soon after, he paid his bill and left the restaurant. At eight forty-five, he walked to the Piazza Marina, six hundred and sixty feet away, to catch a trolley back to his hotel, and he was standing near the base of the Garibaldi statue at the small garden, his back to the square, pissing into the bushes, when he was shot dead.<br /> <br /> According to an article in the New York Herald on Sunday, March 14th, he'd been approached at 9 p.m. by two men. They fired a number of shots at him, and as fell, he drew his own handgun, firing twice at his killers. According to a memorandum sent to Police Commissioner Bingham, from the American consul in Palermo, two men came up to Petrosino, and shot at him four times, three bullets hitting him, in his right back, puncturing both lungs, a through and through in his throat, and one into the side of his face. He died instantly. The Herald story got it wrong. Joe was unarmed, having left his Smith and Wesson revolver in his valise in the hotel room. A heavy, Belgian revolver lay near the body, one barrel discharged. Investigators assumed it had belonged to one of the gunmen.<br /> <br /> A contemporary police report published later, into Petrosino’s death, gave away an important detail that had never been previously recorded: “Petrosino was shot when, walking by the fence of the gardens, the poor detective had stopped to satisfy a corporal need.” His murder had to be seen as an act of public execution; it was a lesson, and a warning to others not to come meddling in the affairs of the Mafia. Poor Joe, his bladder bursting from the jug of wine, stops to take a leak, and gets blown out of his socks. Wanting to humiliate him, the killers, known in Sicily as sicario, hit men, choose just the right moment. The only witness, officially at least, was a seaman, Alberto Cardella, from the ship, Calabria, docked at the port, who had been waiting at the tram terminal about one hundred feet away. He ran to the scene, but Joe lay dead. The sailor saw two men run off into the darkness, heard a carriage drive away. On the ground, speckled by the gentle rain, he saw a derby and an umbrella and a gun. <br /> <br /> In Petrosino’s pockets, among letters of introduction and his notebook, was a picture postcard addressed to his wife. It read, “A kiss for you and my little girl, who has spent three weeks far from her daddy.”<br /> <br /> So who were the killers, and who was behind the hit? <br /> <br /> The Palermo police headquarters received an anonymous letter dated 13th March, from New York. It claimed that the organizers of the murder were: Giuseppe Morello, Giuseppe Fontana, Ignazio Milone, Pietro Inzerillo (who ran a bar/brothel at 260 Elizabeth Street, Manhattan, called 'Stella d'Italia,') and the two Terranova brothers, step brothers of Morello. All of these men were allegedly 'Black Handers.' The contract on Petrosino may have been handed down to them by Vito Cascioferro.<br /> <br /> One of the two gunmen may indeed have been Giuseppe Fontana, who left Sicily soon afterwards and made his way to America. An alleged member of the Villabate cosca, forty-seven year old Fontana was well known to the Palermo police department and had been arrested for criminal activities ranging from counterfeiting to murder. <br /> He was a major suspect in the murder of Emanuele Notarbartolo, the banker. Another report suggests that the killers were Giovanni Campanillo, an ex-New York based Camorra boss who'd been deported earlier in the year as a result of Petrosino's rigorous investigations, along with a friend and murderous partner, Errico Alfano. Both of these men were spotted in Palermo not long after the detectives ship had docked. <br /> <br /> To complicate things further, other accounts indicate the killers were Carlo Costantino and Antonino Passananti who had sailed for Sicily from New York, the day after Petrosino left the country. To muddy the waters a lot deeper, Costantino had in fact been one of many men arrested in the Barrel case in New York. To complicate matters more, there was another man in Palermo that night called Giuseppe Giunta, who had arrived in Palermo direct from New Orleans. He linked into Paulo Marchese back in New Orleans. So were New York and New Orleans working together to set up this contract on Petrosino?<br /> <br /> Then, what about the two men who called into the cafe while Joe was eating? They may well have been Paolo Palazzotto, who Petrosino had caused to be deported from New York for criminal activity, and Ernesto Militano, who was a local tough guy. When Joe left the diner, did they follow Joe off and off him?<br /> <br /> The one I like the best for no reason other than that he sounds really evil, is a man known as Schiffizano, so called because he was involved in the selling of blood from slaughtered animals. This man had two brothers in New York who had been investigated by Joe. A man of flagitious moods and violent nature, he may well have been a local butcher called Giovani Ruisi, and was in fact one of the few men arrested by Baldassare Ceola, the Police Commissioner of Palermo City, although like the rest, he was released for lack of hard evidence.<br /> <br /> One target, ten possible shooters, and as a bonus, Casioferro waiting in the wings. <br /> <br /> The sort of case that would have given Colombo, the television detective, a migraine just thinking about it. <br /> </p>
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<div style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Were these the killers of Joe Petrosino?</span></div>
<p><br /> In due course, the police commissioner of New York prepared a detailed report on the killing of Joe Petrosino, and nominated Constantino and Passananti as the most likely suspects. Neither man was ever tried for the crime however.<br /> <br /> William J. Flynn, head of the U.S. Secret Service, claimed that in 1911, Giuseppe Morello, imprisoned in the Atlanta Penitentiary, had confessed to him that Constantino and Passannanti had been the killers of Petrosino, acting under the orders of Vito Cascioferro.<br /> <br /> The visit to Sicily to flush out information on the Mafia was meant to be secret. On February 20th. the day before he arrived in Rome, the New York Herald published details of the trip. Every man and his dog knew where he was going and why. One theory about his murder that later emerged, suggested that Marchese had plotted the murder from his base in New Orleans. Another, that the Italian police, in the payment of the Mafia, set it up. Yet another, that the two men who approached him in the restaurant, who were apparently informers working for Joe, were in fact working for his killer, and were busy making him the patsy for his own hit.<br /> <br /> In all probability, his arch nemesis, Vito Cascioferro was plotting his death, day by day as Joe moved closer and closer to Palermo. Like a big, fat tarantula spider, the Mafia boss waited near his web, ready to spin in and destroy the man he hated and whose death he had lusted after for over five years. Although examining magistrates interviewed fifteen people, including the Mafia don, no one was every charged with the murder.<br /> <br /> After Petrosino’s murder, the American consul, Bishop, found in Petrosino’s valise, a piece of paper written in the detective’s handwriting: “Cascioferro, resident of Bisaquino, a dreaded criminal.” <br /> <br /> The policeman had carried his killer’s name. The murderer his victim’s photograph.<br /> <br /> Joe Petrosino’s body was returned to New York and buried in St. Patrick's old cathedral where, in 1907, he had married his sweetheart Adelina Saulino. The funeral ceremony witnessed by over 250,000 people became a major event in the New York calendar. The funeral procession took over five hours to travel from the church to the grave where he was laid to rest in Calvary Cemetery, in Brooklyn. His widow received a city pension of $1000 a year to support herself and her daughter. She lived on with her memories, for another 48 years, dying in 1957 at the age of ninety-nine.<br /> <br /> There are still traces in New York of that brave police officer, one hundred years after his brutal murder. In lower Manhattan, on the corner of Lafayette and Kenmare Streets, sits the Lieutenant Giuseppe Petrosino Park and monument. It is small, littered with garbage, and ignored by the public. Ironically, across from the north-west corner, on the junction of Lafayette and Spring Streets sits a building that in the 1930s was a hub of anarchist and mob activity. <br /> <br /> His photo hangs on the wall on the 13th floor of One Police Plaza, commemorating the only officer of the force killed in the line of duty outside of America. <br /> <br /> Joe Petrosino's life and death was the subject of one of the first feature length films (silent) ever produced in the U.S.: 'The Adventures of Lieutenant Petrosino' made in 1912, by the Feature Photoplay Company of New York, produced and directed by Sydney Goldin. <br /> <br /> On the night of Petrosino's murder, Vito Cascioferro dined with a Sicilian parliamentary deputy, the right honourable De Michele Ferrantelli, who supposedly had the best cook in Sicily. Vito loved his food, as his huge belly testified. Some legends have it, he had enjoyed the meal, leaving between courses, to shoot Petrosino, giving him the coup de grace as the seriously wounded detective slumped against the garden fence, and then returning to savour the delights of the cassata, coffee and grappa, and his favourite monogrammed Hungarian cigarettes. The deputy and his guests swore on oath that Cascioferro never left the table that night.<br /> <br /> Privately, Don Vito made no secret of his role in the killing. “My action,” he claimed, “was a disinterested one and in response to a challenge I could not afford to ignore.”<br /> <br /> Every Wednesday following the execution of Petrosino, Cascioferro dined with his friend the politician, on the same meal, that has become a legend in Palermo, and is still created to this day in some of the better restaurants there. It consisted of roasted olives followed by chauchas (green beans) in mint, then salmon garnished with hinojo seeds, which preceded the course of baked lamb in lechtal sauce. It ended with a special Sicilian cassata. <br /> <br /> It is apparently a meal to die for.<br /> <br /> By the time Petrosino lay dead on the rain washed cobblestones of the Piazza Marina, Vito Cascioferro, at the age of 47, was at the top of his profession. If not the capo di tutti capi, he was the nearest thing to the boss of bosses in the Sicilian Mafia. He held power over at least seven major Mafia cosche, or families, in Palermo province: Bisacquino, Campofiorito, Corleone, Contessa Entillina, Chiusa Scalfani, Burgio and Villafranca Sicula, as well as some of the districts of Palermo City, and his presence and word appeared to be honoured by the capos of gangs he didn’t officially control. Prominent figures on both sides of the law owed him favours, and rumour had it that if he felt so inclined, he could arrange the recovery of any property stolen anywhere in Sicily. It was largely because of his presence and forceful personality that the Mafia flourished through the first thirty years of the twentieth century, and in Rome, legislators knew what was expected of them in return for his ability to deliver votes when needed. <br /> <br /> He established his image as an enlightened modern man of the twentieth century by making a pioneer trip in a hot-air balloon. He is accredited with creating the framework of extortion called <span style="font-style:italic;">pizzi</span>, an onomatopoeic word in the Sicilian dialect which translates roughly into English as “rackets.” Pizzi is the beak of a small bird, and in his usual conservative and understated way, Cascioferro spoke of levying a “toll” calling it in Sicilian: <span style="font-style:italic;">fari ragnari a pizzi-</span> “wetting the beak.”<br /> <br /> “Don’t be greedy” he would say, “you have to skim the cream off the milk without breaking the bottle.”<br /> <br /> His descendants are still wetting the beak to this day, across Sicily.<br /> <br /> Meticulous in appearance, he would often appear in public in a frock-coat, wide-brimmed fedora, pleated shirt and flowing cravat. His conduct described as princely, his demeanour modest but majestic, he was a king of sorts. Under his reign, peace and order was observed, albeit, the peace of the Mafia, which was hardly what the official law of the Kingdom of Italy would have imposed, but not many people stopped to draw too fine a distinction. <br /> <br /> In his later years, he sported a long, white beard, and grew his hair long. A favourite of high society in Palermo, he was constantly in demand to host art exhibitions, and organize social parties and musical evenings. He was often reported gambling significant amounts of money at the Circoli dei Civili, a prominent gentleman's club, in Palermo. Sometimes, dressed in Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, he would go on thrush-shooting jaunts, and join the Palermo aristocracy to pelt children of the poor with cakes and candies on All Saints Eve. He was a magnet to women, and once had to chastise his barber for selling off his hair-clippings to be used by a manufacturer of amulets.<br /> <br /> The primary social meeting place in Palermo at this time was the Birreria Italia Café, and Don Vito was often a visitor. Dressed like a Mississippi gambler, he would arrive at eleven in the morning to drink the full, dark roasted coffee, and have his hand kissed by hangers-on. By his side, would be his pearl-encrusted mistress, who legend has it, was not only a woman of nobility, but who had also persuaded him to make her the first female member of the Mafia. Now that's something to try and get to grips with.<br /> <br /> Luigi Barzini, the Italian writer claimed Cascioferro brought the Mafia to its highest perfection without undue recourse to violence.<br /> <br /> In 1921, Cascioferro gave his blessing to one of his youngest and most promising <span style="font-style:italic;">picciotti</span>, or soldiers, to leave Palermo and travel to New York. The word <span style="font-style:italic;">picciotti</span>, literally “the boys” in the Palermitan dialect, had acquired a sinister meaning by the start of the twentieth century. It was the vernacular term for the gunmen of the Mafia. He often said he thought the young man had talent and would go far in the life. He had, and he did. The youth idolized the Don and may well have spent the rest of his life trying to justify his mentor's approval. He stepped off the S.S. Vincenzo Florio, in Newport, Virginia on December 23rd, 1921, and into the pages of mob history.<br /> <br /> His name was Carlo Gambino.<br /> <br /> Sometime between 1924 and 1925, another of his protégées, this time a mature man in his forties, also left Sicily bound for New York. His objective may have been to establish a bridge-head for the eventual and triumphant return of Don Vito back into the New York underworld. Some crime historians claim that there was in fact no link between the two men. If there was, he was unable to achieve this goal, but he had a major, although transient impact on the formation and future of the American Mafia. <br /> <br /> His name was Salvatore Maranzano.<br /> <br /> Early in the 1920’s, things started to change for the worse for the Mafia. Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator became the premier of Italy in 1922. Visiting Sicily in 1924, he was humiliated at the hands of the Mafia. Surrounded by a mob of bodyguards he arrived in the small town of Piani dei Greci, the only town in Sicily, in Italy in fact, to have a Greek Orthodox Church, and was gently rebuked by the Mafia mayor, Don Ciccio Cuccia, described as a “malevolent frog of a man.” <br /> <br /> “There is no need for so many police,” the mayor is reported to have said. “Your Excellency has nothing to fear here when you are with me.” The notion than anyone could control absolute power, anywhere in Italy, except himself, infuriated Mussolini, a man with an ego bigger than Mount Etna, and within a year he had promoted into the prefecture of Palermo police, one of his closest aides, Cesare Mori.<br /> <br /> His mandate was simple. To destroy the Mafia. Mori also hated them with a passion. He announced his intentions when he made his first public address following his appointment:<br /> <br /> "My name is Mori and delinquency must disappear or I shall have people killed. If Sicilians are afraid of the Mafia, I'll show them I'm the meanest Mafioso of them all."<br /> <br /> For four years, instituting a program he called “Plan Attila,” Mori had all legal rights in Sicily suspended, torture was used to obtain confessions and suspected mafioso were often tried and convicted of non existent crimes. Victims of hearsay and innuendo were put in chains and shipped by the boat load to penal island prisons off the coast of Sicily. If anyone came close to destroying the Mafia, it was Mussolini and Mori.<br /> <br /> Of all the eleven thousand men taken into custody and imprisoned, Mori’s greatest catch was Don Vito Cascioferro. Arrested and tried on a trumped-up charge of smuggling, in 1928, through most of his trial, the Mafia boss contented himself with disdainfully ignoring the proceedings of the court. Along with the smuggling charges, the law remanded him in connection with twenty murders, a number of robberies and thirty-seven acts of extortion and fifty-three other offences. Before sentence, on the smuggling charges, he was asked whether he had anything he wanted to say in his defence. Don Vito replied, “Gentlemen, as you have been unable to obtain proof of any of the numerous crimes I have committed, you have been reduced to condemning me for the only one I never committed.”<br /> <br /> Another version of the downfall of Cascioferro suggests he was in fact arrested earlier, in 1926, and condemned by the Court of Assizes of Agrigento to prison for the murder of Francesco Falconieri and Gioacchino Lo Voi.<br /> <br /> Sentenced to life for either of these crimes, and imprisoned in the gaunt and daunting Bourbon Ucciardone prison in Palermo, and died there in 1945. Prisoners took their turns in cleaning out his cell and making his bed. If a guard got too overbearing, Don Vito spoke to the governor, and the jailer was discharged.<br /> <br /> At some point, he had a prisoner carve into one of the prison corridor walls a motto in Sicilian dialect which read, “<span style="font-style:italic;">Vicaria, malalia e nicisitati, si vidu lu cori di l’amicu:</span> “In prison, in sickness and in want, one discovers the heart of a friend.” <br /> <br /> It remained long after he died, covered and protected by a sheet of glass for future generations of prisoners to ponder. It stayed in place until sometimes in the 1960s when the current prison governor had it painted over.<br /> <br /> Don Vito finally died of heart failure at the age of eighty-three. His cell became almost a shrine, and was from then on, always used to hold prisoners of distinction. However, one Mafia researcher, Arrigo Pettaco, claimed in fact he died earlier, in 1943 while imprisoned at Puzzuoli Prison, near Naples. The prison was evacuated during the war, and his guards fleeing an allied air attack, left him behind, to die of thirst.<br /> <br /> Vito Cascioferro laid the foundation for a criminal organization without equal, anywhere in the world in his time. He beget generation after generation of men who would come to carry out and develop his concepts: Calogero Vizzini, who was followed by Giuseppe Genco Russo, who handed over to Dr. Michele Navarra, who was then brutally murdered and his position grabbed by the homicidal maniac, and youngest Mafia boss in history, 19 year old Luciano Liggio. From him the reins were taken over by Michele Greco, and then on to Salavatore “Toto” Riina, who lifted the Mafia’s propensity for violence and destruction to new levels. From there it was all downhill through other monsters like Giovani Brusca and Bernardo Provenzano. Between 1977 and 1992, in a population of five million people, there would be over 10,000 underworld killings and assassinations, as a consequence of a power struggle within the <span style="font-style:italic;">sistema del potere</span>, the system, the power structure, by which organized crime is more often referred to than Mafia or Cosa Nostra on the island of Sicily.<br /> <br /> To-day in Sicily, the Mafia is on the defensive for the first time in generations. However it is believed that there are still around 600 cosches involving perhaps up to 25,000 “made” men and over 250,000 associates. This, on an island with a population around the size of Atlanta, Georgia. In 2006, it was estimated the Mafia generated revenues of around 30 billion Euro ($US 46 billion approx.) <br /> <br /> There is little doubt that the Mafia will continue to operate in one form or another. The <span style="font-style:italic;">sistema del portere</span> is now as much a part of the Sicilian landscape as olive trees. As one boss gets taken down, there is sure to be another who will appear to take over the seat of power. <br /> <br /> Nonetheless, there was only ever one Sun King of the Mafia, and he was Don Vito Cascioferro.</p>
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