murder - Blog 2.0 - Gangsters Inc. - www.gangstersinc.org
2024-03-29T05:01:35Z
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/murder
Three members of Coney Island gang admit killing man in retaliation for him setting up their boss
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/three-members-of-coney-island-gang-admit-killing-man-in-retaliati
2019-09-27T05:30:00.000Z
2019-09-27T05:30:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/three-members-of-coney-island-gang-admit-killing-man-in-retaliati" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237133475,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="9237133475?profile=original" /></a>By Gangsters Inc. Editors</p>
<p>Three members of a Coney Island-based <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Gangs" target="_blank">street gang</a> named the West End Enterprise pleaded guilty in federal court in Brooklyn on Tuesday and Wednesday to a racketeering conspiracy involving their participation in the murder of Antwon Flowers.</p>
<p>The West End Enterprise is comprised of individuals residing in and around the Sea Rise Apartments, the Gravesend Houses and Surfside Gardens, also known as the “Mermaid Houses,” located in Coney Island. Between approximately 2011 and October 2017, the gang committed various criminal acts, including <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Drugs" target="_blank">narcotics distribution</a>, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Robbery" target="_blank">robbery</a>, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Extortion" target="_blank">extortion</a> and <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Murder" target="_blank">murder</a>.</p>
<p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Avenging a boss</strong></span></p>
<p>On January 17, 2016, 28-year-old Tysheen “Billz” Cooper, 33-year-old Michael “Mitty” Liburd, and 30-year-old Maurice “Flaco” Washington agreed to murder Antwon Flowers in retaliation for what they believed was his role in setting up the killing of a West End Enterprise leader the previous day.</p>
<p>As captured on surveillance video, Liburd and Cooper followed Flowers as he walked out of the Mermaid Houses, at which point they pulled out firearms and shot at Flowers, with Liburd’s shot striking Flowers in the head and killing him. Liburd and Cooper then fled in a getaway car that Washington had parked nearby.</p>
<p><strong>Get the latest on organized crime and the Mafia at Gangsters Inc.'s <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=News">news section</a>.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Follow Gangsters Inc. on <a href="http://twitter.com/GangstersIncWeb" target="_blank">Twitter</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRucl2n04Nd1FN7BgyMjdvg" target="_blank">YouTube</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/gangstersinc/" target="_blank">Instagram</a> and like us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank">Facebook</a></strong></p>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p></div>
Eight Trey Crips gang leader charged with murder in crowded Brooklyn nightclub
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/eight-trey-crips-gang-leader-charged-with-murder-in-crowded-brook
2017-06-14T11:37:53.000Z
2017-06-14T11:37:53.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/eight-trey-crips-gang-leader-charged-with-murder-in-crowded-brook" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237083492,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237083492?profile=original" width="520" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>A leader of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Crips" target="_blank">Eight Trey Crips</a> gang in New York was charged with murder in-aid-of racketeering on Monday. 37-year-old Larry Pagett, photo above, also known as “Biz,” “Biz Loc,” and “Molotovbizzz” faces life in prison if convicted.</p>
<p>The murder Pagett is charged with has been caught on surveillance video. On August 28, 2015, a man can be seen entering the Buda Hookah Lounge in the Prospect-Lefferts Gardens section of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Brooklyn" target="_blank">Brooklyn</a>. The place was crowded, with people enjoying themselves.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-guards-go-on-assaulting-inmates-without-consequences" target="_blank">How prison guards keep assaulting inmates without consequences</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p>Then the man pulls out a gun and shoots alleged <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/street-gangs" target="_blank">Folk Nation</a> gangster Chrispine “Droppa” Philip several times in the back of the head as the victim tries to run away.</p>
<p>With “Droppa” Philip “dropped” for good, the hitman got his ass out of there, climbing over several other bar patrons who were lying on the ground in terror.</p>
<p>Prosecutors claim it was Pagett who fired the shots. “As alleged, the defendant in this case shot and killed a rival gang member to elevate his status in the Eight Trey Crips,” stated NYPD Commissioner James P. O’Neill. “The deadly shooting happened inside of a crowded lounge, injuring several others in the shooting, and several more with the panic that ensued.”</p>
<p>“Gang members have shown they will do whatever necessary to maintain their control over their turf and retaliate against those who they see as a threat,” stated Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney. “The violence these gangs spread impacts people every day, so we will continue to go after the leadership who use murder and violence to threaten our communities.”</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/street-gangs" target="_blank">Street Gangs section</a> or <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/black-organized-crime" target="_blank">Black organized crime</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p>
<p> </p></div>
Profile: Gambino crime family capo Bartolomeo Vernace
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/gambino-capo-bartolomeo-vernace-found-guilty
2017-03-08T06:30:00.000Z
2017-03-08T06:30:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-capo-bartolomeo-vernace-found-guilty"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237012093,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237012093?profile=original" width="520" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>After more than thirty years, Gambino capo Bartolomeo “Pepe” Vernace finally had to face the music in 2013 when he was found guilty of a 1981 murder and various racketeering charges. His victim was an innocent bar owner who had nothing to do with the mob. Vernace on the other hand rose rapidly through the underworld while dodging murder charges for years.</p>
<p>It may sound corny, but it was just like a scene from the movie Goodfellas. Apparently Henry Hill and Martin Scorsese perfectly captured the mob ethos of that period. On the night of April 11, 1981, wannabe mobster Frank Riccardi was celebrating his 24th birthday at the Shamrock Bar on Jamaica Avenue. He was having a grand time, fooling around and getting drunk, until someone spilled a drink on a woman he was with and ruined her dress.</p>
<p>Be it alcohol, a short temper, or simple disrespect, Riccardi reacted with violence, starting a bar brawl with the other patron which ended when bar owners Richard Godkin and John D’Agnese broke it up and led Riccardi and an associate out the door and onto the street. As the owners went back inside, Riccardi decided he wasn’t done yet.</p>
<p>Within half an hour he was back at the Shamrock Bar with two friends by his side. One of them being Bartolomeo Vernace, who was an associate in the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-overview">Gambino Crime Family</a> at the time, the other was Ronald “Ronnie the Jew” Barlin, the man who stood by him during the bar brawl. The reason they were there was clear to all present. As they entered the bar with guns drawn, Riccardi shot D’Agnese in the face. Vernace was struggling with Godkin, a Vietnam vet, against an arcade machine. As Vernace got the upper hand, he shot him in the chest and left him to die.</p>
<p>Bartender Joseph Patrick Sullivan witnessed the whole scene. He later testified about what he saw, but he wouldn’t at that moment. Nor a decade later. He was too frightened. According to Sullivan, a few days after the violent murders, Gambino mobster Ronald “Ronnie One Arm” Trucchio summoned him to come see him at his social club. Trucchio was a close associate of Vernace. When Sullivan arrived, no one was there. Still, he got the message: Don’t talk to the cops.</p>
<p>Killing two innocent men over nothing isn’t the mob’s modus operandi. It attracts unwanted heat from police and alienates people in the neighborhood. The three men responsible were in big trouble with their higher ups. And they knew it. They decided to lay low while both police and the Gambinos investigated what exactly had happened.</p>
<p>The situation got complicated when it turned out that one of the victims, John D’Agnese, was the boyfriend of a girl named Linda Gotti, daughter of Peter Gotti and the niece of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-boss-john-gotti-sr">John Gotti</a>. Two men who just a few years later would lead the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-overview">Gambino Family</a>. Both father and uncle sat down with Linda and told her not to cooperate with the police. Omerta, the code of silence, was an important tradition within the Gotti-household and they made that clear to the young woman grieving over her dead boyfriend.</p>
<p>Despite having behaved like a loose cannon and angered the Gottis, Vernace still had enough backing within the Gambino family. According to rumors, Vernace’s uncle had a lot of pull and managed to get him a pass. The other men managed to make amends without getting whacked as well.</p>
<p>With the mafia off their backs, the three men still had to deal with the law. But thanks to their mob connections witnesses were so intimidated that prosecutors failed to make a fist: Charges were dropped against Barlin; Riccardi was acquitted in a state murder trial; and Vernace was acquitted in 1998 in a state trial.</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237012464,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237012464,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237012464?profile=original" width="300" /></a>The acquittal meant that Vernace was back on the streets for good. The Gambino Family took notice and a year later, in 1999, made him an official member of the crime family. After the senseless killing of <a href="http://youtu.be/7pQ6fd6iO_c" target="_blank">Billy Batts</a>, Joe Pesci’s character thinks he will become a “made guy” as well, only to find out the mafia has a long memory and decided to use the ceremony as a ruse to murder him. It would have been a fitting end for Vernace. Especially considering he was in on the killing of Linda Gotti’s boyfriend and the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-boss-john-junior-gotti">Gotti clan</a> still ruled the Gambinos during the years he was made. But eighteen years later any beef that existed had long since been squashed. Besides, Vernace (photo right, Vernace left) was bringing in a lot of money.</p>
<p>Over the next two decades, his power within the mafia grew as he became actively involved in robbery, drug trafficking, loansharking, and gambling, while operating a large and profitable crew from a café on Cooper Avenue in the Glendale neighborhood of Queens. His rank rose as well, going from a soldier to a captain who served on a three-member ruling panel that led the Gambino Family.</p>
<p>His rise was halted on January 20, 2011, when he was arrested in a big <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/will-historic-mob-bust-really">nationwide mob bust</a> that saw over 120 members and associates of La Cosa Nostra in handcuffs, including leaders of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-colombo-crime-family">Colombo Family</a> in New York and the Patriarca Family in New England.</p>
<p>When Vernace heard the charges against him he must have had a moment of déjà vu. Prosecutors topped off Vernace’s indictment with the 1981 double homicide of Richard Godkin and John D’Agnese. And this time witnesses weren’t afraid to testify.</p>
<p>After a five week trial, the jury came back with its verdict. Guilty. As part of the racketeering conspiracy, the jury found that Vernace participated in all racketeering acts alleged in the indictment, including the murders of Richard Godkin and John D’Agnese, heroin trafficking, robbery, loansharking, and illegal gambling.</p>
<p>The 64-year-old mobster now faced life in prison because back in 1981 his friend came to him with the request to come and go out to kill two bar owners for doing their job. Meanwhile, the man who was the source of all this violence remains unknown. That evening over thirty years ago, he spilled a drink on a nice dress that was subsequently “ruined” and left a pretty lady pretty angry, causing her gangster boyfriend to get a buddy and some guns to set things straight and murder two men.</p>
<p>Three years after being found guilty, Vernace passed away behind bars at age 67.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237012481,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237012481?profile=original" width="520" /></a></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-overview">Gambino crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p>
<p> </p></div>
Serbian drug gang busted in Spain and Czech Republic
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/serbian-drug-gang-busted-in-spain-and-czech-republic
2016-03-09T12:20:30.000Z
2016-03-09T12:20:30.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/serbian-drug-gang-busted-in-spain-and-czech-republic"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237061278,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237061278?profile=original" width="374" /></a>By Gangsters Inc. Editors</p>
<p>The Spanish national police and law enforcement authorities from the Czech Republic and Serbia, supported by Europol, have disrupted a Serbian organized crime group operating in Spain and the Czech Republic. This criminal network is suspected of committing a vast array of criminal offences, including three murders and the production and large-scale distribution of cannabis.</p>
<p>Police apprehended 25 suspects of mostly Serbian nationality. During house searches in Spain, six indoor cannabis cultivations were seized together with €50,690 euros, presumably the resulting profit of drug trafficking.</p>
<p>In the Czech Republic, police carried out house searches in private residences, seizing four indoor cannabis cultivations, 30 kilograms of marijuana ready to be sold on the retail market and €18,500 euros.</p>
<p>The case started when Serbian Police informed their Spanish counterparts that members of an organized crime group originating from the town of Novi Sad, who were responsible for committing a number of criminal offences ranging from violent robberies to murders, had moved to Spain to continue their criminal activities with a specific focus on cannabis production and distribution.</p>
<p>One of the most high-profile members of the group, who was already being investigated in different European countries and had a criminal record in Serbia, was detected in a luxury residential area of the city of Lloret del Mar (Gerona) in July 2015. This enabled the investigators and Europol to establish his links with this organised crime group also based in the same area.</p>
<p>Simultaneously, Serbian authorities reported that the main member of the group had been living in the Czech Republic, where he was investigated for his alleged participation in a murder case that had triggered contacts with the Czech authorities under the coordination of Europol.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/europe-overview">European organized crime section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p></div>
Mob Hit in South Philadelphia
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/mob-hit-in-south-philadelphia
2012-12-14T12:00:00.000Z
2012-12-14T12:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/mob-hit-in-south-philadelphia"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237017676,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237017676?profile=original" width="551" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>The Philadelphia crime family is finally returning to its dysfunctional roots. After a decade of relative peace and quiet under the guidance of boss Joseph Ligambi, South Philadelphia was shocked on Wednesday by the first mob hit in years.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, around 3 p.m., gunshots were heard across Iseminger Street in Philadelphia. Gino DiPietro, 50, was shot several times in the back. Fatally wounded he was pronounced dead fifteen minutes later. Authorities allege DiPietro was a mob associate. A neighbor told the Philadelphia Daily News that “[DiPietro] was in and out of trouble. He'd been in jail for drugs.”</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237018058,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237018058,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237018058?profile=original" /></a>The Daily News also <a href="http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20121213_South_Philly_slaying_could_be_city_s_first_mob_hit_in_a_decade.html" target="_blank">reported</a> that “police were tight-lipped about the shooting Wednesday, but one law-enforcement source said DiPietro may have made enemies by cooperating with authorities while incarcerated. His brothers are known mob associates.”</p>
<p>Reputed Philly soldier Anthony Nicodemo (left), 41, is being charged with the murder after police matched a bullet fragment found on DiPietro's clothes with a gun found in Nicodemo's car. Nicodemo is a rising player in the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-bruno-crime-family">Philadelphia mob</a>, linked to many crimes. In 2009 he pleaded guilty to participating in running a sports bookmaking ring inside the Borgata Hotel Casino poker room. The FBI also thinks he was involved in the shooting death of John "Johnny Gongs" Casasanto in 2003.</p>
<p>The murder comes at a time when the leadership of the Philadelphia mafia is on trial for racketeering. Boss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/philly-mob-boss-own-words-to-be-used-against-him">Joseph Ligambi</a> was credited by many inside and outside the mob with bringing order to a chaotic crime family. After decades of bloodshed, Ligambi had started rebuilding what was left of the Philly mob.<a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236996859,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236996859,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236996859?profile=original" /></a></p>
<p>Ligambi’s (right) low-key and nonviolent way of conducting business is reflected by the lack of violent acts in the charges he and his co-defendants face at their <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/philly-mob-boss-joseph-ligambi">current racketeering trial</a>. The brazen hit by a mob soldier on a mob associate, who is rumored to have turned rat, can only damage Ligambi’s defense.</p>
<p>But maybe Ligambi thinks differently. Maybe it’s time for a thorough damage control while he still has any control over his soldiers on the street. Of course, these are all theories. We will have to wait and see how this story unravels. In time all our questions will be answered. All it takes is one informant with an all-access pass to the Philadelphia underworld.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-bruno-crime-family">Philadelphia crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p>
<p> </p></div>
US Soldiers Busted in Drug Cartel Murder-For-Hire Plot
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/us-soldiers-busted-in-drug-cartel-murder-for-hire-plot
2012-03-31T15:05:40.000Z
2012-03-31T15:05:40.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/us-soldiers-busted-in-drug-cartel-murder-for-hire-plot"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237021070,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237021070?profile=original" width="525" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>Two US Army soldiers are among six men charged with running a drug trafficking ring and offering their services as a murder-for-hire team to undercover DEA agents posing as members of the Mexican Los Zetas drug cartel.</p>
<p>The Los Zetas drug cartel is infamous for its ultraviolent ways in a Mexican underworld that is already known for its <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/for-united-states-mexico-is">vicious cartels</a> and gangs that paint entire cities red with blood. Comprised of rogue members of an elite unit of the Mexican army, Los Zetas started out as an enforcement wing of the Gulf Cartel. In 2010, they left the Gulf Cartel and went into business for themselves.</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237021466,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237021466,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237021466?profile=original" width="275" /></a>The same can be said about the two US Army soldiers who were arrested last week by the DEA. Kevin Corley (29) and Samuel Walker (28) were selling the expertise they picked up during their time in the US military to the highest bidder and had no qualms about using it for illegal activities. Not even if it meant dealing with a group as notorious as the Los Zetas drug cartel.</p>
<p>First Lieutenant Corley (right) was discharged from the Army earlier this month, while Walker is assigned to the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson, a unit that Corley served with before his discharge. Both men are thus well trained in military tactics and capable of actions that could prove deadly for their targets.</p>
<p>The two soldiers were introduced to the DEA agents posing as members of Los Zetas by Marcus Mickle (20) and Calvin Epps (26) who tried to organize a shipment of marijuana in return for stolen weapons. According to the press release: “As they began discussions about the distribution of marijuana in the Columbia, S.C., area, Mickle and Epps allegedly told undercover agents about a friend in the military who could provide military weapons to them. The agents were later introduced to Corley who allegedly identified himself as an active duty officer in the Army responsible for training soldiers. He offered to provide tactical training for cartel members and to purchase weapons for the cartel under his name.”</p>
<p>The press release continues: “Over the next several months, Corley continued to communicate with undercover agents regarding the services he could provide the cartel as a result of the training, experience and access to information and equipment afforded him as an active duty soldier. According to the criminal complaint, Corley allegedly mailed an Army tactics battle book to the agents, thoroughly explained military tactics and told undercover agents he could train forty cartel members in two weeks.”</p>
<p>With such an enthusiastic soldier at their disposal, the DEA agents decided to up the ante. “On Jan. 7, 2012, Corley traveled to Laredo and met with undercover agents at which time the agents inquired about his ability to perform "wet work," allegedly understood to mean murder-for-hire, specifically, whether he could provide a team to raid a ranch were 20 kilograms of stolen cocaine were being kept by rival cartel members. Corley confirmed he would conduct the contract killing with a small team, at a minimum comprised of himself and another person who he described as an active duty soldier with whom he had already consulted. According to the complaint, Corley ultimately agreed to $50,000 and five kilograms of cocaine to perform the contract killing and retrieve the 20 kilograms of cocaine and offered to refund the money if the victim survived.”</p>
<p>Always eager to make a good impression on his criminal employers Corley further offered to provide security for Mickle and Epps’ purchase of 500 pounds of marijuana for transport from Texas to South Carolina. He traveled with them to Laredo, where they loaded the marijuana into a tractor trailer and attempted to escort it back to South Carolina. However, the tractor-trailer carrying the load was stopped and seized in La Salle County, Texas, on Jan. 14, 2012. But business continued, the DEA claims. “Corley allegedly arranged for 300 pounds of marijuana to be delivered to Mario Corley in Charleston, S.C., and allegedly assisted in brokering 500 pounds of marijuana and five kilograms of cocaine for Mickle and Epps and discussed the distribution of these narcotics in South Carolina, Texas and Colorado.”</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237021880,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237021880,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237021880?profile=original" width="281" /></a>"On March 5, 2012, Corley delivered two AR-15 assault rifles with scopes, an airsoft assault rifle, five allegedly stolen ballistic vests and other miscellaneous equipment to an undercover agent in Colorado Springs, Colo., in exchange for $10,000. At the meeting, Corley and the undercover agent allegedly again discussed the contract killing and the retrieval of the cocaine which was to occur on March 24, 2012. Corley allegedly stated he had purchased a new Ka-Bar knife to carve a “Z” into the victim’s chest and was planning on buying a hatchet to dismember the body."</p>
<p>Corley, Walker (right), and Davis traveled to Laredo and met with undercover agents to discuss the location of the intended victim, the logistics of performing the contract kill and their respective roles. The three were arrested, during which time a fourth suspect, Kevin Corley’s cousin Jerome, was shot and killed. A subsequent search of the vehicle in which Corley and the other co-conspirators arrived revealed two semi-automatic rifles with scopes, one bolt-action rifle with a scope and bipod, one hatchet, one Ka-Bar knife, one bag of .223 caliber ammunition and one box of .300 caliber ammunition.</p>
<p>The men are charged with conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine which carries a possible punishment of a minimum of 10 years and up to life in prison and/or a $10 million fine; use of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking or violent crime which could result in up to 10 years in prison served consecutively to any other prison term imposed. Those charged in the indictment for conspiracy and possession with intent to distribute more than 100 kilograms of marijuana, including Corley, Mickle and Epps, also face 5 to 40 years in prison if convicted.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/drug-cartels">Drug Cartels section</a> or <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/black-organized-crime" target="_blank">Black organized crime</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p>
<p> </p></div>
An American Businessman In Moscow: The Story Of Paul Tatum
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/an-american-businessman-in
2010-11-25T16:23:42.000Z
2010-11-25T16:23:42.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236986061,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p><br /> By David Amoruso<br /> Posted in 2001<br /> <br /> The first time the Western world became familiar with the crime entangled Russian business scene was when American businessman Paul Tatum was murdered by unknown assailants, reputedly over a business dispute. The murder sent shockwaves through the business community and had American congressmen screaming for justice. But after a few months it seemed like all was forgotten, Tatum as well as the corrupt Russian business scene. Maybe forgotten but hardly out of mind.<br /> <br /> Paul Tatum was born in 1955 in Edmond, Oklahoma. He graduated from Edmond Memorial High School. In High School Tatum already showed an enormous drive to succeed and it became clear to his fellow students and his teachers that Tatum would excel at whatever he pursued. After dropping out of college Tatum began hopping from one business deal to and he eventually ended up doing fundraisers for the Republican Party. Tatum first came to Russia in 1985 at the age of 29 when he was with an American trade delegation. Tatum immediately saw the potential of the Russian market and began planning his path to Russian success. In 1987 after two years of planning and preperation Tatum was ready to conquer Russian business, Tatum set up a business center for foreign firms in Moscow: a first for the communist city. Not long after he and several other American businessmen founded Americom International Corporation. Two important associates in Americom were H.R. "Bob" Haldeman and Bernie Rome, two former members of President Nixon's chief of Staff, Tatum came into contact with them while he was working as a fundraiser for the Republican Party. They helped Tatum get an 'in' with all the important people in Russia and enabled him to set up and expand his business without too much dificulties.<br /> <br /> By 1990 Tatum's big break came. The break came when Tatum's company RedAmer Partnership joined up with Radisson Hotel Corporation and signed a contract with Goskom Intourist and later the Moscow City Government that agreed to construct an American hotel combined with a business center that would go by the name Intourist Redamer Hotel and Business Center (later changed to Radisson Slavyanskaya Hotel). A year later in June of 1991 the Hotel opened it's doors. At the numerous parties at the hotel and business center Tatum mingled with powerful figures from Russian business, politics and eventually ,and inevitably, the Russian underworld.<br /> <br /> The Moscow Underworld is a maze filled with a different Organized Crime group or gang on every corner. In the mid 1990s the Russian interior ministry did research on the amount of gangs in Moscow and came up with around 200 organizations, about 20 of those had branched out to other parts of the world. The Moscow underworld is made up out of groups from several different ethnic backgrounds. The main groups are Slavic (Russian), Georgian, Armenian and Chechen. With so many groups in Moscow the city's businesses are inevitably tangled up with Organized Crime and vice versa. Organized Crime is said to control around 75% of all private businesses in Russia. With Russian criminals threatening legit business and demanding pay offs and ineffective Russian law enforcement it is not surprising then that the demand for private security sky rocketed seeing to it that across Russia private security businesses stepped into the forground. In seven years 25.000 Russian security firms were established employing between half a million to a million workers. These workers are mainly ex Spetznaz commandos or war veterans who are desperately seeking money and would rather stay legit then go into crime. The funny and dangerous thing about these security firms is however that most of them are controlled by Organized Crime groups. With this concrete basis Organized Crime has a lockdown on the entire legit business world in Russia. It was this shady world that Paul Tatum had to start dealing with.<br /> <br /> Tatum's Hotel was doing good business and things went great, a little inconvienant for business was the August 1991 Russian Coup but after the frenzy died down Tatum had even more opportunities. It is rumored that he was the one responsible for a direct phoneline between the White House and Gorbachov's camp. After the coup things settled down again and Tatum went back to business. A business that was ever changing. In 1992 Goskom Intourist was liquidated and the Moscow City Government became a new partner in the deal. No big deal for Tatum at first, his company still owned 80% of the 50% (50% that belonged to the American partners in the deal, the other 50% belonged to the Russian companies and Moscow City Government) of the property. But with the Moscow City Government came a partner that held a lot of power, more than any of the other partners in the deal. The Moscow City Government had connections throughout the Russian government and it's system, it could pressure anyone to give in to their demands and their demands would become clear very fast.<br /> <br /> Paul Tatum and The Moscow City Government had a quiet working relationship for about two years. After that time it started to rumble. In January of 1995 problems arose with the General Director of the American Partnership. The American hadn't received his Russian visa and wasn't going to receive one either. The loss of the General Director was a big blow for Tatum because now that position would be taken over by someone from the Russian partnership. Umar Dzhabrailov was named General Director. Dzhabrailov was a Chechen who had heavy connections within the Moscow City Government and used those connections to get into the position of General Director. But those weren't the only connections Umar Dzhabrailov had, several law enforcement agencies including the F.B.I. and Interpol list Dzhabrailov as a member of Chechen Organized Crime. A report in the Russian press went even further calling Dzhabrailov a "known contract killer and one of a handful of Chechen mafia bosses operating in Moscow." Dzhabrailov doesn't deny his ties to Organized Crime but says they are "only social". With Dzhabrailov as General Director things made a turn for the worse for Paul Tatum.<br /> <br /> Paul Tatum didn't realize it that fast but the Russian partnership had made ousting him it`s priority....by any means possible. While Tatum went about his business the Russian side showed it's teeth. On St Valentine's Day 1995 one of Tatum's bodyguards was found beaten and stabbed in the chest with a pen knife. The bodyguard also had a message from his attackers: "Tell Paul it's high time he left for home." Most businessmen would've gotten the message and would've left town immediately, but not Paul Tatum. Tatum had grown a fondness for the Moscow nightlife, the clubs, the women. Tatum had enough money and liked to spend it and some even say he started acting like a mobster throwing around cash and surrounding himself with gorgeous women. Meanwhile the cold war for control of the Hotel and business center continued. Tatum had upped his bodyguards and after the attack on his bodyguard took extra security measures he now always had his bodyguards guard empty rooms so no one could plant bombs in them. He also decided to fight Dzhabrailov in the media he called him a "genuine Mafioso" who "has threatened he can kill me at any time" The fight had turned ugly and was now spilling from the boardrooms onto the public scene.<br /> <br /> After months of warring between the Tatum and Dzhabrailov in February 1996 it looked like there would be a solution to Tatum's problems. The solution was to bribe Dzhabrailov and the Moscow City Government. If Tatum would pay the sum of $1 millions dollars to a certain person all his troubles would end. $500.000 dollars would go to the Moscow City Government and the other $500.000 dollars would go to Dzhabrailov so that he would resign or step down as General Director. But instead of paying Tatum decided to take the matter to court. Tatum sued the Russian partners for $35 million dollars additional payments and payment of damages. In the media Tatum remained defiant as ever saying "They will have to shoot me to get rid of me" Things were heating up and Tatum was bracing himself for the hit. He now had said goodbye to the fast nightlife of Moscow preferring to stay in his Hotel in suites 850 and 852. Tatum was now told repeatedly by U.S. embassy oficials to leave Russia, Tatum replied in U.S.A. Today with: "I feel like I'm fighting a one-man battle." "They'd rather pay than stand up and fight." On September 30, 1996 Tatum went even further when he published a full page ad in a Moscow paper directed to Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov:<br /> <br /> "Yuri M. Luzhkov: I must tell you that not one person here in Russia or abroad is fooled. All know of the dangerous activities. I implore you to show the world your resolve and commitment to become the catalyst to solve these grave problems-peacefully, efficiently, with fairness and justice for the investor and for the legal agreements under which their original activities were created. The world now awaits this signal. This is your choice and your crossroads. Where do you stand, Yuri M. Luzhkov? In the shadows or the bright sunlight?"<br /> <br /> It would be Tatum's last defiant gesture.<br /> <br /> On November 3rd, 1996 around 5.00 PM Paul Tatum left his Hotel and headed towards the Kievskaya metro station, where he had arranged to meet someone. When Tatum arrived there with his bodyguards the person he was supposed to meet wasn't there, instead a man walked up towards Tatum and shot him eleven times from five meters distance with an AK-47. Tatum's bodyguards did nothing to protect there boss, the killer dropped his weapon and fled the scene unharmed. Tatum's bodyguards rushed their wounded boss to the hospital but to no avail Paul Tatum died shortly after his arrival. Shortly after the news of Tatum's death Dzahrailov and the Moscow City Government took undisputed control of the Radisson Slavyanskaya Hotel and businesscenter. He denied any role in the Tatum murder but did say: "What goes around, comes around". Dzahrailov also saw to it that a planned memorial service at the hotel was nixed as well as Tatum's wishes to be buried at the prestigious Novodevichy Cemetery. Tatum was eventually cremated and interred in the Moscow Novodevitsji cemetary. "Paul never learned it was their country," said Tatum's Americom associate Bernie Rome. "He was like a bull in a china shop. He didn't understand you have to play by Russian rules. It's all very sad."<br /> <br /> Tatum's murder shows how corrupt Russian business had become. Russian business is controlled by Organized Crime groups and powerfull businessmen who use strong arm tactics and criminal ways to get deals done. With Russian law enforcement and the Russian courts inefective Russian business has absorbed Mafia tactics to get it's demands done. It will be interesting to see how and if Russian business will ever de-criminalize and return to normal business procedures such as sueing each other over a business dispute instead of putting out a murder contract.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/russian-mafia-overview">Russian Mafia section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p></div>
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>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/thom-l-jones-mob-corner">Thom L. Jones' Mob Corner</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Thom L. Jones & Gangsters Inc.</strong></p></div>
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.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<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>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/thom-l-jones-mob-corner">Thom L. Jones' Mob Corner</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Thom L. Jones & Gangsters Inc.</strong></p></div>
Camorra Boss: Augusto La Torre
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/camorra-boss-augusto-la-torre
2010-11-18T21:00:00.000Z
2010-11-18T21:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236998484,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p><br /> By David Amoruso<br /> Published: May 1, 2007<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236998658,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Augusto La Torre took the place of his father and became boss of the clan which ruled in the north of the province Caserta, in the south of Lazio and along the coast of Domizio. The empire of the La Torres stretched out into The Netherlands. Augusto's brother <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/camorra-boss-antonio-la-torre-charged-with-plotting-murder-of-ant" target="_blank">Antonio</a> (picture right) had set up legit businesses in Aberdeen, Scotland. (Antonio also ran some illegal businesses there.) In March 2005 <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/camorra-boss-antonio-la-torre-charged-with-plotting-murder-of-ant" target="_blank">Antonio was arrested</a> in Aberdeen because of an Italian arrest warrant. He had been sentenced to 13 years in prison in Italy for racketeering. The La Torres mainly invested their ill gotten money in the United Kingdom. Because of their businesses in the UK it is alleged the La Torre clan even made a non Italian a member. Brandon Queen is the first British (Scottish) member of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/camorra-overview">Camorra</a>. He is in prison in England and receives a monthly salary, something only members of the Clans receive.<br /> <br /> Mondragone was the first Italian community that was disbanded because of infiltration by the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/camorra-overview">Camorra</a>. The La Torre clan had their base in Mondragone, and ruled it with an iron fist. They had a certain way of disposing of bodies which was dubbed alla mondragonese. They dump the bodies in a well, then they throw in a handgrenade. The body is blown in tiny pieces and covered in dirt, hidden forever.<br /> <br /> Eventhough the clan was heavily involved in trafficking narcotics Augusto didn't want to see any drugs in his territory. He prohibited the sale or use of drugs. Anyone who broke those rules was killed. A junkie who, to support his habit, started dealing drugs in Mondragone was taken for a ride, killed, and injection needles were injected all over his body. When Paolo Montano, a soldier in the Clan, got addicted to cocaine one of his best friends invited him to a farmhouse. There Augusto shot him. Augusto demanded total loyalty from his men, and he got it. When Augusto became a <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gangsters-inc-s-mafia-speak">pentito</a> (government witness) in January 2003 all his men did the same. Augusto confessed that he committed and ordered 40 murders. The La Torre Clan's empire was worth hundreds of millions of euros.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/camorra-overview">Camorra section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p></div>
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>
<p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236978865,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<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>
<p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236980465,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<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>
<li><strong>Back to <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/thom-l-jones-mob-corner">Thom L. Jones' Mob Corner</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p></div>
The Message: Don’t Fuck With Antonino Accardo
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-message-dont-fuck-with
2010-11-10T18:00:00.000Z
2010-11-10T18:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p>By David Amoruso<br /> Posted on March 13, 2010<br /> Originally written for Mob Candy Magazine<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236977882,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />It was 1951. The Italian-American Mafia, known as La Cosa Nostra, was doing great. Throughout the United States the mob held sway. From the East coast all the way to the West coast, and everything in between was controlled by twenty-some mob families.<br /> <br /> But not all families were equal. The five New York families and the Chicago family, known as The Outfit, held the most power. But where the five New York families had to compete for criminal talent, and fight over territory, Chicago had no such problems.<br /> <br /> Well, there were some problems. During the days of Al Capone there was some competition, but they were dealt with in violent fashion. And by the 1940s, the "Capone mob" controlled Chicago.<br /> <br /> By the late 1940s the "Capone mob" was called The Outfit, and was run by Antonino "Joe Batters" Accardo (photo right). He had acquired his nickname during his days as an enforcer for Al Capone. Accardo had smashed the skulls of two men with a baseball bat, an act that impressed his superiors, Capone allegedly said: "This boy is a real Joe Batters."<br /> <br /> Accardo would turn out to be a much sharper boss than the man who made him a member at age twenty. One reporter wrote: "Accardo has more brains for breakfast than Al Capone ever had all day." He ran a tight ship. Under his leadership The Outfit forbode its members to deal drugs, and unlike in other cities, the rule was enforced. Several drug dealers turned up dead, sending a clear message to others looking to make a quick buck. Accardo didn't need the money the drugs provided, he had enough. Matter of fact, in 1951 he had just bought his dream house.<br /> <br /> The Accardo family had for years lived in a modest ranch house at 1431 Ashland Avenue in the Chicago suburb of River Forest. The house did not attract any attention, which was a good thing, but at some point Accardo must've asked himself why he didn't enjoy his hard earned millions. What's the use of risking your life, when you can't enjoy the wealth that comes with it?<br /> <br /> And so he bought a twenty-two room mansion at 915 Franklin Avenue for $125,000. The house was built by a millionaire manufacturer in 1930 for $500.000. Needless to say, Accardo bought the house for a very nice price.<br /> <br /> The house included high vaulted rooms, an indoor pool, a gun and trophy room, a pipe organ, a walk in safe, wood spiral staircases, carriage and guest houses on the backyard half acre. It was surrounded by a seven-foot-high wrought iron fence and two electrically controlled gates. After moving in, Accardo added a $10,000 black onyx bathtub and an indoor, two-lane bowling alley. He had the plumbing refitted with gold fixtures and added a massive barbecue pit to the backyard. For the Outfit leader the house was a way of showing Chicago he was top dog, and had the wealth to prove it.<br /> <br /> By the late 1970s he had stepped back, letting others do the work and take the heat. But he was still available for advice. By all accounts he still was the most powerful mobster in Chicago, and thus a good man to have as a friend.<br /> <br /> Harry Levinson was one of those men who could call Antonino Accardo a friend. Levinson had a successful jewelry store on North Clark Street. When he went to work one morning he found his store in a mess. He had been robbed of over $1 million in jewelry. He called 911 straight away. When the cops arrived they told Levinson that the thieves had done a superb job, leaving no traces. But they would do their best in finding them. Of course this didn't sound reassuring to Levinson. He knew he wouldn't get his jewelry back even if the burglars were caught. So he decided to call his friend Joe Batters.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236977072,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Levinson explained his problem to Accardo, who told him not to worry. A call was made to Las Vegas where The Outfit's Anthony Spilotro (photo left) protected the mob's casino skimming operations. Spilotro had been a burglar and knew the Chicago scene. He was asked if he knew who could've pulled off such a heist. Spilotro knew just the man, and pointed them to John Mendell. Shortly thereafter the entire loot was returned to Levinson.<br /> <br /> In January of 1978 Accardo and his wife Clarice went to their condo in Indian Wells, to enjoy the sun, entrusting their house to long time friend Michael Volpe. But their holiday would be short lived. On January 9 they received a call from Volpe who told them someone had broken into their home. Nothing had been stolen but the house had been ransacked. This burglary was a personal insult to Accardo, no doubt about it. Someone was mocking him and it didn’t take long for Accardo to find out which burglars might have an issue with him. The thing is, Accardo wasn't the type of guy you made fun of, and the burglars would find out...very soon.<br /> <br /> Las Vegas enforcer Anthony Spilotro was called back to Chicago to oversee this piece of business. On January 20 police found the body of Bernie Ryan. His throat had been slashed from ear to ear and he had been shot four times. Ryan was a known burglar, and when police discovered his body he had a police scanner on him, which is used by a lot of burglars to monitor police activity. Then, a known associate of Ryan was found dead. Steven Garcia's throat had also been slashed from ear to ear, but instead of being shot, Garcia had multiple stab wounds.<br /> <br /> The next to turn up dead were Vincent Moretti and Donald Swanson. Moretti had been badly tortured, presumably because he was Italian and was expected to know better than break into the home of the boss. Moretti had been castrated and disemboweled. His face had been burned off with an acetylene torch. And he and Swanson also had their throats slashed. On February 20 police discovered the body of John Mendell, the man who could defeat most burglar alarms and who was believed to be the mastermind behind the burglary had also been tortured before his throat had been slashed.<br /> <br /> It seemed as if the group of burglars who were responsible for the grave insult had all been dealt with, but Accardo wasn't finished. John McDonald was found on April 14, his throat slashed and he was shot in the head and neck. On April 26 Bobby Hertogs was found with his throat cut and his body riddled with bullet holes. Hetogs was the final member of the crew of burglars who could have been or were involved in the burglary of Accardo's home. But the bodies kept dropping.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236981060,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />In September of 1978 a federal grand jury held hearings regarding this situation. Accardo was called to testify, but he took the fifth and revealed nothing. Then Michael Volpe, the man responsible for watching the house, was called to testify. He spent a lot of time before the grand jury. Too much time. On October 5 his family reported him missing, and he hasn't been seen since.<br /> <br /> The heat on Accardo intensified after that when the FBI searched his house and found $275,000, with some money bundles wrapped in bank wrappers from the Valley Bank in Las Vegas. Accardo must've been worried. He had to eliminate two more men, men who could tie him to the killings of the burglars. In 1979 two Chicago Outfit mobsters were murdered. John Borsellino and Gerry Carusiello had taken care of the burglars and had now themselves been taken care of. No more ties to Accardo. The $275,000 seized in the raid on Accardo's home was later returned to him. He never did any jail time in connection to these killings. Interestingly he never spent a night in jail in his entire life. He died of heart failure at Chicago’s St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital on May 27, 1992 at age 86. </p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-chicago-outfit-overview">Chicago Outfit section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p>
<p> </p></div>