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2024-03-29T07:29:41Z
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Profile: Gambino crime family boss Carlo Gambino
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/gambino-boss-carlo-gambino
2015-03-25T07:36:51.000Z
2015-03-25T07:36:51.000Z
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<p><br /> By David Amoruso<br /> Posted in 2002<br /><br /> Carlo Gambino was born on August 24, 1902 in Palermo, Sicily. He arrived in the US in 1921 and settled in Brooklyn with help of relatives and friends who had already made it their home. He would later help his two brothers when they arrived in the US. In the United States Gambino got involved in crime and in 1930 he was arrested for larcency in the operation of the "handkerchief pill game". By the 1930s he was heavily involved in bootlegging. From the money he made through bootlegging he bought restaurants and other legit fronts. After prohibition in 1939 Carlo Gambino continued the bootlegging and in May 23, 1939 received a 22 month sentence and a $2.500 dollar fine for conspiracy to defraud the United States of liquor taxes. Eight months later the conviction was thrown out and Gambino was a free man again. During the second World War Gambino made millions from ration stamps. The stamps came out of the OPA's offices. First Carlo's boys would steal them. Then, when the government started hiding them in banks, Carlo made contact and the OPA men sold him the stamps. All in all by the wars end Gambino had made millions through the stamps and the bootlegging.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236989884,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Gambino also got involved in the narcotics trade. Gambino traveled to Palermo several times to set up the routes and make the deals. Using Sicilian men Gambino imported the narcotics into the United States. By 1957 Carlo Gambino had moved up in the Mangano Crime Family, he had become Underboss of Albert Anastasia. He also had a loving wife Catherine and three children (two sons and a daughter). 1957 was a great year for Gambino, on October 24, 1957 his boss Anastasia got whacked while he was getting a shave in the barber shop of the Park Sheraton Hotel. With Anastasia gone Gambino assumed leadership of the Mangano Family, exactly his plan since it was Gambino who was behind the Anastasia hit. Listed as a labor consultant to the outside world Gambino was leading his Crime Family into better times.<br /> <br /> Gambino was making loads of money by now. In addition to the illegal income Gambino also made loads with his legal businesses. Gambino owned meat markets, bakeries, restaurants, nightclubs, linen supply companies and on and on. Life was great for Gambino. His health wasn't good but with both his blood and crime family doing well and money pooring in he didn't mind. RICO hadn't made it's grand appearance yet and turncoats weren't as common as they would be during the 1990s. The government knew who Gambino was and what he did for a living but to get to him was impossible. Gambino who entered the United States as an illegal alien still hadn't become an American yet and so that's where the government tried to take Gambino down. They tried to get him deported, but failed time after time. In 1971 Gambino's wife Catharine died. His health was detoriating fast after that. His heart problems kept playing up and by 1975 Gambino felt it was time to choose his successor.<br /> <br /> And there he made the only mistake during his reign as boss of the Mangano/Gambino Family. He chose Paul Castellano over his Underboss Neil Dellacroce. This decision cut the Gambino Family in two factions and would create a power struggle a decade later. But in the end Carlo Gambino is considered one of the great bosses of La Cosa Nostra. He died on October 15, 1976 of natural causes in his Massapequa, Long Island home.</p>
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Profile: Gambino crime family boss John "Junior" Gotti
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/gambino-boss-john-junior-gotti
2013-11-12T12:30:00.000Z
2013-11-12T12:30:00.000Z
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<p><br /> By David Amoruso<br /> Posted: March 10, 2007<br /> Updated on: August 12, 2008<br /> <br /> "<span style="font-style:italic;">I know my father loved me, but I got to question how much, to put me with all these wolves. This is the world you put your kid in? So much treachery. ... My father couldn't have loved me, to push me into this life.</span>" – <span style="font-weight:bold;">John “Junior” Gotti</span><br /> <br /> John “Junior” Gotti was born on February 14, 1964. His father, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-boss-john-gotti-sr">John Gotti Sr</a> would become the most famous mob boss since Al Capone. It has been said many times, John Gotti Sr had charisma. He walked the streets in his expensive suits, and had an air of being untouchable surrounding him. After winning several court cases against him, he got the nickname “The Teflon Don.” John Gotti Sr was at the top of the world, and on the cover of TIME magazine. On top of the Gambino Crime Family after orchestrating the murder of boss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-boss-paul-castellano">Paul Castellano</a>. The media attention would be his downfall though. The FBI was obsessed with putting him behind bars. In April 1992 they succeeded, John Gotti Sr was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Gotti Sr put his 28 year old son in charge of the crime family.<br /> <br /> Junior Gotti became a made guy, a Mafia member, on Christmas Eve in 1988. Two years later he was made a captain, and two more years later he was Acting Boss of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Gambino" target="_blank">Gambino Crime Family</a>. A meteoric rise if there ever was one. With the rise came the money. Junior bought a six-bedroom Colonial mansion on three acres of rolling hills in Mill Neck, an exclusive community on the North Shore of Long Island.<br /> <br /> In January of 1998 Junior was arrested and charged with extorting the owners and employees of the Scores nightclub; armed robbery of a drug dealer; telephone calling card fraud; loansharking and gambling. In April 1999 he pleaded guilty in a deal carrying a maximum of seven years and three months in prison, $1.5 million in fines, forfeitures, restitution and court costs to charges that include bribery, labor racketeering, gambling, loansharking, tax evasion and lying on a mortgage application. In October 1999 he began serving his sentence.<br /> <br /> Just a few weeks before being released from prison Junior was indicted again. This time he was charged with racketeering, extortion, securities fraud and loansharking. The biggest charge was the kidnapping and shooting of radio host Curtis Sliwa. Sliwa had been badmouthing Gotti Sr on his radio show. Junior allegedly ordered his men to “teach Sliwa a lesson” for disresprecting his father. The government’s star witness was Gambino capo Michael DiLeonardo, who had been made during the same ceremony as Junior, and was a good friend of him as well.<br /> <br /> Junior Gotti went to trial saying he had quit the mob in 1999. To bolster his claims Gotti’s <a href="https://www.jeffreylichtman.com/" target="_blank">attorney Jeffrey Lichtman</a> had 100 hours of recordings of Gotti's talks with close friends inside the bleak visiting room of a prison in upstate Ray Brook. The FBI had begun taping Junior’s prison conversations on March 13, 2003. The tapes give interesting insights in Junior’s views on mob life during and after his father’s reign.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236976269,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />"My father on the street made you want to be a part of it, because he was that kind of guy." "You had to be part of it. You wanted to feel as close as possible to him. The only way was by being that. You wanted to be in it. When he left, John, the picture changed." "I finally realized that when my father was here, it was a real thing. It meant something. He really, really in his heart, loved and believed it, do you understand?" "I wanted to believe and love like him, but then I - once he went to jail and I seen how some people work - believe me, it was like a thing I wanted to get away from. I wanted to be anywhere else but there. I wanted to raise my children. I wanted to coach football for my kid. I wanted to get away from them, you understand me?" "Now I'm here. Here. Now he's dead. I really realize that it's not real. What he loved and what he believed in doesn't exist. It may have existed at one time, and it certainly existed in his mind, and probably in the fellas' minds and some other people's. But it doesn't exist anymore.” "Any honor and dignity, died with my father."<br /> <br /> In September 2005 Junior Gotti was acquitted of securities fraud, the jury was hung 11-1 for conviction on racketeering charges, which included the kidnapping and assault of Sliwa. His re-trial on the remaining charges also ended in a mistrial. At Junior Gotti’s third trial, his new lawyer Charles Carnesi told the jury: “They don’t have evidence after 1999.” “They know he’s out. They want to recycle this evidence.” It worked again, his third trial ended in a mistrial again! Shortly thereafter the government dropped all charges against Gotti.<br /> <br /> "In the 1990s, I lived an opulent and extraordinary lifestyle. I have very simple needs now." "I'll take my family and I'll go. It's enough now. They got to let go. Let us go, he's [John Gotti Sr] dead." "I want to start from scratch, w<img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236975886,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />herever my wife would be happy. I'm different than my father. My children are my life. You can convert me. My father you could not."<br /> <br /> "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in." This could be one of the things Junior Gotti was thinking on the morning of August 5, 2008 when he was arrested by federal agents at his Oyster Bay, Long Island home and charged him with racketeering, murder and cocaine trafficking. The three murders he is charged with are that of Gambino family soldier Louis DiBono in 1990, the 1988 murder of George Grosso, and the 1991 slaying of Bruce Gotterup. All murders occurred under Junior's father John Gotti's watch. Junior Gotti claims he is being framed. If he is found guilty he will face life in prison.</p>
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Profile: Lucchese crime family soldier Frank Federico
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/lucchese-soldier-frank-frankie
2013-07-27T14:55:32.000Z
2013-07-27T14:55:32.000Z
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<div><p><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236989455,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /><br /> By David Amoruso<br /><br /> Frank "Frankie Pearl" Federico was born on January 3, 1928. On August 10, 1989 Federico murders Long Island carters Robert Kubecka and Donald Barstow at the offices of the Kubecka Carting Company at 41 Brightside Avenue, East Northport, New York because of their cooperation with law enforcement’s investigation of the carting industry on Long Island. In October 1989, two months after the slayings, Federico became a made man in the Lucchese Crime Family. The ceremony was conducted by Vic Amuso, who was a fugitive at the time, and held in a basement in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn. According to testimony of turncoat, and former acting boss, Joseph DeFede Federico was placed under capo Anthony "Bowat" Baratta.<br /> <br /> In March 1993 Federico was given a subpoena to appear before a grand jury in the Eastern District of New York and provide blood and hair samples for comparison with evidence recovered at the murder scene. Rather than appear Federico fled. A warrant for his arrest was issued. In April 1994 a second warrant for his arrest was issued on charges that he, together with other members of the Lucchese family, engaged in a pattern of racketeering that included the Kubecka-Barstow murders. But Federico was nowhere to be seen. It was believed he was hiding in Europe, more specifically Italy.<br /> <br /> On January 27, 2003 at 6:50 pm authorities arrested Federico at a Twins Doughnut shop on East Tremont Avenue in the Bronx. Federico was there for a meeting with a former associate. Later it was confirmed that it was Federico’s blood that was found at the East Northport, L.I., office murderscene. In September 2004 Federico was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the 1989 murders. Attorney William Gurin said that given Federico's advanced age, the penalty was essentially a life sentence. With time off for good behavior, Federico would be eligible for release at 88. Brooklyn Federal Judge Frederic Block said it was unfortunate Federico had even a glimmer of hope of freedom someday.<br /> <br /> <strong>For more on the Kubecka-Barstow murders read Thom L. Jones account of the story titled <em><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-evil-that-men-do-the">The Evil That Men Do</a>: The Killing of Robert Kubecka and Donald Barstow</em> at Jones' <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/thom-l-jones-mob-corner">Mob Corner section</a> of Gangsters Inc.</strong></p>
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Goodfella Henry Hill dead at 69
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/goodfella-henry-hill-dead-at-69
2012-06-14T11:00:00.000Z
2012-06-14T11:00:00.000Z
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/goodfella-henry-hill-dead-at-69"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237007658,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237007658?profile=original" width="399" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>His death didn’t come as a surprise. Former mob associate-turned rat Henry Hill died in a hospital on June 12 at the age of 69. He leaves behind his fiancée Lisa Caserta and her son Nate. Nate told the Los Angeles Times that Hill died of complications of heart problems related to smoking. Not the cause of death many people would have expected for Hill when he was running around with the New York mafia.</p>
<p>As a mob associate with an Irish father, Hill knew he could never become an official member of the Italian mafia. His Sicilian mother earned him a little bit more trust with the mob, but the rules prohibited them from ever admitting him to their inner circle. It meant that no matter how big the scores, Hill would never become one of the big shot mobsters he saw around the neighborhood in New York he grew up in during the 1940s and 1950s.</p>
<p>In an interview with The Sun, Hill said he “was intoxicated by their lifestyle when I was young. Those guys were the role models of my neighborhood; they were the guys with the Cadillacs and diamond rings and a girl on each arm.”</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237008064,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237008064,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237008064?profile=original" width="220" /></a>With that in his mind, he became a career criminal and associate of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-lucchese-crime-family">Lucchese crime family</a>. Under capo Paul Vario and his crew, Hill was involved in a wide variety of crimes ranging from robberies, gambling, extortion, loansharking to drug dealing.</p>
<p>That last activity was frowned upon by the mafia. The drug money always found the warm hands of one of the mob bosses who outlawed the practice but was very content with the profits. Matter of fact, the biggest problem the mob had with drug dealing were the long sentences mobsters faced when they were caught. Thus, the solution for these men was simple: don’t get caught. And that’s exactly where Hill failed.</p>
<p>In 1980 his drug dealing operation was busted by law enforcement and the world around him changed dramatically. Having angered his mob family by being caught dealing dope and facing a heavy prison sentence, Hill decided to spill his guts and become a government witness. His testimony led to fifty convictions, including those of Paul Vario and <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/lucchese-associate-james-jimmy">James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke</a>. Does this all sound familiar? No surprise there.</p>
<p>A big part of Henry Hill’s life story is known to millions around the world. It was the subject of a best-selling book by Nicholas Pileggi and an Academy Award winning movie directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Robert Deniro, Joe Pesci, and with Ray Liotta playing the part of Hill.</p>
<p>When Hill’s character in Goodfellas says: “Air France made me”, referring to a heist that netted him and his mob partners a lot of money, he hadn’t felt the power of Hollywood yet. After Goodfellas, Hill became a celebrity and a regular on television and radio shows. His appearances on the Howard Stern Radio Show (see video below article) were infamous as he would appear completely “shit faced” (drunk) while he discussed his past life of crime and new life after testifying against his mob cronies.</p>
<p>At that point he had divorced his wife Karen and left the witness protection program. Living off of his Goodfellas fame, Hill started a website ( <a href="http://www.goodfellahenry.com">www.goodfellahenry.com</a> ), wrote multiple books including "The Wiseguy Cookbook", "A Goodfella's Guide to New York", and "Gangsters and Goodfellas: The Mob, Witness Protection, and Life on the Run”, and told his story to various documentary makers doing a show about his life. All the while, getting lost in drugs and alcohol.</p>
<p>Through the years, various photos appeared online of a bum lying in the bushes somewhere in California. The gruff looking hobo was said to be Hill, who had become addicted to all sorts of drugs which brought him in trouble with the law. In 2003 he was arrested for disturbing the peace and in 2005 police charged him with possession of cocaine and methamphetamine.</p>
<p>Alongside the drugs, Hill kept drinking. In 2009, he told the Associated Press: “I've been on every drug humanly possible, and I can't get a handle on alcohol.”</p>
<p>When Henry Hill turned rat and informed on the mob, many people, including himself, thought he would end up dead from lead poisoning. Two bullets behind the ear and a canary stuffed in his mouth. If he was lucky.</p>
<p>As the years progressed, Hill made more and more public appearances and people started wondering why the mob didn’t make its move. The truth was that the mob had no interest in making a move that would only bring them unwanted heat from law enforcement.</p>
<p>Besides, Hill was doing a pretty good job at making a fool out of himself and being a poster boy for the “snitches are scumbags” movement. Hill was doing himself more harm alive than the mob could ever do to him. Either by way of torture or death.</p>
<p>Hill grew up idolizing the mafia. The riches and freedom. The fancy cars and pretty women. But more specifically those mobsters that were fearless. The Alpha males that ruled the neighborhood. Those gangsters that would do anything to get the job done and then, when the judge handed them a fifty year prison sentence, would smile and say “Thank you”.</p>
<p>It must have hit Hill at one point. Looking in the mirror after sobering up after a particular heavy week filled with blanks, drugs and alcohol, staring at the man eyeing back at him. In those few seconds with a clear head, he knew. He had not lived up to the image of any of his idols.</p>
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Violent Gambino Drug Crew Pleads Guilty
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/violent-gambino-drug-crew-pleads-guilty
2012-04-27T12:58:42.000Z
2012-04-27T12:58:42.000Z
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/violent-gambino-drug-crew-pleads-guilty"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237025282,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237025282?profile=original" width="504" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>Five members and associates of the Gambino Crime Family pleaded guilty in New York yesterday to a host of crimes including racketeering, drug trafficking, extortion, gambling and murder conspiracy. The five Gambinos were part of the big nation wide mob bust that went down in January of 2011.</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237025470,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237025470,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237025470?profile=original" width="100" /></a>Vincenzo Frogiero is the only “made” mafia member of the five that pled guilty yesterday. As a soldier in the Gambino crew led by capo Louis Mastrangelo he worked closely with Gambino associate and fellow crew member Todd LaBarca. The two men were also involved in various schemes with Gambino associates John Brancaccio, Christopher Reynolds, and Sean Dunn, who were part of the crew led by capo Alphonse Trucchio (right).</p>
<p>The mobsters were involved in a wide variety of mob rackets. Trucchio was one of the Gambino family’s biggest players in the drug business. From the late 1980s through 2010, he and others oversaw the family’s large-scale narcotics distribution operations, which were primarily located in Queens, New York. Numerous drug suppliers, wholesalers, and street dealers operated under the authority and protection of the Gambino family in exchange for paying the family a portion of their profits.</p>
<p>Over the years, the crew distributed hundreds of kilograms of cocaine and marijuana, and thousands of ecstasy and vicodin pills, all of which generated millions of dollars in illegal proceeds for the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-overview">Gambino family</a>. LaBarca, Brancaccio, Reynolds, and Dunn all plead guilty to drug trafficking.</p>
<p>Where there are drugs, there is murder. Todd LaBarca was running an extremely successful and profitable multi-million marijuana trafficking operation. He and other Gambino mobsters imported hundreds of kilograms of high-potency marijuana from Canada into the New York City area.</p>
<p>In 2001, Martin Bosshart, an associate who was involved in the drug business with various members of Trucchio’s crew, began making efforts to exclude Michael Roccaforte, an associate of LaBarca, from the marijuana importation operation. In an effort to prevent Bosshart from taking over for Michael Roccaforte and from moving in on the marijuana importation business, LaBarca plotted with other Gambino family mobsters to murder Bosshart.</p>
<p>On the night of January 2, 2002, LaBarca and others lured Bosshart to an isolated location in Queens, New York. There, another Gambino family associate shot him in the back of the head at point-blank range, killing him. Bosshart’s body was recovered at the scene, and LaBarca’s guilty plea in this case is the first conviction of any individual in connection with this murder.</p>
<p>LaBarca, Brancaccio, and Reynolds also pled guilty for their roles in extorting payments from various businesses’ owners and individuals based in New York City through the use of violence and threats. In one instance, LaBarca, Brancaccio, and others threatened a small business owner with guns and threats of death in an effort to extort tens of thousands of dollars. The two also pled guilty to committing assaults for the Gambino family.</p>
<p>To top off the guilty plea, Gambino soldier Vincenzo Frogiero, and associates LaBarca, Brancaccio, and Reynolds pled guilty to various gambling offences, including running internet-based sports betting, or “bookmaking,” operations, various regular, high-stakes card games, and operating video poker machines.</p>
<p>Vincenzo Frogiero faces a maximum of 10 years in prison. Todd LaBarca is looking at a maximum of 23 years in prison. John Brancaccio can get a maximum of 20 years in prison. Christopher Reynolds and Sean Dunn each have the prospect of spending life in prison.</p>
<p>Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said: “For more than a decade, the vicious murder of Martin Bosshart in a mafia turf battle went unsolved. With today’s guilty plea of Todd LaBarca, one of the responsible parties will be held to account. The laundry list of illegal conduct to which LaBarca and these four other defendants pled serves as a reminder of the scourge that is organized crime and that our efforts to root it out will continue unabated.”</p>
<p>Fourteen defendants previously pled guilty in connection with the case: Gambino family captains Trucchio and Mastrangelo; Gambino family soldiers Michael Roccaforte and Anthony Moscatiello; and Gambino family associates Christopher Colon, Salvatore Tortorici, Frank Bellantoni, Michael Kuhtenia, Salvatore Accardi, Keith Croce, Frank Roccaforte, Michael Russo, Robert Napolitano, and Anthino Russo.</p>
<p>Charges are pending against the remaining three defendants charged in the Indictment: Gambino family consigliere Joseph Corozzo, Gambino family ruling panel member Bartolomeo Vernace, and Gambino family associate Robert Bucholz.</p>
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Genovese mobsters extorting Feast of San Gennaro
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/genovese-mobsters-extorting-feast-of-san-gennaro
2012-04-20T10:30:00.000Z
2012-04-20T10:30:00.000Z
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/genovese-mobsters-extorting-feast-of-san-gennaro"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237024700,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237024700?profile=original" width="520" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>Never count out the Italian-American Mafia. With each successful prosecution, authorities claim to have rid a particular area of the mob, but, each time, that same mob pops up its ugly head again a few years later. This week, eleven members and associates of the Genovese Crime Family were charged with conspiring to extort street vendors at the Feast of San Gennaro, gambling, and labor racketeering. It was déjà vu all over again.</p>
<p>The biggest fish that prosecutors slapped with the indictment is 68-year-old Conrad Ianniello, who authorities allege is a captain in the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-genovese-crime-family">Genovese Crime Family</a> of New York. Ianniello is the nephew of Genovese boss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/genovese-boss-matthew-matty">“Matty the Horse” Ianniello</a> and a career criminal who kept a very low profile as he rose through the ranks.</p>
<p>As a captain, or capo, Ianniello was in charge of a crew of mobsters. In 2008, prosecutors claim, he conspired to extort vendors at the annual <a href="http://www.sangennaro.org/" target="_blank">Feast of San Gennaro</a> held in Little Italy, New York. Though, the feast is nowhere near as big of a cash cow as it used to be up until the 1990s when Little Italy did not consist of just one street, apparently the mobsters still feel the urge to try and get some cash off of hardworking honest citizens.</p>
<p>It is interesting to note that almost two decades ago, then mayor Rudolph Giuliani, claimed the Feast of San Gennaro had been rid of the Mafia. He had been proven wrong when, as <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/f/alan_feuer/index.html?inline=nyt-per" target="_blank">Alan Feuer</a> points out in his <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/nyregion/mob-is-back-at-san-gennaro-festival-officials-say.html?_r=1" target="_blank">excellent piece</a> in the New York Times, “a man named Perry Criscitelli, a Mulberry Street restaurateur, who in 2004 was linked to the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-bonanno-crime-family">Bonanno crime family</a> by a witness at the trial of Joseph C. Massino, the family boss.”</p>
<p>“Mr. Criscitelli”, Feuer writes, “was the president of Figli di San Gennaro, the group that runs the new, improved fair. (He quickly resigned from that position.) When Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was asked at the time if he was confident that the feast’s operations were free of Mafia influence, he said, ‘No, but I am confident they will be free.’”</p>
<p>After the Bonannos were out, the Genovese Family was already going to work on the street vendors. Like a vicious circle of life that continues to thrive despite a hostile environment. It seems that no matter how hard authorities try to take them down, the mob keeps on doing the same stuff they have always done.</p>
<p>Like labor racketeering. Also in 2008, Ianniello, together with other members of his crew, conspired to extort a labor union. Working with James Bernardone (44), the Secretary Treasurer of Local 124 of the International Union of Journeymen and Allied Trades (IUJAT), and Salvester Zarzana (48), the former President of Local 926 of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, Ianniello “conspired to extort a labor union in order to induce the union to cease its efforts to organize workers at a company on Long Island. Based on their threats, the defendants allegedly hoped to pave the way for an associate’s union, IUJAT Local 713, to unionize the company instead.”</p>
<p>The most interesting part about this is that Bernardone and Zarzana are allegedly made members of the Genovese Family. Authorities claim both men hold the rank of soldier.</p>
<p>The mob has a long and colorful history in the world of labor racketeering. From New York to <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-chicago-outfit-overview">Chicago</a> where the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-the-chicago-outfit-made">Outfit crippled Holywood</a> by extorting unions on the West Coast, to Detroit: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-disappearance-of-jimmy">Jimmy Hoffa</a> anyone? Authorities have tried for decades to clean up the unions by installing government puppets and indicting any crooked union member they came across. Seeing this latest indictment, it seems the mob hasn’t gotten that memo.</p>
<p>Rounding off the list of defendants are Ryan Ellis, Paul Gasparrini, William Panzera, and Robert Scalza, the Secretary Treasurer of IUJAT Local 713, all alleged associates of the Genovese family. And Robert Fiorello, Rodney Johnson, Felice Masullo, and John Squitieri.</p>
<p>If convicted the defendants face maximum sentences ranging from five to twenty years of imprisonment on each count.</p>
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Give a Man a Gun: The story of Carmine DiBiase
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/give-a-man-a-gun-the-story-of-carmine-dibiase
2012-03-17T13:00:00.000Z
2012-03-17T13:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/give-a-man-a-gun-the-story-of-carmine-dibiase"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237016697,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237016697?profile=original" width="530" /></a>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a></p>
<p>Carmine DiBiase went out on Christmas Day and got drunk. Very drunk. Very, very drunk. And then he shot and killed someone.</p>
<p>Not just any old someone, but a best friend someone. A guy who had stood by Carmine at his wedding, as his chief attendant. Been godfather to one of his children. Was his business partner.</p>
<p>A man who was also so drunk, he never even saw the bullets coming.</p>
<p>Carmine then became famous not so much for shooting dead his best friend. More for being a celebrity of sorts. The Federal Bureau of Investigation sorts.</p>
<p>They chased him and tried to nail him down for years. Even put him up on their Top Wanted List on May 28th 1956, at number ninety-eight, where he would remain for two years. He may well have been the one and only Italian-American mob guy who graduated into this eccentric catalogue of most wanted criminals (at least until the inclusion of Cleveland’s Anthony Liberatore twenty-one years later) and then stayed there longer than most of the common or garden thugs, serial killers, robbers and traditional malcontent anarchists that traditionally populated its archives.</p>
<p>He also hit it big twenty years later when he was, it seems, the shooter, or at least one of them, who sent Joey Gallo, the Hamlet of organized crime, off on his last journey into the great unknown, after scungilli marinara as appetiser, followed by a dessert of .32 and .38 caliber bullets.</p>
<p>And then, just like in the years before, after killing his best friend, Carmine did a runner. But this time, he never came back. As far as we know. Except maybe once.</p>
<p>Carmine stood five eight and weighed in at two hundred and ten. So he was big without being tall. He had wavy black hair and brown eyes, a Bodhisattva smile and a police record that dated back to 1940 when he was eighteen.</p>
<p>On October 5th, Di. Biase and a close neighborhood friend, Salvatore Granello who would grow up to be a mobbed up guy, and known throughout his life as Solly or Sally Burns, tried to rob a tailor, Mike Bakalian, at 558 Hudson Street. The attempt failed, and even this early in his life DiBiase illustrated his propensity for violence by pistol-whipping the victim eight times.</p>
<p>Carmine was arrested and convicted of attempted robbery and sentenced to a serve a term in the State Vocational Institution at Coxsackie. He came out, but didn’t get any better at his chosen profession.</p>
<p>According to police reports he was known in his neighbourhood as a thug and a bully, with a vicious temper; he hung out at the local bars around Mulberry, Elizabeth, Hester and Mott Streets, his preference as a tipple being a good Scotch whisky. A flashy dresser, he was known in the area as a ladies’ man. He had a scar on his left temple and upper lip, and above his wrist on one arm, a tattoo: Pinto 1949.</p>
<p>He dressed like a text-book hood: open-neck shirt, in silk of course, gold necklace on display over hairy chest, pointed-toe featherweight Italian shoes, highly buffed, silk socks and monogrammed underwear. A macho guy who dressed like a gay hairdresser, but who hefted a roscoe instead of a blow-dryer.</p>
<p>He may also have displayed classic psychopath tendencies - charm, narcissism, egotism and manipulation. Probably a standard set of personality traits for anyone hoping to be successful in the murky world of the New York Mafia.</p>
<p>Pete Diapolous, the bodyguard of Joey Gallo claimed:</p>
<p>He was no big earner or mover. Sober he was nothing, but drunk, he would blow your head off.</p>
<p>In February 1944, he was back inside again, this time at Elmira State Reformatory, starting another five years for the same kind of crime. He came out again, and seemed to either get somewhat improved at his job, or gave crime away, for the time being at least. The cops in New York thought of Carmine as a peanut punk, the kind of hood who would probably never amount to much. He’d been arrested eight times, including the two that sent him away. Maybe it was in prison that like Joey Gallo, a man to whom he would be forever linked, Carmine DiBiase became a voracious reader devouring books by Flaubert, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Franz Kafka , among others.</p>
<p>His parents, Gustave and Lena, were first generation immigrants from Italy, and he lived with them and his brother Gaetano, in Little Italy in Lower Manhattan.</p>
<p>He got married, had two children, and worked as a machinist, or a millwright, and then sometimes as a painter and a plumber’s helper, a salesman and once, as a shipping clerk. For a while he became of all things, a tailor. Like almost every guy in the underworld trade, he had a nickname. Many in fact. At times he called himself Carmine De or Carmine Vincent, or Ernest Pinto or just plain Sonny. But to most people in the underworld of New York, he was simply Sonny Pinto. In his early days, he had a look somewhat of the well-known movie star of the period, Victor Mature.</p>
<p>Insert here image of Carmine DiBiase as a young man 1950s.</p>
<p>Then came Christmas, 1951.</p>
<p>Carmine had taken over the lease on the first floor of a building at 167 Mulberry Street, along with Michael Mikey Evans Errichiello, his best friend. They turned it into a bar and meeting place, calling it The Mayfair Boys Civic and Social Club. Like most of these places that dotted the streets of New York, it was a den that catered to crooks, thieves, vagabonds and workers of the night. It never obtained a liquor license, but served booze to its clients until the wee small hours of the morning. It had battered tin ceilings, a bar, a pool table, and tables and chairs scattered around the scarred wood-planked floor. The Copacabana it was not.</p>
<p>Errichiello was a convicted gambler, with a string of arrests for assault, robbery and vagrancy. Peas in a pod were Carmine and Mikey. Until something went very bad in their relationship.</p>
<p>A few days before Christmas, the two friends had an argument. A big one and a bad one according to witnesses. People walking on the street past the club heard the two men shouting and yelling at each other. No one knew for sure just what it was about, but the word going around was that Mikey Evans had been cheating some of the guys playing cards in the club, and worse - had been siphoning off money collected by the club’s poker machines. More for him, less for Sonny. Everything went wrong. Hard to fix. It was like shaking a box of old watch pieces and hoping to pick out a Vacheron Constantin.</p>
<p>It never happens.</p>
<p>The events that unfolded in the early hours of December 26th are based on the testimony of a young, sixteen year old street kid called Joey Luparelli, and the evidence gathered by the police at the scene of the crime, as well as court documents.</p>
<p>Luparelli, known by his street name of Joe Pesh, would grow up to be a criminal associate of the New York Mafia Colombo Crime Family and be present, by some strange quirk of fate at another shooting, twenty-one years into the future, and a block and a half south of The Mayfair Boys, again involving Carmine DiBiase.</p>
<p>Carmine claimed he had spent Christmas day at his home, an apartment at 110 Grand Street, then he had gone to his mother-in-law’s where he stayed until late, before returning to his own place. About 1:00 am he had gone uptown to meet some friends at The Town Crest Bar and Grill. He stayed there for some time, before heading back to Little Italy and the club. There, he found his friend Michael Errichiello dead, and called the police. He claimed he was so drunk he could not remember anything about that night.</p>
<p>The cops came and did what cops do. They looked at the body, slumped in a chair, perforated three times, measured up the place, flashed the pics and took statements from any witnesses still around this time of the morning.</p>
<p>Joe Luparelli, sixteen, lived in an apartment across the street from the club with his mother and sister. His parents were first time immigrants, into New York from Sicily. There were seven kids in the family. The father died when Joe was still a boy, and he grew up wild on the streets like so many of his friends. He got to know the mob guys who infested the area like cockroaches on the hunt. Always on the hunt for something.</p>
<p>In Joe’s days they used to call them gangsters and they all lived by the same code:<br /> Mind your business. Close your eyes. See nothing. Hear nothing.</p>
<p>Joe claimed he was a good kid, as in good at cheating and stealing rather than being good-behaved. That’s what the mob guys were looking for in the street kids.</p>
<p>Christmas Eve, 1951, Joe Luparelli spent at home with his family, then went to the movies with some of his friends. Gene Kelly, the great Irish-American song and dance man in An American in Paris, pure escapism on the most diversionary night of the year. He went back to Mulberry Street about three in the morning and decided to visit the club. This early, there were only three people there. Rocky Tisi who owned a nearby tavern was playing pool with a guy known as Pretty Willie, who worked at the clubhouse, and Errichiello, who was asleep at the bar, his head resting on his folded arms.</p>
<p>Joe hung around watching the pool game and then the door opened and Sonny Pinto looked in, caught Joe’s eye and beckoned him to come outside into the street. He asked Joe to go to a nearby apartment at 13 Elizabeth Street, and wake up one of his gangster friends, a man called Alphonse Sonny Red Indelicato and get him to bring down to the club the guns Sonny Red was holding for him.</p>
<p>In due course, twenty year old Indelicato arrived at the address with a paper bag containing two revolvers, and he and Sonny Pinto went into the club. The two men playing pool, dropped their cues and ran for the door. Carmine DiBiase started shooting at his sleeping friend, hitting him three times, in the head, stomach and the heart, killing him instantly. As Rocky and Pretty Willie scrambled to get of the doorway, Indelicato fired at them, but his aim was off, and he only managed to wound Tisi in the ankle by clubbing him with the gun.</p>
<p>Luparelli (right), the young boy of the streets, Joe Fish to everyone in Little Italy, the kid who ran errands for Mickey and Sonny, found himself trapped in a vortex of necessity. Carmine DiBiase’s future would depend on Joe Luparelli’s silence, and Joe’s life would depend on the premise that Sonny would trust Joe to keep his mouth shut.</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237017653,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237017653,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237017653?profile=original" width="219" /></a>When the homicide detectives started looking for DiBiase, he did a runner, and disappeared for seven years. The New York Police department listed him as their number five on the Top Ten List the city kept, and it was on May 28th 1956 that he made the F.B.I. most wanted list.</p>
<p>The newspapers were less than kind in the coverage they gave Sonny Pinto. One called him a rat-face, bowlegged thug, and another referred to him looking like a roast suckling pig.</p>
<p>Tisi eventually rolled and gave the New York police details about the two Sonnys and their involvement in the shootings at the clubhouse. The police placed Rocky into protective custody and he stayed there for seven years, a New York record which still stands to this day.</p>
<p>Indelicato was subsequently tried and convicted for his part in the murder of Mickey Evans and sentenced to twelve years, to be served in Sing Sing Prison.</p>
<p>Carmine DiBiase was indicted for the murder of Michael Errichiello in 1952, but was long gone. The F.B.I. put out a bulletin on him referring to him as a man who will kill without provocation.</p>
<p>He lived in some kind of self-imposed exile, either in New York or somewhere else for seven years, and then in August 1958, accompanied by his lawyer, the famous Maurice Edelbaum, he handed himself into the New York police. At one stage in his absence, he had allegedly lived with Rusty Rastelli, a soldier in the Bonanno Mafia family.</p>
<p>Following his surrender, Carmine DiBiase reportedly made the following statement:</p>
<p>I am getting older and accomplishing nothing having to stay away from my wife and children, mother and father. I am glad it is over. I had to come in.</p>
<p>Edelbaum, a short, fat man, always seemingly dressed in a rumpled suit, represented whole dynasties of Mafia executives including Vito Genovese, Natale Evola, John Franzese, Carmine Perisco, Joseph Bonanno and Vincent Gigante to name a few, and also played a major role in defending the hierarchy rounded up at the great Mafia gabfest at Apalachin in 1957. He was one of the best and most expensive, but even he could not save Carmine, although in a way, in the end, he did.</p>
<p>DiBiase came to trial, was convicted on May 3rd 1959, and sentenced to death in the electric chair by Judge Michael D. Schweitzer. All death penalty convictions in New York were subject to mandatory appeal and his was heard a year later, in February, 1960 and decided that April.</p>
<p>One of the judges hearing the appeal stated:</p>
<p><em>I turn to the other ground for reversal. Some years after he had been indicted, the defendant was surrendered by his lawyer to the authorities in New York County. Under our system of law and justice, an indictment must be followed by</em><br /> <em>arraignment and trial and, in the present case, it is obvious that the defendant's voluntary surrender was designed to assure him a prompt arraignment, with all of its consequent advantages. The defendant had a right to the effective aid and assistance of the attorney who represented him. The fact that his attorney surrendered him for such arraignment in court could not possibly be regarded as a consent or invitation to secret interrogation by police or prosecutor or a waiver of fundamental rights. It matters not, therefore, that the defendant did not object to being questioned or insist on the presence of his lawyer. The damaging statements made by the defendant during the course of his illegal interrogation by the police and District Attorney should not have been received in evidence.</em></p>
<p>In essence, having surrendered to the law, Carmine DiBiase should have had his lawyer present when any statement or evidence was taken from him by the arresting police officers. By being absent, Maurice Edelbaum effectively guaranteed his client grounds for appeal, which in fact is what happened. Whether by luck or cunning, the lawyer won his client’s appeal, and Carmine DiBiase was granted a new trial.</p>
<p>The records of this are archived and not obtainable, at least to this writer, but the defendant walked from court a free man on March 1st 1961. It was a remarkable about-face. A man convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death, two years later after a re-trial left the courthouse a free man, ready to go back onto the streets and do what he did best-be a criminal.</p>
<p>It was claimed that Matty Ianiello, a powerful crew boss in the Genovese family had helped Carmine DiBiase when he went on the lam after shooting Michael Errichiello, and that Ianiello had paid the attorney fees for Sonny.</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237017890,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237017890,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237017890?profile=original" width="132" /></a>And for the next eleven years there is not much on record about Carmine DiBiase (right).</p>
<p>Harold Konigsberg, a Jewish, freelance hit man for the mob, claimed that DiBiase and Joe Yacovelli had staked out and killed Ali Waffa, the fearsome Arab bodyguard of mobster Joey Gallo, when Ali returned from a sea journey to the Hoboken docks, in July 1963.</p>
<p>A confidential informant notified his FBI handler that DiBiase had been involved in the murder of Michael Granello, who was the son of his boyhood crime capers partner, Solly Burns.</p>
<p>Michael was found shot dead in an auto on 86th Street and Riverside Drive, in 1968. A drug addict, he had been holding up and robbing made men, including on one occasion beating almost to death, with a baseball bat, a mobster called Caserta. Solly, who had allegedly headed up the mob’s enforcement arm overseeing their casino interests in Cuba prior to Castor’s revolution, swore vengeance against his killers. He disappeared in 1970 and was also presumed murdered.</p>
<p>Granello's body found in car 6 Oct 70 at East River Dr. & Hudson St. He was last seen on the 24th September; the FBI claimed he was killed on the 25th at an Elizabeth St. coffeehouse (between Hudson & Prince, perhaps the 8th Ward Pleasure Club, 2623-264 Elizabeth) by Vince Generoso for Thomas Eboli. Granello and Eboli, it was alleged, were at one time competing to succeed Vito Genovese, the boss of the family until his death in prison in 1969, and it was Eboli who ordered the December 1968 hit on Michael Granello for dealing in narcotics, not for his activities in robbing and beating Casserta. The FBI suspected Salvatore Granello was set up by one Jim Corallo and that the garrotted and shot body was allowed to be found because he was on bail. This information would almost certainly have been passed onto the FBI by one of their many CI’s.</p>
<p>There is an FBI report from 1969 that shows DiBiase was a suspect in running an illegal card game venue at 209 West 79th Street, in partnership with some men who were well know to the police department in New York - Victor Tramaglino, Charlie Blum, Hugh Mulligan, Stanley Ackerman and Spanish Raymond Margques - a hotchpotch of the New York underworld - Italian, Irish, Jewish and Hispanic - a mini United Nations of crime.</p>
<p>Tramaglino was listed as a close friend of Carmine Sonny Pinto DiBiase in an earlier, February 5th 1963 FBI internal memo which lists 347 suspected Mafia members operating in New York requesting individual investigations to be carried out on them.</p>
<p>There were other FBI reports that indicated Carmine DiBiase was working under Matty Ianiello and Anthony Strollo a close confident of Vito Genovese.</p>
<p>DiBiase was now a made man in the Genovese Mafia crime family and was still listed as such in a Congressional report on organized crime in 1988, although most sources claim he was part of the Colombo crime family..</p>
<p>According to Luparelli, Carmine dabble in drug trafficking, heroin being his narcotic of choice for sale. He was also involved, according to Luparelli, in the murder of Joseph Visconi, a bouncer in The Wagon Wheels Bar on Broadway who had carried out a robbery on a man called Frank Yacovelli who just happened to be the brother of Joe Joe Yack Yacovelli, a high ranking member of the family administration in the Colombo crime family. Thinking he was going to buy discounted stolen American Express cheques, he was ambushed and killed in an apartment in Little Italy, on Elizabeth Street, by a group of men that also included Sonny Indelicate, DiBiase’s co-conspirator in the killing of Mickey Evans.</p>
<p>By the end of the 1960s, DiBiase and his wife were living in an apartment in Southbridge Towers at 90 Beekman Street in the South Street Seaport District in Lower Manhattan.</p>
<p>He was also involved in a particular brutal and sordid double-murder that took place on the last night of 1970.</p>
<p>On New Year’s Eve, Joseph Fatty Russo held a party at his home on Packanack Lake, in Wayne County, New Jersey. An affluent crook, he was connected into the New York Mafia by an uncle who was a member of one of the five crime families. Fatty himself grew up around Mulberry Street and had allegedly generated his considerable wealth through drug trafficking. He had known Sonny Pinto most of his life.</p>
<p>Sometime after midnight, the party went badly wrong.</p>
<p>Russo had hired two black people to wait on his guests. One was Charles Shepard, a local man, thirty-one year old part-time musician and bar tender. The other, was his common-in-law wife, Shirley Green, who worked as a waitress, and lived in Manhattan. There were over thirty people attending, including children. The party was held in the large basement area of the property. By the end of the night, Russo was either drunk or stoned or a combination of the two, and he noticed that Shepard was drinking his booze, and even worse, dancing and trying to make out with the wife of his nephew.</p>
<p>Incensed, he stormed upstairs into his bedroom where he kept a loaded .38 calibre hand gun, came tumbling back down the stairs and in front of the entire party, emptied the gun into Shepard, killing him instantly. The chaos that erupted must have been electrifying. While some of the guests held a struggling and screaming Shirley, Russo then staggered back to his bedroom, found his ammunition box, re-loaded the gun and went back down to the basement where he shot Shirley six times in the head.</p>
<p>The guests were hustled away to their homes, and along with three of his remaining friends, Russo carried the two bodies to a car which was driven to Pine Brook Road in Montville about fifteen miles away, and the two dead bodies were dumped unceremoniously into snow drifts that lined the street. They were discovered there the first day of January, and the New Jersey police mounted an investigation.</p>
<p>By the time the detectives assigned to the enquiry had traced the shooting to Russo’s home, he had moved to Florida. As the police dug deeper, they discovered that all the guests present that night in New Jersey were also in Florida, on an expense-paid holiday, courtesy of Fatty. Also down for the sun and R & R was Sonny Pinto.</p>
<p>When Russo was finally arrested and charged with the murders of Shephard and Green, he turned to Carmine Persico, a powerful capo or crew boss in the Colombo family, who assured him that the case could be fixed through the family’s connections and control of crooked law enforcement and judicial officers.</p>
<p>Russo was in fact tried twice for the double murders, but was acquitted on both occasions. Federal Organized Crime Strike Force investigators had tapped telephone calls between Russo, Joe Yacovelli, and Carmine DiBiase, which indicated that Russo was being offered help and assistance to evade or avoid prosecution in the murders.</p>
<p>On August 8th, 1972, Federal warrants were issued against all three men on charges of conspiracy. On November the 13th, all of the men were indicted for conspiring to enable Russo to avoid prosecution for murder. In September 1973, a mistrial was declared in the case of Russo and Persico. By then, both Yacovelli and DiBiase were fugitives from justice.</p>
<p>Less than a year down the track, Sonny Pinto would find himself in another murder conspiracy. One that would echo a lot more loudly across the canyons of New York than the sordid killings in New Jersey.</p>
<p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/mafia-rebel-crazy-joey-gallo">Joseph Gallo</a> was a mobster who transcended the gun and the knife and became, literally, a legend in his lifetime. An unlikely mover in the counterculture revolution of the early 1970s in New York, he went where no gangster had gone before. He fancied himself as an artist and Greenwich Village intellectual, hanging out with beatniks, show business celebrities, poets and artists, talking Existentialism and Marxism, and taking on the establishment which in his own peculiar universe was something called the Mafia. Out of Radical Chic bloomed Mafia Chic with Joey Gallo becoming something of an above-ground social entity.</p>
<p>He was Tommy Udo, the giggling psycho, writ large. The Kiss of Death morphed from a celluloid nightmare into a real life one, dark suit, white tie and all, who stalked the streets of Brooklyn and gave his brethren in the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/profile-original-new-york-mafia-family-boss-giuseppe-profaci">Joseph Profaci</a> mob crime family a big dose of heartburn.</p>
<p>As one commentator put it:</p>
<p><em>Joey had a terminal case of the twofers - too far, too fast.</em></p>
<p>Crazy Joe, sometimes called Joe the Blond was a pain up the ass of the Brooklyn based Profaci Mafia clan. Its management hated his loud mouth, louche attitude, polemical approach and egregious manners. In a word, he was their nemesis, and had to be sorted.</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237017478,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237017478,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237017478?profile=original" width="131" /></a>One of his own brothers had nicknamed him Crazy Joe (right) and it stuck. A skinny little runt at five six and one forty five pounds, he went off like fireworks when the wrong kind of thing lit him up. It seemed that in order to earn a livelihood he had to be a lively hood. One of his best friends and his bodyguard, Pete Diapolous, referred to him as <em>a vicious, immoral killer possessed of a certain kind of charm when in a good mood, but undeniably dangerous.</em></p>
<p>New York Post reporter Pete Hamill saw him <em>as dressed in a zoot suit, but the eyes were ancient…eyes devoid of time or any conventional sense of pity or remorse…. He would joke with the cops and smile for the reporters, but the eyes never changed…tormented eyes.</em></p>
<p>His second wife, Sina Essary, a former nun, recalled that <em>You could see the remnants of what had been a strikingly handsome man in his youth.</em> She remembers, <em>He had beautiful features—beautiful nose, beautiful mouth and piercing blue eyes, that seemed to range from the colour of slush to the colour of fogged blue steel.</em></p>
<p>Always the eyes. Everyone noticed that about Crazy Joe. <em>They watched everything</em>, according to Hamill.</p>
<p>Jimmy Breslin the New York crime historian, reporter and novelist, wrote a book about him, called The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, which was made into a movie that starred Broadway star Jerry Orbach, who one day would become a good friend of Joe; Bob Dylan wrote a song about him in 1976, and two years after his death, a movie called Crazy Joe came out with Peter Boyle portraying him. It seemed somehow that Joey simply overdosed on the public’s perception of his fame and reputation, alive or dead.</p>
<p>An editor at Viking Press wanted him to write a book. It would be a sensation the publisher said. Joey said, <em>There's something suicidal about publishers paying a lot of greens for the big nothing.</em> Perhaps he thought it was too much work. Perhaps while ploughing through his ten books a week while in prison, which had included Sartre and Camus and Nietzsche, he had noted what Robert Louis Stephenson had said about <em>young writers having to read like predators</em> and there was so much more to do in whatever years he had left.</p>
<p>Born in June, 1929, in Brooklyn, to Albert Gallo and Mary Nunziato, he had two sisters, and two brothers-- Larry and Albert. They grew up on East 4th Street in Brooklyn, between Ditmas Avenue and Cortelyou Road in Kensington. The brothers were to be gangsters just like Joey. They worked together and ran a street crew called The Cockroach Gang terrorizing the neighbourhood of 4th Avenue and Sackets Street.</p>
<p>Donald Goddard saw him as a circus freak dressed in gangster’s clothes.</p>
<p>In an interview with him, Joey stated that he <em>had travelled with bums from the time he was nine. At eleven, he was running a crap game, and when he was thirteen, running his gang. They were his people, and he lived on the streets. And then, they were giving him the slips and he’s running numbers, and then people were getting to hear about Joey’s floating crap game.</em></p>
<p>His first wife, Effie, thought he was too feeling, too humane. <em>He wasn’t very good at what he did….his instincts were all clouded up.</em></p>
<p>After numerous scuffles with the law, although he was only arrested once for burglary in 1950, and had never been in prison, Joey joined the navy at seventeen, but was out in six months, discharged as being emotionally immature, egocentric and demanding.</p>
<p>He became a protégé of a mobster called Frank Frankie Shots Abbatemarco, a Bensonhurst-based big league bookie and the major policy banker in the crime Mafia crime family headed by <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/profile-original-new-york-mafia-family-boss-giuseppe-profaci">Joe Profaci</a> who was based in South Brooklyn and had headed up his clan since the late 1920s.</p>
<p>Larry was already in Team Frankie Shots, and Joey and his two brothers using the clout and protection of Abbatemarco, gradually built up their own street gang of thugs and extortionists pushing their jukeboxes into bars and cafés across the teeming streets of the second biggest city in America and running extortion scams across the boroughs. It became known in the New York underworld as The International Mob, and consisted of a Greek, two Syrians, an Egyptian, a Jew, a Puerto Rican, an Irishman and by necessity, some Italians. It also at one time included a dwarf called Armando Mando Illiano, and if we believe the legend, a lion called Cleo who was kept in the cellar of Armando’s café. He was apparently a great discourager to late payers on the vig they owed the gang on their street loans.</p>
<p>Sometime in the 1950s, the elder brothers (Albert was the kid in the group) were inducted into the Profaci family; according to FBI informant Greg Scarpa, around 1956, becoming made men, their mythical buttons proudly displayed to those who understood the solipsistic rhythms of the streets of New York. A mob guy was like a paladin, an advocate of the benefits of bad over good. Their guiding philosophy may well have been, to quote Oscar Wilde: <em>The best way to overcome temptation is to succumb to it.</em></p>
<p>Scarpa claimed they were introduced into the Profaci family by Johnny Scimone, an old time mob guy. Charlie Lo Cicero, the family consigliere opposed them from day one, considering them too much trouble (and he was certainly proved right in that respect) but he was overruled as it was perceived that they were good earners, perhaps the most paramount quality in prospective mob members.</p>
<p>Joey and his gang were often used by Profaci for the dirty work that was required from time to time around the mob in Brooklyn, and it was alleged he once stabbed a man to death with an ice pick. In October, 1959, the squad was put to use in the killing of Frankie Shots himself.</p>
<p>Profaci had a reputation as a tight-fisted wad and a boss who would use you then kill you. Pete Diapolous claimed he was more feared in the ranks of the New York Mafia than even the Mad Hatter himself - Albert Anastasia.</p>
<p>Profaci demanded off all his men a share of their revenue, maybe as much as a third from his capi, and when Frankie Shots reneged on the demand, Profaci had him whacked. Frankie and his crew were raking in up to seven thousand dollars each and every day and he had no intention of sliding over 30% of the net to the boss. The Gallos used their little, fat and fearsome torpedo, Joseph Joe Jelly Gioielli for the job, and he and a partner (probably his closest friend, Vincent The Sicilian Gugliaro) shot Abbatemarco nine times, leaving the victim sprawled in careless confusion on the floor of his cousin, Anthony Cardiello’s Tavern, at 256 4th Avenue and Carrol Street, late on the day of November 4th, 1959.</p>
<p>Following the killing of Abbatermarco, Joey and his gang assumed Profaci would allow them to take over Shot’s massive policy bank as a reward for doing Joe‘s dirty work. It didn’t happen.</p>
<p>Profaci was angry that Joey had not arranged to killing of Abbatermarco’s son, Tony, who he considered a threat to the family’s stability on the basis that he would probably seek revenge for the death of his father, and as a result, by-passed the Gallos and passed the numbers business over to his underboss and brother-in-law, Joe Magliocco.</p>
<p>The Gallos decided to resolve the problem the only way they really know how to - with violence. A maverick in his strange underworld and a cowboy with attitude, Joey had no intention of kneeling in respectful supplication at the feet of the elderly Mafiosi who controlled his destiny. As John Tuohy wrote it, <em>to the Gallos, it was going to war over cash and common respect.</em></p>
<p>Although their group never numbered more than twenty to twenty-five, they went up against Joe Profaci and his Mafia family, an entity of over two hundred made men and hundreds more associates. This Mafia war raged across the streets of Brooklyn from 1960 until late in 1963.</p>
<p>The first audacious move on the part of the Gallo gang was to kidnap Joe Profaci. But as he was in Florida when they made their play, they had to settle instead for four of his senior men - Joe Magliocco, John Scimone, Profaci’s personal bodyguard, Profaci’s brother, Frank and a relatively unknown capo called Joe Colombo. The men were eventually released on the basis of promises made by Profaci, none of which materialized.</p>
<p>On August 21st 1961, Larry Gallo was ambushed and almost murdered in the Sarah Lounge on Utica Avenue, his life being saved by the timely arrival of NYPD Sergeant Meagher, patrolling the area with officer Melvin Blei. Sometime either just before or after the abortive hit on Larry Gallo, Joe Jelli the gang’s ace hit man, disappeared and was presumed killed and dumped at sea. His wife notified the police of his disappearance on August 31st. His killer may have been Salvatore Sally D D'Ambrosio, who himself was probably murdered eight years later. He disappeared from a Bensonhurst social club, although his bloodstained shirt was later found there by police investigators.</p>
<p>The war dragged on for over two years with car bombings and shootings filling the New York newspaper headlines. In January, 1962, Joey Gallo was indicted, tried and convicted on extortion charges and sentenced to up to fourteen years in prison. The judge at sentencing stated that <em>Joey Gallo has an utter contempt for the law and is a menace to society.</em></p>
<p>Later in the same month, seven members of the gang, leaving a restaurant, saw smoke coming out of a window at 72 President Street. Rushing into the building, the group which consisted of Albert and Larry Gallo, Frank Punchy Illiano, Anthony Abbatermarco, Alfonso Peanuts Serantonio, Leonard Dello and John Commarato, found six children in a smoke filled apartment on the top floor and rescued them. No one was injured and for a few brief days, the Gallo gang were front page news and local heroes. They even made it into Life magazine. When interviewed by the press, Albert Gallo said:</p>
<p><em>We only did what any red-blooded American boys would do.</em></p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237019280,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237019280,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237019280?profile=original" width="750" /></a>Tony Abbatermarco. Albert Gallo and Frank Illiano with children rescued from President Street fire in January 1962</p>
<p>Five months later, Joe Profaci died of cancer and in due course his crime family was taken over by Joseph Colombo, the obscure capo who had been one of the group kidnapped by the Gallo’s early in 1961.</p>
<p>In March, 1971, Joey came out of prison, divorced his wife Jeffe, met another woman called Sina Essary, a dental technician, who was an ex novice nun, married her, moved from Brooklyn to Greenwich Village, immersed himself in the counter culture revolution, socialized with actors and writers and artists and on April 6th 1972 celebrated his last birthday, his 43rd in the process becoming an entry on a New York Police blotter: Homicide GUN at 5:20.</p>
<p>While imprisoned in Attica, Joey had been diagnosed as suffering from pseudo psychopathic schizophrenia. His response to the doctors report was typical Joey:</p>
<p><em>Fuck You.</em></p>
<p><em>Things are not right or wrong anymore. Just smart or stupid. You don’t judge an act by its nature. You judge it by results. We’re all criminals now…..Things exist when I feel they should exist, okay? Me, I am the world!</em></p>
<p>Joey Gallo may well have suffered from what the German’s referred to as machbarkeitswahn: fantasies of omnipotence.</p>
<p>Wayne Christeson of Tennessee, wrote in an article on Sinna Essary:</p>
<p>……<em>While Joey was still languishing in prison, his old enemy Joe Profaci died. Control of the Profaci mob passed to Joe Colombo, one of the “new” Mafia dons who knew something about politics and public relations. He formed an organization he called the Italian American Civil Rights League and used it to rally support against the FBI’s claim that he was a mobster. With the league as his mouthpiece, Colombo maintained that there was no such thing as “the Mafia” and that he was “just an honest businessman.” The league was hugely successful and so powerful that Colombo was able to win concessions from the producers of The Godfather about the way Italian Americans were portrayed in the film.</em></p>
<p><em>The Profaci organization’s racketeering remained profitable too, but many of Colombo’s subordinates were bridling at the way he ran the business and divided the spoils. To his hardened street enforcers, Colombo was a lightweight and a publicity seeker. Dissension in his family was building.</em></p>
<p><em>Into this unsettled world, Joey arrived fresh from prison, bearing a ten year grudge against the Profaci family. Joey might have been flashing his new cleaned-up image in public, but in secret he was re-energising the Gallo gang. He planned to dispose Colombo. Less than six weeks after his release from prison, Joey demanded a $100,000 tribute payment from Colombo as a condition for staying away from his business. Colombo refused to pay. Instead, he placed a contract on Joey’s life.</em></p>
<p><em>On June 28th, 1971, just four months after Joey’s release from prison, Colombo held a rally of his Italian American Civil Rights League in Columbus Circle, just off Central Park. Thousands of people attended the noon time affair. But as Colombo began making his way to the dais to speak he was shot and severely wounded by a black man identified as Jerome Johnson.</em></p>
<p><em>No one ever discovered who Johnson was working for. As fate would have it, he was immediately shot and killed by yet another never-identified gunman. Colombo was left in a near-vegetative state and was off the board as far as the rackets were concerned. The event made the cover of Time magazine the following week.</em></p>
<p><em>Joey claimed that the FBI was behind the Colombo attack, but most reasonable minds concluded that Joey had engineered it himself. He had a clear motive, and he was certainly capable of pulling it off. While the police and FBI looked for clues, the heirs to Colombo’s power renewed the contract on Joey’s life…</em></p>
<p>Something that has not been widely investigated in the shooting of Colombo is the link between Charles Shephard shot dead by Joseph Fatty Russo just six months previously. Jerome Johnson and Shephard had both lived close to each other in the same area in northern New Jersey and may well have been connected by friendship or some other link. It’s quite possible that Johnson was driven by a desire to avenge his black brother and knew of the link between Russo and the Colombo family members and how they had helped him avoid prosecution for the double killings.</p>
<p>Joey had become friendly while in prison with Harlem dope dealer Nicky Barnes, and it was widely rumoured that through his prison connections into the black criminal fraternity he was intending to recruit black gangsters into his own organization. This never eventuated and may well have been simply street gossip, but the Mafia family under Colombo, seemed certain that Gallo was behind the shooting of their boss. He was a target for them from that day at Columbus Circle according to some crime researchers, although it was not that obvious to police observers who were tracking the activities of the Mafia underworld. They believed that having done his time in prison, the feeling was to leave him alone to get on with his life.</p>
<p>The Gallo gang themselves did their own research into the shooting of Colombo and decided the man behind Johnson was probably Tony Abbatermarco, son of the late Frankie Shots.</p>
<p>He was the biggest numbers guy in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a black ghetto in Brooklyn and tight with a lot of black criminals. He’d held a grudge against the Profaci family since the killing of his father, was mad at Joe Colombo for squeezing money from him and had hated Joey Gallo who he knew had been behind the hit on his father.</p>
<p>He had guessed, quite rightly that the shooting of Colombo would automatically be construed as an act by Joey Gallo.</p>
<p>Joey had left prison deeply disturbed by the way time had left him by. He was a train wreck in waiting, searching for a displaced point on the lines of his life. He was returning to streets that were very different from when he prowled them. Following the death of Joe Profaci and the installation of Joe Colombo as the family boss in 1963, there had been some changes in the family’s structure of command.</p>
<p>Joe Yack Yacovelli, Carmine Persico and Larry Gallo had been promoted to capo status. But Joey, languishing in his prison cell, stayed a soldier and this burned away at him like an ululating cancer.</p>
<p>On his release, he had demanded a cash testimonial from Colombo to guarantee the boss his fealty. He also wanted all his old rackets back-- the policy banks, the loan shark operations and vending machine companies-- and demanded that a least ten of his crew be made into the family.</p>
<p>On May 22nd he had tried again to kidnap the boss of the family, this time Joe Combo,<br /> But the attempt was botched, dissolving into no more than a street brawl. But the message was loud and clear. The Gallo-Profaci war was on again.</p>
<p>None of Joey’s demand were ever going to happen. The Colombo family at a meeting on December 20th 1971, officially rejected all of his demands.</p>
<p>Joe Yacovelli, who would become a major player in the administration of the Colombo crime family, wanted to kill him where he stood, but this was vetoed by the Commission, the Mafia’s board of arbitration. They did not want another Gallo war on their hands.</p>
<p>According to Donald Frankos, a Greek-American criminal who had served time in prison with Joey, Gallo owned several night clubs on 8th Avenue, and two or more sweatshops in the garment district. He also ran dice and card games and was into extortion rackets and trafficking cocaine and heroin, and through black criminal associates was running criminal enterprises in Gary, Indiana and Steubenville, Ohio.</p>
<p>Just three weeks before Joey’s final birthday party, he and two of his men had gone to the San Susan nightclub in Mineola, Long Island, threatened the manager and told him they were taking the place over. A place that just happened to have John Franzese as a silent partner. John Sonny Franzese was one of the more terrifying dangerous mob bosses in New York and had been part of the Profaci/Colombo crime family for most of his working life. A psychopath in his own right, a stone-killer, whose father Carmine The Lion had allegedly disposed of his victims in his bakery ovens. Franzese was not a man to trifle with.</p>
<p>Then on Easter week-end 1972, Ferrara’s Pastry Shop on Grand Street in Lower Manhattan, was broken into and it was reputed over $50000 was stolen from the safe. Ferrara’s was not just any old café, although it was old, dating back to 1892, it was also a venerable landmark and meeting place of many of the senior mob figures in New York, including Carlo Gambino, allegedly the biggest Mafia boss in America.</p>
<p>It was an egregious move, an insult to the old Don who would have given his guarantee to the owners that their place of business was safe and protected by the strength of his reputation. To compound matters, Ferrara’s was a place often used by Vincent Aloi, who may have taken over the management of the Colombo Mafia family after boss Joe was gunned down at Columbus Circle.</p>
<p>The word went around that Joey had given his approval to two of his men--Gennaro Ciprio and Richie Grossman--to do the job. Both men were subsequently murdered, Ciprio, who was Sonny Pinto’s godson, was blasted to death in a hail of bullets in front of his sister, as he left the restaurant he owned in Brooklyn, on 86th Street.</p>
<p>Five days after the break-in at Ferrara’s Joey Gallo was dead.</p>
<p>In the end, it didn’t matter what the trigger was--the shooting of Colombo, the muscle attempt on Long Island, the theft from a mob sanctuary, the disrespect he had shown the men of the Colombo Mafia family--he was a victim of the system, and the politics of cosa nostra.</p>
<p>In essence, since the day he left prison he was a dead man walking.</p>
<p>Joey had moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan on his release and rented Apartment 8A in a bland, twenty-one story apartment building at Seven West 14th Street, a block away from Union Square. Sina, the woman he was to marry, lived with her young daughter in a penthouse apartment in the same building, paying almost twice the rent that Joey did. When he queried this apparent show of wealth by a dental technician, one of his friends shrugged and mentioned something about the dentist she worked for.</p>
<p>After a classic whirlwind courtship, Joey and Sina married, and three weeks later they would celebrate his 43rd birthday.</p>
<p>On the evening of April 6th, Pete Diapolous, driving a black Cadillac, arrived at the apartment building with his gummare, Edith Russo, and along with Joey’s sister Carmella Fiorello, Sina, her ten-year old daughter Lisa, and Joey spruced up and sharp in a pinstripe suit, headed off for a night at the Copacabana at 10 East 60th Street, just across from Central Park. They arrived about eleven, in time for the second show which starred <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/insulting-mobsters-with-don-rickles">Don Rickles</a>.</p>
<p>Sometime after four the next morning, they left the club and drove south into Little Italy. Although they had wined and dined, Joey insisted they needed more sustenance, and he was determined to find a favourite Chinese restaurant, Su Lings, in Chinatown. When they arrived, it was closed. Trolling the rain-washed streets, they found themselves crawling up Mulberry. There, on the corner of Hester, they saw arches and square windows all lit up, a new place on the block, called Umberto’s Clam House.</p>
<p>It had been opened in February by Umberto Ianiello, the thirty-five year old brother of Matty The Horse Ianiello, a capo in the Genovese Mafia family. There was a group of men standing talking on the corner, including Matty, who was acting as the manager this night, as Diapolous pulled the Cadillac to halt. The windows wound down, and Pete and Joey chatted to the men, one of whom was Joe Luparelli.</p>
<p>Joe Pesh Luparelli had led a less than auspicious life as a gopher and associate for the Colombo and Genovese crime families in the years since the killing of Mickey Evans. Using a luncheonette on 11th Avenue between 60th and 61st Street as a business base, he worked under Dick Fusco and Joe Gentile and was at one time a drive for Joe Yacovelli, a job he had been instructed to do by Sonny Pinto. Up to this point his mob career had revolved around the Westside, the term by which the underworld referred to the Genovese Mafia family. He’d been in prison on two occasions, and made his money by being a safe man, strong-arm goon, fence, loan shark and in the numbers business.</p>
<p>Encouraged by their comments, Joey Gallo decided they would eat here, and as Pete parked the car, the small party moved into the restaurant.</p>
<p>Fishing nets and plastic life preservers bedecked the walls, and the floor was tiled white. The tables scattered around were butcher-block design and there was a serving counter-type bar at the back of the seating area, running the length of the restaurant from the Hester Street end to near the kitchen.</p>
<p>There are conflicting accounts as to whether or not there were other customers in the place. Some sources say it was empty, others that four men in work clothes were sitting around a table; that there was an Asian couple in the corner, two college-type girls sitting together and a few night people scatted about at tables and at the bar.</p>
<p>There are only two recorded eyewitness accounts of the events which happened in the early hours of that morning, April 7th: the one reported by Joe Luparelli who was outside, and by Pete Diapolous who was inside. Sinna Essary, almost forty years later, did pass on her very brief recollection of the shooting, but it was blurred by time and no doubt distorted by the sclerotic panic she found herself in.</p>
<p>Luparelli recounted his involvement approximately two weeks after the shooting went down, and Diapolous his presence at the killing of Joey Gallo in a book he co-authored about four years later, so their memories would have been fresh and their recollections much clearer.</p>
<p>The Gallo party ordered and enjoyed a fish and pasta meal and were so impressed, they ordered up seconds. In the meantime, Luparelli had left Umberto’s and hurried down Mulberry, crossing over Grand and into the King Wah Chinese restaurant at number ninety-one. Although closed to the public this time in the morning, it was open to the mob. It had in fact at one time been a Mafia social club and was currently owned by Dominick Dickie Pallatto who ran it with his Chinese wife, Mona. Pallato would be found dead in mysterious circumstances in 1977--drowned in three feet of water in his swimming pool on the island of Grenada. It was deemed he had drowned due to cramp!</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237019466,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237019466,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237019466?profile=original" width="223" /></a>Sitting at the bar were Sonny Pinto and a soldier in the Colombo crime family called Philip <em>Fat Funghi</em> Gambino (right), a distant cousin of the don, Carlo Gambino. Luparelli told them that Joey Gallo was eating up at Umberto’s and Sonny decided this was the time to hit him. There were also two other men who were brothers, at the bar. Luparelli only ever knew them as Cisco and Benny. Sonny went to a telephone in the restaurant and rang Joe Yacovelli, who gave his immediate approval to clip Joey. The brothers went out to fit-up and returned with two .38 and one.32 calibre revolvers.</p>
<p>Because Luparelli was walking with the aid of a cane as he had damaged his knee some weeks earlier, his job would be to drive one of the two cars the hit squad would use. As Fat Funghi was on parole, he would drive the other. Sonny, Benny and Cisco would go into Umberto’s.</p>
<p>The two cars headed north up the narrow, one-way street and sometime after 5:00 AM parked either side of Hester Street. Armed up, the three gunmen went into the restaurant.</p>
<p>Over the years the story of the killing of Joey Gallo has been retold endless times. . The stories say he died on Mulberry Street when in fact he was actually declared dead in the Beekman Hospital after he was driven there by police officer Felix Agosta who stopped his patrol car outside Umberto‘s just after the shooting.</p>
<p>That everyone under the sun did the hit, the latest disclosure being that of Frank Sheeran, a mid-west killer who claimed on his death-bed that he went into Umberto’s and did the shooting. Frank must have been the only three-handed man on the planet because the New York Police Engineering Unit carried out an evidence survey of the crime scene and found the remains of at least twelve shots that had been fired--three .32 calibre, five .38 calibre from two different guns, three of unidentified calibre and one .25 calibre and this did not include the three that actually connected with their target. A total of fifteen rounds fired in all.</p>
<p>The other factor that makes his involvement in the shooting impalpable is just how did he know where to go to do the job? The Gallo party themselves had no idea where they were heading when they left the Copacabana. The hit on Joey was the result of coincidence or fate or simply sheer bad luck. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was a Titanic looking for the iceberg in the dark, inhospitable sea of the mean streets of Manhattan.</p>
<p>Henry Miller said <em>We create our fate every day we live</em>. If he was right, Joey Gallo was going in the wrong direction from the day he was born.</p>
<p>On December 13th, 1972, a Manhattan Grand Jury identified one Carmine DiBiase in an indictment handed up on the killing of Joey Gallo. There was no mention made of one Frank Sheeran.</p>
<p>Pete Diapolous, a man who had spent most of his working life on the streets of New York, states categorically in his book The Sixth Family;</p>
<p><em>I saw Sonny Pinto wide and dark coming in……I made Sonny Pinto and two other guys.</em></p>
<p>Diapolous had met Sheeran a few hours earlier at the Copacabana so knew exactly what he looked like. There was no way Pete the Greek would have mistaken Sheeran for Carmine DiBiase.</p>
<p>Insert here image of Pete Diapolous</p>
<p>Joey and his group had been enjoying their food (no drink as Umberto’s was so new it was not yet licensed) when, to coin the hackneyed expression enjoyed by writers of thrillers, <em>All Hell broke loose</em>. At approximately 5:10 AM Pinto and his crew burst into the restaurant guns blazing, slugs going all over the place. Pushing over tables to protect the women, Joey then ran away from their area, drawing the fire of the gunmen who pinged away as he raced towards the corner door at Mulberry and Hester. Diapolous, struggling to clear his .25 Titan semi-automatic, took a round in his backside as he tumbled over the tables.</p>
<p>Chasing the gunmen out of the restaurant he fired repeatedly at their cars as they drove off.</p>
<p>Joey Gallo shot in the elbow, the buttocks and the back collapsed onto the sidewalk, and lay motionless until Pete Diapolous and the police officer bundled him into the patrol car and screamed off to the hospital a five minute journey to the south.</p>
<p>And that was that. With his death, the Gallo war drew to a close.</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237019694,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237019694,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237019694?profile=original" width="622" /></a>There was one final incident which in a tragic way epitomized The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight reputation that the Gallo gang had acquired over the years..</p>
<p>The Neapolitan Noodle was a restaurant located at 320 East 79th Street in Manhattan. In August 1972, it was the scene of one of the worst mistakes in Cosa Nostra history. Albert Gallo was determined to avenge his brother Joey’s death and laid down a hit to be carried out on some of the Colombo family’s top administration.</p>
<p>On Friday, August 11th, the Gallos found out that Yacovelli, Allie Persico, brother of Carmine, Jerry Langella and Charlie Panarella would be at the bar of the Neapolitan Noodle. Robert Bongiovi aka Bobby Darrow a long time member of the Gallo gang was earmarked to spot the targets for the killers. A few minutes before their hit man arrived however, the mobsters had moved to a different table. In their place were five meat traders with their wives celebrating the engagement of one of their daughters to the restaurant’s manager. As the party moved to their table, the shooter, dressed in a loud Hawaiian shirt and wearing dark glasses and a long, black wig, opened up with two guns, firing nine shots, killing Sheldon Epstein and Max Teklech and wounding two of the other men. The killer, allegedly brought into New York from Las Vegas, escaped and was never found.</p>
<p>No one was ever prosecuted for the killing of Joey Gallo which Pete Hamill referred to as <em>A classic New York moment full of tradition, an endorsement of certain eternal verities, one that brought immense joy to the life of newspaper editors.</em></p>
<p>The only one who did time was Pete the Greek. He got a year in Rikers for illegal possession of an empty firearm.</p>
<p>Joey was buried in a half-ton $5000 casket in Green-Wood Cemetery, in Brooklyn, in Lot 40314 alongside his brother, Larry who had died of cancer in 1968. He shares the cemetery space with luminaries such as Boss Tweed, Leonard Bernstein, Lola Montez, William S. Hart and George Catlin, a lawyer who changed professions and became a painter of the Indians in the wilderness of America. He had died only a hundred years before Joey, although in terms of the way America had changed, it could well have been a million.</p>
<p>His funeral was a circus, with hundreds of people crowding the sidewalks to try and catch a glimpse of the coffin, and police and FBI agents mingling with the crowds to prevent any potential acts of gangland retribution that might erupt.</p>
<p>Sina Essary remembered the procession would have appealed to Joey’s sense of show business. Tommy Udo was dead, and as she remarked, “<em>You would have thought the Pope was passing by</em>.”</p>
<p>As a former nun, she would have known better than most.</p>
<p>Joey Gallo was a complex, confounding figure whose brief life seemed to have been overshadowed by an almost pathological desire to prove to everyone how much smarter he was than they. As Charles McCarry commented, he <em>“saw things with the joyful clarity of the incurably insane.”</em> It’s easy to picture him pleading with Sina not to rob him of the credit for destroying himself.</p>
<p>Like Othello, he would play the swan and die in music.</p>
<p>Three weeks before he was shot dead in a restaurant, The Godfather, believed to be the seminal Mafia movie of all time, previewed in New York. It featured a scene of a Mafia man being shot dead in a restaurant. The coincidence no doubt helped cement fable and reality in the public‘s consciousness. Maybe Mafia gunmen as well.</p>
<p>Following the shooting at Umberto’s, Joe Luparelli, Carmine DiBiase, the two brothers and Philip Gambino went back to the Chinese restaurant down the street and had a few more drinks. Benny and Cisco eventually left to dispose of the guns, then Joe, Carmine and Gambino travelled out of New York and stayed for a number of days at an apartment provided for them by Joe Yacovelli in Nyack twenty miles north of the Manhattan boundary.</p>
<p>In due course, Luparelli afraid for his life, fearing that Yackovelli was going to have him killed to silence him as a witness, fled New York and travelled to Los Angeles. He subsequently surrendered to the government and became an informant.</p>
<p>Philip Gambino disappeared from New York and was arrested by authorities near his home in Palm Beach, Florida, in May 1972, and charged with violation of his parole condition by consorting with known felons.</p>
<p>Benny and Cisco, whoever they were, merged back into the crepuscular landscape that hid them as though they had never existed.</p>
<p>Joe Yacovelli also went on the lam, and eventually, on February 27th, 1974, accompanied by his lawyer, David Markowitz, surrendered to the police in a radio station in New York. He was charged as a material witness in the killing of Joey Gallo.</p>
<p>On April 9th, two days after the murder of Joey Gallo, Carmine DiBiase met up with a man called Charlie in a lot in Engelwood Cliffs, New Jersey and left with him by car, heading somewhere.</p>
<p>And so, Carmine DiBiase (right) disappeared from New York, again.</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237020671,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237020671,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237020671?profile=original" width="232" /></a>It would be the last time that he and the police or the Federal Bureau of Investigation would cross paths. Sonny fought the law, and the law won, insofar as his actions that night on the corner of Mulberry and Hester sent him straight past go and back into oblivion. Away from his beloved streets where the action was. Away from the excitement and lure of the clubs, and the broads and the endless scamming and deal-doing that had filled his days.</p>
<p>Joe Luparelli claims that Carmine did however come back to New York one last time, in the summer of 1975.</p>
<p>On June 30th, there was an altercation on the corner of Prince and Elizabeth Streets in Little Italy. A card sharp had set up a Monte game and suckered in three passing men who lost a considerable amount of money before they realized they were being fleeced. One of these men was Gaetano, the 26-year-old son of Carmine DiBiase.<br /> When they remonstrated with the dealer he ran off, jumped into a car and sped off. Gaetano and another man chased him in their car, stopping the dealer’s car a block away on the corner of Houston Street.</p>
<p>Gaetano DiBiase, dressed in a white suit, pulled his car over and ran up to the dealer, pointing a gun and shouting:</p>
<p><em>“Give me the money.”</em></p>
<p>An off-duty police officer at a gas station across the street saw what was going down and ran over, drawing his handgun. He shouted at Gaetano that he was a police officer, and then a fire-fight erupted. The police officer shot DiBiase twice, who staggered over to his car, which then drove off at high speed. The car travelled as far as 11th Street and 7th Avenue in Greenwich Village, stopping in front of St. Vincent’s Hospital. Gaetano rolled out of his car and collapsed on the sidewalk. The car disappeared. Rushed into emergency, surgeons operated but were unable to save him. He died three days later.</p>
<p>The police staked out the wake and the funeral hoping to apprehend Carmine DiBiase, but he never showed up. At least during the day. Luparelli claimed Sonny Pinto visited the funeral parlour late one night to pay his last respects to his son. It was also alleged that he put out a contract on the officer who had shot his son. Senior officials of the New York Police Department visited the heads of each of the five families and promised a massive retaliation against the mob if anyone tried to fill it. The contract was eventually withdrawn.</p>
<p>Carmine DiBiase was in the wind again. His life deracinated by actions he embraced with almost a libidinal enthusiasm, was corkscrewing him away once more from<br /> his home and family and the life he knew.</p>
<p>It was rumoured he had moved to Hartford, the state capital, a small, relatively nondescript city in the bucolic reaches of Connecticut, nicknamed The Insurance Capital of the World.</p>
<p>And here, is where the trail runs cold.</p>
<p><em>If this is</em> where he landed, his final years are not unlike the man himself: an enigma, maybe wrapped in a riddle and even possibly shrouded by mystery, to paraphrase Winston Churchill.</p>
<p>Did he start again? Form new relationships? Get married, albeit bigamously? Heaven forbid, get a job? He obviously kept deeply under the radar, as his name never crops up again in any police report or judicial system north, south or west of New York.</p>
<p>It was as though he had simply vanished off the face of the earth.</p>
<p>Maybe in the twilight of his life he would wander down to the south side, the Little Italy of Hartford, where he could find the food and drinks that perhaps reminded him of the Lower Manhattan version of the mythical neighbourhood, the place the amici nostra would gather on street corners to talk and smoke and reflect on their day’s endeavours. As Stefan Kanfer recalled it “<em>with its gritty avenues and rude wit, its hard-nosed gin joints and occasional grace notes.</em>”</p>
<p>The teeming, crowded alleys and tenements where the Mafia had begun sometime towards the end of the nineteenth century. The Mustache Petes of the old Honoured Society - Giuseppe Morello and Giouse Galluci and Ignazio Lupo and Joe Fontana and even for a brief period, none other than Vito Cascioferro, the big boss from Sicily - had all played their part in putting down roots and helped grow the biggest most far-reaching criminal conspiracy America would ever experience.</p>
<p>And he had been part of it.</p>
<p>One of the thousands of unknown mobsters who had made up this criminal enterprise. A phenomenon born of the hopes and aspirations of the poor, uneducated working stiffs born out of the years of Italian Diaspora into the biggest city in America. Men whose lack of education, and cultural background, branded them as misfits in the brave new world and whose only chance for survival and progress was under the umbrella of a secret society that held the city and country to ransom for generations.</p>
<p>Perhaps as he sat drinking a coffee, watching the world go by, he remembered images of his life; a montage of memories filled with Grand Street, and the Mayfair Boys and card games and fenced jewellery and shylock loans and deeds done darkly for the boss man and most of all, a bleak, wet early morning in April, the arches and square windows of Umberto’s reflecting the cold yellow light, shaking to the echo of gunfire, people shouting and screaming as he like some Jedi Knight, brought order back onto the streets in a wild and lawless city in a universe far, far away.</p>
<p><em>And, of course, that is what all of this is - all of this: the one song, ever changing, ever reincarnated, that speaks somehow from and to and for that which is ineffable within us and without us, that is both prayer and deliverance, folly and wisdom, that inspires us to dance or smile or simply to go on, senselessly, incomprehensibly, beatifically, in the face of mortality and the truth that our lives are more ill-writ, ill-rhymed and fleeting than any song, except perhaps those songs - that song, endlessly reincarnated - born of that truth, be it the moon and June of that truth, or the wordless blue moan, or the rotgut or the elegant poetry of it. That nameless black-hulled ship of Ulysses, that long black train, that Terraplane, that mystery train, that Rocket '88', that Buick 6 - same journey, same miracle, same end and endlessness.</em></p>
<p>- Nick Tosches: Where Dead Voices Gather</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><em>I would like to thank Jim Ruffalo for passing on information I had missed in my research.</em></span></p>
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Bloods Gang Leader Charged With Three Murders
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/bloods-gang-leader-charged-with-three-murders
2012-02-14T11:30:00.000Z
2012-02-14T11:30:00.000Z
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/bloods-gang-leader-charged-with-three-murders"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237014089,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237014089?profile=original" width="502" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>A leader of the Bloods street gang was charged yesterday with three counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder. Ronald Herron (30), also known as “Ra,” “Ra Diggs,” “Ra Digga” and “Raheem,” was also hit with racketeering, murder in-aid-of racketeering, murder conspiracy, robbery, illegal use and possession of firearms, and narcotics trafficking charges.</p>
<p>Herron had already been arrested on drug charges in October of 2010. Prosecutors allege he ran a violent set of the Bloods street gang in and around the Gowanus Houses, a New York City public housing community in the Boerum Hill section of Brooklyn, that dealt in crack, cocaine, and heroin.</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237014471,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237014471,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237014471?profile=original" width="300" /></a>Rather than keep a low profile, Herron (right) craved attention and fame, posting videos of himself on the Internet in which he identified himself as the leader of the “Murderous Mad Dogs” set of the Bloods street gang, and claimed that he was the leader of a “murder team” and had previously “beat a body.” The videos also showed Herron firing weapons and threatening to use them to kill people. Herron also posted messages on <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/radiggs" target="_blank">Twitter</a> in which he boasted that he had “beat the stabbing,” “beat the attempt,” and “beat the body.”</p>
<p>And he got away with it too. In 2002, when he stood trial for the drug-related murder of Frederick Brooks, two witnesses declined to testify after having been intimidated by members of Herron’s gang. Herron was subsequently acquitted and free to continue his drug business.</p>
<p>That same murder is coming back to haunt him now though. The FBI is using it against him in the superseding indictment that was revealed yesterday. “Herron is now charged with the 2001 drug-related murder of Frederick Brooks, an offense of which Herron was acquitted in state court after witnesses refused to testify because they were threatened by Herron and his associates. Herron has also been charged with the 2008 murder of Richard Russo and the 2009 murder of Victor Zapata. In addition, Herron is accused of three attempted murders, including a 2008 stabbing at a nightclub in Manhattan,” the press release states.</p>
<p>“As alleged, Ronald Herron and his gang terrorized a Brooklyn community for more than a decade, and he temporarily got away with murder by threatening and intimidating witnesses, only to return to the streets of Brooklyn to kill again and again,” stated United States Attorney Lynch. “Thanks to the hard work and close cooperation between federal and local law enforcement, the defendant will now be held to account for his charged long history of violence. Our commitment to dismantling street gangs and to protecting our community from the ravages of gang warfare remains steadfast.”</p>
<p>“Ronald Herron and his associates were nothing if not honest in their assessment of themselves. As alleged in the indictment, the self-designation, ‘Murderous Mad Dogs,’ seems to be no understatement. Calling yourself murderous may not be a crime, but the description is fitting. The FBI is committed to reining in gang violence to make our neighborhoods safer.” said FBI Assistant Director in Charge Janice K. Fedarcyk.</p>
<p>NYPD Commissioner Kelly stated, “As alleged, Ronald Herron and his gang have a history of violence, intimidation and murder in the neighborhood around the Gowanus Houses in Brooklyn, and Herron even boasted on twitter about getting away with his crimes. His tweets were premature.”</p>
<p>After running the projects for over a decade, things have come to a predictable end for the spotlight loving and tweeting gang boss. If all gangs would operate this way, federal agents will not have to endure rain and cold as they put these gangsters under surveillance. They can just stay at home, turn on their computers and start compiling evidence for a case. YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter are all they need.</p>
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Bonanno Boss Murdered Near Montreal
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/bonanno-boss-murdered-near-montreal
2011-11-25T18:30:00.000Z
2011-11-25T18:30:00.000Z
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/bonanno-boss-murdered-near-montreal"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237017863,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237017863?profile=original" width="500" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>The underworld of Montreal is at war. Several high profile mafia bosses have been murdered and yesterday Bonanno family boss Salvatore Montagna was the latest victim as he was shot to death in a suburb near Montreal.</p>
<p>When paramedics arrived on the scene, they found Montagna laying in a river. They pulled him out of the cold water, into the even colder snow and tried to resuscitate him. To no avail. Montagna was pronounced dead at the scene. He was 40 years old.</p>
<p>Montagna had arrived in Montreal in 2009 after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported him because of a criminal contempt charge. Montagna was born in Montreal, but grew up in Sicily, and later moved to New York where he would go on to head the New York <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-bonanno-crime-family">Bonanno Crime Family</a> at the young age of 35.</p>
<p><strong>For a profile of Salvatore Montagna and his criminal career <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/bonanno-boss-salvatore">click here</a>.</strong></p>
<p>The Surete du Quebec immediately took over the case and began their investigation. As with any organized crime murder, details are still sketchy and uncertain. According to witnesses they saw Montagna break a window of a house and run away towards the river where paramedics later found him. Other witness accounts also mention gun shots and another man chasing Montagna. Though, police point out that the investigation is still in progress and they cannot confirm anything as of yet.</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236995491,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236995491,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236995491?profile=original" /></a>Thus, the exact motive behind the murder of Montagna (right) remains unclear. But it almost certainly has something to do with a power struggle within the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-mafia-of-montreal-a-short">Montreal underworld</a>. Ever since the arrest and sentencing of Montreal mob boss Vito Rizzuto, his crime family started unraveling. A few months after his arrest, Vito’s father Nicolo and over seventy alleged members and associates of his criminal organization were <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/montreal-mafia-bust-project">picked up on various criminal charges</a> including drug trafficking.</p>
<p>In 2009, the killing of members of Rizzuto’s weakened organization began. The first one to fall was Federico Del Peschio, a close associate of Nicolo. Vito’s son Nick was next. Vito’s father Nicolo was killed while sitting at his kitchen table by a gunman standing in his yard with a rifle. As Vito Rizzuto sits in an American prison cell serving a ten year sentence for the murder of three Bonanno Family captains he must have been heartbroken. These were the two men who were the closest to him. Not to mention his most loyal henchmen on the streets of Montreal.</p>
<p>The murders continued with the killing of Lorenzo LoPresti, on October 24, being the most recent. That is, until Salvatore Montagna’s time ran out on a snowy white Thursday morning. Was the former mob boss from New York sticking his nose where it didn’t belong? Hopefully authorities can find out.</p>
<p><strong>UPDATE: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/six-plead-guilty-in-murder-of-ex-bonanno-family-mob-boss">Six men pleaded guilty in murder of Sal Montagna</a></strong></p>
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Kill The Chinaman
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/kill-the-chinaman-1
2011-07-08T09:30:00.000Z
2011-07-08T09:30:00.000Z
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/kill-the-chinaman-1"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236999492,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236999492?profile=original" width="500" /></a></p>
<p><strong>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br /> </strong> <em>‘It is the theory that decides what can be observed.</em><br /> <em>If the facts don’t fit the theory change the facts.’</em><br /> <strong>Albert Einstein</strong><br /> <br /> <em>New York Times April 16th 1931:</em><br /> <br /> <em>It took ten years and a lot of shooting to kill Giuseppe Masseria. He was Joe the Boss to the underworld--but his enemies found him with his back turned yesterday in a little Italian restaurant in Coney Island…….</em><br /> <br /> This is where it all happened. Wednesday, April 15th 1931.<br /> <br /> Not with a whimper, but more of a bang. A number of bangs in fact……<br /> <br /> In a dingy street, in a dingy corner on Coney Island, filled with the stink of fish and the stench of treachery most foul, as Shakespeare or someone would have said.<br /> <br /> At various times on this same day:<br /> <br /> The Brooklyn Robins went down to the Boston Braves three to nine in Beantown.<br /> <br /> King Alfonso and Queen Ena of Spain went into exile.<br /> <br /> The first walk backwards across America began in California.<br /> <br /> Prince Thomas, Duke of Genoa and the nephew of the first king of a united Italy, died.<br /> <br /> As did a man who was claiming to be the first king of the New York Mafia.<br /> <br /> His name was Giuseppe Masseria (right, photo credit: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0738573140/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0738573140&linkCode=as2&tag=gangstersinc-20" target="_blank">New York City Gangland</a> by Arthur Nash), sometimes called ‘Joe the Boss.’ <br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236999094,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236999094,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236999094?profile=original" width="223" /></a>Short, fat, (although at 5’4’ and 155 lbs some might think him more squat than tubby) a bit of a trencherman, which is a polite way of describing a glutton, he had the habit of squinting his eyes when talking, hence the sobriquet ‘The Chinaman’ though never apparently to his face.<br /> <br /> Sometime on the afternoon of that long-ago Wednesday, he came to the restaurant, in a building owned or leased by a thirty-two year old man from Angri near Pompei, Italy, called Gerado Scarpato, who lived in the apartment above the restaurant with his wife and mother-in-law. <br /> <br /> Just what Scarpato’s place in the New York Italian-American underworld was, has never been satisfactorily explained. He was a restaurateur, but other things as well. <br /> <br /> Probably involved in extortion, one of his victims arriving at the restaurant unexpectedly that very afternoon, chased away by Scarpato who was talking to a group of men on the sidewalk, including notorious hoodlum, Anthony Carfano and others of an equal bent. Carfano was tight enough with Masseria to have gone into partnership with him in a horse racing stable and a bookmaking business among other things.<br /> <br /> A document in the New York archives indicates that Scarpato had taken over the extortion ring previously run by Giuseppe ‘Clutching Hand’ Piraino, (a close associate of Carfano,) who had been killed the previous August during the mob war that had been taking place in New York since February of 1930.<br /> <br /> Whatever he did on the wrong side of the law, he was good at it. He did not have an arrest record of any sort.<br /> <br /> Scarpato was married to twenty-seven year old Alvera, whose mother, Anna Tammaro, was the head chef and whose name was above the door on West 15th Street, here on Coney Island. <br /> <br /> She may have been busy with her other customers on this day, but for Joe ‘The Boss’ there was little to do. Contrary to all the reports that have been published in the last eighty years that he ‘pigged out’ prior to his demise, his autopsy showed hardly any food content in his stomach - only two ounces of bile.<br /> <br /> Mrs Tammaro claimed that she had served coffee, and the men had asked for fish so she had left the building to purchase some. <br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236999889,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236999889,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236999889?profile=original" width="413" /></a>Whatever he was doing at the Nuova Villa (right), eating was not on the agenda for Joe the Boss. <br /> <br /> According to newspaper reports, on this day in the warmest April New York had experienced in 63 years and the driest since 1910, Joe was accompanied to the eating house by three men in his bullet-proof car, but just who these were has never been completely ascertained. <br /> <br /> One may have been Saverio ‘Sam’ Pollaccia, who was Masseria’s consigliere, or advisor. Another could possibly have been Nicola Gentile, a Sicilian Mafia Pied-Piper who had been wandering across America for twenty-five years, although he claimed that Joe was already dead when he arrived outside the restaurant. Consequently he never went in. At least he did in one of the versions of his memoirs. In another, he claimed he was there with among others, Vincenzo Mangano. <br /> <br /> As to the third? <br /> <br /> Was it Charlie Luciano? <br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237000092,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237000092,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237000092?profile=original" width="180" /></a>His real name was Salvatore C. Lucania (right), and by the age of thirty-four he was, it seems, the right hand of Masseria. A petty criminal and minor drug dealer, he kick-started his career by becoming an informant in 1923 at the age of twenty-six, and never looked back. By the time he came under the wing of Masseria he had established himself as a bootlegger, and operator of betting and gambling rings in Lower Manhattan.<br /> <br /> Every book, article or story on this king-hit in Brooklyn, ever published, will tell you: <br /> <br /> a) it was orchestrated by Charlie, <br /> b) he was there having lunch and playing cards with his boss, and <br /> c) was taking an interminably long leak in the men’s room when all the action was going down, so he did not see anything. As you do.<br /> <br /> It is interesting, however, that even though every flatfoot and detective in town knew who he was, according to the press, nobody bothered to speak to him, and he was never detained or officially interviewed after the event. It seems certain though that the cops would have contacted him as they must have known of his connection to Masseria. Any notes they kept would have made interesting reading.<br /> <br /> Neither the New York Times or The Herald Tribune in their reports on the shooting make any mention of Luciano being present at the restaurant. Gentile claimed he went straight from the Villa Nuova to the home of Luciano in mid-town Manhattan where a meeting was held between himself, Luciano and Vincenzo Troia an associate of Salvatore Maranzano the man who headed the faction opposing Joe. <br /> <br /> If this is true, it might confirm that Luciano was not at the restaurant when the shooting took place.<br /> <br /> It has been reported that two men and in some reports, four men, arrived while Joe and his friends were playing cards, walked into the restaurant and shot him repeatedly. The autopsy on his body showed gunshot wounds to the back, and one in the back of the head.<br /> <br /> It’s been posited that Joe was swinging around to give these upstarts un occhio, the traditional Italian ’evil eye’ but simply got one there for his efforts. In fact, all the kill-shots came from behind. The eye wound was an exit one.<br /> <br /> The day after he was killed, Dr. G.W. Ruger carried out an autopsy on the body of Guiseppe Masseria.<br /> <br /> Joe had been dressed to the nines that day:<br /> <br /> Light gray three-piece suit by Vincent Balletta matched to a white Madras shirts by Henry and Al, New York. Black leather belt with silver buckle. His dainty size six feet in black Oxfords and blue cotton lisle socks. Underneath, cream, silk underwear. <br /> <br /> Dressed to kill!<br /> <br /> Two of the four back shots were through and through as was the head shot. Two of the shots to the back had smudged the coat jacket with gunpowder, indicating the shooter was only inches away. Heart, lungs and liver were torn apart. Brain was shredded. Two lead bullets were recovered, both .38 calibre. Although the autopsy does not indicate it, Joe was most certainly dead when he hit the wooden floor.<br /> <br /> The men who might have shot him have been identified over the years as:<br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237000300,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237000300,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237000300?profile=original" width="594" /></a><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237000660,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237000660,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237000660?profile=original" width="595" /></a>You could say they are the usual suspects. Whether or not any of these were the two or four shooters that day is open to debate. Why Italians would hire Jews to kill the biggest Italian mobster in town is something to speculate on. Although interestingly, it was done some months later to dispose of Masseria’s opponent, Salvatore Maranzano.<br /> <br /> Anastasia and Adonis were very likely members of another gang run by Stefano Ferrigno and Manfredi Mineo which was in support of Masseria in his war on the rest of the New York Italian-American underworld at this time. Albert was a stone killer, with a long list under his belt. Adonis was more a businessman than a hit man. Genovese was definitely another stone-killer and could well have pulled the trigger.<br /> <br /> However, it’s highly unlikely Anastasia was one of the killers. <br /> <br /> Samuel S. Leibowitz who became a judge in Brooklyn’s King County Court, in 1931 was a young lawyer with a reputation for being a top man in the defense’s corner. He had an office at 66 Court Street in downtown Brooklyn. At noon that day, Anastasia walked into the lawyer’s office demanding the receptionist check the time on the office clock. She did and confirmed it was correct. Anastasia asked for Leibowitz and was told he was in court until later in the day. He told the receptionist he would wait, and settled back, thereby creating for himself the perfect alibi. <br /> <br /> It would not be the last time Albert arranged a cast-iron alibi at the time a mobster was being murdered. Twenty years later, in October 1951, he arranged to be having an X-Ray in a public hospital as Willie Moretti the infamous little New Jersey hoodlum was gunned down in another restaurant, this time in Cliffside, New Jersey.<br /> <br /> Livorsi, Stracci and Coppola were all part of a crew of the Masseria family that operated out of East Harlem under the supervision of Ciro Terranova. His father had married the mother of Joe Morello (who had been the previous head of Masseria’s crime family,) and at forty three, was a senior member of the organization in years and experience. The three soldiers were seasoned gunmen, Coppola even carrying a nick name, ‘Trigger Mike’ as testament to his prowess with a gat, (For more on Coppola, check out Thom's earlier story <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/man-is-the-cruelest-animal-the">here</a>) so any of these could have qualified.<br /> <br /> Scarpato claimed he went for a long walk that afternoon and returned to find his prize guest gutted on the restaurant floor. But did he? Maybe he was the shooter. Who better to come up behind an unsuspecting customer than the maître d of the establishment? <br /> <br /> The only really strong link to the killer though, lies with a man called Johnny ‘Silk Stocking’ Guistra who according to some sources was part of the crew of Vincenzo Mangano, a capo in the Mineo crime family, operating the family’s businesses on the South Brooklyn Piers around Red Hook. Which could have been strange seeing as how he was from Calabria and Mangano was a staunch Sicilian Mafioso and averse to working with non-Sicilians in his crew. <br /> <br /> Other information however, implies Johnny was in fact in competition with Mangano and was part of the Masseria crime family. He was apparently involved in rackets linked into the laundry business across New York. It’s been suggested his nick-name indicated his penchant for the opposite sex on the one hand, and also that it represented his favorite tool of destruction as he had, unusually for a mobster, an aversion to blood. <br /> <br /> His connection into the hit was an overcoat he left hanging up in the restaurant.<br /> <br /> Seemed a strange thing to do though. Walk into a room, take off your coat, kill a man and then walk out leaving behind such incriminating evidence.<br /> <br /> Of course if he was there at the moment so to speak, and he was caught unawares, he may well have fled the scene in panic, with obviously no thought for his coat. You’re sitting at a table, talking to your boss, sipping a coffee, when suddenly someone or ones, starts shooting holes in him. It could be cause for extreme concern.<br /> <br /> ‘I’m outa here!’ <br /> <br /> Not unlike the comment and action of Jerome Squillante, when sitting next to Albert Anastasia in that barber shop twenty-six years later in mid-town Manhattan, who also found things just a little bit too hot to hang around when two men came in and banged his boss.<br /> <br /> Didn’t really matter to Johnny the Silk. Three weeks later he was shot numerous times in the head and chest and died in the hallway of a dingy tenement at 75 Monroe Street on the Lower East Side on May 10th. By his side lay his pearl-handed pistol. He’d been able to get it out, but tests revealed it had not been fired. <br /> <br /> Maybe loose ends being tied together? Maybe a double-cross too many? Maybe late on a loan? Never easy to pin the donkey in these tangled tales. All we know for sure is that he or someone wearing his coat, went to that Coney Island food place that afternoon and maybe killed Senor Masseria.<br /> <br /> It’s also possible of course that Johnny had left this coat on a previous visit and simply never got around to collecting it, and the fact that it was found had absolutely no bearing on the shooting at all.<br /> <br /> There was an interesting by-line to his murder. On May 14th his body was waked at 11 First Place in Carroll Gardens. Two men attending the service, Vincent Gesino and Ettore Zappi were given a message at 5 PM that a man called Joe wanted to see them at 1331 Sixty-ninth Street in Brooklyn. When they got there, they were ambushed in the hallway of the building and both men were shot and seriously injured, although surviving their wounds. <br /> <br /> Gesino who worked as a longshoreman, had apparently been involved with Giustra in some kind of business deal, perhaps in relation to the funeral company that Johnny ran from the very premises from where he himself was buried. <br /> <br /> Zappi who eventually became a capo or crew boss in the Mineo crime family <br /> was reported to be the ‘boss’ of Gesino and Giustra, although he claimed at the time to be a simple fruit merchant. Were these two men linked into Masseria’s death in some way and had been designated the chop as a result?<br /> <br /> ‘Silk Johnny’ was not the only one who met an unnatural death following the killing of ‘Joe the Boss.’<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237001094,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237001094,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237001094?profile=original" width="260" /></a>Saveria Pollicia (right), one of the ‘great unknowns’ of early mob history was close to Joe as his family counselor. It hadn’t always been that way. <br /> <br /> At one time he had worked with Salvatore D’Aquila (they were close enough for D’Aquila to become godfather to one of Pollaccia’s children, his daughter Rosa,) who had perhaps claimed the honorific ‘Boss of Bosses’ title within New York‘s Mafia clans, although this has never been substantiated, until he was gunned down on the Lower East Side in 1928. His group then came under the leadership of Manfredi Mineo who died during the underworld war of 1930-1931. This crime conglomerate, known to-day as the Gambino Family, was then headed by Frank Scalice, before being taken over by Vincenzo Mangano.<br /> <br /> Pollaccia was definitely interviewed by the police but was unable to help them in their investigation.<br /> <br /> With the death of his boss, Pollaccia became vulnerable to the machinations of Vito Genovese, one of the Masseria family’s more devious and unpredictable killers. For some reason Genovese had a grudge against Saveria, and as a result, sometime in 1932, Genovese arranged to visit Chicago with him, and there arranged with Paul Ricca, a member of Al Capone’s gang to dispose of Sam. His body was never found. He left a wife and five children who lived in Corona, Queens.<br /> <br /> Just how Vito Genovese was able to arrange the murder of the family consigliere without approval from Luciano the new family boss is a mystery. Unless of course Charlie gave it for whatever reason. Logic and Mafia politics are strange bedfellows even under the most discerning analysis. <br /> <br /> There was a third man who died of unnatural causes who may have been part of the plot to kill Masseria: Camello (sometimes referred to as Carmelo) Li Conti. He was with Guistra the night he got the chop, but through sheer, blind luck missed that hit and survived to live another day. Not for long though.<br /> <br /> His body was found, beaten, stabbed and slashed to death in the bathroom of a room at the Hotel Paramount on West 46th Street in mid town Manhattan. Two months to the date of his friend’s murder, on Friday, July 10th.<br /> <br /> Li Conti may have been a business partner with Guistra and it has been suggested he had been at loggerheads with Masseria over mob affairs. Li Conti was also an undertaker according to his family, with a business in Brooklyn. He in fact handled the burial arrangement for Guistra’s corpse. Li Conti had emigrated to New York in 1904 from Reggio Calabria at the age of sixteen to join his father who was already established in Brooklyn. <br /> <br /> In one of the many ironic links into the men of the Mafia, Vincenzo Mangano sailed into New York a year later at the age of seventeen on the very same boat that Li Conti had embarked on, the SS Gerty.<br /> <br /> Like so many of the characters that move in and out of this story, little is known about Camello other than that according to his wife, Antonina Irato, he buried people, (probably good at that,) and that he died a messy death at the age of forty-three.<br /> <br /> Last, but probably not least was the restaurant owner, Scarpato.<br /> <br /> Following the murder of ‘Joe the Boss’ Gerardo Scarpato gave off all the signs of a dead man walking. After police had questioned him, he demanded they take his fingerprints and keep them on file. ‘I think you may need them,’ he said. ‘I may be next.’ He was so certain he was to be killed, he had his full name tattooed on the inside of his right forearm. <br /> <br /> After the killing of Masseria, Gerardo Scarpato and his wife left New York and travelled back to Italy. They returned in June, 1932. <br /> <br /> Gerardo became interested in the sport of cycle racing in the Velodrome at Coney Island and visited professional boxing matches here also, in the complex at West 12th Street and Neptune Avenue. He also became an executive of the Coney Island Surf Democratic Club. With his background, probably all of these interests were outlets for his extortion ring or some other nefarious activity.<br /> <br /> Alvira then went for another holiday, apparently on her own, to Acra, near Cairo in the Catskills. Just why she went to this tiny hamlet in the middle of nowhere is just another tantalizing mystery, especially considering that Jack ‘Legs’ Diamond the infamous bootlegger and gunman had an estate here at this time. <br /> <br /> She returned from the holiday late on Friday September 9th to find Gerardo was not in the restaurant or their apartment above it. He had not returned on Saturday either. <br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237001476,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237001476,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237001476?profile=original" width="230" /></a>The unknown man who appeared at the beginning of this story, waiting for Scarpato outside the Villa Nuova Tammaro, may have been one of the last ‘legitimate’ persons to have seen him before his death. He claimed he met with Scarpato to hand over money on the night that Scarpato was murdered. After passing the money to him, Scarpato then left, promising to return soon. An hour later, Anthony Carfano (right) appeared and told the man, ‘listen, no matter what happens, you never knew Scarpato. Get the hell out of here and keep your mouth shut.’ <br /> <br /> This was between eight and nine in the evening, on the corner Fourth Avenue and Union Street in Park Slope in Brooklyn. Hours later Gerardo Scarpato was dead.<br /> <br /> He was last seen officially, at a small café he owned on the corner of Surfside Avenue and West 15th Street on the island. Teddy Sallini, the bartender, told the police Scarpato left the place at about 1:AM..<br /> <br /> Five hours later, early in the morning of Sunday, September 11th, someone reported a car parked under a tree at 216 Windsor Place, two block south of Prospect Park. Just what was suspicious about this has never been disclosed, but when the police attended, they discovered his body in the back seat of the black sedan, wrapped in a burlap sack. He had died a particularly hard death. He had been knocked unconscious then trussed up with rope in such a way that as he awoke and started to struggle, the more he did, the tighter the rope around his neck strangled him. It would have been slow and very bad. <br /> <br /> For some reason, never disclosed, the police believe he had been murdered in the Bath Beach area. <br /> <br /> Just why he was killed in this particularly gruesome way is a mystery, like almost all of this story. The Mob would normally kill by pistol or shotgun, or sometimes by a knife in the back. Scarpato died in a way that was surely designed to send a message.<br /> <br /> Captain John McGowan, head of the Brooklyn Homicide, remembered when he interviews Scarpato after the killing of Masseria he was afraid that friends of Joe might have believed he had put him ‘on the spot.’ <br /> <br /> But was his murder about Joe the Boss, or something much more mundane-greed?<br /> <br /> Felix Di Martini a private investigator operating from offices in Beekman Street had been a NYPD officer from 1905-1919. He had worked major crimes for the District Attorney’s of Manhattan and Brooklyn and had operated under Joe Petrosino in the famous ‘Italian Squad’ investigating high-profile murders, Black Hand extortionists and gang crimes. He claimed information that indicated Vito Genovese was the man behind the killing of Masseria. He also stated that Gerardo Scarpato was a ‘confidential lieutenant’ of Genovese.<br /> <br /> Martini believed Scarpato had been murdered because he had sided with a Paulie Merchione (there was a Paul Marchione listed in the crew of skipper Jimmy Angelina in the Genovese family chart set up by Joe Valachi in 1963) in a dispute involving a loan of $5000 to Sam Maraglia, sometimes known as Tony Meddeo, also known as Samuel Medal, and that he had conspired with Merchione to abduct and kill Medal over the dispute regarding this loan. Medal was a beer baron of some substance, apparently worth over $250,000, operating in the Bronx. It was also claimed that he worked under Ciro Terranova whose place in the Masseria family has already been documented.<br /> <br /> Medal disappeared on September 6th 1932 sometime after 7:PM after visiting the ‘Wolverine’ a club owned and operated by Steve LaSalle, on Lexicon Avenue. <br /> <br /> Within a week Scarpato was dead.<br /> <br /> Di Martini believed: <br /> <br /> ‘The supposition in that Scarparto took sides with Paulie and the Sicilian faction in bringing about Medal’s disappearance. It is probable that Scarparto’s death was brought about by Genovese hearing that Scarparto had betrayed his trust and for that reason Genovese would figure that Scarparto’s death was coming to him.’ The photo below shows his funeral.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237001287,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237001287,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237001287?profile=original" width="640" /></a>Two days after Masseria was murdered another killing took place in Brooklyn. Late on the evening of April 17th, Ernesto ‘Hoppy’ Rossi was shot dead as he sat at the wheel of a car outside the home of Police Captain Lewis J. Valentine, 1642 Sixty-eight street. Information about the shooting was sketchy, but it seems two men left the car and then started shooting, before leaving in a another car that was found to have carried false plates. <br /> <br /> Rossi had been part of the crew operated by Frankie Yale, the notorious gangster who had himself been gunned down in Brooklyn in July 1928-the first mobster to become a victim of the Tommy-gun in New York. <br /> <br /> Yale (his Americanized name) was a Calabrian who was a group leader in the Masseria family before his death.<br /> <br /> It has been suggested that Rossi may have worked for a time as the chauffeur of Joe the Boss. Rossi, born in Manhattan of first generation immigrants from Naples, had a father, Pasquale who himself had been arrested by the police as early as 1907 for extortion. So the pedigree was good.<br /> <br /> Rossi’s murder is not a direct link into the case of Joe the Boss, but is still an interesting diversion in this tangled web of who killed whom and for why.<br /> <br /> Just why these men died following the killing of Masseria has never been explained to any degree of satisfaction. Pollicia, Guistra and Li Conti seemed certain to have been part of the Masseria crime family. Scarpato? There is no evidence to indicate one way or the other, but it seems highly likely that he was at least associated with them.<br /> <br /> So why were they clipped?<br /> <br /> Pollicia as mentioned, is believed to have died because of an internal struggle within the Masseria crime family. The other three were all killed for the same reason, or three different ones.<br /> <br /> If it was the same reason, then logic indicates it was to do with the death of ‘Joe the Boss.’ But were they killed by the opposition that saw them as future problems in the making, even though they had done a great service by killing off their chief? Or were they murdered in retribution by men still loyal to the memory of Masseria?<br /> <br /> If each man died an individual death for an individual reason, then the choices seems almost limitless.<br /> <br /> There’s the rub, as the aforementioned Will Shakespeare would have it.<br /> <br /> Why did Joe find himself so unpopular after having reached the pinnacle of his chosen career?<br /> <br /> He had been born around 1887 in a small, rural town in the province of Agrigento, Sicily, and immigrated to New York some sources claim to avoid a murder charge at the age of seventeen. This is conjecture, as there has been no evidence produced to conclusively prove why he left the island. In his late teens he may have been involved in Black Hand activities including kidnapping gangs and for almost two years ran a burglary ring operating in and around the Bowery. He worked for a time as a tailor during the day and went thieving at night. In 1913 he was caught and convicted, receiving a four to six year prison sentence. On his release he lived in the Forsythe Street area of Lower Manhattan with his wife, Maria, before moving to various other addresses in East Houston and East 16th Streets, running a pool room, working in the ice distribution business and operating gambling dens until he moved to an apartment on 2nd Avenue and with the advent of Prohibition, began his climb up through the ranks of the New York underworld. <br /> <br /> Coming from an area in Sicily which had no traditional Mafia history, Masseria it’s safe to assume, held no preconceived ideas as to the place of ‘The Honoured Society’ within the framework of criminal gangs that infested the streets of the biggest city in America. By the early 1920s reports indicated that he was already calling himself’ Joe the Boss’ on the lower East Side of Manhattan.<br /> <br /> It’s highly likely that he was never himself, formerly inducted into the Mafia, although he came in due course to be recognized as a mover and shaker within its ranks. He gathered around him a disparate group of Italian-Americans from all over the Mezzorgiono, the ‘poor south’ of Italy-Sicilians, Calbrians and Napolitans. The one thing they had in commons was that they were criminals or criminals by inclination, and eager to buy their way out of the poverty of their miserable lives. <br /> <br /> Some of these men, such as Charlie Luciano, Vito Genovese, Vincent Alo, Anthony Carfano and Michele Miranda would go on to have major careers in the world of American Mafia crime across the next thirty to forty years.<br /> <br /> Through a series of astute moves and fortunate circumstance, by the late 1920s, Giuseppe Masseria was a major force in the Italian-American crime framework of New York. Joe Bonanno believed his success was simply based on the fact that he rose to his power base through take-overs and merges of a number of small criminal units engaged in illegal alcohol manufacture and distribution. It’s claimed he sought out the role of Boss of Bosses, which title he may well have shouldered for a brief period prior to his death on Coney Island, although this position seemingly was bestowed on Gaspare Messina the Mafia boss of Boston, at a council meeting of Mafia family heads from around America, sometime in December 1930, presumably replacing the mantle which had sat with Salvatore D‘Aquila before his murder.<br /> <br /> Masseria had gotten involved in a messy gang war between his crime family and his allies, the gang headed by Mineo, and another group across in Brooklyn headed by a man called Salavtore Maranzano who was supported by a mob based out of Harlem led by Gaetano Reina. This had dragged on for over a year, and although the casualties were relatively light, with probably a lot less than fifty deaths, shoot-outs on city streets that sometimes created civilian casualties, was not something the city council was too excited about.<br /> <br /> The only ‘inside’ information at a management level we have of the events leading up to the death of Joe the Boss comes from the memoirs of Nicolo Gentile. <br /> <br /> Joseph Valachi the Genovese Family informant of the early 1960s clued us into a lot of meat and potato stuff, but as a foot-soldier his viewpoint was somewhat limited. <br /> <br /> Joseph Bonanno another of the protagonists fighting on the side of Maranzano has also dropped tit-bits, although his biography was more self-serving than unveiling when it came to the truth of the matter. <br /> <br /> Gentile in fact produced two versions of his life-a document which was translated into English for the FBI, which was followed a few years later by a book published in Rome called ‘Vita di Capo Mafia,’ Life of a Mafia Boss. As self-serving as the other books, this one at least overdoses on details and trivia although its major drawback in the investigation into the death of Masseria is that Gentile was actually in Italy during most of the Castellamarese War, as the conflict became known, returning to New York in November 1930.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237002094,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237002094,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237002094?profile=original" width="88" /></a>Born in Siculiana, Agrigento, in the south west of the island in 1885, Gentile (right) had moved to America as a youth in 1903 and travelled back and forward across the country and back and forth to Sicily over the next 35 years before fleeing the country while on bail for narcotic trafficking. <br /> <br /> He tells us among other things that Masseria was ‘stained with the most horrible vileness.’ That he had ordered the assassination of Salvatore D’Aquila in 1928 and that prior to Christmas 1930, Joe the Boss had been called before the New York Police Commissioner, Grover Aloysius Whalen, and told in no uncertain terms that if he did not stop the shooting on the streets, he and all of his men would be arrested and thrown in the jug. <br /> <br /> According to Gentile, at this point Joe threw in the towel and called the war off.<br /> <br /> This, however, was obviously not good enough for someone or ones, which leads us to that Wednesday afternoon on Coney Island. There had been too much damage created, too many people disturbed by the events of the previous year.<br /> <br /> Winston Churchill said, ‘Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount.’ <br /> <br /> That afternoon in April, Joe Masseria made the fateful mistake of getting off, and suffered the consequences.<br /> <br /> The day after his murder, his twenty-four year old son, Joseph Junior, identified the body in the Kings County Morgue at Clarkson Avenue in Brooklyn. Junior had travelled from the family home in the famous Art Deco apartment building at 15 West 81 Street, across from Central Park. It had opened the previous August and Joe senior had purchased Penthouse E on the 15th floor, at some stage before his murder.<br /> <br /> His funeral on April 20th was as to be expected, big, lavish and gaudy. The solid silver casket was said to have cost $15000 ($204,000 in today’s currency). Sixteen automobiles alone were needed to carry the thousands of wreaths; although most were anonymous, one, a heart of roses, was believed to have been sent by Al Capone. Sixty-nine cars made up the funeral cortège which left the penthouse and made its way to the Italian Church of Mary, Help of Christians, at 436 East 12th Street for the requiem mass, held at noon by three priests. <br /> <br /> Interestingly five cars which had been nominated to carry the honorary pallbearers remained empty as none of them showed up.<br /> <br /> He was buried, later in the afternoon, in a mausoleum at Calvary Cemetery in Woodside, Queens County. Fresh flowers are still left there to this day.<br /> <br /> Detectives from Brooklyn’s 60th Precinct, opened a file on Masseria, Number 113, noting his death at approximately 3:30 pm. They finally shelved it as a cold case, 27th November 1940. No one has ever been officially accused of the murder of Joe Masseria.<br /> <br /> According to Gentile, Charlie Luciano claimed he had arranged the killing of his family boss, not to appease the opposing forces of Salvatore Maranzano, but ‘for personal reasons.’ <br /> <br /> It’s generally assumed that Luciano saw the writing on the wall, and that he believed the ‘Americanization’ of the Mafia was long overdue. That despotic ‘Moustache Petes’ like Joe had long passed their use-by date. His successor, Salvatore Maranzano would come to the end of his long-run thing five months after Joe went down. Luciano was a man who saw the purpose of the Mafia as a way to make money, but preferably by the truck-load, not in the dribs and drabs of localized mob extortion rackets which had governed much of the early mob’s social calendar. <br /> <br /> He saw ahead into the future, a future of unions controlled and milked dry. Of gambling and numbers rackets on a grand scale like never before. The domination of every industry and business that kept commerce running. Of political corruption that would help racketeers worm their way into the very fabric of society and eventually enable them to achieve the most noble of holy grails-legitimization. <br /> <br /> Sol Gelb, a New York criminal attorney in the 1920s, said . . . ‘a hoodlum was a hoodlum. A fellow who committed crimes never mixed with respectable people. [After Luciano] they began to look and act the same as respectable people.'<br /> <br /> And so, these hoodlums would aim to scam and rob and steal their way into the very heart of American society until they could achieve this-and many of them did in the years to come.<br /> <br /> But in order to do all of this, the fighting had to stop; peace had to return to the underworld. The boss had to go.<br /> <br /> They had first in the grand scheme of things, to kill the Chinaman.<br /> <br /> <strong>After word</strong><br /> <br /> During the first three days in August, 1931, men representing Mafia families from across the country gathered in New York. They were here to attend a kind of convention. One that would help celebrate the return of peace and order to the New York’s underworld and also to honor the ascension onto the throne of Salvatore Maranzano as the big boss.<br /> <br /> The scores of men who gathered here were ostensibly to be part of a celebration held by the Society Sciacca Maritima which had been formed in 1899 as a charity. Money raised was supposedly to go towards the annual Madonna del Soccoroso day held each year on August 15th on Elizabeth Street, in Lower Manhattan. The Madonna was one of two patron saints worshipped by people from Sciacca.<br /> <br /> The function was held in the Nuova Villa Tammaro and New York Police were on hand to check everyone going in to make sure they were not armed.<br /> <br /> It was an interesting choice of venue for the function, and the function itself, as the Maranzano crime family had apparently passed a death sentence on all Mafioso from Sciacca, who had traditionally supported Masseria in the underworld war that had ended with his death.<br /> <br /> Joe Valachi claimed that as the men entered the restaurant, they threw a donation onto a table, the money being collated and stacked by Frank Scalice. The amount collected varied between $100,000 and $150,00 depending on who was telling the story.<br /> <br /> A New York newspaper reported that Salvatore Maranzano waited in the restaurant on a chair positioned over the very spot where Masseria had been killed, receiving homage from the throng assembled.<br /> <br /> The King was dead. Long live the King. For now at least.<br /> <br /> This gathering of the clans so to speak, was not the only one. Following the killing of Masseria in April 1931, Nicolo Gentile claims that a general assembly was called under the auspices of Al Capone, at the 1000 room Hotel Congress on South Michigan Avenue in Chicago, again, attended by hundreds of mobsters. It’s possible that at this time Capone actually owned the hotel which would have obviously guaranteed security.<br /> <br /> Joe Bonanno in his biography talks about a mob meeting in Maranzano's Wappinger Falls estate in Upper New York State in June, attended by 300 men from all over America. This one apparently followed the Chicago one which it seems was held towards the end of May. He also refers to the Coney island meet, but gave the wrong date, i.e. June, not August.<br /> <br /> Then Joseph Valachi revealed details of yet another meeting, this one in a hall off Washington Avenue, in the Bronx attended by 400-500 people. This was probably held for the benefit of the men who made up the five Mafia crime families of New York, keeping them in the loop, so to speak. A criminal shareholder’s meeting presided over by a board of directors of one-Salvatore Maranzano.<br /> <br /> Seems that following the killing of Masseria, all that was happening was meetings. It’s interesting to speculate just why there were so many, and all taking place in approximately four months, and in different parts of the country. Mafia USA was certainly in a bit of a turmoil once Joe the Boss was demoted.<br /> <br /> The building where Joseph Masseria met his violent end still stands to this day, at 2715 West 15th Street, although modified and altered over the years. It now houses Banners Smoked Fish, owned by Alan Levitz, a business involved in fish smoking, curing and importing; a company that services the hospitality trade across the five boroughs of New York.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237002855,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237002855,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237002855?profile=original" width="297" /></a>The only thing you will find dead there today are a wide variety of aquatic vertebrates awaiting shipment to restaurants.<br /> <br /> At times in New York, mobsters would send the relative or friend of a man they had murdered and disposed of, a parcel of dead fish, signifying the deceased was ‘swimming with the fish, or sleeping with the fish.’<br /> <br /> It seems ironic that the building that once housed Villa Nuova Tammaro, today still connects into mob lore through such a myth, when it once played host to the creation of one of the Mafia’s greatest myths and mysteries-who killed Joe the Boss.<br /> <br /> There is little more to add to this story. The history of the Mafia, at home and abroad, is intersected over the years with examples of men in charge murdered by their subordinates or enemies:<br /> <br /> Dr. Michele Navarra, Paul Castellano, Carmine Galante, Salvatore Inzerillo, Gaetano Reina, Rosario Riccobono, Joe Lombardo, Cesare "Chester" Lamare, Albert Anastasia, Thomas Eboli, Vincenzo Mangano, Giuseppe Calderone, and the most recent, in November, 2010, Mafia Don Nicolo Rizzuto, shot dead in his own kitchen in Montreal. <br /> <br /> An endless list of death by violence because of a life lived by violence.<br /> <br /> Giuseppe Masseria was not the first Mafia boss to die by the gun, and no bookmaker worth his salt, would give odds on how many more will die the same way in the future.<br /> <br /> The so-called ‘Honoured Society’ is a culture infused with greed, duplicity, and all the rest of the seven deadly sins. The greatest myth about the Mafia is the Mafia itself. It is simply a criminal organization composed of criminals, nothing more or less. Its perception in our minds, in our times, is often closer to the mythology created by the media than hard facts that sustain concrete conclusions.<br /> <br /> The Mafia is brand name criminality only in the context of the predatory criminal society based historically and predominantly in western Sicily. Otherwise the term should be regarded as a shorthand generic label for the criminal and racketeering activities of persons with predominantly Italian surnames. The Mafia of Sicily was never transplanted to America. What grew and developed there was simply a recreation in its own form of a culture based on the concept, not the concept itself.<br /> <br /> Most of the Mafia myths come from the United States and not Sicily. The myth, most persuasively created in Hollywood but also enlarged and developed in numerous government reports of the 50s and 60s, is of a virtual underground state of crime headed up by the godfathers or dons of Sicilian American crime families.<br /> <br /> Donald Cressey was wrong to infer that the Mafia stole America. They only ever stole substance, not fanciful theory. There was never an exchange rate for that on the streets of New York.<br /> <br /> The reality, as determined by to-day’s more dispassionate, investigative historians and criminologists, is more prosaic. Dissected, analysed, squeezed dry of every fanciful hyperbole, to-day’s Mafia in America is being presented less as a work in progress, more of an historical phenomena long past its use-by date. Its ranks filled with dissolute and ineffective soldiers with little or no real understanding of the heritage they are supposed to be promulgating, its future is as bleak as it once was promising. <br /> <br /> In America the Mafia grew from a wave of ethnic succession, especially in the New York area-Irish, followed by Jews, followed by Italian-Americans who found outlets for their unique talents in the social whirlpools of the big cities across America. Congressional committees and Presidential commissions have tried hard over the years to pin down just what is the Mafia in American society, and generally fell short every time. Generations of writers, reporters and law enforcement officers are all guilty of creating something out of nothing. It was, and never will be the sum of its parts; more like a part of its sum.<br /> <br /> Giuseppe Masseria tried hard to control something that was in fact uncontrollable.<br /> <br /> Catching falling stars is only for songwriters.<br /> <br /> <em>‘A man feared that he might find an assassin;</em><br /> <em>Another that he might find a victim,</em><br /> <em>One was more wise than the other.’</em><br /> <strong>Stephen Crane</strong> <br /> <br /> <strong>Some of the information and one image in this story was sourced from:</strong><br /> <br /> <em>The Origin of Organized Crime in America by David Critchley which I acknowledge.</em></p>
<p><em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0738573140/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0738573140&linkCode=as2&tag=gangstersinc-20" target="_blank">New York City Gangland</a> by Arthur Nash which I acknowledge.</em><br /> <br /> <em>I also acknowledge the web site Gangrule as the source of the autopsy report on Masseria . Go visit for more information on the early days of the New York Mafia: <a href="http://www.gangrule.com/">http://www.gangrule.com/</a></em><br /> </p>
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Man is the Cruelest Animal: The story of “Trigger” Mike Coppola
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/man-is-the-cruelest-animal-the
2011-06-05T14:00:00.000Z
2011-06-05T14:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/man-is-the-cruelest-animal-the"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236991485,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236991485?profile=original" width="406" /></a>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br /> The man who appeared to be always photographed with a perpetual sneer on his face, seemingly had a temperament to match. Like many short men, he made up for lost inches with a bombastic, in-your-face approach to life. He is best remembered by the media for the way he treated women, rather than for his prowess as a gangster, although he was skilled in that field for sure. He probably murdered his first wife and certainly drove the second one to suicide. Legend has it that because of this, the mob disowned him, leaving him to live out his life in exile, cultivating orchards at his home in Miami Beach.<br /> <br /> Being short, fat, mean and ugly was less of a handicap to this man, more an inconvenience, something he would brush aside as he got on with the important things in his life, mostly to do with making money, and lots of it, which is the Holy Grail of men in the Mafia.<br /> <br /> Michael Coppola was born on July 20th 1900, in Salerno, Italy according to some sources, including the government. Professor Alan Block claimed he was actually born in the Naples area, 30 miles to the north. In December, his parents immigrated to America, settling in New York, in East Harlem. He was one of nine children, one of whom could have been Frank “Three-Fingers” Coppola, a man destined to be a major player in the Sicilian Mafia.<br /> <br /> Ed Reid, in his book “Mafia,” claims Coppola alias Frank LaMonde, was just that. He gets things wrong in this history on the mob, and this may be one of them. Frank Coppola was born in October 1899 in Partinico, Sicily to Francesco and Pietra Loicano. Michael was born a year later to father Giuseppe and mother Angelina.<br /> <br /> In 1914, Michael already an unruly teenager, was sent to truant school as “an incorrigible delinquent.” By the time he was twenty-five, he had been jailed five times, including a thirty-month stretch in Sing-Sing. He seemingly did his master’s degree in criminality on the streets, his curriculum involving grand larceny, felonious assault, pick pocketing, disorderly conduct and homicide.<br /> <br /> He claimed various fronts and occupations during his early years developing his crime profile: employment clerk, barber, restaurant owner and by the mid 1940s was referring to himself as a ‘betting commissioner.’<br /> <br /> Details of his early mob career are hazy. There are reports of him working with Dutch Schultz, the Jewish mobster with attitude; others have him linked into the East Harlem mob known as the “107th. Street Gang,” and by the time he was thirty, he had established himself as a soldier in the Mafia crime family that with the settlement of the Castellammarese War of 1930/31, would become controlled by Charlie Luciano. It was during this period that he earned the nickname “Trigger Mike” which helped him establish an image as a tough-guy, a status somewhat restricted by the fact that he stood barely five feet, five inches tall.<br /> <br /> It’s alleged that he joined the unit controlled by Ciro Terranova, (the half-brother of Giuseppe Morello who was probably the founder of the borgata,) referred to generally as the 116th Street mob or to-day “The Uptown Crew.” At some stage prior to 1935, Terranova was “shelved” by the family administration, and Mike Coppola became the capo controlling it.<br /> <br /> In May, 1929, he had attended the gangland convention at the Breakers Hotel, Atlantic City. Some sources claim that he was “allocated” the numbers business in Harlem at this meeting, although like many things written about the mob, this is speculative at best. Crime historians now believe that the gangster convention held in Atlantic City was more to do with ironing out the gang warfare problems in Chicago than anything else.<br /> <br /> Coppola may have been nominated by Charlie Luciano to watch over the family’s gambling and numbers interests, that were operating alongside those of the famous black gangster, Elsworth “Bumpy” Johnson, who had assumed control of another numbers business that had run successfully under the stewardship of Stephanie St. Clair, the woman who was known as “The Queen of Policy”. At this time, it was a very confused situation on the Upper East Side, with St. Clair, Johnson, Casper Holstein, James Warner and Dutch Schultz all vying for a share of the market that could generate well over $100,000 every day in bets. <br /> <br /> On December 7th., 1929, at 1:30 A.M. it’s alleged Coppola led a gang of six gunmen into a dinner party held by The Tepecano Democratic Club in the Roman Gardens Restaurant at the junction of 187th Street and Southern Boulevard in the Bronx. The party was hosting a function for magistrate Albert Vitale. There were some seventy guests in attendance, including at least one armed New York police officer, Arthur Johnson.<br /> <br /> The visitors were robbed of over $5000 and the cop lost his .38 service revolver, although he eventually, somehow, got this back due to the efforts of Vitale. There were some really tough New York gangsters in attendance that night including Ciro Terranova, the boss of the 116th. Street Gang, Joe “The Baker” Catania and Daniel Imascia who was a nephew of Terranova, and whose brother, Anthony, was an officer of the club. Daniel was also a bodyguard to the infamous ‘Dutch‘ Schultz. It’s an early link into the never ending relationship between the hoods and the politicians that seemed at times, to be the glue holding the New York underworld together. The raid by the gang may have been a setup, according to a subsequent police inquiry, although it is so convoluted and far-fetched it’s almost hard to believe. The only recorded account of this affair appeared in the 1940 book 'Gang Rule in New York,' and apparently emerged at the police department trial of officer Johnson. <br /> <br /> In brief: Terranova may have organized the assassination of mob boss Frankie Uale (aka Yale) back in 1927. A goon squad brought in from Chicago had carried out the killing on a Brooklyn street, notable for the first recorded instance when a Tommy-gun was hefted in New York by the mob. The killers were promised $30 big ones for the hit, but only received $5000 as a deposit. Terranova, allegedly was reneging on the balance and had asked to see the written contract he had offered, just to check the figures. The killers fronted up at the club with the paper, and Coppola fronted up with his boys to remove it along with the holdup takings, which of course was just a smoke screen to cover the real purpose of the raid. I can just picture the document: “The party of the first part, hereafter referred to as the killer, hereby instructs the party of the second part, to be known as the killee…..” It seems about as solid as the legend of the Loch Ness Monster, but then, who knows?<br /> <br /> It's possible the plan to rip-off the dinner party was discussed at either Celano's Garden Restaurant, 36 Kenmare Street in downtown Manhattan, or the garage across the street owned by Albert Marinelli, the crooked alderman representing the 2nd Assembly District. Both of these were, according to the New York Police, favourite meeting-places for Joe Masseria and Charlie Luciano and members of their gang, which at this time almost certainly included “Trigger Mike.”<br /> <br /> One certain victim of the “hold-up” was the judge, Vitale. The New York judiciary decided after a lot of public indignation had been expressed, to remove him from the bench in March 1930.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236991879,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236991879,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236991879?profile=original" width="348" /></a>On a hot steamy night, July 28th, 1931, an auto mobile filled with gunmen wheeled along East 107th Street in East Harlem, slowed outside the Helmar Social Club at number 208, and the men inside the car, levied a barrage of shots at a group of men standing outside the building. The targets threw themselves aside, but a number of children playing in the street were hit, one subsequently dying of his wounds. Two of the gunmen were allegedly Vincent Coll and Frank Giordano and they were looking for members of Dutch Schultz's gang.<br /> <br /> In another convoluted scenario, a police informant, trying to avoid prison, claimed that in fact one of the killers that night was Mike Coppola (right) and that another was Joe Rao, who was also identified as one of the targets of the attack! To complicate matters even more, Anthony 'Big Tee' Buzzone a major Harlem bookmaker, claimed he was the intended target, as part of an ongoing mob dispute revolving around control of sports betting in the area. Ironically, it has been alleged that 'Trigger Mike' had tried to kill Rao the previous year as part of the war taking place in the New York underworld between two warring factions lead by Joe Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano.<br /> <br /> In 1933, Coppola made a trip to Europe and was seen on the Italian Riviera with some well-known New York criminals, including Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, another powerful Jewish gangster. A prize possession of crime author, Hank Messick, was an amateur movie showing these men relaxing by the waterfront, shot by Lepke himself. The trip was apparently financed by New York drug wholesalers, who might well have been Salvatore Santore or Dominick Petrelli, who were identified by FBN agents as being part of a major heroin trafficking ring that also included John Ormento, Tommy Luchese and Philip Mangano among others.<br /> <br /> In June of this same year, Mike Coppola was arrested by the police, who were in fact, after his companion, Buchalter. The two men were found in an expensive apartment on East 68th street, in a very Tony area of upper Manhattan. The cops were after proof that Buchalter was in possession of guns, but a thorough search of the thirteenth floor apartment only disclosed closets full of expensive clothes, and a collection of premium golfing gear, but no weapons. It was believed the two men were working closely together in garment industry racketeering. Coppola was also managing other business schemes, including coin-operated vending and gaming machines spread across Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan.<br /> <br /> From February to April 1937, Coppola rented a house on East 5th Street in Tuscon, Arizona, and along with Cleveland mobster Al Polizzi, Lepke Buchalter from New York, Pete Licavoli from Detroit and Joe Zucker, an aide to Frank Costello, spent time socialising with Jewish gangster Moe Dalitz, who went about purchasing a chain of laundries in the area, (Dalitz seemed to have a thing about laundries, owing a string of them in Detroit and Cleveland,) but just what these other gangsters were discussing as they went hunting and partying has never been disclosed, although it's fairly certain they had not travelled all this way just to get a tan.<br /> <br /> It has been suggested that with the Nazi government disrupting traditional drug trafficking routes out of Europe, these men had gathered here, close to the Mexican border, to try to sort out alternate routes for their raw materials source. If in fact this is what they had assembled here for, they were probably dealing with Enrique Diarte, a Tijuana based Mexican narcotics trafficker, who in the late 1930s and early 1940s was probably the biggest drug dealer in Mexico.<br /> <br /> By the early 1940s Coppola had consolidated his position in the Luciano family, growing rich on the proceeds of his gambling activities. His place in the mob was obviously a mystery to law enforcement officials at city and government level.<br /> <br /> The Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN,) who were probably the most active agency tacking the Mafia at this time, wrongly perceived him as a lieutenant in the 107th. Street Mob, which is known today as the Luchese family.The agency had created a file in 1936 showing the group was led by Tommy Luchese assisted by Coppola and Dominck Petrelli. They believed the overall boss of the 107th Street Mob to be Ciro Terranova.<br /> <br /> Petrelli, Coppola and Terranova were part of the Mafia clan that was controlled by Charlie Luciano. The FBN did however, get Luchese’s place in the 107th correctly identified, just not his position. The family at this time was controlled by Tommaso Gagliano. The FBI would never “officially” recognize the existence of the Mafia for almost another twenty years, which no doubt suited Coppola and his mob friends down to the ground.<br /> <br /> Mike Coppola was part of a crew operating in East Harlem that would become famous for at least four of its other members in the years to come:<br /> <br /> Joseph 'Socks' Lanza, who became the czar of the Fulton Fish Market for the mob, making it for many years a major cash-cow for the Luciano crime family. Lanza probably worked for Coppola as a “muscle” man in the early stages of his mob career, but became a man of such standing, when he married in 1941, his best man was Frank Costello, then the head of the family.<br /> <br /> Phil Lombardo, a small, bald, and cross-eyed gangster, who at one time was driver/bodyguard for big boss Charlie Luciano and would become the family boss himself one day.<br /> <br /> Anthony ‘Fat Tony’ Salerno, one of three brothers in the mob, the others being Alfred and Angelo, who would also rise in ranking to be the big cheese in the Genovese crime family, at least the 'front' big cheese.<br /> <br /> And Barney Bellomo who may or may not have reached that exalted position in the 21st century.<br /> <br /> According to informant Joseph Valachi, “Trigger Mike’s” crew was the biggest in the family, which if true, would have made him one if not the most powerful capo in what was perhaps the biggest Mafia unit in New York, at the time.<br /> <br /> In 1943, Coppola married Doris Lehman, a twenty-three year old dancer and hat-check girl at the Copacabana Club in Manhattan. She was tall, with dark hair, flashing eyes and great legs. In 1944 she gave birth to their first child, a boy they called Michael David. Three years later, Doris was pregnant again, but would never live to see her baby grow up.</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236992264,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236992264,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236992264?profile=original" width="420" /></a></p>
<center>
<p><strong>Mike Coppola and Doris Lehman</strong></p>
</center>
<p><br /> A major part of Coppola’s strength and power base in this part of New York, rested on the support he and other mobsters received from the congressman for East Harlem, Vito Marcantonio. They helped get him the votes for re-election, and he made sure things worked smoothly in their favour. He was fighting a primary in 1946, but his position was being jeopardized by the actions of a Republic party captain called John Scottorigio who was a district captain for Marcantonio's Republican opponent, Frederick Van Pelt Bryan. It was believed Scottoriggio had in his possession a record of voter names he intended to challenge the morning of the elections. Coppola and his group decided that it would be a good thing if Scottoriggio's intention was to be nullified.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993055,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993055,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236993055?profile=original" width="194" /></a>In a meeting held in his apartment at 347 East 1116th. Street (right), Coppola decided that Scottorigio had to be put out of action. He was waylaid early in the morning of election day, November 6th, 1946, as he left his apartment, by four men, who beat him so badly, he died six days later in hospital. Present that night at the meeting in the apartment, apart from the conspirators, were Doris and her father David Lehman.<br /> <br /> The police had arrested an ex-con named Emilio Tizol, who had been pinched for physically menacing three of Republican candidate Van Pelt Bryan's 18th Congressional District workers on Election Day. Hoping to mitigate his forthcoming sentence he asked to see District Attorney Frank Hogan, offering him information on the men who were behind the attack on the Republican captain.<br /> <br /> Based on Tizol's revelations, Hogan's detectives on Saturday the 16th of November, five days after Scottoriggio died, picked up Harlem's two most feared racket bosses, Trigger Mike Coppola and Joey Rao.<br /> <br /> They were subsequently released on bail of $250,000 an enormous amount for this time, which was quickly knocked down by a friendly judge, Aaron Levy to $25,000 following their arrest as material witnesses. The police went after other suspects (over 800 witnesses would subsequently be interviewed in the Scottorigio case,) including Doris and her father. But they disappeared, just after Mike was arrested.<br /> Along with the little boy, they first went to stay with relatives in Queens. Then, they headed south and stayed on Palm Island in Biscayne Bay, near Miami until the spring of 1947. From there, they made their way north, staying for a time with Anthony Del Guidice, an ex NYPD officer, and close associate of Mike Coppola, before finishing up at the palatial residence at 315 Mount Pleasant Avenue, Providence, Rhode Island, of Frank 'Butsey' Morelli, allegedly head of the New England Mafia family.<br /> <br /> Eventually the pressure grew too great, and Doris and her father surrendered themselves to the authorities. They both were indicted, facing perjury charges for their lack of co-operation in the investigation, and facing up to ten years in prison after District Attorney, Frank Hogan, had succeeded in having an indictment brought down in November 1947. <br /> <br /> Early in March, 1948, while awaiting trial for perjury, Doris was admitted to St. Vincent’s Hospital at 153 West Eleventh Street, Manhattan, to await the birth of her second child. On March 17th., 1948, at 10:30 pm, a baby girl, Doris Patricia arrived. On March 18th., a little after nine, the mother died, very conveniently in hospital, of complications from childbirth. No autopsy was ever held to determine the cause of death, and Coppola, contrary to his religious beliefs, had his wife’s body cremated. The case against “Trigger Mike” died along with his wife. Charges against her elderly father were dropped. No loose threads; end of story. <br /> <br /> Doris was waked out of the Ferncliffe Mausoleum and Cemetery facility at 207 East 11th., Street, and it seemed as though half the New York underworld came along to say goodbye. Over 5000 people attended the service or funeral. Among the crowds of sombre men in black were Augie Cafarno, Gerardo Catena, Vito Genovese, Big John Ormento, Frank Morelli and Albert Anastasia, who simply signed the register of condolences as “Albert.”<br /> <br /> There was only one Albert of any consequence among these guys after all. The money pledged by the visitors covered the cost of the funeral, leaving the bereaved husband a profit of $1500. Anastasia dropped off a measly $50.<br /> <br /> In 1947, while his wife was hiding out in Florida, and he was no doubt visiting her, he did one of the many deals that helped make him a very rich man. He invested in the Manhattan Cigarette Company a firm founded in 1936 by Joe 'Doc' Stacher, a close aide of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-meyer-lansky-laundered-the-american-mafia-s-dirty-cash-and-ma">Meyer Lansky</a>, and Mike Lascari, a relative of Luciano’s. The business, originally called the Public Service Tobacco Company, was the largest cigarette-vending machine business on the East coast. Other investors in this booming business included Joe Adonis, Gerry Catena and the New Jersey, Jewish gangster, Abner Zwillman.<br /> <br /> The Mason Tenders Union of New York had long been a fertile breeding ground for Mafia control and manipulation. A unit of the LIUNA, Laborers International Union of North America, itself one of the most corrupt labour organizations in America. There are ten locals in the Mason Tenderts District Council of New York, and the Luciano/Costello/Genovese family had a lock on local 13 of Queens and 47 of Brooklyn for years. Mike Coppola seemingly had a turn controlling these union slush funds for the Mafia at some period prior to moving to Florida on a permanent basis.<br /> <br /> By November 1950, Coppola was the owner of a house at 4431 Alton Road, on the Miami Beach peninsular for which he paid $30,000. He had spent much of the war years here, on the Beach, living at 5138 Cherokee Avenue, just south of La Gorce Golf course in the Lake View neighbourhood.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993098,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993098,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236993098?profile=original" width="655" /></a><br /> He purchased the Alton Road property from John “King” Angersola a one-time member of Cleveland's Mayfield Road Mob, a man with many interests in Florida including the Carib, Wofford and Grand Hotels in the Miami area. Angersola and his brother had migrated south to Florida in 1939 to avoid the heat being brought down on the mob in Cleveland by the crusading director of safety for the city, Elliot Ness.<br /> <br /> Mike was soon investing in local opportunities and quickly became a partner with bookmaker Jack Friedlander in a casino called Club Collins.<br /> <br /> He bankrolled at least two of the South Florida on-track bookmaking heavies, Frank Ritter and Max Courtney In December 1955, his activities in this area had him ejected and bAnnd from the famous Tropical Park raceway in Coral Gables and all associated tracks.<br /> <br /> He also cemented relationships with Jewish gangster <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-meyer-lansky-laundered-the-american-mafia-s-dirty-cash-and-ma">Meyer Lansky</a>, also domicile in Florida and Lansky’s friend and partner, real-estate developer Loris Chesler a 300lb obese Canadian multi-millionaire and former prohibition rum-runner. Through him, he linked into gambling ventures via a Grand Bahamas company called Mary Carter Paints which morphed into Resorts International in 1968. Along with Wallace Groves and Chesler, Coppola became a director of the General Development Corporation whose functions was to purchase available land, including complete islands in the Bahamas chain, as potential sites for future casinos. It also became the largest real estate developer in Florida, creating among other interests, three entire small cities.<br /> <br /> Although he had essentially removed himself physically from the North East Coast, he still maintained ties there.<br /> <br /> A 1952 probe by the New York State Crime Commission into waterfront racketeering in New Jersey, named him as a major target for investigation<br /> <br /> Along with Joey Rao and Tony Bender, (the right hand man of Vito Genovese,) he was deeply involved in controlling the waterfront across the Hudson River.<br /> <br /> He was often observed by New York Police investigators, in the company of Tony Bender, meeting up with Frank Costello for meetings at New York’s many racetracks. Costello loved to gamble, and public courses were perfect venues to discuss Mafia business.<br /> <br /> Mike Copolla was also allegedly operating the largest floating crap game in New York which was busted by the police who raided a deserted loft in Harlem on the afternoon of February 5th, 1952, arresting 46 gamblers and seizing over $10000 in cash.<br /> <br /> Coppola like all the men of the Mafia, networked liked crazy. His business, his social life, his very existence, depended upon and was driven by his connections. Joseph Valachi, a mere soldier in the same crime family, had literally hundreds of friends, social links and access to fellow mobsters across the five Mafia crime families of New York, and he was hardly in the same league as Mike Coppola, whose contacts stretched across America-criminals, politicians, cops, grifters, a whole smorgasbord above and below the radar that he used to grease the cogs and ratchets of his life-style engine.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993454,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993454,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236993454?profile=original" width="198" /></a>One of the lesser known, but fascinating in his own right, was Pasquale “Patsy” Erra (right).<br /> <br /> Born in 1915 in Harlem, at the age of twenty, Erra became a professional fighter at the bantamweight level. He fought eight times in New York with a seven win one loss record between 1935 and 1936 until his life turned to custard when he was arrested, tried and convicted of larceny, for which he did time in prison.<br /> <br /> In 1945, Coppola commissioned him to carry out a hit on one Louis Cirello who had robbed one of Mike’s gambling joints. Erra and a partner who may have been one of his brothers, either Mike or Rocco, tracked down their prey and shot him four times as he stood at the back of the Cosmo movie theatre at 176 East 116th Street in Harlem, on Friday evening, June 1st although they did not do that good a job, and Cirello lived to steal another day.<br /> <br /> As a reward for at least trying. Coppola proposed Erra into the Luciano crime family and he became a member in 1949. He became the bodyguard and driver for Coppola until he also decided to move south to Florida.<br /> <br /> Erra was a man who developed some significant contacts himself. FBI “airtels” or summaries of an electronic bugging device, confirmed that he had been in contact with Raymond Patriarca, the Rhode Island based head of the New England Mafia at some time in the early 1960s indicating that he had progressed up the ladder from being just a hit man and bodyguard. <br /> <br /> In Florida, he more than likely kept on working for Trigger Mike, and along the way ended up in ownership along with Vincent Teriaca of the well-known nightspot, the Dream Bar, located in the Johnina Hotel on the beachfront at Collins and 71street in Miami Beach. He died, May 1973, age fifty-eight.<br /> <br /> Teriaca’s son, Craig, a golf professional was shot and killed in a barroom scuffle by Richie Schwartz, the step-son of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-meyer-lansky-laundered-the-american-mafia-s-dirty-cash-and-ma">Meyer Lansky</a>. Schwartz lasted a few weeks until he was also killed, shot-gunned to death as he sat in his car behind his restaurant. Mob vengeance is almost always quick and certain.<br /> <br /> Another mobster Mike Coppola was linked into was Joseph “Pip the Blind” Gagliano a cousin of Vincent Rao, and one of the major drug traffickers on the upper East Side.<br /> <br /> Starting as a street thug and working with petty hoods like Joe Valachi, stealing fabric out of warehouses in the garment district, he soon worked his way up the ladder into a position of authority in the early mob structures following the New York underworld war of 1930-31. <br /> <br /> He and Coppola had shared business and social agendas. On one occasion, in the early 1930s, they made a trip to Colorado, and were photographed on horseback. Spiffily dressed in matching sweaters and knickers, their hair greased back, they sit uneasily on two large horses, holding on for grim death as the photographer freezes them for all eternity. One, the king of the Harlem numbers, the other a drug dealer par excellence, the world was waiting for them, its arms outstretched.<br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993662,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993662,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236993662?profile=original" width="747" /></a></p>
<center><strong>Coppola & Gagliano</strong></center>
<p><br /> Gagliano operated as the narcotics manager for the 107th Street Mob, organizing the smuggling of opium from Mexico up into the New York area where it was processed into heroin by clandestine laboratories, according to the New York office of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics who tracked him through the 1930s before pinning him down and getting him indicted in December 1946 along with Charles Albero, a.k.a. “Charlie Bullets” and others. Facing up to 10 years in prison, “Pip the Blind” hung himself in his cell in the Bronx on April 10th 1947.<br /> <br /> In 1955, “Trigger Mike” flew from Miami to New York to watch a boxing match and find a new wife. <br /> <br /> The boxers were Archie Moore, grossly outmatched by Rocky Marciano. The woman was Ann Drahmann. She was thirty-four, five feet four (about the same height as Coppola,) dark haired, pretty and a solo mother. She had been born of Italian parents in Cincinnati, her father‘s name being Augustine. She had a seventeen year old daughter called Joan. Ann lived in Newport, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, and had been married to Charley Drahmann who managed the Lookout House casino for the mob. In August 1952, he was killed in a plane crash near Atlanta.<br /> <br /> Friends of Coppola’s arranged an introduction between him and Ann at an Italian restaurant in East Harlem. Mike was ready for another woman to share his life, and Ann was looking for a way out of the poverty trap her husband’s death had created for her. She thought at first that the fat, little man, who spent the night watching her table from across the room was the maître d’ and thanked him for a wonderful evening. Coppola was obviously gob-smacked by her presence, and was soon courting her with a fervour that matched his thirst for making money.<br /> <br /> He pursued her, bombarding her with flowers and gifts of jewellery, chaperoned by big Fat Tony Salerno, one of his soldiers, who towered over the diminutive mob boss with the face of a dimpled doughnut. On December 28th., 1955, Ann and Coppola were married, with their wedding reception being held at the Beverly Hills Club, outside Newport, Kentucky. They moved straight into the Alton Road house, which sat on a 100 by 120 feet corner section with three bathrooms, four bedrooms, a gourmet kitchen and a full-sized pool in the backyard. Managed by a housekeeper, a cook and a gardener, thing should have been perfect, but for Ann, it was all downhill from then on. Ironically, because of their wedding location, she found herself locked into a relationship with her own Joe Btfsplk. <br /> <br /> Three weeks after the wedding, Coppola, in a screaming rage with his wife, calling her “a flat-nosed, frog-eyed bastard,” pulled out a revolver and wildly fired a shot at her, fortunately missing his target by a mile. She slept that night in the maid’s room, and was packing a bag to leave, the next day, when Coppola smacked her repeatedly in the face, knocking her to the kitchen floor. It was just the first of many beatings <br /> <br /> Three months into the marriage, Ann found herself pregnant. One afternoon, lying on the kitchen table, an underworld doctor known only as “Doctor D,” a house surgeon for one of the swanky beach-side hotels in Miami performed an abortion on her, at Coppola’s insistence. Trigger Mike even assisted in the operation, smiling with glee as the doctor cut away the foetus. Three more times, over the following months, Ann subjected herself to the pain and humiliation of these unsavoury operations. She came to believe that her husband wanted sex with her, only so that he could indulge himself in these sickening sequels. The doctor walked away each time with a tax-free fee of $1000 for his services.<br /> <br /> Throughout the 1950s, Coppola operated a loan-sharking business from his home, topping up his bank through regular visits to New York, always returning with at least $200,000 in cash. His wife in her testimony to the IRS, claimed her husband stashed at least $350,000 at any one time in five different secret locations throughout their house.<br /> <br /> Following its opening in 1954, Coppola made the Fontainebleau Hotel on Collins Avenue his operating base, not unlike the way Frank Costello in New York used the Waldorf Astoria as a mob headquarters. Coppola went by the name of Michael Kaplan to confuse any law enforcement investigators as he operated from a luxurious cabana, one of 250 that sat alongside the hotel’s 6500 square foot pool. He became a close friend to Ben Novack the flamboyant hotelier who had created the mammoth establishment that re-opened in November 2008 after a one billion dollar refurbishment!<br /> <br /> The domestic beatings and abuse continued, and on one occasion Ann was immobilized for three weeks after her husband kicked her so hard, he damaged tissue at the base of her spine.<br /> <br /> As much as he continually abused his wife, Ann confirmed that through her marriage, Coppola had showered her with jewellery, furs and presents worth at least $250,000, not so much because he loved her, but to show off and prove to people just how big and successful he was. And he was doing all this on a declared annual income of $15000!<br /> <br /> Late in 1956, Ann was searching through her husband’s possessions, and came across some papers. Although she never disclosed the full nature of them, she later told a federal agent that they confirmed her husband had arranged the murder of his first wife.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993891,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993891,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236993891?profile=original" width="124" /></a>By the end of 1957, Mike Coppola had decided to withdraw from New York street activities for good. He would leave his huge, profitable numbers business in the capable hands of Tony “Fats” Salerno (right), who would also take over the running of his crew. They settled the details when “Fats” came down for the winter break, to catch some sun in south Florida.<br /> <br /> Tony would courier Coppola’s share of the profits each month, and he would concentrate his efforts on his other business efforts in the sunshine state and the Caribbean, where along with <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-meyer-lansky-laundered-the-american-mafia-s-dirty-cash-and-ma">Meyer Lansky</a> and Vincent Alo (no relation to Joey), he had interests in Bahamian casinos, and his directorship in General Development Corporation which by now had bought up half of the Grand Bahamas Island for casino and gambling developments, and Nevada, that generated him substantial income from the points he had in various casinos. The money that came in brown paper parcels from New York was supplemented by bundles of money from these ventures as well. Ann estimated that his income from these sources was at least $1 million every year.<br /> <br /> In October, he and Ann visited Las Vegas, and one night at the Riviera casino, Coppola got into a marathon crap game that went on for twenty-eight hours, and cost him $140,000. On October 13th., he was arrested at the Stardust casino. Although no charges were brought against him, as a result of this brush with the law and the authorities, he was essentially bAnnd from the casinos of Vegas. In 1960, he found himself sharing top billing with eleven other men who had also been barred from any and all casinos and places of gambling in Nevada.<br /> <br /> His name was listed in what became to be known as “The Black Book,” created by the Nevada Gaming Board at the instigation of the governor of Nevada, Grant Sawyer on 13th June, 1960. It stayed there until he died.<br /> <br /> According to information supplied by Ann, some of it later confirmed by mob informer, Joseph Valachi, “Trigger Mike” was connected not only to men who would later become notorious as members of what is now known as the Genovese family, men such as Phil “Ben Turpin” Lombardo, Frank Livorsi, Tony Salerno, Joe Stacci and Vincent Alo, but also other such mob luminaries as Charlie Luciano, now residing at 464 Via Lasso, Naples, Italy, Moe Dalitz, Al Polizzi, Vito Genovese, Tom Dragna and <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-meyer-lansky-laundered-the-american-mafia-s-dirty-cash-and-ma">Meyer Lansky</a>, to name only a few.<br /> <br /> His address book was thick with names as was his Xmas card list-Angersola, Bommarito, Scalish, Epstein, Polizi, a list of various Dragnas, an endless cavalcade of criminals and shady politicians who moved in and out of his business and social templates.<br /> <br /> Although Coppola had stepped back from his daily street crime involvement, he kept pursuing other money-making activities.<br /> <br /> In 1959, he came under the scrutiny of New York D.A. Frank Hogan who was investigating corruption in the professional boxing area. Hogan's office were scrutinizing the activities of a number of well-known hoodlums and shady businessmen such as Anthony Salerno, Frank Ericson, Gil Beckley, one of the biggest bookie-handicappers in Florida and the man who had orchestrated the meeting between Coppola and Ann Drahmann, Coppola himself and the arch-manipulator of the sport, New Jersey based Frankie Carbo, the most venal operator in the crooked world of boxing, and in particular their devious control of the famous June 25th 1959 fight between Ingemar Johansson of Sweden and American heavyweight Floyd Patterson. In a sport where it was often said 'only the ring was square' the mob's stranglehold was stifling to the point that nine months after his bout, Johansson had still not received his $300,000 prize money.<br /> <br /> The D.A.'s investigation led nowhere however, and Coppola and his associates were never indicted.<br /> <br /> As 1959 drew to a close, things were coming to a head in the Coppola household. Not only was Mike beating his wife on a regular basis, her twenty-one year old daughter was now, also a victim. Coppola was supplying her with drugs, and possibly even worse than that, sexually abusing her. Ann and her daughter finally gave in, and both left the house for good. On February 17th., 1960, Coppola sued for divorce, charging Ann with “extreme cruelty.” She cross-claimed, citing the same reason, and on March 25th., a final decree was signed off. She was at last free from the monster she had married almost five years earlier, but wasn’t just satisfied with a divorce and the cash settlement that was granted along with it.<br /> <br /> She wanted revenge, some kind of justice against the brute who had tormented her for so long. The Internal Revenue Service was after Mike, and she agreed to co-operate, working closely with one of their agents Joe Wanderscheid, to help build up a case. The IRS investigation carried on from May 2nd. throughout the rest of the year.<br /> <br /> On the evening of October 20th., Ann was kidnapped from the car park of her apartment building, Blair House on Bay Harbor Island, by two men. They drove her to a lonely beach on Easter Shores and gave her a solid beating. The men told her she was “a stoolie,” and “you got to leave Mikey alone, if you don’t, we’ll kill you.”<br /> <br /> She survived the beating, and later called a press-conference, accusing her husband of arranging the abduction. The IRS’s case against Coppola mounted over the months, and largely on information supplied by Anne, a grand jury indicted him on four counts of tax-evasion, involving $385,000.<br /> <br /> On May 25th., 1961, she and her daughter sailed on the S.S. United States to France to start a tour of Europe. It has been alleged that she took with her $250,000 of Coppola's cash. Over the next few months, she flew back and forward between Rome and New York as Coppola’s trial date neared. While in Florida she was secluded at the Homestead Air Force Base, forty miles south of Miami where agents of the IRS mounted what became known as “Operation Babysit” to ensure her safety and carry out their de-briefing of her.<br /> <br /> On one occasion, Coppola flew over his attorney who offered Ann $200,000 to stay in Europe. She turned him down. His first trial which began on November 27th was postponed because of an irregularity with the jury and at the second trial due to start on Feb 12th., 1962 when over two hundred witnesses had been subpoenaed to give evidence, Mike Coppola, literally minutes before the court convened, suddenly changed his plea to guilty. He had been indicted on charges of tax evasion this time to the amount of $966,193.00, but the government settled for 400K.<br /> <br /> The judged fined him $40,000 and sentenced him to serve a period behind bars. It was his first prison sentence in over 20 years.<br /> <br /> It was rumoured that the mob had held a ‘mini’Commission’ meeting somewhere in West Palm Beach and word had been handed down to Coppola to roll over and not cause any more waves.<br /> <br /> Frustrated at not being able to stand up in court and tell the world what a real slime ball Michael Coppola was, Ann eventually returned once more to Europe. Six months later she was dead.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236994076,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236994076,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236994076?profile=original" width="200" /></a>She and her daughter had settled in Rome. Ann (left) stayed in hotels although Joan had moved into her own apartment. Ann, fearful of reprisals because she had informed on such an important mobster as her husband, refused to live with her daughter in case of potential risk to her, and filled her days shopping and visiting Eve’s, a famous and expensive beauty salon on the Via Veneto.<br /> <br /> She had booked into a hotel room in Rome, on September 18th., and started drinking whiskey and gulping down Nembutal tablets. She wrote a letter of farewell thanking her friends in the IRS, extorting the attorney general, Robert Kennedy to keep up his fight on organized crime, sending farewell wishes to her daughter Joan, asking that she be cremated and her ashes strewn over Coppola’s house. And a final message for the man who had ruined her life:<br /> <br /> “Mike Coppola, someday, somehow, a person or God or the Law shall catch up with you, you yellow-bellied bastard. You are the lowest and biggest coward I have had the misfortune to meet.”<br /> <br /> Then, she lay down on the bed and died.<br /> <br /> Interestingly, only a few days before she killed herself, she had signed an agreement to lease an apartment in the city.<br /> <br /> Coppola served his time in the Federal prison at Atlanta. He found himself with plenty of mob company, including John Diougardi, a capo, and Joe Palermo, a soldier in the Luchese family, and the big boss himself, Vito Genovese serving 15 years for drug trafficking. He would have also, no doubt, mingled with a soldier from his own crime family, a small, inconspicuous man, Joe 'Cago' Valachi, who would soon turn organized crime on its head when he became an informant for the government.<br /> <br /> Mike Coppola returned to his home in Florida in December 1962 after serving nine months of his sentence. It seemed that the problems he had allowed to develop, and the resulting bad publicity surrounding the stormy marriage he had endured with Ann, were enough to convince his superiors in the Genovese crime family that he had served out his usefulness, and they basically put him out to pasture. He spent his remaining years looking after his ivory collection, and raising orchids in the big, empty house on Alton Road.<br /> <br /> Authorities did track him, travelling to Europe, Mexico and Central and South America during this period, but were never able to connect him to any obvious criminal activity.<br /> <br /> In September, 1966, he was taken ill, and was admitted into Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He died there from kidney disease on October 1st. His body was shipped to New York where he was buried at the Ferncliffe Cemetery and Mausoleum in Hartsdale, Westchester County, New York. It was so quick and quiet, the Federal agents who had been checking on him since his release from prison, didn’t learn of his funeral until it was over and done with. <br /> <br /> Ferncliffe is the only registered cemetery in the north New York area that is allowed to carry out cremations. John Lennon and Nelson Rockefeller were cremated here, and the cemetery holds the remains of such luminaries as Jim Henson, the creator of “The Muppets,” Oscar Hammerstein III, actors Basil Rathbone, Joan Crawford, Judy Garland and Ed Sullivan. <br /> <br /> Michael Coppola is buried in a crypt under that of his first wife Doris. <br /> <br /> Ann Drahmann was one of many mob connected women who found their lives locked on an unstoppable course leading only to despair. She no doubt loved the riches her marriage brought her, but could never have imaged the despair those riches would generate.<br /> <br /> Renate Siebert in her elegant and arresting book on women and the Mafia, ‘Secret’s of Life and Death,’ recalls German poet Bertolt Brech’s ballad:<br /> <br /> <em>Oh! Moon of Alabama</em><br /> <em>We must now say goodbye,</em><br /> <em>We’ve lost our good old mamma,</em><br /> <em>And must have dollars</em><br /> <em>Oh! You know why</em><br /> <br /> Powerful ambition for social climbing coupled with the urge to acquire wealth even though it was all being subsidised by a demeaning lifestyle at the hands of a chronic and psychopathic bully made the options of Mrs. Mike Coppola very limited.<br /> <br /> A repulsive, obnoxious megalomaniac, a wife beater and worse, there were few redeeming features about this man. His second wife claimed he loved beautiful things and at times could be very gentle, yet she thought of him essentially as egotistical and cruel. His passing would have been mourned by few.<br /> <br /> Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno certainly would no doubt have been grateful for no longer having to cough up a share of the huge numbers business he controlled from his dingy social club on East 115th Street in Harlem, which is alleged to have generated up to and beyond $50 million a year. It’s highly feasible that he was a strong advocator that Mike Coppola be “shelved” so that he could no longer be obligated to keep sending a share of his profits to his former boss. If there is no honour among thieves, there is certainly none among Mafioso. Salerno had another twenty years to enjoy his wealth and station in the family before he went down to the government on the famous 1985 RICO case which sent him away to prison where he died as a result of a stroke in 1992.<br /> <br /> Coppola was without doubt evil by any definition. Alain Badion the French political activist and philosopher believes that abusing the power of truth enables the control of others or the amassing of power. “Trigger Mike” was undoubtedly a master in both arts.<br /> <br /> William Shakespeare claimed “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” The Mafia supplied many of them.<br /> <br /> Mike Coppola was ugly by looks and ugly by nature. Perhaps Friedrich Nietzsch had the true handle on it:<br /> <br /> “Man is the cruelest animal.”<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236994685,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236994685,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236994685?profile=original" width="118" /></a><br /> <em><strong>Thanks to Ed from The Real Deal Forum for his help on some of the research.</strong></em></p>
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Genovese Capo Sentenced to 10 Years For Murder Conspiracy
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/genovese-capo-sentenced-to-10
2011-05-05T21:30:00.000Z
2011-05-05T21:30:00.000Z
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/genovese-capo-sentenced-to-10"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236989887,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236989887?profile=original" width="450" /></a>By David Amoruso<br /> <br /> “Anthony Palumbo’s decades long crime spree has finally come to an end. He is going to prison which is exactly where he belongs.” Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, could not have been any more clear and direct in his statement about Genovese mobster Palumbo (photo above). <br /> <br /> Today, Anthony “Tony D.” Palumbo (62) was sentenced to ten years in prison and three years of supervised release for his participation in a conspiracy to murder a <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mafia-overview">Russian organized crime</a> figure. He had already pleaded guilty on August 30, 2010. The murder conspiracy took place two decades ago and is another sign that the law has a long memory and the ability to bring the culprits to justice many years after the crime occurred. <br /> <br /> In 1990, Palumbo was placed in charge of overseeing the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-genovese-crime-family">Genovese Crime Family</a>’s interests in an illegal mob cartel that extorted petroleum companies affiliated with several Russian mobsters engaged in a motor fuel bootlegging scheme. Through this scheme, the petroleum companies evaded the payment of federal and state motor fuel excise taxes, and the Genovese and other organized crime families extorted a share of the illegal proceeds. <br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236991065,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236991065,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236991065?profile=original" width="140" /></a>“In late 1992 or early 1993, one of the Russian gangsters asked Palumbo and others to murder a hitman who worked for him. Palumbo and his co-conspirators agreed to murder the Russian hitman, but higher-ups in the Genovese Crime Family would not authorize the murder, so it did not happen,” the FBI’s press release states. <br /> <br /> Because Palumbo pleaded guilty to this murder conspiracy, prosecutors did not pursue charges against him for the 1992 mob hit of Angelo Sangiuolo. Prosecutors allege the murder of the Genovese associate was ordered by former Genovese boss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/genovese-boss-vincent-chin">Vincent “The Chin” Gigante</a> (right) because he had ripped off a gambling business associated with Palumbo. After Palumbo complained to Gigante, Gigante ordered Angelo Prisco, a Genovese capo, to murder Sangiuolo. Prisco recruited two of his associates to commit the murder. On or about June 2, 1992, Prisco’s mob associates shot and killed Sangiuolo in a van in the Bronx.<br /> <br /> Palumbo was picked up by federal agents in 2009 together with a group of Genovese mobsters that included Acting Boss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/genovese-boss-daniel-leo">Daniel Leo</a>. On orders from Leo, authorities allege, Palumbo took over a Jersey City business after the owner fell behind on a loansharking debt.<br /> </p>
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Another Mob Social Club Bites The Dust
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/another-mob-social-club-bites
2011-04-22T09:30:00.000Z
2011-04-22T09:30:00.000Z
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/another-mob-social-club-bites"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237003288,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237003288?profile=original" width="455" /></a>By David Amoruso<br /> <br /> Based in Greenwich Village, the Triangle Social Club used to be the headquarters of the most powerful Mafia Family in the United States. But today, it has become the home of an <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/mobsters_clubbed_thesmokinggun_com_XUKfdl1vlIBVVyoNYVgcaL" target="_blank">organic, feel-good tea and spice store</a> and has been renamed the Sullivan Street Tea & Spice Company. <br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237003884,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237003884,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237003884?profile=original" width="360" /></a>Some people joked that the secretive <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-genovese-crime-family">Genovese Crime Family</a> had once again used a tactic to stay off the FBI’s radar by remodeling their meeting place into a store front that has nothing to do with the mob. The Genovese Family’s former boss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/genovese-boss-vincent-chin">Vincent “Chin” Gigante</a> was indeed capable of such tricks to keep his criminal business a secret. He himself put on a crazy act for most of his adult life in order to stay out of prison. For several decades the Triangle Social Club was Gigante’s base of operations and general meeting place, where he would play cards and socialize with mob underlings. <br /> <br /> But when the mob boss died in 2005 after having been in prison since 1997, the club finally lost its function. In October of 2006, I visited New York to see several of those famous mob hotspots myself. Of course I also stopped by the Triangle Social Club (see video below). The place still looked like it did on many photos I had seen in books, with its dark exterior and boarded up windows, everything about it screamed “members only”. In a recent photo made by Google Street View white graffiti can be <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1378907/Sullivan-Street-Tea--Spice-Company-replaces-Triangle-Social-Club-Mafia-hangout-Greenwich-Village.html" target="_blank">seen</a> on the boards that kept people from looking inside. It probably was a final sign that the Genovese Family had decided to sell the place. <br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237004671,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237004671,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237004671?profile=original" width="240" /></a>Social clubs have been a staple of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/organized-crime-in">Italian-American Mafia</a>. Places where mobsters got together to shoot the shit, play cards, plan schemes… and murders. Gambino Boss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-boss-john-gotti-sr">John Gotti Sr.</a> was a big fan of the social clubs and wanted all the wiseguys in his crime family to show up at his Ravenite Social Club on Mulberry Street to pay him his respect. The only problem was that the FBI had by now found out about the clubs and had each and every one of them on 24-hour surveillance. Thanks to Gotti they were able to build a comprehensive photo portfolio of members of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-overview">Gambino Crime Family</a>.<br /> <br /> That is why <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-bonanno-crime-family">Bonanno</a> Boss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/bonanno-boss-joseph-massino">Joseph Massino</a> ordered all of his Family’s social clubs shut down. The mob was making it too easy for the Feds and had to take steps in order to regain their place in the shadows. After the Gambino Family was rocked by multiple indictments that saw boss Gotti Sr. sent to prison for life and underboss Salvatore Gravano turn government witness, there wasn’t any real use for the Ravenite either. It is now a shoe store with an exterior that tricks you into thinking it is a candy store. If only the Mafia had been that tricky, their clubs might still be open. <br /> </p>
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Lucchese Family Sold “Oxy” From Ice Cream Truck in New York
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/lucchese-family-sold-oxy-from
2011-03-18T13:30:00.000Z
2011-03-18T13:30:00.000Z
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/lucchese-family-sold-oxy-from"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236990667,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236990667?profile=original" width="440" /></a><br /> By David Amoruso<br /> <br /> Don’t we all miss our friendly neighborhood milkman who used to deliver bottles of milk right up to our doorsteps? What happened to the businessman who would offer that kind of service? Well, leave it to the mob to step into that void by driving an ice cream truck into your neighborhood that not only sells ice cream but also oxycodone pills at $20 dollars apiece. <br /> <br /> Yesterday, New York City Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan, New York State Health Commissioner Nirav Shah, M.D. and Richmond County District Attorney Daniel Donovan Jr. announced the indictment of 31 members of an extensive drug trafficking ring that pumped nearly 43,000 oxycodone pills worth $1 million onto the black market in New York City over the course of one year.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236990900,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236990900,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236990900?profile=original" width="248" /></a>The ring was led by <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-lucchese-crime-family">Lucchese Crime Family</a> soldier Joseph Zaffuto (photo right, on the right) and associate Louis Scala (photo right, on the left) who obtained fraudulent prescriptions through Nancy Wilkins, who worked as an office manager for a Manhattan orthopedic surgeon, prosecutors say. Zaffuto was a patient of the physician’s and met Wilkins during an office visit. She stole prescription pads from the office without the physician’s knowledge and sold the sheets to Scala and Zaffuto in exchange for cash payments. <br /> <br /> According to the official press release, the two men recruited dozens of individuals to take the stolen prescriptions to pharmacies and get them filled. These recruits, nearly all Staten Island residents, were paid in either cash or oxycodone. Many of the drug runners were relatives, friends or neighbors of Scala’s and Zaffuto’s. The pair often recruited individuals who were desperate for money or already had drug abuse problems. In some cases, multiple members of a single family or multiple households on the same block were involved in filling prescriptions. A number of individuals developed a dependence on oxycodone as a direct result of their involvement with the drug distribution ring. <br /> <br /> After getting the prescriptions filled, they brought the pills back to Scala and Zaffuto. Scala worked as an ice cream truck driver and as he made his regular rounds with his Lickety Split ice cream truck, would stop on prearranged blocks where he knew his oxycodone customers would be waiting. After serving ice cream to whatever children appeared, he would invite the adult pill customers to climb inside his truck and get their “oxy” fix.<br /> <br /> Since the Italian American Mafia still fascinates so many people and has a lot of them in awe of their so-called code of honor and respect, this latest news should come as another wake up call. As we already had a Gambino crew which pleaded <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-crew-pleads-guilty-to">guilty</a> to running a prostitution ring that pimped out underage girls, the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/mob-myth-busted-gambino-family">myth</a> that the movie The Godfather created should’ve already been in ruins. <br /> <br /> “<em>I also don't believe in drugs. For years I paid my people extra so they wouldn't do that kind of business. Somebody comes to them and says, "I have powders; if you put up three, four thousand dollar investment, we can make fifty thousand distributing." So they can't resist. I want to control it as a business, to keep it respectable. [slams his hand on the table and shouts] I don't want it near schools! I don't want it sold to children! That's an infamia.</em>” – Don Zaluchi in The Godfather. <br /> <br /> Yet here the Italian American Mafia is, selling drugs to friends and neighbors. Selling it from an ice cream truck after just having sold neighborhood kids some delicious ice cream. Where is the honor in that? </p>
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Gambino Crew Pleads Guilty To Racketeering And Prostitution
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/gambino-crew-pleads-guilty-to
2011-01-12T15:00:00.000Z
2011-01-12T15:00:00.000Z
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<p>By David Amoruso<br /> <br /> It was one of the most disgraceful busts in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/organized-crime-in">American La Cosa Nostra</a> history when fourteen Gambino Family mobsters were charged with pimping out underage girls. Though they were also charged with other crimes such as murder and extortion, it was their prostitution ring that attracted widespread attention from the media and public. <br /> <br /> For those of you who missed that story, the government says that a <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-overview">Gambino Crime Family</a> crew operated a prostitution business where young women and girls (some under the age of 18) were exploited and sold for sex. They put various young women and girls to work as prostitutes and advertised the prostitution business on Craigslist and other websites. The women were driven to appointments in Manhattan, Brooklyn, New Jersey, and Staten Island to have sex with clients. They were also available at a weekly high-stakes poker game. Almost half of what the young women earned went into the pockets of the mob family. <br /> <br /> If the American mob still had a vague respectability about it, it vanished with the above mentioned crimes. Especially when all defendants pleaded guilty to all charges against them. <br /> <br /> Of course career criminals will sometimes plead to crimes they did not commit simply to avoid the risk of an extreme long stay in jail if they are found guilty by a jury at a trial, but to plead guilty to pimping out girls under the age of 18? Well, that is something no self respecting man can do. Even more so in the tough guy world of La Cosa Nostra where mobsters claim to hold themselves to higher standards than other criminals. As I wrote in an earlier <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/mob-myth-busted-gambino-family">article</a>: that myth has been thoroughly busted. <br /> <br /> The guilty pleas were announced on Monday by Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Janice K. Fedarcyk, the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Office of the FBI.<br /> <br /> “The Gambino Family and their associates continue to use violence, threats, and intimidation to wield power and profit illegally off the backs of their many victims. But the convictions of all 14 individuals charged by this office just nine months ago has dealt the Gambinos a significant blow. As the result of our prosecution, one of the Mafia's preeminent leaders and many of its rising stars will now serve significant prison sentences. We are, however, far from finished with the Gambino Family and will continue working with our law enforcement partners to put their members and associates out of business and behind bars”, Bharara said in the press release.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236978280,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236978280,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236978280?profile=original" /></a>The “preeminent leader” Bharara mentions, is Gambino boss Daniel Marino (70), who pleaded guilty to murder conspiracy. The man who was killed was his nephew, Frank Hydell, who the mob correctly suspected of being an informant. Marino’s colleagues came to him to seek permission for the hit. In his guilty plea “Marino (right) admitted that he gave his co-conspirators the "green light" for the murder to proceed.” Marino now faces five years in prison when is sentenced on January 25. <br /> <br /> Two other Gambino gangsters waited a long time until they decided to admit guilt. Where twelve of the men had pleaded out in the past several months, Gambino soldier Thomas Orefice and associate Dominick Difiore did so on January 10. Difiore admitted to extortion and the distribution cocaine and oxycodone and faces ten years in prison. Orefice had a lot more on his plate and pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy, with objects including extortion, sex trafficking, loansharking, and gambling. The 34-year-old Gambino soldier can now look forward to becoming an old man in prison as he is facing a thirty year sentence. <br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236991689,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236991689,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236991689?profile=original" width="145" /></a>Fellow Gambino soldier Onofrio Modica has a very similar outlook after pleading guilty to racketeering conspiracy, with objects including accessory to murder, jury tampering, extortion, and gambling. At age 47, he will spend the next twenty years behind bars. <br /> <br /> Janice K. Fedarcyk, the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Office of the FBI, said the following about the case: “The guilty pleas by Orefice and Difiore effectively mark the successful end of the prosecution of this case against a portion of the Gambino Family. The fourteen defendants admitted their roles in crimes that include sex trafficking, extortion, violent assaults, and murders, putting to lie the notion that today's mob is somehow less violent or craven than in the past. While this case is effectively over, the FBI's commitment to policing the Gambino Family and La Cosa Nostra is far from over.”<br /> <br /> As Fedarcyk indicates, the war against La Cosa Nostra has not been won and the fight will continue. Where the FBI and numerous newspapers have frequently labeled certain mob cases as an end of the American mob, they are now a lot more cautious in making such claims. <br /> <br /> Mainly because the Mafia seems to be extremely resilient and deeply ingrained in the American (criminal) landscape. On January 9, an <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/nyregion/10carpenters.html?_r=1&src=twrhp" target="_blank">article</a> in the New York Times showed how La Cosa Nostra still held control over the New York City District Council of Carpenters, despite the fact that it had been put under supervision after the district council’s leader, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/nyregion/29plea.html" target="_blank">Michael J. Forde</a>, and nine others, including union officials, contractors and the head of an industry association had been charged with racketeering and corruption. <br /> <br /> Though things have changed since the days of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-disappearance-of-jimmy">Jimmy Hoffa</a>, a lot, it seems, remains the same.</p>
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Profile: Genovese crime family soldier George Barone
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/genovese-soldier-george-barone
2011-01-06T20:00:00.000Z
2011-01-06T20:00:00.000Z
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/genovese-soldier-george-barone"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237013471,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237013471?profile=original" width="240" /></a><br /> By David Amoruso<br /> <br /> When George Barone died late last year, an adventurous life came to an end. He was a hero of the second world war. A founding member of the Jets street gang made famous in the musical West Side Story. And spent decades as a Genovese mobster who ruled the docks and was a favorite hitter for family boss Tony Salerno. To top it off, Barone became a cooperating witness for the government. <br /> <br /> Barone was born in 1923 in Bensonhurst, New York. When asked about his roots, he said: "I am a mongrel. I'm partly Italian, Irish, and Hungarian." As a young kid, the Barone family moved to Chelsea when his father got a job as a pier watchman. Barone dropped out of high school, and when the US entered the second World War, he signed up with the Navy. He participated in five seperate invasions in the Pacific arena of WW2.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237012887,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237012887,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237012887?profile=original" width="224" /></a>After the war, Barone returned to school for a few years, but the classroom still wasn’t for him and he joined the Merchant Marines, spending two years at sea. He probably would have spent his life traveling the world’s seas if he hadn’t injured his hand. The injury made his job impossible and pretty soon he was back in New York. <br /> <br /> Back on the mainland again, he did not venture far from his beloved ocean. In the late 1940s, he became a member of the International Longshoremen’s Association and started working as a hiring boss on the Lower West Side Pier 58. Barone got the job thanks to some old friends who had become quite prominent and influential gangsters on the Upper West Side. <br /> <br /> But it didn't keep him out of trouble. In February of 1954, longshoreman William Torres complained about Barone’s selection skills, claiming he refused to hire him. Barone and a few strong pals confronted Torres and when they had him cornered, Barone proceeded to beat him senseless with a metal bar. Police charged Barone with felonious assault, but his lawyer managed to get it toned down to disorderly conduct.<br /> <br /> When asked what he did next, Barone answered: “I became a gangster.” But he needed some back up if he wanted to become a successful racketeer and so he and a career criminal by the name of Johnny Earle formed a gang they called The Jets. Together with a bunch of other wannabe thugs they started making a name for themselves on the streets of New York. <br /> <br /> As The Jets battled other street toughs for control over the local gambling and loansharking rackets, Barone showed he had no problems killing another man. When he was being debriefed by the FBI he explained why: “I got a track record of being in a lousy, dirty, rotten environment where killing was part of staying alive.” Killing was also a big part of making a profit. When Barone and Earle heard of a thief who was sitting on a nice haul, the two gangsters waited till he got home. <br /> <br /> When the man stepped through his door, Barone shoved him down and fired several deadly shots into the unlucky thief. The two left with $650,000 in cash. Barone was crystal clear about his motives: “[He] had something we wanted. He resisted, and we shot him.”<br /> <br /> The Jets quickly became a success story and <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/organized-crime-in">La Cosa Nostra</a> took notice. One of the mobsters who was impressed with these young street toughs was Vito Genovese, who used the gang for various chores. But the relationship between Genovese and The Jets soured when the gang’s leader, Johnny Earle, was murdered in 1958, allegedly on orders that originated from within his own gang. Genovese liked Earle and with him gone had no more interest in the young gang. <br /> <br /> But Barone was still considered a good footsoldier, his success with The Jets and career with the ILA proved his skills, so it wasn’t long before he found another mobster who would take him under his wing. That wiseguy was Genovese leader Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, who had his headquarters in East Harlem. With Salerno’s backing, Barone was finally on the road to riches. Using the mob’s muscle and his own knowledge of the New York docks, he managed to expand his influence and was able to negotiate extremely favorable union deals for mobbed up companies. He later testified: “I was in La Cosa Nostra and we told the [shipping] companies what to do or else we just didn't cooperate with them. We made millions. Millions!”<br /> <br /> As the swinging sixties came to an end, Barone was the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-genovese-crime-family">Genovese Crime Family</a>’s official representative on the waterfront. He said the docks were divided between the Genoveses and Gambinos. With the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-overview">Gambino family</a> ‘owning’ Staten Island and Brooklyn, and the Genovese family ruling over New Jersey and Manhattan. <br /> <br /> Though Barone was a huge success on the waterfront, Salerno also found him to be an extremely capable hitman and used him frequently. His great handiwork earned Barone membership in the Genovese Family. At a ceremony in Harlem in the early 1970s, he became a made member. <br /> <br /> By now, Barone was both a successful mobster as well as a success within the ILA, becoming the president of a local in Miami. But authorities were catching up and paying extra attention to the mobbed up unions. In 1979, Barone and seventeen others were charged with racketeering on the Florida waterfront. Barone was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years in prison, but after successfully filing an appeal he got a sentence reduction and was a free man after serving seven years.<br /> <br /> As Barone came home to “the life” he noticed a lot had changed. For one, he no longer was the main man on the Florida docks. And second: the Genovese Family was now run by a man newspapers labeled “The Oddfather” for his crazy behavior. <br /> <br /> Though <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237013692,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237013692,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237013692?profile=original" width="224" /></a><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/genovese-boss-vincent-chin">Vincent Gigante</a> may have behaved like he belonged in a mental institution, and he actually was in and out of several mental institutions during his lifetime, everyone in the underworld knew the truth. The truth was that Gigante was very smart and the most powerful mob boss in the United States. His crazy-act had saved him from going to prison on several occasions and despite his behavior he still was highly respected by his soldiers. His word was the law for any member of the Genovese family. When he let it be known that he no longer wanted his men to refer to his name aloud, but point to their chin (Gigante was nicknamed “Chin”) instead, they all did as they were told. When mobsters did refer to him by name they were immediately reprimanded by their colleagues, as several recorded conversations proved. <br /> <br /> Barone still held sway over the waterfront, but younger wiseguys had moved into positions of more power and wealth and the ‘oldfella’ felt disrespected. It made him hard to deal with and he soon came to blows with <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/genovese-associate-andrew">Andrew Gigante</a>, the son of the family boss. Andrew needed help with getting a friendly company a lucrative contract and Barone was told to make it happen. But Barone was owed money by the company and insisted that debt be paid first. <br /> <br /> The conflict between Barone and father and son Gigante quickly escalated, resulting in Barone (right) being “put on the shelf” as it is called in mob parlance. Which meant he held no more power within the Mafia. He had become a pariah. And he knew that now that the mob no longer had any use for him, probably viewed him as a liability even, his time was surely up. That is when, in 2001, he contacted Team America.<br /> <br /> “I went bad,” Barone said about his new role as government witness. “I wanted to get even. I wanted to survive. I didn't want to get killed by them,” he added, referring to Vincent Gigante and his Genovese Family. “I decided that the Mafia is not the paternal, wonderful organization that it proposes to be. The esprit de corps does not exist. Greed, violence, betrayal: that is what exists.” <br /> <br /> Despite this epiphany, becoming a turncoat was not easy for him. “I lived all of my life without being an informer. Now I am. That is a difficult decision.” George Barone died on December 28, 2010, at age 86.</p>
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Profile: Bonanno crime family boss Salvatore Montagna
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/bonanno-boss-salvatore
2010-11-27T17:30:00.000Z
2010-11-27T17:30:00.000Z
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<div><p><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236995491,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236995491?profile=original" /><br /> By David Amoruso<br /> Posted on April 5, 2010 - Updated on November 25, 2011<br /> <br /> Salvatore Montagna burst onto the front page of the New York Daily News in 2006 when authorities labeled him the new acting boss of the Bonanno Crime Family. But before the public and press got to know him he was already being deported to Canada. Here is the story behind this 35-year-old reputed mob boss.<br /> <br /> The <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-bonanno-crime-family">Bonanno Crime Family</a> has been through a lot in the past eighty years. From becoming an outcast after being infiltrated by FBI agent Joseph Pistone in the 1980s, to hosting the last Commission meeting in 2000.<br /> <br /> The man responsible for bringing the Bonanno Crime Family back from the brink was <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/bonanno-boss-joseph-massino">Joseph Massino</a>. During the 1990s he ruled the family with an iron fist, demanding absolute loyalty from his men. But when indictments came falling down, one after the other ‘loyal’ Bonanno wiseguy made a deal with the FBI and told them all he knew.<br /> <br /> Even Joseph Massino, the boss himself, decided the oath of silence called omerta was worth nothing. After being found guilty of seven murders and racketeering charges he started wearing a wire on his successor: Vincent “Vinny Gorgeous” Basciano. Both men are now locked up behind bars for the rest of their lives.<br /> <br /> Law enforcement had indicted over seventy Bonanno mobsters since 2002. Nine made members of the Bonanno Family, including its boss Massino, turned State’s evidence. The crime family was in serious disarray. Out of this chaos, a young Sicilian-Canadian man nicknamed “Sal the Ironworker” managed to climb his way to the top of the heap.<br /> <br /> Salvatore Montagna was born on May 11, 1971, in Montreal, Canada. The son of Sicilian immigrants, he and his family shuttled back and forth between Montreal and Sicily. When Montagna was 15 years old he and his family moved to New York. After finishing high school he began working as an ironworker and eventually started his own company called Matrix Steel Co. in Brooklyn.<br /> <br /> In 2001, Montagna was subpoenaed to testify in a state gambling case. The prosecutor was unsatisfied with the alleged mobster’s testimony and charged him with criminal contempt. On October 28, 2003, he pleaded guilty to that charge and was sentenced to five years probation. He had been indicted a year earlier after a probe by the Manhattan district attorney's office as one of twenty wiseguys charged in a takedown of a Mafia crew allegedly involved in gambling, loansharking and weapons possession. But other than that not much is known about Montagna's alleged mob activities.<br /> <br /> When the <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/">New York Daily News</a> brought the news about the new mob boss, the heat, naturally, increased. George Stavropoulos served as Montagna’s lawyer at the time. He denies the allegations about his client’s involvement in organized crime. "He is not involved in the Mafia, he is not the boss of the Bonanno crime family or the acting boss of the Bonanno crime family. This is something that the FBI manufactured."<br /> <br /> Whether or not Montagna is or isn’t the new acting boss of the Bonanno Crime Family, the fact is that the FBI never managed to arrest this reputed mob leader on any criminal charges. In 2009, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported Montagna to Canada because of his criminal contempt charge.<br /> <br /> What position Montagna now holds is unknown. Located in Montreal, Canada he is now in the territory of the Rizzuto Family. The Rizzuto/Montreal Family is considered a branch of the New York Bonannos. But the Rizzutos achieved far more power than their cousins in New York and are believed to have separated with them.<br /> <br /> Thus, Montagna is an acting boss on foreign territory. Foreign territory that is very hostile. The <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-mafia-of-montreal-a-short">Rizzuto Family</a> has been almost entirely wiped out by mysterious rivals. Several social clubs were burnt down and Nicholas Rizzuto, the son of boss Vito Rizzuto, was shot dead in broad daylight, while his father, Nicolo, met the same fate when he was shot at his home by an assassin. Montagna has managed to outsmart the law, but he may be in a lot more trouble in Montreal than he was in New York.<br /> <br /> <strong>UPDATE</strong>: On Thursday morning, November 24, Salvatore Montagna (40) was found shot to death in a river near Montreal. For the full story, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/bonanno-boss-murdered-near-montreal">click here</a>.</p>
<p><strong>UPDATE: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/six-plead-guilty-in-murder-of-ex-bonanno-family-mob-boss">Six men pleaded guilty to murder of Sal Montagna</a></strong></p>
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Profile: Bonanno crime family soldier Benjamin Ruggiero
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/bonanno-soldier-benjamin
2010-11-26T21:23:28.000Z
2010-11-26T21:23:28.000Z
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<p><br /> By David Amoruso<br /> Posted in 2001<br /> <br /> Benjamin 'Lefty Guns' Ruggiero was one of the true Cosa Nostra Mafioso, a guy who was old school and knew how Mafia politics worked. Lefty was a Bonanno soldier who was feared and respected by his fellow Mafioso and in the end Lefty showed them all, when he just wouldn't break Omerta. Most of you probably know Lefty from the movie "Donnie Brasco" in which Lefty was played by Al Pacino, it's a great movie but the truth gets tempered with for viewing pleasure. The following is the true story of Benjamin 'Lefty Guns' Ruggiero.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236992492,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Lefty grew up just a few blocks from Little Italy and he never left. When he got older he moved into the apartment complex called knickerbocker village on monroe street a few blocks south of Little Italy. Lefty would soon be involved in criminal business and became connected to the Bonanno Crime Family. Lefty owned a social club at 43 Madison street where he would meet with other Mafioso and connected guys. One of those Mafioso who would drop by was Tony Mirra (picture on the right) a Bonanno Family soldier who would introduce Lefty to his friend Donnie Brasco. To Mirra and Lefty Donnie Brasco seemed an allright guy, something that would cuase them and their Family a lot of trouble later on.<br /> <br /> Lefty had not served time in prison, he had been arrested many times for extortion and theft but had always beaten the rap. Lefty's only real problem was that he was a degenerate gambler. He even had to pay of his gambling debts before he could become a made man, it was delayed untill he had fully paid. But in the summer of 1977, when Lefty was in his early 50s, Lefty became a 'made' man in the Bonanno Crime Family. Lefty became a soldier under Capo Mike Sabella and would run the bookmaking operation for Bonanno Family Underboss Nicky Marangello. In his pre 'made' man years, Lefty Ruggiero had allready made a reputation for himself being a stone killer, clipping between 25 and 30 people. Lefty was the epitome of the wiseguy. He was at it 24 hours a day, scheming, on the street in wiseguy situations he was sharp and tough and that's what earned him a lot of respect from the other wiseguy's.<br /> <br /> Lefty soon became close with Donnie Brasco, Lefty was old school and schooled Donnie Brasco in the ways of La Cosa Nostra. This created a problem between him and Tony Mirra, because technically Donnie belonged to Mirra. Donnie himself preferred being under Lefty and so the two themselves decided that they would say that Lefty was the first to 'claim' Donnie so that Mirra had no right to put Donnie under his wing. Offcourse Mirra wasn't having it and several sitdowns took place over the 'Donnie Brasco' situation. In the end Lefty won and Donnie Brasco was under him. Lefty liked Donnie a lot, seeing a good earner and potential 'made' guy. In the following years they would become very close and Donnie would pass up a certain percentage of money from all his schemes to Lefty.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236992870,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />After some good years the Bonanno Crime Family was on it's way to a new Family war. On July 1979 then Bonanno Family Boss Carmine Galante was whacked, this shook up the entire Family and changed things drasticly. When Galante got whacked, Rusty Rastelli was appointed new Boss, he would run the Family from prison. Lefty's Capo Mike Sabella was demoted to soldier and his crew was taken over by Capo Dominick "Sonny Black" Napolitano (picture on the right). Lefty was sent for by Sonny Black and got the choice if he wanted to be under Capo Sonny Black or Capo Joe Massino, Sonny Black said he would like to have Lefty under him and Lefty agreed and became a soldier in Sonny Black's crew. But all was not well. The hit on Galante had divided the Family in different factions, one faction supporting Rusty Rastelli as new boss the other opposing, a Family war was on it's way. Sonny Black's crew was supporting Rastelli along with Capo's: Joey Massino, Sally Farrugia and consigliere Steve Cannone. Opposing Rastelli as new boss were Capo's: Caesar Bonventre, Philip "Philip Lucky" Giaccone, Dominick "Big Trin" Trinchera and Alphonse "Sonny Red" Indelicato. Lefty was getting ready for the orders and do what he was supposed to do as a soldier: kill.<br /> <br /> Several times Lefty was ready to whack out a Capo from the other faction when he got orders to abort, they had a plan to whack out all the Capo's of the other faction in one clean hit. The three Capo's of the opposing faction were summoned to a peace meeting to patch up differences at a catering establishment. Inside the restaurant the three Capo's were whacked by Lefty, Jimmy Legs, Nicky Santora and Bobby Capazzio. No bodies were found. One of the Capo's of the other faction did not attend that 'meeting' because he was in jail, but Capo Caesar Bonventre had decided to come over to the Rastelli faction anyway. Later on one of the bodies was found by the police, it was a mistake by Joey Massino who was supposed to take care of making the body 'disappear', the bodies were supposed to be chopped up and thrown away. But eventough the body was found, there were no leads to whom might have killed him so the Rastelli faction did not worry.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236992692,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />All seemed well, finally, for Lefty and the Bonanno Family. The Family was at peace and business was back to normal. Untill one day when Lefty and Sonny Black were just hanging out in the social club and some F.B.I. agents came in. They brought pictures and a message: "Donnie Brasco (picture on the right) was an undercover F.B.I. agent". After a few moments the agents left leaving Lefty and Sonny Black stunned as they were trying to look for 'Candid Camera', at first they didn't believe it, they thought it was a trick to cause tension in a finally peacefull Family. But truth or not Sonny Black took measures and started making phonecalls. Every top Mafioso was briefed about the situation and at one point pictures of Brasco were sent to other Crime Family's so they could be on the look out. Being an old school Mafioso Lefty knew that this situation would end up getting him whacked, he had brought Donnie into the Family and he was close to him. Sonny Black also knew this would end in a negative way. And they were right.<br /> <br /> Soon after Sonny Black was missing, the F.B.I. knew that dead wiseguy's weren't of much use during a trial and so on August 30 1981, they snatched Lefty from the street and arrested him while he was coming out of his appartment. There allready was a contract out on Lefty's life. Lefty was offered to enter the Witness Protection program if he would testifie, Lefty declined and was tried and later convicted to 20 years in prison. A big difference with the movie "Donnie Brasco" where we are left to assume that Lefty was 'sent for' and whacked, which in reality didn't happen. In 1992 after serving 13 years in prison because he would not break omerta, Lefty was freed and out on parole, living his life untill he died of cancer on Thanksgiving Day, 1995. On his deathbed, according to one old friend, Lefty threatened to spit in the faces of movie people who offered him $1 million to interview him for the Donnie Brasco promos. A very different attitude if you compare it to someone like Salvatore 'Sammy The Bull' Gravano who not only snitched and joined the Witness Protection program but also wrote a best selling book about his life, while he was setting up his multi million extacy drugring.<br /> <br /> In his book about being undercover in the Mafia, Joseph D. Pistone a.k.a. Donnie Brasco quoted a conversation he and another undercover agent had with Lefty when they were undercover. In this conversation Lefty makes a great comment:<br /> <br /> Undercover agent: "Lefty, I understand how we all like to make money. But what is the actual advantage of being a wiseguy?"<br /> <br /> Lefty: "Are you kidding? What the....Donnie, don't you tell this guy nothing?<br /> Tony, as a wiseguy you can lie, you can cheat, you can steal, you can kill people: LEGITIMATELY.<br /> You can do any goddamn thing you want, and nobody can say anything about it. Who wouldn't want to be a wiseguy?".<br /> <br /> And I think that's about it, Benjamin "Lefty Guns" Ruggiero was one of the few Mafioso whose life was in danger and on it's way to prison who abided by the rules which he lived by most of his life, not breaking omerta and taking it like a 'made' man, someone who didn't look for excuses or an easy ride, he was Cosa Nostra and he didn't stop because he could get whacked or sent to prison, he knew that that was what being a Mafioso was all about.</p>
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Profile of Lucchese crime family boss Steven Crea
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/lucchese-acting-boss-steven
2010-11-26T11:02:42.000Z
2010-11-26T11:02:42.000Z
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<p><br /> By David Amoruso<br /> <br /> Steven "Stevie Wonder" Crea is one of the leading members of the troubled Lucchese Crime Family. Crea is a powerhouse in labor racketeering. Using the reputation of the Lucchese Family and, when needed to prove that reputation, its muscle, he had gained a position in which he could put in place a mob tax of five percent on every job. By paying that mob tax the contractors did not run into any labor problems. The Luccheses used Local 608 for this racket. Its president Michael Forde (who's father, who had already been convicted of Taft-Hartley crimes in the 1980s, was the previous president of Local 608) was under total control of Crea.<br /> <br /> When Lucchese bosses Vic Amuso and "Gaspipe" Casso went on the lam Crea was put on a panel of Lucchese mobsters who would run the family in their absence. This newfound power did not mean Crea was safe. Crea's crew was located in The Bronx and several mobsters started worrying when two other ruling panel mobsters were imprisoned. Capos George Zappola and Frank Papagni and soldier Frank Gioia Jr. were concerned that the power in the family would shift from Brooklyn to The Bronx as Crea was the last member of the ruling panel who was not in prison. The three men discussed killing Crea. The hit had to be a "sneak job" they said, meaning the bosses could not know, this was because they knew the bosses would not OK the hit. In the end the plan never came to fruition because the Lucchese Family had a lot bigger problems than where their boss was located when several of its members became witnesses for the government.<br /> <br /> On August 24, 2006 Crea was released from prison after doing time on a labor racketeering conviction. He had plead guilty to price fixing, bid rigging, and constraint of trade in connection with three large construction projects. And also to "enterprise corruption." Back on the streets Crea can not associate with any known mobsters for a year due to parole restrictions. Will he manage to stay out of trouble and seize control of the Lucchese Crime Family? Or will he violate his parole and go back to prison? Or will a Lucchese rat implicate him in some old murder? We will wait and see. One thing is for sure, the Lucchese Crime Family desperately needs the expertise and leadership of a good boss. Is Steven Crea that boss?<br /> </p>
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Profile: Lucchese crime family boss Louis Daidone
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/lucchese-acting-boss-louis
2010-11-26T11:01:30.000Z
2010-11-26T11:01:30.000Z
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<p><br /> By David Amoruso<br /><br /> Louis "Louis Bagels" Daidone was born on February 23, 1946. In the early 1980s the FBI listed him as a soldier in the Lucchese Crime Family. In 1989 Daidone received orders that he had to kill small time car thief Thomas Gilmore. The mob suspected that Gilmore was a rat. Daidone and two associates tailed Gilmore to his home in Queens. There they ran up behind him and shot him in the head and neck. A year later Daidone was called upon again to kill a suspected rat. This time the target was mobster Bruno Facciola. Daidone lured Facciola to a brooklyn garage. Once there Facciola was certain it was a set up and ran away. Daidone caught up with him, tackled him and then dragged him back into the garage. There Facciola was held down while he was stabbed and shot in both eyes. As a finishing touch Daidone stuffed a canary in Facciola’s mouth as a sign that: you sing to the feds, you're going to get your head blown off. Days later Facciola’s body was found in Brooklyn in the trunk of his own car.<br /> <br /> In 1992 Daidone was arrested and charged with an 1988 armored truck heist that netted $1.2 million. Daidone was eventually acquitted of robbery and weapons charges but was convicted of robbery conspiracy and sentenced to five years. In 1996 he was released from prison. In 2000 Lucchese Acting Boss Steven Crea was arrested and Daidone became Acting Boss. In 2003 Daidone’s reign was over when he was arrested and charged with the murders of Gilmore and Facciola and two counts of extortion. In January 2004 Daidone was found guilty and was later sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole.</p>
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Profile: Lucchese crime family boss Joseph Defede
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/lucchese-acting-boss-joseph
2010-11-26T10:59:27.000Z
2010-11-26T10:59:27.000Z
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<p><br /> By David Amoruso<br /><br /> Joseph "Little Joe" Defede was born in 1934 in New York. In his early days as a mobster Defede used to operate a hot dog truck in Brooklyn that doubled as a numbers bank. As a close personal friend of Lucchese Boss Vittorio Amuso Defede started climbing the ranks and by 1994, not long after Amuso's conviction and life sentence were upheld by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Amuso made Defede acting boss of the Lucchese Crime Family.<br /> <br /> After 4 years Defede was taken out of the picture. In March of 1998 he was arrested and indicted on racketeering charges. He was held without bail as a danger to the community. In December of 1998 Defede pleaded guilty to extorting $100.000s of dollars from garment center businessmen and was sentenced to prison. With Defede in prison Amuso apointed a new acting boss, this time it was Steven Crea's turn. After serving almost 5 years Defede was released early and was back on the streets but things weren't all good. Word got to Defede that Amuso suspected that Defede had been skimming money from the crime families profits. Under the leadership of Steven Crea the profits went up and Amuso seriously thought Defede had fucked him over. And so it was that Amuso wanted Defede whacked. Upon hearing this Defede contacted the F.B.I. and in February 2002 entered the witness protection program.<br /> </p>
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Profile: Lucchese crime family boss Gaetano Lucchese
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/lucchese-boss-gaetano-lucchese
2010-11-26T10:52:07.000Z
2010-11-26T10:52:07.000Z
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<p><br /> By David Amoruso<br /> Posted in 2001<br /> <br /> Thomas Lucchese was Boss of the Mafia Family that still bears his name. A ruthless guy with a ruthless reputation but he somehow managed to have friends who were law abiding citizens and weren't scared of him, later when they found out he was a major figure in the New York underworld they didn't know where to run. Lucchese's tenure as Boss of his Family wasn't that long, about 14 years, compared to his long tenure as Underboss: about 23 years. It shows Lucchese was a loyal soldier and at least abided by the few rules that were left for a mobster to follow.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236987258,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Gaetano Thomas Lucchese was born 1899 in Palermo, Sicily. He had come to America as an 11 year old boy. He had risen rapidly through the ranks of the New York underworld, and was a soldier in the family of Gaetano Reina. As he cruised the underworld he made contacts with powerful people and set up business everywhere. When Lucchese was 19, he lost an index finger in a machine shop accident. In 1923, he was arrested for stealing a Packard automobile and sentenced to three years in prison. Paroled after 13 months, it was the only time he ever spent in prison throughout his long criminal career. At the age of 31 Lucchese had become Underboss of Gaetano Reina. When Gaetano Reina was murdered in March 1930. His Family came under the control of Gaetano "Tom" Gagliano, Lucchese would stay on as Underboss. Gagliano would run the Familie without problems. Under Gagliano Lucchese went on with expanding his power. His legitimate business interests were many and varied. He would come to be a major power in the garment industry and also made friends in the legit world befriending politicians and judges. A young Thomas LuccheseLucchese also had a reputation as a man of violence. It was estimated by the police that he was personally involved in at least 30 murders.<br /> <br /> In 1953 Lucchese's Boss Gagliano died of natural causes. Lucchese now became the new Boss of the Family. He was 54 years old and at the peak of his power, both as a criminal and as an arch manipulator of the convoluted political system that drove the powerhouse of the New York political engine. If Frank Costello was the Prime Minister of the underworld, then Lucchese was undoubtedly its Director General. Lucchese was for many years a personal friend and confidant of Thomas Murphy, who just happened to be the Police Commissioner of the city of New York, and consequently the head of the entire New York Police Department. In 1952 Thomas Lucchese was brought out in the open, the Kefauver Hearings started and all the major mobsters were there to be admired. It was because of these hearings that the Family got the name: The Lucchese Crime Family, a name that still goes.<br /> <br /> Under Lucchese and Gagliano the Lucchese Crime Family reached it's peak. The Lucchese crime family generated its money from many sources,: union control, loan-sharking, gambling, hi-jacking, numbers and drugs. The huge amount of profits from importing and selling heroin, or as they called it "babania," was so enormous, that Lucchese, like so many of his peers, turned a blind eye to the edict that had been laid down many years before, prohibiting the involvement in drug trafficking. In 1961 the Lucchese family was involved in one of the highest profile cases ever, involving heroin importation. It became famous world wide because of a book that was written about the case, and an award-winning movie that followed. The incident was known as "The French Connection."<br /> <br /> In the late 1960s Lucchese developed brain cancer. In 1967 he underwent brain surgery to remove a tumor. He died on July 13, 1967. Over 1,000 mourners came to his funeral. The crowd included politicians, judges, policemen, racketeers, drug pushers, pimps and hitmen. Some bosses did not show up out of fear of the F.B.I. surveillance, but others like Carlo Gambino and Aniello Dellacroce did to show respect. </p>
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Profile of Lucchese family soldier Frank Gioia Jr.
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/lucchese-soldier-frank-gioia
2010-11-26T10:30:00.000Z
2010-11-26T10:30:00.000Z
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<div><p><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236988673,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236988673?profile=original" width="566" /></a><br /> Posted in 2006 - Updated in 2017<br /> <br /> Frank Gioia Junior was born in 1967. From the start, his life was pretty much set in stone. He was born into "the life" as they say, his father Frank Senior and grandfather both were involved in organized crime and members of the Mafia. Growing up around mobsters it wasn't long until Gioia himself became one. At age 12, he hung around a mob owned social club, getting drinks for wiseguys and doing small tasks for them. By the age of 18, Gioia had left behind the errand-boy role and showed his violent capabilities. He shot a bouncer who had disrespected a Lucchese wiseguy. This act of violence earned Gioia huge respect from his mob buddies.<br /> <br /> By the age of 21, he had earned more than $1 million dollars dealing in drugs. In October 1991, at age 24, Gioia became a made guy in the Lucchese Crime Family, his sponsor was George Zapolla. Where most wiseguys believe that upon becoming "made" all their problems are solved, it usually means the opposite. This was true in Gioia`s case as well. In June of 1992, he got arrested on gun charges. And a year later he got arrested again on serious federal drug charges. He was accused of running a heroin pipeline from Manhattan to Boston and was sentenced to 7 years in prison.<br /> <br /> Behind bars, Gioia didn't stay quiet. He got into a fight with another inmate, breaking the man's jaw. Then he got some bad news from his cousin, Vincent Salanardi. The Lucchese family was plotting to whack Gioia's father over some money dispute. After hearing this, Gioia called the feds, got himself, his father, and family a deal, and began cooperating. He was moved to a special prison unit for witnesses and there he, again, broke an inmate's jaw. This time it was an argument over use of the prison phone that lit the fuse.</p>
<p>After serving just 6 years in prison, Gioia was released early, given a new identity and was relocated under the federal witness protection program. Gioia testified against scores of mobsters and drug dealers. As it stands now his testimony resulted in the conviction of over 80 criminals, including one cop killer. Once in the Witness Protection Program, Gioia began giving lectures about organized crime to rookie and veteran FBI agents. </p>
<p>He also had another lucrative gig scamming mall owners and real-estate developers out of tens of millions of dollars, <em>The Arizona Republic</em> reported in November of 2017. Read about <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/former-lucchese-mobster-frank-gioia-outed-as-multi-million-dollar" target="_blank">that story here</a>:</p>
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Profile: Lucchese crime family boss Alphonse D'Arco
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/lucchese-acting-boss-alphonse
2010-11-26T10:30:00.000Z
2010-11-26T10:30:00.000Z
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<p><br /> By David Amoruso<br /><br /> Alphnose "Little Al" D'Arco was born July 28, 1932 in Brooklyn, New York. As early as D'Arco could remember he hung around people who were either associates, members or even bosses of the Mafia. As he grew up in Brooklyn he made visits to bosses of all the 5 Families in New York. Pretty soon Little Al knew that this was the life for him, he too wanted to become a wiseguy, a made guy, he too wanted to belong to a Family. To become a member D'Arco first had to become an associate of one of the 5 New York Families. And so he did, he became an associate of the Lucchese Crime Family. As an associate D'Arco stood at the bottom of the food chain and could only do his best and hope that one day he would become a made guy, During his years as an associate D'Arco had spent some time in prison in the 1960s and when he got out he still had to wait for his membership. It wasn't untill 1982 that he became a made guy. At the age of 50 Alphonse D'Arco became a made guy in the Lucchese Crime Family under boss Anthony "Tony Ducks" Corallo, and he was assigned to the crew of capo Paul Vario (made famous worldwide by the movie Goodfellas in which Vario was played by Paul Sorvino).<br /> <br /> After finally becoming a made guy D'Arco didn't have much time to enjoy it, in 1983 he was arrested for dealing heroine and sent to prison untill 1986. When he got out things started moving fast for Little Al, in 1988 D'Arco was appointed capo of Paul Vario's crew when he died, by his boss Vic Amuso who had become boss after the imprisonment of Anthony Corallo. D'Arco waited 50 (well 30) years to become made member, 30 years of waiting for that moment and now since he had been made things went fast: he had spent 3 years in prison, he had become a capo and the ride wasn't about to stop. In 1990 D'Arco's boss Vic Amuso and his underboss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso went on the lam following a federal indictment and in 1991 Amuso appointed D'Arco acting boss of the Lucchese Crime Family to take care of the Family while they were gone. Now D'Arco was at his highest level, he controlled one of the 5 Families. In his 30 years of involvement with the Lucchese Crime Family D'Arco had learned all there was to know on how to run the business. The Lucchese Family made money through a variety of illegal activities including gambling, loansharking, and dealing in stolen property. Now D'Arco oversaw all of that and also had to somehow keep the real powers who were on the lam happy and content and this proved more difficult than anything.<br /> <br /> When they were on the lam Amuso and Casso went crazy. They ordered mobster after mobster whacked because they thought they would flip or either had flipped. Casso was an extra pain in the neck as D'Arco recalled since he kept asking about money matters. As a result of Casso's badgering D'Arco started keeping records of money coming in and would send them to Casso he would also keep some copies himself. In 1991 D'Arco got word from Amuso that he should whack Lucchese capo Pete Chiodo. Chiodo had fallen out of favor with Amuso when he plead guilty in the same case that Amuso was now on the lam for. Amuso feared Chiodo would flip and so told D'Arco to take care of it. D'Arco tried, he even had his son in the hitteam, but failed. Chiodso survived the shotwounds and immediately called for the F.B.I. he had some stories to tell. When Amuso was finally arrested D'Arco thought he'd might get some easy time, he was wrong. While in prison Amuso started thinking about D'Arco and his time as acting boss and decided he wasn't happy with him. Amuso decided that D'Arco was to rule the streets as part of a 4 man ruling commission made up out of Steven Crea, Frank Lastorino and Sal Avellino. D'Arco felt uneasy with these new changes but decided to just go along with it. But when at meetings he saw how Amuso was trying to avoid him and this made D'Arco unsure of his future in the Mafia. But D'Arco decided to keep going with it, it was the life he chose and it probably was the stress that went to his head. On September 18, 1991 however when he attended a meeting at the Kimberley Hotel in New York he was sure it wasn't the stress. The meeting D'Arco was at went on into the early hours of the morning. D'Arco had no worries untill Michael DeSantis arrived, he noticed that DeSantis was wearing what looked like a bulletproof vest underneath his shirt and he also saw a bulge on his hip, which looked exactly like a gun. At this point D'Arco excused himself and ran. At home D'Arco packed his bags and drove his wife and his children to a hideout on Long Island. On September the 21st he went to the F.B.I. and decided to become a cooperating witness.<br /> <br /> In his mob career D'Arco had been part of/committed 10 murders and also admitted to drug dealing and labor racketeering. At one trial D'Arco was asked by the prosecuting counsel if it was worth it, D'Arco answered:<br /> <br /> "No. I’m sixty-five years old. What has it gotten me? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Yes, I have my wife and I have my son. But I was the one who got my son into the Mafia. And what did I accomplish by doing that? My son is a drug dealer! No, I’ve got nothing to show for it. What a waste of my life."<br /> </p>
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A Death in the Family
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/a-death-in-the-family
2010-11-24T21:27:29.000Z
2010-11-24T21:27:29.000Z
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<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/10663250486?profile=RESIZE_400x&width=300"></div><div><p>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br /> In those last few seconds, as his life was disappearing like an evanescent breath, nothing to protect him, no salvation at hand, his thoughts must have been perhaps his wife and children; his family to be torn apart by his sudden and awful ending. Did he cry out in frustration at the inevitability of this act of duplicity locking him into this act of ultimate violence; or the venal manoeuvre that enticed him into a cul-de-sac from which there could be no escape? The ultimate treachery which was the hallmark of his chosen profession. Maybe in that split-second he had a glimpse of his older brother, Andimo, dying on the roadway, in front of his home. The shotgun blooming into his face like the orange belch from some dragon of death; killed because he stood in the way, just as he had now found himself. Maybe he saw all those men whose lives had been foreclosed by a bank that offered no line of credit other than the certainty that debts had to be paid, in full, on the due date. Perhaps in that last and fleeting moment, he embraced the finality, but still could not accept the reason.<br /> <br /> ‘Why are you hitting me?’ he screamed out in despair.<br /> </p>
<hr style="width:100%;height:2px;" />
<p><br /> Saturday, May 13, 1989, dawned as a soft, spring day in New York. Michael Pappadio was awake early; he had a lot to do. The next day was Mother’s Day, and also his birthday. He would be sixty-seven.<br /> <br /> Dressing casually in a yellow polo shirt, tan slacks and a yellow wind-cheater, he pulled on a pair of white sneakers. He had suffered a stroke in August, 1982, which had left him with a permanent limp in his right leg, and he found the soft, leather casual trainers, more comfortable than shoes.<br /> <br /> His wife was organizing a celebration-bash for later in the afternoon, at their big, comfortable, colonial-style home on Little Neck Boulevard in the gated Bayside Gables Community in Queens. There would be a barbecue, out in the backyard, starting about lunch time, celebrating his special day and Mother’s Day, and all their family and some close friends had been invited.<br /> <br /> A little after 8.30 am, he and Frances left their home and drove in the Mercedes-Benz to 35th Avenue and Bell Boulevard. Here, Michael asked his wife to drop him off at The Great Bay Diner where he told her he was going for a coffee, before heading next door to the produce store to pick up fruit and vegetables. They agreed to meet in an hour, and Frances drove off to do her own shopping. She returned about 10 am, but Michael was not waiting for her. She checked the store and diner, and being unable to find him, assumed one of her four children must have collected him. She drove home. <br /> <br /> But Michael was not at home. Frances rang her children and they agreed to come over, and the family sat down to discuss their next move. Guests, and relatives started to arrive at the house, and several of them went off in groups to scour the neighbourhood. Some dropped by the diner and food store, and discovered that Michael had in fact not visited either.<br /> <br /> Later in the day, Frances phoned her brother-in-law Fred, her husband’s only living brother, at his home on 76th Street in Jackson Heights. Towards the end of the afternoon, he came across to the house in Bayside, and with him were his cousins, Victor and Butch Panica. They sat and talked with Frances, the three men speaking softly, with long awkward pauses, like people comforting each other at a wake. One of them suggested that perhaps Frances should notify the police that Michael seemed to have disappeared. After a while, the three men left, and although Frances spoke to Fred on the telephone from time to time, she never saw any of them again.<br /> <br /> At 11am on May 14th, Frances went to the 11th Precinct on 215th Street in Bayside, and filed Form 336, the New York Police Department’s missing person report. Any trace of the man she had been married to for seventeen years, effectively vanished, until February 11th, 1992. <br /> <br /> Frances Ierfino, who was eleven years younger than Michael, had married Joe Fannelli, a garment cutter, in 1955. They had four children, and divorced in 1969. In 1972, she married Michael who legally adopted the children in 1974. This was his first marriage. The year they married, Michael arranged for an imposing, four bed, four bath brick and stone Colonial to be built in the exclusive Bayside Gables complex in Queens. For some strange reason, with all the wealth in the family, Frances worked part-time as a computer data entry operator at Liz Roberts Apparel in Manhattan, and even stranger, as a part-time counter help at The Bagel Club on 35th Street, in Bayside.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236981901,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />At 5’8” and 200lbs in weight, Michael Pappadio (left) was a plug of a man, physically and mentally strong, and someone who did not openly display fear or physical discomfort. Michael handled all the household finances. When anyone needed money, he gave it to them. He was a domineering personality, whose word was never questioned. When anyone asked about his work, he simply told them he was employed in the garment district. He had four different telephone lines installed in his home, and they seemed to ring non-stop every day. <br /> <br /> One of seven brothers, he was born on May 14th, 1922, in New York, and spent a lot of his life working in and around the garment industry, based largely in mid-town Manhattan. He also spent a lot of his life working in and around the Mafia, in particular, the group known on record as the Luchese crime family. <br /> <br /> New York’s garment district and related industries were for many years controlled by the New York mob, and the Luchese family, according to some sources, had primary rights to the district, along with the Gambino family. This was exercised by their hold over the trucking industry, a vital lifeline into and out of the area, and the way they manipulated the unions controlling the thousands of people employed in the business.<br /> <br /> The Luchese family had their roots in the garment district, going back over 50 years.<br /> Following the death of Jewish gangster Arnold Rothstein in 1928, his garment rackets were inherited by Lepke Buchalter and Jacob Shapiro. By the early 1930s, Tommy Luchese, working under Tommaso Gagliano, (who headed up the old 107th Street mob,) as his under boss, was exerting a major stranglehold on the district, through his political manoeuvring with Tammany Hall leader Jimmy Hinds, and indirectly though his contacts in mayor William O’Dyers office. Using men like Jimmy Plumeri, Johnny Dioguardi and Joe Stracci, Luchese filled the vacuum created when Buchalter and Shapiro died.<br /> <br /> Tommy Luchese controlled Champion Trucking, one of the biggest hauliers operating in the district and along with Plumeri’s Ell-Gee Carriers Corporation and Barton Trucking, dominated the movement of goods in and out of the area.<br /> <br /> The garment industry is divided essentially into two parts: the jobbers who design and sell the garments, and the contractors who assemble and sew the apparel. The bulk of the products were made-up in Chinatown, so there was a constant movement back and forth between the garment district located mainly between 34th and 39th Streets and the makers located south of Canal Street, three miles down the island. The trucking operation was the life-blood of the business, connecting the heart (the district) to the limbs (Chinatown.) Whoever controlled the trucks controlled the garment industry, which by the 1950s was employing more than 300,000 workers.<br /> <br /> In 1962, Luchese’s daughter, Frances, married Thomas, the eldest son of Carlo Gambino, the powerful mob boss, and this union cemented close relationships between the two families, including their interests in the garment district. Again, through control of trucking companies, as well as union control, the Gambino family became a major force alongside the Luchese family in this major New York industry.<br /> <br /> Fifteen years later on August 22nd, 1977, Women’s Wear Daily, the ‘Bible’ of the rag trade began a series of articles exposing Mafia influence and control among the apparel manufacturers, trucking companies servicing them and unions representing the workers. <br /> <br /> It leads off:<br /> <br /> ‘The Mafia: Seventh Avenue’s Silent Partner called New York’s multibillion dollar industry their thing, because virtually every piece of clothing made here is touched by the hands, or the money, or the influence of organized crime.’<br /> <br /> The articles explained how the industry was controlled by the mob through loan sharking, shakedowns for labour peace and professional hijackings.<br /> <br /> And this is how things stood in1989.<br /> <br /> Cosa Nostra profits from the industry managed by the Luchese family, belonged solely to the official bosses, the permanent administration members as recognized by the Commission or ruling body, of the mob. Acting bosses, captains and soldiers were not allowed to personally earn from these sources without permission from the head of the Luchese crime family, who at this time was Vittorio Amuso.<br /> <br /> Michael Pappadio had for many years been an inducted member of Cosa Nostra, getting his stripe, or admission into Cosa Nostra, sometime between 1974 and 1977. He wasn’t the only member of his biological family to have been seduced by the lure of easy money and the power of being a wise guy. His elder brother, by eight years, Andimo, also know by his quant nickname, Pop Wilson,’ had served the Luchese family for many years, until he was blasted to death by a shotgun outside his home in Lido Beach on September 25th 1976. A close friend and confident of Tommy Luchese himself, Andimo had been involved in one of the boss’s many legitimate business ventures, serving as vice-president of Bal-Fran Blouse Company, located at 130 West 46th Street in the garment district, between 1947 and 1950, and Ann-Lynn Sportswear at West 35th Street. Andimo had risen through the ranks to be powerful enough to apparently sit on the board of directors of the mob family, a group referred to as ’the administration.’ He was also very tight with many powerful Cosa Nostra figures, including Vito Genovese, who replaced Frank Costello as the head of their family, in 1957. He was even indicted on the drug rap that snared <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/get-the-right-man-how-the-fbn">Genovese</a> and another group of mobsters in 1958, although he was fortunate to avoid prosecution in this case.<br /> <br /> His murder was never solved. Some sources claimed he was killed by Carmine Galante because he had been trying to muscle in on some of the Bonanno crime family mobster’s gambling and loan sharking activities. Other sources believed his killing was ordered by the Luchese family boss of the time, Tony Corallo, who feared Andimo was plotting a coup against him.<br /> <br /> Michale Pappadio was charged with the responsibility of managing the Luchese’s family’s interests in the garment district, his elder brother’s main focus prior to his murder. Michael had been ‘in place’ for many years, taking over the position on the death of his brother, and as such, was one of the most powerful crime figures in the area. Not only did he milk huge revenues out of this bustling commercial centre in mid town Manhattan, he also operated a very lucrative loan sharking business among the teeming streets, one that grossed millions of dollars each year. <br /> <br /> A classic way in which gangsters like Pappadio sapped money out of the area was a ‘bust out,’ a bankruptcy fraud. In one such example, he along with two associates, and legitimate garment operators, incorporated a firm called Fashion Page. In 1975, when the firm’s business began to decline, the associates made a fictitious loan to the company of $275,000. Shortly afterwards, a fire destroyed the business. Most of the insurance money, over $300,000, went to pay off this loan, rather than the numerous creditors of the business.<br /> <br /> Michael Pappadio had a major say in the corruption of all industry operations that would benefit his superiors, including union control, trucking, cutting rooms, suppliers, etc. He had worked hard and successfully, generating massive revenues in his years managing the garment centre business, as well as developing majority or partial interest in at least twelve garment manufacturing companies, but his downfall and ultimate death came about because of his origins in the Luchese crime family.<br /> <br /> Vittorio Amuso and his right hand man, a psychotic killer called Anthony Casso, who were running the crime family in 1989, came from the western Brooklyn faction and because of this, were regarded with suspicion and resentment by the Harlem/Bronx cell which had traditionally ruled the family. There is confusion as to what position Michael Pappadio actually had in the Luchese’s at this time. Some sources claim he was a capo or crew boss in his own right, others that he was a soldier or simply an associate in the crew under Alphonse D’Arco.<br /> <br /> The origins of the Luchese family, sometime near the beginning of the 20th Century, began in the teeming streets of East Harlem, centred on and around 107th Street. Michael Pappadio was originally from this section of the family, and as a result, became one of the targets earmarked for early retirement by Amuso and Casso as they attempted to solidify their hold over the family, once they had wrested control of it following the imprisonment in 1985 of Anthony Corallo, the family boss since the early 1970s.<br /> <br /> In 1986, Corallo knowing he would spend the rest of his life behind bars, made his mind up and decided on a replacement. He chose a senior capo, Anthony ’Buddy’ Luongo to be his successor, and passed the word down to the troops. At least that’s one of the theories that exist. Another is that Corallo sent word out from prison that he was considering this selection. Either way, it was enough. One night in December 1986, Luongo kissed his wife goodbye in their Bronx home, and told her he was off to meet with some friends in Brooklyn. He never returned home. It’s surmised that he was lured into an ambush and killed either by Amuso or some of his aides. The body was disposed of and no trace of him has ever been found.<br /> <br /> Heresy information subsequently confirmed that the killing had taken place.<br /> <br /> Vincent ‘Fish’ Cafaro, a soldier in the Genovese crime family, gave evidence before a Congressional Committee on Organized Crime in 1988. <br /> <br /> This is part of his statement:<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">I also know Vic Amuso who succeeded Buddy Luongo as boss of the Luchese family. I remember discussing Luongo and Amuso with Ralp the General (Ralph Tutino,) a Luchese associate who was recently convicted in New York on federal drug charges. In December, 1986, Ralph told me ‘Buddy’s missing-he had an appointment in Brooklyn with little Vic (meaning Amuso) and he never came back.’ A few days later, Ralph told me that Eddie Coco, ’Mac’ (Mariano Nacaluso) and Vic Amuso were running things for the Luchese family. Luongo was never heard from again. Sammy Santora (at that time the under boss of the Genovese family-not to be confused with Salvatore Santoro, under boss of the Luchese family) later told me that Luongo had been murdered and that he believed that the ‘guy from Brooklyn’ was responsible. I know the ‘guy from Brooklyn’ to be Vic Amuso. The then consigliere of the Luchese family, Eddie Coco is the power behind Amuso. Even though he is the boss, Vic takes counsel from Coco.</span><br /> <br /> A few weeks after Luongo’s disappearance, Tony Corallo was being urged by his family’s administration to sort out the boss replacement situation, with most of the agitation coming from the Brooklyn crew that had been run by ‘Buddy.’ The under boss of the family, Salvatore ‘Tom Mix’ Santora, had grave reservations about Amuso, but was himself in prison, so had little control over the course of events. <br /> <br /> A street thug and major heroin trafficker, Vittorio Amuso was a big earner for the family, and this, as much as anything else, finally persuaded Corallo to endorse the promotion. It would be Tony Corallo’s last decision regarding the family he had served for almost fifty years. And the worst he ever made.<br /> <br /> In due course, Amuso appointed Anthony Casso as his chief aide. Together, like Bill and Ben the demolition men, or maybe more aptly, ’Dumb and Dumber,’ they would effectively almost destroy one of the tightest, best run and efficient Cosa Nostra families in New York, which at this time had perhaps 120 plus made men, and hundreds of associates.<br /> <br /> The power base of the family, long cemented in Harlem and the Bronx, swung over to the Brooklyn faction, by far the most violent and unpredictable bunch of thugs and killers in the clan, with Anthony Casso as perhaps the worst by far. They operated mostly out of Bensonhurst, a small, compact community of mainly blue-collar workers, situated directly north of Coney Island. It’s densely populated three square miles contained thousands of Italian-Americans who considered themselves lucky to live in one of the last New York areas offering wood-burning ovens for pie-making in commercial pizza kitchens.<br /> <br /> Vittorio ‘Little Vic’ Amuso, who was also nicknamed ‘Jesse,’ was a short, slim man of unassuming appearance, but like so many of his kind, very dangerous when scratched. In his early days he had acted as bodyguard and chauffeur to Carmine Tramunti, a.k.a. ‘Mr Gribbs’ who took over the family leadership after the death of Tommy Luchese, and prior to Tony Corallo. <br /> <br /> Moving rapidly upwards on his career path, by the time he was 33, Amuso was a big time heroin dealer, like so many of his peers in the Luchese family. Parlaying his drug revenues into loan sharking, he was soon developing a reputation as a major earner for the family, possibly the highest accolade a mobster could aim for. His rocketing progress came to a temporary halt when he was arrested in 1977 for importing heroin from Bangkok, Thailand. By 1987 he was solidly entrenched, running the Brooklyn crew under Luongo. He lived with his wife Barbara in Howard Beach in Queens. A close neighbour and friend was John Gotti who lived just three minutes to the south by car. <br /> <br /> As he assumed control of the family, Amuso turned more and more to Sidney Lieberman, a personal friend and Luchese associate, concerning matters in the garment industry, and Pappadio and Lieberman began more and more attempting to undermine each other in their dealings with the new administration.<br /> <br /> Michael was using his brother Fred to help him run the complex and demanding business of supervising the family’s garment business, following his stroke in 1982, and Lieberman began a campaign to undermine Michael’s standing in the family, claiming he was hiding over 50 businesses away from the family for his own benefit, and had earned $15 million that Amuso was unaware of. Michael responded by denying it all, and pointing out, quite rightly that Lieberman, being Jewish, could never be ‘made’ as he himself had and that the administration should always support a member over an outsider.<br /> <br /> A meeting called by Amuso in early 1989, was held in the Cleveland Place, Greenwich Village apartment of a Luchese mobster called Angelo ‘Shorty’ DiPaolo. Michael attended accompanied by Alphonse D’Arco. Also in attendance, were Anthony Casso and Michael’s brother Fred. In a violent and heated confrontation, Amuso demoted Michael from his job in the garment industry, demanding he handed over all record books he was maintaining that involved details on the companies and unions that the family controlled. The meeting ended with Michael storming off, vowing to stay on the job, irrespective of Amuso’s dictates. The boss warned Pappadio that if he persisted, he would issue instructions to have him killed. But like a man with a death wish, Michael Pappadio continued to involve himself in the day-to-day running of the family’s garment district affairs.<br /> <br /> His overheads were high-the $2 million Queen’s house; an apartment at 35 Park Avenue, Manhattan; a condo in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a house in the Hampton’s; the cars, Haydesa Severo, the housekeeper-the list seemed endless. Although getting on in years and a semi-invalid, Michael like so many of his fellow mobsters, was drive by the need to keep on making money, the Holy Grail of Cosa Nostra everywhere.<br /> <br /> Al D’Arco met with him on several occasions during March and April, but was unable to persuade him to accept Amuso’s edict. It seemed the die had been cast. Literally. <br /> <br /> In early April, Amuso convened another meeting, this one at the Le Parc Lounge on Rockaway Parkway, in Canarsie, Brooklyn. Present were D’Arco, Casso, Salvatore Avellino a capo in the family, and former chauffer and close confident of now jailed ex-boss Tony Corallo, and his brother Carmine, a soldier in the family. They listened while Vic announced his decision: Michael Pappadio had to go.<br /> <br /> Amuso handed over the working details of the hit on Michael Pappadio to Anthony Casso, a serial killer with possibly dozens of victims to his credit. A man who loved his work, he sat down and prepared a killing plan. Weapons were to be procured along with a body bag, and it was decided to lure Pappadio to a meeting at Crown Foods, a bakery manufacturer, on Rockaway Boulevard in Queens where he would be killed. The body would be disposed of, and he would vanish as though he had never existed. A classic mob hit scenario, one that had been repeated over and over again, for generations.<br /> <br /> The clip was to be carried out on a Saturday morning. The business would be closed over the week-end, so it would be safe and secure to carry out the killing and then dispose of Pappadio’s corpse.<br /> <br /> On that Saturday morning in May, Salvatore Avellino rang Michael and they arranged to meet outside the Great Bay Diner. They were standing talking, shooting the breeze, when Carmine Avellino pulled up in a blue Lincoln Town Car. It is not know what reason was given for Michael to go along to Crown Foods, but he must have felt comfortable with the arrangement to get in the car and travel south across Queens.<br /> <br /> At the bakery, a business owned by Carmine Avellino,( now a lube and auto repair shop,) Al D’Arco and one of the soldiers in his crew, Georgie Zappola, waited to carry out the killing. Zappola, a dyed-in-the-wool hoodlum, whose father and uncle had both been murdered by the mob in 1981, still lusted after the honour of being a ‘made man.’ D’Arco was carrying a copper wire cable wrapped in blue insulation tape, and Zappola was holding a .22 revolver. As Carmine Avellino led Michael through the bakery towards the rear office area, D’Arco sprang out from behind a pillar and started bashing Michael around the head with the makeshift sap. To everyone’s surprise, the man remained standing, blood streaming from his face. He screamed out: ‘Why are you hitting me?’<br /> <br /> Zappola stepped up, presented the revolver and shot Pappadio. The bullet actually ricocheted off his head, striking a door-frame, and amazingly the man remained standing, holding his face between his hands. Zappola then pulled out a snub-nose .38 calibre revolver and shot Michael again in the head. Unbelievably, he still remained on his feet, his legs, now spread wide, to support his dying body, while his three killers stood around him like wild dogs baiting a wounded bear. And then slowly, he sank to his knees, and toppled over, collapsing onto the floor.<br /> <br /> The three men stood there, in that empty warehouse, adrenaline pumping, bathed in sweat, the blue haze of gunshots hanging in the air, dust motes dancing through the beams of spring sunshine that shafted through the overhead windows, the smell of cordite mixing with the smell of yeast and flour, the broken body sprawled at their feet, pumping blood across the concrete floor.<br /> <br /> It could have been a scene from a Tarantino movie.<br /> <br /> Later giving evidence as a federal witness, D’Arco said:<br /> <br /> ‘There was a big mess, and lots of blood on the floor and walls. Everywhere.’<br /> <br /> They checked to make sure he was really dead, and Carmine Avellino searched his clothing, removing a thick wad of money and an old wallet. Amuso had convinced himself that Michael had turned and become an informant for the FBI, and wanted evidence of this, although there in fact was none because he hadn’t. Suspecting a victim of becoming a ‘rat’ was a classic Mob subterfuge to justify the execution of an irritant within a crime family. The body was rolled into the body bag, and carried through the bakery and then loaded into the trunk of the Lincoln, which had been lined with a plastic sheet.<br /> <br /> With D’Arco driving, he and Zapola went to a secluded intersection at Alderton Street and Trotting Course Lane, close to Woodhaven Boulevard. Here, D’Arco left the car and made his way back to the bakery, (flagging a taxi on Woodhaven Boulevard,) to supervise the cleaning of the crime scene. Zappola waited with the car for the arrival from Long Island of the man who would arrange the disposal of Michael Pappadio’s body. It was subsequently cremated, and the ashes scattered somewhere in the greater New York area.<br /> <br /> Alphonse D’Arco eventually made his way home, to his apartment at 21 Spring Street in Little Italy, Manhattan, where he removed all his clothes, cutting them into strips, including his shoes. He bundled the pieces into plastic bags, and dumped them into the apartment building’s incinerator shoot.<br /> <br /> Later in the day, he telephoned Amuso from a public telephone at the intersection of Kenmare and Mulberry Street. They talked, discreetly about the killing, and Amuso finished the conversation by saying:<br /> <br /> ‘Grazie, ai fatto bene’ which translated into English meant, ‘Thanks, you did well.’ <br /> <br /> Three years later, on a cold, miserable spring day in 1992, Frances Pappadio learned some of the details of her husband’s brutal killing.<br /> <br /> Sitting in her comfortable and luxurious home in Bayside, surrounded by her four children-son Michael, and daughters Patricia, Michelle and Jose- with her sister Dolores Saco busy organizing coffee and tea for everyone, she listened as FBI Special Agent Lucian J. Gandolfo told her what the agency had learned about her husband’s death from Al D’Arco. The day before, she had been visited by Agent Gandolfo and Agent Sharon L. Bonville and told that the FBI had information confirming that her husband was in fact dead, and not simply a missing person. She had asked them to return the following day when she would call her children around her and confront the awful news as a family.<br /> <br /> Frances Pappadio claimed she was never aware of her husband’s mob connection. Michael kept his biological family and business family life completely separate. Her thoughts and feelings as the background and fate of her husband were revealed, can only be imagined. After seventeen years of marriage to a man she thought was a successful businessman, she discovered her husband had been prosperous all right, but in a profession she could never have dreamt of.<br /> <br /> On the same day, February 12th, six miles across town in Jackson Heights, Michael’s brother Fred, was also being interviewed by an agent of the FBI, in his modest row house on a tree-lined street.<br /> <br /> He refused to answer questions without his attorney present, but admitted that unlike his brother, he was not involved in ‘that life.’ Special Agent John Flanagan knew of course that Fred had been present at the meeting on Cleveland Place, when Vittorio Amuso ‘chased’ his brother from the garment industry, and that Fred must have known the inevitability of the events that would eventually unfold, almost certainly resulting in his brother’s death. When he had called with his cousins that day in 1989 to the house in Bayside, to sit and talk with his sister-in-law, he surely knew it was all over, and that Michael had gone for good.<br /> <br /> In the twisted and devious philosophy of Cosa Nostra, family members are dispensable as long as The Family carries on maintaining its momentum.<br /> <br /> Although the ultimate fate of Michael Pappadio was resolved, his family will forever be tortured by the knowledge of his final moments and unresolved resting place.<br /> <br /> Like so many mob murders, the mysterious disappearance of Michael Pappadio would have remained just that, except for information revealed by the man from the Luchese family who knew the answers to many of their secrets-Alphonse D’Arco. He had helped to set it up and carry it out. Michael was just one of many victims who were sacrificed to the ambition of this man over the years, as he schemed and manoeuvred up the corporation ladder of the Mafia underworld.<br /> <br /> D’Arco was one of the highest ranking Cosa Nostra defectors when he rolled and came in from the cold in September 1991. Born in Brooklyn in 1932, near the Naval Yards, he had been involved with the Luchese crime family from his teenage years. <br /> His childhood, D'Arco once recalled, was ‘like being in the forest and all the trees were the dons and the organized crime guys.’ A small, balding, bespectacled inconspicuous man, he looked more like a bank clerk than a mobster. He started hanging around Amuso and the Carnarsie crew of the Luchese family, and at 29 went to prison for five years for fencing stolen stock certificates<br /> <br /> He was made relatively late in life in 1982, by the boss himself, Anthony Corallo, in a kitchen in a house in the Bronx, when he was just turned fifty, and had taken over as capo or crew chief from Paul Vario when he died in 1988. Shortly after he was given his button, he was arrested, and pled out on a drug trafficking charge, going back into prison for two years. He was earning $10,000 a week on his loan sharking book, which he had inherited from Vario, and his tributes from his crew of eleven men and dozens of associates was thousands of dollars every week. <br /> <br /> Amuso had transferred Michael Pappadio into this crew from his Harlem based one, in order to keep a close eye on him.<br /> <br /> The reason for D’Arco’s defection speaks volumes about how much the once powerful Luchese crime family had deteriorated in the few years that its control had passed out of the hands of Tony Corallo. In a murderous campaign generated by Amuso and Casso to eliminate anyone they suspected of disloyalty they arranged the murders of nine men, tried, unsuccessfully to wipe out the head of their New Jersey crew along with his son and another aide, and organized the killing, again unsuccessfully, of capo Pete Chiodo,( a man Amuso had himself sponsored into the family,) although he was shot twelve times in the attempt, tried to kill his sister, and finally were setting up a hit on D’Arco himself, when he became aware of the danger he was in and turned himself into the FBI. At one time, Casso showed D’Arco a list of 49 names he wanted eliminated, and almost half of them were members of the Luchese family! In his de-briefing by the FBI when Casso offered to become an informant, he actually admitted his role in 36 killings.<br /> <br /> A classic hit was the one on Anthony DiLapi. An old school Bronx based soldier, he had been a force in the garment district under Tony Corallo as a Teamster’s local union leader. On his release from prison in 1986, he was summonsed to a meet with Amuso. Afraid that as a Bronx based member of the family, he would be facing problems with Amuso, he fled New York and finished up in Los Angeles, where he worked as a second-hand car salesman. In February 1990 he was shot dead in the car park of his apartment building by Joe D’Arco, the 19 year old son of Al, who crossed America in order to get his button in the mob by earning his ‘bones’ in a hit for the family boss.<br /> <br /> Casso a man so twisted and warped, he must have walked outside his own shadow, brought Al D’Arco to the edge, and in doing so, set in motion the events that helped<br /> law enforcement agencies bring down Amuso and Casso himself. D’Arco’s testimony at numerous trials was the final nail in many mob coffins. It was at D’Arco’s de-briefing by his FBI handlers that the details of Michael Pappadio’s murder came to light.<br /> <br /> "Al gave them great value for the money," said his defence lawyer Edward Hayes. "D'Arco is a lunatic, but he has a story." <br /> <br /> And what a story. For ten years, starting in the court action against Vittorio Amuso, he testified at numerous trials against the mob, including the 1997 one against Vincent Gigante, head of the Genovese crime family.<br /> <br /> In 2002, he took down his shingle as mob informant extraordinaire and retired into the obscurity of the Witness Protection Program. <br /> <br /> Salvatore and Carmine Avellino were both indicted on various racketeering charges in the early 1990s and served significant prison time. They were both charged in the murders of the Long Island garbage haulers Robert Kubecka and Donald Barstow which occurred later in the same year that Michael Pappadio was murdered.<br /> <br /> Georgie Zapolla is currently incarcerated at the Allenwood Federal Correctional Complex in Pennsylvania. His projected release date is March 3, 2014.<br /> <br /> Vittoria Amuso and Antony Casso are both in federal prisons and will never be released.<br /> <br /> For some reason, the name of the man who disposed of Michael’s body was never disclosed.<br /> <br /> In the end, Michael Pappadio died not so much because he underestimated the evil of Amuso and Casso, rather he overestimated his ability to swim with the fish, even though they were piranhas. His belief in the sanctity of the rules of Cosa Nostra seduced him into assuming his crime family position was inviolable. An old school Mafioso he was simply a babe in the woods when he was faced with the terrible twins, whose lust for money and mob power, was greater by far than their observance of the rules they were supposed to live by.<br /> <br /> The tenet that absolute power corrupts absolutely could have been written as a job description for Amuso and Casso, two men who somehow could never understand that fear and loathing are really no substitute for grace underfire, but who most certainly would have understood the saying of Soviet revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin:<br /> <br /> ‘A lie told often enough becomes the truth.’<br /> </p>
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Lucky’s Luck: How Charlie Luciano got out of jail and passed go
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/luckys-luck-how-charlie
2010-11-24T20:00:00.000Z
2010-11-24T20:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/10663249480?profile=RESIZE_400x&width=400"></div><div><p>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br /> Any one interested in the subject of Italian-American organized crime, is probably familiar with the story concerning Charlie Luciano’s final departure from New York. <br /> <br /> After serving 10 years of a thirty year sentence for compulsory prostitution, he was released from prison by the very man who sent him away, New York State Governor, Thomas Dewey, transferred to Ellis Island in New York Harbour, and on February 10th 1946, sailed away on a rust-bucket of a steam ship, never to return. <br /> <br /> Charlie had apparently done such a great service for America’s war effort, that the governor (who as a hell-bent New York District Attorney, pursued Luciano and had him sent away for a crime that most observers thought was the biggest frame-up since Sacco and Venzetti were executed for a murder they never did, back in July, 1921,) agreed to a commutation of sentence, subject to a deportation order, and sent Luciano back to his birth place, the small, sulphur-stinking town of Lecara Friddi in the wilds of Western Sicily . <br /> <br /> Luciano’s conviction was so dodgy in fact, that in a memo dated April 18th 1946, R.A. Rosen Assistant Director of the FBI, stated: <br /> <br /> ‘.<span style="font-style:italic;">..... considerable opinion exists to the effect that Luciano was not guilty of the charges for which he was convicted and that Governor Dewey’s parole of Luciano was motivated partially as an easing of Dewey’s conscience.</span>’ <br /> <br /> Luciano’s sentence was the largest ever imposed at that time in the state of New York for compulsory prostitution, and the Feds, who knew a lot about Charlie, but almost nothing about what he really represented, uncharacteristically went to bat for him, at least in an inter-office memo.<br /> <br /> But just how Charlie got his pass, and why he was allowed to sail off into the evening glow so to speak, on that miserable, rainy day in February, has always been a bit of a mystery. There have been lots words written about it, in a number of different books, with the basic premise something along these lines:<br /> <br /> The New York Harbour, the biggest and most important in the USA, and the staging post for any future American involvement in World War Two, was at risk from Nazi attacks, both overt and subvert. The eyes and ears needed to aid Naval intelligence services were the dock workers and fishermen, and everyone knew that the mob controlled the waterfront, and Luciano, a.k.a. Salvatore Lucania, also known as Charlie Lucky, was obviously a very important man in the underworld. Ergo, he should be able to help secure the cooperation of the waterside workers to aid any intelligence operations. <br /> <br /> A FBI report dated May, 1946 states:<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">In 1941, the security of the port of New York was a matter of great concern, not only to the Third Naval District, but to the Secretary of the Navy and the President of the United States, and further that in accordance with the directive issued by the Secretary of Navy, the activities of the District Intelligence Organization (DIO), in the Third Naval District were expanded to afford the required coverage in the port of New York.</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">It was also pointed out that considerable newspaper publicity concerning the Navy’s responsibility in this regard occurred in 1941, and as a result of it, the District Attorney of New York County, invited the DIO to discuss matters concerning the port of New York. At a meeting subsequently held, the District Intelligence Officer was informed that the ‘Rackets‘ Section of the District Attorney’s Office had numerous contacts in the underworld familiar with waterfront situations. Arrangements were made whereby pertinent information would be called to the attention of the DIO.</span><br /> <br /> Then there was Lucky’s part in the invasion of Europe. A letter send to Charles Brietel, Secretary to Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, stated that the author:<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">was confident that the greater part of intelligence developed in the Sicilian Campaign was directly responsible to the number of Sicilians that emanated from the Charlie ‘Lucky‘ Luciano’s contacts.</span><br /> <br /> And so, not only did Charlie save the port of New York from the fiendish Krauts, but he paved the way for a successful invasion of Sicily that helped shorten the war and save untold number of military lives. The least the state could do was give this guy a break and turn him loose from a conviction that was to say the least, a bit dodgy.<br /> <br /> The author of the letter to the governor’s aide was naval officer Charles Radcliffe Haffenden, known more often as ‘Red,’ and he lies, maybe unwittingly, at the very core of what may have been a classic mob scam to get something they really wanted badly- Charlie out of the pen. Sixty years after the event, everyone is dead and gone, so we are never going to know for sure, but this is what may have gone down in those early years of World War Two.<br /> <br /> Charlie was incarcerated in one of America’s more dismal penitentiaries, located not far from Canada; a bleak, inhospitable place known as Clinton, an armpit of a prison. Situated in the small township of Dannemora, twenty miles south of the border, it had opened in 1845, housing prisoners who were free labour for the iron mines of Clinton and Essex counties.<br /> <br /> After his conviction on the prostitution charges, he was sent first to Sing Sing prison arriving there on June 18th 1936. On July 2nd he was moved north, to the prison the American underworld referred to as Little Siberia, and it looked as though he would spend the rest of his life, or at least twenty years of it, stewing here in the summer and freezing in the winter. He would not be even considered for parole until 1956. <br /> <br /> Inmate 24086 settled down for a long and miserable stay, at this bleak and depressing facility, hidden away behind fourty-foot high walls and watch towers manned by armed guards. <br /> <br /> Warden William Snyder assigned Lucky a cell in ‘the Flats,’ the first-floor gallery in West Hall, which came to be equipped with an electric stove, curtains and a pet canary.<br /> <br /> In March 1937, Luciano was transferred to C Block, ‘one of the best and cleanest blocks,’ according to James D. Horan, a fellow inmate who recalled his hard time with Luciano in his 1959 autobiography, ‘The Mob's Man.’ Horan was happy to have the daily job of cleaning Lucky's cell and pressing his clothes (silk shirts and creased slacks,) for which he was paid handsomely in cigarettes, and other valuable contraband.<br /> <br /> ‘Little Davie’ Betillo, one of Lucky’s associates, who had received 24 to 40 years for a supporting role in Luciano's prostitution ring, often prepared Charlie‘s food, in a corner of the prison kitchen that had been made available to him. Betillo cooked Luciano's meals, before serving them to him in his cell, where the mob boss would listen to comedy shows on the radio. (Lucky's favourite was apparently Abbott and Costello.) <br /> <br /> Something went badly wrong with their relationship however, for Betillo corned Luciano one day, and beat him badly with a baseball bat. ‘Little Davie’ headed up a group of Italian-American convicts who were constantly fighting with another group of non- Italians. Luciano warned Davie off a number of times, and one day ordered him to stop the brawling. Betillo took umbrage and went for Luciano. Charley was saved, only by the intervention of another prisoner, who came to his aid, and as a result, apparently was awarded an early release. Betillo spent some time in solitary. It seems Charlie was incredibly lucky to escape with little injury. Betillo had started his career in the Chicago mob, working as a bodyguard for Al Capone, and was a seasoned killer. From that point on, Charley always had at least two inmates act as his bodyguards, no doubt rewarding them well for their trouble.<br /> <br /> He seemingly accepted and adjusted to his incarceration, making the best of his situation. On a hill overlooking a recreation area called ‘the Courts,’ he drank coffee, played gin rummy and held daily counsel with the prison's extensive Italian population. <br /> <br /> By 1937, New York District Attorney Dewey’s newest target was racketeer Louis ‘Lepke’ Buchalter. Luciano had allegedly arranged maximum security for Lepke in New York, on the run from the law, through underworld contacts Albert Anastasia and Louis Capone, and Buchalter operated without impunity for the next two years. In 1939, an FBI agent paid Luciano a visit over the still at-large ‘Lepke,’ and it’s possible that Luciano agreed to disclose his whereabouts (an apartment in Brooklyn,) but only if J. Edgar Hoover would arrange to have his sentence commuted. The agent refused. Not long after, Luciano, whose freedom was increasingly dependent on gubernatorial parole, may have tricked Buchalter into surrendering so that Dewey, an as-yet unannounced candidate, would owe him a favour. <br /> <br /> Lepke had jumped bail on July 6th 1937 while indicted by a Federal grand jury for violation of the Sherman Anti-trust Act; the first time the government had used it to try a convict a racketeer. A deal was set up, it seems, by Frank Costello, using the only man Lepke trusted- Moe ‘Dimples’ Wilensky-a long time associate of Bucahalter in the garment industry, to persuade Lepke to surrender to J. Edgar Hoover.<br /> <br /> Louis Buchalter would ultimately die in the electric chair in 1944, the first and only New York mob boss to-date, to have met this fate. If this is actually what did transpire, then Charles Luciano would have been the first major ‘rat’ or informer in the Italian-American underworld: One boss squealing on another boss in order to gain some kind of benefit for himself.<br /> <br /> This may have been the first, in a series of attempts by Luciano, to gain clemency on his prison sentence by becoming a government informer.<br /> <br /> The second, involved Dixie Davies, the lawyer who represented Dutch Schultz, the notorious New York numbers racket king. Davies was arrested in his hideaway, a Philadelphia hotel, where he had been in hiding with his mistress, Hope Dore, in February, 1938.<br /> <br /> Schultz had been murdered in 1935, and it seems Luciano had arranged protection for Davies following the murder of his boss. In 1939, Thomas Dewey, mounted a major indictment against corrupt Tammany leader, Jimmy Hines, who was allegedly a major player in Schultz’s gang. The underworld gossip was that Lucky had turned in Davies, allowing the law to catch him, so that he could provide the damming evidence needed to convict Hines.<br /> <br /> More Brownie points for Charlie, maybe?<br /> <br /> It is also possible that while in Clinton, Lucky was approached to help out a new, up-coming Italian-American singer, a crooner from Hoboken, called Frank Sinatra. Legend has it that Lucky financed Frank into the big time, and that Sinatra would later show his appreciation by singing at Luciano’s mobster conclave in Havana on Christmas Eve 1946.<br /> <br /> Sinatra’s wife, Nancy Barbato, was related to a senior member of a Luciano crew, controlled by New Jersey gangster, Willie Moretti, who himself was close to both Charlie and Frank Costello. Frank also had an uncle, on his mother’s side of the family, Babe Garavante, who was also allegedly linked into Moretti’s team. The links between Sinatra and Luciano went even deeper than that. Frank’s father may have actually been born in the same street in the same small town where Charlie Luciano had been born, in Western Sicily.<br /> <br /> This wasn’t the first time Charley had been into the ‘North Country.’<br /> <br /> In 1920, he’d helped to manage an upscale casino called ‘Brooks,’ opened in 1919 and owned by <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-big-bankroll-the-rise-and-fall-of-new-york-mob-boss-arnold-ro" target="_blank">Arnold Rothstein</a>, which was located in Saratoga Springs. Rothstein had also helped finance Charley, and his good friend <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-meyer-lansky-laundered-the-american-mafia-s-dirty-cash-and-ma">Meyer Lansky</a>, and a group of other investors, into their own place-‘The Chicago Club’- located near the railway station in the Springs.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236979276,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Luciano (right) had been one of the pivotal players in the establishment of what we now recognize as the Mafia crime families of New York. Born in Sicily in November 1897, he came to America in 1905 or 1907 depending on which source you choose to believe, along with his parents, Antonio and Rosalia Cafarella and his brother Bartolo. Charlie said in his autobiography it was April 1906, but there are so many things in that book that are suspect; perhaps he even got this date wrong as well! By 1931 at the early age of 34, he was heading up the Mafia clan formerly under the command of Giuseppe ‘Joe the Boss’ Masseria, who had been gunned down in a restaurant on Coney Island. This was the penultimate act of violence bringing to a close what has since been referred to as The Castellammarese War of 1930-31.<br /> <br /> Charlie was developing a nice little business, running what may have been the biggest mob in a city full of mobsters, when D.A. Dewey came along and upset the apple cart, which resulted in Charlie spending winter 1936 in the can, freezing off his tootsies, and knowing the only way from there, was down. He kept on running his criminal empire through intermediaries like Frank Costello and Vito Genovese, and kept closely in touch with the little Jewish criminal kingpin, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-meyer-lansky-laundered-the-american-mafia-s-dirty-cash-and-ma">Meyer Lansky</a>, dubbed ‘the Mafia’s Henry Kissinger’ by comedian Jackie Mason. They had been close friends and confidents since their youthful days growing up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Moses Polakoff, Lucky’s attorney, visited him at the prison, on a regular basis, and along with another outstanding trial lawyer, George Wolfe, he was working around the clock on Luciano’s appeal against his sentence, but not getting anywhere fast.<br /> <br /> While imprisoned in the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, Charley would use his influence to help organize the necessary materials to build a church at the prison in 1941, which became famous for being one of the only freestanding churches in the New York State correctional system and also for the fact that on the church's altar are two of the original doors from the explorer Magellan's ship. This church of St Dismas was called, not unsurprisingly, ‘The Church of the Good Thief!’ No doubt many of the convict penitents would kneel here in supplication to the mob prayer:<br /> <br /> ‘<span style="font-style:italic;">O Lord, give me the strength to rob again.</span>’<br /> <br /> And then on March 25th 1942, a meeting took place in the office of New York District Attorney Frank Hogan, that would trigger a sequence of events leading up to the release and deportation of Charlie Luciano.<br /> <br /> The meeting was held between Hogan, ADA Murray Gurfein, head of the DA’s racket squad section and three Naval men-Lt. James O’Malley Jnr., Lt. Anthony Marsloe and Lieutenant Commander Haffenden. <br /> <br /> Between December 7th 1941 and February 1942, the United States and its allies had lost 71 merchant ships to marauding Axis U-boats operating in the North Atlantic Ocean. It was suspected by Naval intelligence, that German U-boats were being refuelled and supplied with provisions by fishing smacks. <br /> <br /> Rear Admiral Carle Espe, Director of Naval Intelligence, believed the outcome of the war appeared extremely grave. There were serious concerns over possible destruction of essential ports. It was necessary to use every means to prevent and forestall sabotage, and to prevent this supplying of and contact with, enemy submarines.<br /> <br /> The Atlantic sea-lanes had to be made safe if the basic strategy of the war -Victory in Europe-was to be achieved. Also, on February 9th the S.S Normandie, a luxury cruise liner waiting refitting into a war vessel, caught fire, burnt out and rolled over on her moorings in the Hudson River. There was a very strong possibility at first that it was an act of sabotage, carried out right in the heart of New York, although in fact subsequent inquiries revealed it was simply an accident.<br /> <br /> At the meeting in Hogan’s office, it was suggested that the New York waterfront was very much influenced by Italian-Americans, as was the fishing fleets that operated out of the upper North East seaboard harbours. A name came up in the meeting, a man who was very important on the New York piers, a man who ran the biggest fish market in America, at the Fulton Street complex, on the lowers East Side of Manhattan. His name was Joseph Lanza, known to his friends as ‘Sox.’ He was a mobster, working in the crime family run by Luciano, and he was also, currently under indictment on racketeering charges. <br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236979698,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />It was proposed that Lanza (left) be approached initially through his lawyer, Joseph K. Gueria.<br /> <br /> Gurfein and Gueria met the next day, and the mobster’s attorney was asked if he would approach his client to see if he would help the government, through his contacts on the waterfront, to find out how German U-boats were being supplied and refuelled, and by whom and where. There was apparently no offer made by the DA’s office to go easy on the indictment looming over Lanza. Gurfein was in fact laying the ground to persecute Lanza on seven counts of extortion and conspiracy, charges which had been two years in development, in connection with racketeering activities in the Fulton Fish Market, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. What Lanza was being asked to do was simply be a patriot, and help out his country in a time of deep need. <br /> <br /> Following this meeting, Haffenden was appointed as Naval Intelligence Officer in charge of the project, working directly under the officer in control of the Navy’s 3rd District, Captain Roscoe C. MacFall, who was Chief Intelligence Officer of the Third Naval District, covering New York and New Jersey, which Navy wags in the intelligence department referred to as S.S. Concrete. A few days later, ADA Gurfein, attorney Gueria and Lanza met at 11.30 p.m. and drove to Riverside Park. Lanza wanted this level of secrecy. He did not want anyone to see him conferring with someone from the District Attorney’s office.<br /> <br /> Seated on a bench, they discussed the proposal, and Lanza agreed. The following day, he met up with Haffenden at an office the Naval Commander maintained at the Astor Hotel on West 44th Street near Broadway. As a result of this rendezvous, Haffenden and ‘Sox’ Lanza agreed to work together in one of the strangest alliances of the war: the Mafia and Naval Intelligence combing to fight another, different kind of enemy.<br /> <br /> Haffenden hired two brothers, Dominick and Felix Saco to act as his liaison with Lanza in the unusual arrangement that was about to be set up.<br /> <br /> An associate of Haffenden’s remembers him saying at some time in the early stages of the strange alliance between the government and organized crime:<br /> <br /> ‘<span style="font-style:italic;">I’ll talk to anybody, a priest, a bank manager, a gangster, the devil himself, if I can get the information I need. This is a war. American lives are at stake.</span>’ <br /> <br /> Lanza and Haffenden were the left and right bowers in a game of hide and seek that perhaps went deeper than just naval intelligence. Lanza was forty-one years old and had been a career criminal most of his life. He had been in trouble with the law since he was seventeen. His arrest record read: juvenile delinquency, conspiracy and extortion, theft, breaking/entering, homicide, unlawful possession of a weapon, coercion and conspiracy and violating antitrust laws. He was firmly established in the crime family controlled by Luciano, and lived at 101, West 65th Street with his second wife, Ellen Connor. As head of Local 16975 of the United Seafood Workers, he ran the Fulton Fish Market like a dictator, nothing moved in or out without his permission. A fearsome plug of a man with premature gray hair, he was a street brawler, who tended to solve problems with his fists, hence his nickname, and a man who also mixed with the upper echelon of the Mafia, associating with the top men in most of the five Cosa Nostra crime families operating across the city.<br /> <br /> Joseph Lanza was born in Palermo, Sicily around the turn of the 20th century, according to some sources. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics has him listed as being born in New York in August 1900. At the age of 14, he went to work at The Fulton Fish Market, as a fish handler. In the early part of the 20th Century, workers at the market were mainly Irish. By the 1920’s they had been replaced by the Italians. <br /> <br /> Established in 1835, it started business in a large, wooden shed in 1848 and grew to become the biggest wholesale market of its type in America, eventually establishing a complex covering five square blocks near what is now the South Street Seaport, between Fulton and Beekman Streets. In the period 1920-1930, it was estimated one quarter of all seafood sold in America passed through the Fulton. <br /> <br /> A reporter at the New York Times, Emanuel Perlmutter, claimed Lanza earned his nickname ‘Sox’ or sometimes ‘Socks’ because of his propensity to settle disputes by using his fists. Ralph Salerno, who headed up the NYPD organized-crime task force between 1946 and 1967, claimed the nickname came from Lanza’s habit of thumping fish wholesalers and deliverers who refused to pay him for permission to do business. <br /> <br /> He also acquired some other nicknames along the way: The Czar of the Fulton Market; Sea Food Papa and Joe Zotz.<br /> <br /> Tough as he undoubtedly was, he had a soft side as well. One of the workers at the market bred Pomeranian dogs, which curiously, seemed to be a favourite pet of mobsters during the 1930’s. Joe Lanza bought one of the pups, and the dog was his constant companion for years. He apparently doted on the animal.<br /> <br /> Short, stock and immensely tough, by the age of 20, Lanza had become involved in labour union activities, and an organizer for the United Seafood Workers Union (USW) through Local 359 which represented almost 1000 workers employed at the market. <br /> Lanza started his operation from a shoe-shine stand in the market, demanding a penny for every fish sold, and charging a $10 tax on every boat unloading. He also levied every stall holder an annual fee of $2500 to keep the peace.<br /> <br /> Sometime between 1920 and 1930, he also became part of the Mafia crime family that would come to be headed by Charley Luciano, and during this period, may have worked as an enforcer for Michael ‘Trigger Mike’ Coppola, a psychopathic capo regime, or crew captain, in the family, who was based in Harlem.<br /> <br /> Lanza had three brothers, Nunzio (Harry) Anthony and Salvatore. Harry joined him at the market and it’s thought he also joined the Luciano family, rising in rank to sit alongside his brother as a capo. Salvatore, often called ‘Solly’ was also connected into the mob, but probably as an associate rather than a ‘made’ man.<br /> <br /> The 1963 Valachi hearings inferred Lanza was a soldier in the crime family, working under Michele Miranda, although most sources believe by the 1940’s, ‘Sox’ was in fact a capo himself, and generating huge earnings for the mob. <br /> <br /> ‘Sox’ Lanza created his own fiefdom at the Fulton Market. All fish, either landed from sea at the nearby docks, or shipped in by ‘reefers,’ the huge refrigerated trucks, hauling shrimp from Florida or Georgia, had to be unloaded and distributed to the fish wholesalers in the market by union workers, supervised by Lanza or his brother Harry. Lanza also operated his criminal control beyond the confines of the market walls, through a security force operating a watchman’s service for retail shops and vehicles parked around the perimeter of the waterfront complex; in addition, fish processing plants in the area paid Lanza thousands of dollars annually to ensure their shops stayed non-union.<br /> <br /> In 1933, along with Local 954 president Charles Skillen, Lanza was indicted by a federal grand jury for racketeering, but due to witness tampering, the case was dismissed. Tried again, in 1935, he was the beneficiary of a mistrial. Tried again in the November, he was found guilty and sentenced to 2 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. He final went to Flint Prison, Michigan, in 1937.<br /> <br /> Although a thug and part of the New York Mafia underworld, Joe Lanza was a man with strong political ties. His brother-in-law, Vincent Viggiano, was a Tammany leader of the 2nd Assembly District in Lower Manhattan. Lanza was also very close to Frank Costello, himself a consummate political fixer, known as ‘The Prime Minister’ of the underworld, and Joe was often a guest at Costello’s luxurious apartment at The Majestic on West 72nd Street, across from Central Park. Frank and Joe were so close, that Costello had been the best man at Lanza’s wedding, to his second wife Ellen.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236980257,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Charles Haffenden (left) was an unorthodox, controversial Naval Reserve Officer, heading up the B-3 investigating section of the district intelligence office. His superiors considered him to be zealous, loyal, energetic and a gifted intelligence officer. His civilian aides worshipped him because he cut the bull and avoided the red tape inherent in any government bureaucracy.<br /> <br /> Running into his 50’s, he was not only an intelligence buff, but also an underworld one as well. Flamboyant and gregarious, some considered him a blowhard whose judgment needed constant supervision. He had joined the navy during World War One, winning his commission on active service. Between the wars, he held down a variety of jobs, working as an agent, in advertising; general manager of a gasoline pump manufacturer and as a vice-president for a construction company. His other main activity during the 1930’s was as a coordinator for the Executive Association of Greater New York, an organization with similar aims to the Rotary Club. <br /> <br /> His office was at the Astor Hotel, where he maintained a suite of three interconnecting rooms. He had held his commission in the Naval Reserve, re-joining the service and being transferred into the 3rd District intelligence office based at 50 Church Street, on July 8th 1940.<br /> <br /> The B-3 investigation section was known as “The Ferret Squad,” and Haffenden answered only to his immediate bosses, Captain William B. Howe, and Roscoe MacFall. He had initially, a staff of eight to help him run his operation, which grew into 150 agents dispersed around the New York area.<br /> <br /> Lanza carried out a lot of inquires searching for the information the Navy wanted, travelling as far north as Maine and south down to Virginia and North Carolina, checking out information from fishing fleets. He reported in to Haffenden at least a dozen times at the Church Street office with his findings. <br /> <br /> Lanza arranged for some of Haffenden’s men to work in a trucking company run by Hiram Swezey, out of Long Island. Swezey also introduced agents to fishermen who agreed to act as observers, searching for any signs of enemy activity, when they went fishing in the Atlantic.<br /> <br /> In April 1942, Lanza told one of the many undercover informers being used by section B-3, that due to the indictments pending against him, he was not getting total support from the Italian underworld. Because he was asking so many questions, some people believed he was in fact, working as an informant for law enforcement in order to get a possible deal on his impending case. <br /> <br /> He knew that he could really kick-start things by contacting the man who “could snap the whip in the entire underworld,” and that this person should be introduced to Haffenden. The man was Charley Luciano, and the contact in B-3 passed the word on down to Red. There are some sources that believe that Lanza was ‘coached’ in this approach by Frank Costello, who may have been the first one to see the opportunity to use the situation as leverage in springing his old partner from prison. Frank Costello at this time was the street boss of the family, running it for Luciano. They were partners in crime, going back over twenty years.<br /> <br /> At the end of April, Lanza confessed he had reached a dead-end and that the section really needed the help of the mob boss up in Dannemora Prison to open the doors into the Longshoreman’s Association and access all the potential information in the teeming docks and waterfronts of New York. By May 1942, shipping losses were reaching epidemic proportations-272 ships had been sunk along the Eastern Seaboard Frontier, since the war started. Drastic action was needed, unorthodox as it might have to be.<br /> <br /> The danger facing America was dramatically highlighted on June 12th 1942, when a German U-Boat, U-202, landed a team with explosives and plans at East Hampton, Long Island. The group of four men, led by George John Dasch, had a mission to destroy power plants at Niagara Falls and three Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA) factories in Illinois, Tennessee and New York. However, Dasch and his team were observed by coastguards and Dasch was apprehended, whereupon hr decided to turn himself in to the FBI, providing them with an account of the planned mission, which led to the arrest of the complete team. Four more secret Axis agents were discovered in Florida at about the same time. They had landed with cash and explosives, along with maps and plans for a prolonged attack on railroads, waterworks and bridges up the eastern seaboard of the United States.<br /> <br /> The security operation in New York was not the first time that the government would become involved with the mob in its desire to try and safeguard its shores from foreign invasion at the beginning of World War Two. In the Gulf of Mexico, between May 1942 and December 1943, German submarines attacked 72 Allied merchants’ ships in the Gulf, killing over 500 crew members, and sinking 56 vessels. U.S. Custom Agent Al Scharff enlisted the help of Galveston mob boss Sam Maceo to use his contacts to watch out for submarines along the coast line. Maceo worked closely with Silvestro Carollo, the boss of the New Orleans Mafia family, and through these connections, Scharff received numerous sightings of enemy vessels, information that was fed into the Naval defence system, allowing attack frigates to concentrate their efforts around the danger zones.<br /> <br /> Back in New York, Charlie Luciano was emerging as the key to any strategy in obtaining information from the New York waterfront sources, but getting to the mobster would be tricky. Haffenden contacted a senior upstate police officer, Inspector Howard W. Nugent, and he suggested that the man to reach out to was Commissioner of Correction, John A. Lyons. Haffenden then went back to ADA Gurfein, and suggested that Lanza be allowed to visit Luciano in prison. However, approval on a higher level was needed for this, and so Gurfein made a visit to District Attorney Hogan. The D.A. agreed to the proposal, but suggested that to keep legal lines of communication clear, Luciano’s attorney, Moses Polakoff be contacted with the suggestion.<br /> <br /> Gurfein met Polakoff, and explained that in the interests of national security, Naval Intelligence needed to enlist the help of his client. However, Polakoff said he did not feel either comfortable or qualified to broach Luciano with the proposal, suggesting instead, that another contact would be eminently suitable, a patriot, and a prince of the underworld, called <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-meyer-lansky-laundered-the-american-mafia-s-dirty-cash-and-ma">Meyer Lansky</a>, who was a man Luciano trusted explicitly.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236980293,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Gurfein and Polakoff met up with Lansky (left) at Longchamps Restaurant on West 58th Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues for breakfast. After their meal, they all made their way to the Astor Hotel to talk with Haffenden in his suite of offices.<br /> <br /> Following this meeting, the Office of Naval Intelligence sent a letter to John A. Lyons, the prison commissioner, requesting that Luciano be transferred to a ‘better facility, where he could be interviewed by ONI officers and others. It needed to be somewhere closer to New York; more convenient for people to visit him.’ <br /> <br /> A Naval Intelligence internal memo recorded this request, and also states ‘<span style="font-style:italic;">…..we are advised that contacts were made with Luciano thereafter, and that his influence on other criminal sources resulted in their co-operation with Naval Intelligence which was considered useful to the Navy.</span>’<br /> <br /> In view of later events, this letter and internal memo would become highly significant.<br /> <br /> On May 12th 1942, Lucy Luciano was transferred from bleak Danemorra Prison to the more comfortable restrictions of Great Meadows, in Comstock, 60 miles from Albany.<br /> To avoid any publicity, or media interest in this move, Luciano was accompanied by a number of criminal inmates who were also moved. Although it was a high-security prison, it was a lot more acceptable than the place he had left. He was told by the Governor that the move was for ‘administration purposes.’ A week later, he had his first meeting with Polakoff and Meyer Lansky.<br /> <br /> On June 4th ‘Sox’ Lanza at last got his audience with Lucky. He travelled to Comstock with Polakoff and Lansky, and met up with the man who in many ways still controlled his destiny, even from a prison cell. The meeting started at 10 a.m. and lasted until 1.30 p.m. By the time the meeting was over, Luciano had his organization plan primed, and one of the leading players would be Frank Costello. Following this meeting the word got out to the movers and shakers on the New York waterfront, guys like Johnny ‘Cockeye’ Dunn boss of the West Side piers, the men who controlled Brooklyn’s waterfront, and Jerry Sullivan the leading ILA organizer, and their cooperation was formally established.<br /> <br /> By June 27th dividends were already paying off, with 8 German secret agents arrested in New York and Chicago thanks to information supplied by underworld contacts established on the docks of New York and New Jersey.<br /> <br /> On July 17th Lansky, Lanza and Polakoff again visited Luciano, but this time they were accompanied by Mike Lascari, an old boyhood friend of Lucky’s and a power on the New Jersey waterfront. On August 25th another meeting was convened at Comstock that involved seven visitors, again including Frank Costello.<br /> <br /> In December, on the 29th, Meyer Lansky, Polakoff and Lascari again visited, and this time they came with a newcomer, Michael Miranda, a business partner of Longy Zwillman, the New Jersey Jewish mobster. Miranda, born in Naples, had been a major player in Luciano’s crime family for a number of years. Forty-six years old, short and stocky, Miranda had been involved with Vito Genovese in the murder of Ferdinand Boccia eight years before, a crime that had force Genovese to flee New York and settle in Italy. Miranda had a prison record that dated back to 1915, including arrests for murder and obstruction of justice. The meeting lasted for over three hours, but what possible connection could Miranda have with the Naval Intelligence project? Polakoff claimed that he was very influential with the Italians in New York, and that was why he was there for the meeting. He may also have attended the meeting to receive instructions from Luciano regarding their crime family activities.<br /> <br /> Into December 1942, Haffenden’s administrative staff had grown to fifty commissioned officers and eighty-one enlisted and civilian men. Emissaries were spread out across New York, working closely with their underworld connections, set up through Lanza. District Attorney Hogan, the man who had helped to kick-start the operation, was keeping his own, surreptitious watching brief on the way the operation was proceeding. Probably highly conscious of the ramifications if something went badly wrong, he arranged, on November 23rd to have telephone wiretaps installed in Meyer’s Hotel, at 117 South Street, which Lanza used as an office base from which to oversee his activities at the fish market. The transcripts of the intercepted calls confirmed that the Mafia was keeping up its end of the unwritten agreement. But in return, it was equally obvious that Luciano was extracting every concession and favour in respect to visitors and unregulated conferences, to conduct his own Mafia business from the prison.<br /> <br /> Towards the end of the year, the verdict was that the Navy-Mafia alliance was helping to secure the New York waterfront. Intelligence reports were flowing in; there was no active sabotage, no labour disputes, and no disruption of shipping. The Port of New York seemed secure. As one B-3 agent recalled, ‘<span style="font-style:italic;">We had everything sewed up tight: unions, docks, trucks, everything coming and going out of New York</span>.’<br /> <br /> With New York safe and secure, attention now zeroed in on efforts to help the Allied invasion of Sicily. During the Casablanca Conference of January 1943, the combined chiefs of staff had decided to invade Europe from North Africa, via Sicily as they built up their resources ready for the major assault on Germany, across the English Channel from Great Britain.<br /> <br /> The Office of Naval Intelligence set up a new department called F-Section which was created to collect strategic information that would assist in the invasion of Sicily. Lt. Commander Haffenden was transferred from Section-B and placed in charge of this new unit. <br /> <br /> The ONI was the oldest military intelligence unit in the USA, dating back to 1882.<br /> Set up to collect and disseminate information on technological developments abroad, by 1916, one of its primary functions was domestic security, including protection of America’s ports, harbours and defence plants from enemy infiltration, subversion and sabotage.<br /> <br /> Data was collected on military and economic installations in Sicily, and Italians who had emigrated from the island to live in New York, were interviewed to gain background knowledge on the island. Moses Polakoff brought numerous people into Church Street, with photos and other items of information on the places they had left behind, which where added into the intelligence pool. Haffenden later recalled that dozens of Sicilian men, many with long, flowing moustaches, who were referred to as padrones, visited the office, supplying an amazing amount of delineation and extremely valuable information of the most minute nature, regarding the Sicilian terrain.<br /> <br /> Meyer Lansky was again approached, and he introduced another well known underworld figure as his aide. This was Joe Adonis, a handsome, suave forty-one year old career criminal who had risen high in the New York Mafia. He was the primary player in the gambling industry in Brooklyn and was a close friend of Meyer and Luciano who he had known for at least a dozen years. He was even closer to Frank Costello. <br /> <br /> Adonis also arranged for dozens of Sicilians to come in and be interviewed with ONI officers Paul Alfieri and Anthony Marzulla. They were assisted by navy cartographer George Tarbox. These interviews produced over 5000 files, copies of which were sent to the war planners in Washington D.C. Tarbox created dozens of large-scale maps of Sicily, showing roads, mountain passes, docks and Germany installations. When Allied troops landed in Sicily, Lt. Alfieri was in the vanguard, making contact with members of the local Mafia clans who would help the invasion force, providing intelligence and surveillance reports on the Germans.<br /> <br /> Also brought into the scheme of things was Vincent Mangano, who headed up his own powerful Mafia crime family, based in the Red Hook area of Brooklyn, close to the huge, sprawling waterfronts and docks that were one of his prime interests. He had come to New York from Palermo, where he had been born in 1888, arriving in 1905 as a callow youth of seventeen. By 1942 he was heading up one of the five New York Mafia crime families, and it was claimed he was a major link between the old Sicilian and new American Mafias. He apparently supplied hundreds of informants. Mangano was a close friend of Michael Miranda, but he knew Luciano as a fellow mob boss. They were in fact, two of the foundling fathers of the Mafia’s Commission, the governing body set up in 1932 to arbitrate on mob disputes on a nation wide basis. Mangano had been appointed the chairman of this commission, a position he still held at this time.<br /> <br /> According to ‘Sox‘ Lanza, ‘ <span style="font-style:italic;">That’s where all the Italy stuff was put together-with the Commander, and this fellow Vincent and Joe Adonis, to my knowledge</span>.’ <br /> <br /> As part of his strategy in the creation of intelligence gathering, Haffenden in 1943, put forward one of his more audacious proposals, that Charlie Luciano be released from prison and be sent to Sicily in advance of the Allied invasion, to gather support from the local population, in particular during the amphibian phase of the operation. Haffenden even intimated that Luciano had suggested the ideal place for this to take place, the Bay of Castellammarese del Golfo, about eighty miles west of Palermo.<br /> <br /> The top brass in the Navy department, already highly uneasy about their service’s involvement with the criminal underworld in the securing of New York harbours, turned Haffenden’s proposal down flat.<br /> <br /> Charles Haffenden had no doubt that Lucky was an essential element in the creation of information that would be of great value to America’s war effort. In a letter he wrote to Charles Breitel, counsel to the Governor of New York, dated May 17th 1945, he stated:<br /> <br /> ‘<span style="font-style:italic;">I am confident that the greater part of the intelligence developed in the Sicilian campaign was directly responsible to the number of Sicilians that emanated from the Charlie ‘Lucky’ contact</span>.’<br /> <br /> In 1946, in receipt of an enquiry from the office of the FBI, the Navy stated:<br /> <br /> ‘<span style="font-style:italic;">A thorough search of the files of the District Intelligence Office, Third Naval District, failed to indicate that Luciano furnished any information to that office</span>.’<br /> <br /> The naval bureaucrats were already running for cover.<br /> <br /> On January 29th 1943, Joseph Lanza ran out of time and was sentenced to a lengthy prison term on the counts of extortion and conspiracy, charges which had been hanging over him for two years. He went down for fifteen years, although he served only seven of them. Shortly after, Hogan's wire-tap at Meyer’s Hotel heard Haffenden commiserating with Ben Espy, one of Lanza’s associates, suggesting it was a “damn shame” that the judge had hit his chief informant with such a heavy sentence. Fortunately for the Commander, the information was never passed on to his superiors in Naval Intelligence. There had been a number of indications that perhaps Haffenden was getting too close to the mobsters, and he had on one occasion, even accepted a parcel of fresh caught lobsters and crabs from the Fulton Fish Market king. <br /> <br /> On February 1st a motion was made to be argued before Justice Phillip McCook (the same judge who had sent Luciano down, 7 years before,) to modify the mobster’s sentence. Along with affidavits and memorandum of law to support their case, lawyers Polakoff and Wolfe submitted the names of Haffenden and Murray Gurfein (now a captain in the Army,) who could support their claim that Luciano had been of help and assistance in America’s war effort. Although the judge subsequently interviewed the two men, he denied Luciano’s application for sentence modification. He did however, leave the door open, stating in his opinion: <br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">‘If the defendant is assisting the authorities and he continues to so, and remains a model prisoner, Executive Clemency may become appropriate at some future date.’</span> <br /> <br /> On July 10th 1944, the U.S. Seventh Army landed in Sicily, and less than a year later the war with Germany was over. Two month’s earlier, on May 8th 1945, Moses Polakoff issued a petition for the grant of executive clemency for Charlie Luciano. It was addressed to the man who had lead the trial against the mobster in 1936, Governor Dewey. As part of the appeal, the lawyer stated, <span style="font-style:italic;">‘that his client had caused to be furnished valuable, substantial and important aid to the United States Military Authorities.’</span> <br /> <br /> As part of the application, Polakoff had enlisted the aid of Haffenden who was recuperating in the Naval Hospital in Brooklyn. He had volunteered for active service in June 1944, and had been sent home from Iowa Jima, following problems he received with internal bleeding resulting from a shell exploding near him on the beach, in February 1945.<br /> <br /> Haffenden wrote a letter to Charles Breitel, the governor’s counsel, confirming that in his opinion the greater part of the intelligence developed in the Sicilian campaign was directly responsible to the number of Sicilian informers that emanated from the Charlie Luciano contacts. The letter was highly irregular since it did not go through the correct Naval bureaucratic channels, and would later cause Haffenden a lot of grief. He was subsequently censored for his lack of judgment by the Navy, which went on record to state that his actions were expressions of his personal opinion which official records failed to substantiate. The Navy in fact, went out of its way to be obstructive when the parole board decided to examine Luciano’s background. Files were destroyed, personnel were shifted around, Haffenden was ostracized, and Luciano’s assistance was denied. As far as Naval intelligence was concerned, ‘Operation Underworld’ never even happened.<br /> <br /> The word that the mobster Luciano was seeking executive clemency soon hit the news stands, with the New York Herald-Tribune running an article on May 23rd headlined: <br /> <br /> ‘<span style="font-style:italic;">Luciano Seeks Clemency. Says he helped Navy.</span>’<br /> <br /> Moses Polakoff had in fact sworne out this petition for a grant of executive clemency on behalf of his client on V-E Day, fifteen days earlier.<br /> <br /> Following an initial investigation of the application by the State Board of Parole, its chairman, Frederick A. Moran visited Luciano and interviewed him at Great Meadows Prison on June 13th. Then followed months of further protracted inquiries and investigation, and eventually on December 3rd 1945, the board of parole reached its verdict. Chairman Moran wrote to Dewey recommending that commutation of the sentence be granted for deportation only. Charlie would go free, but would not be able to stay in America. Unlike his father Antonio and brother Bartolo, he had never taken out citizenship in his own right. <br /> <br /> Dewey followed the board’s recommendation. <br /> <br /> Deporting foreign-born citizens as a stipulation of parole or commutation was quite common; Dewey actually signed seven such commutations on the same day as he signed off Charley Luciano.<br /> <br /> Maybe also deep down, he had always harboured a feeling of guilt for dobbing Charlie on a charge that in the first place was to say the least, questionable.<br /> <br /> Early in January 1946, Luciano was transferred to Sing Sing prison, and from there he was shipped to Ellis Island in New York harbour to await transfer to the vessel that would take him for ever from the city he loved so much. His attorney Polakoff, his old New Jersey friend Mike Lascari, Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello met up with him there, on February 2nd. According to an FBI informant, the gangster friends brought along a new wardrobe for Lucky and $2500 in unsigned traveller’s cheques.<br /> <br /> Sometime during the night of February 8th Luciano was moved from the island to a vessel moored at pier 7 on the Bush Terminal, at the mouth of Gowanus Bay, part of the Brooklyn waterfront. The S.S. Laura Keene, a converted liberty ship, was to take on a cargo of flour to ship into the port of Genoa, Italy. It was under the command of Captain R.H. Salter and was scheduled to depart on Sunday, February 10th. The day before, the pier was besieged by newspaper reporters desperate to get an interview with the man who was probably the most famous mobster in America. They found their way blocked by a line of tough longshoremen who would allow no access to the ship. It must have been a real donnybrook! James Reardon, the executive in charge of all the piers for the Universal Terminal Stevedoring Company claimed that one of his men had been abused by a woman reporter whose language was ‘foul and filthy.’ Coming from a tough stevedore, it must indeed have been something to hear!<br /> <br /> Later, in the afternoon of that miserable and wet Saturday, a group of men did indeed board the ship, flashing longshoremen’s cards. The group included Frank Costello and his top aide, Wille Moretti, but none of the others has ever been positively identified, although they were described as ‘being very well dressed and wearing diamond rings.’ Hardly the kind of gear you would don to load a consignment of flour onto a freighter. Some of these men may have been Joe Adonis and the group that had met on February 2nd. One who was definitely not there, was Meyer Lansky. On the night the men gathered in the dining room, on board the ship, Lansky was 200 miles away, registered at a hotel in Maryland. Along with Moses Polakoff, he’d said his final good-byes at the meeting on Ellis Island.<br /> <br /> Immigration guard, Dave Incarnato stated later, that food was brought on board from the Fulton Fish Market-lobsters, spaghetti and several bottle of wine, and Luciano and his friends ate and talked quietly in the mess hall. The visitors stayed until midnight, making their farewells. <br /> <br /> At about 9 p.m. on Sunday, February 10th the Laura Keene, built by the Kaiser Company in Vancouver, and weighing 7,000 tons, sailed out of New York harbour, safe and protected through the war years, perhaps in some way because of the man who probably stood at the stern rail and gazed with pain and sadness as the Statute of Liberty disappeared into the haze and rain. It was the last vision he would ever see of America. Perhaps he was even remembering that it was also the first sight of America he ever had, as well. <br /> <br /> I can picture him, standing there, smoking a cigarette, watching the lights of lower Manhattan fading into the gloom, then flicking the butt, out and over into the aft-wash, a crazy fire-fly of a light, shining bright and then extinguished, just as his time in American had been.<br /> <br /> He would never get a chance to return, although he did get close, when he visited Havana, Cuba, towards the end of 1946 for the famous mob conference held in December at the Hotel Nacionale. <br /> <br /> Stories circulated in July 1946 that he was in Tijuana, Mexico trying to establish residency. There was also, a possible sighting of him at Ensenada, in Baja California earlier in the year in May. This whole area of Northern Mexico was classified as a ‘free zone‘ following World War Two, and did not require a visa for entry. It was used often as a haven by mobsters from the United States.<br /> <br /> As Luciano’s story had unfolded over the years, the FBI had been keeping a close watch on the development. On May 17th, 1946 in an inter-office memorandum, J. Edgar Hoover scrawled across the report: <br /> <br style="font-style:italic;" /><span style="font-style:italic;">‘This is an amazing and fantastic case. We should get all the facts for it looks rotten to me from several angles……..a shocking example of misuse of Naval authority in the interests of a hoodlum. It surprises me that they didn’t give Luciano the Navy Cross.’</span><br /> <br /> The Feds also dug up some interesting scuttlebuck on Commander Charles Radcliffe Haffenden.<br /> <br /> On January 1st 1946, he was appointed Commissioner of Marine and Aviation for the city of New York. This was a position of extreme importance, for in addition to having control of the docks of the city, the Commissioner also had under his jurisdiction, the LaGuardia and Idlewild Airports. Democratic leader James A. Roe of Kings County, Queens, who lived across the street from Red, was the driving force in persuading newly elected Mayor William O’Dwyer that Red was the man for the job. There were some interesting rumours that the man behind Roe was none other than Frank Costello, the man who had run the crime family while Luciano had languished all those years in prison. <br /> <br /> Haffenden had been interviewed at one time and asked if he knew Costello; he had denied this until it was pointed out that he had been seen playing golf with Frank at the Pomonk Country Club in Flushing. He then admitted that he was familiar with Costello, although not strictly as a friend, more a casual acquaintance. Frank Costello was probably at this time the most powerful mobster in New York, perhaps even in America. His political clout was unequalled. <br /> <br /> If ‘Sox‘Lanza and Charles Haffenden were the left and right bower, Frank Costello was the Ace card in the game of intrigue that involved Charlie Luciano.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236980300,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /><br /> <span style="font-weight:bold;">Photo: Frank Costello - Credit: NYPD</span><br /> <br /> O’Dwyer was also a friend of Costello’s and had visited him at the mobster’s opulent apartment: 18F, 115 Central Park West, in Manhattan, in December 1942. After drinks and conversation they had gone for dinner to the famous Copacabana Club. According to lawyer George Wolfe ( who also represented Costello,) O’Dwyer met up with Costello for the simple purpose of getting the mobster’s approval to run for the mayor of New York City at the next election. That’s how powerful a guy Frank Costello was!<br /> <br /> A report on the FBI files states that ‘Costello was largely responsible for Haffenden’s appointment as Commissioner of Marine and Aviation.’ The same report also indicates that a FBI informant disclosed that it was common knowledge in the Luciano crime family that a large sum of money ($250,000) had been paid to aid Luciano’s release. Mike Stern, an American author living in Italy, in his book No Innocents Abroad, claimed that Luciano stated a bribe of $75,000 had been paid to the Republican Party in New York State in return for Dewey’s commutation of the sentence. Was it just rhetoric as a form of revenge against a man Luciano loathed and detested, or was there something in it?<br /> <br /> According to George White, the infamous FBN agent, the parole fix on Lucky was arranged by Frank Costello through James Bruno, a Republican ex-Deputy Commissioner.<br /> <br /> On May 24th, 1946 just four months into it, Charles Haffenden lost his job as the boss of the docks and airports. He claimed he resigned over a difference of personality; in fact he was served a notification of dismissal, delivered to his home by a New York Police officer. Haffenden stated in a response to this:<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">‘I am making a statement that I no longer wish to serve in the present City administration…….I hereby order all advertised contracts at Idlewild Airport are cancelled and they must be re-advertised under my successor</span>.” <br /> <br /> A rumour spread that Haffenden and two Congressmen from Brooklyn had plotted to get a monopoly on all the concessions coming up for tender at Idlewild as the airport was expanded. They were then going to sub-lease them off at huge profits. A scam worthy of a mobster had it eventuated. So was Red Haffenden the beneficiary of Frank Costello’s largess, and did he then get too greedy, too soon? Why did the Navy disassociate itself entirely from the very operation they had instigated in the first place? Did Luciano in fact get out of jail and pass go because he was able to bribe the people who counted, or was his help in securing the Eastern Seaboard enough to convince the powers that be, that he should go free? <br /> <br /> There is a third and even more Machiavellian interpretation of the springing of Luciano. In his autobiography, which admittedly is highly suspect, he claimed the main lever he used was to get Costello to dig up all the dirt he could find on Dewey and the witnesses who had buried him at his prostitution trial. The people apparently recanted their testimony, claiming they perjured themselves because they were drug addicts and their supplies had been withheld from them by the prosecution, and that Dewey’s staff had fed them testimony which they simply repeated on the witness stand. He also claimed Dewey’s men went out visiting all the ‘madams’ running the prostitution ring and told them if they wanted to stay in business they would have to testify that they were paying protection money to Luciano.<br /> <br /> He also made this claim to Sal Vizzini, an agent of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, who was working undercover in Italy, and became involved in a three-year operation, investigating Luciano, the bureau called ‘Operation Lepo’ which ran from1959 until Lucky’s death.<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">‘My lawyer walked right into Dewey’s office in the State House in Albany,’ Luciano claimed, ‘he was governor of New York by then……..my lawyer threw the file down in front of him and told him if I didn’t get out we were going to make it public. So he deported me.’</span><br /> <br /> With this dossier of evidence, Luciano’s idea was to use it to demand a re-trial. He didn’t necessarily expect to win, but knew it would cause Dewey embarrassing publicity especially as he was looking towards a second try for the Presidency, and the move might push him into agreeing to a deal. <br /> <br /> Polakoff had seemingly told some of his friends: ‘While there is no question that the information created through Luciano for Naval Intelligence was useful, that was the excuse given for his release, but certainly not the reason.’<br /> <br /> This story was confirmed years later by syndicated columnist Drew Pearson, and was also stated as a fact by Leonard Katz in his autobiography of Frank Costello.<br /> <br /> In 1950 a story appeared in ‘True Parade’ magazine quoting Luciano as confirming that he had donated $75,000 to the New York Republican Party in return for their help in springing him from prison.<br /> <br /> Senator Estes Kefauver, Chairman of the Senate Crime Investigating Committee 1950–1951, referred in his book Crime in America, to the background of the rumours surrounding Luciano and the security of New York’s docks:<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">‘During World War II there was a lot of hocus-pocus about allegedly valuable services that Luciano, then a convict, was supposed to have furnished the military authorities in connection with plans for the invasion of his native Sicily. We dug into this and obtained a number of conflicting stories. This is one of the points about which the committee would have questioned Governor Dewey, who commuted Luciano’s sentence, if the Governor had not declined our invitation to come to New York City to testify before the committee.</span><br style="font-style:italic;" /><br style="font-style:italic;" /><span style="font-style:italic;">One story which we heard from Moses Polakoff, attorney for Meyer Lansky, was that Naval Intelligence had sought out Luciano’s aid and had asked Polakoff to be the intermediary. Polakoff, who had represented Luciano when he was sent up, said he in turn enlisted the help of Lansky, an old associate of Lucky’s, and that some fifteen or twenty visits were arranged at which Luciano gave certain information.</span><br style="font-style:italic;" /><br style="font-style:italic;" /><span style="font-style:italic;">...On the other hand, Federal Narcotics Agent, ((the ubiquitous George White,)) who served our committee as an investigator for several months, testified to having been approached on Luciano’s behalf by a narcotics smuggler named August Del Grazio. Del Grazio claimed he ‘was acting on behalf of two attorneys... and... Frank Costello who was spearheading the movement to get Luciano out of the penitentiary,’ White said.</span><br style="font-style:italic;" /><br style="font-style:italic;" /><span style="font-style:italic;">He [Del Grazio] said Luciano had many potent connections in the Italian underworld and Luciano was one of the principal members of the Mafia,” White testified. The proffered deal, he went on, was that Luciano would use his Mafia position to arrange contacts for undercover American agents and that therefore Sicily would be a much softer target than it might otherwise be.’</span><br /> <br /> There have been many apocryphal versions of what followed these government and legal machinations, some of them wildly improbable. It has, for example, been reported that Luciano was secretly released from prison in 1943 to accompany the invasion force into Sicily, that he was freely to be seen in the town of Gela where the Seventh Army’s first headquarters were established, and even that he was a member of the crew of the tank that picked up Don Calò Vizzini, the island’s major Mafia boss, at Villalba. There is no real evidence of Don Calò and Luciano getting together, however, until late in 1946, when they occupied adjoining suites in the Hotel Grande Abergo Sole on the Corso Vittoria Emanuele, during the formation of the Sicilian Separatist Party.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236980682,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Luciano and his connection to the war effort is a complex and fascinating story. The first and only time that the government of the United States worked hand in glove with the Mafia, at least with enough records and links to establish that it actually happened (unlike the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the alleged mob involvement in that,) and then eventually, let one of their top leaders out of prison for being part of the exercise.<br /> <br /> In 1947, famous media reporter and commentator Walter Winchell, the man who had helped arrange the surrender of Louis ‘Lepke’ Buchalter, actually suggested that Luciano should be nominated for a Congressional Medal of Honour for his work in connection with the defence of New York and the successful invasion of Sicily.<br /> <br /> In 1954, William B. Herlands, the New York Commissioner of Investigation, who had worked under Dewey (right) as an ADA in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, carried out an enquiry, at Dewey’s request, into the events surrounding Luciano’s part in the Eastern Seaboard security operation. Dewey had become concerned that rumours were spreading, allegations that his part in the commutation of Lucky’s sentence was part of some crooked scheme, an act of duplicity on his part for some unknown benefit.<br /> <br /> The Navy agreed to allow the O.N.I. to cooperate, but under three conditions:<br /> <br /> 1. No classified information was to be released for general publication.<br /> 2. Naval security officers would monitor all interviews with former agents.<br /> 3. The final report would not be released for public viewing.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236981474,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Herlands (left), a short, stocky, and very methodical lawyer, agreed to the terms. Thomas Dewey had every confidence in the ability of the man who had served under him as head of the rackets squad in the 1930’s.<br /> <br /> Herland’s investigation included testimony from Captain McFall, 3 other captains, five commanders, two lieutenants, a Marine Corps colonel and an army colonel. Hearing documents ran to 2993 pages, and the investigation was completed September 17th 1954. The main conclusion of the report, which in itself, ran to 101 pages with appendices, was:<br /> <br /> ‘<span style="font-style:italic;">The evidence demonstrates that Luciano’s assistance and cooperation was secured by Naval Intelligence in the cause of developing requirements of national security.’</span><br /> <br /> Following the successful implementation of the operation to secure the Eastern Seaboard, the top brass in the military became concerned about the image of a government agency working in tandem with the New York mob to guarantee the safety and security of the nation’s docks and seaways, and consequently did not want the report made available for public dissemination. After the act, it was a lot more circumspect to close the door on this episode and pretend it never happed. When push came to shove, the Faustian pact Naval Intelligence made with a man who may have arguably, been the most important gangster in America at the time, was a potential scandal that none of the generals or admirals wanted on their conscience, let alone their obituaries. <br /> <br /> Dewey accepted the results of the inquiry, and the papers were stored by him in his personal files, where they remained until discovered by author Rodney Campbell in 1974, filed away at the Thomas E. Dewey archive in the University of Rochester Library, State of New York. Campbell had been commissioned by the Dewey family to write the official biography of the late politician, and his discovery of the Herlands Report was the basis for his book, The Luciano Project, the first in-depth investigation into the whole affair.<br /> <br /> During the Herlands Investigation, Charles Siragusa, a senior agent in the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, claimed he had a source in the New York County D.A.’s office who had been given information that Lucky Luciano, knew the identity of the men involved in the murder of Carlo Tresca, the radical newspaper owner who had bee shot dead on 5th Avenue in 1943. Luciano it was claimed, offered to disclose the identities of these murderers in return for outright parole and permission to remain in the United States. Dewey allegedly rejected the offer. (Kenny Link into the Galante Story here please.)<br /> <br /> If this disclosure was in fact true, it may have been the third example of Luciano, a so-called man of honour, attempting a release from prison, or some form of clemency on his sentence by becoming a government informant. Evidence that perfidy at the highest level of mob management may well have existed, fifty years before Sammy Gravano, and Joe Massimo flipped and became government witnesses to try and cut themselves a deal. The image that Mafioso projected as ‘Men of Honour’ was tarnished even before it was imbedded into the myth.<br /> <br /> Anthony J. Marsloe, a fourty-year old lieutenant in the Navy, assigned to work under Haffenden, was under no illusion about the morality of the task at hand during the early 1940‘s in New York. He told Herlands:<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">‘The exploitation of informants is not only desirous, but necessary when the nation is struggling for existence. Intelligence, as such, is not a police agency. Its function is to prevent. In order to prevent, you must have a system…..which will prevent the enemy from securing aid and comfort from others….by any and all means in which I include the so-called underworld.’</span><br /> <br /> Marsloe would subsequently operate in North Africa and Sicily, where he came into contact many times with (Mafioso) on the island. Giving testimony to the state inquiry into the Luciano affair, he also stated:<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">‘Commander Haffenden’s theory was correct….it neutralized the possible use of the underworld by the enemy…..and was used as a possible means of obtaining information in order to aid our war effort……every source of information is warranted by the unusual circumstances.’</span><br /> <br /> Charley Luciano spent the rest of life in exile, and died of a heart attack at Naples Airport on January 26th 1962. <br /> <br /> He was ranked among the top 100 most important people of the 20th century by Time Magazine. Now there's a thought.<br /> <br /> ‘Sox‘Lanza died of cancer in October 1968, at Memorial Hospital, New York. <br /> <br /> Meyer Lansky also died from cancer, January 15th 1983, in Miami, Florida.<br /> <br /> Frank Costello an old man of eighty-two, passed away peacefully, at the Doctors Hospital in upper Manhattan, on February 18th 1973. <br /> <br /> Thomas Dewey tried twice to be president. He was beaten by Roosevelt in 1944 and then again by Harry Truman in 1948. He went back into private law practice, and died in Florida on March 16th 1971. He was sixty-nine years old. <br /> <br /> Following his dismissal from his city job, Charles Haffenden’s career slid downhill and his health deteriorated. He was working as a Dictaphone salesman when he died on Christmas Eve, 1952. <br /> <br /> If his involvement with Operation Underworld was more about making money that serving his country, as some sources have indicated, it was not apparent in his wealth. At his death, his assets, including his home in Flushing, on 167th Street, a number of insurance policies and a 1951 two-door Hudson sedan, came to $27,061.66.<br /> <br /> A few weeks before he died, Charley Luciano gave an interview to an A.P. reporter, who asked him why he had gotten his release from prison.<br /> <br style="font-style:italic;" /><span style="font-style:italic;">‘I got my pardon because of the great service I rendered the United States,’ said Lucky. Then he grinned at the reporter. ‘And because, after all, they realized I was innocent.’</span><br /> <br /> When the reporter wondered, if he could live his life over, would he do it again the same way, the mobster replied:<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">‘I’d do it legal. I learned too late that you need just as good a brain to make a crooked million, as an honest million. These days, you apply for a license to steal from the public. If I had my time again, I’d make sure I got that license first!’</span><br /> <br /> In light of the financial earthquake that shook the world in October 2008, it seems he was right on the button!<br /> <br /> 16 years after leaving America, the body of Salvatore Lucania, aka Charley Luciano, aka Lucky Luciano, was flown into New York’s Idelwild Airport. His brothers, Bart and Anthony waited there, with a hearse. The body was driven to St. John’s Cemetery, in Middle Village, Queens, and placed in the family crypt in the mausoleum Charlie had purchased in 1935. His mother and father lay there, along with an aunt and an uncle.<br /> <br /> Bartolo Luciano is recorded saying, as the coffin was interred:<br /> <br style="font-style:italic;" /><span style="font-style:italic;">‘Tutti finito, Salvatore.’</span><br /> <br /> It’s all over.<br /> </p>
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Get ’The Right Man’: How the FBN nailed Vito Genovese
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/get-the-right-man-how-the-fbn
2010-11-24T19:59:33.000Z
2010-11-24T19:59:33.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/10663249884?profile=RESIZE_400x&width=372"></div><div><p>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br /> It begins and ends with a man who had a name that sounded like a musk melon.<br /> <br /> His impact on the American Mafia was much more than to just have helped the law incarcerate a man who at the time, they considered perhaps the most powerful hoodlum in the country. By helping to nail him and thus sending him to prison, he created a chain of events that would have perhaps, the most significant repercussions on Italian-American organized crime since its recognized inception in 1931. <br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236978491,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236978491?profile=original" />The Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) had been following Vito Genovese (right) for some time.<br /> <br /> Henry Giordono, the Commissioner of the bureau said:<br /> <br /> ‘We have to go after him. He’s too big to be ignored. We have no choice, and we’ll get him, not matter how long it takes.’<br /> <br /> Following the ill-fated <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/mob-meeting-at-apalachin-the">Apalachin mob meeting</a> held towards the end of 1957 in up-state New York, the largest office of the FBN was instructed to target Genovese as a main opportunity to take down in the bureau’s never-ending war on drug trafficking. Their underworld informants kept pointing to him as a major link in the heroin trail that stretched north into Canada, and from the biggest city in the United States, outwards across the entire continent.<br /> <br /> The agents, men referred to as ‘The Wolves’ by the mob underworld, kept digging away, following up leads, questioning hundreds of suspects, looking for the missing link that would connect them into a conspiracy of drug trafficking which would help them nail the top New York hoodlum who was known to his peers as ‘The Right Man.’<br /> <br /> It was Agent Anthony Consoli who first came across the name of Nelson Cantellops.<br /> One of the agent’s informants, a small time Puerto Rican drug-pedlar, told him about the man who was his supplier. A man who was apparently linked into Vito Genovese through his drug activities. A dealer who was, therefore, through this connection, well-linked into the New York underworld. It took a while to track him down, but Consoli finally found Cantellops in the Tombs, the big, dank and depressing city jail in Lower Manhattan, on the corner of Centre and Franklin. He’d been charged with possession of narcotics. <br /> <br /> It was 1957.<br /> <br /> The prisoner, whose full name was Nelson Silva Cantellops, was short and chubby, with bulging eyes set deep in a sallow face. He was also a Puerto Rican, in his early thirties, and had an arrest record in New Jersey going back to 1949 when he was first indicted and served three years at Trenton State Prison for obtaining money under false pretences.<br /> <br /> He was back in prison in 1952 for attempted forgery, and in 1956, received six months for marijuana possession. At this point in his career, he moved his area of operations over to Manhattan, where he worked as a card-sharp, con-man and drug trafficker. Nelson was your everyday low level scumbag street criminal, a man destined for an early grave or a finite jail sentence, whichever came first. <br /> <br /> He did however, have a major part to play in the bureau’s war on drug trafficking.<br /> <br /> For some reason, Consoli sensed something tangible could be wrested from this little man with the funny name. Agents questioned him daily after he was transferred to a federal detention centre, but they got nowhere. He put on a brave front, claiming he would be ’looked after’ by his friends in the underworld. His trial came up, he was found guilty, and with his long record as a recommendation, the presiding judge sent him away to Sing Sing Prison, in upstate New York, for four years. Nelson had a lot of baggage-a wife, children, girlfriend, mistress, they all needed him for something.<br /> <br /> Two weeks after he was locked away, the bureau arranged to have him transferred to the Westchester County Jail, a much more pleasant venue than the grim prison at Ossining, and Cantellops began to co-operate with them. No one had come forward to ’fix’ his arrest, as he had been promised. It was par for the course with mobsters. They promised the earth and most times delivered nothing. And so because of their laxness, things rebounded on them, often with a terminal velocity. <br /> <br /> Following an in-depth interrogation by William Tendesky, an Assistant U.S. Attorney specializing in drug cases, the prosecutor came out of the interview room and told FBN agent John R. Enright:<br /> <br /> ‘We’re going to indict Vito Genovese!’<br /> <br /> Cantellops claimed he’d moved into the narcotic business in the spring of 1955 as a way of paying off a loan shark, a man called Charles Barcellona. Known to his peers as ‘Charlie the Wop’ the fourty-year Sicilian born, was a member of the crime family run by Albert Anastasia. A seasoned criminal with an arrest record dating back twenty years, which included violation of Federal and State Narcotics laws, Barcellona was, according to mob informant, Joe Valachi a ‘hitter‘ for the family. Also known as ‘Jacky Balls,’ his close friends for some reason, called him ‘Dummy.’ He’d spent a lot of time in prison, and had a particular hatred for cops, having taken his first beating from them when he was only nine years old. He in turn, introduced Cantellops to a man called Joe Di Palermo who set up the drug arrangement. The deal was that Nelson would deliver a ‘package’ to a man in Las Vegas. The package was ten pounds of heroin with a street value of $250,000, and the man it was destined for was Louis Fiano, a California narcotics trafficker. <br /> <br /> In March, 1955, Cantellops had attended a meeting at Al's Luncheonette at 34 East 4th Street, New York, to be briefed on his assignment. At this meeting along with Charles Barcellona, were Ralph Polizzano, his brother Carmine, Joseph Di Palermo and Anthony Colonna. Men whose lives were lived dangerously, moving in and out of drug deals with a confidence born of long experience. Cantellops agreed to transport the narcotics for the group. At the airport bus stop, in New York while Barcellona was talking to Cantellops, an unidentified man handed Cantellops the package. For this delivery, Cantellops was paid $1000 by Barcellona. <br /> <br /> He travelled by air to Los Angeles, on to Reno, and then by bus to Vegas. It went smoothly, and other ‘trips’ followed: to Miami, Tampa, Key West, Philadelphia and the Virgin Island. Nelson was a busy boy. His loan shark debt cleared, he earned $500 for each trip he made, sometimes as high as $1000. On his first visit to Cleveland, in July 1956, he was taken there by a man called Vincent Gigante, a young hoodlum working at the bottom of the ladder in the crime family that included Genovese. People called him ‘Chin,’ but not because of his large, jutting jaw line. ‘Chin’ was a nickname his mother, Yolanda, had given him as a child, “Cincenzo,” abbreviated to Chin, and it stuck with him through the rest of his life. <br /> <br /> Although Cantellops was driven on this occasion by a man from the Genovese family, he was apparently doing a job for John Ormento, a capo in the Luchese Crime Family. In what now seems an extraordinary breach of mob protocol, Joe Di Palermo a soldier in the family, had introduced Cantellops to Ormento, and subsequently to Carmine Galante, the then under boss of the Bonanno crime family. <br /> <br /> ‘Big John’ as he was known to his peers, was the consummate drug trafficker of his time, and had been a dealer since his teen years, operating initially in East Harlem, the traditional home of the 107th Street Mob, which morphed into the Gagliano and then the Luchese Crime Family following the underworld struggle now referred to as the Castellammarese War of 1930-31.<br /> <br /> In a complex operation, typical of the drug dealing mentality, Gigante dropped Nelson off at a bus stop at a town called Loraine, about thirty miles west of Cleveland. He then caught a bus into the city and went to a hotel with the drug package. He left this with the hotel room clerk, telling him it was for his wife and then went outside to be met by Di Palermo’s brother, Charley. Nelson went back into the hotel, retrieved the package, and the two men caught a cab, stopping to pick up a woman at a pre-determined spot. The cab drove back to the hotel, the two men left the cab, the woman, and the drug package. Cantellops then took a Greyhound bus back to New York.<br /> <br /> The FBN needed to check Nelson’s story, which they did in meticulous detail, cross-referencing schedules on aircraft, buses, taxis, whatever form of transportation he claimed to have used in his various drug courier travels. They even verified weather conditions against his claims, looking for anything that would discredit him. He checked out to their satisfaction.<br /> <br /> In October, 1955, Carmine Polizzano's had asked Cantellops to investigate the policy banks in the Eldridge Street area on Manhattan's lower East Side to find out whether they might be used as a front for narcotics distribution. After Cantellops had carried out his survey, Polizzano then invited him to a meeting at his brother Ralph’s apartment at 57 East 4th Street. This meeting was attended by Ralph and Carmine Polizzano, Joseph Di Palermo, John Russo, John Ormento and Benjamin Levine. The group discussed taking over and operating these policy banks as a cover for the distribution of narcotics. Cantellops told the men assembled in the apartment that it might cost between $100,000 and $150,000 to purchase the banks in the Eldridge Street area. The group reached no final decision as it was agreed that the matters would have to be discussed with ‘The Right Man,’ who was Vito Genovese. <br /> <br /> At this time, Genovese was a senior member of the family administration, maybe the underboss to Frank Costello who had taken over the running of the family in 1937 when the then street boss, Genovese, had skipped the country to avoid arrest in a murder inquiry. Genovese had returned in 1946 and been cleared of his involvement in the killing of an underworld hoodlum called Ferdinand Boccia. <br /> <br /> The meeting at the East Village apartment also discussed the possibility of importing narcotics through Puerto Rico because of turmoil in Cuba and recent misfortunes regarding two shipments by boat. Cantellops suggested the use of the Island of Vieques, off Puerto Rico, as a distributing point, a suggestion that was never acted on.<br /> <br /> According to Cantellops, his first contact with ‘The Right Man’ was initiated when he was approached by Carmine Polizzano, a man who was seemingly close to Vito Genovese. Nelson claimed that the first time he saw Genovese, he was sitting in a car with Polizzano, in Greenwich Village. This was in December, 1955. He saw him again, he claimed six months later. Some sources, including court transcripts, claim this second conclave actually took place nine months later, in September, 1956.<br /> <br /> This meet seemingly revolved around discussion to take over the East Bronx policy banks, which were operated by independent, Spanish speaking mobsters. Genovese wanted to take control, to use these networks to also distribute heroin in this area of upper Manhattan. The Eldridge Street operation had apparently never been consummated, and this may have been an alternative that Genovese wanted to explore.<br /> <br /> At some point in August, 1956, Cantellops visited a German restaurant in Manhattan with Ormento and a man called Joe Evola. While in the restaurant, Ormento went over and spoke to Vito Genovese who was sitting, dining with a woman. Genovese allegedly looked across at Nelson and remarked something like ‘he looks okay to me,’ signalling Genovese’s approval.<br /> <br /> Sitting at the bar, close enough to hear the conversation, were two agents of the FBN, Francis Waters and John Hunt. The subsequent Genovese drug indictment was actually formed around their corroborating testimony. <br /> <br /> At the end of August, or early September 1956, Cantellops attended a meeting at the home of Rocco Mazzie, at 2332 Seymour Avenue in the Bronx, where plans were made for extending the distribution of narcotics. <br /> <br /> Earlier, the same evening Cantellops drove to the same German restaurant on East 86th Street with Joe Evola, Ormento, Carmine Galante and Andimo Pappadio, a capo in the Luchese family, and a man close to John Ormento and Genovese. <br /> <br /> Galante was with the Bonanno family, along with Evola; Ormento, and Pappadio were with the Luchese’s, and Mazzie was tied into the crime family known to-day as the Gambino family, run then, by Albert Anastasia. <br /> <br /> After Ormento made a telephone call, they all drove to the West Side Highway and met another car. Cantellops and Ormento entered the other car which was driven by Vincent Gigante. Ormento introduced Cantellops to Genovese, who was sitting in the back seat, saying to Genovese ‘This man is doing a good job for us. He is helping us and doing a good job for us.’ Ormento told Cantellops ‘This is the Right Man.’ Genovese said to Cantellops that they were going to a meeting where territorial control was to be discussed; that the people at the meeting were counting on Cantellops to help them and that Cantellops could earn some money by doing so. <br /> This three-minute conversation was to be perhaps, one of the most significant encounters in mob history.<br /> <br /> The two automobiles drove to Mazzie's home and everyone entered except Genovese and Gigante, who stayed outside. <br /> <br /> Joe Evola, Mazzie, Ormento, Pappadio, Galante and Cantellops discussed the distribution of narcotics in the Spanish market in the East Bronx,(( the area bordered by Longwood Avenue and Fox Street, west of Hunt’s Point)) by use of policy banks, and sealing off the area to eliminate competing narcotics peddlers and policy operators so that they could control the narcotics traffic in this area. Evola and Pappadio thought that the plan would take a month or a month and a half to complete and the others agreed. <br /> <br /> After twenty or thirty minutes Genovese came in. He wanted to know ‘what was the decision on the plan; what they had in mind.’ When he was told about the discussion which had taken place, Genovese said that he needed this information because he wanted to know when to send his men into the area. Later, in the presence of Evola, Ormento, Pappadio and Galante, Cantellops was advised that he would be the contact man for the distribution of narcotics in this area. Cantellops later delivered narcotics in this area at Ormento's request. <br /> <br /> For the next nine months, Cantellops continued to work with Ormento and other mob traffickers, until he was arrested in early July, 1957. Although Ormento had promised Cantellops that he would be taken care of in the event of an arrest, nothing transpired. He was convicted and sent off to Sing Sing. While these events were developing, Genovese, Ormento, Evola and many other members of the American Mafia had their lives seriously disrupted in November, when they were corralled at the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/mob-meeting-at-apalachin-the">Apalachin mob meeting</a>. <br /> <br /> The FBN spent a full year screening Cantellops and validating his story, before submitting the facts to a federal grand jury and obtaining indictments against Genovese and 16 of his associates, One of these, was Vincent Gigante, who was arrested only four weeks after his acquittal in the attempted murder charge on Frank Costello.<br /> <br /> On July 7th, 1958, FBN agents arrested Genovese and 53 other defendants and 14 co-conspirators involved in the conspiracy. Of this group, only Genovese and 16 others were actually indicted. Two of them, evaded the law and did not appear for trial. The two who escaped arrest were Carmine Galante and John Ormento. Those detained were charged with conspiracy to import, conceal and sell heroin.<br /> <br /> On January 5th 1959, the group went on trial. The charges laid against them, in full, were:<br /> <br /> Conspiracy to import and smuggle narcotics into the United States.<br /> To receive, conceal, possess, buy and sell the drugs.<br /> To dilute, mix and adulterate the drugs prior to distribution.<br /> To distribute the drugs.<br /> <br /> On April 17th they were all found guilty and sentenced from five to twenty years. Vito Genovese was given fifteen years. He was initially confined in the Atlanta Penitentiary. The rest of the conspirators were sentenced as under:<br /> <br /> Vincent Gigante-7 years. Soldier, Genovese family.<br /> Joe Evola-10 years. Capo, Bonanno family.<br /> Carmine Polizanno- 8years. Associate, Genovese family.<br /> Ralph Polizanno-7 years. Associate, Genovese family<br /> Salvatore Santora-20 years. Capo, Luchese family.<br /> Joseph DiPalermo-15 years. Soldier, Luchese family.<br /> Charlie DiPalermo-20 years. Soldier, Luchese family.<br /> Rocco Mazzie-12 years. Soldier, Anastasia family<br /> Charles Barcellona-5 years. Soldier, Anastasia family.<br /> Daniel Lessa-14 years. Associate, Luchese family.<br /> Nicky Lessa-12 years. Soldier, Luchese family.<br /> Alfredo Aviles-10 years. Associate.<br /> Benjamin Rodriques-10 years. Associate. <br /> Jean Capece-5 years. <br /> <br /> For his help in making the case Cantellops had his prison sentenced commuted by New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. There was a story that went around following the case, that the inmates of the federal Atlanta Penitentiary, refused to be served cantaloupe melon at meal times.<br /> <br /> The FBN kept after Galante and John Ormento, A line of enquiry followed by agents Martin Pera and James Hunt lead them to a homicide enquiry in the NYPD 48th Precinct in the Bronx. An elderly man had been attacked in his apartment. He’d worked as a processing chemist for one of the drug groups linked into Genovese. Detectives theorized he’d been killed to stop him testifying at the upcoming trial. Before he’d died, the man had given the police a description of his killer, and through their investigation, the agents determined he was a known criminal called Nicolas Tolentino. Often called ‘Big Nose’ for fairly obvious reasons, Nick Tolentino, a fifty year old New Yorker, was a soldier in the Luchese family, and like so many of its members, a consummate drug trafficker<br /> <br /> Interestingly enough, a detective at the precinct house, Tommy Martino, had actually met this man at a function held at the home of a local, and well-known building contractor, David Giampa.<br /> <br /> The agency carried out surveillance on Giampa, who was seen making frequent visits to an apartment building at 1466 East Gun Hill Road, in the Baychester section of the Bronx. A three story red-brick building, it stood on the corner of Adee Avenue. The agents saw Giampa carrying in bags of groceries and laundry, obviously supplying someone who was hiding out in the building.<br /> <br /> One evening, it was April 1st 1959, the agents followed Giampa to an apartment on the third floor, and there, surprised Ormento and Nick Tolentino. They, along with Giampa were arrested and taken into custody. <br /> <br /> Exactly two months later, Agent Pera and his current partner, Bill Rowan, organized and helped carry out the arrest of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/death-in-the-afternoon-the">Carmine Galante</a> on a New Jersey freeway.<br /> <br /> In due course, both Ormento and Galante were indicted, tried and convicted on narcotic charges. John Ormento went off to prison where he died in 1974. Galante also spent time, serving a twelve year sentence, before being released in early 1974.<br /> <br /> The investigation and trial of Vito Genovese had been long and torturous. <br /> <br /> It is not generally realized that Cantellops’ testimony, resulted in the indictment and incarceration of a bigger, and much more important group of drug traffickers than the famous ‘French Connection’ case that was to follow a few years later.<br /> <br /> For the last fifty years, crime historians have argued over the validity of the conviction and sentence. Frank Selvaggi, a senior agent in the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, called it ‘The frame of the century.’<br /> <br /> The late Ralph Salerno, famous NYPD organized crime detective, believed it almost in conceivable that Vito Genovese would deal with someone like Cantellops.<br /> <br /> On appeal, the government admitted it had suppressed evidence in the trial. Edward Bennett Williams, one of the best criminal lawyers practising at this time, argued brilliantly for Genovese. When he was congratulated him on his performance, he said, ‘Thanks, but there's not a chance. They won't let Genovese out. They'll call it harmless error.’ Which they did, and generally do, when they know the error is harmful in Mafia cases. <br /> <br /> Rumours have long existed that Cantellops had been approached by a cartel of mobsters anxious to remove Genovese from the frame, for their own personal reasons.<br /> <br /> These four men, according to these underworld rumours, Charley Luciano in Naples, Italy, and Frank Costello, Myer Lansky and Carlo Gambino in America, had put up a $100,000 bribe to induce Nelson to co-operate with the narcotic bureau and help convict Genovese. Costello would obviously have a vested reason in doing this, bearing in mind that he almost certainly knew Genovese was behind the attempt on his life. A rider to the bribe was that it had to include Gigante in the conspiracy so that he would do time as penance for his bungled attempt on Frank. Jimmy ‘Blue Eyes’ Alo, a senior capo in the Genovese family, is alleged to have arranged for an intermediately to travel to Sing Sing prison, and present Cantellops with the deal. It’s cute and cheesy, like a plot out of a Hank Jansen novel. But as a compelling reason upon which to build a hypotheses, about as ephemeral as a butterfly.<br /> <br /> Costello presumably had little or no respect for Genovese following the abortive attack on him, carried out on the night of May 2, 1957. The man who allegedly shot Frank was tentatively identified as Vincent Gigante, a soldier in the crew of skipper, Tommy Eboli. The attack on Frank was part of an orchestrated plan by Genovese to take back control of the family, which he had relinquished when he fled to Italy in 1937 to avoid prosecution. <br /> <br /> Frank would have realized only Genovese would have had the nerve to make a strike against him. So it’s certain Costello would have lost no sleep over Vito and Gigante going down and doing time, but there is no evidence whatsoever that links these two men into some convoluted drug conspiracy deal involving two sitting New York mob chiefs, one exiled in Italy, and a major Jewish gangster like Lansky. <br /> <br /> Also, what this theory overlooks of course, is the huge amount of detailed information Cantellops supplied to the FBN covering people, places and dates, which allowed the agency to construct the case. In addition, although his command of English wasn’t the best, Cantellops spent a week on the witness stand at the trial on direct, and four weeks undergoing cross-examination by the numerous lawyers employed by the defendants. He was so convincing, the jury had no hesitation in bringing in guilty verdicts against all those charged.<br /> <br /> In one of the numerous appeals that resulted from the trial, it was stated that Cantellops was a key witness for the Government, and that he had a long criminal record, including perjury before a grand jury. On this appeal the appellants laid great stress upon the character of Cantellops. <br /> <br /> The Court in its opinion stated (p. 190):<br /> <br /> ‘They argue that his testimony should have been stricken, that no defendant may be convicted on Cantellops' uncorroborated testimony, and that the indictment should have been dismissed. We do not agree. It was for the jury to judge the witness Cantellops on the basis of all that was brought out about his character, his previous activities.’ <br /> <br /> The Court further stated on the same page:<br /> <br /> ‘It is for the jury to say whether his testimony at trial is truthful, in whole or in part, in the light of the witness' demeanour, his explanations and all the evidence in the case.’<br /> <br /> It has been claimed that there was no way Genovese would have allowed himself to have been seen in the company of a low level drug dealer like Cantellops. On the other hand, had this low level dealer been the potential conduit to huge amounts of money, it strikes me as more than likely Genovese would have wanted to check him out. Also, the powerful mob boss was almost certainly arrogant in his use of power. He knew, as did everyone around him, that he could have squashed Cantellops like a bug (or a melon.) This kind of attitude could well have made Genovese careless. And, in all fairness to Nelson Cantellops, he admitted that he only actually physically met Genovese briefly, on that one evening on the way to the Bronx meeting.<br /> <br /> At the end of the day, maybe the case against Genovese was not unlike the one that banjoed his former boss , Charley ‘Lucky’ Luciano. He was tried and convicted on a prostitution case, which put him away for thirty years in 1936. Cynics at the time said that the government, unable to lock one on Lucky for all the bad stuff he had actually done, found a way to convict him and put him away for something he hadn’t really done. The ends justifying the means so to speak.<br /> <br /> Et tu Don Vitone perhaps? <br /> <br /> Maybe, but I think unlikely.<br /> <br /> Nelson Cantellops did more than just help send Vito Genovese to prison however. He set in motion a chain of events that would have a devastating impact on organized crime across the United States.<br /> <br /> Joseph Valachi, was the first member of the Mafia, in America, to reveal publicly its history, structure, and membership in significant detail, at least in New York. Interestingly enough, no one was ever indicted or convicted as a result of his revelations, but he set the precedent for mob informants that would not be matched again until the early 1990s.<br /> <br /> ‘Between Scylla and Charybdis‘ is the origin of the phrase ‘between the rock and the whirlpool‘ (the rock upon which Scylla dwelt and the whirlpool of Charybdis). These two monsters in Greek mythology inhabited opposites sides of the Strait of Messina, between Sicily and Italy. Odysseus, during his great quest, had to sail through these waters and choose which monster to confront. The saying may also be the genesis of the phrase ‘between a rock and a hard place.’<br /> <br /> That’s where Joe Valachi found himself on the morning of June 22, 1962 <br /> <br /> A soldier in the crime family controlled by Genovese, he’d had to graft his way through life, like all of its members. The strength of Cosa Nostra as the mob called itself, was the fear it generated among ‘ordinary’ citizens, giving its soldiers and captains an edge in their business activities. Many of the lower-level members of the mob however, struggled daily to make a decent living. Just being a Mafioso wasn’t a guarantee of success.<br /> <br /> Valachi probably lost more than he won in his years as a member.<br /> <br /> He was inducted into the family that eventually was to be controlled by Joseph Bonanno, in November 1930. Subsequently, he transferred to the crime family of Charley Luciano, after the murder of Salvatore Maranzano, who had in fact headed up the group that had organized his initiation. This transfer took place sometime in late 1931, maybe September or October.<br /> <br /> Interestingly, Joe Valachi had actually started his mob career as an associate of yet another mob family in New York, this one led by Gaetano Gagliano, (now know as the Luchese Family,) and it’s from this group that he transferred his allegiance to Maranzano, who had allied his men with Gagliano in what was to become known as ‘The Castellammarese War,’ an underground struggle for dominance between at least four warring factions made up of Sicilian, Neapolitan and Calabrian gangsters in the New York underworld.<br /> <br /> Joseph Valachi was one of very few men in mob history who multi-tasked his way through multiple crime families in the Mafia as he burned a career for himself as a hit-man, extortionist, drug dealer and all-round hoodlum.<br /> <br /> Over the next twenty-eight years, he became involved in loan-sharking, slot-machines, pin-ball machines, the numbers racket, owning and running restaurants, dress manufacturing and linen-hiring businesses, owning racehorses, and during World War Two, the lucrative gas-rationing stamps fraud activity.<br /> <br /> His downfall had been brought about by drug trafficking. Frank Costello, then head of Valachi’s crime family, had in 1948, laid down an order forbidding his members from handling drugs. He recognized the danger that the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was to the mob and wanted no part of it. But a lot of the members could not resists the huge profits and relatively easy money to be made out of narcotics.<br /> <br /> The FBN had Valachi listed in their ‘Black Book,’ their directory of known and suspected drug dealers. They’d been observing and tracking him since the mid-1940s, and by 1956 he was eventually arrested, convicted and sentenced to prison for five years for his part in a drug conspiracy, that also involved his brother-in-law, Giancomo Reina. Reina was one of 8 children, and one sister, Mildred, was Valachi’s wife. Their father, Gaetano, had headed up one of those four mob families back in the 1920s, the first that Valachi had been attached to, and his death may have in fact triggered off the Castellammarese War.<br /> <br /> Valachi managed to evade this particular indictment however. Released on bail pending an appeal, his conviction was reversed. He had in fact been linked into his first drug deal as early as 1952, which escaped detection by the FBN.<br /> <br /> By 1957, strapped for money ( a not unusual occurrence for mobsters due to their flagrant lifestyle, gambling habits and often on-going high legal expenses,) he turned again to narcotics for a quick fix. However, in May 1959, he learned that the FBN were after him, and fled New York, moving upstate to live in hiding, and then east across into Connecticut, settling at a trailer camp in a small community in Thompsonville, squeezed in between the Connecticut River and State Highway 91, close to the border of Massachusetts. <br /> <br /> In the middle of November, one of Valachi’s associates, a man called Ralph Wagner, who’d made heroin deliveries for Joe, literally dropped a dime on Valachi. Arrested by the FNB, Wagner found a way to contact Valachi, who gave him a pay phone number near the caravan park. When Joe went to the station at a pre-arranged time to accept a call from Wagner, FBN agents were waiting to arrest him.<br /> <br /> Assured by his mob bosses that the fix was in, and that incarceration would be light, Valachi was in fact sentenced to a term of fifteen years, and sent to serve it at the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia.<br /> <br /> In August 1962, Valachi was returned to New York as a co-defendant in yet another narcotics case, this one involving Vincent Mauro and Frank Caruso, along with Albert and Vito Agueci. Mauro and Caruso were part of the crew headed by Anthony Strollo, Genovese’s right-hand man. The Agueci brothers, from Sicily, were connected into the Buffalo mob, headed by Stefano Maggadino. Joe lost out on this one again, and received a further twenty year sentence, to be served concurrently with the one he was already doing.<br /> <br /> While in New York, the FBN put pressure on him to roll-over and become an informant, telling him that Strollo had gone missing, and was believed murdered on the orders of his best friend and boss, Vito Genovese. The agents also inferred that Joe was next on Genovese’s list of house-cleaning. With these thoughts pressing down on him, Joe was returned to Atlanta.<br /> <br /> Here, he became the central character in a bizarre theatre of manipulation, hidden threats and Machiavellian manoeuvres orchestrated by Vito Genovese.<br /> <br /> The Don suggested that Joe move into his cell, and share it with the other inmates there, a group of four or five. Genovese kept on at Joe, questioning him about his latest drug conviction, hinting that perhaps he had collaborated with Mauro and Caruso, insinuating that he had not received his cut from these various narcotic transactions and also confirming in an indirect way, that he had been responsible for the death of Strollo. <br /> <br /> Vito Agueci was also sent down to Atlanta following his conviction, and began associated closely with inmates Johnny Diouguardi, and Joe DiPalermo, both members of the Luchese family. Valachi began to believe that Agueci was feeding Genovese information through these two men that he was talking to the FBN (which at this time he wasn’t.) Gradually, Joe started to think that Genovese and the other mob inmates were shunning him, isolating him away from the few prisoners he had become close to. One day, DiPalermo offered him a steak sandwich, claiming he had smuggled it out of the prison kitchen. Fearing it was poisoned, Joe threw it in the trash. He stopped using the showers, especially after he was encouraged by Diougardi to do so, fearing the isolation and exposure there, and the possibility of attack. <br /> <br /> One night in June, in the cell, Genovese sat talking to him, rambling on about bad apples and how they should be removed; then kissing Joe, for old time’s sake, and asking after the health of his grandchildren, planting seeds, sowing doubts and fear into the mind of a man already on the breaking edge.<br /> <br /> In desperation, Joe demanded that the guards incarcerate him in a solitary cell, claiming his life was in danger. This gave him a few days respite, but then he was released, as the prison governor could not be convinced there were grounds for his fears.<br /> <br /> Joseph Valachi reached his epiphany early in the morning of June 22, 1963. Wandering around the prison grounds, terrified of each and every inmate who passed him, he saw three men moving slowly towards him. There had been construction taking place in the complex, and he grabbed a piece of iron piping as a weapon to defend himself. As Joe DiPalermo, the man he considered his principal tormentor, walked past, he lashed out, striking him in the head. Joe then chased off the other three men, returning to beat DiPalermo to death. Except he killed the wrong man.<br /> <br /> His victim, John Saupp, was in prison for mail robbery and forgery, a minor, inconsequential petty criminal. His misfortune was to bear a striking resemblance to DiPalermo, especially in profile. Distraught and full of remorse for killing an innocent man, Valachi eventually began cooperating, first with the FBN and then the FBI, who took control of him on behalf of the Justice Department. And the rest is history.<br /> <br /> After a massive, lengthy de-briefing by the government, Joseph Valachi, guarded by agents of the FBI and the US Marshalls, was taken to Washington D.C. in September 1963 to appear before an investigative subcommittee headed by Senator John McClellan of Arkansas. It was here that the world first became aware of Joseph Valachi, who was also known in the New York underworld as Joe Cago and Joe Cargo, Joe Kato and Joseph Siano. On his first arrest in November 1921, he had called himself Anthony Sorge.<br /> <br /> Short and squat, with crew-cut gray hair, sucking on a lemon, to help his drying throat, Joe Valachi spoke for thirty-one hours over a seven day period, from September 27th. <br /> <br /> Introduced by Robert Kennedy, the US Attorney General, he sat facing the committee, under the glare of lights and the gaze of three major television network cameras, answering questions and explaining the structure of organized crime ‘families’ in the USA, and for the first time, confirming the hierarchy by names, and especially the heads of the five New York mobs. <br /> <br /> Republic senator Karl Mundt was so confused by the litany of death, mayhem and Joe’s scrambled Bronx vocabulary, he said at one point:<br /> <br /> ‘You’re getting me all confused. It sounds like a Chinese Chess game.”<br /> <br /> To some in the hall, it sounded like a fairy tale. No one had come prepared for the intensity of Joe’s revelations. Democrat Edward Muskie thought the whole thing a waste of time.<br /> <br /> Much of what he disclosed, confirmed information that the FBI and the FBN had already obtained, from illegal wiretaps. He described in detail, hundreds of members, specifying minute trivia about them: who they worked for, their knick-names, their social contacts. <br /> <br /> ‘They eliminated the term boss of all bosses’ said Joe at one point in his testimony, ‘but Vito Genovese is just that, under the table.’<br /> <br /> In his defence, he was rarely if ever, caught short by his handlers. Although a lot of what he described was already known to the law enforcement agencies, his real danger to the mob was an ability to create a schematic view of the structure of organized crime, describing chapter and verse, how it functioned. Opening up a book that had forever been closed until now. In essence, he was able to convince law enforcement to stop looking at the Mafia’s criminal acts as simply isolated, unconnected crimes; instead, he forced them into approaching organized crime as a huge, inter-locking matrix of self-serving dimensions, allowing the law to adopt a radical new philosophy in its fight against this so-far almost hidden enemy, on an intercontinental scale never before contemplated.<br /> <br /> It was generally assumed that Valachi disclosed the term ’Cosa Nostra’ for the first time. In fact, the FBI and other federal agencies had heard the denomination used before. <br /> <br /> In 1961 and 1962, these agencies were spelling it in their reports as:<br /> ‘Causa Nostra.’ It was an expression mainly used on the Eastern Seaboard, and seldom, if ever heard in cities like Chicago or Philadelphia or Detroit. <br /> <br /> Although Valachi had seemingly never intended to disclose what he eventually did, planning to tell only enough to get revenge against Genovese, as he talked to agents of the FBI, his frustrations and resentments over perceived slights and lack of recognition for his many years of service, by his various bosses over the years, finally pushed him into disclosing everything he knew, or almost everything, about Cosa Nostra.<br /> <br /> A foot soldier and therefore limited in his scale of knowledge, he knew enough however, to give his friends in the mob plenty of heartburn. It is fascinating to imagine being a fly on the wall in Genovese’s cell when Joe’s revelations were broadcast. How the mighty Don would have coped with his peers had he been released just then, is interesting to contemplate. According to author Nick Tosches, Vito ‘was the most violent, most grasping and most treacherous of his breed.’<br /> <br /> It was not to be of course. Vito Genovese died in the Federal Medical Centre for Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri from heart disease, on St Valentines Day, 1969, before he finished his sentence. Had he lived and served this out, it is almost a certainty that the government would have arranged to deport him back to Italy. He had been denaturalized in 1955 for concealing his criminal record when he applied for citizenship. Up to 1959, he had avoided deportation with a series of legal manoeuvres, but it was almost a given the state would have kicked him out of the country as soon as he was released.<br /> <br /> If all Joe wanted was revenge against the man and the system, he managed to get that, in spades. He lost his job, his lifetime, his wife and son, who left him, and for this he laid the blame square on Genovese.<br /> <br /> ‘Vito Genovese is responsible for everything,’ he told author Peter Maas.<br /> <br /> In 1964 Joe was encouraged by the justice department to put down on paper his life story and his knowledge of the Mafia. The 2190 pages he wrote, are held in 20 folders in two boxes at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.<br /> <br /> Headed:<br /> <br /> ‘The Real Thing: The Expose and Inside Doings of Cosa Nostra,’ they document his life from 1920 until 1964.<br /> <br /> Like his nemesis, he died of a heart attack, at the La Tuna Federal Correctional Institution in Texas, on April 3rd 1971.<br /> <br /> He is buried in a nondescript grave at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery, in Lewiston, Niagara County, in upstate New York. How he came to be here is an interesting side note to his life and death. <br /> <br /> It is generally believed that sometime in the late 1960s he entered into a correspondence with a woman called Marie K. Jackson, a housewife, who lived in Niagara Falls, New York. Abandoned by his wife and son, this relationship was all Valachi had in his final years. When he died, she claimed the body and had it shipped north, at the government’s expense and the body was buried in Lewiston, on or about May 6th. The cemetery sits right on the border of Canada, wedged in between the Niagara River, freeway loops and two massive hydro lakes. Marie Jackson died in 1999 and lies buried next to Joe.<br /> <br /> She had been married at one time, and apparently had children, according to her attorney, Bernard Sax, but details about her are scarce. Originally Marie Murray, she was a Niagara Falls native and attended local schools before taking a job at the Amberg's Men's Shop, where she met her future husband. The marriage was not a happy one apparently, and was annulled by the Catholic Church after three years. He was Jewish and she was Catholic, and their religious differences made the marriage impossible, she later claimed. <br /> <br /> She and Valachi had first begun corresponding when he was incarcerated at the Federal prison in Milan, Michigan, in 1966, and maintained a relationship, by mail; she would write him at least twice a week, until his death. She was apparently attracted to him by his performance at the McClellan hearings, which like millions of Americans, she watched on television. Seemingly, she never physically, visited him in any prison. She filed probate on his will at the Niagara County Surrogate’s Court in Lockport, N.Y. in August 1971. His estate was valued at $30,000, the bulk of it, his share from the Peter Maas autobiography. Most of this however, was escrowed by the U.S. government to meet back-tax obligations; some of the remaining money converted into bonds was sent to Valachi’s ex-wife, Mildred. <br /> <br /> However, Marie claimed in an interview with a reporter from the Buffalo News in 1995 that not long after her marriage broke up, she met Valachi at a house party thrown by a mutual friend in the Falls city. Joe seemingly visited her regularly and paid the rent on her apartment. They met and travelled together often, she claimed, and he took her shopping in New York when she visited him there. None of this information was ever disclosed by Valachi himself. If this is true, it may well explain Joe’s knowledge of the Buffalo Mafia family, information he disclosed at the senate hearings in 1963. His links into the Agueci brothers is perhaps confirmation of his connection into the Mafia family headed by Stefano Maggadino.<br /> <br /> Nelson Silva Cantellops, on his release from prison, disappeared into obscurity, emerging in 1965, dead on a bar-room floor, the result of a bad meeting with someone’s knife. His killer was never apprehended.<br /> <br /> It’s interesting that although he was the main instrument in the government’s fight to indict and imprison a man considered perhaps the biggest criminal in America at the time, there does not appear to be a single photographic image of him, anywhere, and the details of his life after the Genovese case, and his death, do not seem to have been recorded in any detail. The short, chubby Puerto Rican criminal, wanders through this story as almost a will-o'-the-wisp, a flickering light, always receding, whenever the search is on.<br /> <br /> Like Dick Datchery in Charles Dickens’ last and unfinished novel, ‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood,’ Nelson comes and goes in the story of Vito Genovese’s drug bust, as not only a conundrum, but seemingly a lost and forgotten figure in the history of organized crime. A few, yellowing pages in a long disused case file, lying in a dusty corner of an archive room somewhere, he lives on only in the memory of those of us searching for the Holy Grail of Mob lore: <br /> <br /> The perfect certainty, the Gospel according to St. Paul-the truth; or maybe to St. Rita-the saint of the impossible; or most probably, St. Jude-the saint of hopeless cases.<br /> </p>
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Death in the Afternoon, The shadow of a Dream: The Story of Carmine Galante
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/death-in-the-afternoon-the
2010-11-24T10:00:00.000Z
2010-11-24T10:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a></p>
<p>Before Lunch<br /> <br /> It was not quite the dog days of August, but almost. The temperature was in the upper eighties by mid-day, baking the cracked asphalt that shimmered under the relentless rays of the noon-day sun, beating down on the city like a blow-torch, tempered by the 80 degrees of humidity. <br /> <br /> In Bushwick, Brooklyn, inland from whatever on-shore breezes may have been blowing in from the East River, there was no relief from the wilting heat. Granita peddlers pushing carts of shaved iced, held umbrellas over their wares, as they passed by men in undershirts, sitting on basket-weave chairs, playing radios, and swigging beer from paper-bagged bottles. Women gossiped on street corners, wafting their babies with fans; laundry hung limply from lines strung between alleys, starched stiff by the sun’s heat.<br /> <br /> A brown Lincoln limousine, carrying two men, meandered down Knickerbocker Avenue, cruising past Bushwick Park where men were playing the bocci courts and barbecuing chicken and chops on portable grills, the blue smoke hardly lifting in the heavy air. <br /> <br /> It was Thursday, July 12th 1979, just another summer day in this part of New York. <br /> <br /> Bushwick, which derived from the Dutch word for refuge, originally settled by mainly German immigrants, had a huge influx of Italians between the two world wars. Many of the inhabitants still did not speak English, and lots of them were of Sicilian descent, living in rows of mostly three-story, six-unit, wood-frame or brick-faced walk-ups. However, the population was down to 120,000 from the 1970 census, many people moving south to Staten Island or east into Queens, giving way to the influx of Hispanic groups gradually taking over the district. <br /> <br /> In the not too distant future, the avenue would become known as ‘The Well’ for its never ending source of drugs and narcotic arrests.But although things were changing, one thing was constant- this area was still the lair of the Bonanno crime family- a fearsome group of Mafia mobsters, who had claimed these streets over sixty years before, and the passenger in the car was probably its most fearsome member.<br /> <br /> The Lincoln pulled up at number 205, a small, nondescript building, wedged in between a neighbourhood law office and a pizza parlour, on the north side of the avenue, between Jefferson and Troutman Streets. The sign above the door said 'Joe and Mary, Italian-American Restaurant,' the windows clouded by dingy yellow curtains. <br /> <br /> The passenger nodded goodbye to the driver, his nephew, 43 years old James Galante, and stepped out into the street. <br /> <br /> As the car rumbled off towards Flushing Avenue, the man checked his cash roll- $860, slipping it into the pocket of his pale blue slacks, along with his Medicare and social security cards. He was wearing a white short sleeved knit shirt, and as always, was sucking on a cigar. Small, somewhere between five-three and five-five, and a stocky 170 pounds, what hair he had left, was wispy and gray to white, strung around his swarthy head like a monk’s tonsure. He was 69 years old, and could have been anyone’s grandpa checking in for a cheap lunch. In fact, he was Carmine Galante, one of the most dangerous hoodlums ever to operate in the organized mob underworld of New York. <br /> <br /> Here in the heartland of his criminal empire, he probably felt as safe as houses. He had less than three hours to live.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236990455,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Galante was born on the lower East Side of Manhattan on February 21st 1910, at 27 Stanton Street. His parents both came from Sicily, from the seaside village of Castellammarese del Golfo. His father Vincenzo had been a fisherman there before immigrating to America. He was twenty-eight when Carmine was born, and was then working as a labourer. Carmine’s mother, Vingenza Russo, was twenty-five when he was born. He was one of five children, brothers Sam (Rosario) and Peter, and sisters Angelina and Josephine. He was christened 'Camillo,' but as he grew up, his school friends changed this to Carmine, and it stuck with him the rest of his life.<br /> <br /> He also called himself at various times: Joseph Russel, Carmine Galento and Louis Volpe. These were just three of the nineteen aliases the FBI, and the five the FBN pinned on him over the years they investigated him. He attended Public Schools 79 and 120, quitting at age fifteen. <br /> <br /> He was soon in trouble. His first arrest occurred in 1924, when he was fourteen, for stealing trinkets from a store counter, but as he was a juvenile, the actual charge is not included in his police record. He was sent to a reform school as an incorrigible delinquent. From 1923 until 1926, he was employed by Lubin Artificial Flower Company at 270 West Broadway. This was one of the many legitimate jobs he recorded for tax purposes and for the benefit of his various parole officers in the years to come. By 1930, he was working as a sorter at the O'Brien Fish Company at 105 South Street, near the Fulton Fish Market.<br /> <br /> On December 12th 1925, he pleaded guilty to an assault charge, and a year later, again in December, was sentenced to prison for a two to five year period for second degree assault and robbery. <br /> <br /> On the morning of Saturday, March 15th 1930, police officer Walter O. De Castillia, reported for duty at the 84th Precinct house at 72 Poplar Street, in Brooklyn Heights. A nine year veteran, married with a young daughter, he lived in Jamaica, Queens.<br /> <br /> The station sergeant sent him around to Martin Weinstein’s shoe factory in the seven-story red-brick building on the corner of York and Washington Streets, just a few blocks to the east, to watch over the owner who was making up his factory payroll this morning.<br /> <br /> At about eleven o’clock, De Castillia was sitting in an inner office on the sixth floor of the building, with the owner. $7500 was laid out on a desk and Martin Weinstein was personally assembling his employees wage envelopes, when four gunmen burst into the main office and strode across to where the two men sat. As officer De Castillia rose, reaching for his holstered revolver, he was struck twice in the chest and once in the leg by a fusillade of at least six shots. He died instantly. The gunmen turned, walked back out of the office along the corridor to the elevator, where a fifth gunman was guarding Louis Sella the lift operator. The men entered and went down to the street level, casually walking to a parked car, in which they drove off. At no time did any of the gunmen attempt to retrieve the small mountain of cash that was stacked on the owner’s desk.<br /> <br /> Sella described the gunmen as young, early to mid-twenties, dark skinned with dark hair, and all well-dressed. Although a small army of uniformed officers and detectives descended on the scene, no trace of the gunmen was found. It was thought at one stage in the investigation that the killing was personal, a grudge killing by one or more of the shooters, although this theory never developed legs.<br /> <br /> Five months later, on August 30th 1930, Carmine Galante was arrested and indicted in the murder of the officer. He was later released for lack of evidence. Arrested along with Galante and also released, were twenty-seven year old Michael Consolo, who subsequently became Galante’s bodyguard, and one of his cousins, Angelo Presinzano, who stayed close to him for many years, right up to his death in fact, and was his best man when Galante married in 1945. <br /> <br /> It's possible that about now, Galante started to work under capo Frank Garafolo, who was also the under boss of the Bonanno crime family at this time.<br /> <br /> Michael Joseph Consolo, however, didn't last the full nine yards with 'Lilo.' A Sicilian born and naturalized American , at the age of 65, in April 1968, he was shot dead on the street near his home on 76th Street in Rego Park, Queens. Two in the head, four in the back. He'd apparently picked the wrong side in the Bonanno War which had been rumbling along for the previous two years. It was rumoured he'd teamed up with Frank Mari to form an alliance with Paulo Gambino, Carlo's elder brother, on behalf of Gaspare Di Gregorio, who had taken over the ruling of Bonanno family, following a convoluted inter-family dispute revolving around Joe Bonanno appointing his son, Salvatore, (Bill) as the family counsellor, after a majority vote by the crew skippers confirmed it. <br /> <br /> Consolo may well have been killed for all the wrong reasons. He had been seen talking to Bill Bonanno outside the Brooklyn Superior Court, as both men waited to give evidence regarding a confused shoot-out that had occurred on Troutman Street, on January 28th 1966. The Di Gregorio faction may well have come to believe he was switching sides so had him killed. He may also have been killed by another, second group of Bonanno dissidents who were also involved in the ongoing struggle that became known among law enforcement circles as 'The Banana Split.' <br /> <br /> Another victim of this inter-family struggle was Calabrian born, Frank Mari, a close friend of 'Little Angie' Tuminaro, the linchpin in the famous 'French Connection' case. He disappeared in September, 1969. Mari was the top killer in the Di Gregorio group, who had been the lead shooter at Troutman Street, and had allegedly killed Bill Bonanno’s bodyguard, Sam Perrone in March 1968. <br /> <br /> Frank ‘Frankie T’ Mari had been inducted into the Bonanno family in 1956, in a ceremony conducted at a house in Elizabeth, New Jersey. At the age of 30, he made his bones. His sponsor, the man who would vouch for him, was Carmine Galante. <br /> <br /> ‘Frankie T’ was one of the last men to get into Cosa Nostra before the Commission, the governing body of the American Mafia, ordered the books to be closed. That day, in the basement of the house, watched over by Tommy Luchese, Albert Anastasia, Richie Boiardo, ‘Lilo’ and others, the induction ceremony was performed. Galante insisted, according to a news report by Nicolas Pileggi, that Mari become part of his crew. He knew a good earner when he saw one, and Mari had a taste for the drug business, dealing through Tuminaro and Anthony DiPasqua.<br /> <br /> It looked as though Mari’s murder was a ‘reprisal’ killing, but again, he may have been hit not by the Joe Bonanno faction, his apparent enemies, but in fact by his own people, led by Philip Rastelli, who could have been making a play to set in place his own bid to take over the family, which in fact he did a few years later. Frank Mari was the heir successor to Paul Sciacca, a man to whom he was very close. He was the man who headed the family after Di Gregorio stood down. Mari’s niece had married Sciacca’s son. Blood is thicker than water. Never more so than in mob families.<br /> <br /> Mari and Frank Adamo were last sighted at the 19th Hole Bar and Grill on 86th Street in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, and then just disappeared off the face of the earth. <br /> <br /> The 1960s were confusing times for the crime family of Joseph Bonanno.<br /> <br /> On December 25th 1930, a police detective, Joseph Meenahan, had his suspicions aroused by the actions of a group of men in a green sedan parked on Driggs Avenue, just a few blocks north of the Brooklyn Naval Yard. Drawing his gun he approached the car, at which point, one of the men shouted at him, something like: 'Stop right there copper, or we'll burn you.' The redoubtable detective then busted a few caps as a shoot-out occurred. The officer’s overcoat was riddled with bullets, and he was wounded in the leg. A six-year old girl walking nearby with her mother, was seriously wounded in the cross-fire. Unable to start their car, three of the four gunmen escaped by leaping onto a passing truck. The detective was able to catch and disable the fourth, who turned out to be Carmine Galante, who had missed his footing and fallen into the street. <br /> <br /> Taken to the police station, he was worked over by a group of detectives and brutally beaten. He was later identified as one of a gang of four who had robbed the Lieberman Brewery in Brooklyn. He never admitted to anything, including the identities of his accomplices, and after a trial, was sentenced by Judge Conway in King’s County Courthouse, Brooklyn, on January 8th 1931, to Sing-Sing prison, and then to Clinton Prison, Dannemora, where he remained until his release on May 1st 1939.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236990286,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />In prison, he was tested, and a medical report indicated that he had a low IQ (90) and the mental age of a 14 year old (Galante (right) was into his early twenties at this time,) was emotionally dull, and diagnosed as a neuropathic psychopathic personality. Dr. Baker, who carried out the examination, also stated that Galante was shy, had no knowledge of current events or any items of common knowledge. A medical check revealed that he had injured his head in an auto accident when he was ten years old, had fractured an ankle at eleven and by the time he had reached twenty, was showing signs of gonorrhoea in his system. He'd lead a busy life up to this point! <br /> <br /> On his release from prison, he went back to his old job at the Lubin Artificial Flower company. On February 3rd 1941, he joined Local 856 of the Longshoreman’s Union, sponsored by his elder brother Sam, and for a time, worked as a stevedore on Piers 14 and 21 for the New York and Cuba Steamship Company. <br /> <br /> Sometime in September, he had either left that job, or was moonlighting on another, because he showed his employment as a labourer at the General Electric Plating Company on Grand Street, in Manhattan’s Little Italy area, a business owned by Sal Farranto.<br /> <br /> By August 1943, he was working for a cartage company, called Knickerbocker Trading, operated by one Nate Mesovetsky. The job was apparently organized for him by Johnny Dioguardi, an up-coming hood in the Mafia crime family we know today as the Luchese, and it paid him the princely sum of $27 a week. According to police records he lived on his release, either with his mother or sisters, which might account for the variety of address he often quoted: 329 East 101 Street, New York; 876 New Lots Avenue, Brooklyn and 202 Mott Street, New York. <br /> <br /> He was working this job, when he was pulled in and questioned by the police in connection with the murder of Carlo Tresca, the anarchist newspaper publisher, whose brutal killing on a New York street, back on January 11th had made international headlines. <br /> <br /> Leaving his office in a building on the corner of 15th Street, at 9.45 p.m., Tresca and a friend had crossed to the corner of 5th Avenue when a small man, dressed in a brown overcoat, ran down the street, shot Tresca twice, and then leaped into a waiting car, that sped off west in the direction of Chelsea. Two men employed by the Norwegian consulate, were walking east on Fifteenth Street, and heard the shots. One of them, Mentz Von Erpecom, later described the car. He had served in the Automobile Corps of the Norwegian army, and he knew his motors. A .38 calibre revolver was found in the doorway of the 5th Avenue entrance to Tresca’s office building, indicating a second killer was waiting there to cover that doorway. The gun was traced to Philadelphia, but there, the trail went cold.<br /> <br /> No matter how hard the police and federal authorities tried, they could not pin the murder on Carmine Galante. They followed him around for days, spotting him meeting with friends and associates at his favourite haunts: the Spring Valley Social Club on Elizabeth Street; The Musical Club at 18, Prince Street; a candy store on the corner of Mott and East Houston Street, and Jean’s Clam Bar on Emmons Avenue, in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. They hauled him in for questioning, catching him leaving a restaurant on Elizabeth Street and pulled in his criminal associates, but to no avail. <br /> <br /> There were so many rumours surrounding him, according to police intelligence:<br /> <br /> Galante was a bootlegger, and he was part of a gang headed by Frank Garofalo. <br /> <br /> Garofalo was said to be his cousin (possible, they both had strong family ties to Castellammarese del Golfo.) <br /> <br /> Galante was associated with Frank Citrano, a.k.a. ’Chick Wilson,’ who apparently lead a gang on the Lower East Side out of a building at 250 Mott Street. <br /> <br /> Underworld sources claimed that the driver on the night of the killing was possibly 'Joe Beck' Di Palermo, Galante's life long drug partner, or maybe he was just in the car at the time. Witnesses testified that there were at least three people in the Ford that drove away from the scene of the shooting. Two days earlier, the same car had tried to run Tesca down as he crossed a street.<br /> <br /> The car, a Ford, registration IC-9272, was identified by reliable witnesses as leaving the scene of the crime. A few hours before Tresca was shot, Galante, wearing a brown overcoat, was seen in this vehicle, driving away from a meeting with his parole officer, Sydney Gross, from the agency office at 80 Centre Street, in downtown Manhattan. His behaviour this particular evening, aroused the suspicion of Gross, who alerted two of his agents. A parole investigator called Fred Berson followed Galante to the car, parked in Lafayette Street, but was unable to tail him, because war time petrol rationing restrictions had grounded all but essential city officers. He did however, note the plate number on the vehicle.<br /> <br /> Berson was convinced Galante was tied into the Tresca shooting and made waves. He was subsequently dismissed from the service following a letter sent to the board by a fellow parole office, who a few weeks later shot himself, leaving a suicide note stating he had killed himself because of what he had been forced to do to Berson.<br /> <br /> Files in the New York District Attorney's office contain information in memos dated January through August 1944, that Carmine Galante, Frank Citrano, Tony Garappa and Joe and Pete Di Palermo, were paid $9000 for carrying out the hit on Tresca, the money coming to them via Joe Parisi, a member of the Teamsters Union, and close associate of Albert Anastasia and Vincenzo Mangano, the administration of what is now known as the Gambino Family.<br /> <br /> In addition to files held by the FBI, ( Tresca was apparently an informant for the agency, and had in fact had a meeting with his case agent the day he died,) which confirmed that Galante worked for both Garafola and Joe Bonanno, an unsigned 8 page document, copies of which are held by several research libraries, advances what could be the most in-depth scenario of the men and organizations behind the killing of Tresca. It was most probably written by Girolamo Valenti, a member of the Italian-American Victory Council, and a close friend and associate of Tresca’s<br /> <br /> In 1946, Louis Pagnucco, an assistant district attorney investigating the murder, got around to interviewing one of the dozens of minor characters that filled so much space throughout the inquiry into Tresca’s murder. The man was a low level street hood, who had just come out of prison for attempted murder, called <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/being-ernest-the-life-and-hard">Ernest 'The Hawk' Rupolo</a>. According to his testimony, shortly after his release, he had met two old friends at the Mapleton luncheonette in Brooklyn. <br /> <br /> His friends, Gus Frasca and George Smurra, had filled him in on the latest news. They claimed that they, along with Galante, had killed Carlo Tresca and had been well paid for the job. Rupolo also picked out of a photograph line out, the face of Frank Garofalo who he claimed he had seen often at the Mapleton luncheonette with his friends. <br /> <br /> Ten years later, Rupolo retracted his story, stating that all he knew was about a rumour going around that Vito Genovese had given the order to kill Tresca and that Galante had done the job.<br /> <br /> Finally the Parole Authority had Galante re-committed to prison on November 23rd 1943, for 'cohabiting with known criminals', in particular his bosom buddy, Joseph Di Palermo. It was the classic manoeuvre, still used to-day 60 years down the track, when the law wants to put some one away, but has no real case against him.<br /> <br /> However by now, Carmine obviously had some powerful friends, because just a year later, on December 21st 1944, he was released, after months of lobbying and legal procedural work by a number of very high-powered and influential attorneys. He may have also been supported financially, by donations from the American Labour Party, controlled by Luigi Antonini, who had formed an allegiance with Generoso Pope the head of the popular Italian newspaper, Il Martello, published in New York. Both of these men had seen Tresca as an obstruction to their political ambitions. There was also rumours floating around that the Teamster’s Union funnelled money through Joe Di Palermo to the Galante defence fund. <br /> <br /> Closer to the root of the affair, Tresca had publicly humiliated Frank Garofalo, about having an affair with an assistant United States attorney, called Dolores Facconti. Also, on September 8th 1942, a dinner party was held in the Manhattan Club Hall by the War Savings Bond Committee of Americans of Italian Extraction. When Tresca entered and saw Garafola was present, he shouted, ‘ Even that gunman is here,’ and turned and left.<br /> <br /> Garofalo and Pope were close, in business and on a personal level, so the killing of Tresca perhaps suited them both, for perhaps quite different reasons.<br /> <br /> In 1954 William B. Herlands, the New York director of investigation under Thomas Dewey, governor of the state, carried out an inquiry into events that had taken place during the early years of the Second World War, regarding the security of America’s eastern seaboard and possible Mafia connection. During this investigation, Charles Siragusa, a senior agent in the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, claimed he had a source in the New York County D.A.’s office who had been given information that Lucky Luciano, the then head of what is now known as the Genovese Crime Family, knew the identity of the men involved in the murder of Tresca. Luciano, it was claimed, offered to disclose the identities of these murderers in return for outright parole and permission to remain in the United States. Luciano was at the time in prison on a 30 year prostitution sentence, facing deportation, if ever released. Dewey allegedly rejected the offer.<br /> <br /> Carlo Tresca and Carmine Galante remain inexplicably linked into one of the most complex political murder mysteries of war time America. As Eric Ambler states in his book A Coffin For Dimitrious, ‘in these affairs what counts is not who pulls the trigger, but who pays for the bullet.’<br /> <br /> At the relatively young age of 34, Carmine Galante had come of age in the Italian-American underworld. Some sources state that he was taken directly under the wing of Joe Bonanno himself, the head of what the NYPD called ‘The Castellammarese Gang‘, or 'La Marese', becoming the boss’s driver and bodyguard.<br /> <br /> On February 10th 1945, he married Elena Ninfa Marulli, always referred to as Helen, who was 28, and lived on Shepherds Avenue, Brooklyn, at Our Lady of Sorrows Church, on Pitt Street in the East Village. She had been his alibi the night Tresca was killed, confirming they both had been to the movies near Time Square, watching the new release, ‘Casablanca,‘ then spending the rest of the evening at a hotel. His best man was his cousin, Angelo Presinzano, also known as 'Little Moe' who was two years older than Galante. <br /> <br /> 'Moey' as Presinzano was also called, was a short-ass like Galante, and had a rap sheet dating back to 1927 for rape, homicide and violations of the narcotic law . He was, later in life, big in the drug business, which was par for the course with many of the members of the Bonanno Family.<br /> <br /> Lilo and his wife moved into 274 Marcy Avenue, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, only a few blocks from where the Irish cop had arrested him in that wild shoot-out fifteen years before. They shared the three-story house with some of Helen’s family and another group called Leggio, who were related to Helen. Like almost everything in Galante’s life, the house was not registered in his name, but rather these other boarders. It is fascinating to speculate on Galante’s early married life- a typical New York couple starting out on their big adventure- Helen, frying bacon and eggs for breakfast, and then heading off each morning to work as a saleslady at the Cambridge Grocery Store, at number 104 on 1st Avenue, and Carmine, jumping into his car and heading off somewhere to kill someone.<br /> <br /> Galante was caught by the law one more time in the 1940’s when he was arrested outside number 5, Berkley Place, near Prospect Park in Brooklyn on September 4th 1947, loading up equipment into a Cadillac. The gear had been used in the operation of an illegal alcohol still. He and three others, including his old pal, Joseph Di Palermo, were released on bail of $500 on charges of alcohol tax violation, pending action by a Federal Grand Jury (see photo below). <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236990665,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236990665,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236990665?profile=original" width="567" /></a><br /> Throughout his criminal career, Galante and 'Joe Beck' as Di Palermo was known in the mob, worked closely, especially in the field of narcotic trafficking. Di Palermo was one of the mob’s consummate drug operators, still being chased by the law for his drug dealings, even well into his 80’s. His other claim to fame of course, was that he was the guy Joseph Valachi tried to kill in Atlanta. But Joe bonged the wrong guy, which kick-started a whole chain of events setting the Mafia on its ear. That's an entirely different story for another time. <br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236991279,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />By the early 1950’s, Carmine Galante (right) had solidified his position in the Bonanno crime family, and was still getting into trouble with the law. On Dec 16th 1950, the cops raided a crap game operating out of 235 West 18th Street, in the Lower East End of Manhattan, arresting 51 people, include Galante, who was charged with operating the game. By now, he had acquired the nickname that would stick with him the rest of his life. Addicted to cigars, especially the big, fat Cuban Presidente brand, he was hardly ever seen without one stuck in the side of his mouth. He became known as ’Lelo’ or 'Lilo', which can mean cigar, or little cigar in Italian slang. <br /> <br /> At this time, Joe Bonanno's crime family numbered perhaps 300 made or inducted members, and an unknown number of associates. It was one of the smaller of the five New York Mafia clans, but was highly unified and well organized. <br /> <br /> Joe's principal administration consisted of Frank Garofalo, John Bonventre and Carmine Galante. There were at least eight capi or crew skippers, each controlling thirty or more soldiers and the capo closest to Joe Bonanno was a man called Gaspar Di Gregorio, the same one who would come to replace Joe when the family dispute arose in the 1960's. The family's bookmaking and number business in Brooklyn and Manhattan's Lower East Side had grown significantly during the 1930's and through the years of the second World War.<br /> <br /> The police were also after Galante again, this time, for a killing that went down early in 1950. On January 2nd Dominick Idone was telephoned at his home at 171, Mulberry Street. He left late in the evening, and was shot dead. Just why he was murdered, has never been established.<br /> <br /> He'd had a long, and honourable career in the mob, going back to August 17th 1913, when he had been arrested for his part in the massive gang brawl between 'The Gopher Gang' and 'The Hudson Duster Gang', at the Bay Hotel in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.<br /> <br /> In addition to sighting Carmine Galante for the hit, the cops put out an all-points bulletin on the Di Palermo brothers, Joe and Charlie, Louis (Gigi) Armonte, Sal Megrino and Joe Mistratta. This could have been one of up to 80 killings attributed to Galante by various law enforcement authorities, and another one that of course, was never solved. <br /> <br /> Sometime in 1952 or perhaps 1953, Joseph Bonanno made the big decision to leap himself, into the world of drug trafficking. He sent Galante north into Canada to establish a bridgehead in Montreal. <br /> <br /> Here, he linked up with Luigi Greco, a Sicilian who had taken over the narcotic business of Harry Davis after he had been murdered in 1946. Greco worked alongside the Cotroni brothers, Vic, Joe and Frank, and had a partner called Frank Petrula. <br /> <br /> Calabrian born Vic Cotroni, who may have been the first Mafia boss of the city, with an arrest record dating back to 1928, became so close to Galante that he became godfather to one of his children. By 1954, Galante had developed such a power base in Montreal, the underworld referred to him as a mammasantissima, a big boss. According to the FBN, Galante at this time, also formed an alliance with John Ormento, a capo in the Lucchese crime family, and they began moving massive amounts of drugs from Cuba and Montreal into New York, Chicago and Dallas. By 1959, the Cotroni brothers were supplying Galante and Ormento with up to 50 kilos of pure heroin a month.<br /> <br /> Joe Bonanno and his son Bill, have both written books about their lives in the Mafia. Among other things, these two volumes are noticeable for their lack of reference to Galante. Joe, the boss, and foundling father of the family that still bears his name, 78 years after he assumed command over it, does not mention Carmine Galante once in his 400 page plus epic. Son Salvatore (Bill) offers up a few words on an 'ex-group leader' <br /> <br /> ‘of ours who had been committed of drug trafficking and whose case we maintained an active interest in for a variety of reasons…we were only marginally interested in how Lilo’s case stood.’<br /> <br /> Interestingly enough, The New York Times in July 1979, printed an article in which Bill Bonanno claimed to be a godfather of one of Galante’s children, and he also stated in regards to Galante’s killing:<br /> <br /> ‘It got my attention, but there was no emotional stress. That is just part of the risk of living that life style.’<br /> <br /> This is the man Carmine Galante, who was apparently Joe’s bodyguard, driver and confident, the man who most probably assumed the under boss position after the retirement of Frank Garofalo and then John Morales. <br /> <br /> It’s not that the father and son lied, more that their version of the truth was less than perfect, and that they saw things the way they wanted them to be rather than as they where. These were two men who would whisper to the deaf or wink at the blind.<br /> <br /> Carmine Galante and his lock on the heroin trafficking business that brought huge rewards into the family, was not an image the Bonanno father and son wanted to perpetrate as part of their legacy being men of honour.<br /> <br /> Galante while in Montreal, lived at 4069 Dorchester Street, with Luigi Greco as a flat mate. He opened the Bonfire Restaurant at 546 DeLane Boulevard in partnership with Harry Ship, a local gambling czar and long time underworld figure, and operated a business called Alpha Investments, registered in Doral Province, Quebec, with Helen his wife, listed as an officer of the company. Lillo brought up from New York, Earl Carluzzi, a professional criminal, and ex-thief, to help him organize the unions for the hotel, restaurant and nightclub workers.<br /> <br /> Galante’s mission in Canada was seemingly to make it a major staging post in the importation of heroin from Sicily and Marseilles, for forward shipment into New York. In a report to J. Edgar Hoover from the SAC (Special Agent in Charge) New York Office, it states that, 'Carmine Galante was the Mafia’s No 1 man in Montreal and that he takes 10% out of all the rackets in the city.' <br /> <br /> While living in Canada, Galante became a good friend and mentor to an up and coming hoodlum, called Johnny "Pops'' Papalia, who one day would become the Mafia boss of Hamilton, Ontario, and who in turn would also get shot dead, in 1997, in a Canadian version of one group of gangsters trying to take control of another. The gangland version of Médecins Sans Frontièrs. <br /> <br /> But all good things must come to an end, and in 1955, Carmine gets deported from Montreal as an undesirable alien. He placed Helen’s brother, Tony Marulli, in his place to oversee his interest, but he got kicked out as well, in 1956.<br /> <br /> Through the 1950’s the FBI kept an eye on Galante, not as a member of the Mafia, but as a 'hoodlum.' Hoover never acknowledged the existence of a nationwide organized crime group that we now know as Cosa Nostra, until after Joseph Valachi’s disclosures in 1963. <br /> <br /> Carmine Galante operated a number of legitimate business that kept Hoover's men busy in terms of surveillance. One, Rosina Costume Co. Inc. was a contract cutter for major dress manufacturers. Galante was listed as its Secretary-Treasurer and his wife Helen, as Vice-President. Another was Latamer Shipping Company based at 10, East 49th Street, New York. This was set up as an import-export company, but the feds were convinced he was using it as part of a world-wide distribution network involving his drug business. And then there was ABCO Vending Machine Company located at 501 New York Avenue, Union City, New Jersey. This business was interesting for a number of reasons: <br /> <br /> It manufactured, sold and placed pin-ball and cigarette vending machines across New Jersey. At one time 'Bayonne Joe' Zicarelli a powerful capo in the Bonanno family and archetypal political fixer, worked with Galante in the business. There was a scandal involving a link by telephone direct from the company into the West New York police department, but the most interesting thing about it was a particular member of the board of directors, which consisted of Sam Atkins, B.B. Azarow and Steven Schwartz. <br /> <br /> Sometime, perhaps as early as 1949, certainly from 1953, Carmine Galante was leading a double life. He had a wife and three children, in Brooklyn, and another 'wife' and two children in New Jersey. His second 'family' lived with him at Apartment 2D, 2330 Linwood Avenue, in suburban Fort Lee. The new woman in his life, who he could have been involved with as early as 1948 or 1949, was called Anne or Antoinette Acquavella, formerly Caputo. She was small, dark haired and very attractive, according to the neighbours. Just what she saw in a stump like Galante is hard to imagine. The union produced two daughters, Mary Lou born in 1950 and Nina, born in 1954. Galante stayed with Acquavella for the rest of his life, although they were never formally married. Being a staunch Catholic, he never divorced his wife Helen. However, an underworld source claimed, he 'would shoot you dead in church during High Mass.' <br /> <br /> According to the neighbours, Galante was back and forward into his New Jersey home, but most often, arrived about five in the morning. During this period, he was driving a black Cadillac. In order to legitimize his two daughters, he arranged for Anne to marry Steven Schwartz, the man who served as a director of ABCO Vending, in New Jersey, although this was purely a marriage of convenience. Schwartz had also been closely involved with Galante in Montreal. While they lived in New Jersey, Galante’s de facto wife worked as a dispatcher for the Calandrillo Trucking Company located in Lodi. In 1955, Galante was also partners in a pastry shop at 13, Prince Street in Lower Manhattan, called De Matteo and Galante. <br /> <br /> During 1956 and 1957, agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, another agency with a keen interest in him, tracked Galante as he travelled from New York to Miami, and in 1958 to Cuba to meet with French, Canadian and American drug dealers.<br /> <br /> On November 9th 1956, Galante was in court again, this time in rural northern New York, where Judge Klausner sentenced him to 30 days in the Broome County Jail and fined him $100 for speeding. Galante had many such speeding infringement throughout his life and was seemingly a pretty careless and reckless sort of driver. But this particular infringement stirred up quite a hornets nest.<br /> <br /> In October 1956, a State Trooper patrolling the highway near Binghampton, at about ten in the evening, pulled a car over that was speeding through the town of Windsor. There were four men in it, and the driver produced a license that was obviously not his. It turned out to belong to the front seat passenger, a man called Joseph Di Palermo, of 246 Elizabeth Street, Manhattan. Trooper Leibe escorted the car to the police substation in Binghampton, where the driver was identified as Carmine Galante.<br /> <br /> Inquires revealed that he and Di Palermo, along with Frank Garofalo and John Bonventre, the other occupants of the car, had spent the previous night, October 17th, at the Arlington Hotel, as hosts of a local businessman called Joseph Barbara. Galante was held in the station jail while further inquiries were being conducted. Within 24 hours, phones were ringing hot, as a battery of lawyers with connection, were telephoning politicians in Albany trying to get them to intercede.<br /> <br /> A couple of days later, a group of police officers from West New York arrived in Binghampton, and tried to bribe Sergeant Edgar Croswell of the State police into letting the case drop. The offer was $1000 in cash. In due course, indictments were laid against the Public Safety Commissioner, the police chief, a detective captain and a detective sergeant of West New York, a town in New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York. A report subsequently issued by the New Jersey Law Enforcement Council stated that the involvement of these four senior city officials with organized crime went much deeper than just trying to fudge a traffic ticket.<br /> <br /> Interestingly enough, the lawyer who represented Galante at his hearing was none other than Donald W. Kramer, the mayor of Binghampton! Carmine did his 30 days in the local nick- the Broome County Jail- which he served through November, and while there, was visited by his wife, his brother Sal and someone unknown to the authorities-one Nicholas Marangella. 44 year old Nicky 'Glasses' Marangello, a small man, with slicked-back hair and thick glasses, would have his moment of fame twenty-three years down the track, when he operated as the family under boss alongside Philip Rastelli, at the time Galante was murdered.<br /> <br /> In August 1957, almost a year after the debacle at Binghampton, Joseph Bonanno took a holiday to Rome and Sicily. He claimed in his biography, that he was invited to do this by Fortune Pope, who would shout him the trip. Pope’s father, Generosso, a very wealthy Italian publisher, had been at the centre of the Carlo Tresca murder case, linking Bonanno and Galante through Frank Garofalo who had retired as the under boss of the family, and returned to live out his life in Sicily. <br /> <br /> Joe makes no mention of the historical meeting that brought together the Mafia chiefs of the old and the new countries, except very obliquely. He goes on about a meal at a restaurant and the altercation he has with a cheeky waiter, but that is all. No mention of Galante, no mention of Charley Luciano, no mention of Genco Russo, the top mafioso in Sicily. Another lapse, another shifting of light and shadows; the cup is not half-filled it is half empty. Joe's biography, interesting though it appears on first reading, is a cornucopia of information deflected from the straight and narrow.<br /> <br /> The meal, which lasted twelve hours, occurred on October 12th at Spano, a famous Palermo fish restaurant on the Piazza Politeama, near the waterfront. The group ate in a private alcove, starting their gargantuan meal with pasta con le sarde, a classic Sicilian dish, created around pasta, sardines, anchovies and fennel, a meal that traces its history back to the Arab occupation of the island.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236991471,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />The diners that night at this private party were all Sicilians, but half of them were oriundi, long time residents in America. They had gathered together, two days earlier, in the Sala Wagner, a sumptuous suite on the mezzanine floor of one of the oldest hotels in Palermo, Albergo e delle Palme, The Hotel des Palmes, once the grandest of Palermo’s mansions, on October 10th for a convention that would last four days. It has been suggested that the conference was instigated by Charley Luciano, the Naples based former head of his own Mafia family in New York, exiled from America in 1946, and now living permanently in Italy.<br /> <br /> The American contingent included in addition to Bonanno, Carmine Galante, John Bonventre, Frank Garofalo, Antonio, Giuseppe and Gaspare Maggadino from Buffalo, Johnny Priziola who ran Detroit, John Di Bella, Santo Sorge and Nick Gentile, who strictly speaking was Sicilian but who had spent over thirty years as part of the American Mafia, before returning to his homeland. <br /> <br /> Sorge is one of those figures that moves through the Mafia landscape like some kind of Van Helsing, a mythical character, searching not to destroy vampires, but to kill off, by guile and corruption, the bureaucrats in the law enforcement organizations that were seeking to eliminate his agencies of power and prestige. A man with contacts into the most important Mafia heads in America, equally at home with their counterparts in Sicily and most of all, a man with huge political influence in Italy. He maintained a respectable front in America, through directorships in Rimrock International Oil Company of New York and the Foreign Economic Research Association. Born in Mussomeli in Caltanisetta province, Sicily, he had become a naturalised American nine years before this meeting. <br /> <br /> In 1967, Sorge brought a libel suit against the City of New York and two senior police officers, both retired. Chief Inspector John F. Shaney, former head of the C.I.B. and Ralph Salerno, former supervisor of detectives, were also named in the defamation and libel case asking $418,000 in damages.<br /> <br /> Sorge was under indictment in Palermo, Sicily for criminal conspiracy as an alleged member of the Mafia, and the two police officers had given expert testimony for the prosecution. Salerno had testified that Sorge had close relationships with both Vito Genovese and Charley Luciano, when he had been alive, Carmine Galante and Joseph Bonanno. The two police officers had in fact been instructed by Police Commissioner Vincent L. Broderick to testify before Judge Aldo Vigneri of the Palermo Penal Court, who had visited America in order to accept depositions. The judge had also gone to visit Joe Valachi in Washington. <br /> <br /> According to Joe:<br /> <br /> ‘Santo Sorge belongs to the the Cosa Nostra. It is my personal knowledge that his function was to go and come from America to Italy and vice-versa, carrying out tasks that I don’t know. I was never able to understand to what family he belongs. He was a close friend of all Cosa Nostra bosses.’<br /> <br /> Sorge was also deep into another libel suite brought against Parade Publications for $1,160,000 on the basis of a magazine article which had said that Sorge was listed by former FBN Commissioner, Harry Anslinger, as the number 5 boss in the top 10 bosses of the American underworld.<br /> <br /> The libel suit against New York and the two officers was dismissed on March 19th 1968.<br /> <br /> Santo Sorge was without doubt, one of the great 'unknowns' of the American Mafia.<br /> <br /> Sorge’s cousin in Sicily, Giuseppe Genco Russo, led the Sicilian contingent at the Palermo meeting, along with the two La Barbera brothers, Salvatore and Angelo, also Vincent Rimi of Alcamo and Diego Plaja, Don Mimi La Fata, Calcedonio Di Pisa, Salvatore Greco, and Charley Luciano. Almost every man in the meeting was a drug trafficker. Some years later, Italian judge, Aldo Vigneri, issued warrants, indicting them for 'organizing the drug traffic to the United States via Sicily.' <br /> <br /> Also present during these four days of high level power talks was one Tommaso Buscetta, (Don Massino,) a member of the Porta Nuova Mafia family of Palermo city, and the most important pentiti or Mafia informer in Sicily, when he broke the code of omerta in 1984. It was he, who revealed that the meeting took place and disclosed for the first time the link between the American and Sicilian arms of the Mafia.<br /> <br /> Just what went on here for four days has never been disclosed in detail, but what went on over the next thirty years seems to indicate that the American delegation asked their Sicilian counterparts to take over the export and distribution of heroin into the United States. It may also have been the time that Galante discovered the benefit of using home grown boys from Sicily, back in New York, and the beginning of the flow from Sicily into America, of the men who came to be known as the zips. <br /> <br /> Salvatore Greco ran a fleet of merchant ships, under Honduras flags, that transported huge amounts of heroin, purchased through Frank Coppola, an old friend of Luciano, into Cuba, and the Sicilians were going to be flooding drugs into the United States with or without the American Mafia's help, so it probably made sense for everyone to cooperate. The zips would be a vital link in the chain connecting the importation and distribution of heroin on the eastern seaboard in the years to come.<br /> <br /> Another interesting bye-product of the meeting in Palermo was the suggestion that it determined and organized the murder of Albert Anastasia, who was gunned down in a barber shop in a mid-town Manhattan hotel, eleven days after the convention in Palermo had ended. Italian police documents submitted to Judge Vignari in 1964 stated that the Palermo meeting confirmed the elimination of Anastasia, to be organized by Vito Genovese and Carlo Gambino, and that two sicari (assassins) were to be sent over to New York to do the shooting. <br /> <br /> Every man and his dog seems to have killed 'The Mad Hatter,' so why not a couple of Sicilian hit men?<br /> <br /> Eighteen days after Anastasia’s death-on November 12th 1957- an elite group of Cosa Nostra members met secretly in Livingston, New Jersey from about noon, until five the next morning. Twenty four hours later, Sergeant Edgar Croswell, the same state trooper approached in 1956 and offered a bribe to release Galante, stumbled over almost the entire American Mafia leadership attending another conference at the home of Joseph Barbara near the village of Apalachin. (David link in here to my Apalachin Story.)<br /> <br /> Like some hoodlum college of cardinals, they had come to congregate at the See of Apalachin to convene something, no one ever learned just what, as the meeting broke up in chaos and men fled or were arrested, leaving the property.<br /> <br /> It is more than possible, that both Bonanno and Galante attended this meeting. Joe claims he wasn’t there; a man detained simply was carrying his driving license. Galante was certainly not detained, but may have been one of the possible 40 or so men who escaped the police blockade. FBI files indicate he avoided police by hiding in a cornfield. One of Barbara's housekeepers tentatively identified Carmine Galante, as being one of several men who were still at Barbara's a day after the fiasco.<br /> <br /> One of the men who was detained, was a 60 year old Sicilian called Salvatore Tornabe, who lived on 2nd Avenue in Manhattan. He was employed as a salesman by the Sunland Beverage Company, which was owned by Joe Magliocco, the under boss of the Profaci Mafia family. Both Magliocco and Joe Profaci were among the men detained by the state troopers lead by Croswell. Among Tornabe’s effects, the cops found a note written partly in English and partly in Italian by Tornabe. It kept referring to and 'Acqua-Velva', which may have been a phonetic spelling of Acquavella, and not a reference to the after shave lotion. The note seemed to suggest that both Tornabe and Galante may have been staying with Barbara on the night before the police raid.<br /> <br /> According to Douglas Valentine in his biography of the FBN, one of the attendees at the hotel summit meeting in Palermo, was Philip Buccola, who had headed up the Boston branch of the Mafia before returning to live permanently in Sicily in 1954. He made a return visit to the USA, arriving in Boston two weeks before the mob meeting took place, and the FBN, while bugging his phone, discovered about Apalachin, and that in fact agents of the bureau had tipped off Sergeant Croswell about what was about to take place. This was never confirmed by Croswell. <br /> <br /> After the disclosure and publicity generated by the Apalachin bust, Galante disappeared from view. An article in the New York Herald Tribune dated January 8th 1958, claimed he had fled to Italy to link up and seek refuge with Charley Luciano, for whom he 'used to run drugs in Harlem.' Another report had him meeting up with Joe Adonis, another major ex-New York mobster living in exile in Italy. On January 9th the New York American Journal reported he had been seen in Havana on January 7th and it was suggested he was seeking to move in on the lucrative gambling concession at the Sans Souci Hotel and Casino. He may also have detoured to the Dominican Republic. For a man with a reported IQ of 90, he was fluent not only in a number of Italian dialects, but also in French and Spanish, and sure knew how to handle air line schedules. <br /> <br /> By April 1958, he was back in New York, and reportedly staying in suite 10A of the Alrae Hotel on East 64th Street. <br /> <br /> In July, he was indicted as part of a major, and complex drug bust carried out by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Among the many gangsters who were hauled in on this, were Vito Genovese, John Ormento, Joe Di Palermo, and Vincent Gigante. Released on bail, Galante went on the lam, staying free until June 2nd 1959.<br /> <br /> It's interesting to observe that both the FBN and the FBI were both keeping tabs on Galante at this time. Special Agent in Charge E.J. McCabe, (FBI,) noted in an internal memo, that 'Carmine Galante is one of the most important hoodlums we have under investigation.'<br /> <br /> The FBN (Federal Bureau of Narcotics) received a tip-off, and working in conjunction with the New Jersey State Police, two of their top agents, Marty Pera and Bill Rowan, set out to arrest him. They tracked him down to a home owned by Gary Muscatello of Union City. With two companions, Galante drove away from this property at 212, North Sunset Drive on Pelican Island, on the south Jersey shore, in a white Chevy convertible, plate number-RI 8208. <br /> <br /> On the Garden State Parkway, near Holmdale, the cops pulled him over. With him in the car, was the ubiquitous Angelo Presinzano, and another cousin, Anthony Macalusco. They were all arrested. <br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236991661,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Just how Galante got caught on this occasion, reveals a fascinating insight into the machinations of the Bureau of Narcotics, the only federal agency at this time, that really understood the Mafia and how it worked. George Gaffney, who headed the New York office of the bureau for four years, claimed that although 'their entire national budget was only 4% of all federal law enforcement expenditure, and their force only totalled 187 agents nationwide, they were responsible for 20% of the federal prison population, and put away more Mafia hoods than all other agencies combined.'<br /> <br /> Agent Pera, through a New York Police contact, obtained a wiretap on the telephone of Joseph Notaro, a skipper in a Bonanno crew based in Newark, New Jersey. ('Bayonne Joe' Zicarelli was a soldier in his crew at this time.) Notaro acted as a message centre for Galante. Checking calls, Pera discovered the name of one Sal Giglio, a fifty-three year old mobster connected into both Notaro and Galante. He was in essence their point man in Cuba, linked into a group of Corsican drug smugglers based there. He had also operated out of Montreal, replacing Tony Marulli, as Galante’s manager, sometime in 1957, working closely with Quebecois gangster, Lucien Rivard, who was a major drug dealer and illegal arms importer into Canada from Cuba, where he ran a casino.<br /> <br /> Giglio also worked with Peppe Cotroni, and his brother Vic, the major drug smugglers, to re-establish the drug pipeline between Montreal and Marseilles, France.<br /> <br /> While this was going on, Pera's partner, Agent Bill Rowan, had come across a copy of a Canadian newspaper, that featured a wedding photograph of Giglio, and his new bride, Florence Anderson, a waitress at the El Morocco Casino, in Cuba, ( a favourite meeting place for Galante, Giglio and their European dealers,) taken on March 22nd. The problem was, Sal's first wife, Mary Fanale, wasn't in on the plot. <br /> <br /> Pera visited Giglio at his home at 2760 Grand Concourse, in the Bronx, and while Mary was happy, cooking away in the kitchen, the two men sat in the living room, where Pera disclosed the incriminating photograph.<br /> <br /> Using this as a hard edge, he persuaded Giglio to drop a dime on his friend and partner, Carmine, and in return, Mary would hear nothing about this other bride down in Cuba. Sal presumably kept on doing what he did best, drug trafficking through Cuba and Montreal into New York. Somehow, Galante never learned of his perfidy, which would have resulted in instant death for Giglio; seemingly the FBN kept its word, and Giglio was still alive in 1970, when he surfaced in Los Angeles, and was arrested on an old 1959 drug charge still outstanding against him. He was last heard of living in Florida in 1998, at the grand old age of 92!<br /> <br /> On June 3rd Carmine Galante was released on bail of $100,000, by Judge Sylvester Ryan of the Southern District Court. It would take almost a further two years before he came to trial on his drug trafficking offences. He surrendered to the Federal Court, Southern District, on May 17th 1960, pleading not guilty before Judge M.C. Cohey, and again was released on bail. During this period, he was living at 40 Park Avenue, in Manhattan. He finally went to trial on January 20th 1961, the presiding judge, Thomas F. Murphy, revoking his bail. On May 15th there was a mistrial declared. One of the jurors, the foreman in fact, a man called Harry Appel, a 68 year old dress manufacturer, fell down a flight of stairs, in a building off 15th Street in Lower Manhattan, and broke his back injuring himself severely. It was generally believed that he fell, mainly because he was pushed. This time, Galante was allowed bail, and went free on bond of $135,000. <br /> <br /> His second trial began in April 1962, and there was chaos in the courtroom when one of the defendants, Anthony Mirra, an upcoming associate of the Bonanno family, and a man as equally as vicious and unstable as Galante, picked up a chair and threw it at the prosecutor. It missed him, and smashed into the jury box. Other defendants screamed and shouted throughout the proceeding, but in the end, to no avail. Galante was found guilty.<br /> <br /> On July 10th 1962, he was sentenced to thirty years in prison. The U.S. Congress had passed a draconian Narcotics Control Act in 1956, signed by President Eisenhower on July 18, and Galante was one of 206 big time Mafia gangsters caught by authorities under this law, according to testimony given by Henry Giordano, commissioner of the FBN, at the McClellan Committee Hearings in 1963. Galante was held in the Federal Detention Centre, at 427 West Street, New York before being sent first to Alcatraz and then to Lewisburg Penitentiary, Leavenworth and finally Atlanta to serve out his sentence. It would be the longest time he was to spend behind bars. He was eventually released from prison in January, 1974, but would remain on bail until 1981.<br /> <br /> His time in Lewisburg Penitentiary was not totally unpleasant. He had his own cell in G Block, known by the inmates as Mafia Row, and it was here that he developed a life long interest and pleasure in growing plants and flowers. He was also allowed three cats as company, and spent many hours in the prison jail, keeping fit. He became a close friend of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-disappearance-of-jimmy">Jimmy Hoffa</a>, and apparently ruled the block with an iron hand.<br /> <br /> Back in New York, he was ready and anxious to resume his life of crime, take over the Bonanno crime family and become the dominant mobster in the city. To make a point that he was back, he allegedly arranged to have the bronze doors on the tomb of Frank Costello, (who had died the previous year,) in Greenwood Cemetery, blown off their hinges. He also threatened to do some awful things to Carlo Gambino, who he hated with a passion for his part in the Commission’s (the ruling council of the American Mafia) decision to overthrow Joseph Bonanno. According to police informers, when he spoke of Gambino, he would literally quiver with rage. In addition, he had to resolve the problem of the leadership of his own crime family.<br /> <br /> Following the ‘Banana War’ and the de-throning of Joe Bonanno in the late 1960’s, there had been a series of boss re-placements in the family. On August 28th 1973, the current head, Natale Evola died of cancer, and was replaced by Philip 'Rusty' Rastelli. When Galante emerged from federal prison, he made it quite clear he was going to be the top dog. Rastelli, who was no slouch himself in the toughness stakes, resisted the move, until one day his son-in-law, James Fernades was gunned down in broad daylight on a Brooklyn street. 'Rusty' got the message and moved aside gracefully, but as it turned out, only temporarily.<br /> <br /> Galante listed his official residence at this time, as Apartment #8, 160 Waverley Place, in Greenwich Village, but in fact lived with Anne his live-in partner, at apartment #20B, 155 East 38th Street in Murray Hill. The FBI kept him under observation, jogging near the East River Drive, moving in and out of L & T Cleaners on Elizabeth Street in Little Italy, one of the business’s he owned, stopping to choose fruit at his favourite store in the village, Balducci’s, or lingering over an espresso and pastries at De Roberts on First Avenue before lunching at Tre Amic restaurant on Third Avenue. Sometimes they watched him as he walked through the teeming streets of Lower Manhattan, like a patriarchal Don moving through a village in Sicily, balding and with a bent walk, puffing on the perennial cigar, his people, the paesani, approaching him to touch his arm or bow in reverence, like a scene out of some Mafia movie. <br /> <br /> Mobsters in New York, salivated over the thought of what they thought they were, rather than accepting the reality of what they in fact, really were-dysfunctional criminals on the road to nowhere. The line between myth and reality blurred considerably following the screening of The Godfather in the earl 1970’s.<br /> <br /> Nearing seventy, Galante seems to have given up driving, and when he needed to travel by car, he used a bodyguard, or often his favourite daughter, the beautiful, dark-haired, Nina, his youngest child by his de facto wife, who would chauffer him in a gold coloured Eldorado. At least every two weeks, he would cross over to Brooklyn, and visit a business run by his son-in-law, Louis Volpe, called the Magic Lantern Bar, at 1625 Bath Avenue, in Bensonhurst, and would sit all night conducting what seemed to be business meetings with his associates. <br /> <br /> He was often observed with dark-skinned, swarthy Italians, and they spoke only in the Sicilian dialect as they discussed their business. These were the hungry and ambitious young Mafiosi he had imported from the island following his visit there in 1957. He was allowing them to set up their own crews and establish business interests, especially on Knickerbocker Avenue in Brooklyn- bakeries, pizza parlours, pastry shops, and cafes. These were the zips, men who would become his right arm- soldiers and bodyguards- who talked so fast, they had this nickname pinned on them by the Italian-American gangsters, who formed the main structure of the Bonanno crime family. The imports were a different breed to their American counterparts. Some sources claim the knick-name also referred to the Sicilian term for 'bumpkin,' others that is was a verbalization of the Italian food ziti. The zips were also known as siggies or geeps. Ironically, the older, original Sicilian Mafiosi who operated before Prohibition, often called ‘Moustache Petes,’ were also referred to as zips.<br /> <br /> According to Vincent Teresa, a Boston hoodlum who had served time in prison with Galante, '…these Sicilian mafiosi will run into a wall, put their head in a bucket of acid for you if they’re told to, not because they’re hungry, but because they’re disciplined. They have been brought up from birth over there to show respect and honour, and that’s what these punks over here don’t have. Once they’re told to get someone, that person hasn’t a chance.'<br /> <br /> Between his release from prison in January 1974, and his lunch appointment on July 12th 1979, Carmine Galante lead a hectic schedule.<br /> <br /> He took over a betting and loan-sharking racket operating in Pennsylvania Station that netted $500,000 a year. He put the pressure on a number of associates of Annielo Dellacroce, the Gambino family under boss, to sell him their interests in sweat shops in Manhattan, at heavily discounted rates. This may have been in retribution for Dellacroce ordering the murder of some of Galante’s drug dealing associates. The two men apparently hated each other with an unbridled passion <br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236991880,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />In March 1975, he travelled to Miami, Florida, booking into room 110 at the Diplomat Hotel on South Ocean Boulevard. He was registered there from the 27th until April 4th. On April 2nd he was arrested by agents of the Broward County Organized Crime Task Force for failing to register with the police that he was a convicted felon. <br /> <br /> Galante travelled to Los Angeles in August, 1975, to meet up with his contacts in Orange County. According to a source close to the Anaheim Police Department, he was organizing a possible take-over of the pornography rackets in Southern California. <br /> <br /> ‘Lilo’ was spotted meeting with people at Disneyland, dressed like a tourist in a white T shirt, sporting a ‘Coney Island hat’ and puffing away on his usual cigar. He was first spotted strolling down Main Street, and then he was seen in earnest conversation with a group of men as they banged around on the go-cart stand. He also spent time on payphones located outside the park’s main entrance, near the Mickey Mouse train stop.<br /> <br /> The major mob player in the porno business of Southern California, up to this time, was the Gambino Family through their capo, the seventy-one year old Ettore ‘Tony Russo’ Zappi. He and his son, Anthony, were managing the business using North Hollywood based William Haimowitz, a protégé of Zappi’s, who had moved from New York and set up shop with the help of Jimmy ‘The Weasel’ Fratiano, a member of the L.A. family, and Anaheim based John Lombardozzi, the brother of another powerful capo, Carmine Lombardozzi, who belonged to Carlo Gambino‘s crime family back in New York.<br /> <br /> Galante’s man in the porn business, Mickey Zaffarano, was making major inroads into the industry, stealing business away from the Gambino representatives, and one of the reasons for Galante’s visit, may well have revolved around these activities. Galante was also seen with these people at a restaurant in a major city in Los Angeles County, and meetings between porn operators and the Mafia representatives took place while Galante was visiting the area. Underworld sources indicated that Galante also had ambitions to consolidate Colombo and Luchese family members who operated here in Southern California, into one super family.<br /> <br /> In the early 1960s, organized crime had established a west coast base of operations in the San Fernando Valley. The Colombo crime family sent people out with money to start their west coast operations. It became the very first pornography business that created a corporate structure for the different parts of the business - distributing, producing, recruiting participants for the movies, filming, packaging, advertising, they created different corporate identities to make law enforcement think it was all owned by different people. Joe ‘The Whale’ Peraino and his brother Louis, both made men in the Colombo crime family, were the producers of the innovative and ground-breaking film, ‘Deep Throat.’<br /> <br /> There was obviously a deep load of potential money-making opportunities to be mined in Southern California for someone like Galante. He also was casting his ambitions beyond Los Angeles, and was tracked making visits to both Reno and Lake Tahoe.<br /> <br /> A few weeks before he made this trip, on June 28th, his eldest daughter by Anne Acquavella, Mary Lou, married Craig Tobiano at Our Saviours Catholic Church, on Park Avenue. The wedding was followed by cocktails at 5.30 p.m. then dinner, in the Cortillion Room of the august Pierre Hotel, across the street from Central Park. As mob weddings go, it wasn’t that big a deal, with only 160 guests attending.<br /> <br /> Dyker Heights is a quiet, residential neighbourhood in south-west Brooklyn, butting onto Bay Ridge. Its population is 70% Italian-American. When it was first developed as a housing area in 1895, it was listed as ‘The handsomest suburb in Greater New York.’ It’s home to the Scarpaci Funeral Home on 86th Street, long a final resting place for many New York Mafia mobsters.<br /> <br /> A few blocks to the north-west, 80th Street, runs between 10th and 11th Avenues. Here, on this narrow, one-way road, lined by neat, red-bricked houses, with orderly front yards, the sidewalks lined with maple trees, a van was parked, sometime between the evening of Monday October 6th and Tuesday, 7th 1975 . When police came to investigate what seemed to be an abandoned vehicle, they found inside, the bodies of two men, each wrapped in a blanket, secured by a cord. Each victim had been shot in the head, and according to the medical examiner, had been dead at least 24 hours.<br /> <br /> The van had been reported stolen from the Bath Beach area the previous weekend.<br /> <br /> The men were identified as George Adamo, aged 33, of Brooklyn, and Charles LaRocca, aged 28, of Jackson Heights, Queens. They were both associates of the Gambino family, and known narcotic traffickers.</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236992098,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p><br /> <br /> They may well have been the victims of a complex mob message sent to Galante by a man he apparently hated and feared-Annielo Delacroce- the underboss of the Gambino crime family, using the boss of another family to get the point home. <br /> <br /> It’s likely these two men had been dealing drugs with ‘Lilo,’and Carlo Gambino, a close friend of ‘Funzi’ Tieri, head of the Genovese family, finding out, had arranged with him to have the men killed by some of Tieri’s top killers. These men were part of a New Jersey based crew of the Genovese family, that had shifted its power base over to Brooklyn, following the death of it’s capo, notorious and legendary Mafioso, Angelo ‘Gyp’ DeCarlo. The new skipper, Frank Casina, was very close to Tieri, and another soldier in this crew was Tommy Lombardi.<br /> <br /> ‘Funzi’ Tieri, it’s believed, contacted Angelo Presinzano, using Tommy Lombardi as a go-between, and gave him a message to deliver to his cousin : <br /> <br /> ‘Tell ‘Lilo’ if he has anything coming, let him come round and see me.’<br /> <br /> Whatever else he was, Galante certainly was not a fool, and never bothered to try and recover whatever was outstanding. Alphonse Tieri, slight in stature, well into his sixties, was not only the boss of probably the biggest Cosa Nostra family in America, he also had a reputation for unbridled ferocity. A man who dressed in $1000 suits and sported mountains of expensive jewellery, he could turn a monster hoodlum into a puppy with a well-chosen word or even just the right look.<br /> <br /> The two dead men had been close to Carmine Consalvo, another underworld drug dealer, a major cocaine trafficker, who had taken a dive off his condominium in Fort Lee, New Jersey, a month earlier, to be followed later in the year by his brother Frances, better known as Frank, who went free-fall from the fifth floor of a high rise in Little Italy, Manhattan. Underworld sources claimed the men were killed by members of Vincent Gigante’s crew. The authorities came to dub these two killings, ‘The Murder of the Flying Consalvos.’ Frank had been a driver for Dellacroce in the early ‘70’s, and both men were thought to be associates of the Gambino family.<br /> <br /> These four killings in 1975, may have been only part of a series of underworld hits that went down following Galante’s release from prison, as he fought to re-establish his power base on the streets of New York, and other mobsters like Dellacroce and Alphonse Tieri went out of their way to make it difficult for him to do so.<br /> <br /> The New Jersey based Bank of Bloomfield went into receivership in December, 1975, mainly, by offering unsecured loans to mobsters from New England to Florida via various Teamster’s locals. Arnold Daner a business associate of the bank’s chief executive, Robert Prodan, gave evidence that $25000 was paid from the bank’s funds via intermediaries, to Carmine Galante during 1975. ‘Lilo’ was a man who looked at any source it seems, to provide him with the lubrication necessary to keep the wheels of his empire rolling. <br /> <br /> In August 1976, Galante organized the purchase of a summer home for his newly married daughter, paying $60,000 for a property at the corner of Tulip Avenue and Wakeman Road, in Hampton Bays, Long Island. He would often spend his weekends here gardening, enjoying his love of plants which he had developed during his long incarceration in federal prison on his drug conviction. On Labour weekend he organized a meeting among crime bosses at this secluded holiday hideout. Among those attending was Russell A. Bufalino, the mob boss of North East Pennsylvania, and the ubiquitous Angelo Presinzano.<br /> <br /> On Friday, September 25th 1976, 62 year old Andimo Pappadio and his wife returned home in his Cadillac, from an evening out. As he was parking his wife’s Cadillac into their garage, prior to moving his own onto their driveway, he noticed a maroon coloured sedan sitting across the street from his luxurious home on Eva Drive in Lido Beach. He went across to investigate and was felled by shotgun blasts fired from with the car, which roared of down the street, as his wife Eleanor Rose came running and screaming out of their house.<br /> <br /> Pappadio, a capo in the Luchese Family, and a major enforcer of his family’s interests in the garment centre of New York, had worked with Galante in the 1950’s, in the junk business. NYPD intelligence units posed that Pappadio had moved in on some of Galante’s gambling business, when ‘Lilo’ was away in prison, and this was pay-back time. Like so many underworld killings, this one was never solved.<br /> <br /> In April, 1977, ‘Lilo’ was back in the south, this time visiting a sick crime associate who was hospitalized in Dallas. In August he was again in Miami, appearing in the US District Court before a Grand Jury. As he always did, Galante took the 5th and was then taken into custody, being released on bail of $50,000 on September 3rd. <br /> <br /> Returning to New York, he went to stay at the summer home at Tulip Lane, on Long Island, and fell down some stairs. He was taken to the local hospital, treated for a groin injury, and released. Four days later, the FBI surveillance team tailing him, saw him go into a mob social club at 1657, Bath Avenue, in the Bensonhurst district of Brooklyn.<br /> <br /> On the night of July 6th 1977, two men humped 210 gallons of gasoline into Giuseppe’s Pizza Restaurant in Ambler, Pennsylvania. They had intended to light a fuse and watch the building go up from a safe distance. Instead, they got careless, and ‘boom’. There was nothing left of one of them but biscuit size pieces, but the second was identified as Vincenzo Fiordilino of Brooklyn, the 22 year old nephew of Giovanni Fiordilino, a member of the Bonanno family. The bombing, according to police intelligence, was one of dozens of torch jobs blowing up pizza parlours in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and New York. They believed Carmine Galante was orchestrating a move to push the Gambino family out of the cheese business, a hugely lucrative operation supplying hundreds of restaurants across the tri-state area, one that Joe Bonanno had controlled in his halcyon days, through companies like Grand Cheese Products Inc. of Font Du Lac, Wisconsin. It was another example of Galante’s determination to aggravate Dellacroce and the administration of the Gambino family. <br /> <br /> Before his visit to Florida, a year following the first of the six killings that would occur across New York, a story circulated that Galante had put out an A.P.B. on ‘The Son of Sam’ killer, ordering his small army of Mafiosi and associates to use all their underworld contacts to help track down the killer. David Berkowitz was in fact captured on August 10th but as a result of detective work by the Yonkers police department and not as a result of some mob informant. <br /> <br /> On October 11th Galante was arrested by US Marshals operating out of the SDNY office and taken into custody on charges of parole violation. He had been caught in a surveillance sweep meeting with known mobsters. He was committed to prison in 1978, at the medium-security federal prison at Danbury, Connecticut, and placed under 24 hour a day guard as threats had been made against him.<br /> <br /> During the time he was in prison, he was visited often by Anthony Spero. He had became the consigliere, or counsellor of the Bonanno Family in 1968 after Joe Bonanno and his immediate family left New York for Tucson, Arizona., at the end of the Bannana War. The diminutive Spero dated back to the 1950's, when he was a soldier under Carmine Galante in Brooklyn and later moved up to Capo, or crew chief. A serious money-maker for the family, he generated revenue in gambling, loan-sharking, hotel and motel franchising and in the taxi-limousine service. An avid bird-fancier, he kept 300 exotic birds on the roof of his social club on Bath Avenue, in Brooklyn. He had been seen making frequent trips to Lewisburg to visit the imprisoned Carmine Galante in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. Through Spero, Galante kept control of his troops, issuing messages and orders.<br /> <br /> The court ordered the release of Carmine Galante in October 1978 on the basis of a brief filed by Jerry Rosenberg as Galante's petitioner. Rosenberg, serving life without parole, known in the prison system as ‘Jerry the Jew,‘ was convicted of killing two policemen in New York City during a hold up in May 1962. But a correspondence school in Illinois has granted him two law degrees. A paperback has been written on his life, and Hollywood turned that into a TV movie titled ‘Doing Life.’ The diminutive Galante and hyper-active Rosenberg would indeed have made an ‘odd couple’ at Auburn Prison, in upstate New York.<br /> <br /> On March 1st 1979, Galante left Milan Prison in Michigan, and flew into La Guardia Airport. He was back in the volcano, as Joe Bonanno used to refer to New York, and had four months to live.<br /> <br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/death-in-the-afternoon-the-1"><span style="font-size:x-large;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">READ PART 2</span></span></a></p>
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Death in the Afternoon, The shadow of a Dream: The Story of Carmine Galante (Part 2)
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/death-in-the-afternoon-the-1
2010-11-24T10:00:00.000Z
2010-11-24T10:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><span style="font-weight:bold;"><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/death-in-the-afternoon-the">Back to part 1</a><br /> <br /> During Lunch</span><br /> <br /> As his nephew drove away from the drop-off, Galante walked into the restaurant, whose front windows were masked by yellow curtains. It was a favourite meeting place, where he often arranged sit-downs with his closest associates. Knickerbocker Avenue had for over 50 years been the turf of the Bonanno crime family, according to FBI files, and an ant-heap of underworld activity.<br /> <br /> Galante had placed Salvatore ‘Toto’ Catalano, who had moved to New York from Sicily, in 1961, and was now one of his capos, in charge of the area. He based himself at Colosseo Imports, a magazine and record store, run by his brothers, Vito and Domick. ‘Toto’ had stepped up after Peter Licata, an old time Bonanno skipper had been shot dead in November, 1976, allegedly by Cesare Bonventre, now one of Galante’s bodyguards. Licata had been deep into drug trafficking along with Galante and Cristoforo Robino, a powerful capo in the Colombo crime family, until he was murdered. Catalano would himself become notorious for his connection into the famous ‘Pizza Connection’ case, a Mafia-backed drug racket, operated in part through pizza parlours, that imported an estimated $1.6 billion worth of heroin into the United States up to 1984, when Federal Bureau of Investigation raids broke the case.<br /> <br /> The avenue was filled with violent and improbable mobsters, crowding the sidewalks and meeting at the major intersection points for the Bonanno family members in this part of Brooklyn-the Café Del Viale, Café Dello Sport and Café Bella Palermo.<br /> <br /> Joe Turano, the owner of Joe and Mary’s restaurant, did a thriving business in hi-jacked meat. There was Luigi Ronsisvalle, an imported killer from Catania, with 13 hits to his credit. Paolo Laporte, an armourer for the hoods who filled the cafés and pizza shops. Vinceno ‘Enzo’ Napoli, a member of the Gambino family and a major fence for the New York underworld. Giusepp Ganci, known as ‘The Buffalo,’ a big time drug dealer working closely with Catalano. He had moved to Brooklyn from San Giuseppe Iato, the Sicilian Mafia stronghold across the hills from Corleone. Anthony Aiello, aka ‘Commerciante,’ a premier loan shark at the baccarat game held in the Café Del Viale, after it closed for normal business, on a busy block near Hart Street. Felice Puma, the godson of Carmine Galante, who ran the Café Scopello, and another drug dealer, who used Ronsisvalle as a driver and bodyguard, and Dominic ‘Mimmo’ Tartamella, who drove a red Porsche that was used to transport drug consignments between Florida and New York.<br /> <br /> Inside the small, two dining room eatery, walls papered in brown velvet and tables covered in yellow oil cloth, two men, Joe Paravati and his friend Joe Polizzi, along with another man, were eating at a table in the rear, just to the left of the door that lead out onto the two hundred square feet patio in the back yard. Here, a table was laid out for lunch- fish, salad and a jug of red wine. No pasta to-day.<br /> <br /> Galante stopped to talk to the old grandmother of the family, Constance, who was knitting at a table, and greeted his 48 year old cousin Joe, and his son and daughter, nodding at the cook-counterman, and then went through to sit outside, his back to the yard, a small garden of tomato vines. Here, he engaged in conversation with his other cousin, Angelo Presinzano, who was now aged 72. <br /> <br /> They had been together a long time, but although he was getting on in years, 'Moey' had still not lost his quick and fiery temper. During the 'Banana War' in the 1960s, he had been on one occasion, a patient in University Hospital, Manhattan, and kept a loaded .38 calibre revolver in his bedside cabinet. There's no doubt had someone come after him, there would have been a shoot-out in the ward.<br /> <br /> Galante and his cousin Joe, were also here to-day to meet with 40 year old Leonard 'Nardo' Coppolla, a close associate of Galante’s and former friend of Turano’s. <br /> <br /> In February, 1979, Coppolla and Turano had fallen out over a dispute involving Mary Turano, Joe’s wife, and Coppolla had been banned from ever entering the restaurant again. The dispute had been brought to Galante’s attention, and he had decided to arbitrate in the matter over lunch on this day. Also, Joseph was scheduled to leave later in the day and travel to Sardinia to meet up with his wife and another daughter who were both there on holiday, and Galante had come to wish him 'bon voyage.'<br /> <br /> At about one-thirty in the afternoon, the street door to the restaurant opened, and Coppolla walked in, accompanied by two tall, good-looking young Italians, both despite the heat, wearing heavy leather jackets to conceal handguns in their belts. They were two of Galante’s special, hand-picked bodyguards, Baldo Amato and Cesare Bonventre, cousins, who like Galante’s parents, came from Castellammarese del Golfo. The three men went out onto the patio and joined Galante, Turano and Presinzano. They chatted for a while, then the three newcomers went back into the restaurant and ate lunch. Galante and the other two met had already eaten and sat under the shade of a yellow-and-turquoise checked umbrella, smoking and talking among themselves. <br /> <br /> It was by now a stinking hot afternoon. <br /> <br /> Galante was still sitting, in front of the table, with his back to the small garden. The three newcomers, having finished their meal, went out onto the patio and joined the group there. Amato sat to his left and Bonventre on his right. Joe Turano, who had stripped off his shirt and was only wearing pants and his undershirt, lounged on a chair with his back to the open door leading into the restaurant. Coppola, a tall, slim man with heavy black hair, wearing a white shirt, light coloured slacks and black shoes, sat across from Bonventre, tucked into the corner, between the wire fence that divided off the next door property, and cluster of potted plants sitting against the outside wall of the restaurant.<br /> <br /> About two-thirty, the restaurant telephone rang. John Turano, the 18 year old son of Joe, answered it. He listened to the caller, James Galante who was calling to see if his uncle was still there. ‘I’ll be right over,’ he said. <br /> <br /> 'Little Moe' had been complaining about stomach pains, and Galante suggested he go home. He said his farewells and left. His were the most fortuitous cramps ever endured by anyone.<br /> <br /> It was now approximately 2.40 in the afternoon as a four-door, blue Mercury Montego, registration 270 NYU, pulled up outside the restaurant and double-parked in the street. The car had been stolen from Ozone Park, Queens, on June 13th. The driver, a red-striped ski mask covering his face, stepped out. He was hefting a .3030 M1 carbine. Three men, also wearing ski masks, left the car and jogged into the building.<br /> <br /> Just inside the doorway, hung a picture of 'The Last Supper.' On another wall was a signed, and fading photo of the old movie star, Fernando Lamas.<br /> <br /> The first gunman in, was carrying a pump action shotgun. He was tall and slim in dark clothes, his face covered by an olive gray ski mask. Behind him, came a medium sized man, swinging a double-barrelled shotgun, also masked. The third masked man, was smaller, but solid and heavily built, with a pot-belly. He was hefting a pistol. The first man stopped, and said, 'In the back, Sally.' As the men rushed the patio, John Turano screamed out in warning: 'Pappa,' and then ran towards a storeroom alongside the kitchen. He knew there was a loaded .38 revolver here, on a shelf, just inside the door. As he struggled to reach it, and keep the door closed, the pot-bellied gunman turned, forced open the door and shot him twice, in the back.<br /> <br /> Outside, Joe Turano was screaming: 'What are you doing?' The middle gunman stepped out on to the patio and levelled the double barrel shotgun and fired first, thirty pellets of buckshot catching Galante as he was rising from his chair. <br /> <br /> Joe Turano yelled again: 'What are you doing?' The first shooter jacked his pump action, pressed it towards Turano’s chest and blew him off his feet, the buckshot going through the upper body, leaving the paper wadding from the shell, embedded in the flesh, the shot going through the chest, passing through the lungs and severing major blood vessels in the neck and heart, tearing away the side of his face and part of his right shoulder. The gunman then swung away from Turano, jacking and firing three times into Galante, tearing lumps of muscle from his right arm, ripping into the side of his face and blowing out his left eye. As the old man pitched from his patio chair, the killer with the double-barrel fired a final blast into his back.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236976670,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236976670?profile=original" />Nardo Coppolla was pushing himself up and away from the table, as the man who had been sitting alongside him, pulled out a .30 calibre automatic and shot him once in the face, and then five times in the chest, tumbling him off his feet onto the concrete patio. As he sprawled face down, the killer with the pump action stepped forward, around the table, racked up a shell, and blasted off the top of his head, blowing his brains across the patio onto the restaurant wall, and then fired a final round into his back.<br /> <br /> Constanza Turano, 18, the other daughter of the family, crouched in terror behind a refrigerator in the kitchen area. She stared in horror through the doorway at the carnage taking place outside on the patio. The noise was deafening; there was gun smoke everywhere. She saw the other leather-jacketed man, the one with dark hair, kneeling behind an overturned table, a .38 revolver in his hand.<br /> <br /> Across the street at 202 Knickerbocker Avenue, a young woman, Migdalia Figuero, was preparing lunch. She looked out over the street on hearing the sound of gunfire, and saw the three gunmen race out of the building and jump into the car which sped off down the Knickerbocker, turning right into Jefferson Street and disappearing up towards Flushing Avenue. She memorized the plate number. She then saw two, tall, young men in leather jackets leaving. One, with dirty blond hair holding a handgun by his side, walked stiff-legged, as though he had wet himself. They quickly moved away down the Avenue, towards a blue Lincoln saloon, which they then climbed into, and then, they drove away. These two had been in an absolute blizzard of bullets, yet walked away dry. <br /> </p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236977264,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236977264?profile=original" /></p>
<p><br /> <br /> Over the next few minutes, police emergency service operators received twenty-three calls reporting that there had been a shooting at 205 Knickerbocker Avenue. <br /> <br /> A crowd was gathering outside the restaurant at exactly 3.20, as the first 83rd Precinct patrol car arrived. Officer John Bobot, gun drawn, was the first into the building. Soon ambulances arrived and Joe and John Turano were rushed away by ambulance. The son would survive. His father was not so lucky. He died on the way to Wyckoff Heights Hospital.<br /> <br /> By four o’clock, detectives from the Queens Homicide Task Force were clustered around the two bodies outside in the backyard. The patio was splashed with blood, and littered with double-0 shotgun and pistol shell casings; nineteen in all would be recorded. The concrete wall to the left of the door was splattered with brain matter. Wedged between the garden wall and the dining table, his head cocked over, his right handing resting on his hip, and a cigar shot to pieces, but still clenched between his dead lips, lay the body of Carmine Galante, flies crawling across his face as his blood oozed away down the six-inch drain in the concrete floor. On his left wrist his Cartier watch was still ticking. On the table, a half finished lettuce and tomato salad, some rolls, a peach and a half-empty carafe of red wine were standing on the floral-pattern, plastic tablecloth. One like it, from an adjoining table, would later be used to cover Galante’s corpse. Cops from the intelligence unit and agents of the FBI started arriving, and soon the restaurant was crowded with hard-faced men, taking notes and talking quietly to each other. Twenty New York City police detectives would be assigned to the inquiry<br /> <br /> The press arrived, and photographers were soon scrambling onto adjoining rooftops, anxious to get the best shots of the carnage carnival, photos that would fill the New York dailies the following morning. <br /> <br /> The detectives stepped gingerly around the debris littering the courtyard. One of the cops estimated a piece of Coppola’s brain, from the body, by tape measure, recording the distance as over eleven feet. <br /> <br /> Bill Clark, a lead detective on the investigation, attached to the organized-crime intelligence division, years down the track, became the executive producer of NYPD Blue, the popular cop show that ran for twelve years from 1993.<br /> <br /> Galante’s body was eventually carried out to a waiting hearse, four hours after he was gunned down, under the sign across the front of the restaurant: ‘We give special attention to Outgoing Orders.’<br /> <br /> The day after the hit, detectives from police intelligence, called on ‘Little’ Moe’ at his home on South 10th Street, in Brooklyn, not far from the East River.<br /> <br /> ‘We’re here to talk to you about Mr. Galante’s killing,’ one of the cops said.<br /> <br /> ‘Come back when I’m dead,’ said Moe, slamming the door in their face.<br /> <br /> There had been rumours of an impending hit on Galante for over two years. Like the man he most probably killed thirty-six years earlier on the streets of Manhattan, Carlo Tresca, he had many enemies. When someone asked him about the risk of assassination, he boasted, 'No one will ever kill me, they wouldn’t dare.' He couldn’t have been more wrong. The instrument of his ambition, the zips, the men he had encouraged and nurtured within the Bonanno family, became the implement of his destruction. It had never apparently occurred to Galante that the best bodyguards also make the best killers. <br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236977467,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236977467?profile=original" />After the autopsy, Galante’s body was laid out in Chapel B, on the second floor of the Provenzano-Lanza Funeral Home at 43 Second Avenue on the Lower East Side, and he was buried on July 17th at Saint John’s Cemetery in Queens, in section twenty-five. It was a small funeral, only fifty-nine mourners attended, including Helen Marulli, Nina in a black dress, and Galante’s lawyer, the infamous Roy Cohn. At the grave side, the priest pronounced that he would leave 'judgment to God,' as Nina placed a red rose on her beloved father’s coffin. Thirty four wreaths of flowers were delivered to the funeral home. One was contained in a purple ribbon that read ‘Dear Don Galante.’<br /> <br /> His gravestone is relatively unassuming, unlike some of the monolithic monuments to mob bosses like Joe Profaci and Charley Luciano, who also lie here in everlasting sleep, and located on the far south of the cemetery close to the never-ending traffic stream on Metropolitan Avenue. The granite block carries the inscription: ‘Love goes on Forever.’<br /> <br /> A federal agent who tracked the procession, remarked on the small entourage. <br /> <br /> ‘Galante was so bad,’ he said, ‘people didn’t want to see him, even when he was dead.’ Another commented on that fact that there wasn’t a made man to be seen.<br /> <br /> Even the men of his own crime family didn’t like him. Funerals tell observers a lot about the wise guys. This one was simple a blank screen.<br /> <br /> ‘Was he an actor?’ a young boy asked one of the police officers on guard duty.<br /> <br /> ‘No,’ replied the cop. ‘He was a gangster.’<br /> <br /> In a strange quirk, the mortician in charge of Galante’s embalming, moonlighted as the maitre’d at one of Lillo’s favourite restaurants, on the corner of 1st Avenue and 10th Street, also called Lanza‘s. Here, was a man who truly served Carmine Galante in life and death!<br /> <br /> Five days earlier, another epitaph had been recorded at the site of his murder. As the van taking Galante’s body drove off from the restaurant, a man in the crowd that had gathered, leaned forward and spat on the hearse. Someone asked him why he had done so. 'It was during the war and I was working very hard against the fascist Mussolini with my friend and hero, Carlo Tresca,' said Joseph Bricolli. 'Galante was the man who killed Tresca…..Garbage is what he was. He killed a hero and sold heroin to children.'<br /> <br /> Just why Galante was really killed and who all the killers were, will never be officially known. Benjamin Ruggiero, a soldier in the Bonanno family, claimed 'he got hit because he wouldn’t share his drug business with anyone else in the family.'<br /> <br /> According to Robert Stewart, head of the Newark Organized Crime Strike Force, and one of the lead prosecutors in the famous 'Pizza Connection Trial,' Galante was killed because he stood as an obstacle to Sal Catalano, Giuseppe Ganci and other major zips who were orchestrating the Bonanno family’s main drug distribution ring. <br /> <br /> In fact the government's allegation, in its opening statement to the jury during the famous 1985 'Pizza Connection Trial,' stated that Catalano was involved in the 1979 murder of Carmine Galante. Luigi Ronsisvalle told FBI agents that if they were looking at Catalano for the hit on ‘Lilo,’ they were on the right track.<br /> <br /> The Commission Case indictment, unsealed on February 26th 1985, included as one of the predicated acts of racketeering: ' that the murder of Carmine Galante and two of his associates was in furtherance of the Commission’s efforts to resolve a Bonanno family leadership dispute.'<br /> <br /> So as often in gangland hits, you pays your money, and takes your pick.<br /> <br /> <span style="font-weight:bold;">After Lunch</span><br /> <br /> The law did however, get one of the killers, and it is safe to assume the identity of the other two, or at least an educated guess. Bruno Indelicato, son of 'Sonny Red' a capo in the family, had certainly been in that blue Mecury Montego saloon. His palm print was found on the car when it was discovered abandoned only a few blocks away, on Ingraham Street, near Gardner Avenue, less than half a mile from the scene of the shooting, in an industrial area to the north of the restaurant. That was enough to get him tracked down and arrested. Underworld sources claimed his father was in on the hit also, maybe the driver. Then again, the driver, or indeed one of the killers, may have been Louis ‘Louie Gaeta’ Giongetti, who was named in a U.S. Court of Appeals judgement determined on January 13th 1989 as part of the conspiracy. He may however, have only been the armourer for the hit.<br /> <br /> Bruno was tried as part of the Commission Case, for the murder of Carmine Galante, and sentenced to forty years in prison. A fingerprint clue on a door handle, led to another soldier in the Bonanno family, a man called Santo Giordano, an auto-mechanic and part-time pilot, but he died in a plane crash in 1983, at Edwards Airport, near Blue Point, Long Island, before a case could be developed against him. The third shooter, the thickset thug with the big belly, may well have been Dominic Trinchera, who was promoted to the position of capo, or crew boss, in the family, not long after Galante was killed. The identity of the car driver was never established for certain.<br /> <br /> In a Supreme Court appeal judgment on petition for a writ for certiorari Number 88-1881 in 1989, following the prison sentence of Bruno Indelicato, the following information appeared: <br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">Petitioner, a soldier in the Bonanno family, and fellow Bonanno soldier Dominic Trinchera, among others, carried out the Commission's plan to assassinate Galante and his associates. They prepared for the murders for several months, obtaining a stolen getaway car and a cache of firearms. The man who supplied the weapons testified that Trinchera had boasted that his position in the family would improve after the executions. Pet. App. 7a, 47a, 49a; Gov't En Banc Br. 9-11.</span> <br /> <br /> Trinchera’s dizzy rise to power didn’t last for long. In 1981 he, and two other family capi, 'Sonny Red' Indelicato, Bruno's father, and Philip Giaccone were all murdered as a result of a power struggle taking place in the Bonanno family, which may have had its roots in the events leading up to Galante’s murder. Interestingly, in the wild shoot out that occurred in a building owned by Sammy Gravanao of the Gambino Family, one of the shooters, was Santo Giordano, who was accidentally hit, and as a result became a paraplegic. Because of his disability, whenever he flew his aircraft, he always needed a co-pilot, who unfortunately was with him that day when the plane did a nose-dive, shortly after take off.<br /> <br /> As the shooting was taking place in Brooklyn, across the East River in Manhattan’s Little Italy, Detective John Gurnee of the NYPD was staked out on surveillance of the Gambino crime family’s Mulberry Street headquarters. <br /> <br /> Sitting in an apartment across the street he and his team, had cameras zoomed onto the frontage of the Ravenite Social Club, the base of Anniello Dellacroce, the powerful under boss of the family. About thirty minutes after the shooting went down, Gurnee filmed a brown Lincoln limousine pull up and double park on the sidewalk. The driver, a tallish, thin man, was observed taking a pistol from the dashboard and tucking it into his waistband. The cops on surveillance recognized him as Bruno Indelicato. Then, his father, 'Sonny Red' arrived followed by the Bonanno consigliere, Stefano Cannone, J.B. Indelicato, the brother of ‘Sonny Red,’ and Phillip Giaccone. They were all welcomed and hugged by Dellacroce. What was the possible connection to this meeting and the death of Galante? <br /> <br /> Were the Gambino and Bonanno families working in conjunction? According to indictments in the Commission case, the hit on Galante was cleared specifically by Aniello Dellacroce, in conjunction with Philip Rastelli.<br /> <br /> Only a few days previously, the ‘other’ ruling head of the Bonanno family, 'Rusty' Rastelli, imprisoned in the MCC building in Manhattan having been convicted of Hobbs Act and criminal anti-trust violations in 1976 and sentenced to ten years imprisonment had been inundated with visitors, including Joey Massino and Dominick Napolitano, both seasoned veterans in the family, Nicky Marangello, Stefano Cannone, Philip Giaccone, Armand Pollastrino and Frank Lupo. <br /> <br /> Underworld informers confirmed that a top level meeting had gone down in Florida, at the Boca Raton home of Gerry Catena, the retired Genovese family capo, who many believed actually ran the family, after Vito Genovese was sent off to prison on drug charges in 1959. <br /> <br /> It was rumoured that Frank Tieri, the current boss of that family, along with Paul Castellano, head of the Gambino crime family, and Anthony Corallo, boss of the Luchese family, were among the powerful underworld heads of state who arbitrated, then agreed that Galante had to go. It was even rumoured that Joseph Bonanno, the seventy-four year old, disposed former family boss, was contacted at his home in Arizona to put the final stamp of approval on the plan. It's possible that Aniello Dellacroce himself, travelled to Tucson, where the elder Bonanno lived, to confirm that the hit was going down and to ensure that Joe would not use the killing as an opportunity to re-ignite his interest in the families affairs. <br /> <br /> Vito De Filippo, the nephew of Joe Bonanno, was a capo in the family. He had moved to New York from Sicily in 1955, and may have been running a casino in Port au Prince, Haiti for Joe. He was family, and he was close to the patriarch. Some sources claim it was he in fact who was ordered by the Commission to make the journey to Tucson and break the news about the intended Galante killing.<br /> <br /> The only reigning family head in New York to oppose the hit was apparently Carmine Persico, leader of the Colombo family. This came out in the 1986 Colombo Family trial testimony of Fred DeChristopher, the cousin of Persico, who recalled a conversation he’d had with Persico, who’d said, ‘……quite frankly, I voted against him getting hurt.’<br /> <br /> In the appeal hearing following the famous ‘Commission Case’ the judges of the 2nd Circuit found in 868 F. 2nd 524 1989:<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">Finally, there was testimony from an undercover agent that, because of the Bonanno family's internal dissension and instability, the Commission controlled that family very closely. At the time of the murder, there was an internal dispute between rival Bonanno bosses Philip Rastelli and Galante. [**25] There was specific testimony that after Galante was murdered, the Commission actively reorganized the Bonanno family under Rastelli and returned autonomous control to the family for the first time in a decade. The jury could reasonably conclude that the Commission approved the murder of Galante in order to resolve the Rastelli-Galante dispute and to restore order and autonomy to the Bonanno family.</span><br /> <br /> So, putting the pieces together, law authorities concluded that the murder of Galante was an organized hit, with consent and approval coming down from the highest level. <br /> <br /> Whatever his crime, he had paid the ultimate price. He joined an illustrious alumni of New York mob bosses who had all completed a baccalaureate in the art of dying on the job, so to speak:<br /> <br /> Vincent Terranova gunned down 1922<br /> Salvatore D'Aquila shot dead on an East Village street in 1928.<br /> Joseph Morello (perhaps the foundling father of the New York Mafia) killed in his office in East Hartem in 1930<br /> Tom Reina, gunned down in the Bronx, in 1930.<br /> Manfredi Mineo dropped by a shotgun blast as he left an apartment in the Bronx, also in 1930. <br /> Giuseppe Masseria hit in a Coney Island restaurant in 1931. <br /> Salvatore Maranzano shot and stabbed to death in his office, in Manhattan, in 1931. <br /> Vincent Mangano, “disappeared” in 1951. <br /> Frank Scalice shot by two killers in a Bronx fruit shop.<br /> Albert Anastasia shot out of his barber chair at a Sixth Avenue hotel, in 1957. <br /> Joe Colombo gunned down and vegtableized on Columbus Circle in 1971. <br /> Tommy Eboli, blown out of his socks in Brooklyn, in 1972. <br /> And yet to come, six years down the track, the same Paul Castellano who had voted on Galante's death, who never got around to celebrating Xmas, 1985, dyeing in the gutter of East 46th Street in mid-town Manhattan on December 16th.<br /> <br /> Some sources claim Galante was in fact never elected head of the family that he was simply a capo, or crew boss, and that Rastelli stayed in the position until his death in 1991. If that was the case, it's hard to fathom why so many top bosses had to gather in concave to arbitrate on ways of removing him. Soldiers and capi were regularly killed in mob families, simply on the order of their administration. There had to be something special about 'Lilo' and I'm sure it just wasn't his bad temper.<br /> <br /> Crime historians postulate that his hatred of the Gambino family, his frenzy to control the drug trafficking trade in New York, his passion to head up the Bonanno family and his apparent dominance of the uncontrollable zips, was a mixture that was surely going to lead to serious indigestion among the other four mobs, maybe even lead to another war to equal the one back in 1930-31. That being the case, his removal, obviously took up a lot of time and generated some serious thinking by his peers. <br /> <br /> After long and careful debate, these powerful mob bosses no doubt came to the conclusion that people don't change when they see the light. They change when they feel the heat. Lillo had forgotten one of the basic tenets that rules the life of the mobster:<br /> <br /> ‘There’s one thing to be said for inviting trouble. As a rule, it generally accepts the invitation.’<br /> <br /> Galante was a strange little fellow. <br /> <br /> Redoubtable, fearless, daunting are just some of the adjectives that were used to describe him. Remo Francescheni, a New York police officer, one time head of the NYPD organized crime squad, said of him: <br /> <br /> ' He was into everything-narcotics, pornography, loan-sharking, labour rackets. He was trying to turn all the other crime families upside down. He was a vicious guy. A cold, cold fish. Very perceptive. He paid his dues. You don’t get many people who spend as much time in jail as Galante did, and still retain and build power. The rest of them are copper. He is pure steel.'<br /> <br /> Ralph Salerno, the New York detective, long considered one of the top experts on organized crime in New York, said, ‘If someone got out of line, Carlo Gambino would say, Lean on him a little. Galante would say, Hit him!’<br /> <br /> Lefty Ruggerio, a soldier in the crew skippered by Napolitano thought of Galante<br /> ‘as a mean son of a bitch. Lots of people hate him,’ he told FBI undercover agent Joe Pistone. ‘They feel he is only out for himself…..There’s a lot of people out there who would like to see him get whacked.’<br /> <br /> Like many men who are vertically retarded, he made up for his lack of inches by a precocious nature that was driven, in his case, by a fierce and frightening unpredictability. Over and over again, FBI reports compiled over many years, are captioned:<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">in view of subject’s record, that he has carried firearms in the past and is known to have shot a law enforcement officer, HE SHOULD BE CONSIDERED ARMED AND DANGEROUS.</span> <br /> <br /> His nemesis, The Federal Bureau of Narcotics, knew him only too well. Their agents characterized him as paranoid, and ‘the most violent of racketeers. A real freak.’<br /> <br /> And yet, a man assessed by a prison psychiatrist as being almost an illiterate moron, could find times to sit and talk at length almost like a college professor, quoting St. Augustine, Plato and Descartes, often emphasizing the point he was making by waving around one of his innumerable cigars. Something would trigger him off however, and he would fly into a white, spittle inducing rage. He was at times, a real Hotspur of a man. People who came into contact with him, called him a psychological gamesman. He hated to lose arguments or to be humiliated. He would offer praise one minute and be abusive the next in order to unnerve those around him. He had a reputation in the mob as a stone killer, a man who would murder without fear or compunction, any time, anywhere, with a clinical detachment which made him even more deadly and effective.<br /> <br /> He was a person of almost total contradictions. Although the mob stressed honour, but turned a blind eye to a member’s proclivity to extramarital relationships, assuming he would remain faithful to the family ethic, Galante spent the last thirty years of his life separated from his wife, enjoying the fruits of an illicit relationship. <br /> <br /> The standard tenet in the Mafia was no to drugs, although many members circumnavigated this. Galante’s approach was to embrace narcotic trafficking with open arms, as an acceptable income earning objective. He was one of America’s most consecrated and rapacious drug dealers, and was reported to be the inventor of the black man test, an infallible experiment devised to ascertain the purity of heroin. A black addict would be kidnapped and injected with a double-bag. If he became comatose within a specific time, the narcotic was judged to be the correct purity.<br /> <br /> Carmine Galante had told his friends that his boss, Joe Bonanno had taught him the one great rule in organized crime was that there was nothing that came close to making money like dealing in heroin.<br /> <br /> He had a fierce reputation for meanness. According to a conversation recorded on a wiretap, Joe Zicarelli was overheard saying: ' I only learned here of late that Don Peppino (Joe Bonanno) is of this nature (mean.) But I got my lesson from Lilo and Lilo got his lesson from trying to duplicate him (Bonanno.) The more work you did, the broker this guy kept you.' Another FBN enquiry revealed that Zicarelli may have taken over as the narcotics manager for the Bonanno family when Galante was sent to prison in 1962.<br /> <br /> Carmine Galante developed a reputation for giving his men a loose rein in running their operations, provided they kept their tributes flowing in. In 1962, law enforcement placed a bug in the office of Angelo ‘The Gyp’ De Carlo a crew captain in the New Jersey Genovese family. He was heard musing on this, with two of his men, Joe ‘The Indian’ Polverino and Carl ‘Lash’ Silesia, talking about Harold ’Kayo’ Konigsberg, a ruthless killer and mob enforcer, who is near to being whacked for some mob transgression. Konigsberg worked for Joseph Zicarelli, based in Bayonne. <br /> <br /> ‘It’s Joe’s fault,’ says De Carlo on the tape, referring to the lack of control exercised over Konigsberg. It’s also Lilo’s fault, that’s who it is. Lilo gives his men a wide latitude, tells them they can do anything they want, go anyplace they want.’<br /> <br /> He was also a big softy when it came to his favourite child, Nina. Evidence that emerged from the Commission Trial, showed that he had this wistful dream of uniting the Bonanno and Colombo families through a marriage between Nina, and Alphonse Persico, the son of Carmine 'The Snake' Persico, the boss of the Colombo family. <br /> Nina apparently had a ‘crush’ on Allie.<br /> <br /> Galante apparently, even thought of making Nina the first ever, female button, or made member of the Mafia. <br /> <br /> If nothing else, Carmine Galante’s passing calmed things down for a while in the New York underworld. Rastelli was re-confirmed as boss of the Bonanno family, a position he maintained, although either in prison or on bail, until he died. His place was taken by big Joey Massino, who ran the family until his own arrest. He had eased off on the drug dealing, reverting to the more traditional mob activities, loan-sharking, extortion, hi-jacking, gambling and has also got his members into white collar crimes, such as pump-and-dump stock scams on Wall Street.<br /> <br /> Nicky Marangello, the dark haired, unassuming gopher who had visited Galante all those years before in Binghampton, was seen as a potential threat to the conspirators who had arranged Galante’s killing, and he was also marked for death. Reason prevailed however, and instead of killing him, Rastelli simply demoted him down off his position on the family’s administration, from under boss to capo. He died of natural causes in 1999.<br /> <br /> In 1987, the Federal Government, for the first time, under the R.I. C.O. law, filed a civil racketeering suit against an organized-crime family-the Bonannos- to prevent it from enrolling new members and to stop it from reaping ‘enormous financial windfalls’ through unlawful and even legal business activities.<br /> <br /> Joe Bonanno kept on going, and eventually died at the age of 96, in 2002. He had lived in seemingly perennial retirement in Arizona, no doubt still agonizing over the ethics of honour, and regretting the passing of the true age of mobsters.<br /> <br /> Perhaps, at times when he reflected on his past glories, over a snifter of his favourite brandy, he gave a passing thought to the man who, all those years ago, drove him around New York- the little guy with the hard, arctic stare and the tightly strung temperament- who was always chewing on a stogie.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236977866,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236977866?profile=original" />After the death of her husband, and the shooting of her son, Mary Turano presumably had enough of the food trade, and closed the restaurant. At some stage, certainly by 1989, it was an Asian take-away, called 'Ko-Kei,' and to-day, it is one of the very few shops on this busy thoroughfare that is closed and empty.<br /> <br /> Just about everyone involved in the whack-out on Carmine Galante is dead and gone, or in the slams.<br /> <br /> Rastelli died from liver cancer, not long after he was released from prison. Paul Castellano was extremely surprised to be shot in the face one cold, December night in 1985, as he climbed out of his limo, en-route to a prime rib at Sparks Steak House in mid-town Manhattan. Annielo Dellacroce had pre-deceased him by a week or so, another victim to cancer. Sonny Red, if indeed he was part of the hit team, got his, along with Trinchera and the other family capo Philip Giaccone, in a Bonanno double cross a couple of years after Galante was hit. Cesare Bonventre was a further victim of the family's duplicity. He was shot and then his body cut up and sank into three drums of glue. <br /> <br /> It's what's known in the underworld, ‘as coming to a sticky end.’ <br /> <br /> Twenty years after his murder, authorities charged Louis "Louie Ha-Ha" Attanasio, 59, of Toms River, who they said was later promoted to acting underboss of the Bonanno family. Also charged were Attanasio's brother, Robert "Bobby Ha-Ha" Attanasio, 57, and Peter "Peter Rabbit" Calabrese, 55, both of Staten Island. <br /> <br /> The only major players in Galante's actual killing, still around, are Bruno ( well, perhaps the driver of that blue Mercury is maybe kicking,) and Baldo Amato. <br /> <br /> Amato went down in October 2006 for a double murder. <br /> <br /> 'Mr. Amato,' said the presiding judge, making no effort to mask his disgust, 'you’re just a plain, wanton murderer and a Mafia assassin. The sentence I’m going to give you, as far as I'm concerned, is a gift.' <br /> <br /> The gift was life in prison.<br /> <br /> Bruno Indelicato went to prison on his conviction, at the famous 'Commission Trial,' and stayed there until 1998, serving thirteen years for his part in the murder of Galante. While in prison, he met up with Cathy Burke, daughter of another famous New York mobster, Jimmy 'The Gent' Burke, when she was visiting her father who was in the same federal facility, and they married in 1992, while Bruno was serving out his sentence at Terra Haute. <br /> <br /> On his release, he went to work as a salesman in the garment industry, and according to the feds, went back into the life. He had been promoted to capo in 1981, but on his return to the streets, went into his uncle, 70 year old Joe Indelicato’s crew, as just a soldier. It was an interesting move because by all accounts he hated his father's brother, with a vengeance. <br /> <br /> He was seen on a number of occasions meeting up with mobsters, including another Bonanno soldier, Vince Basciano, who subsequently became a capo in the family and then it's de-facto boss when big Joey Massino went down and rolled over like a beached whale, in 2004, the first sitting mob boss in New York to achieve this distinction. <br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236978090,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236978090?profile=original" />Bruno has been arrested and imprisoned a number of times for parole violation since his release in 1998.<br /> <br /> At the moment, that's where he is, prison, in a federal detention centre in Brooklyn. He's awaiting trial, on a charge of plotting to kill a rival by masquerading as a police officer, along with Michael "Mikey Nose" Mancuso, the acting, acting boss of the family, after Basciano was arrested and jailed. <br /> <br /> In the mob, what goes around comes around. <br /> <br /> Looking for these kinds of people, the best place to start is the B.O.P.- the Bureau of Prisons. Chances are, if you can't find them anywhere else, that's where they will be living.<br /> <br /> Like the man who brought this group altogether, their sticky fingers lead them less into the honey pots than the mousetraps.<br /> <br /> Under the FOIA, the F.B.I. have made available a file on Carmine Galante that contains over 1200 pages. Most of it, probably in excess of 80%, is useless, so severely redacted as to be incomprehensible. There are the occasional nuggets worth scavenging for, and this is one incorporated in an agent's report dated December 1974:<br /> <br /> 'Galante has long been considered a vicious, cold blooded killer who talks and acts like the movie conception of a gangster......'<br /> <br /> How could a movie even come close to exploring a man like this?<br /> <br /> Perhaps Carmine Galante felt he was somehow, anointed, consecrated as a king of crime, his whole life destined to be a kind of tragic Sicilian theatre, playing out images and scenes that fulfilled the nourishment of the demands he found himself compelled to fulfil. The killings, the drug dealings, the never ending quest for power within the underworld, the seemingly endless banishment to various penitentiaries, the abuse of his marital status, everything was perhaps part of an enduring sacrifice he forced upon himself; forever searching for a rate of exchange in a currency system that would leave him in credit, and never did.<br /> <br /> Then again, maybe it simply all came down to the fact that he was short. He was undoubtedly a man displaying a classic Napoleon complex, being small in stature, but aggressively ambitious and seeking absolute control to indemnify for this failing. It’s therefore quite possible, something in his ego, compensating for his lack of inches, might have driven him beyond the edge of reason in order to achieve his aspirations.<br /> <br /> It’s interesting to consider whether a man as widely read as Carmine Galante ever read any of the works of Shakespeare. If he did, he may have come across one of the Bard’s more famous quotes:<br /> <br /> ‘The very substance of the ambition is merely the shadow of a dream.’<br /> <br /> <span style="font-weight:bold;">Acknowledgements:</span><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">My thanks to Jim Ruffalo for the information on Galante in Southern California.</span><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">To Mora for pointing me to the right copy of the New York Herald.</span></p>
<ul>
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Genovese Family Soldier Arrested in Italy
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/genovese-family-soldier
2010-11-21T19:14:11.000Z
2010-11-21T19:14:11.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p>By David Amoruso<br /> Posted on July 30, 2010<br /><br /> A Genovese Crime Family soldier was arrested yesterday in Sorrento, Italy. Mobster Emilio Fusco (42) is wanted in the United States where he is charged with extortion and two gang land murders in Springfield, Massachusetts. While his associates were being arraigned in the U.S. District Court in Springfield, Fusco was nowhere to be found.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236987492,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Federal authorities already suspected Fusco, who is an Italian citizen, might be hiding in Italy. In their man hunt, the FBI asked for the help and assistance of Interpol and the Italian police. After staking out several possible hide outs and shadowing friends and relatives of the fugitive, Italian police managed to locate him in Sorrento, a small coastal city in the Campania region approximately 30 miles from Naples. Fusco (right) is originally from this area and had no trouble blending in. When police arrested Fusco they found he had 10,000 dollars and 10,000 euros in cash on him.<br /> <br /> According to the indictment, Fusco is a made member of the Genovese Crime Family in New York and participated in extortion, loansharking, operation of illegal gambling businesses, and narcotics trafficking. Furthermore, authorities say he was involved in the gang land executions of Genovese capo, and Springfield mob boss, Adolfo Bruno and mob associate Gary Westerman.<br /> <br /> Adolfo Bruno (57) was shot seven times in a parking lot outside the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Society in Springfield’s South End on November 23, 2003. Authorities claim Bruno’s murder was the result of a power play. The hit was plotted by members of his own crew, chief among them Anthony Arillotta, who was labeled as Bruno’s successor. Genovese Acting Boss Arthur Nigro had allegedly given permission for the hit.<br /> <br /> The government has two major witnesses against Nigro – and Fusco, who was part of the murder conspiracy. The first is triggerman Frank Roche. Roche faced the death penalty if he was convicted of murder and decided to become a government witness instead. He told investigators that he was paid 10,000 dollars to assassinate Bruno. Roche was told the Springfield mob boss had to be killed because he was a weak leader and a suspected government informant and that the leaders of the Genovese Family in New York had given permission for the hit.<br /> <br /> The other witness is Anthony Arillotta, who quickly turned state’s evidence after his arrest in February. Arillotta was the man who set the whole plan in motion by seeking permission for the hit from the bosses in New York. Apparently he did not want to spend the rest of his life behind bars. After becoming a witness, he gave the FBI information about a lengthy list of mob crimes, including the location of the remains of mob associate and drug dealer Gary Westerman. Arillotta fingered Fusco as being a part of the group which plotted Westerman’s murder. With Fusco’s arrest all the main players are now in custody. A trial date has been set for November 1. </p>
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