Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set (54 page)

However, it was Gambino who made the first move in rectifying this situation. Sensing that he was on the losing side of the battle, Gambino secretly approached Maranzano
, and he offered to jump to Maranzano's side. Maranzano readily agreed, and soon Luciano, Costello, Anastasia, and Genovese, also wanted to join Maranzano's forces. Maranzano accepted their offer, with the stipulation they do away with Masseria, once and for all.

That task was accomplished on April 15, 1931, when Luciano lured Masseria to the
Nuova Villa Tammaro Restaurant in Coney Island. While Luciano was taking a bathroom break, Siegel, Genovese, Anastasia, and Jewish killer Red Levine burst through the front door and filled Masseria with lead, rendering him quite dead and ending the Castellammarese War.

Maranzano immediately called for a meeting of all the top Mafioso in the city (reportedly over 500 men) in a warehouse in the Bronx.

At this meeting Maranzano said, “Whatever happened in the past is over. There is to be no more hatred between us. Those who lost someone in the war must forgive and forget.”

Maranzano
then proceeded to form five families, each with a boss and an underboss. Under the two top men each family would have
capiregimes
, or captains, who would rule over the rest of the family,
soldatos
, or soldiers.

The five bosses were Joe Bonanno, Joe Profaci, Lucky Luciano, Tommy Lucchese, and Vincent Mangano. Albert Anastasia became Mangano's
underboss, and Carlo Gambino became a captain in Mangano's family.

Of course, Maranzano made himself “Boss of All Bosses” (Capo di Tutti Capi), which did not sit well with the rest of the young Mafioso.

Despite all the nice talk about “no more hatred between us,” Maranzano had a secret plan to kill Luciano, Genovese, and Costello - men Maranzano thought to be ambitious and a threat to his rule. Maranzano called on vicious Irish killer Vincent “Mad Dog” Cole to eliminate his perceived competition. Maranzano paid Cole $25,000 on the spot, with another $25,000 forthcoming when the dirty deed was done. To set the trap, Maranzano invited Luciano, Genovese, and Costello to his office in Midtown Manhattan.

However, Luciano caught wind of the plot through an informer close to Maranzano, believed to be Tommy Lucchese. Instead of showing up at Maranzano's office, Luciano sent four Jewish killers to the proposed meeting, led by Red Levine, one of the men who had offed Masseria.

The four men, posing as detectives, bulldozed their way past Maranzano's bodyguards in the outer office. Then they blasted into Maranzano's office where they stabbed and shot him to death. On the way out of the building, the four killers ran into “Mad Dog” Cole. They told him not to bother - that Maranzano was already dead and the police were on the way. Cole did an about face, whistling a happy tune, having made a $25,000 payday without firing a single shot.

Luciano soon called the bosses of the other four Mafia families
, and he told them the title of “Boss of All Bosses” was eliminated with Maranzano. Luciano then formed a National Crime Commission, which included Jewish mobsters Meyer Lansky, Louie “Lepke” Buchalter, Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro, Bugsy Siegel, and Dutch Schultz.

Gambino, now firmly entrenched as a captain in the Mangano family, became the biggest
moneymaker in all the New York Mafia. And in the Mafia, making money brings prestige.

In 1932, his pockets bursting with cash, Gambino married his first cousin, Catherine Castellano. Carlo and Catherine Gambino eventually raised three sons and a daughter. Marrying a first cousin was common in Italy, and not frowned upon in the United States as it is today. In fact, marrying a first cousin is now illegal in most, but not all, states.
(Author’s note: My grandparents on my father's side were first cousins, and married in Sicily in the early 1900s.)

When Prohibition was repealed in 1933, Gambino was already set to cash in on the now-legal booze business, but he did so in an illegal way. While Prohibition was booming in illegal sales for the Mafia, Gambino planned for the days when he knew Prohibition would end. To achieve his goals, Gambino scooped up as many illegal stills that he could: in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and even as far as Maryland. When Prohibition ended and the price of alcohol blasted through the roof, Gambino had the largest liquor distribution system on the East Coast of America. And since he was producing the booze himself and not paying any government taxes, Gambino could undercut the legal distributors, ther
eby making him and the Mangano family a small fortune all through the mid-to-late 1930s.

The start of World War II gave Gambino another opportunity to make even more illegal cash through his wartime rations
stamp racket. With war imminent against Germany and Japan, on August 28, 1941, the United States government created the Office of Price Administration (OPA), whose job it was to print and distribute ration stamps to the American public. Without these stamps, people could not buy gasoline, tires, shoes, nylon, sugar, fuel oil, coffee, meats, and processed foods. Gambino figured the only way he could get his hands on ration stamps to sell on the black market was to steal them outright.

Gambino sent his best safe-crackers and second-story men to the vaults inside the Office of Price Administration, and they emerged with hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of ration stamps. When certain low-level employees of the OPA realized the ration stamps were being stolen by the mob, they decided to cut themselves
in on the deal by stealing the ration stamps themselves and selling them to Gambino and his boys, of course, at bargain-basement prices. Gambino figured why take a chance of stealing the ration stamps with the possibility of getting caught. So he took the crooked OPA employees’ offer, and he started buying the ration stamps from them in droves.

The beauty of this scheme was that Gambino already had a ready-made distribution network in place: his network of illegal booze
suppliers. In October 1963, Mafia informant Joe Valachi testified before Arkansas Senator John L. McClellan's Investigative Subcommittee on Government Operations that in one rations stamp deal alone, Gambino made a profit of over $1 million.

Being
a savvy businessman, Gambino knew he could not live the high-life without reporting substantial income to the government. So Gambino invested the money he had made from his illegal operations, estimated to be several millions of dollars, in legal businesses such as meat markets, pizza parlors, olive and cheese importers, carting companies, dress factories, bakeries, and restaurants.

By 1951, the Mangano family, thanks to Gambino's incredible ability to generate income, was one of the most prosperous in the Mafia. The problem was Mangano did not get along with his
underboss Albert Anastasia. Mangano was jealous of Anastasia's closeness with the other bosses, including Frank Costello, and Lucky Luciano who was in exile in Italy; a stipulation of the pardon agreement he received from the United States government after serving nine years in jail on a trumped-up prostitution charge. Several times Mangano physically attacked Anastasia, a silly move since the younger and stronger Anastasia easily beat his boss in a man-to-man fight.

With rumors abounding that Mangano was plotting to kill
him, Anastasia, with the blessing of crime boss Frank Costello, decided to strike first.

On April 19, 1951, the body of Phil Mangano, the brother of Vincent Mangano, was found in the marshes near Sheepshead Bay. He was shot five times in the head. When the police
investigating the murder tried to contact Vincent Mangano about his brother's death, they could find no trace of him.

Vincent Mangano's body was never found.

Within days, Anastasia sat down with the other bosses, and he explained to them that he killed Mangano before Mangano could kill him. With the backing of Costello, Anastasia was bumped up to the boss of the Mangano Family, and the name was changed to the Anastasia family. Anastasia made Frank Scalise and Joe Adonis his underbosses, and he gave his capo, Carlo Gambino, more men and more power within the organization.

However, Anastasia's reign lasted less than seven years.

Anastasia continually butted heads with vicious crime boss Vito Genovese, who was looking to take over all the rackets in New York City, even if it meant killing the other bosses one by one. Anastasia received a terrible blow when his underboss, Joe Adonis, was deported to Italy as an undesirable alien. Anastasia knew his days were numbered, when in early 1956 Frank Costello was shot in the head by Genovese henchman Vincent “The Chin” Gigante. Costello survived the shooting, and at Gigante's trial, Costello, true to the Mafia code of “omerta,” refused to name Gigante as his assailant.

However, this greatly diminished Costello's power in the Mafia, and at the insistence of Genovese, Costello wa
s booted out as one of the five bosses on the Mafia Commission. This left Anastasia without his closest ally, and put Anastasia in a vulnerable position. Soon after, Anastasia’s other underboss, Frank Scalise, was gunned down while shopping for fruits and vegetables on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx.

The final shoe dropped on October 25, 1957, when Anastasia was shot to death while sitting in a barber chair in the Park Sheridan Hotel in Midtown Manhattan.

With Anastasia now dead, Genovese called for a sit-down with the other bosses, and he proposed that Carlo Gambino, whom he had let in on his plot to kill Anastasia, should take over Anastasia's family. The commission agreed and they renamed the family the Gambino Family.

The greedy Genovese called for a meeting of all the crime bosses, underbosses, captains, and respected Mafia men in America, which was to take place in the sleepy town of Apalachin, New York, at the home of Joseph Barbara, a capo in the crime family of Buffalo crime boss Stephano Magaddino. There were several items on Genovese's agenda, but the prime one was that Genovese would announce himself as the “ Capo di Tutti Capi,” or “Boss of All Bosses,” a title that had been vacant since the death of Salvatore Maranzano.

On November 17, 1957, scores of mobsters made their way to Barbara's home. Included in the group were crime bosses John Scalish from Cleveland; Sam Giancana from Chicago; Frank DeSimone from California; Santo Trafficante from Florida; Gerardo Catena and Frank Majuri from New Jersey; and Carlo Gambino, Joe Profaci, Tommy Luchesse, and Vito Genovese, all from New York City.

However, before the festivities got under way, state Sergeant Edgar Roswell, along with a dozen state troopers, stormed the house. Roswell later said that he became suspicious when he saw Joseph Barbara Jr. make hotel reservations for a dozen or so out-of-towners. Roswell said he then drove by the Barbara residence
, and he saw dozens of parked luxury cars in and around Barbara's estate. Roswell called for heavy backup and when his troopers arrived, they made their move.

A rumor later circulated that it was Meyer Lansky himself, no big fan of Vito Genovese, who had tipped off the state troopers about the impending Mafia convention.

Be that as it may, when the troopers stormed the house, Mafioso, like in a Chinese fire drill, scattered in all directions. Men in expensive suits jumped though open windows, and if they could not make it to their cars, they hightailed it on foot through the woods, ruining their patent-leather shoes.

Sam Giancana safely escaped by fleeing through the woods, as did Bonanno
underboss Carmine Galante. But both men were a mess, their suits destroyed by thorny bushes. Some cars made it off the property before a roadblock was put in place, but most didn't. When the dust cleared 58 members of the Mafia were detained, and they were told to empty out their pockets. A total of $300,000 in cash was found on the 58 men, making the state police all the more suspicious about the meeting.

What was notable about the meeting was the men who chose not to attend. Besides Lansky, those absent were Frank Costello, Carlo Marcello from New Orleans, and Lansky's pal Joseph “Doc” Stracher.

Of the 58 men detained, 27 were indicted on obstruction of justice, 20 of whom were convicted of refusing to answer questions about the purpose of the meeting. One of the men convicted was Gambino's cousin Paul Castellano, who wound up doing a year in the slammer as a result.

The aborted meeting, more than anything else, led to the downfall of Vito Genovese. Not only did he not get the exalted title of “Boss of All Bosses,” but he became a pariah in the Mafia; ridiculed as being stupid and greedy for calling so many important men to the same place at the same time for his own purposes.

The day after the raid, the entire nation's newspapers ran front page stories about the incident. No longer could Mafia members claim that the Mafia did not exist. The police and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who had for years denied the existence of the Mafia, went on a rampage, putting extreme pressure on the Mafia's operations.

Although , Carlo Gambino first seemed to be a victim of circumstances, the wily mob veteran plotted to turn the incident to his advantage. In fact, there was speculation that Gambino knew about the raid in advance, and went there purposely so that no would suspect him
of being in on the treachery; which would make sense in light of future developments.

With Genovese still stewing from his loss of face, Gambino colluded with Frank Costello, Meyer Lansky, and Lucky Luciano (still in exile in Italy, but able to move freely into Cuba to meet with his pals) to get Genovese up to his neck in a multi-million dollar international drug deal. Even though dealing in drugs was forbidden by the Mafia, the greedy Genovese could not resist the urge to make a
big score.

When the time was right, Gambino tipped off the Narcotics Bureau about the drug deal, resulting in Genovese's arrest. At Genovese's trial, Gambino paid a false witness named Nelson Cantellops, who insisted on the witness stand that Genovese was not only involved in this particular drug deal, but was, in fact, involved in dozens of drug deals throughout the years. As a result, Genovese was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Genovese served a little more than 10 years, before he died in prison on February 14, 1969.

With Anastasia dead, Genovese in prison, Luciano in exile, Frank Costello basically out of the Mafia loop, Joe Profaci getting older and weaker, and Joe Bonanno having a relatively small crime family, Carlo Gambino became undoubtedly the most powerful Mafia boss in America. His crew of over 500 made men out in the streets included his underboss, Joe Biondo, his consigliere, Joseph Riccobono, and capos Armand "Tommy" Rava, Aniello "Mr. Neil" Dellacroce, Paul Castellano, Carmine "The Doctor" Lombardozzi, Joseph "Joe Piney" Armone, and Carmine "Wagon Wheels" Fatico.

In a display of immense strength, Gambino expanded his enterprises throughout the United States. Besides New York City, Gambino had his fingers in the
pie in Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Boston, San Francisco, and Las Vegas. Gambino also ruled the powerful International Longshoremen’s Union, which controlled all the docks in New York, the main port for imports into America.

After Joe Valachi became the first known Mafia informer, Gambino reinforced the rule that forbade the sale of drugs in his crew. Gambino's rational was that the penalties for selling drugs were so severe, m
en might turn rat when arrested rather than do their time in jail like the “real men” of the Mafia had done in the past. The Gambino family policy was "Deal and Die," and Gambino enforced this rule with no exceptions.

Riding on top of the Mafia heap, Carlo Gambino became a popular figure in
the New York streets of Little Italy. While the other bosses barricaded themselves in their mansions, with an armed bodyguard, burglar alarms, and electrified fences, Gambino walked the streets with impunity, stopping to talk with old friends while be bought fruits and vegetables from street vendors. Gambino went to Ferrara's on Grand Street, between Mulberry and Mott, for pastries. Then he would stroll down the block to get his Italian meats, cheeses, and Italian delicacies from Aleva's, on the corner of Mulberry and Grand.

Starting in March of 1970, Gambino began having trouble with the law. While he was
walking down a Brooklyn street, Gambino was surrounded by New York City police and members of the FBI. They arrested Gambino and charged him with masterminding a scheme to steal $30 million in cash from an armored truck company located in the Bronx. Gambino was eventually indicted, but the case was dropped due to lack of evidence.

This forced the Feds to try another tactic to take Gambino off the streets.

In 1966, the government had issued a deportation order on Gambino, but for some reason the order was never implemented. In early 1971, after Gambino's wife, Catherine, had died of cancer, the Feds did indeed try to implement this order, but on hearing about his imminent danger, the wily Gambino faked a serious heart attack.

The Feds were incensed at Gambino's ploy, so they had the U.S. Public Health Service give Gambino a complete physical. The Feds were aghast when it was determined that Gambino indeed had a severe heart condition. In 1972, this was confirmed, when Gambino was rushed from his home at 2230 Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, to the Columbus Hospital in Manhattan with a massive heart attack. Why a hospital in Brooklyn was not suitable for Gambino was never revealed.

While recuperating at home, Gambino broke one of the laws he himself had decreed - “Deal Drugs and Die.” Acting Genovese boss Thomas “Tommy Ryan” Eboli approached Gambino with a “can't miss” proposition to broker a multi-million-dollar drug deal with Louis Sevilla, considered by the Feds to be the biggest narcotics trafficker in America. The problem was, Eboli, a former boxing manager and notoriously bad gambler, did not have the $4 million needed to proceed with the operation. Gambino fronted Eboli the $4 million, but he lost it all when the Feds arrested Sevilla, and confiscated the drugs and money. When Gambino approached Eboli about his missing $4 million, Eboli turned his pockets inside out, indicating he was flat broke.

This did not please Gambino too much.

As a result, at approximately 1 a.m., on July 16, 1972, Eboli was shot five times as he was leaving his girlfriend's apartment in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Eboli died on the spot, and Gambino had enough influence in the Mafia Commission to order that his close pal, Genovese captain Frank “Funzi” Tieri, would now be the new boss of the Genovese Family.

In early 1973, Gambino had another setback
, when his 29-year-old nephew Emmanuel “Manny” Gambino was kidnapped for ransom. This same gang had previously kidnapped a Gambino Crime Family captain, Frank “Frankie the Wop” Manzo, for $100,000. After that amount was paid for Manzo's safe return, the gang got more ambitious with the Manny Gambino kidnapping , this time asking for $200,000.