Read The Mafia Encyclopedia Online

Authors: Carl Sifakis

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The Mafia Encyclopedia (125 page)

BOOK: The Mafia Encyclopedia
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Page 367
Anti-Fascist, anti-Communist editor Carlo Tresca was
shot clown on New York's Fifth Avenue in 1943, a hit
ordered by Fugitive Vito Genovese as a Favor
to Benito Mussolini.
have Tresca taken care of. Genovese got the contract back to New York to his aides Mike Miranda and Tony Bender who passed it on to a then minor Brooklyn hoodlum named Carmine Galante, who would in the 1970s rise to become the boss of the Bonanno Family.
On the evening of January 11, 1943, Tresca was walking on Fifth Avenue near 15th Street with a friend, attorney Giuseppe Calabi, also a political exile from Italy. As they crossed 15th Street on the west side of the avenue, it was quite dark since the wartime dimout was in effect. The men paid no particular attention to a figure standing on the corner. As they approached him, the loiterer reached in his pocket. He came up with a .38-caliber pistol and started shooting. One bullet crashed through Tresca's right cheek and lodged at the base of his skull. Another hit him in the back and lodged in his left lung. Tresca died in the gutter where he fell. The killer escaped by car.
Calabi and other witnesses were able to record the license number: 1C-9272. That number meant something to the law. About two hours before the killing, Galante, out of prison on parole, had made his weekly report to his parole officer in downtown Manhattan. It was standard procedure for parole officers to trail parolees out of the office in the hope of seeing them consorting with other criminals, a violation of the terms of their release. Galante had entered a car and driven off. A parole officer had not tried to follow Galante but had recorded the license number of the car: 1C-9272.
Picked up as a suspect in the Tresca assassination, Galante denied all. He had not gotten in any car. He'd gone uptown by subway and seen a Broadway movie,
Casablanca
, with Humphrey Bogart. Questioned about the plot of the film, Galante was remarkably and suspiciously vague. He did not appear to even remember the phrase, "You must remember this...." It was suspicious but hardly an indictable offense, especially since none of the witnesses to the murder could identify the killer because of the dimout.
Galante had to be released, and when Genovese returned to the United States after the war, he had nothing to fear from any further investigation of the Tresca assassination.
Police kept Galante under a phone tap for four and a half years, hoping he would make some slip about the case. A police detective who worked on the investigation later recalled, "He was real cagey, that guy. Someone would call him and say, 'Hello,' and all he'd say back was 'Humm' and the other guy would say 'Meet you at 1
P.M.
,' and he would say 'Humm.' That's all he ever said on the phone."
See also:
Galante, Carmine; Genovese, Vito
.
Twenties Group: Mafioso leadership migration
In the 1920s, shortly after his rise to power in Italy, Benito Mussolini declared war on the Sicilian Mafia, ordering his number one enforcer, Cesare Mori, prefect of Palermo, to wipe out the criminal gangs. Mori conducted a brutal campaign of terror and torture and forced many mafiosi to flee. Many of these headed for the United States in what came to be known as the "Mussolini Shuttle."
The mafiosi so forced to come to America became powers in the underworld and did much to mold the forces of organized crime. Known as the "Twenties Group," they included Carlo Gambino, who passed through customs on December 23, 1921, a pre-Mussolini refugee but one already feeling official heat in Sicily. Within the next several years, Gambino was followed by Joe Bonanno, Antonio Magaddino and Stefano Magaddino in 1924; Joe Profaci, Mike Coppola and Joe Magliocco in 1926; and Salvatore Maranzano in 1927. All these men would rise to be the bosses or underbosses in various crime families. All came more or less as representatives of Don Vito Cascio Ferroif not the so-called boss of bosses of the Mafia in Sicily, then certainly the most powerful and colorful chieftain.
Ferro clearly had designs on expanding his influence in America, and so great was his power and influence that all his proteges moved into positions of power in America with startling speed. The Twenties Group found a great many allies already in the United States, mafiosi like Joe Aiello, the leading Mafia leader in Chicago who would eventually fall under the guns of non-mafioso Al Capone; Joe Zerilli, a power in the Detroit family; and
Page 368
Gaetano Reina, Tommy Lucchese and Tom Gagliano in Brooklyn.
With the imprisonment of Don Vito Cascio Ferro in 1929, the Twenties Group splintered, although for a time Don Vito's top representative in the United States, Maranzano, tried to establish himself as the boss of bosses. The Twenties Group proved to have no more lasting allegiance to the Sicilian traditions than other opportunistic gangsters had had, and soon the Twenties members formed alliances with other non-Mafia gangs in the quest for a more tangible traditionthe American dollar.
See also:
Ferro, Don Vito Cascio; Mori, Cesare; Mussolini Shuttle
.
Page 369
U
Undertaker's Friend, The: Underworld "Green Chair Curse"
An ordinary green leather chair in the office of William "Shoes" Schoemaker, Chicago's chief of detectives in 1924, became known as "the Undertaker's Friend" or the "Green Chair Curse." Many apprehended mafiosi were grilled by Schoemaker as they sat in the green chair, and Schoemaker and journalists soon noted that many of the criminals so grilled died in gangland slayings shortly thereafter.
Considering the high mortality rate during Prohibition's booze wars, the death toll was a rather underwhelming discovery but the newspapers, always alert for a new angle on the bloodletting, seized upon the story of a "curse" and started calling the chair "the Undertake's Friend." Shoes, realizing he was on to a good thing, began keeping a record of the criminals who sat in the chair and later died violently. When the "preordained" occurred, Shoes marked an X next to the gangster's name. On the X list were such noteworthies as the bloody Genna brothers (Angelo, Tony and Mike), Mop Head Russo, Porky Lavenuto, John Scalise, Albert Anselmi, Samoots Amatuna, Antonio "the Scourge" Lombardo, Schemer Drucci, Pickle Puss DePro, Zippy Zion and Antonio ''the Cavalier'' Spano. Some of them plopped down in the chair with bravado; others trembled with fear. It made no difference. The results were inevitable. Stories related how many mafiosi adamantly refused to sit in the chair (Sicilians were said to be the most superstitious of all criminals). An almost certainly apochryphal tale relates that Al Capone himself declined an offer from Shoes to take a seat.
Shoes retired in 1934 at which time there were 35 names in his notebook, 34 X-ed out. Only one criminal, Red Holden, was still among the breathing, and he was doing that in Alcatraz for train robbery. "My prediction still stands," Shoes said in his parting shot. "He'll die a violent death. Maybe it'll happen in prison. Maybe we'll have to wait until he gets out. But mark my words, it'll happen."
Shoes died four years later. The chair had passed to Captain John Warren, Shoes's aide, who also kept track of the green chair's death toll. Warren died in September 1953, and the score stood at 56 out of 57Red Holden was still alive. Released from Alcatraz in 1948, he promptly got involved in a number of shootouts, all of which he survived. Then he was sent up for 25 years on a murder charge. On December 18, 1953, Holden died in the infirmary of Illinois's Statesville Penitentiary. Predictably various publications assured their readers that Holden went out bragging. He had beaten the curse of the Undertaker's Friend.
Holden's demise also sparked a newspaper hunt for the green chair. It was traced to the Chicago Avenue police station, where it had been consigned to the cellar after Captain Warren's death. When a maintenance man discovered it had become infested with cockroaches, he chopped it up and disposed of it in the furnace.
It was of course the end of the curse, and in fact, some argued the green chair had ended up with a perfect record, since it had been destroyed before Holden died of natural causes.
Untouchables, The: See Ness, Eliot.
Page 370
V
Valachi, Joseph M. (19031971): Informer
Despite its notoriety, Joe Valachi's testimony before a Senate committee never leddirectlyto the jailing of any criminal. That was not the importance of Valachi's testimony about organized crime, what he called "Cosa Nostra." A barely literate, low-ranking member of the Mafia whose first-hand experiences were frankly limited to less-important events, Valachi was obviously talking beyond his personal experience. Additionally, Valachi was not the most discerning observer. In the underworld the telling of false tales between mobsters, the claims of credit not deserved for important incidents, are common. When another criminal bragged to Valachi that he did this or shot so-and-so, Valachi tended to believe it. As a result some of his information is false and some strains credulity.
Yet Joe Valachi remains one of only a few Mafia members who violated omerta, the code of silence. In September and October 1963 the gravel-voiced, chain-smoking killer enthralled much of the national television audience as he told Senator John L. McClellan and the Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee about the inner structure of the Mafia and organized crime.
"Not since Frank Costello's fingers drummed the table during the Kefauver hearings," the
New York Times
editorialized, "has there been so fascinating a show."
The Valachi revelations were often chilling, including the details of a number of murders in which he took part. Even though he functioned mainly on the street level, he still offered an inside view of the struggle for power within the Mafia and of the double-dealing that is part of the Honored Society. While it is true that many of the incidents and facts that Valachi described were known to police, he still filled in some gaps and provided a rationale linking one development to another and added to an understanding of the dimensions of syndicated crime.
Valachi joined Salvatore Maranzano's organization in the late 1920s and was indoctrinated officially into the organization in 1930. He served Maranzano until his assassination in 1931 and thereafter spent most of his time under Vito Genovese in the Luciano family. His criminal record dated back to his teens. As a "soldier," or "button man," in the mob his duties included that of a hit man, enforcer, numbers operator and drug pusher until 1959, when he was sentenced to 15 to 20 years on drug trafficking charges.
Confined to the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, Valachi was a cellmate of Genovese, who had become head of the Luciano crime family and, after Luciano's deportation to Italy, according to Valachi, the "boss of bosses" within the Mafia. Clearly, Valachi was in no position to comprehend the workings of the national crime syndicate or gauge the vital importance to organized crime of men like Meyer Lansky, Longy Zwillman, Moe Dalitz and others. He saw only the Italian end of the racket, which was typical among lower-echelon Mafia soldiers. (The lower one goes in the Mafia structure, the more one finds the will to believe in the all-powerfulness of the Italian society.)
In 1962, Valachi later revealed, Genovese wrongfully came to suspect Valachi of being an informer and gave him the "kiss of death," a sign to Valachi that Genovese had ordered his assassination. Valachi was terrified and in his terror later mistook a prisoner named Joe Saupp
Page 371
for Joe Beck (Joe DiPalermo), whom he identified as the man assigned to kill him. Valachi killed Saupp with an iron pipe and after he got a life sentence for that killing, he decided to turn informer and get federal protection.
By the time he sang for the McClellan Committee, he was guarded by some 200 U.S. marshals, which at least indicated how highly the federal agents regarded his revelations. The Mafia itself thought highly of them too, putting a $100,000 price tag on Valachi's head. Valachi himself was not surprised by that. "You live by the gun and the knife," he said, "and you die by the gun and the knife."
In all it was said that Valachi helped to identify 317 members of the Mafia, and Attorney General Robert E Kennedy called Valachi's testimony "a significant addition to the broad picture" of organized crime. "It gives meaning to much that we already know and brings the picture into sharper focus."
This did not prevent disparagement of many of Valachi's claims. Quite a few law enforcement officials found much of Valachi's testimony little more than good theater, much of it erroneous and even ludicrous. Many considered the idea of Genovese as the boss of bosses from 1946 on as absolutely silly. The most important voice within the American Mafia in 1946, at the Havana conference in December of that year and for many years thereafter, remained Luciano, even in exile. Otherwise the most important voice was the "little man," Meyer Lansky. As Luciano himself put it to his Italian associates, "listen to the little man" or "listen to Meyer.'' But poor Valachi could never have comprehended a Jew telling mafiosi what to do. There is no doubt Genovese wanted to become Boss of Bosses, but he never made the grade, even after he had Albert Anastasia murdered in 1957. More powerful hands than his doomed him after that.
Although the underworld sought to disparage Valachi, he was never considered very highly. Another Mafia informer, Vincent Teresa, later confined with Valachi, came to like him but said he was a small-timer and a mob gofer. "To the mob, Joe was a
facci-due
twofaced in Italian. No one trusted him in the mob long before he talked." There is ample suspicion in the case of Eugenio Giannini, whose murder Valachi arranged, to indicate that Valachi may well have been an informer long before he went to Atlanta.
Quite naturally the mob itself sought to discredit Valachi, and his nickname may be a case in point. In
The Valachi Papers
, Valachi explained that in his youth, he built makeshift scooters out of wooden crates. "This earned him the nickname Joe Cargo, which later in his criminal career was corrupted to Cago." However, the mob told it different, pointing out jocularly that "Cago" was an Italian word for excrement. Perhaps a better illustration of the fact that Valachi was not highly thought of in the Mafia was revealed by some of his own testimony which was not reported in
The Valachi Papers
. It turned out that the highly placed Paul Gambino, Carlo's brother, came to see Valachi shortly after the Anastasia murder when it looked like war could break out in the crime family. Paul Gambino said, "I have a lot of respect for your opinion regardless of how other people feel. What should we do?" It was obvious that Gambino really was not seeking Valachi's advice but rather was pumping him if he knew of any plot against the Gambinos. The key words of course were "regardless of how other people feel."
Although some of informer Joe Valachi's direct testimony
strained credulity and none of it ever led to the jailing of any criminal,
he did offer a new view of the struggle For power within the Mafia
and the double-dealing that is part of the Honored Society.
There is need, in a historical sense, to compare, Valachi's many disclosures to the later revelations in the memoirs or reminiscences of such syndicate higher-ups
BOOK: The Mafia Encyclopedia
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