The Rise of the Mafia: The Definitive Story of Organized Crime

402 Pages·2009·2.38 MB·English

by  Martin Short

Contents
Title Page
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 The City of Brotherly Love
2 La Mala Vita
3 The Land of Opportunity
4 What is this Thing Called Thing?
5 Tales of Bosses and ‘Made’ Men
6 The Politics of the Saloon
7 The Nobbled Experiment
8 Al Capone – Public Enemy, Public Servant
9 Voices from Prohibition
10 Always Pay Your Income Tax
11 The Outfit, the President and the CIA
12 The Unholy Alliance
13 Racketeers, Racketbusters and Tammany Hall
14 The Fall and Rise of Lucky Luciano
15 The Cleveland Story
16 Gambling with the Mob
17 Las Vegas – the House that Bugsy Built
18 The Mob, the Boardwalk and Atlantic City
19 Sinatra – His Way
20 On the Waterfront
21 The Mob Keeps on Trucking
22 The Chokehold on New York Construction
23 One Big Octopus
24 New Scams for Old
25 Banks, Wall Street and Three-piece Suits
26 The Political Fix
27 Can the Mafia Survive?
28 ‘Reports of Our Death are Greatly Exaggerated’
29 Organized Crime Goes Global
Bibliography
Notes
Index
Copyright
Acknowledgements
This book Is based on my research for Crime Inc., the award-winning ITV
documentary history of organized crime in America, which I originated,
produced, wrote and narrated. An immense ratings success, this seven-hour film
series was syndicated throughout the world and has just been released on DVD.
As nearly twenty-five years have passed since the series was first shown in
1984, we have re-named this work The Rise of the Mafia, This title also recalls
the syndicate of killers, both Italian and Jewish, credited with as many as 1,000
gangland murders in the 1930s and early 1940s.
My thanks are due to literally thousands of Americans and scores of
American law enforcement agencies for allowing me to take up their valuable
time, pillage their memories and their files, and ask them questions which may
often have struck them as naive.
This book could not have been written, nor could the television series have
been made, without the help and support of the FBI, the DEA and the Organized
Crime and Racketeering Section of the Department of Justice. Within these
agencies I especially thank the FBI’s offices in Cleveland, Las Vegas and New
York and its public affairs unit in Washington; the DEA in Miami; the Strike
Forces in Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, Cleveland, Kansas City and Newark; and
the US Attorneys’ offices in the Southern and Eastern districts of New York. I
also thank the US Customs and Coastguard in Miami and the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms.
For help in relation to Federal witnesses in the care of the Witness Security
Program, I thank the US Marshals’ Service and Howard Safir (the future
Commissioner of the NYPD). I also thank the US Bureau of Prisons.
Among numerous state and city forces, I was greatly aided by the New York
Police Department, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Dade County
Public Safety (Homicide), the Broward County Strike Force and the Essex
County (New Jersey) Narcotics Squad. On gambling issues, the New Jersey
Division of Gaming Enforcement was particularly helpful.
In the conception and execution of this entire project I owe my deepest debt
to the New Jersey State Police, through the goodwill and endless co-operation of
Colonel Justin Dintino and Lieutenant Freddie Martens.
The work of the Pennsylvania Crime Commission was an inspiration,
personified by one of its investigators, Gino Lazzari. The same is true of that
unique group of concerned citizens, the Chicago Crime Commission, under its
past and present directors, Virgil Peterson and Pat Healy.
I thank all those people who consented to being interviewed on film (over 100
in all). Those whose help went beyond the call of public service and courtesy to
foreign inquisitors included Edgar Croswell (the man who proved that the Mafia
did exist in 1957), John Cusack, Pete Donohue, Remo Franceschini, Louis Freeh
(the future Director of the FBI), Jack Key, Aaron Kohn, Bob Kortenhaus,
Vincent Piersante, Bill Roemer and Joe Yablonsky.
For academic perspectives and overviews I thank Professors Robert Blakey,
Charles Rogovin, Francis Ianni and Elizabeth Reuss-Ianni.
Other experts who helped me greatly were Nick Akerman, Christopher
Andreoff, Judge Charles Breitel, Thomas Coon, Steve del Corso, Denny
Debbaudt, Mike Defeo, Orange Dickey, Donald Gray, Bill Lambie, Paul Kelly,
Bill Lambie, John Olszewski, Joe Quarequio, Max Renner, Ray Shryock, John
Sopko, Lou Spalla, Ed Stier, Geoffrey L. Thomas and my dear friend John
Bassett
I have relied greatly on the work and support of many authors, reporters and
writers, notably Ed Barries, Ned Day, Ovid Demaris, Ron Koziol, Jon Kwitny,
Ron Labreque, Bruce Locklin, Mike Mallowe, Paul Meskil, Dan Moldea, John
O’Brien, Nic Pileggi, Tom Renner, Allen Richardson and Tony DeStefano,
Sandy Smith, Ned Whelan, Clyde Weiss and Maire-Jane Woge. Among
television reporters and producers, my greatest debt is to John Drummond and J.
P. Stadius of CBS In Chicago.
There are many more people in law enforcement who helped me despite the
rules of their organizations and whose identities must therefore remain
confidential. For even more obvious reasons, I cannot publicly thank those
people within the Mafia, including several crime family bosses, who talked to
me in confidence.
Much of this book is based on the testimony of the federal witnesses who
agreed to go face-to-camera and name names. Wherever they may be now, I
offer my deepest gratitude, my best wishes and my prayers.
Among archive sources I thank the Chicago Historical Society Henry
Scheafer of Chicago, the Historic New Orleans Collection, the Louisiana
Historical Centre, the New York Municipal Archives (Ken Cobb) and the Central
Archives for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem, for access to the
records of the Bureau of Social Morals (Hadassah Assouline).
I thank Thames Television for backing the idea which I brought to its
documentaries department in 1980. My thanks are due to the production team
that worked on the series: ace researchers Helen Dickinson and Dai Richards,
film researcher extraordinaire Adrian Wood and the directors Ken Craig and Ian
Stuttard. Credited on the series as ‘consultant’ was Frank Pulley This ill
describes the Scotland Yard detective who quit the Metropolitan Police after
twenty-seven years’ service for the turbulent waters of the television industry. As
compare and consighere, Frank has remained a tireless ally and, I trust, a friend
of mine, if not a friend of ours!
For more than two years, my wife and children tolerated my prolonged
absences in America. They then had to put up with my mental absence for
another year at home as I worked seven days and nights a week on the series. I
hope they thought it was all worthwhile.
Introduction
Organized crime is America’s biggest business. According to some estimates. its
profits are greater than those of Fortune magazine’s top 500 business and
industrial corporations added together. One estimate accepted by the US Senate
in 1979 assessed major crime revenues in America at over $160 billion a year.
By 1984 the annual retail value of illegal narcotics alone had risen to anything
between $50 billion and $100 billion. Organized crime worldwide in all its forms
now (including vastly expanded corporate fraud and people-smuggling
activities) has a turnover running into hundreds of billions of dollars.
But what is organized crime? I appropriate here two attempts at a definition
of organized crime. The shorter version comes from Ralph Salerno, the eminent
former New York detective:

Organized crime is a self-perpetuating, continuing criminal conspiracy for profit
and power, using fear and corruption and seeking immunity from the law.

A longer definition comes from the Task Force Report on Organized Crime,
published in 1967:
Organized crime is a society that seeks to operate outside the control of the
American people and their governments. It involves thousands of
criminals, working within structures as complex as those of legitimate
governments. Its actions are not impulsive but rather the result of intricate
conspiracies carried on over many years and aimed at gaming control over
whole fields of activity in order to amass huge profits.
The core of organized crime activity is the supply of illegal goods and services –
gambling, loansharking, narcotics and other forms of vice – to countless
numbers of citizen customers. But organized crime is also extensively involved
in legitimate business and in labor unions. Here it employs illegitimate methods
– mono-polization, terrorism, extortion, tax evasion – to drive out or control
lawful ownership and leadership to exact illegal profits from the public, And to
carry on its many activities secure from governmental interference, organized
crime corrupts public officials.

I can foresee that there may be places where a torrent of concentrated fact might
confuse the general reader. This seems most likely when I refer to the five Mafia
crime families of New York. I attempt a summary here. What began in 1931 as
the Lucky Luciano family is now known as the Vito Genovese family. What is
known today as the Carlo Gambino family was originally led by the Mangano
brothers and then by Albert Anastasia until he was murdered in 1957. The three
smaller families are the Joe Colombo family (formerly led by Joes Profaci and
Magliocco), the Joe Bonanno family (named after its founder boss, who died in
2002 aged 97) and the Tommy Lucchese family, founded by Jack Gagliano. The
families are now led by men with different surnames but all five families have
retained the names of their bosses in the 1960s. These names are, of course,
accorded by law enforcement rather than by the mafiosi themselves.
Most of the quotations, unless otherwise attributed, are taken from my filmed
interviews for the television series.
My use of the word ‘Mafia’ throughout the text may not be true to a strict
interpretation of the word, meaning a purely Sicilian organization. This the
Mafia in America today is certainly not. However, Mafia is the only term which
can adequately convey the true power and awesome strength of this octopoid
conspiracy. Euphemisms like La Cosa Nostra or Traditional Organized Crime are
best left to law enforcement and politicians.
I use the term ‘racket’ to describe any crooked manipulation of a legitimate or
outwardly legitimate business or activity. Sometimes I have applied it to wholly
illegal operations such as narcotics. The word apparently originates from the
Saturday night dances or soirées, known as rackets, held at Tammany Hall in the
nineteenth century. They were called rackets because of the appalling noise
made by the carousers who attended. Since most of them were crooked
politicians and their criminal friends, it was not long before the words ‘racket’
and ‘racketeer’ acquired their corrupt meaning. The noise of those long-gone
Tammany celebrations is still ringing in our ears.
The City of Brotherly Love
On a March evening in one of America’s largest cities the boss of the Mafia
crime family was shotgunned to death outside his home.
Four weeks later the family’s consigliere (elder statesman) was found dead in
the trunk of a stolen car. Tortured, stabbed and repeatedly shot, his body was
surrounded with torn $20 notes to symbolize that he was killed for being greedy.
The same day his brother-in-law was found shotgunned to death. Naked, brutally
tortured, bound hand and foot and stuffed in an undertaker’s body bag he had
been dumped on a deserted street.
In September the body of a capo (a lieutenant in the crime family) was
discovered near an isolated landfill. He had been shot three times in the back of
the head.
That October another victim was found, also shot in the head: the family’s
chief loanshark, the boss of its extortionate moneylending business. His body
was bound with his hands behind his back and stuffed inside two green plastic
rubbish bags. He had $500 in his pockets and was still wearing his gold watch.
In Mafia language this denotes that he was killed not in some casual mugging
but for crimes against the family.
In December a florist’s delivery man called at the home of a union boss
corruptly involved with the crime family. The poinsettias he carried concealed
his real gift: six bullets with which he shot the union man in the face and head in
front of his victim’s wife.
Twelve months after the old boss’s murder his successor met his death on his
front porch. His killers detonated a massive bomb packed with finishing nails
from across the street.
Chicago in the 1920s? New York in the 1930s? No. Philadelphia in the 1980s.
In four years more than twenty Philadelphia mobsters would be slaughtered in a
civil war of such violence that nothing in America compares with it since the
repeal of Prohibition in 1933.
To most Americans, and indeed to any Britons who recall the late revolution
in the colonies, Philadelphia means the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. It is
the city of Benjamin Franklin and the city where the Founding Fathers signed