A Criminal History of Mankind (89 page)

Luciano’s close associate Vito Genovese had fled from America in 1937, when the ‘heat was on’, and spent the war in Italy. If Mussolini was embarrassed to learn that his millionaire friend was a wanted gangster, he decided it was worth a little embarrassment when Genovese spent a quarter of a million dollars on a new fascist headquarters in Nola. When the Americans landed, Genovese persuaded them to take him on as an interpreter for army Intelligence. When a CIA agent discovered that he was a wanted killer, Genovese was escorted back to New York. Then one of the chief witnesses against him, Peter La Tempa, died of poison in his jail cell; in June 1946, Genovese was acquitted. He lost no time in reasserting his authority over the New York mobs. In October 1951, the New Jersey Mafia boss Willie Moretti was murdered. He was a close associate of Genovese’s chief rival, Frank Costello, who had taken over Bugsy Siegel’s gambling empire in Las Vegas; and Genovese was determined to ‘cut himself in’. In June 1953, another Costello ally, Steven Franse, was murdered. In February 1955, it was the turn of Longy Zwillman, who was found hanged in the basement of his home in Orange, New Jersey, in a wire noose; the verdict was suicide. And on 2 May 1957, Costello was entering his apartment building when someone yelled ‘This is yours, Frank,’ and shot him in the head. The shout probably saved Costello’s life; he lost a great deal of blood, but survived. In his pockets, police found gambling receipts from a Las Vegas casino, and when Costello declined to answer questions about them, or to name his would-be killer, he was jailed for contempt of court. The doorman picked out the gunman from a police photograph; it was Vincent (‘The Chin’) Gigante, a Genovese lieutenant.

Two months later, Frank Scalise, a Mafia underboss (second-in-command) was shot down at midday on a Bronx street. He was killed, according to underworld gossip, because he had been selling Mafia membership to non-Italians; but it seems altogether more likely that he was another victim in the gang war.

With Costello out of the running, Albert Anastasia, the Syndicate’s chief executioner, stood in the way of Genovese’s bid for power. Anastasia was known as the ‘Mad Hatter’ of crime because he became insanely homicidal when angry. It was Anastasia who had ordered the murder of a public-spirited citizen named Arnold Schuster who had recognised a famous bank robber, Willy Sutton (Willy the Actor) and informed the police. Schuster’s murder - in March 1952 - was intended to warn all other public spirited citizens to mind their own business. Anastasia subsequently had Schuster’s executioners killed, to cover his tracks.

Genovese heard that Costello had been conferring with Anastasia, and that the subject was almost certainly himself. He decided to strike first. His own gunmen were too well known to Anastasia, so Gcnovese approached the underboss of Anastasia’s ‘family’, Carlo Gambino, and made him a proposition. Anastasia was one of the most wanted men in New York - Burton Turkus said he had been getting away with murder for thirty years - and his notoriety was bad for the Mafia. On 25 October 1957, Anastasia was lying in a barber’s chair in the basement of the Sheraton Hotel, his eyes closed, when two men walked in and shot him at close range; Anastasia jumped up and fell into a mirror, which shattered as more shots hit him in the back of the head. The men ran out, threw away their pistols, and vanished.

This killing was arranged by a minor Mafia figure, Joey Gallo, an intensely individualistic gangster who was determined to become a
capo
in his own right. Gallo and his brothers were, at the time, members of another leading ‘family’, the Profacis; the assassination of Anastasia consolidated Gallo’s position in the Profaci family, and during the next two years he is credited with about a dozen more ‘hits’. When Gallo appeared in front of a senate committee on crime in 1959 - interrogated by Robert Kennedy - the hearing was televised, and Gallo became what his biographer Donald Goddard called in
Joey
(published in 1974), ‘the matinee idol of organised crime’. A few months later, Judge Samuel Leibowitz sentenced him to three years in prison for ‘coercion’; he was out within three months.

Gallo was becoming tired of being a mere ‘hit man’; he may also have sensed that the family boss, Joe Profaci, was nearing his end (he died in 1962). In 1961, Gallo decided on a bold move - to kidnap the leading members of the Profaci family. His ‘soldiers’ grabbed four Profaci gangsters, including Frank, the Don’s brother. Joe Profaci agreed to talk, provided the hostages were released. Soon after this, there was a murder attempt on Joey’s brother, Larry Gallo, providentially interrupted by a routine visit from the police. By the time Gallo realised he had been outmanoeuvred by Profaci, he was under arrest for an attempt at extortion - trying to ‘cut himself in’ on the business of a moneylender named Theodore Moss. Gallo drew a seven-to-fourteen-year jail sentence, and the Profaci war came to an end. A few months later, Profaci died of cancer.

By this time, Vito Genovese’s attempt to become the ‘boss of bosses’ had also ended in failure, largely due to the Syndicate’s ‘banker’, Meyer Lansky. Lansky had been one of Luciano’s closest associates; he owned enormous gambling interests in Florida. When Zwillman and Anastasia died, Lansky was aware that his own turn was imminent. In November 1957, Genovese summoned all America’s top mafiosi to a meeting at the estate of a businessman named Joe Barbara, at Apalachin, in New York State. Lansky sent word that he was unable to attend because he had ‘flu; oddly enough, none of his close friends attended either. That day, the local police called on Barbara, observed the dozens of expensive limousines in his driveway, and decided to investigate. Dozens of alarmed gangsters leapt out of windows and took to the woods. This happened minutes after the meeting had voted to appoint Vito Genovese the new head of the Syndicate for the whole country. It was an inauspicious beginning. No charges were made as a result of the Apalachin round-up - all the gangsters had perfectly legitimate reasons for being there - but the story made nationwide headlines, and Genovese lost face.

When Lansky heard that Genovese was planning to kill Luciano - even though Luciano was now living in ‘retirement’ - he decided it was time to take more serious action. One of Lansky’s men was serving time in Sing Sing; his name was Nelson Cantellops. Lansky offered Cantellops a life pension and a promise of protection if he would testify against Genovese to the Narcotics Bureau. Cantellops decided he had nothing to lose. He ‘sang’ to such effect that Genovese was sentenced to fifteen years in jail.

Even in prison, Genovese remained a force in the underworld. It is alleged that he ordered a number of executions from his prison cell. Fellow mafiosi came to report to him every day. Other prisoners were not allowed to address him unless he spoke first. One of these prisoners was a gangster named Joe Valachi, who had worked for a
capo
named Joe Bonanno - known as Joe Bananas. Genovese seems to have believed that Valachi was one of those who was responsible for landing him in jail. Valachi was not a man of iron nerve; when he became convinced that his execution had been ordered, he asked to be placed in solitary confinement. There he decided that his only chance of escape lay in killing the executioner. On 22 June 1962, Valachi seized a piece of iron pipe, and killed a fellow prisoner named John Saupp, a forger. He discovered too late that Saupp bore a striking resemblance to a Genovese henchman called Joe DiPalermo, who had been the intended victim. Faced with execution, Valachi decided to try and strike a bargain with the authorities. The result was the most detailed revelation of Mafia crimes - and organisation - since the days of ‘Kid Twist’ Reles. Valachi began by revealing that the term ‘Mafia’ was long out of date; it had been superseded first by ‘Unione’, then by ‘Cosa Nostra’. He went on to confirm what the justice department had long suspected: that Dewey’s intensive campaign against the Syndicate, culminating in the execution of Lepke and Pittsburgh Phil and the deportation of Luciano, had left the basic organisation untouched. Robert Kennedy called Valachi’s testimony ‘the biggest intelligence breakthrough yet in combatting organised crime’.

This time the authorities did not make the same mistake as in the case of ‘Kid Twist’. Valachi was kept under close guard in a comfortable jail cell; although Genovese offered $100,000 for his murder, he survived to die of a heart attack in his cell in Texas in 1971. Genovese himself had died in jail in 1969.

With Genovese behind bars, Carlo Gambino became the most powerful member of ‘Cosa Nostra’. He soon found himself facing a challenge rather more dangerous than Gallo’s attempt to take over the Profaci family. Joe Bonanno was a ‘family’
capo
who had ‘retired’ to Tucson, Arizona, although he continued to have interests in New York, mainly in ‘loan sharking’ (usury). Bonanno was part of the nine-member Commission - elected from America’s twenty-four leading Mafiosi - that governed Syndicate affairs. When Joe Bonanno’s son Bill was also elected to the Commission, fellow members began to feel that the Bonanno family was acquiring undue influence. About this time Valachi’s revelations caused Joe Bonanno some embarrassment, and he moved temporarily to Canada. There he heard rumours that other Commission members were planning to get rid of him. Bonanno decided to strike first, and ordered the killing of four leading mafiosi, including Carlo Gambino. Bonanno was closely allied to the Profaci clan - his son Bill was married to Rosalie Profaci - and the order was passed on to a Profaci ‘hit man’, Joe Colombo. And Colombo - no doubt recognising that his chances of killing four leading gangsters were minimal - contacted Gambino and told him: ‘It’s war. Bananas is trying to take over.’

On 21 October 1964, Bonanno was walking towards the entrance of his New York apartment when two men pushed guns in his ribs and dragged him into a car. Bonanno was taken to a Catskill resort, where his fellow Commission members demanded explanations. They were not anxious to kill Bonanna; with his son still alive, that would mean all-out gang war, and much unwelcome publicity. What they really wanted was to persuade Bonanno to surrender his ‘business’ interests, and agree to vanish into retirement. Bonanno had little alternative. In exchange for his own life, and a promise that his family would be left untouched, he agreed to leave the country. Gloomy but philosophical, he retired to Haiti. The newspapers referred to the affair as ‘the Banana split’. Joe Colombo was appointed head of the Profaci ‘family’ as a reward for loyalty.

Bill Bonanno was understandably upset by his father’s kidnapping and subsequent retirement, and was indisposed to accept the demotion it implied. Clashes with rival factions led to an offer of a truce in January 1966; but as Bill Bonanno made his way towards the agreed location - the house of one of his own relatives - he was fired on from a doorway and had to run for his life. No one was hurt; but when Joe Bonanno heard about the attack in Haiti, he decided that his rivals had terminated their agreement by breaking it. In May 1966, he returned to America. It was the signal for what became known as ‘the Banana war’. In November 1967, three ex-Bonanno gangsters, who had defected to the other side, were eating in a Brooklyn restaurant when a man approached their table and mowed them down with sub-machine-gun fire. In March 1968, another ex-Bonanna gangster was parking his car when he was hit in the throat by a bullet. A few days later, Bill Bonanna’s chauffeur and bodyguard was murdered by the rival faction. The killing was still going on twelve years later when, in July 1979, Carmine Galante - another Bonanna associate - was shot to death in a Brooklyn restaurant.

But perhaps the most interesting development of the 1970s was the Mafia’s attempt to convince the American public that it did not exist. The architect of this audacious scheme was Joe Colombo, the ex hit-man who was now
capo
of the Profaci family. When his son was arrested in 1970, on a charge of melting coins into silver ingots, Colombo formed the Italian-American Civil Rights League to protest at the way good citizens were always being accused of being mafiosi. The Mafia, he said, was a myth invented by the police; there was no organised crime in America; and if there was, it was certainly not organised by Italians. He discovered, to his surprise, that he had tapped a vein of resentment in his fellow Italian-Americans, who felt they were a persecuted racial group. Hollywood was persuaded to abandon the term ‘Mafia’ - with the result that it was cut out of the script of
The Godfather
. The League threw a picket around the FBI headquarters; 50,000 people attended a rally in Manhattan’s Columbus Circle. Colombo was voted League man of the year. Suddenly, he was a national figure. Politicians began to listen respectfully. Mafia gangsters became accustomed to posing for photographs with civic leaders. One reporter wrote of ‘Colombo’s magical hat trick by which the Mafia had been made to disappear like a magician’s white rabbit’.

At first, older ‘godfathers’ - like Carlo Gambino - were willing to wait and see what came of it all. They had always hated publicity, but Colombo’s seemed to be of the right kind. But things began to go wrong in December 1970, when Colombo’s bodyguard Rocco Miraglia was arrested outside the State Supreme Court. He was carrying a black attache case, which Colombo insisted belonged to him and contained papers of the Civil Rights League. Intrigued by his obvious concern, the FBI agents examined its contents, and found that it appeared to contain accounts of various financial transactions involving huge sums of money, and relating to various well-known Mafia figures, such as Carlo Gambino. The Mafia suddenly found itself again the subject of police harassment. And Colombo’s League was blamed.

On 28 June 1971, Colombo stood up in front of a vast audience at Columbus Circle to review the results of the League’s first year. As he moved through the cheering crowd towards the rostrum, shots rang out and he dropped to the ground; the man who had fired them was a negro photographer, Jerome Johnson. Within seconds, Johnson was dead, shot by a Colombo bodyguard (who was never identified). Colombo recovered after five hours of brain surgery, but his active role as a
capo
was over; he was paralysed.