Manhattan Mafia Guide (22 page)

Just because Salerno chose to stay out of the spotlight does not mean he did not get around. According to author John L. Smith, the mob boss was good friends with entertainer Frank Sinatra. In his book
Running Scared: The Life and Treacherous Times of Las Vegas Casino King Steve Wynn
, Smith reports a story told to the FBI about how Salerno convinced casino mogul Steve Wynn to hire Sinatra as his Golden Nugget casino spokesman. As a result, profits rose dramatically, and Salerno was able to install mob associates into key positions at Wynn’s Atlantic City and Vegas casinos.

Salerno was elevated to the position of Genovese family front boss in 1981, replacing Brooklyn-based Alphonse Frank “Funzi” Tieri, who passed away in March of that year. Though according to many Mafia insiders, including Salerno’s one-time confidant turned informant Anthony “Fish” Cafaro, the real boss of the family was Philip “Benny Squint” Lombardo, who took over the outfit upon the death of Vito Genovese in 1969. Lombardo was allegedly grooming Vincent Gigante for the position (which he secured in the 1980s), using several perceived bosses like Salerno in the process to steer attention away from both himself and Gigante.

Salerno’s reign as front boss did not last long. The FBI bugged his longtime headquarters at the Palma Boys Social Club on 115
^th
Street in the early 1980s, leading to a one-hundred-year prison sentence on RICO charges in 1986. In 1988, Salerno was awarded another seventy-year sentence for his role in a high-rise construction bid-rigging scheme.

The seasoned mob boss died of a stroke inside a Springfield, Missouri federal prison hospital at age eighty.

S
IANO
, F
IORE

2281 First Avenue, 1954

Alias: Fiore Sanguino, Fury

Born: June 22, 1927, New York City

Died: 1964? (disappeared)

Association: Genovese crime family

Siano was the nephew of infamous mob informer Joe Valachi and alleged major narcotics supplier to local black street gangs. He was described by assistant United States attorney Fred Nathan in 1954 as the “principal dealer in cocaine along the Eastern seaboard.”
¹¹⁴

The first arrest for Siano came in 1948 on burglary charges. He was recruited into organized crime through his uncle Joe Valachi, who helped set up Fiore in the illegal narcotics trade in the East Harlem area. Soon, Siano was allegedly carrying out hits for the Genovese crime family, making his bones with the September 20, 1952 murder of Lucchese soldier turned informer Eugenio “Gene” Giannini.

Siano was said to have been recruited again for the 1953 assassination of Steven Franse, a mob associate and longtime close friend of both Vito Genovese and Joe Valachi.

As the gangland legend goes, Genovese left Franse in charge of keeping an eye on his wife, Anna, who was in the process of divorcing Vito and threatening to go public about her husband’s methods of income. Supposedly, Genovese further suspected Anna of carrying on affairs with both men and women under Franse’s nose, an especially humiliating situation for the rising Mafia boss—so appropriate action had to be taken to save face. As the story goes, Genovese couldn’t bring himself to harm Anna, so despite three decades of trusting friendship, he ordered Franse killed. The contract again went to Joe Valachi and his crew of young hit men.

On the morning of June 19, 1953, the body of Steven Franse was found in the rear seat of his car, which was parked in front of 164 East Thirty-seventh Street. Just hours earlier, he had allegedly been lured to a restaurant by old friend Valachi and then jumped by Fiore Siano and Pasquale Pagano, beaten and strangled to death with a chain.

Siano was not convicted for either murder, but he was sentenced to eight years in federal prison on November 27, 1954, after pleading guilty to selling “the highest quality of cocaine at $1,500 an ounce.”

The last anyone ever saw of Fiore Siano was in early May 1964, when he was allegedly led out of Patsy’s Pizzeria at 2287 First Avenue with three unidentified men.

S
ORGE
, S
ANTO

222 East Fifty-seventh Street

Alias: n/a

Born: January 11, 1908, Caltanissetta, Sicily

Died: May 1972, New York City

Association: Bonanno crime family

Considered one of the “great unknowns” of the American Mafia, Sorge was one of the most powerful Mafioso in the United States who also wielded great political power back in Italy. He was a good friend to Charlie Luciano and was thought of as an important liaison between the U.S. and Italian Mafias.

In May 1948, about thirty Sicilians were smuggled into the country via the Port of Philadelphia aboard the SS
Panormus
. Many of the aliens were carrying “substantial quantities” of heroin, which they agreed to transport in exchange for being brought to the United States. The FBN determined that Carlo Gambino was involved in the operation, as was a “representative of” the Santo Sorge Trading Company, located at 196 First Avenue.

Shortly before the Apalachin Meeting of 1957, Sorge, Joe Bonanno and Carmine Galante visited Palermo for a meeting with Charlie Luciano,
¹¹⁵
many believe in order to receive input from Luciano regarding matters of the upcoming conference.

In the late 1960s, the FBI named Sorge as one of the possible successors to Gaspare DiGregorio during the Bonanno family upheaval.

In Palermo during the spring of 1968, Sorge was one of seventeen high-profile U.S. and Italian Mafioso facing up to fifteen years in an Italian prison on charges of operating an international narcotics and currency trafficking ring.
¹¹⁶
Dubbed the “patriarchs of the Cosa Nostra,” codefendants included ten top Sicilian Mafioso, like Giuseppe Genco Russo, and seven American crime bosses, including Joe Bonanno and Carmine Galante from New York, Rafaele Quarasano of Detroit and Francesco Scimone of Boston.

Before the historic trial started, Judge Aldo Vigneri made an unprecedented trip to the United States in order to interview U.S. law enforcement officials and visit Mafia turncoat Joe Valachi—on whose testimony the prosecutors’ case was largely based.

The trial began on March 14, 1968, in Palermo, Sicily, and was presided over by three judges with no jury. At the preliminary hearing, Sorge’s attorneys moved to dismiss the indictment on the grounds that his client, who remained in the United States, was not advised of the charges against him. After two hours of deliberation, the motion was denied. Lawyers then requested permission to subpoena former partner Joe Valachi and New York City police officers Ralph Salerno and John Shanley. The court agreed, provided Sorge pay for all expenses. The witnesses were scheduled to appear in Palermo on April 30; however, they never made the trip.

By May, defense lawyers had cross-examined several witnesses, trying to establish Sorge’s credibility as a legitimate businessman. On May 7 and 8, several people took the stand and testified that Sorge was head of a legitimate Sicilian company called Mediterranea Metals. On June 25, Sorge and all codefendants were acquitted.

Four years later, Sorge died of natural causes at the age of sixty-four.

S
PECIALE
, S
ALVATORE

209 East 107
^th
Street, 1930; 213 East 107
^th
Street, 1950s

Alias: Benny, Sal the Beak

Born: March 12, 1916, New York City

Died: March 25, 1996, Centereach, New York

Association: Lucchese crime family

This stocky, five-foot-three, 170-pound gangster was a trusted associate of the Mafia’s top bosses and said to have had a large controlling interest in East Harlem’s illegal lottery and gambling operations.

Salvatore was born in East Harlem to Francesco Paolo Speciale, who is listed in a 1930 census as a laundry factory driver, and Marietta Rao, the sister of mobster Vincent Rao. They were married at Mount Carmel Church (447 East 115
^th
Street) in November 1910.

East 107
^th
Street, between Second and Third Avenue, in 1912. These buildings no longer exist. Two full blocks of East 107
^th
Street, between Third and First Avenues, have been cleared to make way for an apartment complex.
Library of Congress
.

Salvatore’s first of several arrests came in 1934, at age eighteen. Over the following decades, “Sal the Beak” accumulated an impressive criminal record, including convictions for vagrancy, bookmaking, grand larceny, gambling and narcotics violations.

S
TOPPELLI
, J
OHN

143 Thompson Street, 1910; 153 Madison Street, 1950s; 200 East Thirty-sixth Street, 1977

Alias: John the Bug

Born: April 10, 1907, New York City (b. Stoppelli, Innocenzio)

Died: January 10, 1993, New York City

Association: Genovese crime family

By the 1950s, according to the FBN, Stoppelli was a “trusted inner-circle Mafia leader” and “one of the most active large-scale, wholesale narcotic traffickers in the United States,” working for the Lower Manhattan crew of the Genovese crime family led by Anthony Strollo.

“John the Bug” was born in Little Italy to Rocco Stoppelli, an electrician, and Carmela Miraglio, a cigar store worker, Italian immigrants who were married in New York City in 1900. As a teen, John Stoppelli formed a local stickup and robbery crew, admitting to police during a 1926 arrest that he lived off the “profits of hold-ups.”
¹¹⁷

In March 1926, while living with his family at 926 East 216
^th
Street in the Bronx, nineteen-year-old John Stoppelli was arrested for the October 1925 murder of Louis Bernardo in a pool hall at 108 Thompson Street. Stoppelli’s partner, Peter Cinnamo, admitted to killing Bernardo in a fight and was sentenced for homicide. Stoppelli was charged with burglary.

On April 19, 1938, at 2:15 a.m., a beautiful professional dancer named Thelma Giroux fell naked to her death from the fifth floor of the former Hotel Lincoln at Eighth Avenue and West Forty-fifth Street. When police went to the woman’s room to investigate, they found Stoppelli, who had been dating Giroux for two years. After a few hours of questioning, the known gangster was released, claiming that Giroux had committed suicide.

The rear of the tenement at 134 Thompson Street in 1912, across the street from where John Stoppelli was raised.
National Child Labor Committee Collection, Library of Congress
.

Stoppelli told police that the couple had just returned to the hotel after a night on the town, and out of nowhere, Giroux had stated, “I’m sick and tired of it all. Goodbye. So long. It’s all over.”
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Stoppelli then claimed he stepped out of the room for a moment and upon returning found Giroux missing and the window open. The authorities bought the story, and Stoppelli was released.

It was the second such mysterious death in less than a week. A twenty-two-year-old woman named Norma DeMarco had “committed suicide” by jumping out of a twelfth-story window at 138 West Fifty-eighth Street on April 14, just two days after witnessing the shooting of police officer Humbert Maruzzi during a holdup at the Howdy Club, at 47 West Third Street. DeMarco was credited with saving the officer’s life. When a gunman was preparing to shoot the wounded cop in the back, DeMarco screamed, and the shot missed. The brave heroine was then pistol-whipped while attempting to wrestle the gun away from the thug and still had bandages on her head the night she died. Police lieutenant Thomas Martin ruled that a “sudden mental aberration” caused DeMarco to jump.
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