The Mafia Encyclopedia (35 page)

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Authors: Carl Sifakis

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body be dumped in the streets so that "my family won't have such a hassle getting my life insurance."
The boys agreed, but for various reasons the hit was not carried out. Maybe the Colombos aren't that bad asort.
Colony Sports Club: Mob-owned London gambling casino
Organized crime discovered that legalized gambling was far more lucrative than the illegal type. The bribery tab was lower and the juicy side rackets, such as skimming and openly promoted casino junkets, added big revenue. In an effort to expand legal operations, mob tentacles soon spread beyond the U.S. borders to Cuba, Haiti, the Bahamas, Portugal and even Communist Yugoslavia. Above all London offered an extremely rich base, one that the mob's financial wizard, Meyer Lansky, did not ignore.
When Castro threw the mob out of Cuba and shut their glittering gambling casinos, Lansky immediately accelerated his efforts in England. The mob opened a considerable number of casinos in that country, some of which were less than totally honest, a situation made possible in part thanks to the British belief in fair play and the misguided notion that everyone abided by high standards. In most of these casinos, especially those backed by Philadelphia godfather Angelo Bruno, the rule provided that smalltime games be kept honest, but whenever a sucker was set up, one good for $30,000 or $40,000 in an hour, the gloves were off and every rig possible was used. Two other mob operators, Joey Napolitano and Richie Castucci, were imprisoned, fined and then kicked out of England after the authorities nailed them for rigging games at the Villa Casino.
None of these operators followed the Meyer Lansky method. Realizing the need for a genuine high-class casino that would attract loads of high rollers, Lansky determined the game had to be legit, with no fast mechanics working the tables, no marked cards or switched decks and no loaded dice. Thus the Colony Sports Club opened.
In theory, the Colony was run by former Hollywood actor George Raft but, according to Mafia informer Vinnie Teresa, he was merely a front for the real owners, Alfie Sulkin, Lansky and longtime Lansky associate Dino Cellini. The Colony was the place to go for English and visiting society. Each day Raft would appear, dressed in a tuxedo, and he would meet people, sign autographs and dance with enthralled women. Raft was later to tell friends, those days in the 1960s were the happiest years of his life, a continuing run of glamor for a star whose movie career had faded.
Raft made millions for the mob at the Colony but the bubble burst when the British government finally became exercised at underworld control of the Colony and deported Raft. Cellini was also booted out but essentially Raft was made the scapegoat in the affair. The British failed to solve the matter of true ownership of the casino and Lansky and Cellini kept up their secret association with it.
See also:
Raft, George
.
Colosimo, Big Jim (18711920): Brothel king and Torrio murder victim
Italian-born Jim Colosimo came to Chicago with his father in 1895 and rather quickly achieved the American Dream, underworld style. Having toiled his way up from newsboy and bootblack to street sweeper, Big Jim concluded that hard work was getting him nowhere fast. He turned instead to petty crime, developing fairly good pickpocketing skills. But, after a brush with the law, he decided he needed a safer racket. He got a job working as a collector for two infamous, corrupt aldermen, Michael "Hinky Dink" Kenna and Bath-house John Coughlin. Under the aldermen's tutelage he moved on to poolroom (i.e., betting parlor) manager, saloonkeeper and then the really juicy job as a brothel bagman, collecting tribute for Kenna and Coughlin.
In 1902, while making his appointed rounds, Jim made the acquaintance of a fat, dumpy, middle-aged madam named Victoria Moresco. For both it was love at first sight; Big Jim saw her money and she was taken by his dark Latin virility. To make sure he didn't get away, Victoria made him the manager of her brothel. Two weeks later they married. Under Big Jim's skilled management and with the support of his aldermanic benefactors, the brothel thrived. Big Jim renamed it the Victoria in honor of his bride and raised prices. He also opened up a string of lower-priced bordellos that charged only $1 or $2. Out of every $2 his girls got paid, Big Jim took $1.20. In no time at all he was a millionaire.
But Big Jim had not forgotten his humble streetsweeping days. He organized the street sweepers into a fraternal organization and soon had a lucrative labor shakedown racket going.
In due course Big Jim became the top procurer in Chicago, a city brimming with whorehouse entrepreneurs. His headquarters, Colosimo's Cafe on South Wabash Avenue, became a favorite entertainment and watering hole for a melange of society and entertainment stars, not to mention the cream of the underworld. Many headliners headed for Colosimo's after their own shows, and often included in the late supper crowd were George M. Cohan, Al Jolson, Sophie
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Tucker and John Barrymore. An opera lover, Big Jim often hosted Enrico Caruso.
Colosimo's Cafe was the one joint Big Jim could be proud of, and although he was hardly about to give up his whorehouses, he was looking for someone to take up their management so he could spend more time being impresario of the finer things in show business.
Colosimo was also looking for protection. His great financial success attracted the attention of Black Hand extortionists who threatened him with death unless he paid them off. Since their pay-or-die demands were at first rather nominal, Colosimo paid, but as their money bites increased, the great whoremaster saw a pressing need to acquire some muscle to save his assets. Thus in 1909 he sent for one of the few outsiders he knew he could trust, a nephew from Brooklyn named Johnny Torrio. He was known as "Little John" but increased his stature by always proving as tough as the situation required. Torrio was not a man given to personal violence but he saw this was the only way to deal with extortionists. He lured several into traps where they were murdered. The word soon got around that Big Jim was off limits to protection demands.
Colosimo was extremely pleased with his decision to bring in Torrio, not knowing that the decision would eventually prove to be the death of him. Torrio enjoyed no bountiful rewards for good works at first. Colosimo praised him effusively and shunted him off to the Saratoga, his lowest-rung whorehouse where charges were never more than a dollar a trick and often less. Torrio however was a most imaginative male madam and repainted the sleazy joint and ordered all the women to dress in childish clothes so that they looked like young virgins. He raised the Saratoga's prices and business boomed. This more than anything impressed Colosimo who promoted Torrio to his chief aide, the de facto head of the Colosimo vice empire. Big Jim could thus devote more attention to his plush legit cafe and seek romantic attachments other than with his wife whose attractions grew less as he grew richer.
Torrio had only one thought in mind, that to stay on top in crime one had always to take advantage of changing situations, to shift emphasis with the times. It was this perception that would win Torrio recognition by many as "the father of modern American gangsterism." In 1919 Torrio saw the potential offered by the 18th Amendment. Prohibition would turn fast-moving gangsters into multimillionaires. All that stood in the way of expansion of Colosimo's empire was Big Jim Colosimo himself.
Big Jim had by then dumped his wife and planned to marry a beautiful young singer named Dale Winters. Whenever Torrio tried to involve Colosimo in the rich world of bootlegging, Colosimo shrugged him off, pointed out their vice empire was humming most profitably and turned back to his more gracious pursuits.
Torrio grimly kept on planning and in 1919 imported from New York a 19-year-old youth named Alphonse Capone whom he had known before he left New York a decade earlier and whom he'd seen many times on trips back to Brooklyn. Capone was the perfect foil for Torrio, the thinker. Capone was a man of action who sought to solve problems with the blackjack, the knife and the gun. Capone became Torrio's chauffeur and bodyguard and soon his number two man. Colosimo was still around, but the underworld was already pegging Torrio as the tough in charge.
On May 11, 1920, Colosimo was shot dead in the vestibule of his cafe. Torrio had asked him to be there to receive a large shipment of whiskey. An unknown assailant suddenly sprang from the checkroom and fired two bullets into Big Jim who died in a matter of minutes.
Some careless crime writers have insisted that Colosimo hit was the work of Capone, acting on Torrio's orders. The fact was that Colosimo died according to Torrio's plan but Torrio took care to make sure both he and Capone had solid alibis at the time of the killing. Torrio had already discovered the value of importing outside gunmen to handle important assignments when too much heat would focus on locals.
The killer was Frankie Yale, a top Brooklyn mob leader, who had strongly urged Torrio to import Capone. When Torrio communicated to Yale his need for a good gunner, Yale announced he would handle the matter himself. One eyewitness later identified Yale's photograph as that of the killer, and police discovered he had been stopped at the Chicago train station just after the Colosimo murder. Since the police had had no firm reason to hold Yale, he was allowed to continue to New York. The witness was sent to Brooklyn to confront Yale, but by the time he arrived, he had developed, not unexpectedly, a case of cold feet and could not be sure Yale was the man.
Colosimo's murder remained unsolved, but that mystery is overshadowed by matters of greater significance. Indeed, his death opened the floodgates of crime in America's second city and gave birth to what became known worldwide as the Chicago Gangster.
Commission, The: Mafia "ruling body"
Even with the conviction on November 19, 1986, of three of the so-called Mafia Commission, there is a mistaken impression that the Mafiaor, indeed, organized crimeis entirely governed by this body. But both the Mafia and the national syndicate, two different entities, are far more republican than that. Even in the heyday of the so-called Big Six in the 1940s and 1950s, the com-
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mission was not all-powerfulexcept when its decisions were unanimous.
Confusion is a result of the fact that there are really two commissions. In his autobiography, Joe Bonanno described a national commission that governs the Mafia, speaking only of the commission as a unit representing the five New York families, with a representative from Chicago and at various times from a few additional cities such as Buffalo, Detroit and Philadelphia. Bonanno was exaggerating the importance of that commission.
In the 1930s the syndicate was ruled by a number of leaders headed by Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, some mob leaders in New York and New Jersey with Chicagostill struggling with the loss of Al Capone and trying to win full control of that cityalmost unconcerned. In the 1940s the Big Six made the major decisions on syndicate business. Frank Costello and Joe Adonis represented the mafioso interest of the five families in New York. Meyer Lansky represented himself, other Jewish kingpins such as Moe Dalitz, and the jailed or deported Luciano whose standard orders to others were "listen to the Little Man" (Lansky). Longy Zwillman represented the New Jersey mobs and each week two representatives, Tony Accardo and Greasy Thumb Guzik, flew in from Chicago. The ethnic composition of the Big Six was not insignificant, being composed of three Jews and three Italians. So much for the idea that organized crime was virtually all Italian or Mafia.
Throughout the years there was a national commission of the Mafia but it had more limited interests. It was on this commission that the five New York families were represented as well as other crime families drawn from among the 20-odd crime families blanketing the United States. This commission primarily concerned itself with New York-New Jersey-Pennsylvania affairsnot surprising since probably half the mafioso manpower in the country was and is located in this region.
Chicago, especially when represented by Sam Giancana, was at best only a semi-interested member, probably because in recent years not one crime syndicate but twonot just one Mafia, but one plus Chicagohave existed. Chicago at times merely pays lip service to the Commission but nevertheless claims everything west of Chicago as its own. It has not always been able to implement this view but does hold sway over several other crime families.
Organized crime in recent years has seen the growth, rather than the decline in power, of the Italian or Mafia interests. There has been no purge of Jewish mobsters, and to this very day Las Vegas in mob outlook is still regarded as a "Jewish town." But the realities of the calendar have come into play. When Meyer Lansky passed away in 1983 Jewish participation in syndicate matters declined greatly. Many Jewish mobsters remain in lower levels, but the Jewish syndicate leaders never had the slightest interest in nepotism in so far as the structure of organized crime was concerned and thus have been dying away. They were interested in producing great personal wealth for themselves but not in creating dynasties. It would be wrong to say the Italians or mafiosi have been overly interested in nepotism either. Yet there has been some succession of father-to-son in godfather-like situations, but only when the son seemed capable of taking over, as happened with the Trafficantes in Tampa, the Zerillis in Detroit and, according to the FBI, in the mid-1980s with the Patriarcas in New England.
As a result of this, the Mafia form of the commission has become the effective one, not representative of a purge but rather a reflection of a new reality. And this commission remains what it always has been, the central organ of a confederation of crime families. It was the sort of commission that Luciano envisioned early on, one in which various crime groups remained more or less in charge of their own turf, except where such an outfit was too weak to assert its rights. (Had Luciano been a figure in antebellum America, he would have been an ardent states' righter.)
Thus in recent years the commission has not been powerful. It failed to stifle the Profaci-Gallo conflict or to assert its will during the so-called Banana War. None of this indicates that the Mafia is weakening or dying, but rather that the commission remains less than all powerful. That is the nature of the beast.
In the late 1990s much has been made in the press that the commission was no longer meeting and had not done so for two years. The last statement was clearly true, but there was little reason for a commission meeting. The less-than-all-powerful unit functions best in aiding to resolve interfamily disputes but is virtually powerless when the disputes are intrafamily. With increased law enforcement prosecutions, the violence within the mob has consisted of leadership struggles among members. The input of outsiders in such warfare has always proved ineffective. While the Mafia was clearly weakening in the 1990s the impotence of the so-called ruling commission is probably of minor moment.
Concrete Scam: Huge Mafia construction racket
The concrete racket is one of the most lucrative of all construction shakedowns worked by Mafia mobs across the country. FBI tapes showed that in the 1980s Big Paul Castellano, as head of the Gambino crime family until his murder in 1985, got a cut of every gob of concrete poured on the Manhattan skyline. After his demise the money flowed to his successor and murderer,

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