By logical mafioso succession, leadership of the Cleveland Family after Scalish's death belonged to James "Blackie" Licavoli. But Licavoli's succession was challenged by another ambitious mafioso, John Nardi. Already ensconced in a position of leverage as an officer within the Teamsters local, Nardi moved to edge out Licavoli with the aid of Danny Greene's Irish Gang. One after another, Licavoli supporters were rubbed out, and Licavoli appeared to be in most serious trouble when perhaps his toughest ally, mobster Leo "Lips" Moceri, disappeared permanently, leaving behind his bloodstained car in a hotel parking lot outside Akron.
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Other important crime families soon expressed impatience and/or interest in events in Cleveland. Funzi Tieri, the boss of the Genovese family in New York, offered Licavoli help, which was declined. Blackie understood that when a big family comes in with an offer of aid, it has a bad habit of "staying for dinner," cutting itself in for a piece of the pie. (Los Angeles was a prime example of such a situation.) Licavoli also had to worry about interference from Chicago, especially after that crime family's chief, Joey Aiuppa, declared the Second City neutral and ordered no Chicago soldiers, even those with close ties with Cleveland, to help Licavoli in any fashion. To Licavoli, this meant Chicago was being guided by its own Teamsters policy, and no rules of succession of the "Honored Society" would apply.
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To whatever extent Licavoli may have been intimidated by outside crime families, he still managed to fight an effective war. The Nardi foe parked an automobile loaded with dynamite next to his auto outside his union office. When Nardi came out to his automobile, the dynamite car was detonated by remote control, and Nardi killed. A short time later, Danny Greene also went to his reward. Blackie Licavoli had won out; he even enjoyed a measure of independence of both the Chicago and New York mobs.
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Licavoli proved to be a cunning boss. He penetrated the Cleveland FBI office and bribed a female clerk to feed him information about organized crime investigations, including the identities of a number of informers. Licavoli was later to tell Jimmy Fratianno, as is recorded in
The Last Mafioso
, "Jimmy, sometimes, you know, I think this fucking outfit of ours is like the old Communist party in this country. It's getting so there's more fucking spies in it than members."
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Fratianno, a lifelong friend of Licavoli, was at the time a secret FBI informer, and fear that the Cleveland FBI office leak might reveal his activities undoubtedly was a convincer that he go into the witness protection program.
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It was one thing for Licavoli to be philosophical about leaks, but the embarrassed federal government was hardly amused. Not surprisingly, Licavoli became a prime target for a RICO conviction, especially after he beat murder charges in the Nardi and Greene rubouts, as well as state charges of bribery. Licavoli, however, was convicted of federal RICO charges in 1982 and sentenced to 17 years in prison. He died three years later at the Oxford Federal Correctional Institute. It will take a number of years to determine if such RICO prosecutions can kill the Mafia in Cleveland or whether the Mafia structure is more important than whatever leadership is chopped down. Already there is evidence that other organized crime elements have moved in to fill the vacuum.
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Lingle, Alfred "Jake" (18921930): "World's richest reporter" and mob victim
Jake Lingle made $65 a week as a police reporter-legman for the
Chicago Tribune
. Yet he owned a house in Chicago and a summer place in Indiana. He wintered in Florida or Cuba and maintained a residence at the Stevens Hotel on Michigan Avenue. An inveterate gambler, often betting as much as $1,000 on a single horse race, Lingle traveled in a Lincoln, complete with chauffeurcertainly the only $65-a-week Chicago newsman ever to do so.
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On June 9, 1930, Jake Lingle was shot to death. At first the Chicago newspapers lionized him as a gallant member of the profession, but the facade soon collapsed. The double life of Jake Lingle soon became apparent as the public read that the diamond-studded belt buckle he wore was a gift from Al Capone. Lingle was exposed as being the funnel between the Capone mob and his boyhood pal, Chicago police commissioner William E Russell. (Russell himself was given a furlough from his post and later forced to resign.) It would later be learned that Lingle held a joint $100,000 stock market account with Commissioner Russell ("Jake's like a son to me," Russell often said) and had had enough resources on his own to lose $180,000 in Simmons Bed in 1929.
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Lingle himself was in debt to Capone for at least $100,000 and had been extorting funds from Capone's mobsters as well as those of the rival Bugs Moran gang. Playing both ends against the middle, Lingle used his muscle with the police commissioner to barter gambling and liquor licenses. "I fix the price of beer in this town," Lingle had bragged, and in a sense it was a fact since obviously the cost of protection was a major item in determining what the mobsters had to charge for their suds.
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Lingle had explained away his free-spending lifestyle by saying he had inherited anywhere from $50,000 to $160,000Lingle's story was never quite the same
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