The Mafia Encyclopedia (83 page)

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Authors: Carl Sifakis

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BOOK: The Mafia Encyclopedia
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Page 236
no excuses are accepted if the money is lost. The money must be repaid. This second-echelon group then relends the money to lower-ranking members of the mob at anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 percent a week. These soldiers then make their money by collecting interest at 5 percent or more a week, depending on what the loan traffic will bear.A capo or soldier might end up in an especially lucrative situation that nets him a bonanza. If so, he can expect his superiors to move in on him for a larger cut.
The Mafia does not put its members on any payroll but merely affords them the right to operate and the right to be gouged by their superiors. Oddly though, this underworld version of the Peter Principle gives the Mafia its very vitality. The mafioso accepts the gouging because he hopes to ascend the ladder at least in a small enough way so that he can become a little more of a gouger and a little less a gougee. The Mafia in reality is a ladder of troughs.
It seems unlikely that the Mafia is doomed to wither because of what is called ''ehtnic succession in organized crime." The exponents of the theory seem to overlook the difference between ghetto crime and organized crime. There has been an upward mobility from the ghetto that has led all ethnics to better positions in society, but the Jews and Italians stayed in organized crime after their profits from crime had raised them far beyond the ghettos. The similarities between the Italian Mafia and such new menaces as the "Black Mafia," the "Cuban Mafia" (or Latin Mafia), the ''Chinese Mafia," and the Pakistanis, Vietnamese and Japanese are difficult to draw. Except for humble beginnings, the Mafia as a crime group has no real equal.
There is no doubt that the Mafia overall is reducing its stake in narcotics, not so much because of the growth of competition from other ethnics but rather because of the heavy penalties involved. However the process is a slow one, and the Mafia often funds much of the operations of non-Mafia groups. Chinese gangsters probably control 20 percent of this country's heroin traffic from bases in Hong Kong and Taiwan and many of this country's Chinatowns. In almost all cases these groups have formed working alliances with the traditional Mafia families. In black and Hispanic ghettos gambling operations fees are generally paid to the Mafia for the "franchise" to operate and because the Mafia maintains the key to political and police protection. The abandonment of street-level activities, the high-visibility part of many rackets, has always been a hallmark of organized crime and should not be overemphasized as a sign of transition.
The fact remains the Mafia thrives and moves into more-sophisticated areas of racketeering because of its members long learning period in organized crime. The crude mafiosi of the 1920s who fought the booze wars with garlic-coated bullets were not capable of the sophisticated crimes of stock manipulation, computer theft and other financial flimflams that the Mafia engages in today. Today the new ethnics are, with some exceptions, about 50 years behind the times.
Proof positive that the Mafia is a going concern comes from the fact that an endless supply of young gangsters are panting for admission. They wait impatiently on the periphery, doing the odd jobs for the mob, or as one New York police official put it, "fencing stolen goods for family members with only a small cut for himself, or even dirty work like burying bodies." They seek membership to win the "right to do the hijackings rather than the peddling, the rubouts instead of the shoveling. He might even be allotted a loan-sharking or numbers territory, franchises with a steady income and, because of the family protection, little fear of competition."
One aspirant in New York was so eager for member ship that he flipped for joy when told he was to be "made." He got all dressed up on the big nigh and drove off with some of the boys, never to be seen again. He was not to be made, but unmade, having fallen into disfavor and slated for execution.
Whither the Mafia? In the late 1980s it appeared that profound changes were taking place because of heat from the federal government's crackdown on the leadership of the various crime families. The government obviously hoped that pressuring the bosses, traditionally men in their 70s, might produce some who would crack under the strain of convictions and the anticipation of dying in jail. Previously, the famed informersReles, Valachi, Teresa, Fratiannodespite all the hype from their promoters, were not top-drawer operatives. The revelations of some of these informers hurt the Mafia and organized crime more than others, but if a boss would talk, the rewards could be electrifying.
Would such men, in contradiction of their entire career philosophy,, talk? The motivation of most informers originally is that they were "screwed" by other mafiosi, robbed of their money while in prison. The bosses do not have such justification. However, there seemed good reason to suspect that the government was only provoking lower-echelon mafiosi to kill their bosses, for fear that they might talk. That could have been an added reason for the assassination of Paul Castellano, head of the Gambino family, on December 16, 1985. At the age of 70 he was facing a whole series of indictments. Conviction would doom him to spend the rest of his life behind bars. Would Big Paulie talk?
A very suspicious story appeared in
Time
magazine just a short time before Castellano's murder (actually
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datelined the day of the killing but printed earlier). It claimed that Aniello Dellacroce, the number two man in the Gambino family directly under Castellano, and who had died of lung cancer on December 2, had been an FBI informer.
Time
, it seems, may have been fed FBI disinformation. That Dellacroce, known as a very tough mafiosi, had talked seemed highly dubious to many observers. Many crime observers believe that the agency used Dellacroce as a scapegoat to protect other very real informers. It is also argued that the Mafia, nervous that a man like Dellacroce would defect, would think, how about Castellano, who was considered personally far weaker than Dellacroce?
The true efficacy of the FBI efforts to nab bosses cannot yet be measured. Yet, the Mafia can counter the threat by returning to the ways of the Mafia during the early syndicate days. Then the leaders of most crime families were in their 30s or 40s. The benefits were obvious. If a boss of 75 were hit with a 20-or 30-year sentence, he could crack, knowing he was at the end of the line. A boss aged 40 could do such a term "standing on his head," getting out in as little as six or seven years, allowing for good behavior. The older boss might talk, the younger would not. And a shift to younger bosses might not weaken the Mafia at all, but rather strengthen it in the long run. One thing remains certain, bloodied or not, as one young mafioso told a reporter defiantly, "We ain't dead, that's for damned sure."
The American Mafia is still a rather young creature, only in its 60s. Rather than learning from the Sicilian Mafia, today it is more aptly described as Sicily's tutor. The 1985 testimony of Tommaso Buscettathe highrank Sicilian mafioso, whose defection led to the arrests of hundreds of alleged mafiosi in Italydescribed the structures of the two Mafias on each side of the Atlantic as similar, but added that only the American version had an organization called "The Commission." Buscetta said the idea of a commission was pressed on the Sicilian Mafia by two members of the American MafiaLucky Luciano and "a gentleman named Bonanno coming from the United States in 1957." Buscetta said Luciano and Joe Bonanno had told their Italian counterparts that such a commission was valuable to resolve disputes between the crime families, 20 in Palermo alone, throughout the island.
U.S. law enforcement agencies had no problem figuring why Luciano and Bonanno were so interested in having a commission established in Italy. By reducing the disputes, the arguments over spoils, they would guarantee that the heroin pipeline from Sicily to the United States functioned smoothly. It was the hallmark of the American Mafiaexporting good old American know-how.
Mafia, Origin of
Historians disagree as to the age of the Mafia. Some trace its origin to 1812, others to 1860. Still others say it goes back to the 13th century to the society that was founded in Italy to fight the oppression of the French Angevins. Its slogan then was
Morte alla Francia Italia anela!
("Death to the French is Italy's cry!") The word mafia was taken from the first letters of each word of the slogan.
In the 19th century, the Mafia emerged as a criminal culture, sometimes victimizing wealthy landowners but more commonly renting themselves out as hired guns to oppress the peasants.
So much for the historical views. Ask the American mafiosithose who'll tell you "there ain't no Mafia"and they'll give a different version, one that crime family boss Joe Bonanno repeats in his recent autobiography,
A Man of Honor
. The term
mafia
was coined in the revolt that developed after a French soldier raped a Palermo maiden on her wedding day on Easter Monday 1282. A band of Sicilians angrily struck back by slaughtering a French troop, and as news of the retaliation spread, other Sicilians arose in town after town, killing the French. Thousands of French died, and the slogan of Mafia became their battle cry, arising from the hysterical cries of the raped girl's mother who ran through the streets shouting
ma fia, ma fia
, "my daughter, my daughter."
Bonanno and other more romantically inclined mafiosi much prefer this version, which puts the Mafia on the side of the angels.
Mafia Coffin: Corpse disposal method
When it comes to disposing of corpses, the Mafia is certainly creative. Indeed, only those victims the mob wants to be found are ever discovered.
The Mafia Coffin is perhaps the most ingenious method of disposing of corpses. A body is delivered to a mob undertakereither a voluntary plotter or one being forced to cooperate, perhaps because of heavy loan-sharkingwho alters a coffin and adds a false bottom, the result sometimes called a Double-Decker Coffin. The victim is placed beneath the false bottom of the Mafia Coffin. Another soon-to-be-buried legit corpse goes on top. The mourning family of the deceased is not even aware that their beloved one is sharing his final burial place with a hit victim, and the pallbearers are simply impressed with the apparent weight of quality wood used for the coffin.
The Mafia Coffin is not used much anymore. It would be too easy for the law to one day have the coffin opened and find the extra body. In theory of course the undertaker can simply deny having put in the extra
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panel and insist some unknown killers must have dug up the coffin and stuck in the extra corpse, though this alibi fails to account for the extra panel. The New York City police credit Joseph Bonanno (Joe Bananas) with perfecting the method at his own funeral parlor in lower Manhattan. But the crime family leader takes no credit for the custom in his recent autobiography,
A Man of Honor
.
MAFIA Gun
The
New Orleans Times
in 1869 first reported the presence of a group of "notorious Sicilian murderers, counterfeiters and burglars, who, in the last month, have formed a sort of general co-partnership or stock company for the plunder and disturbance of the city." They were armed with typical Italian shotguns. These weapons at times featured barrels sawed off to about 18 inches and the stocks sawed through and hollowed out very near the trigger. The stock was then fitted with hinges, so that the gun became a sort of "jackknife" and could be carried on a hook sewn inside a coat. Such weapons were messy but brutally effective.
As corpses turned up, heads or entrails blown away, the New Orleans papers dubbed the murder weapons "Mifia guns," especially imported from Italy. It is doubtful that mafiosi brought many such weapons with them from the old country; there was little need for that. Although a weapon typical in Sicily and indeed in many parts of Europe, such guns were also rather popular in much of the American South. Western outlaws had already started sawing down shotguns to conceal them.
Sample "Mafia guns," typical murder weapons used in many
early gangland killings. These were identified as three
of the weapons used in the assassination of New Orleans
police chief David Hennessey.
In 1890 the celebrated murder of Chief of Police David Hennessey convinced the New Orleans populace that it was the work of the Mafia when several weapons said to have been used in the crime proved to be such shortened Mafia guns. One particularly was labeled of Italian make, having a hinged stock which allowed it to be folded into a compact carrying size. Actually it was an American gun produced by the W. Richards Company.
Eventually 11 mafiosi were lynched for the Hennessey murder and from this the brotherhood learned a lesson. They abandoned all use of such weapons in favor of more traditional ones. Despite that, whenever a sawed-off shotgun was used in a shooting the press for years afterward immediately reported it as a "Mafia job."
"MAFIA Manor": Special prison accommodation for wise guys
In decades not long past the federal prison of choice for Mafia men was Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary located within the dark hills and abandoned coal mines of central Pennsylvania. The institution's proximity to New York,, the heartland of about half the Mafia membership in the United States, and the scores of mob guys sent there earned it the name "Mafia Manor" o ne generally regarded as not totally discarded. It was not an extreme exaggeration to say the boys confined there found it as close to a home away from home as a prison could be.
In that sense they are following an old mob tradition. When Al Capone was confined in Pennsylvania's Eastern Penitentiary on a gun charge, the helpful warden, Herbert B. Smith, supplied him with considerable creature comforts. Big Al had a large one-man cell, which he furnished with rugs, pictures, a desk, a bookshelf, a dresser, lamps and a $500 radio consoletops for the era. While other prisoners received visitors only on Sundays, Capone had such privileges seven days a week. Capone did not have a private telephone in his cell,, but he made do using the on in the warden's office, with the required privacy, whenever he so desired.
The same was true of Lucky Luciano when he was incarcerated at New York's Clinton State Prison. Lucky's private cell had curtains over the cell door and an electric stove. He was not the Birdman of Alcatraz, but he doted over a pet canary. His prison uniform was rather unique as he wore a silk shirt and highly polished shoes. He was always surrounded by a phalanx of paid inmate guards while he held court for inmate visitors, dispensing advice and orders, and if he was so inclined, special favors.
By the 1960s Lewisburg prison held hundreds of Mafia or Mafia-connected inmates, all carving out more

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