This short snippet reflects how comfortable Newark police director Dominick Spina was with Boiardo and DeCarlo. Also Boiardo’s relationship with Addonizio and his bagman Irving Berlin. Another conversation has Boiardo flat out telling his mob cohorts that Spina is on the take.
DeCarlo: Today, if you don’t meet them and pay them, you can’t operate.
Boiardo: The only guy I handle is Dick Spina. Gino Farnia and them guys handle the rest of the law. About seven or eight years ago I used to handle them all.[13]
DeCarlo was also caught another time bragging, “Spina, the mayor, Irving Berlin. Any of us guys can put any politician we want anywhere.”[14] He further relayed a conversation he’d had with Dominick Spina regarding how Spina felt like all he did was take orders from people, like Mayor Addonizio. “And then I gotta take orders from Jerry Catena—but you [DeCarlo] and Jerry never ask me to make a move. I gotta admit it. You never ask me for a favor. But Bananas [Anthony Caponigro] and Tony Boy [Anthony Boiardo]! I feel like telling them to go to hell!”[15]
Addonizio’s downfall began on July 12, 1967, when the Central Ward of Newark became engulfed in a major race riot that lasted for six days, triggered by the arrest and beating of a black cab driver by two Newark policemen. It’s beyond the scope of this book to discuss in much detail all the factors that led to the riots, the events that transpired over the course of those six days, or the twenty-six people who were killed and the hundreds injured, including civilians, police, and firefighters. But how organized crime played a part in fomenting the conditions that led to the riots can be traced back to the levels of corruption and forces that were at play in the city. After the riot, the Governor’s Select Committee on Civil Disorder (known as the Lilley Commission) heard from over a hundred witnesses and reviewed an additional seven hundred staff reports. The causes, they found, were endemic poverty, lack of economic opportunity, and dissatisfaction in the black community of Newark. One underlying theme that also emerged was a pervasive culture of corruption in Newark municipal government from lower-level employees straight up to Spina and Addonizio. And the catalyst for that corruption was the influence of organized crime.
In the wake of the riots and the Lilley Commission report, a series of hearings and investigations were undertaken. The staff director of the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement declared that “Official corruption in New Jersey is so bad that organized crime can get almost anything it desires.”[16] A new US attorney, Frederick Lacey, was brought in to lead the charge as evidence was unveiled and indictments were prepared against a who’s who of organized crime and elected officials.
Hugh Addonizio was tarnished by the fallout from the race riots and subsequent investigations. Indictments were leveled against Addonizio and other elected officials from Newark to Jersey City. The Newark mayor was still trying to run his upcoming 1970 mayoral campaign while dealing with an upcoming trial on extortion charges as a result of a kickback scheme netting over a million dollars from contractors working on city projects. Addonizio went to trial in the summer of 1970 with four other defendants, and on July 22, 1970, the jury returned a verdict of guilty on sixty-four counts of extortion. He also, not surprisingly, lost his reelection bid. The twice-defeated mayor slumped in his chair in court as the verdict was read. He remained free on bail while appeals were lodged. Once those were exhausted, the disgraced mayor reported to federal prison in 1972. He was released in 1977 under unusual circumstances and fought the parole board through 1979 to keep himself from going back to prison. He died in 1981 of cardiac arrest, no longer a force in New Jersey politics but to this day a reminder to many of how power corrupts, especially in New Jersey municipal politics.
One of US Attorney Lacey’s first cases against organized crime featured Gyp DeCarlo, who was indicted in 1969 for loan-sharking as part of a complicated financial scheme. In 1967 a financial analyst named Gerald Zelmanowitz had approached a labor racketeer he knew, Lou Saperstein, to invest fifty thousand dollars in a Swiss bank so Zelmanowitz could use the money for financial transactions, with a guaranteed profit to Saperstein. The two men then approached DeCarlo to lend them additional funds. DeCarlo had them to talk with one of his associates, Daniel Cecere. Saperstein already owed DeCarlo money as a result of a prior loan-sharking transaction. However, Cecere decided to invest on behalf of himself, DeCarlo, and Joe “the Indian” Polverino. Though the initial returns had been good, trouble with the IRS cut into the profits. To add further fuel to the fire, Saperstein was falling behind on vig payments. Cecere took him to the barn, and they worked him over. When Zelmanowitz came looking for his friend, he found him in a state. “There was a group of people in the first room as I entered, and I heard my name called, and there is another room attached to this room, which I entered, and when I got in there, Mr. Saperstein was laying on the floor. He was purple. He was bloody. His tongue was hanging out of his mouth. I thought he was dead.”[17]
The day before he was found dead, the result of an acute ingestion of arsenic, Saperstein wrote a letter to the FBI asking for their help:
Gentlemen: I am writing you, maybe others can be helped by my plight. On September 13, 1968, I was severely beaten at a place in the rear of Weiland’s Restaurant, Route 22, DeCarlo’s headquarters. I was then told and given three months until December 13, 1968, to pay the entire accumulated amount under threat of death. Cecere, DeCarlo, and Polverino also stated many times my wife and son would be maimed or killed. Please protect my family—I am sure they mean to carry out this threat. Last night from my home I called DeCarlo and pleaded for time but to no avail. Over the phone DeCarlo stated unless further monies was paid the threats would be carried out.
Louis B. Saperstein[18]
With the information at hand the FBI started investigating and charged DeCarlo and Cecere with loansharking. Their trial began in early 1970. DeCarlo, then sixty-seven years old, was described at the trial as “silver-haired, short and stocky, with an impressive paunch . . . heavy face, a long, sharp nose and shelving chin” who didn’t walk as much as “waddle into the courtroom.”[19] DeCarlo and Cecere were found guilty on three charges each of making extortionate loans to Saperstein. His death was never determined to be either murder or suicide, though it was brought up at trial, resulting in DeCarlo and Cecere’s unsuccessful appeal. However, DeCarlo did not spend long in prison. In December 1972 his sentence was commuted by President Richard Nixon. The Justice Department told the press that it was done on compassionate grounds due to DeCarlo’s serious illness. DeCarlo died on October 20, 1973, from cancer. He had been living at his home in Mountainside, New Jersey.
After DeCarlo’s clemency, there were rumblings of mob influence. One theory held that Frank Sinatra reached out to Spiro Agnew to personally make the plea to Nixon that DeCarlo needed to be released. The FBI and Justice Department both said that the pardon followed all the proper protocols and reiterated it had been given on account of health reasons. They said an investigation “failed to turn up ‘one iota’ of evidence suggesting official impropriety in DeCarlo’s release from prison.”[20] And some sources say that Jerry Catena reached out through Walter Annenberg to intervene on DeCarlo’s behalf, citing Catena’s ties to Walter’s father, Moses Annenberg. Catena’s involvement is an interesting theory with little substance to back it up. But the fact that Catena’s name was thrown around as having the clout to influence a decision by the president is a testament to how far Catena had come since his days working for Longy Zwillman. Catena had moved up through the ranks of the Genovese family and emerged as one of the most understated yet powerful mobsters in New Jersey.
1. SAGE Publishing, CQ Almanac Online Edition: 1963, 2017, https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal63-1315434 (registration required).
2. Federal Bureau of Investigation, The Decarlo Tape Transcripts (Original Full Set), n.d.
3. Indiviglio was killed in 1965.
4. Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Angelo De Carlo, Aka. AR.”
5. John P. Wilgus, The Criminal Commission, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Newark Division, 1963.
6. Robert Wells, Anti Racketeering Conspiracy, New York, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1968.
7. Polidori was a Genovese soldier from East Paterson, in Gene Catena’s crew. He was originally under Willie Moretti but switched over to Catena after Moretti’s murder.
8. Federal Bureau of Investigation, The Decarlo Tape Transcripts.
9. Frederick T. Martens, We’ll Make You an Offer You Can’t Refuse: A Primer on the Investigation of Public Corruption, 1st ed. (N.p.: Mint Associates, 2015), 1.
10. Federal Bureau of Investigation, The Decarlo Tape Transcripts.
11. Paul Hoffman, “The Unmaking of Mayor Addonizio,” Tiger in the Court: Herbert J. Stern (Chicago: Playboy Press), full text available at http://mafianj.com/addonizio/addonizio8.shtml.
12. National Commission . . . Surveillance. Commission Hearings.
13. Ibid.
14. Federal Bureau of Investigation, The Decarlo Tape Transcripts.
15. Ibid.
16. Fred Cook, “The People v. The Mob; Or, Who Rules New Jersey?” New York Times, February 1, 1970, http://www.nytimes.com/1970/02/01/archives/the-people-v-the-mob-or-who-rules-new-jersey-the-people-v-the-mob.html.
17. United States v. Angelo Decarlo et al. Appellant in No. 18705. Appeal of Daniel Cecere, 458 F.2d 358 (3d Cir. 1972).
18. Ibid.
19. Cook, “The People v. The Mob.”
20. Murray Illson, “DeCarlo of Mafia Dead of Cancer,” New York Times, October 21, 1973, http://www.nytimes.com/1973/10/21/archives/decarlo-of-mafia-dead-of-cancer-impropriety-denied-mobster.html.
Chapter 8
Bayonne Joe
Ellis Island, the entry point into the United States of America for millions of immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century, today is often a day trip for tourists visiting New York City. With the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island is often seen as the epicenter of the American immigrant experience, where so many came to find their way in a strange and unfamiliar country. And the entry to this country was through the bustling metropolis of New York City. For that reason, the Statue of Liberty is one of the most ubiquitous images associated with the largest city in the United States. But while the image of Ellis Island as a wholly unique New York City experience remains strong, in 1998 the Supreme Court of the United States, after years of legal wrangling, declared that 90 percent of the island actually belongs to New Jersey—in Hudson County, to be exact.
The Hudson River stretches along Hudson County’s east side, Newark Bay on its west. At the southern tip of the peninsula, the city of Bayonne borders Staten Island before turning north, looking across the lower Hudson River to Brooklyn, before paralleling the West Side of Manhattan, all the way up to West One Hundredth Street. The county in many ways is the nexus between New Jersey and New York City. Cities like Hoboken and Jersey City, now bedroom communities for commuters, dot its landscape.
Before the Mafia planted its flag in the county, the kingpin of the gambling scene was an old-school Irish mobster, Joseph “Newsboy” Moriarty. Born in Jersey City in 1910, Moriarty acquired the Newsboy moniker when delivering newspapers in Jersey City as a kid. Accounts say that by the time he was a teenager he was running a successful bookmaking operation. It was as a teen that Moriarty became friendly with the most powerful elected official in Jersey City at the time, Mayor Frank Hague, who ran Jersey City—and by default Hudson County—from 1917 to 1947. Hague was an old-school political boss whose power went unquestioned. A friendship with him served Newsboy Moriarty through the formative years of his gambling career. Newsboy found many wiling customers in the blue-collar bars and taverns of Jersey City and Bayonne, filled with longshoremen and factory workers. With Hague watching over him, Moriarty was able to grow and expand his business throughout the county.
Moriarty did not play the part of a traditional gangster. For one, though he did business with mobsters, he was basically a one-man operation, with little interference from the wiseguys who also roamed the streets of Jersey City. This was in part due to Newsboy’s relationship with Hague and the Jersey City Police. As one detective said, “Joe just took bets. No muscle, no violence, no dirty stuff. He didn’t mix with narcotics, prostitution, or syndicates.” Another added, “Moriarty was essentially an honest, industrious man in an illegal business.”[1] By sticking to gambling and eschewing the violence associated with the Mafia, Moriarty made it easier to keep relationships with police and avoid press coverage of his activities.
Also, Newsboy’s sartorial choices were not what one would consider high fashion, and he never spent money lavishly, like so many other gangsters did. He “lived frugally, dressed shabbily, drove a string of shabby-looking cars that were capable of high speeds, and made most of his collections alone.”[2] At the height of his success, his bookmaking and gambling operations were said to bring in millions of dollars a year, and whenever police picked him up they’d find wads of cash in his pockets, upward of seven thousand dollars in one instance. But he only owned a few pairs of trousers and lived for many years with his sister in a cramped apartment.
Newsboy also managed to stay largely under the radar when it came to the press. But though his name had cropped up from time to time in local newspapers, he finally made headlines across the country in July of 1962 when workers were removing some old garages from an industrial area in Jersey City. They came upon an old 1947 Plymouth sedan. When they opened the car they found a cache of $2.4 million. Along with the cash was some paperwork tying the money to Moriarty. Police started searching in other nearby garages and found an additional $168,000 and paper bags filled with numbers and gambling slips. Moriarty must have been fuming about the find. There was no way he could get to any additional stashes he had hidden around Jersey City. At the time of the discovery of what the press dubbed “Moriarty’s Millions,” Newsboy was in prison, serving a two- to three-year sentence for numbers running and illegal gambling. The ensuing battle for control of the money pitted Newsboy against the IRS, the police, Jersey City, and the two workmen who’d found the money. Ultimately a judge awarded the IRS the cash in 1965.
The discovery of the money wasn’t the only hit that Moriarty took that summer of 1962. A few weeks before the millions were discovered, Hudson County police arrested over seventy people in a massive effort against illegal gambling in Jersey City and Bayonne. Many of those arrested were part of Newsboy’s extensive network of operatives. While Newsboy kept his action mainly concentrated in Jersey City, he did make a move to expand into Newark. In 1967 he arranged to buy a numbers operation from Richie the Boot. Boiardo, however, had seller’s remorse and convened a meeting at Gus’s Cozy Inn on Bloomfield Avenue with Newsboy and Jerry Catena. Moriarty agreed to sell back the numbers to Boiardo, averting a possible showdown.
Though Moriarty’s money stash was gone, there were some who thought he was still flush with readily available case. In 1971 Moriarty was kidnapped, handcuffed with a hood over his head, and driven down the Jersey Shore. He was beaten, and his hands and face were burned with a blowtorch. The kidnappers wanted to find out where Newsboy was keeping his money. But it was clear that Newsboy didn’t have any stashes of millions left for them. Still, they kept at it. When his captors tired themselves out and fell asleep, Newsboy took the opportunity to free himself from the handcuffs and sneak way. He walked through some woods to a motel where he called the police. He claimed to not have seen his kidnappers and had no idea why they would want to do this to him. “Newsboy told us he was not sure he could identify the three men, and he didn’t even know where the house was. He only said ‘These were real tough guys.’”[3]
Though the newspapers at the time described Moriarty as retired from his operations, he was actually still at it, taking bets from his loyal customers. But the times had changed. The jovial local bookmaker was now engaged in activity that violated federal rules. The FBI was on Moriarty now, and
even his relationship with local police wasn’t enough to stop them from arresting him in 1973 for gambling conspiracy. He was convicted on those charges and sent to prison. Suffering from prostate cancer, his sentence was commuted by Governor Brendan Byrne in 1976. Newsboy died in February of 1979.
Part of the power that gangsters like Newsboy enjoyed stemmed from the deep level of corruption in some of the municipalities in Hudson County. When John V. Kenny was elected mayor of Jersey City in 1949, his administration inherited a police racket squad that was highly effective in combatting illegal gambling and other vice activity in the city. When Kenny suggested to the police commissioner, Charles Witkowski, that he change the makeup of the squad, arrests plummeted. Witkowski, sensing that Kenny was trying to sabotage the squad, put some of his own men back. “In the sixteen months of the squad’s operation, over 325 arrests for gambling, numbers, etc., were made, the highest per capita percentage in the United States.” To which Kenny told Witkowski, “between the gambling squad and the waterfront squad, you’re hurting our friends.”[4]
Garden State Gangland Page 13