Albert the Executioner
A gangster took Panto aside one night. “Benedetto [blessings],” the gangster said menacingly as he sliced his finger across his neck.62 Panto was undaunted. On Wednesday, July 12, 1939, Emil Camarda, union boss of the Brooklyn ILA locals, summoned Panto to his office. When he arrived, a bunch of goons were standing around Camarda. “Peter, some of the boys don't like the way you're calling meetings and making a rumpus,” Camarda told him. “Some of them might want to harm you, but I told them you're a good fellow.” Panto refused to stop.63
Albert Anastasia had had enough of this troublemaker. Nothing was getting through to this guy. Anastasia talked to his henchmen about “some guy Albert had a lot of trouble with down in the waterfront,” who was “threatening to expose the whole thing.” Albert the Executioner came up with a solution.64
On Friday, July 14, 1939, Panto was shaving for a night out with his fiancée. A call was placed to Panto at the store across from his boardinghouse in Red Hook. The caller persuaded him to come to a meeting. “I don't think it is entirely on the square,” he told his fiancée. Nevertheless, he kissed her goodbye, put on his fedora, and walked out the door. Panto was last seen entering the automobile of an ILA official with two men, one of whom was later identified as Anthony Romero.65
Peter Panto looked out the window at Manhattan as the car crossed over to New Jersey. When they arrived, Panto walked into the house for the meeting. Waiting inside were James “Jimmy” Ferraco, Emanuel “Mendy” Weiss…and Albert Anastasia. As soon as Panto walked in he realized what was happening. Panto lunged for the door. Mendy Weiss, a hulking thug, grabbed him and “mugged him.” Panto bit and scratched Weiss's huge hands, desperately trying to break his grasp. We can only imagine the terror running through the young longshoreman's mind in those final moments.66
The men transported his dead body to the marshy meadowlands outside Lyndhurst, New Jersey. They dumped him in a shallow grave and covered him in quicklime.67 Whenever the Mafia is romanticized as the “Honorable Society,” or minimized as a supplier of victimless vice, Peter Panto's last night on earth should be remembered.
4–1: Official photograph of Peter Panto distributed by NYPD in 1939. (Courtesy of the New York Police Department)
Terrorizing the Rank-and-File Committee
After Panto disappeared, graffiti started appearing on pier facilities: “Where is Pete Panto?” It became a rallying cry. That October, Pete Mazzie, a twenty-three-year-old longshoreman, called for a public meeting of the Rank-and-File Committee. About four hundred longshoremen filled the chairs of the smoke-filled hall. A gang of thugs took seats smack in the middle of the hall.
“This is the opening of a headquarters where longshoremen can meet and talk,” Mazzie declared. “The rank-and-file committee is taking up where Pete Panto left off. So any phonies present tonight will find—”
“What do you mean by phonies?” shouted a tall thug popping up from his chair.
“I'll tell you what I mean—” Mazzie tried to continue.
The thug stormed up to the speaker's table and slugged Mazzie. Another goon bashed a chair over Mazzie's head. By the time the police arrived, the hall was a wreck and Mazzie was on his way to the emergency room.68
4–2: Albert Anastasia, October 1936. (Courtesy of the New York Police Department)
Even as he was recovering, Mazzie was warned that he “better watch his step, and remember what happened to Pete Panto.”69 In January 1941, investigators dug up Panto's body in New Jersey. His corpse was so badly decomposed that he had to be identified by his teeth. Brooklyn District Attorney William O'Dwyer's office publicly identified the suspects as Anastasia, Ferraco, and Weiss. O'Dwyer later claimed the case fell apart on November 12, 1941, when one of the key witnesses, Abe “Kid Twist” Reles fell—or was thrown—out of the sixth-floor window of the Half Moon Hotel while under police custody. Few longshoremen believed Reles fell on his own. The violence had an effect. Panto became a martyr on the docks. But fewer and fewer longshoremen dared appear at public meetings. The uprising fell apart.70
CASE TWO: RUNNING A UNION RACKET QUIETLY—UNITED SEAFOOD WORKERS LOCAL 359
Although the Mafia demonstrated it was capable of extreme violence, most of the time it sought to manage its labor rackets quietly. When possible, the Cosa Nostra preferred more subtle forms of coercion, and collaboration with corrupt businessmen. This was revealed in the 1935 federal prosecution under the Sherman Antitrust Act of Joseph “Socks” Lanza of the United Seafood Workers Local 359.71
The Mob in the Fresh Fish Markets
Fresh fish rots quickly. This biological fact gave the fish handlers leverage beyond their rank in life. The teenage Joseph “Socks” Lanza realized this soon after he started working in the Fulton Fish Market in the 1910s. In 1923, when he was barely twenty, the precocious Lanza helped organize Local 359 of the United Seafood Workers union. Lanza's cronies founded the Fulton Market Watchmen and Patrol Association to collect a “protection fund” from retailers to prevent thefts or “labor troubles” in handling their perishable fish.72
The first investigations into the fish markets focused not on the Mafia, but on Jewish fish wholesalers. In July 1925, the federal government charged seventeen fish wholesalers for conspiring to violate the Sherman Antitrust Act by “creating an artificial market and dictating prices to retailers.” They pled guilty and paid fines.73 Then, in September 1926, the state attorney general charged fish companies with another conspiracy to “restrain competition, increase prices and conduct a monopoly in white fish, carp, pike and other fished used by Jewish people during the forthcoming holidays.” But witnesses failed to cooperate.74
June 1935, United States v. Joseph Lanza, et al., Federal Courthouse, Manhattan
In United States v. Joseph Lanza, et. al., the United States Attorney charged eighty individuals and corporations with conspiring to monopolize the freshwater fish industry in New York City in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Joseph “Socks” Lanza and his United Seafood Workers local were accused of conspiring with several crooked businessmen. The defendants included twenty-five corporations with respectable names like the Delta Fish Company, Inc., the Geiger Products Corporation, and the Lay Fish Company.75
The June 1935 trial did not involve any accounts of homicide or even physical assaults. Rather, the witness testimony revealed how the conspirators cleverly used a trade association and business coercion, along with the labor union and subtle threats, to obtain control of the fish markets. Lanza lurked in the background, only occasionally revealing himself.
The Trade Association and Business Coercion
The aim of the conspiracy was to control the supply of fresh fish going into New York City to thereby artificially fix prices. To accomplish this, several retail fish dealers organized into a citywide trade association. The trial testimony showed that the retail dealers combined “into what became known as the Bronx, Upper Manhattan, and Brooklyn Fish Dealers Association, with one of the defendants [Jerome] Kiselik, acting as the so-called impartial chairman.”76
To extend their control, Kiselik and a wholesale organizer named O'Keefe set up a meeting of the fish wholesalers at the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island, Brooklyn “to organize to remedy the market conditions in concert with retailers.” Joe Lanza sat with Kiselik at a table on the dais, but he did not speak during the meeting.77
The businessmen defendants formed a committee to “work out a satisfactory plan for the division of profits on a percentage basis” and to “collect information as to supply, prices…and the elimination of duplication” in the fresh-fish market of New York City. Although it sounded benign, as the court properly found, the scheme “was really one to monopolize the business” of the fish market in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. And it was done by businessmen.78
United Seafood Workers Local 359 and Subtle Threats
The fish cartel probably could not have been maintained without Joseph “Socks” Lanza an
d the United Seafood Workers union. As shown in detail later, cartels are intrinsically unstable, and usually require some mechanism to police the cartel. In this case, it was Joe Lanza and the United Seafood Workers union. Given that almost all the hand truckmen in the fish markets in Gotham belonged to this union, it was a powerful stick in the hands of racketeers.79
The Seafood Workers union was integral to policing the cartel and controlling the supply of fish. When a new retailer brought in fish he bought from outside of New York, he would be educated on the cartel's rules. Kiselik would come by to “straighten this thing out” and instruct the retailer that he “should buy fish in New York.” Lanza would drop in on the conversation but say nothing. The union boss's mere presence was sufficient.80
For wayward retailers, Lanza engineered union problems to bring them into line. When a veteran retailer brought in fish from Philadelphia, Kiselik came by demanding to know why the retailer dared to purchase sweet-water fish in Philadelphia. The retailer replied simply that “it was cheaper.” A few minutes later, fish handlers returned and took the Philadelphia fish off his truck.81 When Booth Fisheries, one of the largest fish dealers balked at some of the association's fees, Kiselik and Lanza together paid a visit to some of Booth's intermediaries. With Lanza standing nearby, Kiselik told the intermediaries that Booth Fisheries “was not behaving in a cooperative fashion” and that he hoped “the matter might be straightened out.” Booth ended up paying the agreed fees and, in exchange, was allotted 12.5 percent of the fresh-fish market in New York—a blatantly illegal allocation of the market.82
For Joe Lanza's “services,” fish dealers funneled strange fees and payoffs to him as well. At trial, a fish retailer testified about what happened when he opened a new place of business in the market. The retailer was visited by Kiselik of the fish retailers’ association. Kiselik asked the new retailer to “see his friend Joe Socks” and pay him $500 (about $8,000 in 2013 dollars). The only reason Kiselik gave for the payment was that “Joe Socks needs the money.” During an intimidating follow-up conversation with the retailer, Lanza stood silent a couple steps away. Joe Socks got his money. But he was convicted in June 1935 and sent to federal prison.83
Case Three: Evading a Union—Keeping Out the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union
The Cosa Nostra's relationship to labor unions was purely opportunistic. When the Cosa Nostra could not gain control over a labor union, it often sought to end-run the union altogether. This is shown by the mob's attempts to keep out the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) from certain garment shops. It led to tragic results in 1949.
The Mafia and the Garment Industry
The garment industry's labor force was originally Jewish, and so were its gangsters. Benjamin “Dopey Benny” Fein was hired as a “labor slugger” for the United Hebrew Trades union to do battle with shtarkes (strongarm men) hired by employers to break strikes. In 1926, the Communist Party–controlled ILGWU brought in the gangster Arnold Rothstein to end a disastrous strike.84 Later Jewish gangsters graduated to more sophisticated labor racketeering. In 1936, Louis Buchalter and his friend Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro were convicted of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act by restricting competition in the fur-dressing trade.85 Buchalter and his henchmen were later found guilty of murder for the slaying of Joseph Rosen, a candy-store owner who was cooperating in an investigation. They were electrocuted at Sing Sing in 1944.86
Italians who grew up in Lower Manhattan were familiar with the needles trades around them. Indeed, Joe Masseria and Charlie Luciano worked briefly in the industry before they were mafiosi. The Gagliano Family had held interests in piecework shops since the early 1930s.87
By the time the Mafia came to the forefront, the ILGWU was under the leadership of David Dubinsky, a dynamic unionist with a record of fighting both Communists and gangsters. The ILGWU became a strong union that prevented the mob from gaining control over its upper-level administration. But even Dubinsky gave up on some areas of the union, like Local 102, a trucking local hopelessly lost to gangsters.88
Mafiosi end-ran the ILGWU by diverting production to their own mob-owned shops. Joe Valachi described how he kept his dress shop union-free. “I never belonged in any union,” Valachi recalled. “If I got in trouble, any union organizer came around, all I had to do was call up John Dio or Tommy Dio and all my troubles were straightened out.”89 By shutting out the ILWGU, these garment contractors held major competitive advantages over rival companies.
“Not to the Bothered by the Union”
Rosedell Manufacturing Company ran a nonunion garment shop on West 35th Street. In 1948, ILGWU organizer Willie Lurye was leading union picketers outside the company's building. They talked truckers out of crossing the line and slowed deliveries into the factory. Rosedell's owners cast about for someone to deal with their union problem.90
Rosedell's owners were put in contact with Benedict Macri. Macri had served as a front man for Albert Anastasia. His brother Vincent Macri was Anastasia's close friend and bodyguard. Rosedell's owners told Macri they wanted either “an International contract or—not to be bothered by the union.” For Macri's services in dealing with the ILGWU, the owners promised Macri a 25 percent share of their business profits.91
Macri had no interest in getting an ILGWU contract. Macri tried to restart operations under the new “Macri-Lee Corporation,” but he still could not get deliveries through his freight entrance. Next, they tried to open a secret cutting room on Tremont Avenue in central Bronx. On Friday, May 6, 1949, the ILGWU picketers got wind of it and went up to the Bronx. According to prosecutors, the pickets slashed about eighteen dresses, infuriating Macri.92
On Monday, May 9, 1949, Willie Lurye was back on the picket line on West 35th Street. In the late afternoon, the ILGWU organizers started to go home. Around 3:00 p.m., Lurye went into the building lobby to make a call from a telephone booth. When Lurye was in the booth, two men trapped him. He screamed in terror as they stabbed him repeatedly. Lurye, bleeding, staggered to the sidewalk. He died the next day. On May 12, 1949, an estimated one hundred thousand New Yorkers participated in or watched the funeral procession down Eighth Avenue. Lurye's grief-stricken father died the following week.93
An eyewitness named Sam Blumenthal told police that he saw two men attacking Lurye with a knife. Blumenthal identified them from photographs as Benedict Macri and John “Scarface” Giusto. Macri, who had gone on the lam within hours after Lurye's murder, surrendered to authorities a year later. Giusto never returned.94
October 1951, People against Macri, Court of General Sessions, Manhattan
On October 11, 1951, the case of People against Benedict Macri commenced in a packed courtroom in Manhattan. The prosecution's initial witnesses testified as expected, establishing Macri's motives and movements that Monday. Then shockingly, the key eyewitnesses to the murder changed their stories on the stand. Sam Blumenthal developed amnesia:
Q Do you remember that you saw, as I have asked you, two men outside the right hand phone booth, moving their hands in the direction of inside that phone booth?
….
A I don't honestly know. In my imagination he did, and yet I'm not sure.
….
Q Did you not tell me, and swear it, on September 21st, 1951, this statement…. “This movement of the hands of the first and second men in the direction of the man in the booth took about a minute.”
….
A I am in doubt of it.
Later in the trial, another prosecution eyewitness seemed to develop vision problems.95
With key eyewitnesses changing their stories, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. “A lot of strange things have happened,” the judge commented after the verdict. “The witness Blumenthal lost his memory; the witness Weinberg lost his vision.” The judge suggested that these “strange coincidences…might bear some further investigation in the future.”96
Subordination of Perjury
The dis
trict attorney's office investigated the witnesses. In March 1952, Sam Blumenthal pled guilty to perjury. Blumenthal admitted that he was approached by George “Muscles” Futterman, a business agent for a mobbed-up jewelry workers’ union. Futterman gave Blumenthal $100, told him to “do what he could not to hurt Macri,” and warned him that he'd be “as good as dead if you don't do what you're told.” Futterman was convicted for subordination of perjury. At sentencing, the judge denounced Futterman as the front man for a “ruthless band of assassins.”97
Although Benedict Macri escaped the law, his mob ties came back on him. In April 1954, Benedict and his brother Vincent Macri went missing after Benedict talked to authorities investigating Albert Anastasia for tax evasion. Vincent's body was found in the trunk of his brother's car. Benedict's body was never found.98
Case Four: Expanding a Mobbed-up Union—Teamsters Local 183 and the Waste Hauling Industry in Westchester County
We look last at how the Mafia spread rackets through mobbed-up unions. This is illustrated by the Cosa Nostra's expansion of its “property-rights” system of waste hauling to the suburbs.
The Mafia and the Waste-Hauling Industry
New York's waste-hauling industry was predominantly Italian, a legacy from when Italian immigrants were relegated to the dirtiest jobs in sanitation. As a young man, Joe Valachi worked as a garbage scow trimmer, the same workers organized by Paolo Vaccarelli. Most commercial waste haulers, or “carting companies,” were small family businesses with a few trucks passed down from father to son. This was a prototypical “fragile” industry.99
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