The Mob and the City

by C. Alexander Hortis

  3. For more of a social-history approach, which uses census records to show the similarities of the Mafia leaders before and after the “Castellammare War” to rebut the myth of rapid Americanization, see Critchley, Origin of Organized Crime, pp. 202–206, 230–31.

  4. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Autopsy of Salvatore D'Aquila, October 11, 1928 (NYMA); Brooklyn Standard Union, October 11, 1928; Mike Dash, The First Family: Terror, Extortion and the Birth of the American Mafia (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009), pp. 291–92, 398.

  5. Ibid., pp. 275, 325; New York Times, October 11, 1928; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 11, 1928.

  6. Gentile, Vita di Capomafia, pp. 61, 76; FBI Report, Denver, La Cosa Nostra, March 29, 1964, in Records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Record Group 65, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD (hereafter “NARA College Park”).

  7. New York Times, October 11, 1928; Brooklyn Standard Union, October 11, 1928; autopsy of D'Aquila, October 11, 1928 (NYMA); Dash, First Family, p. 362.

  8. Critchley points out that the men first engaged D'Aquila in a discussion before killing him, and in 1968 an informant by the pseudonym “Jim Carra” claimed D'Aquila was killed by his own underboss. Critchley, Origin of Organized Crime, p. 289. On the other hand, Carra's version is uncorroborated, and other mob killings began with arguments with the victim, such as the January 1931 murder of Joseph Parrino in a restaurant. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 20, 1931. Thanks to Rick Warner for this citation.

  9. Gentile, Vita di Capomafia, p. 80.

  10. Ibid., p. 96.

  11. Critchley, Origin of Organized Crime, pp. 77, 157.

  12. Dash, First Family, p. 320.

  13. Thomas Hunt, “Profaci's Rise,” Informer: The Journal of American Crime and Law Enforcement (January 2012): pp. 4–15; Critchley, Origin of Organized Crime, pp. 161–62.

  14. Dash, First Family, pp. 364–66.

  15. Critchley, Origin of Organized Crime, pp. 171–77; Dash, First Family, p. 328.

  16. Gentile, Vita di Capomafia, p. 96; Bonanno, Man of Honor, p. 87.

  17. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 27, 1930; Critchley, Origin of Organized Crime, p. 175.

  18. Bonanno, Man of Honor, p. 106; Joseph Valachi, “The Real Thing: The Expose and Inside Doings of Cosa Nostra” (unpublished manuscript), pp. 339–40, in Boxes 1 and 2, Joseph Valachi Personal Papers, in John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston, MA.

  19. Hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations: Organized Crime and the Illicit Traffic in Narcotics, Senate, 88th Cong., 1st Sess. (1963), 163 (testimony of Joseph Valachi).

  20. Gentile, Vita di Capomafia, p. 97; Critchley, Origin of Organized Crime, pp. 171, 178. Although Bonanno claimed Morello admitted his culpability in the Milazzo murder, there is no corroboration for this questionable story. Bonanno, Man of Honor, pp. 100, 103.

  21. Bonanno, Man of Honor, p. 70.

  22. Critchley, Origin of Organized Crime, pp. 144–45.

  23. Bonanno, Man of Honor, p. 71; Peter Maas, Valachi Papers (New York: Putnam, 1968), p. 106.

  24. Gentile, Vita di Capomafia, p. 109; Bonanno, Man of Honor, p. 103.

  25. Organized Crime, 166 (testimony of Joseph Valachi); Salvatore Maranzano, quoted in Bonanno, Man of Honor, 86; Gentile, Vita di Capomafia, p. 97.

  26. Critchley, Origin of Organized Crime, p. 173.

  27. Gentile, Vita di Capomafia, p. 109.

  28. Valachi, “The Real Thing,” p. 287.

  29. Bonanno, Man of Honor, p. 102; Brooklyn Daily Star, July 15, 1930.

  30. Catania was killed on February 3, 1931 by Maranzano's hit men. Organized Crime, 188–89, 192 (testimony of Valachi).

  31. FBI Report, Activities of Top Hoodlums in the New York Field Division, September 14, 1959 (NARA College Park); Peter Diapoulos and Steven Linakis, The Sixth Family (New York: Bantam, 1976), pp. 21–22; Valachi, “The Real Thing,” p. 287.

  32. Bonanno, Man of Honor, p. 86.

  33. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Report of the Autopsy of Joseph Masseria, April 16, 1931 (NYMA); Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Report of the Autopsy of Salvatore Maranzano, September 11, 1931 (NYMA); Thomas Hunt and Michael Tona, “Cleveland Convention Was to Be Masseria Coronation,” Informer: History of American Crime & Law Enforcement (January 2010), p. 33 n. 62.

  34. George Wolf with Joseph DiMona, Frank Costello: Prime Minister of the Underworld (London: Morrow, 1974), p. 83.

  35. New York Times, August 15, 1930; New York Sun, August 16, 1930; Brooklyn Standard Union, August 16, 1930; Maas, Valachi Papers, p. 89.

  36. Bonanno, Man of Honor, p. 107; Dash, First Family, p. 376.

  37. Organized Crime, 164–66 (testimony of Valachi).

  38. Ibid., 170; New York Times, November 6, 1930.

  39. FBI Report, La Cosa Nostra, July 1, 1963, in RG 65 (NARA College Park); Gentile, Vita di Capomafia, p. 107.

  40. Ibid., p. 108.

  41. Bonanno, Man of Honor, p. 122.

  42. New York Times, April 19, 1930, April 20, 1931; Organized Crime, 211 (testimony of Valachi).

  43. Autopsy of Masseria (NYMA).

  44. New York Times, April 16, 1931; New York Sun, April 16, 1931.

  45. Brooklyn Eagle, April 17, 1931; autopsy of Masseria (NYMA); Critchley, “Castellammare War, 1930–1931,” p. 64 n. 123.

  46. Autopsy of Masseria (NYMA); Daily Argus, April 16, 1931.

  47. New York Times, April 16, 1931; New York Sun, April 16, 1931.

  48. It was unlikely Luciano was present at the Nuova. Luciano was not known as a hit man, no news accounts placed him in Brooklyn, and Nicola Gentile witnessed a calm Luciano in his residence shortly after the murder. Gentile, Vita di Capomafia, p. 112.

  49. Critchley, Origin of Organized Crime, p. 302, n. 160 citing “Giuseppe Masseria, November 27, 1940,” in Box 17, Murder, Inc. Collection, NYMA.

  50. Confidential Memorandum, In Re: Anastasia Brothers, March 21, 1952, in Box 8, Albert Anastasia Closed Files (NYMA). The informant did not appear to have been a mafioso himself and made some farfetched claims. For example, he called Vito Genovese “the boss” of the Brooklyn mob, and he alleged that William O'Dwyer actively conspired in Abe Reles's murder. However, the informant was accurate about other waterfront matters, and his story about Giustra was corroborated. New York Times, December 12, 1930, September 12, 1932; New York Sun, May 15, 1931.

  51. Gentile, Vita di Capomafia, p. 112.

  52. Ibid., p. 113.

  53. Bonanno, Man of Honor, p. 128.

  54. Gentile, Vita di Capomafia, p. 115.

  55. Bonanno, Man of Honor, pp. 126–27; Gentile, Vita di Capomafia, p. 115.

  56. New York Times, June 6, 1931.

  57. “Lucky Luciano Talks,” Esquire, p. 128.

  58. Humbert S. Nelli, The Business of Crime: Italians and Syndicate Crime in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago, Press, 1976), pp. 205, 295 nn. 30–31.

  59. Organized Crime, 217–18 (testimony of Valachi); Gentile, Vita di Capomafia, pp. 115–116.

  60. Ibid.

  61. New York Times, September 11, 1931; Bonanno, Man of Honor, p. 130; Gentile, Vita di Capomafia, p. 116.

  62. New York Times, September 26, 1931; Bonanno, Man of Honor, p. 134.

  63. Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, 121 CE.

  64. FBI ELSUR Log, Steve Magaddino, June 3, 1963, in RG 65 (NARA College Park); FBI Memorandum, Subject: Steve Magaddino, March 31, 1965, in RG 65 (NARA College Park).

  65. Organized Crime, 221, 226 (testimony of Valachi).

  66. Dash makes no mention of their role in the Maranzano assassination. While noting their presence at Maranzano's office, Critchley concludes only that the Gaglianos “may have been involved in it.” Critchley, Origin of Organized Crime, pp. 195, 305 n. 238, citing New York State Crime Commission, Public Hearings (no. 4) (November 1952), 111 (testimony of Lucchese).

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sp; 67. Organized Crime, 226 (testimony of Valachi); FBI Memorandum, Thomas Lucchese, January 12, 1954, in FBI FOIA file of Thomas Lucchese (copy in possession of author).

  68. Bonanno, Man of Honor, p. 139; Gentile, Vita di Capomafia, p. 117.

  69. New York Times, September 11, 1931; Public Hearings (no. 4), 95 (testimony of Lucchese).

  70. Bonanno, Man of Honor, pp. 130, 137; New York Times, September 11, 1931.

  71. Girolamo Santuccio, quoted in Maas, Valachi Papers, p. 115; New York Times, September 11, 1931.

  72. Salvatore Maranzano, quoted in Maas, Valachi Papers, p. 115; Salvatore Maranzano, quoted in Gentile, Vita di Capomafia, p. 118.

  73. Organized Crime, 228 (testimony of Valachi); Girolamo Santuccio and Sam Levine, quoted in Maas, Valachi Papers, p. 116.

  74. New York Times, September 11, 1931; autopsy of Salvatore Maranzano, September 11, 1931 (NYMA).

  75. Organized Crime, 231 (testimony of Valachi).

  76. Public Hearings (no. 4), 98 (testimony of Lucchese); New York Times, September 11, 1931; Maas, Valachi Papers, p. 116; Organized Crime, 224 (testimony of Valachi).

  77. J. Richard Davis, “Things I Couldn't Tell till Now,” Collier's (August 5, 1939): 12–13, 43–44.

  78. Nelli, Business of Crime, pp. 179–84; Alan Block, East Side, West Side: Organizing Crime in New York, 1930–1950 (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1983), pp. 3–9.

  79. Davis, Mafia Dynasty, p. 46.

  80. Steven Runciman, The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), p. 216; The Godfather (Paramount, 1972).

  81. Critchley calculates thirteen casualties between May 1930 and April 1931. Critchley, “Castellammare War, 1930–1931,” p. 65. Adding Salvatore D'Aquila (October 1928), Gaetano Reina (February 1930), and Salvatore Maranzano (September 1931), brings the total to sixteen casualties.

  82. Nelli, Business of Crime, p. 172.

  83. Gentile, Vita di Capomafia, pp. 101, 104.

  84. Bonanno, Man of Honor, p. 97.

  85. Organized Crime, 194 (Valachi testimony).

  86. Magaddino, quoted in FBI Memorandum, Subject Steve Magaddino, January 24, 1964, RG 65 (NARA College Park).

  87. Raab, Five Families, p. 28.

  88. Critchley, Origin of Organized Crime, p. 206, citing New York Times, March 2, 1930.

  89. Dash, First Family, pp. 117, 120.

  90. New York Times, September 26, 1931.

  91. Gentile, Vita di Capomafia, p. 119.

  92. Ibid.; Bonanno, Man of Honor, p. 159.

  93. Ibid., p. 141. Although some sources indicate Ciccio Milano of Cleveland also held a seat, he appears to have been removed shortly afterward. FBI Report, Anti-Racketeering Conspiracy, December 13, 1963 (NARA College Park).

  94. New York Times, October 18, 1931.

  CHAPTER 4: THE RACKETEER COMETH: HOW THE MOB INFILTRATED LABOR UNIONS

  1. United States Census Bureau, 1920 Federal Population Census, John Dioguardi, District 152, Manhattan, New York.

  2. New York Times, September 2, 1934, January 16, 1979.

  3. Hearings before the Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field: Investigation of Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field: Part 10, 85th Cong., 2d Sess. (1957), 3618–33 (opening presentation of Robert Kennedy), 3683–3718 (testimony of Lester Washburn).

  4. Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties (New York: Free Press, 1960), p. 129.

  5. Francis A. J. Ianni, Black Mafia: Ethnic Succession in Organized Crime (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), pp. 13–14.

  6. Howard Abadinsky, Organized Crime, 9th ed. (New York: Cengage, 2009), pp. 27–35; Jeffrey Scott McIllwain, Organizing Crime in Chinatown: Race and Racketeering in New York City, 1890–1910 (London: McFarland, 2004), p. 8.

  7. Jay P. Dolan, The Irish Americans: A History (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010), pp. 110, 301.

  8. New York Times, January 2, 1881, January 3, 1893.

  9. Dolan, Irish Americans, p. 96.

  10. Julius Drachsler, Intermarriage in New York City: A Statistical Study of the Amalgamation of European Peoples (New York: n.p., 1921), p. 44.

  11. Tyler Anbinder, Five Points: The 19th-Century New York City Neighborhood that Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum (New York: Plume, 2002), pp. 375, 497.

  12. New York Sun, November 7, 1912, January 18, 1914; Anbinder, Five Points, pp. 284–89.

  13. New York Times, December 27, 1925; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 10, 1926.

  14. Hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations: Organized Crime and the Illicit Traffic in Narcotics, Senate, 88th Cong., 1st Sess. (1963), 148, 231 (testimony of Joseph Valachi); FBI Airtel, Harold Konigsberg, August 16, 1965, in Records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Record Group 65, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD (hereafter “NARA College Park”).

  15. Report, Re: Casper Holstein, March 12, 1935, in FBI Freedom of Information Act File on Casper Holstein (copy in possession of author).

  16. McIllwain, Chinatown, pp. 131–33.

  17. New York State Advisory Committee, Hometown Plans for the Construction Industry in New York (New York: n.p., 1972), p. 1; Colin J. Davis, “‘Shape or Fight?’: New York's Black Longshoremen, 1945–1961,” International Labor and Working-Class History 62, no. 62 (Fall 2002): 143–63.

  18. Frank Lucas with Aliya King, Original Gangster: The Real Life Story of One of America's Most Notorious Drug Lords (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2010), p. 106.

  19. Organized Crime, 254, 304 (testimony of Valachi); Robert A. Rockaway, But He Was Good to his Mother: The Lives and Crimes of Jewish Gangsters (New York: Gefen Publishing, 2000), pp. 24, 46.

  20. Ira Rosenwaike, Population History of New York City (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1972), pp. 93–95.

  21. Hadassa Kosak, Cultures of Opposition: Jewish Immigrant Workers, New York City, 1881–1905 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), pp. 16–18; Samuel L. Baily, Immigrants in the Lands of Promise: Italians in Buenos Aires and New York City, 1870 to 1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), pp. 65–66.

  22. Moses Rischin, The Promised City: New York's Jews, 1870–1914 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977) pp. 59–66; Joshua M. Zeitz, White Ethnic New York: Jews, Catholics, and the Shaping of Postwar Politics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), pp. 19–20, table 3.

  23. Burton Turkus and Sid Feder, Murder, Inc., the Story of “The Syndicate” (London: Gollancz, 1951), pp. 28, 110–11.

  24. Nicholas Pileggi, Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), pp. 8–9.

  25. Michael Franzese, Blood Covenant (New York: Whitaker House, 2003).

  26. Jenna Weissman Joselit, Our Gang: Jewish Crime and the New York Jewish Community, 1900–1940 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), pp. 158–59.

  27. Robert Orsi, “The Religious Boundaries of an Inbetween People: Street Feste and the Problem of the Dark-Skinned ‘Other’ in Italian Harlem, 1920–1990,” American Quarterly 44, no. 3 (September 1992): 313–47.

  28. Proceedings of the Subcommittee of the Committee on Immigration of the Senate: Immigration Investigation—Part II, 51st Cong, 2d Sess. (1892), 55 (testimony of James Buckley); Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 56.

  29. Herman Feldman, Racial Factors in American Industry (New York: Harper, 1931), pp. 156.

  30. Table 4–1 is based on data and estimates from the following sources: Federal Writers’ Project, The Italians of New York (New York: n.p., 1938), pp. 64–67; New York State Department of Labor, Changing Employment Patterns in New York State, 1950 to 1964 (Albany, NY: n.p., 1966), pp. 5, 13; Charles P. Larrowe, S
hape-Up and Hiring Hall: A Comparison of Hiring Methods and Labor Relations on the New York and Seattle Water Fronts (Berkeley: University of California, 1955), p. 5. There are no hard statistics for the percentage of Italians among the two thousand garbage workers. John McMahon and Herbert Gamache, Refuse Collection: Department of Sanitation vs. Private Carting (New York: n.p., 1970), p. 34. I selected 70 percent as a conservative estimate based on Reuter's observation that virtually all waste haulers were run by Italian families with relatives as employees. Peter Reuter, “The Cartage Industry in New York,” in Michael Tonry and Albert J. Reiss Jr., eds., Beyond the Law: Crime in Complex Organizations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 154–55. The historian David Critchley has also noted anecdotally the correlation of the Mafia with these workforces. The Origin of Organized Crime: The New York City Mafia, 1891–1931 (New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 77.

  31. Federal Writers’ Project, Italians of New York, pp. 64–66, 70, 72; State of New York, Provisions of Teamsters’ Union Contracts in New York City (New York: n.p., 1949), p. 3.

  32. Caroline F. Ware, “Ethnic Communities,” in Edwin R. Seligman, ed., Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 5 (New York: Macmillan, 1937), p. 24.

  33. David Roediger, Working toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs (New York: Basic, 2005), pp. 24, 82.

  34. Joselit, Our Gang, p. 106.

  35. Reuter, “The Cartage Industry,” pp. 151–52; Critchley, Origin of Organized Crime, p. 77.

  36. Sonny Montella, quoted in President's Commission on Organized Crime, The Edge: Organized Crime, Business, and Labor Unions (Washington, DC: GPO, 1986), p. 39.

  37. Federal Writers’ Project, Italians of New York, pp. 65–66; Ronald Goldstock, Director, and James B. Jacobs, Principal Draftsman, Corruption and Racketeering in the New York City Construction Industry: Final Report (New York: New York University Press, 1990), pp. 79–85.

  38. See also chapter 6.