Criminal Masterminds

by Anne Williams

  Brought to justice

  For many years, Luciano’s organisation, the National Crime Syndicate, ruled the criminal underworld. Working on a corporate model, Luciano formed a commission with a board of directors, whose task it was to discipline and regulate Mafia bosses. These included Frank Costello, Joe Adonis, Dutch Schultz, Louis Lepke and others. In addition, the National Crime Syndicate offered various services and perks to their members, including a hit man service, known as Murder Inc. As a result of such innovations, New York’s criminal underworld, for the first time, merited the title of ‘organised’ crime, and it was Luciano who was largely responsible.

  Since the Mafia had become so powerful, tightly-knit and well run, it was extremely difficult for the forces of justice to penetrate Luciano’s defences. It took years of hard work and commitment for the US Attorney of New York, Thomas E. Dewey, to nail Luciano, who ruled over the underworld like a lord. However, eventually, Dewey was able to get enough evidence to charge Luciano with running a huge chain of prostitution businesses, and he was tried, convicted and given a long prison sentence.

  While in jail, the US government asked him to help them with their military plans for the invasion of Sicily at the end of World War II. Luciano duly called on his contacts in the world of crime there, who aided the Allies in their manoeuvres. His reward was to be released from jail on parole, provided that he return to Italy.

  On his release, Luciano went to Cuba to organise a crime syndicate, but he was soon found out and was forced to go back to his homeland. There, he continued to involve himself in the New York Mafia, handing out instructions from his base in Sicily. During this time, he became the subject of a murder plot, and also plotted several murders himself. In 1962, he was taken ill at the airport in Naples and died of a heart attack. A court ruled that, since he was now a corpse, he was no longer a deportee and could be buried in the USA. Thus, after his death, his body was flown to New York and buried at St John’s Cemetery in Queens, in the country he always regarded as his true home.

  Al Capone

  Al Capone, known as ‘Scarface’, is one of the most famous gangsters of all time. Operating in the 1920s and 1930s, his career was based on the illegal trafficking of alcohol during the period of Prohibition in the USA, which gave rise to an enormous amount of organised crime and created millionaire bootleggers and gangsters in the process. Not only this, but the black-market trade also involved tremendous violence in which many people, not only gangsters but the general public, lost their lives.

  Today, Capone is remembered for the St Valentine’s Day massacre in 1929, in which seven men were machine-gunned down in cold blood as a warning to an enemy, Bugs Moran, who controlled rival gangs on the North Side of Chicago. He is also remembered as the gangster who combined vicious, bloodthirsty violence with a talent for business, in a mixture of calculation and brutality that fascinated both his friends and enemies. He was just as capable of conscientious bookkeeping as he was of beating a man to death with a baseball bat. His powerful personality intimidated almost all those who came into contact with him, and over much of his career, he ruled gangland Chicago with the tacit agreement of the police. He was placed on the Chicago Crime Commission’s list of public enemies, but he was never charged with his violent crimes. Ironically, in the end, he was jailed for tax evasion, rather than for the murder and torture of his many enemies, as well as his numerous racketeering operations.

  Alphonse Gabriel Capone was born in Brooklyn, New York, on January 17, 1899, the fourth child of nine. His parents, Gabriele and Teresina Capone, were Italian immigrants; his father came from Castellammare di Stabia, a village near Naples, and his mother from Angri, a town in the province of Salerno. Only five years before the birth of Alphonse, the Capones had left their home country and settled in the Navy Yard area of downtown Brooklyn. From there, they moved to the more salubrious area of Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, where Alphonse grew up. It was here that he met his future wife, Mae Josephine Coughlin, and gangster Anthony Espitia, both of whom were to be important figures in his life.

  A life of crime

  The Capone parents worked hard to earn their living, and although by no means wealthy, they were better off than many of their recently arrived countrymen. Gabriel was a barber by trade and was able to read and write. His first job in the city was as a grocer, and after saving some money, he was able to open his own barbershop. In this way, he moved his family out of the immigrant area in which they had first set up home to a more prosperous part of the city, in which there were many different ethnic communities. As a result, Alphonse, or ‘Al’ as he now became, was unusual among his peers for his lack of ethnic, or even racial, prejudice, and later in his career, unlike many other Italian mob leaders, he did not restrict his social and business milieu to the Italian community.

  Up to the age of fourteen, Capone stayed in school and did reasonably well, but as he entered his teenage years it became clear that, unlike his hard-working, law-abiding parents, he was headed for a life of crime. He joined two local gangs, the Brooklyn Rippers and the Forty Thieves Juniors, and became more and more unruly at school, until the situation reached breaking point. As a result of his disruptive behaviour, he got into a fight with a teacher: she struck him, and he responded by punching her. Not surprisingly, he was expelled from school, and after that date, he worked at odd jobs around the city, at one point selling sweets in a sweet shop, and at another, working in a bowling alley.

  Capone’s early career in the junior gangs gave him a good deal of credibility among more serious local gangsters, and he soon got to know Joseph Torrio, boss of The James Street Gang. From here, he went on to join the notorious Five Points Gang, along with Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano, a childhood friend. Thus it was that two of the most famous gangsters in the USA began their careers at the same time, both of them ruthless men who would stop at nothing to achieve their ends and who became the godfathers of modern organised crime, building up a powerful network of illegal activities including bootlegging, drug trafficking, prostitution, gambling and protection rackets.

  Knifed across the face

  Capone got his nickname, Scarface, as a result of an incident that took place when Frankie Yale, leader of the Five Points gang, offered him a job working as a bartender in the Harvard Tavern in Coney Island. While at work, Capone got involved in a dispute with a gangster named Frank Gallucio, who knifed him three times across the face. These wounds led to Capone’s lifelong nickname: Scarface.

  Capone and Torrio then moved operations to Chicago, where the boss at the time was a man named Big Jim Colosimo, whose main business was running brothels. When Prohibition came into force, Torrio wanted to pursue bootlegging, recognising that the real money was in illicit liquor. However, Colosimo wasn’t interested in pursuing this line of business. Displaying the ruthlessness that was to become their trademark in the future, Torrio and Capone arranged alibis for themselves and hired their old friend Frankie Yale from New York to shoot Colosimo down in his own nightclub. The killing took place on May 11, 1920 and heralded the arrival of a new boss on the scene: Joseph Torrio, along with his right-hand man, the notorious Scarface.

  As Torrio and Capone had predicted, there were huge profits to be made from bootlegging, and over the next few years, their gang built up a strong undeground crime network, As a result of usurping the territory of many other gangs in Chicago, they also made many enemies, among them Dion O’Banion, leader of the Irish North Side Gang. Thus, it was not long before Torrio and Capone called upon the services of Frankie Yale once gain, and in 1924, O’Banion was dispatched. As a result, the feuding increased, and the following year, Torrio himself was badly wounded in an assassination attempt. He decided to give up the business and passed control on to his protege Al Capone.

  St Valentine’s Day Massacre

  Although only twenty-five, Capone soon showed himself to be an effective leader, able to cooperate with other gangs thanks to his lack of prejudice against working wi
th Jewish or Irish people. However, Capone brooked no opposition, and those who tried to usurp his turf paid a high price. This became clear when Bugs Moran, the leader of an Irish gang, got in his way. Capone decided to set an ambush for his rival, luring him to a meeting to make a deal for some bootleg whisky. His plan was that fake police would then arrive, disarm the Moran gang and shoot them dead. Everything went well: seven of the Moran gang were tricked by the fake officers, who lined them up against a wall and machine gunned them to death, killing six of them on the spot. The only problem was that Moran himself arrived late to the meet and thus escaped certain death.

  On this occasion, Capone was not present at the massacre, although he ordered it. However, when two of his men, John Scalise and Albert Anselmi, were suspected of double-crossing him, Capone personally presided over their execution. The two unfortunate men were invited to a grand dinner in their honour, and at end of the meal. Capone was presented with a gift-wrapped parcel, which proved to contain a baseball bat. While his bodyguards held down the two victims, Capone beat them both to death with the bat.

  Brought to justice

  Capone was by now an extremely powerful figure in Chicago, and he intimidated all and sundry, including the police. In the suburb of Cicero where he lived, his minions were elected into local government positions, and he avoided prosecution for his illegal business activities by paying off police and politicians alike. However the FBI, now under a new director, Elliot Ness, was determined to break his power, and found a new way of doing so: charging him with tax evasion on their ill-gotten gains. Eventually, with the help of an inside informant Frank O’Hare, Ness managed to build up his case against Capone, and after years of hard work, he eventually managed to bring the gangster to justice.

  Finally, Capone was convicted on several tax evasion charges, and in 1931, he was sentenced to eleven years in prison. He was incarcerated in Alcatraz and released eight years later, by which time his health had deteriorated. This was largely due to the fact that he had contracted syphilis, and it had remained untreated while he was in jail. After his release, Capone retreated to his Florida mansion, where he spent his declining years before dying on January 25, 1947.

  Arnold Rothstein

  Arnold Rothstein, nicknamed ‘The Brain’, was a true criminal mastermind who managed to make millions by bankrolling numerous criminal activities. During his lifetime, he was responsible for overseeing such activities as gambling, prostitution, bootlegging and narcotics smuggling and for transforming the New York criminal underworld into a network of highly efficient crime syndicates.

  Today, he is best remembered for his involvement in the ‘Black Sox’ scandal of 1919, in which it was alleged that he had paid the Chicago baseball team to lose an important match in the World Series, in order to recoup profits from his gambling operations. However, Rothstein’s involvement was never proved, and he was never brought to justice. Indeed, by the end of his life, he had never been convicted of breaking any law whatsoever. Nevertheless, there was a kind of justice in the way he eventually met his death: in 1928 he was shot, apparently in a drunken brawl, after failing to pay a gambling debt. Although Rothstein had not personally involved himself in any violent crime, his business dealings had constantly brought him into close contact with many cold-blooded killers, and it was his connections with such men that ultimately brought about his demise.

  ‘The Brain’

  Rothstein was born in 1882 in New York, the son of a wealthy Jewish businessman, Abraham Rothstein. His childhood was an unhappy one: he felt that his parents did not care for him, and was very jealous of his older brother Harry, on whom they seemed to lavish affection. The young Arnold was educated at expensive schools, but he never did very well, although his mathematics teachers noted that he was extremely good with figures. By the age of sixteen, he had completely lost interest in his studies and dropped out of school. Initially, he found a job as a travelling salesman, much to his father’s consternation. Brother Harry, meanwhile, had delighted his parents by becoming a rabbi. However, the Rothstein family were devastated when Harry became ill with pneumonia and died. Arnold was racked with guilt for his lifelong jealousy of his brother and returned home to try to make amends. He worked in his father’s factory and began to observe his religious faith once more, accompanying his parents to synagogue. But the death of the favoured son had been a severe blow to Abraham, and he continued to reject Arnold. Arnold’s plan to try to become closer to his father after his brother’s death failed, so he now left the family fold for good and began a career in crime.

  The first step was to use his mathematical ability in the pursuit of gambling. He started to hang around pool halls in the city and managed to earn himself a living by playing pool, poker and craps for money. By the age of twenty he had set himself up in business, booking bets on horse races, boxing fights, elections and baseball games. In addition, he also made loans to his customers at extremely high interest rates. To impress his colleagues and customers, he began to carry a large stash of money around with him, earning himself the nickname, ‘The Big Bankroll’. Carrying so much money on his person also enabled him to immediately finance any deals he made, wherever he was, whenever he needed to. However, he also had to employ a number of bodyguards to be with him at all times, in case anyone should try to steal the money from him.

  Shady dealings

  Rothstein soon gained a reputation as a hard-headed businessman who was far more intelligent than most of the criminal element he associated with. He began to make a great deal of money, which at first he invested in legitimate businesses such as shops and car dealerships. He also started a bookmaking business, which is thought to be the way he earned most of his large fortune. Although the bookmaking business was legitimate, it seemed that Rothstein was also involved in a lot of shady dealing behind the scenes, and he gained a reputation as a ‘fixer’. He once remarked that he would bet on anything except the weather, because that was the one thing that he couldn’t fix.

  In 1909, Rothstein fell in love with Carolyn Greene, a young, up-and-coming actress. Legend has it that he impressed her by proposing to her in a restaurant with a large wad of $100 bills sitting on the table in front of him. Whether this story is true or not, Carolyn decided to marry him, and Arnold jubilantly took her home to meet his parents. However, the meeting was not a success. His father Abraham asked Carolyn if she would change her faith to become Jewish but Carolyn answered that she would not. As a result, the Rothstein parents remained implacably opposed to the union and did not attend the couple’s wedding. According to some sources, on the day of the wedding, instead of coming to the service, Abraham Rothstein stayed at home and recited the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer of the dead, for his son.

  Arnold told his new wife that he would endeavour to keep her in luxury for the rest of her life, and resolved to step up his income to support her. She knew that he was involved in the world of gambling, but later professed to know nothing of the details of her husband’s business ventures. True to his word, over the years that followed, Rothstein began to build up a veritable gambling empire, setting up a number of pool halls across New York City. He also himself earned a reputation as one of the best pool players in New York, and he beat many opponents at the table, earning a great deal of money for himself in the process. But it was not only the pool halls that provided Carolyn with a life of luxury; there were numerous other ventures, some legal and some not so legal, that Rothstein presided over. This great network of interests was presided over by Rothstein himself, from his so-called ‘office’ at Lindy’s Restaurant on the corner of Broadway and 49th Street. Here, he would stand on the street, surrounded by bodyguards, to collect money from those who owed it to him, and to conduct his business deals.

  Major player

  Little by little, Rothstein became one of the most powerful figures in New York. His good manners and intelligence made him a pivotal figure. On the one hand, he consorted with corrupt politicians, on the other,
with ruthless mobsters. He received protection from Tammany Hall boss Charles F. Murphy and his advisor, Tom Foley, and also from Mafia bosses such as Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegal. As well as his gambling interests, he ran a real estate enterprise, a bail bond business and a racing stables. With his legal and illegal operations, he amassed a fortune and expanded his interests in and around the New York area. Today, Rothstein, along with Luciano, is credited with transforming the criminal underworld of New York into a series of organised crime syndicates, and being a major player in what later became known as the Mafia.

  The ‘Black Sox’ scandal