Criminal Masterminds

by Anne Williams

  When he was finally released in 1972, the now ageing mobster decided to go into retirement and spent the time travelling around visiting old friends. He hit the headlines again in 1974, when heiress Patricia Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). The SLA was a group of US terrorists who saw successful capitalists as the enemy. William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper magnate and his family, were considered to be prime targets due to their vast wealth and media empire. Shortly after Patricia was kidnapped, the Hearst family approached Cohen for his help. Cohen used his old underworld connections to try and track Patricia down, but it soon became clear that she wasn’t going to return home willingly. When Patricia’s parents told Cohen that they didn’t think it was such a good idea to bring their daughter home because they feared her past actions would send her to prison, he decided to end his involvement then and there.

  After the Hearst interlude, Mickey Cohen stayed out of the limelight, keeping a low profile. Barely mobile and the desire to fight, long gone, he died peacefully in his home in 1976.

  John Gotti

  John Gotti became famous as the Godfather of the Gambino family who were, without doubt, the richest and most powerful criminal family in the USA in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Towards the middle of the twentieth century, federal law agencies were starting to dismantle organised crime families, but in the middle of their efforts, John Gotti stepped forward and captured the media’s attention as he left his mark as a Hollywood-style gangster. Despite his dapper appearance, Gotti somehow lacked the capabilities of his predecessors such as Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky and Arnold Rothstein, but he still left behind him a trail of blood.

  John Joseph Gotti Jr, was born on October 27, 1940 in a dirt-ridden section of the Bronx. His father worked hard and managed to save enough money to move the family to a tough Italian neighbourhood in Brooklyn. Life on the streets was harsh and the young Gotti learned to survive by using his fists. He regularly saw gangsters standing around on street corners in their smart suits, and he aspired to one day becoming like them. By the time he was twelve years old, Gotti, together with his brothers, Peter and Richard, became part of a local gang that ran errands for the gangsters he so admired.

  Although his education on the streets was regular, his attendance at school was erratic. He constantly played truant and because he was considered to be a classroom bully, often disturbing the lessons when he was there, his absence was usually overlooked.

  In the summer of 1954, Gotti was injured during a robbery with some local youths. They were in the process of stealing a cement mixer from a building site, when the mixer fell over and crushed Gotti’s toes. He spent the remainder of the summer in hospital and then went back on the streets with a limp that stayed with him for the rest of his life.

  When Gotti was sixteen, he decided to leave school and joined the Fulton-Rockaway Boys. They mugged, stole cars and fenced stolen goods, and between the years of 1957 and 1961, Gotti was arrested five times. The charges, however, were either dismissed or reduced to a probationary sentence for one reason or another.

  gotti finds love

  Gotti fell in love with Victoria DiGiorgio when he was twenty. He was infatuated by her tiny frame and beautiful dark hair and the couple married on March 6, 1962. Despite the fact they had a stormy relationship, and there were doubts that the marriage would survive, they stayed together and had three children – Angela, Victoria and John A., who became known as ‘Junior’.

  For a while Gotti tried his hand at doing legitimate work, but he was frustrated at the small financial rewards and decided to devote his entire life to crime, much to the disgust of his wife.

  Gotti’s first taste of prison life came in 1963, when he was arrested with Angelo Ruggiero’s younger brother, Salvatore. They were driving a rental car that had been reported as stolen and for this he was given a twenty-day sentence. He received another short sentence for attempted robbery in 1966. However, 1966 proved to be an important year for our would-be gangster, because for the first time he became an associate member of a Mafia organisation headed by Carmine Fatico and his brother, Daniel, called the Bergin crew. The Faticos were answerable to the powerful Gambino family.

  life as a mafia associate

  Gotti started his life within the Mafia as a hijacker and, although he wasn’t particularly successful he did make enough money to move his family to a better home in Brooklyn. Gotti’s fourth child, Frank, was born a short while later.

  In November 1967, with the aid of another gang member, Gotti forged the name of a forwarding company agent and managed to drive off with $30,000 worth of merchandise from JFK airport’s cargo terminal. Four days later, the FBI, who had Gotti under surveillance, watched as he and Angelo Ruggiero loaded up a lorry, this time at Northwest Airlines cargo bay. They swooped and found Gotti hiding in the back of the lorry hiding behind some of the boxes.

  While Gotti was out on bail, he was arrested again for stealing a cargo of cigarettes worth $500,000 from outside a restaurant in New Jersey. He was now in deep trouble, and Fatico hired the defence attorney Michael Coiro to represent the Gotti brothers and Ruggiero. Hiring Coiro paid off and Gotti was let off leniently, serving less than three years at Lewisburg prison.

  When Gotti was released in January 1972, his wife forced him to get a legitimate job and he was put on the payroll of his father-in-law’s construction company. Victoria got her wish, but deep down she knew her husband would never change and gave up asking questions about his underhand activities. Shortly after his release, their fifth child, Peter, was born.

  working his way up

  From their first introduction, Gotti and Aniello Dellacroce hit it off, and the two men had many things in common. They were violent, foul-mouthed but clever, and also shared the bad habit of gambling. This friendship bought Gotti in close contact with the capo Garlo Gambino. As much as Dellacroce liked Gotti, the boss Paul Castellano hated him, or perhaps more accurately, feared him.

  By the age of thirty-one Gotti became acting capo when Fatico was indicted for loan-sharking. Under the leadership of Gotti, the Bergin crew began to get restless, urging him to get involved in some of the richer pickings. They gradually drifted towards the dangerous game of drug trafficking, despite warnings from the Gambino family to steer clear.

  Having ignored the rules of the family, the Gotti gang were caught selling drugs and they eventually disbanded. Dellacroce, who had been suffering from cancer, died on December 2, 1985. Unhappy with the way that Castellano was running the family, Gotti along with other family members, arranged for the assassination of the Gambino family boss. He was shot six times, along with his bodyguard, Thomas Bilotti, outside a restaurant in Manhattan on December 16, 1985.

  With both Castellano and Dellacroce out of the way, Gotti had to play a waiting game. He didn’t have to wait very long though, because within eight days Gotti was in charge of the biggest Mafia family in the nation. Gotti became the centre of attention and he loved it. He became nicknamed ‘Dapper Don’, wearing expensive hand-tailored suits and dining in the finest restaurants. He became famous for his lavish street parties and earned himself a reputation for keeping street crime at bay.

  However, constantly being in the limelight had its disadvantages as it attracted the attention of the FBI. It was in the late 1980s that Gotti got his other nickname ‘Teflon Don’, due to the fact that he managed to avoid convictions on racketeering and assault charges in two seemingly watertight cases. In the first case, a man who had complained of being attacked by Gotti, changed his mind rapidly when someone ‘tampered’ with the brakes on his car. In the second case, Gotti was acquitted after he allegedly bribed the foreman of the jury. It didn’t seem to matter what they did, the FBI seemed unable to make a charge stick against the Mafia boss.

  the final trial

  Following their failure to have Gotti put behind bars, the FBI tightened their surveillance. They bugged his home, his club, his phones and all his
known business premises. To get round this problem, Gotti decided to hold his clandestine business meetings while walking down the street, playing loud tapes of white noise. However, Gotti was caught. The FBI managed to get a recording of conversations in his ‘headquarters’, an apartment above the Ravenite Social Club. In the first tape he talked about one of his lawyers, who he suspected was leaking information. He ordered the man to shut up or suffer the consequences, i.e. a short trip down an elevator shaft. In another recording Gotti was heard to make defamatory remarks about his underboss Salvatore ‘Sammy the Bull’ Gravano. The tapes were recorded in late November 1989 by a bug the FBI had placed in the apartment.

  Gotti was arrested on December 11, 1990 when FBI agents and New York City detectives raided the Ravenite Social Club. They arrested Gotti, Gravano, Frank Locascio and Thomas Gambino. The following morning the New York Times featured an article which sympathised over the arrest of John Gotti. Gotti didn’t shun the media, in fact he loved them, he loved being a gangster. It would be fair to say that Gotti and the news media were born for each other. He became only the second Mafioso to make the cover of Time (Al Capone being the first), and responded by hanging a blown-up version of the cover on his office wall.

  When Gravano heard the tapes with Gotti bad-mouthing him, he flipped, and it seemed as though with the evidence from the bugs, photographs and the testimony of Gravano, Gotti’s fate was sealed. On April 2, 1992, Gotti was convicted on charges that included five murders, loansharking, racketeering, obstruction of justice, illegal gambling and tax evasion. He was sentenced to 100 years in prison and was sent to the maximum-security penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. For over nine years he spent twenty-three hours a day locked in solitary confinement in a cell that measured only eight feet by seven feet. He was allowed out one hour a day for solitary execise in a concrete-walled enclosure.

  From behind bars, Gotti planned who would take over his role as capo, and the job fell to his son, John Gotti Jr, who acted as boss with the help of older members of the Gambino family.

  Gotti’s reign was finally over and even though he had managed to fight conviction for many years, he eventually lost his battle over throat cancer. He died on June 10, 2002, at the US Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. His funeral in New York was attended by over 130 members of the Gambino crime family and many of his personal friends and family.

  Like many other gangsters before him, Gotti was a criminal mastermind, even though he was less sophisticated than the brutal Capone we know from the movies. Gotti’s main aim within the Mafia was his constant strive to reach the top.

  The Krays

  The Kray brothers grew up to become the UK’s most famous and infamous gangsters. In comparison to the Mafia of Sicily or the Cosa Nostra in the USA, the Krays could be described as a bunch of ruffians rather than an evil organised crime cartel, but they still received notoriety for their acts of violence. These old-style cockney villains came close to building their own criminal empire with comparative ease, indicating just how backward the British authorities were in truly understanding the meaning of organised crime.

  raised in the east end

  The East End of London has been described as ‘outcast London’. In the late 1950s and 1960s, it certainly could have been described as a world separated from the rest of London. It was an area that was dominated by trade and commerce, the profits of which were undoubtedly siphoned off into the pockets of criminal groups that operated there. The hugely over-populated area was rife with murder, extortion, theft, money lending and prostitution and this was where our brothers started out their lives.

  Reggie Kray was born at 8.00 a.m. on October 24, 1933, and ten minutes later his identical twin Ronnie came into the world. Violet and Charlie Kray already had a seven-year-old son, Charlie, who over the years was rather dominated by his two younger brothers. The family lived in the Shoreditch area in the East End of London until 1939, when they moved to Bethnal Green. Their father lived a rather nomadic existence, often away on his travels buying and selling precious metals. Although this provided the family with a fairly regular, if not meagre, income, it also meant that the three boys had little contact with their father. Violet, by all accounts, was a good mother and she did her best to raise her three boys in difficult times.

  At the start of World War II, Charlie senior was conscripted into the army and the family was evacuated to a small village in the Suffolk countryside. After the dirty, cramped streets of London, the Kray boys loved the freedom and spent hours playing in the fields. Had their mother not missed her friends and family so much back in the East End, the Krays would have had a very different life. Much to their dismay, they moved back to war-torn London within the year and the boys went back to having dodge the many street gangs that roamed the streets. Their father, who loved his freedom, did not fit into the routine of army life and he soon became a deserter from the British Army. The police and military were on the lookout for Charlie Kray and many a night the family would be woken up by a knock on the door. Charlie spent more and more time away from the family until eventually he became a virtual stranger.

  In an effort to stay out of trouble, the three boys took up boxing. Charlie junior, proved to be a reasonable fighter, but it was the twins that soon started making the headlines as promising amateur boxers. Being called up to join the Army abruptly ended their boxing career, but it did little to stem the violence that was to be the hallmark of their lives.

  gangsters in the making

  When they were released from the Army, the Kray brothers turned quickly to a life of crime. They ran small-time protection rackets for local villains, but soon agreed they wanted to work for themselves. The turning point in their career came when they managed to save enough money to buy the lease on a seedy snooker club in Bethnal Green. Before they took over the club, it had a terrible reputation for fighting and it was constantly being smashed up by local thugs. When the Krays approached the owner asking if they could take over the lease, he jumped at the chance, telling the boys that the lease was theirs if they really felt they could sort the place out. They renamed the club The Regal, and within weeks they had turned it around and made it into a safe, profitable business venture. Many believed that they had been the perpetrators of the violence in the first place and it was their own reputation that put pay to any further trouble.

  Shortly after they took over The Regal, a gang of thugs known as the Maltese mob tried to extract protection money from the Krays. This was a big mistake and for once the gang didn’t get their own way. One member had a bayonet thrust through his hand, while the others were lucky to escape with their lives.

  The Kray brothers loved to drink and frequented many late-night clubs and bars. In the Vienna Rooms off the Edgware Road, they met two of their heroes, Jack Spot and Billy Hill, who between them dominated the majority of London. Ronnie and Reggie could listen for hours to their stories and gleaned as much information as they could about organised crime. They worked for Spot for a while, providing protection for the bookmakers at the racecourses. While working for Spot they also came into contact with Mad Frankie Fraser, who at the time was working as a bucket boy for one of the bookmakers. A bucket boy was responsible for wiping the chalk off the bookies’ boards. Mad Frankie went on to become a notorious criminal and gang member who spent more than half of his life in prison for numerous violent offences.

  time to move on

  Although the twins had learned a lot from their brief time with Spot and Hill, they knew in their hearts it was time to move on. They were already involved in virtually every type of scam, running protection rackets, hijacking and even made big business out of forging National Service exemption certificates. In 1957, Ronnie was arrested for grievous bodily harm (GBH) on a man called Terry Martin, outside a pub in Stepney. He was also charged with possessing a firearm and received a three-year prison sentence. Reggie was also charged with GBH, but the case did not hold up and he was found not g
uilty.

  While Ronnie was off the scene, Reggie wasted no time in expanding The Firm, as the brothers liked to call it, opening another club called The Double R in Bow. Charlie was normally the brains and the money behind the operations while Reggie and Ronnie provided the brawn. The club soon flourished and it wasn’t long before Reggie acquired many other clubs that were inexplicably burnt to the ground. Gradually, the Kray empire became bigger and bigger, until it is estimated that they owned more than thirty clubs and bars.

  ron’s ‘sickness’

  While Ronnie was in prison, Reggie and Charlie found that their operations ran a lot smoother, due to the fact that Reggie and Ronnie were frequently arguing about who was the boss. Ron, who seemed to be the more dominant twin, usually won the argument, which was often detrimental to their business. The trouble was, behind Ron’s harsh exterior was a much softer heart. He would often have his hand in the tills and give money to what he felt was a deserving cause. Although this was highly commendable, it was not very good for their profits. For this reason, and because Ronnie could so easily break into a violent rage regardless of the consequences, the Kray’s businesses thrived in his absence.

  Ronnie spent his first year in Wandsworth prison but was later transferred to Camp Hill on the outskirts of Newport, on the Isle of Wight. While serving his time, Ron’s favourite aunt Rose died, which seemed to tip him over the edge, and he had to be transferred to the psychiatric wing of Winchester prison. It was here he was diagnosed as being a paranoid schizophrenic and declared insane.