by Gordon Kerr
Shortly before the execution date, however, strange things began to happen. The witnesses changed their statements. They were no longer sure if they had seen Anastasia kill Torino; their memories became blurred. A retrial had to be scheduled and Anastasia was released. Then, coincidentally, four of the prosecution’s most important witnesses disappeared. The retrial never took place and the charges were quietly dropped.
Anastasia began to drift into organised crime in the 1920s, starting out in bootlegging once Prohibition had been introduced and then working as a bodyguard for crime boss Joe Masseria. Around this time, too, he changed his name from Umberto Anastasio to Albert Anastasia, apparently to prevent shame falling on his family if and when his name appeared in the newspapers in relation to his criminal activities. His brother decided to retain the family name and was known as ‘Tough Tony’ Anastasio. He would run the New York docks for the Mob 20 years later.
Albert ended up working for Vincent Mangano, head of the Mangano Crime Family, following the Castellamarese War, in which the future direction of the Mafia was fought for. The ultimate winner of that war was Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano, and Albert Anastasia played a major part in Lucky’s rise to the top of the heap.
Until then, the Mafia had been run by old-fashioned mobsters, known as Mustache Petes. They were members of the Sicilian Mafia who had come to New York as adults in the early 1900s. They ran organised crime according to the old ways and were resented for it by the younger soldiers. When Luciano informed Anastasia that he intended to deal with the old Mustache Petes once and for all, Anastasia was delighted. He had been waiting for more than eight years for Lucky to take control and is reported to have claimed that he would kill anybody who got in Lucky’s way. Naturally, Luciano made Anastasia a major part of his bid for power. As for Albert, he knew that once Lucky was head of the National Crime Syndicate, he would get his reward.
So it was that when Bugsy Siegel led four men with guns blazing into Scarpato’s Italian restaurant on Coney Island in 1931 to kill Joe ‘The Boss’ Masseria, Albert Anastasia was one of them and it is rumoured to have been Anastasia who delivered the coup de grâce, the bullet in the head to ensure that Masseria had eaten his last supper.
When Luciano founded the National Crime Syndicate, a grouping of the five Crime Families of America, he turned to his man Anastasia for an important job. By this time, Anastasia was renowned for his ruthless brutality; so he was perfect for the job as operating head of the syndicate’s enforcement arm, Murder Inc., working alongside another legendary sociopath, Louis ‘Lepke’ Buchalter.
The idea of Murder Inc. was that if you were connected to the Mafia you could approach Anastasia to take a contract out on someone. If it was acceptable, one of the killers on Murder Inc.’s books would be assigned the job. Those books contained some formidable names – killers such as Frank ‘Dasher’ Abbandando, Louis Capone, Martin ‘Buggsy’ Goldstein, Harry ‘Happy’ Maione, Harry ‘Pittsburgh Phil’ Strauss, Allie Tannenbaum, Seymour ‘Blue Jaw’ Magoon, Mendy Weiss and Charles ‘Charlie the Bug’ Workman. The organisation set up its headquarters in a small Brownsville candy store named Midnight Rose’s on the corner of Saratoga and Livonia Avenues. To his nickname the ‘Mad Hatter’ Anastasia could now add a new one – the ‘Lord High Executioner’.
One of Murder Inc.’s top killers, Abe ‘Kid Twist’ Reles, claimed the organisation was responsible for more than 63 murders on the direct orders of Albert Anastasia. It is reckoned, however, that Murder Inc. was actually responsible for some 800 deaths.
At the start of World War Two, Anastasia signed up – perhaps he fancied a bit of legitimate killing. Then, after his military service he moved to New Jersey where he controlled the waterfront as capo, reporting to Vincent Mangano. Mangano was the last of the old-school Mafiosi and, as with the Mustache Petes, he was hated by the men working under him, including Anastasia who was still hanging out with other crime bosses such as Luciano, Frank Costello and Lepke Buchalter. This did not help their relationship and Mangano began to distrust Anastasia. There were many arguments between the two, even fist fights when they had to be separated by others, although Mangano, getting on in years, would never have been a match for the younger, fitter Anastasia.
Anastasia made his play in 1951, after, it is believed, hearing that Mangano was going to kill him. Firstly, on 19 April 1951 the body of Philip Mangano, Vincent’s right-hand man, was found near Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. On the same day, Vincent vanished and not a trace of him has been seen since.
Naturally, Anastasia put himself forward to fill the gap at the top of the Family. He convinced the other bosses of the syndicate that Mangano had been plotting to kill him and that he had acted in self-defence, being supported in his claim by Luciano Family boss, Frank Costello. They believed him and the man who had arrived in New York shoeless and penniless 34 years previously, found himself at the top of the heap as head of what was to become known as the Gambino Family, with the young Carlo Gambino as his underboss.
Anastasia ruled the Family with characteristic ruthlessness and extreme violence. Once, it is reported, he was infuriated by a television interview with Arnold Schuster, a young man who had been witness to a robbery by a man called Willie Sutton. He ordered his men to hit the young man. ‘I can’t stand squealers!’ he is reported to have screamed. ‘Hit that guy!’
With Frank Costello he controlled the National Crime Syndicate, but this killing of an ‘outsider’ caused consternation within the organised crime world. It had been Bugsy Siegel who had said ‘we only kill each other’ and Anastasia had stepped over the line. Vito Genovese, a rival of Costello for the leadership of the Luciano family, began to spread rumours of Anastasia’s instability, undermining his position as head of a Family. He won sympathy from Anastasia’s underboss, Carlo Gambino, and Joe Profaci another Family head, both of whom had turned against Anastasia.
Genovese launched an all-out campaign against Costello and Anastasia, trying to convince the other bosses in the crime commission that Anastasia was breaking Family rules by selling membership of his Family. A boss could not be killed without the agreement of all the other bosses and Costello stood in the way of a hit on Anastasia. So they went after Costello and on the night of 14 May 1957, a bullet grazed his head as he entered his Manhattan apartment building. Just before squeezing the trigger and fleeing the scene, the man who had accepted the contract, Vincent ‘The Chin’ Gigante, shouted out: ‘This is for you, Frank!’
Word spread that Anastasia had hired Gigante to hit Costello and Gigante had screwed up. Of course, it was actually Genovese who had hired Gigante and the miss was deliberate. He had wanted Costello to go after Anastasia and that was exactly what happened. The bosses all agreed that Anastasia should be hit and the contract was handed to Joe Profaci who did the hiring.
The momentum was building against Anastasia and on 25 October 1957 the antipathy towards him was given full expression.
If Albert Anastasia was one thing, he was a creature of habit. Every day would start for him with a haircut in the barbershop at the New York Park Sheraton Hotel. Joe Bocchino had been cutting Anastasia’s short curly hair for years and as he sat down in the leather chair, Bocchino, as usual, threw a candy-striped barber’s cloth around him. On a chair next to Anastasia sat a manicurist and Jimmy, the shoeshine boy, sat at his feet, working on his wing-tipped shoes. It was relaxing and Anastasia sat quietly dozing as everyone worked on him.
Suddenly, two men – thought to be Larry and Joe Gallo – wearing fedoras and dark glasses entered the barbershop, pulling out .38 revolvers and silently waving the people away from the chair. They opened fire on Anastasia who immediately raised his left hand, shielding his head. The first bullet ripped through his palm. Another couple of bullets shattered his left wrist and entered his hip.
Anastasia no longer carried a gun, believing himself to be immune to attack, but he is said to have instinctively reached for the one he used to wear. There was mayhem as the bottl
es of hair unctions were smashed by the fusillade of shots. Anastasia was hit again, in the back this time, as he stood up, dazed and reaching towards the figures, but not realising that he was reaching towards their reflections in the mirror in front of him.
The barber’s cloth still wrapped around his large body, he sank to the floor. One of the men calmly walked up to his prone figure and fired a bullet into the back of his head, just as Anastasia himself had done to Joe Masseria all those years before.
Jimmy Hoffa
He tapped his watch impatiently and squinted into the distance, down Telegraph Road towards the affluent Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills. It was 30 July 1975 and he was standing in the car park of the Machus Red Fox Restaurant. Inside, the plush red velvet, English country, hunt-club style restaurant awaited with its dimly lit booths, but his lunch companions were already 15 minutes late and Jimmy Hoffa hated people being late. He was a stickler for punctuality.
There was a payphone nearby. He walked over to it and called Josephine, his wife, telling her it looked like he had been stood up and might be home early. Leaving the booth, he scanned the street again and began pacing up and down outside the restaurant, a smartly dressed stocky man in a dark blue short-sleeved shirt, blue pants, white socks and black Gucci loafers, angry and edgy.
He had been strangely on edge earlier that morning before setting out for the restaurant, according to Josephine, and when he had dropped into the offices of a friend’s limousine service in Pontiac en route to the restaurant, his nervousness was apparent to one of the employees.
The reason for his edginess was simple. He was supposed to be meeting Anthony ‘Tony Jack’ Giacolone, the go-between for Hoffa and Vincent Meli, the Detroit Mob’s union specialist, and Anthony ‘Tony Pro’ Provenzano. Provenzano was a capo in the Genovese Crime Family who had been vice-president of Hoffa’s Teamsters Union and who had gone to prison with Hoffa in 1964 for tax evasion. Hoffa and Provenzano had once been close friends, but were now sworn enemies. Hoffa was annoyed that Provenzano had taken up his old union role and Provenzano, for his part, was refusing to back Hoffa’s attempt to gain re-election to the presidency of the Teamsters. They had recently bumped into each other by chance at an airport and had a stand-up fight during which Hoffa broke a bottle over Tony Pro’s head. Provenzano had declared he would take revenge on Hoffa’s grandchildren screaming: ‘I’ll tear your heart out!’
The Machus Red meeting had been called to discuss his re-election but the Mafia, with whom Hoffa had worked well in the past, were not sure they wanted him back. His handpicked successor as president, Frank Fitzimmons, was much more malleable than Jimmy had ever been and he was also liked by US President Richard Nixon, which was a major plus. And since Nixon had granted Hoffa clemency in 1971 a lot had changed. The Mob were happy with things the way they were.
They must have arrived shortly after Hoffa’s call home, because a few minutes later a maroon 1975 Mercury Marquis Brougham sped out of the restaurant car park, almost hitting a passing delivery truck. The driver, pulling up alongside the car, peered in and recognised Jimmy Hoffa in the back seat behind the driver, another passenger whom he did not recognise, seated alongside him. Between them, on the seat, he noticed a long object wrapped in a grey blanket. He later said its shape suggested to him a rifle or a shotgun.
The next day, Jimmy Hoffa’s green 1974 Pontiac Grand Ville was still sitting in the restaurant car park and when the FBI checked on the whereabouts of the two men he was supposed to meet, Tony Jack Giacalone said he had been at the gym. Witnesses placed him, just as he claimed, at the Southfield Athletic Club around two. Tony Pro said he was playing cards in New Jersey with friends and was unaware of any meeting with Hoffa.
Charles ‘Chuckie’ O’Brien was an associate of Hoffa and he claimed he had not seen him on the day in question. He said he had delivered a 40 pound salmon to the home of the Teamsters’ vice president in the Mercury and had helped the man’s wife to cut it up. He had then been with Giacalone at the gym, he said, before taking the Mercury to a car wash, although no one at the gym or the car wash could corroborate his alibi.
Eight days after Hoffa’s disappearance, the police brought in sniffer dogs that picked up Hoffa’s scent in the back seat and boot of Giacalone’s Mercury. In 2001, a DNA match was made between a hair found in the car and a hair taken from a hairbrush belonging to Hoffa.
James Riddle Hoffa was born in Brazil, Indiana, on US Route 40, a highway that used to run all the way from New Jersey to San Francisco. His father, a coal miner, died when he was still young, and the family moved to Lake Orion, Michigan, where, unable to remain in school because he had to earn money for his family, he went to work in a warehouse.
He showed an early interest in labour relations, gaining a reputation as a tough street fighter who always stood up for the rights of his fellow workers. This tendency lost him his warehouse job, but it got him another as a union organiser for Local 299 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, working in the Detroit area.
Hoffa began, in the course of his work, to develop organised crime connections. The Mob had always seen unions as a means of making money and it was inevitable that he would have to work with them. His first criminal conviction, a fine, came as a result of his use of them against an association of small grocery stores. It did not prevent him, however, from continuing to use his contacts as a threat when he was promoted to a senior union position.
He was a natural leader of men and was genuinely passionate about the mistreatment of workers by management and government. At the age of just 20, he organised his first strike involving workers known as ‘swampers’ who loaded and unloaded strawberries and other products on and off delivery trucks.
The International Brotherhood Teamsters had originally been a craft union when founded in 1903, a teamster being someone who drove a team of oxen, a horse-drawn, or mule-drawn wagon or a mule train. By the 1950s, it represented truckers and firefighters. It was good at using strikes and secondary boycotts to win its demands. It was sometimes known also to use less lawful methods. Jimmy Hoffa won the presidency of the Teamsters in 1957, following the conviction and imprisonment of the previous president, Dave Beck, on charges of bribery. Hoffa himself was not averse to the odd kickback. The McClellan Committee which investigated union activity in the 1960s, found evidence that he had received a payment, disguised as a loan, for averting a potentially disastrous strike in the Detroit laundry industry.
But he went from strength to strength, expanding the reach of the union and, by 1964, he had signed up virtually every truck driver in the United States. He also attempted to bring in airline employees and other transport employees. This led to concern in government circles that were the Teamsters to call a strike, the entire US transport system could be brought to a halt, with devastating consequences for the economy.
Hoffa had a good relationship with the mobsters who controlled union activities in areas such as the garment industry. They had, after all, thrown their muscle behind his efforts to get elected president. But the Teamsters pension fund was used as a bank by hoods such as former Purple Gang member and bootlegger Moe Dalitz, and Allen Dorfman to pay for the construction of hotels, casinos and other projects. The Desert Inn and the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas were built with money ‘loaned’ from the pension fund. Dorfman would eventually be charged with future Chicago Mafia boss, Joey ‘The Clown’ Lombardo, for embezzling £1.4 million from the fund. The case failed to make it to court as the main witness was killed two days before his court appearance.
When John F. Kennedy became President of the United States and he appointed his brother Robert as Attorney General, pressure built on Hoffa and the Teamsters. The Kennedys were convinced that Hoffa and his cronies were pocketing union money and launched an investigation.
In 1964 they finally caught up with him when he was convicted of attempted bribery of a grand juror and jailed for 15 years.
Hoffa’s disappearance was to America what
Lord Lucan’s was to Britain. Every killer in the United States claimed that he had done it, from Richard ‘the Iceman’ Kuklinski to Tony the Greek.
The claims and rumours as to what happened to his corpse are legion. It is variously claimed that his body was buried in concrete on the Straits of Mackinac Bridge connecting the strip of water between two of the Great Lakes, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron; it was taken to New Jersey and put into the concrete used in the building of the New York Giants’ Stadium; it was buried in a residential area in Hamilton, New Jersey; it was shipped across the border and buried at the Mondo Condo in Toronto, Canada; it was buried in the concrete foundation of the Renaissance Center in Detroit; it was cremated in the animal crematorium at the Wayne State University Medical School in Detroit; it is being held in the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox; it was encased in the foundation of a public works garage in Cadillac, Michigan; it was buried at the bottom of a swimming pool behind a mansion in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; it was ground up and dumped in a Florida swamp; it was crushed in an automobile compactor at Central Sanitation Services in Hamtramck, Michigan; it was buried in a field in Waterford Township, Michigan; it was weighted down and dumped in Michigan’s Au Sable River; it was ground to mush at a fat-rendering plant; it was buried under the helipad at the Sheraton Savannah Resort Hotel, owned, at the time, by the Teamsters; it was put in a steel drum and buried on the grounds of Brother Moscato’s garbage dump, a toxic waste site in Jersey City, New Jersey.