Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set (91 page)

Whitman wanted to be Governor of the state of New York, and then President of the United States of America. The best way to accomplish this exacta was to successfully prosecute a highly visible case; especially one where the accused was a decorated New York City police lieutenant (a variation of this same strategy was later employed by New York City Special Prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey and New York Attorney for the Southern District Rudolph Giuliani, amongst others).

Whitman didn’t want to know the truth, and like Jack Nicholson once said in a movie, “He couldn’t handle the truth.”

The truth was three lowlife gamblers arranged the killing of another lowlife gambler. This was not the stuff dreams were made of; at least not Whitman’s dreams. Whitman needed a big splash to further his political career, and his two successful prosecutions of Becker were the right ticket Whitman needed to propel him upward politically; the truth be damned.

As for Swope, he was just a huckster who knew a good story when he saw it, even if the story lacked the ingredients of the truth. Swope, who later won the first Pulitzer Prize in 1917 for his reporting on
Inside the German Empire
, once said, “It occurred to me that nothing is more interesting than opinion when opinion is interesting, so I devised a method of cleaning off the page opposite the editorial, which became the most important in America. And thereon I decided to print opinions, ignoring facts.”

And that’s exactly what Swope did concerning the murder of Herman Rosenthal. Swope knew the most sensational “opinion” to have was that a corrupt police lieutenant had ordered the killing of Rosenthal. Swope, like Whitman, saw no career advantage in stating the truth, so he tilted his reporting in a manner that would assure a guilty verdict for Becker.

AFTERMATH

When Bridgey Webber was
released from the Tombs prison (after the trial of the four killers), he found out the hard way that the underworld of New York City did not like informers, rats, and canaries. In June of 1913, while exiting a Second Avenue gambling den, someone rushed up behind Webber and stabbed him in the back.

Knowing a second Becker trial was coming soon and not wanting to lose one of his star witnesses, District Attorney Whitman rushed to Polyclinic Hospital to make sure Webber was not in any danger of dying. After being told by hospital personnel that Webber’s wound was a superficial one, Whitman asked Webber if he could identify his assailant. Webber clammed up this time, saying only that a kid had stabbed him; he did not know the kid and couldn’t even identify him even if he saw him again.

Then, figuring New York City was no longer a safe place for him, Webber hightailed it to South Fallsburg, New York, where he bought a farm under his brother Charles Webber’s name. Bridgey Webber returned to New York City only to testify at Becker’s second trial.

Harry Vallon, knowing what happed to Webber could soon happen to him, trekked over to Pittsburgh, Pa., where he lived in a swanky hotel under an assumed name. It was reported that Vallon had relatives in Pittsburgh and friends of the most dubious character. On July 28, 1915, just two days before Becker’s execution, Vallon’s identity was unearthed by a member of the press.

Vallon told this reporter, “I feel compelled to talk before it’s too late.”

When Vallon was asked if that meant that he had evidence Becker was innocent and that Vallon was ready to come clean, Vallon answered, “Yes, if I get a chance.”

The Pittsburgh reporter also noted that Vallon was in the charge of a rather large man, who was said to be a detective in the employ of New York Governor Whitman. Vallon told the reporter that he had great animosity against the New York City police department, saying, “They are hounding me to the nut factory by hanging a perjury charge against me.”

Vallon also said that the New York City police had “frightened his girl” away from him by threatening to prosecute him.

Two days later, Becker was executed, and there is no indication that Vallon ever returned to New York City, or that “his girl” ever returned to him.

As for Sam Schepps, he opened a successful jewelry store called the
Maison Cluny
with his brother Nathan at 437 Madison Avenue. On March 30, 1918, a man named Henry Cohen, better known as “Harry the Yot,” was shot and killed in Schepps’s jewelry store, hours before Cohen was set to squeal to the District Attorney about a gambling swindle Cohen said was perpetrated against him by Schepps. Schepps and two other men were arrested for Cohen’s murder, but they all beat the case due to lack of evidence.

In 1921, Schepps was arrested again and charged with usury, because he refused to return two diamonds worth $80,000 to famed opera singer Lydia Lipkowska, after she had pawned the diamonds to Schepps in order to borrow $12,000. According to Lipkowska, Schepps said he would not return the diamonds unless Lipkowska forked over another five grand.

In October of 1933, Schepps was arrested a third time, this time with his brother Nathan, and charged with forging more than $10,000 worth of bank checks, which the Schepps brothers had foolishly deposited in their own business account.

There are no accounts of Schepps having any more run-ins with the law before he died on January 26, 1936 in the Fifth Avenue Hospital.

Bald Jack Rose reinvented himself after Becker’s convictions. Knowing he was marked as a rat throughout the New York City underworld, and also not wanting to get stabbed like Webber did, Rose donned a black wig and bought a farm in Newport, Conn. Rose, capitalizing on his newfound fame, first made a living writing “true crime” books. When his literary talents were exposed as less than ordinary, Rose toured churches in the Northeast, making compelling sermons about the evils of gambling and other vices. When that gig ran its course, Rose set up a movie production company with the intention of making short films on the subjects of his sermons: gambling is bad; mother and apple pie are good.

This scheme of Rose’s didn’t go over too well, either.

Highlighting the notion that only the good die young, Bald Jack Rose lived until the ripe old age of 72. On Oct. 8, 1947, Rose expired in the arms of his loving wife, Hilda, in New York City’s Roosevelt Hospital from an “internal disorder.”

According to newspaper reports, unlike Charles Becker’s, Rose’s funeral service at Riverside Chapel on Amsterdam Avenue and Seventy-Sixth Street attracted no public attention. By that time, 35 years after the murder of Herman Rosenthal, most New Yorkers had never heard of Bald Jack Rose, and those who did would rather forget him.

It might be whimsy, but it would have been incredibly nice if when Bald Jack Rose entered into the afterlife, he was met by Charles Becker and Becker’s billy club, in a hot place with no cold-running water and no air conditioning.

That would only be right.

The End

*****

Mob Wives – Fuhgeddaboudit!

By Joe Bruno

PUBLISHED BY:

Knickerbocker Literary Services

EDITED BY:

Marc A. Maturo

COVER BY:

Nitro Covers

Copyright 2012 - Knickerbocker Literary Services

*************

What People are saying about “Mob Wives – Fuhgeddaboudit!”

FROM MOBSTERS TO THEIR WIVES
 
- RJ Parker - Bestselling Author”

I have read all of Joe Bruno's books on the Mobsters, the crooks, creeps and gangs. I'm not surprised he wrote a book on the Mob's wives too. I suspect there will be another book one day on the children of the mobsters? I can only hope. Love all of these books. Grab a copy..
only a book for a few hours of reading enjoyment.

The "Real of Reality TV - L. L. McKenna

What a pleasure to read!
Mr Bruno not only provides insight to the "reality show" but includes his blogs...and responses. While scripted or not, the only truth is the paycheck the characters cash while exposing themselves to the viewers.

***************

The following blogs are in chronological order. I removed the curse words in the responses, and because of the constant “Internet speak,” which is a language unto itself, I also had to do extensive editing of the responses to make them look like something resembling the English language.

I also used just the first three letters of the reader’s names. Their complete names are on my blog
Joe Bruno on the Mob
, and on my Facebook page
- Mobsters, Gangs
- just as they have listed them.

As for the “
JB
” in the responses; that’s little old me.

====================

Sammy “The Bull’s” Daughter to Write Tell-All Book

August 28, 2011

Yeah, right. If you believe Karen Gravano, a star in the VH1 reality show
Mob Wives
, is going to tell the complete truth about her life as the daughter of Sammy “The Bull/Rat” Gravano, I have a condo in Libya I’d like to sell you.

First of all, I’ve never seen the program
Mob Wives
and I never will see the program
Mob
Wives
(I meant it when I said it, but things change). I grew up in New York City’s Little Italy and television programs like
Mob Wives
and
Jersey Shore
do nothing but besmirch the reputations of hard-working Italian-Americans, who are overwhelmingly the vast majority of Italian-Americans in America. So any show which flaunts the escapades of the “Guidos” or “Guidettes,” I want nothing to do with it.

As for Karen Gravano’s book – Who cares?

I made the mistake of reading her father’s biography “Underboss,” written by Peter Maas in 1997. And as we found out later, the book turned out to be a pack of lies and half-truths. How can you believe anything a rat like Sammy the Bull (Crap) says anyway? Or even care?

As for his daughter Karen’s life story, I’d rather read the Encyclopedia Britannica; from cover to cover. I might not enjoy the actual act of reading, but at least I’ll learn something of value.

Reading Karen Gravano’s book is like reading the cartoons in Sunday’s newspapers.

Only not as entertaining.

Anthony Graziano Is Back in Jail

December 2, 2012

One thing for sure - if you’re a mobster these days, don’t talk to anyone without first checking if that person is wearing a wire. Or better yet, speak to people naked in a steam bath where they can’t wear a wire (but make sure they aren’t wearing a wrist watch, where transmitters are hidden these days by the Feds).

Anthony Graziano, whose daughter Renee is one of the four principals in the TV program
Mob Wives,
is back in jail because he spoke to someone he trusted about collecting a loansharking debt dating back to at least 2005. In 2003, Graziano was sentenced to nine years in prison for tax evasion and racketeering charges. He was released to a halfway house in early summer of 2011 to serve the end of that sentence, then to home confinement about a month later. But that didn’t stop him from talking to a longtime associate who had recently gone over to Team America.

According to the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration, Graziano was heard speaking to an unnamed informant saying things he shouldn’t have said to anyone.

According to the transcripts of the wired conversation on Aug. 16, Graziano allegedly said, “You remember this guy…? He owed me 150 thousand.”

The informant, a Bonanno soldier with a history of violence, told the 71-year-old Graziano that the debtor was “a panicky mess, worried about threats he had recently received.”

“I went to see the guy, the guy was crying hysterically on the boardwalk. I said, ‘Listen, you know Anthony would never do anything to you,’” the informant said.

“Never,” Graziano said.

“And I’m not here to do anything to you either,” the informant said.

“Listen to
me. Tell him … ‘Listen Anthony, come to the house’,” Graziano said.

On November 9, Graziano, who is known by the nicknames “TG” and “the Little Guy,” was recorded again speaking to the informant about a resolution of the old debt.

Graziano allegedly said to the informant, “Let me see what he. If he got $25k, I’ll take the $25k and call it even. ‘You belong to me, anything you do, let me know. Maybe I can make some money with you.’ ”

Graziano’s lawyer, Patrick Parrotta, denies the recent allegations against his client.

As was posted in the
Staten Island Advance
, Parrotta said, “My client is going to finish serving out the rest of his previous sentence in 2012, and in the interim, we are preparing to fight the allegations by way of a trial shortly thereafter.”