Manhattan Mafia Guide (10 page)

Vito Genovese mug shot.

According to Mafia insiders, Genovese entrusted very few to his inner circle and was one of the most inaccessible bosses of La Cosa Nostra. The stealthy mobster enforced an elaborate chain of command between himself and his underlings and was known to pass his own (Mafia) family members on the street without so much as a glance. Was this a crafty ploy to evade the authorities or an example of the gangster’s icy personality? Those in the know think it was a little of both.

Born to Felice and Nunziata Genovese in Rosiglino, Tufino, a province of Naples, Italy, the future mob heavyweight immigrated to New York City with his family about 1914. His first arrest came soon after—a weapons possession charge in Manhattan on January 15, 1917, that earned the twenty-year-old aspiring gangster sixty days in the workhouse, a term he served between June and July of that year.

A string of six arrests between 1918 and 1925 on charges ranging from felonious assault to homicide (twice), all ended in a discharge. Genovese would only see the inside of a jail cell once more until the 1950s—thirty days in January 1927, with which he also received a $250 fine.

By this time, the five-foot, seven-inch, 160-pound Genovese had established himself as a feared Prohibition-era strong-arm for hire and was planting the seeds of his own alcohol and gambling rackets in both New York and New Jersey with partners such as Charlie Luciano. By the end of the 1920s, Genovese had been recruited by the Giuseppe Masseria crime organization and made Luciano’s underboss in the 1931 restructuring of the Mafia.

On June 20, 1930, four men were arrested in a Secret Service–led raid on an alleged Bath Beach, Brooklyn counterfeiting plant (1726 Eighty-sixth Street), where almost $1 million in suspicious currency was “ready to be placed into circulation.”
⁵⁶
Eight men were indicted on June 30, including suspected ring leader of the operation Vito Genovese, though he was not in police custody at the time of the indictments.

The ring was accused of manufacturing $200,000 in fake $20 notes over a three-month period between April and June 1930 and received a fair amount of press. The curious thing is that Genovese’s name only appears in the first flurry of reports about the incident—but he is never mentioned again. There is no infraction listed on his police report from this time period, so it seems the gangster escaped charges.

Vito Genovese wanted for the murder of Ferdinand Boccia in 1934.
NYPD, New York City Municipal Archives
.

His first wife, whom he married in 1924, died in 1931. On March 30, 1932, Genovese married Anna Petillo, who was not exactly
available
—that is, until her husband, Gerard Vernotico, was found strangled to death on the roof of 124 Thompson Street on March 16, only two weeks before her wedding to the mobster. All gangland signs point to Genovese, though the murder remains officially unsolved.

On September 19, 1934, Mafia associate Ferdinand “the Shadow” Boccia was shot to death at the Cristofolo Café, at 533 Metropolitan Avenue in Brooklyn. While he was sitting at a table gambling, two men walked in the front door with guns drawn. Boccia’s uncle, Benny, who managed the place, assumed it was a stickup and offered no resistance. When Benny told the gunmen to take whatever they wanted, one of them stated, “No holdup here gentlemen, we want this rat,”
⁵⁷
and pointed the barrel of his gun at Ferdinand Boccia. It is said that the Shadow was given enough time to say a brief prayer with Rosary beads pulled from his pocket before being shot six times.

A low-level mob associate turned informant named Ernesto “the Hawk” Rupolo—who earned his nickname after being shot in the eye—eventually confessed to killing Boccia. His testimony led to a murder indictment for six men,
⁵⁸
including Vito Genovese, whom Rupolo claimed contracted him for the job.

Ernesto “the Hawk” Rubulo mug shot, 1945.

Boccia was murdered while clutching Rosary beads.
NYPD, New York City Municipal Archives
.

Genovese, who had become acting boss of the Luciano family in 1936, when Charlie Lucky was sent to prison, fled to Italy in 1937 to escape prosecution for the murder of Boccia. In his absence, Frank Costello filled the acting boss position and would go on to rule the organization for the following two decades.

In 1946, U.S. authorities extradited Genovese back to New York City, where he stood trial for the 1934 crime. While appearing in Kings County (Brooklyn) Court on June 7, 1946, Ernest Rupolo, who served eight years for the murder, took the stand against Genovese. He testified to meeting the mob boss through future family consigliere Michele Miranda, whom Rupolo claimed had hired him for contract killings in the past. He stated that he first met Genovese at a Brooklyn restaurant, where Miranda introduced him as
don vin done
, or “the big man.”

When Rupolo leaned over the witness stand, pointed at Genovese and identified him as the person who hired him to assassinate Boccia, Don Vito shifted in his seat and stared at the apostate killer. Rupolo was reportedly visibly shaken. He loosened his tie, unbuttoned his collar and began to sweat.
⁵⁹

Mike Miranda wanted for the murder of Ferdinand Boccia in 1934.
NYPD, New York City Municipal Archives
.

A second witness named Peter LaTempa was poisoned on January 15, 1945, leaving the prosecutors’ entire case riding on the testimony of an admitted killer and jailhouse rat; needless to say, charges against Genovese were dismissed. Nineteen years later, on August 24, 1964, Rupolo’s body was found washed up on a Queens beach. He was shot, stabbed, bound by rope and chained to a heavy object before being dumped in the East River.

It turns out that Boccia had helped Genovese establish a numbers racket early in 1934 but felt the big man was cutting him out of a fair share of profits. The rest is gangland history.

It is said that Genovese was bitter upon returning to America and playing second fiddle in Costello’s well-tuned Mafia family. For the next decade or so, he would run his Little Italy crew and breed a new generation of loyalist mobsters who helped him plot and murder his way to the top by the end of the 1950s.

It may have seemed like being family boss just wasn’t in the cards for Genovese. His first opportunity in 1936–37 only lasted about a year before he was forced into exile for a decade. After finally wresting control of the organization from Frank Costello in May 1957, Genovese only spent two years on the street before he was sentenced to fifteen years in prison on April 17, 1959, for drug trafficking.

It is kind of remarkable that the family acquired so much power under the circumstances. In those two years after Costello retired, Genovese reversed much of the family’s solid relationships that Costello had developed by making a lot of enemies, as well a few major blunders—like the November 14, 1957 Apalachin Conference he called in upstate New York, where police were tipped off, resulting in the arrests of sixty mobsters. To this day, many people believe that Genovese was set up on drug charges in 1959 in order to remove him from the picture altogether.

Genovese continued to rule and grow his family from behind bars through various front bosses but would succumb to a heart attack on Valentine’s Day 1969. His body was shipped from a federal penitentiary medical center to a funeral home in Red Bank, New Jersey, where services were held.

Vito Genovese was buried at Saint John’s Cemetery in Queens.

G
ERNIE
, J
OSEPH

336 East 120
^th
Street, 1950s

Alias: Joseph Yanni, John Gernie

Born: August 4, 1921, New York City

Died: February 1972

Association: Genovese crime family

This Genovese soldier who provided muscle for Anthony Strollo’s crew had an arrest record spanning several decades, including burglary, larceny, gambling, assault and “causing an explosion with intent to kill.”

On September 18, 1957, Gernie was arrested for his part in a narcotics ring that sold heroin to undercover authorities over a three-month period. Gernie was allegedly present at several of these transactions, which were made at various West Side parking garages and cafés throughout the summer of 1956. When arrested, in Gernie’s possession was a marked $100 bill used by agents to purchase heroin just weeks earlier. Gernie was sentenced to ten years in prison on February 19, 1957, and fined $5,000.
⁶⁰

G
IGANTE
, V
INCENT

181 Thompson Street, 1928; 238 Thompson Street, 1950; 134 Bleecker Street, 1957; 225 Sullivan Street

Alias: Chin

Born: March 29, 1928, New York City (b. Gigante, Vincenzo Louis)

Died: December 19, 2005, Springfield, Illinois

Association: Genovese crime family boss

This colorful, hulking, former light-heavyweight boxer and Little Italy native earned his stripes as a Vito Genovese strong-arm before eventually taking over the family in the early 1980s. By the 1990s, Gigante was said to be a powerful leader inside the Mafia Commission, wielding influence over La Cosa Nostra organizations throughout the Northeast.

Vincent was born at 181 Thompson Street Salvatore to Esposito Vulgo and Iolanda Scotto di Vettimo, Neapolitan immigrants who were married in Italy in October 1920, shortly before arriving in New York City. Sometime after settling in America, the family adopted the name Gigante.

The alias Chin (insiders say it was just Chin, not
the
Chin) was said to have derived from a childhood nickname given to him by his mother, but it also suited him well in the boxing ring. During the 1940s, young Gigante fought in the 170-pound weight class and earned an impressive record of twenty-five wins and four losses (twenty-one wins by knockout).