Manhattan Mafia Guide (9 page)

12 Prince Street today.
Courtesy of Sachiko Akama
.

Contrary to the common assertion that he was born in Brooklyn, young Evola arrived in New York City on the SS
Indiana
on June 3, 1913, with his twenty-seven-year-old mother, Francescio (maiden name Mione), and siblings Giuseppa, Giorlama and Anna and settled in Little Italy.

Evola’s first arrest came while working for Salvatore Maranzano on August 31, 1930, at age twenty-three, for firearms possession. The charges were dropped a year later. His next arrest came on April 3, 1932, for coercion; again, he was acquitted. By this time, Joe Bonanno was boss of the family.

By the early 1950s, using the Belmont Garment Delivery and Amity Garment Delivery Companies (both located at 240–42 West Thirty-seventh Street) as a front, Evola became a major labor racketeer in the city’s garment industry, specifically in trucking and shipping. By this time, he was working under Joe Stracci and James “Jimmy Doyle” Plumeri, before becoming a capo about 1957. Between June 1956 and March 1957, Evola had been subpoenaed to appear before several grand juries in the Southern District of New York and was one of sixty upper-echelon Mafioso who attended the Apalachin Conference in 1957.
⁴⁹
(When interviewed by authorities at his West Thirty-seventh Street office, Evola said he was in Apalachin delivering a few coats for a niece who lived close by.)

In April 1959, Evola was found guilty for his alleged role in a Genovese-Gigante-Di Palermo-Polizzano narcotics ring based out of East Fourth Street, which he appealed. Drug courier turned informant Nelson Cantellops testified that he met Evola several times at various locations throughout the 1955–57 operation and claimed he was instrumental in developing a street distribution route in the Hispanic section of the East Bronx.
⁵⁰

During the appeal trial in January 1960, Evola was sentenced to five years for perjury and conspiring to obstruct justice. On April 5 of that year, his appeal was overturned, and Evola was sentenced to ten years, which he served at Leavenworth Prison in Kansas.

Back on the street by the end of the 1960s, Evola became underboss about 1968 and then, about 1970, replaced an ailing Paul Sciacca as head of the Bonanno family, a position he held until losing a battle with cancer in 1973.

F
ARULLA
, R
OSARIO
A
RIO

315 East Forty-eighth Street, 1942

Born: August 25, 1882, Villarosa, Sicily

Died: February 1971, Italy

Association: Lucchese crime family

Labeled a “vicious and cold-blooded killer” by the FBN, Farulla had close ties to top-level American, Italian and French criminal organizations. His criminal career began in Sicily before spending most of his life in New York City; though according to a 1968 memo, the FBI believed that he eventually became involved in a former Lucchese-run family based out of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

By thirty years of age, Farulla had been sentenced to back-to-back prison terms in his native Sicily: four and a half years on murder and weapons charges in 1908 and two to four months in 1912 for assault and battery. Italian courts would later sentence him to life in prison for murder and theft, but he had already fled the country and settled in New York City, where his first U.S. arrest came in 1929 for bootlegging, possibly working for the Gaetano Reina gang in East Harlem.

In 1953, Farulla was convicted of conspiracy for his role in an international crime ring that allegedly smuggled large quantities of heroin into the United States from France.
⁵¹
The operation was shut down in October 1953 after being infiltrated by undercover U.S. narcotics agents. Farulla was on the run for almost a month but turned himself in on November 4, 1953, to face charges. The sting led to several arrests on both sides of the Atlantic, including that of Nicolo DiGiovanni, a Sicilian living in Marseille who was the alleged leader of the ring.
⁵²

According to Farulla’s Social Security death index, the U.S. Consulate in Italy is listed as his last place of residence before he passed away at age eighty-two.

G
ALANTE
, C
ARMINE

27 Stanton Street, 1910; 329 East 101
^st
Street, 1930; 235 Sullivan Street; 206 Thompson Street; 134 Bleecker Street

Alias: Lilo, Charles Bruno, Joe Dello, Gagliano, Galanti, Galanto

Born: February 21, 1910, New York City (b. Gigante, Camillo)

Died: July 12, 1979, Glen Cove, New York

Association: Bonanno crime family acting boss

With a criminal record dating back to 1926, Galante earned his criminal stripes as a youth in a street gang on the Lower East Side. By the end of 1930, twenty-year-old Galante had already been arrested in connection with the murder of Brooklyn police officer Walter De Castilla and was wounded in a gun battle that also injured two young children. At the time, he was listed as working as a sorter at the Fulton Fish Market, but by February 1941, he was sponsored into the International Longshoreman’s Association (ILA) union by his brother, Sam Galante, and earned a “position” at the New York and Cuba Mail Steamship Company as a stevedore. By the end of the following year, Galante had also been “employed” at the General Electric Plating Company at 176–80 Grand Street (as a handyman), the Knickerbocker Trucking Company at 520 Broadway (as a helper) and at an unnamed pastry shop at 13 Prince Street.

By the 1940s, Galante was known to the FBI as a Mafia member and was said to have worked as a hit man for Vito Genovese. In 1942, he became the prime suspect in the assassination of news publisher Carlo Tresca, but like the many other murders Galante is alleged to have participated in, no conviction was handed down.

Carmine Galante mug shot, 1943.

In 1945, Galante moved to Brooklyn with his new wife, Helen Marulli of 96 Henry Street. The marriage ceremony was held at Our Lady of Sorrows, at 213 Stanton Street. His best man was fellow mobster Angelo “Moey” Presenzano, a figure who may have played a role in Galante’s assassination three decades later.

Galante was one of sixty upper-echelon mobsters to attend the Apalachin Conference on November 14, 1957, held on the upstate New York property of close associate Joseph Barbara. Over the next two decades, Galante’s loyalty propelled him up the Bonanno family ladder, from consigliere to underboss to acting boss in the 1970s.

While acting boss, Galante was said to have made a lot of enemies by incorporating Sicilian Mafia members into his inner circle, leaving the other New York families out of lucrative operations. He waged a war on the Genovese and Gambino families, leading to the murders of at least eight rival family members. It is even said that he had the mausoleum of deceased rival Frank Costello blown up. By the end of the decade, the commission allegedly decided that Galante was dangerous and had to be eliminated.

At 2:45 p.m. on July 12, 1979, Carmine Galante was eating lunch at a restaurant in Brooklyn (205 Knickerbocker Avenue) when three men burst through the front door, opened fire and killed Galante and his table guests before fleeing in a blue 1974 Mercury.

Galante had undergone several psychiatric examinations over his lifetime while incarcerated, including a 1931 evaluation at Sing Sing and one in 1938 at Clinton State Prison, both of which declared him “psychopathic.”

G
AROFALO
, F
RANK

339 East Fifty-eighth Street (Midtown East, 1930s and 1940s)

Alias: Frank Carroll, Garafola, Garofola

Born: September 10, 1891, Castellammare Del Golfo, Sicily (b. Garofalo, Francesco)

Died: [?]

Association: Bonanno crime family

Described by the FBN as a “top ranking…enforcer and executioner” for the American Mafia with strong ties to Sicily, Garofalo was a highly respected and influential Mafioso, yet little has been told of his lengthy criminal career in contemporary accounts. When mentioned, he is often reduced to a footnote as a suspect in the assassination of news publisher Carlo Tresca in 1943.

Born in Trapani to Vincenzo and Caterina Garofalo, young Francesco was initiated into the Castellammare cosca as a teenager, a faction that was headed by a man named Magaddino Buccellato.

He arrived in New York City at age twenty-nine on May 26, 1921, aboard the SS
Providence
. Here, he went to work for the Castellammarese-based Nicola Schiro crime family, for whom he ran a bootlegging crew and formed lifelong friendships with the likes of young Carmine Galante and Joseph Bonanno.

After the 1943 murder of Carlo Tresca, one theory arose that suggested Garofalo arranged the assassination because Tresca personally insulted him at a social event,
⁵³
though this is an unlikely scenario. Garofalo was never charged. At the time of the murder, Garofalo lived at and operated the Colorado Cheese Company at 176 Avenue A, as well as the High Grade Packing Company in Merced, California.

Garofalo was said to be semiretired from the mob when, in 1955, he returned to Sicily, where he attended the Grand Hotel des Palmes Summit in Palermo on October 14–17, 1957.
⁵⁴
He then returned to the United States briefly to allegedly take part in the Apalachin Summit in November 1957, when it is suspected that Garofalo briefed the gathered Mafia bosses on the results of the Palermo conference. Though the outcome of both meetings is still largely a mystery, one theory suggests that at least one result was the establishment of a new heroin trade operation between the American and Sicilian Mafias.

In August 1965, seventy-four-year-old Frank Garofalo was swept up in a large-scale crackdown on Cosa Nostra operations in Sicily.
⁵⁵
Shortly after dawn on August 2, Sicilian police executed seven simultaneous raids across the island, resulting in the arrests of several high-ranking Mafioso. The Palermo police, heading the operation, said they possessed evidence firmly linking the U.S. and Sicilian underworlds in a worldwide narcotics distribution ring, alleging that pure heroin was being imported from Asia, refined in Sicily and distributed throughout North America.

Besides Garofalo, seven American Mafia members were indicted, including Joe Bonanno, Carmine Galante and Santo Sorge. Sicilian Mafia boss Giuseppe Genco Russo was also charged. In all, seventeen top-level Mafia leaders were put on trial for criminal conspiracy, as well as narcotics and currency trafficking. In an unprecedented move, investigating judge Aldo Vigneri visited America in 1965 to interview several witnesses, including two FBI agents and disgraced mobster Joe Valachi, who was housed in a Washington, D.C. jail cell at the time.

Despite presenting eight years of evidence and several witnesses, prosecutors failed to prove their case, and all charges were dropped against all defendants in June 1968. Frank Garofalo disappeared from public record after that.

G
ENOVESE
, V
ITO

29 Washington Square West, 1944

Born: November 27, 1897, Naples, Italy (b. Genovese, Avito)

Died: February 14, 1969, Springfield, Missouri

Association: Genovese crime family boss

Not many other Mafioso of the era quite match up to the fearsome reputation of Vito Genovese, the churlish mob leader who had no problem using violence on anyone who stood in his way. Fellow mobsters, friends and civilians were all fair game to the man who went on to lead arguably the most infamous (and powerful) Mafia organization in America.