The Mafia Encyclopedia (114 page)

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Authors: Carl Sifakis

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Page 336
was himself probably the greatest mob prude of all. After a quarter of a century dealing with the mob's prostitution and other sex rackets, he could rightfully claim to have never touched even one of the women.
Torrio had a morbid fear of venereal disease and maintained a strict loyalty to his wife. His protégé Capone had no such compulsion and so developed the syphilitic affliction that would eventually end his life. The same was true of top New Jersey mobster Willie Moretti who finally had to be shot in what other mafiosi considered to be a "mercy killing" because they feared his mental health, affected by advanced syphilis, would cause him to blab mob secrets.
Moretti, also known as Willie Moore, tended to hold others to a higher standard than himself. Thus when gossip columns started to report that singer Frank Sinatra was going to divorce his wife Nancy to marry actress Ava Gardner, he shot off a telegram to Sinatra to whom he had long been a patron: "I AM VERY MUCH SURPRISED WHAT I HAVE BEEN READING IN THE NEWSPAPERS BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR DARLING WIFE. REMEMBER YOU HAVE A DECENT WIFE AND CHILDREN. YOU SHOULD BE VERY HAPPY. REGARDS TO ALL. WILLIE MOORE."
Another don operating on the double standard was Chicago boss Sam Giancana. As a reading of
Mafia Princess
by Antoinette Giancana and Thomas Renner makes obvious, Giancana was capable of jumping out of the bed of his mistress if necessary to commit murder, if he suspected any man of trifling with his daughters.
Sex for gangsters is looked upon as normal recreation, and, despite the rules, almost any peccadillo is permitted if the women are "outsiders." Thus it really was quite all right for Vito Genovese to have a man killed because he wanted his wife for himself. There is a mob rule against killing for personal reasons but affairs of the heart can at times be excused. Similarly, sex capers that produce no heat are acceptable. No one seriously objected when some of the boys in Detroit's Purple Gang got a little too involved in fun and games at the LaSalle Hotel one hot summer night and the body of a beautiful girl came hurtling down some l0 stories to the street. Since the Purples at the time enjoyed considerable official cooperation, police took one look at the victim, who was bound and gagged, and decided it was a classic case of suicide.
Mobsters are expected to pamper their wives and take them away for trips, cruises and the like. However, it is not at all uncommon for the boys to stash their old ladies in Deck A and their broads a deck below. The custom is known as "bringing both sets."
An exception to this rule is Christmas time when tradition dictates fidelity to the wives. For years when the Copacabana flourished as a secret Frank Costello operation, the Christmas rule at the Copa was mob wives onlyno girlfriends allowed.
Promiscuity is regarded in Mafia circles as an expression of manliness. Thus it was never clear whether Lucky Luciano was more angry that Thomas E. Dewey convicted him on prostitution charges or that the prosecutor brought on a parade of hookers who indicated Luciano was impotent.
Sex also represents a condemned man's last wish, even though he may not know it. When Tommy Eboli was violently removed from his post of acting boss in the Genovese crime family, the assassins knew he was on his way to see a lady friend in Brooklyn. He could have been popped on his way into her apartment building but it was apparently decided that Eboli was entitled to the "respect" shown a boss. They let him have his evening of joy even though that meant hanging around for hours. Then they shot him to death as he came out.
Shapiro, Jacob "Gurrah" (18991947): Labor racketeer
By the late 1920s the foremost industrial racketeers in New York City and very likely the nation were Louis Lepke and Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro. Of the two, Lepke had the brains, attired conservatively with the look of a respectable businessman, while Shapiro, squat, heavyset and gravel-voiced, a gorilla in man's clothes, provided the fearsome brawn.
His nickname of Gurrah said it all. Whenever he told someone to "get out of here"which was oftenit came out in a snarling "Gurra dahere." His underworld associates dubbed him "Gurrah" for his contributions to underworld English.
Teenagers, Gurrah met Lepke in 1914 on the Lower East Side while both were attempting to rob the same pushcart. It marked the beginning of a rewarding partnership. Lepke realized even then he would have a need for Shapiro's muscleand Shapiro
must
have seen the need for a brain.
As a matter of fact, Shapiro was lucky eventually to have two brains working for him. Lepketogether with some other aspiring criminals, Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lanskyhad come under the tutelage of the greatest criminal mastermind of the day, Arnold Rothstein, who, if he had lived, would have left a powerful imprint on organized crime as it developed in the 1930s. Rothstein saw a great potential in labor racketeering, far beyond just beating up strikers for pay.
Learning from him, Lepke and Shapiro moved into the union field in the garment industry and terrorized certain locals through a mixture of beatings and murders. Once they gained control of a local, they were set up to take kickbacks and skim on the dues from union
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members while at the same time extorting huge payoffs from garment manufacturers who wanted to avoid strike troubles.
They began working with Jacob "Little Augie" Orgen, the top labor racketeer of the day, to provide strikebreaking crews for employers. Lepke and even Shapiro soon discovered Little Augie was years behind the times, only looking for the biggest immediate payoff and not trying to build a good thing. Lepke and Shapiro realized they did not need Little Augie, who must have sensed their attitudes since he formed a new alliance with the Diamond brothers, Legs and Eddie, to provide him with extra muscle and protection. It did Little Augie no good. On the night of October 15, 1927, Little Augie and Legs Diamond were at the corner of Norfolk and Delancey Streets on the Lower East Side when Louis Lepke drove up. Shapiro jumped out, gun in hand, while Lepke started firing from inside the car. In the hail of bullets, Diamond went down, severely wounded. Diamond recovered. Little Augie was not as lucky; he was dead on the spot.
The field belonged now to Lepke and Shapiro, and they put the squeeze on both the unions and the employers. Many employers who tried to hire their muscle soon found themselves under the gangsters' domination.
Gurrah was happiest when he could use force. He always firmly believed that a bust in the teeth was better than a harsh word, and that a bullet or a bottle of acid was more fun than a bust in the teeth.
When Lepke led his organization into Lansky and Luciano's emerging national crime syndicate, he was put in charge of Murder, Inc., the execution arm of the organization, probably because it was felt that he would need it most in his labor extortion field. Lepke's chief aides in Murder, Inc., were Albert Anastasia and Gurrah Shapiro, two natural killers who truly enjoyed the work. Gurrah handled a number of hits personally and devoted much of his spare time seeking out young talent for the murder troop.
In 1935 racketeer Dutch Schultz came before the ruling board of the crime syndicate with a proposal that special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey, who was after him, be assassinated. Not surprisingly Shapiro and Anastasia favored the idea. Everyone else paled at such a suggestion, realizing that such a murder would simply generate more heat for everyone. When Luciano and Lepke voted against the idea, Anastasia and Shapiro, each regarding their boss as mentor, fell into line. Only Schultz continued to demand the Dewey murder, and when it was clear he would get no support in his insane plot, he announced he would go it alone. As a result, Schultz was murdered before he could carry out his plot.
Later Gurrah came to feel that his initial instinct to support Schultz had been right. With Schultz out of the way, Dewey went after the Lepke-Shapiro labor rackets. In 1936, Gurrah was sentenced to life for labor rackets. Lepke was also sent to prison and later went to the chair on an old murder he had commissioned.
During Lepke's murder trial Gurrah managed to smuggle a message out of the penitentiary to his mentor. He reminded him of Schultz's murder plot and concluded triumphantly: "I told you so."
Before Shapiro died in prison in 1947, he bitterly told other convicts that he had been a fool to follow Luciano, Lansky and Lepke, that if he had stuck to his own code of violence he would have been a free man.
See also:
Garment Industry Rackets; Lepke, Louis; Manton, Martin T
.
Shotgun Man (?-?): Unidentified Black Hand hit man
No mafioso hit man was more identifiable to more people and yet enjoyed greater immunity from arrest than an early Chicago killer dubbed by the press "the Shotgun Man." Little was ever known about him, save that he was believed to be Sicilian and that for years before appearing in Chicago's Little Italy he had served as an assassin for various Mafia chieftains in the old country.
In Chicago as in Sicily, the Shotgun Man took up chores for various Black Hand extortionists who threatened victims with death if they failed to pay their blackmail demands. Some Black Handers were from the Mafia, others from the Camorra, the Naples-based criminal society, and still others were mere freelancers capitalizing on the immigrants' fear of the Black Hands. The Black Handers did kill some recalcitrant would-be victims, thus advertising their serious intentions.
The Shotgun Man specifically personified the Black Hand evil. One can well imagine the icy terror that gripped recipients of Black Hand extortion demands if they were asked if they wished to share the fate of some Italian businessman who was really not yet dead. Then the Shotgun Man would dispatch the businessman. As a rule, the threatened victims immediately paid up.
Annually for several years, anywhere from 12 to as many as 50 victims of Black Handers were killed, and the Shotgun Man was acknowledged to be the hit man in perhaps one-third of the cases. Between January 1, 1910, and March 26, 1911, the Shotgun Man shot 15 Italians on orders from various Black Handers. In all, the total number of Black Hand killings in that time frame was 38. In March of 1911, the Shotgun Man cut down four victims within a 72-hour period, all at the intersection of Milton and Oak Streets, a spot that became known as "Death Corner."
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The Shotgun Man blithely walked the streets of Little Italy with no fear of exposure, even immediately after a killing. Many witnesses could have identified him, but it was said throughout the community that the Black Handers who purchased his services enjoyed political protection. If the Shotgun Man was arrested, he would be turned loose in a short time with an excellent memory of his accusers.
The Shotgun Man was reportedly paid handsomely for his lethal labors, and it was said he remained at his duties only until he acquired enough wealth to retire to Sicily. Indeed, after a period of eight or nine years, the Shotgun Man left Little Italy. To take up a tranquil life in Sicily? No one will ever know.
See also:
Black Hand; Death Corner; White Hand Society
.
Siano, Fiore "Fury" (19301964?): Mobster and Joe Valachi relative
In the traditional old-line mafioso state of things, a crime family was exactly thata family. Brothers, brothers-inlaw, sons, cousins, uncles, nephewswhen they were all together it was believed that omerta, the code of silence, would be kept. Even in the most perfect of worlds there might be weaklings who could not stick with blood, and they would be exterminated within the family. At the same time, it was the duty of mafiosi to protect other relatives at all costs.
It was his family that doomed Fiore Siano. Siano was the nephew of informer Joe Valachi. Valachi had brought Siano, his sister's son, into the mob, or what he called the Cosa Nostra. Valachi was proud of the "kid," as he called him. Siano was a very good murderer. He fully deserved his nickname "Fury."
Twice Valachi used him as a hit man, both in very important murders. One was at the behest of Vito Genovese, who ordered the death of Steve Franse, a oncetrusted associate, whom the gang boss blamed for his wife, Anna Genovese, "falling out of love with him." Siano followed instructions meticulously, seeing to it that Franse suffered before he died. The victim was badly beaten before he was finally strangled with a chain. Siano pummeled his victim, leaving him with contusions and abrasions of the face and body as well as a fractured rib.
An even more important hit was that of Eugenio Giannini, a mobster heavily involved in narcotics dealings, and, at the same time, an informer for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Lucky Luciano, in exile in Italy, learned of Giannini's duplicity and ordered his extermination. Siano was one of an efficient three-man hit team that handled the job.
Fury Siano's future in the mob looked and was secure. Then Joe Valachi turned informer. Siano started walking around with a haunted look on his face. About nine months after it was learned Valachi was telling all, Siano suddenly vanished.
A New York City police intelligence report stated: "Siano disappeared about the end of April or the beginning of May, 1964. He has not been seen since three unknown males took him out of Patsy's Pizzeria, 2287 First Avenue, during the aforementioned period. Siano is believed dead. The rumor is that his body was disposed of in such a manner as to prevent it from being discovered."
The old mafioso belief that blood was a litmus test in criminal organization held true in Siano's case, in this case that "bad blood" infected the family.
Valachi spent his last years in federal custody, protected from underworld retribution. His family, he reported, would have nothing to do with him. "And I don't blame them," he said.
See also:
Franse, Steven; Giannini, Eugenio
.
Sicilian Flu: Imaginary and real mafioso ailments
Mafiosi, when arrested or facing investigative committees or court appearances, develop a gamut of medical maladies ranging from heart trouble to common colds.
It is common for FBI agents derisively to diagnose such ploys as "Sicilian flu," a term coined when the late Buffalo boss Stefano Magaddino promptly took to bed when agents came to arrest him. He claimed to have the flu and was much too ill to be fingerprinted. As Special Agent Neil Welch put it, "It won't hurt. We just want to hold his hand." Subjected to a bedside arraignment, Don Stefano sucked on an oxygen tube and gasped, "Take-a the gun. Take-a the gun and shoot me, that's what you want!" At the time, Don Stefano was 77, and some five years from his final reward.
Claims of ill health do seem to have some validity however, in the cases of the older dons. Ascribing heart conditions to "Sicilian flu" may in fact be a bit uncharitable. Carlo Gambino claimed his heart condition kept him abed most of the time in his tightly guarded home on Long Island. More likely he stayed in bed because, stripped of his citizenship, his "bum ticker" protected him from deportation. He still schemed, issued orders and, indeed, seemed to have little trouble venturing forth when crime family business beckoned. Yet in the end it was a heart attack that put him down for good.
Scientific study is elusive on the subject, but it is obvious to any reporter on the Mafia beat that members of organized crime suffer more from heart attacks and heart disease than the population as a whole. Perhaps the high incidence of stress-related diseases is an indication of the pressures on Mafia Dons. Is a heart disease a condition that goes with the territory?

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