The Mafia Encyclopedia (49 page)

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Authors: Carl Sifakis

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BOOK: The Mafia Encyclopedia
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Page 132
Charles "Lucky" Luciano, the architect, together with Meyer Lansky, of the criminal syndicate that controlled much of the illegal activities in the United States.
Joe Adonis (Joseph Doto), who by the 1930s was the gangster political boss of Brooklyn and valued ally of Frank Costello.
Albert Anastasia, one of the most powerful crime family leaders in America and Lord High Executioner of Murder, Inc., who for years directed the activities of the hit men enforcers who carried out the deadly edicts of organized crime.
English, Charles Carmen "Chuckie" (19141985): Chicago Outfit capo
Extremely close to Chicago crime boss Sam Giancana, Chuckie English (né Inglese) had dinner at the Giancana house the night of Sam's murder but is dismissed as a murder suspect by the late don's daughter, Antoinette Giancana. She said that since childhood she regarded him as "family." In fact, in the period after Giancana's death there was some speculation that a bloody purge of his most loyal followers would ensue and that English would be a likely victim. That did not happen.
With a record dating back to 1933, English has been charged over the years with such sundry crimes as murder, robbery, extortion, hijacking, loan-sharking and counterfeiting phonograph recordsthe last, a major Mafia industry. He was identified in both the Valachi hearings and the 1983 U.S. Senate subcommittee hearings, and took the Fifth Amendment 56 times before the McClellan labor rackets committee.
Giancana used English as the point man for Chicago's crime penetration of Arizona. English was his constant golf companion, it being said they felt it safest to discuss crime strategy on the fairway. English stood by while Giancana was the subject of an FBI lockstep surveillance, a technique described to force the subject to react in illogical ways and perhaps betray himself in some fashion. An exasperated Giancana did slip once, sending an irate English after two FBI agents to relay his message: "If Bobby Kennedy wants to talk to me I'll be glad to talk to him and he knows who to go through." The clear inference to the FBI agents was that the party indicated was singer Frank Sinatra. Sinatra was known to be very tight with Giancanaand for a time at least with the Kennedys.
Actually this scene was cited by some members of the Chicago crime family as proof that Giancana was starting to go "goofy" and that the senior powers, Paul Ricca and Anthony Accardo, should take control of the outfit from Giancana. English appears to have been criticized for not talking Giancana out of such injudicious conduct. It appears to have started Giancana on a slow road down from power, to his later removal and ultimately to his murder in 1975.
Chuckie English suffered no retributionat least, of a fatal naturewith Giancana's departure, but he clearly lost his muscle within the organization. Long a high-ranking lieutenant, English was demoted to mere soldier status, serving under Joey "the Clown" Lombardo. English continued to bewail his reduced status and to bad-mouth the Outfit's leadership, which he felt was inferior to that during his good old days with Giancana. Finally, Accardo had enough and ordered English put to sleep.
See also:
Pass
.
Envelope: Mob gift custom
It is the Mafia custom at gangland weddings, baptisms and funerals to donate an "envelope" to those involved, to the bride and groom, to the proud parents and to the grieving widow, respectively. When Chicago crime boss Sam Giancana's daughter (of
Mafia Princess
fame) was married, wedding guests from New York to California contributed envelopes totaling more than $130,000, and this was in addition to more than $40,000 given previously at the bridal shower.
The most important envelopes are those given to widows of mobsters who have come to a bad end. When Chicago mafioso Sal Moretti was murdered, the largest envelope was presented to the widow by Giancana who offered his words of regret. Never mind that it was Giancana who had ordered Moretti hit.
But for sheer tenderheartedness after a hit, honors must go to Sammy "the Bull" Gravano. He was in on the killing of Louie Milito, whose body was never found. Milito's daughter came to the Bull for help since her father and he were longtime business partners. "Don't worry, princess, I'll get back to you," Gravano told her. He did, but offered no trace of Milito. Instead, he gave her an envelope with enough cash to aid the widow and family. As he said in
Underboss
, "I felt bad for her and the kids."
Gravano had gotten an earlier contract on Milito canceled, but finally he agreed he had to be hit. The widow and kids "were why I had fought to keep him alive, even though her and Louie were getting close to a divorce." The Bull claimed it had cost him $20,000 to finish construction the victim had been doing on his house. He also told the widow to check with him if anyone gave her any problems "because sometimes there are assholes who will get their little brave pills because a guy is dead."
In Gravano's view he was carrying the envelope custom to a higher moral plane.
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Ethnic Succession in the Mafia: See Black Mafia
Eyes in the Sky: Crooked gambling technique
Once organized crime moved into gambling in a big way, it was only logical that its operatives would set up cheating operations. A common method used in both crooked casinos and private games was called "eyes in the sky," concealed peepholes in the ceiling through which silent watchers could stare at card players. Meyer Lansky, a leading proponent of such peeping methods in casinos, gave them something of a legitimate explanationthey were needed to watch dealers and players to make sure there was no collusion between them. However, the likely purpose was to cheat big bettors in key games.
Mob leader Vito Genovese was involved in a number of eyes-in-the-sky swindles. In one private game, Genovese and one of his lieutenants, Mike Miranda, bilked a gullible merchant out of $160,000, in part by getting signals from a spy in the room above as to what cards the merchant had in his hand.
But cheating is not merely a case of Mafia vs. dupe. Following the eyes-in-the-sky scam described above, Genovese and Miranda, promised another mobster, Ferdinand "the Shadow" Boccia, $35,000 to set up the victim. Instead they hired two hoodlums, William Gallo and Ernest "the Hawk" Rupulo, to assassinate Boccia. They hired Rupulo to dispatch Gallo. Later still, Rupulo was killed. It appears the guiding principle in Mafia gambling scams is: Cheat everybody.
Page 134
F
Ferro, Don Vito Cascio (18621932): Sicilian Mafia leader
Don Vito Cascio Ferro is often called the ''greatest" of all the Mafia leaders of Sicily. He was certainly the most charismaticphysically impressive, tall, lean, elegantly attired in frock coat, pleated shirt, flowered cravat and wide-brimmed fedora. In his later years he also adorned himself with a wide, flowing beard. Today, more than a half century after his death, many Sicilians still speak of him in awe and cite him as an example of the manly virtues of dignity and strength. He was virtually illiterate but he bore himself with the manner of royalty. When he ventured forth from Palermo, he was greeted by mayors at their town gates; they kissed his hand in homage.
Don Vito carried the Honored Society to the apogee of its power on the island, developing the practice of
pizzu
, which translates as "wetting the beak," a system under which the Mafia collects a small tribute or tax on virtually every business in Sicily. Under Don Vito every sort of businessman and shopkeeper had to pay regularly for protection. If they refused, their businesses were ruined, shops and homes destroyed and crops burned.
Some historians attribute to Don Vito the development of the system of protection payoffs in the United States as well, but such methods of extortion flourished in New York City long before Don Vito visited there in 1900. In fact, Virgil W. Peterson, longtime head of the Chicago Crime Commission, feels "... his later operations in Sicily may have been influenced somewhat by what he had observed in New York City."
Don Vito was born in 1862 to tenants of an aristocratic landowner, Baron Inglese, at Bisaquino. His criminal career started early with arrests for assault in 1884; threatening public officials, extortion and arson and assault by 1893; and, in 1899, he was accused of taking part in the kidnapping of a baroness. Don Vito fled to New York City where he found refuge with a sister who operated a small shop on 103rd Street.
Don Vito's activities in this country are hazy, but police suspected him of killing at least one man. The victim was stabbed to death, chopped to pieces and stuffed in a barrel. Before the New York police could locate Don Vito, he fled to New Orleans where it was said he cemented relations with certain criminals to print counterfeit dollars in Sicily and smuggle them into the United States.
When Don Vito returned to Sicily he expanded his criminal activities, formed his key Mafia band in Palermo and organized much of the crime on the island. He was known to send counterfeit money as well as other contraband to mafiosi in both New York and New Orleans, and he dispatched many Sicilian criminals to the United States as part of his criminal network.
In 1909, the legendary New York police detective Joseph Petrosino came to Sicily to gather evidence for the deportation of Italian criminals from the United States. Petrosino was murdered almost certainly at Don Vito Cascio Ferro's instigation. A popular theory, one fostered by Don Vito himself, was that the Mafia chieftain did the job himself.
Petrosino was walking in the deserted Piazza Marina one night when two men jumped out from behind a tree and shot him three times in the back and head. Blood flowing down him, Petrosino held himself erect by grab-
Page 135
bing the iron grating of a window. Then a third man appeared and fired the coup de grace, a bullet directly in the detective's face.
Don Vito, according to this version, had been dining that evening in the house of a deputy to the Italian Parliament. Midway through the cheese serving he had excused himself, taken his host's carriage and driven to the Piazza Marina. After killing Petrosino, he took the carriage back to his host's home and continued dining. The host later swore Don Vito had never left his company the entire evening.
There is little doubt that the killing of Petrosino added much prestige and power to Don Vito, both in Sicily and with grateful gangsters in America. Don Vito concentrated for several years on building his power in Sicily, but he had long-range plans for becoming the head of the Mafia in America as well. In 1927, Don Vito sent his agent, the cunning Salvatore Maranzano, to New York to organize the Mafia forces there under one leadership. It is not clear whether he intended to install Maranzano in power there or follow himself. Chances are he had the latter course in mind since Benito Mussolini, jealous of Mafia power, was seeking to destroy the criminal society in Sicily.
In 1929 Don Vito was arrested by the Italian government. Because he could not find real evidence against Don Vito, Mussolini's chief agent in his anti-Mafia campaign, Cesare Mori, manufactured a frame-up charge of smuggling. Don Vito contemptuously refused to speak at his trial until its conclusion when he said, "Gentlemen, since you have been unable to find any evidence for the numerous crimes I did commit, you are reduced to condemning me for the only one I have not." Don Vito was confined in Ucciardone Prison where he died in 1932, and for many years other criminals took it as a high honor to be confined in the cell where the greatest Mafia chieftain spent his final years.
Meanwhile, in America Maranzano was on his own once Don Vito was imprisoned. He decided he could fill the void as the boss of bosses of the American Mafia. He fought the Castellammarese War to a successful conclusion with the death of his arch-foe Joe the Boss Masseria. Maranzano organized the New York Mafia into five families with himself above them all.
However, Maranzano's and Don Vito's dream of a Sicilian Doss of bosses in America lasted less than five months. Maranzano was murdered by the LucianoLansky combination that would instead put in place a multi-ethnic national crime syndicate.
Five iron Men: Kansas City crime rulers
It has been said there were few cities in America west of Chicago that could match the corruption that gripped Kansas City, Missouri. Yet numerically the number of actual mafiosi in the city was rather small. This may be explained in part by the presence of the Chicago Outfit which, from the time of the establishment of the national crime syndicate by Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, laid claim to everything to its west. (Chicago's claim was recognized basically everywhere but in Nevada and California and, to a limited extent, in Arizona.)
The other mobs had little interest in going into Kansas City; they recognized it as being an empire to itself under the powerful administration of political boss Tom Pendergast. As a matter of fact, in the deliberations started in the late 1920s and early 1930s that culminated in the formation of the national syndicate, Pendergast was the only political boss invited to take part. When Pendergast found it inopportune to attend himself, he sent Johnny Lazia, the king of the North Side wards, as his spokesman.
Pendergast, who controlled the Mafia in Kansas City far better than did other political machines, made it obvious to the mobsters that he was as ready to use violence and murder as they were. When Lazia was hit with a tax evasion conviction in 1934, he showed signs of turning informer against the machine; his lips were sealed by a machine gun assassination almost certainly decreed by the Pendergast forces.
According to a report of the Federal Narcotics Bureau, the Kansas City Mafia entered into the narcotics trade in 1933 with the end of Prohibition. Among the main personnel in the operations were such important mafiosi as Joseph De Luca, Nicole Impostato and James De Simone.
With the death of Lazia, Charley Binaggio, the fastest rising criminal light in Kansas City, eventually took over the North Side wards and delivered votes for the Pendergast machine. When Tom Pendergast and his machine got in deeper legal troubles, Binaggio continued to advance. As an apparent Mafia member himself (to others he insisted there was no such thing as a Mafia, past, present or future), he became one of the "Five Iron Men" who ruled much of Kansas City criminal activities. Others of the five were Binaggio's enforcer, Charley Gargotta (of whom Senator Estes Kefauver, following the crime hearings of the 1950s, would say, "If ever a human being deserved the title of 'mad dog' it was Gargotta") and three other mafiosi, Tano Lococo, fat Tony Gizzo and grizzled old Jim Balestrere, the reputed Mafia boss in the city.
Balestrere, an ancient Sicilian-born mobster, had a public line of playing dumb and representing himself as a poor old jobless fellow who lived on a little income from a piece of business property (which turned out to be used for a gambling enterprise) and on a few dollars given him by his children. He used the same ploy before

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