not be carried inside, bearing that classic, touching message, "From His Pals."
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The funeral procession was a mile long with 26 cars and trucks loaded with flowers, including rather garish arrangements sent by Torrio, Capone, and the Genna brothers, perhaps fittingly since all of them were involved in the execution of O'Banion. Ten thousand people followed the hearse, jamming every trolley car to the area of the Mount Carmel cemetery. At the gravesite another 5,000 to 10,000 spectators waited. An honest judge of the era, some say a rarity for the age, John H. Lyle, called the funeral "one of the most nauseating things I've ever seen happen in Chicago." Back in New York Frankie Yale was more impressed. In fact, he told friends he certainly hoped that when his time came, he would get a more impressive funeral than O'Banion had enjoyed.
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Yale went to his reward in a hail of lead in 1928, and the boys tried to do right by him. Fifty thousand dollars was lavished on his send-off. The coffin was nickel and silver, and flower stores in Brooklyn were denuded to the tune of 38 carloads of flowers. Flags flew at halfstaff. About 250 autos in a funeral cortege followed the hearse through the streets of Brooklyn to Frankie's resting place in Holy Cross Cemetery. Among the 10,000 mourners were two widows, each insisting she was the genuine Mrs. Yale. It was left to a rather prideful
New York Daily News
to claim that Yale's funeral "was a better one than that given Dion O'Banion by Chicago racketeers in 1924."
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In the 1920s and 1930s big gangster funerals were considered only proper and fitting. As one mobster informed the press, "That's what buddies are for."
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Before O'Banion's death the biggest funeral held by the North Side gang involved Nails Morton who had a 20-car flower procession. O'Banion had a 26-car procession. When O'Banion's successor, Hymie Weiss, was assassinated, he had only 18 cars with flowers, a fact that upset his widow. Patiently, Bugs Moran of the North Siders had to explain that, since the deaths of Morton and O'Banion some 30 others in the gang had died, which played hob with the number of donors. Weiss's successor, Schemer Drucci, had a touch less impressive a funeral than Weiss's, but his wife was satisfied; he was buried under a blanket of 3,500 blooms. She said: "A cop bumped him off like a dog, but we gave him a king's funeral."
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By the 1940s more simple funerals became the style. When Al Capone was laid to rest in 1947, Chicago boss Tony Accardo strictly limited mob attendance, deciding who was "too hot" and might cause a disruption. As Accardo said, "We gotta draw the line someplace. If we let'em, everybody in Chicago will crowd into the cemetery. Al had no enemies." (Presumably Tough Tony could not resist that last humorous comment; after all, it did have an element of truth. Accardo knew Capone's enemies were mostly dead by then, very few having departed this world from natural causes.)
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Still later, mob big shots were no longer honor bound to attend funerals at all because of the disruptions that might occur. However, when longtime crime boss Tommy Lucchese died in 1967 and his family let it be known they "understood" if no one attended, many top mafiosi did attend, including Carlo Gambino, Aniello Dellacroce, and Joe and Vincent Rao, insisting they had to come in person to show the great esteem they had for Lucchese. Perhaps what they respected most about him was that for the last 44 years he had never been convicted of a thing.
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When Frank Costello passed away in 1973, his widow was firm. She wanted none of his unsavory friends to attend the funeral. Her wishes were respected.
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When Gambino godfather Paul Castellano was murdered in December 1985, he was buried in a secret rite after John Cardinal O'Connor barred a funeral mass for him" after a great deal of prayer," according to a spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York. Castellano suffered the same fate as Carmine Galante and Albert Anastasia, who were also denied funeral masses. Faring better were Crazy Joey Gallo, Carlo Gambino and Joe Colombo. Canon law 1184 stipulates that funeral masses will be denied to "manifest sinners" who have not shown some sign of repentance before death. In many cases, mobsters get the benefit of a doubt, especially if they die in bed. One Catholic expert explained, "The assumption is that they had time to reflect and to repent in some fashion before death. But the way he [Castellano] went out, it's very difficult to see how anybody could say that he had time to reflect and repent.''
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Cardinal O'Connor in his official statement said that both church law and possible negative reaction by the faithful guided his decision to forbid a funeral mass for Castellano. In 1979 Terence Cardinal Cooke denied the mass for Carmine Galante, also a rubout victim, but as an "act of charity" he permitted a priest to recite prayers at a service in a funeral home. O'Connor did the same for Castellano, and added in condolence, "We extend deepest sympathy to the family."
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The O'Connor decision did not meet with total approval within the church. The Reverend Louis Gigante, pastor of St. Athanasius in the Bronx and brother of two reputed mobsters, criticized it. He said he would have celebrated a funeral mass for Castellano. "If he was not a Catholic in life, we should have told him, 'You're no good,'" Gigante said. "Don't say it now, when the family is going to get hurt."
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