The Mafia Encyclopedia (56 page)

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Authors: Carl Sifakis

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Page 156
of a mindless twerp eager to kill when ordered. Ricca had, at the time, catapulted to the heights within the mob and had learned the best possible life insurance was to have a bunch of maniacal killers backing him up. Giancana was that in time and, more important, would have a bunch of ruthless young 42ers ready to do his bidding. Under Ricca's tutelage, Giancana moved upward in the Chicago Outfit, and, as he did, brought other 42ers in with him, men like Sam Battaglia, Milwaukee Phil Alderiso, Marshall Caifano, Sam DeStefano, Fifi Buccieri, Willie Daddano, Frank Caruso, Rocco Pentenza and Charles Nicoletti.
By the 1950s the ravages of age had downed many of the old Capone hands, operatives and enforcersTerry Druggan, Golf Bag Hunt, Greasy Thumb Guzik, Phil D'Andrea, Little New York Campagna, Claude Maddox and Frank Diamond. Accardo and Ricca promoted Giancana to operating head of the mob. It represented in a sense the changing of the guard, and Giancana promoted up the ladder his old 42er buddies and other young men. As these gangsters took over, they became known as the Youngbloods.
The mob took over more rackets than ever before. In the early 1950s, Giancana had masterminded the move to take over from the black numbers kings. A few judicious murders in this field upped the income of the Chicago Outfit by millions of dollars a year.
Sam's star rose higher and higher. He was no godfather whose hand was to be kissed, who was to be hugged by hulking enforcers. The name of the game in Giancana's crime family was money, and he who produced wealth for the mob earned its respect, provided the cash flow continued unabated. Sam moved in entertainment circles, and his friends included Frank Sinatra, Joe E. Lewis, Phyllis McGuire and Keeley Smith. His relationship with the Kennedy family can only be called complex, and there is little doubt that for a time he shared a mistress with the president of the United States.
Giancana's interests ranged from Las Vegas to Mexico to Cuba and elsewhere, no one knowing them all. And there was the CIA connection that haunted Giancana the last 15 years of his life. Somewhere in all these activities were the seeds of Giancana's doom.
In 1975, the details of the Giancana-CIA relationship were still coming out, and Sam was slated to go before a Senate investigating committee to testify. For several years he had been in decline with the mob because of his excesses. His murders, his love affairs, his battles with the FBI attracted too much heat. Before his death, Ricca reluctantly decided Giancana had to cool it. He was replaced in his boss role by Joey Aiuppa, a selection that Giancana did not like.
Giancana busied himself with gambling enterprises in Mexico. Now he was a source of considerable irritation to Accardo and Aiuppa, who pointed out to Giancana that he was living on mob money. Giancana saw it as his money. He had become a much-hated manby the mob, by the CIA, by the FBI, perhaps by the other mafiosi involved in the Castro caper.
On June 19, 1975, Giancana was in the basement kitchen of his Oak Park, Illinois, home cooking a little snack before bedtime. Someone was with him: his murderer, but Giancana never suspected. As Giancana had his back turned, minding his sausages, a gun, a .22-caliber automatic with a silencer, was placed inches from the back of Giancana's head. There was a slight plop and Giancana crashed to the floor. Professionals know that a single shot to the head does not always kill. The murderer rolled Giancana over and placed the gun under Giancana's chin and shot bullet after bullet, six more in all, into his jaw and brain.
When the news broke of the assassination, CIA Director William Colby announced, "We had nothing to do with it." Newsmen checked with syndicate figures and got the same response from that quarter. Someone was lying. One of Giancana's daughters said it was all very unfair to her father, that he deserved a medal for the good works he had done for the government.
See also:
Forty-Two Gang; Youngbloods
.
Giannini, Eugenio (19101952): Informer and Joe Valachi murder victim
The life expectancy of a Mafia informer tends to be rather short, but the remarkable Eugenio (Gene) Giannini served 10 years as a stool pigeon for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics while chumming with many top American mafiosi. He was at the same time, in a practice not uncommon among informers, double-crossing the narcotics bureau and doing his own drug deals.
Unfortunately for Giannini he went too far when he approached the exiled Lucky Luciano in Italy and offered to supply him with considerable counterfeit dollars if he could find a buyer. Apparently instinctively, Luciano did not trust Giannini and left the deal hanging.
In the meantime Giannini was arrested by the Italian police on another matter. Finding himself confined in a rather unwholesome jail, he desperately smuggled out some letters to Charles Siragusa, the narcotics bureau man in Rome, reminding him of the services he had done the bureau in revealing narcotics violators as well as his burgeoning contact with Luciano.
It was a most injudicious thing to write. Letters smuggled out of Italian prisons tend to be read by unknown eyes. In some unknown way information
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about what was in the Giannini letters soon filtered back to Luciano.
The word soon got from Luciano to Vito Genovese in New York and then to Genovese's man, Tony Bender, who passed the word to the later-informer Joe Valachi. Giannini had to be killed.
Valachi shook his head sadly, saying, "There goes my couple of thousand he owes me...." About a month later Bender sent for Valachi a second time and told him the mob had been unsuccessful in locating Giannini. From the drift of the conversation, Valachi said later he was afraid it might be thought he was sheltering Giannini to protect his $2,000. Out of self-defense, Valachi later testified to a U.S. Senate subcommittee, he volunteered to take the contract on Giannini. On September 20, 1952, Giannini was found shot to death. The job had been done by three young punks assigned by Valachi to do the actual killing, following his detailed script.
However, some crime experts have felt that Valachi lied, or as Virgil W. Peterson, for 27 years head of the Chicago Crime Commission, put it, "was considerably less than forthright" with the Senate subcommittee. It may have been that Valachi was not at all concerned about $2,000, if indeed Giannini owed that to him.
When Giannini had been arrested in Italy, Dominick "the Gap" Petrelli, Valachi's best friend, was taken with him. Giannini, although the subcommittee was never so informed, had bragged to Italian authorities in Petrelli's presence that he was an informer for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. There was no way Petrelli would not have informed Valachi, his dearest friend, of this. Not long after this Petrelli, like Giannini, was murdered as being an informer. Which leaves one to speculate about Valachi as well. Giannini, with whom Valachi was involved, was an informer. His best friend, Petrelli, was an informer. It could well have been that Vito Genovese was not wrong when he gave Valachi the "kiss of death," maintaining Valachi too was a stool pigeon and that his informing days had begun before he went to Atlanta.
Valachi took on the Giannini hit for no compensationperhaps he enjoyed the very valuable bonus of protecting himself.
Gigante, Vincent "the Chin" (1926-): Nob enforcer
From the public's point of view, Vincent "the Chin" Gigante's claim to fame springs from the attempted slaying of Frank Costello in 1957. Even though Gigante, who went on trial for that crime, walked out of court a free man, he remains in popular theory linked to it.
According to this version, Vito Genovese ordered Costello killed so that he could seize the leadership of organized crime in New York. The then-300-pound Gigante reportedly took shooting practice daily in a Greenwich Village basement in preparation for the rubout. On May 2, 1957, Costello entered his apartment building on Central Park West. At that moment a large black Cadillac pulled up to the curb, a huge man got out, rushed past Costello, and entered the building. When Costello entered the lobby, the big man, from behind a pillar, appeared behind Costello. "This is for you, Frank," he called. Costello turned, a movement that probably saved his life. The bullet grazed the right side of his scalp just above the ear. The fat man turned and hurried from the lobby, convinced he had delivered a killing shot.
Vinnie "the Chin" Gigante, alleged gunman in the attempt
on Frank Costello's life, by the 1970s was regarded as the No. 3
man in the Genovese crime Family.
But Costello was not seriously hurt, although he required hospitalization. Following the code of omerta, he insisted he did not know his assailant. However, the building's doorman had gotten a good look at the gunman, and, based on his evidence, an arrest order went out for the Chin. He didn't turn up. Informer Joe Valachi later reported, "The Chin was just taken somewhere up in the country to lose some weight." When fat camp adjourned, Gigante came in
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Two unidentified men escort the Chin to court. The court discounted his "dummy act" and sent him to prison on racketeering charges for 12 years.
and surrendered, claiming he'd just heard the cops were looking for him.
It was a slim, trim Gigante who sat in the courtroom on trial for attempted murder. There wasn't much of a case against him. The doorman now wouldn't or couldn't identify him as the gunman. When Costello was put on the stand, Gigante's lawyer, Maurice Edelbaum, a noted and high-priced criminal attorney, conducted his interrogation on the absolute assumption that Costello would refuse to identify his client.
Edelbaum treated Costello harshly, reviewing all the Kefauver Committee's revelations about him and inferring that anyone who tried to kill Costello would be doing the community a favor. The lawyer then had Costello put on his glasses and study Gigante carefully. Costello did so and then swore that he had never seen Gigante in his life. Next Edelbaum leaned toward the witness and thundered, "You know who shot you. You know who pulled the trigger that night. Why don't you tell the jury who it was?"
Costello said nothing. Later Edelbaum informed a friend, "I would have dropped dead if he answered."
The jury acquitted Gigante.
Gigante rejoined the Genovese forces while the powerful New York Mafia split into two camps. On the one side stood Genovese and his supporters seeking control of the city's most powerful crime family, and on the other side, the aging Costello, who was also being harassed by federal officials, the deported Lucky Luciano and the crafty Meyer Lansky. On the surface, an agreement was reached that brought peace. Genovese agreed that Costello would retire, but be allowed to maintain his racket revenues. Costello and his friends agreed to the arrangement, and, apparently to show good will, the Chin was even invited to a number of Costello parties.
However, behind the scenes the double-dealing continued. Carlo Gambino, who had joined forces with Genovese to kill off Costello supporter Albert Anastasia, now secretly switched sides, having achieved his goal of leadership of the Anastasia crime family. The Costello-Luciano-Lansky-Gambino forces concocted a frame that would deliver Genovese to federal authorities on a narcotics rap. Part of the deal called for each of the four to contribute $25,000 apiece to a fund to
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bribe a minor dope pusher, Nelson Cantellops, to implicate Genovese. Costello, for his $25,000, insisted that the Chin had to be included among those caught in the net. It was a favor the others willingly granted. The plot worked to perfection, and, in 1959, Genovese got 15 years imprisonment, and 24 of his aides also drew long terms. The Chin got seven years.
In the 1970s the Chin was back in the fold. Later, according to some printed accounts, he suffered from a mental ailment and frequently regressed to childhood. Other reports claimed that he had actually risen to the rank of consigliere in the crime family under Frank Tieri (all of which tells volumes about the overall intelligence frequently available about the Mafia). In fact in 1987 with the conviction of Fat Tony Salerno, Gigante was named acting boss, this despite the fact that he sometimes walked on the street in Little Italy in his bathrobe, mumbling incoherently. Both the family soldiers and the police saw this behavior as a dodge to avoid possible future prosecution. Under Gigante the Genovese family became once more the most powerful of all, eclipsing the Gambino family under John Gotti, with whom he had a running battle for power. Eventually Gigante's "dummy act," collapsed under attack by federal prosecutors, and in December 1997 he was sent to prison for 12 years, making it unlikely at his age that he would resume control of his family, presuming of course that he survived his term.
Give-up Guys: Hijacking scam
A large portion of truck hijackings, especially at such popular stealing grounds as New York's Kennedy airport, are not genuine hijackings or stickups, but rather arranged affairs involving "give-up guys." These are truckdrivers who have come under mob influence, perhaps by getting in debt to bookmakers or loan sharks or by being bribed.
These give-up drivers let their trucks and loads get hijacked either in staged stickups or while leaving their trucks along their route to get a bite to eat with the key "accidentally" left in the ignition. When the driver returns, his truck and its valuable load is gone. The mob protects such give-up guys, since they can be used again in a similar caper. Naturally the trucking firms may desire to fire these men, but the mob, through its control of certain unions, can bring the firm's activities to a complete halt through a driver walkout, forcing management to accept give-ups as a part of normal business.
Godfather, The: Novel and movie
Although it may be called a romantic novel (author
Marlo Puzo's own description of it),
The Godfather
and its later movie adaptations did much to form the public conception of the Mafia today. It may also be said to have molded the mafiosi's own concepts of themselves and their world.
Robert Delaney, a New Jersey State police detective, penetrated that state's mob organizations and was able to provide firsthand intelligence on organized crime and its members for a U.S. Senate subcommittee in 1981. He testified, "The movies
Godfather I
and
Godfather II
have had an impact on these crime families." He told of members who saw it three, four or as many as 10 times. He said once, while part of a group dining at a restaurant with Joseph Doto (the son of Joe Adonis), "Joe Adonis Jr. gave the waiter a pocketful of quarters and told him to play the jukebox continuously and to play the same song, the theme music from
The Godfather
. All through dinner, we listened to the same song, over and over."
Senator Sam Nunn asked, "You are saying sometimes they go to the movie to see how they themselves are supposed to behave, is that right?"
"That is true," Delaney said. "They had a lot of things taught to them through the movie. They try to live up to it. The movie was telling them how."
Longtime crime boss Joseph Bonanno (Joe Bananas) has his own evaluation of
The Godfather
. In his autobiography,
A Man of Honor
, he explains the extraordinary response to the work:
This work of fiction is not really about organized crime or about gangsterism. The true theme has to do with family pride and personal honor. That's what made
The
Godfather so popular. It portrayed people with a strong sense of kinship to survive in a cruel world
.
Bonanno, however, does not offer us any star rating for the film.
Gordon, Waxey (18881952): Prohibition bootleg king
He was as prosperous and resourceful as any bootlegger during Prohibition, and for a time it seemed ridiculousnearly impossibleto think of forming a national crime syndicate without including Irving Wexler, better known as Waxey Gordon.
Waxey was a master of the payoff and the fix and could solve almost any problem. When New Jersey reformers became upset by the noise created by the steady flow of Gordon trucks rumbling out of his illegal breweries, Waxey's inspired solution came in the form of big payoffs to politicians. And they proved worth it. Thereafter, Waxey's beer was pumped through pressure hoses laid in the sewer systems of Elizabeth, Paterson and Union City.

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