The Mafia Encyclopedia (90 page)

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Authors: Carl Sifakis

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BOOK: The Mafia Encyclopedia
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Page 257
The mobsters Felt they'd done right by Moretti by shooting him up Front.
He was due the respect of seeing what Was happening to him, especially,
so the saying went, as everyone genuinely liked Willie.
tomorrow I go wrong, I want you to hit me in the head too," Genovese said. Finally even such a staunch ally as Albert Anastasia was convinced that a "mercy killing" was necessary for the sake of both Willie and the syndicate.
On October 4, 1951, Willie sat down in a New Jersey restaurant with three or four men (the testimony varies on this). When the waitress stepped into the kitchen, they were chatting amiably in Italian. Suddenly there were several gunshots and when the waitress peered through the kitchen door, all the customers except one were gone.
Fifty-seven-year-old Willie Moretti lay dead on the floor, his left hand on his chest. It was a typical mob rubout, and there would be no convictions. Willie had been shot up front, supposedly a mark of "respect" accorded to bosses. They had a right to see what was happening.
In this case it could well have been a sign of respect since, after all, everybody genuinely liked Willie. They just happened to like him better dead.
Mori, Cesare (18801942): Mussolini's Mafia fighter
Probably no individual was more responsible for the mass exodus of mafiosi from Sicily to the United States that Cesare Mori, one of Benito Mussolini's most devoted agents of suppression. Mussolini had used Mori earlier to wipe out socialist unrest during his political campaign in Bologna, and Mori was one of the chief architects of Mussolini's 1922 march on Rome when he seized complete power. As a reward for fascist labors, Mussolini appointed Mori prefect of Palermo, the most powerful position on the island. Mori's principal task in Sicily was to unseat the lazy and corrupt administrators and replace them with ardent Fascists. Since the administrators in most of the towns were allied with the Mafia, the "Honored Society" fell into conflict with the Fascists. The Mafia used the same tactics of terrorism in fighting the government that it used against its many victims. Many of Mori's new appointees were assassinated as soon as they took office. The Mafia even carried its vengeance into downtown Palermo, murdering leading Fascists in the streets before hundreds of witnesses.
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In 1924 Mussolini himself visited Sicily and was embarrassed by the Mafia in Piana dei Greci, where the mayor, Don Ciccio Cuccia, who was also the Mafia boss of the area, bawled Mussolini out for coming with so many police motorcyclists to guard him. He said, "Your Excellency has nothing to fear when you are by my side." Then he turned to his men and announced, "Let no one dare touch a hair of Mussolini's head. He is my friend and the best man in the world!"
Inwardly, Mussolini seethed, understanding full well Don Ciccio's message that he, not the leader from Rome, was the true power. Don Ciccio made the point all the more clear when Mussolini was slated to make an address from a balcony to the local populace. The only audience the Mafia leader permitted to show up, one account states, was "twenty village idiots, onelegged beggars, bootblacks and lottery-ticket sellers."
The enraged Mussolini afterward ordered Mori to wage all-out war against the Mafia. Two months later Cuccia vanished into a Fascist prison, and the drive to stamp out the Mafia went into high gear. Mori's methods were, if anything, more ruthless and barbarous than those used against the socialists. Rights of those arrested were wantonly abused. Confessions were extracted by torture. One of the most common methods involved stretching a suspect on his back over a wooden box with his hands and feet wired to the sides of the box. The victim was then drenched with brine and whipped. The brine made the lashes more painful but left no marks. Other tortures involved administering electric shock to the genitals, one of the earliest known uses of this brutal method, and forcing prisoners to swallow saltwater through a funnel until their stomachs swelled painfully.
Fascist judges paid no attention to such minor details and convicted accused mafiosi by the hundreds. An estimated 600 innocent persons were also convicted through such tortures and the lying testimony of jealous neighbors or Fascist Party members. In some cases members of separate Mafia gangs were convicted of the same crimes in different courts, and others were convicted of crimes that had never occurred. From the American point of view, the worst aspect of Mori's campaign was that it caused at least 500 young mafiosi to seek refuge in the United States.
Mori terrorized the citizenry in the Mafia-infested Western provinces and paraded about as a conquering Roman of old. It was common for towns he visited to decorate triumphal arches with the welcoming words, "Ave Caesar."
Mori's campaign ended in 1929 following the conviction of Don Vito Cascio Ferro, the most charismatic of all the Mafia leaders, on a framed-up charge of smuggling. Don Vito, who died in prison in 1932, denounced his judges in court, saying, "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."
In any event, by the time of Ferro's death, Mori had crushed most Mafia organizations. Those that survived pledged fealty to Mussolini, a position they maintained until the Allied invasion of Sicily during World War II.
Whatever is thought of Mori's methods, there was little doubt that he offered the world the most authentic description of the Mafia, one that applies still today both in Italy and in the United Stateseven if it conflicts with the versions offered by American governmental agencies and such controversial informers as Joe Valachi. In a book he later wrote,
The Last Struggle with the Mafia
, Mori noted it was not an "association in the sense of being a vast aggregate organized and incorporated on regular principles." The Mafia, he observed, functions with statutes, rules of admission, and election of chiefs. The chief attained power simply by imposing his will on others. Members were accepted automatically if they had the proper qualifications and were automatically expelled or permanently eliminated when they no longer met these qualifications. Profits were not divided by any set measure but went proportionally to the strongest. Only in a few cases, Mori said, were there any Mafia groups that held regular meetings, had secret laws and used concealed marks of recognition, but they were clearly the exception to the rule. Most important, Mori found the Mafia to be a "potential state which normally takes concrete form in a system of local oligarchies, closely interwoven, but each autonomous in its own district."
This description is true of organized crime in the United States today. A crime family in New York would not dream of going into Detroit to kill an individual without clearing it first with the local powers and indeed would most likely request the local organization to take care of the matter for them. It would then be up to the local organization to comply if it so wished. If however it preferred to grant the proposed victim sanctuary, there is little the outside crime family can do. The organization of such crime fiefdoms clearly is not based on tradition, but rather on raw power. It is this tradition of Mafia power and regional autonomy that keeps organized crime in America somewhat disorganized.
The disorganized nature of the Mafia kept Mori from achieving total victory and left him with many adversaries in Sicily. Mori died in 1942, probably a pity from the mafioso point of view since Mafia vengeance on him under protection of the Allies would certainly have been as brutal as the justice accorded Mussolini by the partisans.
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See also:
Ferro, Don Vito Cascio; Mussolini Shuttle; Twenties Group
.
Morton, Samuel J. "Nails" (?1924): Chicago mobster and mobster and "horse rubout victim"
Within the madcap underworld of 1920s Chicago, Nails (so called because he was as tough as nails) Morton was always believed to have died because of treachery, and a treachery most dispicable because it was carried out by a dumb animal.
Nails was a top enforcer for the Dion O'Banion Gang, virtually the only Jew among the North Side Irish mobsters. As much as any single gunner, Morton was responsible for holding the Italian gangsters under Torrio and Caponeas well as the Genna brothers and othersat bay on the North Side from 1920 to 1924. Morton, known by the police to have committed several murders, enjoyed respect bordering on terror from other mobsters mainly because he had won the Croix de Guerre in France in the Great War and been promoted on the battlefield to a first lieutenancy. That, and the fact that he concocted very inventive death traps for foes, made rival gangsters avoid confrontations with him. Often he would try to lure an enemy into combat by accusing him of making anti-Semitic slurs.
However, as celebrated as Morton could be for his killing ways, he was to become most noteworthy for the way he died and the gangland vengeance that followed.
Nails, who developed a yen to circulate in finer circles, took to horseback riding in Lincoln Park "where the society swells ride." One day in 1924, a riding stable horse threw Nails and kicked him to death. It was an act that could not be overlooked or forgiven. Four leading O'BanionsBugs Moran, Little Hymie Weiss, Two Gun Alterie and Schemer Druccidescended on the riding stable and at gunpoint kidnapped the offending horse. The creature was led to the spot where it had dispatched Morton, and there, after the very angry Alterie punched the horse in the snout, was shot in the head, once by each gangster, in worthy underworld fashion. Gang boss O'Banion bewailed the fact he had not been around when Nails was killed and vengeance exacted; such moronic behavior fit O'Banion as well as his men.
Yet despite his unsavory record, Nails was accorded an elaborate funeral with considerable military, fraternal and religious honors. City, county, state and federal officials were prominent in attendance, and the
Chicago Daily News
reported: "Five thousand Jews paid tribute to Morton as the man who had made the West Side safe for his race. As a young man he had organized a defense society to drive 'Jew-baiters' from the West side."
A year after Morton's death ill-fated plans were laid for a memorial tribute to him. The printed announcement of the service bore the names of Rabbi Felix A. Levi, General Abel Davis, Captain Ed Maher and the Reverend John L. O'Donnell. The principal address was to be made by a leading attorney, Frank Comerford. Perhaps what sent matters awry was the added announcement that also participating in the tribute would be Johnny Torrio, Terry Druggan and Hymie Weiss (the new leader of the North Siders, Dion O'Banion having by then been assassinated). General Davis backed out of the arrangements, saying it would be an error to flaunt such gangsters and Morton's record "in the faces of decent citizens." The whole affair then fell apart. It was, said one writer, "another kick in the head for poor Nails."
Motorcade Murders: Automobile procession assassinations
During the inception of organized crime in the 1920s, the motorcade system of killing came into vogue. Whether Hymie Weiss or Bugs Moranboth subsequent leaders of the Irish O'Banion Gang, the prime opposition in Chicago to the Torrio-Capone forcesinvented the system is unclear. Bugs Moran, a cunning if rather pathological killer, was always attracted to spectacular killings and probably deserves the credit. Certainly he headed up more such murder convoys than any other gangster.
Moran and a dozen gangsters, each armed with a fully loaded tommy gun and riding in a half-dozen limousines, swept past the victim's home, place of business or hangout. As the motorcade slowed, each gunner spattered a thousand or so .45-caliber cartridges in the general direction of the target. Such overkill was generally effective, even if a few innocent bystanders occasionally got caught in the deadly hail of bullets. That was merely an unfortunate sidebar to otherwise spectacular success.
The most publicized murder motorcade of all was one that failed, an attempt to rub out Al Capone at the Hawthorne Inn in Cicero, Illinois, in 1926. A two-story brick structure, the inn had been converted to Capone's specification into a fortress. Bulletproof steel shutters protected every window, while armed guards were stationed at every entrance. The second floor was reserved for Capone's private use.
The building, dubbed Capone's castle, almost became Capone's deathtrap. On September 20, Capone and bodyguard Frankie Rio were dining in the rear of the Hawthorne's restaurant when a single car drove past and opened fire with a machine gun. When the shooting stopped, the pair, with the other diners, rushed to the windows and doors to see what had happened. There were no bullet marks. The gunners had been firing blanks.
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Frankie Rio understood instantly and knocked Capone to the floor, falling on top of him. Just then a convoy of 10 cars passed slowly in front of the inn, and a seemingly endless number of guns protruding from every one of the curbside windows let loose a deadly hail of fire. Directly above Rio and Capone, woodwork, mirrors, glassware and crockery splintered. A Capone gunman, Louis Barko, who had rushed into the restaurant when the blank shots were fired, went down with a bullet through his shoulder.
In all 1,000 bullets were fired, and the inn, restaurant, lobby and offices were literally ripped asunder. Thirty-five cars parked at the curb were riddled with bullet holes. Remarkably, no one was killed, although Mrs. Clyde Freeman, sitting in a car with her infant son on her lap, was struck by a bullet that creased her forehead and injured her eyes. Capone footed $5,000 in medical bills to save the woman's eyesight.
Movie Racketeering
The mobs moved in on Hollywood moviemakers during the reign of Al Capone, when the industry was still silent. Movie executives tended to be silent, too, when faced with Capone threats.
The Capones made their first move through George Browne and his associate Willie Bioff, a longtime pimp. Together, they ran Local 2 of the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE). To show what fine fellows they were, Browne and Bioff had the union ladle out free soup for unemployed actors. And the two proceeded to ladle more than soup. That same year they pressured a large financially pressed Chicago movie chain to cancel 20 percent paycuts on its employees. As an alternative, Bioff said they would take $20,000 under the table.
By the time Capone went to prison for income tax evasion, his titular successor, Frank Nitti, had decided to move heavily into movie extortion. He slated Browne to run for the IATSE presidency in the 1934 election. Browne predictably had the Chicago votes sewn up; Lucky Luciano and Louis Lepke saw that he got support in New York; and Al Polizzi took care of the campaign in Cleveland. Browne won in a walk. And Willie Bioff went along to watch over Browne.
For delivering unto Browne the union presidency the Chicago Outfit took 50 percent of all illegal money that was taken in. Later, the fee was raised to 75 percent. This did not represent a squeeze on Browne and Bioff. There was so much money coming in they had no complaint.
The fee for avoiding a strike by projectionists in New York was set at $150,000 (a fabulous sum for Depression days), in Chicago $100,000. Refusal resulted in stink-bombings of the theaters. In 1936 Bioff told the head of Loew's, Inc.: "Now your industry is a prosperous industry and I must get two million dollars out of it."
Bioff and Browne then worked out a settlement that called for the four big distributorsMGM, Loew's, Paramount and Twentieth Century-Foxto cough up $50,000 a year each, and a smaller company to pay $25,000. In addition, the two leaders got a number of concessions that pleased the union membership, and they were hailed at the 1938 convention. Browne and Bioff then turned around and levied a 2 percent tax on all their members' earnings, which brought in $60,000 a month. This did not please the membership; it led to a revolt. That, combined with exposures by columnist Westbrook Pegler, led finally to the duo's conviction on racketeering charges in 1941.
Facing long prison terms, Bioff and Browne started talking. As a result of their testimony most of the Chicago Outfit's leadership were convictedNitti, Phil D'Andrea, Paul Ricca, Charlie Gioe, Lou Kaufman and Johnny Roselliand given 10-year prison terms.
They served the minimum sentence and were paroled in a little over three years, a development that provoked a national political scandal. When they got out, the mob influence in Hollywood had hardly deteriorated. Roselli continued to be a power in the movie capital and even turned movie producer himself, turning out a number of law-triumphs-over-crime epics such as
He Walked by Night
. Roselli had no trouble getting to make these projects. He made the movie moguls an offer they couldn't refuse. And when the mob wanted to promote the career of some worthy or unworthy actor or actress it had little trouble getting the proper results.
Since the movie shakedown convictions of Browne and Bioff, the mob has become much more sophisticated in its operations. A union threatens a strike and a lawyer-labor relations expert arbitrates it. He draws a colossal fee for his services on which, minus expenses, he pays the taxes. The balance is then cut up with Chicago.
See also:
Bioff, Willie Morris
.
Murder, Incorporated: Enforcement arm of national syndicate
When the national crime syndicate was being set up in the early 1930s, they realized that "muscle" would always be necessary for the maintenance of order. Since the mob never had any of society's misgivings about the justification of the death penalty, they decided it would be very businesslike to set up a special troop of killers that all the crime groups around the country could call on for rubouts. The most attractive feature about such a troop was that the killer could come in from out of

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