The Mafia Encyclopedia (99 page)

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Authors: Carl Sifakis

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BOOK: The Mafia Encyclopedia
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Page 288
Gravano claimed he reassured Joe all was well, that the killing of his brother was simply business. He reminded Joe that he had a tough job with 18 kids to take care of (Joe and Tommy each had nine kids). Rather proudly the Bull bragged in his book: "And Joe's still alive today."
It may be Joe Bilotti did not care for those words in
Underboss
, since it essentially pegged him as a Gravano man, something that might not sit well since Gravano became the greatest mob stoolie of the 1990s.
It could become another example that a pass is not necessarily forever.
Patriarca, Raymond L.S. (19081984): Mafia boss of New England
Some Mafia observers contend that New England's Raymond Patriarca was the most double-dealing Mafia boss in the country. The head of the Massachusetts state police once told a legislative committee that Patriarca was so ruthless and devious that he regularly hijacked liquor shipments he was hired to protect.
Despite this, or perhaps because of it, Patriarca, until his death in 1984, was much respected by other Mafia bosses, and he was frequently called in to serve as a mediator in gang wars. While doing time in the early 1970s for his part in a double murder conspiracy, Patriarca was, much like Vito Genovese, able to run his mob from behind bars. And whether imprisoned or free, he often warned other Mafia bosses to stay out of his territoryall of New Englandand they did.
Patriarca ran his organization with an iron fist. He once ordered an old mafioso to murder his own son because the son had cost Patriarca some money in a crime arrangement that went awry. When the old mafioso fell to his knees, crying he could not kill his own son, Patriarca threw the man out of the organization. The only reason he did not have the old man killed was that Henry Tameleo, his underboss managed to cool Patriarca off and get him to relent on the murder order.
Patriarca's ruthlessness extended to his men in other ways. Once Patriarca put up $22,000 for his men to handle a load of stolen cigarettes. Unfortunately, the FBI seized the load. That did not interest Patriarca in the least; he wanted his money backPatriarca was always a partner in profits, but never in losses. His men had to scrounge up the $22,000 to pacify their boss.
Patriarca also tolerated no upstart trying to start up criminal activities in his area. He demonstrated his thoroughness in the Irish wars in Boston when a young gangster named Bernard McLaughlin tried to muscle in on the mob's loan-sharking rackets. McLaughlin and his supporters were virtually exterminated to the last man. In another explosion of his infamous temper, Patriarca for a time put a death sentence on his own brother because, while in charge of mob security, he had failed to spot a FBI bug placed in Patriarca's office.
Born to Italian immigrant parents in 1908 in Worcester, Massachusetts, Patriarca moved to Providence when he was four. He left school at eight to shine shoes and work as a bellhop. Eventually he discovered that armed robberies and working for liquor smugglers during Prohibition were more rewarding. In the 1930s the Providence Board of Public Safety branded him "Public Enemy No. 1" and ordered the police to arrest him on sight.
Yet in all Patriarca went to jail only once in that period, for armed robbery in 1938. He got five years but only served a few months, which brought legislative calls in Massachusetts for an inquiry into the pardon granted him by then-Governor Charles E Hurley. It turned out that a prime factor behind the pardon was a heartrending plea from one Father Fagin, who turned out to be a nonexistent priest. It developed the petition had been drawn up and guided past government officials by the governor's right-hand man, Executive Councilor Daniel Coakley. Coakley was later impeached and barred thereafter from ever holding public office in the state.
The scandal marked Patriarca as a man with political connections, and by the early 1940s he had assumed a major Mafia leadership role. In the 1950s, he became the top boss, his influence extending from Providence to cover Boston and the rest of New England.
For a quarter of a century, as Patriarca built his base, he enjoyed relatively little public exposure. Finally though, because of Joseph Barboza, a Patriarca enforcer and hit man who turned informer, he was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, specifically having a mob member, Rocco DiSiglio, eliminated for being the fingerman for a stickup gang victimizing mob crap games.
He did six years for that, and when he came out he resumed leadership of the organization. Yet Patriarca enjoyed a spirit of loyalty where it might not be expected. Another mob informer, Vinnie Teresa, who effectively crippled much of the mob with his testimony in a number of trials, refused to testify against Patriarca. Raymond, he said, had always treated him fairly, and he would not cross him. There were few men who would have said that about Patriarca.
See also:
Angiulo, Gennaro J
.
Persico, Carmine (1937 ): Boss of Colombo crime family
One of the most violent enforcers and collectors for Brooklyn Mafia don Joe Profaci, Carmine Persico was introduced to Profaci's rackets by Larry Gallo. Eventually Persico joined Larry and his two brothers, Crazy
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Joe and Kid Blast Gallo, in an open revolt against the Profaci rule. Profaci, perhaps the most grasping Mafia boss in decades, extracted tribute constantly from his soldiers. Persico once complained to later-informer Joe Valachi: "Even if we go hijack some trucks he taxes us. I paid up to $1,800."
With the Gallos and Persico there was a lot of nasty firepower standing up to Profaci, who relied on all his deviousness to resolve his dilemma. He promised to do right for a few of the rebels, including Jiggs Forlano and Carmine Persico, if they would return to the fold and show their fealty by going after the Gallos. Persico jumped at the chance and did all he could. In fact, New York police would later say it was Persico who tightened the garrote on Larry Gallo when he was lured to a bar in Brooklyn, allegedly for an anti-Profaci plotting session. Gallo narrowly survived; a police officer walked in at the critical moment. It was a scene that was to be replayed in fictional form in
The Godfather
. The Gallos called Persico "the Snake" after that. So did the police. Persico advised his friends to call him "Junior."
After Profaci's successor, Joe Colombo, was shot in 1971, Persico became a capo under the almost secret rule of elderly Thomas DiBella who was boss of the family for three years before the FBI and other investigative agencies discovered the fact. Eventually DiBella stepped aside because of his years and functioned as consigliere, or adviser, while Persico, the former rebel, took over as boss. Bizarre events dominated his reign, most of which was spent in prison (although this didn't stop the federal government from indicting him in the mid-1980s on racketeering charges for crimes they said he masterminded behind bars). Persico became one of the very few mafiosi to ever make it on the FBI's Most Wanted list after he fled the indictment and eluded capture for several months.
Persico was also a unique would-be hit victim who ended up with a spent bullet in his mouth after enemy mobsters pumped several carbine shots into a car in which he was riding. Persico spat out the bullet.
An avid reader about himself in the newspapers, Persico took deep offense in December 1985 when writer Pete Hamill, covering his racketeering trial for the
Village Voice
, recalled Persico's younger days (Hamill had grown up in the same Brooklyn neighborhood). "Man to man," Hamill wrote, "Junior wasn't very good with his hands ... But if Junior caught you while three others were holding you, he was devastating."
Ignoring the advice of his lawyers, Persico penned an angry letter to the
Voice
, calling Hamill's story "biased, degrading, angry, perverse, and unprofessional."
Hamill's response in part was:
Mr. Persico's many years behind bars obviously have refined his prose style beyond the narrow limits he had attained 35 years ago in our old neighborhood.... In those days, his usual reply to criticism was to mutter, "Your sister's!" box before creasing your skull with a length of pipe. Who now can dispute the possibilities for rehabilitation afforded by the joint?
However, Persico had more than a war of words to wage or a legal battle to engage of with the government. He had spent almost 10 years of the previous 13 behind bars, a fact that left his godfatherly role a bit frazzled, despite the government's claims about what he could manage from prison. Another capo, Jerry Langella ran the family on the outside.
Persico had the misfortune of being out of prison and back in control of the Colombos when the government in 1986 polished its RICO approach in the Mafia Commission case against the top bosses of several families. Persico may have been the most outraged of the defendants about the use of membership in the Mafia as enough, or close to it, to win a conspiracy conviction. Persico, in his usual pride in his own abilities, acted as his own attorney.
His most memorable comment to the court was an anguished outcry: "Without the Mafia, there wouldn't even be no case here!"
The Snake got it absolutely right. He also got a 100~ year sentence for murder and conspiracy.
See also:
Macintosh, Hugh "Apples
."
Petrosino, Joseph (18601909): Police detective
The first police officer in America to battle the Mafia effectively, Joe Petrosino was named head of the newly formed Italian Squad of the New York City police in 1905. The need for the Italian Squad was overwhelming. At the turn of the century, more than 500,000 of New York City's 3 million residents were Italian. But most of the cops were Irish with a lesser number Jewish. With nary an Italian on the force, the mafiosi gangsters enjoyed the particular advantage of a police force that could not understand them.
Petrosino had first been recruited to be a policeman in 1883 by Police Inspector Alexander "Clubber" Williams precisely because of his ethnic background. By 1895, Petrosino had risen to the rank of detective and was assigned to the Lower East Side. He took time to learn the various dialects of the Italian immigrants squashed into the ghetto and to gain their confidence; soon he was gathering information that enabled him to solve many murders and extortions of the Black Hand. He reported to superiors that the Black Hand was not a distinct organization but various freelance criminals
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who threatened victims with death unless they paid protection money.
Petrosino nailed many Black Handers, including one who had tried to victimize opera star Enrico Caruso. (The singer and the detective became fast friends.) In 1901, Petrosino uncovered the infamous Murder Stable in Italian Harlem where some brutal mafiosi killed and buried at least 60 victims who operated in competition with their rackets or would not pay them protection money. It was for many the first proof of the Mafia's existence in New York.
In 1905, Police Commissioner William McAdoo authorized the Italian Squad and put Petrosino in charge of the 27-man unit. In the four years Petrosino ran the squad, Black Hand crimes dropped by half. Several thousand arrests were made, and 500 men were sent to prison. In 1908, there were 44 bombings with 70 arrests, 424 Black Hand extortion complaints with 215 arrests. Also, numerous mafiosi were deported on Petrosino's evidence.
Petrosino appeared before congressional committees, urging modification of the immigration laws to forbid the entry of known criminals. He warned that Italian authorities were phonying the passports of some immigrants to rid their jails of undesirables, a sort of preCastro boatlift.
Early in 1909 Police Commissioner Theodore Bingham sent Petrosino to Palermo, Sicily, to gather information about deportable criminals. The assignment was so secret that fellow officers were told he was home ill. Yet inexplicably a story appeared in the
New York Herald
attributing to Bingham the fact that Petrosino had gone to Sicily. On the rainy night of March 12, 1909, Petrosino was standing in the piazza of the Garibaldi Garden when four shots rang out. Petrosino was hit three times, in the shoulder, throat and right cheek. His murderer got away. Later a strong case was made that the New York detective had been gunned down personally by Don Vito Cascio Ferro, the most important Mafia leader in Sicily. Don Vito claimed to have spent the evening at dinner at the home of a Sicilian member of the Italian parliament, and his host backed up the story. However, many believe that Don Vito slipped away long enough to do the killing and then return to cement his alibi. Don Vito had the motivation to do the killing personally. A few years earlier Don Vito had come to America to expand his criminal empire, but had been run out by Petrosino.
The death of the legendary Italian detective sent shockwaves through New York City. He was brought back for a martyr's funeral. A quarter million people jammed the streets of Little Italy as a procession of 7,000 escorted the body to the grave. A short time thereafter, Bingham was fired as police commissioner because of the news story that revealed Petrosino's whereabouts. Petrosino's death had saved literally hundreds of mafiosi from deportation, a bitter fact that would plague the United States in later decades.
See also:
Black Hand; Murder Stable
.
Pigeon Coop Tip-Off: Is a wise guy gone for good?
For some reason a fair number of mafiosi keep pigeons. Whatever lies behind the practice, it is sometimes helpful to authorities. Every once in a while a pigeonkeeper will vanish, and the police will be in the dark about what happened to him. However, if a short time later the pigeon coops are taken down, it is a sure sign that the mobster is no longer among the living.
That was the case of Sonny Black, a high capo and for a time acting boss of the Bonanno family. Black had been conned by undercover operative "Donnie Brasco"FBI agent Joe Pistoneto whom he trustingly gave entree into mob activities. When Brasco emerged from his cover, Black, who refused to seek refuge as an informer, went to a mob meeting where damage and guilt was being assessed. A week later two men were seen taking down Black's pigeon coops, and the FBI concluded Sonny Black was dead. His body was discovered about a year later.
Pillow Gang: St. Louis Mafia family
Carmelo Fresina was, in his own fashion, the most colorful mafioso in St. Louis, heading up what was certainly the most colorfully named criminal group, the Pillow Gang. Fresina would arrive at a sit-down of the gang, put on his chair the trusty pillow he always carried and, easing himself down, discuss such sundry criminal activities as extortion and murder. Then when the meeting was over, he would pick up his pillow and leave.
The Pillow Gang added a bizarre touch to Prohibition-era St. Louis criminality, in the early part of this century marked by curiously ineffectual bands of mafiosi. This is surprising since St. Louis was one of the early settling spots of the Mafia in this country. Some of the first mafiosi to arrive in New Orleans in the 19th century soon headed north to avoid police trouble and nested in St. Louis. The city boasted its first Black Hand activity in 1876. Yet, perhaps due to the quality of the mafiosi involved, the Italian criminals failed to achieve dominance for a long time. During the Prohibition era five gangs of major importance operated in St. Louis: Egan's Rats, perhaps the most important; the Hogan Gang; the Cuckoo Gang, mostly hoodlums of Syrian descent; the so-called Green Dagoes, composed mostly of Sicilians; and a gang of Americans of Italian descent,

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