Garden State Gangland

by Scott M. Deitche

  Several Bergen gambling halls were under Joe Adonis’s thumb.[4] Already well known in Manhattan, Adonis was one of the top targets of local law enforcement, as well as of federal agents from the Bureau of Narcotics. Adonis’s New Jersey empire was based in Fort Lee, West Paterson, and especially Lodi. The Lodi operation was centered on a palatial gambling hall called Costa’s Barn. According to lore, Adonis spent lavishly to redecorate the interior.

  While Adonis garnered a lot of the police and media attention, one of his partners was Guarino “Willie” Moretti, one of Bergen’s most powerful crime figures. He seemed to have his hand not only in the gambling palaces but also in the pervasive payoffs to police, judges, and lawmakers.

  Willie married and settled in New Jersey in 1928.[5] His early criminal career included a five-year sentence in Elmira Prison in New York for gun charges. Moretti only served part of the time. Of the circumstances, Willie told the Senate,

  In 1913 some barber said I tried to hit him and take money off him, so they charged me with robbery. It was no more robbery than sitting here . . . In 1915 I was convicted for— there was a gun charge of a misdemeanor. I got a two-year suspended sentence from Judge Rolasky again. And he made a speech there, and he said, “Being I sentenced you to Elmira Reformatory in 1913 and you obeyed my orders, I am going to give you a suspended sentence. Next time you hear shooting, turn and run the other way, and don’t take any guns out of people’s pockets.”[6]

  After he was released from Elmira, the teenage Moretti made most of his money on gambling, “just shoot craps, that’s all . . . All kids gambled to make a living.”[7] Moretti moved around the area, never staying in one place too long, “between New York and Buffalo—and I went all over, Newburgh, traveled around, wherever there was a crap game, I was there.”[8]

  Later on, Moretti became a legitimate businessman as well, owning a share of the United State Linen Supply Company of Paterson, New Jersey. Moretti dressed sharply and carried himself like a man of great importance. He was comfortable meeting with various Mafia chieftains and was also a regular fixture at the horse track, where he later told a Senate committee he pocketed up to fifty thousand dollars a year in winnings from the horses alone.

  Willie had a close professional relationship with Essex County boss Longy Zwillman and with Jerry Catena and operated for a time out of Newark’s First Ward, along with Richie “the Boot” Boiardo. Zwillman said of Moretti, “I have known the fellow a long time. He is a nice fellow.”[9] Moretti was close with Vito Genovese, whose name eventually became the old Mangano crime family’s “official name.” Genovese had an interest in slot machines set up in bars throughout New Jersey. His point man for the slots was Moretti.

  Moretti’s connections also extended to Charlie “Lucky” Luciano, with whom Moretti met in Havana, along with Jerry Catena. Moretti said of Catena, “He knows Lucky well, too. We happened to be in Florida, and I took him along with me. I wanted to see Charlie Lucky, so they volunteered, just on a friendly basis.”[10]

  Willie’s pop culture claim to fame was his friendship with Frank Sinatra. Unlike many of the singer’s alleged gangland connections, the Moretti relationship was real. The story, fictionalized in The Godfather, was that Moretti put a gun up to Tommy Dorsey’s head to force the bandleader to release Sinatra from a restrictive contract. Sinatra was eternally grateful, and Moretti gained a nice footnote in cinematic lore.

  Moretti, his brother Solly, Adonis, Max Shargel, Frank Ericson—these were some of Bergen’s bigwigs. But while the occasional local newspaper published a story detailing the Mafia’s hold on the county, enough of a cloud of secrecy hovered over the Bergen Big Five, as they were called, to keep at bay any serious investigations. The hold over Bergen extended to the political establishment. Moretti knew a lot of powerful political figures not just at a local level, but the state level as well. This type of influence with political figures was essential for the mob in Bergen, and elsewhere, to maintain their business operations with minimal disruption by law enforcement. As long as things stayed quiet and no one uncovered too much, there was an air of plausible deniability.

  But that lasted only so long before citizens across the country got a front-row seat to the story of how the Mafia was able to deeply infiltrate many of America’s largest cities, courtesy of both the emerging technological marvel of television and the efforts of a senator from Tennessee, the coonskin-cap-wearing Estes Kefauver. The committee that informally took his name, officially titled the United States Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce, was established on May 3, 1950. Its stated mission was to investigate “whether organized crime utilizes the facilities of interstate commerce or otherwise operates in interstate commerce in furtherance of any transactions which are in violation of the law.”[11] Many hearings were filmed for a television audience, and they aired more than those sessions attended by journalists from all the major newspapers and magazines. Up until the Kefauver hearings, the idea of a national crime syndicate had been a foreign concept to many Americans. But that was about to change.

  The Kefauver Committee shed some light on the Mafia’s activities in New Jersey (as well as in other cities, from Tampa to Kansas City) and, as previously noted, brought Longy Zwillman in for an appearance. The committee also paid particular attention to Duke’s Restaurant and attempted to get some of its more infamous customers to share secrets about the establishment’s allure. They called Solly Moretti (Willie’s brother) and Joe Adonis, among others. They also called Willie, who turned out to be surprisingly candid about some details, including offering a who’s who of his appointments at Duke’s—from Jerry Catena to Longy Zwillman. At the time of the hearings, his brother Solly was in prison for gambling charges, and the rumor was that Willie was so incensed that his political connections were not able to get the charges dropped that he was prepared to bare all about the nexus between the Mafia and the law before the committee.

  Moretti’s questioning before the committee fell on Wednesday, December 13, 1950. His brother, as well as Joe Adonis, had been previously questioned but had offered little in terms of substance. Moretti, on the other hand, answered most of the committee’s questions, admitting that he knew a cadre of underworld figures from Longy Zwillman to Los Angeles Mafia boss Jack Dragna. Moretti even had his own concept of the mob. “Well,” he told the assembled senators, “the newspapers calls them the mob. I don’t know whether they are right or wrong. If they would be right, everybody would be in jail; is that right?”[12]

  While Willie kept many secrets—for example, when asked about the politicians he knew, he replied, “I know a lot of people . . . I don’t care to mention any names”[13]—he was open about a wide range of intimate topics, such as his income, his business dealings, and his frequent visits to the horse tracks, from Jersey down to Florida. Later that day, newspapers described Moretti as “one of the most remarkable citizens to appear before the Committee.”[14] Many in the Mafia weren’t as taken with Moretti’s appearance.

  By 1951, Moretti was living in Hasbrouck Heights, a small Bergen County borough, adjacent to Lodi. He had a six-acre estate in Deal, on the Jersey Shore, where he raised ducks. As the immediate fallout from his Kefauver appearance seemed to wane, Moretti was back looking after his business arrangements. But he was also battling an enemy within. A case of syphilis he acquired when he was younger was starting to eat away at his brain. This caused bouts of dementia (some mobsters believed the illness explained his otherwise-inexplicable appearance before the Kefauver Commission). Rumors started flying that Moretti’s behavior was growing increasingly unpredictable.

  On October 4, 1951, Willie was set to meet some fellow mobsters at Joe’s Elbow Room for lunch and business discussions.[15] Joe’s was located down the block from Duke’s—which had closed a year prior—and was basically a nondescript one-story building with a flat roof. As a waitress later recounted, two men entered the restaurant around 11 a.m. and sat down at the counter. They were
joined by two more, and all four then took a table near the front window. Willie Moretti drove up in his Corona Cream–colored Packard.[16] One of the men went out, greeting Moretti, who wore a brown suit and maroon tie, ushering him inside. The men sat and spoke Italian while the waitress went to the kitchen to retrieve menus. The shots rang out seconds later in quick succession, filling the empty restaurant.

  What exactly happened during the shooting is speculation. It is believed that at least two men stood and commenced firing on Moretti, hitting him in the chest and head as he fell from his chair onto the black-and-white-tiled floor. After cutting Moretti down, the men bolted from the restaurant. The waitress told police that by the time she gazed back into the main restaurant, the men were already gone, and Moretti was lying on the ground, dead.

  “His left arm was crooked, thick, ham fist holding onto his heart long stilled; his ankles neatly crossed, a hint of sock showing, his eyes closed to the violence of that final moment, as his killers shot him, face on, a mark of respect—he had the right to see what was happening—the blood pooling out from under his shattered head, one of those awful ties, soaked in red, crumpled over the shoulder of his open jacket.”[17]

  Reporters flocked to the restaurant immediately. With the crime scene located only feet away from the Palisades Amusement Park’s entrance, there was a somewhat comical juxtaposition: While Moretti was being killed, the deadly gunshots rang out across an amusement park brimming with families, many of which would have easily heard the shots, though they probably had no clue as to what was actually happening.

  Willie’s funeral was lavish, even by mob standards. The procession was comprised of eleven limousines and seventy-five cars. Flowers arrived courtesy of all the major Mafia figures. After the mass at Corpus Christi Church, over five thousand mourners descended on the burial site. One reporter observed that actual mourners seemed to be in the minority and that the rest came “to gape, trample the cemetery, and steal flowers off his grave.”[18] Moretti was buried in an ornate tomb at St. Michael’s Cemetery in South Hackensack. His tomb towers over nearby headstones, casting an ominous shadow.

  The Moretti killing rippled through both the New Jersey and New York underworlds and made news around the country. Many mobsters felt that Moretti’s worsening dementia and ever-opening mouth had definitely been unwelcome, especially with both law enforcement and the media beginning to exhibit renewed interest in their activities.

  Some suggested alternative means would have been more appropriate to Moretti’s stature. Angelo “Gyp” DeCarlo respected Moretti and “deplored the manner in which [he] was killed.”[19] Even so, DeCarlo had understood that Moretti had to go, due to the advancing syphilis, but he offered that they should have simply injected certain substances into Moretti’s arm and placed him in a car, creating the facade of a natural death by heart attack. Talking to another New Jersey mafioso, “Tony Boy” Boiardo, DeCarlo pontificated further: “They say, ‘Tony Boy wants to shoot you in the head and leave you in the street, or would you rather like this, we put you behind your wheel, we don’t have to embarrass your family or nothing.’ That’s what they should have done to Willie.” To which Tony replied, “I don’t think Willie would have went for that.” And Ray responded, “I think he would. He would have tried to talk his way out of it, but he would have went for it.”[20]

  The leading motive for the Moretti killing of is generally thought to be related to his 1950 appearance before the Kefauver Committee and the view that his declining mental state had rendered him too unstable. Joe Valachi testified to Congress that “they expressed it that he was a sick man, and once Vito [Genovese] even told us, and he said, ‘Lord have mercy on his soul’ and that he said he lost his mind and that is the way life is.” Valachi went on to describe how Moretti hadn’t been killed out of anger but respect, citing the funeral as evidence. “He had lots and lots of automobiles, with flowers, and usually when a boss like Anastasia or even Maranzano, they were deserted, but Willie was not deserted, because it was sort of, as we put it, he was supposed to be a mercy killing because he was sick.”[21]

  But a highly interesting competing theory was posed by one informant.[22] Based out of the FBI’s San Diego office, this informant told the FBI about the belief that Moretti had been an informant for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, under George White. During Moretti’s appearance at the Kefauver hearing, White had even sat behind Moretti in the audience.

  The informant was suspicious. White had known about some of the informant’s operations, and the only other person “in the know” was Moretti. And so, before a meeting of top Cosa Nostra figures in Los Angeles in 1951, the informant laid out his theory. Word was then passed back to New York to investigate the charge, and, according to the informant, it was found to be true.

  White had regularly met with high-ranking Mafia figures during his tenure atop the Bureau of Narcotics. The FBI had not yet developed its interest in rooting out organized-crime syndicates. The Bureau of Narcotics alone had commenced linking the Mafia to the importation of vast quantities of heroin and other drugs into the United States and was among the first federal law-enforcement agents to develop significant intelligence about Mafia operations, including cultivating informants and sending in undercover agents in an effort to break open many early Mafia drug operations.

  Three days after Moretti’s killing, Fred Stengel, chief of police for Fort Lee, New Jersey, was found dead behind the town’s Madonna Cemetery. He had shot himself with his service revolver. At the time of his death, Stengel had been under indictment for protecting the gambling operations of the Moretti brothers and Joe Adonis. Interestingly, Moretti had testified to the grand jury, which led to Stengel’s indictment. Moretti also was expected to be called to testify at the upcoming trial. There was no evidence of foul play, and the chief had been acting noticeably nervous for months, according to Fort Lee police captain Carl Mains. “It was definitely suicide.”[23]

  The investigation into Moretti’s killing did net a couple of potential suspects. On October 21, police brought in thirty-nine-year-old Joe Li Calsi for questioning, based on a nightclub singer’s tip. The Tampa-born Li Calsi, denied any knowledge of the Moretti killing and was booked only on a vagrancy charge. He was held on a twenty-five thousand dollar bail and officially charged with Moretti’s murder a couple of days later. But as it turned out Li Calsi was the singer’s boyfriend, and the story of his involvement could not be confirmed. He was released.

  Also arrested and charged with Moretti’s killing was forty-eight-year-old John Robilotto, also known as Johnny Roberts, a soldier in the Anastasia crime family. Roberts was also an undertaker in Brooklyn. Information placed Roberts in the restaurant right before Moretti’s murder. Johnny Roberts was officially charged with the murder on June 21, 1952, and arrested in Brooklyn. He was extradited to New Jersey on August 1. He was released on September 8 after posting a twenty-five thousand dollar bail.

  A few years later, Chicago mobster Johnny Roselli told an FBI informant that Roberts had definitely murdered Willie Moretti. The charge was echoed by famed underworld turncoat Joe Valachi in 1963: “That’s when Willie gets his, from Johnny and these other people.”[24]

  But Roberts himself had gotten caught up in an interfamily conflict brewing between Anastasia and the emerging power of Carlo Gambino. A year after the spectacular October 1957 daytime killing of Anastasia at the Park Sheraton in New York City, Roberts’s bullet-riddled body had been found on a Brooklyn street corner after being dumped out of a car by three men.

  The fallout from Moretti’s killing reverberated throughout the Bergen County scene. Coupled with the Kefauver Committee’s findings, the spotlight on the partnerships between the Mafia and law enforcement was fraying the already-delicate threads that tied things together. This placed some mobsters in unusual positions.

  In early 1952, Bergen County chief of detectives Michael Orecchio was arrested and charged with involvement in gambling activities and for turning a b
lind eye to Mafia-run floating dice games. In a strange turn of events, Joe Adonis, along with Willie Moretti’s brother Solly, testified before the jury during Orecchio’s trial. Adonis admitted that he had been part of gambling operations from 1947 to 1950 in Bergen County and that he had seen Orecchio out and about.

  Though Willie had been outraged by his brother Solly’s incarceration on gambling charges, which had prompted his Kefauver testimony, his brother was unable to avenge Willie’s killing, save for his testimony during the Orecchio trial. Just a few months after he told the jury about the wide-open rackets in Bergen County, Solly died in prison from cerebral hemorrhage.

  Now that Moretti was out of the picture, Adonis also faced expulsion not only from New Jersey, but from the United States entirely. After a protracted legal battle between Adonis and federal authorities, he was ordered deported back to Italy in 1956. In a few short years, Adonis, Anastasia, and the Moretti brothers were all gone. But, as was the case with most underworld power vacuums, there was no shortage of mobsters waiting in the wings to move in and fill the void.

  And many of those mobsters attended the most infamous and ill-fated meeting in mob history.

  1. Some sources say the full name was Duke’s Bar and Grill.

  2. Drew Pearson, “Washington Merry Go Round,” syndicated column, 1957, archived at http://auislandora.wrlc.org/islandora/object/pearson%3A1?page=761.

  3. Ed Scarpo [pseud.], “The Mafia Hit the Jackpot with the Slot-Machine,” Cosa Nostra News (website), June 9, 2015, http://www.cosanostranews.com/2015/06/the-mafia-hit-jackpot-with-slot-machine.html.

  4. Joe Adonis’s real name was Giuseppe Doto.

  5. Moretti was born June 4, 1894, in New York City.