Garden State Gangland
Page 14
And while Newsboy had a large chunk of the gambling action, there was plenty of money to be made in the county. Along with Newsboy Moriarty there was another dominant crime figure in Hudson. His name said it all: Bayonne Joe Zicarelli was born in Bayonne in 1912 and rose through the ranks of the Bonanno crime family to become the county’s underworld king. He was “reportedly the head man in the numbers, lottery, and gambling operations in Hudson County, New Jersey, with its headquarters in Bayonne.”[5]
Though he was born to a Calabrian family, not Sicilian, and had no known ties to the Mafia, Zicarelli was nonetheless introduced to organized crime by neighborhood associates. He earned a reputation as a tough street hood who was not afraid to stand up and fight. This reputation remained with him throughout his life. Bayonne Joe had a soft side as well. According to local residents, on Thanksgiving and Christmas he would “send five- or six thousand turkeys to needy people” and on Easter would “send one thousand hams.”[6]
Zicarelli had a long list of run-ins with the law, starting back in the post-Prohibition late 1930s when he was sentenced to three years’ probation for violating liquor laws. In February of 1949 he was indicted for running a gambling house in Bayonne. He pled no contest and was fined a thousand dollars, a mere portion of the take from his gambling operations. The following year he was charged with conspiracy to defraud and possessing a still. That case was dismissed. Zicarelli was rising in the ranks of the mob, with few convictions to his name. And he looked to expand his empire outside the neighborhood.
In the late 1940s and early ’50s, Zicarelli was following other northern mobsters in looking for gambling opportunities overseas, the main target being Cuba. Zicarelli explored options to establish gambling operations in Caracas, Venezuela, as well. He was an entrepreneur of the Mafia and a big earner. That caught the eye of various mob families who were always on the lookout for guys who could line their coffers.
According to mob hitman Harold “Kayo” Konigsberg, Zicarelli was the subject of an intense feud between Angelo “Gyp” DeCarlo, Charlie Tourine, and Carmine Galante. Each of the mobsters wanted Zicarelli to be part of their respective crews. DeCarlo and Tourine were Genovese guys, while Galante was a Bonanno. Galante won out, and Zicarelli became a made member of the Mafia in 1955. Zicarelli and Galante became business partners as well in a number of legitimate business endeavors.
Joe’s notoriety eventually garnered the attention of federal authorities, and his name became associated with international events in 1959. An FBI report of that year suggested that Zicarelli might be “active in purchasing guns for a Cuban revolution, gambling activity in Mexico, kickback contracts in Venezuela, possible assassination of a Venezuelan political leader, and a possible link in the disappearance of Jesús de Galíndez-Suárez. Another government agency has furnished information that Zicarelli has been authorized to purchase one million dollars’ worth of rockets and machine guns for the Dominican Republic.”[7]
The next year Zicarelli came up on the feds’ radar again. He was running part of his gambling empire out of the Park Royal hotel on West Seventy-Third Street in Manhattan. Zicarelli was getting concerned the police in Bayonne were putting too much heat on his gambling enterprise in Hudson County. So, while the FBI listened, Zicarelli called Cornelius “Neil” Gallagher. Neil was of particular interest to the eavesdropping feds, not because of his criminal connections, but because of his political ones. Gallagher was a US congressman from New Jersey. A war hero in both World War II and Korea, he also served on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Operations Committee. He was so well respected in Washington that there was talk that Senator Lyndon Johnson, who was running for the presidency, was looking at Gallagher as a possible running mate.
The phone call to Gallagher went through, and Zicarelli laid out his concerns, especially about a top police official. Gallagher assured him that he would take care of it. A few days later, Zicarelli reached back out to Gallagher. “I got hold of those Bayonne police, and there will be no further problem.” The congressman told Bayonne Joe. Joe replied, “I hope so, because they’re ruining me.” Gallagher then added, “They damn well better not.”[8]
Gallagher was also supposed to assist Zicarelli in his plans to get involved with a Dominican airline, Compañía Dominicana de Aviación. For years Zicarelli had been involved in running guns to the Dominican Republic during the reign of Rafael Trujillo. When Trujillo was assassinated on May 30, 1961, Zicarelli saw opportunity in the ensuing chaos: an opening to gain control of the Dominican airline, a chance to invest in a legitimate business. Zicarelli thought that Gallagher’s pull in the Committee on Foreign Affairs could be of help, but the deal fell through even after Gallagher had personally flown to the Dominican Republic to advocate for Zicarelli’s bid for the airline with Trujillo’s successor.
One of the most bizarre alleged ties between Gallagher and Zicarelli was revealed in a 1968 Life magazine article. This story came from the confessions of Kayo Konigsberg. Kayo, who was serving time in prison, started talking to authorities about some of the murders that he had committed both in the employment of the Mafia and on his own. One of the stories he told involved not murder but the disposal of a dead body.
Konigsberg said that he had been called to the house of Congressman Gallagher one night back in October 1962. Gallagher and Konigsberg had both grown up in Bayonne. Gallagher had brought Kayo down to the basement and showed him the body of a local shylock named Barney O’Brien. When later relating this to police, Kayo said he didn’t think Barney had been murdered by the congressman, but he wasn’t sure how he had died. What Kayo did know was that Gallagher had asked him to remove and dispose of the body. Unsure whether he wanted to get himself involved in anything, Kayo insisted on calling Zicarelli, who told Kayo to do the favor. Kayo then loaded the body in his car and drove it to a remote area where he buried it. Gallagher adamantly refuted the story, claiming Kayo had never been in his house and that there were no phone calls made to Zicarelli on the night in question. He further told the reporter for Life that O’Brien did occasionally come to his house but hadn’t that night.
Gallagher distanced himself from the Zicarelli connection. A recording of Zicarelli and Emmanuel Riggi, a DeCavalcante solder the government was looking to deport, had the Bonanno capo telling Riggi that if things came down to the wire Zicarelli could reach out to a few judges he had in his pocket but that the best option was for Riggi to contact “Neil the Congressman.”[9] It was Bayonne Joe’s opinion that, if all else failed, Gallagher could step in on Riggi’s behalf and halt the deportation process.
In the mid-1960s, during the Bonanno family internecine war, Zicarelli was among thirty Bonanno family members and associates subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury investigating the internal warfare.
As internal confrontations strained the Bonanno family to its breaking point, Zicarelli was alleged to have held a number of positions within the family that was constantly in flux. In 1967 a top echelon informant told the FBI that Zicarelli was the New Jersey underboss to Angelo Caruso.[10] A few weeks after that report, another said that Zicarelli was part of a reshuffling that saw the top spot go to Paul Sciacca and that Zicarelli had been dropped from the underboss position. By 1968 Zicarelli was seen as a “type of referee and advisor in the continuing problems.”[11] In late 1968 Zicarelli was approached by the leadership of the family and offered the position of consigliere, which he turned down.
All the constantly shifting alliances and positions were draining Zicarelli mentally and physically. Bayonne Joe told Sam DeCavalcante on June 11, 1965, that he was actively seeking to move into another family and wanted DeCavalcante to take him into the Elizabeth group. He saw the DeCavalcantes as stable and small, not partial to the bickering that was driving such a wedge between so many Bonanno mobsters. DeCavalcante was in favor of the move and floated the idea to Carlo Gambino to see if the Commission would approve; but ultimately it was determined that Zicarelli should remain
in the Bonanno family.
During the Bonanno family turmoil, one of Zicarelli’ s top associates started looking around for other opportunities as well. John DiGilio started spending a great deal of time with members of the Genovese family—namely, Patty Mack Macchiarole, a Jersey City–based mobster with close ties to the longshoremen’s union. DiGilio saw more opportunity at the port than Zicarelli. The Bonannos didn’t have much of a presence at all on the New Jersey waterfront. Since that’s the direction DiGilio was moving in, a decision was made to allow him to switch sides, and he went with the Genovese, eventually becoming a made member. Gyp DeCarlo was heard on a wiretap telling a colleague that DiGilio was his man on the piers and that he was only allowing Zicarelli to operate there are as a favor but that now DiGilio would be talking over all operations on the docks. It was unclear whether DeCarlo was talking about union-related activities or mainly gambling.
Adding to his issues, Bayonne Joe was indicted in November of 1970 with conspiracy to corrupt the mayor of West New York, John Armellino. It was alleged that Zicarelli and his associates had been paying Armellino a thousand dollars a week to protect their gambling operations. The mayor and his brother were also indicted and charged with accepting the payoffs and facilitating the gambling operation through failure to enforce the laws of the State of New Jersey. Bayonne Joe was sentenced to twelve to fifteen years in prison. The indictment was another illustration of how deep corruption went in Hudson County and how Zicarelli was such a pivotal player in how politics was run in county, for the most part.
While Zicarelli was dealing with legal and Mafia-related issues, a new player was emerging in the Hudson County underworld. The main competition in Hudson County for both political corruption and illegal gambling was the Corporation, a Cuban organized-crime syndicate led by José Miguel Battle, a hardened Bay of Pigs veteran and former police officer under Fulgencio Batista, the president of Cuba who had been overthrown by Fidel Castro. Batista was also close to mob figures like Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante Jr. due to the mob’s hotel and casino operations in Cuba. Battle's bases of operations were Miami and Union City, New Jersey, which is in Hudson County. Battle was close to Santo Trafficante Jr. in Miami, but his relationships with mobsters in New Jersey and New York City ran the gamut from mutual cooperation to turf battles. There are sources that maintain Joe Zicarelli assisted Battle in his early efforts to set up multi-million-dollar-policy and bolita networks in Union City and other areas in Hudson County. But the Corporation would become a major crime syndicate on its own, and close ties with Mafia families diminished over the ensuing years.
After Zicarelli was released from prison in 1977, he was remanded to state prison to finish a sentence for contempt. His lawyers argued that he needed a medical furlough to address a host of health issues, including hypertension, kidney problems, and ulcers. He was released at the end of 1977 for medical reasons. Bayonne Joe died in 1982.
Enoch “Nucky” Johnson at his tax-evasion trial.
Source: Avi Bash.
The Blue Mirror, Longy Zwillman’s hangout in the 1930s and 1940s.
Source: Author’s collection.
Site of the Casablanca Club in Newark, a major underworld hangout owned by Longy Zwillman.
Source: Author’s collection.
The Riviera Hotel, Longy Zwillman’s base of operations.
Source: Author’s collection.
Abner “Longy” Zwillman (smiling at camera).
Source: Myron Sugerman.
Joseph “Doc” Stacher.
Source: Myron Sugerman.
Max “Puddy” Hinkes, associate of Longy Zwillman.
Source: Myron Sugerman.
Elizabeth Carteret Hotel, site of Max Hassel and Max Greenberg’s murders.
Source: Author’s collection.
Gene Catena, brother of Jerry Catena.
Source: Avi Bash.
Gerardo “Jerry” Catena.
Source: Myron Sugerman.
Ruggiero “Richie the Boot” Boiardo, longtime New Jersey Mafia figure.
Source: Author’s collection (UPI photo; author owns original).
Willie Moretti murder scene.
Source: Avi Bash.
Simone “Sam the Plumber” DeCavalcante.
Source: Author’s collection (UPI photo; author owns original).
Joseph “Happy” Bellina, Newark-based mobster.
Source: Author’s collection.
Angelo “Gyp” DeCarlo.
Source: Author’s collection (UPI photo; author owns original).
Joseph “Scoops” Licata.
Source: Author’s collection.
Mafia boss and Atlantic Highlands resident Vito Genovese.
Source: Author’s collection (UPI photo; author owns original).
Thomas “Tommy Ryan” Eboli.
Source: Author’s collection (UPI photo; author owns original).
Tino Fiumara.
Source: Author’s collection.
Anthony “Little Pussy” Russo.
Source: New Jersey State Commission of Investigation.
Albert “Reds” Pontani.
Source: Author’s collection.
Louis “Streaky” Gatto, Genovese capo of the Lodi crew.
Source: Author’s collection.
Joe Sodano.
Source: Author’s collection.
Michael Taccetta, 1992 mug shot.
Source: Author’s collection.
Surveillance photo of John DiGilio.
Source: New Jersey State Commission of Investigation.
Myron Sugerman giving a talk on the history of the Jewish mob.
Source: Myron Sugerman.
1. Lebanon (PA) Daily News, “Retired Gambling Czar Is Burned, Beaten,” May 28, 1971, 21.
2. Joan Cook, “Joseph (Newsboy) Moriarty, 68, Longtime Jersey Gambler, Dies,” New York Times, February 26, 1979, http://www.nytimes.com/1979/02/26/archives/joseph-newsboy-moriarty-68-longtime-jersey-gambler-dies-money-found.html.
3. Lebanon (PA) Daily News, “Retired Gambling Czar.”
4. US Senate, Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, “(b) Northern New Jersey,” Kefauver Committee: Final Report, Aug. 31, 1951, 82nd Cong. (1951), 65–72, archived at http://www.onewal.com/kef/kef4.html#northern.
5. Lincoln J. Stokes, Joseph Arthur Zicarelli, Newark, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1959.
6. Paul G. Durkin, Harold Konigsberg, New York, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1965.
7. Stokes, Joseph Arthur Zicarelli.
8. Life, “The Congressman and the Hoodlum,” August 9, 1968, 22, archived at https://books.google.com/books?id=RT8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA22&lpg=PA22&dq.
9. Delaware County Daily Times, “Wiretaps Records Involve Officials,” July 11, 1969.
10. Vito DeFillippo was the New York underboss.
11. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Special Agent in Charge, La Cosa Nostra, Memorandum, Newark, 1969.
Chapter 9
Bruno and the Down Neck Mob
In the city of Newark is a neighborhood that stands out as an ethnic enclave that has stood the test of time through the city’s turbulent twentieth-century history. It’s more commonly known as the Ironbound, so named because it’s bordered on all sides by railroads and major highways. The Ironbound district is a thriving blue-collar immigrant community, shaped in recent decades by a large Portuguese population with Brazilian and Ecuadorian influence. The narrow streets are lined with well-kept homes, and the main commercial strips, including Ferry Street, are known statewide for their Portuguese, Spanish, and Brazilian restaurants, markets, and bakeries. When Portugal won the Euro 2016 championship, the streets of the Ironbound were jam-packed with throngs of the soccer team’s supporters sporting Ronaldo shirts.
The Ironbound is also known colloquially as Down Neck. The moniker refers to the neighborhood unique geographic location where the Passaic River ‘droops’, though some also say it referred to an older name of Dutch
Neck. It was here in the narrow streets and corner taverns that many New Jersey mobsters were born and raised. The social clubs that dotted the landscape provided a meeting place to discuss gambling and loansharking over coffee and pastéis de nata. Gangsters from the Genovese and Gambino families grew up Down Neck. Cut off from the other heavily mobbed-up neighborhoods of the First Ward, Vailsburg, and Silver Lake, Down Neck guys tended to stick together. According to one former wiseguy, “the Down Neck mob was a mob unto itself.”[1] And their loyalties and alliances stood the test of time. There was a real camaraderie with the Down Neck guys, and the area was, and is still, a ripe spot for mob activity.
While the neighborhood spawned mob figures that belonged to many different families, it became a New Jersey outpost for an unlikely Newark-based crew from the Philadelphia crime family. How that happened is an artifact of a choice made by one of the early bosses of the Philadelphia crime family, Joseph Bruno. When the Castellammarese War was winding down in New York, Salvatore Sabella was the boss of the Philadelphia Mafia family. He stepped down at the end of the war, around 1931, and leadership was passed to John Avena, who was murdered in 1936. The mantle was then passed to Joseph “Bruno” Dovi. Joe Bruno, as he came to be known, ran the family for the next decade. The Philadelphia family’s presence in Newark dated back to the 1940s and featured two main events: The first was the relocation of Joseph Bruno from Bristol, Pennsylvania, where he had been living, to New Brunswick, New Jersey, a city of about thirty-five thousand, forty-five minutes south of Newark. The second was the arrival to Newark of one of Bruno’s men—Tony “Bananas” Caponigro.