Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set

by Bruno, Joe

  George Appo caught a break, when in September of 1894, he was approached by George W. Lederer, a renowned theater producer. Lederer offered Appo a part in his new play entitled “In the Tenderloin,” in which Appo was to simply play himself, in a play about New York City's underbelly.

  Appo toured the country in this play for several years, but when the play's run ended, Appo was stiffed by Lederer for $15,000 in unpaid salary. Although he tried for several years, Appo never did collect his money.

  At the start of the 20th century, George Appo decided to live free of crime. He worked as a car cleaner at Grand Central Terminal, and also as a handyman at Calvary Church, the Sallade dress factory, and in the home of millionaire reformer Alexander Hadden.

  In 1915, during the government's investigations of opium dens, Appo began secretly working for the government. Appo received a salary of six dollars a month, in addition to another six dollars a month for rent for his apartment. Soon, Appo's salary was increased to $10 a month.

  In his final years, little was heard about George Appo. What is known, is that Appo lived in a small apartment in Hell's Kitchen on the west side of Manhattan.

  On August 10, 1929, George Appo was admitted to the Manhattan State Hospital on Wards Island. By that time, Appo was nearly deaf and almost blind.

  On May 17, 1930, even though he had been shot four times, stabbed twice (once in the throat) and brutally beaten in prison, George Appo died at the age of 73 from nothing more than old age.

  Bonanno, Joseph – The Youngest American Mafia Boss Ever

  Joseph Charles Bonanno was born on January 18, 1905, in Castellammare del Golfo, a small town on the West Coast of Sicily. When he was three years old, his father, Salvatore Bonanno, moved his family to the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. They lived in Brooklyn for about 10 years, but then Salvatore, caught in a jam with the cops, was forced to move his family back to Sicily.

  In Sicily, Salvatore Bonanno was said to have been involved in Mafia activities. His son Joseph followed in his father's footsteps and was also heavily involved with the Mafia. In 1924, to avoid Mussolini's attack on the Mafia, Joseph Bonanno escaped from Sicily by taking a boat to Havana, Cuba. In Havana, Bonanno stowed away on a Cuban fishing boat, which landed him illegally in Tampa, Florida.

  Now in America, Bonanno headed north. He had a scare in Jacksonville, Florida, where he was briefly detained by immigration officials. Bonanno somehow talked his way out of this jam, and he traveled as quickly as he could to New York City.

  In New York City, Bonanno quickly hooked up with other mobsters from Castellammare del Golfo, who had already established an illegal foothold in America. True or not, Bonanno told the people from his hometown that his father, Salvatore, was a big Mafioso in Sicily. This eased Bonanno's move into the bootlegging business.

  Bonanno moved quickly up the ranks, and soon he became the boss of his own small crime family. Another Italian mobster tried to move into Bonanno's territory, necessitating a sitdown, which was presided over by three powerful mob bosses, including Bonanno's cousin, Stefano Magaddino - the Mafia boss in upstate Buffalo, and Salvatore Maranzano, the highest-ranking Mafioso, who was from Bonanno's hometown of Castellammare del Golfo. Having the deck stacked in his favor, Bonanno won the sitdown, and he was allowed to keep control of his family, in addition to gaining control of the opposing gangster's family.

  In 1927, Maranzano became involved in a bloody all-out Mafia war against Joe “The Boss” Masseria for control of all the rackets on the East Coast of the United States. This was known as the “Castellammarese War.” By this time, Bonanno had risen to the rank of Maranzano's right-hand man, or captain. Charles “Lucky” Luciano occupied the same position with Masseria's crew.

  Maranzano approached Luciano with the offer of leaving Masseria and joining Maranzano's forces. Luciano, seeing the writing on the wall and also because Masseria frowned on Luciano's alliances with non-Sicilians like Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel, agreed to kill Masseria so that Maranzano would now be the No. 1 Mafia boss in America.

  Luciano lured Masseria to a little Italian restaurant on Coney Island. There, while Luciano was relieving himself in the men's room, Bugsy Siegel, along with three of his best killers, burst in and shot Masseria dead.

  Maranzano immediately called for a meeting of all the Mafioso in New York City. At this meeting, Maranzano created five crime families, with five bosses, one of whom was Luciano. Maranzano also declared himself “Capo de Tuti Capo,” or “Boss of All Bosses.”

  Luciano did not fancy the path his organization was taking with Maranzano in charge of the Five Families. So, Luciano used four Jewish killers, led by Red Levine, to stab and shoot Maranzano to death in his midtown office.

  Luciano, in his quest to unite all the mob bosses (Five Families) in New York City, called for a meeting with Bonanno. The purpose of this meeting was to assure Bonanno that Luciano's intentions were, despite the death of Maranzano, to keep the five-family concept intact.

  At this meeting, Bonanno told Luciano, “I have no problem with you.”

  This is exactly what Luciano wanted to hear.

  As a result, Luciano inserted Bonanno as head of the former Maranzano Family, and he changed the name to the “Bonanno Family.” Bonanno was only 26-years-old at the time, making him the youngest Mafia boss ever in America.

  Banding together with such gangsters as Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and Vito Genovese, Bonanno's illegal empire took off expeditiously. In order to insulate himself from possible prosecution by the police, Bonanno involved himself with several legal businesses, in addition to such illegal endeavors like bootlegging, extortion, hijacking, gambling, and drug dealing. Bonanno also stuck his sticky fingers into the garment center, where he bought himself pieces of the B&D Coat Company and the Morgan Coat Company. To enhance the wealth of his garment businesses, Bonanno used the muscle of the Garment Workers Union to give himself an advantage over the legitimate clothing businesses in the garment center.

  Of course, this meant paying off the local police to look the other way, while Bonanno schemed and brutalized his way to the top of the garment industry. It was so easy to bribe the police, the vast majority of whom were Irish, Bonanno once said, “All the Irish cops took payments.”

  In addition, Bonanno also was the part-owner of the Sunshine Dairy Farm in Middletown, New York, a Wisconsin cheese factory, and the Anello and Bonanno Funeral Home in Brooklyn.

  Bonanno's most enterprising endeavor may have been the invention of the double-decker coffin, which was said to be used exclusively at the Anello and Bonanno Funeral Home. These coffins were assembled so that a second body could be stored under the one that was scheduled for burial. This co-opted the need for digging a grave for the victim of a mob rubout.

  Even though Luciano and Bonanno were equals in the five-crime family Mafia concept, Bonanno considered himself the most traditional; true to the Mafia concept which was adhered to in Italy.

  Bonanno later wrote in his book, A Man of Honor: “Luciano was so Americanized that he operated on the most primitive consideration: making money. Men of my tradition have always considered wealth the by-product of power. Such men of my tradition were mainly in the people business.”

  In 1937 Luciano was arrested, tried, and convicted on a trumped-up prostitution charge orchestrated by Special Prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey. As a result, Luciano was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

  However, after World War II, Dewey, now governor of New York, commuted Luciano's sentence to time served, and Dewey had Luciano deported to Italy. This arrangement suited Luciano just fine, since he could still run his empire from across the ocean with little or no difficulty. Luciano's release was said to have been orchestrated by Frank Costello and Joe Bonanno, who reportedly passed the hat for Luciano in the five mob families and donated the contributed booty, said to be in excess of $250,000, to Dewey's campaign coffers, which was used in Dewey's failed 1948 Presidential bid won by Democrat Harry Truman.<
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  By the early 1960's, Bonanno had expanded his empire to the state of Arizona, which was open territory for any mob boss who wanted to take control. With Arizona being near California, Bonanno, getting more ambitious and greedy by the moment, figured he could move into California and take over the rackets of Frank DeSimone, the mob boss of Los Angeles.

  Yet, Bonanno's biggest mistake was when he decided to start infiltrating the rackets in Canada, which incensed his cousin Stefano Magaddino, the mob boss of Buffalo, who considered Canada his sacred domain.

  It was during the early 1960's that Bonanno began having trouble within his own crime family (they thought he spent too much time outside New York City) and also with the bosses of the other crime families, which comprised the Mafia Commission, as it was now called by its members. Bonanno's biggest ally on the Commission was Joe Profaci from Brooklyn. In 1962, Profaci died after a long bout with cancer and was replaced by Joe Magliocco, considered not as powerful nor as fearless a man as Profaci.

  Bonanno thought that was the perfect time to act, and he approached Magliocco with the plan of killing the bosses of the other three families: Carlo Gambino, Tommy Lucchese, and Bonanno's cousin Stefano Magaddino, as well as Frank DeSimone of Los Angeles. Magliocco agreed, and he gave the order to organize the hits to his new underboss, Joe Colombo. However, instead of following Magliocco's orders, Colombo reported the treasonous acts to Gambino, Lucchese, and Magaddino. As a result, Magliocco and Bonanno were ordered to appear before the Commission to explain their actions.

  Bonanno told the three other bosses to take a hike, but Magliocco timidly agreed to appear before the Commission. At this meeting, Magliocco confessed his actions and he threw himself on the mercy of the Commission. Inexplicably, the Commission agreed to spare Magliocco's life. However, Magliocco's punishment was expulsion from his own crime family, and in addition, Magliocco was no longer considered even a low-ranking member of La Cosa Nostra. In other words, Magliocco had lost his “button” for good.

  With Bonanno's refusal to appear before the Commission, the Commission members stripped Bonanno of the leadership of his family, and they replaced him with Gaspar DiGregorio. This move split the Bonanno family, with some members siding with DiGregorio and others with Bonanno.

  On the night of October 21, 1964, the night before he was to appear before a New York grand jury, Bonanno was walking along a Park Avenue street with his lawyers, when two men suddenly jumped from a car. These men seized Bonanno and threw him into another car.

  What happened next has been debated since then.

  When Bonanno reappeared in court 19 months later, his story was that he was kidnapped by his cousin, Stefano Magaddino, and held at a farm in Buffalo. Bonanno said that Magaddino repeatedly, under the threat of death, urged him to quit the Mafia. Bonanno said he refused, and instead he tried to make a deal whereby his neophyte son Salvatore “Bill” Bonanno would assume control of the Bonanno Crime Family. Bonanno, against the wishes of the Commission and many in his own crime family, had already appointed his son as his “consigliere.” Bonanno said that Magaddino, speaking for the rest of the Commission, flatly refused Bonanno's offer. Bonanno said he was released after a few months, and he spent the rest of his 19 months in exile, hiding in Tucson, Arizona.

  However, Bonanno’s story holds little water. If Magaddino really did have Bonanno in custody there was very little chance that Bonanno, after refusing to give up the leadership of his family and after plotting to kill three Commission bosses, would have ever left Buffalo alive.

  The more likely story is that Bonanno arranged to “kidnap” himself, so that he could plot behind the scenes on how he and his son Bill could take over the mob rackets throughout the country.

  While Bonanno was “in absentia,” DiGregorio called for a meeting with Bill Bonanno to discuss how they could peacefully co-exist in the same crime family. When Bill Bonanno arrived at the meeting on Troutman Street in Brooklyn, he and his men were met by a hail of gunfire. However, it was late at night, and because of the dark and the bad aim of both groups, no one was injured.

  The next two years after the return of the senior Bonanno were referred to as the “Bananas War.” Because of his failure to eliminate Bill Bonanno, the Commission replaced DiGregorio with Paul Sciacca, considered tougher and a more capable Mafioso than DiGregorio.

  In 1968, after years of bloodshed on both sides, Joe Bonanno suffered a heart attack, and he announced his retirement. After Bonanno and his son Bill relocated to Tucson, Arizona, both factions of the Bonanno family united under Sciacca.

  While Bonanno was in Tucson, where he was supposedly allowed to keep whatever rackets he had assembled, there were several bomb attempts: at the homes of Joe and Bill Bonanno, and also at the homes of some of their Tucson crime associates. However, no one was killed, and soon the other New York bosses came to believe Bonanno when he said he would stay out of the East Coast rackets completely and concentrate on Arizona.

  In 1983, after serving time for conspiring to interfere with a Grand Jury investigation into his two son's Arizona businesses, Joe Bonanno inexplicably wrote his autobiography Man of Honor. Bonanno’s book told in great detail of Bonanno's role in the rise of the Mafia in America. The other mob mosses in America were outraged that Bonanno would break his vow of “omerta.” The then-head of the Bonanno Crime Family, Joe Massino, began calling his family the Massino Family, but that name never stuck. In 2005, Massino became a government informant, the highest ranking member of the Mafia in America ever to do so.

  Joe Bonanno died peacefully of a heart attack on May 11, 2002, at the ripe old age of 97; outliving his contemporaries in the Mafia by anywhere from two to four decades.

  Brodie, Steve

  He was a hoaxer and a huckster, and the personification of what the Gay 90's Bowery was all about. But no matter what legend says, Steve Brodie did not jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.

  Steve Brodie was born in New York City on Christmas Day 1861. Not getting much of a school education, Brodie became a newsboy and then a bootblack, who eventually earned his living on the Manhattan side of the newly-constructed Brooklyn Bridge, which connected downtown Manhattan and the southern tip of Brooklyn.

  The Brooklyn Bridge, completed in 1883, was designed by German immigrant John Augustus Roebling. It took 13 years to build, but Roebling did not live to see its completion. During the initial phase of construction, Roebling had his toes crushed, and after his foot was amputated a tetanus infection caused his death. The project was completed by his son Washington Roebling, who, after he too suffered a debilitating injury during the construction phase, was helped by his wife, Emily, who was basically the liaison between her bedridden husband and the construction crew on site.

  When finished, the Brooklyn Bridge had a span of 1,595.5 feet, which at its grand opening, made it 50 percent longer than any other suspension bridge in the world. The bridge was 78 feet, six inches below water level and 276 feet six inches above water level. On the first day it opened, 150,300 people crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, along with 1,800 horse-drawn vehicles.

  On May 30, 1883, one week after the bridge opened, a rumor spread that the bridge was about to collapse. People panicked, which led to a stampede in both directions. At least 12 people were killed and others not accounted for. After this tragic incident, people were afraid to cross the bridge. So, P.T. Barnum, of circus fame, removed all doubts, when on May 17, 1884, as a promotion for his circus, Barnum marched 21 elephants across the Brooklyn Bridge.

  The first lunatic who tried to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge did not fare very well. In late May 1884, right after P.T. Barnum's successful stunt, swimming instructor Robert Emmitt Odlum, oddly enough the brother of women's rights activist Charlotte Odlum Smith, took a flying leap off the Brooklyn Bridge, and he went splat into the water. When Odlum's body floated to the surface, he was indeed quite dead.

  By 1886, Steve Brodie was a man down on his luck. After betting on inferior horses at the racetrack,
Brodie decided to make a winner out of himself by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge. But Brodie was no fool. He knew what had happened to Odlum, and he took all precautions to make sure he didn't suffer the same fate.

  On June 23, 1886, at approximately 2 p.m., Brodie stood at the entrance of the Brooklyn Bridge. According to the New York Times article the following day, Brodie had made a $200 bet to clear up his racetrack losses. The bet was that he would be brave enough to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.

  Before he got onto the bridge, Brodie kissed his wife goodbye.

  She replied, “Good-bye Steve and take care of yourself. And may you be successful and scoop us dose $200, so that we kin have a good time.”

  According to published reports, Brodie then rode a wagon, which took him to the part of the Brooklyn Bridge just above the East River. In the water below, three men in a rowboat allegedly awaited Brodie's jump, so that they could fish him from the drink before he drowned. According to the New York Times article, Brodie took off his coat and hat, but not the rest of his clothes.

  Someone yelled, “Police! Suicide! Look out! He's going to jump into the river!”

  What happened next has been disputed for years; but in fact, no one who wasn't connected to the ruse had actually seen Brodie jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. What is certain, is that the three men in the rowboat rowed to where Brodie was floundering in the East River. When they got to Brodie, they dragged him by his shoulders into the rowboat. The men then rowed back to the pier on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge, where they were met by Patrolmen Lally. Patrolman Lally immediately put Brodie under arrest.

  “On what charge do you arrest me?” Brodie said.

  “For jumping off the bridge and endangering your life,” Patrolman Lally said. “You better come with me.”

  “OK, I'll go wid you, but I guess I'll get the $200,” Brodie said. “I can jump off de highest bridge in de world now.”

  Immediately, there were skeptics as to whether Brodie had actually jumped off the bridge; some argued it was all a stunt. Soon, word began circulating in the streets of Lower Manhattan that Brodie had pulled off the caper, not for $200, but because a man named Moritz Herzberg had offered Brodie to buy him a saloon, on the basis that after the stunt, Brodie would be famous and so would his saloon.