by Bruno, Joe
Removal of the bodies took three days. It was a long and tedious project because, in their charred condition, the bodies would immediately fall apart when they were moved.
Forensic science being in its infant stages at the time, an exact body count was impossible. Initial reports in the newspapers said there were anywhere from 275 to 400 fatalities in the Brooklyn Theater Fire. A coroner's report later said there were 283 fatalities, but that was only an educated guess. One hundred and three unidentified bodies and parts of bodies were buried in a common grave at Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
The death count in the Brooklyn Theater Fire of 1876 was exceeded only by the Iroquois Theater fire which occurred on December 30, 1903, in Chicago, Ill, where at least 605 people died, and the Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire in Boston, on November 28, 1942, which killed 492 people.
The Brooklyn Theater Fire of 1876 did spur New York City to institute safeguards that reduced the possibility of a similar fire ever happening again. Changes in the building code barred the presence of paints, woods, and construction material in the stage area. The code also mandated the use of a solid brick proscenium wall, “extending from the cellar to the roof, to minimize the risk of a stage fire spreading into the auditorium.”
Other changes to the code decreed that “proscenium arches were to be equipped with non-flammable fire curtains.” Other openings in the proscenium wall required self-closing, fire-resistant doors. And heat-activated sprinkling systems were required for the fly space above the stage.
Starting in the early 1900s, a half hour before the scheduled performance each theater was to have a “Theater Detail Officer” on duty. Before the play started, the Theater Detail Officer's job was to “test the fire alarms, inspect firewall doors, and the fire curtain.” During the performance, the theater Detail Officer would “roam the theater, making sure that aisles, hallways, and fire exits were clear and accessible to all patrons.”
There were contradicting accounts about what happened to Kate Claxton after she escaped from the Brooklyn Theater Fire. One newspaper said she was seen sitting safely in the First Precinct police station one hour after the fire. Another report said that three hours after the fire had started, a New York City newspaper reporter found Claxton wandering in a daze at Manhattan's City Hall. Her hands and face were bloated with burn blisters, and she could not remember taking the ferry from Brooklyn to Manhattan.
Scant months later, after Claxton had recovered from her injuries, she traveled to St. Louis to appear in another play. As soon as she arrived in St. Louis, she checked into the Southern Hotel. In hours, that hotel went up in flames. But Claxton and her brother, whom she was traveling with, made a miraculous escape seconds before the hotel collapsed.
This effectively ended Kate Claxton's theatrical career. Fearing she was some kind of a jinx, other actors refused to appear on stage with her. And theatergoers, fearing another fire, boycotted her performances altogether.
Nine years after the Brooklyn Theater Fire, Kate Claxton shared her thoughts with the New York Times.
She said, “We thought we were acting for the best in continuing the play as we did, with the hope that the fire would be put out without difficulty, or that the audience would leave gradually or quietly. But the result proved that it was not the right course. The curtain should have been kept down until the flames had been extinguished, or if it had been found impossible to cope with them, the audience should have been calmly informed that indisposition on the part of some member of the company, or some unfortunate occurrence behind the scenery compelled a suspension of the performance, and they should have been requested to disperse as quietly as they could. Raising the curtain created a draft which fanned the flames into fury.”
Hindsight is 20/20, but Kate Claxton's later observations were absolutely correct. The Brooklyn Theater Fire of 1876 could have produced minimal damage, if only the theater personnel had not bumbled, but had acted in a coherent, methodical, and calm manner.
Sadly, this never happened.
Castellano, Paul
He was one of the most disliked mob bosses ever, with a superiority complex second to none. However, if Paul Castellano had been street-smart like most Mafia bosses, he might not have been executed so easily and so publicly.
Paul Castellano was born Constantino Paul Castellano on June 26, 1915, in Brooklyn, New York. Castellano did not like his given first name, so he insisted that everyone call him Paul instead. Castellano's parents were born in Sicily, and his father was a butcher, with a little illegal numbers business on the side. Castellano's father was also an early member of the Mangano Crime Family, which was created by Salvatore Maranzano after the killing of Joe “The Boss” Masseria, which ended the Castellammarese War.
Castellano dropped out of the school after the eighth grade, and he went to work in both of his father's businesses. In 1934, when Castellano was only 19-years-old, Castellano and two of his buddies committed an armed robbery of a local business. However, things went awry, and when the police arrived at the scene, his two friends had escaped. Big Paul, as he was called (Castellano was six-foot-three and in his prime weighed over 275 pounds), was caught by the police. But he refused to rat on his colleagues, and as a result, he was hit with a three-month bit in the slammer. When he returned to the mean streets of Brooklyn, Castellano's reputation had been enhanced by his refusal to cooperate with the police.
In 1937, at the age of 22, Castellano married his childhood sweetheart Nina Manno, who was the sister-in-law of Carlo Gambino. They eventually had three sons: Paul, Philip, Joseph, and a daughter Connie.
In 1940, Castellano was inducted as a made member of the Mangano Crime Family, the same crime family in which his first cousin Carlo Gambino was already a captain. In fact, Castellano and Gambino were so close, Gambino even married Castellano's sister Catherine (marrying first cousins was not uncommon amongst the Sicilians).
After Mangano was knocked off in 1951 by his Underboss, Albert Anastasia, Anastasia took control of the Mangano Family, and he changed the name to the Anastasia Family. Anastasia also bumped up Big Paul to the rank of captain. In 1957, when Anastasia was killed by rival Vito Genovese, Gambino took over the Anastasia Family. He changed the name to the Gambino Family, and he inserted his cousin Paul Castellano as one of his right-hand men.
On November 17, 1957, Genovese called for a huge summit of all the Mafia bigwigs in America scheduled to take place in Apalachin, New York, at the home of Mafia member Joseph Barbara. There were several items on Genovese's agenda, the most important of which was to declare himself “Capo di Tutti Capi,” or “Boss of All Bosses.”
However, the wily Gambino knew that the local state police would be tipped off to the meeting, so he stayed away, and instead he sent his cousin Paul to take the heat. When the state police raided the Barbara residence, dozens of mobsters tried to escape by jumping out of windows and running through the woods in their expensive suits and patent leather shoes. But not Castellano. Big Paul surrendered without a fight, and he was sentenced to a year in prison for refusing to tell the police the purpose of the meeting.
After his marriage to Nina, Paul prospered in the family meat businesses, and by the 1950s, he owned several businesses, including Blue Ribbon Meats, Ranbar Packing Inc., and The Pride Wholesale Meat and Poultry Corporation.
According to Jonathan Kwitney's book Vicious Circles, “The Castellanos owned many meat stores and distributorships in Brooklyn and in Manhattan. They had a long record of welching on debts; of suffering suspicious hijackings, which can lead to insurance claims; of selling goods that were later found to have been stolen off the docks or trucks, and of cheating other firms by receiving the assets of companies about to go into bankruptcy proceedings.”
Whereas Castellano gave the airs of a successful businessman, issuing a death warrant was certainly not beneath his character. Castellano once ordered the death of an underling, because the man had the audacity to say Castellano looked like chicken ma
gnate Frank Perdue. (Perdue was famous for his chicken-like face splashed across the screen in his TV commercials, where he pronounced, “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken.”)
In the mid 70s, Perdue was having trouble getting his chickens into the New York City weekly supermarket advertisement circulars. Someone whispered in Perdue's ear, and soon he signed a distribution deal with Dial Poultry, owned by two of Castellano's sons. From that point on, Perdue had no trouble advertising and selling his chickens in the New York market.
To show he would not allow anyone in his blood family to be abused in any way, Castellano's son-in-law Frank Amato disappeared from the face of the earth after Castellano discovered Amato was beating Castellano's pregnant daughter Connie and cheating on her on the side. As a display of familial compassion, Castellano did wait for his daughter's divorce to become final before he gave the order to vaporize Amato.
Castellano, with the blessing of his cousin Carlo Gambino, was also heavy into the shylocking business. Unfortunately, in 1973, one of his street “lenders,” Arthur “Fat Artie” Beradelli, free on bail while appealing convictions for fraud and selling counterfeit securities, was pinched by the Feds, again for fraud. The FBI, led by field agents James Kallstrom and Frank Frattolillio, put the screws to Beradelli, and they convinced him if he didn't cooperate with the Feds he would spend big time in the slammer. Beradelli, who was represented by a legal aid attorney, listened to his attorney's advice, and he became a stool-pigeon.
After giving the Feds a list of those in charge of the loansharking enterprise he was involved with, Beradelli finally agreed to wear a wire. And he did so while speaking with “Little Paul” Castellano, the younger cousin of Big Paul and one of the chief loansharking operators who answered to Big Paul.
Even though Little Paul was fluently versed in “mob-speak” (a mob dialect when they speak vaguely about everything and constantly refer to items called “that thing”), it was obvious from the taped conversations that Beradelli had borrowed large amounts of money from Little Paul and that Little Paul was to continue to receive his “vig payments,” even after Beradelli went to prison. Little Paul also made it clear (in mob-speak) that his older cousin Big Paul was overseeing the entire operation.
In March 1975, Beradelli wore a wire while speaking with Big Paul Castellano. But Big Paul was excellent in mob-speak himself. Even though everything that was captured on tape was consistent with the notion that Big Paul Castellano was indeed the big cheese in the loansharking operation, Big Paul said nothing on tape that could conclusively connect him to any wrongdoings; at least nothing the Feds could take Big Paul to court with.
While Beradelli was wearing a wire and speaking to friends, Beradelli's wife found out that her husband was also speaking to the Feds. Beradelli's wife was a Gambino cousin (isn't everyone?), and she immediately berated her husband; calling him a “rat.” This left Beradelli no choice but to refuse to testify in court against any mob figures that might be indicted in the loansharking case.
Beradelli later said, “If I had gone against her, I would have lost her and the children forever.”
As a result of his failure to see the deal though until the end, instead of getting no prison time, Beradelli was sentenced to two years in prison on the original fraud charges. Because he did garner some very important information on the tapes he did make, the second fraud charge against Beradelli was dropped.
On June 30, 1975, the Feds indicted nine alleged organized crime figures for loansharking. These men included Big Paul Castellano, Little Paul Castellano, and another cousin Joseph Castellano. Before the trial began, Little Paul Castellano pleaded guilty. Because he was a relatively small fish in a big pond, Little Paul got only four months in the slammer and a $5,000 fine. The government tried to force Beradelli to testify at the trial, which included their intended target, the Big Fish himself: Big Paul Castellano, but Beradelli refused. Judge Bartels then ordered Beradelli to testify, giving him immunity from prosecution. Beradelli still refused, and as a result of Beradelli's non-cooperation, all the defendants walked scot-free, including Big Paul Castellano. Judge Bartels then threw the book at Beradelli, sentencing him to five years in prison for contempt-of-court.
But at least Beradelli still had his faithful wife and lovely children to visit him in prison.
By 1975, Carlo Gambino was obviously very ill from a severe heart condition. When Gambino died, the favorite on the streets to take over the Gambino Family was Aniello Dellacroce, a hardened criminal and Gambino's second-in-command. Dellacroce was a respected man in the mob, and had allegedly taken part in several “pieces of work,” or murders. And according to Mafia rules, Dellacroce was, in fact, supposed to be promoted to boss instead of Castellano. Dellacroce had the backing of all the major Gambino street crews, including Carmine Fatico's men at the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club in Queens.
However, Gambino wanted to keep things in the family, and to the consternation of many, he anointed Paul Castellano to be his successor as the head of the Gambino Family. As a result, there was outrage amongst the street soldiers, who saw Castellano as nothing more than a greedy snob who thought he was stratospherically above the common street soldiers who were kicking up all the money to the bosses on top. Whereas most captains demanded 10 percent of the street soldier's take, Castellano wanted 15 percent of any schemes his men were involved with.
Things came to a head, when on October 15, 1976, Carlo Gambino finally died and Castellano was officially inducted as the Gambino boss. Street men, like tough John Gotti, bristled at the choice and were hardly placated when Dellacroce, as a consolation prize, was given control of all the lucrative Manhattan Gambino street rackets. Dellacroce, an old school Mafioso, who went by the credo that a boss’s word should never be challenged, was the only person who kept his crew from a devastating and bloody mutiny against Castellano and his allies.
Whereby Gambino had lived in an inconspicuous house in Brooklyn, Castellano built himself a mansion on the trendy Todt Hill on Staten Island. Todt Hill (which in Dutch meant “Death Hill”) was the highest track of land in the entire borough of Staten Island. The 17-room house was built with stone and stucco, and was painted entirely white, with two white columns majestically standing out front, looking suspiciously like the White House in Washington, D.C. (The Gambino street crews snidely referred to Castellano's home as “The White House.”) The house was completely surrounded by tall wrought-iron fences and armed with the most sophisticated burglar alarms. If this wasn't enough to discourage intruders, Castellano had ferocious Dobermans patrolling inside the perimeter, viciously leaping at the fences if anyone, including the mailman, came near the house.
In late 1978, Castellano further infuriated the men who were loyal to Dellacroce when he set up a meeting between himself, his top captains, and the two bosses of the violent Irish “Westies” gang from Manhattan's Hell’s Kitchen: Jimmy Coonan and Mickey Featherstone. The intermediary who arranged the meeting was Roy DeMeo, the most proficient killer under the flag of Gambino captain Anthony “Nino” Gaggi.
The meeting took place at Tommaso's, a Bay Ridge eatery frequented by a veritable who's-who of the mob. When Coonan and Featherstone were escorted by DeMeo into the private back room of Tommaso's, they could hardly believe their eyes. Seated at a horseshoe-shaped table were Nino Gaggi, Carmine Lambardozzi, Joseph N. Gallo, Aniello Dellacroce, and Funzi Tieri. Seated at the head of the table was the sire of the Staten Island “White House”: Big Paul Castellano himself.
At this point, Coonan and Featherstone thought they had a very big problem and were going to leave the restaurant in body bags. It seemed that just a few weeks earlier, Coonan had taken part in the murder of Castellano's top bookie/shylock Ruby Stein. Coonan had owed Stein $70,000 in gambling debts, and Coonan figured it made more economic sense to kill Stein rather than to pay Stein. So that he did, in a Hell's Kitchen bar, along with a few of Coonan’s accomplices, all of whom Coonan made shoot Stein as a sign of solidarity a
fter Stein was already dead. After the deed was done, they cut Stein up into little pieces, and they deposited Stein's body parts into several garbage bags and threw them into the waters near Ward's Island.
The only problem was, Coonan forgot to slit open Stein's torso to let out all the gases, and Stein's torso was soon found floating in the waters near Rockaway Beach in Queens.
After Castellano made a few inquiries, he found out the last man Stein had been seen with alive was Jimmy Coonan.
In addition, there was the slight problem of Ruby Stein's little black book, which contained the names and the exact figures of the money out on the streets owed to Stein, and thereby owed to Castellano and his captains. Coonan had taken that black book off Stein's dead body, but at this particular time he didn't know exactly what to do with it. If he commenced making collections, Castellano would have known for sure who had killed his very valuable asset – Ruby Stein.
According to T.J. English's book – The Westies, Coonan, as a sign of good will, presented Castellano with a box of the finest Cuban cigars. After Castellano passed the box around the table so his captains could see the value of the present, the men began eating with a vengeance; first the salads, then the dishes of seafood with pasta, then some of the best lasagna known to man. After the last morsel had been devoured, and the men were waiting for their espresso and Anisette, Tieri whispered something into Castellano's ear.
Big Paul cleared his throat, and then he said directly to Coonan, “Jimmy,” then he hesitated and said, “You don't mind if I call you Jimmy?”
