The Mob and the City

by C. Alexander Hortis

  7. Testimony of Masseria in People against Lagatutta and Masseria (JCC).

  8. Ibid.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Thomas Hunt, “Year-by-Year: Charlie Lucky's Life,” Informer: History of American Crime and Law Enforcement (April 2012): 35–61; United States Census Bureau, 1920 Federal Population Census, Salvatore Lucania, Enumeration District No. 1, New York, NY.

  11. Report of Dr. Harry Freedran, Charles Luciano [undated], 1936, in Box 13, Thomas E. Dewey Papers, Department of Rare Books, Special Collections and Preservation, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY (“UR”).

  12. Report of Dr. L. E. Kinholz, Charles Luciano, June 30, 1936, in Box 13, Dewey Papers (UR); United States Census Bureau, 1920 Federal Population Census, Salvatore Lucania, District No. 1, New York, NY.

  13. Report of Dr. Freedran (UR); New York Times, June 19, 1936.

  14. New York Times, June 19, 1936.

  15. Report of Dr. Kinholz, in Box 13, Dewey Papers (UR). Luciano may have enjoyed drugs too much. “He is a drug addict,” stated his first prison psychiatrist in 1936, who recommended that due “to his drug addiction he should be transferred to Dannemora Prison” in Dannemora, New York. This prison had a mental health hospital. Ralph Blumenthal, Miracle at Sing Sing: How One Man Transformed the Lives of America's Most Dangerous Prisoners (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2004), p. 166. Sometime after his transfer to Dannemora, Luciano denied drug use to another psychiatrist, who found no addiction at this later time. Report of Dr. Freedran (UR).

  16. Report of Dr. Kinholz and Dr. Freedran, both in Box 13, Dewey Papers (UR).

  17. Report of Dr. Freedran in Box 13, Dewey Papers (UR); Luciano quoted in Leonard Lyons, “The Man Who Was Lucky,” Esquire (April 1953): 66–67, 127–31; FBI Memorandum, Re: Charles Luciana, August 28, 1935, in FBI Freedom of Information Act File (hereafter “FOIA”) of Charles Luciano (copy in possession of author).

  18. United States Census Bureau, 1920 Federal Population Census, Salvatore Lucania, District No. 1, New York, NY.

  19. Mike Dash, The First Family: Terror, Extortion, and the Birth of the American Mafia (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009), pp. 147, 150.

  20. Ibid., pp. 234–36.

  21. David Critchley, The Origin of Organized Crime in America: The New York City Mafia, 1891–1931 (New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 121, 155.

  22. United States Secret Service, Daily Reports for New York District Office, January 27, 1912, April 27, 1915, May 29, 1915, each in Records of the United States Secret Service, Record Group 87, in National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD (hereafter “NARA College Park”).

  23. New York Times, January 16, 1920; Michael A. Lerner, Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 40, 64.

  24. National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, Enforcement of the Prohibition Laws: Official Records, Senate, 71st Cong., 3d Sess. (Washington, DC: GPO, 1931), 203, 716.

  25. Lerner, Dry Manhattan, p. 95.

  26. National Commission, Enforcement of the Prohibition Laws, p. 723.

  27. Tom Geraghty, quoted in Jeff Kisseloff, ed., You Must Remember This: An Oral History of Manhattan from the 1890s to World War II (New York: Schocken Books, 1989), p. 584.

  28. Caroline F. Ware, Greenwich Village, 1920–1930: A Comment on American Civilization in the Post-War Years (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1935), p. 56;Critchley, Organized Crime, p. 143.

  29. Roger Touhy with Ray Brennan, The Stolen Years (Cleveland: Pennington Press, 1959), pp. 63, 65.

  30. Brooklyn Standard Union, July 22, 1931; New York Post, February 29, 1932.

  31. Mark H. Haller, “Bootleggers and American Gambling 1920–1950,” in Commission on the Review of the National Policy Toward Gambling, Gambling in America: Appendix (Washington, DC: GPO, 1976), pp. 109–11.

  32. Joseph Bonanno with Sergio Lalli, A Man of Honor: The Autobiography of Joseph Bonanno (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), pp. 65, 75.

  33. Nick Gentile, Vita di Capomafia (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1963), pp. 80, 87.

  34. Lerner, Dry Manhattan, p. 146.

  35. Malcolm F. Willoughby, Rum War at Sea (Washington, DC: GPO, 1964), pp. 32–33.

  36. George Wolf with Joseph DiMona, Frank Costello: Prime Minister of the Underworld (London: Staughton, 1975), pp. 12–15, 22, 50–51.

  37. Ibid.; Costello vs. United States, 365 U.S. 265 (1961); Investigation of Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, Hearings before the Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, Part 7, Senate, 81st Cong., 2d Sess. (1951), 895, 900 (hereafter “Kefauver Committee Hearings”).

  38. Daily Star, October 28, 1926; Brooklyn Standard Union, November 19, 1926; New York Times, January 27, 1926, January 21–22, 1927, January 31, 1927; Wolf, Costello, p. 51.

  39. Kefauver Committee Hearings, 889–904 (testimony of Frank Costello).

  40. Costello vs. United States, 365 U.S. 265 (1961).

  41. New York Times, August 3, 1924, June 11, 1925, June 30, 1925; New York Evening Post, April 16, 1925.

  42. Bonanno, Man of Honor, p. 76; Critchley, Origin of Organized Crime, p. 138.

  43. John Morahan, quoted in Jeff Kisseloff, ed., You Must Remember This: An Oral History of Manhattan from the 1890s to World War II (Baltimore: John's Hopkins University Press, 1989), p. 585.

  44. Ware, Greenwich Village, pp. 56–57; Lewis Valentine, Night Stick: The Autobiography of Lewis J. Valentine (New York: Dial Press, 1947), pp. 54–55.

  45. Humbert S. Nelli, The Business of Crime: Italians and Syndicate Crime in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 172.

  46. Masseria may have made key contacts while in Sing Sing. For eighteen months, between March 1914 and September 1916, Masseria's time in Sing Sing overlapped with that of Thomas “The Bull” Pennochio, a close ally of Charles “Lucky” Luciano. During Prohibition, Luciano and Pennochio would become key lieutenants of Masseria. Compare Giuseppe Masseria, Inmate Admission, Sing Sing Correctional Facility Records, New York State Archives, Albany, NY (hereafter “NYSA”) with Thomas Pennochio Prison File in Notorious Offenders Files, Records of the Federal Bureau of Prison, RG 129, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD (hereafter “NARA College Park”); Thomas Hunt and Michael Tona, “Cleveland Convention Was to Be Masseria Coronation,” Informer: History of American Crime & Law Enforcement (January 2010): 13–36 n. 83.

  47. Critchley, Origin of Organized Crime, p. 155; Lerner, Dry Manhattan, pp. 261–263.

  48. New York Evening Telegram, May 9, 1922; New York Times, May 9, 1922.

  49. New York Herald-Tribune, May 9, 1922; New York Evening Telegram, May 9, 1922, August 11, 1922; New York Times, May 9, 1922; People against Joseph Masseria (1922), in New York County District Attorney Records, New York Municipal Archives, New York, NY (hereafter “NYMA”).

  50. New York Call, August 9, 1922; New York Times, August 9, 1922.

  51. New York Times, April 16, 1931.

  52. Wolf, Frank Costello, p. 69; Dash, First Family, pp. 271–72.

  53. FBI Memorandum, General Investigative Intelligence File, October 15, 1956, in Records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, RG 65, (NARA College Park); New York Times, July 24, 1929.

  54. Bonanno, Man of Honor, p. 84; New York Times, April 16, 1931.

  55. Kisseloff, You Must Remember This, p. 597.

  56. Ben Wattenberg and Richard M. Scammon, The Real Majority: An Extraordinary Examination of the American Electorate (New York: Coward-McCann, 1970), p. 45.

  57. Ira Rosenwaike, Population History of New York City (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1972), pp. 93–95.

  58. Table 2–1 is based on Rosenwaike, Population History, pp. 77, 141, 202–204, and Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, The Estimated Jewish Population of the New York Area, 1900–1975 (New York: n.p., 1959), p. 15. The numbers in table 3–1 are rounded down to the nearest thousand and percentage point.

 
; 59. Federal Writers’ Project, “Italian Colonies in New York City, 1936,” in WPA Federal Writers’ Project (NYC Unit) Collection, 1936–1943 (NYMA); Tyler Anbinder, Five Points: The 19th-Century New York City Neighborhood that Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum (New York: Plume, 2002), p. 375.

  60. Jerry Della Femina, quoted in Myrna Katz Frommer and Harvey Frommer, ed., It Happened in Manhattan: An Oral History of Life in the City during the Mid-Twentieth Century (New York: Berkley Books, 2001), p. 47.

  61. Gus Petruzzelli, Memories of Growing up in Little Italy, NY (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2010), p. 11.

  62. Julius Drachsler, Intermarriage in New York City: A Statistical Study of the Amalgamation of European Peoples (New York: n.p., 1921), pp. 43–45.

  63. There were about five thousand mafiosi out of approximately 1,029,000 Italian Americans. Hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations: Organized Crime and the Illicit Traffic in Narcotics, Senate, 88th Cong., 1st Sess. (1963), 270–71 (testimony of Joseph Valachi); Rosenwaike, Population History, p. 205. This constitutes 0.48 percent of the total population.

  64. Robert A. Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), pp. 103–104.

  65. Clara Ferrara, quoted in An Oral History of Manhattan, p. 367.

  66. George P. LeBrun, It's Time to Tell (New York: William Morrow, 1962), pp. 130–31.

  67. Salvatore Mondello, A Sicilian in East Harlem (Youngstown, NY: Cambria Press, 2005), p. 54.

  68. Pete Pascale, quoted in An Oral History of Manhattan, p. 365.

  69. James B. Jacobs with Christopher Panarella and Jay Worthington, Busting the Mob: United States v. Cosa Nostra (New York: New York University Press, 1994), p. 20.

  70. Organized Crime: 25 Years after Valachi: Hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Affairs, Senate, 100th Cong., 2d Sess. (1988), 236 (testimony of Vincent Cafaro).

  71. Tony Napoli with Charles Messina, My Father, My Don: A Son's Journey from Organized Crime to Sobriety (Silver Spring, MD: Beckham Publications, 2002), p. 47.

  72. Organized Crime: 25 Years after Valachi, 201 (testimony of Joseph Pistone).

  73. Philip Carlo, Gaspipe: Confessions of a Mafia Boss (New York: William Morrow, 2008), pp. 5–7.

  74. Vincent Teresa, My Life in the Mafia (New York: Doubleday, 1973), pp. 21, 23.

  75. For background on the cosche of Sicily, see James Fentress, Rebels and Mafiosi, Death in a Sicilian Landscape (New York: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 172–74.

  76. Donald R. Cressey, Theft of a Nation (New York: Harper and Row, 1969).

  77. This section uses historical evidence to expand on the insights of criminologist Howard Abadinsky, the first academic to suggest that crime syndicates were like franchises. Howard Abadinsky, Organized Crime, 10th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2013), pp. 7–8.

  78. Roger D. Blair and Francine LaFontaine, The Economics of Franchising (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 4.

  79. This section expands on the insights of Italian scholar Diego Gambetta, who has written about the role of “criminal trademarks.” Diego Gambetta, Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), pp. 195–229.

  80. Henry Hill, quoted in Nicholas Pileggi, Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), pp. 57–58.

  81. Peter Maas, Serpico (New York: Viking Press, 1973), p. 156.

  82. Hill, quoted in Pileggi, Wiseguy, pp. 56–57.

  83. Michael Franzese, I'll Make You an Offer You Can't Refuse (New York: Thomas Nelson, 2009), p. 67; Peter Reuter, Disorganized Crime: The Economics of the Visible Hand (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1983), pp. 151–72.

  84. Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 45.

  85. Joseph Pistone, The Way of the Wiseguy (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2004), p. 81.

  86. Gambetta, Sicilian Mafia, pp. 45–46.

  87. FBI Report, La Cosa Nostra, October 20, 1967, in RG 65 (NARA College Park).

  88. John Roselli, quoted in Ovid Demaris, The Last Mafioso (New York: Times Books, 1981), p. 19.

  89. United States v. James Coonan, et. al., 938 F.2d 1533 (2d Cir. 1991).

  90. Anthony Serritella, Book Joint for Sale: Memoirs of a Bookie (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2011), p. 70.

  91. Organized Crime: 25 Years after Valachi, 239–40, 301 (testimony of Joseph Valachi); Joseph D. Pistone, Donnie Brasco (New York: Signet, 1997), pp. 78–79.

  92. Blair and Lafontaine, Economics of Franchising, p. 224.

  93. James Fentress, Rebels and Mafiosi: Death in a Sicilian Landscape (New York: Cornell University Press, 2000), p. 177, n. 59.

  94. Organized Crime: 25 Years after Valachi, 260 (testimony of Vincent Cafaro).

  95. FBI Memorandum, Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program, March 20, 1962, in FBI FOIA File on Gregory Scarpa Sr. (copy in possession of author).

  96. Organized Crime: 25 Years after Valachi, 236 (testimony of Vincent Cafaro); Jimmy Fratianno, cited in Demaris, Last Mafioso, p. 4.

  97. Peter Maas, The Valachi Papers (New York: Putnam, 1968), p. 201.

  98. Organized Crime: 25 Years after Valachi, 236–38 (testimony of Vincent Cafaro).

  99. Gentile, Vita de Capomafia, p. 86.

  100. Bonanno, Man of Honor, p. 159.

  101. See generally Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave (New York: Bantam, 1991).

  102. Timothy J. Gilfoyle, A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), p. 186.

  103. Gentile, Vita de Capomafia, p. 65.

  104. Mike Dash, The First Family: Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder, and the Birth of the American Mafia (New York: Ballantine Books, 2010), pp. 34, 97, 142, 183, 251.

  105. Claude S. Fischer, America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 48–49, 62.

  106. 48 U.S.C. §§ 1103–4 (1934); Nardone v. United States, 302 U.S. 379 (1937); Jacobs, Busting the Mob, p. 8.

  107. President's Commission on Organized Crime, Organized Crime and Money Laundering: Record of Hearing II, March 14, 1984, New York, New York (Washington, DC: GPO, 1985), 59 (testimony of Jimmy Fratianno); Demaris, Last Mafioso, p. 376.

  108. Investigative case file on Frank Costello in Box 52 in Kefauver Committee files; Binghamton Press, June 14, 1959; Jacobs, Busting the Mob, pp. 132, 158–59; Richard A. Posner, Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006 ), pp. 95–96.

  109. James J. Flink, The Automobile Age (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1988), pp. 130–31.

  110. Maas, Valachi Papers, p. 44.

  111. United States Treasury Department, Traffic in Opium and other Dangerous Drug for the Year Ended December 31, 1937 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1938), pp. 60–61.

  112. Mark H. Haller, “Bootleggers and American Gambling 1920–1950,” in Commission on the Review of the National Policy Toward Gambling, Gambling in America: Appendix (Washington, DC: GPO, 1976), p. 116.

  113. Dennis Griffin, The Battle for Las Vegas: The Law vs. The Mob (Las Vegas: Huntington Press, 2006), pp. 4–7.

  114. Shane White, Stephen Garton, Stephen Robertson, and Graham White, Playing the Numbers: Gambling in Harlem between the Wars (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. 13, 56, 237.

  115. Francis A. J. Ianni with Elizabeth Reuss-Ianni, A Family Business: Kinship and Social Control in Organized Crime (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1972), pp. 92–96; Harold Lasswell and Jeremiah McKenna, The Impact of Organized Crime on an Inner City Community (New York: Policy Sciences Center, 1972); Don Liddick, The Mob's Daily Number: Organized Crime and the Numbers Gambling Indus
try (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1999), pp. 99–101, 161–63.

  116. White, Playing the Numbers, pp. 237–38; FBI Report, Paul Joseph Correale, September 26, 1960, and FBI Report, Crime Conditions, May 15, 1962, both in RG 65 (NARA College Park).

  117. Joseph Bonanno, Man of Honor, p. 153.

  118. Bill Bonanno and Gary B. Abromovitz, The Last Testament of Bill Bonanno: The Final Secrets of a Life in the Mafia (New York: Harper, 2011), pp. 289–90.

  119. Richard O. Davis and Richard G. Abram, Betting the Line: Sports Wagering in American Life (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2001), pp. 35–36, 41–42, 87.

  120. Reuter, Disorganized Crime, pp. 14–40.

  121. John Cummings and Ernest Volkman, Goombata (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990), p. 101, cited in Critchley, Origin of Organized Crime, pp. 237–38.

  122. See chapter 7.

  CHAPTER 3: THE MAFIA REBELLION OF 1928–1931 AND THE FALL OF THE BOSS OF BOSSES

  1. Nick Gentile, Vita di Capomafia (Rome: Editori Riuniti,1963), p. 96; Joseph Bonanno with Sergio Lalli, A Man of Honor: The Autobiography of Joseph Bonanno (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), p. 87.

  2. For examples of the conventional history of the Castellammarese War, see Selwyn Raab, Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2005), pp. 22–34; John Davis, Mafia Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the Gambino Crime Family (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), pp. 36–43. By contrast, in his pioneering historical study of the conflict, David Critchley argues, “The War was predominantly a revolt by several U.S. Families against trends towards the informal consolidation of power that had built up, centered on the capo di capi's patronage powers.” David Critchley, The Origin of Organized Crime in America: The New York City Mafia, 1891–1931 (New York: Routledge, 2009), p. 165. However, Critchley still accepts much of the standard framing of “the Castellammare War of 1930–1931.” David Critchley, “Buster, Maranzano, and the Castellammare War, 1930–1931,” Global Crime 7, no. 1 (February 2006): 43–78. This book argues, moreover, that short-term ambitions and individual economic motives were more important factors than any revolt against patronage powers.