The Mob and the City

by C. Alexander Hortis

  17. New York State Crime Commission, Public Hearings (no. 5) (New York: n.p., 1953), 3667–70 (testimony of F. X. McQuade).

  18. Ibid., 1343 (testimony of Melvin Krulewitch), 1394 (testimony of Abe Greene).

  19. Senate Boxing Hearings, 104–13 (testimony of Frank Marrone).

  20. Ibid., 62 (testimony of Lew Burston).

  21. Utica Observer-Dispatch, August 10, 1958; FBI Report, Joseph Anthony Straci, RG 65 (NARA College Park).

  22. Life, May 26, 1952; Hearings before the Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce: Part 11, Senate, 82nd Cong., 1st Sess. (1950), 261 (testimony of William Weisberg); Senate Boxing Hearings, 91, 104–11 (testimonies of Harry Stromberg and Frank Marrone).

  23. Don Jordan, quoted in Peter Heller, “In this Corner…!” 42 World Champions Tell Their Story (New York: De Capo Press, 1994), p. 362.

  24. Rocky Graziano, Somebody up There Likes Me: The Story of My Life until Today (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1955), pp. 160–62; Jake La Motta, Raging Bull: My Story (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970), p. 80; Marty Pomerantz, quoted in Allen Bodner, When Boxing Was a Jewish Sport (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997), p. 37.

  25. Danny Kapilow, quoted in Bodner, When Boxing Was a Jewish Sport, p. 135; Senate Boxing Hearings, 7–19 (testimony of Jake La Motta); La Motta, Raging Bull, pp. 159–62; Brooklyn Eagle, January 22, 1948.

  26. Kapilow, quoted in Bodner, When Boxing Was a Jewish Sport, p. 136; Senate Boxing Hearings, 45–46 (testimony of Joe Louis).

  27. International Boxing Club of New York, Inc. v. United States, 358 U.S. 242 (1959); Senate Boxing Hearings, 1394 (testimony of Abe Greene).

  28. Kevin Mitchell, Jacobs Beach: The Mob, the Fights, the Fifties (New York: Pegasus Books, 2010), pp. 47–52.

  29. Life, June 17, 1946, May 26, 1952; State of New York, Report of the Joint Legislative Committee on Professional Boxing (1963), p. 26.

  30. Ibid., 80; Senate Boxing Hearings, 76 (testimony of Sam Richman), 570 (testimony of James Norris); FBN File, Boxers and Managers, August 22, 1956, in Box 148, RG 170 (NARA College Park).

  31. New York State Athletic Commission, In the Matter of an Inquiry into Alleged Irregularities in the Conduct of Boxing (December 12, 1955), copy in New York State Library, Albany, NY.

  32. New York Times, September 20, 1953; Brooklyn Eagle, June 27, 1954; Angelo Dundee, My View from the Corner: A Life in Boxing (New York: McGraw Hill, 2008), p. 36.

  33. Brooklyn Eagle, January 28, 1947; Life, February 10, 1947.

  34. Senate Boxing Hearings, 114–15 (testimony of James P. McShane); Hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations: Organized Crime and the Illicit Traffic in Narcotics, 274 (testimony of Valachi); Corruption in Professional Boxing: Hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Affairs, Senate, 102nd Cong., 2d Sess. (1992), 97 (testimony of Michael Franzese); Binghamton Press, January 27, 1947; Brooklyn Eagle, January 28, 1947.

  35. New York Times, February 11, 1947; Mitchell, Jacobs Beach, pp. 1–3.

  36. International Boxing Club of New York, Inc. v. United States, 358 U.S. 242 (1959).

  37. Senate Boxing Hearings, 302, 337 (testimony of Truman Gibson), 551–59 (testimony of Norris).

  38. New York Times, July 25, 1958, October 31, 1959.

  39. International Boxing Club of New York, Inc. v. United States, 358 U.S. at 246.

  40. New York Times, September 23, 1959, May 31, 1961.

  41. George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1995), pp. 336–44; Knapp Commission Report, pp. 133–42. Thanks to Lisa Davis and the website http://bitterqueen.typepad.com for identifying FBI documents and other primary sources on gay bars cited in this chapter.

  42. Stanley Walker, The Night Club Era (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1933), pp. 215–16; New York Times, November 30, 1967, March 23, 1970, August 1, 1977; Steve Ostrow, Live at the Continental: The Inside Story of the World-Famous Continental Baths; Book One: Bette, Buns and Balls (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2007), pp. 123–24; interview of John Doe by John O'Brien (ca. 1984), tape AC0375 in ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives, Los Angeles, CA.

  43. Chauncey, Gay New York, pp. 72–86, 327, 450 n. 74.

  44. FBI Report, David Petillo, August 30, 1968, and FBI Report, David Petillo, September 27, 1963, both available at: http://bitterqueen.typepad.com/friends_of_ours/2010/12/the-fbi-files-david-petillo-did-it-in-drag.html (accessed May 21, 2013); Life, February 28, 1969; Martin Duberman, Stonewall (New York: Dutton, 1993), pp. 183–84, 297 n. 15; Donald Goddard, Joey (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), pp. 317, 333, 347–48; William Hoffman and Lake Headley, Contract Killer: The Explosive Story of the Mafia's Most Notorious Hitman Donald “Tony The Greek” Frankos (New York: Thunder's Mouth, 1993), p. 201.

  45. New York Times, December 1, 1934, June 20, 1953; “Queer Doings Net Suspension for Vill. Clubs,” Billboard, December 2, 1944; Buddy Kent and Gail, quoted in Lisa E. Davis, “Back in Buddy's Day: Drags Original Lesbians Reflect on Their Heyday,” Xtra.ca, March 1, 2006, available at http://www.extra.ca/public/printStory.aspx?AFF_TYPE=4&STORY_ID=1427 (accessed May 21, 2013); Tommye and John, quoted in Joe E. Jeffreys, “Who's No Lady? Excerpts from an Oral History of New York City's 82 Club,” New York Folklore 14, nos. 1–2 (1993): 185–202; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 29, 1937; see promotional piece for Howdy Club at Lesbian Herstory Archives, Brooklyn, NY; Alan Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two (New York: Free Press, 1990), pp. 113–16; Thaddeus Russell, A Renegade History of the United States (New York: Free Press, 2010), pp. 234–35.

  46. Postcard of Tony Pastor's Downtown (in possession of the author); “Queer Doings Net Suspension for Vill. Clubs”; New York Times, February 27, 1944, November 30, 1967; FBI Report, Activities of Top Hoodlums, October 15, 1959, in RG 65 (NARA College Park).

  47. “Queer Doings Net Suspension for Vill. Clubs”; Condon, We Called It Music, p. 8; New York Times, March 18, 1967.

  48. Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer, U.S.A. Confidential (New York: Crown, 1952), p. 314.

  49. Bertie, quoted in Alison Owings, Hey, Waitress! The USA from the other Side of the Tray (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), pp. 193–94.

  50. Buddy Kent and Gail, quoted in Lisa E. Davis, “Back in Buddy's Day”; Lyn, quoted in Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Penguin Books, 1992), pp. 127, 332 n. 19.

  51. Hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations: Organized Crime and the Illicit Traffic in Narcotics, 291–92 (testimony of Valachi); Peter Maas, The Valachi Papers (New York: Perennial, 2003), p. 231; New York Times, June 20, 1953; Davis, “Back in Buddy's Day.”

  52. Terry Noel, quoted in Morgan Stevens, “Special Feature on Terry Noel,” 2005, available at http://www.queermusicheritage.us/fem-terrynoel.html (accessed May 21, 2013); Tommye and John, quoted in Jeffreys, “Who's No Lady?” pp. 185–202.

  53. Maas, Valachi Papers, pp. 210–12; New York Times, June 20, 1953; Charles Scaglione Sr., Camelot Lost (Pittsburgh: RoseDog Books, 2009), pp. 52–53.

  54. New York Times, December 17, 1963, February 14, 1965, October 16, 1966, November 30, 1967, January 8, 1970, August 1, 1977; R. Thomas Collins Jr., NewsWalker: A Story for Sweeney (Fairfax, VA: RavensYard, 2002), pp. 119–27; United States v. Ianniello, 808 F.2d 184 (2d Cir. 1986); FBI Report on Salvatore Granello, March 26, 1970, in FBI file on Salvatore Granello in RG 65 (NARA College Park), available at http://bitterqueen.typepad.com/friends_of_ours/2012/09/fbi-files-mob-boss-vito-genovese-protected-serial-child-rapist-salvatore-sally-burns-granello.html (accessed on May 21, 2013) (hereafter “FBI Report on Granello”); New York Times, October 7, 1970.

  55. People v. DeCurtis, 331 N.Y.S.2d 214 (N.Y. App. Div. 2d Dept. 1970); Coll
ins, NewsWalker, p. 107; New York Times, October 7, 1970; Jon Roberts and Evan Wright, American Desperado: My Life—From Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset (New York: Crown, 2011), p. 96; FBI Report on Granello. For other gay bars controlled by the Mafia in the 1950s and ’60s, see Duberman, Stonewall, pp. 183, 297 n. 15.

  56. Interview of Chuck Shaheen by Martin Duberman (1991), in Martin B. Duberman Papers, 1917–1997, in New York Public Library, New York, NY; interview of Mary Crawford by Alan Bérubé, February 17, 1983, available at http://www.glbthistory.org (accessed May 21, 2013).

  57. Public Broadcasting System, The Stonewall Uprising (2010); Kent, quoted in “Back in Buddy's Day.”

  58. FBI Airtel, Mattachine Society, Inc., Internal Security, June 11, 1959, and FBI Airtel, Subject: Mattachine Society, June 19, 1959, both in FBI FOIA File on the Mattachine Society (copy in possession of author); New York Times, November 30, 1967.

  59. Duberman, Stonewall, pp. 183–85, 297 n. 11; Chuck Shaheen, quoted in David Carter, Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution (New York: St. Martin's, 2005), pp. 68, 281 n. 19; Lucian K. Truscott IV, “Gay Pride History: The Real Mob at Stonewall,” available at http://www.throughyourbody.com/gay-pride-history-the-real-mob-at-stonewall/ (accessed May 21, 2013).

  60. Carter, Stonewall, pp. 131–37, 262–64; Lincoln Anderson, Villager, June 16–22, 2004; New York Daily News, July 6, 1969.

  61. Ray “Sylvia Lee” Rivera and Morty Manford, quoted in Eric Marcus, Making Gay History: The Half-Century Fight for Lesbian and Gay Equal Rights (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), pp. 127–29; protest leaflet available at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/stonewall-leaflet/ (accessed May 21, 2013).

  CHAPTER 7: THE LIVES OF WISEGUYS

  1. State of New York, 1915 New York State Census, Philip Albeniza, Assembly District 2, New York, NY; FBI Report, Philip Joseph Albanese, May 16, 1958, in Records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Record Group 65, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD (hereafter “NARA College Park”).

  2. Yonkers Herald-Statesmen, August 13, 1953, April 15, 1955.

  3. United States v. Philip Albanese, 224 F.2d 879 (2d Cir. 1955); Yonkers Herald-Statesmen, October 6, 1954.

  4. For an overview of early Mafia memoirs, see Thomas A. Firestone, “Mafia Memoirs: What They Tell Us about Organized Crime,” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 9, no. 3 (August 1993): 197–220.

  5. Joshua B. Freeman, Working-Class New York: Life and Labor since World War II (New York: New Press, 2001), pp. 7–18; United States Department of Labor Statistics, 100 Years of U.S. Consumer Spending: Data for the Nation, New York City, and Boston (Washington, DC: n.p., 2006), p. 22, available at http://www.bls.gov/opub/uscs/ (accessed August 25, 2013).

  6. Luciano, quoted in New York Times, June 19, 1936.

  7. Rocco Morelli, Forgetta ’bout It: From Mafia to Ministry (Orlando, FL: Bridge-Logos, 2007), p. 35.

  8. Organized Crime: 25 Years after Valachi: Hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Governmental Affairs, Senate, 100th Cong., 2d Sess. (1988), 203 (testimony of Joseph Pistone); Joseph D. Pistone with Richard Woodley, Donnie Brasco (New York: Signet, 1997), pp. 141–42. For additional examples of why men joined the Mafia, see Firestone, “Mafia Memoirs,” pp. 200–15.

  9. Organized Crime: 25 Years after Valachi, 236 (testimony of Vincent Cafaro); Tony Napoli, My Father, My Don: A Son's Journey from Organized Crime to Sobriety (Silver Spring, MD: Beckham, 2008), p. 47; Willie Fopiano, The Godson: A True-Life Account of 20 Years Inside the Mob (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), p. 8.

  10. Antonio Calderone, Pino Arlacchi, and Marc Romano, Men of Dishonor: Inside the Sicilian Mafia (New York: William Morrow, 1993), p. 67; Peter Maas, Underboss: Sammy the Bull Gravano's Story of life in the Mafia (New York: Harper Perennial, 1999), p. 88.

  11. Charles Siragusa, The Trail of the Poppy, Behind the Mask of the Mafia (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966), p. 66; Joseph Bonanno with Sergio Lalli, A Man of Honor: The Autobiography of Joseph Bonanno (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), p. 158.

  12. Joseph Cantalupo and Thomas Renner, Body Mike: An Unsparing Exposé by the Mafia Insider Who Turned on the Mob (New York: Villard Books, 1990), p. 24; Joe Barboza, Barboza (New York: Dell Publishing, 1975), p. 103.

  13. Dennis N. Griffin and Andrew DiDonato, Surviving the Mob: A Street Soldier's Life inside the Gambino Crime Family (Las Vegas, NV: Huntington Press, 2010), p. 11; Organized Crime: 25 Years after Valachi, 203–204 (testimony of Joseph Pistone).

  14. Tables 7–1 and 7–3 are based on the New York Family charts in 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). To be consistent with Table 7–2, I have narrowed the population to those 162 soldiers for whom reliable background information was available. The McClellan Committee's charts were based on arrest records and FBI and FBN intelligence files. The charts roughly reflect the primary activities of the soldiers. I have made a few minor adjustments to the data. To be consistent with chapter 5, I have limited the “narcotics” category to those actually convicted of a narcotics crime. In addition, I have supplemented the activities for two soldiers: Joseph Gallo was involved in vending machines, and Joe Valachi was involved in multiple activities.

  15. FBI Record Sheets reprinted in Charlie Carr, ed., New York Police Files on the Mafia (New York: Hosehead Productions, 2012), pp. 52, 94, 176, 184, 280.

  16. DiDonato, Surviving the Mob, p. 6.

  17. Peter Maas, The Valachi Papers (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1968), pp. 93, 129, 227, 232.

  18. Maas, Underboss, p. 289 (“Sammy at once confessed to participating, in one way or another, in eighteen or nineteen murders”).

  19. Clinton Prison Classification Clinic, Report on Carmine Galante, February 1, 1944, in Records of the Department of Correctional Services, New York State Archives, Albany, NY (hereafter “NYSA”).

  20. Organized Crime: 25 Years after Valachi, 236 (testimony of Vincent Cafaro); Joseph Stassi, quoted in “Oldest Living Mafioso,” GQ (September 2001), p. 376.

  21. Tony Napoli with Charles Messina, My Father, My Don, p. 80.

  22. Joseph Pistone, The Way of the Wiseguy (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2004), p. 24.

  23. Sal Profaci, quoted in George Anastasia, The Goodfella Tapes (New York: Avon Books, 1998) p. 89.

  24. Philip Leonetti, Scott Burnstein, and Christopher Graziano, Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family and the Bloody Fall of La Cosa Nostra (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2012), p. 25.

  25. Maas, Underboss, p. 41; Peter Reuter, Disorganized Crime: Illegal Markets and the Mafia (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1985), p. 99.

  26. Theresa Dalessio with Patrick Picciarelli, Mala Femina: A Woman's Life as the Daughter of a Don (Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books, 2003), p. 40.

  27. Maas, Valachi Papers, pp. 65, 79.

  28. Pistone, Donnie Brasco, p. 115.

  29. Louis Ferrante, Unlocked: A Journey from Prison to Proust (New York: Harper, 2008), p. 10.

  30. Vincent Teresa with Thomas C. Renner, My Life in the Mafia (New York: Doubleday, 1973), p. 137.

  31. New York Age, June 6, 1953; Thomas B. Ripy, Federal Excise Taxes on Alcoholic Beverages (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 1999).

  32. FBI, Criminal Intelligence Digest, February 11, 1965, in RG 65 (NARA College Park); case file on United States v. Pillon and Gambino, et al., Case No. 38045 (E.D.N.Y. 1941), in Records of the District Court of the United States, RG 21, National Archives and Records Administration, New York, NY (hereafter “NARA New York”).

  33. Maas, Valachi Papers, p. 239.

  34. Acknowledging the “wealth of testimony dealing with racketeering practices and organized crime involvement in the vending industry,” in the 1950s, a
later study found racketeering had dissipated by the early 1980s. Peter Reuter, Jonathan Rubinstein, and Simon Wynn, Racketeering in Legitimate Industries: Two Case Studies (Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice, 1983), pp. 15–31. This change may be due to the entry of new public companies and video electronics. See ibid., pp. 21, 26–27.

  35. Hearings before the Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, Part 46, Senate, 85th Cong., 2d. Sess. (1959) 16626–44 (testimony of Charles Lichtman), 16660–66 (testimony of Milton Green), 16667–79 (testimony of Benjamin Gottlieb).

  36. President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (Washington, DC: GPO, 1967), p. 189.

  37. Donald R. Cressey, Theft of the Nation: The Structure and Operations of Organized Crime in America (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2008), pp. 74–75.

  38. Carl Sifakis, The Mafia Encyclopedia, 3rd ed. (New York: Checkmark Books, 2005), p. xv.

  39. Organized Crime: 25 Years after Valachi, 301 (testimony of Joe Valachi); Joseph Volz and Peter J. Bridge, ed., The Mafia Talks (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1969), p. 98.

  40. David Critchley, The Origin of Organized Crime in America: The New York City Mafia, 1891–1931 (New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 238, 318 nn. 26–35.

  41. In his otherwise well-researched book, Critchley relies on a skewed analysis of the income of mobsters: First, Critchley emphasizes mob boss John Gotti's “middle-class lifestyle” while conspicuously ignoring Gotti's predecessor, Paul Castellano. Castellano, the Gambino Family boss from 1976 through 1985, was a millionaire who lived in a mansion on Todt Hill, Staten Island (see below). Second, Critchley points to the 1953 divorce proceedings of Anna and Vito Genovese, noting that their house was assessed at only $55,000 and that Anna and the IRS were unable to prove Vito's illegal income. However, their $55,000 house in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, was worth more than four times the median house value in New Jersey in the 1950s (about $481,000 in 2013 dollars), which is not exactly middle class. United States Census Bureau, “Historical Census of Housing Tables Home Values,” available at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/values.html (accessed August 20, 2013). Furthermore, multiple underworld sources have since confirmed that Genovese was in fact receiving cash income through hidden interests in nightclubs, narcotics, and other illegal funds. Organized Crime: 25 Years after Valachi, 291–92 (testimony of Valachi); FBI Memorandum, Salvatore Granello, October 5, 1960, and FBI Report, La Cosa Nostra, August 21, 1964, both in RG 65 (NARA College Park); United States v. Aviles, 274 F.2d 179 (2d Cir. 1960). Third, Critchley cites a study of “a sample of wills or probates left by deceased Mafia figures in New Jersey-Pennsylvania” that “uncovered their generally leaving few or no assets.” Critchley, Origin of Organized Crime, p. 238 (citing Michael Libonati and Herbert Edelhertz, Study of Property Ownership and Devolution in the Organized Crime Environment [1983]). But that study relied on a small sample of legal estate filings for mostly low-level men (twelve of the fifteen men). As the authors themselves acknowledge, “estate probate laws and tax requirements are not taken seriously by organized crime figures,” and organized crime figures often hold a range of “non-legal property interests” that do not show up in estate filings. Libonati and Edelhertz, Study of Property Ownership, pp. 18–20, 38–40, available at https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/95269NCJRS.pdf (accessed August 25, 2013). Fourth, Critchley focuses on bookmaking, with “strikingly little mention of numbers.” Shane White et al., Playing with Numbers: Gambling in Harlem between the Wars (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), p. 283 n. 13. However, the numbers lottery was more territorial with higher potential profits (see chapter 2).