by Gordon Kerr
Then, when Luciano was convicted and imprisoned on pimping charges in 1936, Genovese was made acting boss. He did not last long, however. In 1937, he was indicted for the murder of Ferdinand Boccia, a small-time gambling racketeer. Boccia and Genovese set up a rigged card game and, a few days later, Boccia demanded a third of the profits. He thought it was only fair as he had introduced them to the victim, a wealthy Italian businessman. Genovese refused to pay up, instead hiring Willie Gallo and Ernest ‘the Hawk’ Rupolo to murder Boccia. His body was pulled out of the Hudson River in May 1937, at which point Genovese offered Rupolo $175 to murder Gallo in case he talked. Rupolo made two bodged attempts before Gallo decided that this was getting ridiculous. He went to the police and implicated Genovese and Rupolo in the murder. Rupolo got 20 years, but Genovese took off before they could lock him up, too. He bought a house for his second wife in New Jersey, deposited money in various accounts for her and fled to Italy with a suitcase stuffed with $750,000. He settled in the town of Nola, not far from his home town Naples. Not a man to kick his heels when there was money to be made, he threw himself enthusiastically into the local narcotics trade.
So, when the Allies invaded Italy in 1944, starting their big push for Berlin and victory, who should they find waiting for them but Vito Genovese, an English-speaking American with lots of local knowledge and contacts. He got a job as an interpreter/liaison officer in the US Army headquarters, and turned himself into one of American Military Government of Occupied Territories’ (AMGOT) most trusted employees. This was a bit of a turnaround as, just under a year previously, he had arranged the killing of Carlo Tresca, editor of an anti-Fascist Italian-language newspaper in New York, as a favour to his good friend, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. He was a friend of the family – he had also been supplying drugs to Il Duce’s brother-in-law.
Ironically, Vito helped AMGOT to deal with crime in the Naples area, only, of course, so that he could clear out his rivals and take over their rackets. The opportunities were huge for a criminal mind such as Genovese’s and he worked with the Italian Mafia, establishing a massive black market operation in southern Italy. However, the military police launched an investigation into his activities and he was arrested in August 1944 and held in a military prison in Naples. While he was detained they looked into his past, learning that he was on the run from murder charges back in the United States. Luckily, however, his friends in America had not forgotten him and they made sure that the key witness in the case was not around to testify against him when he was deported to the States. The witness died of ‘an overdose of sedatives’ while being held in protective custody. Therefore in June 1945 all charges against Vito were dropped, to the disgust of the judge who said: ‘By devious means, among which were the terrorizing of witnesses, kidnapping them, yes, even murdering those who could give evidence against you, you have thwarted justice time and again.’
Genovese was free to return to business as usual, but things had changed. Luciano had by this time been deported back to Italy and, although he was still nominally in charge, the real boss was the man they called ‘the Prime Minister of the Underworld’, Frank Costello. This irritated Vito who, of course, thought he should be boss. After all, he had been acting boss before he had had to leave for Italy and he wanted all the wealth, power and prestige that the position brought. Even more irritating was the fact that he was not even given the position of underboss. That went to New Jersey racketeer Guarino ‘Willie’ Moretti, a cousin of Costello. Vito Genovese was now 52 years old and still only a capo.
As 1951 rolled around, Genovese made his mind up. He would take out Costello and his men and seize power.
Moretti was no problem. He had contracted syphilis from one of his many liaisons with prostitutes and was losing it. He talked too much, sometimes revealing Mob secrets to the press. When the US Senate Select Committee on Organized Crime started an investigation known as the Kefauver hearings, they called Moretti to testify. He hammed it up for the cameras and was too candid with the committee. Moretti had breached the Mafia code of silence, omerta. He was the first that Genovese dealt with. He spread word that Moretti was no good and had to be rubbed out. On 4 October 1951, three of Albert ‘Mad Hatter’ Anastasia’s hitmen took him to lunch. Afterwards, they killed him with a number of shots to the chest. Interestingly, he had been due that day to have lunch with comedy duo Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, but Lewis learned that morning that he had mumps and the pair cancelled. The first nail had been hammered into Frank’s coffin.
Genovese now went after the Prime Minister. He sent out soldier Vincent ‘Chin’ Gigante to whack Costello. In spite of a shotgun blast fired at his head from close range, Costello survived. Genovese had to move fast. He said that it had been kill or be killed, that Costello had been coming after him. He began to cultivate a perception of Costello as an ineffectual boss and made it very clear that he was now top of the heap and if anyone was found trying to contact Costello he would be considered a traitor and dealt with accordingly. He made Jerry Catena underboss and Michael Miranda became his consigliere. Probably wisely, Costello decided to retire, but only after being demoted to the position of soldier in the Family.
Being head of the Luciano Family was still not enough for Genovese. He wanted the position of capo di tutti capi, boss of bosses. To do that he would have to whack the ‘Mad Hatter’, Albert Anastasia, a dangerous and violent individual who had been prominent in the legendary Murder Inc. in its heyday. Genovese persuaded Carlo Gambino that it would be beneficial to both of them if Anastasia was not around any more and the Mad Hatter was sensationally shot dead in a barber’s chair in the Manhattan Park Sheraton Hotel on 25 October 1957.
Some three weeks later, Genovese organized the Apalachin Conference in the rural town of Apalachin, New York. It was at this meeting, attended by 58 top Mafiosi, that he hoped he would be enthroned as boss of bosses. But, it all went badly wrong. An eagle-eyed New York State Trooper, Edgar Croswell, had been observing the meeting house, which belonged to mobster Joseph ‘Joe the Barber’ Barbara, head of the Bufalino Crime Family. Croswell saw large numbers of mobsters arriving at the house, radioed in for reinforcements and they surrounded the farm. When the mobsters were alerted to the police presence, chaos erupted and they tried to flee. Some even ran off into the neighbouring woods. A number of men were arrested, amongst them Carlo Gambino and Vito Genovese. Aside from derailing Genovese’s power plan, the most important consequence of the Apalachin Meeting was that J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, had to admit to the power of organised crime in the States and declared war on it. Genovese had, unwittingly, brought Cosa Nostra out of the shadows and into the view of the public and law enforcement. More importantly for Don Vitole, he was not going to be boss of bosses.
In April 1959, it ceased to matter when he was convicted of selling a large quantity of heroin. He was fined $20,000 and sentenced to 15 years in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in Georgia. It was widely believed that he was set up by the authorities, especially as the Mafia had banned dealing in drugs as a part of its business. But another theory has it that Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello were behind it, knowing that it would not be long before Genovese would come after them. They set up a drug deal that they knew Genovese could not resist and Puerto Rican drug dealer Nelson ‘Melon’ Cantellops, was paid $100,000 to stand up in court and testify against Genovese. When he told a Grand Jury that he had attended a meeting in which Genovese spoke of taking over the drugs trade in the Bronx, the game was up for Vito.
Prior to sentencing, he summoned his men and claimed that he would continue to run his empire from behind bars, as other bosses had done. His brother Mike would be the conduit for his orders and Tommy Eboli would be acting boss. He appointed a team of caretakers to oversee day-to-day matters.
He ruled the Genovese Family in this way until he finally succumbed to heart failure in the federal prison medical centre in Springfield, Missouri, on Valentine’s Day 1969, aged 7
2.
Joe Colombo
Jo Colombo, boss of one of America’s five crime families from 1964 to 1971, did not start out as a hood. Instead, he began his working life in the American Coast Guard, but was never really cut out for it and was soon getting into trouble. At one point he was diagnosed in a naval hospital as suffering from psychoneurosis, was given a medical discharge and started collecting disability allowance. By the end of the war, his real career path was becoming clear and he could be found flexing his muscles and organising rigged dice games on the piers of New York. Soon he was climbing the greasy pole within the Profaci Family, one of the five divisions of the Mafia created by Lucky Luciano in 1931.
Joseph Profaci headed the Profaci Family, a man loathed by his soldiers because of his legendary tightfistedness and his heavy taxation of family members. He ran his branch of the Mob along the lines of the old Sicilian Mafia families, levying charges and tributes from family members. Nevertheless, under Profaci, the Brooklyn-based family business prospered through its labour rackets, extortion, gambling, hijacking and loan sharking. And Profaci, of course, prospered more than most. He was a flamboyant man, smoked big cigars, drove big, black cadillacs, and bought rows of tickets to Broadway shows. He owned homes in New York and Florida and a 328-acre estate in New Jersey.
Colombo was a well-spoken, articulate man with pots of charisma and flair, so it is no surprise that by the late 1950s he was a ‘made’ man – a full member of the Mafia family. His calm manner and gentlemanly behaviour belied his awful temper, however, and he could erupt into a terrible rage at any moment. But above all, Colombo was a survivor. After all he had survived the assassination of his father, Joe Sr.. He had been garrotted in his car, along with a lady friend, in 1928. Famously, when Joe Jr. was asked when he got to the top of the tree whether he was ever tempted to find the people responsible for his father’s murder, he replied: ‘Don’t they pay policemen for that?’
Joe became a highly respected enforcer for Profaci, ensuring monies got paid and debts were settled. He was part of a five-man hit team, working alongside Larry and Crazy Joe Gallo, two of the Mafia’s most efficient killers. It was a team credited with at least 15 kills. ‘When you killed with the Gallo boys,’ Carl Sifakis writes in The Mafia Encyclopedia, ‘you killed with the best.’ In addition to his hit-man duties, he worked as an enforcer on the docks, before moving on to running gambling dens, hijacking, and loan-sharking. He was seen as tough, smart and supremely capable. It did not take him long to achieve the senior Mafia position of capo.
In 1962, the unpopular Joe Profaci’s 34-year reign finally ended when he succumbed to cancer. To the disappointment of many members of the Profaci Family, especially Joey Gallo and his family of violent street thugs and enforcers, Giuseppe Magliocco, a man very much in the Profaci mould, was given control. The war with the Gallos, which had gone on during Profaci’s time, simmered on. Carmine ‘Junior’ Persico and Hugh McIntosh, two of Magliocco’s chief enforcers, survived attacks by the Gallos. And they would, undoubtedly, have gone after many more of Magliocco’s crew had 17 of them not been convicted on racketeering charges and two of them not been murdered by Magliocco’s men. Meanwhile, leader Joey Gallo sat in prison, powerless to do anything.
So with the Gallos safely out of the way for a while at least, Magliocco could get on with running the business. Part of that business was doing a big favour for Joe Bonnano, known as ‘Joe Bananas’ and head of the Bonnano Family, another of the five divisions of the Mafia. Bonnano wanted to be capo di tutti capi, boss of bosses, and there was only one way he could achieve that; he needed to be rid of the bosses of the other three families – Carlo Gambino, Thomas Lucchese and Stefano Magadinno. There was really only one man for the job. The ever reliable and eminently capable Joe Colombo was to be entrusted with it.
But it did not work out quite the way Bonnano had planned. What he forgot was that Joe Colombo was very close to the Gambino Family. In fact, before joining the Profaci Family, he had been employed by the Pride Meat Company run by Paul Gambino, brother of Carlo. It was through Gambino, who had taken a shine to the bright young Colombo, that Joe had found a place in the Profaci Family. He had never had much to do with Magliocco or Bonnano. Consequently, he reckoned that his loyalties lay with the Gambinos and not with Bonnano. Joe went to Carlo Gambini and told him about Bonnano’s plan. Gambino was, needless to say, furious and convened a meeting of the other families to which Bonnano and Magliocco were summoned to explain themselves. Bonnano failed to show but Magliocco attended, admitted the plan, was fined $50,000 and sent into retirement. He was already a sick man and he died a month later. Joe Bananas was removed from his position and his family broke into two groups. The press termed it ‘The Banana Split’.
Gambino was now top dog and knew he owed it to Joe Colombo. He also thought that if Colombo became boss of the Profaci Family, he would be a mere puppet and Colombo would really be pulling the strings. So, he petitioned the Commission to put Colombo in charge of the Profaci Family. The decision was unanimous and Colombo, aged 40, became the youngest mob boss ever.
It was a decision not to everyone’s liking. New Jersey Mafia boss Simone Rizz ‘Sam the Plumber’ DeCavalcante said at the time: ‘What experience has he got? He was a bustout guy all his life . . . What does he know?’ And within his own family, there were warring factions. However, the Gallos still did not have the strength to be in a position to challenge Colombo. But there was also the Persico crew who provided enforcement for the Profaci Family. Nonetheless, Joe’s control was absolute and the press began to refer to the Profaci Family as the Colombo Family.
Joe Colombo’s life was not just all about the Mob. He was a devout Catholic. One story alleges that when a valuable crown was stolen from a Brooklyn church, he was outraged. He put the word out that it should be returned immediately. The thief did so, but made the fatal mistake of keeping three of the diamonds from the crown. Not long afterwards his body was found with a rosary wrapped around his neck.
When Colombo’s son was arrested in 1970 for melting down $500,000 of US coins for their silver content, Joe formed the Italian–American Civil Rights League, appointing himself leader. Its stated aim was to protest against the harassment of Italian Americans but his real objective, apart from skimming money from the organisation of course, was to portray anti-Mafia activities by the police and FBI as harassment of Italian Americans. Its benefit events – featuring stars such as Frank Sinatra – raised large sums of money which went straight into Mafia coffers, and by the end of the year the League had 150,000 members and 50 chapters across the country. But other Mafia bosses began to worry about what appeared to be Joe’s obsession with the League. They also worried about the publicity he was attracting. He was giving interviews on television and making speeches. Throughout its history, the Mob has shunned publicity and has always dealt harshly with those of its members who courted it. Joe did not help by allegedly spitting in Carlo Gambino’s face when Gambino complained about the publicity surrounding Joe.
The situation was complicated by the release from prison of Joey Gallo. Gallo had already gone to war once, with Joe Profaci, over the leadership of the family, and he hated Colombo for his activities during that war. He had made good use of his prison time, building alliances with other ethnic criminals. He courted, in particular, the Afro-American criminal elements in Harlem and the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. He was using these contacts to disrupt Colombo’s activities in Brooklyn.
Joe had organised the League’s second big rally for 28 June 1971. The day dawned bright and sunny and when he was picked up by his driver that morning, he felt good. The League was the perfect scam – it had the air of a legitimate organisation, it made him look good and, above all, it made him lots of money, more than $1 million in its first year. He would make still more today.
He arrived at the venue at Columbus Circle and made for the platform where his sons, Anthony and Joe Jr., were working, along with around 50 of his me
n. There were police, TV reporters, photographers and around 4,000 people in the audience. As Joe approached the stage, a young black man filmed him up close and as he reached it, the black man, only a few feet away, suddenly dropped his camera, whipped out a pistol and fired three shots into Colombo’s head and neck. Mayhem broke out as Joe stumbled onto the steps. Joe Jr., another Colombo Family soldier and a couple of cops roughly wrestled the black man, Jerome Johnson, to the ground but as the cops pulled out their handcuffs and struggled to cuff Johnson, a short, stocky man with a pistol in his hand, pushed through the baying crowd now surrounding the assassin and leaned forward, shooting him dead. Then he was gone in the crowd.
Colombo was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital where surgeons fought to save his life. He survived, but remained in a coma for the seven remaining years of his life.
As Joe Gallo said: ‘He was vegetabled.’
Carmine ‘The Snake’ Persico
Carmine Persico is not the best-looking guy in the world. But, small and scrawny though he is, with one hand mangled from a bullet wound, he is not a man to tangle with and he has been known to carry an ice-pick around with him just in case someone annoyed him. His hand-wound is not the only injury, for Carmine has been shot some 20 times in his long and illustrious Mafia career. He is sometimes known as ‘Immortal’ on account of his ability to survive the countless attacks on him, one of which was a bomb in 1963 from which he escaped with minor injuries. However, the most popular nickname for this Mob veteran is pretty unappetising – ‘The Snake’. He was given this as a youngster because of the slyness of his crimes.
