30 May 2017

Zanghi 'squeals' after brother's murder

On this date in 1927, two men were felled by shotgun and automatic pistol fire as they chatted outside a South Philadelphia restaurant. The shooting resulted in unprecedented cooperation with law enforcement by a Philadelphia gang leader and the arrest and (largely unsuccessful) prosecution of local Mafia leadership.

Philadelphia Inquirer, May 31, 1927.
The location of the shooting was the Cafe Calabria, 824 South Eighth Street near Christian Street. Gunmen positioned in the area coordinated with others in a passing automobile for the carefully planned 6 p.m. attack.

Anthony "Musky" Zanghi, 27, an arrogant gang boss who regularly found himself in as much trouble with other underworld figures as he was with law enforcement officers, was the apparent target of the gunmen. But he avoided any injury, reportedly by ducking for cover at just the right moment.

Zanghi's little brother Joseph, 19, and underworld colleague Vincent "Scabby" Cocozza, 31, were not as fortunate. They were hit by flying lead as they stood near Musky on the sidewalk. A slug penetrated the center of Joseph Zanghi's forehead, killing him instantly. Scabby was shot multiple times. He died minutes after arrival at Pennsylvania Hospital.

One of the witnesses to the double-murder was a six-year-old Alfred "Freddy" Cocozza, nephew of the slain Vincent Cocozza. Years later, Freddy Cocozza embarked on a fabulously successful singing career using the name Mario Lanza.

Vincent Cocozza death certificate

Early accounts of the shooting were vague. Some reports said Joseph Zanghi and Vincent Cocozza were shot while waiting for Musky to finish dinner at the Giardino di Torrena restaurant next door at 822 South Eighth Street.

Musky was so enraged by the killing of his brother that he provided detectives with a detailed story of the incident and formally accused a number of Philadelphia-area men of taking part in it. Police officials said it was the first time they recalled any crime figure of Zanghi's rank breaking the underworld's "code of silence."

According to his story, he and Cocozza had been in Atlantic City, New Jersey, earlier in the day. Upon their return to Philadelphia, Anthony Zanghi was warned to stay out of sight, as gunmen from out of town were looking for him.  Zanghi did not follow the advice.

Minutes before six o'clock, Musky and Cocozza encountered local Mafiosi Salvatore Sabella and John "Big Nose" Avena along Eighth Street. Sabella and Avena greeted Zanghi with unusual warmth, patting him on the shoulders and inquiring about his health.

Anthony "Musky" Zanghi
"I knew they were a couple of [John] Scopoletti's men, and it struck me funny that they were making so much fuss over me," Zanghi told detectives. (Zanghi believed that Scopoletti was the boss of the local Mafia at the time. That appears to have been an error.)

Cocozza walked on and bumped into Joseph Zanghi, who was on his way to meet his brother. The two men stopped to talk, while Anthony Zanghi worked to extract himself from the Sicilian gangsters.

Zanghi told investigators that he spotted a few Scopoletti men sneak around a corner. Certain that something was up, he stepped away from Sabella and Avena. At that moment, a blue sedan sped around the corner from Christian Street and Sabella and Avena and other men on the street drew pistols.

Musky dove for cover as the weapons from the sidewalk and the street opened fire. As Scabby and Joseph collapsed, the gunmen on the sidewalk jumped onto the sides of the automobile and were quickly carried away.

Hearing this story, police gathered up Scopoletti, Sabella, Avena, Joseph Ida, Dominick Festa, Luigi Quaranta and Dominick Pollina. They also arrested four men from New Brunswick, New Jersey, who showed up to meet with the Mafiosi as the arrests were being made. The New Jersey suspects were identified as Norman Marsella, Nicholas Messino, Joseph Bruno and John Marco.

Early on the morning of May 31, an emotional Zanghi identified all of the Philadelphia men in a police lineup, calling the suspects "dirty dogs" and "dirty rats." As he first saw the lineup, he called out, "There's the dirty rats that killed my brother. Let me get at them." According to reports, Zanghi decked Sabella with a single punch to his head.

After making the identifications, the gang leader wept: "I've done something I never thought any cop could ever make me do. I've squealed. I'll be killed now for sure, but I don't care. My brother is dead, and I loved my brother."

Zanghi provided police with information on underworld activities, including regional trafficking in liquor, narcotics and women. Police also learned that Zanghi's organization had been shaking down saloons in the region that did business with his bootlegging competitors, a possible motive for the Mafiosi to wish to eliminate Zanghi.

A short time later, there was reason to doubt Zanghi's stated determination to see his brother's killers brought to justice. Musky went missing. Luigi Quaranta was tried and convicted during his absence. Quaranta was later given a new trial because Zanghi - his original accuser - had been unavailable for cross examination.

Defense witnesses testified that Zanghi falsely identified the suspects. One witness testified that Zanghi privately admitted he did so in order to extort large payments from the Mafiosi. Zanghi's disappearance was said to be evidence that he had received a payment. He soon returned to Philadelphia, but he had little credibility left. None of the other murder suspects were convicted.

Anthony Zanghi remained a racketeer. Suspected of the 1928 murder of Anthony Denni, he left Pennsylvania and began operating in New York under the name of William Martino. Musky was shot to death in Manhattan's Little Italy, on Mulberry Street between Canal and Hester, on August 7, 1934. Police believed that Zanghi business partner Anthony Cugino, then in hiding, killed Zanghi after an argument related to a currency counterfeiting operation. Zanghi's widow, Antoinette, was subsequently arrested, tried and convicted of working in the same counterfeiting racket. Police tracked down Cugino the following year. He hanged himself in a holding cell at New York City Police Headquarters on September 8, 1935, before he could be arraigned for his partner's murder.


Sources:
  • Joseph Zanghi Certificate of Death, County of Philadelphia, file no. 47793, reg. no. 12335, filed June 1, 1927.
  • Vincent Cocozza Certificate of Death, County of Philadelphia, file no. 46043, reg. no. 12345, filed June 1, 1927.
  • New York City Death Index, certificate no. 18199, Aug. 7, 1934, Ancestry.com.
  • Register of Interments, Mt. Moriah, Philadelphia PA, Ancestry.com.


  • "2 slain in street by gunmen firing from racing auto," Philadelphia Inquirer, May 31, 1927, p. 1
  • "Gangsters kill 2 men," Wilmington DE Evening Journal, May 31, 1927, p. 8.
  • "Use pump guns in gang warfare," Wilkes-Barre PA Record, May 31, 1927, p. 1.
  • "Two men slain on street corner," Pittsburgh Press, May 31, 1927, p. 1.
  • "Breaks gang law in helping cops nab brother's slayers," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 31, 1927, p. 6.
  • "Gang chief names seven as slayers' bares crime ring," Philadelphia Inquirer, June 1, 1927, p. 1.
  • "Scopeletti trial nearly disrupted by 'buying' charge," Philadelphia Inquirer, July 1, 1927, p. 1.
  • "New trial in killings," Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 30, 1927, p. 2.
  • "Gangster killed in crowded street," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Aug. 8, 1934, p. 11.
  • "Zanghi widow held as bad bill passer," Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 19, 1934, p. 2.
  • "Ex-inmate of Maryland pen, wholesale killer, hangs himself in cell," Baltimore Sun, Sept. 9, 1935, p. 20.

29 May 2017

Chicago's Genna is laid to rest

On this date in 1925, Chicago Mafia leader Angelo Genna was laid to rest at Mount Carmel Cemetery in the village of Hillside, west of the Windy City. Observers said his funeral was as spectacular as that of his gangland rival Dean O'Banion half a year earlier.


The twenty-seven-year-old Genna was shot to death earlier in the week while driving in his roadster. Authorities determined that four shotguns fired at him from an automobile that pulled alongside of his. Genna's car smashed into a lamppost at Hudson and Ogden Avenues. Genna was taken to the hospital, where he died a few hours later without providing any statement about his killers. Family members also had no useful information for police and insisted that Genna, who had been involved in gangland conflicts for years and was once tried for murder, hadn't an enemy in the world.


Decatur Herald May 30, 1925
 Catholic officials denied Genna a church funeral, but a priest from Holy Guardian Church visited to pray with family members. A wake was held at the home of Genna's in-laws, the Spingolas, at Taylor Street near Halsted. (The Spingolas had become Genna's in-laws just a few months earlier at a lavish wedding that reportedly featured a one-ton wedding cake.)

As thousands, including judges, politicians and federal officials, visited the Spingola home to pay their respects, the home and the sidewalk outside became filled with enormous floral tributes. Chicago Tribune reporter Genevieve Forbes Herrick noted that notorious bootlegger Johnny Torrio, then in prison, sent a large vase constructed of pink and white carnations. Herrick went on to describe additional offerings:

There were bachelor buttons from the "Boys from Cicero;" a pile of blood red roses from the widow; a heart of pinks from the boys at Spingola's garage; peonies from "Diamond Joe" Esposito; lilies from Al Capone; a mass of flowers from "Samoots" Amatuna; more flowers from the Genna boys, still more from the Spingolas, and so until they spilled out of 31 limousines on the way to the cemetery.

Another source indicated that Capone's impressive eight-foot-tall floral piece was not his only contribution. The gang boss was said to have helped arrange the funeral.

Herrick noted that Genna's wounds were carefully concealed within the open casket at the wake. "The rich folds of the purple robe swathing his body hid the dozen or so bullet wounds, ugly things, which four enemies had poured into him...," she wrote.

At 10 o'clock, Friday morning, May 29, pall bearers from the Unione Siciliana carefully moved Genna's heavy $6,000 casket - said to be bronze with silver trim and the occupant's name written in gold - to the waiting hearse. A published report estimated the weight of the casket at 1,200 pounds.

A band played as the funeral cortege - a mile and a half long - made its way to the cemetery. An estimated 20,000 people lined the narrow streets of Chicago's Little Italy to view the spectacle. Genna's remains were interred in a $10,000 vault a short distance from O'Banion's gravesite.

Sources:
  • Angelo Genna death certificate, Cook County, State of Illinois, reg. no. 29944, filed Nov. 19, 1925, original reg. no. 1006, filed May 28, 1925.
  • Herrick, Genevieve Forbes, "New rich rum chief slain by gunmen in car," Chicago Tribune, May 27, 1925, p. 2.
  • "Feudist's death may renew war," Decatur IL Herald, May 27, 1925, p. 1.
  • "Splendor will surround Genna funeral today," Chicago Tribune, May 29, 1925, p. 3.
  • Herrick, Genevieve Forbes, "Chicago ne'er had funeral like Genna's," Chicago Tribune, May 30, 1925, p. 1.
  • "Funeral pomp awes Chicago's 'Little Italy,'" Decatur IL Herald, May 30, 1925, p. 1.
Link:

24 May 2017

On This Day in 1933: Lepke & Lucky Linked to Broadway Shootout



The well-dressed patrons of Broadway's evening thoroughfare likely expected to be wowed and dazzled by any number of eateries, cabarets or simply the neon lit spectacle.  Slugs from automatic shotguns? The unmistakable scent of gunpowder? A wildly out of control car chase?  No, these were not what visitors  foresaw, but a loud outdoor show they most certainly did get, and it ended with bloody collateral damage.

Irene Savage
On May 25th, 1933, As people were filtering in and out of various establishments around Manhattan's 80th and 81st street, two sedans raced by (one report claimed three vehicles were involved), with one vehicle's occupants visibly the aggressor, firing high-powered shotguns and/or machine guns at the other.  The gun battling pursuit, though short-lived, ended when the presumed dominant car sped off east on 81st while the bullet-ridden loser vehicle crashed into a fence on 84th.  All of the firefight participants escaped - including two bloodied, limping mobsters who fled the wrecked vehicle.  The shooting, however, put three of four civilian victims in the hospital:  Irene Savage, 24, took a bullet in the shoulder, Walter O' Donald, a visiting shopper from Hornell New York, suffered a presumed minor scalp grazing via shotgun slug, Sadie Fontine, 45, suffered the worst injuries, hit directly with a bullet in the back and shrapnel in her hips. Edward Safern, whose car was struck by stray bullets, suffered no physical injuries.

Waxey Gordon
Despite plenty of witnesses  the only physical evidence retrieved from the scene - blood throughout the crashed car, two pearl colored fedoras with New Jersey haberdashery labels, car registration to an 'Edward Rosen' of the Bronx, and the inch think glass of the vehicle windshield.  The thick car windows were obviously intentional 'bullet proofing' (though proved a failure against the high powered rounds), the hats helped in the police theory that a bootlegging war involving Irving Wexler, aka Waxey Gordon could be the motive, but upon following up the registration lead... it appeared Edward Rosen was a manufactured name, and the vehicle didn't belong to anyone at the given address in the Bronx.

"As police locked the trio up, they announced they had definite information that a beer war between Gordon and two men whom they named as Louis "Lefty" Buckhalter and Charles Luciano, has been ended by a truce." - Associated Press, September 1, 1933.


Lepke Buchalter 1933
It took a few months for all the puzzle pieces to fall into place, climaxing when police pinned charges on Charles 'Chink' Sherman, his brother Henry, and Jack Weinstein.  The trio had already been in custody for other weapons and narcotics charges, and were noted as being "the few remaining members of the Waxey Gordon Gang."  Although the three men denied any participation in the May 25th shootings, information led police to identify two other involved individuals, both of whom carrying reputations  known to certain law enforcement entities, yet not very familiar to the larger public.  Louis 'Lepke' Buchalter and Charles Luciano.  Indeed, in 1933 neither man was a household name, but within the underworld they possessed quite a resume and status.
Lucky Luciano 1931

Waxey Gordon, once allied with Luciano, Lepke, Meyer Lansky, and so on, had been losing favor with the group and feuds erupted between the factions, which included Dutch Schultz who, at the time, was in good graces with the likes of Luciano.  Some theorize it was Meyer Lansky who filtered tips to police that eventually put Gordon away on narcotics charges.  In any case, Gordon was in jail, several allies had been murdered both in New York and Los Angeles, and 'Chink' Sherman's fate would be far worse than that of the innocent bystanders caught in his gang's fusillade. 


Sherman, who had bad blood with Dutch Schultz dating back to knife and gunfights in 1931, met the grim reaper in 1935. His body... discovered in a shallow lime pit within a barn in Monticello New York.  Sherman had been shot in the arm, his skull showed a bullet wound and that of a blow from a fire axe, presumably.  The property where the body was found belonged to the Drucker family.  It took another five years before the connection was made that Sherman's grave was one of several in the region, and that  one of the property owners -  Jack Drucker - served as an icepick wielding member of Murder Inc. The greater gangland irony - Schultz, who also eventually fell out good graces with the fellas, was gunned down by Murder Inc. henchmen barely two weeks before Chink Sherman got whacked. Further, 1935 was also the year that Charles Luciano's name escalated into public recognition,  having made much larger headlines in regard to theories of who may have ordered the Dutch Schultz murder.





Sources:
AP. "Gang Gunners Hit Two Women On Broadway." Geneva Daily Times. 25 May 1933. P.3.
"Auto Gun Duel Injuring Three Laid to Beer Feud." Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 25 May 1933. P. 8.
Cipollini, Christian. "Lucky Luciano: Mysterious Tales of a Gangland Legend." Strategic Media Books. 2014.
AP. "Sherman, One of Few Left Of Gordon's Gang, Nabbed." Buffalo Courier Express. 1 September 1933. P. 3.









19 May 2017

The Long Black Veil: The Widows of Frankie Yale

Before 1925, women associated with mobsters were rarely seen in the newspapers.  The mob funeral, which spawned a mid-1920s genre of photojournalism, would lift the blackout on mob women and their children.

With Prohibition, newspapers kept mob activity in the face of the law-abiding.  It was a time when everybody read the paper.  While gangland hits were making the front page, some vestiges of Edwardian morality kept most gangsters' molls away from the camera lens.  With the mob funeral, photojournalists at last found a tasteful way to portray the mystery women connected to gangland. 

Summer in the city and gangland murders made for dramatic sendoffs.  By 1925, the war between the Torrio/Capone and Genna factions raged on Chicago's West Side.  On June 13th, Mike Genna of the alcohol-making Genna family was mortally wounded in a battle with police officers.  Angelo Genna had been killed three weeks prior on May 26th, and Anthony "Tony" Genna would die on July 8th.



Aerial photos of the Genna corteges lining the streets showed a strange ink blot.  Closer inspection revealed a cluster of black-garbed women of the Genna family, bereaved of sons and lovers.









New York reporters would not be outdone by Chicago.  On July 1, 1928, Frankie Uale, whose ethnic name was often anglicized to "Frankie Yale," became the first recorded New York mob boss to die in a submachine gun ambush.  (The submachine gun was discovered to be unfired.  Some initial accounts attributed his wounds, which rendered him unrecognizable, to a shotgun blast.) 

Yale, a strikebreaker, racketeer and fixer in the parlance of the day, was a Capone associate.  He is said to have been the assassin of  "Big Jim" Colosimo.  Uale was killed as he drove his expensive sedan down a Brooklyn street in broad daylight.  A car bearing Illinois or Indiana license plates fired six shots aimed at his head.  His car crashed through a fence and stopped in a yard as pedestrians ran for cover. 

The press covered the lavish funeral from a unique angle.  Frankie Yale had not one but two widows, each with her own children in attendance.  No aerial or bird's eye view of this event would satisfy photographers, who used close-up techniques to snap tear-stained faces hiding beneath yards of black tulle.  

There was the "aging Mrs. Maria Yale with her two children..." and there was "the other woman, Lucienda, for whom the gangland emperor deserted Maria."

Public records indicate the likelihood that Maria (nee' Pea) might have been the only Mrs. Frankie Uale.  The two were married on March 1, 1917 in Brooklyn.  No record of a divorce or subsequent remarriage is recorded for Frankie Uale in New York City.


Sources: 

March 3, 1929, 'Chicago Gangland:  The True Story of its Murders, its Vices and its Reprisals," by James O'Donnell Bennett, Chicago Daily Tribune

July 2, 1928, "Rich Flowers Smell of Guns and Revenge," New York Daily News.

Kings County Groom Index

Photos:  Collection of author




 

18 May 2017

Another King falls


Thirty-eight year old Bill Kirkillis was a former Chicago hoodlum who had moved to Massillon, Ohio, and had become known as the "King of Columbia Heights," a section of that city. On this date back in 1931, Kirkillis was exiting an apartment and heading for his car when a gunman opened fire on him. One of the four shots plowed into his right side and made it to his hear, killing him.

Kirkillis had been recently released from the workhouse where he did a stint for stabbing a man. He had also been picked up on suspicion of killing another. However, police believe that Kirkillis was  bumped off for tipping off Federal Prohibition agents about speakeasies belonging to his rivals.

 


16 May 2017

1929: Capone meets City of Brotherly Love

Arrested with concealed weapon on his way
home from Atlantic City peace conference


May 16, 1929 - Chicago crime lord Al Capone and his lieutenant, Frank Rio, were stopped by police detectives outside the Stanley Theatre, southwest corner of Nineteenth and Market Streets in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Washington Post
May 17, 1929
The notorious gangsters insisted they were in Philadelphia to kill only time, while waiting for the next Chicago-bound train. Detectives found that both men had handguns. Capone and Rio were arrested for carrying concealed deadly weapons.

Capone gave a detailed statement to authorities describing his situation: He and Rio were returning from a Chicago underworld peace conference at Atlantic City, New Jersey. They were driving to the North Philadelphia Station to catch the afternoon Broad Way Limited train back to Chicago. Automobile problems caused them to miss their train. The next train was scheduled to leave North Philadelphia some hours later, and the two gangsters decided to relax in the theater.

Capone's surprising stay in Pennsylvania began with a night in police lockup and would stretch on to a year. Treating the charge dismissively, the next day the Chicago boss and his aide pleaded guilty to weapons possession. They appeared stunned when Judge John E. Walsh sentenced them to one-year sentences in state prison.

The U.S. press immediately began speculating that Capone orchestrated his arrest and conviction in order to escape the vengeance of underworld rivals. Chicago's St. Valentine's Day Massacre occurred only three months earlier. Some claimed that former Chicago underworld leader Johnny Torrio had come out of retirement to order Capone to have himself arrested so things in the Windy City could cool down. No known data or reasonable analysis of available data supports these notions.

Capone certainly was not a willing prisoner. His attorney tried to postpone the trial, to achieve Capone's discharge on a bond that he would never reenter the city and to arrange a suspended sentence. Capone subsequently griped over the speed of his trial and the severity of his punishment, and he actively sought his release on appeal.

 


Atlantic City convention

Other legends sprang up relating to the meeting in Atlantic City. Some books and television programs have suggested that it was an organizational meeting - called by Salvatore "Charlie Luciano" Lucania, Johnny Torrio or Frank Costello - for a nationwide criminal syndicate. Others claim it was a sort of intervention by the nation's gang bosses to break Capone of his murderous habits or a disciplinary hearing against the Chicago gang leader.

The original source of these legends is difficult to pin down, and it seems they have snowballed over time. It was reported in May 1929 that Capone personally told Philadelphia Director of Public Safety Lemuel Schofield: "We stopped at the President Hotel, where I registered under an assumed name. 'Bugs' Moran, the leader of the North Side Gang, seven of whose men were killed on St. Valentine's Day, and three or four other Chicago gang leaders, whose names I don't care to mention, participated. We talked over our troubles for three days. We all agreed at the end of that time to sign on the dotted line, bury the past and forget warfare in the future, for the general good of all concerned." (New York Times, May 18, 1929, p. 1.)

When Herbert Asbury, who had a strong tendency toward sensationalism, published The Gangs of Chicago in 1940, he basically repeated the Capone account, calling the Atlantic City event a peace conference of Chicago bosses. Asbury's sensationalist tendency was satisfied merely by inflating the number of Chicago bosses to thirty.

In the same year (1940), Thompson and Raymond's Gang Rule in New York seems to have been the first book to claim that the meeting involved bosses from outside of Chicago. They placed the convention at the Hotel President and said attendees included "most of the leaders in the national Unione Siciliane." The purpose, according to the authors, was to put a stop to Sicilian and Italian gangland feuds and arrange a system for a panel of bosses to consider and approve of killings before they were performed. The authors claimed that Frank Costello developed those ideas.

Twenty-two years later, Bill Brennan further expanded the conference story and added details for his book, The Frank Costello Story. Brennan, apparently realizing that Costello was not a boss in 1929 and did not have the authority to call a nationwide conference of underworld leaders, portrayed the Hotel President gathering as a bit of an insurrection against old-line Mafia bosses like Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria. Providing no source, Brennan claimed that the attendees included Capone, Jake Guzik, Frankie Yale, Joe Adonis, Frank Erickson, Owen Madden, Max Hoff, George Remus, Solly Weissman, Larry Fay and members of Detroit's Purple Gang. There were problems with Brennan's account - not the least of which was the death of Frankie Yale almost a year earlier - but that did not stop other authors from picking up the ball and running with it.

President Hotel
The Chicago Crime Book of 1967, edited by Albert Halper, tried to return the story to its origins with added importance for former Chicago gang boss Torrio. A chapter written by Francis X. Bush said that the Atlantic City conference involved Capone, Torrio, Joe Aiello and Bugs Moran, along with their chief aides. The conference concluded, he said, with a formal written agreement establishing a crime syndicate in Chicago. Torrio was set up as its supreme arbiter. For some reason, Bush placed the meeting in June 1929, when Capone already was behind bars in Holmesburg County Jail (he was transferred to Eastern State Prison in August).

When Jack McPhaul took a shot at the Torrio life story in 1970's Johnny Torrio: First of the Gang Lords, he combined various elements from previous writers for his account of the convention. There was the Torrio supremacy of the Halper book, the imposed preservation of gangland peace of the Thompson and Raymond volume and the expansive guest list of Brennan. According to McPhaul, Torrio ordered Capone to attend the convention, which McPhaul viewed as a disciplinary hearing, and then ordered Capone to get himself arrested and imprisoned (apparently it did not matter to Torrio where Capone did this).

John Kobler, who handled many other phases of Capone's existence more responsibly in his 1971 book Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone, seems to have found the Atlantic City convention legends irresistible. According to Kobler, the convention lasted three days and featured numerous gang bosses from around the country, all agreeing to combine into a national syndicate run by an executive committee. "Cutting across all the old ethnic and national divisions," Kobler wrote, "there gathered around the table not only Italians and Sicilians, but also Jews, Irish and Slavs, more than thirty gangsters in all." (Big table!) The list of attendees was expanded from previous accounts to include Dutch Schultz, Nucky Johnson, Joe Saltis, Frank McErlane, Sam Lazar and Charles Schwartz.

Fred Cook largely echoed this account for his (emotionally titled) 1973 book, Mafia! But Cook, perhaps benefiting from access to the meeting minutes, said the Atlantic City convention resulted in four major decisions: 1. U.S. was carved into crime districts; 2. No boss could be killed without approval of a leadership commission; 3. Syndicate would gather a bribery fund for police and politicians; 4. A fund would be set up "to groom young gangsters for the Syndicate." The resistance of old Mafia bosses to this new syndicate, Cook wrote, made the Night of Sicilian Vespers (another grossly inflated legend) necessary.

The next year, Frank Costello: Prime Minister of the Underworld by George Wolf with Joseph DiMona stated that the Atlantic City meeting was called by Frank Costello and Johnny Torrio. The book claimed that Costello was then - in 1929 - at the height of his power (allowing him a gradual decline spread out over the next four and a half decades). The conference guest list was dramatically altered so that Chicago's Frank Nitti could be there, along with Lou Rothkopf, Moe Dalitz, Charles "King" Solomon, John Lazia, Joe Bernstein and Louis "Lepke" Buchalter. Wolf's book provided a detailed but sourceless look at the convention, referring at one point to the "crystal chandelier" that "dangled above the rich mahogany table and chairs, which gleamed from recent polishing." (Wolf neglected for some reason to explain that mahogany is an excellent wood choice for furniture at a seaside hotel, as its density makes it extremely resistant to rot.) Wolf said the convention set up a national crime syndicate overseen by a commission of leaders and arranged for Capone to temporarily serve time in prison so things could be smoothed out with his Chicago rivals.

Virgil W. Peterson further increased the 1929 Atlantic City guest list for his 1983 book, The Mob. He had Albert Anastasia, Vincent Mangano, Frank Scalise, Longie Zwillman, Willie Moretti and Meyer Lansky (honeymooning with his new bride) also meeting at the Hotel President. Peterson reported a widespread belief that Capone arranged for his own Philadelphia arrest after the convention, but he left it for the reader to decide between unlikely choices: 1. Capone was ordered to prison by other gang bosses in attendance at the Atlantic City convention; 2. Capone arranged after the convention to go to prison seeking protection from enemies. Apparently unworthy of consideration was the possibility that Capone was an out-of-area gangster caught carrying a concealed weapon and a local judge threw the book at him.

Despite decades of invention and exaggeration, the truth of the May 1929 conference in Atlantic City probably is quite close to the earliest accounts.


"Al Capone's long stay in Philly" 
in this back issue of Informer.

http://www.magcloud.com/browse/Issue/112621

Gone Fishin'

Police had been searching the Cincinnati area for all around bad man Jack Parker. Parker, 35, operated out of the city of Hamilton, Ohio, and was known as a bank robber, gunman and killer. Police wanted him in connection with the murder of a man in a Kentucky roadhouse.

Since the murder, Parker had been hiding out in a fishing camp. On this day in 1928 some visitors picked him up at his hideout and took him for a ride, literally. The following day his body was found in a shallow pool of water at the bottom of an embankment. Police reasoned that he had been riding in the back seat of the car when the person in the front  passenger seat turned, and shot him in the face four times. He was then dragged from the car and rolled down the embankment. Cincinnati gunman Robert Zwick was subsequently credited with the killing.


15 May 2017

Perhaps he should have knocked first



On this date in 1932, two Detroit gangsters, Sam and Andrew Farrera. were doing some business in Toledo, Ohio when some local gangsters decided that they didn’t need any Motor City hoodlums muscling in. The Farreras, and another guy, were parked in their cousin's driveway when a car load of rivals pulled up and opened fire. The windshield of the Ferraras’ car shattered, sending glass into Sam’s eyes. His vision impaired, Sam managed to slip from the car and dive through a basement window. His brother caught a bullet in the hand.


After the first barrage, the attackers pulled around the corner and one of them, John Incorvaia, alias Engoria, 33, jumped from the auto and returned to the house with an automatic pistol. Not bothering to knock, Incorvaia rushed into the house and opened fire. Moments later he dropped dead with two bullet wounds, one of which pierced his head. Mabel Candela, a cousin of the Ferreras, confessed to the shooting saying that she fired in self-defense. 


13 May 2017

The King is Un-Crowned



On the morning of May 12, 1928 sixty-year old Gaetano Acci-who was known to Chicago police by some other names, including; “the Wolf: ,“King of the Blackmailers” and “The Muscler"-was seen leaving his home at  1066 Polk Street and getting into a sedan with four other men. 

Later that day he and his cohorts were spotted miles away in the town of Rockford, Illinois. The following morning, eighty-nine years ago today,  a motorist traveling along a quiet stretch of road outside the town of Harvard, Illinois, discovered Acci's body and alerted authorities. Turns out that the "King of the Blackmailers" had extorted four bullets from someone's gun. Two went to his head, and two to his body.

Acci was known to prey on Italian residents of Chicago's west side. On his corpse were found six letters addressed to different people demanding money. According to police, a week prior to his death, they had set a trap for him and planned to kill him when he stopped to pick up a faux payment package, but he never showed up. Subsequently the underworld save them the trouble.

SoCal boss DiGiorgio is gunned down

Chicago Tribune illustration

Feared California Mafia leader 
killed in Chicago barber chair

Chicago Tribune
May 14, 1922

May 13, 1922: Vito DiGiorgio, the leader of southern California's Mafia, was shot to death in a barbershop at Oak and Larrabee Streets in Chicago.

DiGiorgio, forty-three, was returning from a Mafia meeting in Buffalo, New York, and stopped off in Chicago for a couple of days. He, thirty-five-year-old James Cascio and an unidentified third man visited the barbershop of Salvatore DiBella and John Loiacono, 956 Larrabee Street. The location was in the center of a Sicilian neighborhood in Chicago's Near North Side. DiGiorgio sat down in a barber's chair, while Cascio and the third man busied themselves at a pool table in a rear room.

Just a few minutes later, two gunmen burst into the shop and, without saying a word, shot DiGiorgio in the side of his head and put three bullets into Cascio. Both victims died of their wounds. The gunmen, accompanied by the man who entered the shop with DiGiorgio and Cascio, fled through a rear door.

Police found papers in DiGiorgio's pockets that linked him to an address on Dauphine Street in New Orleans. DiGiorgio had lived in New Orleans for years, managed a grocery business and earned his underworld reputation there before relocating to southern California. He may have returned to his home in the Crescent City after being wounded in an attempt on his life at Los Angeles in the summer of 1921.

New Orleans Daily
Picayune, June 12, 1908

Cascio was said to have Buffalo and New Orleans addresses.

DiGiorgio (image at left) appears to have been closely aligned with New York-based Mafia boss of bosses Salvatore "Toto" D'Aquila and may have secured his position as southern California boss through D'Aquila's insistence. (D'Aquila inserted his personal representatives into crime family leadership positions in a number of U.S. cities, including Boston and Philadelphia.)

At the time, D'Aquila was attempting to consolidate power by moving against supporters of the former Giuseppe Morello regime in New York and elsewhere. A Los Angeles-area Mafia faction led by Jack Dragna and Salvatore Streva had connections with Morello.

Sources:
  • "The Serio explosion a Black Hand deed," New Orleans Daily Picayune, June 12, 1908, p. 1.
  • "Shot down by mystery assailants," Los Angeles Times, July 18, 1921, p. 13.
  • "Two men killed in Black Hand feud," Logansport IN Pharos-Tribune, May 13, 1922, p. 8.
  • "Double murder in 'Little Italy' baffles police," Chicago Tribune, May 14, 1922, p. 18.
  • Gentile, Nick, Vita di Capomafia, Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1963.
  • Orleans Parish, Louisiana, Death Records Index, Ancestry.com.
  • United States Census of 1920, Louisiana, Orleans County, Precinct 2, Ward 8, Enumeration District 130.
  • Vito DiGiorgio World War I draft registration card, serial no. 1117, order no. A1450, Div. no. 7, New Orleans, Louisiana, Sept. 12, 1918.
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