Showing posts with label DeSimone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DeSimone. Show all posts

23 February 2023

Los Angeles boss Dragna found dead in hotel

 On this date in 1956:

San Bernardino County Sun

Jack Dragna, longtime underworld boss of southern California, was found dead of an apparent heart attack in a Los Angeles hotel room on February 23, 1956. 

Dragna appeared to rise to command a Los Angeles-based Mafia organization during the Prohibition Era. He was uncontested boss from about 1931 until the moment of his death and evidently had strong connections to underworld leaders in New York and Cleveland. The regional Mafia during his reign was noted for its involvement in luxurious off-shore gambling ships as well as its failures to secure control of nearby Las Vegas casinos and, despite several attempts, to eliminate rival gambling racketeer Mickey Cohen. Dragna was succeeded as boss by attorney Frank DeSimone.

Often suspected of wrongdoing but rarely convicted, Dragna managed to avoid serious legal jeopardy between Prohibition and the early 1950s. Then the attention of local, state and federal law enforcement fell on him. His first dramatic setback occurred in late June 1951, when he was convicted of "lewd vagrancy" and "resorting" for an affair with twenty-three-year-old "cigarette girl" Annette Eckhardt. The case involved tape recordings of Dragna and Eckhardt activities (including a nude canasta cardgame) inside a love-nest at 330 S. Mariposa Street. Dragna that July was initially sentenced to six months behind bars, but he was able to reduce the jail sentence to under a month, which he served in June of 1952.

A state crime commmittee report released in 1953 labeled him the chief of the southern California branch of the U.S. Mafia (referred to in the jargon of the time as "L'Unione Siciliano"):

There can be little doubt that Jack Dragna and his gang of associates, such as the Sicas and the Adamos of Los Angeles, and the Matrangas, Dippolitos and Le Mandris of San Bernardino County, were all connected with the notorious L'Unione Siciliano. Certain papers seized by the Los Angeles police on February 14, 1950, from the Dragnas definitely tend to confirm this view. Several small address books were taken from the gangsters. The names listed read like a Who's Who of the Mafia in the United States. Some of them are regarded as among the most powerful and dangerous professional criminals in the Country. They also contained, of course, the usual sprinkling of names of police officers, district attorney's investigators, bail bond brokers, lawyers and lobbyists. That these acquaintances were business rather than social is indicated in many instances by Dragna's canceled checks, the payees of which were often known gangsters. The seized papers also showed that gangster funds are being invested in certain legitimate businesses, such as clothing, fruit, wine, olive oil and importing.

Dragna was battling a U.S. deportation order at the time of his death. The government's case against him related to a Mexico vacation he took in 1932. When reentering the U.S. from Mexico, Dragna falsely claimed U.S. citizenship. (Dragna applied for citizenship in the 1940s, but his application was denied.) The false claim resulted in his arrest by federal authorities twenty years later. That arrest occurred December 8, 1952, at 3927 Hubert Avenue, Los Angeles, his home at the time.

Dragna (LA Times)
In the summer of 1953, he was held for deportation at a detention center on Terminal Island (Los Angeles Harbor Region) when his wife Frances passed away. Through legal maneuvers, he managed to delay deportation and to win release under $15,000 bond.

At about that time, he reportedly had a home at 4757 Kensington Drive in San Diego and apparently visited with his nephew Louis Dragna at 1429 Thelborn Street in the Los Angeles suburn of West Covina. On February 10, 1956, however, he became a resident of the Saharan Hotel, 7212 Sunset Boulevard (described in one newspaper as a $7 a day motel). According to hotel manager Alexander Germaine, he checked in under the alias of "Jack Baker."

On Thursday, February 23, hotel maid Mrs. Alice Charles (named "Alice Dick" in one account) found Dragna dead in his bed and summoned authorities. Reports stated that Dragna was dressed in a set of pink pajamas. Police found bottles of heart medication at his bedside, along with two sets of false teeth. They concluded that he suffered a heart attack sometime the previous night.

A total of $986.71, including nine hundred-dollar bills, was found in his possession. An identification card bore the name Jack Ignatius Dragna, accompanied by the address of nephew Louis. Dragna's late model Cadillac was found parked outside the hotel. In Dragna's luggage, police found a small statuette of Jesus.

While police were searching the hotel room, they received a call on the room telephone from Dragna's daughter Anna Niotta of San Diego. Mrs. Niotta reportedly had heard a report of her father's death on the radio.

In its report of the sixty-four-year-old Dragna's demise, the Los Angeles Times noted that the longtime gangland leader had always been conspicuously absent from incidents of bloodshed during his reign:

The reputed top man of this area's Sicilian Black Hand society never turned up in the vicinity of violence. It was standing conversation in the underworld that whenever the shotguns began to go off, Dragna would be discovered peacefully undergoing a checkup in a hospital.

Sources:

  • "Dragna, 66, dies of heart attack," San Fernando CA Valley Times, Feb. 24, 1956, p. 2.
  • "Dragna arrested for deportation by U.S.," Hollywood CA Citizen-News, Dec. 8, 1952, p. 1.
  • "Jack Dragna, Mafia gang figure, found dead in bed," San Bernardino County CA Sun, Feb. 24, 1956, p. 1.
  • "Jack Dragna," Findagrave.com, March 21, 2002, accessed Jan. 1, 2016.
  • "Jack Dragna behind bars," Los Angeles Mirror, June 5, 1952, p. 6.
  • "Jack Dragna found dead in Sunset Blvd. hotel," Los Angeles Times, Feb. 24, 1956, p. 1.
  • "Jack Dragna held guilty in vag case," Los Angeles Mirror, June 27, 1951, p. 12.
  • "Jack Dragna in move to quit jail," Los Angeles Daily News, June 13, 1952, p. 57.
  • "Jack Dragna sentenced to 180 days in jail," Los Angeles Times, July 27, 1951, p. 2.
  • "U.S. nabs Jack Dragna on illegal entry charge," Los Angeles Times, Dec. 9, 1952, p. 2.
  • Jack Ignatius Dragna, California Death Index, Los Angeles, Feb. 23, 1956.
  • Special Crime Study Commission, Final Report of the Special Crime Study Commission on Organized Crime, Sacramento: State of California, 1953, p. 64.


15 October 2019

Wealthy Los Angeles-area Mafia leader vanishes

On this date in 1931...


L.A.Times, Oct. 18, 1931

Joseph E. Ardizzone, wealthy southern California ranch owner and Mafia chief, left his Sunland, Los Angeles, home about six-thirty in the morning of October 15, 1931, to visit relatives in Etiwanda. He was never seen again.

A day later, his brother Frank reported him missing. Police were informed that Ardizzone was making the trip from his Mount Gleason Avenue home to the Cuccia ranch at Etiwanda in order to pick up a cousin, Nick Borgia, who had recently arrived from Italy. Ardizzone was driving a dark blue Ford coupe.

Ardizzone was described as forty-five years old (he was almost forty-seven), five feet eleven inches tall, 220 pounds, with brown eyes and gray hair. When last seen he was wearing a brown suit, brown tie and brown felt hat.

After searching the approximately fifty-mile route for almost a week, authorities had not turned up a single clue relating to his disappearance. Local police theorized that Ardizzone had been "taken for a ride," murdered and buried in a remote section of desert.

The Los Angeles Times noted that Ardizzone was known "as a man who settled many of the differences which existed from time to time among local Italian residents."

Targeted earlier

The newspaper also recalled that he had been the apparent target of an assassination attempt earlier in the year. In March, when Ardizzone and companion Jimmy Basile were starting home to Los Angeles from a dinner at Rosario DeSimone's home in Downey, they were overtaken on the Downey-Vernon Road by a large sedan. Shotguns fired at them. Basile was killed, and Ardizzone was seriously wounded.

Ardizzone staggered back to the DeSimone home with seven wounds in his back. DeSimone's son Leon, a doctor, administered first aid and summoned an ambulance to take Ardizzone to Hollywood Hospital.

Authorities speculated that Ardizzone and Basile were targeted as the result of a vendetta stemming from the recent killing of Dominic DiCiolla, described as the "king" or "czar" of the Little Italy underworld at Los Angeles' North End.

Around the same time, a number of Italian Americans disappeared and were presumed murdered in a war over liquor rackets.

Underworld boss

Many today identify Ardizzone as one of the earlier Mafia bosses in southern California. Born in November 1884 in Piana dei Greci, Sicily, Ardizzone crossed the Atlantic in 1899, first settling in New Orleans. Within a few years, he relocated to the Los Angeles area.

Ardizzone emerged victorious in 1906 from a gang war with the forces of George Maisano, though the conflict took the life of Ardizzone cousin Joseph Cuccia. Ardizzone was suspected of the June 2, 1906, fatal shooting of Maisano. (Maisano died of his wounds at the county hospital on July 28.) Authorities could not locate him until spring 1914. At that time he was charged with the 1906 murder. However, the case was dismissed for lack of evidence, after witnesses refused to testify against him.

Later in the 1910s, the Ardizzone underworld faction warred with a Matranga faction. That conflict resulted in several killings in 1919.

Jack Dragna
Ardizzone may have been forced out of an underworld leadership position by the arrival of New Orleans Mafioso Vito DiGiorgio. DiGiorgio appears to have had the backing of powerful eastern Mafia leaders as he attempted to unite the Los Angeles area factions. His May 13, 1922, murder in a Chicago poolroom, may have permitted Ardizzone to return to a boss role.

In the mid-1920s, Ardizzone partnered with Ignatius "Jack" Dragna in an organization called the Italian Protection League. Dragna was president of the league, while Ardizzone was its treasurer. The league's purpose was uncertain, but may have related to bootlegging activities and to a defense of local racket territories from outside influences.

DiCiolla, killed early in 1931, may have been one of the outside influences. It appears that DiCiolla had been friendly with the Genna Mafia in Chicago before relocating to Los Angeles.

The disappearance of Ardizzone left Dragna in command of the Mafia of Los Angeles.

Sources:
  • "Another gang killing hinted," Los Angeles Times, April 1, 1931, p. 3.
  • "Arrest clears old mystery," Los Angeles Times, May 24, 1914, p. 10.
  • "Black Hand in new slaying," Los Angeles Times, Feb. 26, 1919, p. 1.
  • "Bootleg gangs open new war," Los Angeles Times, Oct. 18, 1931, p. II-2.
  • "Domenico 'Dominic' DiCiolla," Findagrave.com, Feb. 8, 2011, accessed Jan. 1, 2016.
  • "Federal agents strike hard blow at racketeering by sweeping rum raids in North End," Los Angeles Times, April 3, 1931, p. II-2.
  • "Fruit peddler shoots another," Los Angeles Herald, June 3, 1906, p. 5.
  • "Gang war killers known," Los Angeles Times, April 2, 1931, p. 8.
  • "Gang war stirs police crusade," Los Angeles Times, March 23, 1931, p. II-2.
  • "Injuries are fatal after three months," Los Angeles Herald, July 29, 1906, p. 3.
  • "Italian surprises surgeons," Los Angeles Herald, June 28, 1906, p. 7.
  • "L.A. rounds up 21 men for deportation as criminals," Oakland Tribune, March 29, 1931, p. 9.
  • "Liquor-racket murder solution likely as Italian underworld 'boss' aide talks," Los Angeles Times, March 21, 1931, p. 2.
  • "More racket violence feared as asserted gangster vanishes," Los Angeles Times, March 26, 1931, p. II-2.
  • "Police trail the murderer," Los Angeles Herald, Sept. 26, 1906, p. 8.
  • "Search futile for Ardizzone," Los Angeles Times, Oct. 21, 1931, p. II-8.
  • "Seek for assailant," Los Angeles Herald, June 9, 1906, p. 7.
  • "Slain boss of racketeers buried in costly coffin carried by pallbearers in tuxedos," Los Angeles Times, March 25, 1931, p. 2.
  • "Three fined as shooting sequel," Los Angeles Times, April 25, 1931, p. II-3.
  • Giuseppe Ardizzone Declaration of Intention, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, No. 13512, July 14, 1920.
  • Giuseppe Ardizzone Petition for Naturalization, District Court for the Southern District of California, No. 9738, Aug. 9, 1922.
  • Joseph Ernest Ardizzone World War I Draft Registration Card, Los Angeles County, Sept. 12, 1918.
  • Reid Ed, The Grim Reapers: The Anatomy of Organized Crime in America, Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1969.
  • Tiernan, M.L., He Never Came Home: The Mysterious Disappearance that Devastated a Family, The Early History of Sunland, California, Vol. 5., Amazon Digital, 2014.
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