Showing posts with label Lanza. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lanza. Show all posts

02 October 2023

Gangsters of Lower East Side

Informer's October 2023 issue, entitled "Gangsters of New York's Lower East Side," includes twelve feature articles and eleven sidebars related to the gangland history of the area known as the "greatest breeding ground for gunmen and racketeers... this country has ever seen." The issue also includes several articles on other subjects.

Magazine (left) and book covers.

Thomas Hunt, Justin Cascio, Patrick Downey, Michael O'Haire, Steve Turner and Matt Ghiglieri contributed articles.

The Informer issue is available in seven formats. Print magazine and electronic (PDF) magazine editions can be obtained through the MagCloud service. Hardcover and paperback print book and Kindle ebook formats are listed with Amazon. EPUB ebook and abridged audiobook editions are sold through Google Play Books.

Lower East Side history articles focus on the following subjects:

  • The Whyos gang.
  • Bandits' Roost photograph.
  • John McGurk's "Suicide Hall." (Sidebar on gambling.)
  • Monk Eastman. (Sidebar on Eastman's killer.)
  • Mafia boss Nicola Taranto. (Sidebar on rumored Mafia headquarter on Mott Street.)
  • Paul "Kelly" Vaccarelli. (Sidebars on Irving Berlin, Sirocco and Tricker, Torrio and Vannella, Bellantonis of Broome Street.)
  • Chinatown Tong Wars.
  • Frank Lanza businesses.
  • "Johnny Spanish" Mistretta
  • Meyer Lansky's youth. (Sidebars on Mutty, Lucy and Kitty; Dutch Goldberg; Gurrah, Lepke, Curly and Bugsy; Red Levine.)
  • Killings on Second Avenue.
  • Narcotics racketeers.

The issue is illustrated with numerous photographs and a dozen maps. It runs 174 pages (including covers and ads) in magazine format and 370+ pages in print book format. The auto-narrated audiobook omits some material unrelated to the main subject. It runs about eight and a half hours. This is the thirty-third issue of the journal, first published in 2008.

For more information, visit Informer's website.

12 May 2018

'Lucky' transferred at request of spy agencies

On this date in 1942...

The Mafia boss widely known as Charlie "Lucky" Luciano was transferred between prisons in New York State at the extremely curious request of representatives from the United States Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and Office of Strategic Services (OSS).

Salvatore "Charlie" Lucania, whose surname was mangled by police and press through the years to become "Luciano," was moved on May 12, 1942, from Clinton Prison at Dannemora to Great Meadow Prison in the hamlet of Comstock, New York.

Lucania was serving a 30- to 50-year sentence imposed June 18, 1936, eleven days after his conviction on state compulsory prostitution charges.

Following sentencing, his first stop in the New York State prison system was Sing Sing Prison in the Westchester County village of Ossining. He was admitted there on June 19, 1936. Within a week, prison Assistant Physician James A. Kearney made an issue of Lucania's past history with narcotics. Kearney recommended that Lucania be transferred to Clinton State Prison in the northern New York village of Dannemora (Clinton County), a facility better able to handle inmates with addiction and psychiatric problems.

Lucania arrived at Clinton Prison on July 2, 1936. He spent most of the next six years in a desperately humdrum existence within the Clinton Prison walls. He was largely out of touch with his underworld associates. While his brother Bert regulary made the difficult journey to remote Dannemora to visit with him, Lucania saw other visitors, including his own attorneys, far less frequently.



Lucania's situation improved following a Feb. 9, 1942, ship fire at a North River pier in New York City. The recent Japanese surprise attack at Pearl Harbor had brought the U.S. into World War II, and authorities were concerned about the presence and activities of enemy agents within America's borders. The fire, which destroyed a former French ocean liner the Navy was converting into a U.S. military troop transport, was initially thought to be the result of sabotage. Though the fire was later determined to be accidental, the incident caused the Navy ONI to resort to unconventional means to secure U.S. ports.

Gurfein
Understanding organized crime's control of dock unions, ONI Captain Roscoe C. MacFall, Commander Charles Radcliffe Haffenden and Lieutenant James. O'Malley, Jr., sought underworld assistance. They approached Frank Hogan, Manhattan district attorney, and Murray I. Gurfein, assistant D.A. in charge of the Rackets Bureau, seeking an introduction to the Mafia. Gurfein and Haffenden became the primary contacts between the D.A.'s office and ONI as the government established a relationship with racketeers.

Gurfein put Haffenden in touch with Joseph "Socks" Lanza, who controlled unions at the giant Fulton Fish Market, then located at the east end of Manhattan's Fulton Street (moved late in 2005 to its current location in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx). Lanza, a member of Lucania's crime family, suggested that ONI involve Lucania in its security arrangements.

Haffenden called on former Lucania defense attorney Moses Polakoff to open discussions with the Mafia boss. Apparently uncomfortable with the idea - Polakoff had not spoken with Lucania since an August 1939 visit to Clinton Prison - the attorney suggested using Lucania's close associate Meyer Lansky as an intermediary.

Lyons
Lansky was brought in on the discussions in April. He agreed to assist but noted that it would be a problem to travel the great distance to Dannemora. In the same month, Commander Haffenden submitted a written request for Lucania to be transferred to a more easily reached institution. The request was sent through Lieutenant Commander Lawrence Cowen of ONI in Albany to New York State Corrections Commissioner John A. Lyons. Cowen refused to leave the document with Lyons. After Lyons read it, Cowens took it back and destroyed it.

Commissioner Lyons met with Murray Gurfein to discuss the matter on April 29, 1942. Gurfein recently gave up his position as assistant district attorney to join the Army's Office of Strategic Services (OSS) - the wartime precursor of today's CIA. On May 6, Lyons issued an order to transfer Lucania to Great Meadow Prison. While still some distance from New York City, Great Meadow was easily accessible and sat only a short drive from the underworld's summer playground in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Lyons then met directly with Great Meadow Prison Warden Vernon A. Morhous to discuss the extraordinary bending of prison rules relating to visits to Lucania. Lyons said the rules regarding visitor logs and visitor fingerprinting were to be waived and visitors were to be allowed to speak in complete privacy with Lucania. Morhous was told that the only records should be separate memos he submitted to the corrections commissioner recording the date and length of the visits.

To keep the arrangements with ONI secret, Lyons called for a number of other prisoner to be moved between Clinton and Great Meadow at the same time as Lucania's May 12, 1942, transfer.

Great Meadow Prison


The impact of this U.S. intelligence program is uncertain. It is probable that some measure of labor peace on the docks was achieved through cooperation with the underworld. There is reason to believe that ONI interests were discussed - if not enhanced - by Lucania, Lansky, Lanza, Frank Costello, Brooklyn underworld powers Joe "Adonis" Doto and Albert Anastasia, West Side underworld leader John "Cockeye" Dunn and others. Some of those crime figures met directly with Haffenden.

As Haffenden's role at ONI changed, the focus of his relationship with crime bosses also changed. During 1942, Haffenden was removed from the ONI's security-oriented B-3 Section to its "Target Section," responsible for collecting strategic intelligence on possible Allied invasion sites. After the transfer, Haffenden sought to acquire information from Lucania and his Mafia colleagues that might be helpful in the planned invasion of Sicily. Michele "Mike" Miranda and Vincent Mangano became participants in that discussion.

Lansky
It seems unlikely that any significant contribution to the Allied war effort was made by Lucania during this phase - records relating to the secret project were destroyed following the Allied victory. But Lucania remained at Great Meadow Prison and continued his private visits with mob colleagues through the end of the war. Later visitors included Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel and Guarino "Willie Moore" Moretti, The final known visit - last of twenty-two outlined in records pieced together by state authorities and the FBI - occurred with Meyer Lansky and another visitor who was not named on Nov. 29, 1945, more than three months after the final Japanese surrender.

Four days later after that visit, the Board of Parole issued a favorable recommendation on a plan to commute the remainder of Lucania's prison sentence and deport him to Italy. On Jan. 3, 1946, Governor Thomas E. Dewey officially commuted the remainder of the sentence upon the condition of deportation. Lucania was transferred back to Sing Sing Prison on Jan. 9. A parole was granted on Feb. 2, and Lucania was transferred to Ellis Island. On Feb. 8, he was placed aboard the S.S. Laura Keene at Pier 7, Bush Terminal in Brooklyn. The ship left harbor on Feb. 10 and reached Italy seventeen days later.

Haffenden's connections to Lucania and his associates were later criticized by U.S. officials. Exposure of the favors he granted the crime boss resulted in a Navy censure. On May 31, 1946, evidence of corruption caused Haffenden to lose his postwar job as New York City commissioner of Marine and Aviation.

For more on this subject:

"When Lucky was locked up," American Mafia history website.

14 June 2017

San Francisco boss succumbs to blood disorder

On this date in 1937 - Francesco Lanza, Mafia boss of the San Francisco area, died of natural causes. His son Mariano Vincenzo (James) was deemed too young to succeed him, and the role of boss was passed to Tony Lima.


Originally from Castelbuono, Sicily, where the family surname was Proetto, Francesco Lanza entered the U.S. through New York in the early 1900s. His family, including two-year-old Mariano Vincenzo, joined him in New York in February of 1905.

The family made its way west during the World War I years and settled in San Francisco by the start of Prohibition. A low-profile Mafioso, Lanza ran produce-related businesses and became a legal supplier of grapes to illegal wine-making operations across the U.S. He remained far in the background while more conspicuous underworld figures perished in Prohibition Era gangland conflicts.

In the 1920s, he became part-owner of a vineyard in Escondido, California. Nick Licata, a Mafia leader from the Los Angeles area, later partnered in that business. California Mafioso Aladena "Jimmy the Weasel" Fratianno recalled Lanza as San Francisco's regional Mafia boss and partner with Giuseppe Alioto in a restaurant at the city's Fisherman's Wharf.

Lanza died at the age of 64. Historian Christina Ann-Marie DiEdoardo noted that the apparent cause of Francesco Lanza's death was aplastic anemia, a blood disease that could have been treated through transfusions. "Ironically," DiEdoardo wrote, "this made him the only boss around during the Booze Wars who died because his blood stayed in his body..."

A couple of decades after Francesco Lanza's death, his son James became boss of the San Francisco crime family. Unnoticed by the early 1950s Kefauver Committee, his name came up during the McClellan Committee hearings later in that decade. It was believed that James Lanza traveled east for the 1957 Apalachin convention as representative of San Francisco but managed to escape the notice of authorities. His presence in New York City and Scranton, Pennsylvania, hotels at the time of the convention was noted. The FBI began watching Lanza in the late 1950s and conducted electronic eavesdropping on his operations in the early 1960s. A widely publicized U.S. Justice Department listing of U.S. Mafia leaders in the late 1960s named James Lanza as the boss of the San Francisco crime family. James Lanza died in February 2006 at the age of 104.

See also:

O'Haire, Michael, "San Francisco boss Lanza held key role with Colorado's Mafia," Informer: The History of American Crime and Law Enforcement, October 2021.


Sources:

  • "Mafia's leadership list updated by Justice Dept.," Palm Springs CA Desert Sun, Aug. 22, 1969, p. 7
  • "San Francisco deaths," Oakland CA Tribune, June 15, 1937, p. 35. 
  • California Death Index, Ancestry.com.
  • Demaris, Ovid, The Last Mafioso: The Treacherous World of Jimmy Fratianno, New York: Times Books, 1981, p. 137.
  • DiEdoardo, Christina Ann-Marie, Lanza's Mob: The Mafia and San Francisco, Santa Barbara CA: Praeger, 2016.
  • Hart, Arthur V., "Meeting of hoodlums, Apalachin, New York, November 14, 1957," FBI report, file no. 63-4426-171, NARA no. 124-90103-10092, July 8, 1958, p. 103.
  • Investigation of Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, Hearings Before the Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, Part 32, 85th Congress, 2d Session, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1958.
  • Mudd, Herbert K. Jr., "La Cosa Nostra San Francisco Division," FBI report, Aug. 23, 1968, file no. 92-6054-2397, NARA no. 124-10297-10131, p. Cover-C.
  • Passenger manifest of S.S. Sicilia, departed Palermo on January 26, 1905, arrived New York City on Feb. 10, 1905.
  • Polk's Crocker-Langley San Francisco City Directory 1934, San Francisco: R.L. Polk & Co. of California, 1934, p. 635.
  • SAC San Diego, "La Cosa Nostra AR - Conspiracy," FBI airtel, file no. 92-6054-1907, NARA no. 124-10222-10055, March 13, 1967, p. 4.
  • SAC San Francisco, "Mariano Vincenzo Lanza, aka James Joseph Lanza," FBI memorandum, file no. 92-3432-87, NARA no. 124-10222-10385, Dec. 29, 1960.
  • Social Security Death Index, Ancestry.com.
Read more about the Lanzas of San Francisco in: