Magaddino's wrath

On this date in 1961:

Thanksgiving Day hunters in Penfield, New York (just outside Rochester), discovered the beaten, mutilated and burned remains of a male murder victim. 

Syracuse Post-Standard, Nov. 24, 1961.

Days later, the FBI laboratory - using fingerprints from the remains - identified the victim as Albert George Agueci. Agueci, 39, a resident of Toronto, Canada, had been a narcotics racketeer working with the Magaddino Crime Family based in western New York.

Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Nov. 26, 1961.

Albert Agueci, his brother Vito and 18 other people were charged in the summer with participating in a large narcotics operation. The arrests strongly suggested that regional crime boss Stefano Magaddino was engaged in narcotics trafficking in violation of a Mafia Commission policy.

Albert Agueci

Albert Agueci and a number of co-defendants were released on bail. One co-defendant, William "Shorty" Holmes, was soon found shot to death in the Bronx.

As the date of trial approached, Albert Agueci disappeared. Vito and ten other defendants in the narcotics case were on trial in U.S. federal court in New York City when Albert's charred remains turned up.

The brutal gangland slaying was viewed both as a Magaddino disciplinary effort and as the boss's attempt to distance himself from the narcotics ring.

For more about Agueci, Magaddino and the Mafia of western New York, see DiCarlo: Buffalo's First Family of Crime, Volume II.

Turning point of 1930-31 Mafia war

NY Times, Nov. 6, 1930

On this date in 1930:

The forces of Salvatore Maranzano scored a major Castellammarese War victory over U.S. Mafia chief Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria on November 5, 1930.

Maranzano gunmen were alerted to a meeting of Masseria and top aides at the Alhambra Apartments, Pelham Parkway, in the Bronx. They moved into a ground-floor apartment with windows looking out on the apartment complex's courtyard and waited for the meeting to break up. The gunmen hoped to get a shot at Masseria himself, but when they spotted Masseria allies Al Mineo and Steve Ferrigno in the courtyard, they opened fire.

Mineo and Ferrigno, leaders of a sprawling Bronx-Brooklyn crime family closely linked to Masseria's Manhattan organization, never had a chance. With the death of his allies, Masseria lost the support of the Mineo-Ferrigno group and was thrown on the defensive in the gangland war.

Joseph Valachi participated in the Alhambra Apartments hit and recalled the event in detail in his memoirs (beginning on Page 283).

Alhambra Apartments, Pelham Parkway (Museum of the City of New York)