'Sally Bugs' is killed to ensure his silence

On this date in 1978...

Briguglio

A Teamsters union official, suspected of involvement in James R. Hoffa's 1975 disappearance, was murdered March 21, 1978, on Mulberry Street in Manhattan's Little Italy.

Salvatore "Sally Bugs" Briguglio was observed standing in front of the Little Italy's Andrea Doria Social Club, 165 Mulberry Street, at about eleven o'clock that night. (The Andrea Doria club was a known hangout for members and associates of the Genovese Crime Family. It sat about a block from Umberto's Clam House, the location of the 1972 murder of renegade Colombo Family Mafioso "Crazy Joe" Gallo.)

Minutes later, two men, wearing jackets with hoods pulled over their heads, approached him from behind. There are different opinions about what happened next.

Some witnesses reported that the two men spoke with Briguglio, perhaps trying to convince him to come along with them. As conversation became argument, one of the men struck Briguglio. Other witnesses saw no such thing. They stated that no words were exchanged at all; the two hooded men merely went up to Briguglio and knocked him down.

At that point, witnesses agree that the two men with hooded jackets drew handguns and started firing. Four bullets entered Briguglio's head. One struck him in the chest. 

The gunmen ran a short distance north toward Broome Street, climbed into a light blue Mercury Monarch with New Jersey plates and drove off.

Briguglio was rushed to Bellevue Hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival.

Though the killing, which occurred just outside the front windows of the popular Benito II restaurant, 163 Mulberry Street, was seen by a number of people, all witnesses told police that they could not identify or even describe the gunmen.

Provenzano

Briguglio was secretary-treasurer of Union City, New Jersey, Local 560 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. He was known to be a top aide to powerful New Jersey Teamsters official Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano, a Genovese Crime Family mobster. Provenzano and Hoffa once had been friendly but had a serious falling out when they served time together in prison.

Federal investigators received information that Briguglio and his brother Gabriel participated in the abduction and murder of Hoffa. Salvatore Briguglio was brought twice before a Detroit federal grand jury investigationg the Hoffa disappearance. He reportedly refused to testify, citing his right against self-incrimination.

At the time he was killed, Briguglio was awaiting trial with Provenzano, New Jersey racketeer Harold "Kayo" Konigsberg and others for the 1961 killing of a previous Local 560 secretary-treasurer, Anthony Castellito, who dared to oppose "Tony Pro." Rumors suggested that Provenzano feared Briguglio was providing information to prosecutors and had him silenced.

Briguglio and Konigsberg may have been on thin ice for some time. FBI heard that there was a Mafia death sentence against both men just months after they worked together on the killing of Castellito.

A different Provenzano associate, Salvatore Sinno, was cooperating with law enforcement and provided all the information needed for a successful prosecution. Provenzano and his codefendants were convicted of the Castellito murder just a few months after Briguglio was slain.

Sources:

• "Tony Pro convicted of murder," Passaic NJ Herald-News, June 15, 1978, p. 9.
• Buder, Leonard, "Federal agents hope Teamster slaying in Little Italy will offer leads in the Hoffa-disappearance case," New York Times, March 23, 1978, p. B3.
• Casey, Dave, "Hallandale men indicted, sought in pension fraud," Fort Lauderdale FL News, Nov. 29, 1978, p. 1B.
• Doyle, Patrick, and Joan Shepard, "A Hoffa witness is slain by 2 in Little Italy street," New York Daily News, March 22, 1978, p. 3.
• Edmonds, Richard, "Says Tony Pro paid for a hit," New York Daily News, June 2, 1978, p. 18.
• Gage, Nicholas, "Provenzano indicted with Teamster aide in '61 union killing," New York Times, June 24, 1976, p. 69.
• Kramer, Marcia, and Paul Meskil, "Cops read 'contract' in killing of Hoffa suspect," New York Daily News, March 23, 1978, p. 5.
• Linker, Norbert R., "Criminal influence in International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 560, Union City, New Jersey," FBI report, file no. CR 92-5215-22, NARA no. 124-10300-10030, Jan. 15, 1962.
• Social Security Death Index, 141-22-0294, March 1978.

Gambino chief shot, killed at his home

Low-key boss linked New York, Sicily mobs

Cali

The reputed boss of New York's Gambino Crime Family was shot to death March 13, 2019, in the street outside his Staten Island home.

Shortly after 9 p.m. emergency dispatchers received a 9-1-1 call from 25 Hilltop Terrace in the Todt Hill section. Fire department medics and police responded. They found Francesco "Franky Boy" Cali, 53, had suffered multiple gunshot wounds.

Cali was rushed to the North Campus of Staten Island University Hospital, about a mile and a half away at Seaview and Mason Avenues. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.

According to published accounts, no one in the generally quiet residential neighborhood saw the shooting. Several residents reported hearing a series of six or seven gunshots just after nine o'clock. One resident said those were followed by a pause and then several more shots. According to the New York Daily News, a Cali family member stated that Cali was run over by a pickup truck before he was shot. (This incorrect report was likely the result of Cali being found behind and slightly under his SUV, parked at the road.) A blue pickup truck was observed leaving the area immediately after the shooting. Police are investigating.

Cali's wife and children were home at the time of the shooting. The home - a two-story red-brick Colonial-style structure - sits close to Hilltop Terrace. It is separated from the street by a small front yard consisting of several trees, a semicircle driveway of paving stones and a patch of shrubs. (Built in 1970, the home was last purchased in 2007 for $1.225 million. Extensive renovations were done to the home and the property at that time.) The residence is reportedly held in the name of Cali's wife, Rosaria Inzerillo.

Plastic cups cover shell casings found by
police following the Cali shooting
New York Daily News photo.

---

'He's everything'

Long suspected of underworld involvement, Cali's importance to Mafia organizations on both sides of the Atlantic first became apparent to authorities on October 21, 2005. On that date, electronic surveillance overheard Palermo, Sicily, Mafioso Gianni Nicchi talking to his district chief Antonino Rotolo about Cali in the U.S.: "He's our friend, and he is everything over there."

Authorities found that Cali had risen quickly in the Gambino Crime Family and was then a powerful capodecina based in Brooklyn. Under the reign of the Gottis, Cali had been used as an ambassador to the Mafia in Palermo. Cali became close to the Inzerillo clan of Palermo's Passo di Rigano district and was also known to have contacts within the 'Ndrangheta criminal society of Calabria, in the south of Italy's mainland.

Cefalu

The FBI learned more about Cali's underworld career from Frank Fappiano and Michael DiLeonardo (brothers-in-law and members of the Gambino Family). DiLeonardo recalled Cali from spring 1994, when DiLeonardo had recently been appointed capodecina and Cali was just a crime family associate.

During 2006 court testimony, DiLeonardo pointed out Cali in a surveillance video: "This is Frank Cali, associate at the time. He later on gets straightened out with Jackie D'Amico." DiLeonardo explained that being "straightened out" meant being formally inducted as a Mafia member. D'Amico handled crime family operations for the Gottis following the life imprisonment of boss John J. Gotti.

Cali paid a price for his new notoriety. Early in 2008, Cali and dozens of underworld figures were arrested as a result of the federal Operation Old Bridge. Cali pleaded guilty to extortion conspiracy - relating to his attempt to force payments from a trucker working at a proposed NASCAR racetrack in Staten Island. He served sixteen months in prison and was released in 2009.

After the Gotti faction was removed from power, largely through a series of successful prosecutions aided by informants, the crime family was ruled for several years by a panel of bosses. In 2011, Sicilian native Domenico Cefalu was given the title of boss. His reign marked a return to power of the crime family's Sicilian faction (and relatives of former boss Carlo Gambino, for whom the organization was named.) Cali served in an underboss role for Cefalu.

Cali

Under Cefalu and Cali, the Gambino organization made increased use of Sicilian immigrant criminals and of its relationship with the Sicilian underworld. According to law enforcement sources, the organization became a major player in international heroin trafficking and traded also in prescription narcotics, such as oxycodone. (It continued to generate income through gambling, construction and labor rackets.)

Members of the Inzerillo clan, who earlier fled a Sicilian gang war, returned to Palermo and reclaimed their rackets territory. Cali, an Inzerillo in-law (Cali's wife also is niece to Giovanni Gambino, a relative of the late Carlo Gambino), benefited both from the increased power of the Inzerillos in Palermo and the resurrection of the Sicilian faction in the Gambino Family. There were rumors of Cali taking over for the retiring Cefalu in 2013 and again in 2015.

---

Factional conflict?

Some in the press are speculating that the killing of Francesco Cali is the result of a new phase of an old factional struggle within the large but deeply divided Gambino Crime Family. Through its history, the crime family has changed leaders as often through murder as through peaceful transfer of power.

Update, March 16, 2019: A suspect in the shooting of Francesco Cali was arrested early this morning. Anthony Comello, 24, of Staten Island, was taken into custody at 2 a.m. in the town of Brick, Ocean County, New Jersey. Police say Comello has no known connection with organized crime. He and Cali reportedly quarreled over Comello's attentions to a female member of Cali's family. Police stated that fingerprints matching those on a Comello rifle permit were found on a license plate knocked loose from Cali's Cadillac Escalade in the vehicle collision that drew Cali from the safety of his home on March 13. Update, Dec. 7, 2019: Anthony Comello, accused of the killing of Francesco Cali, claims he was motivated by belief in a deep-state conspiracy theory, according to a report in the New York Times. Comello reportedly believed that Cali was part of "a liberal cabal working to undermine President Trump." The defendant told his lawyer that he went to Cali's home to arrest him and turn him over to the military, but shot Cali when he resisted.

The underworld organization's competing factions became evident a short time after the 1928 assassination of early boss Salvatore "Toto" D'Aquila. Manfredi "Al" Mineo assumed control of the crime family with the blessings of then-boss of bosses Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria. The combined Masseria-Mineo strength kept the organization's sub-leaders and members in line for a time. After the 1930 murder of Mineo, however, new conservative Sicilian leadership behind Frank "Ciccio" Scalise of the Bronx took power and pulled away from Masseria.

The old-line Sicilians retained control, but changed leadership to Vincent Mangano, when the Castellammarese War against Masseria concluded a year later. Mangano ruled for two decades but had trouble with a non-Sicilian faction led by Albert Anastasia, a native of Calabria. The regime of Mangano and his brother Philip was ended in 1951. Philip was found murdered. Vincent Mangano simply disappeared. Anastasia reportedly admitted to his colleagues that he was responsible for the deaths of the Manganos but claimed self defense, as they were planning to move against him.

Anastasia became boss. The Sicilian faction champion, Carlo Gambino, served as underboss. Anastasia's murder in fall of 1957, restored the Sicilians to power. Gambino stepped in as the new top man. He quickly suppressed a rebellion led by Anastasia loyalist Armand Rava and then made Rava ally Aniello Dellacroce his underboss. Gambino groomed his brother-in-law Paul Castellano as his successor, offending the out-of-power Dellacroce faction.

A crime family civil war could have been triggered by Castellano's move into the boss role in 1976, but Dellacroce restrained his followers. (Like Francesco Cali, Castellano was a resident of Todt Hill, Staten Island.) Upon Dellacroce's death late in 1985, the Castellano opposition united behind John J. Gotti. Gotti set up the assassination of the boss in Manhattan on Dec. 16, 1985, and secured for himself the leadership of the crime family.

Cali's murder may be a sign that the Sicilians, in power through the past eight years, may once again be forced out.

---

Old neighborhood

While some sources point to Sicily as Cali's birthplace, it appears that Cali was born Francesco Paolo Augusto Cali in New York City on March 16, 1965. He was raised in Brooklyn.

His father Augusto, recalled as proprietor of a video store on Eighteenth Avenue in Bensonhurst, reportedly maintained a clean record. He was questioned by the FBI in 1986 as part of the Pizza Connection investigation but faced no charges.

In addition to the home at Todt Hill, Francesco Cali was also associated with the 7306 Eighteen Avenue address in Bensonhurst. That address sits in an old Sicilian neighborhood, perhaps the same one where Augusto ran his business. Currently, a large number of business signs in the area feature Asian writing. But a Sicilian presence is still evident. Three private Sicilian social clubs sit on the same block with 7306 Eighteenth Avenue: Società figli di Ragusa (No. 7308), Sciacca Social Club (no. 7316) and U.S. Vizzinese Association (no. 7320).

See:

• Complete article at Mafiahistory.us.

Sources:

• "25 Hilltop Ter," Zillow, zillow.com.
• "25 Hilltop Terrace," Realtor.com.
• "Francesco Cali, a man with reported mob ties, shot and killed in New York City," USA Today, usatoday.com, March 14, 2019.
• "Reputed Gambino crime boss Frank Cali shot dead in front of Staten Island home," CBS-2 New York, newyork.cbslocal.com, March 13, 2019. 
• Bolzoni, Attilio, "Franky Boy, the invisible boss who wanted to have Palermo back," Rome La Repubblica, repubblica.it.
• Burke, Kerry, and John Annese with Rocco Parascandola, "Gambino Crime Family boss Frank Cali shot and killed outside Staten Island home: sources," New York Daily News, nydailynews.com, March 13, 2019.
• Celona, Larry, and Ben Feuerherd, "Gambino crime family boss Frank Cali shot dead outside Staten Island home," New York Post, nypost.com, March 13, 2019.
• Celona, Larry, and Bruce Golding, "Gene Gotti's release from prison has mob on edge," New York Post, nypost.com, Sept. 17, 2018.
• Cornell, Irene, "Report: Gambino Crime Family picks Domenico Cefalu as new boss," CBS-2 New York, newyork.cbslocal.com, July 29, 2011.
• Dienst, Jonathan, Marc Santia and Michael George, "Gambino Crime Family leader shot dead outside home: sources," NBC-4 New York, nbcnewyork.com, March 13, 2019.
• Egan-Chin, Debbie, "Frank Cali, 2008," New York Daily News, nydailynews.com.
• Michael DiLeonardo Testimony, United States v. John A. Gotti, Jr., U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Feb. 22, 2006, mafiahistory.us.
• Murphy, Mary, "Gambino Crime Family boss fatally shot at Staten Island home," WPIX-11, pix11.com, March 13, 2019.
• Weiss, Murray, "Mob pick for Gambino godfather turns down the job," DNAinfo New York, dnainfo.com, July 18, 2013.
• Winston, Ali, Nate Schweber, Jacey Fortin and Liam Stack, "Man said to be Gambino boss is killed on Staten Island," New York Times, nytimes.com, March 14, 2019, p. 22. 

Mob mayhem on a Monday morning

On this date in 1962...

NY Daily News

It was a bad Monday morning for Michael F. Albergo of Ridgewood Queens. A bad one also for Michael's younger brother Philip.

Michael, forty-four, left his apartment building, a three-story brick structure at 1875 Troutman Street, at about eight o'clock on January 29, 1962, to fetch his car. The all-white 1961 Chrysler New Yorker was parked about a half-block up the one-way street near the corner with Woodward Street. Michael's wife needed a ride to the subway station, so she could get to her waitressing job.

As he reached the car, Michael saw that one of his flashy, wide-whitewall tires was completely flat. That was the beginning.

Michael was not entirely unaccustomed to bad days. He had a really bad one about eight months earlier, when he and four other men were arrested and charged with extortion conspiracy. Michael was able to have his case severed from codefendant Joseph Gallo. But he must have been discouraged to see Gallo, a Profaci Crime Family-affiliated hoodlum known as "Joey the Blond" and "Crazy Joey," get convicted and sentenced to between seven and a half and fifteen years in prison. Michael's own trial was approaching. In the meantime, he was free in bail of $5,000.

Michael had been in trouble with the law before and knew what prison was like. He was sent to reform school when he just was sixteen and convicted of burglary. He avoided incarceration following convictions for receiving stolen goods in 1937 and for bookmaking in 1946. He had federal interstate theft charges dismissed in 1947. But, then, he was sentenced to five to ten years in state prison on a grand larceny conviction. He served more than five years of that sentence before he was paroled on April 26, 1954.

Determining that the flattened white wall would prevent him from getting his wife to the subway on time, Michael returned to his second-floor apartment and telephoned for his brother. Philip, twenty-eight, lived in Brooklyn. A carpenter by trade, Philip had no police record, though people had noticed him spending considerable time with his mob-connected brother.

Philip drove over in his Cadillac convertible and dropped Michael's wife at the subway station before returning to Troutman Street to assist Michael with his flat tire.

Michael Albergo

The brothers were finishing the job at twenty minutes past ten when that Monday morning got really bad.

They were crouching by the tire as a dark green sedan came up beside them and slowed. From inside the vehicle, a gunman opened fire. At least a half-dozen shots headed in the general direction of the Albergo brothers. The sedan then sped away.

Michael and Philip suffered serious but not immediately life-threatening wounds. Michael was hit by .38-caliber slugs in his right shoulder and right arm. Philip had a slug pass through his left arm and lodge in his chest.

It must have seemed like good luck when a bakery delivery truck happened by. The Albergo's got the attention of the driver, and the driver agreed to take them to the hospital. As they drove off, it became apparent that the driver was not going directly to the hospital. He had just one more delivery to make that morning, and was determined to keep on schedule.

According to reports, Michael and Philip accepted that news with remarkable nonchalance. They casually smoked cigarettes as their blood poured out into the bakery truck.

Upon arrival at the Carlton Restaurant, 52-03 Metropolitan Avenue, the brothers finally met people willing to drop everything to help them. Restaurant owner Rose Achiel and her daughter Barbara summoned an ambulance and administered first aid. (It seems the bakery truck driver did not wait around long enough to be identified.) The brothers were taken to St. John's Hospital in Elmhurst. Their condition was said to be not critical.

Detectives from Queens investigated the shooting and called in Brooklyn Deputy Chief Inspector Raymond V. Martin for assistance. The shooting was linked to an underworld conflict between the Gallo Gang of the Gowanus section of Brooklyn and their superiors in the Profaci (later known as Colombo) Crime Family.

Martin's book

Martin had been keeping an eye on the Gallo Gang. The group had been intensely interesting to him since the 1959 murder of their Mafia mentor "Frankie Shots" Abbatemarco. (Martin later wrote a book about the Gallo-Profaci War, entitled Revolt in the Mafia.) It was said that Abbatemarco had been withholding numbers racket tribute payments from the Profaci hierarchy. Soon after that murder, the Gallos rebelled against Profaci. There were rumors that Profaci ordered the Gallos to arrange the killing of Abbatemarco, promising them control of Abbatemarco's numbers as a reward for their loyalty. According to the rumors, the Gallos felt betrayed when Profaci handed the numbers racket to others. They launched their rebellion by kidnaping and threatening several leaders of the crime family.

Aware of increasing hostility between the Profaci factions, police had positioned themselves near Gallo headquarters and had followed the Gallo members as closely as they could. It appeared that Michael Albergo was not deemed an important enough Gallo contact to monitor, leaving him vulnerable to an attack from Gallo enemies.

Detectives quickly concluded that Michael's tire had been deliberately flattened to put him on the spot for a mob hit. The Chrysler was parked on the left side of the one-way street. The front tire on the passenger's side - facing the middle of the street - had been pierced with an icepick.

After interviewing a few dozen Albergo friends and relatives, police were no closer to identifying those responsible for firing on Michael and Philip. If the brothers knew anything, they were keeping it to themselves. Their silence may have contributed to their longevity. After recovering from his bullet wound, Philip lived another forty-three years, dying in May 2005. Michael lived to the age of ninety, passing in the summer of 2008.

One of the lingering questions for police was whether Philip was intended to be a target. Michael was alone at the car for a period of time before Philip arrived to help him. But the attack did not occur until both brothers were together. Sources suggested that Michael and Philip routinely got together on Monday mornings.

Sources:

• "Extortion figure shot in Brooklyn," Rochester NY Democrat and Chronicle, Jan. 30, 1962, p. 6. 
• "Gunned down in gang war," Troy NY Record, Jan. 30, 1962, p. 8.
• "Night spot manager held in extortion," Long Island Star-Journal, May 13, 1961.
• "Seek solution to shooting, Albergo brothers recover," Ridgewood NY Times, Feb. 1, 1962, p. 1.
• House Select Committee on Assassinations, U.S. House of Representatives, 95th Congress, 2d Session, Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix to Hearings, Report Volume IX, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979, p. 36.
• Martin, Raymond V., Revolt in the Mafia: How the Gallo Gang Split the New York Underworld, New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1963, p. 219.
• Pugh, Thomas, "Gallo's 2 boys getting well; cops baffled," New York Daily News, Jan. 31, 1962, p. 23.
• Pugh, Thomas, and Henry Lee, "Gallo hood & brother shot in street - live," New York Daily News, Jan. 30, 1962, p. 3.
• Social Security Death Index, May 28, 2005, and Aug. 29, 2008.

Awaiting airport arrival, Lucky departs

On this date in 1962...

Longtime Mafia leader Salvatore "Charlie Luciano" Lucania, sixty-four, died January 26, 1962, of an apparent heart attack at Capodichino Airport north of Naples, Italy.

Lucania was at the airport to meet movie producer Martin Gosch and discuss a Gosch script for a Mafia-related movie.

Gosch later suggested, without providing any evidence, that Lucania had dictated his life story to Gosch. Gosch and Richard Hammer authored a book, The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano, that was packaged as Lucania's memoirs. The book was released in 1975, after Gosch's death. The book's publisher, Little, Brown & Company, claimed in advertisements that Last Testament was based upon tape-recorded conversations with Lucania. The publisher later issued a correction, revealing that no such recordings were ever made. Little, Brown & Company followed up with a claim that a collection of Gosch's original notes - seen by no one connected with the project and allegedly burned by his widow after his death - was based upon thirty interviews of Lucania by the producer between 1959 and 1962. Over time, the story was altered to suggest that Gosch provided handwritten notes to Hammer or provided his own recorded dictation of his original notes to Hammer. It was later discovered that Last Testament contained factual errors on matters that would have been well known to Lucania and also was built upon quotations attributed to Lucania that were fabricated by Hammer. An FBI investigation of Gosch labeled the producer an untrustworthy opportunist trying to profit from his association with Lucania. FBI records reveal that Gosch told a representative of the FBI that his movie script, the only product of his interaction with Lucania, was a work of fiction. The Bureau dismissed the Gosch and Hammer book as a fraud, stating, "It is not believed that this book has any value to the FBI, or to anyone else for that matter." (Richard N. Warner's detailed analysis of the book was published in the April 2012 issue of Informer: The History of American Crime and Law Enforcement.)

United States Narcotics Bureau agents and Italian law enforcement had been trailing Lucania, known to many as "Lucky Luciano," believing that he was an organizer of an international narcotics smuggling ring. They were preparing to arrest him at the time of his death.

NY Daily News

Gosch reached Lucania as he collapsed. Knowing that Lucania had a heart condition, he searched the Mafia leader's pockets for pills. Finding a small box of pills, he put one into Lucania's mouth. Observers found the activity suspicious, and there were persistent rumors that Lucania was poisoned. Police questioned Gosch for about five hours. The producer said he first met Lucania in 1960 and was working on a movie about Lucania's life.

Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

Lucania was born to Salvatore and Rosalia Lucania in Lercara Friddi, Sicily, in November of 1897. He was brought to the U.S. as a child around 1905. His family settled on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and Lucania attended public school until sixth grade. He got into some trouble as a teenager and was sent for a time to Brooklyn Truant School. In 1916, he was convicted of a narcotics offense (sale of morphine) and served a sentence at the New Hampton Farms Reformatory.

NY Times

Following his release, he participated in gambling rackets and continued involvement in narcotics sales. He became an associate of Jack "Legs" Diamond and Arnold Rothstein and, later, of Manhattan Mafia boss Giuseppe Masseria. As Masseria reached the position of boss of bosses, Lucania was his top lieutenant.

Lucania and other members of Masseria's organization betrayed their boss at the end of the underworld's 1930-31 Castellammarese War and set him up for assassination in spring 1931. Lucania took over the Masseria operation. Months later, he arranged the assassination of another Mafia boss of bosses, Salvatore Maranzano. With Lucania's backing, the U.S. Mafia discarded the old boss of bosses system of resolving inter-family disputes and installed a representative panel known as the Commission.

Lucania was convicted of compulsory prostitution in 1936. He testified in the trial and was forced to admit past crimes and lies told to authorities. He was sentenced to serve thirty to fifty years in prison. He was released from prison on a conditional executive commutation from Governor Thomas Dewey and deported from the U.S. to Italy in 1946. His release and deportation were arranged after a former member of the Office of Naval Intelligence vaguely claimed that the imprisoned Lucania rendered assistance to U.S. forces during World War II.

Wishing to be closer to his longtime home, his associates and his lucrative rackets, Lucania traveled back across the Atlantic and settled in Havana, Cuba, in autumn 1946. Pressure by U.S. agencies on the Cuban government succeeded in forcing him back to Italy March of 1947.

During his years in Italy, Lucania reportedly hoped to someday return to the U.S. His return occurred only after his death. His remains were transported by plane from Rome to New York City in February 1962. He was buried in St. John's Cemetery in Queens, New York.

Sources:

• Anderson, Jack, "The Last Days of Lucky Luciano," Parade, June 17, 1962.
• Dewey, Thomas E., Twenty Against the Underworld, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1974.
• FBI cablegram to Director, Charles "Lucky" Luciano FBI file, Jan. 26, 1962.
• Feder, Sid, and Joachim Joesten, The Luciano Story, New York: Da Capo Press, 1994 (originally published in 1954).
• Gage, Nicholas, "F.B.I. tells agents not to trust book on Luciano," New York Times, March 14, 1975, p. 30.
• Gage, Nicholas, "Questions are raised on Lucky Luciano book," New York Times, Dec. 17, 1974, p. 1.
• Lewis, Norman, The Honored Society, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1964.
• Packard, Reynolds, "V-King Luciano's luck runs out: drops dead," New York Daily News, Jan. 27, 1962.
• Poulsen, Ellen, The Case Against Lucky Luciano: New York's Most Sensational Vice Trial, Little Neck, NY: Clinton Cook Publishing, 2007.
• Powell, Hickman, Lucky Luciano: The Man Who Organized Crime in America, New York: Barnes and Noble, 2006 (reprint of 1939 work).
• "Publisher of book on Luciano says it was based on interviews," New York Times, Jan. 21, 1975, p. 46.
• Receiving blotter, Chas. Luciano, no. 92168, Sing Sing Prison, June 18, 1936.
• Rosen, A., "Charles 'Lucky' Luciano parole," FBI memorandum to E.A. Tamm, April 3, 1946.
• Rosen, A., "Charles 'Lucky' Luciano, was miscellaneous information," FBI memorandum to E.A. Tamm, Feb. 10, 1947.
• Rosen, A., "Charles 'Lucky' Luciano's parole and deportation," FBI memorandum to E.A. Tamm, March 6, 1946.
• The People of the State of New York against Charles Luciano, et al., Record on Appeal, Volume III, Supreme Court of the State of New York, Appellate Division - First Department, 1937
• Vizzini, Sal, with Oscar Fraley and Marshall Smith, Vizzini: The Story of America's No, 1 Undercover Narcotics Agent, New York: Pinnacle, 1972.
• Whitman, Alden, "Publisher to go ahead with Luciano book," New York Times, Dec. 27, 1974, p. 23.
• "'Lucky' Luciano succumbs' was underworld czar," Rochester NY Democrat and Chronicle, Jan. 27, 1962, p. 1.
• "Charles 'Lucky' Luciano, information concerning," FBI memo, Feb. 19, 1962.
• "Charles Luciana, with aliases," FBI memorandum, file no. 39-2141-X, Aug. 28, 1935, p. 4, 5.
• "Charles Luciano, Anti-Racketeering," translations of Italian language articles appearing in the Jan. 11, Jan. 18 and Jan. 25, 1959, issues of L'Europeo magazine, FBI memo, Feb. 18, 1959.
• "In the end 'Lucky' Luciano was not really so terribly lucky after all," Bridgeport CT Sunday Post, Feb. 4, 1962, p. 14.
• "Lucania is forced to admit crimes," New York Times, June 4, 1936, p. 1.
• "Luciano dies at 65; was facing arrest," New York Times, Jan. 27, 1962, p. 1.
• "Luciano dies of seizure," Poughkeepsie Journal, Jan. 26, 1962, p. 1.
• "Luciano's links to underworld investigated by Italian agents," New York Times, Jan. 28, 1962, p. 66.
• "Salvatore Lucania...," FBI report Albany 100-5170, Oct. 16, 1942.
• "Salvatore Lucania...," FBI report NY 62-8768, file no. 39-2141-9, May 5, 1946
• "The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano," FBI memorandum to Mr. Cleveland, Oct. 2, 1974.

Cali cops called for Caddy corpse

Cleveland-connected
killer confesses

Petro

On this date in 1969...

On Sunday, Jan. 12, 1969, police found a dead man behind the wheel of a '66 Cadillac convertible parked in the Los Angeles International Airport lot. There was a small-caliber bullet wound at the base of the man's skull. The man had been dead for a couple of days.

A local resident, departing the airport Saturday for a one-day flight, parked near the Cadillac and noticed the driver slumped over the steering wheel. When the resident returned Sunday night and found the Cadillac and its driver in the same position, he alerted police.

No identifying papers were found on the body. Police used fingerprints to identify the victim as forty-six-year-old former Cleveland robber/safecracker Julius Petro. They learned that Petro had borrowed the Cadillac from a woman friend two days earlier.

Petro had survived at least two brushes with death during his young adult years in Ohio. He was sentenced to be executed for murder, but won a retrial on appeal and in 1948 was acquitted of that murder. Months later, he and four accomplices held up the Mafia-linked Green Acres casino outside of Youngstown, Ohio. The robbers took about $30,000 in cash and jewels, including a large diamond ring belonging to regional gambling boss Joseph DiCarlo. Shots were exchanged between the robbers and casino guards. Petro suffered gunshot wounds to his right chest and arm, but managed to recover.

An early 1950s bank robbery conviction sent Petro to prison for about thirteen years. Following his May 1966 release, he joined a wave of Cleveland-area racketeers relocating to California. Initially serving as an enforcer for a gambling operation, in a short time Petro was viewed as a threat to displace racket overseer John G. "Sparky" Monica. The killing of Petro eliminated that threat.

Ferritto

Authorities were unable to solve the Petro murder until about a decade later, when Raymond W. Ferritto became an informant and confessed that he performed the killing for Monica. He said he shot Petro on January 10, 1969. Ferritto, a western Pennsylvania native connected with the Cleveland Mafia, also confessed to participating in the 1977 bombing murder of Cleveland mobster Danny Greene.

Monica denied any involvement, but he was indicted for hiring Ferritto and a man named Robert Walsh to kill Petro because Petro was extorting money from him. Prosecutors seeking to bring the gambling boss to trial encountered a number of obstacles that delayed for years a preliminary hearing in the case. A Monica arraignment was finally set for Monday, February 22, 1982. Just a few days before that, however, fifty-six-year-old Monica, free on bail, died in a traffic accident on US-70 near Tularosa, New Mexico.

Investigators were able to track some of Monica's movements and guessed that he was returning from a visit to a girlfriend in Odessa, Texas, when the highway accident occurred.

Sources:

• “Petro, freed in killing, is found shot,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, Sept. 18, 1948.
• "Reputed Mafia figure," Los Angeles Times, Feb. 19, 1982, p. 35.
• California Death Index.
• Demaris, Ovid, The Last Mafioso, New York: Bantam Books, 1981.
• Dye, Lee, “Parolee’s murder mystifies police,” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 16, 1969, p. 1
• Farr, Bill, “’Hit man’ admits murder at airport,” Los Angeles Times, May 19, 1978, p. 5
• Hazlett, Bill, "1969 gangland slaying case headed for trial," Los Angeles Times, Feb. 8, 1982, p. II-6.
• Hazlett, Bill, "Judge to appeal closed hearing order," Los Angeles Times, May 30, 1979, p. II-4.
• Hertel, Howard, and Gene Blake, "Reputed Mafia chief defies court, jailed," Los Angeles Times, July 10, 1969, p. 1.
• Hunt, Thomas, and Michael A. Tona, DiCarlo: Buffalo's First Family of Crime, Volume II, 2013.
• "Fatal wreck adds twist to murder," El Paso Times, March 17, 1982, p. 11.
• Petro v. United States, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Feb. 12, 1954. (Also Joseph J. Sanzo v. U.S.)
• Porrello, Rick, Superthief, Next Hat Press, 2006.
• Porrello, Rick, To Kill the Irishman, Next Hat Press, 1998.
• Social Security Death Index.

See also:

• Julius Petro biography on Mafiahistory.us. 
• "Golden State often unfriendly to transplanted mobsters," October 2021 issue of Informer: The History of American Crime and Law Enforcement.
  

He did it, but they couldn't prove it

Carmine Galante of Bonanno clan
is regarded as Tresca's killer

On this date in 1943...

Tresca

Carlo Tresca, sixty-three-year-old editor of the Italian-language newspaper Il Martello (The Hammer), sat alone in his third floor Manhattan office after the close of business on Monday, January 11, 1943. He was preparing to host an eight-thirty meeting of a committee of the anti-Fascist Italian-American Mazzini Society.

Tresca, who embraced an anarchist (anarcho-syndicalist) philosophy and was arrested dozens of times for pro-labor mischief and other offenses over the years, had actively opposed Fascism since early in the rise of Benito Mussolini. His views on the Fascist movement, once dismissed as radical rabble-rousing, gained popularity upon U.S. entry into the Second World War near the end of 1941.

Committee member Giuseppe Calabi, of 415 Central Park West, arrived about fifteen minutes late to the office, above the Crawford clothing store at the corner of Fifth Avenue and West Fifteenth Street. None of the four other committee members showed up at all.

Tresca and Calabi waited for other members until after nine-thirty and then gave up. Tresca asked Calabi to accompany him for dinner. The editor had a favorite bar and grill, located about half a block away, on the east side of Fifth Avenue between Fourteenth and Fifteenth Streets. He often stopped there in the evening as he made his way from work to his Greenwich Village home, 52 West Twelfth Street. Calabi accepted the invitation. The office lights were turned out and the men exited the building onto the Fifth Avenue sidewalk.

---

Galante

On that same night, thirty-five-year-old Carmine Galante, of 876 Lots Avenue in Brooklyn, had an appointment in downtown Manhattan. Galante had been paroled a few years earlier from Sing Sing Prison after serving two-thirds of sentence for shooting at a police officer during a payroll holdup. There were months left on his parole, and he had been called to a meeting with the State Parole Board at 80 Centre Street.

Sidney Gross, in charge of the parole office, noted that Galante seemed nervous during the meeting. He grew concerned that Galante was slipping back into the old criminal associations that had repeatedly landed him behind bars since he was a teenager. Gross secretly assigned investigators Fred Berson and George Talianoff to follow Galante when he left the office.

The investigators positioned themselves near the building exit and waited for Galante. At shortly after eight o'clock, they were surprised by the speed with which their target rushed out onto the sidewalk and jumped into a waiting automobile.

With wartime rationing of gasoline and rubber, automobiles were generally reserved for only the most important travel, and they were entirely unavailable to Berson and Talianoff. They reasonably expected Galante to walk to the nearest subway station. As the dark sedan drove away, the investigators did the only thing they could do. They wrote down the sedan's license plate number: 1C-9272.

---

Tresca and Calabi took just a few strides on the dimly lit sidewalk, passing a man who was impatiently pacing back and forth, when that man stepped up behind them and fired a handgun at Tresca's back. The two men instinctively turned toward the sound of the gunshot. Tresca got a second bullet in the face. The gunman fired another wild shot or two before climbing into a dark sedan and heading off to the west on Fifteenth Street.

Police officers and an ambulance from St. Vincent's Hospital rushed to the scene. Tresca was dead before he reached the hospital. A postmortem examination found that either of the .32-caliber bullets that entered his body would have been sufficient to end his life - the first ripped through one of his lungs and the second lodged in his brain.

NY Daily News

Calabi could provide little identifying information about the gunman. He was about five-foot-five, wore dark clothes and had his hat pulled down low, leaving his face in shadow. Calabi estimated that the gunman was in his mid-thirties.

Investigators found no .32-caliber firearm at the scene. They did find a .38-caliber handgun, tucked behind an ash barrel around the corner near the Fifteenth Street exit of the office building. This suggested that preparations were in place to assassinate Tresca as he left the building, no matter which exit he chose. It also suggested that a second gunman may have been involved.

Some eyewitnesses told the police that, despite the darkness, they could tell that the gunman's vehicle was a 1938 or 1939 Ford. A matching car soon was found abandoned at a subway entrance one-half mile away at Seventh Avenue and West 18th Street. (Seventh Avenue was not yet a southbound one-way street in 1943, allowing the automobile to drive up northward from Fifteenth Street.) Its license plate number was 1C-9272.

Police learned that the vehicle was purchased as a used car from Confield Motors just eighteen days earlier. The purchaser paid for it with $300 in cash. It was registered to Charles Pappas, 82-07 Eighty-Second Street in Brooklyn. The authorities found that the name and address were fictional.

Detectives wondered about the Mazzini Society members who failed to show up for the meeting. Tracking down the members, they found that each had a different reason for failing to make it to Tresca's office that night. One recalled a prior engagement, one insisted he was never notified of the meeting, one knew about it but didn't feel it was important to attend and the last simply forgot about it.

---

The next day, parole board investigators heard of the Tresca murder and saw the familiar license plate number of the abandoned automobile. Sidney Gross called police with information about Galante. He then led officers through Galante's known hangouts and located him at a restaurant on Elizabeth Street. Police arrested Galante as he emerged from the restaurant.

Questioned about his movements after leaving the parole board office, Galante stated that he took a subway uptown, went to a movie theater and then spent time with a girlfriend. He knew little about the movie he supposedly watched, and he refused to divulge the name of the girlfriend.

Police had already caught the parolee in a lie. They revealed that witnesses saw Galante get into an automobile. Galante stubbornly stuck to his lie.

Two of the many mourners who paid respects to the
late Carlo Tresca at the Manhattan Center.
Library of Congress

Police and prosecutors were certain that Galante was involved in the killing of Tresca. However, they did not have enough evidence to build a murder case against him. The authorities had to be satisfied with returning him to prison on a parole violation.

---

Garofalo

Galante today is widely regarded as the gunman who took Tresca's life. But the precise reason he did so remains unclear. Law enforcement sources have indicated that Galante was ordered to perform the hit by Frank Garofalo, underboss of the Bonanno Crime Family in New York. Some say this resulted from a personal dispute between Tresca and Garofalo. Others say it was a favor done by Garofalo for New York mobster Vito Genovese, who returned to Italy in the late 1930s and sought to improve his standing with Mussolini. (The Genovese theory seems unreasonably tangled.)

Still others believe there was an arrangement between Garofalo and newspaper publisher Generoso Pope. Pope, whose original surname, "Papa," was very close to the name used to purchase the Ford sedan, faced intense criticism from Tresca for his prewar support of Mussolini and Fascism. Following U.S. entry into the war, Pope made every effort to portray himself as a Mussolini critic and a key political ally of the Democratic Administration in Washington. Pope was influential in the Italian-American community, was well regarded by anti-Communist U.S. political leaders and included not only Garofalo but also Frank Costello (and possibly Tommy Lucchese) among his underworld friends.

Pope

(The Pope-Costello relationship continued into the next Pope generation. Multiple sources indicate that Generoso Pope, Jr., used no-interest loans from Costello to purchase the New York Enquirer tabloid and build it into the National Enquirer. The May 1957 assassination attempt against Costello occurred when he was returning home from a dinner with Generoso Pope, Jr., and other friends.)

Sources:

• "Carlo Tresca slain on 5th Ave.," New York Daily News, Jan. 12, 1943, p. 1.
• "Carlo Tresca shot dead," New York Daily News, Jan. 12, 1943, p. 2.
• "Carmine Galante," FBI report, file no. 92-3025-8, 1958, p. 1.
• "Costello is shot entering home; gunman escapes," New York Times, May 3, 1957, p. 1.
• "Enemies of Tresca sought by police," New York Times, Jan. 15, 1943.
• "Ex-convict seized in Tresca murder; chance gives clue," New York Times, Jan. 14, 1943, p. 1.
• "FBI fears reprisals over Tresca slaying," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Jan. 12, 1943, p. 3.
• "Tresca biography," Anarchy Archives, dwardmac.pitzer.edu, accessed Jan. 10, 2019.
• "VIII, Costello's influence in politics," Third Interim Report of the Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, 82nd Congress, 1st Session, Report no. 307, Washington D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1951.
• Cummings, Judith, "Galante to give up to U.S. authorities," New York Times, Oct. 9, 1977.
• FBI Director, "La Cosa Nostra AR - Conspiracy," FBI Airtel to SAC New York, file no 92-6054-2176, NARA no. 124-10289-10184, Nov. 16, 1967.
• Feather, Bill, "Bonanno Family membership chart 1930-50's," Mafia Membership Charts, mafiamembershipcharts.blogspot.com.
• Frasca, Dom, King of Crime, New York: Crown Publishers Inc., 1959, p. 67.
• Gallagher, Dorothy, All the Right Enemies - The Life and Murder of Carlo Tresca, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988.
• Horgan, Richard, "The dubious beginnings of The National Enquirer," Adweek, adweek.com, June 13, 2013.
• Martin, John, and James Tierney, "Grill hoodlum, linked to Tresca murder car," New York Daily News, Jan. 14, 1943, p. 2.
• New York City Extracted Death Index, certificate no. 1306, Jan. 11, 1943.
• SAC New York, "La Cosa Nostra AR - Conspiracy," FBI Airtel, file no. 92-6054-2194, NARA no. 124-10289-10202, Nov. 20, 1967, p. 3.

Outfit killer Calabrese dies on Xmas 2012

On this date in 2012...

Frank J. "Frankie Breeze" Calabrese, Sr., seventy-five, a convicted leader of the Chicago Outfit, died December 25, 2012, at the Federal Medical Center of Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina. He was serving a life sentence.

Prison officials said he had been in poor health, with heart disease and other afflictions. Calabrese, himself, outlined an assortment of medical problems, including an enlarged heart, during a sentencing hearing in 2009.

There were reports that Calabrese had been seriously ill for more than a year. His attorney told the Chicago Tribune that Calabrese had been taking seventeen different medications for a variety of health problems.

The attorney, Joseph Lopez, recalled Calabrese as "quick-witted, smart and street-savvy." He said his client was "difficult at times because he was used to getting his way."

Lopez said Calabrese's Christmas Day death felt "odd" because that day was Calabrese's favorite holiday: "He always talked about how much he loved spending Christmas with his family."

Calabrese was born on Chicago's West Side to James and Sophia Calabrese on March 17, 1937. His early childhood was spent on Chicago's West Erie Street.

Beginning his criminal career as a teenager, Calabrese was convicted and imprisoned for possession of stolen cars in 1954. Calabrese was back in the streets and running a lucrative loan sharking enterprise by the early 1960s. Loan customers were charged interest of ten percent each week. In that period, he became a protege of the Chicago Outfit's South Side boss Angelo "the Hook" LaPietra. His loan sharking operation continued into the 1990s, as Calabrese grew in importance within the Outfit.

On July 28, 1995, Calabrese and eight members of his underworld crew were indicted for racketeering, conspiracy, extortion, mail fraud, witness tampering and impeding the IRS. Federal prosecutors said the group operated an extensive loan sharking racket in the Chicago area, using threats and violence in the course of business. Calabrese pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a long term in federal prison.

Calabrese's son, Frank Jr. also pleaded guilty and went to prison in the loan sharking case. During their time in prison, Frank Jr. began cooperating with federal authorities and helped assemble evidence that was used against Calabrese and other Outfit leaders in the Family Secrets trial of 2007.

Calabrese was convicted of racketeering and racketeering murders in that trial. Witnesses against him included his son and his brother. Calabrese took the stand in his own defense, admitting to loan sharking but denying Outfit membership and participation in killings.

The jury found him guilty of involvement in seven killings. The victims were racketeer Michael Albergo (disappeared in 1970), trucking executive Michael P. Cagnoni (car bomb 1981), informant ex-mobster William E. Dauber and his wife Charlotte Dauber (shotgunned 1980), racketeer and former union business agent John Fecarotta (shot 1986), bar owner Richard Ortiz and his friend Arthur Morawski (shotgunned 1983). The jury could not reach a decision on six other killings Calabrese was accused of taking part in.

Cagnoni car-bombing. Chicago Tribune.

Two other Outfit leaders, James Marcello and Joseph Lombardo, along with codefendants Paul Schiro and Anthony Doyle also were convicted of racketeering conspiracy in the case. Marcello and Lombardo were convicted of racketeering murders.

Calabrese was sentenced January 30, 2009, to life in prison.

In early April, Calabrese and three others convicted in the "Family Secrets" case were ordered to pay more than $24 million in fines and restitution to the families of their victims.

Part of Calabrese's debt was paid in March of the following year, when FBI agents executed a search warrant at the former Calabrese home in Oak Brook and discovered a secret compartment in the wall behind a framed collection of family photographs. Envelopes in the compartment were found to contain $728,000 in cash. The compartment also held one thousand pieces of jewelry (many still in store display boxes or with price tags still attached), seven firearms, twelve audio microcassettes and a collection of handwritten notes and ledgers.

Sources:

• Coen, Jeff, Liam Ford and Michael Higgins, "10 murders laid at feet of 3 in mob," Chicago Tribune, Sept. 28, 2007.
• Donato, Marla, "Cicero revisits '83 double slaying," Chicago Tribune, April 12, 2000.
• Koziol, Ronald, and John O'Brien, "A deadly trick for mob figure," Chicago Tribune, Sept. 16, 1986, p. 19.
• O'Brien, John, and Lynn Emmerman, "Mob violence: Bullets riddle hit man, wife," Chicago Tribune, July 3, 1980, p. 1.
• Unger, Rudolph, and Philip Wattley, "Radio-control bomb kills suburbanite," Chicago Tribune, June 25, 1981, p. 1.
• United States Census of 1940, Illinois, Cook County, Chicago, Ward 28, Enumeration District 103-1767.
• Weber, Bruce, "Frank Calabrese, 75, hit man for the mob in Chicago," New York Times, Dec. 27, 2012, p. 22.
• "A look at 18 murders detailed in mob case," Rock Island Dispatch-Argus, Sept. 11, 2007.
• "Chicago Crime Commission calls FBI raid on Calabrese home major blow to organized crime," Prnewswire.com, March 28, 2010.
• "Frank Calabrese, notorious Chicago mob hit man, dies in prison, authorities, say," CBS News, Dec. 27, 2012.
• "Members of 'street crew' indicted Norther District of Illinois," United States Attorneys' Bulletin, September 1995, p. 304.
• "Mob hitman Frank Calabrese Sr. dies in prison," Chicago Tribune, Dec. 26, 2012.

Murdered on Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve, 1992...

Rosemarie & Thomas Uva

Thomas and Rosemarie Uva headed out on the morning of Thursday, December 24, 1992, to finish up their Christmas shopping. Before leaving their apartment at Eighty-Third Street in Ozone Park, Queens, Rosemarie spoke briefly on the telephone with her sixty-one-year-old mother-in-law, Fannie Accomando Uva of the Bronx.

Traffic was heavy - holiday motorists mixed with the usual Thursday morning rush-hour congestion. The Uvas, in a four-door maroon Mercury Topaz, were less than a mile from home at nine o'clock when they stopped for a traffic light at 103rd Avenue's intersection with Ninety-First Street.

Bullets cracked in rapid succession through the Topaz's windshield. Three slugs struck twenty-eight-year-old Thomas in the head. Three others hit Rosemarie, thirty-one. They died instantly.

Their automobile, no longer restrained by the force of a living person's leg on its brake pedal, began to move through the intersection. It continued eastward several blocks, colliding with another vehicle at Woodhaven Boulevard and finally coming to rest against a brick wall and fence surrounding a residential property at Woodhaven and 103rd Avenue.

Police, press and public had no idea at that moment why the young couple had been killed. Members of some New York crime families understood the reason, but they weren't yet talking about it. Fannie Uva seemed to be the first to have an inkling. When she spoke with the local press, she remarked that the shooting sounded like something the Mafia would do. But she told reporters that her son Thomas had no connection to organized crime. ..

Read more at Mafiahistory.us:

• "Robbing from the Mob: Christmas Eve killings bring to end couple's foolhardy criminal career."

'Chin' Gigante dies in prison hospital

On this date in 2005...

Vincent "Vinny the Chin" Gigante, longtime boss of the Genovese Crime Family, died December 19, 2005, at the United States Medical Center for Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. The seventy-seven-year-old was serving a racketeering sentence at the time of his death.

Prison staff found Gigante unresponsive at five-fifteen in the morning and attempted without success to resuscitate him through CPR. A cause of death was not announced, but prison officials noted that Gigante had a history of heart disease.

Gigante was born in New York on March 29, 1928. His family lived for many years on Thompson Street in Manhattan's Greenwich Village neighborhood. In his late teens, Gigante was a prizefighter. He later became a protege of crime bosses Vito Genovese and Tommy Eboli, and he is generally believed to have been the gunman who wounded Frank Costello in May 1957.

After serving a five-year sentence for a 1959 narcotics trafficking conviction, "Chin" Gigante advanced to leadership positions in the Genovese Crime Family. He was one of the key figures - along with longtime friend Venero "Benny Eggs" Mangano - in the organization's powerful Greenwich Village crew. Gigante ran his criminal rackets from the Triangle Social Club.

About a decade after the narcotics conviction, Gigante first made use of feigned mental illness. When charged with attempting to bribe the police department, he managed to convince doctors that he was mentally unfit to stand trial.

Gigante gradually took over the Genovese clan in the early 1980s, as boss Philip "Benny Squint" Lombardo moved into retirement. (Venero Mangano substituted for Gigante in 1988, when the boss had surgery for a heart ailment.) Gigante deflected attention first by having East Harlem-based Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno pose as crime family leader and, after Salerno's 1992 death, by publicly portraying himself as severely mentally ill. Family and close acquaintances insisted that he suffered with Alzheimer's disease, dementia and/or paranoid schizophrenia.

Gigante did his best to back up the amateur diagnoses through his actions. He regularly checked into hospitals seeking treatment for hallucinations and dementia. He often wandered the streets of Greenwich Village in pajamas, robe and slippers, was observed carrying on conversations with himself and once was found hiding under an umbrella in his bathroom shower. The New York press dubbed him "the Oddfather."

The Chin's act was largely successful until the July 25, 1997, conviction for racketeering, extortion and plotting (but not carrying out) a murder resulted in a twelve-year prison sentence. In 2003, Gigante admitted in Brooklyn federal court that he had been feigning mental illness in order to obstruct justice. Three more years were added to his prison sentence following that admission.

Sources:

• Marzulli, John, "Last of the old dons gone," New York Daily News, Dec. 20, 2005, p. 36.
• Newman, Andy, "Analyze this: Gigante not crazy after all those years," New York Times, April 13, 2003.
• Pyle, Richard, "Imprisoned mob boss Vincent Gigante, 77," Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 20, 2005, p. B9, "Vincent Gigante, mob's 'Oddfather,'" Arizona Republic, Dec. 20, 2005, p. 10.
• Raab, Selwyn, "Vincent Gigante, mob boss who feigned incompetence to avoid jail, dies at 77," New York Times, Dec. 20, 2005, p. 29.

See also:

• "Gigante, Vincent 'the Chin' (1928-2005)," mafiahistory.us
• "Death of 'Benny Eggs' severs link to Genovese Family's foundation," mafiahistory.us

Detroit gang feud claims Adamo brothers

On this date in 1913...

Detroit Free Press, Nov. 25, 1913.

Vito and Salvatore Adamo, leaders of a Sicilian underworld faction in Detroit, were murdered on their way home from work in the late afternoon of November 24, 1913.

The brothers worked as wine and liquor peddlers. At about five o'clock, they exited the saloon of their partner Peter Mirabella on Mullett Street (close to the current Nicolet Place) near Rivard Street. They walked along Mullett toward their residence, 486 Champlain Street (now East Lafayette). But they were ambushed.

Two men had been loitering on Mullett between Rivard and Russell Streets (Russell no longer reaches the area). As the Adamos approached, those men drew sawed-off shotguns from their coats, fired large slugs into the brothers and fled. Police arrived to find two dying men in the gutter in front of 170 Mullett Street.

Vito Adamo, thirty years old, died on the way to St. Mary's Hospital. Salvatore Adamo, twenty-one, died at the hospital about half an hour later. The Adamos were buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery, Thursday, November 27 - Thanksgiving.

Local authorities attributed the murders to an ongoing feud between Sicilian gangs in Detroit. Vito Adamo, with codefendant Phillip Buccellato, had recently been tried for and acquitted of the August 1913 murder of Carlo Caleca (also spelled Calego). Caleca was a Black Hand extortionist believed to be working with the Giannola Gang. The Adamo brothers were arrested following an early November attempt on the life of Italian banker and "padrone" Ferdinand Palma. They were released when they convinced authorities that they were close friends of Palma.

The Detroit underworld feud did not end with the deaths of the Adamos. Violence among local underworld factions continued through the Prohibition Era.

Death certificates for Salvatore and Vito Adamo.

Sources:

• Carlo Calego Death Certificate, State of Michigan Department of State Division of Vital Statistics, no. 6327, Aug. 8, 1913.
• Salvatore Adamo Death Certificate, State of Michigan Department of State Division of Vital Statistics, no. 9030, Nov. 24, 1913.
• Vito Adamo Death Certificate, State of Michigan Department of State Division of Vital Statistics, no. 9029, Nov. 24, 1913.
• "Dying statement may convict two," Detroit Free Press, Oct. 10, 1913, p. 8.
• "Two exonerated in murder case," Detroit Free Press, Oct. 14, 1913, p. 5.
• "Ten killed, six wounded; Black Hand record in Detroit in eleven months," Detroit Free Press, Nov. 25, 1913, p. 1.
• "Two Italians, brothers, are fiend victims," Port Huron MI Times-Herald, Nov. 25, 1913, p. 6.
• "Two more slain in Detroit streets in bitter Italian feud," Lansing MI State Journal, Nov. 25, 1913, p. 14.
• "Two Sicilians slain in Italian colony of Detroit; feud result," Detroit Free Press, Nov. 25, 1913, p. 1.
• "Two more marked for death in blood-feud of Detroit Sicilians," Detroit Free Press, Nov. 26, 1913, p. 1.
• "Widow's oath is blamed for bomb deaths," Detroit Free Press, April 13, 1914, p. 1.

Bosses meet on eve of Apalachin convention

On this date in 1957...

Magaddino

On the eve of a scheduled Mafia convention at the Joseph Barbara estate in Apalachin, New York, underworld bosses and cousins Joseph Bonanno and Stefano Magaddino met November 13, 1957, at a private home nearby in Endicott, New York. The two men debated through the night.

The meeting and the content of the discussion were recalled by Bonanno in his autobiography, A Man of Honor.

Bonanno, boss of a Brooklyn-based Mafia family and the current chairman of the Mafia Commission, criticized the decision of western New York underworld boss Magaddino to set up the meeting while Bonanno was out of the country and unable to speak in opposition. Magaddino argued that Bonanno was upset over nothing. Magaddino reminded Bonanno that, when he left the U.S., he entrusted his underworld authority to Magaddino.

Bonanno noted that Joseph Barbara, called upon by Magaddino to host the large gathering, was in poor health and had misgivings about local police cooperation since he hosted a Commission meeting one year earlier.

Bonanno

Magaddino insisted that Barbara was just making excuses: "I never ask him for a favor. When I do, he tries to get out of it. Joe feels all right."

Bonanno also suggested that rival New York bosses Tommy Lucchese and Vito Genovese used appeals to Magaddino's vanity to manipulate him into quickly scheduling the convention. Bonanno reasoned that Lucchese and Genovese wanted national Mafia recognition of their ally, Carlo Gambino, who was just installed as a crime family boss following the assassination of Albert Anastasia. Recognition of Gambino undermined the leadership claims of rival factions in the former Anastasia organization.

Magaddino left Bonanno and headed to Apalachin around midday on November 14. (Bonanno claimed he did not go to the convention.) A police roadblock had already been set up around the Barbara estate and Mafiosi trying to leave the site were being stopped and taken to a New York State Police barracks in Vestal for identification.

See also:

• Apalachin party-crashers expose Mafia network (Writers of Wrongs)
•  A Man of Honor: The Autobiography of Joseph Bonanno.