The Mafia Encyclopedia (105 page)

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Authors: Carl Sifakis

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Page 306
Connie was able to supply the government with information that the mob was planning to kill the key witness against them. The federal agents doubted her claim until she supplied them with the address in New Jersey where the government had the witness under wraps.
The witness was shifted to another secret location and eventually the government won its case against Ormento and a number of other big shots. However, before a case could be built against Rastelli, Mrs. Rastelli was blown away by a mob gunman.
From 1976 Rastelli was in and out of prison on an extortion charge and then for parole violation for meeting with other mobsters. In the mid-1980s he was under numerous federal indictments. After the mob rubout of Gambino boss Paul Castellano in December 1985, there was considerable speculation that Young Turks in the Bonanno family would seek to take out Rastelli because all the charges were making Rastelli ineffective as a leader or, more important, might be inspiring him to start talking. Immediately after the Castellano shooting, U.S. marshals put Rastelli "under protection" at a secret hideaway.
To the aging don it might well have seemed like Connie Rastelli all over again.
Late in 1986 Rastelli was convicted of taking part in a massive labor racketeering conspiracy. The charges were made under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). Under a 12-year sentence he died of liver cancer at 73.
Rat Pack and the Mafia, The: Sinatra's Hollywood followers
The connection between Frank Sinatra and the mob can hardly be classified as late-breaking news. But he was not the only celebrity in the mob's barn. As the acknowledged leader of the Rat Pack, Sinatra was one among other members, including such Hollywood stars and showbiz people as Peter Lawford, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop, Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh, Robert Wagner, Natalie Wood, Shirley MacLaine, Jimmy Van Heusen and others.
Rat Pack members performed regularly in Las Vegas, and their circle attracted many admirers and hangerson, including mobsters like Johnny Roselli, the Hollywood-Las Vegas honcho for Chicago's Sam Giancana. Much has been made of Sinatra's closeness to mob figures and his alleged desire to "run" with gangsters, but the idea that he sometimes cooperated out of fearas did many of the Rat Packersshould not be dismissed.
It was said that Sinatra talked to Giancana about the value of the Chicago Outfit aiding the 1960 presidential campaign of John E Kennedy. Giancana, as his biographer, William Brashler, has stated, "made no commitment without expecting something in exchange." Clearly, what Giancana expectedand informed his mob associates he expectedwere connections in the White House through Sinatra to get the federal government off his back. (Giancana had also tried to achieve that goal by cooperating with the CIA in the ill-fated plots to assassinate Fidel Castro.) It turned out Giancana expected too much from Sinatra, whose influence on John Kennedy was less than generally believed and virtually nil with Bobby Kennedy, attorney general. (Bobby Kennedy forced J. Edgar Hoover, that less-than-zealous Mafia fighter, to have the FBI get tougher with the mob.) Giancana was furiouswith Bobby Kennedy, Sinatra and the whole Rat Pack. It turned out the only Kennedy whom Sinatra had any "in" with was old Joseph, and by that time the elder Kennedy's influence on his sons was itself rather limited.
The boys from Chicago grew more angry as under the Kennedys the heat intensified, as we can hear in a famed conversation between Giancana and a tough outfit hoodlum named Johnny Formosa, recorded for posterity. Formosa told his boss: "Let's show 'em. Let's show those fuckin' Hollywood fruitcakes that they can't get away with it as if nothing's happened." Formosa's solution on Sinatra: "Let's hit him." And of the Rat Packers: "I could whack out a couple of those guys. Lawford, that Martin prick, and I could take the nigger and put his other eye out."
The offer was undoubtedly attractive to Giancana's psychopathic heart-of-hearts, but even Giancana could temper his natural inclinations when money was concerned. "No," he said. "I've got other plans for them."
Thus it was that a short time later Sinatra and a number of the Rat Packers were appearing at the Villa Venice, a former sleazy clip joint turned plush nightclub outside Wheeling, Illinois. Whoever the owners of record, there was firm knowledge that Giancana and the mob were the real operators. Among those performing before big-spending crowds were Sinatra, Eddie Fisher, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. Outside, a bus shuttled customers to a plushly furnished quonset casino a mere two blocks away.
The FBI descended on the Rat Packers and learned that all of them were performing gratis as a personal favor to Sinatra. Fisher rambled in his talks with the FBI but said very little. Davis was more outgoing, informing agents he had cut short some lucrative Las Vegas dates to work the Villa Venice gratis "for my man Francis." The FBI wanted to know if he was also doing it for friends of Sinatra. "By all means," Davis said. Sam Giancana? "By all means." Davis added only one other thought: "Baby, let me say this. I got one eye, and that one eye sees a lot of things that my brain tells me I shouldn't talk about. Because my brain says that, if I
Page 307
do, my one eye might not be seeing
anything
after a while."
The
Chicago Daily News
reported, "During the past 20 days since singer Eddie Fisher started off the new star policy at the Villa, a heavy toll has been levied at the hut on the [Villa] patrons. Individual losses of as much as $25,000 have been reported." Basing an estimate on overheard conversations, the FBI determined that the one-month operation of the Villa Venice and its shuttle service had brought Giancana and the boys a cool $3 million.
Giancana's "other plans" for the Rat Pack had been taken care of. The mob leader was still unhappy about the Kennedy problem, but consoled himself counting the net. And the Rat Pack was alive and well.
See also:
Sinatra, Frank
.
Further reading:
The Don
by William Brashler;
The Mafia Is Not an Equal Opportunity Employer
by Nicholas Gage;
Mafia Princess
by Antoinette Giancana and Thomas C. Renner.
Reading, Pennsylvania: Mafia's East Coast "Cicero"
Cicero, Illinois, the longtime captive city of the Capone mob, was thought unique; a situation like Cicero could never happen again. But, it could and it did. Called the "Pretzel Capital of the World," Reading, Pennsylvania, was turned into a pretzel by the Angelo Bruno crime family of Philadelphia in an operation described as the outright rape of an American city.
Working together with local underworld figures, the Bruno operatives in the 1950s and early '60s corrupted most of the Reading city administration from the mayor on down. In the heart of peaceful Pennsylvania Dutch country the Bruno hoodlums set up an illegal Las Vegas of the East, boasting what has been described as the biggest crap game east of the Mississippi and perhaps in the entire country. The "Reading Game," as it was called, operated out of Philadelphia from the 1950s to 1962, when the FBI finally smothered it. Each night big gamblers from all over the East gathered in a restaurant in the heart of Philadelphia. They would be picked up by "luggers" and hauled 50 miles to Reading where the million-dollar dice game was played on high-rolling "California tables."
A hoodlum for a time involved in the operation later explained: "Everybody made a buck on the game. They rented their limousines from a funeral director, because they only used them from ten at night until seven in the morning." He indicated how much freedom organized crime enjoyed in the Quaker City at the time, declaring: "They even had a cop out in front of the restauranthe'd blow a whistle like a hotel doorman to signal a limo when he had a full load coming in for the game. It looked like opening night on Broadway. The cops never touched them."
Naturally, the game enjoyed official protection in Reading as well, and the gambling represented merely one symptom of the rape of Reading. In conjunction with the gambling, for the edification of the players, the largest East Coast red-light district flourished. Reading was also saddled with the biggest illegal still since Prohibition, and the operation was tied right into the city water supply.
Meanwhile Reading went down the drain. Industry started pulling out, and the downtown area turned into a near wasteland, with revenues diverted away from such frivolities as civic improvements. As citizens became restive, the mob even brought in some "reformer" puppets to try to maintain the mob status quo, Finally a Justice Department task force moved in. Federal agents found only one civic improvement made in recent yearsthe installation of new parking meters. It was an investigation into this situation and the fact that the company installing the meters had a history of paying off municipal governments to win such contracts that broke the Reading mess wide open. By 1962 the FBI had crushed the Reading Game and the Bruno crime family faced deportation back to Philadelphia.
The lesson of Reading however was more meaningful than the mere battle against a single Mafia family. The year 1962 was significant. Attorney General Robert Kennedy had been lighting fires under a reluctant FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to at last recognize the organized crime menace and the Mafia.
Reading was cleaned up rather quickly and one must wonder what conditions might have been in Reading in the 1960s had Hoover been forced to act against the emerging national crime syndicate in the early 1930s. For three decades Hoover had denied the existence of the Mafia and organized crime, instead concentrating on the most bumbling, incompetent, independent criminals he labeled "public enemies." He refused to involve himself against crime syndicates which he insisted weren't there or to take assignments fighting Prohibition rackets or the narcotics trade. And he said his men had more important things to do than chasing after gamblers. Thus Hoover ignored the main sources of wealth for organized crime, which provided mobs the power and influence to seduce politicians, judges, police officials and other important figures both in and out of government. Reading provides a symbol of how Hoover's intransigence and inaction became one of the three main reasons organized crime and the Mafia festered and flourished in the United States to an extent not seen anywhere else in the industrialized world.
Page 308
Red Dye Murders: Hafia extortion hoax
The Mafia did not originate red dye murders. The trusty confidence swindle actually went back many decades. But several crime groups, including the Genovese family and the Gallo brothers, often used the gimmick in their extortion plots. It works as follows.
A victim is picked out, often a bookmaker or some other money man, and pressure is put on him and another
supposed
victim at the same time. There is a general sitdown meeting involving the mobsters, the victim and the phony victim. The mobsters become upset when both their victims are reluctant to pay the protection money demanded. Suddenly things turn violent, and the mobsters pull guns and force the two victims into a car. There the phony victim keeps arguing with the mobsters and suddenly some shots are fired. They are really blanks. The phony victim, however, has been fitted with small explosive caps that discharge bloodreally, red dye. The phony victim is pronounced dead before the startled eyes of the real victim. The car is pulled off the road and the "body" dumped in some bushes. Then the mobsters turn to the real victim to determine if he now sees the wisdom of purchasing protection. He generally does. (In one case, the Genoveses got a sucker to agree to pay protection of $100 a week, plus a new Cadillac every Christmas for one of the mafiosi.)
The red dye hoax seems to be rather sparingly used. Perhaps this is because it requires the utmost faith by the phony victim in his confederates. In the twisty world of Mafia contract plots, all that is necessary to rub out a mobster is to sell him on acting the ruse in a red dye murder. In such a case, the murder is real.
Reina, Tom (18891930): Early New York crime family leader
Few killings illustrate the sinister twists that are possible in Mafia intrigues as well as the case of Tom Reina, whose murder on February 26, 1930, is considered by most crime historians to be the start of the bloody Castellammarese War.
It is a simplification to call the Castellammarese War a two-sided affair. True, the battle was primarily between the New York Mafia factions of Joe the Boss Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano. But a third, and ultimately decisive force was Lucky Luciano and the Young Turks (aided by the important Jewish mobsters under Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel), who conspired to defeat both sides. They danced back and forth in cunning maneuvers to weaken both foes.
Reina was an important Masseria partner, albeit not an enthusiastic one. He was casting friendly eyes toward Maranzanoespecially after Masseria began pressuring him for a cut of his rackets. Through allies serving under Reina, especially Tom Gagliano and Tommy Lucchese, Luciano, himself also allied with Masseria, learned of the Masseria plans to assassinate Maranzano supporters Joe Profaci and young Joe Bonanno. Since Luciano was counting on Profaci and Bonanno in his future national crime syndicate, he wanted to prevent their deaths, and equally he did not want Reina to defect to Maranzano since that might tilt the contest too much in the latter's favor. Therefore the Luciano forces decided Reina had to be killed.
In his so-called
Last Testament
Luciano claims, "I really hated to knock off Tom Reina, and none of my guys really wanted to either. Reina was a man of his word, he had culture, and he was a very honorable Italian.'' This need not be taken as pure gospel. Luciano gained the allegiance of Gagliano and Lucchese by promising them the Reina empire.
On the Wednesday night of his murder, Reina, as he did once every week, had dinner at his aunt's home on Sheridan Avenue in the Bronx. When Reina left the house, Vito Genovese, a Luciano underling, was waiting. Reina was surprised to see him but started to wave his hand at Genovese. As he did, Vito blew his head off with a shotgun.
Joe Valachi would later marry the dead Reina's daughter, but his information on the Reina assassination, as on a number of other matters, was of only limited value.
Reles, Abe "Kid Twist" (19071941): Murder, Inc., killer and informer
When Abe Reles, a Brooklyn gangster, was picked up by police in 1940, he sported a rap sheet with 42 arrests accumulated over a 16-year period. Hauled in on charges of assault, robbery, burglary, possession of narcotics, disorderly conduct and six charges involving murder, he nevertheless had done only six minor stretches, with never a single major conviction.
Reles might well have eluded conviction again. The law didn't know the
real
Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, a man who had personally taken part in at least 30 murders. The law also did not know there was such a thing as an organization later to be dubbed Murder, Incorporated, the enforcement arm of the new national crime syndicate. Some cops knew about something called "the combination," which linked up a great many Jewish and Italian mobsters, but that such an organization had a special troop to handle assassinations was something they had not even guessed. Murder, Inc., did exist and had by then handled something like 400 to 500 murders in the 1930s.
But once Reles started singing in what was called the most remarkable "canary act in underworld history," goggle-eyed investigators cleared up 49 murders in the

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