The Mafia Encyclopedia (111 page)

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Authors: Carl Sifakis

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Page 327
New Jersey Mafia boss, Gyp DeCarlo, balked when asked to identify Fat Tony. The witness had already testified that Fat Tony Salerno had been involved in certain wrongdoings, but on the stand he got cold feet and declared he had meant another Fat Tony Salerno.
In the 1970s and 1980s Salerno divided his time among Miami Beach, a 100-acre estate in upstate Rhine-beck, New York, and his apartment on posh Gramercy Park in Manhattan. He provided an indoor riding arena and private schooling for his children, and spent $27,000 on new carsall on a declared income of $40,000. Salerno was sentenced to a six-month jail term in 1978for the first timeon gambling and tax evasion charges.
Under him the Genovese crime family was said to operate in numerous fields and rackets, including narcotics, gambling, loan-sharking, extortion, waterfront activities, pornography, union rackets, carting rackets and vending machines.
Fortune
started its hit parade of the nation's top 50 mob bosses in 1986 as a list somewhat akin to its annual list of America's top 500 companies. It said organized crime is a $50 billion a year industry and "mirrors the management structure of a corporation."
Impressed by Salerno's trappings of wealth, common to many top mobsters, the magazine declared him to be the top "earner" of the underworld. Lost in their description is an authoritative picture of the shifting tides of Mafia power. From the late 1950s until his death in 1976, Carlo Gambino became the top mafioso in New York and the nation, in the process raising the smaller, former Anastasia family to preeminence over the larger Luciano-Costello-Genovese group. Gambino was instrumental in the deposing of Genovese and slowly asserted his authority over the Genovese family, eventually installing Tieri, an old and loyal friend, as boss.
Before his own death, Gambino ordered control of his crime family passed to Paul Castellano, his brother-in-law. Castellano, although he headed the most powerful crime family, did not get that much respect in the underworld; Tieri pushed his family back to the top rung, although, ever-loyal to Gambino, he never sought to depose Castellano. When Tieri died in 1981, Castellano and the Gambino family reasserted their old powers: Salerno and the Genoveses' efforts to expand through Philadelphia into Atlantic City were stunted, and the Gambinos took over more of the activities in the New Jersey gambling city.
Fat Tony maintained his tough-guy form right up to his indictment on RICO charges, when he realized his time had passed. Of all the defendants in the so-called Mafia Commission trial, Salerno seemed oblivious to any strategies to fight. During the trial, he spent his free time during recesses munching away on Baby Ruth and Mars bars and the like. Once while awaiting the return of the jury from lunch, he pulled out an Almond Joy.
A member of the prosecution's team, in a friendly moment, approached Fat Tony and offered him a granola bar, saying, "They're really much better for you, Mr. Salerno. Better than all that chocolate."
Fat Tony waved the granola bar away and said, "Who the fuck cares. I'm gonna die in the fucking can, anyway."
Fat Tony was righthe did die in the can five years into his 100-year sentence.
Sanctioned Stoolie: Inter-crime family spy
The mob has frequently used informers as double agents to infiltrate other crime families and groups, including the police, in hope of discovering useful intelligence. In the assassination of Paul Castellano, head of the Gambino crime family and reputed boss of bosses, Frank DeCicco was a sanctioned stoolie for the Gotti group inside Castellano's inner circle and was the key man in setting up the godfather's rubout. (Four months later DeCicco was blown up in a car bombing).
A much honored sanctioned stoolie was Tommy Lucchese, also known as Three-Finger Brown, who was Lucky Luciano's favorite killer in the Mafia wars of the 1920s and 1930s. Later in the war between Joe the Boss Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano, Lucchese sided with Maranzano while Luciano was with Joe the Boss. Actually Lucchese was the inside spy for Luciano, who was determined to depose both bosses. Luciano accomplished half his goal by having Masseria murdered and then made a temporary peace with Maranzano, waiting his moment to strike. That came when Lucchese informed him of Maranzano's plan to have Luciano assassinated by non-mob gangsters.
Luciano struck first as four men pretending to be police officers entered Maranzano's headquarters just as Lucchese "happened" to enter. Lucchese's presence was necessary because the hit men did not know their intended victim by sight. Maranzano was dispatched and the new de facto boss of bosses, Luciano, named Lucchese the head of one of New York's five crime families, which even after the latter's death in 1967 continued to bear his name.
San Francisco Crime Family: See Mickey Mouse Mafia.
San Jose, California, Crime Family: See Mickey Mouse Mafia.
Page 328
Saupp, John Joseph (19101962): Murdered convict
The prison murder of John Joseph Saupp, an inconsequential forger and mail robber, was, according to U.S. Attorney General Robert E Kennedy, the "biggest single intelligence breakthrough yet in combating organized crime and racketeering in the United States."
Saupp's fatal misfortune was his striking resemblance to Joseph (Joe Beck) DiPalermo, a syndicate hoodlum and Atlanta prison associate of crime leader Vito Genovese. Genovese had decided that another prisoner, minor crime figure Joseph Valachi (who was doing time for a narcotics offense), had turned stool pigeon. He passed the death sentence on Valachi, and only by luck did Valachi survive three attempts on his life. Then Genovese, who was Valachi's cellmate, gave him the "kiss of death," indicating to Valachi that the campaign to kill him would continue and that he was doomed.
Valachi tried to be extra careful, waiting for the fourth attempt. He strongly suspected that among those out to execute the murder assignment was Joe Beck. On June 22, 1962, Valachi found himself surrounded by a group of prisoners, three of whom he suspected of being would-be killers. Just then another prisoner walked by him. Valachi, thinking it was Joe Beck trying to get behind him, seized a length of pipe from some nearby construction work and attacked his nemesis, banging him over the head.
Only after Valachi was taken to the associate warden's office did he discover he had fatally wounded the wrong man, that the victim was Saupp, a man he didn't even know. Saupp died about 48 hours later.
Valachi was now doubly on the spot. Mob leader Genovese still wanted him dead, and the authorities now had him on a murder charge. The only way out for Valachi was to turn federal informer. He did, and in his celebrated public testimony before Senator John McClellan's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, he revealed more secrets about organized crime than any witness up until that time.
John Joseph Saupp is chiefly remembered as the hapless catalyst who brought about Valachi's testimony. On his murder, Valachi, a longtime mob hit man, said, "You can imagine my embarrassment when I killed the wrong guy."
See also:
Valachi, Joseph
.
Scalise, Frank "Don Cheech" (18941957): Crime family underboss
The murder of Frank "Don Cheech" Scalise remains, like many other Mafia murders, unsolved. But even more than most, the hit is tangled in a web of mob intrigue that almost certainly can never be unraveled.
Frank Scalise's body lies covered up in a Bronx fruit Store
a murder scene appropriated For
The Godfather
. His brother
was to suffer a more grisly fate.
A close ally of Lucky Luciano since Prohibition day Scalise was part of the Mangano family and aided Albert Anastasia in wiping out the Mangano brother, so that Anastasia could take over the crime family. In fact, Scalise and Anastasia had long been partners in murder. According to Luciano, in August 1930 they had killed Peter "the Clutching Hand" Morello on his orders (It was perhaps the most important killing of the Caster lammarese War, since Morello was the adviser of Joe the Boss Masseria and, as Joe Bonanno put it, "the brain of his outfit." Luciano felt the same way about it and knew that once he had Morello killed, Joe the Boy would be relatively easy.)
Anastasia and his underboss Don Cheech were ??? arable through the years and were constantly involve in all sorts of deals, shady even by Mafia standards. ??? was certain that in 1954 Scalise and Anastasia st??? selling memberships in the Mafia to eager applicants to $40,000 to $50,000 when the "books" or membership rosters, were opened for the first time since the early
Page 329
1930s. It was said that Scalise collected about 200 of these kingsized kickbacks.
Now the guessing game begins. One theory has it that when Anastasia heard the accusations against his underboss, he angrily ordered his murder, and Scalise was cut down by four bullets in the neck and head as he was buying fruit at a favorite Bronx fruit stand (this was the model for the attempted assassination of Don Corleone in the
The Godfather
). Another theory was that the murder was ordered by Anastasia not out of anger, but to prevent further speculation that he, Albert A., was getting a cut of the membership kickbacks.
Another theory holds Scalise innocent of the charge, claiming that Vito Genovese, as part of a campaign to discredit Anastasia with whom he was involved in a struggle for control of Mafia affairs in New York, had cooked up the plot. Anastasia, the theory goes, simply outmaneuvered Genovese by having Scalise killed, a bit of double-dealing not beyond the Anastasia character. Still another theory maintains that Genovese had Scalise killed and then spread the word that Albert had done it. Since one of the gunmen was almost certainly Jimmy "Jerome" Squillante, a very close associate of Genovese, the Genovese theory looks best.
However, none of the Scalise murder theories is conclusive. Scalise was also known to be involved in drug smuggling, and it was said that he had welshed on his responsibility to reimburse his underworld partners when the government grabbed a heroin shipment. For that reason, Scalise was marked for death.
In any event, Genovese profited most from Scalise's demise, it being a fairly common tactic in the Mafia to knock off an enemy's most powerful supporter before going after the main target. It had been done in the case of Joe the Boss Masseria and in 1957 was shortly to be the case with Anastasia.
Confusion or no, the death of Frank Scalise was not without its touch of "honor." His brother Joe quickly vowed vengeance, but then noticed that Anastasia was staying rather quiet about matters. Joe Scalise dropped his vow and disappeared for a number of weeks, reappearing only when the word went out that all was forgiven, that it was understood he was merely expressing normal filial devotion.
Shortly after he came out of hiding, Joe Scalise was invited to a party at Squillante's home. Joe unwisely accepted and was barely inside the door when the boys fell on him with sharp knives. His corpse was butchered down to smaller pieces and carried outside to a waiting garbage truck. (Squillante bossed the New York garbage-collection racket at the time.)
See also:
Squillante, Jimmy "Jerome.
"
Scarface: Gangster movie
The Godfather
was
the
Mafia movie of the 1970s, and one that has done much to form the public conception of organized crime today. But it was not the first popular film to do so.
Scarface
was made in 1932. Preceded by two noteworthy crime movies,
Little Caesar
and
Public Enemy
the former patterned after the exploits of Chicago's Cardinelli gang and the latter after that city's O'Banion Gang
Scarface
enjoyed the greatest impact because of a notorious curiosity about and fear of Al Capone. Accurate about the scar, there remained questions about its authenticityespecially from Al Capone himself. At least Capone saw few similaritiesand sent a couple of torpedoes to check out the facts.
The screenplay had been written by Ben Hecht for Howard Hughes's studio. One night there was a knock on the door of Hecht's Los Angeles hotel room, and two sinister-looking hoods confronted him with a copy of the screenplay.
"You the guy who wrote this?" one demanded.
Hecht had to admit he was.
"Is this stuff about Al Capone?"
"God, no!" Hecht assured them. "I don't even know Al." He rattled off the names of Chicago underworld characters he had known in his reporter daysBig Jim Colosimo, Dion O'Banion, Hymie Weiss.
The Capone emissaries were appeased, one announcing: "O.K. then. We'll tell Al this stuff you wrote is about them other guys." As they started to leave, however, the other one had a thought. "If this stuff isn't about Al Capone, why are you calling it Scarface? Everybody'll think it's him."
"That's the reason," Hecht replied. "Al is one of the most famous and fascinating men of our time. If you call the movie
Scarface
, everybody will want to see it, figuring it's about Al. That's part of the racket we call showmanship."
This was a readily accepted explanation. If there was anything the Capones appreciated it was a scam. "I'll tell Al. Who's this fella Howard Hughes?"
"He's got nothing to do with it. He's the sucker with the money."
"O.K. The hell with him." Placated Capone's hoods departed.
The power structure of Chicago was not nearly as placated about
Scarface
however. As Ralph Salerno and John S. Tompkins have noted in
The Crime Confederation
, "The movie was so explicit in its exposure of municipal corruption that the city of Chicago banned it until World War II."

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