The Mafia Encyclopedia (17 page)

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Authors: Carl Sifakis

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Page 40
proceeded in the normal fashion: An ethnic group occupies the ghettos, produces crime, matures and moves up the social ladder at least to the extent of turning over the bottom rung to the next ethnic minority. The Irish were succeeded in close proximity by the Jews and the Italians, who became the criminals of their day, as in lesser numbers did the Poles and Russians and others.
By logical progression the Jews and Italians should have moved away from crime. Indeed before the start of World War I, the 1,500-member, Jewish Monk Eastman Gang and the like-numbered Italian Five Points Gang under Paul Kelly (Paolo Vaccarelli) both had splintered. Both groups had been abandoned by the political machines who understood that their use of the gangs was ending under the cutting edge of reform. There simply were no more prospects for such huge organized gangs.
America's entry into the war contributed further to the destruction of the gangs. We should have entered the post-war period with no more than the usual and temporary outbreaks of violence caused by returning soldiers. Instead, within a short time Prohibition lay heavy on the land.
Great new criminal vistas opened. Americans had no intention of being deprived of beer and booze, and the Jewish and Italian gangsters had a great rebirtheven the Irish staged a big comeback. The 1920s, when the Jewish and Italians should have been tapering off on their criminal activities, saw them instead expanding. Money poured in so fast that the criminals no longer needed to curry favor with the politicians. They did, in fact, buy the politicians in a unique reversal of the normal arrangement.
The Italians and Jews combined forces at a new and previously unheard of level of organized crimeafter a series of wars eliminated those who resisted syndication. Infusing this new criminal combination was a steady supply of young blood. The Depression of the 1930s froze the ethnic groups in their ghettos. It was perhaps the deepest and most severe economic crisis to afflict the nation, and many youngsters, lacking special talents or abilities, were forced into crime. They were eager to "make it with the mob."
Coupled with these two favorable factors for the new crime syndicate was the lack of police repression. In many cities the syndicate had little trouble buying off the police just as it bought off the politicians. The only hope lay on the federal level and here, incredibly, nothing happened. Through the 1930s and, indeed, for the next two decades the federal government did nothing to curb syndicate crime. The FBI was muzzled by its director, J. Edgar Hoover, who refused even to acknowledge the existence of either the Mafia or organized crime in any way, shape or form.
During the lost years the structure of organized crime solidified to the extent that the demise of any of its players has now become meaningless. The system continues.
Some analysts, failing to appreciate the uniquely favorable climate that gave birth to the
American
Mafia and the national crime syndicate, have seen the normal criminal development by the now ghettoized blacks and Hispanics as an indication that they will step into power in syndicate crime. But such organized crime is based on a sophistication that does not come to any criminal ethnic group in a single generation. It must be remembered that the Italian mobsters of 1920 were little more than illiterate, hulking, Black Hand-type extortionists whose appreciation of criminal activities was limited to crude shakedowns and murder. It took the schooling of the bootleg years, the forced transition to more advanced crimes after Repeal; gambling, not just to numbers, but legalized casino operations and the sophisticated principles of the skim; the laundering of money, the use of Swiss banks, the infiltration of the banking and business system, the looting of pension funds through well-papered transactions.
Yet the exponents of the Black Mafia in the mid-1970s were talking about a decade that would show huge strides forward for the Black Mafia. It has not happened and if it were to happenand given the lack of very powerful social and economic events, it cannota logical guess would be the rise of a Black Mafia by the 2050s.
The "Bible" of the Black Mafia theory is
Black Mafia, Ethnic Succession in Organized Crime
by Francis A. J. Ianni. While an exceedingly informative and colorful portrayal, the book can't help but go far to demonstrate against the author's very contention. What Ianni calls a Black Mafia, as organized-crime authority Gus Tyler notes, "consists of a pimp with a stable of seven hookers, a dope pusher, a fence who dabbles in loan sharking and gambling, a con man who gets phony insurance policies for gypsy cabs and a numbers racketeer." Tyler grants these activities are organized but ''they are not in a class with white organized crime either qualitatively or quantitatively" and don't conclusively support a theory of "ethnic succession."
It may well be that talk of a Black Mafia or a Cuban Mafia merely makes an excellent cover story for the Mafia and its syndicate mobsters, who in the meantime claim to be "going legit."
Ianni is very impressed with the comments of one Italian crime family leader: "... what the Hell, those guys want to make a little, too. We're moving out and they're moving in. I guess it's their turn now." Such a high-flown philosophical attitude is remarkable within an underworld that maimed and murdered in wholesale
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lots to get where it is. And it may be rather cynical to doubt such sentiments as self-serving. Perhaps the Mafia is going legit. It also may be that we have done Al Capone a grievous injustice. His business card read: "Alphonse Capone, second hand furniture dealer, 2220 South Wabash Avenue."
See also:
Barnes, Leroy "Nicky"; Cuban (or Latin) Mafia; Forty Thieves; Johnson, Ellsworth "Bumpy"
Boiardo, Ruggiero "Richie the Boot" (18911984): New Jersey Mafia patriarch
Ruggiero Boiardo may have been the oldest mafioso the law ever tried to bring to trial on organized crime charges. At 89, the state had indicted him in the "Great Mob Trial," an operation instigated by the state of New Jersey to prove the existence of an organized crime network. Richie the Boot Boiardo had been facing a variety of chargesincluding racketeering, extortion and murder conspiracybut was released because, it was ruled, his health was too poor for him to stand trial. Richie the Boot told the court he just wanted "St. Peter to bring me to heaven." So the white-haired, hobbled mob boss went back behind the walls of his 30-room estate in Livingston, where he continued for another four years to conduct much of his business from a small vegetable spread that bore the sign: "Godfather's Garden." And authorities kept calling him the patriarch of organized crime in New Jersey.
Born in Italy, Boiardo came to Chicago at the turn of the century when he was nine. In 1910 he was working as a mason in Newark, New Jersey. Bootlegging during Prohibition made Boiardo a big man in Newark, and he established himself as a sort of godfather of the First Ward where he developed a philanthropic side, and entire families came to him in times of need. He satisfied the political elements because people in his area voted the way he thought best.
Police labeled him a gang leader but Boiardo avoided trouble and for a long time was never arrested for anything serious enough to send him to jail. He did have to fight off incursions by other gangsters, however, and to his dying day carried the remains of shotgun pellets that lodged in his chest during a gun battle. By 1930 he had become an associate of Abner "Longy" Zwillman, who was known as "the Al Capone of New Jersey." Through the 1930s and later Boiardo was connected by state and federal investigators with bootlegging, numbers and lottery rackets. His good fortune with the law ended when he did 22 months in jail on a concealed weapons charge.
In theory Boiardo "retired" from all criminal activities in 1941. He moved to a lavish estate in Livingston, the main house constructed of stone imported from Italy. Like the domain of a powerful feudal lord, the estate sported wrought-iron gates, fountains, mosaics, a collection of sculpted busts of the Boiardo family and an impressive statue of Richie the Boot riding a white stallion.
In the 1950s it was clear that Boiardo was still heavily involved in mob gambling and loan-sharking activities; in 1963 informer Joe Valachi named Boiardo as a power in the "Cosa Nostra" or Mafia crime syndicate. Boiardo denied it all, insisting he was just an avid gardener and proud grandfather. However, in the 1980s he escaped prosecution only because of his age. The man who law enforcement officials called the patriarch, one of the most powerful and feared men in the state's underworld, died in November 1984 at the age of 93, still said to be a kingpin in gambling and extortion operations in Essex County.
Bompensiero, Frank "Bomp" (19051977): Hit man, San Diego crime boss and FBI informer
In the treacherous world of Mafia hit men, few characters proved shiftier than Frank "Bomp" Bompensiero. Bomp was at the same time a pitiless killer and an FBI informer who betrayed his friends to the FBI and in the end was betrayed by that agency to a certain death at the murderous hands of the mob.
For decades regarded as one of the most efficient hit men in the West Coast mob, Bompensiero was an expert in the so-called Italian rope trick, a surprise garroting that always left the dying victim with a surprised look on his face.
For double-dealing, Bompensiero was without peer. Once the Detroit mob gave him a murder contract involving one of two crime figures who had each approached the leadership with demands that the other be killed. The leadership discussed the matter at a sitdown and decided which man should get it. Bomp was informed and at a party he immediately approached the victim to be, whom he happened to know, and told him, "Look here, you've been having this problem and the old man's given me the contract. I'm going to clip this guy but I'm going to need your help."
Naturally the man was eager to be of aid and was overjoyed when told to help dig a hole for the body in advance. Bomp picked out a lonely spot and they took turns digging. Finally the man asked Bomp if the hole was deep enough. Bomp announced it was perfect and shot his victim in the back of the head.
Bomp was especially close to the late Los Angeles crime boss Jack Dragna and ran a number of rackets with him in San Diego, where he eventually became the chief of the L.A. family's rackets in that city. During the last 10 years of his life, Bomp turned stool pigeon for
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the FBI after he was charged with conspiracy to defraud. The case was dismissed on the grounds of insufficient evidence after the FBI "turned" Bomp and thereafter Bomp supplied federal officials with a wealth of information about mob activities.
Not that Bomp played straight with the FBI. He continued his own crimes which apparently included the murder of a wealthy San Diego real estate broker, Mrs. Tamara Rand, who had close ties with gangster elements in Las Vegas. Many observers found it inconceivable that the FBI did not learn of Bomp's involvement in the matter. But Bomp had outsmarted himself. He had become a doomed man. Suddenly the L.A. mob put out a contract on him, but Bomp was not an easy man to kill, not a man to be trapped easily. To allay his suspicions the L.A. mob appointed Bomp to the post of consigliere in the hope of catching him off guard. Amazingly, for two years, nothing happened. Even among friends or supposed friends Bomp was on the alert. Nobody could get at him without very obviously being killed in the process.
Finally the FBI had Bomp lead a number of L.A. mobsters into contact with a porno outfit that was really an agency front. When the agency made a number of arrests it had to be apparent to Bomp that he was being tossed to the wolves. Apparently, the FBI concocted the scheme in an effort to draw Jimmy Fratianno into their informer net and, by dooming Bompensiero, they got their way. Now branded by the L.A. family as a stoolie, Bomp still continued to survivefor a time. He stayed close to home, leaving his expensive Pacific Beach apartment only to make his rounds of telephone calls from a phone booth because he was sure his home phone was tapped. Finally, in February 1977, 10 years after Bomp started dealing with the FBI, unknown gunmen caught up with him as he was returning from a phone booth and pumped four bullets into his head with a silencer-equipped automatic pistol.
Bonanno, Joseph (1905-): Crime family boss
Although Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonanno's crime family was, in 1931, the smallest of New York's big five, he still wanted to be the largest power in syndicated crime in America.
Bonanno came to America with his parents from Sicily when he was three years old, but the family returned to their hometown of Castellammare del Golfo. He lived out his teens there, absorbed the Mafia traditions and became an anti-Fascist student radical in Palermo following Mussolini's seizure of power in 1922. Bonanno was forced to flee and reentered America in 1925 after sojourning in Cuba. Although some crime writers say Bonanno went to Chicago and worked under Al Capone, he instead stayed in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in a tight-knit area composed mainly of Castellammarese. He made a mark for himself among the mafiosi as an enforcer who saw to it that Brooklyn speakeasies bought their whiskey from the proper sources. (In
Honor Thy Father
, a biography of the Bonanno family, Gay Talese writes: "... he did this without resorting to threats and pressure," which would have made Bonanno a most remarkableand probably a one-of-a-kindhawker of booze in the era.)
Joe Bonanno, or Joe Bananas, was a
longtime crime family boss, going
back to the early 1930s. Revelations
he made in his autobiography in the
1980s put him in prison when he
refused to say more in court about
the Mafia and its ruling commission.
A young man who seized every opportunity he saw, Bonanno grabbed off virgin territories in Brooklyn for the Italian lottery. About 1927 Salvatore Maranzano arrived in America and effectively took over the leadership of the Castellammarese mafiosi. He soon launched a war of supremacy with Joe the Boss Masseria. Bonanno proved to be a dedicated and dependable soldier in that struggle which became known as the Castellammarese War.
Eventually, Masseria was murdered and the war endedalthough not by the hands of the Maranzano forces. Masseria was killed by combined Italian and Jewish gangsters who had entirely different plans for the underworld. Lucky Luciano, though serving under

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