The Mafia Encyclopedia (25 page)

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Authors: Carl Sifakis

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Page 60
In one of Al Capone's most celebrated killing sprees, the mob chief personally dispatched three gangsters after a banquet given in their honor. Al had a surprise package opened that contained an Indian club and proceeded to beat their brains out. The matter of disposing of the bodies was left to Capone's favorite enforcer, Machine Gun Jack McGurn. Since Capone wanted the deaths of the trio well advertised, McGurn dumped them where they were sure to be found. Otherwise McGurn had his own private burial ground on some farmland in northern Indiana. Decades later Chicago gangsters still took sightseeing rides through the area to point it out to friends and talked openly of planting some additional corpses there; law enforcement agencies have generally assumed they did make use of Machine Gun Jack's private cemetery.
Murder, Inc., had its own graveyard in Lyndhurst, New Jersey, in a chicken yard near the house of a brother-in-law of one of the assassination outfit's top gunners. Stool pigeon Abe Reles revealed the location, and the law, searching for the body of Peter Panto, a young anti-racketeer dockworker, launched a massive steam-shovel hunt. After several weeks of futile probing, a steam shovel hit paydirt. A 600-pound lump of earth, clay, rock and the everpresent quicklime was found. The pile was too fragile to pull apart, but X rays of the mass revealed an almost complete skeleton of one body and parts of another. The skeleton was believed to be Panto's, but positive identification was not made. In this particular case it did not matter, the death-penalty law in effect at the time in New York provided for execution of kidnappers, unless the victim was returned alive before the start of the abductors' trial. A corpus delicti was not necessary.
Planting bodies in burial grounds was generally done when there was a need to hide the fact that a murder had been committed. In Panto's case it was generally known that his only enemies were waterfront mobsters and simply depositing his corpse in a gutter would put the heat on them. Having Panto "disappear" made the caseto some extent, at leastan enigma.
Burial grounds are still used since they are deemed more permanent than a water grave for unwanted corpses. Such stiffs, no matter how weighted down, have a disturbing habit of floating to the surface. As the mobs became more intimately involved in construction rackets, foundations and cement roadways have become very popular burial sites. There is, to mobsters, something inspiring about planting a victim under a high-rise. "Sort of like a real tombstone," one gangster told police.
Business Penetration by Mafia
For years the claim has been made that the Mafia is going legit. The crime families' take from gambling, narcotics, loan-sharking and labor rackets, to name a few of their major income sectors, has stayed about even in recent years, the argument goes, and so has opened the need for expansion into more honest enterprises. Thus it is known that one crime family owns real estate valued at well over $200 million, while another controls a major hotel chain. New York mafiosi are said to be part owners of several of the city's skyscrapers.
In the 1950s the Kefauver Committee determined that syndicate figures were involved in "approximately 50 areas of business enterprise." Among them, alphabetically, were advertising, appliances, automobile industry, banking, coal, construction, drug stores and drug companies, electrical equipment, florists, food, garment industry, import-export, insurance, liquor industry, news services, newspapers, oil industry, paper products, radio stations, ranching, real estate, restaurants, scrap, shipping, steel, television, theaters and transportation.
Although the mobsters' moves into such enterprises may seem motivated by a desire to go legit, it is easy, upon closer consideration, to suspect ulterior motives. For example, although they flocked to Las Vegas for legal gambling in the 1940s, they thereafter derived several dishonest dollars for every honest one they extracted from such operations.
And, what was the Gambino family's real interest when they penetrated one of the largest furniture firms in the country? Ettore Zappi, identified by the McClellan subcommittee as a capodecina (captain) of the Gambinos, joined the firm in a minor executive position in New York and later proposed to management that he set up a separate corporation which alone would supply all the company's mattresses. The company brass found the idea attractive, thinking they could dictate price and production standards and yet be free of actually manufacturing the mattresses or paying competitive prices. However, with Zappi's contract came a sole supplier agreement; the furniture company was boxed in since it depended entirely on the new firm for its mattresses. If it couldn't get them, the furniture firm was as good as out of business.
And, in terms of getting the mattresses, they had to be shipped from the mattress maker to the furniture firm's plant. Suddenly an exclusive franchise was awarded to a new trucking firmmore mafiosi going legitorganized by the Gambinos. The trucking firm was in turn tied to a Teamsters local, also by coincidence with close ties to the Gambino family. Going legit or not, the Gambinos came out of the deal with two sweetheart franchises, employment for many family members and a strengthened grip on union affiliations.
An added fillip for the mob's move into legitimate business is that the investment can never go wrong.
Page 61
Should the crime family find itself stuck with a lemon it can turn the companylegit or otherwiseto bankruptcy and still walk away with a solid profit.
See also:
Bankruptcy Scams
.
Buster from Chicago (?-1931): Hit man
According to Joseph Valachi, an imported gunman from Chicago may have been the most prolific hit man of the entire underworld. Valachi, remarkably, never even knew his name, insisting the gunner was simply known as "Buster from Chicago."
Brought to New York for the Mafia war of the early 1930s, Buster looked anything but a professional gunman. Valachi described him as a "college boy" in appearance and in the grand Chicago style he carried a tommy gun in a violin case. Valachi was awed at Buster's shooting ability with all types of weapons, from pistols to shotguns and machine guns.
Buster, like Valachi, was at the time allied with Salvatore Maranzano, a brilliant mafioso seeking to wrest control of the New York rackets from Joe the Boss Masseria. Buster was the ace shotgunner in the assassination of two chief Masseria aides, Alfred Mineo and Steve Ferrigno, in the Bronx on November 5, 1930. Hidden in a ground-floor Bronx apartment, Buster cut them down with a 12-gauge shotgun blast into the courtyard. Two other gunmen also fired but Buster took out both victims, killing them instantly. As the assassins scattered, ditching their weapons, Buster ran into a policeman who had been attracted by the gunfire. Excitedly, he told the officer there had been a shooting at the apartment house a block away. As the officer, gun in hand, took off in that direction, Buster ran the other way.
In another killing, Buster quite efficiently took out James Catania, alias Joe Baker, as he and his wife left a building. Buster did not want to kill the woman; he fired only in the split-second he had a clear shot at the husband. He was most proud of the fact that every slug from his gun hit Catania and not his wife.
There is some suspicion that Valachi's version of the exploits of Buster from Chicago was inaccurate or highly colored. For example, Valachi also credits Buster with assassinating Peter "the Clutching Hand" Morello, Masseria's bodyguard and top adviser. Valachi relates that Morello was a tough kill, getting up and dancing about after he was shot once, trying to avoid being hit again. Buster took this as a sporting challenge and backed off; before he finally polished him off, he tried to wing Morello as though he were an amusement-park shooting gallery target.
Almost certainly this is pure nonsense. Valachi either made up facts or more likely was so gullible that he tended to accept as gospel anything related to him. Buster could not have had anything to do with the Morello killing, which was not carried out on Maranzano's orders, but was a crime of treachery from within the Masseria organization, actually done by Albert Anastasia and Frank "Don Cheech" Scalise on orders from Lucky Luciano. It was a necessary prerequisite to Luciano's elimination of Joe the Boss.
Valachi never explained or apparently even wondered how Buster, either a stranger to Morello or a known member of the opposition, could possibly have penetrated Morello's inner sanctum, especially considering Morello (and loan shark Pariano) were counting out $30,000 in racket cash receipts when assassinated. Anastasia and Scalise would have been readily admitted because they were Morello allies.
In any event, Buster lived through the Castellammarese War that put Maranzano on the pinnacle of power, but once Maranzano was eliminated by Luciano, Buster's days were numbered. According to Valachi, Buster wanted to fight Luciano because he believed: "They'll take us anyway, one by one." Before Buster could act, Luciano and Vito Genovese, probably solely as a precaution, gave orders to have Buster taken out. (Being such an expert gunner, he could be recruited by enemies wanting Lucky and Vito killed). In September 1931, Buster was killed in a poolhall on the Lower East Side and his body carted away and discretely disposed of. Buster came to New York a mystery and he went out the same way.
See also:
Valachi, Joseph M
.
Page 62
C
Caifano, John Michael "Narshall" (1911- ): Chicago Outfit enforcer
A graduate of the juvenile 42 Gang in the 1920s, Marshall Caifano was a playboy enforcer for the Chicago Outfit, serving directly under Sam Giancana and readily available for murder jobs. He was the prime suspect in a number of murders, several on the grisly side, and his arrest record, dating back to 1929, includes 35 collars, with convictions for burglary (reduced to petty larceny), larceny, bank robbery, interstate extortion and interstate fraud. He was also cited for contempt of congress in 1958. He took the Fifth Amendment 73 times before the McClellan Committee.
Caifano shuttled around the country on assignments for Giancana and his successors, Joey Aiuppa and Jackie Cerone. Police investigators connected him with the murder of Estelle Carey, a Chicago cocktail waitress and the beautiful girlfriend of imprisoned Hollywood extortionist Nick Circella. The mob got the notion that Nick might blab to get out of prison early and sent a brutal killer over to visit Estelle. She was tied to a chair, tortured, covered with gasoline and set ablaze. The only witness to the grisly homicide was Estelle's pet poodle cowering in a corner. From the mob's viewpoint the murder had the salutary effect of zipping Nick's lips.
Caifano was also considered a prime suspect in the murder of Richard Cain, a chauffeur, bodyguard and confidante of Giancana until Cain's assassination in December 1973. It remains unclear whether Cain's extermination was ordered by Giancana or by the newer heads of the mob.
A free-spending playboy, Caifano was a regular on the Las Vegas scene, known at times to drop as much as $200,000 at the gaming tables. Whether he ever paid off such debts was a matter between the casinos and Caifano. In his Las Vegas Strip stalking, Caifano was credited with locating Willie Bioff, the old pimp and stool pigeon in the movie shakedown case that sent much of the Chicago leadership to prison. Shortly afterward Bioff got into a small pickup truck and was blown into eternity.
Caifano was one of the first 11 undesirables blacklisted by the Nevada Gaming Control Board from entering any casino in the state. It was like preventing Caifano from visiting his money. He took the matter to court to fight for what he considered his constitutional rights to gamble. He lost.
Still, he left his mark in Las Vegas folklore for his part in the murder and disappearance of a bigtime gambler, Russian Louie Strauss. According to Jimmy "the Weasel" Fratianno, Caifano took part in plotting Russian Louie's demise although, unlike the Weasel, he did not take part in the actual strangling and secret burial. To this day there is a saying in Las Vegas, when you owe someone money, that goes: "I'll pay when Russian Louie hits town."
Caifano did a turn in prison for trying to extort $60,000 from millionaire oilman and gambler Ray Ryan, the owner of a resort in Palm Springs, a gambling casino in Las Vegas and joint owner with actor William Holden in the Mt. Kenya Safari Club in Africa. When Marshall got out he was said to be after Chicago to knock off Ryan in revenge for testifying against him. It was said that Caifano was incensed because Joey Aiuppa sat on the hit for some time. Finally, in October 1977, a bomb in his own car finished off Ryan.
Page 63
In the 1980s Caifano was doing a 20-year-stretch on a federal racketeering count for the possession and transportation of stolen securities valued at $4 million. The sentence was extended to 20 years under the Special Offenders Act after the government demonstrated that Caifano was a "special dangerous offender." Taking the witness stand on that point was Caifano's former buddy, Fratianno, who detailed the facts about the Russian Louie killing. Fratianno had special incentive for nailing Caifano. When Los Angeles and Chicago put out a contract on the Weasel's life, Caifano was the fingerman who tried to lure Fratianno to Chicago for a "sit-down," one that he most likely would not have got up from. Instead the Weasel ran to the witness protection program.
See also:
Black Book
.
California Crime Family: See Dragna, Jack.
Camorra: Neapolitan crime society
Although some claim its origins are Spanish or Arabic, the Camorra (meaning "fight" or "quarrel" in Spanish) first surfaced in Naples and its environs about 1820. Formed in Neapolitan prisons as a protective society for prisoners, the Camorra flourished as convicts were released and settled into Naples and the surrounding countryside. They organized into gangs and preyed on citizens, later offering immunity to those who paid protection money.
The Camorra, even more than the Sicilian Mafia, was very structured, consisting of 12 groups or families, each supervised by a boss. These bosses sometimes met to plan joint policy and strategy, and, like the crime families in the United States, each Camorrista unit enjoyed total supremacy in its own territory.
The families were also divided into subgroups called
paranze
, each supervised by a
caporegime
, or
capo
. The capo was charged with assigning each member to a specific task: robbery, protection, blackmail, kidnapping, loan-sharking, murder for hire or fee collecting at gambling places. The capo also determined the "taxes" to be paid by auctioneers, boatmen and cabdrivers. In effect, the Camorra achieved a sort of second government status.
All revenues were handed over to the boss of the family who then apportioned part for the corruption of the police and courts, another share for pensions of wives of dead or imprisoned members, and the rest as profits, according to the rank of each member.
New recruits to the Camorra came in the form of novices, who were admitted to the Camorra on a sort of probation and, until the 1850s or 1860s, they could not achieve full Camorrist status until they committed a murder on specific order by the society. (There is a belief that this is so in the American Mafia today, but despite the testimony of some informers, this requirement is far more honored in the breach.)
Some authorities have argued that the crime families in America are patterned more after the Camorra form of organization than that of the Sicilian Mafia, but in actuality virtually all secret criminal societies in history have operated in the same general pattern. Joe Valachi testified that when he entered what he called the Cosa Nostra he was told by his boss: "Here are the two most important things you have to remember. Drill them into your head. The first is to betray the secret of Cosa Nostra means death without trial. Second, to violate any member's wife means death without trial." These were, of course, the bylaws of the Camorra too.
Certainly the initiation rites of the 19th-century Camorra and the 20th-century Cosa Nostra are similar. Historian C.W. Heckethorn in 1872 described in
Secret Societies of All Ages
the Camorra initiation:
On the reception of a picciotto [beginning member] into the degree of camorrist, the sectaries assembled around a table on which were placed a dagger, a loaded pistol, a glass of water or wine, and a lancet. The picciotto was introduced, accompanied by a barber who opened one of the candidate's veins. He dipped his hand in the blood and extending it towards the camorristi, he swore for ever to keep the secrets of the society and faithfully to carry out its orders
.
In 1964 Joe Valachi, with minor contrast, testified:
I sit down at the table. There is wine. Someone put a gun and knife in front of me. The gun was a .38 and the knife was what we call a dagger. Maranzano [the boss] motions us up and we say some words in Italian. Then Joe Bonanno pricks my finger with a pin and squeezes until the blood comes out. What then happens, Mr. Maranzano says, "This blood means that we are now one Family. You live by the gun and the knife and you die by the gun and the knife
."
There is no scientific study available of today's average American mafioso, but in 1890 the Italian sociologist G. Alongi conducted physical examinations and interviews of more than 200 Camorristas. He found,
the majority have naturally great physical strength, though many become syphilitic through habitual intercourse with prostitutes. The courage with which they endure physical pain is so extraordinary as to suggest a profound insensibility; they betray no signs of suffering

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