The Mafia Encyclopedia (64 page)

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Authors: Carl Sifakis

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BOOK: The Mafia Encyclopedia
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The third switch turned on an electric motor which opened a hidden compartment in the back rest of the front seat. This compartment was fitted with brackets to hold shotguns and rifles. And by demonstrating this particular opening in the back rest, we found that a machine gun could be secreted in the compartment also
.
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Newsmen labeled the car a "hitmobile" and gave it considerable play, although nothing much happened to Alderisio and Nicoletti. They could not be linked legally to the car or convicted on any charge. They were released, but the car was seized by the Chicago police for their official use thereafter.
It is believed that special hitmobiles used from time to time for specific murders are promptly run through a demolition machine and reduced to a square foot of scrap.
Hoffa, James R. (19131975): Labor leader and obvious murder victim
Up until the time he disappeared in 1975, longtime Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa had a lot of enemies. In the 1950s and early 1960s, none was more potent than Robert F. Kennedy, the president's brother, attorney general from 1961 to 1964, who succeeded in putting Hoffa in prison for a few years. But when the Mafia later turned on Hoffa, after years of cooperation and manipulation, that was, as one organization crime figure put it, "all she wrote." Hoffa disappearedpermanently.
There is little doubt that Hoffa was murdered. The FBI constructed a scenario that they concluded told the story pretty well. It may or may not be correct in all details, but one thing seems sure: Jimmy Hoffa's not coming back.
Hoffa was for decades a controversial Teamsters union leader, one with strong connections to organized crime. However, despite his underworld connections and a long list of shady dealings, he remained immune to prosecution until he became the target of Robert E Kennedy, chief counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field (more popularly called the McClellan Committee), and later attorney general.
As attorney general Kennedy made the "Get Hoffa" campaign a top priority of his administration. Kennedy's efforts resulted in the labor leader's trial in 1962 for extorting illegal payments from a firm employing Teamsters. The case ended in a hung jury, but Hoffa was then nabbed for attempting to bribe one of the jurors. He was sentenced to eight years in prison. In 1964 Hoffa was convicted of misappropriating $1.7 million in union pension funds. He fought off entering prison until 1967 and ended up doing 58 months, having his term commuted in 1971 by President Richard Nixon with the proviso that he stay out of union politics for 10 years.
Hoffa did not take that proviso seriously and started legal action against the stipulation. In the meantime he went ahead with his efforts to regain control of the union from his former protégé, Frank Fitzsimmons. The Mafia was particularly cozy with Fitzsimmons, finding him easier to manipulate than the strong-willed Hoffa. True, there was a recording heard by the McClellan Committee in 1961 in which Hoffa seemed to be offering his permission for Anthony "Tony Ducks" Corallo to steal from union funds so long as he was not caught at it. But Hoffa actually was a tough bargainer and his assistance did not come cheap. Fitzsimmons was regarded by organized crime as a man who could be counted on always to be looking the other way. In addition, Fitzsimmons was welcome at the White House and Hoffa was not. A return to power by Hoffa would lead inevitably to further FBI surveillance of union activitieswhich was hardly conducive to tranquil mob operation. Time after time the mob told Hoffa to cool it, but in mob language he proved "hard of hearing and kept coming on."
On July 30, 1975, the 62-year-old Hoffa went to a restaurant in suburban Detroit, Manchus Red Fox, supposedly to meet three men, one a Detroit labor leader, another an important Detroit mob member and the third a power in New Jersey Teamsters activities. Hoffa arrived first, at 2 P.M. A half hour later the trio had not shown up, and Hoffa called up his wife to say he was waiting somewhat longerthe last documented conversation Hoffa had. At 2:45 he was seen getting into a car in the restaurant parking lot with several other men. Investigators later were satisfied that Hoffa never got out of that car alive, that he was garroted and his body run through a mob-controlled fat-rendering plant that was later destroyed by fire.
The government's list of suspects was large and included, after intensive probing of underworld sources and convicts seeking reductions in their sentences, Russell Bufalino, Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano and two Hoffa "cronies," Thomas Andretta and Gabriel Briguglio. Another suspect, Gabriel's brother Salvatore Briguglio, was believed to be talking to the FBI and was shot to death in New York in March 1978.
According to the FBI reconstruction of the Hoffa murder, Tony Pro had called the so-called peace parley with the union leader and then ordered him killed. Provenzano denied even being in Detroit at the time and, indeed, seemed to go out of his way to seal an airtight alibi; at the time of Hoffa's disappearance, Tony was touring a number of Teamster locals in and around Hoboken, New Jersey.
There are many loose ends in the Hoffa case. For instance, why, if he were going to order Hoffa's execution, had Tony Pro linked himself to a meeting with Hoffa when he had to know that Hoffa would and did mention he was to meet with him. Then there was the odd fact that the men who took care of Hoffa showed up 45 minutes late, hardly the norm for mob hit men
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for whom promptness is not only a virtue but also a necessity for staying alive themselves. The answer could be that the decision to hit Hoffa was a last-minute thing, with the Mafia hot line buzzing all around the country to get approval. In any event, the FBI's theory that Hoffa was murdered, and by a particular method, was backed up from traces of his hair and blood found later in the abduction car.
There were other theories. One Teamsters official, subjected to considerable questioning by the FBI, stuck to his own inside version, that Hoffa had "run off to Brazil with a black go-go dancer."
In the years since 1975, Hoffa has been declared legally dead and most of the suspects in the case have gone to prison for other crimes, some of the convicting evidence having been uncovered during the Hoffa probe. Any murder convictions in the Hoffa case per se are strictly on hold and probably depend on some member or members of organized crime talking to get out of prison. As one unidentified Teamsters vice president has been quoted, "We all know who did it. It was Tony and those guys of his from New Jersey. It's common knowledge. But the cops need a corroborating witness, and it doesn't look like they're about to get one, does it?"
Jimmy "the Weasel" Fratianno offers an alternative theory in
The Last Mafioso
. He tells of an important Cleveland mobster with close links to the Detroit family, saying it was nonsense about Tony Pro and Bufalino, that Detroit was not an organization that needed outside help. He linked local mafiosi big shots to the case: "Tony Giacalone was in tight with Hoffa and he's the one that set him up. Tony Zerilli and Mike Polizzi gave the order and that was all she wrote."
Certainly there was no way Hoffa could be killed in their area without Detroit giving the okay, but in a sense we are merely talking mechanics. The fact is the Mafia held its own private union election, and Hoffa was voted a dead loser.
See also:
Provenzano, Anthony "Tony Pro"; Zerilli, Joseph
.
Hoover, Herbert (18741964): Al Capone nemesis
Al Capone called him "that bastard Hoover" and blamed him for his going to prison. Capone should have been talking about J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but he was not. J. Edgar, as early as 1930, demonstrated that he most certainly was not going to have anything to do with any form of organized crime, and certainly not with the Capone mob in Chicago. There were considerable grounds for J. Edgar Hoover, despite his later denials, to enter the fight against Capone. Yet the definitive biography
Capone
by John Kobler astonishingly finds it necessary to mention J. Edgar Hoover only once, when the head G-man innocuously visited the federal penitentiary at Atlanta while Capone was doing time there.
Capone's real enemy on the national level was "that bastard" President Herbert Hoover. He held the president responsible for getting him convicted on income tax charges, preventing a later "deal" to settle the claims, and giving him a long sentence compared to the short ones handed to other gangsters, including his own brother Ralph Capone.
It was now a matter of folklore inside the underworld that the president railroaded Scarface Al to prison because of a personal vendetta. Legend has it that Hoover hated the Chicago kingpin for one or both of two reasons. One allegedly dates to shortly after Hoover won the 1928 contest against Al Smith and vacationed at the J.C. Penney estate on Belle Isle in Florida, not far from the Capone compound on Palm Island. The tale goes that there was so much shouting, females crying, and shooting during the night from the Capone retreat that Hoover could not sleep. His puritanical ire aroused, Hoover decided then and there to destroy the famous gangster when he took office. The second reason describes an enraged Herbert Hoover. The president-elect watched in dismay as a drove of reporters suddenly abandoned him in a Miami lobby when a more important personageAl Caponestrolled in.
There probably is little truth to either story. But Hoover was determined to crush Capone who he viewed as a disgrace to the national honor. When he came into office, he found the presidential aim thwarted. It was obvious that Capone had local and state authorities in his hip pocket and had nothing to fear at that level. On the federal level were only corrupt Prohibition agents and J. Edgar Hoover.
It was Colonel Frank Knox, the publisher of the
Chicago Daily News
, who finally came forward with a solution. Like the president, Knox despaired of law enforcement's inability to nail Capone and told President Hoover the only hope was to go after him on two federal offensesbootlegging and income tax evasion.
Hoover turned to his Treasury Department for action, and Andrew Mellon, the secretary of the treasury at the time, later recounted the events that occurred daily at "meetings" of the president's so-called Medicine Cabinet, a group of high officials he had in to the White House each morning to toss around a medicine ball. "Every morning when the exercising started, Mr. Hoover would bring up the subject," Mellon said. "He'd ask me, 'Have you got that fellow Al Capone yet?' And at the end of the session, he'd tell me, 'Remember now, I want that Capone in jail.'"
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In due course Hoover succeeded. Some observers consider Hoover one of this nation's most inept chief executives, but had other presidents followed in Hoover's footsteps, the outlook for the Mafia and organized crime would have been bleak indeed.
Hoover, J. Edgar (18951972): FBI director
Organized crime, the American Mafia and the national crime syndicate were chartered in the 1920s, concurrent with the establishment of J. Edgar Hoover's Federal Bureau of Investigation. Both groupsaccording to former FBI agent Neil J. Welch and ex-U.S. attorney David W. Marston, in their book
Inside Hoover's FBI
matured in the 1930s. "Although they were presumptive enemies," the authors suggest, "during their first four decades they competed primarily for newspaper space."
J. Edgar Hoover was the best FBI director organized crime could ever have wanted; it was difficult for syndicate members to be antagonized by a law enforcement official who claimed neither organized crime nor a Mafia existed in the United States. Without a man like Hoover heading the FBI it is inconceivable that organized crime and the Mafia could ever have reached the heights of power, wealth and administrative organization.
Prohibition gave new life to the criminal gangs of an earlier era that had started to collapse just prior to World War I. Bootlegging brought about the reconstruction of the gangs; suddenly they became so wealthy and powerful that, instead of being the puppets of the political machines, they pulled the strings. Illiterate punks became the great robber barons of the 20th century, and it was these men who provided the muscle to create organized crime in America (in its truest meaning of a syndicate with interlocking relationships with other mobs around the country).
To establish a national syndicate, various levels of government officials, politicians and law enforcement groups were subverted. Aiding in this task was Hoover, who refused to stalk syndicate gangsters, denying the existence of such groups as a crime syndicate or Mafia.
Many theories have been offered for Hoover's bizarre behavior, and in each there is probably at least partial truth. Hoover probably was fearful that, like other law enforcement agencies that came in contact with organized crime and the Mafia, the FBI would be tarred with the brush of corruption, since syndicate criminals had huge funds available for the fix. He preferred his agents move against such perils to the republic as teenage car thieves. These were readily apprehended, and he could cite endless if meaningless
J. Edgar Hoover (right), the "Mafia-blind" head of the FBI, with his top aide Clyde Tolson
(in what photographers called Tolson's traditional half-step behind position).

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