The Mafia Encyclopedia (70 page)

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Authors: Carl Sifakis

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Page 196
politicians as they were subpoenaed. It was called "Kefauveritis," after Estes Kefauver, the soft-spoken but hardnosed Democratic senator from Tennessee who chaired the committee and became America's first television-promoted crimebuster.
When it became known that the traveling Kefauver Committee was coming to town, organized crime figures in many cities developed unexpected heart attacks, laryngitis, appendicitis, nervous breakdowns and an almost paranoid desire for privacy. Travel fever was another symptom as Mafia types were consumed with a bug to see the country, the worldif possible, the moonso long as it was far away from Kefauver.
As mobster after mobster either evaded appearing or refused to answer questions, Kefauveritis apparently struck other witnesses as well. Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York likewise did not appear to testify although urged by both Democratic and Republican members of the committee and despite the fact that many other governors, of both parties, did appear. Former racketbuster Dewey would do no more than have his counsel present formal statements. However, he did allow that if he was given enough advance notice, he might give the senators a few minutes of his valuable time in his private office. He said the senators could even stay at the Executive Mansion. Exactly how the committee's large staff of counsel, investigators, court stenographers and so on would fit into Dewey's office was a problem not tackled. Under the circumstances the committee decided not to leave New York City for Albany, and the committee and the nation were deprived of hearing Dewey's explanation for his pardon of Lucky Luciano and for wide-open gambling conditions, run by organized crime and by Meyer Lansky in particular, in Saratoga Springsjust 33 miles from Albany.
In refusing to appeara remarkable attitude for a racketbuster who constantly had hauled witnesses in for questioning and always held an innocent man would want to help official inquiriesDewey behaved little differently than the mobsters who tried to thumb their noses at the U.S. Senate. In the process, of course, he demonstrated that contagious "Kefauveritis" afflicted the upperworld as much as the underworld.
Kennedy, Robert F. (19251968): U.S. Attorney General
Robert F. Kennedy was the first attorney general of the United States to make a serious attack on the Mafia and organized crime. Many hold he was also the last one. As Harry J. Anslinger, former U.S. Commissioner of Narcotics, put it:
"Many former attorneys general ... would let loose a blast against the underworld and then settle back in their chairs and let it go at that. They seemed to think they had performed their duty merely by calling attention to the problem. Not so with Bob. He followed through. He knew the identity of all the big racketeers in any given district, and in private conference with enforcement officials throughout the country he would go down the line, name by name, and ask what progress had been made."
Quite naturally Anslinger's opinion differed from J. Edgar Hoover's, with whom he had a less than cordial relationship. For years, Hoover had asserted there was no such thing as a Mafia or organized crime. Because of the Apalachin Conference bust of 1957, Hoover finally had to alter his line, and when Bobby Kennedy became attorney general in 1961, Hoover was further forced to expand the FBI fight against the Mafia.
On John Kennedy's assassination, Hoover slacked off on the Mafia investigation. Neil J. Welch, a retired special agent in charge of several top FBI offices, and David W. Marston, former United States attorney from Philadelphia, note in their book
Inside Hoover,s FBI
: "When Kennedy stepped down as attorney general, Hoover moved immediately to undo all that he had done and perhaps never realized that one Kennedy accomplishment was indelible: When the FBI finally penetrated organized crime, agents gave the credit not to J. Edgar Hoover, but to his nemesis, Robert E Kennedy."
See also:
Hoover, J. Edgar
.
Kid Dropper (1891 or 18951923): Labor racketeer king
At the beginning of the 1920s Nathan Kaplan, better known as Kid Dropper, was considered the top gangster in New York City. He had been a lowly member of the Five Pointers Gang prior to World War I (a bit of an oddity as a Jewish mobster in what was virtually entirely an Italian outfit), but he learned the criminal craft well and murdered his way to the top of the labor sluggerextortionist field.
Kaplan picked up the Kid Dropper moniker in his youth. His scam, dropping a wallet filled with counterfeit money on the street, "finding" it and selling it to a gullible victim since he "didn't have time to locate the owner and collect a reward." Naturally, the marks would agree to return the wallet, paying the Kid what they agreed the likely reward would be. Whether or not the marks intended to return the wallet, they each ended up with nothing but some worthless counterfeit money.
As late as 1911, when Kid drew a seven-year prison term for robbery, he was not considered an important criminal. When he was set free, however, he filled a void in the labor slugging field left by the passage of Joe the Greaser Rosensweig and Dopey Benny Fein. In partner-
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ship with another vicious thug, Johnny Spanish, Kid Dropper formed a new gang of labor sluggers. It was not a partnership made in heaven since the pair had a long history of hating one another. Years earlier they had had a falling out over a woman, and Spanish taught the Kid a lesson by shooting her, for which he drew a seven-year sentence.
Obviously the boys were not going to maintain their new relationship for long, especially since each viewed himself as the logical leader of the gang. Soon open warfare broke out between the pair and each turned loose a troop of killers against the other. Bullet-ridden corpses soon became a common sight in the garment district where both sides sought to dominate the rackets. The war came to an abrupt end on July 29, 1919, when the Dropper's forces learned that Spanish was dining in a Second Avenue restaurant without his usual collection of bodyguards. When Spanish stepped into the street, three gunmen, one said to be Kid Dropper himself, pumped him full of bullets.
Thereafter the Kid dominated all the labor slugging rackets in the city, working at times for the employers or the unions and sometimes for both at the same time. Between 1920 and 1923 Kid Dropper was said to have been responsible for at least 20 murders. He became a popinjay on Broadway and appeared, said one writer, "in a belted check suit of extreme cut, narrow, pointed shoes, and shirts and neckties of weird designs and color combinations, while his pudgy face, pasty-grey from long imprisonment, was surmounted by a stylish derby pulled rakishly over one eye." He did not make Johnny Spanish's mistake and was always surrounded by a bevy of gunmen.
There was good reason for this. The Dropper now faced newer and more deadly opponents than Johnny Spanish had been. They were led by Jacob "Little Augie" Orgen, a pitiless killer with such supporters and "comers" in his ranks as Jack "Legs" Diamond, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter and Gurrah Shapiro. Soon the two sides were slaughtering each other, especially for control over the wet wash laundry workers. From 1922 to mid-1923 their bloody warfare resulted in 23 murders. Once Lepke and Shapiro almost got Kid Dropper just outside his Lower East Side headquarters, but, barely missing him, they killed one of his men and an innocent bystander.
In August 1923, Kid Dropper was seized on a concealed weapon charge and hauled into the Essex Market Court. While he was being transferred to another court, he was led to the street by a phalanx of policemen past a swarm of newsmen and onlookers. As the Kid was entering the police car, a minor and dim-witted hoodlum named Louis Kushner jumped forward and shot him through the windshield. Kushner had been "stroked" by the Little Augies into believing that if he knocked off the Dropper he would come into their gang in a top position.
Dropper collapsed inside the car, while his tearful wife fought through the police to reach her husband. "Nate! Nate!" she cried. "Tell me that you were not what they say you were!" Instead, the Kid came back with a typical underworld line. "They got me!" he gasped and died.
Kushner heard the Dropper's last words and declared triumphantly, "I got him. I'd like a cigarette."
In a curious finale to the murder, Kushner got as his lawyer James "Dandy Jim" Walker, the darling of Tammany and soon to be mayor of New York. The district attorney, another Tammany man, agreed with Walker that what Kushner had done was naughty manslaughter rather than cold-blooded murder and Kushner in the end only had to serve a few years for a crime that could have sent him to the electric chair.
Meanwhile Little Augie swallowed up the Dropper's illegal enterprises, to keep them only until 1927 when Lepke and Shapiro rubbed him out and took over the bulk of the union rackets in the city.
Kidnapping of Mafiosi
In recent years, only a handful of criminal cases have concerned kidnap for ransomthat is, cases reported to the authorities. But contrary to official records, kidnapping for ransom is prevalent, and it involves the most dangerous victims in the worldMafia members.
The idea of seizing and holding organized crime fig. utes for ransom is not a brand new one. It was exploited for considerable reward in the 1930s by Chicago's so-called College Kidnappers. Named for the fact that their leader, Theodore "Handsome Jack" Klutas, was an alumnus of the University of Illinois and that most of their members were college graduates, the group specialized in snatching underworld characters who not only could afford to pay ransom but also were least likely to go to the police. Very often the victims of the College Kidnappers were members of the Capone Mob. In response to the kidnappings, the group was added to the Chicago Outfit's death list. Klutas or his men didn't seem too worried, though; between 1930 and 1933, they took in an estimated half million dollars, mostly from the mob.
In 1933, Capone gangsters cornered a minor member of the College Kidnappers, Babe Jones, and forced him to offer Klutas a payoff to cease kidnapping mob members. Klutas indicated he liked the deal, but as soon as Jones left, he ordered Jones's assassination, figuring him to be a weak character who would in time leak too many gang secrets to the Caponeites.
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Jones's car was stolen. Then he received a phone call, allegedly from police in Joliet, that the vehicle had been found and could be picked up at a certain garage. Jones, knowing how the College Kidnappers worked, took the precaution of driving past the garage dressed as a woman. He spotted two assassins known to him in a car outside the garage.
Now Jones was trapped between the College Kidnappers and the Capone gang, who had no further use for him since Klutas had rejected the bribe. In desperation, Jones turned to the police. He revealed the addresses of various gang hideouts, and Klutas was machinegunned to death from a police ambush at one of the locations. No doubt when word of Klutas's death reached the then-imprisoned Al Capone, he was thrilled by the triumph of law and order.
Gangster Vincent "the Mad Mick" Coll made a career out of kidnapping for ransom New York mobster kingpins attached to the Legs Diamond and Owney Madden gangs. In June 1931, Madden had to pay $35,000 to get back his right-hand man, Big Frenchy Demange, whom Coll had snatched off a street corner.
Charged in 1932 with killing a five-year-old boy in a street shootout with other gangsters, Coll figured he needed the best legal brains in the business. Once more he kidnapped a Madden man and collected $30,000. The funds went to ace criminal lawyer Sam Leibowitz, who got Coll off on the murder rap. Coll's kidnapping days ended later that same year when he was cut down in a public phone booth as he was engaged in a long telephone conversation with Madden, threatening to snatch him and kill him.
The notorious Gallo brothers of Brooklyn masterminded the most audacious mob kidnapping in recent years. In early 1960, they snatched four or perhaps five members of the Joe Profaci family. The victims included Joseph "the Fat Man" Magliocco, Profaci's brother-in-law and underboss; Frank Profaci, the boss's brother; and two powerful aides, Salvatore "Sally the Sheik" Mussachia and John Scimone, Profaci's trusted bodyguard and chauffeur. Some were snatched from their homes, others on the street or from a social club. Joe Profaci was himself a target, but he was tipped off in time, boarded a plane to Florida, and checked himself into a hospital. The Gallos, angry that Profaci was not cutting them in for enough of the family crime income, warned they would kill their hostages unless their demands for more equitable treatment were met.
Surprisingly, Profaci seemed to agree. He said if the hostages were released, a sitdown would be held on the Gallo complaints and the situation would be rectified. The kidnappers were inclined to accept the offer, especially Larry Gallo and Joe Jelly, the gang's top assassin. Only Joe Gallo objected violently. "You kill one," he said, "you tell them you want one hundred G's in cash as a good faith token, then we sit down and talk."
The argument ended with Larry slapping his hotheaded brother and insisting the hostages go free. They were released except for Scimone, who was held an extra week. In captivity, Scimone expressed sympathy for the Gallos' position and asked how he could help them. Before Scimone was freed, he was badly beaten to make it appear that he had gotten the extratough treatment because he had refused to renounce his boss.
The kidnapping did not have a happy ending for the Gallos. Profaci stalled on their demands, and, after an armed truce of about six months, the old don went to war on the upstarts. Using some Gallo defectors, he had Joe Jelly taken for a fishing expedition in which he ended up as fishfood. Larry Gallo was almost strangled to death in a famous ambush in a Brooklyn bar where he had been lured by Scimone, Profaci's bodyguard, who had expressed a willingness to aid the Gallo cause. In Old Man Profaci's book, kidnappers got no deals, just Mafia vengeance.
Carlo Gambino, the most powerful Mafia leader of the 1960s and 1970s likewise gave kidnappers no quarter, especially in a 1972 case in which three freelance kidnappers grabbed the don's nephew, Manny Gambino, and demanded a $350,000 ransom. After part of the money had been paid, the kidnappers went ahead and killed Manny and buried his body in a New Jersey swamp.
The FBI learned of the kidnapping and arrested two suspects, much to Gambino's annoyance. He preferred taking revenge personally. A third suspect, James McBratney, evaded arrest and Gambino put out a contract on him. He was caught in a Staten Island, New York, bar and executed by a three-man hit squad, headed by mafioso John Gotti, who was later convicted of the killing and drew a seven-year sentence. When Gotti got out, Gambino advanced him far up the crime family ladder to the trusted position of capo.
Kidnapper exterminators are much esteemed in the mob.
King's Man: Hafioso with direct access to the godfather
A truly powerful mafioso is one called a "king's man" with the authority to go directly to the boss or godfather of a crime family without having to deal with any buffers. Shortly after the death of Neil Dellacroce, John Gotti's sponsor within the mob, godfather Paul Castellano cut Gotti down to size. From then on Gotti was not to have direct access to Castellano but would have to go through Tommy Bilotti, a mob guy regarded by

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