To all Sho 'nuff Mob Study readers everywhere, we extend our unmitigated "WELCOME." We urge publishers who read our series to send us a complimentary copy of any recently, and/or soon-to-be, released organized crime book.
In the order in which they are received, the books will be read, then reviewed, and subsequently, cited in upcoming editions of the series. We ask only that our book donors remain patient.
Thank you.
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
In Today’s column: MOBSTERS WHO COMMIT SUICIDE; DON'T EVER NEGLECT TO MENTION 'WILLIE HEENEY!'; WHO WAS EUGENE 'RED' MCLAUGHLIN?; LOOKING FOR THE SILVER LINING; WHY THE AMERICAN MAFIA IS IN DECLINE TODAY.
The Frank "Goomba" Saladino (1946-2005) Autopsy
What were the results of the Frank "Goomba" Saladino autopsy?
On Monday, April 25, 2005, prosecutors unsealed a 9-count, 41-page racketeering conspiracy indictment. Agents from the F.B.I. and the Internal Revenue Service began arresting the accused in Illinois, Florida and Arizona that morning.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation dubbed their probe "Operation Family Secrets." For the first time in history, the entire "Chicago Outfit" was deemed a criminal enterprise under federal racketeering laws.
Frank 'Goomba' Saladino, 59, who formerly lived in Freeport and Rockford, Illinois was one of the men that agents sought to arrest that day. However, federal agents found Frank Saladino dead in the hotel room where he was living in Hampshire in Kane County. When the authorities arrived to arrest him that day, they found that Saladino had apparently died of natural causes. Did the autopsy support this conclusion?
The autopsy report said Frank "Fat Frank"/"Goomba" Saladino's death was caused by heart disease and not the long arm of the Chicago Outfit.
I always thought it possible that Frank "Goomba" Saladino committed suicide. But, I would really have been surprised if the autopsy showed that Saladino killed himself.
Among alleged members and associates of the American Mafia, verifiable cases of official "suicide" are rare.
George Weinberg
In the words of T. J. English (February 15, 2005), in Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish-American Gangster, ReganBooks, ISBN: 0060590025:
"The Dutchman's temper and loud mouth got him killed; on October 23, 1935, a team of gunmen entered the Palace Steak House in Newark, New Jersey and filled him with an assortment of high-caliber bullets. Schultz lingered for two days, mumbling a series of delusional non sequiturs ("A boy has never wept nor dashed a thousand kin,,," "Mother is the best bet, and don't let Satin draw you too fast...") before dying in his hospital bed.
Unfortunately for Jimmy Hines, the gangland elimination of his business partner and friend did not lessen his own problems. In fact, Dewey, the crusading and ambitious district attorney, merely shifted his prosecutorial focus from Schultz to Hines, whom he identified as "a coconspirator and indispensable functionary of the Schultz organization." Dewey had the goods. In the wake of the Dutchman's murder, his sidekick, George Weinberg, turned state's evidence. Weinberg had been the primary go between for the Schultz organization and Hines, often meeting the district leader at his Central Park West apartment and political clubhouse.
The case against Hines was unprecedented, the first in which a prominent political leader was prosecuted for being a high-ranking member of a criminal organization. Dewey was not just saying that Jimmy Hines was a politician who had committed crimes; he was saying, clearly and unequivocally, that Jimmy Hines was every bit as much a gangster as Dutch Schultz.
After many long delays, the People v. James J. Hines got underway in August 1938. George Weinberg took the stand and spilled the beans on Pops, as Weinberg referred to Hines. Four days into the trial, the judge declared a mistrial on a technicality. Dewey was not deterred. He re-indicted Hines on the exact same charges. In Janaury 1939, a second trial got underway, with one major difference. On the eve of his testimony in the second trial, George Weinberg, feeling depressed and remorseful, blew his brains out with a revolver. The dramatic suicide as a potential disaster for the prosecution, but their case was saved when the judge ruled that Weinberg's testimony from the first trial could be entered into the record" (p.p. 211-212).
See: "The POLICY Era" at http://policykings.com/era/
Frank Nitti (1888-March 19, 1943)
Frank Nitti committed suicide. A bullet to the head. But, as John J. Binder (May 1, 2003) tells us in The Chicago Outfit (Images of America), Arcadia Publishing, ISBN: 0738523267,
"Nitti was in ill health when he took his own life and, according to information in some circles, was suffering from cancer. This helps explain his action, which was unusual for a gangster. During that era, many victims of cancer committed suicide rather than live in prolonged pain" (p 64).
Abner 'Longy' Zwillman (1899-February 27, 1959)
Longy Zwillman's death was ruled a "suicide." After Dutch Schultz was whacked in 1935, Longy Zwillman took over The Dutchman's criminal operations as the press began calling Zwillman the "Al Capone of New Jersey." However, Longy Zwillman often sought to legitimize his public persona, offering a reward for the return of the Lindbergh baby in 1932, and contributing to charities, including $250,000 to a Newark slum clearing project.
Shortly after taking over Schultz's operations, Longy Zwillman became involved in local politics, eventually controlling the majority of local politicians in Newark for over twenty years. During the 1940s Longy Zwillman, along with Guarino Willie "Willie Moore" Moretti, his long time associate, dominated gambling operations in New Jersey.
As Donnie Brasco A/K/A Joe D. Pistone (March 1, 2004) tells us in The Way of the Wiseguy , Running Press Book Publishers; Book & CD edition, ISBN: 0762418397,
"Testifying before a grand jury will get you killed. If summoned, you got to go, but once you're there, do not testify. The last thing in the world you want to do it testify against mobsters, unless you are ready to enter witness protection and never speak to any of your loved ones again" (p. 29).
During the 1959 McClellan Senate Committee hearings on organized crime, Longy Zwillman was issued a subpoena to testify before the Committee. However, shortly before he was to appear before the Committee, on February 27, 1959, Longy Zwillman was found hanged in his West Orange, New Jersey residence.
But, it may have been that Vito Genovese orchestrated Longy Zwillman's assassination. Suspecting that the elderly gangster had agreed to become a government informant, Meyer Lansky may have given the Italian Mafia permission to take out Longy Zwillman.
Police found bruises on his wrists, supporting the theory that Longy Zwillman's arms had been tied before he was hanged. In this scenario, the alleged hitmen bound his arms, attached a noose around his neck and to a beam and made Longy Zwillman climb a ladder to eternity. The alleged hitmen kicked the ladder out from under Longy Zwillman's feet. As his legs swung, the alleged hitmen unbound Longy Zwillman's arms.
Before leaving the scene of the crime, the last thing the alleged hitmen did was to put the ladder back under Longy Zwillman's dangling body. Là, maintenant nous avons un "suicide!"
Craig DePalma (1968- )
Greg DePalma, age 73, the Gambino Cosa Nostra Family capo and Craig, age 38, his mobster son, were both nabbed for racketeering with John A. "Junior" Gotti, the former Gambino acting boss. Like Junior, both DePalma's pleaded guilty and were sentenced to federal prison in 1999.
The outcomes for father and son were markedly different, however.
Greg DePalma was recently suckered by Robert Persico, an undercover FBI agent posing as Jack "The Jeweler" Falcone in an FBI sting.
Michael "Mikey Scars" DiLeonardo, 50, a Staten Island gangster who was a top gun and partner of John A. "Junior" Gotti in alleged topless bar extortion scams in New York, Atlanta and Boca Raton, began cooperating with the feds in mid-November, 2002. His testimony for the state was instrumental in the convictions of Peter Gotti and Thomas "Huck" Carbonaro. Later this year, Mickey Scars will be the star witness for the prosecution in the upcoming John A. Gotti Trial.
Craig DePalma had been serving a six-year sentence stemming from the racketeering and extortion case in which John "Junior" Gotti copped a plea. The feds tried to get Craig DePalma to testify against the Gambinos by threatening to convict him of criminal contempt. Craig had initially agreed to cooperate against DiLeonardo then backed out. As he awaited trail for criminal contempt for refusing to repeat testimony he had given to an Atlanta federal grand jury about Mikey Scars at Scar's Atlanta racketeering trial, Craig became depressed.
In October 2002, on the eve of his trial, prison guards found Craig DePalma hanging in his Atlanta jail cell. Craig DePalma is now comatose, in a vegetative state, in the United Hebrew Geriatric Center, a nursing home, in New Rochelle, New York. His prognosis is "no real chance of recovery."
The elder DePalma began using the United Hebrew Geriatric Center to conduct mob business. Craig DePalma had been serving a six-year sentence stemming from the racketeering and extortion case in which John "Junior" Gotti copped a plea.
Greg DePalma believes that Mikey Scars DiLeonardo was acquitted because Craig DePalma refused to testify against him. The elder DePalma began to use the United Hebrew Geriatric Center to conduct mob business. Maybe the aborted suicide attempt is evidence that Craig DePalma was just not made of the Right Stuff.
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) was a French sociologist. His theories and writings helped establish the foundations of modern sociology. Durkheim disagreed with most social theorists of the late 1800's because they thought that individual psychology was the basis of sociology. Durkheim regarded sociology as the study of the society that surrounds and influences the individual. Durkheim (December 1, 1982) explained his theories in his book The Rules of the Sociological Method, Free Press; 1st American ed edition, ISBN: 0029079403.
Durkheim studied thousands of cases of suicide to demonstrate his theory that a person commits suicide because of the influence of society. In Suicide by Emile Durkheim (February 1, 1997), John A. Spaulding and George Simpson, Free Press; Reissue edition, ISBN: 0684836327, he explained the theory.
In this work Durkheim (February 1, 1997) examines the rates of suicide among categories of people, e.g. the rich versus the poor, married people versus single people, protestants versus Roman Catholics and Jews.
A major cause of suicide and suicide attempts among members and associates of the American Mafia is depression brought on in a defendant in the aftermath of his cooperation with the feds. Often times the defendant experiances negative self-thoughts, e.g. feelings of insecurity, worthlessness accompanied by a loss of self-concept.
The Suicide Rates of U.S. Mobsters
The American Mafia in the twentieth century primarily consisted of Italian and Jewish American made men and associates. Emile Durkheim (1897) noticed something in the late nineteenth century that is still true today, suicide rates tend to be higher among members of the diverse protestant denominations than they are among the churches of Roman Catholicism and/or Judaism.
Suicide Rates By Religious Affiliation: Explaining The Variance
Durkheim (1897) explains the variance in his study with the dependent variable, "the relative degree of social integration." He argues that bonds of solidarity are more intense among Roman Catholic and Jews than they are among protestant denominations.
Roman Catholics and Jews place a premium upon conformity in the collective. Protestant denominations place a premium upon individualism and autonomy. When we practice individualism and try to maintain a high degree of autonomy, we place ourselves at risk for suicide.
The Limitations of the Research Design
Emile Durkheim (1897) used a secondary analysis research design. He analyzed data that was collected by another party, i.e. the Census. Durkheim (1897) realized that sometimes a death is reported as a "suicide" when, in actuality, is was "accidental" or it occurred from "natural causes." Likewise, Durkehim (1897) knew that sometimes a death is reported as having been "natural" or "accidental" when, in actuality, it was the result of a "suicide."
It is hard to assess what percentage of "deaths due to automobile accidents" in a giving year in the United States are, in actuality, "deaths due to suicide." People who are covered by life insurance do not get coverage in those policies for the commission of suicide. However, if the person who is covered by life insurance gets killed in an automobile accident, the policy covers the death.
"0.0 per 100,000 people died from a suicidal transport injury in the US 2001 (National Vital Statistics Report, CDC, 2003)" see "Deaths from Automobile accidents injury" at http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/a/automobile_accidents_injury/deaths.htm
Negative Self-thought and Suicide
The fact that, for ten years, Mikey Scars had been a part of the Gambino inner circle makes his testimony potentially devastating.
Mikey Scars was a regular at John Gotti's Little Italy headquarters during the Dapper Don's reign. He was caught in "walk-talks" with Peter Gotti in May and June of 2000 and in meetings with other defendants in the waterfront racketeering case. Mikey Scars learned the gangster trade under Salvatore "Sammy Bull" Gravano---the mob turncoat. Mikey Scars's career as a mob rat may rival the mob rat career of Sammy Bull.
Mikey Scars reached out to the feds under similar circumstances as Sammy Bull, he was detained without bail and awaiting trial for murder and other racketeering charges that could put him away for life.
Mikey Scars is divorced. He was allowed to contact his girlfriend, with whom he has a young child, and his teenaged son, to ask if they would enter the federal Witness Protection Program with him. Each declined, sending the gangster into a severely depressed emotional state and a suicide attempt by an overdose of prescription medication.
Sometimes an American Mafia member or associate behaves in a manner that is suicidal. In such cases, a resultant death is not reported officially as a "suicide."
Joe Shakes Rattles And Rolls
In "Joe Shakes Takes the Money and Cries," This Week in Gang Land, The Online Column, July 8, 2004, pp. 3-4, we find that Joseph "Joe Shakes" DiStefano, the soldier was in a bit of trouble with his mob superiors. At a sit-down, “DiStefano tearfully admitted that he had been picking up the money from Joe The Russian all along, but had kept the money for himself”..."Joe the Russian had also paid off a $5000 loan that Joe Shakes kept “to pay off his own debts” (p. 4).
According to the testimony of Salvatore "Good Looking Sal" Vitale, the former Bonanno Cosa Nostra Family underboss and current mob turncoat, DiStefano “deserved to be killed for what he had done.” Instead, Joe Shakes was put “on a shelf” – essentially banished from the family – until he returned the mob money he had skimmed" (Ibid. ).
This is an example of "suicidal behavior in the mob," an example with a happy ending.
"Ultimately, Joe Shakes redeemed himself with the Bonanos. He repaid the money, and was restored to good standing." (Ibid.).
If not for cooler heads in the mob, Joseph "Joe Shakes" DiStefano would not have had a chance to redeem himself with the Bonanno Cosa Nostra Family. Instead, Joe Shakes would have been whacked.
The name "Willie Heeney" is conspicuously absent from the pages of Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish-American Gangster, ReganBooks, ISBN: 0060590025, by T. J. English (February 15, 2005). This omission is an oversight that must be redressed in future editions of the book.
Willie Heeney
Willie Heeney, a transplant from Saint Louis, Missouri, was a top killer for the Chicago Outfit. Serving as Al Capone's "chief of staff" in Cicero, Illinois, Willie Heeney then ran the area until his death.
Willie Heeney hailed from the Kerry Patch, i.e. an area of the city of Saint Louis, Missouri where most of the early Irish settled. People who live in the Kerry Patch just call it "The Patch."
Willie Heeney's Kerry Patch cohorts included such notorious men as Dinty Colbeck, Tom and Willie Eagan and Ray Renard. See "The Kerry Patch" at:
http://home.earthlink.net/~lilirish/KerryPatch.htm
During the tumultuous years of the Roaring Twenties, Machine Gun Jack McGurn was a top Chicago Outfit gunman. He made money for himself and the Chicago mob hand-over-fist. Even before the emergence of national syndicated crime under the auspices of the American Mafia in 1931 and, the end of the Prohibition era in 1933; the Chicago mob's rackets portfolio was diversifying. The focus shifted from bootlegging to labor racketeering and illegal gambling.
Jack McGurn found adjusting to these changes to be difficult. For him, it was harder to make a living during the mob's peace time than it had been during the bootleg wars. Jack McGurn was becoming desperate. He began to squawk too much about what he was getting. Against the Chicago Outfit's rules, Jack McGurn was dealing drugs. He even proposed to his superiors that, under his leadership, the Chicago Outfit become more involved in the drug traffic. For these reasons, Jack McGurn became expendable to the Chicago Outfit.
According to John J. Binder (May 1, 2003) in The Chicago Outfit (Images of America), Arcadia Publishing; ISBN: 0738523267,
"Jack McGurn was shot to death in a bowling alley by two companions on February 15, 1936. According to a knowledgeable individual, McGurn, who was nearly broke at the time, went to Claude Maddox and Tony Accardo and threatened to revel what he knew about the St. Valentine's Day Massacre unless he received money. Maddox arranged for his removal on the day after St. Valentine's Day. Based on a statement by Murray Humphrey's, overheard on electronic surveillance by the FBI, the gunmen were Maddox himself and probably Willie Heeney" (p. 60).
In his later years, Willie Heeney was a mob elder who abused cocaine. See "The Last Days of Al Capone" at: http://www.americanmafia.com/Feature_Articles_122.html
Willie Heeney died of cancer at Mercy Hospital on July 13, 1951 at 63-years-of-age.
In Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish-American Gangster, ReganBooks, ISBN: 0060590025, T. J. English (February 15, 2005) says:
Jack "Legs" Diamond "played a major role in breaking up a plot against The Big Bankroll. A Chicago gangster named Eugene "Red" McLaughlin had come to town with the idea of kidnapping Rothstein and holding him for $100,000 ransom. The Chicago mobster approached Legs Diamond, thinking he might be willing to take part in the job. Legs played along, even going so far as traveling to Chicago to finalize the plot with McLaughlin. Then Chicago newspapers reported that McLaughlin, shot and weighed down with boulders, was found dead in a ditch in Cook County's Sanitary Canal" (p. 132).
To James "Jimmy the Man" Marcello and Frank Calabrese Sr., alleged made members of the Chicago Outfit and Operation Family Secret's defendants, a recent development in regard to organized crime in New York City ought to be encouraging. In Chicago, on Monday April 25, 2005, Marcello and Calabrese Sr. were among the 14 people indicted.
The Vincent "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano and the Operation Family Secrets indictments are unrelated. But, the fact that they both fall under the RICO Laws makes them at least superficially comparable.
Both Calabrese Sr. and Marcello were involved in "confidential" conversations in jail with individuals they trusted when their words were captured on tape. The FBI alleges that aspects of their respective discussions are incriminating.
It was reported on Friday, May 6, 2005 that a federal judge ordered that Vincent "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano, the acting boss of the Bonanno Cosa Nostra Family, be released immediately from solitary confinement. The feds had argued that Basciano deserved solitary because he ordered the slaying last December of Randolph Pizzolo, the mob associate, and plotted to kill a prosecutor from behind bars.
Joseph "Big Joey" Massino, the Bonanno Cosa Nostra Family boss who was trying to cut a deal with feds after he was convicted last summer of ordering seven murders, secretly recorded jailhouse conversations. On Thursday, May 5, 2005, Nicholas Garaufis, the Brooklyn Federal Judge, listened to the tapes himself. He concluded that, though he tried mightily, Big Joey Massino, did not deliver the goods.
The American Mafia is in decline today because it has failed to universally maintain either of the following two things:
(1) the Grand Hotel des Palmes "Agreement" (1957) in Palermo, Sicily.
A meeting was held at the Grand Hotel des Palmes,---or, as is spoken in Italian, "Albergo e delle Palme,"---in Palermo, Sicily in 1957 between the American Mafia and the Sicilian Mafia. There were several issues on the agenda: the drug trade, the Albert Anastasia problem, Borders, and the Sicilian Commission.
The "Pizza Connection," of course, is related to the drug trade issue on the agenda.
The American Mafia agreed to allow the Sicilian Mafia a franchise on heroin trafficking in the United States. In other words, the American Mafia agreed to purchase its heroin from the Sicilian Mafia STRICTLY which in turn would handle importation into, and sales throughout, the United States.
(2) an underworld "No Drugs" Rule that is enforceable.
The "Agreement" between the American and the Sicilian Mafia was the foundation of La Cosa Nostra's (LCN) vaunted "no drugs rule."
It was during Frank Costello's tenure as the Chairman of the Mafia National Commission that the "Agreement" was made. Costello had made a fortune in bootlegging and gaming and he saw the dangers inherent to drug trafficking. Nevertheless, ambitious mob leaders have fueled opposition to the Grand Hotel des Palmes Agreement (1957) in an effort to fan the flames of dissent.
Paraphrasing Vito Genovese the day told the assembled at the aborted Appalachian Conference in 1957, "When I get on top, we will all get rich." During the Appalachian Conference, Vito Genovese argued, as I paraphrase,
"I am in favor of limiting drug distribution to only the neighborhoods where the dark people, the coloreds, reside." By "coloreds" Don Vitone meant African-, Asian-, Latino-Americans, etcetera. Of course, the problem with this strategy is that drug abuse can not be geographically contained for very long.
The American Mafia’s "no drugs" rule is very superficial. It is really just an extension of the Grand Hotel des Palmes "Agreement" (1957). In essence this "no drugs" rule says, and, again, I paraphrase,
"The Sicilian Mafia has the franchise on American drug dealing. American Mafia drug dealing via the Sicilian Mafia is "legal" in the U.S. underworld. The American Mafia can deal drugs only when its drug connection is the Sicilian Mafia. When members of the American Mafia deal drugs independently of the Sicilian Mafia, their criminal enterprise is 'illegal.'"
The Grand Hotel des Palmes "Agreement" (1957) is still in effect in the American Mafia. The Grand Hotel des Palmes "Agreement" (1957) allows the American Mafia to tell the world, "The coloreds have taken over the drug racket. We could not deal drugs today if we wanted to." All the while, the "coloreds" are dope DISTRIBUTORS, but the American Mafia is the nation's primary drug WHOLESALER.
Of course, wiseguys still deal drugs, but, THEY ARE DOING SO "ILLEGALLY." Anyone who publicly deals drugs outside of this "Agreement" is cursed, e.g. Vito Genovese, Carmine "Lilo" Galante.
The No Drugs Rule is still in effect because members of the American Mafia shake down independent drug dealers. Meanwhile, the following message is being received by the American Mafia's rank and file: "Everybody and everything in the United States has a price, even the American Mafia. Mafia honor is a whore."