The Everything Mafia Book (25 page)

More than Just a Nightclub Owner

Ruby moved to Dallas in the 1940s and became a well-liked nightclub owner. His burlesque shows were well attended by gangsters and cops alike. He kept up with his contacts in the mob, as well as with Dallas gangsters. There are some who say that Ruby had no connections to organized crime. This is unlikely.

Ruby—the Nexus

There are a lot of interesting coincidences that tie Jack Ruby to organized crime figures. Chief among them was Santo Trafficante Jr. In 1959, Santo was the guest of Fidel Castro in one of the Cuban dictator’s swank jails. According to an eyewitness, Trafficante was visited there by an American gangster, Jack Ruby. As improbable as that may sound, Ruby admitted that he was in Cuba around the same time. The idea that Jack Ruby may have allegedly visited Trafficante in a Cuban prison surprises many because there doesn’t seem to be any outward connection between a Dallas nightclub owner and a Florida mob boss.

Ruby’s connections to Trafficante start with his companion on that 1959 Cuba trip, Lewis McWillie. Also a Chicago native, McWillie worked in the Deauville casino for Trafficante and a few others owned by the Florida mob boss’s associates. McWillie was close with two other Trafficante cronies, Russell D. Matthews and Norman Rothman. In addition to involvement in gambling, all the men, including Ruby, were involved with smuggling weapons to Castro prior to his victory in the civil unrest.

Ruby, McWillie, and Matthews were also in the sphere of influence of Joe Civello, the mob boss of Dallas. Civello’s name crops up in numerous conspiracy theories, as do McWillie, Matthews, and of course, Jack Ruby.

Lee Harvey Oswald

Lee Harvey Oswald was no doubt a strange loner. At age seventeen he enlisted in the Marines, worked in top-secret facilities, learned the Russian language, and ultimately renounced his American citizenship and defected to the Soviet Union. The circumstances of his defection and his return are curious and full of fodder for conspiracy theorists.

Lee Harvey Oswald’s uncle, a man named Dutz Murret, was a bookie for the New Orleans Mafia. Oswald’s mother was linked to several soldiers in the mob. The man who killed Oswald, Jack Ruby, had ties to the Dallas crime family, which was more or less a subsidiary of the Marcello organization. Is it possible that the Mafia used this outcast and oddball Oswald for their hit and then had him whacked to avoid discovery? Future generations will know when the classified files are revealed. Carlos Marcello was conveniently in a New Orleans courtroom being found not guilty of his false birth certificate charges on the afternoon of President Kennedy’s murder.

Some Suspects

According to the most popular Mafia-did-it theory, the gangsters Santo Traf-ficante Jr. and Carlos Marcello were responsible for Kennedy’s assasination. Other mob names that turn up include Johnny Roselli, Charles Nicoletti, and Sam Giancana. There are dozens of other suspects with ties to the intelligence community, anti-Castro Cubans, right-wing politicians, left-wing Castro supporters, the KGB, and Lyndon Johnson, but this book will concentrate on the gangsters.

Who were some other mobsters that people say were killed because of the Kennedy assassination?

Although the life of a mobster is rife with pitfalls, including the very real possibility of getting whacked over a business deal, the murders of Trafficante associate Eladio del Valle, Chicago boss Sam Giancana, and Johnny Roselli may have been linked to the Kennedy assassination.

Santo Trafficante

Courtesy of AP Images

Mafia Boss Santo Trafficante, of Tampa, Fla., waves before a grand jury appearing, Sept. 30, 1966, Queens, New York. He was one of thirteen reputed Mafia leaders arrested in a Queens restaurant September 22 and held as material witnesses on bail totaling $1.3 million.

Charles Nicoletti

Charles “Chuckie” Nicoletti was a hit man for Sam Giancana. A coveted player in Giancana’s stable, Chuckie was reportedly hired by anti-Castro Cuban and CIA figures to be part of the conspiracy to murder Kennedy. Giancana and Johnny Roselli are also part of this particular theory. The main evidence against Nicoletti comes from the confessions of James Files, his one-time driver. Files stated that he and Nicoletti were two of the gunmen that shot Kennedy that November day in Dallas. Chuckie himself was shot in the back of the head just days before he was scheduled to appear before the House Select Committee investigating the JFK assassination. His was just one of dozens of suspicious assassination-related deaths that occurred during the Committee’s hearings.

Bill Bonanno’s Story

Salvatore “Bill” Bonanno was the son of legendary crime boss Joseph Bonanno. In 1999 Bill came out with a book about his life in the Mafia. It contained a far-fetched story of who killed Kennedy. Bill maintained that Johnny Roselli was one of the shooters and that he shot at the president from a sewer hole in front of the motorcade. Bonanno also said that French/ Corsican mobsters were involved in the hit. Bill offers little evidence to back up the claims.

Means, Motives, and Opportunity

If the Mafia was sufficiently angry with the Kennedys for their crusade against organized crime, the logical move would be to kill Robert Kennedy. But Carlos Marcello remarked that the best way to kill the dog was to cut off the head. In fact, after his brother’s death, Robert Kennedy thought the mob may have had a hand in it. The Justice Department scaled back their assault against organized crime, though only temporarily. But if the mob wanted to kill the president, how would they have done it?

Bosses like Santo Trafficante Jr. had ties to the intelligence community. The Dallas Mafia was tight with the local police force. Carlos Marcello had a lot of political pull. So the matter of a coverup could be accomplished. Also, Trafficante and Roselli’s connections to the anti-Castro Cuban operations gave them access to top-shelf hit men. It would be easy to send them to a mob-friendly town like Dallas.

And what better way to cover their tracks than to set up a patsy whose uncle worked for the Marcellos in New Orleans. This patsy would then be killed by a Chicago mob associate with ties to the local police, giving him access to the parking garage where Oswald was killed. We may never know the truth, but the circumstantial evidence is scintillating.

CHAPTER 13
Family Ties

The Mafia in America was always much more than just the figures in Chicago and New York; yet in most people’s minds these two cities were synonymous with organized crime. At one time, dozens of crime families controlled America from coast to coast, as well as outposts in smaller cities and open territories like Miami. The Mafia in a real sense controlled American crime, though most of the families numbered less than 100 made soldiers. This chapter looks at some of the lesser-known, but no less infamous, Mafia families across the country.

East Coast Mafia Families

Gangsters were a dime a dozen on the East Coast in the Mafia’s heyday. The region from New England through New Jersey and out to Pennsylvania was home to thousands of made guys, associates, bookies, loan sharks, dope peddlers, grifters, and hit men. The immigrant neighborhoods, readily corruptible electorate, and the economic activity of the area—dominated in the early part of the twentieth century by manufacturing, unions, and the docks—gave the wise guys just what they needed to expand their rackets.

Buffalo, New York

The Buffalo, New York, mob was founded by Stefano Magaddino. He was a member of the Commission from its inception and one of the elder statesmen of the Mafia. Buffalo’s location near the Canadian border made it ideal for the bootleg business. The Buffalo mob was integral in the pipeline of transporting whiskey from Canada into the United States. Magaddino also had another business that catered to those who ran afoul of him—a mob-run funeral home. The Buffalo mob extended its influence west into Ohio and up into Canada.

Buffalo Mafioso Stefano Magaddino was the older cousin of New York City gangster Joseph Bonanno. They were not cousins on the best of terms however. The Buffalo resident was intensely jealous of his more successful younger cousin, and neither would have been displeased to see the other whacked.

When old man Magaddino died of natural causes at the ripe old age of eighty-two, his succession was thrown into upheaval as various gangsters made a grab for power. By the 1980s the Buffalo family was in control of Joseph Todaro Sr., who spent most of his time in Florida. The remnants of the Buffalo family are still involved in gambling, loansharking, and construction unions.

New England

The New England family had an identity crisis. The power base shifted back and forth between Boston, Massachusetts, and Providence, Rhode Island, depending on who was in charge. The first dons, Gaspare Messina and Phil Buccola, sipped espressos in Boston’s North End. Buccola’s successor, Raymond L.S. Patriarca Sr., moved the headquarters of the family to Providence, where he had his vending company—one of many mob bosses who worked in the vending-machine industry. Patriarca remained the don until he died in 1985. His son, Raymond Patriarca Jr., took over, causing turmoil in the family. He was replaced by Francis “Frank Cadillac” Salemme. The Salemme reign was marked by a war between the established Mafiosi and a younger group of renegades. After a series of murders and successful prosecutions, the New England Mafia was damaged. The crime family still lives on, with the power center shifting back once again to Providence.

Northeast Pennsylvania

This Mafia family operates out of the old coal mining cities of Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and Pittston, Pennsylvania, extending its reach north into New York State and westward to Erie. This area attracted a large number of Italian immigrants to its coal mines and industrial operations in the beginning of the twentieth century. The local Mafia was founded by Santo Volpe, who was succeeded by John Sciandra as head of the family. Joseph Barbara had Sciandra whacked in 1940 and was the don until 1959. Russell Bufalino took over the crime family in 1959 and became the namesake of the group until his death in 1994. The current boss of the nearly dormant family is William D’Elia, who maintains close contacts with the mob in Philly.