The Everything Mafia Book (34 page)

There have been some notable informants since the Mafia’s inception. Camorra gangsters Raffaelle Daniello and Tony Notaro testified against their bosses in 1918. Gangsters from New York, Chicago, and New Orleans provided information to police long before the FBI became interested in the Mafia.

Vito Genovese was not considered the Boss of Bosses by most in the know. Even in far-off Italy, Lucky Luciano remained the boss until his death in 1962. And Luciano’s mouthpiece in America was his old friend Meyer Lan-sky. Valachi, not the brightest bulb in the underworld, and more than a little xenophobic, did not give Lansky his due simply because he was Jewish.

Other Mafia informants claimed Valachi talked out of both sides of his mouth long before he turned rat. And claims surfaced that he might have been an informant long before he officially went to the feds.

Another attack on his character was in his Mafia nickname. He had been called Joe Cargo as a young man but over time other Mafiosi began calling him “Joe Cago.” According to mob sources, they were not simply mispronouncing his moniker. It was a sign of how they felt about him.
Cago
is an Italian word for “feces.”

Joe Valachi tried to commit suicide in 1966 but failed. In 1971, in a Texas prison, Valachi died after an acute gall bladder attack (or heart attack, depending on the source). He was sixty-six years old. Before his death, Vala-chi cooperated with bestselling author Peter Maas on the book
The Valachi Papers
. It was later made into a movie starring Charles Bronson. At least Valachi exacted revenge on his old boss. Vito Genovese lost much of his power as a result of Valachi’s testimony, and he died in 1969.

Always a Gangster

Another infamous rat in the history of Mafia informants is Henry Hill. Henry Hill was played by Ray Liotta in one of the best and most realistic gangster movies, Martin Scorsese’s
Goodfellas.
And in a very appropriate twist for these very twisted times, he is the first Mafia informant to have his very own website. Hill also appears regularly on the Howard Stern radio show and has become a restaurant owner after overcoming drug and alcohol problems.

A Brooklyn Tale

When Hill was a small boy on the mean streets of East New York, Brooklyn, he was enthralled with the local wise guys. Like many a wannabe mobster before him, including Big Al Capone, he got his start running errands for the neighborhood gangsters, much to the chagrin of his parents.

A Mafioso must be fully Italian in order to become a made man. Jimmy “the Gent” Burke and Henry Hill could never be made men because they were not full-blooded Italian. Burke was given the affectionate and honorary title of “the Irish Guinea.” In later years, some mobsters, like John Gotti Jr., were made despite being only half Italian.

Henry became entrenched in the seductive criminal underworld. One of his best friends was Jimmy “the Gent” Burke, a Queens-based mobster well known as a hijacker. Hill and Burke were half Irish, and because of that, no matter how many people they killed, they would never be admitted into the inner sanctum of the Mafia. For the record, Hill says he never killed anyone, though he was present at a few murders.

Hill was an associate of the Lucchese Mafia family. His biggest score was as part of the famous Lufthansa heist, at Kennedy Airport. But by the 1970s, his life was also spiraling out of control. Drug and alcohol addiction, plus the increasing stress of living in the dangerous underworld, were bringing him to the breaking point. He started dealing drugs and became a target for local narcotics detectives. In 1980 he was arrested for drugs and decided to become a turncoat for the feds. He knew he was on the outs with Burke and Paul Vario, his other mentor in the Mafia.

Witness for the Prosecution

In the wake of the Lufthansa heist, many of those involved in the robbery were snuffed out. Dozens more were murdered as they squabbled over the distribution of the Lufthansa airport heist money. Faced with his world coming in all around him, Hill went into the Witness Protection Program and was given a new identity. He remained in the program for seven years.

After the ill-fated Lufthansa heist, many of the robbers involved in the operation were murdered by Burke, who sought to keep the money for himself. Of those murdered, four bodies were never found, one corpse was frozen solid, one decomposed body was found in Ohio, and another dismembered body was found floating off New Jersey.

Under his new identity, Henry Hill continued to engage in criminal activity and even did sixty days in jail. He was arrested for drug dealing, assault, burglary, driving while intoxicated, and parole violation. The protection program, run by the United States Department of Justice, kicked him out, so he turned to the FBI, which has helped him remain in hiding since then.

Cyberfella

Henry Hill calls himself a “cyberfella” these days. He is also the author of a cookbook called
Cookin’ on the Run
. Although his life will always be in danger, it would seem that his ego has compelled him to make potentially hazardous forays into the light. He has a website called
www.goodfellahenry .com
. He also owns a restaurant in Connecticut.

Those who log on can buy copies of Mafia-related books and chuckle over his version of David Letterman’s Top Ten List. Hill’s parody is a list of Mafia slang expressions for murder. You can take an interactive tour of his old neighborhood and the mob hangout called Robert’s Lounge. You can even buy an autographed poster of the movie
Goodfellas
that he suggests you purchase before he gets whacked. Send him an e-mail and he might even answer.

The Sicilian Turncoat

Although turning informant is a dangerous decision for an American Mafioso, it can be dangerous for their entire family in Italy. But while the violence of the Italy-based groups kept their defectors to a minimum in the early years of the Mafia, as time went on more and more mobsters decided to make the move to assist the police. One of the most significant was Tom-maso Buscetta. His testimonies at trials in the 1980s resulted in the conviction of dozens of American and Sicilian gangsters.

Henry Hill

Courtesy of AP Images/Mike Derer

Former mobster Henry Hill smiles during an interview at the Essex County Jail in Newark, N.J., Friday, May 9, 1997. Hill, fifty-three, whose autobiograpy inspired the movie Goodfellas, was arrested in a Newark hotel room with his girlfriend on parole violations in California.

The Sicilian Mafia was known for its violent vendettas. Throughout the twentieth century hundreds of mobsters and family members were killed due to personal conflicts, in addition to the many more who were taken out for business reasons. Police officers and judges were also vulnerable to attack.

A Gangster’s Gangster

As one of seventeen children, Buscetta had to work hard to help out his family. He was born into poverty. But by the time he was a teenager he was running errands for local Mafia bosses. By the mid-1940s he was a full-fledged member of the Porta Nuova family, smuggling cigarettes and working in the narcotics trade.

The Pizza Connection case stemmed from an investigation into heroin smuggling activities. Authorities learned that a group of Sicilian mobsters had established an extensive network of heroin traffickers in pizzerias throughout the United States. The network was headquartered out of a Queens, New York, pizza parlor. In total, over twenty Mafiosi were convicted.

Fleeing an escalating Mafia war, Buscetta came to New York, where he worked for the Gambino crime family before moving to Brazil. In South America, he was picked up on an old murder warrant from Sicily. Deported back to Italy, Tommaso was sent away for life.

Turning Against the Sicilians

Prison is not easy for anyone, so they say, but Buscetta was having a difficult time. To make matters worse his two sons were murdered as part of yet another Mafia war that was turning the streets of Palermo red with the blood of gangsters and family members. Buscetta decided it was time to make his move. But rather than further the violence, he met with an anti-Mafia judge. Buscetta let loose the deep, dark secrets of the Mafia, as well as alliances with the American mob. He testified in the infamous Pizza Connection trial in New York as well as the Maxi-Trial in Italy, which led to the convictions of over 300 gangland figures.