Movie racketeering

The mobs moved in on Hollywood moviemakers during the reign of Al Capone, when the industry was still silent. Movie executives tended to be silent, too, when faced with Capone threats.

The Capones made their first move through George Browne and his associate Willie Bioff, a longtime pimp. Together, they ran Local 2 of the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE).

To show what fine fellows they were, Browne and Bioff had the union ladle out free soup for unemployed actors. And the two proceeded to ladle more than soup. That same year they pressured a large financially pressed Chicago movie chain to cancel 20 percent paycuts on its employees. As an alternative, Bioff said they would take $20,000 under the table.


By the time Capone went to prison for income tax evasion, his titular successor, Frank Nitti, had decided to move heavily into movie extortion. He slated Browne to run for the IATSE presidency in the 1934 election. Browne predictably had the Chicago votes sewn up; Lucky Luciano and Louis Lepke saw that he got support in New York; and Al Polizzi took care of the campaign in Cleveland. Browne won in a walk. And Willie Bioff went along to watch over Browne.

For delivering unto Browne the union presidency the Chicago Outfit took 50 percent of all illegal money that was taken in. Later, the fee was raised to 75 percent. This did not represent a squeeze on Browne and Bioff. There was so much money coming in they had no complaint.

The fee for avoiding a strike by projectionists in New York was set at $150,000 (a fabulous sum for Depression days), in Chicago $100,000. Refusal resulted in stink-bombings of the theaters. In 1936 Bioff told the head of Loew’s, Inc.: “Now your industry is a prosperous industry and I must get two million dollars out of it.”

Bioff and Browne then worked out a settlement that called for the four big distributors—MGM, Loew’s, Paramount and Twentieth Century-Fox—to cough up $50,000 a year each, and a smaller company to pay $25,000. In addition, the two leaders got a number of concessions that pleased the union membership, and they were hailed at the 1938 convention.

Browne and Bioff then turned around and levied a 2 percent tax on all their members’ earnings, which brought in $60,000 a month. This did not please the membership; it led to a revolt. That, combined with exposures by columnist Westbrook Pegler, led finally to the duo’s conviction on racketeering charges in 1941.

Facing long prison terms, Bioff and Browne started talking. As a result of their testimony most of the Chicago Outfit’s leadership were convicted— Nitti, Phil D’Andrea, Paul Ricca, Charlie Gioe, Lou Kaufman and Johnny Roselli—and given 10-year prison terms.

They served the minimum sentence and were paroled in a little over three years, a development that provoked a national political scandal. When they got out, the mob influence in Hollywood had hardly deteriorated. Roselli continued to be a power in the movie capital and even turned movie producer himself, turning out a number of law-triumphs-overcrime epics such as He Walked by Night.

Roselli had no trouble getting to make these projects. He made the movie moguls an offer they couldn’t refuse. And when the mob wanted to promote the career of some worthy or unworthy actor or actress it had little trouble getting the proper results.

Since the movie shakedown convictions of Browne and Bioff, the mob has become much more sophisticated in its operations. A union threatens a strike and a lawyer-labor relations expert arbitrates it. He draws a colossal fee for his services on which, minus expenses, he pays the taxes. The balance is then cut up with Chicago.

Murder, Incorporated

Nine of the most important men in Murder Inc.

When the national crime syndicate was being set up in the early 1930s, they realized that “muscle” would always be necessary for the maintenance of order. Since the mob never had any of society’s misgivings about the justification of the death penalty, they decided it would be very businesslike to set up a special troop of killers that all the crime groups around the country could call on for rubouts.

The most attractive feature about such a troop was that the killer could come in from out of town, knock off a victim he wouldn’t even know, and disappear, leaving the authorities without even a suspect or motive. Police investigations are based on looking for motivation and when a stranger kills a stranger, they seldom can get a handle on the matter. They might suspect the local crime figures of instigating the rubout but they can’t prove a thing.

Many forerunners to the syndicate murder troop existed in American criminal history, including killer gangs in the 19th century who committed murders for pay, with prices generally ranging from a low of $2 to a king’s ransom of as much as $100. However, the syndicate bosses set up something new, Murder, Incorporated, a very elite group of killers, based in Brooklyn. Unlike the bloodletters who preceded them, they were not available for hire by outsiders, but were reserved strictly for mob business.


The purpose of the new crime syndicate, composed of an ethnic conglomerate of Young Turk mafiosi, Jewish, to a lesser extent Irish, and Polish and Wasp gangs—that blossomed in Prohibition—was to cut up the rackets in orderly fashion. These included gambling, loan-sharking, labor racketeering, narcotics and prostitution.

Syndicate founders sagely figured there would be some opposition to their plans, hence the need for an enforcement arm to back up the national board’s decisions. (It was probably little different than in the corporate world where every powerhouse executive has his hatchetmen.)

Under the rules, Murder, Inc., killed only for pressing business reasons and was never to be brought into action against political figures, prosecutors or reporters. Lansky and Moe Dalitz, then the most potent criminal power in Cleveland, were most adamant on these rules.

The other big shots concurred, feeling that rubouts of such “civilians” would stir the public too much and produce “heat” that would be bad for the syndicate. Bloodletting of good guys, they agreed, would complicate their ability to bribe politicians and the police, a vital ingredient in any crime syndicate operation.

Louis Capone and Emanuel 'Mendy' Weiss, two killers-for-hire, share a carefree laugh.

A whole new vocabulary was introduced by the members of Murder, Inc. The killers accepted “contracts” to “hit” “bums.” Many psychologists have pointed out the significance of the term bum. It was a rationalization that allowed the killers to regard their victims as being of a lower species and deserving to die. It was little different than Nazi death camp executioners speaking of the victims as “scum” and “subhumans.”

Albert Anastasia is often described as the Lord High Executioner, or operating commander of the troop, but he took orders from Louis Lepke, the country’s number one labor racketeer and a member of the syndicate’s ruling circle. At times, Joey Adonis also issued orders.

However, none of the estimated 400 to 500 murders believed to have been committed by Murder, Inc., ever went ahead without the concurrence, or at least the absence of any negative vote, of other crime bigs, notably Lansky, Luciano and Frank Costello. Bugsy Siegel probably best summarized the top gangsters’ attitudes toward Murder, Inc., when he informed construction executive Del Webb, rather philosophically, that he had nothing to fear from the mob because “we only kill each other.”


Directly below Anastasia, Lepke and Adonis were a number of lieutenants, including Louis Capone (no relation to the Chicago Capones), Mendy Weiss and Abe “Kid Twist” Reles. Instructions for specific murder assignments were generally passed from on high to just one underling who in turn passed the word on so that it could not be proved in any criminal prosecution that the men at the top were involved.

Some of the more celebrated killers of the mob included Pittsburgh Phil Strauss, the man who easily held the top score in kills; Vito “Chicken Head” Gurino, who honed his shooting skill by blasting off the heads of chickens; Happy Maione, the wearer of a perpetual scowl; Buggsy Goldstein; Blue Jaw Magoon; and Frank “the Dasher” Abbandando.

The Dasher could lay claim to having obtained the quaintest nickname of the troop. It was the result of one of his earliest hits, one that he almost bungled. Assigned to take out a big, lumbering longshoreman, he aimed his gun at point-blank range, only to have the weapon misfire.

Thoroughly embarrassed, Abbandando dashed off with his angry would-be victim thundering after him. Abbandando raced around the block so fast he actually came up behind his target again, and this time succeeded in pumping three bullets into the man. Thereafter Abbandando was known to his cohorts as the Dasher.

Overall, the Dasher was said to have been involved in about 50 murders. Pittsburgh Phil was named in 58 murder investigations and authorities agreed his total of kills was probably about twice that number.

The boys, headquartered at a 24-hour candy store in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn called Midnight Rose’s, awaited assignments and swapped intelligence of effective murder techniques. When an assignment came in, the designated killer hit the road to wherever the victim lived. He didn’t come back until the job was done.

The principal that “we only kill each other” was never better illustrated than in the rubout of crime lord Dutch Schultz, himself a founding ruler of the crime syndicate. In 1935, Schultz had become the prime target of special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey, and he demanded that Murder, Inc., hit Dewey. This was in direct violation of the founding rules of the organization, and Schultz was voted down. Only Albert Anastasia thought the idea had merit, but he backed off under the withering opposition of his superiors, Luciano, Lansky, Costello and Adonis.

Harry Millman, a former big shot mobster in Detroit,
lies dead on the ground after a visit from Murder Inc.

Schultz stormed out of the meeting, insisting he was not bound by such a decision and that he would handle the job himself. Immediately, a new vote was taken, and the principle of law and order prevailed. Schultz got the death penalty. The job was carried out shortly thereafter in a Newark chop house. Two of the three Murder, Inc., gunmen involved were Charlie “the Bug” Workman and Mendy Weiss.

In 1940 Murder, Inc., unraveled when a number of lesser mob members were picked up on suspicion of various murders. Also picked up was Abe Reles, not a smalltimer. Reles got the idea that someone might talk and doom him, so he decided to talk first. He became known as “the canary of Murder, Inc.,” and eventually gave details on some 200 killings in which he personally participated or had intimate knowledge of.

Several top killers went to the electric chair, including Pittsburgh Phil, Louis Capone, Mendy Weiss, Buggsy Goldstein, Happy Maione and Dasher Abbandando. Also executed was Louis Lepke, the first and only top chief of the syndicate ever to suffer that fate.

In November 1941, Reles was still doing his canary act, and it was believed his testimony would eventually doom Albert Anastasia, Bugsy Siegel and quite possibly others. However, before he could testify in what were described as “perfect cases,” Reles “went out the window” of a Coney Island hotel where he was supposed to be under ironclad police protection.

Whether Reles’s death was suicide, accident or murder has never been established, but later Luciano, Lansky and Doc Stacher told friends and interviewers that through the good political offices of Frank Costello (and a sum believed to be $100,000, a king’s ransom in that period) it was arranged to see to it that “the canary who could sing couldn’t fly.”

Of course, all this meant was the end of Murder, Inc. Other troops of killers were started up, one known to be centered in New Jersey. Murder, Inc., remained in business.

Murders of dons

When Sam Giancana was murdered in 1975, a theory immediately developed that it could not have been a Mafia job. He had not been shown the “respect” due a don in death. Giancana was shot in the back of the head as he grilled some Italian food for himself and whomever murdered him. Then the killer had rolled him over and fired bullets from beneath his chin up into his jaw and brain.

If the mob had had Giancana murdered, the theory went, it would have been respectful; he would have been shot in the face because a don is entitled to see the shot that kills him. Ergo, the Giancana rubout had been a CIA job.

This notion is about as nonsensical as the idea that big bosses are entitled to a last meal, hence they are often shot at a restaurant table, facing their killers. True, Joe the Boss Masseria and Carmine Galante, to name just two, really were killed after they had partaken of their main courses—and they were shot from in front.


The fact is that dining table murders are popular with the mob because the victim never has a chance to reach for a weapon. Of course, he is shot in front. A genuine custom for Mafia men is to sit with their backs to the wall.

Mob killers would much prefer shooting a boss or any victim from behind since it is obviously safer. But, when Frank Costello was almost assassinated, he was rushing for the elevator in the lobby of his Manhattan apartment building.

He passed a fat man standing there who called out after him, “This is for you, Frank!” As he turned, he saw his would-be assassin’s right arm extended and a gun pointing directly at his face at a distance of no more than 10 feet. The man fired. The fact that Costello saw the shot gave him just enough time to jerk his head to the side so that he wound up with no more than a bloody flesh wound.

Later the newspapers would say the gunman’s tactics were a mark of respect for Don Francesco, that he was only to get it up front. That was not so. His assailant, Vincent Gigante, had called to him to freeze him into a stationary target rather than a moving one.

Albert Anastasia got it sitting in a barbershop chair. He managed to jump from the chair and dive for the floor but 11 bullets tore into his body. Then one of the murderers stepped forward and applied the coup de grace, a shot to the back of the head. Anastasia got about as much respect as he ever gave his victims as the chief executioner for Murder, Inc.

Anastasia had succeeded to the head of the Mangano family by killing the boss, Vince Mangano, and his brother Phil. It has always been accepted that the kill-crazy Anastasia did it personally. How he got rid of Vince Mangano was never determined since the body was never found.

Phil Mangano was found. The details of his death can only be speculated upon since he was found immaculately dressed but pantsless. Questioned by police, Anastasia said the absence of Phil’s pants made him think he had been the victim of a crime of passion. Surely, he wasn’t the victim of a respectful hit man.

About the only major crime leader who was dispatched with a genuine show of respect was Willie Moretti, gunned down in a restaurant in New Jersey where he had been sitting with four men. When the waitress stepped into the kitchen, he and his assailants were chatting amiably in Italian.

Suddenly, she heard several gunshots. When she came out, Moretti lay on the floor dead, shot in the face. Actually the Moretti slaying was a Mafia “mercy killing,” made necessary because a mental illness brought on by syphilis was causing him to babble more than the mob could allow. It was decided he had to go.

However, no one had anything against poor Willie, and everyone felt he was entitled not to be shot in the back like a dog. And they gave him a wonderful funeral. Some bosses do get to go in style.

Murder Stable

In 1901, the Mafia presence in New York was considered by many citizens to be less than certain. But the disclosure of the infamous Murder Stable site convinced even the most skeptical that there was a “Mafia” or a “Black Hand” or some organized concern of Italian criminals. Oddly, the discovery came while the New York police and the U.S. Secret Service were more concerned about the presence of foreign anarchists.

Early in 1901, the Secret Service got wind of rumors that there was an anarchist plot to assassinate President William McKinley. The service enlisted the aid of New York police detective Joseph Petrosino, who would later become the first genuine police menace to the American Mafia and various groups of Black Handers.

Petrosino infiltrated anarchist circles in New Jersey and found there to be no organized plan to kill the president. His investigations, however, revealed that a number of individuals were all capable of trying the assassination.


More important, within the context of discovering the Mafia in action, Petrosino and the Secret Service stumbled across the “Murder Stable,” a property located at 323 East 107th Street in the heart of Italian Harlem. A gang of Italian criminals, headed by some brothers named Morello and a particularly fearful individual named Lupo the Wolf, were the terrors of the area; screams through the night struck dread in neighbors living in the stable area.

The authorities dug up the premises, unearthing the remains of about 60 murder victims. The property belonged to one Ignazio Saietta, a.k.a. Lupo the Wolf. It was determined that Lupo the Wolf and the Morellos used the place to torture their enemies into compliance or to death.

Among the murder victims was a teenage Morello whom Lupo the Wolf decreed had too loose a lip about gang affairs. He executed him slowly and savagely, striking fear in other gang members and discouraging them from straying in any fashion.

Remarkably, nobody was convicted for the wholesale killings in the Murder Stable. Lupo insisted he was no more than the landlord of the place and could hardly be held responsible for what his tenants did. The “tenants” turned out to be no more than Italian names that could not be traced.

Even more remarkably, the Murder Stable apparently continued to be used as a murder site until about 1917 by Lupo the Wolf (until he was imprisoned on unrelated charges), the Morellos and another relative through marriage, gangster Ciro Terranova.

Mussolini Shuttle

Shortly after his rise to power in Italy in 1922, Benito Mussolini launched an all-out war against the Mafia in Sicily. As a result, somewhere between 500 and 1,000 young mafiosi fled for America, where they provided fresh manpower for the old-line Mafia gangs. Many were happy to go, attracted by the huge monies that could be obtained in the bootlegging rackets.

Sicily’s most important Mafia leader, called by some observers “the boss of bosses,” Don Vito Cascio Ferro, masterminded the escape routes on what became known as “the Mussolini Shuttle.” The northern route called for smuggling the emigrant fugitives into Marseilles from where they were booked passage either directly to New York or to Canada, from where they slipped into the United States via Buffalo or Detroit. A southern route meant slipping out of Sicily to Tunis, thence to Cuba and on to Miami, Tampa, Norfolk or New Orleans.

Most of these emigrants owed allegiance to Don Vito and were expected to aid his obvious push to take over much of the Italian criminal activities in the United States. However, Don Vito himself was imprisoned by Mussolini in 1929 and died in 1932, leaving these erstwhile gangsters free to join various contending factions.


Most joined the Young Turks under the more Americanized gangsters such as Lucky Luciano and Frank Costello and would in time take part in the destruction of the old-line mafiosi or Mustache Pete elements, who had tried to rule the U.S. underworld according to the traditions of the Sicilian Mafia.

In that sense Mussolini did much to foster organized crime in America, a result Il Duce probably saw as rather amusing. However, Mussolini’s campaign against gangsters cost him much support among Americans of Italian descent who viewed the new criminal migrations as producing more crime in their communities and so stirring fresh anti-Italian feelings among the general population.

Mustache Petes

The early Mafia leaders in this country tried to maintain Sicilian criminal traditions in a new country and society. Younger Italian gangsters considered this impossible, preferring instead to cooperate not only with Italian criminals, but also with other ethnics—especially the highly organized Jewish gangsters. In time, the Mustache Petes—as the young mafiosi not-so-lovingly dubbed the old Sicilians—were considered an obstacle in “Americanizing” crime.

In New York and other cities, the Mustache Petes were eliminated from power, usually through assassination. But often, the younger generation of criminals, fattened by huge bootlegging profits, used political force and the police to isolate and so take the Mustache Petes out of circulation.

Among the younger gangsters were Lucky Luciano (always much more comfortable working with Jewish gangsters than with many of his own kind), Frank Costello, Joe Adonis, Vito Genovese, Albert Anastasia, Tommy Lucchese and others.


Even Joe Bonanno, a young mobster perhaps more steeped in “tradition,” “honor” and “respect,” saw the need to modernize and so opposed the Mustache Petes. After the bloody Castellammarese War—which eliminated the old Mafia as a force in the United States—a far wealthier, healthier and more powerful “Mafia” emerged in organized crime.

Luciano and his cohorts found they could work well with such Jewish gangsters as Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Louis Lepke, Cleveland’s Mayfield Road Gang (later Nevada’s Desert Inn Syndicate) and Detroit’s Purple Gang.

The Mustache Petes, they felt, were too set in their ways to see the true riches and power a crime syndicate could bring. Besides, the old guard—the Morellos, Lupo the Wolf, Joe the Boss Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano—were interested primarily in exploiting fellow Italians and not the public at large.

Narcotics racket

It is difficult to estimate exactly how much wealth narcotics trafficking adds to the coffers of the American Mafia. But narcotics profits, alone, guarantee the organization’s enduring wealth and power. And these profits are regarded as the real source of funds for buying the Mafia’s political and police protection.

J. Edgar Hoover can legitimately be faulted for failing to go after the Mafia and organized crime, but his dogged efforts to keep the FBI out of narcotics investigations is strangely logical. He wanted to keep the reputation of the FBI simon-pure, something he knew would be impossible because corruption and bribery was virtually inevitable in policing the narcotics field.

According to a recent government estimate, the average heroin junkie needs about 50 milligrams of the drug each day to satisfy his cravings. Figuring the average cost at $65 a day, a habit costs $24,000 a year. Many experts consider such figures as much too conservative. But using those figures for a minimum 100,000 hardcore addicts, also a conservative figure, the heroin racket adds up to at least a $2.5 billion business. Add to this the massive trade in marijuana (with at least 10 million regular pot users) and cocaine (considered “safer” than heroin by most users) and the total dollar figure in the narcotics business is clearly staggering.


Of course, the cost to the narcotics dealers is penny ante compared to the rewards. By the 1970s, it was said that the return on capital invested made drug smuggling the most prosperous industry in the world. In 1960, a kilo of heroin was obtainable in Marseilles, France, where it was manufactured from morphine base, for about $2,500.

In New York, it brought $6,000 a kilo wholesale—and over $600,000 on the street. By 1980, a kilo of grade four heroin cost about $12,000 from the supplier and brought a quarter of a million dollars in New York at wholesale prices. Cut with quinine and milk sugar, the heroin sold for several million dollars at street prices. No legitimate business, even Arab cartel oil, could come close to that.

This bottom-line figure made it obvious that the Mafia’s so-called No Narcotics Rule was sheer nonsense. No criminal organization that accepts the murder of human beings as a routine part of business could pass up such profits on the grounds of “honor” and “morality.” Mafia leaders who attempted to proscribe narcotics dealing were either lying or deluding themselves. There was and is no way to keep their criminals out of crime’s most lucrative business.

John Nardi

One of the few criminals in recent years to attempt to dislodge a Mafia family from power with the aid of “outsiders,” John Nardi was a power in the Cleveland Mafia and high up in local Teamsters affairs. For years he had felt that he never got the recognition he deserved under the mob reign of John Scalish, and when the latter died in 1976, he made a bid for power in alliance with Danny Greene, head of the socalled Irish Gang.

Syndicate crime in Cleveland had always been ethnically mixed, with a strong representation of Italian mafiosi, Jewish gangsters headed by the resourceful Moe Dalitz, and various Irish criminals. By the 1970s, the Jewish elements had long since departed for the lush legal gambling climes of Las Vegas and illegal action in Florida. But under various Italian leaders, and finally Scalish, the Mafia had become fairly dominant. However, Danny Greene and the Irish gangsters in alliance with Nardi moved to take over the Cleveland rackets as well as the important mob influence within the Teamsters.

War broke out between the Nardi-Greene forces and those of the mafiosi under James T. “Blackie” Licavoli, also known as Jack White. The Nardi-Greene gangsters scored first, knocking off a number of their enemies with bombs planted in their cars. The Licavoli forces for a time seemed incapable of striking back.

They did come up with a plot to lure Nardi and Greene to New York where they could be hustled to a large meat-packing plant in New Jersey controlled by Paul Castellano, then taking over as boss of the Gambino crime family. It would be possible, as one plotter put it, “to kill them right there, freeze and bury them.”

As quaint a murder plan as it would have been, it never came to pass. Meanwhile, crime families in Chicago and New York grew impatient with the failure of the Licavoli forces to win out. Finally, the Licavolis built a better bomb trap than their foes had built earlier. They loaded a car with dynamite and parked it right next to where Nardi parked his automobile at his Teamsters office.

When Nardi came out to his car, an assassin pushed a remote-control switch which blew up the dynamite car and killed Nardi in the process. Later that same year, Danny Greene was murdered as well. Frank “Funzi” Tieri, head of New York’s former Genovese family, sent congratulations to Licavoli, having greatly admired the way Nardi had been dispatched.

Neighbors of mafiosi

Paul Castellano mansion in Staten Island

When in December 1985 Paul Castellano was shot to death on a New York City street, television and newspaper reporters scurried immediately to the exclusive Todt Hill section of Staten Island where the former head of the Gambino crime family had resided. They failed to find any neighbors with an ill word to say about Castellano. “Great neighbors,” one was quoted, “and a credit to the neighborhood.”

The local residents were particularly proud of the 17-room white-porticoed mansion at 177 Benedict Road which they referred to as “the White House.” Many felt the Castellano family added class to the neighborhood and certainly helped property values.

Such attitudes toward mafiosi by neighbors are hardly unusual. There have never been any major complaints from respectable citizens in fashionable Sands Point, Long Island, where there has long been a considerable Mafia colony. When Tommy “Three- Finger Brown” Lucchese died, he was considered in his Long Island, New York, suburb a “wonderful neighbor.” One told the press: “If he’s a gangster, I wish all of them were.”


Even in Brooklyn in what was the turf of Crazy Joe Gallo a reporter asked a neighbor if he thought the Gallo men were gangsters. “That’s only what the papers say,” was the response.

The general rule of thumb among members of the Mafia and their allies is that they merge with their neighborhoods. Home for many years for top syndicate criminal Meyer Lansky was a three-bedroom ranch-style house in Hallandale, outside Miami. He walked his dog, described rather uncharitably by some newsmen as “the ugliest dog in the world,” and drove rented Chevrolets. Mrs. Lansky helped out image-wise by selling her used clothing in the garage of the house in a typical display of middle-class frugality.

Frank Tieri, the boss of the old Genovese crime family, was also the epitome of neighborly kinship. Around his modest two-family house in the Bath Beach section of Brooklyn, he could be counted on to guide an untended kindergartner out of the street if the child raced out after a ball.

Tony Accardo, the longtime Chicago big shot, a believer in living lavishly, might not have been quite as fondly thought of by neighbors. Often at Christmas time he would install a carillon that would send Christmas carols thundering through the otherwise placid and reserved River Forest area. Other residents probably did not appreciate the noise, but there is no record of any objection made by them. Such complaints would be un-Christian, un-Christmasy—and perhaps unhealthy.

While most neighbors think kindly of mafiosi, these neighbors can rest assured that they have had to pass muster with the mobsters. Most big mobsters have their boys run checks on all the neighbors to learn all about their habits and lifestyles. According to his daughter, Sam Giancana could inform Mrs. Giancana on all the goings-on of various neighbors.

When daughter Antoinette brought other children to the house, Sam immediately checked out their families. If he objected to something in their parents’ backgrounds—ethnicity or other faults—the children were not permitted in the Giancana household again.

It’s smart to stay on the good side of Mafia neighbors. One who did not was 51-year-old John Favara, a friend of John Gotti—known to police at the time as a capo in the Gambino family and called by the law one of the most violent mafiosi. In 1980, Favara ran over and killed Gotti’s 12-year-old son, Frank, in a traffic mishap officially declared accidental. Four months later, Favara was kidnapped as he left his job in a furniture plant; he was never seen again.

According to police, after the death of young Frank, the Favara family had received unsigned threat letters at their Howard Beach, Queens, home, and their car had been spray-painted with the word murderer. Police got reports that Favara had been chain-sawed to death, and then placed in a car that was run through a demolition machine and reduced to a one-square-foot block. Meanwhile, Favara’s wife sold their house and with her son and daughter moved far away from Howard Beach.