The Gangster Report

Ripped apart by mob-faction wars for over a decade now, the Canadian mafia landscape is as tumultuous as ever. Just this past spring, Hamilton, Ontario mob boss Angelo Musitano was murdered almost exactly 20 years after he and his older brother Pasquale (Fat Pat ) Musitano assumed control of mafia affairs in the hardscrabble factory town, located a short distance from Buffalo, New York, by orchestrating the May 1997 execution of John (Johnny Pops) Papalia, the Buffalo mob’s longtime captain in the region.

Papalia was shot dead on May 31, 1997. The younger Musitano, 39, was gunned down behind the wheel of his SUV in a his driveway in the Hamilton suburb of Waterdown back on May 2

The Musitano brothers both did seven years behind bars for conspiracy in the Johnny Pops hit. Last week, Canadian mob writer extraordinaire Adrian Humphreys of the National Post newspaper, wrote of Angelo Musitano’s 2012 wedding, which was under heavy surveillance from law enforcement.

Below is a list of the six most notable underworld figures in attendance at the Musitano nuptials, according to Humphreys’ reporting.

Cosmio (The Quall) Commisso – Toronto’s reigning ‘Ndrangheta mob boss

Domenic Violi – Son of slain Montreal mafia street boss Paolo Violi and a current major player in the Quebec mob scene

Domenico Figliomeni – Son-in-law and right-hand man of powerful Toronto mobster Jimmy DeMaria

Natale Luppino – Son of former Hamilton ‘Ndrangheta mob boss Giacomo Luppino and one-time right-hand man to slain Toronto mafia bigwig Paul (The Fox) Volpe

Giuseppe (Big Joe) Cuntrera – Toronto’s Sicilian mob boss and a member of the notorious Cuntrera mafia clan

Antonio (Tony Large) Sergi – High-profile Toronto mobster

The post Who Was Who At Recently-Assassinated Hamilton Mafia Boss Angelo Musitano’s 2012 Wedding appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Being a rapper has proven a hazardous profession in some cases the past three decades. Dozens of violent slayings can be linked to the rap music industry since the groundbreaking genre gained mass popularity in the mid-to-late 1980s.

Let’s take a look at the most significant homicides tied to rap artists over the last 30 years.

Credit to www.coli.com for aid in compiling the following list:

The Rap World Murder Timeline (1987-2017)

August 27, 1987 – New York DJ and early-hip hop music impresario Scott (La Rock) Sterling

*Co-founder of the influential east coast rap contingent Boogie Down Productions is shot to death behind the wheel of his jeep in the Bronx projects

August 8, 1990 – New York rapper Brandon (B-Doggs) Mitchell

*Founding member of the Motown Records rap group Wreckx-n-Effect from Harlem is killed in argument over a girl at picnic in the wake of the group’s first album hitting shelves months earlier

October 6, 1990 – Texas rapper Daniel (D-Boy) Rodriguez

*The Puerto Rican rapper is killed in carjacking in Dallas

December 16, 1993 – West Coast rapper Charles (Charizma) Hicks,

*Shot and killed in Palo Alto, California

April 18, 1994 – Louisiana rapper Edgar (Pimp Daddy) Givens

*The Cash Money Records artist is killed in a New Orleans housing project in an alleged domestic dispute

November 30, 1995 – New York rapper Randy (Stretch) Walker

*Live Squad member and Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. affiliate is killed in Queens on the one-year anniversary of the famous Quad Studio shooting-and-robbery attack survived by him and Shakur, which served as the seminal event in the notorious East Coast-West Coast Rap War

January 1, 1996 – San Francisco rapper Kyle (Mister Cee) Church

July 31, 1996 – Bay Area rapper Seagram (aka Seagram Miller)

*The first Bay area rapper signed to Scarface’s Rap-A-Lot in Houston who is killed in East Oakland

September 13, 1996 – Historic West Coast-affiliated rap superstar Tupac Shakur

*killed in a Las Vegas drive-by following attending a Mike Tyson boxing match (succumbs to wounds a week after the attack)

November 10, 1996 – Tupac Shakur affiliate and Outlawz rap group member Yafeu (Kadafi) Fula

*The lone witness to the Shakur slaying is killed inside a New Jersey housing project

January 15, 1997 – New Orleans rapper and Cash Money Records afilite Robert (Kilo-G) Johnson, Cash Money affiliate

March 9, 1997 – East Coast rap icon Christopher (Notorious B.I.G.) Wallace

*Murdered in a drive by on a promotional tour of Los Angeles after leaving a party

April 5, 1997 – New Orleans rapper and Cash Money Records artist Albert (Yella Boy) Thomas

*Founding member of the rap group UNLV

February 3, 1998 – Houston rapper Patrick (Fat Pat) Hawkins

January 11, 1999 – Texas rapper Steven (Granpappy Mafioso) Eduok

*Gunned down in the parking lot of a Houston nightclub and recording studio by an assailant toting a AK-47

February 15, 1999 – New York rapper Lamont (Big L) Coleman

*On the verge of a Roc-A-Fella contract, killed in a Harlem drive-by

March 28, 1999 – New York rapper Raymond (Freaky Tah) Rogers

*Founding member of the Lost Boyz rap group, killed outside a Sheraton Hotel in Queens

May 21, 1999 – Detroit rapper Kamail (Bugz) Pitts

*Founding member of D-12 and Eminem affiliate is killed in a fight at BBQ in the weeks after Eminem rocketed to international superstardom

May 2, 2000 – Elektra Records artist and east coast rapper Raeneal (Q-Don) Quann

*Founding member of the NAAM Brigade rap group, killed in a Philadelphia

July 4, 2000 – DJ Quick protégé Jonny (Mausberg) Burns

*Murdered in a Compton, California drive-by

July 26, 2001 – New York rapper Eric (E Moneybags) Smith

*His murder was ordered by legendary east coast drug kingpin Kenny (Supreme) McGriff, who had aligned with the music label Murder, Inc.

October 30, 2002 – Rap pioneer and DJ legend Jason (Jam Master Jay) Mizell

*Killed in a recording studio in Queens

October 31, 2002 – New Orleans rapper and Cash Money Records artist Derrick (Bulletproof) Williams

*Nephew to Cash Money Records founder Ronald (Slim) Williams and Bryan (Baby) Williams

February 2, 2003 – San Francisco rapper Ricky (Hitman) Herd

May 19, 2003 – Georgia rapper Jason (Camoflauge) Johnson

*Killed in his hometown of Savannah leaving PurePain Recording Studios

October 24, 2003 – East coast rapper and SPICE 1 and Kool G Rap affiliate Jasun (Half a Mill) Wardlaw

*Killed in a Brooklyn housing project

November 26, 2003 – New Orleans rapper and No Limit Records artist James (Soulja Slim) Tapp

*Killed inside his mother’s house

September 18, 2004 – Detroit rapper Antonio (Wipeout) Cadell

*Killed in a feud with fellow Motor City rapper Blade Icewood

November 1, 2004 – Bay Area rapper Andre (Mac Dre) Hicks

*Killed in Kansas City, Missouri drive by shooting

April 19, 2005 – Detroit rapper Darnell (Blade Icewood) Lindsay

May 24, 2005 – Kansas City rapper Anthony (Fat Tone) Watkins

*Killed in Las Vegas

April 11, 2006 – Detroit rapper and D12 founding member DeShaun (Proof) Holton

*Killed in a shooting at an after-hours club on Motown’s far north eastside

May 1, 2006 – Houston rapper James (Big Hawk) Hawkins

June 11, 2007 – East coast rapper, Byrd Gang co-founder and Jim Jones affiliate Rayquon (Stacks Bundles) Eliot

*Killed in Queens, New York

March 25, 2008 – New York rapper Leval (Cavlar) Lyde

*Killed outside a Brooklyn seafood restaurant after an argument with fellow patrons in a parking lot turns violent

April 20, 2008 – New Orleans rapper and Hot Boys affiliate Michael (VL Mike) Allen

January 4, 2009 – New York white rapper Joe (29-E) Ryan

*Killed in Seattle after a recent move to the Pacific Northwest

March 18, 2009 – Akon protégé Roderick (Dolla) Burton

*Killed in Los Angeles over beef starting in his hometown of Atlanta

October 30, 2009 –Felon-turned-rapper Mike Beck killed in Brooklyn

*Affiliated with historic east coast hip hop figures Rakim and Fat Joe

December 10, 2010 – Cash Money Records female rapper Renetta (Magnolia Shorty) Lowe

*Killed in New Orleans behind the wheel of her Mercedes Benz

May 15, 2011 – West Coast rapper Montae (M-Bone) Talbert

*Killed in a drive by in Inglewood, California

November 10, 2011 – San Francisco rapper Markesee (Killa Keise) Henry

December 4, 2011 – East coast rapper John (Tommy Hill) Wilson

*Founding member of the R.A.M. Squad rap group, killed in front of club in Philadelphia after having testified against a set of Philly drug dealers months earlier

December 16, 2011 – Mario (Slim Dunkin) Hamilton

*Killed in Atlanta by fellow rapper Vinson (Young Vito) Hardimon

June 7, 2012 – Baton Rouge, Louisiana rapper Melvin (Lil’ Phat) Vernell III

*Trill Entertainment label dynasty scion is killed in the parking lot of Georgia hospital while awaiting the birth of a child

September 4, 2012 – Chicago rapper Joseph (Lil’ JoJo) Coleman,

January 2, 2013 – Atlanta rapper Justin (Yung Teddy) Mitchell

April 26, 2013 – Atlanta rap label owner James (OG Double D) Lewiel

*Killed cruising in his Maybach in a drive-by on the I-20 Expressway

June 20, 2013 – Louisiana rapper and Meek Mill-signee Addarren (Lil’ Snupe) Ross

*Killed in fight over video game

June 21, 2013 – Philadelphia rapper James (Jimmie Wallstreet) Davis

*Killed on the porch of his mother’s house

September 1, 2013 – Texas rapper Jeremy (Jit) Hill

*Killed outside a Houston strip club

September 23, 2013 – West coast rapper Kevin (Flipside) White

*Founding member of the OFTB Gang rap group

September 26, 2013 – Midwest rapper Louis (L.A. Capone) Anderson

*Killed leaving a recording studio in Chicago

December 28, 2013 – T.I. protégé Glenn (Doe B) Thomas

*Killed in his hometown of Montgomery, Alabama

January 3, 2014 – G-Unit and 50 Cent affiliate Jamal (Mazaradi Fox) Green

April 9, 2014 – Chicago rapper and Interscope Records artist Mario (Blood Money) Hess

*Rapper and Kanye West-affiliate Chief Keef’s cousin

May 31, 2014 – Chicago rapper McArthur (OTF NuNu) Swindle

*Killed in a Southside Chicago shopping mall parking lot

February 2, 2015 – Bay Area rapper Dominic (The Jacka) Newton

*Killed in East Oakland

May 17, 2015 – New York rapper Lionel (Chinx Drugz) Pickens

*Killed in Queens

May 29, 2015 – Chicago rapper Shoquon (Young Pappy) Thomas

June 23, 2015 – Bow Entertainment founder and Louisiana rapper Shannen (Young Ready) Hudson

July 11, 2015 – Chicago rapper, Glo Gang member and Chief Keef affiliate Marvin (Capo) Carr

*Killed in a drive-by in Chicago

September 7, 2015 – Detroit rapper Bryon (Dex Osama) Cox

September 23, 2015 – Chief Keef affiliate and Glo Gang member Marquese (Wolf Da Boss) Tann

*Killed in a Los Angeles marijuana dispensary robbery-homicide

March 4, 2016 – Georgia rapper Trentavious (Bankroll Fresh) White

*The 2Chainz and Gucci Mane affiliate is shot inside a Atlanta recording studio allegedly by fellow rapper “No Plug”

June 25, 2016 – Baltimore rapper Tyriece (La Scoota) Watson

*His manager was killed days later

April 29, 2017 – New Orleans rapper and Rich Gang member Desmone (BTY YoungN) Jerome

The post The Rap World Murder Timeline: Breaking Down Hip Hop’s Top Hits Off The Charts appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Six gangland murders in the Bay Area 37 years ago this summer set-off the first part of the notorious Oakland, California drug wars pitting wily west coast crime lord Felix (The Cat) Mitchell and his 69 Mob versus an upstart group known as The Family and led by R&B singer-turned-dope man Milton (Mickey Mo) Moore. Highlighting the killing spree was the grisly triple homicide of Family drug gang members Rickey (The Rocket) Walker, his younger brother Roger (Red) Walker and their sister-in-law Sandy Adamson on August 6, 1980. The tumult in the local drug game didn’t cease for years.

Centered in and around the San Antonio Villas and Acorn Apartments housing projects, Mitchell’s 69 Mob ruled the robust heroin market in Oakland and San Francisco in the late 1970s until his organization was challenged for the throne by Moore’s Family gang at the beginning of the following decade. The Walker brothers and Adamson were found slain on the morning of August 7, 1980 by a jogger on a grassy slope near Skyline Boulevard in a hilly section of an Oakland municipal-park called Colorado Trail, strangled and shot to death.

Red Walker, 18, and Adamson, 31, were discovered with plastic bags over their heads and died of asphyxiation. The 26-year old Rickey Walker died from two bullet wounds to the back of his skull, killed execution style. The lives of Vendetia Davis, Terry Hatter and Charles Dorsey were claimed by the unrest in the Bay Area underworld the week before.

Federal witnesses testified that members of Mitchell’s inner circle bragged of their involvement in the murders of the Walkers and Adamson. Mitchell told an associate of a trip to Los Angeles during the first week of August 1980 to create an alibi and avoid the heat from the string of hits that tipped off the month and placed his 69 Mob under even further scrutiny from law enforcement than normal.

Felix the Cat circa 1984

The 69 Mob was decimated by a forthcoming federal legal assault. The legendary Felix the Cat got locked up in 1985. He was killed inside his prison cell in 1986 – stabbed to death at 32 years old – and laid to rest in his hometown of Oakland in lavish fashion (horse-drawn carriage carrying his coffin in a parade procession of over a dozen white-colored limousines and a half-dozen cream-colored Rolls Royces).

Mickey Moore and The Family were brought down in 1985 too. Moore is a preacher today.

In the years after Mitchell and Moore went away to the Big House, Mitchell’s nephew Darryl (Little D) Reed and his LDI Gang rose to the top of the mountain in the Bay Area drug trade, which by that time had shifted away from heroin and heavily into crack cocaine. When Reed got busted in 1988, the second part of the Oakland drug wars erupted out into the open, featuring an intense power struggle for control of the city’s lucrative crack industry fought between two of Reed’s former LDI lieutenants, Timothy (Timmy Black) Bluitt and Anthony (The Ant) Flowers and resulting in a reported 16 murders in less than three years.

Bluitt was Reed’s second-in-command, while Flowers was LDI’s volatile main enforcer and hit man. Both Bluitt and Flowers were imprisoned in the 1990s. Reed, 48, was pardoned by President Barack Obama last year and walked free from federal custody in December 2016, having served 28 years behind bars for a non-violent drug crime.

Felix Mitchell’s funeral procession through the streets of Oakland in 1986

The post Bloody August By The Bay: Oakland (CA.) Drug Kingpin Felix Mitchell’s 69 Mob Declared War On ‘The Family’ In 1980 Summer Of Death appeared first on The Gangster Report.

A fist fight at a spring 1989 picnic and BBQ in Oakland, California spouted into a full-blown, two-and-a-half year street war for power in the Bay Area drug world, according to court records from the 1990s. While remnants of the infamous LDI Gang gathered to eat and socialize at Oakland’s Dimond Park in early May 1989, LDI lieutenants Anthony (The Ant) Flowers and Eric (Squeeze) Smith came to blows, with Smith allegedly getting the best of Flowers, LDI’s top enforcer, and Flowers in the wake of the embarrassing incident deciding to go off on his own and go to the proverbial mattress against his former LDI affiliates for supremacy in the local crack cocaine market, per the court documents.

LDI founder and leader Darryl (Little D) Reed had been busted months earlier and the gang was in the process of restructuring. Reed’s LDI crack-empire was created in the aftermath of the downfall of Felix (The Cat) Mitchell’s 69 Mob, which notoriously reigned over the region’s sprawling heroin industry in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Reed was a nephew and protégé of Mitchell’s – he had his prison sentence commuted by an outgoing President Barack Obama last year, walking free almost a decade prior to his scheduled release date. Felix the Cat is arguably the Bay Area’s most storied crime lord of all-time and was slain behind bars in 1986.

Mitchell fought a war versus up-and-coming drug chief Milton (Mickey Mo) Moore, commonly known as the first Oakland Drug War. Following a half-decade reprieve from the instability stemming out of Moore and Mitchell’s incarceration and the jailing of Reed, tension simmered to a boiling point between Flowers and what was left of LDI led by Reed’s No. 2-in-charge Timothy (Timmy Black) Bluitt after the scuffle at Dimond Park. Flowers aligned with the Lacy Brothers Gang for added muscle and the subsequent conflict became known as the second Oakland Drug War.

Authorities attributed at least 18 murders to the beef that lasted until Bluitt was locked up in late 1991. The quick-triggered and diminutive Flowers, 52, went down in 1994 when he was indicted for running the crack business in the East Bay section of Oakland, eventually convicted three years later and slapped with a 28-year prison term.

The second Oakland Drug War ramped up in March 1990 with the murder of a Flowers’ lieutenant in a roadway shootout followed by the grocery store slaying of a Bluitt henchman days later. Lacy Brothers Gang lieutenant and police-cooperator Theodore (Teddy Bear) Collins was killed in front of his mother’s house in East Oakland and in August 1990, according to federal informants, Flowers headed a team of gunmen that shot up a funeral home during the lying to rest of a pair of Bluitt’s bodyguards recently felled in the feud.

The war’s collateral damage proved tragic too. An innocent bystander named Patricia Welch died in a car wreck resulting from a police chase with members of the Flowers organization. Flowers’ former LDI enforcement wing was also accused of accidentally killing 21-year old Beverly Bell in April 1988 in an attack on her boyfriend Kenny Winters, an associate of the Lacy brothers.

The post The Bay Area’s King Ant Got ‘Squeezed’, Took A Stand After ’89 BBQ Brawl & Second Oakland Drug War Ensued appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Well-liked Philadelphia mafia figure Joseph (Joey Bongs) Bongiovanni died of cancer this week. He did a federal prison stint in the 1980s for gambling and racketeering.

A longtime presence in the area underworld, the 70-year old Bongiovanni maintained close ties to Philly mob boss Joseph (Skinny Joey) Merlino and consigliere Joseph (Chickie) Ciancaglini. As a young man, Bongiovanni worked as a cop in the Philadelphia Police Department.

Merlino, 55, is currently under federal indictment out of New York for gambling and health-care fraud affairs he allegedly oversaw from his new home in Boca Raton, Florida, where he relocated after he got out of a 12-year term behind bars for racketeering in early 2011. Mob watchers placed Skinny Joey on the Jersey Shore last weekend. When Merlino first got out of a prior prison stay in the 1990s for robbing an armored bank truck, he lived in Bongiovanni’s condo in the Girard Estates section of South Philly as he planned his takeover of the local crime family – Bongiovanni backed Merlino in the war he fought with Sicilian-born don John Stanfa between 1992 and 1994 to grab the reins of a Borgata he’s yet to relinquish.

Bongiovanni and Ciancaglini went down together in a racketeering case in U.S. District Court in the winter of 1981. While Joey Bongs did three years in prison for the bust, Chickie Ciancaglini, 83, only just walked free two years ago in the spring of 2015 after serving more than three decades as a guest of the government.

According to court records and FBI documents, Bongiovanni traces in mob roots to bookmaking and numbers running for Ciancaglini and Skinny Joey’s dad, deceased Philadelphia mafia underboss Salvatore (Chuckie) Merlino, in the 1970s. Per his 1980 federal tax form, Bongiovanni was employed at a wholesale meat company connected to another deceased Philly mobster named Anthony (Tony Meats) Ferrante, who controlled the city’s meat-packing district and portions of the city’s pro boxing scene on behalf of the mafia. Chuckie Merlino died of natural causes in prison at 73 years old in October 2012.

The post Not Your Average Joe: South Philly Mourns Passing Of Popular Wiseguy, Mob Boss’ Buddy, Joey Bongiovanni appeared first on The Gangster Report.

According to multiple sources familiar with U.S. Immigration proceedings, it’s finally payback time for those still sore about how things went down three decades ago with several once highly-visible members of the Detroit, Michigan Iraqi Christian community currently slated for deportation back to Baghdad. U.S. Federal Judge Mark Goldsmith will issue an order on the constitutionality of deporting droves of Iraqi natives back to a country where they could be violently persecuted for their religious beliefs later this month (July 22).

President Trump’s hardline stance towards clearing the country’s immigration backlog has swept up more than 1,000 Iraqi Christians with criminal records, hundreds coming from Detroit, including a number of them associated with a bitterly-fought battle of wills between federal and local law enforcement and an Iraqi crime syndicate in Southeast Michigan sometimes loosely referred to as the Chaldean mob in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Still-lingering tensions have caused some of the federal agents involved in working the Iraqi Christian beat back at that rocky period of time to push hard for certain former targets of theirs who they feel got off light in their respective punishments from the U.S. justice system to be the first of the native Iraqis to be returned to their unstable homeland, per sources.

“Things were incredibly tense, incredibly personal,” said one retired member of federal law enforcement of the poor relations that existed between the proverbial cops and crooks in that world back then. “They weren’t fond of us and we weren’t fond of them, there was never any love lost….. you were never ‘just doing your job,’ it was it taken to a whole other level. It was an extreme situation…in a lot of cases it was on a very emotionally-wired level on both ends of the spectrum, everything was heightened. I’m talking to the point where there were rumors and rumblings floating around of these guys putting murder contracts on the heads of the police and the police putting murder contracts on the heads of some of the bigger fishes we were after. That entire coke era in Detroit was insane and this was a slice of it. When you’re talking about cops, feds, these are the type of people with long-term memories and grudges they don’t let go of. Some people still want to jam these guys for that stuff and Trump has given them the opportunity.”

Guys like Lou Akrawi (seen above).

Lou Akrawi, the 69-year old reputed one-time Godfather of the Iraqi Christian community in Metro Detroit, was detained in May, just 16 months after he got out of state prison where he served a 20-year sentence for manslaughter. When he left Baghdad for America in 1968, Akrawi, an admitted communist and socialist, was marked for death by Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party and the Iraqi government for his part in a political coup and a failed assassination of Hussein in the months following the Baathists assuming power in the country.

Until late this week, the barrel-chested and famously-outspoken Akrawi had been on a hunger strike from his detention facility in Arizona since June 28, protesting his deportation and the fact that he was being isolated from the other Iraqi Christians in the facility. On Thursday, after more than two weeks without food or water, Akrawi, more than 20 pounds the lighter in weight, agreed at a court hearing to hydrate and consume daily vitamin supplements.

According to FBI and DEA records, from the 1970s into the 1990s Akrawi headed a vast network of Iraqi Christian criminals based in Northwest Detroit and the surrounding suburbs, with considerable interests in the area’s drug, gambling and extortion markets. His swaggering and handsome 25-year old nephew, surrogate son and alleged street boss, Harry Kalasho, was slain in a gangland hit in the winter of 1989.

Shortly after Kalasho was killed, Akrawi was indicted for racketeering and narcotics trafficking in state court along with Kalasho’s crew. While Akrawi was acquitted at trial in the case, the Kalasho crew was all convicted and received long prison sentences. Akrawi went away in 1996, held responsible for the death of an innocent bystander in a grocery-store shooting that Wayne County prosecutors put at Akrawi’s doorstep for ordering in retaliation for an attempt on his life the day prior. Since his release from state custody in late February 2016, Akrawi had been living quietly with his sister in Bloomfield Twp., Michigan, right outside of Detroit, and spending most of his time with his sons and grandsons at his eldest son’s espresso bar and café in Macomb County.

A pair of former Kalasho lieutenants Najah (Jaguar Nick) Konja and Hatum (Black Tim) Zakar were also recently detained and are scheduled to be deported with Akrawi. Konja and Zakar did 20 years in prison apiece and have been living on the straight-and-narrow in Metro Detroit over the last decade since their release from prison. Another Kalasho confidant, Basam (Little Basil) Jarges, was deported eight years ago in the wake of finishing up his prison term and today lives in Dubai.

The post GR Sources: Hard Feelings Remain From Times Past As A Number Of Feds Urge Immigration To Give Their Fmr. Iraqi Christian Targets In Det. The Boot appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Former teenage drug dealer Richard (White Boy Rick) Wershe was granted parole Friday morning after having served nearly 30 years behind bars in the Michigan Department of Corrections for a non-violent drug crime he was arrested for in the spring of 1987 and convicted of months later.

“I’m coming home,” said an overwhelmed Wershe to his attorney Ralph Musilli early Friday afternoon informing him of the news.

Wershe, just days shy of his 48^th birthday, is the longest-serving non-violent juvenile offender in the United States prison system and the last remaining prisoner convicted under the state of Michigan’s now-defunct “650 lifer law,” ruled unconstitutional by the state supreme court in 1998. A Hollywood film starring Matthew McConaughey, Bruce Dern and 16-year old newcomer Richie Merritt chronicling Wershe’s life is slated to hit theatres next year.

His incarceration stems from a May 22, 1987 traffic-stop bust on the eastside of Detroit where police unearthed a box of cocaine under a nearby porch. Then only 17, he resided in Southfield and in the years prior, according to FBI and DEA records, had been a top-secret government-planted mole in the unruly, mainly-African American Motor City narcotics scene of the crack era, getting paid roughly $50,000 between the ages of 14 and 16 to provide a federal drug task force intelligence on local street dealers and kingpins.

The 650 lifer law had mandatory life prison terms without the possibility of parole for those convicted of possession with intent to distribute at least 650 grams of a controlled substance. This year was the fourth occasion Wershe has been eligible for parole in the close to two decades since the law was repealed. He was rejected by the parole board in 2003, 2007 and 2012 respectively.

Before he tastes freedom, Wershe might still have to go to Florida and spend two years in prison for his role in a stolen-car ring conspiracy he took part in from within a witness protection wing of a Miami federal correctional facility in the 2000s. Wershe’s attorney has filed a motion for resentencing in Martin County, (Florida) Circuit Court. If the motion is granted, Wershe could be released by the end of the summer.

In the years after being found guilty at trial in 1988, Wershe entered the Federal Witness Protection Program and helped take down a group of dirty Detroit cops connected to then Mayor Coleman A. Young. Adding fuel to an already intense media storm surrounding his case in the 1980s was the fact that Wershe was in a romantic relationship with Young’s niece. Wershe’s fight for a release from prison has garnered national headlines in recent years.

The post ‘I’m Coming Home,’ One-Time Teenage Drug Dealer ‘White Boy Rick’ Receives Second Chance, Paroled From MI. Lifer Law appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Colorful New England mobster Alfred (Chippy) Scivola, a highly-respected mafia elder statesman on the east coast, died of natural causes this week, three years removed from his release from a three-year federal prison term he served for racketeering. The popular 76-year old Scivola was based out of Providence, Rhode Island and allegedly got inducted into the Patriarca crime family in 1996. He is the third member of the New England mafia to pass away since the spring and was known in the local underworld as a true character.

In 2011, Scivola was convicted alongside former Patriarca clan boss Luigi (Baby Shacks) Manocchio and one-time acting boss Anthony (The Little Cheese) DiNunzio for shaking down four Providence area topless bars (the Cadillac Lounge, the Satin Doll, the Foxy Lady and Club Desire) for street taxes ranging in the seven figures.

Manocchio, 90, is retired from the rackets – he did five years on the charges. DiNunzio, the 58-year old younger brother of reputed new don Carmen (The Big Cheese) DiNunzio, is scheduled for release from prison next winter.

The elder DiNunzio’s predecessor in the don’s seat, Pete Limone, succumbed to a bout with cancer last month at 83. The DiNunzio brothers hail from Boston, as did Limone. Longtime Boston button man Ralph (Ralphie Chong) Lamanttina died of old age in April – he was 94.

Back in 2005, Scivola was incarcerated for two years on similar charges stemming from his shaking down of Stamford, Connecticut strip clubs. That indictment reported a meeting in Connecticut between Scivola and a New York mob underboss Anthony (Tony the Genius) Megale of the Gambino crime family in 2002, regarding the Patriarcas’ extortion of Fairfield, Connecticut strip-club owner and Gambino associate Harold (Oil Can Harry) Farrington. Megale claimed “ownership” of Farrington and his businesses and paid Scivola a “settlement fee” to give to Manocchio for the Patriarcas to back-off of any further extortion efforts, per court filings. Megale died of cancer in the summer of 2015.

Scivola rose through the ranks of the east coast mafia as part of the infamous Acorn Social Club crew in Providence’s Federal Hill neighborhood (Rhode Island’s Little Italy) in the 1970s and 80s. According to federal surveillance reports and court records, Scivola was gangland running buddies with Edward (Little Eddie) Lato and Frank (Bobo) Marrapese as the threesome made their way up the syndicate’s pecking order and gained considerable esteem in area mob circles in the process

In October 1981, Scivola and Marrapese were busted for receiving a load of stolen La-Z-Boy recliner chairs and then in 2002, Scivola and his son were pinched for selling “hot” Reebok-brand sneakers. Lato and Marrapese pled guilty with Scivola in 2011 to extortion charges and are both currently behind bars.

The post New England Mafia Loses Another Anchor, Beloved ‘Chippy’ Scivola Bites The Dust At 76 appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Emmy Award-winning actor and comedian Ray Romano has been cast as legendary mafia mouthpiece and Detroit labor-union leader Bill Bufalino, Sr. in the new Martin Scorsese 100-million dollar film entitled The Irishman, starring a who’s who of iconic mob-movie actors. The film will detail how historic Teamsters union president and mob associate Jimmy Hoffa was kidnapped and killed as told by a boastful one-time friend and mafia hit man and is slated for theatres and for streaming on Netflix next year.

Romano is currently generating Oscar buzz for his supporting role in The Big Sick. He is best known for headlining the smash-hit CBS television show Everyone Loves Raymond in the late 1990s and first half of the 2000s. Through its nine-season run, the show collected a total of 15 Emmys.

The Irishman, based on the 2003 best-selling book, I Heard You Paint Houses, penned by Charles Brandt and chronicling mob hit man Frank (The Irishman) Sheeran’s relationship with Hoffa and unsubstantiated claims that he pulled the trigger in Hoffa’s still-unsolved murder, will begin shooting at the end of the summer. Hoffa vanished from a Bloomfield Township, Michigan restaurant parking lot on the afternoon of July 30, 1975 on his way to a lunch sit-down with Detroit mob street boss Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone and New Jersey Genovese crime family capo and Teamsters power Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano. His body has never been found.

Jimmy Hoffa (L) flanked by his attorney Bill Bufalino (R)

The FBI, Michigan State Police and most historians and experts on the subject reject Sheeran’s assertion that he was the triggerman on the Hoffa hit. Sheeran, who was president of a Teamsters branch in Delaware and died in December 2003, worked as muscle for Pennsylvania mob dons, Russell Bufalino and Angelo Bruno.

Sheeran will be played by frequent Scorsese-collaborator Robert De Niro in The Irishman. Fellow Oscar-winner and Scorsese staple Joe Pesci will play Russell Bufalino, while Harvey Keitel will portray Bruno and Al Pacino is set to take on the role of the fiery Hoffa. Keitel starred in Scorsese’ breakout film, 1973’s Mean Streets, however The Irishman will be the first project pairing Academy Award-winning leading man Pacino and living-legend director Scorsese.

Bill Bufalino, a cousin to Russell Bufalino, was Hoffa’s longtime attorney and proxy to the press and represented a number of the suspects in the Hoffa disappearance and homicide probee. The wedding of Bufalino’s daughter on the weekend preceding Hoffa’s murder was attended by mafia luminaries from around the country, including Russell Buffalino, Tony Giacalone and Tony Provenzano, and feverishly documented by the FBI.

Hoffa rode his deeply-entrenched underworld connections to the presidency of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a colossal labor union representing the interests of truckers and cartage haulers, in 1957. After spending time in prison for bribery, fraud and jury tampering and relinquishing the job, he feuded with his former allies in the mafia over his desire to return to office, resulting in his slaying.

From 1947 through 1967, in addition to being Hoffa’s attorney and building a reputation as a skilled litigator and judicial negotiator, Bill Bufalino held the post of president of Teamsters Local 985, which allegedly controlled the Metro Detroit jukebox delivery business. Bufalino married the niece of Detroit mob underboss Angelo (The Chairman) Meli. According to FBI records, the Detroit mob’s Meli crew ran the region’s jukebox industry and spearheaded the area mafia’s infiltration of the Teamsters.

Meli died of natural causes in 1969. Retiring from practicing law in the early 1980s and moving down to Florida, Bufalino died of cancer in May 1990 at 72 years old. His son, Bill, Jr., followed in his footsteps as a high-profile criminal defense attorney in Detroit.

Bill Bufalino, Jr. will be a small character in the 2018 movie, White Boy Rick, recounting the incredible true story of a former client of his, Richard (White Boy Rick) Wershe, a teenage drug dealer recruited onto a federal drug task force as a 14 year old in 1984 and currently the longest-serving non-violent juvenile offender in the U.S. prison system. Wershe, 48, is going on three decades behind bars for a single cocaine possession charge he took when he was 17 in May 1987 on the eastside of Detroit. Actor James Shinkle plays Bufalino, Jr. in the movie

The post Ray Romano Tapped To Play Famous Detroit Mob Lawyer Bill Bufalino In Star-Studded Hoffa Movie appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Former crack-era Detroit drug czars Art Derrick and Edward (Big Ed) Hanserd will appear as characters in the upcoming White Boy Rick movie set to unspool the nearly-unfathomable tale of one-time illegal juvenile informant and Southeast Michigan teenage cocaine dealer Richard (White Boy Rick) Wershe. Derrick will be played by Eddie Marsan of Ray Donovan fame and Hanserd is portrayed by Motor City rapper Danny Brown in his debut acting role.

White Boy Rick will land in theatres in 2018. Newcomer Richie Merritt plays Wershe and Oscar-winner Matthew McConaughey plays his dad. Veteran Hollywood actors and Oscar-nominees Bruce Dern and Piper Laurie are cast as his grandfather and grandmother, respectively. The film is directed by Yann Demange (71).

The 48-year old Wershe was paroled from state prison in Michigan last week after doing almost three full decades behind bars for a single drug possession conviction and could be free by this time next month. He is the longest-serving non-violent juvenile offender in the United States.

Less than a month out of the eighth grade, Wershe was recruited into the Detroit narcotics scene by a federal task force aimed at dismantling a criminal organization being run out of his eastside neighborhood by a suave, politically-connected coke and heroin kingpin named Johnny (Little Man) Curry. From ages 14 to 16, Wershe was paid to infiltrate Curry’s crew and provide the task force intelligence on the drug chieftain’s affairs until the relationship dissolved and Wershe went off and began dealing cocaine on his own. Found guilty at trial for an arrest he took when he was 17, he’s been locked up since January 1988.

Much like Curry, who was married to then-Mayor of Detroit Coleman A. Young’s niece in the 1980s and did 14 years in a federal prison for his drug peddling at the peak of the nation’s crack epidemic, Derrick, known simply by his initials “A.D.” on the street, acted as an underworld mentor to Wershe and bragged publically of being a father figure to him and bestowing upon him his catchy nickname. Wershe and Derrick were the only two white people operating in the inner-city Detroit drug game at that period of time.

Derrick appeared at Wershe’s first parole hearing in March 2003 before succumbing to a battle with substance abuse two years later at 52. He had done a mere six years in prison despite being the primary wholesale cocaine baron based in Michigan in the mid-to-late 1980s, compared to Wershe’s relative minor status in that world and far-harsher punishment.

Eddie Marsan has gained critical acclaim for his acting work the last four years on the popular Showtime series Ray Donovan about a Boston Irish gangster’s transformation into a law firm fixer in Los Angeles in which Marsan plays the title character’s brother, a retired boxer. Marsan is British and can be seen in the Robert Downey, Jr.-vehicle Sherlock Holmes movies as well.

Big Ed Hanserd, more commonly referred to as “Black Ed” or “Eddie Money” in eastside narcotics circles, was a contemporary of Johnny Curry’s and one of the flashier drug bosses of that era in Motown. Today 57, Hanserd did 27 years in prison, finally walking free from drug-conspiracy and weapons convictions late last fall and relocating to California. Actor Jonathan Majors plays Curry in the White Boy Rick movie.

While Derrick had a private plane he bought from the legendary Rolling Stones rock-and-roll band to tool around the country in, Hanserd had a fleet of expensive cars. Hanserd was taken into custody in July 1989 as he got into his candy apple red-colored BMW in the parking lot of a suburban shopping mall. His gleaming, mint-condition car collection also included custom-made Porsches and Ferraris built as replicas of ones driven by actors Don Johnson and Phillip Michael Thomas on the smash television show Miami Vice.

During the height of his power, Hanserd owned several hair salons and barber shops. By the late 1980s, he had developed supply sources in Los Angeles through notorious west coast coke kingpins Richard (Freeway Ricky) Ross and Brian (Waterhead Bo) Bennett.

Danny Brown (born Daniel Sewell) is a 36-year old Detroit rap staple who hails from the city’s westside. An admitted former drug pusher himself, Brown is affiliated with hip hop artists ASAP Rocky, Schoolboy Q and 50 Cent and his G-Unit group (Young Buck, Tony Yayo & Lloyd Banks) and released his first solo album in 2010.

Brown isn’t the only skilled rhyme spitter cast in White Boy Rick. Southern California rapper Y.G. is on board to play Leo (Big Man) Curry, Johnny Curry’s twin brother and partner in crime, and Milwaukee rapper IshDARR is portraying Stephen (Freaky Steve) Roussell, Wershe’s best friend and right-hand man who was slain in September 1987.

Danny Brown

The post Real-To-Reel: Old School Detroit Drug Dons ‘A.D.’ & ‘Big Ed’ Go To Big Screen In 2018 White Boy Rick Movie appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The only murder reputed Philadelphia mafia boss Joseph (Skinny Joey) Merlino is suspected of carrying out that possibly matches the method he was recorded bragging of favoring on an FBI wire three years ago is the 1996 Michael (Dutchie) Avicolli hit. Merlino, 55, was taped telling mobsters in New York’s Genovese crime family in 2014 “It’s easy to kill someone….you’re my friend, you trust me. I tell you, ‘Listen, drive me home right now.’ I get you in the car, I shoot you in the fucking head and it’s over with,” in recordings revealed in a court document filed this week in Merlino’s current federal racketeering case arising out of the Empire State and charging him with bookmaking and health care fraud.

The bombshell snippet of audio surveillance was included as part of the government’s response motion to attorneys for the now Florida-headquartered Merlino seeking a change of venue in the case from New York back to his hometown of Philly. Merlino is set to go to trial in January. He beat homicide charges at trial back in the 2000s, but is still considered a suspect in ordering, sanctioning or personally carrying out more than a dozen gangland murders in the last 25 years.

None of them, accept the Avicolli hit, fit the description he gave on tape (note: context is important too, yet unfortunately because of a lack of details surrounding the full 2014 recording of Merlino talking murder with the Genovese clan, we don’t have any here).

Dutchie Avicolli belonged to Merlino’s inner circle and is alleged to have met his demise over affairs of the heart – he had supported Skinny Joey in his war campaign to claim control of the Bruno-Scarfo crime family, which traditionally operates in Philadelphia and North New Jersey, from 1992 through 1994. Avicolli got behind the wheel of his blue-colored Buick and left his South Philly residence on the morning of April 3, 1996 and was never seen again. Multiple sources tell Gangster Report, Avicolli was in a beef with Merlino’s right-hand man and underboss Steven (Handsome Stevie) Mazzone over the fact that Avicolli, a known playboy, was romancing Mazzone’s then wife and Mazzone was retaliating by seducing Avicolli’s niece.

“They took Dutchie for a ride up to North Jersey and he never came home,” said former Philly mob don and Merlino mentor Ralph Natale of the Avicolli hit to FoxPhilly29’s Dave Schratwieser, an award-winning investigative journalist in Pennsylvania, in a television news interview in the spring plugging his new book (Last Don Standing).

Merlino and Natale grabbed power in the Philly mafia in tandem in 1994 with the incarceration of their rival, sitting Sicilian-born Godfather John Stanfa, a one-time driver for crime family namesake Angelo Bruno and co-conspirator in Bruno’s March 1980 assassination. Natale, 83, entered the Witness Protection Program in 1999 and testified at Merlino’s summer 2001 trial where he was acquitted on multiple murder counts, however, convicted of racketeering.

According to FBI informants, Avicolli, 52, was shot in the head and buried on farm property in New Jersey by Mazzone, Merlino and others. The Avicolli execution and a number of other unsolved local mob hits are getting a new looksee by investigators in an ongoing federal racketeering and murder probe centered around modern-day Philadelphia mob activity per a Schratwieser report in April.

The post Analyzing Skinny Joey Merlino’s Statement On Murder: Lone Philly Mob Rubout To Match Boss’ Boast Is Spring ’96 Clipping appeared first on The Gangster Report.

This week’s 67-page response motion filed by the U.S. Attorneys Office in federal court in New York gave us our first tiny glimpse at the hundreds of hours of audio surveillance evidence the government has compiled on alleged Philadelphia mob don Joseph (Skinny Joey) Merlino over the last five years. Besides his now already-famous opining on the ease of murdering those close to you, released in a brief transcript of the 55-year old Godfather talking to members of the New York mafia in a recording made in 2014 included in the motion filed in Merlino’s racketeering case Tuesday, mob watchers can also catch a glimpse of Skinny Joey living up to his well-earned reputation as a master shakedown artist, slick underworld politician and gambling “guzzler” extraordinaire.

Authorities believe Merlino, 55, runs the Philadelphia-North New Jersey Bruno-Scarfo crime family from his luxury condo in Boca Raton, Florida – he relocated to South Florida in early 2011 upon getting out of prion. Last summer, he was indicted out of New York City along with more than three dozen alleged east coast wiseguys and mob powerhouses, for federal racketeering. Free on bond, he is specifically charged with bookmaking and health-care fraud and is seeking to get his trial, scheduled for a January 2018 start date, moved from New York to Pennsylvania. Prosecutors are opposing the change of venue request.

Below is a breakdown of what this week’s government motion to block the defense team’s attempt to get the trial moved across state lines told us about Merlino’s alleged recent underworld affairs and his dealings with New York’s Genovese and Gambino mobs. The lead defendants in the case are Merlino and Genovese captains Patsy Parrello and Eugene (Rooster) D’ Onofrio.

According to the motion, Merlino had a piece of New York mafia associate Anthony (Wall Street Tony) Cirillo’s on-line sports gambling business. The 51-year old Cirillo splits his time between New Jersey and Boca Raton and has links to both the Gambino and Genovese crime families. He was indicted alongside Merlino in August 2016 and barred by the case’s judge from interacting with him at a mutual friend’s wedding back in the spring at a posh South Florida country club.

With Merlino as his partner, Cirillo had an ace in the hole. Per the motion, Cirillo used Merlino to intervene on his behalf to resolve debts. Merlino was recorded in 2013 telling a confidential informant that he got ten percent of Cirillo’s bookmaking operation.

This week’s motion also detailed a meeting of the minds between Genovese capo Danny Pagano – seen in this article’s cover image -, fellow Genovese Goodfella Anthony (Tony Muscles) Vazzano and Gambino soldier Daniel (Little Danny) Marino, Jr. where Marino, Jr. voiced concerns about Merlino not paying his gambling debts and Pagano telling him that D’Onofrio is responsible for getting the problem fixed. Dating all the way back to his time as a twentysomething mob associate running around South Philly and Atlantic City in the 1980s, Skinny Joey has built a world-class reputation as a “guzzler,” someone who places personal bets himself or wagers through a series off “cutouts” with no intention of repaying losses.

A winter 2014 recording made by an undercover FBI agent captured a meeting down in Florida between D’Onofrio, Merlino and a young Merlino crony named Carmine Gallo discussing how best to collect an outstanding debt owed to Cirillo’s sport book.

When D’Onofrio was informed at the recorded meeting in February 2014 that a debtor had expressed fear of him, he responded with glee.

“Good….guess what? He should be afraid of me, I don’t play around,” D’Onofrio responded.

Pagano, 64, is the son of deceased Genovese crew boss Joe Pagano, who ran the Lower Hudson Valley region for the New York mob, was nailed for a daisy-chain bootlegging gasoline scam in 1998, following serving a state prison stint for racketeering earlier in the decade. He is in a New York halfway house until late August, finishing up a two-year federal prison term for bookmaking and loansharking.

D’Onofrio, 75, is the Genovese clan’s capo of crews in Manhattan’s Little Italy and Western Massachusetts and has done time behind bars for narcotics trafficking, sports booking and second-degree murder (his conviction would be vacated). Vazzano, 52, allegedly works as an enforcer for Patsy Parrello in his Bronx crew stationed on Arthur Avenue. The 73-year old Parrello pled guilty in the spring. Marino, Jr.’s father, Danny Marino, Sr. is a reputed administrator in the Gambinos.

Prior to his arrest last summer, Cirillo controlled business affairs at a Wall Street trading firm called Princeton Securities through a trust and according to sources in federal law enforcement, is connected to mob crews in the Garden State belonging to Genovese capo Ludwig (Ninny) Bruschi and Gambino capo Alphonse (Funzi) Sisca.

Cirillo’s name popped up in a recent criminal investigation earlier probing Genovese syndicate gambling activity in New Jersey. In 2015, Genovese bookie Gary (Baldy) Latawiec was indicted for running one of the biggest sports books in the country out of the Tribeca Spa of Tranquility in Manhattan. Per court documents tied to the Polish 78-year old Latawiec’s case, Latawiec’s gambling business delivered proceeds in tribute envelopes of cash to Genovese higher-ups using Cirillo as an intermediary

The post The Skinny Joey Tapes: Philly Mob Chief Making Old Impressions New Once Again, Per Recent Response Motion appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Deceased east coast mobster Vinnie Ravo may have played a role in the disappearance of labor union boss Jimmy Hoffa, according to brand new reporting by best-selling author and world-renowned investigative journalist Dan Moldea, the preeminent authority and expert on the historic Hoffa case. A source of Moldea’s names Ravo as one of those who helped dispose of Hoffa’s body at a New Jersey landfill owned by Genovese crime family soldier Ralph (Brother) Moscato 42 years ago this week (visit Moldea’s website here and read his breakdown of the fresh revelation).

The 62-year old Hoffa vanished from a suburban Detroit restaurant parking lot on the afternoon of July 30, 1975 after locking horns with his former benefactors in the mafia over his desire to reclaim the presidency of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the massive and then heavily mob-infiltrated truckers and cartage workers union, against their wishes. Hoffa had relinquished his post atop the monolithic union years earlier as he served a federal prison sentence for fraud, bribery and jury tampering.

Despite tens of thousands of tips and dozens of high-profile searches, Hoffa’s body has never been unearthed and nobody has ever been arrested in his kidnapping and murder, making it the most infamous and iconic unsolved crime in modern times. He was on his way to a meeting with Detroit mafia street boss Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone and New Jersey-stationed Genovese syndicate captain and Teamsters powerbroker Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano, who was aligned with Brother Moscato and Vinnie Ravo in the Garden State underworld, the day he disappeared.

Moscato died of natural causes three and a half years ago in the winter of 2014 at 79. Ravo passed away in prison in March 2006 at 71 years old. Moldea’s source in tying Ravo to the Hoffa probe was tight with Moscato and part of his inner circle.

During the 1980s and early 1990s, Ravo could often be seen doing the town in Manhattan, across New Jersey and even in the Caribbean Islands with NFL Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor of the Super Bowl champion New York Giants. Ravo owned a series of strip clubs (The Bench being the most popular) in New Jersey frequented by local professional athletes, most notably Taylor and his Giants teammates. Retired Giants linebacker Brian Kelley testified in front of a New Jersey State Commission on Organized Crime in 1992 that he was being shaken down by Ravo for $500 a week following Ravo arranging a sale of a bar business for him. Ravo also allegedly helped Taylor get started in the bar and restaurant trade.

Ravo’s rap sheet included arrests for murder, attempted murder, drug dealing, illegal firearm possession, kidnapping and burglary. Court and FBI records connect Ravo to Brother Moscato and New Jersey Genovese capos John (Johnny D) DiGilio and Angelo (The Horn) Prisco. DiGilio was killed in the spring of 1988. Prisco just passed away this summer.

Known as one of the Tri-State area’s most notorious loan sharks, Moscato owned Gateway Transportation, a large trucking company, and a number of construction firms and garbage dumps and toxic-waste landfills as his legitimate businesses. Moscato’s landfill located under the Pulaski Skyway Expressway in Jersey City, New Jersey was searched by the FBI for Hoffa’s remains in the 1970s to no avail.

Ralph (Brother) Moscato

Moldea interviewed Moscato before his death and on the 40^th anniversary of Hoffa going missing two years ago in July 2015 penned a bombshell guest piece for the legendary Gangland News column out of New York. In it, he shared a tape-recorded conversation with Moscato in which the retired Genovese button man appeared to admit he and another New Jersey-based Genovese Goodfella, Salvatore (Sally Bugs) Briguglio disposed of Hoffa’s corpse at Moscato’s Pulaski Skyway toxic-waste dump.

Per FBI records, Moscato and Briguglio were suspected of murdering fellow mobster Armand (Cookie) Faugno, a partner of theirs in the shylocking business, and getting rid of his body at the Pulaski dump too. Faugno disappeared in 1972.

Briguglio, slain gangland style himself in 1978, was Tony Provenzano’s right-hand man and has been a suspect in the Hoffa case since Day 1. Provenzano’s driver, Ralph (Little Ralphie) Picardo, became an FBI informant and pointed investigators to Moscato’s landfill as to where they could find Hoffa’s body. There was speculation by informants that the reason Hoffa’s remains were not found in the search of the property was because the Provenzano crew got wind of Picardo’s betrayal and moved the evidence in lieu of the pending dig.

Salvatore (Sally Bugs) Briguglio in 1975

Picardo told the FBI that he was filled in on the details of the Hoffa hit by one its alleged participants, Provenzano crew member, Tommy Andretta, who according to Picardo, admitted him, his brother Stevie Andretta and Briguglio kidnapped and killed Hoffa in a private residence just outside Detroit, stuffed his dead body in a 55-gallon drum and shipped it to Moscato’s New Jersey trash dump for burial in a Gateway Transportation truck. Andretta, 80, is no longer active in mob affairs and lives in Las Vegas.

Provenzano kicked the bucket behind bars in December 1988, locked away on an unrelated racketeering and murder conviction. He was in a fierce feud with Hoffa, a former close friend, at the time Hoffa was done away with. Tony Giacalone, the mob’s official liaison to Hoffa dating back to the 1950s and related to Provenzano through marriage, arranged for a purported sitdown to bury the hatchet between the pair that in fact was a ruse to get Hoffa out into the open so he could be kidnapped from the popular Machus Red Fox restaurant in ritzy Bloomfield Twp., Michigan and executed at a nearby home.

Both Tony Jack and Tony Pro had airtight alibis for the afternoon Hoffa got clipped. Giacalone was at his Southfield Athletic Club headquarters five miles north of the Red Fox holding court and Tony Pro was at his Teamsters Local 560 union hall office in Union City, New Jersey doing the same. However, per more trailblazing research by Moldea via an interview he conducted from 2009 with former underworld figure Don Wells, Provenzano was in Detroit the night before Hoffa got bumped off, on July 29, 1975, dining at Carl’s Chop House, a favorite local mob haunt of the day and Giacalone crew dining staple.

Wells was good friends with feared Teamsters enforcer extraordinaire Rolland (Big Mac) McMaster and in 2006 traded a tip that Hoffa had been buried on McMaster’s once-owned Hidden Dreams Ranch in Commerce Twp., Michigan, for a proverbial get-out-of-jail-free card from a narcotics-trafficking bust. McMaster was a Hoffa ally-turned-enemy, heading the so-called “Goon Squad” enlisted in the early-to-mid 1970s to prevent a Hoffa bid for president of the Teamsters at all costs. He died at 93 in 2007. The dig at McMaster’s former property a year prior proved fruitless. McMaster’s brother-in-law Stanton Barr ran the lucrative steel hauling division of Brother Moscato’s Gateway Transportation.

Tony Giacalone succumbed to liver failure in 2001 awaiting trial for racketeering. He had done seven years in federal prison (1979-1986) for extortion and tax evasion in the direct aftermath of the Hoffa murder. His younger brother, Vito (Billy Jack) Giacalone, rose to be the Detroit mob’s underboss, and is believed by investigators and most experts to have acted as his big bro’s representative on the Hoffa hit.

Billy Giacalone leaving court in 1996

Unlike his big bro, Billy Giacalone had no alibi for the day Hoffa went missing and was unaccounted for by his normal FBI surveillance unit. Billy Jack died of dementia in 2012. The Giacalone brothers were suspects in dozens of mob slayings in their half-century as the face of the mafia in the Motor City on the street and their collective muscle aided the Detroit-based Hoffa tremendously in his ascent up the ranks of the union. Hoffa’s capturing the Teamsters presidency in 1957 coincided with Tony Jack’s promotion to street boss and day-to-day overseer of the Tocco-Zerilli crime family.

Dan Moldea is considered the seminal researcher on the Hoffa case. He published The Hoffa Wars, the undisputed bible on the topic, in 1978. Besides writing about Hoffa, Moldea has released seven other investigative classic, ranging in topics from pro football and the mob, O.J. Simpson, Ronald Reagan, Robert Kennedy and the Clintons.

The post ‘Godfather’ Of Hoffa Research Moldea Sheds New Light On Labor Union Leader’s Unsolved Murder, Brings Fmr. NJ Wiseguy Into Picture appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Next month, Academy Award-winning film director Kathryn Bigelow will release Detroit, a recounting of the city’s devastating 1967 race riot, the most destructive period of civil unrest in American history. The riot marks its 50^th anniversary this week. Lasting for a total of five days (July 23 through July 27), the riot literally tore the once gleaming Midwest metropolis, apart at the seams resulting in 43 deaths, over 7,000 arrests, the burning, looting and destruction of more than 2,000 buildings and pieces of property with a damage bill ranging in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Detroit opens on August 4. Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty, The Hurt Locker) directs a cast highlighted by John Boyega (Star Wars franchise), Will Poulter (The Revenant, We’re The Millers), Anthony Mackie (8 Mile, The Hurt Locker, Captain America franchise) and John Krasinski (TV’s The Office). The film focuses on the notoriously-tragic July 26, 1967 Algiers Motel Murders.

Using The Detroit Free Press newspaper Twitter feed and its brilliantly-crafted #Detroit67 thread as a guide, below is a timeline of the first day of the infamous uprising in the Motor City.

Detroit 1967 Race Riot Timeline – Day 1: July 23, 1967

3:35 a.m. – An undercover Detroit police officer enters an African-American blind pig after hours bar at 12^th and Clairmount inside the Economy Printing Company building where dozens have congregated to welcome home two returning Black soldiers from service in the Vietnam War

3:50 a.m. – The ensuing Detroit Police Department raid of the after-hours spot ends in arrests of 85 customers and staff

4:05 a.m. – As the police load those arrested into a series of paddy wagons to be taken to the 10th Precinct for booking, a crowd begins to gather and the ill will between the residents of the primarily African-American neighborhood and the nearly all-White police brigade responding begins to boil with cross words being hurled

4:40 a.m. – The crowd at 12^th and Clairmount begins to get hostile, blind pig doorman Walter Scott claims responsibility for inciting the violence which would erupt into a full-fledged riot within hours when he threw a beer bottle at a policeman.

5:10 a.m. – Glass bottles, rocks and garbage debris starts to be thrown into local businesses’ front windows on 12th Street and at responding police

5:15 a.m. – Detroit Police Chief Ray Girardin is notified of the unrest and calls to inform Mayor Jerry Cavanaugh of the situation at the Mayor’s mansion

5:30 a.m. – Responding police from the 10^th Precinct receive backup called in at Girard’s command from surrounding precincts

7:45 a.m. – Police Chief Girard orders Belle Isle, the city’s most popular downtown park, closed and access blocked off to the public

7:50 a.m. – An estimated 3,000 people are now looting local storefronts, throwing rocks and bottles at police, city workers and community leaders trying to quell the unruly behavior

8:00 a.m. – Governor of Michigan George Romney is called at his home in suburban Bloomfield Hills and alerted of the growing chaos in the city of Detroit

8:25 a.m. – The first building of the riot is set ablaze, a shoe store on 12^th Street

9:00 a.m. – Rioters have grown in numbers to close to 10,000 people

9:45 a.m. – State Congressman John Conyers stands atop a car with a bullhorn pleading for a stop to the violence

10:30 a.m. – Police make a half-dozen arrests on 12^th Street

11:00 a.m. – Michigan State Police are alerted to be on “stand-by” status

12:00 p.m. – Police Chief Ray Girardin and Mayor Cavanaugh resist aid from the state police and issue a media blackout, encouraging press outlets from reporting on the intensifying situation as a means of maintaining calm in the areas of the city the riot hadn’t hit yet

1:00 p.m. – Fires breakout at 12^thStreet & Taylor, 12^th Street & Blaine, 12^th Street & Pingree and 12^th Street & Philadelphia and crowd throws rocks and bottles at responding firefighters

2:05 p.m. – Mayor Cavanaugh seeks help from the state police and National Guard to contain the uprising

2:30 p.m. – The National Guard sends its first four units of aid to the city

3:00 p.m. – Looting and violence spreads to Dexter, Linwood and Grand River

4:00 p.m. – The Motown Records Music Revue playing at the historic Fox Theatre on Woodward Avenue downtown is cancelled in the middle of a performance by native Detroiters Martha Reeves and the Vandellas

4:20 p.m. – Mayor Cavanaugh requests additional help from the state police and National Guard

4:30 p.m. – An Armenian Linwood Avenue shoe-repair shop owner attacked and badly beaten

5:00 p.m. – National Guard sets up post on campus of Detroit Central High School

5:20 p.m. – Looting extends to Joy Road and Oakland Avenue

6:00 p.m. – Looting extends to West Grand Boulevard

6:15 p.m. – The looting hits downtown at Washington Boulevard

6:20 p.m. – The looting has moved north to Highland Park

6:45 p.m. – The National Guard spreads out through the city

7:30 p.m. – Governor Romney arrives in Detroit at DPD headquarters downtown

7:45 p.m. – Mayor Cavanaugh orders 9:00 p.m. citywide curfew, describes the situation as “critical but not out of control”

7:50 p.m. – Looting has spread to Hamilton and Webb

8:30 p.m. – Looting has spread to 7 Mile and Woodward to the north and down Michigan Avenue to the west

8:40 p.m. – Looting has spread to Livernois and Fenkell

9:07 p.m. – The riot’s first report of sniper fire as shots ring out at Seward and Poe

9:15 p.m. – The riot’s first report of a shooting victim, a teenage African-American male

9:30 p.m. – Shots are fired at firemen at 12^thStreet and Lawrence

10:10 p.m. – Looting and fires have spread all the way east to Mt. Elliott

10:15 p.m. – Police shoot and wound a looter for the first time in the now raging-out-of-control riot

10:25 p.m. – Mayor Cavanaugh orders all city gas stations shuttered

10:35 p.m. – Looting spreads to Kerchival Avenue

10:45 p.m. – The FBI office in Detroit contacts the Department of Justice in Washington D.C. and informs them the situation in the city is “worsening by the moment”

10:48 p.m. – Sniper fire is heard at 12^th Street and Taylor

10:50 p.m. – Governor Romney orders all National Guard troops in the state to report to mobilized outposts in Detroit

11:10 p.m. – Looting has spread to the eastside’s Brewster Housing Projects

11:45 p.m. – Looting is reported at Monterey and Petoskey

11:58 p.m. – Mayor Cavanaugh cuts off all liquor sales in the city, Highland Park and Hamtramck

11:59 p.m. — The first day of the riot concludes with almost 300 buildings across the city either on fire or gutted by fire

The post Real-To-Reel: New Movie Details Motown’s Shame 50 Yrs. Ago -The Detroit ’67 Riots Timeline (Day 1) appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Florida biker gang lieutenant Greg (Stinky) Umphress can no longer dodge the stench of a jail cell. Umphress, a member of the Ocala, Florida chapter of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club, was taken into custody by state authorities over the weekend after dodging arrest in connection with a first-degree murder indictment for the past two months. He was caught in East Naples, Florida on Saturday in a tattoo parlor based on an anonymous tip to local police. East Naples resides in Collier County.

The 32-year Umphress is charged in the execution-style killing of Kingsmen Motorcycle Club vice-president David (Gutter) Donovan at a gas station in Central Florida back in April. Donovan, 41, was the second-in-command in the Kingsmen’s Lake County, Florida chapter.

Umphress is one of four Florida Outlaws indicted in Gutter Donovan’s slaying. The president of the Ocala Outlaws chapter, Marc (Not Quite) Knotts, and fellow chapter members Jesus (Ace) Marrero and Miquel (Toe Jam) Torres have also been charged in the case. Knotts and Marrero were arrested the day the indictment dropped in May, however Umphress and Torres took off and were declared fugitives. Torres was nabbed last month.

According to a police report from the incident, Umphress, Marrerro and Torres put a knife to Kingsmen vice president Gutter Donovan’s throat as he exited a Circle K gas station in Leesburg, Florida on the evening of April 29 and forced him to his knees on the side of the building facing Knotts. When Donovan refused Knotts’ demand that he remove his Kingsmen colors and “cut” (rocker vest), Knotts ordered him murdered, imploring his Outlaw underlings to “shoot that motherfucker.”

Donovan was shot in the head and the back, dying after a two-week fight for his life in the hospital. Which of the Outlaws actually pulled the trigger in the execution is unclear. Knotts, 48 and sometimes referred to as “Knothead,” was then shot three times in the back from the gas station entranceway by a Kingsmen brother of Donovan’s as he went to get on his bike and leave the scene.

Per recent statements by police, the Outlaws are in the midst of staging a relentless campaign to assume complete control of the state of Florida’s biker world, a region the club has maintained a stronghold in dating back a half-century – according to informants, the Outlaws, headquartered out of the Midwest, but gangland powerbrokers across the American South too, have started to demand that all other biker groups in the state either disband, be absorbed into the Outlaws or openly wear an Outlaws “support patch” on their rig and gear.

The Kingsmen, a club based out of New York, only declared itself a “One Percent” gang (an organized criminal endeavor) four years ago. Kingsmen national president David (Big Dave) Pirk, who lives in Florida and triumphed in a club civil war for the right to become part of the One Percent Nation, is currently under indictment for racketeering and

Seven years ago, Stinky Umphress walked away virtually unscathed from attacking a bar patron with a ball-peen hammer in a fight over food. Umphress was initially charged with attempted murder and then aggravated assault by prosecutors in Florida for the November 2009 beating, which occurred outside of the Papa Bear’s Den bar and grill in West Palm Beach after Umphress grabbed a handful of French fries off a random customer’s plate as he left the establishment.

The customer followed Umphress, flanked by a group of Outlaws, to the parking lot to confront him regarding the gesture and Umphress proceeded to take the hammer from its hiding place in a storage compartment on his Harley Davidson bike and slam it into his victim’s face. Two more Outlaws allegedly jumped into the altercation, smacking the victim over the head with a beer bottle and stomping him several times as he lay cowering and in pain on the pavement.

At trial in June 2010, Umphress was found not guilty of the aggravated battery charge, but guilty of a lesser battery count. He wound up doing less than six months in the county jail. His dad, former Florida Outlaws member Greg (Hoss) Umpress, Sr., died four months later in the days before Thanksgiving 2010.

The post The Smell Of Steel: Outlaws MC Member ‘Stinky’ Umphress Finally Behind Bars, Summer On The Run Ends In Collier County, FLA appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Using The Detroit Free Press newspaper Twitter feed and its brilliantly-crafted #Detroit67 thread as a guide, below is a timeline of the first day of the infamous uprising in the Motor City.

Detroit 1967 Race Riot Timeline – Day 2: July 24, 1967

12:00 a.m. – Governor George Romney declares a state of emergency

12:05 a.m. – The riot experiences its first reported fatality, 45-year old looter Walter Grzanka is shot to death by a store owner

1:15 a.m. – Sharon George, a 23-year old pregnant mother of two is murdered, is shot to death as she drove up Woodward Avenue

2:15 a.m. – Governor Romney calls U.S. Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey and tells him federal assistance is needed in reestablishing order in the city of Detroit

2:45 a.m. – National Guardsmen shoot 23-year old Clifton Pryor to death amid conflicting reports whethe he was a sniper or an unarmed civilian

3:00 a.m. – U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark tells Romney he must officially declare Detroit under “insurrection” before the U.S. Armed Forces can be called in to assist

3:01 a.m. – Governor Romney holds televised news conference

3:30 a.m. – Detroit firefighter John Ashby is electrocuted by a hanging high-voltage wire while fighting a blaze

4:30 a.m. – Looting, arson and sniper fire is reported on Jefferson Avenue near St. Jean in the DPD’s 5^th Precinct

8:00 a.m. – Fred Williams, 49, is electrocuted to death outside his burning home by touching a downed power line

9:45 a.m. – U.S. Military vet Herman Ector, 30, is shot to death by security guard after getting into argument over security guard’s behavior towards looters

10:47 a.m. – Governor Romney reaches out to President Lyndon B. Johnson via telegram and requests help from the U.S. Armed Forces, writing “Time could be of the essence”

11:00 a.m. – Detroit Tigers pro baseball franchise announces it is moving series with Baltimore Orioles to Maryland

1:25 p.m. – Looter Robert Beal is shot by police inside auto parts store on Oakland Avenue

1:45 p.m. – Looter Daniel Jennings is shot to death by owner of drug store after he broke in

1:46 p.m. – Looter Joe Chandler is shot and killed by police robbing market on 2^nd Street

2:30 p.m. – Looter Herman Canty, 46, is shot and killed by police robbing grocery store on W. Grand Boulevard

3:00 p.m. – U.S. Army paratroopers arrive at Selfridge Air Force in Mount Clemens, 25 miles outside the city limits

4:00 p.m. – Al Peachlum is shot and killed and two innocent female bystanders wounded by police inside Joy Road super market (Peachlum is mistaken for a looter)

4:15 p.m. – Members of President Johnson’s White House staff led by Cyrus Vance and U.S. Army General John Throckmorton arrive at Detroit Police headquarters for briefing

4:16 p.m. – Looter Alphonso Smith is shot by police inside a market on Dexter Avenue

4:30 p.m. – Looter Nathaniel Edmonds is shot by a civilian at corner of Harper and Baldwin

5:00 p.m. – White House rep Cyrus Vance and General Throckmorton tour pockets of riot with Governor Romney under heavy guard

5:20 p.m. – Looter Eddie Kemp is shot and killed by police at convenient store on Mack Avenue

8:05 p.m. – White House rep Cyrus Vance holds press conference announcing U.S. Military personnel won’t be dispatched to Detroit yet

8:28 p.m. – Looter Richard Sims is shot and killed by police attempting a break-in

8:30 p.m. – President Johnson is informed in the Oval Office by FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover “They’ve lost all control of Detroit”

8:55 p.m. – Mayor of Detroit Jerry Cavanaugh and Governor Romney talk to President Johnson on the phone, plead for aid and military support

9:15 p.m. – Reports of sniper fire on 12^th Street

9:28 p.m. – A sniper begins firing on the Detroit Police Department’s 7^th Precinct at Mack and Gratiot

9:30 p.m. – Fleeing looter Frank Tanner is shot by police, but gets away before he can be arrested

9:32 p.m. – U.S. Army troops arrive at Michigan State Fairgrounds at Detroit city limits on 8 Mile Road and Woodward, having been summoned from Selfridge Airforce Base

9:45 p.m. – Governor Romney calls U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and pleads for help from the military

10:22 p.m. — Police take sniper fire on eastside, officers duck for cover at corners of Charlevoix & Lycastle and Fairview & Goethe

11:00 p.m. — White House rep Cyrus Vance calls Washington and tells President Johnson the local authorities in Detroit need federal assistance

11:30 p.m. — Detroit firefighter Carl Smith is killed, caught in crossfire between police and snipers on Mack Avenue

11:55 p.m. — Per a press release from City Hall, almost 500 buildings burned to the ground throughout the second day of the riot

The post Real-To-Reel: New Movie Details Motown’s Shame 50 Yrs. Ago – The Detroit ’67 Riots Timeline (Day 2) appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Using The Detroit Free Press newspaper Twitter feed and its brilliantly-crafted #Detroit67 thread as a guide, below is a timeline of the first day of the infamous uprising in the Motor City.

Detroit 1967 Race Riot Timeline – Day 3: July 25, 1967

12:00 a.m. – President Lyndon B. Johnson goes on national television to address the country regarding the riot in the Motor City, announces dispatching of U.S. Army to the area to aid in putting down the unrest and that “Law and order has broken down in Detroit, Michigan”

12:00 a.m. – U.S. Army brigades begin arriving inside the Detroit city limits as the President addresses the masses on TV

12:01 a.m. – Fleeing looter Manny Cosbey is shot and killed by police after robbing a grocery store on E. Nevada Street

12:20 a.m. – The Detroit Police Department’s 5^th Precinct takes heavy sniper fire

12:25 a.m. – Sniper fire reported on Jefferson and St. Jean

12:50 a.m. – Detroit firefighters take sniper fire at Mack and St. Jean

1:15 a.m. – Security guard Julius Dorsey is accidentally shot and killed by police in a shootout with looters

1:17 a.m. – President Johnson authorizes a direct phone line installed between Detroit’s City Hall and the Pentagon in Washington D.C.

2:40 a.m. – Detroit firefighters take sniper fire at Oakland and Alger

2:45 a.m. – A building is set ablaze, accompanied by sniper fire at the corner of Linwood and Montgomery

3:00 a.m. – Detroit Police Officer Jerry Olshove is killed in friendly fire incident as Olshove and other officers scuffled with looters

4:00 a.m. – U.S. Army brigades assume command post on the city’s lower eastside

4:01 a.m. – U.S. Army General John Throckmorton orders military personnel under his command to unload weapons until further notice

8:00 a.m. – President Johnson, Governor George Romney, Mayor of Detroit Jerry Cavanaugh issue joint statement urging store owners in the city not effected by the rioting to remain open for business

8:05 a.m. – Looter Frank Tanner, shot by police the night before fleeing a robbery, dies in a neighborhood yard

10.00 a.m. – Mayor Cavanaugh lifts the ban on gas sales in the city

1:00 p.m. — General Throckmorton orders his troops to load their weapons again and prepare to canvas the city in military vehicles

1:30 p.m. — Flanked by some 8,000 Michigan National Guardsmen sent to the area since the morning, U.S. Army tanks and rifle-toting soldiers make their way through the city

3:00 p.m. – Looter Arthur Johnson is shot and killed by police on Holbrook

9:10 p.m. – Detroit Police officers come under sniper fire at Hazelwood and Lawton

9:45 p.m. – Sniper Jack Sydnor is killed by police

10:25 p.m. – Reported machine-gun sniper fire heard at Commonwealth and Merrick

The post Real-To-Reel: New Movie Details Motown’s Shame 50 Yrs. Ago – The Detroit ’67 Riots Timeline (Day 3) appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The day before he disappeared, legendary labor union boss Jimmy Hoffa had lunch with then Mayor of Detroit Coleman A. Young at the fabled Book Cadillac Hotel. The beloved and blustery former Teamsters union president was in the process of trying to reclaim his throne atop the empire of truckers and cartage-hauling workers he once led much to the dismay of his one-time allies in the mafia and was attempting to rally support from powerful people wherever he could find them, especially in the organized labor hotbed of the Motor City where he lived.

According to exclusive Gangster Report sources, the chat with the mayor was a straight up “quid pro quo” with Hoffa offering to feed cash into the hotel by way of a pension-fund loan and swing union votes his way in return for Young’s backing in his grab for power in the organized labor goliath he helped build years earlier but had lost a grip on due to a federal prison stint.

Hoffa, 62, was kidnapped and killed on the afternoon of July 30, 1975, 42 years ago this week. He was last seen getting into a maroon-colored Mercury Marquis in the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant and lounge in Bloomfield Township, Michigan and driving away with three unidentified men. His remains have never been found and nobody has ever been charged in his murder.

On July 29, 1975, Hoffa dined with Mayor Young in the Presidential Suite of the Book Cadillac on Washington Boulevard in downtown Detroit, at that point a cherished structure in aesthetic and financial disarray. The iconic pair of historical Motown figures spoke of a possible bailout package for the hotel funded by the Teamsters if Hoffa was re-elected president of the union the following year in return for the diminutive, brash, in-your-face Young’s backing of Hoffa’s bid for the office he had to give up while serving time behind bars in the late 1960s and early 1970s for fraud, bribery and jury tampering, per sources with intimate knowledge of the lunch rendezvous.

Part of that backing, according to these sources, included Young pledging to help Hoffa get the ban on his right to run for the president’s seat removed. As part of the conditions attached to the commutation he was granted from President Richard Nixon, springing him early from his prison sentence in December 1971, Hoffa had agreed not to run for an elected office position until the 1980s.

Coleman A. Young

Young, the first African-American mayor of a major United States city, reigned for 20 years (1974-1994), his tenure at City Hall marked with a string of juicy political and personal controversies and what was perceived by many as a divisive attitude towards the suburbs. His adversaries in the political arena and in federal law enforcement never nailed him though and he died peacefully of natural causes in 1997 at 79, having won a whopping five terms as mayor.

The Book Cadillac Hotel opened its doors in late 1924 at the height of the Prohibition Era and quickly became the premier luxury lodging and social quarters in the city for decades to come. By the time Young and Hoffa met to discuss the Teamsters financing a refurbishing in the summer of ’75, however, the building was virtually falling apart and had shed its glitzy image considerably. They ate veal and poached salmon at their meal in the Presidential Suite, per one source.

With an increasingly diminishing occupancy rate, the Book Cadillac, which had been through a slew of ownership changes since it was built by the Book brothers in the Roaring Twenties, shuttered in 1984, only to be brought back to prominence by the Westin Hotel & Resorts group with a grand re-opening in October 2008. Celebrity chef Michael Symon’s highly-acclaimed Roast steakhouse is currently located in the new Book Cadillac.

During Prohibition, Detroit’s infamously bloody and ruthless Jewish mob, the Purple Gang, headquartered out of the Book Cadillac, with the group’s boss, Abe Burnstein, residing in a penthouse suite on the hotel’s top floor. Burnstein died of a heart attack at the hotel in 1968. He had turned over the remnants of the Purple Gang to his counterparts in the Detroit Italian mafia 30 years earlier and stayed on in an advisory capacity to the shot-callers in the Tocco-Zerilli crime family and one of its liaisons to the east coast mob scene, specifically Meyer Lansky, the lone Jewish representative on the national “Commission” in New York.

Abe Burnstein

Hoffa used numerous ex-Purple Gangers as muscle and labor negotiators in his climb up the ranks of the Teamsters. A lot of the remaining Purples wound up in the mafia’s Giacalone crew, a fearsome bunch of killers, con men, thieves, bookies and shylocks led by the notorious Giacalone brothers, Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone and Vito (Billy Jack) Giacalone.

The Giacalone brothers were Hoffa’s direct contact in the Detroit underworld and two of the top suspects in his slaying. They also had connections in Mayor Young’s office, according to sources.

Hoffa was headed to a lunch date with Tony Giacalone the day he went missing and his DNA was later found in Tony Jack’s son’s Mercury Marquis, the vehicle Hoffa was witnessed being kidnapped in from the Red Fox at around 3:30 p.m. on July 30, 1975. Tony Jack died of kidney failure in early 2001. Billy Giacalone, the only member of the Giacalone crew unaccounted for by the FBI the afternoon Hoffa vanished, died of old age in the winter of 2012.

On May 2, 1939, Hall of Fame baseball player Lou Gehrig was staying at the Book Cadillac on a road trip with his New York Yankees to face the Detroit Tigers when he decided to call it quits on his 2,130-game “Ironman Streak.” The streak wouldn’t be snapped until 1995. Gehrig took a meeting with his Yankees manager Joe McCarthy in McCarthy’s room on the 36th floor to inform him of the decision after falling and almost fainting walking down the hotel’s staircase to the lobby for breakfast that morning.

The front of the Book Cadillac circa Prohibition

The post Jimmy Hoffa & The Mayor: Storied Slain Union Chief Had Quid Pro Quo Deal On Table W/ City Of Detroit When He Died appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Using The Detroit Free Press newspaper Twitter feed and its brilliantly-crafted #Detroit67 thread as a guide, below is a timeline of the first day of the infamous uprising in the Motor City.

Detroit 1967 Race Riot Timeline – Day 4 & 5: July 26 & 27, 1967

July 26

12:15 a.m. – An emergency riot task force comprised of the Detroit Police, the Michigan State Police and the U.S. National Guard respond to reports of possible sniper activity near the Algiers Motel on Woodward

1:00 a.m. – Connecticut woman Helen Hall, who was in Detroit on business, is shot to death watching the riot unfold through the window of her New Center motel room

1:20 a.m. – Tonia Blanding, just 4, is accidentally killed by machine gun fire from National Guardsmen

2:15 a.m. – The DPD Homicide Division is notified of three dead bodies at the Algiers Motel, later identified as African-American teenagers Carl Cooper, Aubrey Pollard and Freddy Temple (recently graduated from high school, Temple was spending the summer as a member of Motown music act the Dramatics’ entourage). The three teens and several others were involved in an encounter with the riot task force that remains cloudy to this very day.

7:00 a.m. – The Detroit Free Press sets up a phone line to register displaced citizens in an attempt to divert calls from the flooded Detroit Police Department dispatch center

1:00 p.m. – The Detroit Police Department’s 10^th Precinct comes under sniper fire

5:02 p.m. – Unarmed civilian George Talbert is shot to death by National Guardsman walking on LaSalle

9:30 p.m. – Vaughn’s Book Store on Dexter Avenue is torched

11:06 p.m. – Factory worker Albert Robinson is shot and bayonetted to death by a National Guardsman in front of his apartment building at Davidson and LaSalle.

July 27

11:31 a.m. — Looter Willie McDaniels dies at the hospital from bullet wounds suffered at the hands of police the day before

12:00 p.m. — Mayor of Detroit Jerry Cavanaugh announces lifting of citywide curfew

1:34 a.m. — UAW union President Walter Reuther pledges his union’s support for city rebuild at press conference

7:15 a.m. — Governor of Michigan George Romney reinstates citywide curfew

The post Real-To-Reel: New Movie Details Motown’s Shame 50 Yrs. Ago – The Detroit ’67 Riots Timeline (Days 4 & 5) appeared first on The Gangster Report.

R&B Hall of Famers and all-time classic soul-music crooners the Dramatics got their start with the help of notorious Detroit black racketeer Edward (Fast Eddie) Wingate and were connected to the infamous Algiers Motel Massacre, which occurred 50 years ago this week, July 26, 1967, amid a raging race riot in the Motor City. Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow’s new movie titled simply Detroit chronicles the riot and the unsolved Algiers Motel murders.

At the time of the incident at the Algiers Motel, the Dramatics, born and bred Detroiters themselves, were in the middle of a brief stint at the legendary Motown music label. One of the victims of the massacre, 18-year old Freddy Temple had spent his summer as part of the Dramatics’ entourage. The Algiers Motel Massacre, allegedly perpetrated by law enforcement, resulted in the murder of three African-American male teens and the beating of nine other people, including two members of the Dramatics, Roderick Davis and Larry Reed, and took place early on in the fourth day of the worst riot in American history.

Actor and singer Jacob Latimore landed the role of Freddy Temple in the Detroit film. Algee Smith plays Larry Reed. Bigelow brought home the 2007 Academy Award for Best Director with her effort helming the nail-biting war movie The Hurt Locker.

Formed on the streets of Detroit in 1962, the Dramatics are best known for hit songs “In The Rain” and “Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get” from the 1970s and for singing backup vocals on seemingly-omnipresent rapper and pop culture staple Snoop Dogg’s 1993 single “Doggy Dog World.” In The Rain released in 1971 and Whatcha See Is What You Get released a year later, were Top 10 Billboard smashes, peaking at No. 5 and No. 9 on the charts respectively. The group’s original lineup consisted of Reed, Davis, Larry (Squirrel) Demps, Al Wilkins and Ron Banks.

The Dramatics were first signed by Fast Eddie Wingate’s Golden World Records in 1964 as the Dynamics. They put out singles “Bingo” (as the Dynamics) and “Inky Winky Wang Dango Doo” (as the Dramatics) on Golden World, but were given over to Motown when Motown owner and R&B pioneer and impresario Berry Gordy bought Wingate’s Golden World and Ric-Tic Records labels in 1966.

Larry Reed

Wingate was the biggest black policy lottery boss and bookmaker in Detroit throughout the 1960s. His Twenty Grand Supper Club, a popular lounge and performance venue down the road from Motown’s Hitsville studio, acted as a launch pad for virtually all of Gordy’s most profitable acts, such as Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross and the Supremes, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. It was also a hangout for area pimps, gamblers, numbers runners, narcotics peddlers, mobsters and professional murderers, according to state police documents.

Per FBI records related to the Motown music kingdom, Gordy maintained ties to underworld figures like Wingate and drug pusher Arnold (Pretty Ricky) Wright, both with whom he was particularly close, and members of the Italian mafia in Michigan as well. Wingate retired to Las Vegas in the 1980s, dying of natural causes in 2006.

On the afternoon the 1967 Detroit Riot broke out, the Dramatics were backstage getting ready to perform at the Fox Theatre downtown as part of the Motown Music Revue playing to a packed house in their hometow. Two of the Dramatics, Roderick Davis and Larry Reed, and their friend Freddy Temple, who had been on tour with the Motown Music Revue the prior two months, took refuge from the riots at the Algiers Motel located in the city’s Virginia Park neighborhood.

Temple, Davis and Reed were socializing in the motel’s adjoining Manor House residence in the early hours of July 26, 1967 when a deputized riot task force made up the Detroit Police, Michigan State Police and U.S. National Guard arrived on the scene to investigate reports of sniper fire in the vicinity. They were aided by private security units in their sweep of the Algiers Motel and were reportedly angered to find two white prostitutes congregating with 10 black men in the Manor House

By the time the task force departed the area two hours later, Temple and fellow Manor House inhabitants Carl Cooper, 17, Aubrey Pollard, 19, were slain, Cooper and Temple from shotgun blasts coming from weapons matching those issued to the task force. Pollard was reportedly killed execution style.

Two Detroit Police officers, Ron August and Robert Pallie would confess to taking part in two of the murders, but later recant and have the charges against them thrown out. Detroit Police Department vice squad detective David Senak, the man who led the raid at the Algiers Motel, was charged with conspiracy and misconduct, however, also had the charges dismissed.

Roderick Davis

According to future trial testimony, Roderick Davis was taken into a room of the motel by Senak and instructed to lay face down on the floor at which time Senak sent a shotgun blast into a wall next to him as an intimidation measure. Senak then told August to take a pistol he gave him and to go kill Pollard in the room next door, per the testimony. Despite never being punished by the law, Senak, August and Pallie never worked as cops again. Senak was linked to at least two other shootings and one murder patrolling the riot zone in the days preceding the triple homicide at the Algiers Motel on July 26.

Detroit’s 1967 Riot claimed a combined 43 lives over five days in late July. Police made more than 7,000 arrests and more than 2,000 buildings and pieces of property burned to the ground. The riot began at around 4:00 a.m. on July 23 in the aftermath of a police raid on a party at a blind pig to welcome home two returning African-American Vietnam vets from finishing their service overseas in Southeast Asia.

Following the riot, the Dramatics departed Berry Gordy’s Motown label for Sport Records and then to Volt-Stax Records out of Memphis, where they found their most mainstream success. They’ve also put out work on ABC Records, Chess Records’ Cadet label and corporate giant Capitol Records. The Dramatics were inducted into the R&B Hall of Fame in 2013 and are still touring.

Reed and Davis left the group in 1968, shortly after the Dramatics decided to part ways with Motown. Gordy and his Motown label fled the Motor City for Los Angeles in 1972. In June 1988, Gordy sold his interests in the music empire he constructed to worldwide acclaim and fanfare to MCA for a cool 61 million dollars.

The post The Dramatics, Fast Eddie & The Algiers Motel Massacre: Detroit’s ’67 Riots Blended Civil Unrest With Motown & The Black Mob appeared first on The Gangster Report.