Legendary labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa was kidnapped and killed 42 years ago this week. The historic crime remains unsolved and Hoffa’s body has never been discovered. The question of what really happened to Jimmy Hoffa is eternally embedded in pop-culture lore as the quintessential American unsolved mystery and continues to intrigue the masses and stir debate more than four decades later.

It’s the general consensus among investigators and experts that Hoffa was murdered for his desire to take back the then mobbed up Teamsters union following handing the reins to his easier-to-puppet vice president Frank Fitzsimmons when he was incarcerated years before for bribery, fraud and jury tampering. Hoffa rode his mob connections to power in the union, however, refused to yield to the mafia’s orders to throw the towel in regarding his re-election bid.

THE HOFFA INVESTIGATION TIMELINE (1975-2017)

July 30, 1975 – Former Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa, 62, disappears on his way to a meeting with powerful mafia captains, Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone out of Hoffa’s hometown of Detroit and Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano out of New Jersey and the Genovese crime family. He’s last seen outside the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township, Michigan at around 2:45 p.m. getting into and driving away in a 1975 maroon-colored Mercury Marquis, believed to be owned by Tony Jack’s son, Joseph (Joey Jack) Giacalone. Hoffa was promised a chance at squashing a beef with Provenzano whose support he needed to win back the Teamsters presidency in 1976.

July 31, 1975 – Jimmy Hoffa’s green-colored Pontiac Grand Ville is found by his close friend and mob associate Louis (Louie the Pope) Linteau sitting in the Red Fox parking lot.

August 2, 1975 – The FBI steps in to take over the Hoffa missing person’s and homicide probe from the local police.

August 8, 1975 – The FBI obtains a search warrant for Joey Giacalone’s car and finds fingerprints belonging to Hoffa’s surrogate son, Chuckie O’Brien on a soda bottle and a slip of paper inside. O’Brien admits taking possession of the vehicle from Joey Jack the morning of July 30, but denies any involvement in Hoffa’s demise.

August 9, 1975 – The FBI confiscates Joey Giacalone’s car. The 1975 Mercury Marquis is the only piece of substantial physical evidence ever collected by authorities in the high-profile inquiry. Today, the car sits in the garage storage unit of the Detroit FBI office.

August 21, 1975 – The FBI confirms dogs detected Hoffa’s scent in the backseat and trunk of Joey Giacalone’s Mercury Marquis.

September 2, 1975 – A Federal grand jury is convened in Detroit to explore bringing homicide charges in the Hoffa case.

March 21, 1978 – Genovese crime family soldier Salvatore (Sally Bugs) Briguglio is shot to death in New York’s Little Italy by two masked assailants. Briguglio served as Tony Provenzano’s right hand man and one of his main assassins and considered by many a prime suspect and suspected triggerman in the Hoffa hit.

July 30, 1981 – Detroit mob soldier Carlo Licata dies suspiciously in his Bloomfield Township home, referred to in local underworld circles as “The House on the Hill.” The Licata residence, located less than a five minute drive from the Red Fox, was known for hosting meetings between Jimmy Hoffa and Tony Giacalone and some FBI agents believe Hoffa was killed there. Licata was found with two gunshot wounds to the heart on the six-year anniversary of Hoffa’s disappearance, a death officially ruled a suicide. Licata’s dad was deceased Los Angeles mob boss Nick Licata and married to the sister of then Detroit mafia don Giacomo (Black Jack) Tocco.

July 30, 1982 – Jimmy Hoffa is declared legally dead on the seven-year anniversary of his disappearance.

June 22, 1982 – East coast mob enforcer-turned-FBI informant Charlie Allen claims Tony Provenzano set the Hoffa hit into motion and Hoffa’s body was “chopped up” and “thrown into a Florida swamp” in testimony before the United States Senate. Allen told legislators he was recruited by Hoffa to kill his successor as Teamster president Frank Fitzsimmons.

February 1989 – St. Louis Judge Barbara Crancer, Jimmy Hoffa’s daughter, takes the FBI to court for the release of her father’s murder file and eventually wins ruling to turn over documents related to the probe. The U.S. Attorney’s Office enters an appeal and gets to postpone delivery of file to the Hoffa family.

June 18, 1989 – Retired Detroit FBI chief Kenny Walton does an interview with the Detroit News and states bluntly he knows who killed Hoffa and how they did it, however the Bureau could never indict anyone in the case in his tenure as head of the feds Motown office (1985-1988) due to the intelligence coming from confidential informants instead of future witnesses in court.

September 20, 1989 – East coast mobster-turned-FBI informant Donald (Tony the Greek) Frankos, the former driver and bodyguard for Tony Provenzano, who had died a year earlier of a heart attack in prison, claims he killed Hoffa and buried him under a goal post at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

August 5, 1993 – The U.S. Court of Appeals reverses the decision of the lower court demanding that the FBI fork over their files on the Hoffa murder to his family.

November 2000 – The FBI conducts a meeting in Detroit to discuss re-ramping up Hoffa investigation.

February 23, 2001 – Detroit mob street boss Tony Giacalone dies of kidney failure awaiting trial under indictment for federal racketeering. Authorities believe Giacalone planned the details of the Hoffa hit and had his younger brother and fellow mob capo Vito (Billy Jack) Giacalone represent him on the job itself.

March 2001 – Through DNA testing, the FBI matches hair on a brush Hoffa once used and a strand found in Joey Giacalone’s car, leading to a high-priority get-together of current and former investigators aimed at arriving at a consensus of where to go with the Hoffa probe.

March 2002 – The FBI refers the Hoffa case to state prosecutors requesting that authorities in Oakland County, Michigan look into bringing murder charges against those longtime suspects still alive.

August 29, 2002 – Prosecutors in Oakland County announce DNA evidence not conclusive enough to bring charges.

July 16, 2003 – Acting on a tip from imprisoned murderer Richard Powell, Oakland County Sherriff’s Department deputies search an underground pool in Hampton Township, Michigan looking for evidence of Hoffa’s murder, specifically a syringe and briefcase.

December 14, 2003 – Retired east coast mob hit man and regional Teamsters president, Frank (The Irishman) Sheeran from Delaware, gives a deathbed confession taking responsibility for being the triggerman in the Hoffa hit. Sheeran worked for Pennsylvania mafia bosses Russell Bufalino and Angelo Bruno and was close friends with Hoffa.

May 8, 2004 – Police evidence units from Bloomfield Township, Michigan dig up floorboards in the Northwest Detroit home Frank Sheeran said he shot Hoffa to death in but fail to find any DNA match.

March 5, 2006 – Notorious east coast hit man Richard (The Iceman) Kuklinski gives a deathbed confession claiming he killed Hoffa, chopped him up and put him in a Toyota bound for Japan and to be sold as scrap metal.

May 17, 2006 – Acting on a tip from convicted drug dealer Don Wells, the FBI starts digging for Hoffa’s remains at Hidden Dreams Ranch in Commerce Township, Michigan, the former residence of Hoffa’s Teamster ally-turned-enemy Roland (Big Mac) McMaster. In the year leading up to Hoffa’s homicide, McMaster headed a union goon squad tasked with disrupting the Hoffa re-election campaign.

May 30, 2006 – After almost two weeks at the site, the FBI calls off the Hidden Dreams Ranch dig without finding anything.

July 2008 – Former Jewish Canadian mobster Marvin (The Weasel) Elkind, Hoffa’s driver and bodyguard on his trips to New York in the 1950s, claims in interviews for a coming book that Tony Giacalone told him and others that Hoffa was buried underneath the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit. The “Ren Cen” is the centerpiece of the Motor City skyline and the concrete was being poured in the construction of the multi-tower building the week Hoffa went missing.

February 19, 2012 – Retired Detroit mob underboss Vito (Billy Jack) Giacalone dies of natural causes. Some investigators think Billy Jack was the triggerman in the Hoffa hit since he was unaccounted for by his normal FBI surveillance unit the day Hoffa vanished.

September 18, 2012 – Local police dig up the floor of shed in Roseville, Michigan looking for Hoffa under a residential driveway to no avail. The property was once owned by a bookie who had worked for the Giacalone brothers throughout the 1970s and located in the same neighborhood where feared Giacalone strong arms Bernard (Bernie the Hammer) Marchesani and Frank (Frankie the Bomb) Bommarito lived.

June 17, 2013 – Acting on a tip from shelved Detroit mob underboss Anthony (Tony Z) Zerilli, the FBI digs at a farm in Oakland Township, Michigan once owned by Detroit mafia don Jack Tocco, Zerilli’s first cousin. Tocco and Zerilli had been feuding since a 1990s racketeering indictment ensnared them both and drove a wedge between the former best friends that eventually resulted in Zerilli voluntarily going to the FBI and implicating Tocco, acting boss of the crime family in 1975, in Hoffa’s slaying. Joe Zerilli, Tony Z’s dad, was boss at the time and allegedly signed off on the hit.

June 19, 2013 – Despite calling it the biggest break in the case in decades, the FBI ends the dig at the old Tocco farm within 48 hours without any success.

June 20, 2013 – A confidential source tells the FBI that Hoffa was strangled to death by Tony Provenzano, while Tony Giacalone and Chuckie O’Brien watched on in Joey Giacalone’s car and then his body disposed of by being put through a wood chipper in Inkster, Michigan. Giacalone and Provenzano were related via marriage and O’Brien had long looked at Giacalone as a father figure.

July 30, 2015 – The undisputed “Godfather” of Hoffa case research Dan Moldea reveals that deceased Genovese crime family soldier Ralph (Brother) Moscato admitted to him in an interview before he passed away that he and childhood friend Sally Bug Briguglio buried Hoffa’s body at Moscato’s trash dump in Jersey City, New Jersey after it was transported to the Garden State from Detroit in a truck owned by Moscato’s Gateway Transportation.

July 30, 2016 – Former corrections officer Mike Yarbrough says he saw Hoffa buried by Provenzano crew at the Renaissance Center construction site the evening he disappeared and was then chased away by Provenzano lieutenants Tommy and Stevie Andretta. The Andretta brothers have always been considered suspects in the Hoffa murder conspiracy.

July 12, 2017 – Dan Moldea reveals a source of his once closely linked to Moscato ties New Jersey Genovese wiseguy Vinnie Ravo to Hoffa burial at Moscato’s landfill alongside Moscato and Sally Bugs.

The post Time After Time: The Hoffa Investigation Timeline – 42 Years Of Looking For Answers appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Whether former mob associate Chuckie O’Brien was involved in the kidnaping and murder of iconic Teamsters union boss Jimmy Hoffa in 1975 is uncertain. What is certain is that O’Brien, Hoffa’s adopted son and the basis for the Tom Hagen character in The Godfather book and film, was at odds with his surrogate father at the time he went missing and had possession of the car Hoffa was most likely transported to his execution and burial the day Hoffa was murdered.

O’Brien and Hoffa were fighting over Hoffa refusing to back O’Brien’s bid for a Teamsters’ administrative post at Local 299 in southwest Detroit – the epicenter of Hoffa’s powerbase for decades – and O’Brien spreading rumors that Hoffa was an FBI informant. Many experts believe Hoffa became a confidential informant for the government in the wake of his release from prison and his falling out with his one-time benefactors in the mafia over his desire to win back the presidency of the Teamsters.

Hoffa vanished 42 years ago this week, on July 30, 1975, en route to a sitdown luncheon with Detroit mob street boss Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone and Genovese crime family captain Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano from New Jersey at a Bloomfield Township, Michigan restaurant parking lot. He was last seen getting into the backseat of a maroon-colored Mercury Marquis and driving away with three other unidentified men. His body has never been found and nobody has ever faced charges in his homicide.

O’Brien admits to taking possession of a 1975 maroon-colored Mercury Marquis owned by Tony Jack’s youngest son, Joseph (Joey Jack) Giacalone, the morning Hoffa disappeared, but denies having any knowledge of what happened to him. The FBI confiscated Joey Jack’s car in the days after the blustery, hard-headed 62-year old Hoffa was wacked and in the 2001 matched DNA from a hairbrush of Hoffa’s to a strand of hair found in the rear passenger’s seat of the vehicle. Trained police dogs place Hoffa’s scent in the car’s backseat and trunk.

Born in Kansas City to Missouri mobster Sam (The Binger) Scaradino, who sometimes went by the alias “Frank O’ Brien,” and mafia mistress and paramour Sylvia Pagano, who took an unsuccessful shot at being a Hollywood starlet under the stage name “Sylvia Paris,” Chuckie O’Brien moved to Detroit after his dad died of a sudden heart attack and his mom began dating Motor City mob capo Frank (Frankie Three Fingers) Coppola and then Hoffa and Tony Giacalone. He lived with the Hoffa family throughout his childhood and early adulthood and followed Hoffa into the ranks of the union.

With the support of Giacalone and other powerful Midwest mafia figures, Hoffa vaulted to the top spot in the goliath Teamsters union in 1958, getting elected president at the Teamsters national conference in Miami. O’Brien was a union delegate and registered union business agent out of Local 299. Per FBI documents and federal court filings, O’Brien would often act as a go-between for Hoffa and Giacalone to other prominent members of the American mafia outside of Detroit regarding union matters, including Provenzano in New Jersey, the Civella crime family in Kansas City and the Marcello crime family in New Orleans.

Convicted of bribery, fraud and jury tampering, Hoffa was sent to federal prison in 1967 until he was brought home via a commutation from the Nixon White House in late 1971, Hoffa intended on recapturing the Teamsters presidency at the 1976 election despite the mob ordering him to stand down and his commutation barring his return to office for 10 years. According to exclusive Gangster Report, Hoffa started cooperating with the FBI against his former allies in the mob in return for a promise from the government to lift the ban on his running in the 1976 election.

After Hoffa got out of prison and began a public crusade and media tour campaigning on a platform of ridding the Teamsters of organized crime influence, he opposed O’Brien’s attempt to become vice president of Local 299, prompting O’Brien to begin telling people Hoffa was a snitch and siding with Tony Giacalone in the mob’s feud with his adopted dad. Per FBI records, Hoffa tried getting O’Brien transferred to a union job in Alaska as punishment.

Jimmy Hoffa being trailed by Chuckie O’ Brien in better times

O’Brien was booted from the Teamsters for his ties to the mafia in 1990. In the hours after Hoffa didn’t return home from his meeting with Giacalone and Tony Provenzano on July 30, 1975, O’Brien and Hoffa’s real son and daughter, his surrogate brother (James P. Hoffa) and sister (Barbara Crancer) had an argument over O’Brien’s lack of forthrightness and haven’t spoken since. Crancer is a judge in St. Louis. James P. Hoffa is currently in his fourth term of being president of the Teamsters and has for all intents and purposes, significantly cleansed the union of mob influence.

Decease mob hit man and Teamsters member Frank (The Irishman) Sheeran claimed to have been the triggerman in the Hoffa murder on his deathbed, naming O’Brien as the driver in Hoffa’s kidnapping. Sheeran died in 2003 and was a friend of Hoffa’s and henchman for east coast mob dons Russell Bufalino and Angelo Bruno.

Most historians and experts dismiss Sheeran’s confession, as does the FBI. Many think O’Brien delivered the Mercury Marquis used in the job, probably unknowingly, to a hit team made up of Detroit and New Jersey Genovese wiseguys at Tony Giacalone’s suburban Southfield Athletic Club headquarters on the afternoon Hoffa was clipped. O’Brien admits to driving Joey Jack’s Mercury Marquis to see Tony Jack at the Southfield Athletic Club on the afternoon Hoffa turned up missing.

Giacalone purported to Hoffa that he could arrange a sitdown with Provenzano, a Teamsters powerbroker in Union City, New Jersey’s mammoth Local 560, to squash a beef between the pair stemming from a fight in prison over insurance benefits being paid out to Hoffa’s family, but not Provenzano’s.

Hoffa needed Provenzano’s support for his re-election bid. The meeting was scheduled for the Machus Red Fox restaurant, less than five miles away from Giacalone’s headquarters. Neither Giacalone, nor Provenzano showed up and Hoffa got into a car with people he assumed were taking him to rendezvous with them nearby, however instead was murdered.

Tony Provenzano, related to the Giacalone family through marriage, died of a heart attack behind bars in 1988. Tony Giacalone died of kidney failure in early 2001 facing federal racketeering charges. Joey Giacalone, 64, is reputed to be capo of his dad’s former crew these days. O’Brien, 81, lives in Florida and is reportedly working on his memoirs.

Godfather scribe Mario Puzo said in interviews he hatched the idea for the fictional Tom Hagen character in his original novel after being told of a man named “O’ Brien” in Detroit who was Hoffa’s adopted son. Hagen came from German-Irish heritage and rose to be the consigliere of fictional Coreleone crime family. The Tom Hagen character was portrayed by Oscar-winning actor Robert Duvall in the first two Godfather movies.

O’Brien also got the Hollywood treatment – at least partially – in the 1992 movie Hoffa directed by and co-starring Danny DeVito and Jack Nicholson as Hoffa in a critically-acclaimed performance. DeVito’s “Bobby Ciaro” character was loosely based on a combination of O’Brien and Local 299 vice president Bobby Holmes, a staunch, longtime Hoffa confidant and ally.

The post No Love Lost: Jimmy Hoffa & Chuckie O’ Brien’s Relationship Hit Rock Bottom In Months Preceding Hoffa’s Murder appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Philadelphia drug world figure Anthony Reaves was slain this week less than an hour after he received a suspiciously lenient sentence in state court for his role in a large narcotics ring being run out of the Bennett Homes housing projects in Chester, Pennsylvania. Reaves, 41, had been cooperating with prosecutors in Delaware County in two cases, one targeting his boss in the drug trade, reputed Philly kingpin James (Thaddy Ock) Townsend, currently awaiting trial.

Fresh off landing a sweetheart eight-year probation early Monday afternoon in exchange for his help in the case against the Townsend organization and another focusing on alleged Chester crack-cocaine chief Rasheen Caulk, Reaves was gunned down in front of his Southwest Philadelphia apartment complex as he returned home. The 38-year old Townsend and more than a dozen of his lieutenants, including Reaves, were indicted in April 2016.

Townsend is out on bail. Caulk, 38, went down back in the spring and is also free on bond, facing multiple state drug counts.

James “Thaddy Ock” Townsend

According to Philly.com, Reaves rejected offers by authorities to relocate out of state. Although he wasn’t expected to testify at Townsend’s upcoming trial, Reaves made controlled drug purchases for a state narcotics task force and his cooperation was divulged in court pleadings filed in 2016. FoxPhily29 award-winning investigative journalist Dave Schratwieser reported that his sources disputed the state’s claims of any significant offer of relocation and instead offered putting Reaves up in a hotel room.

Per the “Operation Bennett Trifecta” indictment last year, Townsend oversaw his crack empire in the Bennett Homes projects with the help of his two older brothers Darrell (Challie Ock) Burton and LaFenus (Big Finney) Burton, 42 and 44 years old respectively. The case was dubbed Bennett Trifecta because of the teaming of the Chester Police Department, the Pennsylvania State Police vice squad and Delaware County investigators in attempting to dismantle Townsend’s Bennett Homes operation.

The post Underling Of Alleged Philly Drug Lord ‘Thaddy Ock’ Townsend Bumped Off Minutes Following Walking Away With Probation appeared first on The Gangster Report.

New England mafia associate Billy Ricci was the first domino to fall in the shocking cold-case murder revelations that have rocked the Patriarca crime family in the past year and a half. He flipped in early 2016 and by that spring the FBI descended on his Providence, Rhode Island property off Branch Avenue and dug up long-missing Boston nightclub owner and mob crony Stevie DiSarro, who was killed in May 1993 for his own cooperation with the government, .

The 70-year old Ricci recently got off light on narcotics and weapons charges, receiving just three years of probation. He was sentenced on July 21 in U.S. District Court in Providence.

In August of 2015, Ricci, who belonged to the mob crew of Patriarca clan captain Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca before DeLuca entered the Witness Protection Program and relocated to Florida earlier in the decade, was busted by the feds for using a converted textile mill on his Branch Avenue property as an illegal-marijuana grow operation and possessing a stolen pistol. The feds uncovered more than 1,500 marijuana plants in the building.

Ricci told the FBI DeLuca took part in the DiSarro murder conspiracy and was assigned burial duties in which he recruited Ricci’s aid. Along with DeLuca’s brother Joe, they disposed of DiSarro’s body at Ricci’s property, which at that time was just a construction site.

Bobby DeLuca

Bobby the Cigar, 71, was arrested inside the Witness Protection Program last summer, pled guilty to his role in the murder conspiracy and implicated his former boss in the mob, turncoat Patriarca don Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme, Cadillac Frank’s son, Francis (Frankie Boy) Salemme, Jr. and New England mafia associate Paul (Paulie the Plumber) Weadick as DiSarro’s killers. Cadillac Frank Salemme was pulled out of the “Program” last summer too and has been charged in the case.

Salemme, Jr. died of AIDS in 1995, but Weadick is alive and well and was arrested last fall. The elder Salemme and Weadick have pled not guilty and are awaiting trial behind bars. The 62-year old Weadick is allegedly connected to current reputed New England mob boss Carmen (The Big Cheese) DiNunzio and was convicted of second-degree murder in the 1980s.

According to the indictment, the handsome and business-savvy Stevie DiSarro, 43, was lured to the Salemme family home in suburban Sharon, Massachusetts on May 10, 1993 and strangled to death by Salemme, Jr. while Weadick held his legs and Cadillac Frank watched on. The Salemmes and DiSarro co-owned The Channel, a South Boston music venue, nightclub and go-go bar. By some accounts, Jack Salemme, Cadillac Frank’s baby brother and acting boss, was present however he isn’t currently facing any related charges.

DiSarro, a native of Providence, had been secretly helping the FBI and IRS build a criminal prosecution against Cadillac Frank when he was slain. Cadillac Frank reportedly confided in DeLuca in the weeks preceding DiSarro getting rubbed out that he thought DiSarro was cooperating with authorities and skimming profits from the club under the table.

Cadillac Frank (L) & Stevie DiSarro (R)

Salemme, 84, ruled the New England underworld from 1991 through 1995 with DeLuca acting as his underboss and eyes and ears in the syndicate’s Rhode Island wing. Imprisoned in the summer of 1995, Cadillac Frank decided to join Team USA in late 1999 after finding out his childhood friend and co-defendant James (Whitey) Bulger, Boston’s legendary Irish mob boss, was a longtime FBI confidential informant. He’s admitted to perjuring himself in his initial debriefing for the government regarding what he knew about DiSarro’s execution, falsely placing the blame for the DiSarro hit on a deceased superior of his.

DeLuca’s renewed cooperation has allegedly yielded more than just fresh intelligence on the DiSarro hit. Last fall, he copped to lying about and planning the details of the September 1992 gangland murder of Patriarca crime family enforcer Kevin Hanrahan. Per sources, a federal grand jury has been impaneled in Providence to seek bringing charges in the Hanrahan homicide and DeLuca is also feeding the feds information on the May 1994 slaying of Rhode Island Goodfella Barry Kourmpates.

Hanrahan had been trying to “cut into” mafia-run sports books in the region without permission and Kourmpates was part of a crew of Portuguese wiseguys and thieves that perpetrated a string of robberies of Providence mob associates and then refused to return the stolen goods when requested to by Patriarca administrators. Kourmpates’s charred remains were discovered in a Jamestown, Rhode Island state park on Mother’s Day morning. Hanrahan was felled by a barrage of bullets fired at point-blank range in Providence’s Federal Hill neighborhood following leaving a dinner with DeLuca’s right-hand man Ronnie Coppola.

Billy Ricci’s converted textile mill where the FBI found DiSarro’s body in the spring of 2016

The post The Domino Effect: Providence Pot Grower Pulls Probation In Return For Leading Feds To DiSarro’s Remains appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The beginning of the end for dynamic Outlaws Motorcycle Club boss Harry (Taco) Bowman came 20 years ago this week, in August 1997, via a federal racketeering and murder indictment out of Tampa, Florida. Bowman, today 67 and serving a life prison sentence, went on the run from the law for the next 22 months, before being apprehended in a club safe house located near Detroit.

Outside of Hells Angels MC founder Ralph (Sonny) Barger on the west coast, Taco Bowman is probably America’s most well-known biker boss of all-time, a legend in Midwest underworld circles who reigned as the Outlaws International President from the early 1980s until just before the dawning of the New Millennium. Finally brought into custody in the summer of 1999 on a tip to authorities provided from one of his girlfriends, Bowman built a reputation equally formidable in lethality, leadership and ingenuity. In the years prior to his indictment, he had amped up the Outlaws’ longstanding war with Barger’s Hells Angels and even issued a murder contract on the head of Barger himself.

Born in Marysville, Michigan, Bowman moved to Detroit in the early 1970s and soon joined the fast-growing Outlaws Nation. By the end of the decade, he had risen to the post of International Vice President under his mentor, Harold (Stairway Harry) Henderson, based in Indianapolis and the first Outlaws leader to plant a flag outside of the country for the club which now boasts chapters around the world. When Henderson stepped down from being the club’s president in 1984 to deal with his legal problems, Bowman took his place.

Earning his nickname due to his dark complexion and resemblance to being of Latino heritage, Bowman was an underworld rarity – he was both loved and feared. Behind his hypnotic leadership ability, the Outlaws swelled to record numbers with a national roster of more than 1,500 full-patch members and over 200 total chapters across the globe.

The chameleon-like Bowman has been credited by law enforcement as being the first “businessman biker boss,” a trendsetter in pioneering the Outlaws foray into more diverse rackets and more sophisticated business ventures than just owning bars, strip clubs and tattoo parlors. He expanded his powerbase by forging sturdy ties with other like-minded crime syndicates, like the Italian mafia, and high-standing members of legitimate society, like wealthy philanthropists, politicians and policemen.

Known to dress and act for whatever company he was in the presence off, Bowman could be seen in his club colors and cut, rousing it up with the boys in a dust-stained bar one hour and the next be clean shaven, neatly-coiffed and decked out in a $5,000 suit, looking like he was ready to attend a board of directors meeting. He lived in a large red-brick house in the upscale suburban neighborhood of Grosse Pointe Farms and enrolled his children in a pricey private school nearby. He could be often seen around town being driven to appointments in a custom-made, bullet-proofed Cadillac, always accompanied by a pair of bodyguards. Unlike most of his biker brethren, he seldom wore his hair extra long, nor sported a beard or bared a body filled with tattoos.

“Taco was interesting because he kind of went against the grain and kept one foot in the straight world and the other in the biker world, while most of those guys want to stay as far away from the two-car garage and picket fence thing as possible” said Randall I mean Taco used to drive his kids to school and was active in neighborhood type stuff. He might have wanted to blend in more than usual, but he was a pretty ruthless individual who definitely raised a lot of hell in his time.”

Immediately stamping his personal imprint on the organization, Bowman moved the club’s international headquarters from Chicago to Detroit. Then he is alleged to have ordered the execution of a Chicago-based Outlaw member in the days following the move as a means of sending a message that his regime would be a hellish and bloody one. And boy was it.

Using a fortified clubhouse on Warren Ave, a high mile east of the Southfield Freeway, as his command center, Bowman, made a big splash right off the bat conquering the hearts and minds of his minions with his garish and gung-ho leadership style. In his next major decision, he tapped Wayne (Joe Black) Hicks, a Toledo-based Outlaw and a man with a vicious reputation as a psychopathic killer, to be president of the club’s integral Ft. Lauderdale chapter. Having a stronghold in Florida is imperative for any biker club’s success on a nationwide-level, since the state acts as a hub for biker culture in the south and portions of the east coast in general.

Hicks, a gruffer, more physically-imposing version of Bowman, became Bowman’s most-trusted lieutenant and quickly gained the reputation as the overlord of biker activity in Florida. With the aid of the state’s regional president, William (Wild Bill) Pilgrim and his own personal bodyguard and top lieutenant Stephen (DK) Lemunyon, Hicks ruled the Sunshine State with a heavy hand.

The rest of the decade was relatively tame compared to what was on the horizon for the future. Taco Bowman’s diabolical reign hit its stride in the 1990s, when the strapping and handsome biker czar upped the ante in his battle with enemies both foreign and domestic. Taco was on the warpath and his bloodlust had few limits.

During the early part of 1991, Bowman ordered the murder of Raymond (Bear) Chaffin, a former Outlaws member in Florida who had left the gang and re-affiliated with the Warlocks, a rival biker club backed by the Hell’s Angels. He gives the contract to Hicks, who in turn had club enforcers Houston (Part-Time Tex) Murphy and Alex (Dirt) Ankerich shoot Chafin to death on February 21.

A little over a year later in March of 1992, Bowman oversaw and directed the physical beating of an Outlaws probate member named Irwin (Hitler) Nissen down at Biker Week in Daytona Beach. Nissen was being punished for getting into a physical altercation with Atlanta Outlaws chapter president, James (Moose) McClean the previous afternoon at a wet t-shirt contest held at an Outlaws-owned bar. Brought to Bowman’s hotel room, Nissen is beaten, threatened with a knife, and then thrown over the balcony by Bowman and fellow Outlaws members, Part Time Tex Murphy, Dennis (Dog) Hall and Christopher(Slasher) Maiele.

Continuing his ruthless ways, in 1993, Bowman ordered the kidnapping, beating and torturing of Florida Outlaws member, Kevin (Turbo)Talley, who had signed a document with Canadian officials in Ontario admitting the Outlaws were a criminal enterprise. The betrayal led Bowman to make an example out of him for everybody in the club to learn from and Talley was ordered to report to Detroit immediately upon his release from custody in Toronto. He was picked-up at Metro Airport by two Bowman lieutenants and taken to an isolated room in the Outlaws Detroit clubhouse on Warren where he was kept detained for five days, being beaten, humiliated and sodomized. Put on a plane back out of town, Talley stripped of his colors and kicked out of the club.

A decade into his reign of terror, Taco Bowman was as secure as ever in his post. He inspired a devout loyalty with his overly-aggressive antics and an intense charm and genuine affection for his troops. As a result, law enforcement had an incredibly difficult time finding a way to crack the shell of his operations and develop informants from anywhere in the proximity of his inner-circle.

Being at the peak of his power after a decade in the post, Bowman had the ability to take the club in any direction he desired. Perfectly in sync with his brash persona, he chose to raise the stakes. On New Years’ Eve 1993, Bowman held a meeting of top Outlaw brass in a Florida hotel suite and declared his intent to escalate the club’s war against the ever-hated Hells Angels. The decision was overwhelmingly well received and becomes an immediate priority.

On a visit to Chicago in early 1994, Bowman ordered Chicago Outlaws president, Peter (Greased Lighting Pete”) Rogers, to begin plotting an attack on the Hell’s Henchmen, a Hell’s Angels backed biker gang based in Illinois. Upset with the untimely nature of his request, in September of that year, Bowman met with Indiana Outlaws member, Randall (Mad Dog Randy) Yager and Chicago Outlaw member, Carl (Jamming Jay) Warneke at his suburban Detroit residence and instructed them to bomb the Hell’s Henchmen’s clubhouse as soon as possible.

Following two attacks on the clubhouse in the same week, the property was burned to the ground and condemned by the city. Before the year was out, Bowman had ordered more fire bombing attacks, two more targeting Midwest Hells Angels clubhouses and two clubhouses belonging to the Warlocks in the state of Florida.

Not a man of an even temper, the smallest slight or sign of disrespect would send Bowman into hysterics. During the fall of 1994, he became enraged we he sees a newspaper photograph taken at the funeral of Hells Angel member, Michael (Mad Mike) Quale, killed in a gun battle with Outlaw member Walter (Buffalo Wally) Posnjak, who was also slain in the altercation. In the photo, Bowman saw a member of the Fifth Chapter motorcycle gang, an affiliate club of the Outlaws, hugging a mourning Hells Angel member. Since he was especially close friends with Posnjak, Bowman was incensed with the act of compassion that he interpreted as outright treason.

In the days following the funeral, Bowman ordered the entire Fifth Chapter club, a small group of bikers based in the Southeast, to the Outlaws clubhouse in Tampa and led a mass beating of the gang’s members with chains and bats. When he was done, Bowman informed them that he was disbanding their club and they could never associate with any Outlaws ever again.

Bowman ordered the murder of a Chicago-based Outlaws enforcer named Donald (Big Don) Fogg in late 1994. Fogg was a suspected informant who Wayne Hicks wound up killing on behalf of his boss. To celebrate Fogg’s execution, Bowman held another New Year’s Eve meeting, this one in Detroit, where he declared his intention to “take the war to them out west” and start attacking the Hells Angels on their own turf in California. In early 1995, he sent a group of lieutenants, headed by Hicks, out to Los Angeles to begin making arrangements for the assassination of Hells Angels Godfather Sonny Barger.

While in the midst of scheming to kill Barger, Bowmen’s men blew up a number of Hells Angels-backed businesses in Southern California and began planning more attacks to take place in the coming year, including the murder of George Christy, one of Barger’s closest underlings. However, before the attempt on Barger’s or Christy’s life could be carried out, Bowman’s empire began to crack at its very foundation – Wayne Hicks aka Joe Black joined Team USA.

Time finally ran out for Bowman in the months before the New Millennium. After almost two years as a fugitive, the FBI converged on a house in Sterling Heights, Michigan and arrested him on the afternoon of June 7, 1999 while socializing with Outlaws brass in the backyard. Bowman was convicted at trial in 2001.

The post The Legend Of Taco Bowman: Beloved Outlaws MC Leader’s Biker Empire Began Crumbling In Summer Of ’97 appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The Outlaws Motorcycle Club and the mafia in Detroit almost went to war in the early 1990s when Outlaws boss Harry (Taco) Bowman began muscling in on a series of dice games belonging to the notorious Giacalone crew. Bowman eventually backed off and soon both sides of the feud were in handcuffs and had more to worry about with the feds than they did in each other.

Bowman was indicted on racketeering and murder charges in a case out of Florida 20 years ago this week in August of 1997. Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone and Vito (Billy Jack) Giacalone, the faces of the Detroit mob on the street for a half-century, were hit with their own racketeering case the year prior. Reputed current Detroit mafia don Jack (Jackie the Kid) Giacalone, Billy Jack’s son and Tony Jack’s nephew, was on his way up the ranks of the local underworld in the 1990s and played a central role in the mob-biker beef of that era, according to federal court filings and FBI audio surveillance transcripts.

Starting in the 1970s, the Giacalone brothers began doing business with area biker gangs – both Bowman’s Outlaws and the homegrown Highwaymen Motorcycle Club -, outsourcing muscle work to them and teaming in gambling endeavors and narcotics transactions. The Outlaws is the preeminent biker gang in the Midwest and throughout the American South. During Bowman’s tenure as the club’s president (1984-1999), the Outlaws’ international headquarters was moved to Detroit and Bowman grew to be considered a biker god among his droves of staunch loyalists and lackeys.

Per court records, in 1991, Bowman butted heads with Jackie Giacalone over a number of floating craps games being organized and run by a string of Middle-Eastern wiseguys who had traditionally paid the Giacalones protection money as a fee to operate without hassle, but were choosing to pay Bowman and the Outlaws instead. The Giacalone brothers responded by placing a murder contract on Bowman’s head, assigning the wet work to Nove Tocco and Paul (Big Paulie) Corrado, back then a pair of eager-to-please foot soldiers trying to climb the ladder of the local Italian crime family

For months, Tocco and Corrado tried unsuccessfully to carry out the contract. They soon became frustrated and suspicious and their musings and conversations were intercepted by an FBI bug installed in Tocco’s car. Tocco even sought counsel from his dad, Paul, his brother Joe and his uncle, Anthony (Tony Z) Zerilli, at that time the Detroit mob’s underboss. Paul Tocco married Tony Z’s sister.

Below is a conversation between Nove Tocco, Joe Tocco and Paulie Corrado recorded on the morning of April 23, 1991:

N. Tocco -Something’s going on here that’s not right. I don’t know exactly what it is right now, but things ain’t sitting right with me. Uncle Tony warned me yesterday about Taco.

Corrado – What did he say?

N. Tocco – He says something’s not right. He says this story’s not right. Something is wrong with the whole thing

Corrado – In what way?

N. Tocco – He says he don’t whether its Jackie for sure, but something’s not right about this fucking story. He thinks Jackie might be playing us into Taco for his own reasons.

J. Tocco – ‘Cause Jackie feels Taco is a threat to Jackie.

Corrado – Right. Fucking exactly

N. Tocco – Yesterday when I went to pick up some vinegar from my father (mafia soldier Paul Tocco) he says ‘I’m glad you’re here, I want to talk to you alone’. Now he starts telling me that this whole thing feels wrong to him too. He wants to corner Tony Giacalone and make him get to the bottom of it. From what he can tell, they backed off because they wanna know how much Jackie knows about all this. He says, Jackie gave up a craps game and Taco and his boys took it. I said, I thought it was two separate games. He says, ‘How the fuck does Jackie let Taco take his game?”. And then he says,’From what I here, Tony Jack is pissed about it. He tells me he thinks fucking Jackie is pushing you and me at Taco. This came out of his mouth, okay?

Corrado – Yeah

J. Tocco – I told you I believed that from the start

The Giacalones lifted the murder contract off Bowman’s life in the aftermath of Jackie and Billy Giacalone getting busted for bookmaking and getting sent to prison. According to state police documentation, a Giacalone crew lieutenant named Frank (Frankie the Bomb) Bommarito, the Detroit mob’s longtime emissary to the Southeast Michigan biker world, helped arrange a sitdown between Bowman and Tony Jack that quelled tensions. Bommarito helped Bowman hide from the law as a fugitive in the late 1990s.

Tocco, Corrado and the Giacalone brothers all went down in the infamous 1996 Operation Game Tax indictment. Tony Jack died before he ever saw a courtroom, while Billy Jack, Nove Tocco and Paulie Corrado were each found guilty at trial. Facing a stiff prison term with the Game Tax bust being his second federal felony conviction in a decade, Tocco turned government informant and entered the Witness Protection Program.

Billy Giacalone died of natural causes in 2012. Corrado did a dozen years in prison on the Game Tax case and is reportedly “out of the Life.” His dad, Dominic (Fats) Corrado, served as a captain in the Detroit crime family from the 1950s until his death of cancer in 1985.

The main combatants in the Motor City’s lone mob-biker beef, Taco Bowman and Jackie Giacalone, both 67, remain alive. Bowman is in the can and won’t be getting out – he doing life following a guilty verdict at a 2001 trial in Tampa. Once Bowman was off the streets, the Outlaws international headquarters returned to Illinois. Authorities believe Giacalone assumed the throne as boss of the Detroit mafia in 2014 after a stint as acting boss and street boss.

The post Former Outlaws MC President Taco Bowman & The Detroit Mob Squared Off In ’90s Dice Game Dispute appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Historic Outlaws Motorcycle Club president Harry (Taco) Bowman had a love life that ultimately interfered with his life as a fugitive. Bowman was arrested for racketeering and murder after almost two years of avoiding capture when one of his girlfriends turned him in because of her anger over his romantic dalliances while away from his hometown of Detroit on the run from the law.

During his 22 months “lamb chopping it,” Bowman rose to No. 2 on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. This week marks the 20-year anniversary of his indictment, which was filed in Tampa, Florida. He was finally handcuffed following a federal raid of a Sterling Heights, Michigan home on the late afternoon of June 7, 1999 where he was found, long-haired, bearded and bronzed, surrounded by Detroit Outlaws brass who had converged on the modest suburban residence to have a BBQ with their fugitive boss.

The legendary former Midwest biker don often wore three-piece business suits and appeared in public with short hair and a clean shave allowing him to seamlessly integrate himself into the legitimate world. Bowman, 67, was revered and respected worldwide in biker gang circles, reigning as the Outlaws international president from 1984 until his conviction at trial in Florida in 2001.

One retired FBI agent wants to share the turning point in the government’s tireless quest to track down the elusive motorcycle club leader – Bowman is currently doing life in prison.

“Taco was quite the ladies’ man and we eventually discovered a way to leverage it against him,” he said. “The guy had girlfriends all over the place. He had a wife and a main girlfriend in Detroit and then a bunch more spread out around the country. We got a sighting of him out west, out near Las Vegas a couple of months before we ended up nailing him. The state police out there pulled him over on the highway for speeding. They had no clue who he was when they stopped him and let him go on his way. He was in a convertible Benz, had a fake ID and a young blonde with him. Well, it took a little while for the tape from the camera in the police cruiser to make it to us in Michigan, but when we got our eyes on it, we realized there was a play there we could make. We printed out a close-up photo of Taco and this bimbo he had with him and went and found his No. 1 girlfriend in Detroit to show it to her….. She wasn’t happy, she started cursing him and gave him up in about five minutes. She let us know he was headed back to town the next week to meet up with his boys so he could relay orders to them in person (he was good with staying off the phone). The day he got to Michigan, she gave us the address of where he was holding the meeting at and we swooped in and got him.”

The post Affairs Of The Heart led To Taco Bowman’s Apprehension, Outlaws MC Boss’ Girl Problems Got Him Caught appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Former Chicago mafia associate and highly-feared enforcer George (Georgie Karate) Brown will be getting out of prison more than two years before scheduled. Earlier this week, U.S. District Court Judge Edmond Chang ordered Brown’s sentenced reduced, chopping off the final two and a half years of an original three and a half year bid imposed last fall in September 2016.

Until his indictment in 2013 and he began cooperating with the government, Georgie Karate was muscle for a subunit of the Chicago mob’s Cicero crew based out of Lake County and long having links to reputed acting Outfit boss Salvatore (Solly D) DeLaurentis, who forcefully took power in the cluster of Northern suburbs in the early 1980s. The 54-year old Brown trained in mixed martial arts and employed his skills at hand-to-hand combat while working his job for the mafia and a clique of Lake County mobsters headed by Paulie Carparelli, known by law enforcement to be a lieutenant of DeLaurentis’.

Carparelli, 48, Brown and five others were busted for extortion in July 2013. All seven co-defendants in the case wound up being convicted. The sentence-reduction order issued in the case against Brown contained a sealed FBI memo outlining further cooperation he has provided since his incarceration.

Brown pled guilty to extorting multiple businessmen at the request of fellow mob associate Mark Dziuban, an underling of Carparelli’s in late 2014. He wore a wire on Carparelli and other crew members prior to his arrest. According to court filings, one debtor Brown was dispatched to deal with on behalf of Carparelli urinated on himself when he caught sight of Brown lumbering in his direction.

Dziuban, owner of a printing company called American Lithos in Carol Stream, Illinois, sought out Carparelli for advice on which enforcers to use in collecting street tax and sent them around the country to intimidate debtors and pick up extortion payments in Wisconsin and New Jersey. Georgie Karate admitted going into the office of the owner of a granite company and assaulting the man using his karate moves.

“Hey, motherfucker, this aint going away, you pay what you owe,” the 300-pounder said while pummeling his victim with his feet and fists.

Carparelli was caught on an FBI wire in January 2013 talking about doing muscle work himself directly for the 78-year old DeLaurentis, someone Windy City mob watchers say assumed day-to-day oversight of Outfit affairs upon his predecessor, Michael (Fat Mike) Sarno, going to prison on extortion charges in December 2010.

“Solly D gave me $10,000 to throw that guy a beating” he was heard saying. “They wanted his legs broke.”

A 2011 FBI bug intercepted Carparelli offering an underling $2,000 to deliver someone else a beating in order to square away some quick holiday cash.

“It’s easy fucking money, you just catch the kid outside, beat the shit out of him, bust his fucking arm, his jaw and then leave…..It’ll take you five minutes. That’s your Christmas money right there,” he said.

Carparelli, due out of prison next spring, hasn’t been shy in telling associates about his ties to and work for the Chicago mafia.

“I’ve been with the Outfit (local slang for the mob in Illinois) my whole life, I’m not about to change now,” he was caught on tape telling a friend. “This is what I’m made of and this is where I come from and I’m fucking proud of it.”

*”Georgie Karate” Brown can be seen in this article’s cover photo on the left walking into a 2014 court date.

The post The Outfit’s ‘Karate Kid’ Gets A Break, Chicago Mob Turncoat Georgie Brown Gets Sentence Reduced appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The story of the notorious Bonded Vault Heist is going to the big screen with a big name attached to shepherd the project to multiplexes nationwide. Earlier this week, scorching-hot novelist Don Winslow and The Story Factory production company optioned The Last Good Heist, a 2016 book chronicling the largest bank robbery in American history pulled off by a Providence, Rhode Island mob crew in 1975, for a future feature film (you can purchase a copy of the book here).

Don Winslow is an incredibly popular and critically-hailed crime novelist, having penned recent smash hits The Force (2017) and The Cartel (2015) – both also currently being developed as movie projects -, and will write the screenplay for The Last Good Heist. His 2010 book Savages was his most recent writing endeavor to be made into a movie: a 2012 film directed by Oliver Stone and starring Salma Hayek, Benicio Del Toro and Blake Lively.

The Last Good Heist was written by award-winning television investigative reporter Tim White (WPRI) and local authors Wayne Worcester and Randall Richard. White is the leading “mobologist” in the Providence media. Worcester is a college professor.

On the morning of August 14, 1975, eight armed burglars boosted $30,000,000 of cash and valuables from the Bonded Vault Company, a safe-deposit storage facility located inside the Hudson Fur Storage building, a converted brick church on Cranston Street in Providence’s West End neighborhood. Today, the haul would be worth an estimated $135,000,000.

The Bonded Vault Company housed safe-deposit boxes for dozens of Rhode Island wiseguys, thieves and gangsters. According to FBI informants, legendary New England mafia don, Raymond Patriarca, sanctioned the heist. The robbery crew consisted of Bobby (The Deuce) Dussault, Joe (The Dancer) Danese, Chuckie Flynn, Gerry Tillinghast, Ralph Byrnes, Jake Tarzian and John and Walter Ouimette, relatives to high-ranking Patriarca crime family lieutenant Gerard (The Frenchman) Ouimette.

Bobby Dussault and Joe Danese turned against the mob and entered the Witness Protection Program. They were the star witnesses at the other six’s media frenzy of a trial the following year in the spring of 1976. Flynn, Byrnes and John Ouimette were each convicted, while Walter Ouimette, Tarzian and Tillinghast were all found not guilty. It was Dussault who first implicated his mob boss, Patriarca, in blessing the job, claiming the then-incarcerated Godfather felt betrayed by his men for their lack of financial support with him being behind bars and wanted to steal from them.

Patriarca dropped dead of a heart attack in 1984 shortly after his release from prison. Dussault died of a heart attack in a North Dakota federal halfway house in 1992.

Raymond Patriarca (L) entering a court date in the 1970s

The post Tale Of Patriarca Clan’s Bonded Vault Heist Headed To Hollywood, ‘The Last Good Heist’ Gets Movie Option appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The Mongols Motorcycle Club might be trying to make inroads into Michigan. According to sources in law enforcement, members of the Mongols showed up at a July 4^th biker rally held in southern Michigan.

The state of Michigan has long been a hub of Midwest biker gang activity and successful in keeping west coast clubs from gaining traction in the region. Founded in Montebello, California in 1969, the Mongols maintain chapters in 14 states across the country and have planted flags in 11 separate international outposts. Currently, the closest Mongols chapters to Michigan are in New York and Pennsylvania.

“We’re keeping tabs on the situation, their presence (at the Fourth of July rally) raised some eyebrows,” one state police source in Michigan said.

The two biggest “One Percenter” motorcycle clubs in Michigan are the Outlaws and the Highwaymen. Like the Mongols, the Outlaws have traditional rivals in the Hells Angels. The Outlaws, which housed its international headquarters in Michigan in the 1980s and 1990s, declared war on the west coast-based Hells Angels in the 1970s with a triple murder of three Hells Angels from the club’s first east coast chapter out of New York.

Besides the Outlaws and the Highwaymen, other prominent biker gangs in Michigan include the Devil’s Diciples, the Forbidden Wheels, the Iron Coffins, the Freedom Riders, the Liberty Riders, the Avengers, the Renegades and the Vigilantes. The Hells Angels have never had a chapter in Michigan, only coming as close as Ohio. Federal prosecutors in Michigan have indicted and convicted sitting administrations in the Outlaws, the Highwaymen and the Devil’s Diciples in the past decade.

The post Midwest Motorcycle Club Invasion? Fourth of July Biker Rally Brings Mongols MC To Michigan appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Chicago wiseguy Rocky LaMantia died at 59 years old last week, his name forever tied to the killing of his high school sweetheart Martha DiCaro in 1979 and just a few years removed from serving a prison sentence for being the wheelman in the armed robbery of a pawn shop. LaMantia, a multiple-time convicted felon and the son of former Chicago mob lieutenant, Joe (Shorty) LaMantia, was found not guilty in DiCaro’s slaying in a controversial bench trial.

DiCaro, 20, was shot to death inside the LaMantia family home on the Southside of Chicago on the evening of May 6, 1979. The younger LaMantia painted the shooting to authorities as an accident. The couple had dated for five years and state prosecutors claimed DiCaro had gone to see LaMantia that night to breakup with him and the ensuing argument ended in LaMantia shooting her with his father’s gun in a vengeful rage. The gun that shot and killed Martha DiCaro has never been recovered and rumors remain that the trial was fixed.

Shorty LaMantia belonged to the Chicago Outfit’s Chinatown crew, overseeing a series of bookmaking and burglary rings for Southside mafia captain Angelo (The Hook) LaPietra. He passed away peacefully in 2002. Shorty’s elder adopted son Aldo (Junior) Piscitelli died of natural cause four years ago. LaPietra died of natural causes in 1999 following a brief stint as the crime family’s consigliere.

Both LaMantias were implicated in the City of Chicago’s Hired Truck Scandal of the early 2000s. Rocky LaMantia’s Dialex Trucking Company cleared more than a million bucks in city contracts in less than five years (1999-2002). Lori LaMantia, Rocky’s wife, held a job in City Hall (she’s never been implicated in any wrongdoing).

Joe “Shorty” LaMantia

In 2008, Rocky LaMantia was convicted of being the getaway driver in the armed robbery of a Southside pawn shop which yielded almost $200,000 in cash and valuables. Smacked with a six-year state prison sentence, he walked free in 2013. His arrest sheet listed busts for drugs, burglary and weapons violations too.

Prior to being collared in the armed robbery in the late fall of 2007, he had publically floated the idea of writing a book. Chicago Crime Commission records link LaMantia to current reputed Southside Outfit capo Frank (Tootsie) Caruso. The Caruso family’s Chinatown mob reign dates back well over a half century. Sarah LaMantia, Rocky’s sister, married into the Caruso family.

Rocky LaMantia’s 1979 murder trial was held in front of disgraced Cook County Judge Thomas J. Maloney, booted from the bench for taking bribes years later. Maloney, linked by informants to a string of mobsters, gangsters and their associates, was indicted in 1991 and served more than a decade behind bars for fixing three state murder cases.

The post Chitown Mafia Figure Rocky LaMantia Passes Away Prior To 60th Birthday, Lived Life Fast & Loose On Windy City’s Southside appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Outlaws Motorcycle Club boss Leroy (Black Region Roy) Frasier, who has looked after biker gang affairs in the states of Michigan and Indiana since the early 2000s, and several of his lieutenants were indicted for racketeering, weapons and narcotics offenses ten years ago this week on August 16, 2007. The 59-year old Frasier pled guilty to conspiracy charges and did less than two years in prison. He was released from federal custody in February 2011.

The combined rustbelt territory comprising Michigan and Indiana is known as the “Black Region” in Outlaws circles. Frasier began his career in biker politics as president of the club’s Bay City, Michigan chapter. He admitted to planning a coordinated attack on his Outlaws’ arch rivals, the Hells Angels, in the spring of 2006 at a South Bend, Indiana swap meet.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Outlaws international headquarters was located in Detroit. The 18-count 2007 bust resulted from three separate criminal investigations (Operation Detroit Mugger, Operation End Game & Operation Broken Spoke) and ensnared more than a dozen club members spanning six different chapters, four in Michigan (Bay City, Eastside Detroit, Westside Detroit, Downriver Detroit) and two in Indiana (Fort Wayne, Indianapolis).

Besides Frasier, the 2007 indictment nailed Indianapolis chapter president Dan (Milky) Neace, Ft. Wayne chapter president Bruce (Big Brucie) Wendel, Westside Detroit president Ramon (The Razor) Rios, Downriver Detroit president, William (Slick) Guinn, and Southeast Michigan regional chief, Michael (Radical Mike) Radke. They were all convicted and did time behind bars.

Following the incarceration of Harry (Taco) Bowman, the club’s beloved Motor City-based international president from 1984 until he was found guilty of murder and racketeering in 2001, the Outlaws moved its headquarters back to Illinois, the state in which the club was founded. Bowman was indicted out of Florida in August 1997 and went on the run for two years being hid in a succession of safe houses provided by his Outlaws brethren and his allies in Detroit’s powerful Italian mafia. The iconic 67-year old biker don is currently doing life in prison.

The post The Outlaws MC’s ‘Black Region’ Blasted By Bust A Decade Ago, Michigan & Indiana Bikers Burned In ’07 Fed Takedown appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The Bay City, Michigan chapter of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club was birthed in blood. In 1977, chapter founders Ron (Runner) Wiltse, Don (Trigger) Hall, David (Frenchy) Wells and Rusty (Wishbone) Miller were convicted in the triple murder of three rival Devils Diciples as the pair of infamous biker gangs tussled for power in Michigan’s Tri-City region – Bay City, Saginaw and Flint – a cluster of smoggy, socioeconomically struggling factory towns roughly 90 miles north of the longtime Midwest Outlaws hotbed of Detroit.

Members of the Bay City Outlaws were indicted ten years ago this week as part of a multi-state federal crackdown on biker gang activity in the club’s so-called “Black Region” made up of Michigan and Indiana. The lead defendant in the August 2007 bust was Outlaws bigwig and Bay City native Leroy (Black Region Roy) Frasier, the club’s one-time Tri-City chapter president and overall Black Region boss. Frasier, 59, pled guilty to conspiracy charges and did two years in prison, getting sprung from the can in the winter of 2011.

On December 11, 1975, Wiltse and Hall shot and killed Manny Almaguer, Merle Behmlander and Earl Brown in Almaguer’s home in the Flint area and stole their respective Devils Diciples Motorcycle Club vests and colors. Wells, Miller and Wiltse had previously been affiliated with the Devils Diciples before deciding to jump ship and revive a prior incarnation of the Outlaws in the region. Both groups were originally founded in the wake of the dissolution of the Tri-Cities’ Hell’s Henchmen MC chapter in the late 1960s. Wiltse was once the president of the Devils Diciples chapter in Flint.

Part of the rivalry between the Devils Diciples and the Outlaws in the Tri-Cities stemmed from the Devils Diciples allowing African-Americans to join their club’s ranks. For decades, the Tri-City area has been a hardscrabble racial and cultural melting pot of black, white, Irish, Polish, German and Hispanic residents.

According to state court records, in the early 1970s, Wiltse, Wells and Miller teamed with Hall, a member of the first Outlaws chapter in the region back in the 1960s, to revive the club’s presence in Bay City and the men all traveled together to Detroit to visit the state’s “mother chapter” in order to get the okay. The Outlaws and Devils Diciples clashed in a Detroit bar in the summer of 1972 and then again outside a Saginaw truck stop two years later, with gun shots being fired in both altercations.

Rusty Miller and his girlfriend turned state’s evidence in the triple-homicide case involving the Devils Diciples in December 1975. So did Devils Diciples vice president Henry Flues. Miller testified in open court in February 1977 that directly following the murders, Wells was showing off Manny Almaguer’s Devils Diciples vest to a house full of people, boasting “Look what I got myself today.”

Flues testified that he ordered Runner Wiltse to shutter his Flint Devils Diciples chapter and upon Wiltse refusing to do so he dispatched Almaguer to go and deal with the situation by force. This led to a fist fight between Almaguer and Wiltse where Almaguer physically removed and took possession of Wiltse’s “DD” vest rocker and Wiltse seeking out Trigger Hall’s help in bringing back a local Outlaws chapter. Wiltse, 70, Wells, 68, and Hall, 73, are all serving life in prison for the triple murder.

Although the Devils Diciples were first started in Fontana, California, the club has recently housed its national headquarters out of Port Huron, Michigan. “DD” national president Jeff (Fat Dog) Smith and a number of his lieutenants were convicted at a racketeering and drug trial in 2015. The Outlaws international headquarters was in Detroit throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

The post Biker War By The Bay: The Outlaws & Devils Diciples Tangled In Michigan’s Tri-Cities Back In The ’70s appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The bloodshed continued in the Montreal mafia this week with another in a long line of gangland slayings dating back to the late 2000s and related to a seismic clash for power in the Canadian mob underworld. On Thursday, Rizzuto crime family soldier Antonio De Blasio was killed in a suburb of Montreal, shot to death outside his son’s football practice at a local park.

Let’s take a look at the history of the unrest in the ranks of the mafia in Montreal:

THE MONTREAL MOB WAR TIMELINE (2004-2017)

Jan 24, 2004 – Long-reigning Canadian Godfather Vito Rizzuto is arrested at his Montreal mansion, charged with his participation in the infamous 1981 Three Capos Murders (a Bonanno crime family internal purge) in New York

Aug 11, 2005 – Johnny Bertolo, a racketeer, builder and construction union rep aligned with Raynald Desjardins, Rizzuto’s longtime right-hand man and best friend, is killed as he left a Montreal gym

Aug 17, 2006 – Vito Rizzuto is extradited to New York to face homicide and murder conspiracy charges, which he is convicted of and ordered to serve 5-to-10 years in prison for

Aug 30, 2006 – Rizzuto crime family enforcer Domenico Macri is killed in a drive by as he sat at a traffic light in downtown Montreal

Sep 7, 2007 – Frank Velenosi, a main lieutenant of Rizzuto crime family underboss, Francesco (Compare Frank) Arcadi, is found stabbed to death in the trunk of his Volvo

Jan 15, 2008 – Rizzuto crime family enforcer Constantin (Big Gus) Alevizos is killed

Dec 4, 2008 – Rizzuto crime family soldier Mario (Skinny) Marabella is killed as gunmen open fire on him as he exits his vehicle and goes to fill up his tank at a suburban Montreal gas station

Jan 16, 2009 – Sam Fasulo, a top henchman under Rizzuto crime family administrator Compare Frank Arcadi, is murdered in Montreal

April 12, 2009 – Bonanno crime family boss Salvatore (Sal the Ironworker) Montagna, the young, brash Godfather and native Canadian, is officially deported from the U.S. and lands in Quebec. He joins forces with Desjardins to try to wrestle control of the Montreal mob away from the incarcerated Rizzuto

Aug 21, 2009 – Freddy Del Peschio, a Rizzuto confidant, is slain

Dec 28, 2009 – Nicolo (Ritzy Nick) Rizzuto, Jr, Vito’s son and protégé, is shot dead in broad daylight while getting into his car in suburban Montreal

March 19, 2010 – Pete Christopulous, a bodyguard for Haitian gangster Ducarme Joseph, (a one-time Rizzuto ally-turned-enemy, founder of the feared “67s Gang” and suspected shooter in the Rizzuto, Jr. hit) is killed in an assassination attempt on Ducarme inside Ducarme’s women’s clothing boutique located in a Montreal shopping plaza

May 19 2010 – Rizzuto crime family consigliere and Rizzuto brother-in-law, Paolo Renda vanishes and is presumed murdered

June 29, 2010 – Rizzuto crime family acting boss Agostino Cuntrera and his bodyguard Liborio Sciascia are killed outside Cuntrera’s office in a hail of bullets in the middle of the afternoon

Sep 29, 2010 – Rizzuto enforcer Ennio Bruni is killed, gunned down in a crowded Montreal strip mall

Nov 10, 2010 – Montreal mafia patriarch and elder statesman, Nicolo (Uncle Nick) Rizzuto, a mafia dignitary on multiple continent, is shot dead in his kitchen by a sniper shooting from his backyard

Jan 31, 2011 – Arcadi lieutenant Antonio Di Salvo killed outside his home

Oct 24, 2011 – Rizzuto ally-turned-rival Larry Lopresti, the son of slain Rizzuto lieutenant, is killed on his home balcony in suburban Montreal while smoking a cigarette

Nov 24, 2011 – Salvatore Montagna is assassinated near a woodsy riverbed as he runs from an ambush in suburban Montreal after he and Desjardins’ palace coup goes awry (Desjardines eventually pleads guilty in the murder plot)

March 1, 2012 – Rizzuto lieutenant-turned-Desjardins loyalist Giuseppe (Joe Closure) Colapelle is killed: Joe Closure was a double agent for Desjardins, spying on Montagna

May 4, 2012 – Stealthy Rizzuto ally-turned-Montagna-backer Joe Renda disappears and is presumed dead

July 16, 2012 – Former Rizzuto crime family money launderer Walter Gurierrez is killed in a barrage of bullets as he walks towards his house in a West End Montreal neighborhood

Aug 14, 2012 – Street gang leaders Chenier Dupuy & Lamartine Paul are gunned down within hours of each other, Dupuy is killed as he sat in his truck outside a restaurant, Paul was murdered as he left his apartment. They were suspected of providing muscle for the anti-Rizzuto wing of the Montreal mafia

Oct 5, 2012 – Vito Rizzuto is released from “supermax” U.S. prison in Colorado and flies back to Canada, landing in Toronto and going into hiding

Nov 5, 2012 – Giuseppe (Smiling Joe) Di Maulo, a one-time top Rizzuto capo that joined forces with Montagna and Desjardins (Smiling Joe’s brother in-law) to remove the imprisoned Rizzuto from his throne, is murdered by gunmen outside his home

Nov 17, 2012 – Desjardins associate Mohamed Awada, who on had been on the frontlines of the war, is slain

Dec 8, 2012 – Rizzuto crime family lieutenant Emilio Cordeleone is killed

Jan 22, 2013 – Desjardins ally and builder Gaetan Gosselin is murdered in Montreal outside his home

Jan 31, 2013 – Desjardins lieutenant Vincenzo Scuderi is murdered in Montreal outside his home

May 8, 2013 – Deported Rizzuto clan enforcer and Ontario crew leader Juan (Joe Bravo) Fernandez is found dead in Sicily, his corpse and that of his bodyguard charred, after Fernandez, also a confidant of Desjardins’, attempted to stay neutral in the war between his two close friends

July 8, 2013 – Powerful Montreal mob figure and Rizzuto rival, Giuseppe (Ponytail) De Vito, is poisoned to death in his cell in a Quebec prison

July 12, 2013 – Up-and-coming Toronto Mafioso Sam (The Young Gun) Calautti and his right-hand man Jimmy Tusek – are murdered outside a bachelor party in Woodbridge, Ontario while a suspect in the slayings of a number of Rizzuto crime family members, including Vito Rizzuto’s father and son and his one-time Toronto capo Gaetano (Guy) Panepinto in the early 2000s

Nov 10, 2013 – Rizzuto ally-turned-rival Moreno (The Turkey) Gallo is killed in Acapulco on the three-year anniversary of the murder of Uncle Nick Rizzuto inside his estate

Dec 18, 2013 – Gallo and Smiling Joe Di Maulo loyalist Roger Valiquette is murdered in broad daylight in suburban Montreal

Dec 23, 2013 – Vito Rizzuto dies in a Montreal hospital, allegedly of an aggressive form of cancer but amidst rumors of possible foul play

April 24, 2014 – Highly-feared Toronto mobster Carmine (The Animal) Verducci is shot dead on the sidewalk outside of his restaurant in Vaughn, Ontario

Aug 1, 2014 – Ducarme Joseph, powerful street gang leader, Rizzuto-ally-turned-enemy and possible Nick Rizzuto, Jr.’s murderer, is killed in suburban Montreal

March 1, 2016 – Rizzuto crime family administrator Lorenzo (Skunk) Giordano is shot to death outside his fitness club in suburban Montreal

May 27, 2016 – Rizzuto crime family administrator Rocco (Sauce) Sollecito is shot to death as he sat at a stop sign in his luxury SUV within less than 100 yards from a suburban Montreal police station

June 2, 2016 — Semi-retired Rizzuto crime family lieutenant Angelo D’Onofrio, 72, is shot to death while sitting outside a suburban Montreal coffee shop (Café Sinatra) drinking an espresso

October 15, 2016 — Rizzuto crime family lieutenant Vince Spagnolo, 65, a Vito Rizzuto confidant and one of the don’s most trusted advisors and messengers, is shot to death outside his home

May 2, 2017 — Hamilton, Ontario mobster Angelo Musitano is shot to death in his driveway

August 17, 2017 — Rizzuto crime family soldier and Sollecito crew member Antonio De Blasio, 45, is gunned down outside his son’s football practice in the Montreal suburb of St. Leonard.

*Source: Business Or Blood: Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto’s Last War by P. Edwards & A. Nicaso

The post The Montreal Mob War Keeps Kicking: Rizzuto Syndicate Hit List Updated & Revisited appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The New England mafia worked closely with the American Nazi Party in the 1960s, as Providence mob don Raymond Patriarca and American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell forged a mutually-beneficial relationship via an introduction by an unnamed member of the national mafia “Commission,” per a new article posted on GoLocalProv.com (read the article here). According to Gangster Report sources, Patriarca used a lieutenant of his named Louie (The Fox) Taglianetti as his main go-between with the neo-Nazi group until Rockwell was assassinated in the summer of 1967, around the same time Taglianetti himself fell out of favor with his boss for unrelated reasons and was soon slain as well.

For the last couple of years, GoLocalProv.com has been delving into the thousands of pages of FBI documents it acquired in 2015 detailing the long-deceased Patriarca’s criminal and personal affairs. Both Patriarca and Lincoln Rockwell rose to prominence in the 1950s, as Patriarca took the reins of the New England mob family that would soon bear his name in 1954 and Lincoln Rockwell, a native Rhode Islander, founded the American Nazi Party in Arlington, Virginia in 1959.

The mafia Commission member who introduced Patriarca to Lincoln Rockwell visited the white supremacist leader at his armed-guarded compound in Virginia, according to the government records obtained by GoLocaProv.com. Louie Taglianetti delivered messages back-and-forth between the odd couple of iconic figures, per a source intimately familiar with the Patriarca regime.

Louie the Fox in life (R) & death (L)

Taglianetti ran a sports book and loansharking business out of Patriarca’s National Cigarette Service Company in Providence’s Federal Hill neighborhood. Patriarca headquartered his crime syndicate’s nerve center out of National Cigarette and Coin-O-Matic Distributors, two adjoined vending machine businesses. Informants told local police at the time that Patriarca kept Taglianetti close to him for his expertise at the vending machine and jukebox racket.

The FBI’s wiretapping of the two businesses led to Taglianetti’s downfall. Against Patriarca’s wishes, Louie the Fox urged his lawyers at a spring 1967 trial for tax evasion to push for the release of the tapes which proved a great embarrassment for his boss. One of the wires in Patriarca’s office picked up a conversation between him and Taglianetti where Patriarca expressed support for African-Americans being able to vote.

The 49-year old Lincoln Rockwell was killed leaving a laundry mat near his Arlington estate on August 25, 1967, shot to death by a disgruntled former follower of his. Less than three years later on February 6, 1970, Louie Taglianetti and his girlfriend Elizabeth McKenna were slain entering McKenna’s Cranston, Rhode Island apartment building. At the time of his murder, Taglianetti, 67, was out on bail facing a first-degree homicide charge in the 1962 gangland slaying of notorious Providence mobster John (Mad Dog Jackie) Nazarian.

Patriarca did prison time for a controversial double murder conspiracy in the 1970s. He died of a heart attack in 1984.

George Lincoln Rockwell posing in front of his Arlington, VA. Neo-Nazi-themed manor in the mid-1960s

The post The Mob & The American Nazi Party: N.E. Mafia Don Did Business With The ‘Alt Right,’ Let Louie The Fox Do His Talking appeared first on The Gangster Report.

A white supremacist and reputed hitman-for-hire was a top suspect in the December 6, 1971 gangland slaying of Detroit mob associate Sol (Good Looking Solly) Shindel, gunned down inside his suburban home on the heels of a reckless gambling spree in Las Vegas and under indictment in a pair of racketeering cases . The Shindel homicide has never been solved, but has long been tied to the Zerilli-Tocco crime family’s Giacalone crew.

At the time of his murder, the 52-year old Shindel was one of the biggest bookmakers in the state of Michigan and worked for Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone, the menacing then street boss of the mafia in Detroit. Tony Giacalone and two of his lieutenants, Ronald (Hollywood Ronnie) Morelli and Robert (Bobby the Animal) LaPuma, have always been prime suspects in the Shindel hit. LaPuma and Morelli were Solly Shindel’s collectors. Morelli was Giacalone’s mob protégé. The trio of Mafiosi were hauled in front of a federal grand jury to answer questions regarding Shindel’s murder in the winter of 1972.

One theory in the Shindel homicide probe is that Giacalone and his men outsourced the job to Eugene (Mean Gene) Szymanski, a multiple-time convicted violent-felon and someone once referred to as the Godfather of the white supremacist movement in Michigan. Szymanski — seen in this article’s cover photo — led the Southeast Michigan wing of the White Warriors, a racist hate group operating throughout the Midwest.

In the months after Shindel turned up dead in his Southfield, Michigan residence, a confidential informant told authorities that Szymanski bragged to him about killing the stylish, outspoken Jewish bookie the day after it occurred. According to police records, Szymanski, today 74 years old and behind bars for an unrelated crime, did muscle work for the Detroit mob’s now-defunct Monroe, Michigan crew back in the 1960s and 1970s. He was a suspect in more than one murder in the Monroe area during that time. Monroe is 45 miles south of Detroit, located near the Ohio border.

On the afternoon of December 7, 1971, in the hours following Shindel popping up dead, Szymanski and several of his White Warriors sat around a kitchen table in a Detroit apartment as word of the slaying was reported on the local television news. Per one of the White Warriors present who was also a state police informant, after the newscast went to a commercial, Szymanski turned the rest of the room and boasted of his involvement.

“When they want a job (like the Shindel hit) to be done, who do you think they go to?…..Gene Szymanski that’s who,” he reportedly said.

A year later, Mean Gene Szymanski was arrested for shooting a Hamtramck, Michigan police officer and did a decade in prison upon his conviction. Released in 1983, he stayed clear of the can until 2002 and his arrest for shooting an unarmed patron in front of the Gold Coast Club in Detroit where he was employed as the club’s head of security – Szymanski was sentenced to 10-to-30 years for the incident and currently has a maximum out-date of March 2030.

Bobby LaPuma found Shindel’s body lying dead on his living room floor at around 8:45 a.m. the morning of December 7 – he was shot in the face, head and neck. The tall, burly and imposing LaPuma often chauffeured Shindel around town and had been scheduled to pick him up that morning for a set of meetings and collection stops.

LaPuma and Morelli, a well-known twosome of up-and-comers in that particular era of the Motown underworld, had accompanied Shindel on a short vacation to Las Vegas in the days before he was slain. Per FBI records, Shindel ran up nearly six-figures in gambling debts on the trip and was rumored to have skimmed some of the money he took with him to the craps table in Vegas from the Giacalone crew till back in the Motor City.

Shindel had other problems too. Legal problems.

Earlier in the year, he was indicted by the feds for a giant bookmaking ring being run out of downtown Detroit’s famous Anchor Bar. That October, he was slapped with state extortion charges. LaPuma and Morelli were co-defendants of his in both cases. Informants told the FBI Morelli urged Giacalone to green light a hit on Shindel so the handsome, swaggering Morelli could grab control of Shindel’s sports book for himself. Shindel was left exposed by the imprisonment of his mob mentor Matthew (Mike the Enforcer) Rubino the previous summer.

Tony Giacalone died of kidney failure in 2001. He did seven years in prison for extortion and tax evasion (1979-1986) and was under federal indictment for racketeering when he passed away. Morelli dropped dead of a heart attack on a prison handball court while in the final months of his own prison bid for racketeering in 1985. LaPuma, 80, is leaving in retirement on the west coast.

The post The White Supremacist Movement & The Mob In Michigan: Hate-Group Leader Looked At In ’71 Shindel Murder appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Entertainment industry legends Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin avoided being witnesses and possibly unintended collateral damage in the infamous mob murder of Genovese crime family underboss Willie Moretti in the fall of 1951. Moretti was assassinated as he ate lunch at his favorite restaurant, Joe’s Elbow Room in Cliffside Park, New Jersey on October 4, 1951, a meal Lewis and Martin were supposed to attend but bowed out of at the last moment.

Lewis died of heart failure at his home in Las Vegas this week at 91. He and Martin formed a smash-hit comic duo between 1946 and 1956, getting their starts in mob-run nightclubs and performance venues and going on to make 15 movies together for Paramount Pictures. They were earning $30,000 per month apiece at the peak of their popularity as a two-man act. After their breakup, Lewis went on to a successful solo career and Martin teamed with Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. to start the Rat Pack.

Martin and Sinatra were long linked to members of Italian-American organized crime throughout the years. Like Lewis and Martin, Sinatra was close to Willie Moretti, the Genovese syndicate’s gangland overlord of the Garden State – his first wife Nancy was cousins with Moretti.

Sinatra and Lewis were both born-and-bred New Jersey residents. Martin (real name: Dino Crostini) came from Ohio and was groomed early in his life and career by local Buckeye State mob bosses Jimmy Tripodi and Cosmo Quattrone.

Moretti’s strong arm antics were immortalized in The Godfather film and book – Moretti made famous band leader Tommy Dorsey “an offer he couldn’t refuse,” in negotiations to let Sinatra out of an unfavorable contractual agreement by, as mafia folklore recalls, sticking a gun down Dorsey’s throat and assuring him either his brains or his signature would be on papers dissolving his business relationship with ‘Ole Blue Eyes.

Willie Moretti’s murder scene – Fall 1951

The Martin and Lewis act cut its teeth on the Jersey nightclub and lounge circuit of the 1940s, performing at mob-connected places like The 500 Club and the Bath & Turf Club in Atlantic City and The Riviera in Fort Lee. Atlantic City nightlife staple and mob associate Paul (Skinny) D’Amato owned and operated The 500 Club. Moretti and his partner in the rackets, historic Jersey Jewish mobster Abner (Longy) Zwillman, headquartered their gambling endeavors out of The Riviera’s card room and that’s where he met Martin and Lewis.

In the summer of 1948, Martin and Lewis performed at Moretti’s daughter’s wedding in Newark, New Jersey in the main ballroom of the Essex House Hotel. On the evening of October 3, Moretti attended a show of theirs at The Copacabana nightclub in New York City and during a backstage chat following the performance invited them to have dinner with him the next afternoon at Joe’s Elbow Room across the bridge in Jersey.

Originally, the pair accepted the invitation, however early that next morning, Lewis became ill and called the restaurant to cancel. Moretti never received the message. What he did receive at approximately 11:30 a.m. was a body full of bullets – he was gunned down as he ate his meal. Martin and Lewis watched the news break together on Lewis’ living room television set that evening according to Lewis’ future autobiography.

Informants told the FBI that Moretti angered his contemporaries in the east coast mafia with his candid and quip-heavy testimony in front of the U.S. Senate racket hearings of the early 1950s. Mob leaders questioned his sanity after a syphilis diagnosis years earlier. Martin died in 1995.

The post Jerry Lewis & The Mafia: All-Time Classic Comedy Duo Narrowly Missed Witnessing Notorious N.J. Mob Execution appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Former Philadelphia mob soldier and handsomely-paid FBI informant Ronnie (Big Ron) Previte died of natural causes this week at 66, steadfastly refusing to uproot and leave his New Jersey digs even after his cooperation and testimony put several high-ranking mafia leaders behind bars. Known as an “earner” on the street throughout his career in the underworld, Previte cleared seven figures in government compensation between his work with the New Jersey State Police and the FBI. Before he became a Garden State gangster, he was actually a cop.

Previte worked in the upper ranks of two equally-unstable mob administrations out of nearby Philadelphia, first serving as a bodyguard and driver for Sicilian don John Stanfa in the early 1990s and then being tabbed a top lieutenant in the hierarchy of Stanfa’s successors in the boss’ chair, Ralph Natale and Joseph (Skinny Joey) Merlino, the current reputed Godfather in the City of Brotherly Love. Stanfa squared off against Natale and Merlino in a war for control of the Philly mob, with Stanfa and Merlino both dodging assassination attempts in brazen public attacks.

Stanfa’s beefy security detail triumvirate of Previte, Freddy Aldrich and Vince Filipelli was known in the local press as the “Palace Guard.” Aldrich died in a 2010 car crash. Filipelli is reportedly a soldier in Merlino’s modern-day mob regime.

Ron Previte & Ralph Natale

Adept at playing multiple angles in his craft, Previte seamlessly integrated into Natale and Merlino’s orbit after Stanfa was incarcerated in 1994, primarily due to his ability to line their pockets with cash. The entire time, he was wearing a wire for the FBI. He retired from double duty in 1999 following Merlino’s arrest, but never abandoned his Jersey stomping grounds. Natale soon flipped and entered the Witness Protection Program.

Skinny Joey Merlino was convicted of racketeering at a media frenzy of a 2001 federal trial and did 12 years in prison. Released in 2011, he’s alleged to have resumed his post atop the Bruno-Scarfo crime family, but resides in South Florida.

In 2004, Previte was the subject of the book The Last Gangster, penned by legendary Philly mob scribe and organized crime expert George Anastasia. Award-winning Fox29TV investigative reporter Dave Schratwieser, the city’s other leading mobologist, broke the news of Previte’s passing on his Twitter account Wednesday night. Previte took a bookmaking pinch while in “wiseguy retirement.”

Natale put out a memoir this year, The Last Don Standing. Last summer, Merlino, 55, was indicted on another round of racketeering charges and is scheduled to go to trial in New York City in the winter of 2018.

The post Big Ron Previte Passes Peacefully Having Never Left New Jersey, Savvy NJ-Philly Mob Figure, Govt. Snitch Defied Odds appeared first on The Gangster Report.

After making a crude drunken pass at the girlfriend of Somerville Gang member Alex (Bobo) Petricone at a Salisbury Beach bar on Labor Day, September 4, 1961, Charleston Gang member Georgie McLaughlin was beaten unconscious starting over a decade of volatile unrest in Boston’s Irish underworld. There was a brief reprieve from the violence in the late 1960s, but the infighting and instability reignited in the early 1970s, resulting in even more bodies dropping.

Meanwhile, Bobo Petricone had left his mobster ways behind him in Boston, changed his name to Alex Rocco and relocated to Hollywood, where he quickly became a noted character actor, earning cinematic infamy as Moe Greene in The Godfather and an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actor in the CBS show The Famous Teddy Z. Rocco died of cancer in July of 2015 at 79 years old.

THE BOSTON IRISH MOB WARS (1961-1975)

October 30, 1961 – Bernie McLaughlin

* The Charleston Gang Boss is shot to death leaving The Morning Glory bar. Infuriated by his brother Georgie’s assault on Labor Day, he had issued a murder contract on the head of Somerville Gang boss James (Buddy) McLean, unsuccessfully attempting to blow him up with a car bomb. Rocco was considered a suspect in the McLaughlin murder conspiracy.

1962 – Henry Reddington

March 15, 1964 – William Sheridan

May 14, 1964 – Frank Benjamin

Summer of 1964 – Two McLaughlin Gang members are taken to Somerville, tortured and killed

August 4, 1964 –Willie Delaney

September 4, 1964 – Ronnie Dermody

December 1964 – George Ash

March 12, 1965 – Teddy Deegan

*Future New England Italian mafia boss Peter (The Crazy Horse) Limone and then New England mafia underboss Enrico (Henry the Referee) Tameleo, among others, were wrongfully convicted of Deegan’s murder on the false testimony of famous Boston mob turncoat Joe (The Animal) Barboza.

July 1965 – Romeo Martin

October 20, 1965 – Edward (Punchy) McLaughlin

October 31, 1965 – James (Buddy) McLean

*The Somerville mob boss is shot to death leaving The Peppermint Lounge in Winter Hill

May 26, 1966 – Connie Hughes and Sammy Lindenbaum

September 23, 1966 – Stevie Hughes

January 1967 – Edward (Wimpy) Bennett

*The South Boston and Roxbury rackets boss is gunned down in his garage at home

February 1967 – Andy (The Baron) Von Etter

March 1967 – Johnny Locke

December 1967 – Richard Grasso

November 1969 – Donnie McGonagle

*Killed in a case of mistaken identity

A 1971 bar fight between Mullen Gang member Mickey Dwyer and Kileen Brothers Gang member Kenny Killeen at The Transit bar, which served as the Killeens’ headquarters in South Boston. Kenny Killeen bit off part of Dwyer’s nose in a drunken rage and the flames of war engulfed the local Irish underworld once again (“The Mullens” got its moniker for the gang’s home base being in Mullen Square). 

March 28, 1971 – William (Billy O) O’Sullivan

May 13, 1972 – Donald Killeen

*The Killeen Gang boss and “Southie” crime lord is slain by gunmen in front of his Framingham residence getting into his Chevy Nova following his young son’s birthday party.

December 1, 1973 – James (Spike) O’Toole

November 1974 – Paulie McGonagle

June 25, 1975 – Eddie (The Bulldog) Connors

November 25, 1975 – Tommy King

November 25, 1975 – Frank (Buddy) Leonard

The post The Boston Irish Mob Wars Murder Timeline: Godfather Actor Had Gangster Past, His Actions Spurred Mass Bloodshed appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The legend of east coast female crime lord Stephanie (Madame Queen) St. Clair, the most powerful woman in the history of the New York underworld, will only grow when it’s the focus of an upcoming film. HBO, Zero Gravity Management and celebrated director Tim Story announced last week they were teaming up to adapt Shirley Stewart’s book, The World of Stephanie St. Clair, into a movie.

St. Clair came to the United States from the Caribbean island of Martinique in the early 20^th Century and went on to rule the mostly African-American Harlem policy lottery racket for most of the 1920s and 1930s, successfully fending off efforts by notorious New York Jewish and Italian mobsters of the era to take over her territory by force. During that time, she mentored New York City’s future undisputed black Godfather Ellsworth (Bumpy) Johnson with Johnson acting as her muscle and top hit man.

St. Clair’s organization famously went to war with trigger-happy Jewish mob boss Dutch Schultz, based out of the Bronx, in the early 1930s. Schultz was assassinated at a Newark, New Jersey steakhouse in 1935, murdered on orders of his one-time allies in the Italian mob. According to local gangland lore, St. Clair sent a floral arrangement to the funeral home where Schultz was being eulogized bearing an obscenity-laced note attached, ending with the phrase “rot in hell.”

After being convicted in 1938 of shooting her husband, Eugene Brown (aka Sufi Abdul Hamid), a man referred to in the New York press as “Black Hitler” and the leader of a black-nationalist, Islamic cult, in an argument at her opulent estate, St. Clair went to prison for the next decade. She reemerged on the scene in Harlem in the late 1940s and centered her endeavors on social activism, having handed off her criminal empire to Johnson, who had made an alliance with the Italians and what would become the Genovese crime family.

Bumpy Johnson

St. Clair died peacefully in 1969 at the age of 82. Johnson dropped dead of a heart attack at a Harlem restaurant the year prior in the summer of 1968. He was only 62 and under federal indictment for racketeering.

Back in 1997, Bumpy Johnson was the subject of the movie Hoodlum. Acclaimed actor Laurence Fishburne portrayed Johnson and Academy Award-nominee Cicely Tyson played St. Clair in the film, put out by United Artists to lukewarm reviews and a modest box office.

Tim Story is one of today’s leading African-American filmmakers. The 47-year old director was born and raised in Los Angeles and has helmed such hits as Barbershop, the Ride Along franchise, the Fantastic Four franchise and the Think Like A Man franchise. Singer-actress Janet Jackson had recently been trying to get a starring television-movie vehicle off the ground with her in the St. Clair role, Kenny Leon (Hairspray Live!, The Wiz Live!) on board to direct and the Lifetime Network developing.

The post The Ultimate Bad Girl: Historic Harlem Lady Gangster, ‘Madam Queen’ St. Clair Set To Receive Hollywood Movie Treatment appeared first on The Gangster Report.