The city of Youngstown’s mob landscape erupted into fiery disarray in the 1960s when the mafia clans in Cleveland and Pittsburgh went to war over the fertile gambling territory in the traditionally working-class Mahoning Valley, famously using car bombs as one of their weapons of choice. The violence lasted until 1968, but after a decade-long reprieve from the bloodshed in the area, the feud escalated again and resulted in a number of slayings in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
March 11, 1960 – Pittsburgh mob soldier and Youngstown crew boss Sandy Naples and his girlfriend Mary Ann Vranich are shotgunned to death on the porch of Vranich’s house. Naples was on a weekend furlough from prison.
August 6, 1960 – Cleveland mob associate Vince Innocenzi is found shot to death in a ditch in Trumbull County weeks following botching a hit on Pittsburgh mafia affiliate Joseph (Stoney) Romano. Days after Innocenzi’s murder, his brother Silvio is found hanged in his garage. Innocenzi was already on thin ice in Ohio underworld circles for his robbing of a mafia-owned Steubenville restaurant and bar years earlier.
December 15, 1960 – Local mob enforcer and Naples faction collector “Big John” Schuller is killed, found shot on Route 82. He had survived a car bombing two years prior.
June 10, 1961 – Cleveland mob associate and Mahoning Valley gambling lieutenant Mike Farrah is shotgunned to death on his front lawn while practicing his golf swing. Farrah oversaw affairs at the Jungle Inn, the cash cow of a mafia-backed casino and supper club in Warren, Ohio
July 1, 1962 – Pittsburgh mob soldier Billy Naples, his older brother Sandy’s successor as the Steel Town crime family’s point man in the Valley, is blown up in a car bomb in his garage
July 17, 1961 – Cleveland mob soldier James (Vinnie D) De Niro is blown up in a car bomb outside his restaurant on a crowded Youngstown street
November 23, 1962 – Cleveland mob soldier and notorious Youngstown crew boss Charles (Cadillac Charlie) Cavallaro and his 11-year old progeny Tommy Cavallaro are blown up in a car bomb in their garage the morning after Thanksgiving as the elder Cavallaro went to drive his young son to football practice
October 11, 1968 – Local hoodlum and Cleveland mob affiliate Paul Calautti is killed, shotgunned to death on orders of then-Naples faction leader Joseph (Little Joey) Naples, the future co-crew boss in the area on behalf of the Pittsburgh mafia during the late 1980s
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