Preface

     A few years later, he showed me several books about organized crime and explained why his father and his six uncles were in them. Then he showed me some of his old photos. In one he was a young boy on his pony, a glittering diamond ring on one of his fingers. Then there were the pictures of his father, decked out and dapper. Obviously no ordinary Sicilian immigrant.

     I viewed my grandfather's murder as a tragedy, of course, but I also knew that it was a fascinating slice of history. It was a story that lived on in a steady stream of newspaper and magazine features, each one prompting my father to tell me a little more. But he wouldn't answer all of my questions, and several years went by before my curiosity caught up with me.

     Finally I went to the library armed with the date of my grandfather's death. When I searched it out in the newspaper microfilm, I was in awe at the magnitude of coverage. All the newspapers had front-page headlines like: GANG GUNS KILL TWO PORRELLOS AND ALLY. Obviously our name drew instant recognition, and PORRELLO in the banner sold newspapers.

     I wanted to know the whole story.

     I had left my coveted job playing drums for Sammy Davis Jr., to join the police force of a small, suburban town in the Cleveland area. I'll always wonder if my roots, by some mysterious--even divine--means, influenced that bizarre career transition. At any rate, a more stable, less transient job situation allowed time for more newspaper research, which revealed a series of dramatic and related stories that spanned decades. I learned that the names of PORRELLO and LONARDO had been as familiar to Clevelanders as those of Capone and O'Banion were to Chicagoans. "Always be proud of your name" was a more complicated instruction than I had realized.

     "Leave it alone," my father said when I told him I was going to write a book. Too late. It was just too big a story to let alone, though I might have listened if I had known it would take nine long years to complete. Fortunately I had developed a penchant for researching, investigating and interviewing. I ferreted out newspaper and magazine articles, books, police and coroner reports and court documents. I sought and accomplished interviews with an unlikely and diverse assortments of sources.

     Throughout the project my father's disapproval steadily waned. He enjoyed viewing the photos I was digging up and even helped identify some. "That's Uncle John." "That's where Uncle Rosario lived." With each finding I made, he recovered memories of an era long obliterated by gunfire and anguish.

     In the end my father gave me his blessing and helped fill in details. Some were gripping, some were torturing. He remembers he was rushed home from a spot near his father's murder by a family friend who carried the little six-year-old in his arms as he ran down the street frantically yelling, "They got him! They got him!" And he can never forget how, during the wake in the crowded living room, he stood on the kneeler to get a better view inside the casket.

     In my mind I shared his grief which was well hidden, perhaps alleviated by the passage of time. I have had occasional misgivings about rehashing the painful memories, but more than fifty years have gone by since the last shootings and bloodshed among Porrellos and Lonardos. And I found keen interest and encouragement from an impressive and growing number of people who, like me, wanted to know the whole story.

     I have written as objectively as I could of an extraordinary time, hampered though by the passage of time, mysteriously missing police reports, unending variations of significant incidents and the peripheral effects of omerta. And I have not forgotten the good guys. Unheralded police and city officials who fought it out on the streets and in the courtrooms with few results. They were unaware then that their adversaries were a powerful new breed of criminal that would change history in decades to come.

      It is a colorful but dreadful history etched in blood--from omerta and the traditional blood ties of Sicily to the internecine bloodshed of her transplanted sons during a "noble experiment" that ent awry. It its murky aftermath moved Mafia chieftains, union racketeers, drug kingpins--powerful, ruthless men in an era whose legacy still lives. Only one among the original, young Sicilians survived as a shadowy public figure into the latter days of the twentieth century. It occurs to me that in a most unforeseen, extraordinary way, he changed the course of organized crime history.

Reprinted by permission

Order the book online The Rise and Fall of the Cleveland Mafia

Email Rick Porrello at Rick@AmericanMafia.com