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Feature Articles |
June 2000June 5, 2000
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compiled by John William Tuohy
CALIFORNIA: A grand jury investigation into card rooms in San Jose reveals
that gangsters have taken a grip on the industry. Some 55 person have been
indicted on a variety of crimes, including loan-sharking, drug-dealing and
check fraud.
The owner of one club was indicted on charges of assault, extortion and
witness intimidation. A number of witnesses told the grand jury that
loan-sharking was rampant at the clubs.
Many witnesses described a closed world where gamblers, club employees and
loan sharks all know each other from spending many of their waking hours at
the Bay area cardrooms.
One man told the grand jury that he ended up owing $25,000 on a $7,000
loan that his girlfriend, a former club dealer, had obtained from a loan
shark.
CALIFORNIA: Gangster Bugsy Siegel's 1940s safe, buried for decades in the
floor of a Hollywood resturant was opened for the first time on live
television this month, but, once opened, contained nothing.
A psychic had said the safe contained deeds to two properties in Nevada,
a ruby ring, and possibly the names of Hollywood moguls who used the
prostitution services of Siegel.
A locksmith drilled through several inches of solid steel to find a
second safe deep inside the first.
The safe had languished forgotten for years in the Formosa Cafe, which,
say its owners, once housed a secret back office used by Siegel to run a
prostitution racket while the glamorous mobster mingled out front with movie
stars. The safe was found during a recent renovation of the Formosa, which
featured in the movie "L.A. Confidential"
In 1986, a vault that was supposed to belong to Al Capone that was found
in the foundations of the Lexington Hotel in Chicago was opened on live
television. It contained nothing but empty gin bottles.
CHICAGO: Are the Chicago and New York mobs working together in the sex trade
business? And, if they are, does it explain the recent fascination that the
mobs have shown for the strip club industry? Is the Chicago outfit returning
to White Slavery, its original source of income from 1880 through 1925 in
conjunction with the New York Outfits, just like it did under Johnny Torrio?
The recent arrest of alleged Bonanno solider Vincent R. Amarante AKA
Elmo, of New York, by Chicago police at a suburban Strip Club outside the
Windy City may provide some intriguing new clues to the puzzle.
Amarante, who was released from prison in 1987 on a weapons charge, was
charged with keeping a house of prostitution, anther words, pimping,
following a raid at Arnie's, a strip club in Chicago. Amarante is said to
work for Bonanno Capo Louis "Louie Attaboy" Attanasio. More then twenty women
and one other New York, Allan Grossman, was also arrested during the raids.
If Amarante, who has a record dating back to 1967 for narcotic and
gambling, is working as an independent in Chicago, something that most police
officials scoff at, then he's be required to pay a street tax, or "rent" as
its called in Chicago, to the Boys on top of the Organization before a penny
is sent back east.
From 1880 until about 1925, the Chicago outfit under Big Jim Colosimo,
Johnny Torrio and Al Capone ran a massive white slavery ring in conjunction
with a series of New York criminals including Frankie Yale and Lucky Luciano.
From 1932 until 1944, the New York and Chicago mobs controlled several
enormous Hollywood labor unions, and in the late 1950s and early 1960, they
shared joint ownership in several Cuban, Jamaican and Nevada casino's.
In the past the New York and Chicago mobs have traded prostitutes that
were employed in their brothels and strip clubs. Although the practice more
or less died out in the early 1920s, it brought back to life in early 1950s
with the emergence of "B girls", a Tony Accardo invention.
CHICAGO: A woman arrested by US Customs officials has admitted to smuggling
heroin and cocaine in infant formula cans and said she twice used babies as
props to lessen suspicions of customs inspectors. She was smuggling heroin
from Panama. The women said that she "rented" the infant from the child's
aunt.
CHICAGO: Items belonging to Al Capone, John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd
are being auctioned at Butterfields auction gallery in Chicago in June.
The items for sale include Al Capone's ivory cigarette holder, photographs
of his brother Ralph with their mother, Capone's christening medal inscribed
"Baby," a pair of green plastic dice. All of the Capone items were once the
property of Madeline Capone, Ralph widow.
Also on the block is a blue Dunrite bulletproof vest that John Dillinger
and his gang stole from the Peru, Ind., police station in October 1933, as
well as submachine guns, sawed-off shotguns, ammo and police badges also
netted in the heist. Pretty Boy Floyd items will also be displayed.
Included in the sale is Bonnie Parker, of Bonnie and Clyde fame,
handwritten poetry. A shirt Clyde Barrow wore was sold for $85,000. Last
year, a handwritten sheet of song lyrics penned by Capone while serving time
at Alcatraz sold for more than $10,000.
CHICAGO: The Jackson Elementary School recently invited disbarred lawyers
Alphonse Gonzales and City Hall power broker Oscar D'Angelo to be "Principles
of the day" D'Angelo and Gonzales were disbarred as a result of the Operation
Greylord investigation of corruption among judges and lawyers by organized
crime.
ENGLAND: Britain's Health Minister John Hutton, unveiled new guidelines under
which those who exploit child prostitutes will face prosecution. Organized
criminals control large parts of the child prostitution market.
The guidelines call for prosecutions against people who sexually exploit
and abuse young people and treatment for their victims.
Although there are no accurate figures for child prostitution, a 1998
survey of 48 drop-in facilities and residential homes around Britain showed
754 young people were selling themselves for sex. More than 40 percent of
them were under 16.
ISRAEL: Amnesty International says that Israel does not protect the rights of
women and girls who are brought to that country from Russia to work in
Israel's sex industry.
The report says that hundreds of women a year are kidnapped or lured into
Israel's sex industry. Once there the women are bought and sold, auctioned,
held in debt bondage, imprisoned by their "owners," deprived of their travel
documents, raped and tortured. Many of the women, the report claims, are
rounded up in police raids on brothels and massage parlors and are then
forcibly deported.
Police in Israel say they are powerless to stop the flow of trafficked women
until the laws change, but women's groups say authorities rarely bother
prosecuting crimes such as abduction, rape and battery which are associated
with trade in women.
JAPAN: Experts from the Group of Eight (G-8) major nations will meet this
month in Kyoto to devise ways to combat international organized crime.
LIECHTENSTEIN: In an effort to boasts its sagging international reputation,
the Liechtenstein government approved legislation tightening up existing
measures to fight money laundering.
Under new legislation, people and institutions handling assets must
establish their origin and report suspicions of money laundering more
stringently.
Allegations still exist that the country is a haven for Russian Mafia and
Colombian cocaine cartels, which allegedly laundered money through this
nation of 32,000.
NEW JERSEY: A reputed Genovese crime family was charged with running a crew
that deals in bookmaking, loan-sharking, and dope dealing out of a Mobil gas
station in suburban Englewood Cliffs. Joseph "Joe Black" DeSimone and his,
Ralph, and eight other men were charged. Also charged was Joseph Cariddi, a
former Fort Lee fire chief who is the elder DeSimone's son-in-law.
The indictment says the crew used violence and threats to collect money
from bettors and that they dealt in marijuana after receiving it by overnight
mail from California.
The prosecutors say they have 800 conversations recorded by wiretap.
Joseph DeSimone's brother, Ralph "Cousin" DeSimone, Jr. a heroin dealer
and longtime Genovese associate, was shot to death and hog-tied in the trunk
of his car at La Guardia Airport in 1991. The Genovese suspected him of being
a government informant.
James "Little Jimmy" Ida, the third-ranking member of the Genovese
family, was convicted of racketeering charges, including conspiring to murder
Ralph DeSimone, Jr.
NEW YORK: Reputed Gambino gangster Charlie Marino, a childhood friend of John
Gotti's son in law, Carmine Agnello, was arrested for running a $2.5 stolen
car ring out of Queens. The ring was busted because it chopped up stolen cars
that belonged to a New York Police Department sting operation called
operation Vanish.
NEW YORK: Federal authorities are investigating possible role of the Gambino
crime family in the now-defunct Englewood stock brokerage which is accused of
defrauding investors out of more than $1.6 million. The firm was run by
Arnold "Bo" Squitieri, son of Arnold "Animal" Squitieri, a reputed soldier
with the Gambino's.
PARAGUAY: The Paraguayan military almost took control of this tiny country
again and threatened to rebel again unless the current government takes
action to end the political instability that has made the nation South
America's most active smuggling center and a major transshipment country for
Bolivian cocaine headed for Europe and the United States and, recently,
international money laundering. Paraguay was rated the second-most corrupt
nation in the world by German-based watchdog Transparency International in
1998. It improved to No. 8 in 1999.
PHILADELPHIA: Investigators have found the corpse of a man buried for at
least 25 years beneath the basement of a building where reputed mob associate
Pete "The Crumb" Caprio once ran a social club.
Caprio, who is now cooperating with the Feds since being charged in two
gangland murders, told the police where the bodies were buried.
The dead man is known only as "Butch," and Caprio has
implicated two mob figures in that killing. Both mob bosses who were
implicated are dead.
Caprio is expected to provide the investigators an idea of the
Philadelphia family's hierarchy and the influence of the Philadelphia mob
over northern New Jersey's gambling and loan-sharking rackets.
Caprio was indicted on charges that he participated in the 1996 murder
of reputed Bruno organized crime family captain Joseph Sodano and the 1994
death of William "Crazy Willie" Gantz. Gantz was Sodano's right-hand man.
The theory is that Sodano was killed after he refused to give Natale and
Merlino a bigger cut of profits from illegal gambling and loan-sharking
operations in New Jersey.
TENNESSEE: Lloyd Jowers, the former Memphis bar owner who claimed he hired
someone other than James Earl Ray to assassinate Martin Luther King Jr died
this month at age 73.
Jowers ran Jim's Grill, a bar room on the ground floor of a rooming house
from which prosecutors say the shot that killed King was fired on April 4,
1968. He said that organized crime members plotted and executed the actual
murder.
In 1993, Jowers told ABC-TV that he was paid $100,000 from a Memphis
merchant named Frank Liberto to arrange King's murder.
James Earl Ray confessed to the killing but recanted and spent the rest
of his life trying to prove his innocence. He died in prison in 1998.
This past December, Jowers and "unknown conspirators" were found liable
in a wrongful death lawsuit brought against Jowers by the Martin Luther Kings
family. The jury awarded the Kings
$100 in damages, the token amount the family requested because they wanted
the jury to find evidence of a conspiracy to lend support to their call for a
new investigation into the killing.
In Tennessee, it was largely agreed that Jowers was a disreputable
character who hoped to make money off of his claims through a book and movie
deal.
Mr. Tuohy can be reached at MobStudy@aol.com
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