When you think of a U.S. mafia rubout, what is the image you think of?

agreed. i was a copyboy at the n.y. daily news then and it happened a couple of blocks away at a steak joint, if i recall. i vividly remember the excitement in the city room over the picture. the cigar made it unique.

 

"Leave the gun. Take the cannoli."

 

When I think if mob rubouts, I always think local first. A guy I knew in college told me his dad was killed in a mob rubout. I thought the guy was full of shit. Then I was home during Christmas and the local paper was running a series on the mob in our town. And it had a picture of the guy's dad's car after it was bombed with his dad's name in the cutline.

This was 20-some years ago. I ran into the guy last fall. I thought he was full of it. He wasn't.

Nice guy, too.

 

I picked Castellano cause he was the only one I remotely remembered.

 

One for Buckweaver (nice one on the St. Valentine's Day massacre)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Rothstein

killed over $300-thousand lost in a rigged poker game.


and Dutch Schultz, killed apparently while taking a wiz and his two bodyguards at dinner.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USACschultz.htm

 

Speaking of Rothstein, I can't recommend David Pietrusza's biography enough. It's superbly researched, and very long, but still a breeze to read. If you're interested in mob history at all (let alone NYC history or 1920s history or political/police corruption) you need to pick it up. I think Rothstein's legacy often gets shortchanged; he deserves to be up there as one of the major architects of the American underworld in the 20th century.

As for the "rigged" poker game, IIRC, it was something like "The Sting" where Rothstein the cheat got outcheated by McManus and Co. at his own game, then tried to welsh on his bets (which he was well-known for) by claiming the fix was in. So they retaliated.

 

1. buck, did not know that. Will have to check that out.
2. firstdown. SOLID effort. take that as you will.
3. what about the cops? I think the life of Thomas Dewey is facinating. Going after the mob in New York in the 19-30s and very nearly rubbed out by said mob.

 

BTW, this thread rocks.

Regarding your third point, BB, let's refer back to your image of Dutch Schultz getting whacked at a Newark chop house. The reason the contract went out on the Dutchman was because he was catching shit from Dewey and wanted to take him out. To do so required a vote of the newly formed (in 1931) Commission of the bosses of the five families of New York and Chicago.

Lucky Luciano (kind of the first among equals member of the Commission) reasoned that to whack Dewey would cause more problems than it was worth. He sold that logical conclusion to his fellow Commission members, but the borderline psychotic Schultz wasn't having any of that. So he went freelance and vowed to whack Dewey by himself.

Wrong answer. Luciano and Company put a contract out on Schultz, which Charlie "the Bug" Workman filled that night in Newark.

 

if I'm not mistaken, didn't the commission want to put the hit out (on Dewey), but decided to wait a week to "think it over" and that's when they decided not to do it? And then Dutch goes off and WHACK--literally.

 

I always have thought the Galante hit was classic mob - dead guy on the floor of a Brooklyn Italian restaurant. Big Paul got his outside a Manhattan steak house, so it's just not the same to me. Crazy Joe Gallo got his in Little Italy, so that would have been a good one, too.

As for Rothstein, that's one of the many inaccuracies in the movie version of Eight Men Out. They make it seem like he got on a boat never to be heard from again. Although he wasn't killed immediately after the 1919 Series, he certainly met a different ending.