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

This one gets my vote.

 

One of interesting things I've read about Luciano was is assistance to the OSS during WWII. The U.S. needed intelelgence in Sicily and the story goes that Luciano agreed to get the Italian mob to help. In return he was parolled in 1946.

 

Joe Colombo. Guy gets shot in front of a crowd of 50,000 people (in fact, was about to speak at an Italian Unity Day in Manhattan in 1971) and then the guy who shoots him gets whacked. Second gunman runs off and never is identified. "Nobody saw nothin" at its peak.

 

If I'm not mistaken, the guy that whacked Colombo was a black man with mental problems. The second gunman then shot up the black man so he wouldn't talk.

 

Rothstein was a fascinating guy. Started with the Eastmans, a Jewish street gang in lower Manhattan. Because he was smart, especially with numbers, Rothstein became a favorite of Big Tim Sullivan, a gangster/politician who essentially ran the Tammany Hall operation in early part of the century and was considered the boss of Five Points. As part of the patronage game, the gangs served to get the vote out for Tammany Hall and intimidate opponents. Rothstein always considered Sullivan as his mentor.

 

Very true, Boom. He helped not only in Sicily, but he got the mob-dominated New York waterfront in line and had them help the Coast Guard. In return for his service, he was paroled -- but deported to Cuba.

Later, he tried sneaking back into the U.S., but was turned away.

 

I vote Other, as in JFK getting whacked for his and his brother Bobby's obsession with stomping on organized crime, after the mob helped to deliver the Illinois vote in the 1960 Presidential election.

At the other end of the spectrum, I remember hearing about a few car bombings around the Chicago area in the 60s, minor local wise guys from The Outfit who done somebody wrong.

 

In order:

Castellano

Anastasia/Siegel (tie)


Further editorial note: Joey Gallo got married in Jerry O's living room.

 

Never tire of recommending David Pietrusza's bio of AR. It's dirt, DIRT-cheap on Amazon, and well worth the eight bucks or so it'll take to get it into your hands.
I don't agree with every one of Pietrusza's conclusions, but it's markedly superior to the previous landmark try, The Big Bankroll.

 

To be fair, while there are many inaccuracies in "Eight Men Out," this isn't one of them.

John Sayles ended the story immediately after the trial (and with one fictional epilogue scene in New Jersey); he never tried to imply that nothing ever happened in the rest of Rothstein/Attell/Sullivan's lives. He had to cut the movie to under 2 hours, and the story is simply too complicated to explain what happened to everyone involved.

(One thing he did gloss over, in fact, was that Rothstein showed up in Chicago, after Attell opened his mouth to the New York papers, and A.R. got some sympathy play from the corrupt Chicago courts after a then-famous "I'm retired from gambling!" statement. ... After that, he got on a boat and sailed to Europe for a while to lay low.)

 

That would probably have been in the wake of Sam Giancana's "retirement" as head of the Chicago Outfit and the resumption of boss duties by Tony "Big Tuna" Accardo, who was generally recognized as the most effective boss in the storied history of the Chicago Mob.

I say "retirement" because Giancana -- when he wasn't banging one of the McGuire Sisters or JFK paramour Judith Exner -- was popping off too much in the media and was way, waaaay too much of a hothead. The attention he brought the Outfit was putting the hurt on business.

Former FBI Agent William Roemer has written a couple of good books on this subject, including a biography of Accardo, that chronicle all of this.

 

Santo Trafficante and Carlos Marcello are said to be involved with Kennedy when the CIA wanted to kill Castro. Trafficante continued to work with the Agency through Iran-Contra.

How can we forget JIMMY HOFFA?