Chapter Fourteen

The Persistent Sergeant Dickey

As the Allies advanced northwards in mainland Italy, Vito Genovese changed sides. The top New York mobster turned exile dropped his title of commendatore and distanced himself from his Fascist friends. As the Allies entered his realm in Nola, near Naples, in the autumn of 1943, he offered to help them as translator and guide to the region. US Major E. N. Holmgreen, Civil Affairs Officer (CAO) in Nola, was so impressed with Genovese that he wrote him a letter of recommendation on 8 November 1943:

The bearer [of the letter], Vito Genovese is an American citizen. When the undersigned arrived at Nola District as CAO, Mr Genovese met me and acted as my interpreter for over a month. He would accept no pay; paid his own expenses; worked day and night and rendered most valuable assistance to the Allied Military Government. This statement is freely made in an effort to express my appreciation for the unselfish services of this man.

That Genovese could afford to appear unselfish is no big surprise. He knew he had just struck a new criminal gold-mine – the black market in American military goods. The FBI later quoted a US Attorney’s report on his activities during this period:

During the war he acted as translator for numerous American military government officials, and at the same time was active in black-market activities. These activities consisted of stealing United States Army trucks, driving them to supply depots, loading them up with flour, sugar and other supplies, which material was then driven to a place of concealment and unloaded. The trucks were then destroyed.

Genovese made a fortune. That US Army officers were not aware of this double-life – or were aware and preferred to turn a blind-eye – was demonstrated in another glowing letter of recommendation from Captain Charles I. Dunn, US Provincial Officer in Nola, written on 9 June 1944:

This is to certify that Vito Genovese has been employed by me as my personal interpreter since the 28th of January 1944. He has been invaluable to me – is absolutely honest, exposed several cases of bribery and blackmarket operations among so-called trusted civil personnel. He has a keen mind, knows Italians as do few people and is devoted to his adopted home, the USA, and all American Army personnel.

Genovese exposed other black-market gangsters to the US authorities so he could get them shut down and take over their business.

Luke Monzelli, a lieutenant in the Carabinieri assigned to follow Genovese during his time in Italy, described Genovese’s criminal network:

Once the black market began Genovese’s connections in Nola became important. Besides his power plant he controlled manpower and better than that, he had the confidence of the Camorra [Neapolitan mobsters] whose members had long since decided to collaborate with the Mafia.

In Sicily there was a capo named Calogero Vizzini, a powerful man who operated out of Villalba. Between Nola and Villalba or, if you prefer, between Vizzini and Genovese, there began a clandestine supply line of everything you could imagine. Truckloads of food supplies were shipped from Vizzini to Genovese – all accompanied by the proper documents which had been certified by men in authority, Mafia members in the service of Vizzini and Genovese.

‘He made more than a million dollars in untraceable cash in almost no time,’ said Lucky Luciano. ‘That connivin’ louse was sellin’ American goods to his own Italian people, things that’d save their lives or keep ’em from starving. He made a fortune outa penicillin, cigarettes, sugar, olive oil, flour, you name it.’

Norman Lewis was an Italian-speaking British intelligence officer posted as a member of the Field Security Service to Naples in 1944. He was attached to the American Fifth Army and saw at first hand the black market in action. ‘The black market flourishes as never before’, said Lewis in his diary entry of 18 April 1944. He quoted the Psychological Warfare Bureau’s estimate that 65 per cent of the income of Neapolitans came from transactions in stolen American supplies, and that one-third of Allied supplies and equipment brought to Italy disappeared into the black market:

Every single item of Allied equipment, short of guns and munitions – which are said to be sold under the counter – is openly displayed for sale in the Forcella market. It was noted that at the opening of the San Carlo opera every middle- and upper-class woman arrived dressed in a coat made from a stolen army blanket.

This was backed up by a report in the same month from Allied Civil Affairs officers to the War Cabinet in London:

One of the large sources of supply for the black market was from imports, more particularly of military supplies, as opposed to civil affairs. No checking of supplies was possible. At one point, it is estimated that of the civil affairs supplies, 30% were being pilfered, whilst of the military supplies 45%.

Lewis believed it would be relatively easy to trace all these items back to their criminal suppliers, but he was told by his Field Security superior that the black market was none of his business. As he investigated further, he could see the whole black-market system ran on very senior patronage:

Indeed, it is becoming generally known that it operates under the protection of high-placed Allied Military Government officials. One soon finds that however many underlings are arrested – and sent away these days for long terms of imprisonment – those who employ them are beyond the reach of the law.

At the head of AMG is Colonel Charles Poletti, and working with him is Vito Genovese, once head of the American Mafia, now become his adviser. Genovese was born in a village near Naples, and has remained in close contact with its underworld, and it is clear that many of the Mafia-Camorra sindacos who have been appointed in the surrounding towns are his nominees.

These facts, once State secrets, are now known to the Neapolitan man in the street. Yet nothing is done. However many damaging reports are put in about the activities to high-ranking AMG officials, they stay where they are.

How much more damning could it get?

Charles Poletti was Lieutenant Governor of New York under Thomas E. Dewey; indeed, for a brief moment – twenty-nine days – he was governor of the state before Dewey took over. He was only thirty-eight years old and was the first person of completely Italian ancestry to serve in this post. In 1943 he was appointed American Senior Civil Affairs Officer (SCAO) for Palermo. After service in Palermo, Poletti proceeded to head AMG in Italy in Rome. Later, in a 1993 interview for BBC TV, he denied any association, whatsoever, with the Mafia during his time in command. ‘We had no problems at all with the Mafia’, said Poletti. ‘Nobody ever heard of it. While we were there, nobody heard of it. Nobody ever talked about it.’

But Poletti’s two most important decisions while SCAO in Palermo involved backing Lucio Tasca as Mayor of Palermo – a leading Separatist and friend of the Mafia – and advocating Francesco Musotto as first High Commissioner of Sicily, accused of being both a Separatist and having connections with the Mafia. Poletti’s response was that he had used only ‘the criterion of competence to be his guide’.

Colonel Poletti revealed his own views on the situation in Sicily in an interview with a British Foreign Office minister on 7 January 1944. The minister, in fact, was future British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, appointed British government representative to the Allies in the Mediterranean in 1942. As SCAO in Palermo, Poletti told Macmillan that he believed the transfer of control from the Allies to an Italian administration was overdue and should be achieved a soon as possible. ‘Colonel Poletti said that there was considerable separatist feeling in the Island’, noted Macmillan, ‘but that this could be appeased by plan proposed which was that there should be a High Commissioner appointed for the Island to whom nine Prefects would work.’ Macmillan concluded that ‘Colonel Poletti talked with vigour and confidence. He has clearly run Sicily with enthusiasm and gusto though the shadow of . . . Tammany Hall may have been thrown lightly across the Island.’ (Tammany Hall was the notoriously corrupt centre of political activity in New York City in the nineteenth century.)

A copy of Macmillan’s report on Poletti was shown to Lord Rennell who made his own comments:

Palermo province was the most heavily staffed province in Sicily at all times. He [Poletti] always tended to put in an allied officer instead of using Italians and was consequently reproved for this. Colonel Poletti likes having a lot of officers under him because it makes him feel important.

Lord Rennell went further:

I have already expressed my views about the proposed appointment of Colonel Poletti to the Headquarters of the Allied Commission of Control as Administrative Director. I consider him, most unsuitable for this appointment.

He is a not unattractive creature who has obviously succeeded in winning Mr MacMillan [sic] after a short acquaintance. I know him longer. He has administrative experience but he has been by no means so responsible for running Sicily as he appears to have made out to Mr MacMillan. I suggest that Mr MacMillan and others should ask advice of certain American officers before this appointment is made.

Rennell knew that Poletti was not even very popular among his own officers. In an earlier despatch written in June 1943, Rennell noted the US reaction to Poletti in North Africa:

He [Colonel Poletti] was very frigidly received by General George Patton’s staff. It took all Brigadier General McSherry’s powers to make the situation even tenable. The 1st [American] Division bluntly stated that they were quite capable of looking after Civil Affairs themselves in their sector and wanted no American or British officers under Colonel Poletti attached for the purpose.

Such forthright views had little effect on Poletti’s promotion to mainland Italy. In April 1944, Poletti contributed his own report on the black market to the Allied Control Commission (ACC). At the time, he was ACC Regional Commissioner for Campania, an area including Naples:

The most urgent problem is that of the ‘black market’. A reorganisation of distribution of AMG food has taken place and we are now using our own transport to take food from the docks to district warehouses. The police have been strengthened; individually they now have a greater appreciation of their jobs. Some of the head racketeers have been pulled in and it is hoped to bring about prosecution and sentences speedily.

Obviously, this did not include Vito Genovese – who was the biggest racketeer of all in the Naples area.

‘In the communes’, boasted Poletti, ‘citizen squads have been started with efforts to make the people feel that honesty can be achieved.’

Lucky Luciano had his own description of Poletti’s usefulness in Italy:

As it happened, the Army appointed Charlie Poletti, who was one of our good friends, as the military governor in Italy and Poletti kept that job for quite a long time . . . Vito wound up as the official Italian-American interpreter. Maybe if I had it to do again, I would’ve arranged for Poletti’s troops to line Vito up against a wall and shoot him.

Norman Lewis tells a story about AMG corruption involving an Italian industrialist who had been sent to jail for a year for dealing in stolen Allied goods. ‘His wife’, said Lewis, ‘went to the “Beacon”, the best of the Neapolitan brothels, and asked for the loan of their most intelligent girl. She dressed her in her smartest clothing, lent her her jewels, and paid 4,000 lire for the girl to impersonate her.’ The girl, pretending to be the industrialist’s wife, visited the AMG official and pleaded for the release of her husband. ‘The visit was a success’, continued Lewis, ‘and two days later the gates of Poggio Reale prison swung open for the industrialist. The average Neapolitan’s comment when hearing this typically Neapolitan story is, “What a pity she didn’t send a girl with the syphilis.”’

Vito Genovese continued to make a fortune from his mastery of the black market in wartime Italy until August 1944. Luke Monzelli claimed that a young Italian army sergeant investigated the discovery of a mysterious freight carriage full of cereal and salt parked in a siding near Nola. He revealed the link with Vizzini, but was told to forget about it – it was a secret military matter. He was later transferred out of the region, as was Monzelli.

It would be up to a fearless and determined 24-year-old US sergeant called Orange C. Dickey to blow Genovese’s cover.

Sergeant Dickey gave his account of his investigation into Vito Genovese in Italy before three law officers in the Brooklyn office of District Attorney George Beldock on 1 September 1945:

I arrived in Italy on or about the 19th day of December 1943. My assignment was Intelligence Sergeant of a Service Squadron. I was appointed criminal investigation agent [Criminal Investigation Division] on the 2nd of February.

He first came across the name of Vito Genovese in late April 1944. ‘At that time I was investigating the black-market activities in olive oil and wheat in Italy, between Foggia and Naples.’ Dickey had a lucky break in that a former senior gang-member of the Camorra had married an American girl and bought his way out of the organisation. This man now pointed the finger at Vito Genovese, calling him the head of the Mafia in southern Italy.

During the first part of May, Dickey single-handedly began a complete investigation of Vito Genovese in the district of Nola, east of Naples:

On or about the 2nd day of June, I proceeded to a vineyard located approximately seven miles from Nola proper in the Commune of San Gennaro, where I found several United States Army trucks which had been destroyed by fire.

In tracing these trucks by serial numbers and other identification means we found the trucks had been stolen from docks in Naples and been driven to a quartermaster supply depot, where they were loaded principally with flour and sugar, after which they were driven to the area where they were found by myself, and the supplies unloaded onto cars and transported into nearby towns, for sale – after which the trucks were destroyed.

Shortly after this discovery, Dickey arrested two Canadian soldiers who had deserted their posts to serve as drivers of these stolen trucks. ‘The important part of their statements’, said Dickey, ‘is the fact that they were told that when they reached the point of destination for these trucks, they were to say “Genovese sent us” . . . And the truck is parked and they are paid off and then leave the area.’ Dickey continued to gather his evidence and then presented it to his superior officers. They gave him the okay to arrest Genovese.

On the day that Genovese was arrested, a copy of a report from the Allied Provincial Public Safety Officer in Viterbo, north of Rome, was sent to Poletti’s office. Getting wind of the mobster’s imminent arrest, Poletti wanted to clarify exactly what their relationship had been with Genovese. The Viterbo report said:

Careful examination of the records and antecedents of the above named [Vito Genovese] has been made of all employees on the AMG Payroll of this Province, and it is definite that such a person is not employed in this Provincial organization.

That was hardly surprising as Genovese operated way to the south of Viterbo, around Naples. The report then tried to identity the mobster with another bad character:

In the records of the Questore a subject named Vito Genovese di Giuseppe, born on 12/7/88, at Avignano, resident in America for many years, was charged on 9th July 1935, before a Military Tribunal in Naples for the offence of desertion, and was sentenced to one years’ imprisonment in a Military Prison. He is known by the nickname of ‘Mafrita’, and it would appear that this man is identical to the subject of the enquiry.

Except that this man was not the same Genovese. He was almost a decade older and had been in prison in Italy while the gangster was running a criminal empire in the US. The same report did, however, acknowledge that Genovese was employed by Major Holmgreen and three other US officers. Now that was the real Genovese.

Whether this report was a genuine attempt to identify the mobster or a smoke-screen to distance the US administration in Italy from him, we will never know. It was dispatched on the exact day that Genovese was arrested.

On 27 August 1944, Vito Genovese arrived in the office of the mayor of Nola to request a travel permit. He was accompanied by an armed chauffeur. While the Mafioso’s bodyguard parked the car, Dickey made his move:

I approached Vito Genovese, in the company of two English soldiers, and requested that he accompany me to the Military Police Office in Nola, which he did . . . Immediately after the arrest of Vito Genovese, I proceeded to downtown Nola and confiscated the vehicle in which Genovese had been riding. This vehicle was an Italian civilian car, Fiat model 1500.

I searched the vehicle and in the compartment in the rear of the front seat – I mean the private front seat, I found two Italian weapons, one a 9-mm Beretta and the other a 7.65 Victoria – both fully loaded.

A few hours after the arrest of Genovese, Nicola Cutuli arrived at the AMG offices in Naples. He was Questore of Rome, the most senior investigative police officer in the country. He demanded that Genovese be released into his custody and taken to Rome. The Americans refused. Later, a sheet of paper with Cutuli’s name on it was found in Genovese’s apartment.

While Dickey proceeded with the paperwork of his arrest, an informant in Nola gave him a copy of a book entitled Gang Rule in New York City, by Craig Thompson and Raymond Allen, published in 1940. In the book, he found a photograph of Genovese and it identified him as a former gangster associate of Lucky Luciano. Dickey showed his prisoner the picture. ‘Sure’, said Genovese, ‘that’s me when I was in New York City.’ When he asked him about running the black market in Italy, he denied some of the charges but accepted others. Dickey now contacted the FBI and they informed him that Genovese was wanted for questioning over a murder in New York.

Coincidentally, earlier in the month, a New York newspaper report of 9 August 1944, said:

The whereabouts of all six [wanted for the murder of Ferdinand Boccia] were said to be unknown but an interesting sidelight on Genovese was that he was reported recently to have been in Italy acting as an interpreter for the Allied Military Government there.

‘The Army officials are going to bring him back’, said Brooklyn DA Thomas Hughes. ‘How or when he will brought back I cannot say.’

With Genovese safely under arrest, Dickey searched his apartment in Nola and found a bundle of documents:

Among these papers there was a small paper on which was written a number, easily identified as the number of a US Army truck. Beneath this number was written, ‘The Shed’. In a previous case I had learned that the shed was a large underground storeroom and was used as a storage place for contraband wheat.

Dickey then proceeded to Genovese’s apartment in Naples where he found large quantities of PX supplies, such as soap, candy bars and cigarettes. He also found a powerful radio receiver – used for receiving information on the arrival of valuable contraband. Among the documents found in Genovese’s apartments were several business cards and other papers that linked him to prominent businessmen in the area as well as judges, the mayor of Nola, the president of the Bank of Naples, and AMG officers.

There were nine official AMG travel passes, several just made out to the bearer – a sign of Genovese’s influence within AMG. They even entitled the bearer to fill up with American fuel. One was made out to a leading local dealer in olive oil. Two papers signed by AMG officers entitled Genovese to receive American food supplies – in violation of Army regulations. One business card belonged to Innocenza Monterisi, a mistress of Genovese who, according to Dickey, also supplied women for Allied officers.

Nowhere was found any significant stash of money. Dickey had his suspicions about a safe deposit vault in Banco del Lavoro in Nola. Genovese denied having a vault or a key for it. Dickey knew that one of Genovese’s henchmen had visited it on the day he was arrested. The bank records said the vault belonged to the gangster, but when he went before a tribunal in Naples, Dickey was refused a court order to force its opening.

Genovese was still in military custody in November 1944. Dickey was waiting for an arrest warrant to arrive for him from the US, but no one wanted to take a decision on what to do with him. There was no suggestion of putting him on trial for black-market charges in Italy. ‘At this time’, said Dickey, ‘the Army did not seem very interested in returning this man to the States, and I was told that I was “on my own, to do anything I cared to”.’ It was an extraordinary situation, but clearly Genovese’s associates in and outside the US Army were working their influence as best they could and stopped any fast action in the hope that Dickey might get fed up and let him go.

That this might be the tactics of very highly placed US officers was demonstrated when Dickey visited Rome to talk to Colonel Charles Poletti, then Commissioner of Allied Military Government in Italy. ‘I wanted him to tell me whether I should try him by civilian authorities’, said Dickey, ‘whether Allied Military Government intends to try him, or whether the US Army has control, or what I should do with him.’

He arrived at Poletti’s headquarters at 10.00 a.m. and was told to go straight to his office and walk in. Excited at the prospect of finally getting some advice on what to do next with Genovese, Dickey pushed open the door of Poletti’s room, but he wouldn’t be getting any sense out of the colonel. ‘He seemed to be asleep’, remembered Dickey. ‘He had his arms folded on the desk and his head down on his arms.’ Dickey returned twice more that day to see Poletti but did not get to speak to him:

On both these occasions his office was jammed with people . . . I was kept waiting on both occasions for long periods, and after making several attempts to talk to him, I left . . . [Poletti was] just walking around, giving orders to the girls; but it didn’t seem to be essential business, just more or less enjoying himself.

It was outrageous behaviour from Poletti who, obviously, did not want to be dragged into the Genovese affair. Then, in the hall outside Poletti’s office, Dickey bumped into William O’Dwyer who was on leave from his post as District Attorney in Brooklyn to serve in Italy. He knew all about the Genovese case but underlined the policy of his boss, Poletti, to steer well clear of it. He advised Dickey to bypass his senior officers and deal directly with Brooklyn DA Thomas Hughes. O’Dwyer was later charged by a grand jury with incompetently failing to prosecute senior mobster Albert Anastasia.

Returning from Rome to Naples, Dickey reported Poletti’s behaviour to his immediate superior officer. ‘He took no particular notice of the information’, recalled Dickey, ‘said that he had heard rumors to that effect previously, and with a few casual remarks it was dismissed. So that is the last that was said about Genovese up until the time I made an all-out effort for his extradition.’

Dickey pressed on, but by now Genovese was getting desperate. The mobster offered Dickey $250,000 to forget about the whole matter and let him go. At the time, the US Sergeant was earning just $210 a month. ‘Now, look, you are young’, Genovese told him, ‘and there are things you don’t understand. This is the way it works. Take the money. You are set for the rest of your life. Nobody cares what you do. Why should you?’ When Dickey refused the money, the mobster turned nasty and threatened his life and that of his family. Dickey would not be intimidated.

Finally, in January 1945, Dickey got the news he had been waiting for. With the help of the War Department, the Brooklyn DA’s office had set in motion extradition proceedings. The news travelled fast. Just seven days later, Genovese’s American mobster friends swung into action. The one witness to his involvement in the murder of Boccia was Peter La Tempa, but he was in jail. No problem for Genovese’s friends. On 15 January 1945, La Tempa awoke in his cell with acute gallstone pains. The valuable witness was then given sedatives strong enough ‘to kill eight horses’. Luciano later claimed it was Frank Costello and his associates who set up the murder.

With the only major witness against Genovese gone, the mobster no longer feared returning to the US. In fact, he was glad of the free return journey. ‘Kid’, he said to Dickey, ‘you are doing me the biggest favor anyone has ever done to me. You are taking me home. You are taking me back to the USA.’ Dickey was designated Genovese’s guard on the voyage across the Atlantic. Handcuffed together they set sail on board the steamship James Lykes and arrived in New York on the morning of 1 June 1945.

No one met Dickey and his gangster prisoner at the port. He had to organise his own transport to arrive at the District Attorney’s office of Kings County in Brooklyn that afternoon. He presented himself to the policeman on duty and DA assistant Edward A. Heffernan came down to greet them. When Heffernan recognised the mobster chained to Dickey’s wrist, he whispered into the young man’s ear. ‘Do you mind my saying’, said Heffernan, ‘I am surprised. We never expected to see this boy back here.’ Heffernan was later charged, alongside his boss O’Dwyer, with failing to prosecute gangster Anastasia.

When Genovese finally appeared before a US court in June 1946, all charges were dropped against him for lack of evidence. ‘By devious means’, said the county Judge, ‘among which were the terrorizing of witnesses, kidnapping them, yes, even murdering those who could give evidence against you, you have thwarted justice time and again.’ Dressed smartly in a double-breasted blue suit, white shirt and maroon tie, Genovese smiled. He was now free to continue his career as one of the top Mafiosi in America and exploit his links with the old Mafia in Sicily.

Dickey’s heroic efforts had all been in vain.