Chapter Eighteen

Courteous Raiders

What was it like to be on a train raided by Salvatore Giuliano’s bandits? Flight Lieutenant R. J. H. Gillingham knew – he was there. Gillingham was returning from a visit to an RAF base near Trapani to Palermo when his train came to a crashing halt outside a tunnel near Partinico on the afternoon of 23 January 1946:

There were two loud bangs, which I imagined were caused by the train hitting some rocks on the lines. Almost immediately all the passengers dived for cover and I heard the sound of shots on the starboard side. The driver quickly brought the train to a standstill.

Shots were fired over the train and it was quickly boarded by persons carrying weapons and after some talk in Italian the passengers began leaving the train. I was the last to leave it, with the exception of the women, and as I got out I stated to one of the bandits that I was English. He made me understand that I was to stay where I was and made some remark similar to ‘Inglesi buono’.

The rest of the male passengers were taken 100 yards away from the train and had their money and valuables taken from them. The passengers’ suitcases were then thrown from the train on to an embankment where they were looted. ‘As my suitcase was still in the train’, said Gillingham, ‘I managed to make one of the bandits realise that it was there and he gave me to understand that I should go to the other side of the train, whereupon I was handed my luggage and told to go back to the port side.’ After the luggage had been robbed, the passengers were told they could get back onto the train. But the engine was damaged and they had to wait for another locomotive to arrive to tow them to the nearest station.

When Gillingham got back to his hotel in Palermo, he was interviewed by a US Navy Intelligence officer, who wanted to know everything about the raid. Gillingham also passed the details of his experience on to the British Consulate. ‘I should just like to add’, he told the British consul, ‘that I was spoken to courteously by the bandits, more so when they became aware that I was an Englishman, and that they, as far as was possible, went out of their way to be courteous to me.’

The reason for the bandits’ courtesy is that they were part of Salvatore Giuliano’s gang and, still being Separatists, held out hopes for the Allies intervening on their behalf against the Italian government.

The level of lawlessness in Sicily in early 1946 attracted the attention of several Allied intelligence organisations. Special Agents Gabriel B. Celetta and Saverio Forte worked for the US Army CIC Naples Detachment. They made a special study of the Separatist violence in Sicily and uncovered some startling connections with the Mafia. They identified two main rebel bands in operation on the island. One band was composed of about a hundred Separatists, two members of which were Duca di Carcace, a leader of EVIS, and his aide, Giuseppe Tasca, son of Lucio Tasca, the first mayor of Palermo during the Allied occupation.

Also with this band is the Giuliano outlaw gang [said Celetta and Forte], composed of about eighty men. This latter group, headed by Salvatore Giuliano, has made common cause with the Separatists on promises from the Separatists that in the event of a victory the members of the Giuliano band would be given full amnesty and richly rewarded for their effort in the ‘liberation movement’.

This first band functioned in the west of the island. A second band, originally led by Concetto Gallo and operating in the east, had been reduced in their significance ever since his capture at the end of 1945. The members of these rebel bands were said to be well equipped with modern American, British, German and Italian rifles, machine guns, hand grenades and several mortars. Radio transmitting and receiving sets were used by them to co-ordinate their movements. Despite this impressive armoury, it had come to the attention of Special Agents Celetta and Forte that many Mafiosi were no longer interested in supporting the rebel Separatists:

They too would like to see the Italian Government allow these misdirected EVISsts to disband and returned to their homes. The undersigned Agents have been reliably informed that should this come about, the Mafia themselves would quickly liquidate both the remnants of the Niscemi band [in the east of the island] and the Giuliano outlaws. The Mafia is known to be well represented in every city, town and hamlet in Sicily.

According to Celetta and Forte, the Mafia wanted to reassert their dominance over banditry in Sicily and were willing to kill those who would not submit to them and the government. That said, the CIC agents did admit that some important members of the Mafia were still sympathetic to the Separatist cause. They mentioned Don Calogero Vizzini as being especially close to Lucio Tasca, whose son was directly involved with the rebel band. ‘Vizzini has the utmost faith in Lucio Tasca’, said the agents, ‘thus the possible danger of a Mafia – Separatist outlaw affiliation, which would indeed be a combination hard to curb.’

Celetta and Forte interviewed General Amedeo Branca, overall commander of the Carabinieri on the island, and Colonel Armando Calabro, commander of the Palermo Carabinieri, and they admitted their weakness in weaponry in the face of the bandit gangs. The Carabinieri commanders wanted the government either to grant the outlaws an amnesty or send large reinforcements from the mainland, including 6,000 extra men, a dozen armoured cars and fifty jeeps. It wasn’t helping the situation that the rebels were getting extra arms from across the sea. ‘Reliable information’, said the CIC agents, ‘has been obtained that American arms and ammunition are being smuggled from Calabria for use by the rebels. American and British uniforms are also being worn by some members of the EVIS.’

There were even rumours of Allied agents going native and fighting alongside the Separatists. A British intelligence officer from Palermo, called Major Oliver, was said to be one of the Allied deserters to have joined them. It was an added complication – and embarrassment – that the Allied authorities would definitely want buried. The involvement of renegade Allied officers, caught up in the web of Mafia and Separatists, seemed to be a growing reality as Celetta and Forte uncovered another surprising secret alliance:

Information has been obtained by these Agents that an Italian named Nicola Gentile, a member of the Mafia, who was deported from the United States in 1937 has returned to Palermo from a trip to Rome with a story that while in Rome he had been approached by an American Colonel who had known Gentile in the United States.

The American Colonel had taken Gentile to meet Prince Umberto, Lieutenant General of the Realm, and there had been told to convey a message to the Sicilian Mafia that their united effort to back the Monarchy was desired. The American Colonel had then told Gentile that the retention of the Monarchy was also what the United States desired.

This rang alarm bells with Celetta and Forte who wanted to investigate the claim immediately and identify the American colonel. Lucky Luciano knew Nick Gentile and he knew Colonel Poletti, both of whom had been operating on different sides of the law in New York before the war. Gentile had worked for Luciano during the Castellammarese War. Had he and Poletti met up in Rome? It is an intriguing possibility. Poletti’s military service in Rome came to an end in November 1945. He then joined a Manhattan law firm as a senior partner. During 1946 – 7, he served as an arbitrator for labour disputes in the New York coat and suit industry.

In late January 1946, while still in Palermo, Celetta and Forte picked up news that Giuliano’s gang had graduated from robbing trains and buses to attacking a strategically more important target – the Bocca di Falco airfield, just a few miles from the centre of the city. It was used by both Americans and Italians, said the CIC agents:

One of the objectives of the gang may be the destruction of several tri-motored Italian airplanes on the airfield which they may fear might be used against them, either for reconnaissance or strafing purposes. Attempts have also been made on several occasions against the motor pool and the communications equipment belonging to the Italians.

Aside from robberies, Giuliano also led raids against Carabinieri bases. On the night of 7/8 January, they attacked a Carabinieri HQ and killed three policemen and wounded fifteen more. A second attack on Carabinieri barracks led to the capture of six more policemen. By the end of January, the alliance between the Mafia faction led by Calogero Vizzini and the rebels, feared by CIC Special Agents Celetta and Forte, seemed in danger of happening. They warned:

Because of the threatened arrest of Vizzini, one of the Mafia leaders and a fiery Separatist, the Mafia has threatened to order active participation by the Sicilian Mafia on the side of EVIS and the outlaw bands. Because of their known power, this would mean real civil war in Sicily. Vizzini’s threatened arrest is said to be caused by the alleged confession of an EVIS rebel who has stated that he was personally recruited for the EVIS by Vizzini to fight against the Carabinieri.

Aldisio, the High Commissioner of Sicily, tried to defuse the situation as he knew that Vizzini was trying to negotiate a compromise settlement with the government. Instead of being arrested, Vizzini was told to leave Palermo and go back to Caltanisetta. Celetta and Forte spoke to Aldisio in early February and he told them that the Italian government would be willing to negotiate with EVIS only from a position of strength. Proof of the government’s muscle arrived in the form of nearly 1,000 troops from the Garibaldi Regiment, equipped with armoured cars. Celetta and Forte confirmed this:

The undersigned witnessed the arrival of several companies of troops from the Garibaldi Regt as they marched through the streets of Palermo. They appeared to be seasoned troops, apparently armed with British rifles and automatic weapons, clothed in British battle dress, but with distinctive Italian Alpini headgear. There was no cheering on the part of the Palermo natives – only a deep silence – very un-Italian in character.

The CIC agents then spoke to Colonel Calabro, Carabinieri commander of the Palermo region, and he disclosed that the Carabinieri also had the assistance of an Allied military advisor – a British major. He immediately made a request for extra uniforms, weapons and vehicles for the police forces. The government meant business but it had a time limit – just twenty days – before the extra troops would have to go back to the mainland.

As troops of the Garibaldi Regiment prepared themselves for an assault on the Mafia, some of them were caught up in a dispute on the streets of Palermo involving Allied servicemen.

At about 20:00 hours on 9 February 1946 [said Celetta and Forte], four American sailors, allegedly intoxicated, engaged in a free-for-all in the streets of Palermo, in which members of the Garibaldi Regiment . . . and civilians participated. During the fracas, several shots were fired over the heads of the combatants by Italian police. A grenade was thrown by the usual ‘unknown person’ and two civilians were injured.

The Giornale di Sicilia gave a more detailed account of the street fight in Via Roma:

The [sailors], undoubtedly drunk, addressed the Italian soldiers with insults in Neapolitan dialect, and the latter asked for the reason of such free insults. As a reply, the sailors started to fight.

It is believed that they were ready to fight because they drew out their belts and wrapped their fists with them, leaving the buckles exposed. The four soldiers were beaten and only one of them could escape, though he had a pistol, while the others tried to protect themselves from the hail of blows. A huge crowd of several hundreds of people gathered around the fighters and a few civilians tried to take away the unfortunate soldiers from the aggressor’s hands, but they were also given violent blows.

Eventually, the police and a Naval shore patrol arrived to break up the fight. Celetta and Forte investigated the incident and tried to dampen down newspaper coverage of it. Threats of revenge were heard from Italian soldiers against the American sailors and it was feared this might spark further incidents and political unrest. Celetta and Forte even considered that the fight might have been a set-up by agents wanting to create ill feeling between Sicilians and Americans.

The government offensive against Giuliano and his bandits began in the second week of February. It centred on the mountainous region of Montelepre where Giuliano had his base. According to a US military intelligence report of Thursday 14 February:

Large military forces are fanning out along the hills and the operations are beginning to yield excellent results. The ‘Nembochi’ Division and ‘Aosta’ Brigade are with the ‘Folgore’ Division, as well as the regiment of the ‘Garibaldi’ division. Today four bombers and reconnaissance aircraft went into action.

Controversially, flamethrowers were used to force the rebels from their mountain hide-outs. Over a hundred bandits were arrested and the equipment seized included horses, mules, numerous weapons, a mixture of old 1891 rifles and looted German guns, and stores of ammunition. A government spokesman later denied the use of flamethrowers.

On 21 February, it was reported that Captain Mazola, a well-known Sicilian bandit leader of EVIS, had been captured in Palermo province. Some 300 suspected bandits were taken into custody with him, plus rifles, grenades, and 200 light guns. On 27 February, an AFHQ report mentioned that army units in the Prizzi – Bivona – Licara area had arrested a further 300 suspects and captured two 47-mm guns, machine guns, and small arms. The bandits were feeling the pressure and a 200-strong unit of EVIS was noted to be on the move, led by a bandit called Avila and a Separatist Nino, alias ‘Cannone’. They were planning to attack an army barracks.

By early March, however, the area south of Palermo had been secured. An Allied intelligence report recorded that a mopping-up operation in the Corleone area, conducted by detachments of the Garibaldi Regiment and Carabinieri, detained fifty outlaws and took possession of rifles, machine-guns, hand grenades and other military material.

EVIS as a military force was at an end. Giuliano and his followers remained at large, but the news of the arrest of other major EVIS leaders impacted on the prospects of the Separatists. With their guerrilla units defeated in the field, all Finocchiaro Aprile and his party colleagues could look forward to were the national elections to be held in June 1946. They were released from prison in March, but they faced an uphill struggle. In May, the Italian government outmanoeuvred them by devolving more power to the high commissioner of Sicily and establishing a regional assembly of twenty-four members representing various aspects of Sicilian life.

The gift of autonomy completely undercut the appeal of the Separatists and Finocchiaro Aprile faced final humiliation on 2 June. Out of forty-nine deputies elected in Sicily, only four were Separatist candidates – Finocchiaro Aprile, Antonino Varvaro, Concetto Gallo, and Attilio Castrogiovanni – the latter two, EVIS commanders, were in prison at the time of the election but were released because of parliamentary immunity. The Separatist party received only 8.71 percent of the total vote or 166,609 votes, despite claiming a signed-up membership before the election of 600,000.

CIC Special Agent Gabriel Celetta returned to Sicily in June with a new partner, Frank de Santis, to investigate the political and criminal situation following the election. At first they considered the Separatists were no longer an important factor. A month later, it got worse:

The Separatist Movement is at present undergoing a serious crisis, caused by dissatisfaction and disaffection within the organization . . . Finocchiaro Aprile is said to have been strongly criticized because of his chameleon attitude, prior, during and after the 2 June elections.

The clear winners on the island and across Italy were the Christian Democrats. It was a slap in the face for those Mafiosi who still believed in Separatism, and, if they had any doubts left, they quickly switched all their powers of patronage and intrigue to the Christian Democrats. This would be their party of the future. It was now a two-horse race for political power in Sicily – between the Christian Democrats and the Communists.

Released from their association with the Separatists, the Mafia were seeking to stake their own claim to power and influence on the island. ‘The Mafia is alive again on a greater and more dangerous scale than ever before’, said Celetta and Santis in their July 1946 CIC report. But they noted a new generation of more violent mobsters was contesting the power of the old gangsters:

At present those professing to be ‘Mafiosi’ are under no control, each one works for himself and keeps all spoils. Old time Mafiosi who, after the fall of Fascism, had begun to operate ‘legitimately’, as before, are in opposition to this new Mafia and often the police find individuals who have been mysteriously killed. The present crop of Mafiosi are often ex-soldiers and well armed.

An Allied military intelligence summary of June reinforced this view. Mafia gangsters were said to be killing rival small-time criminals at a rate of four to five every night. Even the Socialist mayor of Palermo was stopped by Mafiosi and robbed, but, it was noted, a party of Monarchists passing the same place a few minutes before were unmolested. This was a reference, perhaps, to mobster Nick Gentile’s dalliance with Monarchists in Rome.

Despite the successful military campaign against Separatist EVIS gangs at the start of the year, Celetta and Santis reported that banditry remained a major problem on the island:

The most notorious of the brigand bands and one of the largest is the group headed by Giuliano operating in the vicinity of Palermo. Members of this band have penetrated the city of Palermo itself and openly kidnapped rich merchants, who are often murdered when the requested ransom is not promptly paid.

Giuliano’s success is partly due to the Sicilian hero-worship of bold malefactors and the fact that the 23 year old bandit operates ‘à la Robin Hood’, often giving money and succor to the needy by whom he is kept informed when danger of capture threatens his band.

Poor Sicilians were not the only fans of Giuliano, according to the CIC agents:

His reputation and renown has spread even to the ranks of personnel of the American Naval Detachment in Palermo, who have been heard to openly praise Giuliano as being the best man in Sicily today and should be made its first president. According to them he is doing good by taking money from war profiteers and distributing a good part of it amongst the needy.

Having survived the flamethrowers of the Italian Army, and with the praise of some Allied personnel, Giuliano was now ready to re-position himself – no longer as a Separatist guerrilla – but as an anti-Communist hero.

On 3 January 1946, Governor Thomas E. Dewey commuted Lucky Luciano’s sentence – along with the sentences of six other foreign convicts held in US prisons – in preparation for their deportation. Luciano was forty-eight years old.

Luciano is deportable to Italy [said Dewey in a statement to the Legislature]. Upon the entry of the United States into the war, Luciano’s aid was sought by the armed services in inducing others to provide information concerning possible enemy attack. It appears that he cooperated in such effort though the actual value of the information procured is not clear. His record in prison is reported as wholly satisfactory.

To the press, Moses Polakoff repeated his assertion that Luciano’s help had been given over two years, was related to the invasion of Sicily, and was procured by Gurfein, who had been a special prosecutor on Dewey’s staff.

The deportation process took just over a month. On 2 February, Luciano was taken from jail and placed in a cell on Ellis Island. He was visited by Frank Costello and Polakoff. ‘He was locked and guarded’, said Ellis Island Chief of Detention, Lloyd H. Jensen. ‘Costello brought him his baggage and other personal items. His room was as plain as all the others in his wing, contained just a chair, a bed, a toilet. Costello came on one ferry and left on the next.’

However, New York Times journalist Meyer Berger made several surprising claims in his 9 February 1946 report of Luciano’s deportation:

Luciano was under sentence of from thirty to fifty years but was pardoned by Dewey, ostensibly for help he gave the Office of Strategic Services before the Army’s Italy invasion. It is understood that Luciano provided Army Intelligence with the names of Sicilian and Neapolitan Camorra members, and a list of Italians sent back to their native country after criminal conviction in the United States; that many of these men helped defeat the enemy in Italy.

In the light of subsequent revelations, it appears that Berger got it wrong about the OSS and Army Intelligence – he should have said Naval Intelligence. But even he knew some deal had been struck between the government and the gangster. Again, little mystery here. It is interesting to note that the journalist alleged a Neapolitan mob connection. This would make a lot of sense, as Luciano, through Vito Genovese, would have had access to Neapolitan crime rings. This was never mentioned by Naval Intelligence.

On 9 February, Luciano was escorted by two agents of the US Immigration Service onto the 7,000-ton freighter Laura Keene. He spent the night on board, ready to sail from Bush Terminal, Brooklyn, the next morning. Journalists crowded on the dockside begging to be allowed to interview him. Luciano declined to answer any of their questions. ‘I’ve seen the press enough’, he growled. To stop any journalists breaking onto the ship, a menacing guard of longshoremen was provided by the Mafia, each of them armed with baling hooks.

Aside from a cargo of flour, it was claimed, Luciano was the only passenger on board the ship. Rumours in the press said he had a farewell dinner of spaghetti and wine held on the ship the night before his departure. Six men were said to have attended the party, including Frank Costello and Albert Anastasia. Meyer Lansky was on board for the farewell party and he remembered it more precisely than the newspaper reports:

We had a wonderful meal aboard, all kinds of seafood fresh from the Fulton Fish Market, and spaghetti and wine and a lot of kosher delicacies. They brought it in huge hampers, along with crates of French champagne . . .

Lucky also wanted us to bring some girls to take along with him on the ship to keep him company. I asked Adonis to do something about that . . . Joe found three showgirls from the Copocabana Club and there was no difficult in getting them aboard. The authorities cooperated even on that. Nobody going into exile ever had a better send-off.

According to Lansky, the guest list of mobsters on board included Bugsy Siegel, William Moretti, Frank Costello, Tommy Lucchese, Joe Adonis, Stefano Magaddino, Albert Anastasia and Joe Bonanno. As Luciano sipped champagne, they joked about old times and how they used to ship illicit liquor across the Atlantic. Bonanno, however, denied ever being at the farewell party.

‘There was no indication whether Luciano would debark at Genoa, the ship’s first port of call’, speculated a newspaper, ‘or continue to Sicily. Underworld gossip had it that within a short time the gangster would leave his homeland for a base of operations nearer the United States.’

The New York Herald Tribune took a more robust approach to Luciano’s departure. In an article entitled ‘Luciano Departs for Italy with 3,500 Tons of Flour’, it quoted former New York Mayor La Guardia. ‘I’m sorry Italy is getting this bum back’, he said. La Guardia was also angry that Frank Costello, a known racketeer, had been allowed to visit Luciano a week before his departure while held at Ellis Island. During a radio broadcast interview, he asked the New York Police Commissioner ‘What is the limit of Costello’s power in the city?’

After a seventeen-day voyage, the Laura Keene arrived in Naples on 28 February. Straight away, Lucky Luciano visited the local police headquarters and explained to them that he would stay in Naples briefly with a relative and then travel on to Sicily to see other family members. After that, he planned to tour Italy. A journalist asked him to explain what help he had given to the US government to gain his early release. This is exactly what Luciano feared. He didn’t want the whole of Italy knowing he had collaborated with the foreign invaders. ‘You know I can’t talk about those things’, he said – and that was that.

Fifteen years later, Luciano recalled his plans for his first months of freedom:

The last day on Ellis Island, Lansky and me had a meet, just the two of us. I told him sometin’ that none of the other guys knew up to that point – that I had already made connections in Italy to get visas under my real name, Salvatore Lucania, that would be good for Cuba and Mexico and a whole lotta countries in South America . . .

Of course, I had another reason for pickin’ Havana. The war bein’ over, people was beginnin’ to flock there, what with the place bein’ wide open, the gamblin’ good and the broads beautiful. With a combination like that, Lansky and his friend Batista [former President of Cuba] was rakin’ the dough in and I had no intention of bein’ left out of that . . .

Luciano wanted to cut the 4,000 miles Dewey was putting between him and New York to just ninety miles between Miami and Havana.

In Sicily, Luciano visited his home town – Lercara Friddi – 50 miles inland from Palermo. When he arrived, the main piazza was packed with people. The mayor, wearing the red sash reserved for occasions of state, welcomed the gangster and invited him to sign the official register. Everyone cheered him. A cousin then stepped forward and introduced Luciano to other members of his family. In the evening, long tables were put out in the piazza and every woman brought a dish of food – saved over days from their meagre rations. Luciano sat down to a feast of spaghetti marinara.

Luciano was moved by his reception and distributed money and gave away some of his clothes to his family. Best of all, he paid to turn part of a house into a cinema where they watched movies for the first time in the town.

The first picture we showed [said Luciano], Little Caesar, made me such a big man like you’d never believe. The people were comin’ up to me and practically kissin’ my hand – not only because I brought them the pictures but because they wanted to show me that I was a bigger shot than Little Caesar. They made me feel like Salvatore Maranzano.

Luciano had long resisted the traditional Sicilian Mafia style of his former boss, but in Lercara Friddi he was submerged in it. After a few days, Luciano moved back to Palermo. His presence was noted by the British consulate in July:

The ex Sicilian gangster Luciano, who was recently deported from the United States is living at the Hotel delle Palme (the most important hotel in town). I am told, on good authority, that some of the leading members of the Mafia have called on him at the hotel on more than one occasion. Rumour has it that he is now in somebody’s pay working against the communists.

This bandit, or ex-bandit, is very much in the public eye. He has two luxurious American motor cars; dresses and lives expensively, and is often seen in the company of an elegant but vulgar Italo-American woman.

The reference to Luciano being funded to work against Sicilian Communists is interesting. Does it indicate that he still had links with US Naval Intelligence but in a new Cold War role? It would not be surprising as he spent much of his criminal career enjoying an ambivalent relationship with the authorities – using them to his own advantage and to defeat rivals.

After Palermo, Luciano went back to Naples and Rome. The Italian black market in American goods was as profitable as it had been under Vito Genovese. Luciano linked up with Mafiosi in Sicily and mainland Italy and, by the autumn of 1946, the mobster had replenished his coffers and felt ready to return to the world of American crime. Luciano does not mention Don Calogero Vizzini at all, but does deal with a leading Sicilian Mafioso called ‘Il Barone’ – Riccardo Barone.

Luciano arrived in Havana, Cuba, in October 1946 and, despite his distaste for the title, assumed the mantle of Boss of Bosses. With Meyer Lansky, he organised a meeting of the top American Mafiosi at the Hotel Nacional in December. Frank Sinatra flew in to entertain them.

Vito Genovese turned up at Luciano’s palatial residence in Havana and revealed his ambition by suggesting that the Sicilian go into retirement. When he refused, Genovese demanded half of the black-market business in Italy. ‘I set up that whole thing in Europe’, said Genovese, ‘the black market, the truck routes to Germany, everything.’

‘You’re nuts’, snapped back Luciano. ‘I ain’t going back to Italy. I’m stayin’ in Cuba.’

‘I understand different’, said Genovese. ‘I heard that Washington knows you’re in Havana and they’re getting ready to put the screws on the jerks in Cuba to get you thrown out.’

‘You greedy fuckin’ pig’, shouted Luciano.

‘As we was yelling’ at each other’, remembered Luciano, ‘it suddenly come back into my head what that shitheel had done during the war . . . workin’ hand-in-glove in Italy with our enemies and with the Nazis . . . So I done somethin’ that I never done before . . . I pushed him up against the wall and I beat the livin’ daylights out of him . . . I told him he was . . . a fink American who turned on his own country like a fuckin’ traitor.’

Genovese was badly beaten, but he was right. The US government put pressure on the Cuban government and Luciano was thrown out of the island, returning to Italy in April 1947. Genovese now became the dominant figure in the New York underworld.