CHAPTER ELEVEN
AUGUST 18, 1956
ASTOR HOTEL
NEW YORK CITY
6:00 P.M.
It has been five years since organized crime was exposed on national television. But instead of being cowed, the Mafia has grown even stronger—especially in New York.
Three thousand guests pack the ballroom in this Times Square hotel. Among them are the heads of America’s twenty-four major crime families, including Mafia kingpins Vito Genovese, Albert Anastasia, Sam Giancana, and Joe Profaci.1 Frank Costello of the Luciano family is currently serving an eleven-month sentence for tax evasion and obviously cannot attend. Longtime kingpin and Costello ally Joe Adonis is also absent, now living in Milan, Italy, after deportation by the U.S. government.
Despite the public awareness brought forth by the Kefauver hearings five years ago, the Mob has thrived, as evidenced by this lavish sit-down dinner reception. Gambling and illegal narcotics are the foundation of the increased affluence, and havens like Las Vegas and Havana allow the Mafia to flourish in settings sympathetic to them. Yet America in 1956 is in transition, and criminals are being forced to change right along with the country.
Some historians will later view ’56 as the most pivotal year of the decade. The Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union has intensified, and the fear of a nuclear doomsday is very real. Dwight Eisenhower will soon be reelected even though his calm persona and centrist policies are seemingly out of touch with the violent clashes between blacks and whites now ravaging the Deep South. In addition, Congress has passed into law a bill that will construct an interstate highway system, spurring suburban growth and bringing forth new inventions such as the motel and the drive-in movie theater.
But the shift in American culture goes beyond race and roads. Elvis Presley released the breakout smash song “Heartbreak Hotel” in January, ushering in the rock ’n’ roll sound that now pushes aside crooners like Mob favorite Frank Sinatra. This new mania is accompanied by a more low-key movement known as the Beat Generation, which turns its back on traditional American values to embrace free sexuality and recreational drugs. And while no Mafioso in the ballroom tonight would ever dream of donning a beret and playing the bongo drum in the manner of some Beat gatherings, they are more than happy to provide the marijuana and heroin that fuel some “beatnik” behavior.
But onstage here at the Astor, rock ’n’ roll has no place. Instead, Anthony Dominick Benedetto, who performs under the name Tony Bennett, croons for the mingling crowd. At thirty, Bennett is a singing sensation, but out of respect for the gathering he performs tonight gratis. Another prominent Italian, Eugenio Maria Giovanni Pacelli, sends his best wishes and blessings from Rome. The eighty-year-old Pacelli is known worldwide as Pope Pius XII. The pontiff’s motives for involving himself in a Mafia wedding are unclear, but the bride and groom are making plans to stop at the Vatican during their honeymoon to pay their respects.
The occasion at the Astor is the wedding of Rosalie Profaci and Salvatore “Bill” Bonanno, uniting two of New York’s most powerful crime families. This is the largest gathering of Mafia notables since the Havana Conference, but the mood is celebration, not business. The groom’s father, Joseph Bonanno, a.k.a. Joe Bananas, watches over the proceedings, proud that he has reunited the Mob, if only for one night. He has carefully scrutinized the seating arrangements, making sure that rivals are on the opposite side of the hall from one another.
But no matter where they are, all can easily see the seventeen-foot-tall wedding cake.
“At least they came,” Bonanno will later reminisce. “They were making an effort to be nice.”
“Nice” does not last long.
The date is May 2, 1957. Frank Costello is temporarily out of “the jug,” as he terms it, having been released from prison on bail. Before the Kefauver hearings, Costello’s only conviction had been forty years earlier for carrying a gun. But his televised performance changed the mobster’s life, making him the focus of intense government scrutiny into his business dealings. In 1954, he was convicted for evading $28,532 in federal taxes. But this past March he was temporarily set free on $25,000 bail to await a ruling on whether his actual sentence should be five years or time served.
New York City has long been divided among what is known as the Five Families, all descended from Sicilian immigrants. The Bonanno, Lucchese, Luciano, Gambino, and Profaci families are also part of the nationwide organized crime consortium known as the Commission. The boss of each family, as well as leaders of the Buffalo, New Orleans, and Tampa mobs, and Chicago’s Outfit, hold sway in settling disagreements. To prevent turf wars, each family’s territory in the five boroughs and New Jersey is controlled by this collective. Should a leader become unstable and need to be replaced, permission from all the other bosses is required.
Right now, Frank Costello feels safe. It’s true that the deportation of Joe Adonis, as well as the three years spent in jail, have weakened the mobster’s hold on the Luciano crime family. Yet Costello is sure that his allies will remain loyal. He has a longtime alliance with Albert Anastasia, who now heads his own crime family after murdering former Gambino boss Vincent Mangano in April 1951, even as the Kefauver hearings were still in session. Costello is also close with Tommy Lucchese of the Bronx and New Jersey Mob, a man known for his diplomacy. The three men form a majority within the five families. This should keep Costello in power long after his legal woes pass—or so he hopes.
Unbeknownst to the Prime Minister of the Underworld, as Costello is nicknamed, Vito Genovese is now quietly attempting to pull Lucchese over to his side.
Frank Costello is enjoying his freedom in New York City. He spent several hours on this warm spring day at the Biltmore Hotel, relaxing in a Turkish bath. Then it was on to dinner at the white tablecloth French-Italian restaurant L’Aiglon with his wife, Bobbie, and a few friends. But when the party moves to the bar for drinks, Costello excuses himself and takes a cab to his seven-room Manhattan apartment across the street from Central Park. The time is 10:55 p.m. The mobster does not notice the large black Cadillac that follows the taxi, then slows to a stop in front of the landmark Majestic apartment building.
Costello greets doorman Norvel Keith as he enters the lobby.
Suddenly, a thick Italian voice shouts at the mobster: “This is for you, Frank!”
Costello instinctively turns his head toward the yelling, even as his burly assailant fires a .38-caliber pistol from fifteen feet away. The hit man, Vinny “the Chin” Gigante, is a former boxer who now works as an enforcer for Vito Genovese. Costello recognizes the three-hundred-pound assassin in the split second before a bullet creases the right side of his skull.
Instantly, blood spurts from the wound as Costello falls hard onto a leather lobby couch. Gigante pushes past the doorman and out onto Seventy-Second Street, where the black Cadillac awaits. As the car speeds away, Vinnie the Chin is sure he has conducted a successful hit on the great Frank Costello.
But Costello is alive.
The act of his name being called out before the round left the gun barrel allowed Costello to turn his head just enough to literally dodge the bullet. Though blood flows from the wound, the Mob boss is merely grazed. He is immediately taken by taxi to Roosevelt Hospital, where doctors confirm that the bullet entered near Costello’s right ear and traced the curvature of his skull before exiting just above the neck. Incredibly, X-rays show absolutely no damage to his skull.
Meanwhile, as the surgeons do their work, New York police conduct a surreptitious search of Frank Costello’s belongings. “Gross casino wins as of 4-26-57,” reads one scrap of paper: “$651,284.” A subsequent investigation reveals the money to be his “take” from the brand-new Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas. This is the first confirmed involvement between the New York Mob and the Vegas casinos.
That fluke piece of evidence is enough to have Frank Costello returned to prison.
But it is the near assassination that changes his life. When called upon to name his assailant in court, the boss invokes the code of omertà, claiming he didn’t recognize the man who shot him. “I don’t have an enemy in the world,” Costello tells the NYPD, apparently befuddled as to why anyone would try to kill him. “I must have been mistaken for someone else.”
Yet Frank Costello knows that Vito Genovese will not rest until he takes control of the Luciano crime family, which would certainly mean death for Costello. At sixty-six years old, he is financially comfortable and enjoys the love of the former showgirl to whom he has been married for almost forty years.
So rather than endure the threat of another hit, Costello takes the unprecedented step of “retiring” from the Mafia. He will return to prison to complete his sentence, then upon his release live out his days at the Majestic, no longer boss of the Luciano crime family. Costello settles into a daily routine of rising at 9:00 a.m., walking to the Waldorf Astoria for a shave, manicure, and shoeshine, lunch at the Madison Hotel, and then evenings entertaining celebrities at the Majestic’s corner apartment 18F. Costello’s days of worrying about law enforcement arrest or a surprise Mafia hit are over. He is even on record as seeing a psychologist once a week to discuss his feelings.2
Vito Genovese, who has patiently bided his time since that long-ago attempt to take control at the Havana Conference, wants nothing to do with retirement. His only concerns are power and wealth.
Vito Genovese has finally won. The Luciano crime family is no more.
The Genovese crime family is born.
Albert Anastasia is also expanding his crime family.
The mobster once nicknamed Il Terremoto—The Earthquake—has matured, and is no longer the impulsive executioner of his younger days. For instance, it was just a few years ago that he ordered the murder of Brooklyn resident Arnold Schuster, a twenty-five-year-old clothing salesman who became a local hero for capturing legendary bank robber Willie Sutton. But when Schuster went on television to boast about the apprehension, Anastasia just happened to be watching. Shouting at the TV, “I can’t stand squealers,” he then sent his crew to assassinate the amateur detective. Schuster was shot once in each eye and twice in the groin as a message to others who might meddle in the crime world.
But now, Albert is a changed man.
“Anastasia,” the New York Times will note, “could seem pleasant, genial, and generous.” It is 10:18 on this chilly Friday morning. The notorious former hit man for Murder, Incorporated, wears a brown suit and gray hat as he enters the Park Sheraton Hotel here in Manhattan. Anastasia removes his long blue topcoat and takes a seat in Grasso’s, the lobby barbershop. The recessed fluorescent lighting accentuates the deep lines on Anastasia’s face, brought on by heavy losses at the racetrack.
The mobster takes a seat in Chair Four, facing out the window onto Fifty-Fifth and Seventh. His back is to the door.
The small shop is busy, with two other customers already seated, as well as a staff of five barbers, a manicurist, a valet, two shoeshine men, and owner Arthur Grasso.
“Haircut,” Anastasia says brusquely to barber Joseph Bocchino.
Bocchino places a sheet around the gangster’s neck. Anastasia’s chair is reclined and hot towels are placed over his face to soften his beard for a shave that precedes the barbering.
Anastasia is now fifty-five. The attempted hit on longtime friend Frank Costello has rattled the burly mobster. Fearing he might be next, Anastasia recently increased his number of personal bodyguards from one to three. A ten-foot-high metal fence now surrounds his new mansion in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and the lawn is patrolled by two snarling Doberman pinschers. Anastasia’s greatest fear, however, is not his own death but a hit on his wife and twenty-two-year-old son.
In truth, the possibility of such an attack dwindles with every passing day. Anastasia almost went to war with Vito Genovese, but instead the two men sat down to dinner with the leaders of the five families, where they traded accusations before making peace. “Reluctantly, they renounced going to war with one another,” boss Joseph Bonanno will recall. “The rest of us raised our glass in a toast for peace. Albert and Vito kissed each other on the cheek.”
That peace has allowed Anastasia time to conspire with Meyer Lansky and Tampa Mob boss Santo Trafficante, in hopes of expanding his family’s operations into Cuban casinos and drug smuggling. In fact, Anastasia is so confident in the gangland truce that he travels without a bodyguard today. He now relaxes as the towels are removed. The barber spins him around to face the mirror. The time is now 10:30 a.m., as Anastasia reclines with his eyes closed.
Suddenly, two men of below-average height enter the barbershop from the hotel lobby. Both wear fedoras and aviator sunglasses. Scarves cover the lower portion of their faces. Each wears one black glove.
Striding quickly to Chair Four, the two gunmen quietly poke barber Joseph Bocchino with the barrel of their pistols as a “suggestion” to get out of the way immediately. As he flees, they take up positions on either side of Albert Anastasia.
Everyone else in the shop moves quickly for the door.
Hearing the commotion, Anastasia sits up quickly and attempts to protect himself, but it is too late. Ten quick shots are fired. The first two are what coroners call “defensive wounds,” shattering Anastasia’s left hand and wrist as he throws up his arm in a failed attempt to protect himself.
Moving quickly, Anastasia lunges at the gunmen but in the confusion makes the tragic mistake of attacking their images in the mirror. Now facing the wrong direction, he is hit in the hip, the spine, and, finally, the skull.
As the New York Times reports, “Apparently, the bullet at the back of the head had ended Anastasia’s life immediately.”
As the crime boss crumples to the floor wrapped in white barber towels, the killers exit onto Fifty-Fifth Street and immediately blend into the sidewalk crowds before entering a waiting car. The pistols are already abandoned, one dropped in a doorway and the other in a trash can.3
By midnight, New York police will interview fifty eyewitnesses, with a list of ten more to be interrogated. Vito Genovese had the most to gain from Anastasia’s slaying, and despite the truce called by the five families, there is every reason to believe he authorized the hit. Yet to this day, the killers are still unknown.
Curiously, Anastasia was a known crime boss, and the very public murder had all the appearances of a gangland slaying, but in Washington, J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI still insists that organized crime in America is a myth.
That is about to change.
“Is there any organization such as the Mafia,” Bobby Kennedy asks Federal Bureau of Narcotics agent Joseph Amato, “or is that just the name given to the Italian underworld?”
The date is November 13, 1957, two weeks to the day since Albert Anastasia was gunned down. The weather outside is wet and dreary. As television cameras broadcast the proceedings nationwide, Kennedy addresses the witness in a caucus room of the Old Senate Office Building in Washington. The thirty-one-year-old Massachusetts native now serves as chief counsel for the committee while the Senate investigates “improper activities in labor and management” as they relate to organized crime.
Since 1946, Agent Amato has been part of a four-man detail of Italian American FBN agents working out of the New York City field office. Their stated purpose is to end the Mafia’s narcotics operations. Now, with Kennedy as the chief counsel, Amato appears before a select Senate hearing investigating the Mob. Known as the McClellan Committee, after John Little McClellan, the Southern Baptist senator from Arkansas, the panel more often goes by the nickname Rackets Committee. At Kennedy’s request, the freshman senator from Massachusetts has acquired a seat. That senator would be his big brother, John, a World War II hero and Democratic presidential hopeful.4
Bobby Kennedy has served as Senate counsel since 1954, taking on his current lead role when the Democrats obtained the Senate majority. Rumors of illicit behavior within America’s top labor unions surface in 1955, leading President Dwight Eisenhower to request a federal investigation. Senator McClellan soon asks that Bobby serve as the committee’s lead counsel, giving him broad authority to set the agenda and question witnesses.
The bold young attorney takes on his new role with typical zeal, knowing very little about unions or organized crime but determined to end labor corruption. He even travels to New York as part of his research, where he accompanies Joseph Amato and the FBN “Italian Squad” as they make drug busts on the nighttime streets. Washington insider Alice Longworth, daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, describes the earnest Kennedy’s moralistic fervor as that of a “revolutionary priest.”
This places Bobby squarely at odds with his father and older brother. As the Kennedy clan gathers for Christmas in 1956, he eagerly announces his role in the hearings about organized crime, only to encounter one of the most furious rows in family history. Sister Jean Kennedy Smith will call the fracas “the worst one we ever witnessed.”
Joseph Kennedy rages that his young son is naïve, a danger to family ambition.
John F. Kennedy’s plans to run for president in 1960 are closely tied to the Mafia-controlled unions, who traditionally vote Democrat. JFK sides with his father, fearing that his brother’s investigation might turn the longshoremen and teamsters against his candidacy.
In the end, Bobby gets his way. John Kennedy reluctantly accepts a spot on the committee to block the conservative South Carolinian Strom Thurmond from being part of this high-profile panel.5
In 1956, JFK was passed over for a vice presidential spot on the Democratic Party’s ticket in favor of Senator Estes Kefauver. And as Kennedy has been reminded by journalists, Kefauver’s national fame derived solely from prosecuting organized crime on national television. Doing the same with these McClellan hearings could go a long way toward propelling John Kennedy to the next political level.
Yet the normally charismatic Massachusetts senator does not seem to care. John Kennedy shows his apathy through poor attendance and a bored demeanor on those days he does sit in committee.
Bobby Kennedy is the exact opposite. His relentless pursuit of organized criminals has led him to this very moment, as Agent Amato sits before the committee and prepares to answer the simple—and dangerous—question: “Is there a Mafia?”
Amato has been a federal agent for seventeen years and well knows the peril associated with the answer he is about to give. Television cameras have been forbidden from showing any part of his image and he sits with his back to the room to hide his face.
“That is a big question to answer,” Amato replies. “But we believe that there does exist today in the United States a society, loosely organized, for the specific purpose of smuggling narcotics and committing other crimes in the United States.”
Bobby Kennedy launches his follow-up question immediately. “And that is what you consider the Mafia.”
“It has its core in Italy and it is nationwide,” Amato concludes.
“In fact, international.”
By sheer coincidence, at the very same moment Bobby Kennedy is grilling Joseph Amato about the existence of the Mob, an international Mafia summit is about to begin.
Three hundred miles north of Washington, in the tiny upstate New York town of Apalachin, Vito Genovese has called a meeting of North America’s top Mafia members. With Frank Costello and Albert Anastasia now gone, Genovese considers himself the uncontested Boss of All Bosses, and he has called a meeting to make it official.
As far as the FBI is concerned, this conference is fiction. If there is no such thing as organized crime, then mobsters could not possibly gather anywhere. But as Agent Amato is testifying in Washington, this “loosely organized” syndicate is very much a reality.
Upstate New York is a vast rural area that extends from the lower Hudson Valley to Canada. It is here that Mafiosi have traveled from all across America, as well as Cuba, Puerto Rico, and even Sicily. They gather at the fifty-three-acre estate of mobster Joseph Barbara, with its big stone house, guest cottage, and sprawling lawn. The Mafiosi are dressed in fine suits and coats, with the bosses meeting inside the main lodge as their soldiers gather outside around the massive barbecue grill. The smell of thick steaks being cooked mingles with the aroma of cigar and cigarette smoke. This is a business meeting, with all the tension that implies, but it is also a gathering of far-flung friends and associates, with profane jokes and insider conversations about a world all their own.
The neutral site of Chicago was Genovese’s first choice for the meeting. There, violent Mob boss Sam Giancana would have been able to host the conference at any number of locations without any fear of police interference.6 But Genovese’s fellow crime boss, Joe Bonanno, prefers Barbara’s wooded property, thinking it far more inconspicuous. Out of respect, Vito Genovese bows to Bonanno’s wishes.
There are so many Mafiosi in attendance that there is not enough room in Barbara’s home to accommodate them. Reservations have been made for the very best rooms at a number of local hotels. Barbara’s spacious lawn is now a parking lot filled with the Cadillacs, Lincoln Continentals, and Lincoln Premieres favored by mobsters. But even amidst this lavish collection of automobiles, the Chrysler Crown Imperial limousine that delivered Vito Genovese to the gathering stands out for its opulence.
The vicious Genovese holds court as the assembled gangsters calmly discuss gambling, narcotics, prostitution, and the division of Albert Anastasia’s empire. A radical new idea is also on the agenda, that of expanding Mob operations that already account for more than $7 billion in illicit revenue annually. The plan is to move beyond traditional core Mob businesses into the very fabric of American government. This scheme would mimic traditional Mafia operations in Sicily by taking control of national unions, interstate trucking, the textile industry, Cuba’s sugar trade, and the prison system.
New York State Police sergeant Edgar D. Croswell points to a photograph as he tells the Senate Rackets Committee about a raid he led on an Apalachin, New York, meeting last November. Police rounded up sixty men, many of them mobsters. Washington, D.C., June 30, 1958.
But unbeknownst to the mobsters, Sergeant Edgar Dewitt Croswell of the New York State Police has other plans.
Sergeant Croswell is forty-four, pale, tall, and a thirteen-year veteran of the force—the sort of man so fascinated by his job that he trains his young sons to recognize cars by make and model, should they ever need to identify a vehicle in court. “My hobby is police work,” he explains to those wondering about his passion for law enforcement. Croswell is thin to the point of being gaunt, a chain smoker who favors Salem cigarettes. A stomach ulcer requires that he drink nothing more potent than milk. The detective not only commands the local state trooper barracks at Vestal, seven miles from Apalachin, but the divorced Croswell also sleeps each night in the Spartan concrete structure. With no place else to call home, and nothing else to occupy his time, the lanky trooper makes it his business to know every single criminal happening in his jurisdiction.
Thus, Detective Croswell has spent considerable time scrutinizing the individual he believes to be Apalachin’s most sinister resident. Joseph Barbara is a transplant from Pennsylvania who moved to town in 1944, then bought his property and a Canada Dry bottling plant, in that order. By all appearances, Barbara is a solid citizen who now controls the local beer and soft drink dealerships. He is an active community leader and philanthropist, as well. His property is actually a compound: a home made of stone, a stable, garage, and barbecue area—the sort of estate a man of means might rightfully enjoy.
But to Trooper Croswell, something about Joseph Barbara is not quite right.
Croswell has been suspicious for a very long time. The Barbara home has seen dubious comings and goings in the past, so it has become common practice for Croswell to keep the estate under surveillance. In fact, he has been keeping tabs on Barbara since the suspected mobster’s arrival in Apalachin thirteen years ago. Croswell has maintained an informal vigil, learning that Barbara’s background includes a significant number of arrests. That piques the detective’s interest and leads to surveillance.
The Barbara family is not oblivious to Croswell’s attention. They do not know his name, simply referring to him as “that state trooper.”
One year ago, Croswell’s vigilance paid off when state police arrested an underboss of the Bonanno crime family as he left Barbara’s home. Surprisingly, once Carmine Galante was in custody, a contingent of police from New Jersey arrived in Apalachin and tried to bribe the troopers in an attempt to arrange Galante’s freedom. This unusual—and highly illegal—abuse of police power led to the indictment of those officers. That also served as a lesson to Croswell that the Mafia’s tentacles are everywhere.
More recently, while at the local Parkway hotel investigating an individual who paid for his room with a bad check, Sergeant Croswell overheard Joseph Barbara’s son making a large number of room reservations. Joseph Barbara Jr. explained to the clerk that he required double rooms for an upcoming beverage convention but would not name the individuals who would occupy them.
Apalachin has a population of just one thousand, so any such convention will have a major impact on the town’s economy. Out of curiosity, Croswell starts checking around town to see if there have been any other unusual transactions. He asks the local butcher if the Barbara family had recently placed any large orders.
The answer is yes. Not trusting the quality of the local butcher’s fare, Joseph Barbara has ordered 220 pounds of steak, ham, and veal from Armour and Company to be shipped from Chicago and delivered to his home. The cost comes to $432.7 Bowing to the Mafia’s code of grandiosity, Barbara has pointedly not ordered chicken, which isn’t considered manly to the Mafia, thus not worth serving to esteemed guests.
In addition, Detective Croswell finds out that Barbara has also been purchasing enormous quantities of sugar, which could indicate the presence of illegal alcohol production on the premises of the Barbara compound.
Suspecting that the Barbara estate has been an organized crime refuge in the past, Sergeant Croswell has every reason to believe that the out-of-town guests might have a similar affiliation. And due to those hotel reservations, Croswell knows the date on which the visitors will be arriving.
McFall Road is the only path leading in and out of Barbara’s property. On the morning of November 14, dressed in plain clothes, Trooper Croswell drives his unmarked police car to within fifty yards of the compound, then uses binoculars to surveil the cars parked on the lawn. The air is cold and smells like rain. Croswell is accompanied by his partner, Trooper Vincent Vasisko, as well as two agents from the Treasury Department. Art Ruston and Ken Brown work in the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division and have agreed to assist this morning based on the remote chance that they will be able to enter Joseph Barbara’s property and catch him in the act of illegally distilling alcohol.
Other than that, there is actually little Sergeant Croswell can hope to achieve. He cannot enter the Barbara property to question the guests. No criminal acts have been committed, so his presence might be construed as bigoted toward Italian Americans. He could concoct a reason to make an arrest, but in reality, unless the individual has outstanding warrants, anyone arrested would most likely be set free immediately for lack of cause. Croswell would then be seen as an overzealous small-town policeman and perhaps lose his job.
However, the trooper does possess the authority to stop any vehicle once it leaves Barbara’s property and request those inside to provide identification. A person who fails to show ID or attempts to run can then be arrested.
After surreptitiously inspecting the line of Lincolns and Cadillacs, Croswell and the other officers begin writing down license numbers. There is no sign of danger, but sensing he might need assistance, Croswell radios for backup help. Seventeen officers respond. As a lead investigator with the state police, Croswell is now the senior officer on the scene. He orders the installation of roadblocks to prevent any departures from the Barbara home and also orders a cordon of officers to surround the house in the local woods to stop any escapes on foot. Now all Croswell can do is wait.
Soon, a local fish vendor drives up to the roadblock after making a delivery. Croswell allows Bartolo Guccia to pass, only to see him turn the truck around and head right back into the Barbara property.
The detective immediately knows what will happen next.
Inside the living room of the main house, the big bosses discuss business. Sam Giancana, Santo Trafficante, Joe Bonanno, Carlo Gambino, Joe Profaci, and Vito Genovese are all engaged. The walls are paneled in wood, the fireplace is twelve feet wide and made of stone, and the windows are covered in thick drapes. A baby grand piano and a china hutch also fill the room.
Ironically, given Genovese’s once-passionate belief in the value of the narcotics trade, the big bosses are currently discussing whether to abandon drug trafficking. New laws mean severe prison sentences for dealers. But despite the enormous drop in Mafia earnings should they decide to leave the lucrative drug business, Genovese is really not interested in that. He is more concerned with being named Boss of All Bosses.
Outside, near the barbecue, lower-level Mafia soldiers talk among themselves. The steaks from Chicago are cooking, the smell filling the air in anticipation of an enormous feast once business is concluded. Beer on tap is available in the screened-off summer pavilion. One of the attendees, Carmine Lombardozzi, fears imminent death. As a former fixer for Albert Anastasia, Lombardozzi knows that the big bosses are currently discussing his future. A death sentence has already been passed, but he is hoping they will reconsider. Should they not, there is a very good chance Lombardozzi’s steak lunch will be his last.
In the kitchen of the main house, Josephine Barbara and her housekeeper sit at a large round breakfast table. Mrs. Barbara has a view out the window toward McFall Road, where she sees a familiar face just beyond the parked Cadillacs.
“It’s that state trooper,” she says to Marguerite Russell.
Suddenly comes the sound of shouting.
“State police,” fishmonger Bartolo Guccia warns the mobsters in a thick Italian accent. “They’re stopping everybody!”
The steaks are left to burn.
The gangsters run.
Sergeant Croswell can’t believe it.
Italian men in thick coats and hats swarm into the parking lot, walking at a very fast pace. Unaware that law enforcement has no evidence against them and cannot enter the property, the mobsters are panicking. Despite criminal pasts that have taught them to show nonchalance when encountering law enforcement, the assembled gangsters buckle. The fear of years in prison overcomes reason.
Some flee to their cars; others trudge into the thick woods. “Like vermin scuttling out of burning woodwork,” writes the New York Daily News, “the underworld chiefs headed for open air.”
At first, Chicago mobster Sam Giancana remains in the main house, believing that the police will not enter the estate. But he soon grows weary of the uncertainty and darts into the forest, becoming one of the few escapees. “I had to run like a fucking rabbit through the goddamned woods,” he would later complain. “The place was full of briars. I tore up a twelve-hundred-dollar suit on some barbed wire, ruined a new pair of shoes.”
On the road, the first vehicle carrying a mobster approaches the barrier manned by Sergeant Croswell. He waves it through.
This is an intentional act. Croswell hopes that this display of nonchalance will encourage other drivers to approach him.
A few moments later, Croswell is rewarded as a line of cars approach his position.
Quickly, he orders the Chrysler Imperial containing Vito Genovese to halt. Five men are packed inside the car. “You’ve been at Mister Barbara’s?” the detective asks.
“He is very sick, the poor man,” says Genovese, sitting up front on the passenger side. “We just came to wish him a speedy recovery. But I don’t need to answer these questions, do I?”
Croswell requests IDs, then waves the Imperial through. More troopers await farther down the highway, prepared to stop and detain the car’s inhabitants. No arrests are being made, but state police have the legal authority to hold suspects without filing charges. New York mandates that this period of time not exceed twelve hours.
With all avenues of exit sealed, the detainments are swift—and numerous. Sixty suspected Mafioso are placed in custody, including leaders of the New York families: Vito Genovese, Joe Profaci, Joe Bonanno, and Carlo Gambino. Tampa mobster Santo Trafficante is also nabbed. Each is taken to the Vestal barracks substation, where they are ordered to take off their shoes and sit on the floor with their hands on their heads for processing—all the while guarded by armed state troopers. With their gold watches, diamond pinkie rings, and expensive suits, these men look drastically out of place in the dusty barracks.
Croswell has instructed the state troopers to make every effort to coerce the mobsters into doing something wrong—so that they can be held in jail longer. But the Mafioso know better than to react. “We gave them a tough time at the station house,” Croswell will admit, “but we couldn’t even make them commit disorderly conduct.”
Each mobster’s belongings are searched, but no guns or drugs are found. Sergeant Croswell rushes to beat the twelve-hour deadline for setting the men free but also takes time to personally interrogate each man. “What were you doing at Barbara’s?” he asks time and again.
Most respond in similar fashion, stating that they were concerned about Joseph Barbara’s health and had come to wish him well. In fact, back at the estate, stress has gotten the better of Joseph Barbara, and he has suffered a second nonfatal heart attack. He will be dead in just two years, having lost his house and business due to the infamy created by Trooper Croswell’s aggressive policing on this November day.8
As Croswell concludes his questioning just before the twelve-hour deadline expires, he tallies his findings. These men are definitely career criminals—only nine of the detained gangsters have no criminal record. Between the others, Croswell counts 275 prior arrests and one hundred convictions. Their average age is fifty-three. Half of them were born in Sicily or Southern Italy.
The most astonishing new evidence is the breadth of the criminal operations. It has long been suspected that New York, Chicago, and Miami are Mob hotbeds, but the detained delegates also hail from places like Texas, Colorado, Kansas, and Alabama.
“They are the hierarchy of the Eastern Seaboard criminal world,” Croswell tells reporters, who first interview the trooper by phone. The press then floods into Apalachin to cover this incendiary story.
In Washington, J. Edgar Hoover rises on the morning of November 15, prepared for the calm of his ritual: poached eggs on toast while reading the morning paper. Just one month ago the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first satellite in history. The Russians now have complete control of space, a fact that terrifies the American public. Hoover’s anti-Communist campaigns are more concentrated than ever.
But all that changes as Hoover opens the morning New York Times.
65 HOODLUMS SEIZED IN A RAID AND RUN OUT OF UPSTATE NEW YORK VILLAGE
That front-page headline infuriates the FBI director. For the past two months, he has very publicly stated that Communism is America’s biggest threat and that “there is no such entity as the Mafia.” But Apalachin makes Hoover look like a fool. For a quarter century, the director has publicized himself as America’s top lawman, his finger on the pulse of all criminal activity. But now he well knows his credibility is shattered.
The director can barely contain his rage as he speaks with Clyde Tolson about the situation during their drive to work. In the end it is decided that Hoover must cling to his story. The Mafia still does not exist. Agents will be instructed to refer to Apalachin as the “so-called” Mafia meeting. Speaking through bureau mouthpiece Louis B. Nichols, Hoover continues to express “strong doubts about the Mafia’s existence.”
Nichols, the FBI’s third in command behind Hoover and Tolson, defines the Mob in Hoover’s abstract terms: “The boys involved in these parties in the United States just drift together for a number of reasons, all pretty clear when you think things over. It’s like a bunch of Dutchmen getting together, and while hoisting their glass, exclaiming, ‘we together are sticking.’”
Incredibly, some members of the media still buy Hoover’s version of events.
“No Mafia at Barbara’s,” begins the headline in the Binghamton (NY) Press, a city next door to Apalachin. The headline concludes: “None in the US, Says FBI.”
Alerted to the news about Apalachin, Bobby Kennedy storms out of his office and drives the ten blocks to the Department of Justice. He takes the elevator up to the office of J. Edgar Hoover. Kennedy requests files on each of the arrested mobsters.
Out of sixty men arrested, America’s top law enforcement agency possesses almost no detailed information about them. What files the FBI does have are mostly newspaper clippings instead of intelligence gathered by field agents.
A stunned Kennedy leaves Hoover and crosses the street to the Treasury Building, where he turns to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics for information. Unlike his archrival Hoover, FBN director Anslinger has plenty of documentation on the Mob—and is happy to share.
“The FBI did not know anything,” Bobby will later remember, “about these people who were major gangsters in the United States.”
As for the FNB, “they had something on every one,” Kennedy will note.
On November 27, thirteen days after the Apalachin confrontation, an embarrassed J. Edgar Hoover is finally forced to admit the existence of organized crime. He institutes the Top Hoodlum Program as a modern version of Public Enemy Number One and requires agents in field offices nationwide to draw up a list of the ten most notorious criminals in their cities. The words Mafia and Apalachin are never referenced.9 Yet thanks to the alert investigation of Sergeant Edgar Croswell, America’s top crime fighting official is finally acknowledging the Mafia.
But as Hoover well knows, Bobby Kennedy is way ahead of him.
And Kennedy plans to bring down organized crime all by himself.
On December 22, 1957, Bobby Kennedy meets behind closed doors with the thirty-three investigators working for the Senate McClellan hearings. He declares his intent to subpoena each arrested gangster from the Apalachin summit, ordering them to appear before the anti-racketeering subcommittee.
Kennedy is sincere in his determination to expose the major crime families. Yet he is equally passionate about his own bloodline. Both elements are slowly emerging into America’s consciousness.
Three weeks ago, his brother, Senator John F. Kennedy, was featured in Time magazine as “The Democratic Whiz of 1957.”
JFK has his sights on the White House, and Bobby Kennedy knows that Apalachin means more viewers of the Senate’s televised Mafia investigation, allowing his brother to raise his public profile even higher. That is, if Senator Kennedy actually shows up to the hearings. In many ways, JFK still looks down on his younger brother Bobby, seeing him as a relentless nuisance instead of a resource. The younger Kennedy is determined to change his brother’s perception.
But even more than helping to get his brother elected president of the United States, Bobby Kennedy is eager to please his father, Joe. The Kennedy patriarch is sparing in his love for his sons and, as a result, John, Bobby, and little brother Teddy will go to great lengths to make him proud. Bobby also knows that Joseph Kennedy is willing to do whatever it takes to see his son elected to the nation’s highest office—including pay $75,000 in “advertising” to get JFK featured in Time magazine. “I just bought a horse for $75,000,” the patriarch tells the archbishop of New York, Cardinal Francis Spellman, over lunch at the priest’s Madison Avenue residence. “And for another $75,000, I put Jack on the cover of Time.”
Thus begins the symbiotic intertwining of the Kennedy family, J. Edgar Hoover, the Mafia, and the press.
And, in typical gangland style, theirs is a relationship that can only end in mayhem.