CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
JUNE 22, 1962
U.S. FEDERAL PENITENTIARY
ATLANTA, GEORGIA
7:30 A.M.
Joseph Michael Valachi fears for his life.
The fifty-eight-year-old member of the Genovese crime family, currently serving a sentence of fifteen years for heroin trafficking, walks quickly across the prison yard. Valachi is the cellmate of Vito Genovese, to whom he has sworn a lifetime oath of allegiance. Valachi’s official Mob title is that of a low-level soldato—soldier—and as a “made man,” he has also taken a vow of omertà—silence under questioning.
At five foot six and a heavyset 184 pounds, with a raspy voice and graying hair of an older man, Valachi does not appear to be a physical menace. But he has been a member of La Cosa Nostra for more than thirty years and knows how to deal with a threat. He does not attract attention as he wanders close to an area undergoing construction and quietly picks up a two-foot section of iron pipe.
Weapon in hand, Valachi knows he must act quickly.
This is not the first time the diminutive mobster has plotted murder. He has been a criminal since the age of nine while growing up in East Harlem, New York. At first, his specialty was driving getaway cars during robberies. But at the age of twenty-seven he became a “made man”—a full-fledged member of the Mafia—and was almost immediately involved as a soldato in the bloody 1931 Castellammarese War for control of organized crime in New York. It was Lucky Luciano who emerged victorious, and Valachi threw his allegiance behind the young Sicilian.
Joseph Valachi, convicted murderer and former Cosa Nostra mobster, testifies before the Senate Permanent Investigation Committee in Washington, D.C., October 1, 1963. Valachi tells how he was initiated into the national crime society, La Cosa Nostra, by having to burn a crumpled ball of paper in his hands while taking the oath to “live by the gun and the knife and to die by the gun and the knife” and be burned to ashes if he ever informed against his associates.
When Vito Genovese took over the New York family following the 1957 murder of Albert Anastasia, Valachi had no issue switching loyalties. The actual number of deaths in which he is complicit is unknown, but the mobster is most prominently suspected of arranging the murder of fellow Mafioso Steven Franse at the behest of Genovese—luring Franse into a trap where he was strangled to death.
Joseph Valachi has prospered in organized crime, owning three restaurants, a jukebox company, and a dress factory. His ex-wife, Millie—whom he left for another woman after twenty-five years of marriage—knows all about his illicit lifestyle. Her father was Gaetano Reina, the founder of the Lucchese crime family who was murdered by a shotgun blast to the head at age forty. Millie’s brother Giacomo is Valachi’s coconspirator in the drug-trafficking operation that landed the mobster in this federal penitentiary.
Joseph Valachi has one son, Donald, a twenty-six-year-old construction worker in New York who may not know what his father really does for a living.
Valachi understands completely that if he uses this iron pipe in the manner he is now contemplating on this humid summer morning, the murder charge will most likely result in the death penalty. But the specter of the electric chair is preferable to a Mob hit that would happen without warning. So Joe Valachi will take his chances.
In the past, Valachi has offered minor bits of information to federal narcotics agents, hoping it might lead to preferential treatment or even a reduced sentence. He does not believe this qualifies him as an informant—a “rat” in Mob parlance—and yet, he is under suspicion. One recent night in their cell, Vito Genovese made a rather unusual comment: “You know, we take a barrel of apples, and in this barrel of apples there might be a bad apple. Well, this apple had to be removed, and if it ain’t removed, it would hurt the rest of the apples.”
Sensing danger, Valachi protests immediately. “If I done anything wrong, show it to me and bring the pills,” he replies to Genovese, referring to poison. “And I will take them in front of you.”
“Who said you done anything wrong?” Genovese replies. Then the crime boss makes a most unusual statement. “We’ve known each other for a long time. Let me give you a kiss for old time’s sake.”
The two men kiss on the cheek. At first Valachi tries to rationalize the gesture’s meaning, but eventually he realizes it is the “kiss of death” customarily offered to men about to get murdered.1
Valachi will later recall that after this gesture of false affection he “just laid on my bed. But who could sleep?”
Whatever Genovese’s motives for wanting him dead, Joseph Valachi knows who will do the killing. He believes that task will go to yet another inmate connected with the Genovese family, Joseph DiPalermo—a known “enforcer” for the crime boss.
So Joseph Valachi decides to strike first. Pipe in his fist, he walks across the yard to where DiPalermo now stands.
Before his imprisonment, Joe Beck, as DiPalermo is nicknamed, had a reputation as a drug-trafficking mastermind. DiPalermo is fifty-five, and despite his reputation as an enforcer, he has long survived by his intellect rather than by pure strength.
It was Vito Genovese, at the Havana Conference sixteen years ago, who first advocated that the Mob begin selling drugs. But it is DiPalermo who has made it the Mafia’s most lucrative source of income. He procures heroin, marijuana, barbiturates, cocaine, and any other pharmaceutical substance his clients request. Though he now wears prison gray, DiPalermo was well-known for his flashy behavior on the streets of New York, dressing in vivid blue suits, fedoras, and snakeskin shoes and driving a matching blue Cadillac.
As Joseph Valachi hefts the pipe in his right hand, the short, narrow frame of Joe Beck stands just a few feet away, back turned. So as Valachi steps forward to attack, his victim does not see the first time the iron pipe crashes down on the back of his skull. Or the second. Or the third.
Knowing guards will soon intervene, Valachi flails at DiPalermo’s lifeless corpse until he is sure the capo is dead.
But Valachi has made a mistake. The man bleeding in front of him is not Joseph DiPalermo.
Instead, Valachi has ended the life of Joseph Saupp, a convicted forger with no criminal ties to Vito Genovese whatsoever, but whose height and build tragically match that of DiPalermo.2
In an instant, Joseph Valachi realizes he will soon be joining the unfortunate Saupp.
After forty years as a criminal, Joseph Valachi knows there is only one way to avoid the inevitable Mob hit—he must become a full-fledged rat.
The murder of fifty-two-year-old Joseph Saupp is of little consequence, or so it seems. His remains are returned to Crawford County, Ohio, where he is buried in Mount Calvary Catholic Cemetery. The life of this small, thin felon was unremarkable, but the aftermath of his brutal death will change America forever.
Once he makes known his willingness to speak on the record about the Mafia, Joseph Valachi quickly disappears into federal protective custody. His whereabouts are unknown even to his ex-wife and son. In fact, he has been removed from the Atlanta penitentiary and relocated to the Westchester County Jail, north of New York City.
In exchange for a life sentence for murder rather than the death penalty, Valachi agrees to testify against the Mob. Meanwhile, hit men from several crime families scour the country in search of the informant, desperate to kill him before he can reveal their secrets.
Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics interrogate Valachi. Among the first questions directed at the mobster is when he joined the Mafia.
“Right after the war,” Valachi responds.
“World War One or World War Two?” the agents want to know.
“You don’t understand,” Valachi states, before clarifying. “Right after the war with Chicago.”3
This glimmer of unique intelligence begins a steady stream of information about life in the underworld. When the narcotics agents have extracted as much information as they can, the FBI takes over the interrogation. In particular, Special Agent James P. Flynn makes it a priority to befriend the mobster and gain his trust. In January 1963, Valachi is moved from Westchester to the stockade at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, to be closer to Flynn’s office.
Agent Flynn begins his work with simple discussions about helping Valachi lose forty pounds in order to enjoy better health. Knowing that the mobster has a fondness for horse racing and has owned four Thoroughbreds of his own, Flynn arranges for Valachi to receive the New York Daily News every morning. Before scanning the obituary page for the names of fellow mobsters, Valachi pores over the horse racing results and then sits down with Flynn to handicap the day’s races at Belmont and Saratoga. Once their friendship is established, Flynn guides their talks into crime. Over the course of eight months, the mobster submits to hundreds of hours of interviews, working three hours a day, four days per week. As information comes forth, it is shared with several governmental law enforcement agencies for fact checking. Among them are the Treasury Department, Secret Service, IRS, and Postal Service. Amazingly, all of Valachi’s information checks out. He never contradicts himself or is caught in a lie.
In time, Valachi not only reveals specific details of unsolved crimes now connected to the Mob—some performed decades ago—but also reveals the specific inner structure of La Cosa Nostra and its manner of committing specific crimes. According to Valachi, the lowest level of Mafioso is the simple “associate.” Above them are the soldiers, then caporegime, then underboss, then at the top, the boss. Parallel with the boss at this upper level is an adviser known as the consigliere.
As a lifelong Mafioso, Valachi has seen the rise of New York’s five families and establishment of the national crime syndicate. He states for the record the names of individuals who first ran the families: Lucky Luciano, Tommaso Gagliano, Joseph Profaci, and Salvatore Maranzano.
Then Valachi gives up the names of the men currently running the five families: Tommy Lucchese, Vito Genovese, Joseph Colombo, Carlo Gambino, and Joe Bonanno.
Publicly admitting even one of those names ensures Joe Valachi now has a price on his head. Confessing all five is to ask for the most brutal torture conceivable before the murder takes place. Even behind prison bars, Joseph Valachi will live the rest of his life in fear.
The damage is done. The mobster’s willingness to speak in detail about organized crime—heretofore basically a mystery—will forever change law enforcement’s strategies for dealing with the Mafia.
With more and more disclosures forthcoming, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy grows excited about sharing this information with the general public. It is arranged that Joseph Valachi will appear before a Senate subcommittee looking into organized crime. And unlike the last group of Mafiosi testifying before Bobby Kennedy’s McClellan hearings four years ago, all of whom maintained their code of omertà by pleading the Fifth Amendment, Joseph Valachi is expected to reveal all.
As the date for Valachi’s appearance before the Senate committee draws near, the time comes for Special Agent James Flynn to say goodbye to the mobster. The two men have become such good friends that Flynn would often bring Italian delicacies to Valachi’s cell and then share a meal with the informer.
Despite this close relationship, Flynn is sanguine about the mobster and his motives. “Revenge was a large part of it, but it was also a cold, calculated move for survival. Don’t think for a moment that this was a repentant sinner. He was a killer capable of extreme violence. He was devious, rebelling against all constituted authority, and he lived in a world of fear and suspicion. Fear especially marked him—fear of what he was doing and at the same time fear that nobody would believe him.”
The result of Agent Flynn’s patient interrogation has the unlikely effect of spurring a publicity war between J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI and Bobby Kennedy’s Justice Department. On September 25, 1963, two weeks before Valachi is to testify before the Senate committee, a story titled “The Inside Story of Organized Crime and How You Can Help Smash It” appears in the national weekly magazine Parade. The byline is that of J. Edgar Hoover.
Not to be outdone, Robert Kennedy authorizes family friend Peter Maas to write a book based on Valachi’s testimony. In addition, Maas authors a story for the Saturday Evening Post about organized crime using details given to him by Bobby Kennedy.
Director Hoover is furious when informed of Kennedy’s tactics. “I never saw so much skullduggery,” he writes. Then, ignoring the fact that he also personally published an article containing secret information, the director adds: “The sanctity of Department files, including Bureau reports, is a thing of the past. H.”
But Hoover is not finished. Continuing the war to take credit for the Valachi disclosures, he attempts to prevent the release of Peter Maas’s book The Valachi Papers. The matter will go to court.
J. Edgar Hoover will lose.
Bobby Kennedy is finally winning the war on organized crime. His most recent triumph came this past May, when Jimmy Hoffa was indicted for charges of jury tampering. The case has not yet gone to trial, but that day will soon come. Kennedy’s “Get Hoffa” squad is at last seeing results for its vendetta against the union boss.
In addition, the sheer volume of information obtained from Joseph Valachi is making a big difference for the Justice Department.
“A principal lesson provided by the disclosures of Joseph Valachi and informants is that the job ahead is very large and very difficult,” writes Bobby Kennedy in a special twenty-four-page announcement on the eve of Valachi’s appearance before the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The date is September 27, 1963.
“Evidence concerning their clandestine operation is particularly hard to uncover,” Kennedy writes. “A witness who will testify in the face of threats to himself and his family is rare. This is one reason the disclosures made by Joseph Valachi are of such significance: For the first time an insider—a knowledgeable member of the racketeering hierarchy—has broken the underworld’s code of silence.”
As the attorney general well knows, the last decade has seen the Kefauver hearings, McClellan hearings, and Apalachin Summit investigation—all futile attempts to penetrate the inner workings of organized crime. Valachi has changed all that. The government has gone from knowing nothing about the Mafia to knowing almost everything.
“The picture is an ugly one,” Kennedy notes. “It shows what has been aptly described as a private government of organized crime, a government with an annual income of billions, resting on a base of human suffering and moral corrosion.”
Finally, the attorney general summarizes: “We have been able to make inroads into the hierarchy, personnel, and operations of organized crime. It would be a serious mistake, however, to overestimate the progress federal and local law enforcement has made. A principal lesson provided by the disclosures of Joseph Valachi … is that the job ahead is very large and difficult.”
It is October 1963 as Joseph Valachi appears before the second McClellan Committee on organized crime. His testimony goes on for six days in public and one more session in private. He rambles as he answers the questions directed at him, often taking a break to suck on a lemon when his mouth gets dry. The Valachi hearings, as they will become known, are broadcast on national television. The American public soon learns of the ritual initiation ceremonies to become a “made man,” as well as the history of the Mafia going back to the early 1930s. Valachi names names, telling which individuals run which crime families. He describes wars between rival families that resulted in the murders of dozens. And to the chagrin of Vito Genovese, who has placed a bounty of $100,000 for Valachi’s murder, the informant testifies that Genovese is the Boss of All Bosses and runs gambling operations in Nevada from inside his Atlanta prison cell.
Joseph Valachi’s appearance makes history. Upon completion of his testimony, he is returned to federal custody to spend the rest of his life in the penitentiary.
It has taken Attorney General Robert Francis Kennedy six years of obsessive struggle to crack the secret code of organized crime. It seems nothing now stands in the way of RFK crippling the Mafia.
But something does.
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
The president of the United States is murdered on the streets of Dallas, Texas, shortly after noon on November 22, 1963. A lone gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald is arrested and charged with the crime.
Jimmy Hoffa, awaiting trial, is eating lunch in Miami when he gets the news. As waitresses and busboys break down and cry, Hoffa stands on his chair and cheers: “I hope the worms eat his eyes.”
Finding a pay phone, Hoffa places a call to his lawyer. Frank Ragano also counts Tampa crime bosses Santo Trafficante and Carlos Marcello as clients—both of whom have sworn revenge on the Kennedy brothers. Ragano and Trafficante have just raised a glass in celebration of JFK’s murder when the union boss calls. “They killed the son of a bitch,” chortles Hoffa.4
Given the Kennedy brothers’ pursuit of organized crime and the number of high-powered Mafioso who have promised vengeance on the president and attorney general, there is every reason to believe that the Mob might have ordered the hit. The assassination has the appearances of organized crime involvement: lone gunman, high-powered rifle, shots aimed at the head.5
It is a warm Virginia afternoon and Bobby Kennedy is at home, sitting by his pool. The phone rings. J. Edgar Hoover is on the other end of the line. The director tells the attorney general that his brother, the president, has been assassinated. There is no emotion in Hoover’s voice when he shares the brutal news.
A shocked Bobby Kennedy places a hand over his eyes, then shares the news with the small crowd of friends on hand. His wife, Ethel, puts her arms around him.
Within minutes, RFK is convinced that Jimmy Hoffa and the Mafia might be involved—perhaps working together with Carlos Marcello or Sam Giancana.
But no matter who carried out the hit, the attorney general believes it is his fault. He has long believed that the Mob would try to kill him, but RFK never anticipated they might go after his brother. “I thought they’d get me,” he confides to his press secretary, Ed Guthman.
The attorney general immediately asks Walter Sheridan of his “Get Hoffa” squad if he knows of any connection among Hoffa, the Mafia, and the assassination.
The chain-smoking Sheridan and RFK have worked together since the first investigations of Teamster activities began several years ago. His official role is that of special assistant to investigate federal crimes, but his real talent is infiltrating the Teamsters union by cultivating informants.
Coincidentally, Sheridan recently learned from insiders the alarming news that Jimmy Hoffa has openly discussed the possibility of shooting Robert Kennedy. The job would be conducted with a high-powered rifle as he, the attorney general, drives his convertible—the very same scenario that just transpired in Dallas. Walter Sheridan tells the attorney general there is a very good possibility that Hoffa might have played a role in JFK’s assassination.
Bobby Kennedy immediately orders Sheridan to Dallas to oversee the investigation. J. Edgar Hoover is already there and sees to it that the FBI controls the crime scene. Just two days later, there’s another shocking occurrence: a sleazy Dallas nightclub owner named Jack Ruby somehow manages to infiltrate the security detail protecting the accused assassin Oswald and shoots him dead. Immediately, rumors fly that Ruby—birth name: Jacob Leon Rubenstein—has ties with organized crime. A subsequent congressional inquiry into the Oswald murder will later confirm this, revealing that Ruby, originally from Chicago, “had a significant number of associations and direct and indirect contacts with underworld figures.”
In the end, Walter Sheridan will return to Washington to inform Bobby Kennedy that he was not successful in finding a connection among Jimmy Hoffa, the Mafia, and the president’s murder.
And so, suspicion lingers—who really killed John F. Kennedy?
The nation wants to know.
Among Jimmy Hoffa’s first comments to his attorney after the Kennedy assassination is an expression of relief: “Bobby Kennedy is out as attorney general.”
But Hoffa is wrong. New president Lyndon Johnson requests that RFK stay on at the Justice Department. A grieving Bobby Kennedy agrees. His work is not done, and he has a very old score to settle.
Hoffa.
On March 4, 1964, Jimmy Hoffa is convicted of attempting to bribe a grand juror and sentenced to eight years in prison. A separate conviction for fraud boosts that total to thirteen years. His appeals process will continue for three years, but on March 7, 1967, Jimmy Hoffa begins serving his sentence at the Lewisburg federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania.
Robert Francis Kennedy has finally gotten his man.
Kennedy has not finished the job of eradicating the Mafia, but his efforts and investigations have severely damaged America’s “alternate government,” as he once referred to the Mob.
Bobby Kennedy’s relationship with J. Edgar Hoover has always been tense, but having the president as a brother gave RFK the upper hand. That changes immediately after the assassination. “[Hoover] no longer had to hide his feelings,” Kennedy will acknowledge to friends. “And he no longer had to pay any attention to me.”
One of the first RFK orders when he took over the Justice Department was that a special phone be installed in J. Edgar Hoover’s office. This direct line to Kennedy’s own desk was to only be answered by the director. Hoover long chafed at the appearance of being the attorney general’s subordinate and loathed the intrusion of that special phone.
That direct line now goes unanswered.
So while RFK was still Hoover’s boss, Hoover “would never deal directly or through me” any longer, according to RFK. Both men are aware that John Kennedy had plans to replace Hoover during his second term in office when reelection would no longer be a factor.
Now, J. Edgar Hoover makes sure that the new president, Lyndon Johnson, has no such plan. Hoover has a special relationship with Lyndon Johnson, to whom he has been funneling information about the sexual peccadilloes of congressmen and senators for many years. Before Johnson became vice president and was serving as Senate majority leader, the Texan was fond of using this political dirt to influence votes. John Kennedy’s personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, will even claim that Johnson used Hoover’s secret files to obtain the nomination for vice president. “LBJ had been using all the information Hoover could find on Kennedy—during the campaign, even before the convention,” Mrs. Lincoln told an interviewer.
In May 1964, President Johnson returns Hoover’s favors, perhaps knowing that the director most likely possesses a file of Johnson’s own numerous indiscretions. Standing in the White House Rose Garden, before a podium bearing the presidential seal, Johnson directly addresses Hoover. “Edgar, the law says you must retire next January when you reach your seventieth birthday. And knowing you as I do, Edgar, I know you won’t break the law.”
Hoover stands just behind the president, hands clasped before him.
“But the nation cannot afford to lose you,” LBJ continues in the twang of his native Texas, “and by virtue of, and pursuant to the authority vested in the President of the United States, I have just now signed an executive order exempting you from compulsory retirement for an indefinite period of time.”
J. Edgar Hoover is now director for life.6
On September 3, 1964, Robert Kennedy resigns as attorney general of the United States. During his time in office, the Justice Department has indicted 687 organized crime figures, with a conviction rate of 90 percent.7
But those triumphs are soon to be a thing of the past. Since JFK’s assassination, J. Edgar Hoover has ordered the FBI to stop focusing manpower on investigating organized crime. With the conflict in Vietnam escalating into actual war, he now prefers to focus on political violence, the civil rights movement, and foreign espionage.
Thus, the war on organized crime is over—for now.
Meanwhile, the Mafia quickly moves to monetize their sudden advantage.
A primary target: the heavyweight championship of the world.