The Cleveland Mafia: The end of an era and demise of a Don
By John Petkovic, The Plain Dealer
November 23, 2015
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- He was a perfect gentleman, a loyal friend, a good fella who would buy you a drink, pick up the tab.
The kind of guy you wanted to know and have on your side.
But Jack wasn't the type to call to see to how you were doing. Not even to just to say hi .... nothing. He wouldn't even answer the phone when you called.
Jack never talked on the phone. He knew there would be someone else listening, always.
"Suddenly, I'd get a call out of the blue from some stranger, someone I had never spoken to before," says James Willis, who was a good friend of Jack. "They'd say, 'Hey, the Old Man wants you to stop by at 5:30.'"
The stranger didn't even have to indicate the place. And, of course, he didn't give a name. It was always like that.
"The Old Man," you see, was Jack and Jack was James T. Licavoli, the Cleveland mob boss who passed away 30 years ago on Nov. 23, 1985.
In its heyday, the Cleveland mob's tentacles ran through the Midwest, reached New York and helped run Las Vegas. By 1982, Licavoli was behind bars, convicted on RICO charges connected to the 1977 murder of mobster Danny Greene.
"Jack was the last of the old-school Cleveland mobsters," says Willis, a Cleveland attorney who specialized in representing organized crime figures, including Licavoli. "He adhered to all the codes you hear about in Mafia movies."
They stopped adhering to any code by the time Jack took over. The underworld was crawling with rats – thanks to the establishment of the United States Federal Witness Protection Program, in 1970.
But Licavoli still believed in Omerta – a code of honor and silence that saw cooperation with authorities as a betrayal of the "family."
"I'll never forget when the government came to me with a deal and I presented it to Jack," says Willis, who continues to practice law in Cleveland. "He just looked at me and said, 'Jimmy, we'll be friends for a long time provided you don't come to me with no more deals from the government. If I'm going down, I'm going down with the ship."
Another Licavoli code has become a Hollywood cliché, not to mention the standard Wall Street CEO explanation for mass layoffs: "It's nothing personal, just business."
"Jack was a humble guy, he wasn't extravagant or flashy, he didn't even really drink," says Willis. "A lot of the guys coming up were just out for themselves, not Jack. He looked out for the operation and he was so good at his job that I thought it would never end."
Ironically, the very measured Licavoli rose to power during the most turbulent and explosive period in Cleveland mob history, no to menton the city itself.
It ended up taking him down, and the Mafia as we know it went down with him.
In the 1970s, Cleveland lost 23.6 percent of its population, a staggering amount, even considering national trends. In that same decade, it became the first major American city since the Great Depression to default on its loans.
Cleveland also seemed to be increasingly in the grip of the mob. In 1976, the city became known as Bomb City, U.S.A. – thanks a mob war that resulted in 37 bombings that took place in Cuyahoga County, including 21 in Cleveland.
That year, the Browns finished in third place in the AFC Central. The Indians finished fourth in the AL East. But Cleveland was No. 1 in America in car bombs, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
"Cleveland had the best burglars, thieves and safe crackers in the country," says Willis. "I know, I represented a lot of them."
There were reasons other than Cleveland's home-grown "talent" that explained the rise in bombings, however.
"When John Scalish died, there was a battle for power in Cleveland," says author Rick Porrello, referring to Licavoli's predecessor, whose reign ended unexpectedly when he died during heart surgery, in 1976. "That's when all hell broke loose."
Scalish, whose 32-year reign was by far the longest of any area boss, oversaw the rise of the Cleveland family. In 1950, he set up gangster Moe Dalitz in Las Vegas, at the legendary Desert Inn, putting the Cleveland mob in the middle of skimming operations. On his watch, the mob became engaged in loansharking, gambling and labor unions, and forged ties with the Jewish mob. At its peak, the Cleveland mob had 60 made men.
"The problem is Scalish didn't have a plan of succession set up," says Porrello, whose book "To Kill the Irishman" was made into a 2011 film starring Christopher Walken, Paul Sorvino and Val Kilmer. Porrello is currently the Lyndhurst Chief of Police.
Scalish allegedly told his treasurer Milton "Maishe" Rockman – who was the mob's connection to Teamsters president Jackie Presser -- that he wanted Licavoli to take his place.
"No one thought it would be Licavoli," says Porrello. "He was already an old man, a bachelor and walked around with a cane."
Licavoli had a lot of nicknames, like all mobsters. He was "Jack White," an ironic play on his dark complexion – or "blackie" to the less ironic. He was also called "King of the Hill" because he lived off Murray Hill in Little Italy.
His spread was hardly a castle, however. Despite his wealth, he lived in a small, modest house on Fairview Court with a longtime roommate.
"He was an old miser," says Porrello. "One time he was caught by store security for switching the price tag on a pair of trousers. When they found out who he was they dropped the charges."
Licavoli's cheapskate ways might not have been befitting a crime boss, but he was a loyal, hard-working guy who just happened to be working for the mob.
Born in 1904 to Sicilian immigrants, Licavoli got an early start in the St. Louis underworld.
Prohibition – which banned alcohol sales in America from 1920 to 1933 -- led to a rise in organized crime in America. It brought it to Cleveland, just as it did to St, Louis.
Licavoli was there from the beginning, working with his cousins as a bootlegger.
In 1926, he was shot in the leg and arrested after a shootout with St. Louis police. Even though Licavoli fired on officers, charges against him were dropped.
After settling in Detroit, Licavoli and his cousins took over the rackets. A bootleg conviction led to short stint in jail, then a move to Toledo to get away from the heat resulting from a murder he was involved in.
Next stop. Cleveland -- in 1938, to take over the vending machine and gambling businesses.
Roulette, poker, chuck-a-luck, bingo – Licavoli proved skilled at taking 'em all over. He preferred pinochle himself, which he played with close associates, where they would boast about hits between hands.
"The boasting was a way of guys being validated and showing that they're connected within the mob," says Porrello, a descendent of the Porrellos, one of Cleveland's first mob families. "You kill an enemy or maybe get arrested for something less serious or maybe get mentioned in a newspaper and it makes you look tough."
Licavoli once boasted in a 1977 Plain Dealer article that he found an FBI bug in his Little Italy home. But for the most part, he was that old-school guy that that knew how to keep a secret.
In 1951, he appeared before a highly-publicized U.S. Senate committee investigating organized crime, but refused to talk.
"He was very secretive and not at all flamboyant," says Willis. "We would only talk in person -- usually we'd get together at The Theatrical."
The legendary Short Vincent club was the Switzerland of Cleveland. It was opened by Morris "Mushy" Wexler, who ran a gambling wire service that provided odds to bookies. It was a base of operations for notorious Cleveland gangster, Alex "Shondor" Birns.
But it was also a place where mobsters, politicians, judges and cops could cohabitate.
"Jack was never a drinker and he always spoke quietly," says Willis. "But everyone would be hanging out at the place and it was always a fun time."
The coziness of it all was a microcosm of a larger problem, according to Dennis Kucinich who took over as Cleveland's mayor in 1977, as mob violence was reaching its climax.
"The mob had hooks into city hall and banks and institutional activities – a vast control of many aspects of life in the city," says Kucinich, who served as mayor until 1979. "The escalation in gang violence was far from a signal of the end of the mob; it was the mob expressing the hold it had on the city at the time."
Kucinich defeated incumbent Ralph J. Perk, who was seen as weak on organized crime. Perk had appointed a noted mobster and "made man" to the Regional Sewer Board -- Anthony "Tony Lib" Liberatore.
"They had the vending machine business and were involved in the waste-hauling contracts, corporate pursuits, a number of things," says Kucinich. "Trying to separate them from the public trough was a daunting challenge."
Kucinich became a target of the mob, according to a 1984 Senate inquiry into organized crime activities. The plot involved taking the mayor out during a 1978 Columbus Day parade – payback for his attempts to crackdown on organized crime.
Kucinich missed the parade that day because he was hospitalized with an ulcer. There was also an alleged plot to take him out at Tony's Diner, a West Side spot where he was a regular.
"We wouldn't get in bed with the mob and there were threats to myself and people in my administration," says Kucinich, via phone from Washington, D.C. "And it wasn't just the Cleveland mob – it was tied in with Pennsylvania and Maryland."
The hit on Kucinich was alleged to be organized by Thomas "The Chinaman" Sinito, a capo who lead a crew of soldiers in the Cleveland family. He recruited help from Maryland.
"All around the country Cleveland was known as the bombing capital of the America and all these things were happening out in the open," Kucinich adds. "They took it so far and the system finally caught up with them."
Just as the FBI organized crime efforts were getting stronger, the Cleveland mob was descending into anarchy.
"Licavoli made millions in gambling but hadn't been involved in running an organization," says Porrello. "He was an old mobster and the culture around him was changing."
"You had young guys coming in with no sense of loyalty," adds Porrello. "So when the feds started infiltrating with informants and witness security you'd have all these people talking."
On top of all that came the drugs – and the even-shabbier characters they attracted.
"It was like 'Goodfellas,'" says Porrello, referring to Martin Scorsese's 1990 mob classic. "It's all going good and everyone's making money and then they get into drugs and the next thing is they're robbing drug dealers and dealing with people on drugs and they're doing drugs and everything falls apart."
Like Paul Sorvino's character in the movie, Licavoli wanted nothing to do with drugs. He didn't even like to drink.
"I remember him telling me, 'You're a hard-working kid and you went to school and you're respectable and you can make something of yourself,'" says Terry Tarantino, owner of La Dolce Vita in Little Italy. "Don't be like these guys who have a few drinks and think they're Superman – don't be a bum."
Tarantino met Licavoli when he was 18, just before he left Little Italy to attend Ohio State University.
"People in the neighborhood didn't see him as a big shot because he didn't carry himself that way," says Tarantino. "He often went golfing with my dad and bowling with my uncle and they were totally clean."
"I'm not saying he was an angel, but the guy was very upright with people in the neighborhood and never expected special treatment," adds Tarantino. "People respected him more than they feared him because he carried himself as a normal guy."
It is the complex psychology of the mobster that continues to captivate the culture.
"These individuals had families, were involved in civic life and were committed to their communities," says Kucinich. "But they were also people who, when they had a disagreement, would kill people."
While Licavoli's use of a cane made him seem mortal to those in the neighborhood, it also underscored how fierce he could be to enemies. He was renowned for tapping his cane on the floor when he issued a hit on someone, to underscore the order.
And while he was at ease in the neighborhood, he was at war in the underworld.
By 1976, Licavoli was engaged in a full-on feud with Danny Greene. The Irish-American mobster based out of Collinwood competed with the Sicilian Mafia for control of the Cleveland underworld.
Greene, who rose to power in the 1960s when he muscled into the International Longshoreman's Association, became involved in the numbers racket working for notorious racketeer Shondor Birns.
He later became a suspect in the 1975 car bombing that claimed Birns' life, which came in response to a botched Birns-ordered hit on Greene. Birns' death put Greene in control of gambling rackets and a partnership with drug and arms trafficker John Nardi against Licavoli.
As if the bombings didn't bring enough publicity, there was the flamboyant Greene going on TV to taunt his enemies and boast that he was alive and well – even after multiple murder attempts.
After a numbers of failed attempts, the family did get Nardi – with a car bomb in May 1977. Greene was next, also via car bomb, on October 6, 1977.
Licavoli had free reign of Cleveland. Well, for two months – until he was arrested in connection with Greene's death by the FBI, which found an 18-inch knife in his cane.
"I managed to get him acquitted of the charges the first two times we went to trial," says Willis, who was Licavoli's lawyer to the end. "The third time wasn't a charm."
In 1982, he was tried under federal RICO charges and convicted and sentenced to seventeen years imprisonment.
He was done in by informants – the kind of rats that an old-school Mafioso like Licavoli detested.
"Sometimes, you know, I think this (expletive) outfit of ours is like the old Communist party in this country," he reportedly told informant Jimmy "the Weasel" Fratianno. "It's getting so that there's more (expletive) spies in it than members."
Licavoli lasted three years in jail before dying of a heart attack. He never whined the whole time.
"There was no trouble, nothing uncommon about him at all," said R.D. Brewer, warden of the Oxford Correctional Institute in Oxford, Wis., in a Page One story in The Plain Dealer.
"That was Jack," adds Willis. "He was a strong man and he took everything like a man."
Even at age 81, hobbling with a cane.
"The image of Licavoli hobbling off to jail with his cane was symbolic of what was happening with the Mafia," says Porrello. "The war that ended up putting him in jail also ended up crippling the Mafia.
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