Pogo The Clown wrote: ↑Tue Oct 10, 2017 9:30 am
He could have had a different guy in mind when he wrote it (assuming he didn't fabricate Battista Balsamo out of thin air) since he included a picture of Balsamo in the book which showed him to be a much older guy then one born in 1905.
Pogo
Pogo is indeed correct. The documented Gambino member Battista Balsama (1905-1968) is NOT the same person Bill Balsami was speaking of.
For starters, Bill Balsamo got his grandfather confused with anothr conman named Giuseppe Battista Balsamo. The correct man is Battista Balsamo, born 1868, Terrasini (the same place where virtually all of Detroit hails from). Can't find his 1895 arrival record but 1900 lists him as arriving in NYC and going to St Louis, MO. In 1905 he lives on Union St in Brooklyn and apparently stayed there until he died in 1940. On one census he states he's lived there since 1902. He started out as a fisherman who became a fish salesman. His son was named Charles or Carl.
(Thanks to Antiliar for this info.)
A few things I observed:
1) He's from Terrasini (which, if he was involved you'd think would have made him closer with the Bonannos but -> )
2) He lived on Union St (which is Gambino county and -> )
3) He's a salesman (like alot of them but)
without any arrest record we only have the author that claim this guy was a member. And the above MO is shared by 3x as many legitimate people, so it's not a mafia MO for per se but just certain traits you keep encountering when looking up members' info .
4) Either it's a mistake on the part of who filled out the records, but if true it appears he has contacts such as Mr. V. Carbony in Ponce, Puerto Rico and Pancho Gonzalez in Vera Cruz, Mexico. I'm not saying he wasn't amico nos because he knows Spanish guys but just would like to note that would be quite rare. (And I am again reminded of that Brooklyn informant named Battista Balsamo who was a Spaniard, I'll have to re-look that up.
Union St is in Cobble Hill is just north of Red Hook, in the 1900's the leader in that area was Joe Trovato who's been in BK for at least a decade, also linked to Lupo and I believe one of the Manganos married his daughter later but I could be mistaken. After Trovato I believe Joe Fanaro is a possible leader in that area before being killed in 1913 (along with Fontana up in Harlem). Both Trovato and Fanaro were Gambinos.
I'll keep this Balsamo under "maybe" for being a member, but I've still seen nothing from my end to indicate that.
UPDATE: Battista Balsamo b. 1868 and the documented Gambino member Battista Balsamo b.1905 are not father and son but both lived on Union St. The 1905 one's father is Ignazio and I have yet to ascertain if they came from Terrasini as well. Which if the case means they probably have relatives in Detroit and might be worth bringing Jimmy Buccellato into this discussion. What I recall of Detroit 1910 is you had alot of people traveling the country before settling in Detroit, they certainly had ties to Chicago, St Louis, Cleveland and NY very early on. But he's better versed in that region than myself and perhaps has looked into the townmen of Terrasini like did with our town.
UPDATE 2: (Again, my apologies for dragging this thread fucking light years away from 1983 New York), looking into my notes, outside of Detroit the Terrasini were wanderers, you see a few here and there in different cities but the hub is Detroit but... err *maybe origins in St. Louis which connects with Balestrate and ergo (!) the Bommarito connection! The Bommarito's a large family, I'm even related to them and went to a (lowercase F) family reunion in Saginaw, MI in 2002 which included relatives without the surname. 300 or so, some from St Louis. This area between C.D.G. and Palermo includes alot of Mafia cities like Belestrate, Partinico, Alcamo, Carini and these factions- like the Cast or Corleonese on a smaller level- maintained some national cohesion, enough for murders to be 'felt' in other cities. It really needs more looking into. We're going into subsets of the larger three hubs of the Castellammare Gulf and the interior and the urban coasts of Palermo/Sciacca. Like the Ribera network, they apparently spanned multiple cities and states.