New Orleans.

[Pogo The Clown]

Yes that was my thought as well.


Pogo

[Antiliar]

I appreciate the kind words. It can be difficult, as I enjoy speculating but I try to make it clear when I'm raising questions or making general observations. I sometimes make myself sick with how much I use "appears to be" and "possibly" in writing, but it would make me more sick to say something is definitive without evidence for it. Sometimes people want absolute facts but that's not something the mafia offers much of.

I like saying "mafia-adjacent". Like when we find someone who is surrounded by mafia presence but can't confirm membership, it makes sense to call them mafia-adjacent. I also use the word mafioso more generally, sometimes to refer to someone who may or may not be a member but is nonetheless immersed in the culture. I wouldn't call a confirmed associate a "mafioso", but it works for people in that grey area where we don't know. It's along the lines of what Bonanno said, "mafia" is an idea rather than the formal name of the organization so I use "mafioso" in that vein, like how the entire subculture is what forms the mafia and not only the members and ranks.

Anyway, I'm still gearing up to dig deeper into NO someday. Antiliar is a great resource on that family and there are others. There is an Agrigento element in that family that needs to be explored more... the Marcellos were from Ravenusa before going to Tunis, and as mentioned the Gaglianos are from PE. I've seen some other leads I want to dig into.

Palermitan and Corleonese too.

So much is lost to history, so much we'll never know. All I can say is that NO was the NY of its day and what the mafia looked like or what it entailed is lost to history. Now all we got a Carlos Marcello and a dozen names we never hear of again.

We have evidence of the Mafia in Sicily of the 1870's and 1890's being linked with New Orleans. I posted it before I'll try and locate it. But from what I gather, New Orleans and Palermitan mafiosi were in close contact.

I can share some info offline. The earliest Mafiosi were from Palermo, Piana dei Greci, Contessa Entellina, Monreale, and later, Corleone. Charles Matranga was supposedly the capo at the time of the 1891 mass lynchings, but it hasn't been confirmed. Some of the information comes from Emmanuele Polizzi, who was declared incompetent to stand trial. Matranga was born in Ustica, his father Salvatore came from Monreale, and his grandfather from Piana dei Greci. (Piana and Contessa were both Albanian settlements.) The first boss we can confirm was the man who was killed in 1903 by Morello. Then Francesco Motisi, the capo of Pagliarelli, then Vincenzo Moreci who was killed in 1915. Then we have a big knowledge gap until Corrado Giacona, who died in 1944. The Frank Todaro, Sylvestro Carollo, Leoluca Trombatore, and finally Carlos Marcello. According to one source a Sam Guarino was the top man in the 1930s, but I couldn't find anyone who fit.

[stubbs]

New Orleans’ main point of contact in the Gambinos for many years was reportedly Joe N Gallo, whose family was from Bisacquino like DiLeonardo’s family.

Interestingly enough, my ancestors came from Bisacquino via the port of New Orleans before moving to Texas years later. Since Gallo was born in Birmingham, it’s possible his family came in through New Orleans as well. Many Sicilians went from NOLA east to Alabama to find work.

Many Sicilians also came in through the port of Galveston, but it seems on a much smaller scale than NOLA and obviously NYC.

[PolackTony]

So it's been a small group since at least the 1950's.

Between 1850 to 1890 existed an a worldwide Sicilian trade in the citrus industry which extended by Sicily to New Orleans to Buenos Aires. It's a forgotten piece of history but before everyone bought Florida oranges the Sicilians supplied the world until 1890. What I'm getting at, is how Sicilians, or in our interest Mafiosi, were involved with this trade and likely lead to its eventual decline as the mafia gutted the industry in a Sopranoesque bust-out.

Between 1850 and 1870, the New Orleans Mafia was the epicenter. Had the South won the Civil War, New Orleans would have remained America's premier city and there may have never been a powerful NY Mafia. For all we know there may have been multiple Families in New Orleans early on. Not saying there was, just saying that in the 1800's New Orleans was the hub. New York likely didn't dominate until the 1890's.

In 1870 the majority of Itals were in NO, by 1872 they were then in SF, Birmingham, NY, Pennsylvania, St Louis. The early NY Mafiosi all had ties to NO, including Morello who arrived there wearing a red bandanna around his neck which may have implicated some symbolism.

Also, you will read history books about how Sicilians and the blacks of the south found common interests with each other. Yes and no. It's a grey area, something Italian historians don't like to discuss is the "White Society" composed of Sicilians who for a year outshined the KKK in lynchings. You also had Republican political affiliated Mafiosi at this time. It was a grey area. Organic and not static. Anyone who says it's completely black and white is ignorant or mistaken.

Jump ahead to the 1960's, FBI wiretaps revealed the Commission edicts omitted NO out of respect for their being the first family.

From what I've seen, a considerable number of Sicilians in Chicago came via Louisiana, including 1st gen Sicilian-American who moved up north and settled in Chicago Italian communities in the 20th century. Just offhand, even several later prominent Outfit guys like Spilotro and Turk Torello had connections via their mothers to Louisiana.

[PolackTony]

So it's been a small group since at least the 1950's.

Between 1850 to 1890 existed an a worldwide Sicilian trade in the citrus industry which extended by Sicily to New Orleans to Buenos Aires. It's a forgotten piece of history but before everyone bought Florida oranges the Sicilians supplied the world until 1890. What I'm getting at, is how Sicilians, or in our interest Mafiosi, were involved with this trade and likely lead to its eventual decline as the mafia gutted the industry in a Sopranoesque bust-out.

Between 1850 and 1870, the New Orleans Mafia was the epicenter. Had the South won the Civil War, New Orleans would have remained America's premier city and there may have never been a powerful NY Mafia. For all we know there may have been multiple Families in New Orleans early on. Not saying there was, just saying that in the 1800's New Orleans was the hub. New York likely didn't dominate until the 1890's.

In 1870 the majority of Itals were in NO, by 1872 they were then in SF, Birmingham, NY, Pennsylvania, St Louis. The early NY Mafiosi all had ties to NO, including Morello who arrived there wearing a red bandanna around his neck which may have implicated some symbolism.

Also, you will read history books about how Sicilians and the blacks of the south found common interests with each other. Yes and no. It's a grey area, something Italian historians don't like to discuss is the "White Society" composed of Sicilians who for a year outshined the KKK in lynchings. You also had Republican political affiliated Mafiosi at this time. It was a grey area. Organic and not static. Anyone who says it's completely black and white is ignorant or mistaken.

Jump ahead to the 1960's, FBI wiretaps revealed the Commission edicts omitted NO out of respect for their being the first family.

From what I've seen, a considerable number of Sicilians in Chicago came via Louisiana, including 1st gen Sicilian-American who moved up north and settled in Chicago Italian communities in the 20th century. Just offhand, even several later prominent Outfit guys like Spilotro and Turk Torello had connections via their mothers to Louisiana.

Correction to the above, not Turk Torello (who was Lucano but with family connections to KC), but Johnny Apes Monteleone, who's mother Paulina Gagliano was born in Louisiana to Sicilian parents (same as Spilotro's mother).

[B.]

- If they were referring to five active members, the question is what the criteria would be for referring to members as "active" or "inactive" while communicating with the Commission about membership? That's not something they typically address formally.

- A member might be elderly or basically retired, but I'm not sure they'd make a distinction based on "activity" level when discussing membership with the Commission. A member is a member and when Joe Colombo did his own family membership "census" and told Scarpa the number, he made no distinction between active members and inactive.

- For example, when the books are open, the mafia doesn't decide to induct new members because they have too many old or inactive members, but only to replace members who have died. The only exception is the +2 Christmas rule which was put in place due to the number of members incarcerated by the 1990s.

- Scarpa said Colombo brought up New Orleans' request to induct new members because they had five "remaining" members and were at risk of "dying out "without new inductions. He said Colombo told him the youngest member was in his mid-40s. Would Colombo say NO was at risk of "dying out" if they had 30+ members, most of them inactive? I can't answer that, though based on my observations that's not how they typically view their organizations. When Domenico Violi said he beat out thirty members to become Buffalo underboss, he likely meant the entire membership, including elderly members.

- If it were me guessing, I would say New Orleans should have had many more elderly members based on their history. I don't have any basis for it, though. If we look at other southern groups, the Birmingham family died out in the 1930s and a source indicated to the FBI that Dallas didn't make any members for 30 to 40 years and almost died out before Joe Civello inducted some new members. Did New Orleans follow the same pattern as these nearby families and do little to maintain their numbers? The Colombo->Scarpa info gives that impression.

- I'd be interested in who the FBI's sources were for making other charts and suspected member lists during this era. We have accurate lists for families who had a member source and even then it usually required more than one to get an accurate list of most members, like we saw in Philadelphia. Who was in a position to give the FBI information on New Orleans membership?

- An extensive FBI report published in October 1967 listed the hierarchies and all confirmed members and suspected members of each US family. While not perfect, this was based on the totality of their sources and confirmed members only came from high-placed/corroborated sources. The only confirmed member they had for New Orleans in late 1967 was Carlos Marcello, while they had a longer list of suspected members. The lists of suspected members for other families were naturally far less accurate than their confirmed members. That the FBI had only one confirmed member in New Orleans, the boss, lends itself to the info from Scarpa / Joe Colombo.



^The above is a strong indication the FBI was guessing or relying on non-member sources when determining suspected members. They knew that Carlos Marcello was a nationally respected mafia boss at this time, so it may have been difficult for them to believe Marcello was a figure of great stature based in an area with a strong mafia history, yet could count his organization on one hand. It doesn't make sense if we look at it from the outside without member sources.

If there are other sources who confirmed NO members during this period, it would be great to throw them in the ring. I just haven't seen any and the 1967 FBI report lends itself to Colombo->Scarpa. Would be great too if we had info on how many members they initially made after contacting the Commission in 1968.

[B.]

- Looking at the LaStella meeting attendees from New Orleans, we might figure that these were all made members by 1966:

Anthony Carollo
Frank Gagliano
Joseph Marcello
Carlos Marcello

- Gagliano was only in his 30s, though, so if Colombo was right he would not have been a member yet. The LaStella dinner may not have been the formal Commission meeting but a social event held in addition to a formal meeting. Genovese members Dominick Alongi and Anthony Carillo attended the dinner and likely would not have attended the formal Commission discussions.

^ We know of other meetings where associates are asked to step away during the formal discussion but are invited back to socialize / eat. The DeCavalcante family's Christmas party started out as members only, then included proposed members later in the day. It's now believed that some of the younger members at Apalachin (i.e. Neil Migliore) were not yet made and may have been there as assistants/drivers to the leaders, plus it was an opportunity to familiarize them with national figures.

- Gagliano may have been there because he was a proposed member and Marcello brought him for one of the above reasons. He isn't included on the FBI's 1967 suspected member list which is strange so maybe they had reason to believe he wasn't made yet?

- Anthony Carollo (not to be confused with attendee Carillo) could be the NO member referred to by Scarpa / Colombo as being 44- or 46-years-old. He would have been 45 at the time Colombo referred to New Orleans. His father had been an earlier boss of the family.

- Joseph Marcello could also be who Colombo was referring to. Marcello was 44 in 1968. Joe Marcello had attended an MLB game in Houston with Dallas boss Joseph Civello in August 1967 which could point to membership. He was also described as follows:



^ The source who identified Joe Marcello as second in command or underboss was a non-member in New Orleans who was socially close to the Marcellos but appears to have had little to no insight into the formal mafia organization. For example, he couldn't understand why Marcello brought Carollo and Gagliano to NYC with him for the LaStella meeting as he thought Marcello hated them. He was familiar with Marcellos general activities and social contacts but little more.

^ The source who identified Campo as a mediator doesn't appear to have become a full-blown informant and none of the lists of informants in NO seem to be members or associates who knew the inner workings of the organization. Very interesting, though, is that this source says he had known of the mafia in NO since the 1910s and had been proposed for membership in the 1930s by Sam Guarina but apparently turned it down. Then in the 1940s the source was approached by boss Leoluca Trombatore about becoming a member again and Trombatore told the source that if he became a member it was "for life". It sounds like the source did not become a member but he didn't fully cooperate either from what we can see. He said Leoluca Trombatore was boss until 1964, when he died and Carlos Marcello succeeded him. He said Marcello had been Trombatore's "#2" man even though media publicity labeled him the top figure. Note that Trombatore/Trumbadore died in 1963 and was from Corleone and he appears to have been a nephew of boss of bosses Giuseppe Morello of NYC.

^ The other source who ID'd Carlos Marcello as a rappresentante was Ray Patriarca on his office bug, but we already knew Marcello's rank. Always good to have confirmation from another boss, though.

^ Joe Colombo told Scarpa that NO had a boss, underboss, and consigliere. The above snippets suggests this may have been Carlos Marcello, Joseph Marcello, and Vincenzo Campo, respectively. Like the Marcellos and Gaglianos, Campo was from Agrigento, being from the mafia stronghold of Siculiana.

- Colombo's attendance at the LaStella dinner with the NO figures show that he had direct contact with them during their visit, so his knowledge was firsthand. I'm not absolutely convinced Scarpa's info via Joe Colombo was the be all end all, but I do believe there is an argument to be made for it given the sources and other available info.

- Bill Feather's chart page lists many names of older members, some of whom are stated as being alive in >1968. I greatly appreciate Bill's page as a quick reference point and collection of info / research, though it is not always accurate and sometimes non-members are included, DOBs/DODs are mistaken, and sources are questionable. For example, his list of current DeCavalcante members includes names that have appeared only as forum gossip (he includes the bloated wigger Whitey Stango and Joseph Merlo III, who is a gay theater actor, on the member list). I would need to know his sources on the older New Orleans members to gauge them better. No disrespect meant, just the truth.

[Patrickgold]

I think what we are starting to see that a lot of these small families didn’t really die out when many thought they did. Another example of this was when Kenji also mentioned that he was introduced to the boss of the Denver Family in the early 2000s and it was Paul Villano. These families might have been downsized considerable and may have only had titles that were ceremonious but they were still considered those titles by other families

[nash143]

Bit of further info from '68 report...

[B.]

Bit of further info from '68 report...

Thanks!

Because Silvestro Carollo and Frank Coppola had been deported, and Giuseppe Gagliano was living in NY after returning from his own deportation, they may not have been included in Colombo's total, though Carollo returned to NO before he died in 1970. It raises the question of whether deported members were still considered "with" their previous family or if they inevitably transferred membership. Coppola did transfer membership we can be sure.

That leaves the Marcellos, Anthony Carollo, Campo, and Frank Gagliano as five possible members still living in New Orleans circa 1968. I'm curious who the two different sources were on this list. Frank Bompensiero began cooperating in 1968 and in other reports identified Coppola and Carollo as members, as he knew them when they were in Tijuana after being deported, so maybe the first one is him. "NO T-1" and "NO T-2" would have been temporary codes which in some cases used the local jurisdiction's location to cover the informants' real code from a different jurisdiction to hide their identity.



^ The source who described Campo as the consigliere is the same non-member associate who called Joe Marcello the underboss. Here we see the temporary code "NO T-1" used again for a different informant than the one in Nash's post.

^ The FBI explains below why they continued to list Campo and Marcello as suspected members:



^ "Highly Confidential Technical sources" and "qualified sources" refers to cooperation from made members or taped recordings of made members. The FBI rarely made exceptions when it came to confirming members.

^ Marcello and Campo were not confirmed as members because the informant who called them underboss and consigliere was not a member. Because of this, we can't say for certain they were members though it seems most likely.

[motorfab]

I have always been very skeptical about what Scarpa would have said on NOLA with the fact that there are only 5 members. That would mean they had fewer members than a borgata like San Jose. or Denver ... Even if some presumed members like Salvadore & Vic Gallo or Joseph Pecora died in the early 60s, 5 is still very few! I had retrieved a list on MF dating from 1963 with 5 names, it could be those there. But even if it's those there a guy like Vincenzo Campo is not there. I can hardly see him being inducted in the mid-sixties and being catapulted straight to Consigliere.



Regarding the 1967-68 list I have already seen somewhere (probably also on MF) the same one with Sam DiPiazzia on it. As I was telling nash143 when he was doing his chart, I think there are a few names missing and they were between 30-35 members. I also think (but this is just a personal feeling) that some of the Bonura brothers or a guy like Jerome Pipitone had a good chance of being members. Those there more surely others that we have not heard of.

I find it quite incredible that a borgata like NOLA never had more high-ranking informants to give the cops information. Apart from making assumptions, we cannot even say who was a capo during these years ...

[motorfab]

B., If I am not mistaken according to this associate informant it was Leoluca Trombatore the Boss before Marcello (which also makes me quite skeptical). Maybe Trombatore was acting for Carollo before Marcello

[sdeitche]

Anyway, I'm still gearing up to dig deeper into NO someday. Antiliar is a great resource on that family and there are others. There is an Agrigento element in that family that needs to be explored more... the Marcellos were from Ravenusa before going to Tunis, and as mentioned the Gaglianos are from PE. I've seen some other leads I want to dig into.

The LoScalzos had NO ties. Nino LoScalzo, son of Angelo "the Hammer" and brother of Vince Loscalzo, worked for Marcello at the Elmwood Plantation restaurant, before his death from leukemia in 1976. Joe Marcello was a pallbearer at his funeral. Nino is buried at the L'Unione Italiana Cemetary, just north of Ybor City.

[Angelo Santino]

The Monasteros of Pittsburgh, the previous generation had members in The Lynching.

Gaetano Russo of early New York, went back and forth between both cities, active from 1860's until the 1910's.

Weren't the Alongis (Genovese) by way of NO?

Antonio Musso arrived in Detroit and shared their lineage but married a Piro from New Orleans and went onto boss Rockford.

[cavita]

I would love more information on the NO family as I am always interested in the families that have little to no information. That and the fact I have familial connections to three of the purported members keeps my interest piqued.