Pogo The Clown wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 11:42 am
If the youngest member of the 5 was in his mid-40s then it couldn't have been a situation like Cleveland and Dallas were no ceremonies were held for 30-40 years.
If the youngest member described by Colombo was Anthony Carollo (son of a boss) or Joe Marcello, both in their mid-40s, they easily could have been inducted ~25 years earlier when the men were in their 20s given the time period and that they were a heavily (entirely?) Sicilian family.
The NO informant I mentioned said he was approached about becoming a member in the 1930s and then again in the 1940s. So if they had other candidates beyond him, they held a ceremony in the 1930s and another in the 1940s. If inductions were rare and included few inductees attrition would catch up quickly with a small family.
I wasn't suggesting NO didn't induct anyone for 30-40 years. I was using Dallas as an example of a nearby family that went that long without inductions, only to induct new members in the 1960s to save themselves from dying out. Very similar to the way the Scarpa/Colombo info describes NO. There are a lot of regional patterns in the US mafia, so it's possible southern families were similar in the way that midwest families and west coast families were also birds of their own feather while still all being the same national mafia.
Dallas appears to have had fewer than twenty and maybe even around ten members during the years other families were at their peak. Not unlike what we see with families in Sicilian villages. If NO was similar at all to Dallas, even slight attrition and breaks in inductions could drastically reduce them.
And it would be very strange indeed for generational attrition to kill off all the soldiers but leave the Boss, UnderBoss, Consigliere, a former Boss and former UnderBoss still alive. As we've seen with other families attrition hits the leadership just as hard if not harder since they to tend to be older to begin with.
The former boss and underboss had been deported and were outside of New Orleans at that time. They may not have been considered NO members given transfers were still common then, which would leave a couple of slots open for other names in Colombo's alleged five member total.
Marcello allegedly became boss in 1963/1964 and according to one of the NO informants may have been underboss to Trombatore before that. If that's the case, the dwindling NO family elected a new boss in the 1963/1964, who named a new underboss, and they may have kept the consigliere or chose a new one.
General attrition wouldn't have occurred around a static administration -- the family appears to have chosen a new administration in spite of massive attrition.
I go back to what I said about the FBI listing 33 members in 1968. Even if we stipulate they were wrong on some or even most of them I find it almost impossible to believe that they would have been wrong on 28 of the 33 names they had listed as members.
The FBI themselves said (you can re-read the report excerpts above) that they lacked "qualified sources" to confirm the suspected NO membership during that time, hence so few confirmed members. Suspected members were often listed because they associated closely with members and were held in a certain regard, or a non-member source told the FBI someone might be a member. Cities with member sources had an easier time not only confirming members but also accurately determining suspected members. The FBI was in the dark on NO beyond Carlos Marcello's status as boss.
The FBI wouldn't have been "wrong" in their identification of suspected members, because the whole point of the suspected members sections of their reports is to communicate that they "don't know for sure". It's like your Possible Members section in the charts -- same exact idea. I wouldn't say you are wrong for including them because you made it clear there is room for doubt.
The FBI does not appear to have developed a qualified source in or around NO between October 1967 and 1968 that allowed them to identify 28 - 33 confirmed members, so the list you are referring to is likely based on the same suspected member list they were using during that time and the FBI explicitly stated it was not corroborated by a qualified source. I would have to see the exact chart to know for sure, but this is the FBI's own procedure and info I'm focusing on so unless there was a major breakdown in communication I'm not sure what this other chart would be based on.
I appreciate debating this a little bit with you -- I'm with you in that my personal assumption would be that NO had more than five members in 1968. Joe Colombo told Greg Scarpa otherwise, though, and the FBI does not appear to have had qualified information suggesting otherwise. It's completely possible they had more members -- maybe a few, maybe twenty, I don't know. What we have is a Commission member telling a member informant otherwise and the FBI lacking qualified sources to suggest otherwise.
Our best bet for adding new names to the confirmed list is if other members sources around the country identified NO members. Like I said, Bompensiero identified Silvestro Carollo and Frank Coppola from their time in Tijuana. Maybe another member source knew some NO names and we'll come across it.
