Maceo Brothers from Galveston, Texas

[BeatiPaoli]

To Everyone: Simple question: Were the Maceo brothers, Sam and Rosario, ever members of Cosa Nostra? They certainly fit the "profile," as it were, both ethnically and in their legal/illegal activities. Any information would be appreciated.

Regards,
BeatiPaoli

[PolackTony]

I looked into the Maceos a bit before and was never able to find anything confirming their membership. They were, of course, all dead by the time the FBI began systematically investigating the mafia as a formal entity. Quality intel on Texas is sparse in general and offhand I’m not even sure that the FBI had a member CI in the Dallas Family in the 60s, so unless someone has come across a file where a member source in another Family happened to have identified any of the Maceos as deceased members, I don’t know that we can know for sure.

Here’s what B wrote in the 1963 Dallas thread last year:

- Not sure about the Galveston faction under the Maceo brothers Sam, Rosario, and Vincent. They had Palermitano heritage and were all dead by this time but I've never seen definitive info they were members. Seems likely at least Sam was.

If anyone is interested, I have Rosario “Rose” (1887), Salvatore “Sam” (1894), and Vincenzo “Vincent (1897) Maceo as born in Palermo Città to Vito Maceo of Palermo and Angela Sansone of Cefalù. The family lived in the Quartiere of Borgo Vecchio before emigrating to the US at NOLA in 1902, living in Vernon Parish, LA, before relocating to Tx in the 1910s. Elder brother Tomasso “Thomas” Maceo (1884) died in Galveston in 1918 during the influenza pandemic. All three brothers were barbers, with Sam living in San Antonio around 1917 but rejoining the rest of his family in Galveston by 1919, after he served in the military. Vincent served in WW1 as well, and in 1931 he was incarcerated in Leavenworth. His first wife, Madge Maceo, was beaten to death with a club in Galveston in 1921, so he may have been convicted of her murder. In 1927, Sam Maceo, who later was a boxing promoter, operated the Hollywood Super Club in Galveston, which was torched in an arson after being ordered by local authorities to shutter due to hosting gambling activities. Vincent died in 1947, Sam in 1951, and Rose in 1954 (Sam died in Baltimore, where he had recently underwent surgery while being treated for cancer and Johns Hopkins).

While not directly relevant to the OP, the names on Vito Maceo’s 1929 obituary may be interesting for anyone trying to piece together what may have been the outlines of mafia activity in Galveston in this era. Note that Rose Maceo’s wife, Francis, was a DiSpenza but her parents seem to have been from Palermo Città and may not have been related to the Cimminesi DiSpenzas of Chicago. Vito Maceo had two brothers, Salvatore and Vincenzo (the latter married to Concetta Sansone, the sister of Vito’s wife) who also settled in Galveston and died in the 1930s.

[Sullycantwell]

I looked into the Maceos a bit before and was never able to find anything confirming their membership. They were, of course, all dead by the time the FBI began systematically investigating the mafia as a formal entity. Quality intel on Texas is sparse in general and offhand I’m not even sure that the FBI had a member CI in the Dallas Family in the 60s, so unless someone has come across a file where a member source in another Family happened to have identified any of the Maceos as deceased members, I don’t know that we can know for sure.

Vincenzo Maggiotta was a member informant https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.htm ... =Maggiotta
I haven’t been able to find any info he gave though.

[PolackTony]

I looked into the Maceos a bit before and was never able to find anything confirming their membership. They were, of course, all dead by the time the FBI began systematically investigating the mafia as a formal entity. Quality intel on Texas is sparse in general and offhand I’m not even sure that the FBI had a member CI in the Dallas Family in the 60s, so unless someone has come across a file where a member source in another Family happened to have identified any of the Maceos as deceased members, I don’t know that we can know for sure.

Vincenzo Maggiotta was a member informant https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.htm ... =Maggiotta
I haven’t been able to find any info he gave though.

Jimmy Maggiotta was an informant? In the document that you linked, Maggiotta was identified as a “top echelon criminal informant target” (i.e., they had designated him previously as someone they wanted to attempt to turn into an informant), but then the Dallas office noted that as they could not establish that Maggiotta was involved in any criminal activities (1965), they were closing his file (they cited three CIs in the report that claimed they had no knowledge of Maggiotta being criminally active but rather just socially close to Civello).

[Sullycantwell]

I looked into the Maceos a bit before and was never able to find anything confirming their membership. They were, of course, all dead by the time the FBI began systematically investigating the mafia as a formal entity. Quality intel on Texas is sparse in general and offhand I’m not even sure that the FBI had a member CI in the Dallas Family in the 60s, so unless someone has come across a file where a member source in another Family happened to have identified any of the Maceos as deceased members, I don’t know that we can know for sure.

Vincenzo Maggiotta was a member informant https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.htm ... =Maggiotta
I haven’t been able to find any info he gave though.

Jimmy Maggiotta was an informant? In the document that you linked, Maggiotta was identified as a “top echelon criminal informant target” (i.e., they had designated him previously as someone they wanted to attempt to turn into an informant), but then the Dallas office noted that as they could not establish that Maggiotta was involved in any criminal activities (1965), they were closing his file (they cited three CIs in the report that claimed they had no knowledge of Maggiotta being criminally active but rather just socially close to Civello).

Ah, didn’t read it careful enough. Good catch

[cavita]

Don't know what year this was..probably 1960s

[stubbs]

The best book on the Maceos and that era in Galveston, if anyone is interested, is called The Maceos and the Free State of Galveston: An Authorized History by Kimber Fountain. It’s a quick read and she actually talked to Maceo family members who are still alive.

It’s been a year or two since I read it, but from what I rememeber the Maceos weren’t made members, but seemed to be independent operators. They resisted getting hooked up with the New Orleans family. But, they still had some connections, I think mostly with the Dallas family. I believe they also had an interest in a hotel in Dallas with one of the members there.

Galveston is a small island and by the time both brothers died in the fifties, most of the gambling was moving to Vegas since it was legal there, and everything pretty much died out in Galveston. That, and by the fifties most of the vice in Texas got hit hard by law enforcement who started cracking down hard; illegal gambling in Dallas got hit hard in the fifties too, which is why Benny Binion moved to Vegas during that time period.

Tilman Fertitta is a decendant of the Maceos and people love to claim he’s somehow in the mafia, but Tilman is about as Italian as the Olive Garden. If he was doing anything illegal, or involved with illegal gambling, there’s zero chance he’d have gotten approved by the NBA to buy the Rockets, especially after the Tim Donahey scandal.

[PolackTony]

I looked into the Maceos a bit before and was never able to find anything confirming their membership. They were, of course, all dead by the time the FBI began systematically investigating the mafia as a formal entity. Quality intel on Texas is sparse in general and offhand I’m not even sure that the FBI had a member CI in the Dallas Family in the 60s, so unless someone has come across a file where a member source in another Family happened to have identified any of the Maceos as deceased members, I don’t know that we can know for sure.

Vincenzo Maggiotta was a member informant https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.htm ... =Maggiotta
I haven’t been able to find any info he gave though.

Jimmy Maggiotta was an informant? In the document that you linked, Maggiotta was identified as a “top echelon criminal informant target” (i.e., they had designated him previously as someone they wanted to attempt to turn into an informant), but then the Dallas office noted that as they could not establish that Maggiotta was involved in any criminal activities (1965), they were closing his file (they cited three CIs in the report that claimed they had no knowledge of Maggiotta being criminally active but rather just socially close to Civello).

Ah, didn’t read it careful enough. Good catch

It can get confusing, as the FBI at times assigned informant code numbers to targets of the Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program (started in 1961 under Hoover's orders but initiated for the Dallas FO in 1962) even though they hadn't yet actually succeeded in inducing them to inform. For example, the Chicago FO I believe assigned a code number to capodecina Fiore Buccieri just because he had a normal, polite conversation with agents in public. Per the file in question here, Dallas only received authorization to engage Maggiotta as a target in December of 1965, but then in January of 1966 closed his file given reports from several local CIs that Maggiotta was not known to be criminally active at that time (by definition, of course, a "Criminal Top Echelon" informant had to be demonstrated to be criminally active, in order to be in the position to provide intel on criminal activities).

[PolackTony]

The best book on the Maceos and that era in Galveston, if anyone is interested, is called The Maceos and the Free State of Galveston: An Authorized History by Kimber Fountain. It’s a quick read and she actually talked to Maceo family members who are still alive.

It’s been a year or two since I read it, but from what I rememeber the Maceos weren’t made members , but seemed to be independent operators. They resisted getting hooked up with the New Orleans family. But, they still had some connections, I think mostly with the Dallas family. I believe they also had an interest in a hotel in Dallas with one of the members there.

I've gone through Fountain's book. It's a nice read and contains a lot of good information on local Galveston history and the extended Maceo-Fertitta-Serio family (who were already intermarried and linked to each other back in Palermo). But the claim that the Maceos were "independent" was solely based on Fountain's personal opinion, and it is evident that she simply didn't have access to sources that would be in the position of actually proving or disproving the Maceos' membership and/or formal affiliation. This is of course a common issue with books of this sort, particularly those written about mobsters outside of NYC and prior to the FBI's targeting of LCN as such. This is not a dig at Fountain, who does guided tours and is a writer for the Galveston Monthy Magazine ( "Exploring Your Island Paradise"). She obviously knows a lot about local history but demonstrates a poor understanding of the mafia. For example, from my reading, she appears totally unaware that a Dallas Family existed and assumed that if the Maceos were affiliated with the mafia it would have to have been with the "Marcello outfit" (she makes no mention at all of guys like the Piranios, Civello, Angelica, Attardi, etc). While the book is a must-read for anyone interested in the Maceos, it doesn't help us to interrogate the question of the Maceos' formal status vis-a-vis the mafia.

In the concluding paragraph of Chapter 1, Fountain states her claim:

Admittedly, the evidence is circumstantial, but what is known of the Maceos’ early history is adequate to establish a substantial degree of certainty that they were not members of the Sicilian Mafia. Regardless, the peculiar mindset that they eventually developed, influenced but not overtaken by their heritage, would elevate them far above a stereotype.

At the end of the same paragraph:

The level of class, sophistication and diplomacy they infused into an otherwise tawdry profession would grow to outrank that of any mafioso. Despite the labels thrust upon them, the raw, unadulterated version of who the Maceos were and what they accomplished when they stepped off that ship after the most uncomfortable three weeks of their lives, is enough to unequivocally prove that the Maceo vision was unlike anything the world had ever seen.

So, in Fountain's opinion, the Maceos were not mafiosi. Why? They were just too classy, they totally didn't fit the "stereotype" of mafiosi (unlike such notoriously low-class cafoni as Dr. Giuseppe Romano, Dr. Filippo Noto, Dr. Mario Tagliagambe, Cola Schirò, polymath Tony D'Andrea, Mike Merlo, etc).

Good thing Fountain was here to set the record straight, otherwise we'd continue to "marginalize" the Maceos by erroneously calling them mafiosi. Fountain, as it turns out, already knew that they weren't criminals, let alone mafiosi, before she even really began researching them in earnest (from the introduction to the book):

[O]ne thing I have never done is marginalize the key characters of the Free State, as is so often the case. They are drawn as caricatures and painted with a Hollywood brush into portraits with labels like “gangster,” “mobster” and “Mafia" [...] Fortunately, I had made up my mind about the Maceos long before I was confronted with this historical distortion. The way I interpreted it, Sam and Rose Maceo were nothing short of geniuses who had found a way to elevate a city to enormous prosperity during some of the bleakest decades in United States history. I did not see them as thugs or even as criminals[.]

In a later chapter, Fountain also goes on to opine that Sam Maceo, in spite of the fact that Vincenzo Vallone was managing Maceo's High Hat club in Houston, had nothing at all to do with narcotics and the Maceos were unfairly caught up in an FBN dragnet despite "doing their best to maneuver around a Marcello drug ring that had forced its way into Galveston waters". As further support for the implausibility of Sam Maceo being involved in narcotics trafficking, she cites that he was on public record claiming that he barely drank and that local LE and the Galveston press (at least some of whom I think it's safe to presume were in the Maceos' pocket) stated publically that the Maceos were "independent" of any criminal networks outside of Galveston. Her bibliography includes no references to any FBN or FBI files, congressional hearings, or court documents.

Don't know what year this was..probably 1960s

This was from a 1958 memorandum that the FBI received from the FBN, reproducing information from a 1950 FBN list of 850 individuals "suspected by the Bureau of Narcotics of being adherents of the Mafia in the United States". Unless somebody happens upon some new evidence in an FBI file in the future, the FBN intel on the Maceos is probably the best that we're gonna get, though their use of "member of the Mafia" here of course can't be taken at face value as necessarily indicating that Sam Maceo was a made guy.

-------

Interesting to note also that Johnny Roselli admitted to knowing Sam Maceo during his testimony at the Kefauver Hearings in 1951:

[stubbs]

The best book on the Maceos and that era in Galveston, if anyone is interested, is called The Maceos and the Free State of Galveston: An Authorized History by Kimber Fountain. It’s a quick read and she actually talked to Maceo family members who are still alive.

It’s been a year or two since I read it, but from what I rememeber the Maceos weren’t made members , but seemed to be independent operators. They resisted getting hooked up with the New Orleans family. But, they still had some connections, I think mostly with the Dallas family. I believe they also had an interest in a hotel in Dallas with one of the members there.

I've gone through Fountain's book. It's a nice read and contains a lot of good information on local Galveston history and the extended Maceo-Fertitta-Serio family (who were already intermarried and linked to each other back in Palermo). But the claim that the Maceos were "independent" was solely based on Fountain's personal opinion, and it is evident that she simply didn't have access to sources that would be in the position of actually proving or disproving the Maceos' membership and/or formal affiliation. This is of course a common issue with books of this sort, particularly those written about mobsters outside of NYC and prior to the FBI's targeting of LCN as such. This is not a dig at Fountain, who does guided tours and is a writer for the Galveston Monthy Magazine ( "Exploring Your Island Paradise"). She obviously knows a lot about local history but demonstrates a poor understanding of the mafia. For example, from my reading, she appears totally unaware that a Dallas Family existed and assumed that if the Maceos were affiliated with the mafia it would have to have been with the "Marcello outfit" (she makes no mention at all of guys like the Piranios, Civello, Angelica, Attardi, etc). While the book is a must-read for anyone interested in the Maceos, it doesn't help us to interrogate the question of the Maceos' formal status vis-a-vis the mafia.

In the concluding paragraph of Chapter 1, Fountain states her claim:

Admittedly, the evidence is circumstantial, but what is known of the Maceos’ early history is adequate to establish a substantial degree of certainty that they were not members of the Sicilian Mafia. Regardless, the peculiar mindset that they eventually developed, influenced but not overtaken by their heritage, would elevate them far above a stereotype.

At the end of the same paragraph:

The level of class, sophistication and diplomacy they infused into an otherwise tawdry profession would grow to outrank that of any mafioso. Despite the labels thrust upon them, the raw, unadulterated version of who the Maceos were and what they accomplished when they stepped off that ship after the most uncomfortable three weeks of their lives, is enough to unequivocally prove that the Maceo vision was unlike anything the world had ever seen.

So, in Fountain's opinion, the Maceos were not mafiosi. Why? They were just too classy, they totally didn't fit the "stereotype" of mafiosi (unlike such notoriously low-class cafoni as Dr. Giuseppe Romano, Dr. Filippo Noto, Dr. Mario Tagliagambe, Cola Schirò, polymath Tony D'Andrea, Mike Merlo, etc).

Good thing Fountain was here to set the record straight, otherwise we'd continue to "marginalize" the Maceos by erroneously calling them mafiosi. Fountain, as it turns out, already knew that they weren't criminals, let alone mafiosi, before she even really began researching them in earnest (from the introduction to the book):

[O]ne thing I have never done is marginalize the key characters of the Free State, as is so often the case. They are drawn as caricatures and painted with a Hollywood brush into portraits with labels like “gangster,” “mobster” and “Mafia" [...] Fortunately, I had made up my mind about the Maceos long before I was confronted with this historical distortion. The way I interpreted it, Sam and Rose Maceo were nothing short of geniuses who had found a way to elevate a city to enormous prosperity during some of the bleakest decades in United States history. I did not see them as thugs or even as criminals[.]

In a later chapter, Fountain also goes on to opine that Sam Maceo, in spite of the fact that Vincenzo Vallone was managing Maceo's High Hat club in Houston, had nothing at all to do with narcotics and the Maceos were unfairly caught up in an FBN dragnet despite "doing their best to maneuver around a Marcello drug ring that had forced its way into Galveston waters". As further support for the implausibility of Sam Maceo being involved in narcotics trafficking, she cites that he was on public record claiming that he barely drank and that local LE and the Galveston press (at least some of whom I think it's safe to presume were in the Maceos' pocket) stated publically that the Maceos were "independent" of any criminal networks outside of Galveston. Her bibliography includes no references to any FBN or FBI files, congressional hearings, or court documents.

Don't know what year this was..probably 1960s

This was from a 1958 memorandum that the FBI received from the FBN, reproducing information from a 1950 FBN list of 850 individuals "suspected by the Bureau of Narcotics of being adherents of the Mafia in the United States". Unless somebody happens upon some new evidence in an FBI file in the future, the FBN intel on the Maceos is probably the best that we're gonna get, though their use of "member of the Mafia" here of course can't be taken at face value as necessarily indicating that Sam Maceo was a made guy.

-------

Interesting to note also that Johnny Roselli admitted to knowing Sam Maceo during his testimony at the Kefauver Hearings in 1951:

Great post Tony! It’s been a few years since I read that book. I didn’t remember her writing like that; maybe she was too close to some of the Maceo relatives to be objective.

If you or anyone comes across anything mentioning their membership in any family, please share. My guess is most likely they would’ve been members of the Dallas family, if any. But who knows, maybe they were with the Marcellos.

I think there were a few Dallas lcn members who operated out of Houston. Though, I know there were a few Marcello members/associates who did some bookmaking in Houston in the sixties: Luke Galioto, Joseph Accardo, and Sam Saia got busted there in’69. I think Saia was from Baton Rouge originally.

[B.]

I do suspect Sam Maceo was a member but have never seen anything definitive.

Dallas had a great source who got information on the org directly from Civella but he didn't seem to get much on the non-Dallas factions.

[PolackTony]

I do suspect Sam Maceo was a member but have never seen anything definitive.

Dallas had a great source who got information on the org directly from Civella but he didn't seem to get much on the non-Dallas factions.

Do you mean the CI who gave the Feds a summary of the history of the Family from the time of the Piranios? This was DL 299-PC, who told the FBI on May 31st, 1966, that he was given this info by "a very close associate of CIVELLO who indicated that he had received this information directly from CIVELLO". In another FBI report from 1966/06/08, it was noted that DL 299-PC was relaying information to the FBI reported to him by Phillip Stephen Bosco, a "close associate" of Civello who was a suspected Dallas member (Bosco was born in 1911 in Dallas to Corleonese parents, Leoluca Lo Bosco and Anna De Gilia). Bosco was also the brother-in-law of Joe Ianni, as their wives, Lucille Pinto and Marie Elizabeth Pinto, respectively, were sisters (the surname was originally Panepinto, and both sisters were born in Dallas to American-born Corleonese parents).

Here was DL 299-PC's account, apparently relayed to him by Bosco who heard it from Civello. I believe that you posted it previously in an older thread, but it's relevant here as the account includes "Houston-Galveston" as one group under the Piranios:



The FBI had an earlier CI, prior to the initiation of the Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program, DL 105-C, who had previously told them in 1959 that the Piranios had been the bosses from the 1920s but that Civello had succeded Joe Piranio as the "Dallas representative of the nationwide Italian criminal organization" upon the latter's suicide in 1956.

[B.]

Yep, I was thinking of that CI. Thanks for the reminder he didn't hear about it direct from Civello but from Bosco via Civello.

It's clear the Houston faction was part of the Dallas Family but what muddies the waters is that remote members also lived in Texas like Attardi of the Gambinos and Angelica of the Genovese. Curious if Angelica was tied to the Pellegrino crowd.

Another figure of interest is Matteo Arrigo. He came to the US with Manfredi Mineo and Mineo's bro-in-law Nino Grillo (boss of Resuttana) and lived in Atlanta before ultimately settling in Galveston where he died in the 1950s. Certainly seems like a possible mafioso and his Palermo roots make me wonder if there were other mafia-linked Palermitani in Galveston like the Maceos and Arrigo.

[cavita]

Kind of relevant here