Maceo Brothers from Galveston, Texas

[chin_gigante]

I've already answered your dumb accusation on other threads. I signed up here to research the Colorado mob, specifically in P-Town. I've posted extensive questions about the same.

I've reviewed TV shows that I obsessed about momentarily. I've posted about multiple books, and the one you think I wrote? Yes I loved it. I'm flattered you think I wrote it. But mah dude, you're oddly paranoid, and hostile to new posters.

It's quite obvious that you wrote the book. You joined the forum a week before it was self published on Amazon and you first mention it here the day after. You try to work it into almost every thread you engage in and twice you've tried to start a discussion about it in its own thread.

Add to that you adopted a very condescending attitude the second you received any pushback from other researchers. If you don't start conducting yourself in good faith and stop leaning into personal attacks then you won't be on the forum much longer.

[Antiliar]

Actually, I assumed you were being so aggressive because you have small hands (that's a euphemism). Or perhaps small stature and a small heart. In other words, that you're simply just a jerk.

I also considered that unlike most people here, you're one of those people who can't handle different viewpoints. You claim to be a dispassionate scholar. That's not how scholars operate...

I've already answered your dumb accusation on other threads. I signed up here to research the Colorado mob, specifically in P-Town. I've posted extensive questions about the same.

I've reviewed TV shows that I obsessed about momentarily. I've posted about multiple books, and the one you think I wrote? Yes I loved it. I'm flattered you think I wrote it. But mah dude, you're oddly paranoid, and hostile to new posters.

I didn't produce the TV show I raved about and I didn't write the books I've cited in my posts (by Bonnano or Martin Gosch or Peter Maas or modern authors).

Might I suggest you tone it down a bit? Go touch grass.

Whether or not you wrote the book your attitude and online behavior is unacceptable. If you have an issue with another member you take it to the Graveyard section, not here. I suggest you reread the rules and play nice in this area if you want to continue here.

Besides that, since I'm also a researcher I'm going to agree with what B wrote. That Amazon ebook you've been bringing up is poorly researched, has few if any citations, and isn't recommended. I read the book and the writer's biggest problem is his arrogant know-it-all attitude insinuating that he's an expert when he's far from it. We have historical documentation that refutes the claims the writer asserts, including court testimony, government reports, and lots of first-hand accounts from confidential informants in the U.S. and Italy. I'm not saying that everything the author wrote is wrong, just a lot of it, especially when he assumes too much and makes sweeping generalizations.

[johnny_scootch]

My apologies if this has been mentioned here already as I haven’t fully read this thread, last night I watched season 2 episode 2 of the Taylor Sheridan show 1923 on Paramount+ and there is a mafia esque Sicilian character named Sal Maceo who runs Galveston, Texas. Obviously not a coincidence and it’s an excellent show so anyone interested in the Maceos and Galveston might want to check it out.

[Chaps]

Love 1923!

[B.]

A+, B & Humbly Appreciated Chicago Tone! That piece of context makes it clearer to understand just how deeply rooted Maceo's were in the network. Ironically I'm currently reading the Gentile informer article they pop up in mixed in with this orbit of Gambinos. In the article to me it seems like Gentile met Afonso Attardi in Galveston, mid to late 1930's as he says they (Gentile, LaGaipa & Conti) traveled to Galveston 8 days later, after a trip to New Orleans. I wonder if Arrigo and Attardi knew each other in Galveston or earlier in NY although they came from different Sicilian regions and Arrigo didn't stay in NY before Texas. Arrigo of the Gambinos & later Biaggio Angelica of the Genovese being involved with the Galveston/Maceo orbit shows proof 2 families in association from NY. I don't see at least Sam Maceo not being made into the Dallas Family as it seems the Maceo's put the Galveston in the "Houston - Galveston" group, name coined by the CI credited to Tony DL 299-PC.

I forgot Gentile went to Galveston. Good detail and further evidence that the city was "in network". Just a note that we have no info confirming Arrigo was affiliated with the Gambinos but he did live in New York before taking a return trip to Sicily and returning with Mineo, Grillo, and Briguccia. Those relationships do suggest that if Arrigo was made when he was living in NYC early on, he would have been a member of the Lupo Family, the precursor to the modern Gambinos. His involvement with Mineo and Grillo suggests to me Arrigo had stature in Cosa Nostra (i.e. he was made) so when he was living in Galveston for the remainder of his life he very well could have been a Dallas member.

There were some members who bounced between different cities in Texas. Peter "Duca" DeLuca for example was a confirmed Dallas Family member who spent time in Houston and Galveston in addition to Dallas itself. Duca, like Vincent Vallone, was Calabrian and previously lived in Pennsylvania -- some of us suspect there was early Camorra activity in the Houston area these guys were affiliated with before Cosa Nostra. The Piranios (two successive Dallas bosses from Corleone) and Vallones also intermarried, as did the Vallones and their fellow Calabrians the Iannis (the latter of which were important Dallas members close to and possibly related to Genovese captain Rocco Pellegrino, a confirmed Camorrista). In this thread it's also mentioned that Vallone worked at the Maceo club. Although the Dallas area had at least one great FBI source, we are greatly lacking when it comes to the Houston-Galveston area which is why questions persist about mafiosi in those areas but it's evident they were part of the national mafia network and very likely a branch of the Dallas Family.

I've already answered your dumb accusation on other threads. I signed up here to research the Colorado mob, specifically in P-Town. I've posted extensive questions about the same.

You were relentlessly pushing the e-book here until I called you out on it and weren't even doing an effective job at hiding who you are.



I initially engaged you in good faith in another thread but this is just going to be a merry-go-round and it's evident you have no interest in widening your understanding of mafia history and can't hang. I touch so much grass it would make your head spin.

[motorfab]

You are so clueless and absolute that you don't even grasp that the Camorra was not in Basilicata, and Torrio was from Basilicata.

I don't want to argue more than what has been said, but actually the Camorra had in addition to Campania branches in Calabria (the current 'ndrangheta is in fact a continuation of the Camorra that evolved into its own thing), Puglia, Abruzzo, Basilicata and even Sicily (the latter were recruited in prison for the most part).

We had approached the subject in particular in a thread where we even spoke of John Torrio, who although born in Baslicata, his family was from Puglia (thanks to PolackTony who had informed me of this detail)

The thread (Torrio is mentioned on page 2) viewtopic.php?t=9720

To delve deeper into the subject, reading Angelo Santino's blog is highly recommended https://americancamorra.substack.com/

[PolackTony]

You are so clueless and absolute that you don't even grasp that the Camorra was not in Basilicata, and Torrio was from Basilicata.

I don't want to argue more than what has been said, but actually the Camorra had in addition to Campania branches in Calabria (the current 'ndrangheta is in fact a continuation of the Camorra that evolved into its own thing), Puglia, Abruzzo, Basilicata and even Sicily (the latter were recruited in prison for the most part).

We had approached the subject in particular in a thread where we even spoke of John Torrio, who although born in Baslicata, his family was from Puglia (thanks to PolackTony who had informed me of this detail)

The thread (Torrio is mentioned on page 2) viewtopic.php?t=9720

To delve deeper into the subject, reading Angelo Santino's blog is highly recommended https://americancamorra.substack.com/

Correct, and as Angelo and I covered in one of the articles on his blog, the old Camorra had a significant presence in Puglia, with a “Maxi-trial” targeting Camorristi in Bari in the 1890s and other trials of Camorra societies in localities such as Taranto, Andria, and Trani. The activities of Camorra societies in Basilicata are less well-documented, likely due to the relative isolation and underdevelopment of that province even compared to the rest of the South, but there were certainly Camorristi there and the presence of Camorristi Lucani was also attested in the prison system (the engine for the spread of Camorra societies across the Mezzogiorno in the 19th century).

[B.]

There's also that Johnny Torrio's stepfather was Calabrian, his relationship to the Calabrian Colosimo, that the Calabrian and Campanian Camorra were inclusive of other Italian ethnicities, etc. A lot of interesting stuff for Ptown to check out and learn. I don't expect anyone to know this stuff without being one of the maniacs who have been digging into this for years but it takes humility to take it all in and not show up here simply to promote extremely distorted myths about the American mafia.

[PolackTony]

There's also that Johnny Torrio's stepfather was Calabrian, his relationship to the Calabrian Colosimo, that the Calabrian and Campanian Camorra were inclusive of other Italian ethnicities, etc. A lot of interesting stuff for Ptown to check out and learn. I don't expect anyone to know this stuff without being one of the maniacs who have been digging into this for years but it takes humility to take it all in and not show up here simply to promote extremely distorted myths about the American mafia.

Right, and as another piece of the puzzle there was the documented relationship of Colosimo to Francesco Filasto ("Frank Filastro"), a major NYC-based leader of the Calabrian Camorra at the turn of the 20th Century. We have good reason to believe that Torrio was positioned within a network of Camorristi that closely connected Chicago and NYC as well as other locations around the US and which was in an evolving dialogue with Sicilian mafiosi during the same period. The latter assertion obviously ties back directly into some of the questions that we have around exactly what was going on in Texas and how it may have related to guys in other regions of the US.

[B.]

Plus the 25 Years After Valachi timeline explicitly named Colosimo as the Chicago "Camorra Head" when he was killed, then named Torrio as the "Camorra Head" who was subsequently succeeded by Capone. We know this isn't baseless speculation on the government's part as in addition to circumstantial relationships placing Colosimo, Torrio, and Capone in the Camorra network, we have Genovese leaders recorded identifying Capone as a one-time Camorrista (along with other Genovese leaders), plus Augie Maniaci and Teddy DeRose both naming Capone as a Camorrista.

Even the heavily-mythologized "most independent Italian gangsters ever" Torrio and Capone came from their own mainland Italian organization that eventually coalesced with the Sicilian mafia all around the United States (at least in part), Torrio and Capone being just another example of this national process. It's not exclusive to the United States either given high-level pentiti in Sicily have said that leaders of the Campanian Camorra, Calabrian 'ndrangheta, and even formative leaders of the Sacra Corona Unita were initiated into Cosa Nostra to receive mutual recognition, Leonardo Messina and Dr. Gioacchino Pennino both saying it essentially became one organization at the upper levels. In this respect, Cosa Nostra was like a new major society that leaders of the other Italian organizations were initiated into.

Getting back to Texas, there's reason to believe the Dallas Family also brought Camorristi into their organization. The Iannis, who were alleged relatives of Rocco Pellegrino (confirmed Camorra leader in NY before entering the Genovese Family) and maintained close relationships to Pellegrino and his sons through the 1960s, as well as Vincenzo Vallone, Peter Duca, and their circle were almost certainly Calabrian Camorra affiliates who were initiated into Cosa Nostra. This network also extended to the Pittsburgh and Cleveland Families, sources stating that prominent Calabrian leaders like Tripodi, Zoccoli, Carbone, and the Milanos were close to Rocco Pellegrino and the Western PA-Ohio region being a confirmed example of Camorristi being initiated into Cosa Nostra in the later 1910s and also maintaining their own adjacent Camorra society even after this. Peter Duca himself had previously lived in PA at one point before Texas.