2014 Informer acticle on early New York Mafia

[DPG]

If you havent read this article and your into the old guys like me then your doing yourself a disservice. I know it has changed the way these early years arre talked about on the forums completely since i first joined rd. So ive read over the article a few times this week and asked Christe if i could post some questions centered on the article that i hope will start a discussion atleast, considering alot of these things maynot even be able to be answered but id sure like to hear everyones opinion. So here we go DPG is goin into his famous question asking mode.

1.Like most people here im sure I had read Mike Dash's book a few years before the article and accepted it as fact having no other basis to go on then Mr. Hunt's onewal.com. Being a fan of the old days when the guys layed out how the early families most likely started out which separates the Morello and Lupo gangs it made sense to me after reading the article over a few times. So onto my first question finally, given Morello and Lupo's "equal footing" before their convictions, how do you explain Morello actually gaining some status back before his death, compared to Lupo just basically floating in the wind? Is it Lupo wanted nothing to do with the new way things were being ran? How come after they kill Toto in 28, being that by all accounts Peter Morello had Joe the Boss's ear, why didnt he wanna bring his brother in law back into the fold?


What do yall think? Ill ask a couple more tomorrow and try not to go into such a preamble, just want everyone to understand where im coming from.

[DPG]

Ima throw a quick one out before i go to bed.

2. Based on the immigration numbers, is it not fair to say that the first 'organized italian gangs' setup would almost have to be of the mainland 'Camorra' type instead of from Sicily? I just didnt know if you guys looked at that angle, as far as maybe trying to find other organizations that already had roots in America pre Mafia?

[Angelo Santino]

Ima throw a quick one out before i go to bed.

2. Based on the immigration numbers, is it not fair to say that the first 'organized italian gangs' setup would almost have to be of the mainland 'Camorra' type instead of from Sicily? I just didnt know if you guys looked at that angle, as far as maybe trying to find other organizations that already had roots in America pre Mafia?

Well you said it yourself, Lupo and Morello were bosses of different families, each family at any time has its own intricacies. Morello had more loyalists in his group than Lupo did in his, which is why his position went to someone else. As far as Morello regaining his status, in many ways he didn't. He tried and that lead to an internal dispute within his own Family which splintered it, it got the attention of D'Aquila and green lights were placed on those around Morello, it was resolved by him forfeiting his claim to the chair, which went to Masseria. I'm kinda of the opinion that the 1923 war ended in a stalemate on both sides with D'Aquila having to accept Masseria and be content with that Morello didn't get his position back.

Antiliar probably has his own answer to your questions so I do hope he responds.

As for 2) The first groups in the US were Sicilian Mafia, as far as mainlanders it's our next project, been working on it for several years and can't really divulge any details but it's very much a sequel to this first article with just the same amount if not more "new" information being presented. Don't know when it'll be released but it may take the form of a book as the content may be too large for a 90 page article.

[DPG]

Awesome to hear about the new research.

As far as Lupo goes, hes nothing after he gets outby all accounts and forgot about completely in some, where Morello is eventually brought back into the fold for a few years atleast. Maybe Lupo wanted nothing to do with being connected to leadership considering all the time he had just spent. Food for thought is all, which is why I turn to you guys.

[Angelo Santino]

Awesome to hear about the new research.

As far as Lupo goes, hes nothing after he gets outby all accounts and forgot about completely in some, where Morello is eventually brought back into the fold for a few years atleast. Maybe Lupo wanted nothing to do with being connected to leadership considering all the time he had just spent. Food for thought is all, which is why I turn to you guys.

I don't know his personal reasons. If he wanted to "stay clean" he did a poor job and was getting into trouble in the 40's. He would fall into a long laundry list of former bosses who lived on without having a leadership role. Take Salvatore Sabella who lived until the 1990's, you never heard about him after 1931. Or Al Polizzi from the 1940's who retired from Cleveland to Florida and outlived Scalish, Licavoli and was still alive in 1985. Nick Schiro lived in New Jersey after abandoning his boss position in NY. All have different reasons and circumstances, Lupo is no different.

As far as "being away" from the "leadership" to avoid prison, remember this was before RICO. Lupo wasn't convicted for heading a criminal enterprise but rather for his direct involvement in a counterfeiting distribution network. Due to his (and Morello's) reputation from the Barrel Murder in 1903 they were men to be made an example of and received sentences 3 or 4 times the average sentence. Counterfeiting convictions usually wielded 6 months to 2 years for petty shit and 3-5 years for a large scale operations. Lupo and Morello and everyone else received 10-20 year sentences which was shocking, you can understand why Morello cried because that was most unexpected. But that wasn't a result of being "boss of a mafia family" like the commission case.

What I think happened, why Lupo didn't retake the Gambino family, could be due to the eras in which things occurred. In 1900-1920 most of your mafia members- including bosses- were at best middle class businessowners. Prohibition upended the entire playing field and a new breed and era of gangsterism came in. The profits were unheard of and unimaginable compared to 10-20 years prior. It would be like Apple rehiring it's old CEO from 1970's who's been retired to oversee the new iproduct's implementation. I don't know what Lupo would have had to have offered after being in prison for a decade with no experience in the current scope. Same could be said for Morello but the difference is he killed the reigning boss who refused to step aside, so he was harder to be ignored.

[DPG]

Im gonna come back to Lupo and Toto. Like i said most this things I ask my not even have an answer but i enjoy reading everyones thoughts. I wanna switch over to Morello for the next one. And please everyone join in if you have an opinion which is all Im asking for and i dont want to just tie the Gov up, he just happens to have a very extensive knowledge of this subject.

3. Being that, and correct me if im wrong cause i dont have thr article in front of me at thr moment, Morello came to New York and stayed for less than a year (?) thrn left town for better prospects that he may have been attempting to go straight? My thought on this expands when I take into account that he moves right past NOLA on his way to Texas but doesnt stop in what is widely known as an early mafia settlement. (Im not sure on time frame concerning the Hennessey trial)

Im tryin to wrap my head all thr way around this in hopes to maybe be able to contribute. Thanks for your time and dont let me take to much of it man, I got plenty to chew on right now.

[Angelo Santino]

Im gonna come back to Lupo and Toto. Like i said most this things I ask my not even have an answer but i enjoy reading everyones thoughts. I wanna switch over to Morello for the next one. And please everyone join in if you have an opinion which is all Im asking for and i dont want to just tie the Gov up, he just happens to have a very extensive knowledge of this subject.

3. Being that, and correct me if im wrong cause i dont have thr article in front of me at thr moment, Morello came to New York and stayed for less than a year (?) thrn left town for better prospects that he may have been attempting to go straight? My thought on this expands when I take into account that he moves right past NOLA on his way to Texas but doesnt stop in what is widely known as an early mafia settlement. (Im not sure on time frame concerning the Hennessey trial)

Im tryin to wrap my head all thr way around this in hopes to maybe be able to contribute. Thanks for your time and dont let me take to much of it man, I got plenty to chew on right now.

Morello attempting to go straight by moving to Texas and spending time in New Orleans before getting an : "You know, the mafia could work in America" was Dash's narrative. That didn't happen. The Mafia was already in the USA for more than 50 years and NY by 1870 as an entity.

Again, I don't know what Morello was thinking or the circumstances that lead to him becoming boss. He was a member in Sicily and I just presumed he continued with his membership here and, like all mafiosi, need to make a living and traveled around for work.

[Stroccos]

this has nothing to do with new york but in cleveland a group of people formed the "white hand" to fight the black hand. did anything like this happen in nyc?

[baldo]

Chris, wiki says Sabella died in the 60s. Are you referring to another Sabella? thanks.

[DPG]

I would hope that not what you thought i suggesting, simply thougjt maybe his mafia ties back home didnt seem to hold him to the 2 biggest mafia stongholds in America. Seemed like an additional narative, that would add credibility to the fact that be didnt do what has been claimed be did.

[Angelo Santino]

I would hope that not what you thought i suggesting, simply thougjt maybe his mafia ties back home didnt seem to hold him to the 2 biggest mafia stongholds in America. Seemed like an additional narative, that would add credibility to the fact that be didnt do what has been claimed be did.

I don't know at all what you are referring to. Sorry.

Chris, wiki says Sabella died in the 60s. Are you referring to another Sabella? thanks.

Maybe I'm confusing Sabella with Pollina.

[Antiliar]

My understanding of Lupo is that he made a deal with D'Aquila in order to stay alive. This is a hypothesis that I think has the best explanatory value considering all the known facts. In order to stay alive, Lupo would be made a soldier in what was then D'Aquila's borgata and submit to his authority. He had to agree to give up any desire to ever becoming a boss again. That ended Lupo's leadership, although there were many who still respected him. From then on he was relegated to small time crimes, sometimes working with the brother of Frankie Yale, Angelo Uale.

If you have any other questions, if you would keep it short and to the point I would be glad to answer.

[B.]

In Antiliar's "Magaddino recording" topic I recently bumped, the transcript has a part where Magaddino is saying that Morello was considered for membership in the Buffalo family when he was brought back in. So it seems they were considering different options for him beyond the Masseria family (if it existed yet at the time Magaddino is referring to), at least initially.

[Angelo Santino]

It is my opinion that Lupo would have faired better as a small town boss. Based on what I've seen, he tried his best to maintain an image of legitimacy. His Italian market on Elizabeth was frequented by all 5 boroughs and unlike most of his contemporaries, opted to live in an upscale multi-ethnic non-Mafia neighborhood on the west side. But due to his (much justified) arrest in the high sensationalized Barrel Murder which received national attention combined with the fact that his last name translated to Wolf, he became the newspaper face of the Mafia alongside Morello. This may or may not have lead to his financial ruin which he, perhaps ironically, blamed on the Black Hand. Desperate times call for desperate measures and he entered into a 3rd rate quality counterfeiting distribution scheme with the Genoveses and Bonannos out of necessity. All this despite being boss of the largest and oldest Family with deep business, financial and familial ties to Palermo. There's an element of truth to what Joe Bonanno said when he referred to New York as the Volcano and how much more difficult it was to be a boss in NY as opposed to other smaller cities.

In 1943 (around there), Lupo was asked about his life and he allegedly said: "I'd like to be a young boy again in Sicily and die very very young, and never know all these years of torture and bloodshed." Something to that effect. I think that's the most you'll get regarding Lupo's internal feelings.

[Angelo Santino]

In Antiliar's "Magaddino recording" topic I recently bumped, the transcript has a part where Magaddino is saying that Morello was considered for membership in the Buffalo family when he was brought back in. So it seems they were considering different options for him beyond the Masseria family (if it existed yet at the time Magaddino is referring to), at least initially.

I learned something new today. Thank you.