Carmine Tramunti and the Lucchese family

[B.]

With all of the new information that has come out over the past 10 years or so, what is the verdict on Tramunti? Acting boss who was essentially a placeholder for Corallo? Multiple informants have said that Tramunti's position was not official, but he was obviously a power in his own right so I wonder if the plan was to make Corallo the boss all along, or if that just happened because of Tramunti's legal and health problems. At least one informant said that Tramunti was likely to promote Big Sam Cavalieri to underboss.

I've started to become more interested in this time period for the Luccheses, so anything on this era of the Luccheses is up for discussion. One thing I read that is unrelated but stood out is that the Lucchese family actively discouraged their members from being formally introduced to other families. I don't know if this was just in response to Valachi or what, but I guess it was on a need to know basis.

There was an informant who claimed to have been made in 1958, and he says that aside from the usual ritual, everyone in attendance had a glass of wine, drank half, and then dumped the rest as a symbol of secrecy. This same informant ended up living in San Francisco because he owed money and believed he would be killed. Anyone have any ideas who this may have been? He seems to have been the same guy that Vario sponsored and who was introduced to Salvatore Curiale in a bakery before being made.

[Pogo The Clown]

That post Lucchese period is interesting for sure. I had heard about Tramunti only beng the acting but I'm not sure on that. As you said he was a power and was on top pretty long (7 years) to have only been a mere placeholder. His indicment coincided with Corallo getting out so it is interesting to consider if he wuld have stepped down for him or not if he hadn't been arrested.


Pogo

[B.]

That post Lucchese period is interesting for sure. I had heard about Tramunti only beng the acting but I'm not sure on that. As you said he was a power and was on top pretty long (7 years) to have only been a mere placeholder. His indicment coincided with Corallo getting out so it is interesting to consider if he wuld have stepped down for him or not if he hadn't been arrested.


Pogo

Yeah, and Tramunti was in somewhat of a leadership position before Lucchese died, accompanying Lucchese to high level meetings, etc. You have to figure LaSalle was probably underboss in name only by the late 1960's given his age, so some of these guys who were candidates for boss had probably been unofficially serving in more of an underboss capacity. A wiretap at Sam Cavalieri's club picked up Tramunti carrying out messages on Lucchese's behalf, so he seems to have been more than your average captain.

This period is a weird time for most of the families, too, except the Gambinos and maybe the Colombos.

[HairyKnuckles]

In a report, dated March 1969 (and I think it´s the latest report that can be found on MF on the structure of the Families), Tramunti is listed as acting boss. It says that the spot occupied by the boss is open. Corallo is listed as a captain. Not saying that the feds were 100 percent accurate, but judging by the report, it appears to me that Tramunti was holding the seat for Corallo, who was incarcerated at the time. It´s quite funny how Tramunti went down. He was originally indicted on charges of mail fraud and stock fraud and acquitted but was indicted again soon after for lying in court when he testified as a witness on his own behalf. He was found guilty on that and sentenced to five years. Around the same time, he was also indicted for narcotics conspiracy, found guilty and sentenced to 15 years. According to informants, Joe "Brown" Lucchese was the acting boss during this time, until Corallo cleared parole.

B, the informant you are talking about was probably an East Harlem based Lucchese who was a member of the Brooklyn faction. He said that when he was made, he had to travel across the river (or across the bridge) and exposed that Vario was his captain. Would be interesting to find out exactly who this guy was.

[Ed]

B,

I always enjoy your posts.

I spent a lot of time trying to identify this informant but the Mary Ferrell files don’t provide many useful details to create a proper profile. I don’t have my notes in front of me, but like Hairy Knuckles says, I recall the informant was an older, Manhattan-based mobster who was part of the Brooklyn faction of the Lucchese Crime Family. He was associated with many Harlem-based guys from different crime families. FBI documents suggest he was a labor racketeer and a drug dealer in the past.

Sometime in the late 1960s, the informant fell out with his superiors over outstanding loans he had with the Genovese Crime Family. Fearing for his life, he took off for California where the FBI got him to talk. There is a whiff of a suggestion that the informant had a relationship with the FBI before then.
I think the informant said he had a brother (?) in Las Vegas who was used by Vario to try and get him to return to NYC.

Together, these details don’t give us much of an informant profile. But I think if we make use of details provided by former FBI agent Anthony Villano in his memoir “Brick Agent” we might be able to finger a possible candidate.

Villano writes about a Lucchese Crime Family member who cooperated with the FBI. Villano gives him the pseudonym of Rico Conte. Villano says Conte first talked in the 1950s during the FBI’s inquiry into the Victor Riesel/ Johnny Dio blinding incident. Conte didn’t give up any made members at the time but he did give agents a primer on the LCN, although Director Hoover apparently ignored it. Villano re-established the relationship sometime in the 1960s

According to Villano, Conte was a well-known drug dealer and a playboy. Villano mentions the FBN was familiar with him so he likely appears in the Mafia Black Book. Villano implies Conte was a Manhattan-based mobster who told the FBI about a capo that they had never previously heard of, which is pretty much what Lucchese informant did.

Conte ended up living in Connecticut with his common-in-law wife who wasn’t Italian. (Did Villano get Connecticut from California?)

The informant profile provided by Villano surely contains some misinformation to protect his true identity but like most FBI agents who write books, he probably couldn’t help himself and he likely gave a fairly accurate description. (Agents like Villano and William Roemer didn’t count on all their confidential FBI reports showing up in the internet to be used as a cross-reference).

It’s all a bit circumstantial but my best guess is that these two Lucchese informants were one and the same. If we combine these two informant profiles, Lucchese Crime Family member Edward D’Argenio starts looking like a possible candidate.
Mary Ferrell contains a few files on D’Argenio that date from the Riesel/Dio blinding incident. Like Rico Conte, D’Argenio lived common-in-law with his Jewish partner, and he too was called “wop” (mind you, that was probably a common insult at the time). I researched other small similarities but I can’t remember off the top of my head.

D’Argenio might have first begun to cooperate in the 1950s, in part, to help his son who got into trouble with the law about the same time. D’Argenio shows up in the Black Book and was identified as a member of Lucchese Crime Family at the Valachi Hearings. I recall he was busted for dealing heroin in the 1940s in the Baltimore-area. He was called “Baltimore Eddie” or “Eddie Baltimore”.

I believe D’Argenio died in the early 1970s. From what I can ascertain, Villano only identifies the crime family affiliations of his informants if they are dead. So that also fits. Brick Agent was published in 1977. So for example, the informant called “Julio” who we now know was Gregory Scarpa isn’t identified by crime family because he was alive in 1977.

I don’t have D’Argenio’s FBI file so there might be information that would preclude him from being the informant. Maybe someone has information that shows D’Argenio wasn’t part of the Brooklyn crew which would probably rule him out. Or maybe Rico Conte and the Lucchese informant mentioned in the 1969 document are unconnected.

Ed

[Pogo The Clown]

Great info guy's. The late 60s-early 70s period is pretty confusing for this family. Joseph “Joe Palisades” Rosato and Ettore Coco have been listed as the Acting Boss after Lucchese died (or while he was on his death bead) as well as Tramunti. After Tramunti had his legal troubles Joseph Capra and Joe Lucchese have also bbeen listed as Acting Bosses. The UnderBoss and Consiglieri positions during this time are unclear as well.


Pogo

[funkster]

Which MF documents are you guys pulling this info from?

[HairyKnuckles]

Great info guy's. The late 60s-early 70s period is pretty confusing for this family. Joseph “Joe Palisades” Rosato and Ettore Coco have been listed as the Acting Boss after Lucchese died (or while he was on his death bead) as well as Tramunti. After Tramunti had his legal troubles Joseph Capra and Joe Lucchese have also bbeen listed as Acting Bosses. The UnderBoss and Consiglieri positions during this time are unclear as well.


Pogo

Yes, and another guy is Steven LaSalla. He may have been the first one in the row of acting bosses following Lucchese´s death.

[Pogo The Clown]

This is what I have for the rest of the administration during this time period.


Stefano LaSalle until he retired in 1972. Followed by Tom Mix Santoro. Vincent "Nunzio" Roa as the Consiglieri until he retired in 1973 followed by Paul Vario (who had been Acting in the late 60s and early 70s). Does this jive with what we know about this period?


Pogo

[NYNighthawk]

I was a kid at the time and remember seeing Tramunti on Crosby Ave in the Bronx at the diner he frequented. He was very small in statue. If I recall wasn't he the one who went to prison for simply nodding at a meeting that an informant testified meant he approved a drug deal? The scene was played out in Goodfellas by Paul SOrvino.

[B.]

That's some great deductive reasoning, Ed. You've been awesome at figuring out who the likely informants are, so I'm glad you replied. JD might be able to offer more info on D'Argenio's crew affiliation. I was thinking there might be some obvious guy who was known to have moved out to California, but it sounds like this informant wasn't that well-connected within the family and was in hiding on top of that, so he may have been off of most people's radar.

I'm curious what LaSalle's health was like by the late 1960's, considering he was pushing 80 which in those days was considered ancient. Probably one of the last living Morello family members at that point, right? Can anyone think of any others?

By 1969 I believe Christy Furnari was listed as a captain. Did anyone ever figure out where he branched off from? It seems that the Curiale had most of the family's Brooklyn interests, so I'd guess it all came from there but this informant is a good example of a guy who lives elsewhere falling under a Brooklyn crew. The opposite could have been true for Furnari, with him being a Brooklyn guy under a non-Brooklyn capo.

[funkster]

Which MF documents are you guys pulling this info from?

Here's the one dealing with the Vario crew informant:

http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html ... elPageId=3

There's at least one follow up with him on the site somewhere.

It was originally thought the Ciro LNU mentioned might be Ciro Giampaolo, but it definitely wasn't him. This was confirmed both through the CI himself with photos and also by the fact Giampaolo never lived or owned a business in Brooklyn, he was affiliated with the Prince St/Harlem guys and later on moved to Mount Vernon.

Awesome. Thanks.

[Ed]

A good source for the FBI about the Lucchese Crime Family at this time was Bonanno Crime Family member William Dara. He was close to Bonanno capo Mike Sabella, and Lucchese capos Paul Vario and Eddie Coco.

Dara was based in Miami. He got in trouble with the law in 1967 and probably began to cooperate about then. I can't recall what he told the FBI about who succeeded Tommy Lucchese but he claimed he talked to Vario regularly so his information must have been fairly accurate.

I do recall he called Jimmy Doyle an alcoholic. I wonder if that was common perception at the time and worked against Doyle succeeding Lucchese as boss.

As an aside, Dara told the FBI that Vario was originally connected to the Bonannos before he moved over to the Luccheses. (Dara seems to imply Vario transferred because of the Bonanno War.) He also said Sabella dropped the dime on Joe Bonanno when he tried to make a power play against the other bosses in the early 1960s. Wonder if any of that is true. Could work against his credibility.

[Pogo The Clown]

I believe Vario was already the Lucchese's Brooklyn Capo before the Bonanno War. If he did start out with the Bonannos it would have to have been before the late 50s at least.


Pogo

[B.]

A good source for the FBI about the Lucchese Crime Family at this time was Bonanno Crime Family member William Dara. He was close to Bonanno capo Mike Sabella, and Lucchese capos Paul Vario and Eddie Coco.

Dara was based in Miami. He got in trouble with the law in 1967 and probably began to cooperate about then. I can't recall what he told the FBI about who succeeded Tommy Lucchese but he claimed he talked to Vario regularly so his information must have been fairly accurate.

I do recall he called Jimmy Doyle an alcoholic. I wonder if that was common perception at the time and worked against Doyle succeeding Lucchese as boss.

As an aside, Dara told the FBI that Vario was originally connected to the Bonannos before he moved over to the Luccheses. (Dara seems to imply Vario transferred because of the Bonanno War.) He also said Sabella dropped the dime on Joe Bonanno when he tried to make a power play against the other bosses in the early 1960s. Wonder if any of that is true. Could work against his credibility.

I remember reading some of Dara's info. I posted a photo of him on the old board from his arrest in the 60's. He was a member of Sabella's crew, right? I know he had guys in Florida. That doesn't sound right to me about Sabella dropping the dime on Bonanno, and it definitely isn't right about Vario. It doesn't make sense to lie about either of those things, though.