Ed Reid's 'Big Shots' List from 1952

[Raven]

4th article:

[Raven]

I have the book that the 'big shots' list came from and while I don't think it is that great, you have to remember that Reid was one of the first guys to write about LCN and he didn't have a lot of the info that is now available to pretty much everyone. This was pre-Apalachin and a lot of people couldn't even agree that the Mafia existed at that time. Some people thought it was an urban legend.

[FriendofHenry]

as well as 2 Ohio members on this "Grand Council"
I'm gonna guess it probably came from the meeting that Profaci as well as few other big guys got caught at in Cleveland.

who is this guy that runs Warren , Ohio?? and would Warren be the County of Youngstown??

Ohio was almost like the Mid Wests "New Jersy" as in w there home grown fam, Pittsburgh, Detroit has Toledo bc its basically Detroit.... and then there close to Chicago but i dont think they had much connection there

Warren, Ohio is in Trumbull County and Youngstown, Ohio is in Mahoning County.

[B.]

Accurate or not, I enjoy info along these lines from this era given that the "mafia" wasn't yet part of pop culture outside of very generalized "prohibition gangsters" and "top hoodlums". It's interesting to see how LE and the media saw power dynamics and relationships, even if they were stretching things to try and make sense of it all for public consumption. It also makes me wonder in what ways we still have our own misguided ideas on the mafia even though we know its structure, history, and all kinds of other details. Honestly when I watch most documentaries and read a lot of published material in books / the media, it doesn't feel that different from reading something like this. Not to sound like I'm on a high horse or anything, but it's pretty amazing to me how on the boards alone we've been able to break down myths that are otherwise still all over the place and when you look at the quality of discussion in a lot of other places I don't think it's much better than a list like this -- maybe even worse given how many resources we have today.

[CabriniGreen]

@B

I agree it's all perspective..... I take this into account with anything and everything I read about the mob.

[FriendofHenry]

27. John Vitullo, Mahoning County, Ohio...My Great Uncle

[nash143]

I'm glad a few have seen the benefit of the list. I never intended to write up the list as if it was fact- only to use it as an interesting starting point for a discussion. As a few have said, it was first published long before many people even were aware of LCN.

FoH - that is intriguing!

[FriendofHenry]

I'm glad a few have seen the benefit of the list. I never intended to write up the list as if it was fact- only to use it as an interesting starting point for a discussion. As a few have said, it was first published long before many people even were aware of LCN.

FoH - that is intriguing!

Maybe even more interesting was that Uncle John arranged for his Sister to marry my Grandfather who owned an Italian bakery.
Guess what product was needed during prohibition to make beer Uncle John, like Don Corleone, carried the politicians in his pocket.