Hey boss, new poster here. I'd like to share a point of view from the era in question.Frank wrote: ↑Sun Mar 18, 2018 10:00 pm I assume the Commission members were afraid of Vito Genovese since he had one boss killed and almost killed his Family's boss. Are we missing something here. Is there any evidence that Giancana gave his Blessing on the Anastasia hit. Didn't the have an argument at a previous Commission meeting. Wasn't Bonnano and Profaci against the hit. Maybe they really supported it since Mangano was supposedly close with them.
In 1957 Anastasia's murder was the most talked about event on the street. And I don't mean the dirt part of the street. I'm talking everyday square citizens were chatty over it. The milkman was talking about this shit as much as the titty-fuckers. About what was to come. The whole speculation bit. Huge buzz all over. The prevailing 'talk' on the ground was what you just implyed. Not just from the big mouths but from a few of the "L'autenticos" that were on record. That the murder of Albert Anastasia was a Commission order. The newspapers then and the books that came out decades later muddied the view of it all, but at the time it made a whole lot of sense. It was revenge for killing a boss (Mangano). That the hitters or plotters on the scene were Bonnanos, Lucianos and in-house (Manganos). Names like Joe the blonde (Biondo) and Nino Coppola, who ran with the Lucianos before becoming Albert's driver after hooking up with don Cheech in the bronx came up ONCE (and not twice). Another rumor was that the Commission was pushing for a "Sicilian" to take over because "... it was only right." Take that however you want. To this day I don't know what that's supposed to mean. But that was the "word on the street," warts and all, of 1957.
YEARS later during the Disco phase (the original 9-11) what's his name? Vito something. The guy who wrote the "Goodfellas" story on that scumbag junkie stoolpigeon irisher eggplant. He wrote some article about the Anastasia hit and made it out to be Profaci being behind it. A handful of years later, Joe Bananas has his memoirs released and blames Don Vitone. At the time I'm thinking to myself "Well what do you know?" Time goes by and you got all these guys writing history books on Anastasia the boss and I just figured with all of that talk back then "they" must have had it all wrong. Fast forward from there to the Real Deal and somebody posted a Capeci article talking about him getting a death bed confession from some jew junkie drug pusher who claimed to have been one of the hitters. He mentioned Stevie boy the future captain of the Gambinos as being the other gun. I never heard of Wittenberg in my life and Grammauta didn't mean much to me. I glossed over the rest and figured it for bullshit. At that juncture I'm already poisoned by the popular history talk about it being the Gallos, Persico or as part of Genovese's lone wolf conspiracy to become THE capo regime. Some time later I'm in the fuckin' hospital doing a bit there and I revisits the Capeci angle on my little pocket cellular telephone that gave me access to the WWW. (It's how I used to read the RD). I don't know what it was but I guess when your colon is cleaned out and your being injected with something at 11am, 4pm, 9pm, 2am and back again, you're mind is just a little clearer than normal. The third guy mentioned in the Capeci piece was ARMONE. The first time around it didn't register. The 2nd rereading with a fresh set of eyes, new colon and all the cobwebs removed from the mental cave threw me into a time warp vortex. I remembered why it made sense to me way back when about some in the Bonnano family taking initiative and Anastasia's murder being a Commission thing. And not a plot by Gambino to take over. I remembered being under the impression in the 1960s that the Armone brothers were from "Brooklyn" and that they were "Bananas." [<~you know who]. When all the shooting started in Brooklyn throughout the decade and Joe Bonnano was presumed dead, the next big topic of conversation was that "Brooklyn" had been erased as it was and that the Gambino was in charge of a new regime that come out of three merged families. Mangano-Bonanno-Profaci. Obviously that was all bullshit. But ALLEGEDLY some folks in those aforementioned crews got the "okay" to be put on record or transfer with the remaining balance of N.Y. Cosa Nostra. ARMONE, as in "Piney," was supposedly one of these guys. I don't think he or his brother were straightened out in the '50s. But I found it interesting that the junkie Wittenberg would have named Steven Armone as one of the killers of Albert Anastasia. In the Capeci article the Jerry says it spoke to him because Armones were on record with Joe the Blonde. Who later became the new Underboss. In other words the killers were directly connected to the victors who got the spoils. But from my then angle in 1957, Armone would have made sense because he wasn't made, he's being identified by locals as being "with" the Brooklyn Bonannos, and was in-sync with the rumor of the Commission being behind it. Who on the Commission would have been pushing for a Sicilian to take the reigns of the Manganos? Certainly Bonnano would be one of the candidates to have pushed for it. Especially that Bonanno was in the midst of setting up the heroin pipeline and don Carlo, Biondo, et al, had links to that world. Of course all of this shit flies against the face of what has been documented. Joe Bonanno basically ridiculing don Carlo in his memoirs doesn't sound like a guy advocating for him in '57. FBI reports and books stating the reason for Apalachin was to justify Anastasia's murder. It can't well be a Commission-led conspiracy if Vito's got to meet with everybody to explain it all. But the "written record" doesn't sit well with me either.
It's anybody's guess. But I just wanted to tell you that what you said about J.P. and J.B. possibly being in on it was what the Italian American community in New York was saying in 1957 moving forward. Newspapers had a whole other spin. They made it seem like everything was coming apart at the seams and somebody went rogue. The details might be a little freaky. But I believe the entire Commission was the motivation for Anastasia dying. And not the whole Genovese was on the war path story. It may have something to do with his consolodating power. But even if Genovese had been convicted in '45 and went to prison and gotten the chair, I tend to think Anastasia's days would have been numbered as soon as the Mangano brothers disappeared.
Thanks,
JIGGS
