The Mob and the City (40 page)

By then reinforcements from Troop C had arrived. Croswell immediately sent them off to patrol for the runners. Twenty state police troopers set up a dragnet around Apalachin. Meanwhile, Croswell focused on the McFall roadblock. Throughout that afternoon and evening, cars carrying mobsters sporadically came down the hill.
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• New York boss Carlo Gambino was riding in a 1956 Lincoln chauffeured by his
  caporegime
  Paul Castellano, himself a future boss of the family.
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  Riding in the car with them was Armand Rava, a bitter holdover from the Anastasia regime (Gambino would have Rava killed a few weeks after Apalachin). Following them was Gambino's
  consigliere
  , Joseph “Staten Island Joe” Riccobono. Although this was supposed to be Carlo Gambino's coming out party, this is not what he had in mind. The low-profile Gambino, who had always eschewed the public spotlight, would soon be introduced to all of America under banner headlines.
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• It must have felt like
  déjà vu
  for New York boss Joseph Profaci and his underboss/brother-in-law/chauffeur Joseph Magliocco. In December 1928, Profaci and Magliocco had been arrested together with twenty-one other
  mafiosi
  at the Statler Hotel in Cleveland. Prior to Apalachin, the ’28 Cleveland conclave had been the largest Mafia meeting to be disrupted by police. Almost thirty years later, Profaci and Magliocco were being hauled off to another stationhouse for questioning about another meeting. Their
  caporegime
  Salvatore Tornabe was also caught at the roadblock.
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• The Lucchese Family of New York was represented at Apalachin by three high-ranking lieutenants.
  Consigliere
  Vincent Rao departed alone in his 1956 Cadillac Coupe.
  Caporegime
  John “Big John” Ormento of East Harlem—the most significant narcotics trafficker in the country—was caught at the roadblock as well in his black ’57 Chevy convertible.
  Caporegime
  Joseph “Joe Palisades” Rosato, a racketeer in the garment district, was also netted at McFall Road.
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• Before the DeCavalcante Family took over, northern New Jersey was treated as a satellite of the New York families, and its attendees reflected this relationship. Anthony Riela, a member of the Bonanno Family in Essex County, New Jersey, provided rooms at his cheap airport motel for out-of-town delegates with flights in Newark. Meanwhile, the elder statesmen of the Apalachin meeting was sixty-nine-year-old, Sicilian-born Charles Salvatore Chiri of Bergen County, New Jersey.
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• The Patriarca Family of New England sent Frank Cucchiara, its
  consigliere
  from Boston. His boss Raymond Patriarca had good relations with the New York families, which agreed to give the Patriarca Family dominion from Boston to the Connecticut River. Cucchiara indeed was escorted by Natale Evola of the Bonanno Family of New York.
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• From the South came Dallas boss Joseph Civello. Born in Louisiana, the tall, lanky Civello became a liquor-store owner and drug trafficker in Texas. He served six years in Fort Leavenworth for his role in a massive narcotics ring. After his release in 1944, he gradually rose through the ranks to become boss of the Dallas Family in 1956.
  ⁴⁵
  
• Most delegates from upstate New York had driven their own automobiles to Apalachin, and so tried leaving by car on McFall Road. From Auburn, New York, the Monachino brothers, Patsy and Sam, had close ties to the Profaci Family. The Monachinos drove down in their 1957 Oldsmobile with Anthony “Guv” Guarnieri and Patsy Sciortino.
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  Meanwhile, the much younger Valenti brothers, Constenze (age thirty-three) and Frank (age forty-six), of Rochester, New York, departed in a sleek, blue-and-white 1957 Chrysler Saratoga convertible. Poor Joey Barbara left in the least stylish vehicle, a company station wagon.
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• Joseph Falcone was driving his older brother Salvatore Falcone, head of the Magaddino Family's interests in Utica. They brought their notorious enforcer Rosario Mancuso, a 235-pound thug who had a conviction for assault with intent to murder for a brutal beating he inflicted.
  ⁴⁸
  The Falcones had an estimated 80 to 100 made men, and vice was so pervasive that Utica was nicknamed “Sin City of the East.”
  ⁴⁹
  Croswell was later assigned to a probe of corruption in Utica. Using wiretaps, Croswell discovered that Deputy Police Chief Vincent Fiore was tipping off brothels and gambling houses to police raids, and he even supplied private protection to Albert Anastasia in Utica. Fiore was forced to resign and subsequently convicted.
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THE CHASE BEGINS

With troopers at the McFall roadblock rounding up friends of theirs, some attendees decided to take their chances on foot. About 1:45 p.m., Treasury Agent Brown saw about eight or ten men “in close single order file walking from the back of the Barbara residence” toward the woods. About 2:00 p.m., Treasury Agent Ruston saw another “three or four men running across that open area” behind Barbara's house. The escape had begun.

Croswell directed Treasury Agent Brown and Trooper T. G. Sackel to go after them. To encircle the runners, they drove a police car southeast to McFadden Road, the next dirt road over on the other side of the trees. The lawmen got out of the car to hunt for the hoodlums.
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10–1: Joseph Barbara Sr.'s estate in Apalachin, NY, 1957. The majority of the attendees of the Mafia meeting were caught at the McFall roadblock. Other attendees were caught trying to escape through the surrounding trees and dirt roads. (Map by Ted Pertzborn)

Buffalo's Man of the Year

The first runner they caught was John Montana of Buffalo, New York. Brown and Sackel found Montana hopelessly tangled on a barbed-wire fence, his expensive coat enmeshed in the jagged metal. Worse still, Montana knew he was about to face a very public fall from grace. The Honorable John C. Montana was a former City of Buffalo councilman, successful businessman, and civic benefactor. In 1956, Montana was named Buffalo's “Man of the Year” by the Erie Club, an association of police officers. Behind his sterling image, Montana held a virtual monopoly on taxicabs in Buffalo, and he was second-in-command of the Magaddino Family of Buffalo, known as “the Arm” for its influence throughout western New York. Standing nearby Montana, in fact, was an out-of-breath Antonio Magaddino, his suit pants covered in burrs and mud.
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Sitting in the back of the police car, Montana tried desperately to salvage his reputation. He told Sergeant Croswell that he “knew many prominent people” and that if Croswell “would let him go back to get his car, he might be able to do something for me.” When that did not work, Montana tried to explain his presence: on his way to Pennsylvania, he had car troubles and coincidentally stopped by Barbara's home for some repairs.
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Man of Honor in the Cornfield

One of the New York City bosses ran like a rabbit into a cornfield. After apprehending Montana, Treasury Agent Brown and Trooper Sackel next found Joseph Bonanno and his uncle John Bonventre in the cornfield adjoining Barbara's property. At the substation, Trooper Vasisko questioned Bonanno, who at that time admitted he was at the house “visiting” his friend Joe Barbara.
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To save face, Joe Bonanno later concocted a story that he was
not
at Barbara's home and was “wrongly implicated in the whole mess.” In his 1983 autobiography
A Man of Honor
, Bonanno claimed that while in Italy, he gave his driver's license to his brother-in-law to renew it, who gave it to
another
friend Gaspar DiGregorio. DiGregorio then just happened to be picked up by the police while on a hunting trip with John Bonventre in the vicinity of Apalachin. Bonanno called it a “messy haphazard juxtaposition of people and events—a human comedy.”
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He was lying. What Bonanno did not realize was that the New York State Police also identified him through his social security card: “Identified through Social Security as Joseph Bonanno…. Had cards in his possession—Social Security Card 080-14-[XXXX].” He further “gave permanent address as 1847 East Elm Street, Tucson, Arizona”—Bonanno's new home out west.
⁵⁶
Moreover, the police found that
no
rifles or shotguns were in the men's possession, a major hole in Bonanno's hunting trip story, given how hard the troopers were looking for guns.
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Runners in the Woods along McFadden Road

Another set of runners made it to the woods east of Barbara's property, where they hid among the trees and cockleburs. To make matters worse, it started drizzling at 2:30 p.m.

One has to feel a little bad for Tampa Bay boss Santo Trafficante. Earlier that week, Trafficante was basking in the tropical sun as manager of the Sans Souci Casino in Havana. This was just supposed to be a day trip, some business to take care of before his forty-third birthday on November 15. Albert Anastasia had been eyeing gambling in Cuba, so Trafficante came to lay down his marker. The gambling mogul flew in on the late-morning flight to Binghamton. He had barely arrived at Barbara's house before police were on the scene. In the woods, he met up with Carmine Lombardozzi and Michele Miranda, both
caporegimes
from New York.
⁵⁸

At 3:30 p.m., Trafficante, Lombardozzi, and Miranda ventured onto McFadden Road, another road on the eastern side of the trees. A patrol car spotted the trio of wiseguys. Two troopers got out of the car and “ran towards these subjects, who started back into the woods.” The police fired four warning shots into the air before the mobsters finally stopped.
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Real Estate Investors from Jersey

A pair of hapless mobsters from the DeCavalcante Family of New Jersey could have been performing a comedy routine. During the panic, Francesco “Fat Frank” Majuri and Louis “Fat Lou” LaRasso took off huffing and puffing on
foot. At about 2:15 p.m., they waved down Glenn Craig, a local resident driving by on Little Meadows Road. They told Craig they were looking for land; as luck would have it, Craig was looking to sell his land. After going through the ruse of negotiations, Majuri and LaRasso told Craig that they'd “get back within a week or so and they would try to get money from some union bank…in New Jersey.” They then offered him $10 for a ride to Binghamton. They did not get far. When a state trooper stopped Craig's car on McFadden Road, the corpulent, nattily dressed out-of-towners were obvious suspects.
⁶⁰

The New Jerseyians gave perhaps the most laughable explanation for their presence in Apalachin. Majuri flatly denied knowing Barbara. He said that they were just looking “to purchase real estate” to build a summer cottage. According to their story, in the wee hours of November 14, 1957, Majuri and LaRasso spontaneously decided to jump on the 7:00 a.m. Pennsylvania Railroad train to Binghamton. They claimed they could not locate their real estate broker, so they took a taxicab to Apalachin and wandered around until it started drizzling.
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Mobsters from out West

As if by instinct, taking off in the opposite direction from the eastbound runners were a half-dozen
mafiosi
from western cities. From the City of Angels came mob boss Frank DeSimone and his underboss Simone Scozzari. DeSimone was actually a licensed attorney of the California bar when he assumed leadership of the Los Angles Family in 1956. During the panic, they went west across McFall Road into a stand of pine trees on the other side. They made it to Little Meadows Road, where they were apprehended by a patrol car. At the Vestal substation, the police searched Scozzari and found $600 in cash and a check for $8,445 to his order ($74,000 in 2013 dollars). Not bad, considering he told the state police he was unemployed.
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Far less glamorous were a pair of bosses from small western families, James “Black Jim” Colletti of Pueblo, Colorado, and Frank Zito of Springfield, Illinois. They had remarkably similar lives. Both grew up in Sicily in the 1890s, came to America in the 1910s, and migrated west to work as miners: Colletti in the metals mines of Colorado; Zito in the coal mines of Illinois.
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Each forged himself into the crime boss of his mid-sized city: Colletti in Pueblo,
population 63,000; and Zito in Springfield, population 81,000. They each collected revenues from gambling and vice in their cities. They also had some legitimate businesses: Colletti owned the Colorado Cheese Company; Zito held interests in taverns.
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