Eighty years ago, Sing Sing’s electric chair, “Old Sparky,” delivered its sinister, life-ending jolts in succession to the trio of Louis Capone, Emanuel “Mendy” Weiss and Louis “Lepke” Buchalter.

The executions on March 4, 1944, marked the climactic close to a particularly bizarre chapter in the Mob’s history. The sensational trials and revelations of the Mob’s violent enforcement arm, better known as Murder Inc., were brought to an electrifying end.

Many defendants were tried across several counties beginning in 1940. Some turned state’s witness, others received lengthy prison terms and seven were put to death. Harry “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss and Martin “Buggsy” Goldstein were executed in 1941, followed by Harry “Happy” Maione and Frank “Dasher” Abbandando in 1942. Capone, Weiss and Buchalter were the last Murder Inc. defendants to die in the chair.

Doomed from the start

Louis “Lepke” Buchalter’s legal troubles grew dire several years before the shocking discovery of his contract-killing crew. In 1936, he and Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro were out on bail for antitrust law violations in New York when they decided to go on the lam. The feds also wanted Lepke for narcotics trafficking and other charges.

Shapiro surrendered in 1938. Then, in late 1939, Buchalter turned himself in to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. He allegedly believed a deal was in place that would keep him in federal custody, thereby not having to face New York District Attorney Thomas Dewey, who adamantly believed Lepke had been coordinating the murders of loose ends and stool pigeons. There was, however, no such deal, as Lepke would soon find out.

Buchalter took a plea deal in federal court on January 2, 1940. The judge issued a $2,500 fine and sentenced him to 12 years for narcotics trafficking and two years for fur racketeering. Dewey requested Buchalter face trial for the state’s charges. At first, the feds agreed, but a tug of war between state and federal agencies dragged on for some time.

Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, the new DA, William O’Dwyer, put his team, including Assistant DA Burton Turkus, to work on hundreds of cold case murders. Roundups of known hoodlums soon produced turncoats, who revealed the shocking details of a professional contract killing squad based out of a 24-hour candy store in Brownsville, Brooklyn. The group of assassins was known internally as the “Combination” or “Combine” and was, according to informants, overseen by high-ranking mobsters, including Buchalter. The press gave this group a clever name — Murder Inc.

Among the cold cases they reviewed was the murder of shopkeeper Joseph Rosen, shot to death in September 1936. Rosen was forced out of a successful trucking business (allegedly by Buchalter’s faction) before operating a small confectionary. At some point, Rosen spoke up and/or threatened to go to the authorities about the Mob’s strongarm tactics. Former Murder Inc. henchman Abe Reles first told the DA’s team about it. Then, another gunman, Albert Tannenbaum, testified that he overheard Buchalter issue the contract on Rosen. Tannenbaum also named Emanuel Weiss, Louis Capone, Harry Strauss and Philip “Little Farvel” Cohen.

In August 1940, Brooklyn’s prosecutor indicted Buchalter, Weiss, Capone and Cohen. At the time, Buchalter was serving out his federal sentence at Leavenworth Prison in Kansas. Louis Capone’s attorney fought to have his client detached from Buchalter, but Assistant DA Burton Turkus retorted by describing Capone as a six-time killer and the mentor to Murder Inc.’s henchmen. “He raised them from little punks to gang overlords,” Turkus said. “The skull and crossbones flew over Capone’s headquarters.” The motion for a separate trial was denied.  Philip Cohen also protested, citing a lack of real evidence and calling out Tannenbaum’s statements as lies.

Over the course of legal red tape and appeals, there were moments when the judges expressed doubt or concern over the flimsiness of some of the evidence against the defendants. But in the end, it didn’t matter.

End of the line

As the Brooklyn proceedings began in September 1941, Philip Cohen’s motion for severance was granted. He would, however, serve out the remainder of his narcotics conviction (only to be gunned down six months after his release in 1949). That left Weiss, Capone and Buchalter to face trial together. All were convicted and sentenced to death. The trial was speedy, but the punishment phase was stymied by appeals, motions and the blame game.

Buchalter’s situation was complex. State authorities bickered with the feds about the terms of handing over their prisoner. The Justice Department wouldn’t turn him over unless the state guaranteed the death penalty, which would require a commutation of his federal sentence by President Franklin Roosevelt. Ultimately, the feds relented, and after three years and six stays of execution, the condemned men finally faced their doom.

On March 4, 1944, the appeals and hopes for clemency were exhausted. The trio said goodbye to family members and ate their final meal. The warden, William E. Snyder, and the electrician (and executioner), Joseph Francel, awaited the first condemned man.

When there’s more than one condemned person, the unwritten protocol is for guards to take the individual perceived as “weakest” first. Louis Capone, escorted by a Catholic priest, entered the death chamber at 11:02 p.m. and was pronounced dead three minutes later.

Mendy Weiss came next, accompanied by a rabbi. Before he was strapped to the chair, Weiss stated that he had been framed and bid farewell to his family. “Give my love to my family and everything else but I am innocent.” He was pronounced dead at 11:11 p.m.

Buchalter, also joined by a rabbi, entered just a few minutes after Weiss’s body was removed. He didn’t speak but glanced around the room at the 36 witnesses.

Reporter Arthur E. Chambers Jr. described the scene in a column for the Daily Argus on March 6, 1944. “To the end, Lepke was different from other condemned men. Instead of wearing black trousers, customarily worn by those going to the chair, he wore his own gray trousers and a white shirt, open at the neck. The regulation tan leather prison slippers and gray wool socks were on his feet. The right leg of the trousers had been slit to the knee to permit attachment of the electrode.”

Lepke was dead at 11:16 p.m.

After the smoke cleared

Buchalter went to his death stoically, with a silence that spoke volumes. Some felt he could have pulled off the veil from politicians and other authorities who may have been in the Mob’s economic sphere.

Lepke’s attorney, J. Bertram Wegman, offered a cryptic statement, open to interpretation: “Buchalter had two keys in his hand. He chose to use the one that opened the door to eternity rather than the other one.”

New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and prosecutor Burton Turkus also weighed in with similarly ambiguous implications. “Some people sweated a lot of bullets in the last few days,” LaGuardia quipped.

Turkus called Lepke’s silence “a signal to the underworld that he was not opening up on its members.”

Buchalter’s execution marked the first and only capital punishment ever carried out on a high-ranking Mob boss in America.

Christian Cipollini is the author of Murder Inc.: Mysteries of the Mob’s Most Deadly Hit Squad and LUCKY, a gangster graphic novel.

The Netflix limited series Griselda, inspired by the true story of the Colombian “Godmother of Cocaine,” tells the story of her muscling her way into the male-dominated underworld of drug trafficking.

Starring Modern Family’s Sofia Vergara as Griselda Blanco, the six-part crime drama chronicles Blanco’s rise to power during the 1970s in establishing drug routes into the United States. Along the way she encounters betrayal, violence, drug abuse and paranoia, and, finally, after establishing a lavish, decadent lifestyle, imprisonment. 

A parallel plot line follows Miami policewoman June Hawkins (Juliana Aidén Martinez), who at first isn’t taken seriously by male officers, but whose crime-solving skills help end Blanco’s reign.

Visiting Blanco in prison at the end of the series, Hawkins tells her that three of her four sons are dead. Hawkins also lets Blanco know that she has taken a desk job to spend more time with her own son and husband.

Fearing Griselda

In real life, Blanco was born in 1943 in Cartagena, Colombia. She grew up in poverty with “an alcoholic sex worker mother,” according to a story on the Vice magazine website.

Cartagena, a coastal city on the Caribbean, is known for its historic port and colorful Old Town. It also has a place in world literary history. Ground-breaking novelist Gabriel García Márquez, a future Nobel Prize winner, worked as a reporter at a Cartagena newspaper early in his journalism career during the late 1940s.

Blanco’s family would leave Cartagena when she was young, moving to Medellin in the country’s mountainous interior. In his book Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw, Mark Bowden writes about the Medellin Cartel under drug lord Pablo Escobar. In 1993, Escobar was killed by gunfire in Medellin at age 44 while attempting to escape from authorities.

The Netflix series opens with a quote from Escobar: “The only man I was ever afraid of was a woman named Griselda Blanco.” 

Blanco’s ability to inspire fear, and her bloodthirsty reputation, were established early in life. At age 11, Blanco kidnapped a boy whose wealthy family “didn’t take the kidnapping-for-ransom seriously,” according to Vice. Blanco shot the boy to death.

That was only the beginning.

“She became a sex worker and pickpocket at age 12, and by 13, she was living with a pimp and forger named Carlos Trujillo,” Vice reported. “They married, had three children, but their relationship soured over business. Blanco had him whacked.”

In the United States, Blanco oversaw a narcotics pipeline that flooded parts of the country, especially South Florida, with smuggled cocaine. Left in her wake were dozens of bodies, including three husbands who were, as Vice puts it, “knocked off.” The number of deaths she orchestrated is disputed, as are the circumstances, though the violent upheaval in South Florida during these years is well documented.

The Netflix series dramatizes one of the most startling incidents, a July 1979 attack by gunmen at the Dadeland Mall, resulting in two deaths. This public display of violence, dubbed the Dadeland Massacre, jolted the nation, leaving the impression that Miami, in the grip of ruthless cocaine traffickers such as Blanco, had become a cartel battlefield threatening the general population.

Two years later, on November 23, 1981, Time magazine’s cover captured this out-of-control environment, showing an illustrated, frowning sun floating above a blood-red South Florida, with the headline “Paradise Lost?”

In 1986, an article in The New Yorker about Miami crime reporter Edna Buchanan reflected upon the period a few years earlier when drug wars were resulting in mass casualties. The article, by Calvin Trillin, noted that by 1981 Miami was experiencing, according to one homicide detective, the greatest increase in murders per capita that any city had ever recorded, giving Miami the “highest murder rate in the country.”

“Around that time,” Trillin wrote, “the Colombians who manufactured the drugs being distributed in Miami by Cubans decided to eliminate the middleman, and, given a peculiar viciousness in the way they customarily operated, that sometimes meant eliminating the middleman’s wife and whoever else happened to be around.”

Setting the record straight

Documentary filmmaker Billy Corben and Blanco’s youngest son, Michael Corleone Blanco, launched a YouTube series, The Real Griselda, aimed at separating fact from fiction in the Netflix version of events. Michael is named for the character Al Pacino portrays in The Godfather films.

Corben’s documentaries about that violent period include Cocaine Cowboys in 2006. He also has written, along with Aurin Squire, a stage play called Confessions of a Cocaine Cowboy.

During a telephone interview, Corben said the Netflix series is “gonzo Cocaine Cowboys fan fiction that adds to the mythology of the Godmother.”

“We appreciate the opportunity to set the record straight,” Corben said. “Netflix has created that platform.”

As one example of an inaccuracy, Corben said Blanco would not have set fire to large amounts of cocaine, as happened in the Netflix series.

Corben also said a scene in which Blanco forces drug trafficker Jon Roberts to strip and bark like a dog is make-believe. “That didn’t happen,” Corben said.

In the 2011 book American Desperado, by Roberts and journalist Evan Wright, Roberts describes Blanco in harsh terms. According to Roberts, he once intended to make a romantic move on her, claiming to be “weak for evil women,” but was pulled aside by an associate who said, “Jon, they call her the Black Widow because after she uses a man, she kills him.”

When Blanco later needed a hideout, Roberts found one for her. She was on tranquilizers 24 hours a day, he said, and wouldn’t leave the place. “The house smelled worse than a truck stop toilet,” Roberts said.

In the end, Blanco finally was arrested and spent nearly 20 years in U.S. prisons for drug trafficking and three murders. She was deported to Colombia in 2004.

Blanco lived less than a decade after that. On September 3, 2012, a gunman on a motorcycle shot Blanco to death outside a Medellin butcher shop. She was 69.

As fate would have it, Blanco is the one who first devised the tactic of using hitmen on a motorcycle to assassinate someone, according to the Miami Herald.

‘Everything’s booming’

Today, Miami has come roaring back and is a major hub for economic development, Texan Tilman Fertitta said recently on CNBC’s Last Call.

Fertitta’s privately held Landry’s Inc. operates restaurants and other businesses, including the Golden Nugget hotel-casino chain, anchored by the long-standing resort on Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas. Fertitta also owns the NBA’s Houston Rockets.

During the interview, Fertitta discussed the grand opening of his newest upscale restaurant, Mastro’s Ocean Club Miami, and stressed that the region has become popular among executives looking to relocate.

“So many people have moved their offices down here,” Fertitta said. “Restaurants have been booming. Hotels have been booming. Everything’s booming here.”

Larry Henry is a veteran print and broadcast journalist. He served as press secretary for Nevada Governor Bob Miller and was political editor at the Las Vegas Sun and managing editor at KFSM-TV, the CBS affiliate in Northwest Arkansas. Today, he is a senior reporter for Gambling.com.

From The Godfather to Griselda, the Mob is firmly embedded in pop culture, which comes with a few drawbacks. In a medium that prioritizes entertainment over education, misconceptions are bound to spread, often becoming promoted to conventional wisdom. Budding mobsters have even been influenced by film and television in the way they see and conduct themselves.

Myths propagated by pop culture have built the image of the Mob into a powerful, yet honorable, organization, detached from its real-world counterpart. Hidden behind these false premises are kernels of truth, however, so let’s dive into the five most common Mob myths to distinguish fact from fiction.

5. The Mob doesn’t kill civilians

“You’ve got nothing to worry about, Del. We only kill each other.” — Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, Bugsy (1991)

When Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel took control of the Flamingo Hotel project in Las Vegas, he hired Del Webb to oversee construction. Webb quickly learned of Siegel’s reputation from the man himself. When Siegel boasted that he had personally killed 12 men, Webb became understandably nervous. Siegel dismissed his concerns by saying, “We only kill each other.” Meaning, the only targets are those who have chosen that way of life. But is that really true?

Contrary to Siegel’s claim, civilians are quite often caught in the crossfire of Mob violence. In 1982, Michael Donahue offered to give an old friend a ride home from a Boston bar. Donahue was unaware that Brian Halloran, an FBI informant, had been marked for death by James “Whitey” Bulger. Bulger and an accomplice drove up alongside Donahue’s Datsun and began shooting. After the car crashed, Bulger made sure that the two were dead. More than 30 years later, Donahue’s murder was among the 11 counts that gave Bulger two life sentences.

Collateral murder is not unique to American organized crime. In 1992, on a highway in Capaci, Sicily, magistrate Giovanni Falcone and his wife, Francesca Morvillo, were returning home when an explosion killed them and three police escorts. Members of the Sicilian Mafia had used a skateboard to move 500 kilograms of TNT and ammonium nitrate into a drainage pipe beneath the road. This method of deployment, Mafia informant Maurizio Avola claimed, came from an explosives expert sent by John Gotti.

Whether through mistaken identity, collateral damage or loose ends, the Mob will kill whoever it wants, regardless of an individual’s involvement in the underworld.

4. The Mob doesn’t deal drugs

“But drugs, that’s a dirty business.” — Don Corleone, The Godfather (1972)

This misconception originated from the Mob itself. “I did not tolerate any dealings in prostitution or narcotics,” wrote New York boss Joseph Bonanno in his autobiography A Man of Honor. “Perhaps other families didn’t adhere to my strict guidelines, but this was my way.” But what people say and what they do are often two different things.

Evidence of drug trafficking is peppered throughout the early history of organized crime, well before Bonnano collaborated with the Sicilian Mafia in 1957 to import heroin. Illegal drug trafficking in American organized crime is as old as the first federal anti-narcotics law in 1915. Throughout the 1910s, opium dens were frequently mentioned alongside brothels and gambling joints run by Big Jim Colosimo’s gang, the precursor to the Chicago Outfit. In New York, Charles “Lucky” Luciano received his first conviction in 1916 for selling heroin, landing him six months in jail. Decades later, Luciano would play a key role in recruiting Sicilian mafiosos as street-level drug dealers for New York, shielding American mobsters from the consequences of heroin trafficking.

Bad publicity and lengthy prison sentences were enough of a deterrent for a few bosses to discourage dealing drugs. Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, a founder of Murder Inc., was sentenced in 1940 to 14 years in prison for his heroin trafficking ring. Vito Genovese, namesake of the Genovese crime family, landed 15 years in prison in 1959 for narcotics trafficking, effectively a life sentence for the aging mobster.

Gambino boss Paul Castellano was one of the few who truly banned drug trafficking. His rule left no room for interpretation, “You deal, you die.” The new generation of wiseguys, including John Gotti, did it anyway. Castellano might have killed Gotti for violating his cardinal rule, but Gotti killed him first. While Gotti managed to skate by drug charges (instead getting life for murder in 1992), his brother, Gene Gotti, was not so lucky. He was sentenced to 50 years for narcotics trafficking in 1989.

Despite heavy consequences, drug trafficking has remained a staple in organized crime rackets worldwide. In that world, money trumps morals.

3. The Mob started Las Vegas

“That kid’s name was Moe Greene, and the city he invented was Las Vegas.” — Hyman Roth, The Godfather: Part II (1974)

The way the movies tell it, Las Vegas was a dilapidated gambling burg in the middle of the Mojave Desert when Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel (the inspiration for Moe Greene) swooped in to transform it into a resort metropolis. In truth, Las Vegas had been steadily growing since its birth as a railroad town in 1905. In 1931, the construction of Hoover Dam set the infrastructural stage for a booming population. Casinos became widespread after the statewide legalization of gambling the same year. By the time Siegel set foot in Las Vegas, it was already a flourishing city.

When the first New York mobsters arrived in Las Vegas, there were already two casinos on the Strip, the El Rancho Vegas and the Last Frontier. At the time, Hollywood Reporter publisher Billy Wilkerson was constructing the Flamingo, but turned to the Mob’s financing when he ran out of money. Siegel joined on as the Mob’s representative, although he later forced Wilkerson out to finish the project himself. Plagued by overspending, the Flamingo had a disastrous opening month when the rooms weren’t ready for guests. His financial mishaps roused suspicions of theft from his financiers, which led to fatal consequences on June 20, 1947, when he was murdered in Beverly Hills.

There is usually an ounce of truth in what the movies depict. The Mob did bring a level of luxury that wasn’t seen in the Western-themed casinos of the Strip’s early years. Even taking mismanagement into consideration, the $6 million the Mob sunk into the Flamingo’s construction dwarfed the El Rancho Vegas’s price tag of less than $500,000. While the town had already been around for decades, the Mob brought with it the gambling and entertainment expertise to morph Las Vegas into the entertainment capital of the world (although they would skim from the profits every step of the way).

2. The Mob helped elect John F. Kennedy

“It was easy for the Mob to help Joe Kennedy get his son elected president by making sure he won in Illinois.” — Frank Sheeran, The Irishman (2019)

It’s true that for much of the early 20th century, organized crime had some influence on the political machines that dominated large urban centers, such as New York City’s Tammany Hall. However, that influence began to wane as investigations and Senate hearings revealed political corruption to the public.

There are rumors that Joseph P. Kennedy approached Chicago mobsters and asked for their help in getting his son elected. But the data do not support this claim. When John F. Kennedy ran for the Democratic Party’s nomination in 1960, the Chicago Outfit’s influence only spread to five of Chicago’s 50 wards. The Outfit, its manpower diminished since the Capone days, didn’t have the numbers to intimidate voters throughout their five wards. In addition, a statistical analysis of votes in the 1960 election by Chicago Mob historian John J. Binder showed that voting trends in the Outfit’s historically pro-Democrat wards followed similar trends to the rest of Chicago. There is evidence that the Outfit labored to influence a down-ticket state’s attorney election, but irregularities drew suspicious on only about 6,000 out of 490,000 ballots cast.

What did have the power and influence to tip the scales in Kennedy’s favor, however, was Mayor Richard Daley’s Democratic machine. Daley and his cronies used significant resources to deliver votes for their candidate.

To their credit, the Chicago Outfit did have the ability to influence Chicago’s elections, especially when a Republican candidate campaigned on organized crime crackdowns. The Outfit’s wards show statistically significant voting trends heavily in favor of Daley in the 1955 mayoral election. Daley’s reformer opponent, Robert Merriam, became a threat to the Mob after he vowed to end Chicago’s tolerance of racketeers.

Things might have been different if the Outfit knew just how much of a threat Kennedy posed with his brother Robert at his side. In the lead-up to the 1960 election, the soon-to-be attorney general had already been grilling mobsters and corrupt Teamsters Union boss Jimmy Hoffa as chief counsel of Senator John McClellan’s hearings on labor racketeering.

1. The Mob assassinated President John F. Kennedy

“Ruby’s all Mob, knows Oswald, sets him up. Hoffa — Trafficante — Marcello, they hire some guns, and they do Kennedy.” — Bill Harvey, JFK (1991)

Who hasn’t been suspected of involvement in the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy? Those named in conspiracy theories on and off the grassy knoll include the KGB, Secret Service, CIA, pro-Castro groups, anti-Castro groups, President Lyndon Johnson and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Mob bosses Sam Giancana, Santo Trafficante and Carlos Marcello have also been thought to have been involved in killing the president.

The so-called evidence of the Mob’s involvement lies primarily with Jack Ruby, the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald two days after the assassination. By virtue of being a nightclub owner, Ruby certainly had contact with members of organized crime. However, these were not close connections, in particular because of his past. Born in Chicago, Ruby was an errand boy for the Mob on the West Side of Chicago. Yet according to Mob historian Gus Russo, Ruby was run out of Chicago because he was frequently interviewed by police to inform on the Mob. This is not the kind of person that a high-ranking mobster would trust to take care of loose ends.

It’s certainly true that some mobsters had a beef with Kennedy. With Robert F. Kennedy serving as his attorney general, the brothers went after organized crime. Tampa Mafia boss Santo Trafficante Jr. allegedly gave a toast in private to his lawyer, hours after the assassination. Yet, the Mob was still an organization that operated best with minimal attention from the law. High-profile assassinations were out of the question. When New York bootlegger Dutch Schultz suggested that he would take out District Attorney Thomas Dewey in 1935, Mafia leadership promptly had Schultz killed instead.

The Mob exists primarily to make money. To kill a president of the United States would bring on the full wrath of American law enforcement, a move that would inhibit them from fulfilling their raison d’être.

On July 13, 1863, during the Civil War, New York City burst into flames when the federal government started a draft. Residents, especially poor immigrants, were inflamed at the possibility of serving. The city’s police force became the target of their anger.

Reports of the situation rang out around the country. The Daily State Gazette of Trenton, New Jersey, reported, “Two o’clock – The riot is said to have assumed vast proportions … the police have been handled terribly severe. It is reported that Police Superintendent Kennedy and some 15 of the police were killed and many wounded.” As the riots ensued over the course of a week, the police had to coordinate their efforts quickly to end the violence.

The 1863 draft riots made their way into the modern psyche with Martin Scorsese’s 2002 film Gangs of New York. The film, which highlights the rise and fall of New York street gangs, is loosely based on The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld, a nonfiction book by Herbert Asbury published in 1927. The end of the film features the draft riots but takes creative liberties with the details.

The real story highlights the challenges and corruption involved in creating a police force in New York. The newly formed law enforcement agency would almost inevitably clash with the working-class immigrant groups that had been growing in New York throughout the 19th century.

New York Police in the 1850s

The New York City police first organized in 1853 when the state mandated uniforms and established a supervisory commission. Democratic Mayor Fernando Wood corrupted the commission, however, when he cajoled members to give him sole power over the police. In 1857, the Republican Party gained control over the state government and created a new force, the Metropolitan Police. Wood, however, refused to give up his police force, which he called the Municipals. The city now had two police forces with a distinct ethnic divide: the Municipals, mostly Irish Catholic immigrants, and the Metropolitans, primarily Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

In Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, historians Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace wrote about the two forces, “Chaos ensued. Criminals had a high old time. Arrested by one force, they were rescued by the other. Rival cops tussled over possession of station houses.” After a fight outside City Hall, the state’s Court of Appeals ruled the Metropolitans as the city’s legitimate police force. The decision forced Wood to disband the Municipals the day before a major riot on Independence Day.

The Wood-aligned Dead Rabbits, an Irish Sixth Ward gang, caught the weak Metropolitans off guard with an assault amid the festivities. Luckily, a rival gang affiliated with the Know-Nothings, a political party consisting of anti-immigrant, Protestant-leaning Bowery Boys, came to the police’s rescue. These gangs of mostly young laborers and apprentices had ruled respective neighborhoods since the 1830s. However, these groups, far from organized, were more like raucous social groups for young men. The clash between the gangs allowed the police to beat a retreat, but order was not restored until the National Guard arrived. Twelve people were killed, including two police officers, and 41 others were injured.

The new superintendent

Political forces continued to interfere with the police until John A. Kennedy became the new superintendent in May 1860. Kennedy allowed former Municipals to rejoin the force. The attempt to conciliate incensed Irish Catholics failed, however, because the Metropolitans continued to target immigrants. In one day in 1860, Metropolitans arrested 500 “street vagrants,” mostly immigrants, for the vaguely defined crime of “disloyalty to the Union.” Kennedy also used his powers during the Civil War to arrest 4,000 army deserters in a single year, again mostly immigrants. During the 1862 midterm elections, his officers singled out immigrant voters in a ploy to keep them from the ballot box.

In that same year, Kennedy arrested a well-respected member of the immigrant community, Isabel Brinsmade, for treason. Her arrest triggered a major backlash, and she sued Superintendent Kennedy and the Metropolitan Police for unlawful arrest. During the trial, evidence and testimony showed the police commissioners that Kennedy had been overzealous in his duties. Yet, the commissioners stirred more animosity by only censuring him.

More tinder for the riots

The ill-prepared police had other issues leading up to the draft riots. Without a riot squad or even mounted police officers, they relied on “direct attack on the mob, with a vigorous use of the club,” wrote historian Adrian Cook in The Armies of the Streets: The New York City Draft Riots of 1863.

The force also lacked support from state leaders. Democratic Governor Horatio Seymour sunk police morale with his constant criticism. Seymour attempted to replace the Republican members of the Board of Commissioners with loyal Democrats.

Invading Confederate troops at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, made tensions worse and the need for conscripts more apparent. Around the same time, the federal government began to implement the National Conscription Act. Immigrant workers despised the new law because wealthier men could pay $300 to dodge the draft, far above a working-class immigrant’s pay grade. Beyond that, President Abraham Lincoln had stipulated there were no exemptions for immigrants working toward citizenship.

With low police morale, limited peacekeeping ability and agitated immigrants, the city only needed a match to set it ablaze.

The match

On the morning of Monday, July 13, 1863, draft workers began to draw names. Laborers around the city skipped work to protest. One group marched to the Ninth District Provost Marshal’s Office, where the draft was taking place. Draft officers had only announced about 50 names when the angry mob descended.

The firemen of the Black Joke Engine Company No. 33 joined the mob, incensed that their captain had been drafted. The immunity that kept firemen in the city from being drafted into the state militia apparently did not apply to the Union army. “A pistol shot rang out, and the Black Joke men burst into the office, smashed the selection wheel, and set the building on fire,” wrote historian Iver Berstein in The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War. The draft riots had begun.

Assault on the police and Superintendent Kennedy

All hell broke loose, and the angry mobs took their frustrations out on the Metropolitan Police. Rioters targeted the homes of officers or those sheltering them. Captured policemen were stripped of their uniforms and beaten, if not killed. In one particularly gruesome instance, a woman attempted to cut off the ear of a badly beaten officer, but squeamish rioters prevented her from finishing the job. Doctors were later able to reattach his ear.

The major target for the rioters was the despised police superintendent. When Kennedy heard about the rioting, he left police headquarters and made his way to the scene. He rode in a buggy until he hit blockaded roads and proceeded on foot. As he walked up Lexington Avenue, a former cop recognized him, “Here comes the son of a bitch Kennedy! Let’s finish him!”

The crowd pounced on Kennedy and beat him over the head until he was unrecognizable. The attack left the police with no leadership for hours. Some newspapers reported Kennedy was dead. Eventually, Police Commissioner Thomas C. Acton took control of the situation and called on all police units to converge at police headquarters on Mulberry Street.

When Kennedy was finally found, he “was almost unconscious, his face fearfully bruised and cut, one eye entirely closed, lips swelled frightfully … his hand cut with a knife, his body a mass of bruises, and his person covered with blood and mud,” according to contemporary historian David M. Barnes in The Draft Riots of New York, July 1863. The 60-year-old superintendent survived the riots and continued as superintendent until 1870, but for the rest of the week he was out of commission.

Siege and arson

Continuing the first day’s violence, a clash occurred between the Metropolitans and rioters at the Upper East Side Union Steam Works located on East 22nd Street. The factory, owned by the son-in-law of Republican Mayor George Opdyke, had been commandeered as an armory. There, police engaged in hand-to-hand combat with rioters. After three attempts, the rioters routed the police. Soldiers in the 12th U.S. Infantry broke through the rioters to recover the remaining arms cache.

The following evening, the steam works were burned to the ground. The nearby 18th Ward Police Station and the 23rd Precinct were also set ablaze. Days later, women and children were scavenging the remnants of the 18th Ward building for wood and other supplies when it collapsed, killing three of them.

During an assault on Jackson’s Foundry on July 15, two days into the riots, the mob demanded that the soldiers guarding the building give up all police officers within. The soldiers — unwilling to adhere to the rioters’ demands — were quickly overtaken. The foundry, however, was saved from destruction by military reinforcements who drove the rioters away. The police were clearly being targeted, but they weren’t the only group facing the mob’s wrath.

Black community targeted

The Black community was the rioters’ other major target. Anger within the immigrant community toward Black residents had escalated weeks before the riots. Factory owners had used Black workers as strikebreakers, guarded by the police. This touched off violence against the Black community in the city. The violence leading up to the riots was so bad that Superintendent Kennedy warned Secretary of War Edwin Stanton that he should not march the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, the first all-Black regiment, through the city.

During the riots, the police neglected to aid the Black community. In one instance, the police arrived far too late to aid a Black mariner named William Williams, who, after asking for directions, was murdered by whites near the uptown docks. Later, the police arrived upon the corpse of a Black coachman named Abraham Franklin hanging from a lamppost. Although the police took his body down, they callously left him lying in the street for the mob to desecrate.

The rioters’ carnage continued by burning down the Colored Orphan Asylum. Luckily, an Irish driver of a horse-drawn omnibus rescued the children and transported them to safety at a police station.

Control returns

The police and military slowly gained control over the situation. However, they received no assistance from Governor Seymour, who arrived in the city on Tuesday morning. He declined to declare martial law and referred to the rioters as his “friends.” Furthermore, Irish Catholic Archbishop John Hughes, the most prominent member of the Irish community, remained silent on the situation until the chaos subsided.

It was through the efforts of Commissioner Acton and military leaders that order returned to the city. After Acton regrouped the police at headquarters, he placed Senior Inspector Daniel Carpenter in charge of forces. Carpenter led officers to the street outside and rallied the gathered officers, “Men! We are to meet and put down a mob. We are to take no prisoners. We must strike quick and strike hard.”

They soon won major victories. The forces dispatched a mob that attacked Brooks Brothers Clothing Store on Catherine Street and, with military support, broke down a barricade on Ninth Avenue placed by rioters. By Thursday, the situation was almost under control when more soldiers arrived from Gettysburg and patrolled the streets around Gramercy Park with a howitzer. By Friday, about 6,000 troops and other Metropolitan officers were stationed around uptown, and calm began to return to the city.

Aftermath of the riots

The bloody riots claimed more than 100 lives. The destruction was felt in more than 50 burned buildings and damages close to $2.5 million (about $53 million today). The riots led directly to efforts to professionalize both the police and fire departments.

After the Black Joke Fire Company sparked the riots, Superintendent Kennedy and Commissioner Acton called for major reforms. Two years after the riots, state legislators transformed the fire companies from voluntary social groups into salaried city employees. The police put more focus on mob suppression with more drills and club training, according to historian Adrian Cook.

The riots forced the police to quickly organize themselves to curb violence across New York City. Officers soon had training manuals and physical training standards to prepare for future situations. Officers, armed with just a club to keep the peace during riots, learned how to use the tool effectively. New York City Police still carry clubs in the form of a collapsible aluminum baton.

Martin Scorsese brought the riots into popular culture with Gangs of New York. The movie features events from the draft riots, but the story contains historical inaccuracies. In reality, the gangs had little to do with the draft riots, and William “Bill the Butcher” Poole, portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis, died eight years before.

Timothy Brown is a Ph.D. student in history at the University of Connecticut. He received his master’s degree in history from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He served as an intern at The Mob Museum in 2021.

Innocent victims of Mob violence are one of the most underreported aspects of organized crime. This is due in part to the persistent belief that mobsters only kill each other. Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel is credited with advancing this narrative to soothe a business associate.

Building contractor Del Webb took over construction of the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas in 1946 and found himself employed by Siegel, a mobster reputed to have killed more than a dozen people. In an oft-repeated anecdote, Siegel boasted to Webb about how he had personally killed 12 men who went against him. After noticing the panicked look on Webb’s face, he reassured him with the promise, “We only kill each other.”

But Siegel’s assertion is not true. The Mob’s “code of honor” is a folk tale. Not only are regular people caught in the crossfire of Mob violence, sometimes they are targeted. Here’s just a sampling of innocent victims of Mob violence.

Michael Vengalli – East Harlem, 1931

On a busy street in East Harlem in New York City on July 28, 1931, 5-year-old Michael Vengalli met his end in a volley of gunfire. Four other children, including Michael’s 7-year-old brother Salvatore, were injured.

It was 6:30 p.m. on a sweltering summer day in the mostly Italian neighborhood the Vengallis called home. That day, the temperature soared to 97 degrees. As families finished their evening meals, children went out into the street to enjoy the last hours of daylight and escape the oppressive heat of 1930s brownstones and tenements. As Michael and Salvatore played, a car drove past, and five occupants began firing into the crowd of people, aiming at bootlegger Joey Rao. Rao escaped unharmed, but Michael and Salvatore, along with 3-year-old Michael Bevilacqua, 5-year-old Samuel Divino and 14-year-old Flora D’Amelia, were hit.

Michael and Salvatore’s mother, Catherine, rushed out onto the street. Seeing Salvatore first, she immediately took him to Fifth Avenue Hospital in a taxi. Another mother found Michael and took him to Beth David Hospital. Michael died later that night.

Although mobsters Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll and Frank Giordano stood trial for the crime, no one was convicted.

Michael Vengalli died because of a gang dispute that bled out into the neighborhood of East Harlem. His killers likely did not intend to murder a child, but they had nonetheless planned a hit in a crowded, public space. Their negligence had consequences for people outside the organized crime lifestyle.

Frank Carramusa Jr. – Kansas City, 1919

Twelve years before Vengalli’s death, on March 28, 1919, Kansas City mobster Paul Catanzaro killed 11-year-old Frank Carramusa Jr. Catanzaro shot the boy as retaliation for an unpaid Black Hand extortion attempt. Frank’s father, a grocer in Kansas City’s Little Italy, had received threatening Black Hand letters. He refused to pay, and Catanzaro shot Frank Jr. while he rode in one of his father’s delivery trucks. Although the police caught Catanzaro, he was never convicted, in part because of threats made against eyewitnesses to the crime.

Johnny Castro – Miami, 1982

On February 7, 1982, 2-year-old Johnny Castro was killed by 9mm submachine gunfire during an attempt on the life of his father, Jesus Castro. The elder Castro worked as a bodyguard for Griselda Blanco’s drug cartel in Miami. Blanco ordered his death after she alleged he disrespected her sons by kicking one of them in the behind.

Blanco hitman Jorge Ayala was later convicted for carrying out the botched hit that took the toddler’s life. Blanco also served time for arranging this and two other hits.

Nicola Campolongo – Calabria, Italy, 2014

On January 16, 2014, in Calabria, Italy, 3-year-old Nicola “Coco” Campolongo was shot along with his grandfather, ‘Ndrangheta member Giuseppe Iannicelli, and his grandfather’s girlfriend. The three victims were found in Iannicelli’s burned-out Fiat Punto. Officials investigating the crime found Iannicelli’s body in the trunk and a 50-cent coin on the roof, a ‘Ndrangheta signature.

Campolongo’s mother and father were both serving prison sentences that left him and his siblings in their grandfather’s custody. Experts believe it was common knowledge that he took his grandson with him everywhere to deter violence.

In October 2015, Cosimo Donato and Faustino Campilongo were arrested for their involvement in the murders. During the aftermath of Campolongo’s death, anti-‘Ndrangheta activists asserted that 30 children had died as a result of gang warfare since 1950.

Mary Bari – Brooklyn, 1984

Just as children have been both intentional and unintentional victims of Mob violence, girlfriends and wives of mobsters also have been targets. Mary Bari suffered such a fate on September 25, 1984, in Brooklyn, New York.

Bari began dating Colombo crime family underboss Alphonse Persico when she was a teenager. She had been with him for a decade when he went into hiding in 1980 following an extortion conviction. His associates believed she knew where he was hiding and feared she may give information to the FBI. In 1993, Colombo family member Carmine Sessa told the FBI that Bari was killed because she knew where Persico was hiding, and there were rumors she was already talking to the feds.

Greg Scarpa Sr. and other members of the Colombo family lured Bari to the Wimpy Boy Social Club in Brooklyn with the promise of a waitressing job. When she arrived, Greg Scarpa Jr. grabbed her and shoved her to the floor. His father then shot her three times.

Bess Greenbaum – Phoenix, 1958

Bess Greenbaum, wife of Phoenix mobster Gus Greenbaum, likewise met a grisly end, in her case alongside her husband. Gus, manager of the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, had a tense relationship with his Mob associates in the late 1950s as a result of personal debts related to gambling and drug addiction.

On the morning of December 3, 1958, the Greenbaums’ housekeeper Pearl Ray found them murdered in their Phoenix home. She last saw them alive the preceding evening, and Bess had driven her home at the end of her shift. Ray found Bess on a couch in the den, fully dressed, with her throat cut and wrists bound behind her. A severe blow fractured her skull, most likely from a decorative glass bottle found beside her.

Gus was found in the couple’s bedroom in his pajamas, with his throat slashed and nearly decapitated. Two hard blows to the rear of Gus’s skull each produced fractures. Pillows had been placed on both sides of their heads, presumably to muffle their screams. It is possible the killers only targeted Gus but decided to take out Bess as well when she arrived home earlier than expected.

The Greenbaum murders remain unsolved, but all signs point to a Mob hit. The killers wrapped the knife in a cellophane bag to avoid leaving fingerprints, and there were no clear signs of forced entry. Although a small amount of cash and a ring from Gus’s hand were missing, other valuables were undisturbed. Greenbaum’s tension with his Mob associates was well known in the underworld. And his sister-in-law Leone also had been murdered by suffocation in 1955.

Mildred Noble – Dallas, 1949

Mildred Noble, wife of Dallas gambling racketeer Herbert Noble, died on November 29, 1949, when she unintentionally detonated a car bomb meant for her husband. Herbert took Mildred’s car that morning, and when she went to leave in his Mercury later that day, nitroglycerin connected to the generator exploded. Mildred died instantly.

Although the culprit was never convicted, her death likely stemmed from a long-running feud between Herbert and fellow mobster Benny Binion related to competition in the Dallas gambling rackets. Herbert “The Cat” Noble survived numerous assassination attempts in the mid- to late 1940s. Although Binion moved to Las Vegas in 1946, the attempts on Noble’s life did not cease.

After Mildred’s death, Noble rarely left home, doing so only in an armored Ford. He had Dalmatians, Chihuahuas, peacocks and guinea hens as living security alarms, but they didn’t save him from a bomb planted in his driveway on August 7, 1951.

William Holmes – Detroit, 1937

Familial and romantic ties do not account for all innocent victims’ deaths. William Holmes, a Black doorman at Detroit’s Ten Forty Club, died when a car bomb intended for mobster Harry Millman detonated in the early morning of August 29, 1937. The Ten Forty Club was a popular hangout for Purple Gang members. Millman frequented the club and usually had Holmes pull his car around at the end of the night, but Holmes had no connection to the Purple Gang or Millman. Holmes was killed by the ten sticks of dynamite wired to the spark plugs. He became the first victim of a gangland car bombing in Detroit.

Dominick Ragucci – Suffolk County, New York, 1979

Another reason that non-mobsters become innocent victims are cases of mistaken identity. Gambino crime family hitman Roy DeMeo killed Dominick Ragucci after mistaking him for a Cuban hitman on the evening of April 19, 1979.

Ragucci, an 18-year-old vacuum cleaner salesman and student, parked in front of DeMeo’s home after a sales meeting. The paranoid, drug-addled DeMeo approached Ragucci’s car alongside associate Joseph Guglielmo, intending to confront this would-be assassin. Ragucci sped off in a panic, and DeMeo and Guglielmo gave chase in DeMeo’s Cadillac. Ragucci could not lose them, and DeMeo fired at Ragucci’s car 20 times over more than seven miles of busy streets. Ragucci crashed into another car before coming to a final stop. DeMeo got out of his car and fired until Ragucci was dead.

Gambino family capo Nino Gaggi was reportedly furious over DeMeo’s mistake, and sources allege DeMeo privately expressed remorse. But none of that emotion could make up for Ragucci’s death nor the trauma endured by the many innocent bystanders who amazingly survived the reckless, high-speed chase.

Golden Dragon Massacre victims – San Francisco, 1977

In the early morning of September 4, 1977, diners at the Golden Dragon restaurant in San Francisco witnessed another example of mistaken identity gone horribly wrong. Earlier that year, a gang war erupted in San Francisco’s Chinatown between the Joe Boys and Wah Ching, two youth crime groups. Gang violence erupted after a dispute over the control of firework sales in the early summer.

After the Joe Boys discovered the vandalized grave of a fallen associate, they began planning an attack on Wah Ching leader Michael “Hot Dog” Louie at the Golden Dragon. On the evening of the massacre, four 17-year-old Joe Boys — Chester Yu, Curtis Tam, Melvin Yu and Peter Ng — traveled to the Golden Dragon. Chester Yu served as getaway driver while the others entered the restaurant. About 100 diners were there, including “Hot Dog” Louie and 10 other gang members seated in a booth on the upper level. Through a window, one of them spotted the gunmen approaching the restaurant, and Louie and his crew were able to duck and hide by the time the gunmen ran through the doors.

Other diners were not as lucky. Melvin Yu walked directly up to a young man seated at a table and shot him nine times. Yu likely mistook his victim for Louie or another Wah Ching leader, but the man was not a gang member. He was Paul Wada, a 25-year-old native San Franciscan, activist and law student at the University of San Francisco. His dining companion, Denise Louie — no relation to “Hot Dog” — was also killed. A fellow Asian American activist from Seattle, Washington, Louie was visiting Wada and other friends in the city.

As the gunmen proceeded through the restaurant, they shot indiscriminately at tables, particularly focused on young diners. In the end, they killed five and injured 11 people. In addition to Wada and Louie, two young San Franciscans, Calvin M. Fong, 18, and Donald Kwan, 20, died along with 48-year-old waiter Fong Wong.

A lot of what is known about the evening came from a former Joe Boy turned informant, Robert Woo, who later provided San Francisco Police with a recorded conversation with Curtis Tam recounting the events of the massacre. In 1978 and ’79, trials were held for all four perpetrators, along with Joe Boys boss Tom Yu and two other juveniles associated with planning the massacre. Melvin Yu and Peter Ng were found guilty on multiple counts of first-degree murder, Tam was found guilty of second-degree murder and ringleader Tom Yu was found guilty on five counts of first-degree murder.

The survivors of the Golden Dragon massacre and their loved ones still carry the scars of this senseless tragedy. So, too, do those touched by countless other cases of Mob violence against innocent victims. The societal cost of organized crime can be enumerated in many ways, and one is by the numbers of innocent victims who have lost their lives because of Mob conflicts.

“Art Collection Is Looted; Loss Put at $1.3 million,” read a headline in the August 22, 1968, edition of the New York Times. In the middle of the night, burglars broke into the home of art collector T. Edward Hanley and walked off with 14 paintings and two statues while Hanley slept in his bed.

Associates of the Buffalo Mafia orchestrated the theft under the oversight of crime boss Stefano Magaddino, whose reign was nearing its end. The theft gave the FBI the perfect opportunity to take down the Mafia in Buffalo, New York. Magaddino found his empire in danger from an unexpected source: Hanley’s determined and eccentric wife.

The rise of Stefano Magaddino

The Buffalo crime family flourished from 1922 until 1969 under the leadership of Stefano Magaddino. Magaddino was born in Sicily on October 10, 1891. Both of his grandfathers had been leaders of separate factions of the Sicilian Mafia. He eventually moved to the United States, lived in New York City and joined the family business. However, in 1921 he was arrested for participation in a revenge killing in New Jersey. Fearing retaliation, Magaddino fled upstate to Buffalo.

At the time, the Buffalo Mafia needed new leadership. The Buffalo crime family was formed in 1912 by Joseph DiCarlo and Angelo “Buffalo Bill” Palmieri as boss and underboss, respectively. DiCarlo ran the Buffalo family until his death in 1922. Palmieri then invited Magaddino to take over for DiCarlo.

Upon his arrival, Magaddino began to build an empire in western New York. Accompanying his illegal rackets were legitimate businesses, including the Magaddino Memorial Chapel, the Power City Distributing Company of Niagara Falls and the Camelia Linen Supply Company of Buffalo. His consigliere was Buffalo insider John C. Montana, a former city council member and businessman.

Magaddino was one of the founding members of the Commission, the overarching organization that linked the nation’s Mafia syndicates together beginning in the 1930s. For years he stayed under the radar, until the Mafia drew the FBI’s attention in 1957.

Apalachin and ‘Little Apalachin’

On November 14, 1957, at Magaddino’s insistence, members of the Commission from across the country gathered in the small town of Apalachin, New York. The meeting was meant to work out, among other things, issues surrounding the recent killing of New York Mafia boss Albert Anastasia. According to Magaddino, this was the ideal setting for easing tensions because the local police were simple farmers with no understanding of organized crime.

Contrary to Magaddino’s belief, the arrival of limousines and a bunch of men in tailored suits in the small hamlet sparked a reaction from the New York State Police. They raided the meeting at the home of Pittston, Pennsylvania, mob boss Joseph Barbara and arrested many Mafia members. Magaddino, who had underestimated the police, escaped by traipsing through the muddy woods in his suit. Unfortunately, the same was not true for John C. Montana, whose capture destroyed his mainstream reputation. After the Apalachin bust, FBI leaders made it their mission to bring down organized crime.

By the 1960s, FBI agents were in Buffalo investigating Magaddino. In 1967, they caught a huge break. In a repeat of 1957, almost every member of the Magaddino crime family, besides Stefano and his son, was arrested in an illegal gambling hall in the basement of Panaro’s Snowball Lounge. The raid became known as “Little Apalachin.”

Later that year, the FBI arrested a low-level thug named Pasquale “Paddy” Calabrese for a number of burglaries. The Magaddino bosses made the mistake of ignoring their underling’s plight, so he turned on them. He informed the police that he committed the robberies on the orders of underboss Frederico G. “The Wolf” Randaccio and capo Pat Natarelli. On December 11, 1967, Randaccio and Natarelli were convicted of orchestrating the robberies and sent to prison for 20 years each in a major blow to Magaddino’s operation.

By this time, Magaddino was the oldest member of the Commission and the longest-reigning boss. But his empire was crumbling.

Magaddino burglary ring

The Magaddino family relied on burglary for extra money. The burglary ring was controlled by John C. Sacco, with three main figures in his ranks: Russell DeCicco, Gregory Parness and Louis Mavrakis. The FBI was working to take them down when an informant stepped up — Gregory’s brother, Paul Parness. Paul informed the FBI that Sacco had big connections with other bosses, including Russell Bufalino, the successor of Barbara as head of the Pittston crime family. In April 1968, Sacco and Bufalino began working together in the burglary ring. Their first job was for Bufalino to hawk 60 stolen color television sets. Thanks to Paul, the FBI recovered the TV sets before the burglars could carry out their plan.

Their situation went from bad to worse when the thieves targeted a wealthy art collector.

The art collector

T. Edward Hanley, born in 1893, was a wealthy physician who had inherited much of his money from his family’s brick manufacturing company and Pennsylvania oil and gas industry investments. He used his allowance to collect rare books and art beginning in his sophomore year at Harvard University. His collection included works by D.H. Lawrence, George Bernard Shaw, T.S. Eliot, Oscar Wilde and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. His most prized possessions were an original edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and the corrected page proofs from James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Hanley’s taste in art ran mostly to impressionist and post-impressionist artists, although he also collected works by 19^th century American artists. Represented in his collection were artists such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Rembrandt Peale, Gilbert Stuart, Pablo Picasso and Paul Cézanne. He built a generous reputation for donating and/or loaning much of his collections to museums and universities. Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Art Gallery displayed his paintings in 1944, and in 1967, he displayed 300 pieces at Huntington Hartford’s Art Gallery in New York City. All of this made it well known to the world — and the Mafia — that Hanley had a vast and valuable collection.

The late-night larceny

On August 21, 1968, DeCicco and Mavrakis burglarized Hanley’s home. According to the New York Times, the thieves broke in through the kitchen and forced their way into his gallery. They walked off with 14 framed paintings and two bronze statues. Hanley, in poor health, was asleep in an upstairs bedroom.

Among the stolen artwork were paintings by Francisco Goya, Renoir, François Boucher and Henri Fantin-Latour. In addition, the burglars took two statues by Edgar Degas and Auguste Rodin, worth about $25,000 each. The most valuable pieces stolen were Picasso’s Au Moulin Rouge, at the time worth $500,000, and Cézanne’s Portrait of Vallier, valued at $450,000.

The next day, Hanley’s wife Tullah, returned to their home from a business trip and assessed the situation. The value of the stolen artwork came to $1,394,250, as reported by the Chicago Tribune. She was adamant that the paintings would be returned and would take down whoever broke into their home. This became the Buffalo Mafia’s glaring misstep, which would soon lead to the boss’s downfall.

Mrs. Hanley vs. the Mafia

Hanley met Tullah in 1945 at a club in Buffalo, where she worked as a belly dancer. He quickly became infatuated with the half-Hungarian, half-Egyptian dancer and divorced his wife to be with her. The couple wed on Christmas Day 1948. According to her death notice in the Buffalo News, she once boasted, “I was Ed Hanley’s most treasured acquisition.”

After informing the police of the value of the stolen artwork, she took matters into her own hands. “The thieves did not know what to take, what they might be able to sell,” Mrs. Hanley said in a press release reported by the New York Times, “Nobody in the world will buy them. No art dealer or collector would buy them. They could not sell them.” She offered “a reasonable sum of money with no questions asked” for their safe return. “We are going to get them back. Of that I am definitely sure,” she said and criticized the theft as “definitely a job by local amateurs, not the work of professionals.”

While Tullah suspected amateurs, the New York State Police captain later admitted to the Bradford Era that the burglary “had a definite Cosa Nostra flavor.”

Catching the crooks

In the meantime, the “amateur” Buffalo Mafia burglars needed to figure out what to do with the stolen art. Paul Parness, the FBI’s informant, said the burglary was committed by Russell DeCicco and Louis Mavrakis with help from DeCicco’s wife, Renée, and Parness’ brother, Greg. He also stated that the paintings were stored not far from the Hanley home. The FBI sent an undercover agent posing as a crooked art dealer. DeCicco fell for the ruse and guaranteed that he would get the paintings to the buyer in Buffalo.

On August 29, DeCicco, Parness and Mavrakis left Buffalo for the Bradford area to retrieve the stolen pieces. Authorities trailed them the entire way from New York to Pennsylvania. When the three burglars arrived at their hiding place, an oil shack near a gas station, they noticed the Pittsburgh FBI trailing them. They immediately returned to their car and hightailed it back to Buffalo. Noticing this change in plans, authorities searched the shack and recovered the stolen art, undamaged. The FBI chose not to prosecute immediately, as they were building a larger case against the Magaddino burglary ring.

Soon, the burglary ring found more trouble. DeCicco was charged with stealing Rembrandt’s Portrait of a Young Man in an Armchair from the George Eastman Museum in Rochester. Then Parness was tagged for the burglary of $50,000 worth of art from the home of wealthy Buffalo banker Seymour Knox II. It was not until January 1969 that the burglars would face trial for the Hanley art theft.

The Hanley art theft trial

At the trial, the defendants’ mouths were agape when Paul Parness took the stand. He had betrayed them, and none of them — not even his own brother — suspected a thing. However, the trial’s main attraction was the eccentric Tullah Hanley. While it is uncertain what she wore to the trial, the Buffalo News reported after her death that she was “a flashy dresser, her trademarks were low-cut, skin-tight outfits topped off with a turban or a feathered hat.” Joe Griffin, former Buffalo FBI agent and author of Mob Nemesis: How the FBI Crippled Organized Crime, described her at the trial as such:

“She was some ticket: about seventy years old but very well preserved, she told me during our court break conversations that her political affiliation was ‘sexually progressive,’ and that she was a ‘twelve o’clock woman in a nine o’clock town.’”

She made a bigger splash when she tried to talk with Renée DeCicco during every break. Griffin and his partner approached Tullah to ask why she wanted to communicate with Mrs. DeCicco, and she bluntly stated she was trying to coerce Renée and her husband into a ménage à trois. The agents, likely taken aback, unsuccessfully told her to stop.

The prosecuting attorneys brought up the issue during the trial, and the judge ordered Tullah to stop badgering the defendants. Any romantic prospects were quashed when the defendants were convicted and sentenced to five-year prison terms, although Renée only received three years.

This was another crippling blow to Magaddino’s empire.

A belly dance in front of priests

T. Edward Hanley did not attend the trial because Tullah never told him about the burglary. As she reasoned, “it would kill him.” Soon after the trial, on April 9, 1969, Hanley died. After the trial, Tullah wanted to display some of the stolen artwork at Buffalo’s Canisius College. The FBI agreed to deliver the art to the college instead of bringing it back to her. Tullah rolled up with paintings covered in FBI evidence tape during an event at the college.

Griffin, who attended the event, remembered that Tullah “delivered a brief, beautiful, and touching speech in her lilting Hungarian accent.” She then performed a belly dance routine for the formal audience of college officials, art connoisseurs, priests and FBI agents. She concluded with a handstand that left her exposed. Afterward, Griffin said: “Those of us from the FBI roared with laughter all the way back to the office.”

Tullah continued to shock society for the rest of her life. She put on an elaborate show in 1970 during the opening night festivities for an exhibition of art she donated to the San Francisco-based M.H. de Young Museum. According to the New York Times, she changed five times into ever-more-revealing outfits, danced to live rock music with women covered in only body paint, wrote her own sexual-innuendo-infused labels for each piece of artwork called “Tullah’s Notes,” and gave the embarrassed San Francisco mayor a private belly dance. Despite her quirky behavior, Tullah continued her late husband’s philanthropy and donated the rest of his collection to museums and universities around the country. She died in 1992 at age 66.

The end of Stefano Magaddino

As for the Magaddino crime family, Stefano’s days as a powerful boss were already over. In November 1968, the FBI investigated illegal horse race betting involving Stefano’s son, Peter. After the FBI obtained a warrant to search Peter’s home, agents recovered $473,000 linked to the betting ring.

This gave the FBI probable cause to search Stefano’s house. During the search, Stefano feigned a heart attack. He did have heart troubles, but a doctor at the scene proved he was faking it. Stefano was arrested, but never faced any jail time because his lawyers kept delaying the trial on account of their client’s alleged heart condition.

Although Magaddino escaped jail time, his once-commanding leadership was hampered by failing health and dwindling funds. He died of a heart attack at his home in 1974.

Timothy Brown is a Ph.D. Student in history at the University of Connecticut. He received his master’s degree in history from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He served as an intern at The Mob Museum in 2021.