1957 - Vito Genovese convened the largest gangster meeting in the history of American crime, at which he was supposed to proclaim himself "the boss of all bosses." More than a hundred mafia bosses from all over the United States have arrived on a small estate near New York. All preparations were carried out in the strictest secrecy, and yet at the most crucial moment the police came to the villa, around which there were dozens of luxurious limousines. Just for verification.
However, the appearance of the police had a stunning effect on the audience. Everything was exactly like in the movies. The gangsters scattered. Elderly gangsters in smart suits worth many thousands of dollars jumped over fences and fled into the woods, throwing pistols and wads of money out of their pockets as they went. They said that even six months later, local residents sometimes still found one hundred dollar bills in the forest …
Genovese's coronation ended in embarrassment - but nevertheless it took place. Now all power over the US mafia clans is concentrated in his hands. Finally he became the number one gangster! Alas, not for long. The bosses of the most prominent families in the mafia and Lucky Luciano himself did not like how Genovese took power from Frank Costello.
This time no one was going to shoot anyone. It was enough to give a bribe to one small drug dealer, who was at that time in the investigative prison, so that he told the police about the role of Vito Genovese in the American drug business. And on April 17, 1959, Vito appeared before the court, which delivered its verdict: 15 years in prison. This verdict was not subject to appeal.
For many years, Genovese remained the formal head of his clan, leading the gangsters from prison. He was no longer destined to be released, and on February 14, 1969, 7 years after the death of Lucky Luciano, he died in a prison hospital from cardiac arrest.
But even after the death of Vito Genovese continues to struggle to become number one. His grave and the grave of Lucky Luciano are in the same New York cemetery, at a distance of several hundred meters from each other. However, the crypt of the Genovese family is closer to the entrance, and in order to get to the tomb of Luciano, everyone has to walk past a slab with the name of Vito Genovese.
How it all began
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The entire biography of Vito Genovese is a continuous series of crimes. As a 15-year-old teenager, he arrived from Italy to America. Poverty, which he hated back in Italy, continued to haunt his family here. But Vito, was determined to get rich and at the age of 16 ran away from home, joining the ranks of countless juvenile criminals in New York. for a short time he worked in the "port hell", as the Americans call the New York docks, completely controlled by gangsters. Genovese was quickly able to enter this world.
Thief, robber, extortionist, drug dealer - these were the stages of his career. By the beginning of the 1930s. he was already in charge of the drug trade in a syndicate headed by Lucca Luciano, Albert Anastasia and Frank Castello. Ready for any crime, young Vito Genovese soon became Luciano's personal bodyguard. His successful career was interrupted by the following incident.
One gangster, a certain Boccia, was subject to "elimination" for the fact that he began to act independently, regardless of the syndicate. At that time, Genovese was already in a fairly high position to do it with his own hands. He could afford to use the services of a contract killer.
Genovese turned to the Italian Emilio Gallo, for whom this bloody craft served as a livelihood. At the same time, in order to secure himself more reliably, Genovese instructed another killer, Ernst Rupolo, after eliminating Boccia, to kill Gallo. In the gangster world, it is customary to get rid of dangerous bystanders in this way. However, this time the case did not work out. Gallo killed Boccia, but he was able to escape and, realizing who instructed Rupolo to kill him, reported Genovese to the police.
Fleeing from the electric chair, Genovese, who did not yet have powerful connections, was forced to urgently leave the United States. He returned to Italy and, having joined the international drug trade, eventually led it. Connections with Roman aristocrats, who have always had an interest in this craft, soon opened Genovese access to the higher spheres. And a little later the decrepit king Victor-Emmanuel even awarded him the title of "commandant". But when World War II began and all Americans living in Italy were interned, Genovese was not helped by the Italian title, and he had to spend almost two years in a camp in Abruzzi.
The position he occupied in the American underworld, contacts with the gangster syndicate, which were not completely cut off during the war, soon attracted the interest of fascist intelligence and contributed to Genovese's release.
In New York at that time there lived a newspaper publisher Carlo Tresca, who emigrated from Italy, an anti-fascist and an enemy of Mussolini. He began publishing the weekly "Martello" in the United States, in which he exposed the true goals of the fascist policies of Hitler and Mussolini. For more than a year, Italian intelligence tried in vain to deal with him through their agents.
For a fee of $ 500,000 and the promise of a free and unpunished life in Italy, Vito Genovese took up this business and fulfilled it. The apparatus of the murderers of the gangster syndicate did not stop functioning during the war, just as the trade in smuggled goods and drugs did not know interruptions.
1943, January 11 at 9:30 pm - Carlo Tresca was shot dead in New York at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 15th Street. Cod and a friend were crossing the street when a short, stocky man shot him point blank. Cod died on the spot. Two Norwegian diplomats who happened to be passing there at that time began to chase the killer's car. They could not catch up with the Ford, which was racing at a breakneck speed, but they remembered the number.
The car, which the police set off in search of, was soon found near 15th Street and identified by witnesses. Its owner turned out to be Italian-American Carmine Galente, who had multiple convictions for drug dealing. Predictably, Galente completely denied his guilt, claiming that someone had stolen his car that evening and probably used it for criminal purposes. The murder commission did not take Galente at his word and presented him to witnesses for identification.
1943, January 11, evening - Blackout was first introduced in New York. Therefore, the witnesses were unable to identify with complete certainty the killer in Carmine Galente. The prosecutor's office had to release Galente. The press wrote about this:
“There is no doubt that Tresca was killed for political reasons and on behalf of the Italian fascists. In the same way, there is no doubt that Vito Genovese, who lived in Italy, had a hand in this murder in order to buy his own freedom at such a price …”.
These newspaper comments were of little use, however - Genovese was in Italy, with which the United States was at war, and deservedly reaped the gratitude of the Italian government. For the American authorities, he was out of reach.
The war ended two years later. Italy was occupied by American troops. Albeit belatedly, the law nevertheless reached Vito Genovese. The New York prosecutor's office did not forget the murders of Boccia and Carlo Tresca committed on his instructions, and through the War Department demanded to find Genovese and bring him to America.
To find Genovese did not have to spend much effort: by that time he was in the service of the Americans, offering his services as an interpreter to the headquarters of the tank division, and quickly won the favor of the officers, supplying them with drugs and wine, as well as supplying them with girls. So it took three months to get Genovese to New York.
Meanwhile, Emilio Gallo, who had been sentenced to life in a hard labor prison, was removed from Sing Sing and prepared to testify against Genovese. At the instigation of the latter, the murder of Boccia was the only crime that the prosecuting authorities hoped to prove.
But Gallo faced the same fate that 14 years later befell another prosecution witness, Elmer Burke.
The warship with Vito Genovese on board had not yet had time to dock at the New York pier, and the only witness for the prosecution had already been transferred from the prison cell to the morgue. The night before, he allegedly had an episode of hepatic colic, and the guard gave him pain reliever. Gallo died by morning. There was absolutely no way to prove that Genovese was to blame: while Gallo was writhing in pain, Vito Genovese was in the hands of the American police.
1946 - Genovese sat in the dock calm, smiling, confident.
“The law requires an acquittal for lack of evidence,” as expected, the judge announced and then added: “But each of those present in the hall knows how the only witness was eliminated, whose testimony would inevitably entail the death sentence.
As he spoke these words, the judge was pale with excitement. Vito Genovese smiled with a bored look.
Scenes of this kind continued to repeat themselves over and over again in Genovese's life. After returning to the United States after the war, he finally settled there. After 14 years, Genovese had a fortune of $ 30 million.
The twelfth trial against Vito Genovese ended in the same way as the 11 previous ones. Before the jury retired to deliberate, the judge released the accused from custody. Genovese paid the $ 150,000 bond on the spot, with a careless gesture taking the money out of his vest pocket.
1956 - New York journalist Victor Riesel tried to lift the veil over the activities of criminal organizations. For several years in a row, he was engaged in tracking gangster schemes, finding out the names of politicians, government officials, industrial magnates associated with the underworld. He spent months in New York port, working as a docker, collecting material on the role of gangsters in port trade unions. Then, in some newspapers and on television, he began to acquaint the public with the results of the investigations.
1956, April 5 - Victor Riesel, speaking on television, describes how Vito Genovese and his henchmen Johnny and Tommy Dioguardi seized dominance of the transport and dock workers' unions. He also explained why the drug trafficking syndicate is especially interested in these trade unions.
As numerous as the routes by which drugs are smuggled into the country, the port remains the main gateway, and most of the illegal cargo arrives in disguise on transatlantic ships. Therefore, it is important for the bosses of the syndicate to have their own people and dockers unloading ships, and among the transport workers taking cargo out of the harbor.
The transmission lasted until two in the morning. Then Victor Riesel, his secretary Bette Nevins, and two television studio editors went to Broadway for a cup of coffee.
At about three o'clock in the morning, Riesel and Betty Nevins left the cafe and moved down 51st Street towards the Mark Hellinger Theater, where the journalist had parked his car. When he had already grabbed the door handle, a young, well-dressed man approached him, looked him over with a quick glance, said hello, and asked for a light, and then reached into his pocket, as if for cigarettes.
Riesel, who was striking a match at that time, did not notice how the stranger had a bottle in his hand. But when he looked up again, a caustic liquid splashed in his face. Riesel instinctively waved it off, and a few drops of liquid fell on the face and hands of the stranger, who immediately turned and ran. Riesel's secretary did not dare to rush in pursuit, and she could not leave the journalist groaning with burning pain.
At the corner of 51st Street, the fugitive bumped into patrol officers, one of whom asked:
- What happened? Where are you in such a hurry?
The young man was not taken aback.
“Two men attacked me,” he replied. “They should still be there, at the Mark Hellinger Theater.
The police rushed to the theater found only Riesel, writhing in pain, and his secretary calling for help.
By that time, the criminal had already disappeared. But on his face and hands there were indelible traces of the crime he had committed, which should have exposed him. It could be assumed that the police would be able to find the bandit, make him speak. However, the leaders of the gangster syndicate could not allow the criminal acting on their behalf to speak.
Hours later, all of the morning New York papers reported on the villainous attack on Victor Riesel. It seems that no crime has caused such general indignation as this.
On the same evening, Victor Riesel, despite the doctors' ban, again stood in front of the television camera. With an inhuman effort of will, overcoming physical suffering, he told millions of viewers about the crime of which he became a victim:
- Even last night you could look into my eyes, today you see only bandages in front of you. I went blind and the doctors didn’t leave the slightest chance for my vision to return. The gangsters from the "port hell" blinded me for opposing them. This acid burn should only be my first warning. So they expect to silence me, but I will not. Until my last breath, I will continue to fight this rag.
For more than 30 years, the most heinous criminals have been terrorizing our country, and they can get away with it. Our government constantly insists that America is the freest, richest, most beautiful country in the world. But this freedom should not be freedom for gangsters. America shouldn't be a haven for criminals. It's time to end this.
Victor Riesel openly named the main perpetrators of the atrocity committed against him - the same names that he named 24 hours ago: Vito Genovese, Johnny and Tommy Dioguardi.
In the meantime, time passed, and the hunt for a man who should have been given his own burns remained unsuccessful.
Only Joseph Carlino, a professional criminal, who served a total of 22 years of his 47 years in prison, helped the police. He expected to conclude an agreement with the authorities.
Four weeks after the attack on Victor Riesel, Joseph Carlino was arrested for robbery and had every reason to fear that, given his criminal record, he would be sentenced to life in hard labor. To alleviate the fate, he expressed his willingness to tell what he knew about the attack on the journalist. In exchange for this service, he demanded that his sentence be commuted. And the prosecutor's office did not hesitate to make this fairly common deal in the United States.
According to Carlino, at the end of March, about a week before the attack on Riesel, Johnny Dioguardi approached him with a proposal to "teach a lesson" to him, Johnny, a personal enemy. Carlino refused, as he was not satisfied with the $ 500 fee and was afraid of the possible consequences. But he promised to find a replacement. The next evening they met in the same pub, and Carlino brought with him 23-year-old Abe Telvi, whom he knew from prison and who, as he knows, was ready for any dirty business for money.
This time Johnny Dioguardi was accompanied by his brother Tommy. The four of them discussed the details of the attack on Viktor Riesel. Carlino received $ 100 from Johnny Dioguardi for mediation.
The morning after the attack, Abe Telvi unexpectedly came to Carlino's house. He was very alarmed, as he had burned himself with acid. Carlino made him soda lotions and gave him his suit. Abe Telvi said he intends to stay with his brother Leo Telvi until this whole story fades.
After receiving Karlino's testimony, the prosecutor's office could, without making a fuss, grab Abe Telvi. They even knew the address where he was hiding. She chose, however, a different path: a photograph of Telvi appeared in print with a wanted notice and a request for assistance. Thus, the public should have had the impression that the authorities were taking all measures to arrest the criminal. But at the same time, this announcement in the press served as a warning for the gangsters led by Vito Genovese about the danger that threatened them and the need to urgently do something.
And the gangsters were quick to take advantage of the friendly warning. Before the police could arrest Abe Telvi, passersby found his corpse in a gutter on 247th Street, perforated with three pistol bullets …
P. Kochetkova