Today's Mafia

There are about 3,000 Mafia members and affiliates in the U.S., the FBI estimates. In [Gambino family head Paul] Castellano's day there were double that number in the New York City area alone, yet the same five families--Gambino, Bonanno, Columbo, Genovese, and Luchese--have survived since Charles "Lucky" Luciano founded the Commission, the Mafia's governing body, in the early 1930s. Luciano helped establish the family structure, with dons and their captains managing associates who had yet to become "made men." There were 26 families during the mob's heyday in the 1950s, stretching from Boston, Providence, Buffalo, and Philadelphia through Al Capone's Chicago outfit to Hollywood and "Bugsy" Siegel's new frontier in Las Vegas. Today, the mob is concentrated around New York.

Staff, This Week, April 21, 2019

Al Capone's Mansion

     The home of the most notorious gangster in American history could be yours--provided you can meet the asking price of more than $8 million. The Miami Beach waterfront home of Al Capone is back on the market, approximately six months after it was purchased for $7.4 million.

     Capone bought the home for $40,000 in 1928 after being forced to leave his former stomping grounds of Chicago and Los Angeles. He is said to have plotted the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre, in which seven members of a rival Chicago gang were murdered after being lured into an ambush disguised as a liquor [delivery at a Chicago gangster's garage].

     Capone spent his final years at the Palm Island mansion after serving eight years in federal prison for tax evasion. He died in 1947. After extensive restoration work, the house was put back on the market in 2011. [In October 2021, Capone's 6,077 square foot home sold for $15.5 million.]

"Make an Offer: Al Capone's Miami Mansion Goes on the Market," Fox News, February 9, 2014 

Henry Hill On Wiseguys

To me being a wiseguy was better than being president of the United States. It meant power among people who had no power. It meant perks in a working class neighborhood that had no privileges. To be a wiseguy was to own the world. I dreamed about being a wiseguy the way other kids dreamed about being doctors or movie stars or fireman or ballplayers. [Today, instead of wiseguys, we have politicians.]

Henry Hill [The real-life protagonist in the movie "Goodfellas."] In Jerry Capeci, Wiseguys Say the Darndest Things, 2004

The Wiseguy Persona

The wiseguy does not see himself as a criminal or even a bad person; he sees himself as a businessman, a shrewd hustler, one step ahead of ordinary suckers. The wiseguy lives by a vastly different set of rules than those observed by regular people, rules that were fashioned by their criminal forefathers and proven to work by generations of mobsters before them. Wiseguys exist in a bizarre parallel universe, a world where avarice and violence and corruption are the norm, and where the routines of most ordinary people hold dear--working good jobs, being with family, living an honest life--are seen as the curse of the weak and stupid. Wiseguys resemble us in many ways, but make no mistake: they might as well be from another planet, so alien and abnormal are their thoughts and habits.

Joseph D. Pistone, The Way of the Wiseguy, 2004. Using the name Donnie Brasco, Pistone worked for months as a FBI undercover agent inside a NYC Mafia family. 

A Mobster's Regrets

How I could have put Cosa Nostra ahead of loyalty to my wife and my kids is something I will always have to live with. All my life, growing up, I thought that people who went to school and put their noses to the grindstone were nerds, taking the easy way out. I know now that I was the one who took the easy way that I didn't have the guts to stay in school and try. That was the tough road, which I didn't take.

Sammy "The Bull" Gravano in Jerry Capeci, Wiseguys Say the Darndest Things, 2004. Gravano was a hit man for John Goti Jr., the boss of New York's Gambino family. 

Mafia Violence

The history of the Mafia is a history of bloodshed and murder. Consider the poor bastard who ran afoul of some members of the Gambino crime family. They cut some holes in him, hung him over a bathtub, and drained all the blood out of his body. These are not rare occurrences or unusual crimes. Wiseguys routinely commit acts of nauseating grisliness. Forget about when someone is already dead and they cut up his body with chain saws and butcher knives like they were carving up a side of beef. We're talking about what they do to people when they are still alive. All sorts of body parts are cut off...Eyes have been gouged out, heads caved in, bones sledge-hammered, and bodies crushed. Weapons include golf clubs, steel bars, brass knuckles, baseball bats. Blood literally runs in little rivers when wiseguys decide to use knives and even swords. Guns, of course, are the most common weapon, and the most humane. A couple of quick ones to the back of the head makes you one of the lucky ones.

Joseph D. Pistone, The Way of the Wiseguy, 2004

Probation as The Gangster's Cure

When these organized crime figures go on trial they all show up in wheelchairs or on crutches. Suddenly they have bad hearts or livers and are about to die. Of course after the case they're all very healthy again. They must go to Lourdes and get cured. Even Butchie Miceli walked away, without his crutches. This guy had multiple sclerosis. Found a cure the minute they said "probation!" Great cure.

Joe Delaney, New Jersey police chief in The Book of Criminal Quotations, J.P. Bean, editor, 2003 

Impressing Al Capone

You know, sometimes I lose my temper, and I say, "Gee I wish somebody would bump that guy off," and then one of these young punks who wants to make a name for himself goes ahead and does it. And then I have to pick up the pieces.

Al Capone in Jerry Capeci, Wiseguy's Say the Darndest Things, 2004

Reinventing Al Capone

     Except for books about writers and the writing life, the memoir has become my least favorite literary genre. I'm sick of manufactured sob stories; celebrity drivel you can get from People Magazine; fiction passed off as fact; revisionist, self-serving history; autobiographical narcissism; and memoirists trying to create something out of nothing. While there are very few of us worthy of a memoir, everybody seems to be writing one, including people with relatives who were once famous, or better yet, infamous. A memoir published in 2010 by Deirdre Marie Capone, the grandniece of the prohibition gangster Al Capone, represents this form of literary exploitation.

     When Al Capone died on January 25, 1947, the author of Uncle Al Capone: The Untold Story From Inside His Family," was 7-years-old. During the first six years of her life, uncle Al was doing time at Alcatraz for the least of his crimes, tax evasion. When they released him in November 1939, Capone's brain was partially destroyed by untreated syphilis. He spent his last months on earth in a bath robe fishing in his swimming pool on Palm Island in Biscayne Bay, Florida.

     It's safe to say that the author of this memoir had no direct contact with her great uncle. And even if she had, she was 7-years-old. This book was obviously not written from her journal entries. Nevertheless, Deirdre Capone wants us to believe that Al Capone was the victim of heavy-handed law enforcers who exaggerated the extent of his criminality. The author is telling us that Capone was nothing more than a successful businessman giving the American public what it wanted--illegal booze. Moreover, the man loved his family and liked to cook. If half of what has been written and said about Al Capone is false, he is still one of the most violent and evil criminals in American history.

       As a "businessman," Capone killed his competitors, and anyone who refused to buy his alcohol. Sure, people wanted their prohibition era booze, but they didn't bargain for the extortion, arson, kidnapping, aggravated assault, and first-degree murder that went with doing business with a man who employed more than 600 thugs and gangsters. Having paid-off most of the cops and federal prohibition agents in Chicago, Capone had a license to kill, and he used it. Calling Al Capone a "businessman" is like calling Adolph Hitler a statesman who loved his dog

     Like most mob leaders, Capone moved up the gangster career ladder by murdering people who stood in his way. He killed several men over petty arguments and barroom insults. Those he didn't murder ended up with broken arms, legs, and skulls. At an organized crime banquet he once hosted, Capone beat an associate to death with a baseball bat as he sat over his pasta. And on February 14, 1929, he masterminded the execution style mass murder of seven members of a rival gang in the so-called St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Some businessman.

Winners and Losers in the Prohibition Era

     In 1919, the 18th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution allowed for the Volstead Act that banned the manufacture, shipping, and selling of liquor. In 1933, the 21st Amendment repealed the 18th Amendment which allowed the repeal of the Volstead Act. Americans went back to lawful drinking.

     Besides people who liked to drink, the U. S. government, during the prohibition era, was the big loser. During that period, the federal government lost $11 billion in tax revenue from liquor sales. Moreover, the government spent $300 million in a futile effort to enforce the Volstead Act.

     Prohibition's big winner ended up being organized crime. During the liquor ban, the Mafia gained a giant foothold in every major city in the country. In Chicago, gangster Al Capone earned $60 million a year providing illegal booze to thirsty Americans. Eventually the IRS brought Capone down by taking him to court for tax evasion. Scarface served eleven years at Alcatraz before he died in 1947 from untreated syphilis. Before his federal conviction, Capone virtually ran the city of Chicago.

Married to a Mobster

I look back and I realize that in the end I got everything I dreamed about having when I was still living with my parents in Bensonhurst [New York City] and longing for escape. I married a handsome man, we became wealthy [on other people's blood and money], we had children, they went to private schools, we lived in a nice big house. So I got everything I always wanted. Some people might say I got everything I deserved. What do they know?

Lynda Milito, widow of slain Gambino soldier Liborio "Louie" Milito in Jerry Capeci, Wiseguys Say the Darndest Things, 2000

Al Capone the Philosopher

You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.

Al Capone

The Reach of the Mafia

Chances are that in your lifetime you will have at least one brush with the Mafia.... Maybe you'll unknowingly eat in a mob-connected restaurant. Maybe prices in your local store will go up because of the mob stealing merchandise. Maybe you'll buy scalped tickets from some half-ass wiseguy. Maybe you'll make a bet with some guy named Knuckles. Unless you spend your whole life holed up somewhere in Iowa, chances are you will at least rub up against one of the Mafia's many expansive tentacles. Wiseguys are everywhere, walking among us; a little more inclined to brazenly double-park, perhaps, but part of the fabric of society, nonetheless.

Joseph D. Pistone, The Way of the Wiseguy, 2004

When The Mafia Was Kicked Out of Cuba

[Fidel] Castro is a complete nut! He's not going to be in office or power for long. Either Batista will return or someone else will replace this guy because there's no way the Cuban economy can continue without tourists, and this guy is closing all the hotels and casinos. This is a temporary storm. It will blow over.

Miami Mafia boss Santo Trafficante circa 1962 in Jerry Capeci, Wiseguys Say The Darndest Things, 2004