About The MOB
R
Phillip Rastelli
1918 to June 24, 1991.
"Rusty"
Rastelli was an influential member of the Bonanno Family in New York until the lengthy imprisonment imposed by the U.S. Justice Department's successful assault on the Syndicate's ruling Commission. (Rastelli, who was already held by authorities on other charges, made headlines in the New York tabloids when he collapsed in the courtroom during the 1985 case against the Commission members.)
It appears Rastelli, who lived in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, ran Family operations after Carmine Galante's death in 1979. He might also have served as Family boss for a year between the death of Natale Evola and Galante's rise to power in 1974. Some underworld informants told authorities that Galante never reached boss status, controlling only a rebellious wing in a family actually ruled from 1973 by Rastelli.
Rastelli appears to have plotted with Gambino mobster Aniello Dellacroce for the hit on Galante.
Rastelli's wife Connie was found shot to death in 1962 as she reportedly began feeding information about her husband's drug trafficking activities to the federal authorities. Rastelli died in prison on June 24, 1991.
Gaetano Reina
c. 1890 to Feb. 26, 1930.
"Tommy"
Reina, born about 1890, was a Prohibition Era Mafia boss New York City. One of his rackets was a monopoly on ice distribution. (That may seem odd, but folks used iceboxes back then and had no practical way of manufacturing their own ice.)
Reina's operations were centered in the Bronx, and he peacefully coexisted with Ciro Terranova's Bronx-Harlem organization for many years while pledging allegiance to "Joe the Boss" Masseria. Famed Mafia informer Joe Valachi did his first work as a Mafia associate in coordination with the Reina group.
When Salvatore Maranzano arrived in New York around 1925, Reina immediately (but secretly) abandoned Masseria and fell in line behind Maranzano.
Masseria was unaware of Reina's defection until Dec. 7, 1929, when Reina gunmen walked into and held up a Terranova-sponsored fundraising dinner for city Magistrate Albert Vitale at the Roman Gardens in the Bronx. True to form, Masseria acted promptly against the rebellious crime lord, having Reina exterminated on Feb. 26, 1930.
The 40-year-old Reina was reportedly exiting the apartment house of his mistress, located at 1522 Sheridan Avenue in the Bronx, when he was greeted by a shotgun blast. Reina's death is considered by many to be the start of the Castellammarese War.
Upon his death, Masseria ignored high-ranking Reina men Tom Gagliano and Tom Lucchese and installed his own ally Joe Pinzolo as head of the Reina organization. That move infuriated Gagliano and Lucchese and forced them (and virtually the whole of the Reina gang) into the Maranzano camp.
Gagliano set up Pinzolo for a hit early in September 1930.
Abe Reles
1907 to Nov. 21, 1941.
"Kid Twist"
Reles was a killer employed by Lepke Buchalter's "Murder Inc." unit of the national crime Syndicate. Born in 1907, he grew up in the gangs of Brownsville, Brooklyn, eventually earning notice from Buchalter. He was a key member of the Syndicate's enforcement arm beginning in the early 1930s.
In 1940, facing first degree murder charges, Reles became an informant for New York prosecutor Burton Turkus. Reles provided much information into the workings of the enforcement group and its relationship to the Syndicate's ruling Commission.
The info provided Turkus with strong cases against Murder Inc. chief Buchalter and Commission liaison Albert Anastasia. Anastasia would wriggle free of the state's case against him. But Buchalter was convicted and sent to the chair on March 5, 1944.
Assassin Charlie "Bug" Workman, believed to have handled the killing of Dutch Schultz, was given a life sentence. Other assassins suffered worse penalties as a result of Kid Twist's testimony.
Reles, held under police protection at the Half Moon Hotel on Coney Island, continued to sing about everything he knew relating to organized crime, and the Mafia Commission decided to end the song. Early on Nov. 12, 1941, just as the state was set to begin its trial against Anastasia, Reles was found beneath his hotel room window - five stories beneath (his room was on the sixth floor, and he landed on a low roof of an adjoining structure).
A couple of knotted sheets were dangling out of the window, not nearly enough to reach anywhere close to the ground, but enough to allow the police to claim that Reles died while trying to escape. The distance Reles "fell" - horizontally - from the building tells a different story.
The informant was apparently thrown from his window. Police guards either performed the defenestration themselves or agreed to look the other way while it was done.
Paul Ricca
Nov. 14, 1897, to Oct, 11, 1972.
Paul DeLucia, "The Waiter"
Ricca was born in Naples in 1897. He came to the United States in 1920, fleeing prosecution for murder. He rose through the ranks of the Capone mob and stepped into a major leadership role in the gang in Chicago after Frank Nitti's apparent suicide in 1943.
It is speculated by some that Ricca was Nitti's heir apparent and succeeded Nitti as supreme Chicago boss in '43. Ricca was certainly powerful, but it is unknown if he ever held absolute power over the Outfit. He apparently joined Nitti and Tony Accardo in a ruling panel over the Family upon Al Capone's imprisonment for tax evasion in 1932.
Just before entering prison, Capone reportedly assembled the leadership team and important organization lieutenants for a meeting at Chicago's Lexington Hotel. The cooperative nature of that meeting set the tone for the Outfit's later existence.
In stark contrast to some of the Mafia Families in New York, Chicago leaders cooperated rather than competed. Ricca was among the Chicago and New York crime leaders to attend (and be arrested at) a national Mafia convention held in Chicago in April 1932 and then to attend an alleged Mafia meeting in New York in 1934.
Ricca established a good working relationship with New Yorkers Charlie Luciano and Meyer Lansky and used those contacts to help the Chicago Family penetrate labor unions around the country. He was sent off to prison with Johnny Roselli and other Chicago Mafiosi in 1944 as a result of an investigation into Mafia extortion in the show business industry. The conviction was obtained in the U.S. District Court in New York City on Dec. 22, 1943.
The Chicago Outfit had penetrated the most powerful labor union in Hollywood (the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Motion Picture Operators) in the early 1930s and used its influence to rob movie studios of millions (proving the impotence of the local Los Angeles Mafia).
While Ricca received a 10-year sentence for his involvement in the racket, he was released on Aug. 13, 1947. The short prison term prompted public outrage and sparked investigations into organized crime's influence at the U.S. Justice Department.
In the 1950s, the Senate's Kefauver Committee established links between Ricca and Florida gamblers and politicians stemming from dog-track operations.
During Ricca's term as part of the Outfit's leadership, the Chicago mob began paying its members for staying out of the drug business. Some sources indicate those payments went as high as $200 a week. The Chicago Family appears to be the only one in the nation to have adopted a positive incentive against drug trafficking.
After contempt charges were lodged against Ricca, the U.S. government began the job of having him denaturalized and deported to Italy (where he still faced a 22-year murder sentence). A deportation order was handed down in January 1959 but not executed.
When Sam Giancana fled the county in 1966, Ricca and Tony Accardo once again ran day-to-day operations in the Chicago Family. Ricca remained involved with Outfit decision-making until his death of natural causes in 1972, providing a continuity and stability in that organization that lasted four decades.
Arnold Rothstein
1882 to Nov. 4, 1928.
"The Brain"
Gambler, thief, bootlegger, underworld financier and drug dealer, New York-born Rothstein is considered by some to be the father of American organized crime.
Never directly tied to the American Mafia, Rothstein nevertheless was an influence on many who would later rise to power in that organization. Among his more successful students are counted Frank Costello, Charlie Luciano, Phil Kastel and Meyer Lansky.
Rothstein's early bad luck gambling against "the house" reportedly helped him decide to become "the house." He is believed to have opened his first gambling establishment at New York's Hotel Francis in 1909. With his profits, he invested in other criminal endeavors, including drug trafficking.
There is some evidence that Rothstein financially backed what became known as the Black Sox Scandal in 1919. Rothstein contributed his wealth and clout to bootlegging and speakeasy enterprises in the 1920s.
In October 1928, Rothstein might have assisted Jack Diamond in his feud with Dutch Schultz. Rothstein is believed to have aided in the murder of Schultz ally Joey Noe. Schultz might then have taken revenge by having Rothstein shot and killed at the Park Central Hotel on Seventh Avenue on Nov. 4, 1928.
Authorities were fed a hardly believable story about Rothstein being murdered over gambling debts. They indicted gambler George McManus and his associate Hyman Biller for the murder. McManus and Biller were later cleared of the charge.
John Russomano
Russomano served East Harlem racket boss Giosue Gallucci beginning around 1910. An enforcer and bodyguard for Gallucci, Russomano's name made the papers for the Dec. 16, 1912, killing of Aniello "Zopo" Prisco, the leader of a gang of extortionists who was looking to muscle in on Gallucci's rackets.
The police decided that Russomano killed Prisco in self-defense, but that didn't stop Prisco gang members from pursuing a vendetta against him. He was ambushed at his home Feb. 18, 1913. Russomano's bodyguard Tony Capilongo was killed by the unseen (and unheard, probably due to the use of some silencing devices) killers.
Russomano himself was shot several times but survived. He was no longer an influential figure in organized criminal history after being jailed for a Sullivan Law violation just before Gallucci's death on May 17, 1915.
