About The MOB
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Anthony Salerno
1911 to July 27, 1992.
"Fat Tony"
Salerno was raised in a Mafia-infested East Harlem neighborhood. Born in 1911, he was drawn into the street gang life and graduated into bookmaking, loansharking and the policy (numbers gambling) racket.
The city boy showed a love for the country when he purchased a rural farm in upstate Rhinebeck, NY, in the 1950s. By the 1970s, his influence was felt at the Fulton Fish Market and at produce markets around the city.
He appeared to serve as the Genovese Family consigliere during the post-Genovese reign of Frank "Funzi" Tieri.
There is disagreement about Salerno's rise to power in the Genovese Family. Some say he became the supreme Family leader from about the time of Tieri's death in 1981 and held that job until imprisoned five years later. Others say he was boss only for less than a year before being deposed by Vinny "The Chin" Gigante. Some apparently feel Salerno never was the actual boss of that Family and just fronted for Gigante.
Salerno reportedly suffered a stroke in 1981, which coincided with the time some Mafia historians say he was ousted. He remained at his country home for several months before returning to partial-week duties in the city - some insist this was a power-sharing agreement with the actual Family boss.
The authorities overlooked the ostensibly insane Gigante when they put together the Commission case and, instead, indicted Salerno as the Genovese Family boss in February 1985. The Commission trial did not begin until September of the following year. Salerno and his associates were convicted and sent away for lengthy prison terms.
Fat Tony died of a stroke while in custody at Springfield, Mo., July 27, 1992. He is buried at St. Raymond's Cemetery in the Bronx.
Frank Scalise
? to June 17, 1957.
"Ciccio," "Cheech"
Scalise was an important Mafioso in the Bronx. He appears to have served briefly as boss of the criminal organization later known as the Gambino Crime Family around the time of the Castellammarese War. Even after surrendering the boss role, Scalise and his brother Joseph were leading advisers to the Family leadership in the 1950s.
Scalise ran into trouble with the Commission in 1957 when he was found to be selling Mafia memberships for as much as $50,000 apiece. That activity also reflected badly on then-boss Albert Anastasia.
On June 17, 1957, Scalise was cornered by two young gunmen in a produce market at 2380 Arthur Ave. and shot numerous times in the head, neck and back.
Joseph Scalise swore revenge for the killing, apparently unaware that his brother's death had been ordered by the Commission. Joseph was himself eliminated.
John Scalise
? to May 7, 1929.
Scalise was a lifelong friend of Albert Anselmi. The two fled murder charges in Marsala, Sicily, together and ventured to the U.S., settling in Chicago.
There, they both joined the Genna brothers' organization. Scalise and Anselmi were believed to have taken part - with Brooklyn's Frankie Uale - in the assassination of Dion O'Banion.
When the Gennas decided that Alphonse Capone had become a nuisance, they ordered Scalise and Anselmi to get rid of the Neapolitan outsider. The two hit men reportedly betrayed the Gennas, however, tipped Capone off to the plot and set up a hit on the Gennas.
The year 1929 started off as a busy one for Scalise, but at least it ended quickly. He and his partner are believed to have been key participants in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in February. In early March, they were both charged with the North Side murders.
At the same time, Scalise and Anselmi began conspiring against Capone once again, this time with local Unione head Joe "Hoptoad" Guinta. The planned overthrow of their boss may have been the result of learning he had been linked to the assassination of Uale in 1928.
The conspirators informed too many people of their plans against Capone, and Scarface learned of their treachery. Capone invited Scalise, Anselmi and Guinta to a banquet on May 7, 1929, and during the meal beat them all to death with a baseball bat and shot a few bullets into each for good measure.
Nicola Schiro
"Cola"
Legend indicates that Schiro was the aging and timid 1930 leader of a Brooklyn Castellammarese Mafia group. He reportedly folded under pressure by Joe "the Boss" Masseria.
As the Castellammarese War approached, Joe Masseria sought to humiliate the Brooklyn group and demanded cash tribute from Schiro. Schiro paid and subsequently vanished, leaving the organization to Masseria's arch-enemy Salvatore Maranzano.
So little information about Schiro can be confirmed that some revisionist Mafia historians now insist he never existed.
Ellis Island records show that a number of Nicola Schiros were processed there. Several of those were equivalent in age to the Mafia Schiro, at least one settled in Brooklyn and at least one was born in the Castellammare del Golfo area of Sicily.
Messick and Goldblatt, drawing from the memoirs of Nick Gentile, decided that "Nicholas Schirio" was the name of the Brooklyn group leader. Adding to the case for Schiro's existence is the fact that Mafia boss Joe Bonanno personally remembered Schiro in his autobiography.
Bonanno's treatment of Schiro and his discussion of the events which followed Schiro's disappearance could lead one to believe, however, that Schiro was not the true boss of the Castellammarese clan. He might only have been keeping the boss's seat warm from the time that gang heads Gaspare Milazzo and Stefano Magaddino fled Brooklyn for Detroit and Buffalo, respectively.
Benjamin Siegel
Feb. 28, 1906, to June 20, 1947.
"Bugsy"
Siegel was one of the few Prohibition Era gangsters who were native born Americans. He was born in Brooklyn in 1906.
While still young, he became a close friend of Meyer Lansky and was acquainted with Charlie Luciano. Siegel and Lansky (the "Bug and Meyer Mob") entered the organized crime world as young guards for illegal liquor shipments. They proved useful friends to Luciano and Frank Costello as an East Coast network of cooperative bootleggers (The Seven Group)was established. And Luciano reportedly made use of Siegel in dispatching "Joe the Boss" Masseria at Scarpato's Nuova Villa Tammaro restaurant on April 15, 1931.
As Prohibition ended, the crime Syndicate formed by Luciano and his allies sent Siegel west to help out with Jack Dragna's gambling operations in southern California. Hollywood was made for Bugsy. His personal tastes ran toward the showy and expensive. And his good looks nearly resulted in a movie career.
Siegel also became attracted to the legal gambling oasis of Las Vegas, Nevada, and started dreaming of setting up a first-rate casino in the desert. He would eventually build the Flamingo on loans from his powerful criminal friends. Some insist that Siegel "founded" Las Vegas gambling. In fact, gambling houses dotted the landscape before he arrived. But Siegel did devise that mix of gambling, high class style and glitzy show business that would become the Las Vegas trademark.
All that cost money, however - too much money, his mob associates felt. And when the Flamingo failed to make the predicted returns on their investments, the members of the Commission decided that Siegel was robbing them and would have to be eliminated.
He was shot to death June 20, 1947, at the Beverly Hills home of his girlfriend Virginia Hill. Lansky and friends inherited interests in the Flamingo and would reap financial benefits from the operation for years.
Pasquarella Spinelli
? to March 20, 1912.
Spinelli was a casualty of early gang warfare in Italian Harlem. Spinelli and her step-daughter Nelly Lenere ran a large and profitable stable in the center of the Italian community. Some speculate that the stable was also the headquarters of a ring of thieves trained and led by Spinelli.
Whatever the source of her income, her wealth was sufficient to draw the attention of the neighborhood Black Hand extortionist, Aniello "Zopo" Prisco about 1910. Spinelli was reluctant to share her fortune, and Zopo sent Chuck Minaco over to help himself to it on Oct. 29, 1911.
Minaco apparently made the mistake of turning his back on Lenere during his raid on the house and he wound up in the morgue with 25 stab wounds.
Prisco retaliated for his associate's death by cornering Spinelli at her stable at dusk on March 20, 1912, and pumping three bullets into her. Spinelli quickly became the stuff of legend.
There are some who believe her stable was the location of the early underworld schooling for such notable hoodlums as Ciro and Vincent Terranova and that it was later to become the infamous "Murder Stable." Certainly, it was not long after Spinelli's death that there was a complete change in the underworld leadership in Harlem.
Joseph Stracci
"Joe Stretch"
Stracci was a longtime friend of Mafia informant Joe Valachi.
According to Valachi, Stracci was present at the assassination of "Joe the Boss" Masseria at a Coney Island restaurant in April 1931. But that's the sort of event that many claim a connection with.
Stracci was apparently a member of the Masseria organization, who remained with that Family under Charlie Luciano. In the mid-1930s, Stracci and Valachi, along with Frank Livorsi and Joseph Rao, combined their efforts in a numbers racket.
Anthony Strollo
? to April 8, 1962
"Tony Bender"
Strollo was a lieutenant in the Luciano-Genovese Crime Family.
Joe Valachi recalled that Strollo was his immediate superior in the Family when he was recruited by Vito Genovese after the death of Valachi's former boss Salvatore Maranzano. Strollo got Valachi and his partner Bobby Doyle started in gambling ventures, acquiring them permission from mob higher-ups to set up 20 slot machines in New York City.
According to Valachi, Strollo regularly dealt in narcotics despite his bosses' rules against such activity. In 1960, the drug trafficking (and the fact that he didn't cut his bosses in for a share of each deal) got him in trouble with Vito Genovese, then in jail on a narcotics conviction. Additional narcotics charges were lodged against Genovese in 1961, and the boss grew enraged at Strollo.
On April 8, 1962, Strollo vanished without a trace.
