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The
Book Shelf
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The Canary That Couldn't Fly |
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 For the better part of seven decades, mob aficionados and just plain folk have debated the mysterious demise of Abe (Kid Twist) Reles, who plunged to his death from a sixth floor window of a Coney Island hotel where police were guarding him for a potential court appearance against murderous mob boss Albert Anastasia.
Most people on both sides of the law have long disputed the official findings by authorities – in 1941 and again in 1951 by a special grand jury – that Reles had been trying to escape from the fortress-like Half Moon Hotel “squealer’s suite” where he had been housed for nearly two years.
 “I never met anybody who thought Abe went out that window because he wanted to,” said Joe Valachi when he broke his vow of omerta. On the other side of the aisle, prosecutor Burt Turkus, who used Reles as a witness to send killers to the electric chair, wrote in his 1951 book, “Murder Inc.,” that the escape theory made no sense and that foul play was involved.
Surely, too many years have passed for any positive definitive answer to emerge now to all the questions surrounding Reles’ death to emerge now.
But, after 10 years of dogged research, a history buff who was born in Brooklyn and settled in Chicago in 1983 has penned a fascinating book that examines all the political machinations and blood and guts violence of the era to some up with a very plausible solution to what may be the most undying unsolved mystery in the history of organized crime in America.
 In “The Canary Sang But Couldn’t Fly,” unknown author Edmund Elmaleh – who became intrigued by the Reles (left) case after first looking into some of his own family’s possible ties to legendary Jewish gangster Lepke Buchalter – not only does an excellent job of relating and analyzing the case’s compelling facts and unanswered questions; he makes it interesting too!
Through previously classified FBI reports, Elmaleh discloses that J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI worked closely with former Brooklyn DA William O’Dwyer to keep Reles alive as he traveled around the country testifying in grand juries from Chicago to Los Angeles. Contrary to his public pronouncements, O’Dwyer, who would later ride Reles’s testimony to two elections as Mayor, “did fear losing Reles to a mob bullet.”
Sadly, however, just as Elmaleh completed his book last November 6, he died at age 49 of a sudden, massive heart attack.
“Eddie had just finished doing the flap copy for the book jacket, and had hit the send button,” recalled Kathi Kapell, a medical editor who lived with Elmaleh for 18 years. “One minute he was talking and the next minute he wasn’t.”
 When Elmaleh began his project, Kapell told Gang Land, “he had an aunt still living in Brooklyn who told him not to get involved. ‘It won’t come to any good,’ she said.”
Five months after his death, Kapell still misses her longtime lover, but has only a little difficulty speaking about his long term project.
“Eddie was an intellectually curious person who loved history, the mob and mafia lore. He was really looking forward to seeing it in print. His first book. But it’s really not painful talking about it. I’m so proud of him,” she said. |
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FBI's Mr. Big Rips FBI Bosses |
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 Now that the FBI’s super undercover agent has made his network bones on 60 Minutes regarding his astounding secret missions, Gang Land is free to discuss what the ex-G-man has to say about some of his old bosses.
Warning: It ain’t pretty.
Joaquin (Jack) Garcia, who took down the leadership of the Gambino crime family in an elaborate sting operation says that “shortsighted” FBI bureaucrats blew a golden opportunity to decimate the “five families” by ending the investigation soon after he was proposed to become a “made man.”
Garcia also says that a double-dealing supervisor who was the driving force to shut down the 27-month probe took vindictive actions against him that could have blown his cover and gotten him killed because he questioned the decision to end the investigation in early 2005.
Garcia, who was lauded by New York FBI boss Mark Mershon as one of the best undercover agents in the 100-year history of the FBI, levels his accusations in “Making Jack Falcone,” his book that tells the inside story of the agent’s infiltration into the Gambino family.
The blockbuster book touches on several roles that the burly, 390-pound Cuban-born émigré used during his 26 years on the job, almost all as an undercover agent. But the tell-all tome focuses primarily on his role as “Big Jack Falcone,” a jewel thief and wannabe wiseguy whose work led to the   convictions of 32 mobsters and associates, including the family’s two top gangsters in 2005 – acting boss Arnold (Zeke) Squitieri (left) and underboss Anthony (The Genius) Megale. (right)
In the book, Garcia praises and thanks by name hundreds of agents, prosecutors and other federal, state and local law enforcers who helped him pull off the Falcone sting and scores of other undercover roles he played to nail numerous drug dealers and corrupt cops during his long career.
But Garcia charges that the actions of three top FBI officials, including the White Plains based supervisor who headed the investigation, David Velazquez, to shut down the case before its time “enabled the entire institution of organized crime (to) dodge a bullet.”
If the probe had continued, and Garcia had been “made,” as wiseguy Jack Falcone he could have vouched for other undercover agents and the FBI could have made serious inroads into the Bonanno, Genovese, Colombo and Luchese families, he writes.
 The end came in March, 2005, even though on several occasions, mobster Gregory DePalma (left) was overheard telling “Jack Falcone,” who had worked his way up to becoming the aging capo’s bodyguard-chauffeur, that he was going to propose him to be made.
“There is only one thing I’m pushing to do, ASAP, is you. That would be the second guy (I sponsored.) I mean you want it, right?” DePalma said in one tape recorded talk.
 It’s not unusual for an undercover agent to disagree with superiors about ending a risky, time-consuming, and costly undercover investigation: Joe Pistone, (right) who played the role of an up-and-coming mob associate for five years, wanted to continue his foray into the underbelly of the Bonanno crime family when FBI bosses pulled the plug on him back in 1981.
But current and former FBI agents tell Gang Land that they agreed with Garcia’s position to keep the case going, and that even if it didn't lead to the monumental achievement of Garcia being inducted into the Gambino family, there were other goals that could have been attained.
Velazquez is not identified by name in the book. He declined to discuss the case with Gang Land. In the book, he is quoted as stating that he decided “to shut the case down because it met and exceeded all of its objectives. It was the right time to close it out.”
That opinion was repeated by several FBI officials who spoke to Gang Land, including David Cardona, the head of New York’s criminal division. Cardona said Garcia’s work was “outstanding,” but he backed the official determination, echoing comments from other officials that Garcia was “too close” to the case to make a truly objective decision.
But neither Cardona nor any of the other officials would dispute, or explain, the actions that Garcia lays on Velazquez after the agent asked for a meeting with New York organized crime superiors and Washington officials who oversee undercover operations to review Velazquez’s decision and air out the differing positions.
The meeting was scheduled to take place at 26 Federal Plaza, the Downtown Manhattan office building that houses FBI headquarters. Garcia did not want to risk blowing his cover – and perhaps his life – by using the main entrance, so two agents agreed to pick him up in a Bureau car and drive him into the underground garage so he could attend without being made as an FBI agent in the lobby of the building.
A few minutes later, the agents called and told Garcia that Velazquez had prohibited them from picking him up. They also said Velazquez had told them that he was going to have Garcia “fired for insubordination for calling in headquarters.”
 Garcia (left) could live with being fired, but he was concerned about living if he were recognized as an agent. He appealed that ruling, and a New York organized crime supervisor, who recognized the obvious danger of making an undercover agent walk into the lobby of the FBI building and flash his badge to enter, quickly rescinded that decision.
Garcia uses tough words to describe those on his side of the law with whom he clashed. He says there was “ineptness, idiocy, incompetence and inexperience” by FBI managers who investigated reports of a mob contract on his life.
Still, Garcia is unsure whether he has been marked for death. He doesn’t really think that someone “will come and whack me” in retaliation. But his home is fully wired, he starts his car with a remote, and he always carries a gun.
“I’m not just blowing off steam when I say that the investigation into the alleged hit was poorly handled. The outcome in fact remains open,” he writes. In a final word about the uncertainty ahead, he alerts the bureaucrats who bungled that probe: “So if you and I ever meet, don’t walk too close!”
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The Good Rat A Great Read |
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 Watching Jimmy Breslin covering the Mafia Cops trial had Gang Land looking down the line for an intriguing, always unique, fun-filled, yet riveting read by the irascible Pulitzer Prize winning columnist-author.
The Good Rat is all that, and more.
In addition to his word pictures and insights about Good Rat Burt Kaplan and murderous detectives Lou Eppolito (big, brazen and brawling) and Steve Caracappa (slender, stealthy, silent), Breslin gives breadth to many so-called minor players in the compelling saga.
There’s the illiterate auto mechanic who feared for his life as he dug a grave for the dirty duo’s first murder victim and lived with that fear for 19 more years, and the sister of a 26-year-old hoodlum they kidnapped and sent to his death. Before trial, when she found out Caracappa was living around the corner from her mom on Staten Island, she rang his bell and told him: “You motherfucker. I want to see you when they put handcuffs on you and take you away for the rest of your life.”
Breslin discloses, as only he can, that the mob tradition of respectful kissing began when Sonny Franzese met Joe Brancato on the corner of Lorimer Street and Metropolitan Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and that after losing the last race at Aqueduct one day, jockey Con (Scamp) Errico rode his mount right into nearby Pep McGuires, “the greatest bar in the history of the city,” and the horse proceeded to drink water from a bucket that legendary gangster Jimmy Burke had placed on the bar.
 For the purists, there are countless pages of Kaplan’s spell-binding trial testimony that sunk the rogue cops. For the rest of us there are Breslin’s personal dealings with Tony Pro, Fat Tony and Tony Café as well as his account of how U Couraga, an Italian pit bull bested a challenger from The Bronx in a memorable battle at a mob graveyard near the Brooklyn-Queens border.
For everyone, there’s Chapter Nine. It's a riveting, terrifying account of a $4000 dispute between the money-hungry Mafia Cops and a cheapskate mob psychopath and how it led to the tragic wrong man execution of a loved and loving, hard-working Brooklyn man with the same name as a mob hood who had been marked for murder. Amazon's got it for $16.47. |
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Mafia
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Mafia is a
treasure trove of
information about
wiseguys who
operated during the
golden age of the
mob. A MUST for mob
buffs. A phone
book-sized directory
of mug shots and
minutiae on more
than 800 wiseguys
that was compiled in
the early 1960s by
the Bureau of
Narcotics and
Dangerous Drugs.
The
book is said to be a
reprint of an actual
top secret dossier
that the agency put
together. Each
gangster in the
“just the facts”
book – it’s #31 of
50 copies that were
produced – is
relegated to a
single page that
lists his nicknames,
haunts, associates,
criminal and
business interests
in a brusque but
colorful report.
Joe
Batters Accardo, a
"former member of
the old Capone mob
...claims to be a
salesman for Premium
Beer Sales Inc.,
2555 W. Armitage
Ave., Chicago, Ill.”
Another Chicago
wiseguy, Leonard
Calamia, “frequents
the Poodle Dog
Restaurant at 1121
Polk Street …when in
San Francisco.”
Francisco Castiglia,
a.k.a. Frank
Costello, “resides
115 Central Park
West” and “frequents
Biltmore and Waldorf
Astoria hotels.”
Richie The Boot
Boiardo has “bullet
scar on left cheek”
and “frequents
Newark, N.Y.C., &
gambling houses in
Havana.”
The
BNDD database
includes one-page
reports
on virtually all the
gangsters you’d expect to see,
and countless more
you wouldn’t.
There’s
one on Luigi Fratto, of Des
Moines, “the most
influential member
of the Mafia in the
state of Iowa,” and
other reports about Benny (The Blimp) Barone, the Mafia
leader of Omaha,
Nebraska, and his
crew of four
Omaha-born and
raised Biase
brothers, Anthony,
Louis, Bernard and
Samuel.
Mafia
lists for $35.
Amazon's got it
for $23.07 |
Notorious New
Jersey |
In
Notorious New
Jersey: 100
True Tales of
Murders and
Mobsters, Scandals
and Scoundrels,
author Jon
Blackwell makes a
decent case that,
when it comes to
powerful gangsters
and mob rubouts,
New Jersey
mobsters often
rise to the level
– or sink to the
same depths – as
their Big Apple
cousins across the
Hudson River.
Until a heroin
dealing conviction
sent him to die in
prison, Vito
Genovese lived in
splendor in the
Garden State. So
did Richie The
Boot Boiardo,
whose 17-acre
estate was adorned
with a statue of
The Boot astride a
white horse.
Blackwell recounts
the murders of
beer baron
gangster Dutch
Schultz and
Genovese underboss
Willie Moretti and
the bugged
conversations that
made mob boss Sam
the Plumber
DeCavalcante a
household name
decades before
Tony Soprano
arrived on the
scene.
All
told, 17 of
Blackwell’s 100
true crime stories
involved
gangsters,
including
transplanted New
York mobster
Giuseppe (Joe
Adonis) Doto, who
when asked why he
re-located to the
Garden State by a
Senate Committee,
said: “I liked the
climate better.”
Notorious New
Jersey lists
for $18.95. It's
$12.89 at
Amazon. |
Tears &
Tiers
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Tears & Tiers:
The Life and
Times of Joseph
"Mad Dog"
Sullivan, The
Only Man To
Escape From Attica,
is a scary,
disturbing book
about Sullivan,
a convicted bank
robber, mob
hitman and
escape artist.
Sullivan, 68,
has spent about
45 years of his
life in prison,
and is serving a
life sentence.
It is also a
compelling, and
touching read.
In the last
paragraph of the
preface, the
author, his
wife, Gail
Sullivan,
probably says it
best: “The story
isn’t always
pretty but I
believe it’s an
important and
interesting
story that
should be told.
Just as
importantly, no
one will be hurt
in its telling.
This is a step
into the life of
the man I
married, the man
that I love with
all of my heart,
the man that
gave me two fine
sons that we
both are very
proud of, the
man who law
enforcement
speculates might
have murdered as
many as thirty
people.”
Tears & Tiers is $15 at
Amazon.
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The
Mafia Cops
 Gang Land readers
interested in
learning more details about the
scandalous Mafia Cops
saga of murderous ex-detectives Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa
have two other books to choose from.
The Brotherhoods, The
True Story Of Two Cops Who Murdered For The Mafia is a 509-page hardcover
book co-authored by Willam Oldham, a retired NYPD detective who began
investigating the murderous duo as a criminal investigator
for the feds, and
writer Guy Lawson.
Amazon has it for $20.08, more than eight bucks off the
list price.
 Mob
Cops, The Shocking Rise and Fall of New York’s
“Mafia
Cops,” is a 386-page soft cover publication written by Daily News
reporter Greg B. Smith, who previously authored “Made Men, The True
Rise-and-Fall Story of a New Jersey Mob Family.
$7.99 at Amazon.
Oldham and Lawson begin
their account with the arrest last year of Eppolito and Caracappa in Las
Vegas. Smith starts his narrative in 1969 on a young
Burt
Kaplan, who would become the
star witness against the rogue cops, as the budding gangster
drives to Connecticut to dump the body of a
murder victim whose name he
never learned.
Both books are
current. They end with the convictions of both men for eight murders
that were overturned
by trial Judge Jack Weinstein, and with the ex-detectives
jailed without bail
as they wait for a decision by the Second Circuit Court of
Appeals on the government's appeal of Weinstein's ruling. |
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