The Mafia downfall

Part 19 - With most Bosses behind bars, La Cosa Nostra is facing a crisis

Once upon a time there was La Cosa Nostra, the myth of organized crime, American style. It was a powerful organization that dominated Hollywood, controlled trade unions, flirted with the White House and extended its tentacles into Canada. Its bosses were feared and respected. Sam Giancana and John Fitzgerald Kennedy shared their lovers, Marilyn Monroe and Judith Exner Campbell. Carlo Gambino, Vito Genovese, Gaetano Lucchese, Joe Colombo and Joseph Bonanno belonged to the old guard. They spoke a slang born with the first Italian immigration wave that was a mixture of American and Italian. And, without dirtying their hands with drugs, they built an empire with a turnover well above those of Ford and General Motors put together.
Then things began to change. Turncoats started to surface, and American authorities started to play tough, developing efficient laws such as the RICO, the anti-mob act.
Nowadays, for the first time in its long history, La Cosa Nostra is recoiling. In the U.S., it’s in a tight spot.
The Gambinos, after John Gotti got sentenced to life in prison, have no boss. Last year, La Cosa Nostra’s Commission appointed Nicholas "Little Nick" Corrozzo as Gotti’s successor. But he didn’t have the time to look around: the judges in Miami’s Court of Appeals convicted him of criminal association. Gotti’s son had no better luck; some weeks ago he was sentenced to seven years in jail for extortion and racketeering.
Same fate for the Genovese family, America’s most powerful following Gotti’s exit, which last year lost its boss, Vincent "Chin" Gigante, convicted for a series of murders and attempted murders.
In order to avoid his reckoning with justice, Gigante, formerly Vito Genovese’s right hand man, went around in slippers and for some time a dressing gown, mumbling incomprehensibly.
But few believed he was insane.
"Let’s not make the mistake of underestimating them," warns Lou Freeh, FBI’s director. "They’re in a tight spot, not in shambles. La Cosa Nostra is an organization strongly rooted in America and still to be feared."
One thing is certain, it’s changed its behaviour: from defiant and arrogant as it was until the end of the Eighties when it sneered at the authorities, to sneaky and cautious. This is a confirmation of the blows it suffered at the hands of the FBI, which managed to decimate it.
Some forewarning of these difficulties came in January, 1994, when brothers Giovanni "John" and Giuseppe "Joe" Gambino, grandchildren of the great Carlo, admitted being members of the Mafia, plea-bargaining at 15 years in prison.
For the first time in a Federal court, two bosses declared to be at the head of an organization controlling a part of the city, to be dealing in heroin and cocaine and to lending money at usurary rates. They also admitted murdering one of their own men who was planning to betray the organization and buying some jurors in a trial against a member of their family.
For the first time two reputed members of the American La Cosa Nostra accepted to plead guilty. Until then, two attitudes had been mimicked: doing like John Gotti did, acting tough, denying charges, behaving like a boss in front of the judges, and ending up getting life; or doing like Sam ‘The Bull’ Gravano, a life-long acquaintance of Gotti’s, who chose to become the U.S. Mafia’s Tommaso Buscetta, obtaining impunity and a golden place in the federal witness protection programme.
"In the U.S. we’ve won a battle, not the war yet," agrees Sgt. Pietro Poletti of Ottawa’s Criminal Intelligence Service. "We must keep La Cosa Nostra under investigative pressure."
There is an explanation regarding the difficult period La Cosa Nostra finds itself in. "In the last few years, when entire managing groups have been investigated and then convicted," explains Ronald Goldstock, former director of New York State’s Organized Crime Task Force, "the empty places have been filled by people with no criminal experience, with the result that they either got caught very soon or diminished the level of criminal business."
This bad period for La Cosa Nostra also affects situations in Canada.
Two years ago, La Cosa Nostra’s representative for Southern Ontario, John Papalia, and his right hand man, Carmine Barillaro, were both eliminated. And recently Gerlando Sciascia, an important member of the Bonanno family, considered by U.S. police forces the liaison officer with the Montreal Mafia, was killed in the Bronx.
Many observers linked these murders to some ill-feeling between the two organizations (the American and Canadian Mafias), which were once considered "one and the same thing".
"Sure, La Cosa Nostra’s influence in Canada is not the same as it used to be," Poletti declares. "They still refer the bigger problems to U.S. families, but there’s much more autonomy."
Ben Soave, chief of the task force against organized crime in the Greater Toronto Area, concurs: "Once, for instance, the Buffalo-based Magaddinos were all-powerful, and nobody in Ontario dared to discuss their will. Nowadays many things have changed, and current bosses lack Stefano Magaddino’s criminal authoritativeness."
The Buffalo "family" lost its control over Local 210, a power centre for years. Many "soldiers" ended up in jail and the boss himself, Joe Todaro junior, is in a tight spot.
Then there’s another problem, which all Mafia families have to face.
New generations do not always follow in their fathers’ footsteps, and in the U.S. of Freeh and Giuliani it’s not easy to recruit new "soldiers", even if La Cosa Nostra’s appeal resists the passing of time.

(translated by Emanuele Oriano)

Publication Date: 2001-06-24
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=100