AMH 3470 final

Carlo Gambino

Carlo "Don Carlo" Gambino (Italian: [ˈkarlo ɡamˈbiːno]; August 24, 1902 - October 15, 1976) was a Sicilian-American mobster and boss of the Gambino crime family, which is still named after him. After the 1957 Apalachin Convention, he unexpectedly seized control of the Commission of the American Mafia.

Carlos Marcello story

Carlos Marcello, also known as The Godfather and "The Little Man" (February 6, 1910 - March 2, 1993), was a powerful Italian-American mafioso who ruled the New Orleans crime family from 1947 until the late 1980s. G. Robert Blakey and other conspiracy theorists have asserted that Marcello along with Santo Trafficante, Jr. and Sam Giancana masterminded the 1963 assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy in retaliation for federal prosecution that threatened their secret criminal organization's increasingly profitable businesses and their multibillion-dollar international organized crime empires. In its 1978 investigation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the House Select Committee on Assassinations said that it recognized Jack Ruby's (Dallas, Texas nightclub owner) murder of Lee Harvey Oswald as a primary reason to suspect organized crime as possibly having involvement in the assassination."The committee found that Marcello had the motive, means and opportunity to have President John F. Kennedy assassinated, though it was unable to establish direct evidence of Marcello's complicity."

Giovanni Schiavo and John Scarne

John Scarne (March 4, 1903 - July 7, 1985) was an American magician and author who was particularly adept at playing card manipulation. He became known as an expert on cards and other games, and authored a number of popular books on cards, gambling, and related topics. Giovanni Ermenegildo Schiavo (1898-1983) was an Italian American writer and researcher. Schiavo mostly focused his studies on Italian-American organized crime and the mafia.

Joey Gallo

Joseph Gallo (April 7, 1929 - April 7, 1972), also known as "Crazy Joe" and "Joe the Blond", was a New York City gangster for the Profaci crime family, later known as the Colombo crime family.

Joe Valachi

Joseph Michael "Joe Cargo" Valachi (September 22, 1904 - April 3, 1971) was an American gangster who is notable as the first member of the Italian-American Mafia to acknowledge its existence publicly. He is credited with popularization of the term cosa nostra. And in 1963, Valachi testified before a U.S. Senate committee (known as the Valachi hearings) and disclosed previously-unknown information about the Italian-American Mafia including its structure, operations, rituals and membership. His testimony was the first major violation of omertà, the mafia's code of silence, and the first concrete evidence that the Italian-American Mafia existed to federal authorities and the general public.

Judy Campbell

Judith Exner (January 11, 1934 - September 24, 1999) was an American woman who claimed to be the mistress of U.S. president John F. Kennedy and Mafia leaders Sam Giancana and John Roselli. She was also known as Judith Campbell Exner, and Judith Campbell. Salvatore "Sam" Giancana (June 15, 1908 - June 19, 1975), was a Sicilian American mobster, notable as the boss of the criminal Chicago Outfit from 1957 to 1966. His nicknames were "Mooney", "Momo", and "Sam the Cigar".

Johny O'Rourke

Michael "Mike" O'Rourke (1862 - unknown), aka "Johnny O'Rourke", was a professional gambler of the Old West. While living in Charleston, Arizona, he killed Henry Schneider, a popular mine engineer, in what O'Rourke said was self-defense. But citizens were aroused and threatened to lynch O'Rourke. Constable George McKelvey took O'Rourke to Tombstone, as he was chased by the angry mob but would be saved by numerous officials.

Nicholas Pileggi

Nicholas Pileggi (February 22, 1933) is an American producer, author and screenwriter. He is best known for writing the non-fiction book Wiseguy and co-writing the screenplay for Goodfellas, its 1990 film adaptation, for which he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Ocean's Eleven

Ocean's Eleven is a 2001 American heist film directed by Steven Soderbergh, and a remake of the 1960 Rat Pack film of the same name.

Vito Genovese

Vito "Don Vitone" Genovese (November 27, 1897 - February 14, 1969) was an Italian-American mobster who rose to power during Prohibition as an enforcer in the American Mafia. A long-time associate and childhood friend of Charles Luciano, Genovese took part in the Castellammarese War and helped shape the rise of the Mafia and organized crime in the United States. He would later lead Luciano's crime family, which was renamed the Genovese crime family by the authorities.

Action Jackson

William Jackson, also known as Action Jackson (December 13, 1920 - August 11, 1961) was an enforcer and loan collector for the Chicago Outfit. He earned his nickname of "Action" because it was slang for "Juice Man", which meant debt-collector. He was tortured to death by his fellow gangsters, allegedly on suspicion that he had become an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

William J. Chambliss

William Joseph Chambliss (1933 - February 22, 2014) was an American criminologist and sociologist who taught sociology at George Washington University for over 20 years. He is known for his pioneering work regarding conflict theory, which concluded, among other things, that conflict between different social classes is the fundamental force in capitalist societies.

Wiseguy

Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family, is a 1985 non-fiction book by crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi that chronicles the life of Henry Hill; a mafia mobster who turned informant . The book is the basis for the 1990 Academy Award-winning film Goodfellas directed by Martin Scorsese.

Paul "Skinny" D'Amato

Paul "Skinny" D'Amato (1908 - June 5, 1984) also known as "Mr. Atlantic City", was a racketeer and the owner of the 500 Club in Atlantic City, New Jersey from the 1940s until the club burned down in 1973. The 500 Club was allegedly a front for an illegal gambling operation. To draw gamblers, he had such big name entertainers as Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis perform at the club.

The Valachi Papers

The Valachi Papers is a 1972 crime film directed by Terence Young and starring Charles Bronson and Lino Ventura. Adapted from the book The Valachi Papers (1969) by Peter Maas, it tells the true story of Joseph Valachi, a Mafia informant in the early 1960s. The film was produced in Italy, with many scenes dubbed into English.

Joseph Amato "Black Joe"

A prior Boss of the Chicago Outfit (mob) in 1927 and part of the Milwaukee/Balistrieri American crime family based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Mafia Chic

A fictional book by Erica ORioff about the granddaughter of a notorious New York Mafia don, Teddi Gallo, constantly flanked by overprotective men, as well as FBI agents, finds her life spiralling out of control as she deals with an old boyfriend, matchmaking schemes, crime sprees, and stolen Jimmy Choos..

Teamsters

A labor union in the US and Canada that represents blue collar and professional workers in both the public and private sectors. It is the product of the transformation of The American Federation of Labor (AFL) and then the Team Drivers' International Union (TDIU) and finally emerging as Teamsters in Chicago, Illinois, which only permitted employees, teamster helpers, and owner-operators owning only a single team to join, and advocated higher wages and shorter hours more aggressively than the TDIU which involved employers. Infiltration by organized crime dominated the agenda of the Teamsters throughout the 1950s.

Loansharks

A loan shark is a person who offers loans at extremely high interest rates, has strict terms of collection upon failure, and operates outside off the street (outside of local authority). The term usually refers to illegal activity, but may also refer to predatory lending with extremely high interest rates such as payday or title loans.

Albert Anastasia

Albert Anastasia (September 26, 1902 - October 25, 1957) was an American mobster, hitman and crime lord, and revered as one of the most ruthless and feared organized crime figures in United States history. One of the founders of the modern American Mafia and the founder and boss of Murder, Inc. (the enforcers for the Italian- American Mafia), Anastasia was boss of what became the modern Gambino crime family.

Benjamin Civilett

Benjamin Richard Civiletti (born July 17, 1935) served as the United States Attorney General during the Carter administration, from 1979 to 1981. He was the first Italian American to serve as Attorney General. Since 2001, Civiletti is one of the three members of the Independent Review Board,[1] a board that the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union must answer to when allegations of corruption or organized crime infiltration surface under the terms of a 1992 consent decree issued by a federal district court judgment.

Joseph Albini and Dwight Smith

Dwight C. Smith was an American author who wrote on the history of the development of the imagery linked to the term mafia. The author aims to break down the mystique surrounding the word, attributing its buildup to sensational reporting, hidden agendas and the public's fascination with the idea of a secret criminal society. Joseph Albini was also a popular American author who rote on defining organized crime and its concepts.

Edward Levi

Edward Hirsch Levi (June 26, 1911 - March 7, 2000) was an American law professor, academic leader, scholar, and statesman. He served as president of the University of Chicago from 1968 to 1975, and then as United States Attorney General in the Ford Administration. He is credited with restoring order after Watergate.

Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959

Enacted in 1959 after revelations of corruption and undemocratic practices in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, International Longshoremen's Association, United Mine Workers and other unions received widespread attention, the Act requires unions to hold secret elections for local union offices on a regular basis and provides for review by the United States Department of Labor of union members' claims of improper election activity.

Robert Blakey

George Robert Blakey (born January 7, 1936, in Burlington, North Carolina) is an American attorney and law professor. He is best known for his work in connection with drafting the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and for scholarship on that subject.

Gay Talese

Gay Talese (February 7, 1932) is an American writer. As a journalist for The New York Times and Esquire magazine during the 1960s, Talese helped to define literary journalism. Honor Thy Father is a 1971 book by Gay Talese, about the travails of the Bonanno crime family in the 1960s. The research for the nonfiction novel began when Talese introduced himself to mafioso Salvatore "Bill" Bonanno in a courthouse in 1965. For nearly seven years, Talese interviewed Bonanno and other members of the Mafia extensively. Talese even traveled to Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily to research the ancestral origins of the subjects of his story.

Gennaro Angiulo

Gennaro "Jerry" Angiulo (March 20, 1919 - August 29, 2009) was a New England mob underboss who rose through the Mafia under Raymond L. S. Patriarca of the Patriarca crime family. He was convicted of racketeering in 1986 and was in jail until being released in 2007.

Harry S. Anslinger

Harry Jacob Anslinger (May 20, 1892 - November 14, 1975) was a United States government official who served as the first commissioner of the U.S. Treasury Department's Federal Bureau of Narcotics. He was a supporter of prohibition and the criminalization of drugs, and played a pivotal role in cannabis prohibition.

Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.

Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. (July 5, 1902 - February 27, 1985), was a Republican United States Senator from Massachusetts and a United States ambassador before running as VP for the presidential campaign of 1960 with Richard Nixon.

Harlem

In the early 20th century, Harlem was a stronghold of the Italian Mafia.

Jimmy Hoffa

James Riddle Hoffa (born February 14, 1913; disappeared July 30, 1975) was an American labor union leader who served as the President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) union from 1957 until 1971. He vanished in late July 1975, at age 62. Hoffa had first faced major criminal investigations in 1957, as a result of the McClellan Senate hearings. He avoided conviction for several years. However, when JFK was elected president and appointed Robert F. Kennedy as Attorney General. Robert Kennedy had been frustrated in earlier attempts to convict Hoffa, while working as counsel to the McClellan subcommittee. As Attorney General, Kennedy pursued the strongest attack on organized crime that the country had ever seen and carried on with a so-called "Get Hoffa" squad of prosecutors and investigators.

Joe Adonis

Joe Adonis (born Giuseppe Antonio Doto; November 22, 1902 - November 26, 1971), was a New York mobster who was an important participant in the formation of the modern Cosa Nostra crime families and cousin to the Luciano family. With Masseria's death (killed by Luciano, Frankie Yale's right hand man prior to his assignation and then becoming an enforcer for Giuseppe "joe" masseria, who involved himself in the castellammarese war to take control of New York against Salvatore Maranzano of the Sicilian clans. But eventually lost when maranzanos gained allegencd of Yale's old circle turning on Masseria) Luciano became the pre-eminent organized crime boss in New York City. However, unlike Maranzano, Luciano did not want to become the "boss of all bosses." Instead, he established a National Crime Syndicate that united all the Italian-American gangs across the country and allowed for shared decision-making. For his part in murdering Masseria, Adonis received a seat on the Syndicate "board of directors." He then changed his name to Joe Adonis.

John C. Montana

John C. Montana (July 1, 1893 - March 18, 1964) was a Buffalo, New York labor racketeer, political fixer, and elected politician who eventually became the underboss and/or consigliere (advisor to the boss) of the Buffalo crime family. After being caught in 1957 as he attended the national Mafia Apalachin meeting which was raided by State Police his criminal ties became known and the popular public figure was reduced to be known as a "former gang boss."

Sen. John L. McClellan

John Little McClellan (February 25, 1896 - November 28, 1977) was an American lawyer and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a U.S. Representative (1935-39) and a U.S. Senator (1943-77) for Arkansas. He focused his efforts against organized crime, supplying the political influence for the anti-organized crime law Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).

Rose Kennedy

Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald Kennedy (July 22, 1890 - January 22, 1995) was an American philanthropist, socialite, and the matriarch of the Kennedy family.She was the wife of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.,and had nine children including President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and longtime Senator Ted Kennedy.

Sam Giancana

Salvatore "Sam" Giancana ( June 15, 1908 - June 19, 1975), was a Sicilian American mobster, notable as the boss of the organized crime syndicate, Chicago Outfit (aka the Chicago Mob) from 1957 to 1966. His nicknames were "Mooney", "Momo", and "Sam the Cigar".

Saturday Evening Post

The Saturday Evening Post is an American magazine, currently published six times a year. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1963, then every two weeks until 1969. From the 1920s to the 1960s, it was one of the most widely circulated and influential magazines for the American middle class, with fiction, non-fiction, cartoons and features that reached millions of homes every week.

Narcotics

The term narcotic originally referred medically to any psychoactive compound with sleep-inducing properties. In the United States, it has since become associated with opiates and opioids, commonly morphine and heroin, as well as derivatives of many of the compounds found within raw opium latex.

Apalachin Meeting

The Apalachin meeting was a historic summit of the American Mafia held at the home of mobster Joseph "Joe the Barber" Barbara, in Apalachin, New York, on November 14, 1957. Allegedly, the meeting was held to discuss various topics including loansharking, narcotics trafficking, and gambling, along with dividing the illegal operations controlled by the late Albert Anastasia. An estimated 100 Mafiosi from the United States, Italy, and Cuba are thought to have attended this meeting. Vito Genovese, then head of the renamed Genovese family, initially called the meeting as a way to recognize his new power as capo dei capi (boss of all bosses).

Bureau of Narcotics

The Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) was an agency of the United States Department of the Treasury. Established in the Department of the Treasury by an act of June 14, 1930 consolidating the functions of the Federal Narcotics Control Board and the Narcotic Division. These older bureaus were established to assume enforcement responsibilities assigned to the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, 1914 and the Narcotic Drugs Import and Export Act, 1922. (aka Jones-Miller Act)

The Godfather

The Godfather is a 1972 American crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola and produced by Albert S. Ruddy, based on Mario Puzo's best-selling novel of the same name. It stars Marlon Brando and Al Pacino as the leaders of a fictional New York crime family. The story, spanning 1945 to 1955, chronicles the family under the patriarch Vito Corleone (Brando), focusing on the transformation of Michael Corleone (Pacino) from reluctant family outsider to ruthless mafia boss.

Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act

The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (enacted June 19, 1968) was legislation passed by the Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, establishing the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA). Title III of the Act set rules for obtaining permitted court authorized wire-tapping and bugging by federal, state, and local authorities and allowing the use of such evidence in trial. Later reversed by the Supreme Court based on 4th Amendment rights. It had been started shortly after November 22, 1963 when evidence in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy increased public alertness to the relative lack of control over the sale and possession of guns in the United States.

Organized Crime Control Act

The Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 was an Act of Congress and signed into law by U.S. President Richard Nixon. The Act prohibits the creation or management of a gambling organization involving five or more people and that has been in business more than 30 days or accumulates $2,000 in gross revenue in a single day. It also gave grand juries new powers, permitted detention of unmanageable witnesses, and gave the U.S. Attorney General authorization to protect witnesses, both state and federal, and their families (witness protection). Part of the Act created the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) in 1970.

Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly referred to as the RICO Act or simply RICO, is a United States federal law that provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization. The RICO Act focuses specifically on racketeering and allows the leaders of a syndicate to be tried for the crimes they ordered others to do or assisted them in doing, closing a perceived loophole that allowed a person who instructed someone else to, for example, murder, to be exempt from the trial because they did not actually commit the crime personally.