attempting to prove that he had been coached on what to say by the Justice Department, finally trying to portray him as an alcoholic or molester of little girls —all of which turned out to be equally futile. It only took the jury five hours to find Persico and his codefendants guilty. The case is being appealed.
The information Valachi provided was primarily intelligence, although his testimony in April 1968 was crucial in the conviction of one of the fastest-rising young Cosa Nostra powers in Brooklyn, Carmine Persico, Jr.* By die time Valachi had been persuaded to talk, the statute of limitations had run out on practically all the specific crimes he discussed—except murder. And in New York State, where the murders which had involved him took place, a corroborating witness is required in the absence of physical evidence. Notably enough, in the two murder cases that offered the best prospects for a successful prosecution, an accomplice named by him mysteriously disappeared and is presumed dead after it became known that Valachi was talking.
How important was Valachi? According to William Hundley, operationally in charge of the Justice Departments drive against organized crime before, during, and after Valachi talked: "What he did is beyond measure. Before Valachi came along, we had no concrete evidence that anything like this actually existed. In the past we've heard that so-and-so was a syndicate man, and that was about all. Frankly, I always thought a lot of it was hogwash. But Valachi named names. He revealed what the structure was and how it operates. In a word, he showed us the face of the enemy."
Valachi was peculiarly equipped to do so. In the Cosa Nostra's paramilitary organization he was on the order of a master sergeant working out of headquarters, and there are few men still alive today who can match his thirty-three years of active duty. His service, moreover, exactly coincides with the birth and growth of the modern Cosa Nostra. He was, as they say, there when it happened; he knows where all the bodies are buried.
3
Italians did not invent organized crime, nor did they introduce it to this country. Indeed, when the first great wave of Italian immigrants arrived in the late nineteenth century, they found a flourishing underworld then primarily in the hands of the Irish and the Jews, although just about every eduiic group has had a crack at it at one time or another, including good old-fashioned American families like the James boys. But what a very small number of these Italian newcomers—mostly from Naples, Calabria, and Sicily —did bring was a traditional clannishness, contempt for lawful authority, and a talent for organization that would eventually enable diem to dominate racketeering in the United States.
The first significant step in diis direction occurred in the 1890s, when a gang of Sicilians gained control of the New Orleans waterfront. No cargo moved on or off the docks without their being paid tribute. Then the city's chief of police, probing too energetically into their activities, was murdered. Nineteen members of the gang were brought to trial, the case against them apparently airtight. But a dreary pattern, so familiar today, was already being set. The best criminal lawyers in the country were hired and, helped no end by some jury tampering, won acquittals for all but three of the defendants. The first time, however, the strategy backfired; after the verdict was in, an enraged crowd wound up lynching eleven of them and very nearly caused a diplomatic break between Washington and Rome.
But such a bold penetration of the established underworld was exceptional in those days. The earliest organized Italian criminals in America, the Black Hand extortion rings, preyed almost exclusively on the vast majority of their decent, hardworking countrymen who had settled here. The name came from a crudely drawn black hand on the bottom of a letter demanding money from a particular victim and usually
The information Valachi provided was primarily intelligence, although his testimony in April 1968 was crucial in the conviction of one of the fastest-rising young Cosa Nostra powers in Brooklyn, Carmine Persico, Jr.* By die time Valachi had been persuaded to talk, the statute of limitations had run out on practically all the specific crimes he discussed—except murder. And in New York State, where the murders which had involved him took place, a corroborating witness is required in the absence of physical evidence. Notably enough, in the two murder cases that offered the best prospects for a successful prosecution, an accomplice named by him mysteriously disappeared and is presumed dead after it became known that Valachi was talking.
How important was Valachi? According to William Hundley, operationally in charge of the Justice Departments drive against organized crime before, during, and after Valachi talked: "What he did is beyond measure. Before Valachi came along, we had no concrete evidence that anything like this actually existed. In the past we've heard that so-and-so was a syndicate man, and that was about all. Frankly, I always thought a lot of it was hogwash. But Valachi named names. He revealed what the structure was and how it operates. In a word, he showed us the face of the enemy."
Valachi was peculiarly equipped to do so. In the Cosa Nostra's paramilitary organization he was on the order of a master sergeant working out of headquarters, and there are few men still alive today who can match his thirty-three years of active duty. His service, moreover, exactly coincides with the birth and growth of the modern Cosa Nostra. He was, as they say, there when it happened; he knows where all the bodies are buried.
3
Italians did not invent organized crime, nor did they introduce it to this country. Indeed, when the first great wave of Italian immigrants arrived in the late nineteenth century, they found a flourishing underworld then primarily in the hands of the Irish and the Jews, although just about every eduiic group has had a crack at it at one time or another, including good old-fashioned American families like the James boys. But what a very small number of these Italian newcomers—mostly from Naples, Calabria, and Sicily —did bring was a traditional clannishness, contempt for lawful authority, and a talent for organization that would eventually enable diem to dominate racketeering in the United States.
The first significant step in diis direction occurred in the 1890s, when a gang of Sicilians gained control of the New Orleans waterfront. No cargo moved on or off the docks without their being paid tribute. Then the city's chief of police, probing too energetically into their activities, was murdered. Nineteen members of the gang were brought to trial, the case against them apparently airtight. But a dreary pattern, so familiar today, was already being set. The best criminal lawyers in the country were hired and, helped no end by some jury tampering, won acquittals for all but three of the defendants. The first time, however, the strategy backfired; after the verdict was in, an enraged crowd wound up lynching eleven of them and very nearly caused a diplomatic break between Washington and Rome.
But such a bold penetration of the established underworld was exceptional in those days. The earliest organized Italian criminals in America, the Black Hand extortion rings, preyed almost exclusively on the vast majority of their decent, hardworking countrymen who had settled here. The name came from a crudely drawn black hand on the bottom of a letter demanding money from a particular victim and usually
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