♪
For 30 years, the Five Families,
the heart of the mafia, had a free run in America.
♪
REPORTER: And on the floor, riddled with five bullets,
the body of Al Anastasia.
Loan-sharking, prostitution, taking over unions.
They had their hands on politics.
♪
They could do whatever they wanted.
They got away with everything.
[gunshots]
REPORTER: The two gentlemen inside
died as a result of multiple gunshot and shotgun wounds.
♪
MICHAEL FRANZESE: Did we kill as part of that life? Yeah.
If I violate the terms of this oath,
then I can pay for it with my life.
♪
[gunshot]
REPORTER: Paul Castellano, gunned down yesterday
on a public street.
REPORTER: Police officials say John Gotti has replaced
the late Paul Castellano
as the new head of the Gambino Family.
MICHAEL: People think you're taking an oath
to lie, steal, cheat, kill.
That's not the oath.
Omertà means one thing: Silence.
I respectfully decline to answer.
I'm not going to answer another question here
just 'cause I'm not under arrest
and I'm going to walk out.
"We do not talk to the law.
We do not talk to outsiders. All of our business is private."
And that is the absolute rock bottom code of the mafia.
NARRATOR: For half a century, the mafia stuck
to this sacred oath and pillaged New York City
and the greater American economy.
Omertà was the key to their success.
Without it, they would drown.
♪
Its first major threat would come in 1963,
in the form of Joseph Valachi,
a man willing to break this sacred oath
and reveal the structure and secrets of the mafia.
Those on the inside would soon learn the cost of doing
business in America, where greed, individualism
and celebrity would continuously test
the strength of their age-old code.
Omertà.
♪
To understand the mafia in America,
you need to understand the mafia in Sicily,
the crown jewel of the Mediterranean Sea.
It had been fought over for thousands of years.
The Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Romans,
the Arabs all planted a flag.
In the mid-IXX century, it belonged
to the Spanish Bourbon dynasty.
Sicily as an island, it develops its own unique culture,
so that made Sicilians feel for a long time
different from Italians, different from Europeans.
Sicily, up until the IXX century,
was a feudal society
with large land ownings, owned by absentee landlords
who governed with the help of middle managers.
In 1860, General Giuseppe Garibaldi
invaded the island and brought it
under Italian control,
leading to the most significant transfer of power
in the history of Sicily.
Suddenly, there's like a free for all
and everything is for sale.
And at first, a lot of Sicilians
support and back the unification of the country of Italy.
However, as time goes on, a lot of Sicilians
are faced with a number of crises,
ranging from agricultural strife to being heavily taxed.
There are some uprisings against the government.
Those uprisings are put down.
There's a period of disorder.
There are brigands and bandits who take advantage
of the vacuum of power that follows this invasion.
♪
[speaking Italian]
♪
They considered themselves men of honor,
men of respect, men important enough to be above the law.
These men would soon venture to New York City
in search of opportunity.
And with them, they would bring this attitude
of playing by their own rules.
♪
ED O'DONNELL: Immigration to the United States
in the late IXX and early XX century explodes.
Things are going poorly in many European countries.
Poverty, war, oppression.
The United States has lots of opportunity,
many jobs, land, freedom.
And so there's this huge migration
from Europe to the United States.
And of that migration, something on the order
of four million people come from Italy.
♪
You had immigrants coming from southern Italy,
the poorest, most uneducated rural part of the country.
♪
They came here to a life that probably
was not really much better.
♪
Now they're thrown into this cauldron
of New York City, the epicenter
of modern industrialization and capitalism.
There are dozens and dozens of ethnic groups,
and it's a really intense, competitive environment
just to survive.
♪
BILL TONELLI: From the old country, they brought with them
a certain amount of clanishness.
They relied on family even more than the Italians did in Italy,
and they didn't expect anything good from authority.
They didn't expect any help from outside.
So they came here with those same attitudes.
The gangsters and the grandmothers
all had the same worldview.
♪
CHRISTOPHER BONANOS: The most famous Italian-American
neighborhood in New York City is obviously the Little Italy
centered on Mulberry and Mott Streets in Lower Manhattan.
But there were a scattering of others as well.
ANTHONY DESTEFANO: Certain neighborhoods were
largely Italian American,
and the criminal element held sway because they knew
where everybody was, knew where everybody lived.
♪
It was kind of like a cocoon
where people didn't want to cooperate necessarily
with police because they knew the criminals were in the area.
♪
In the early 1900s, crime in New York City was ubiquitous,
as it was everywhere else,
but it was also pretty small scale.
There's a bit of what we might call low level organized crime,
but it's really just local gangs that control maybe
four or five blocks, and they are shaking down
and extorting from people within their own neighborhoods.
ANTHONY DESTEFANO: In East Harlem, there were
Italian people from all over.
It had a number of characters who were,
I guess you could call them padrones, who were important
to the neighborhood as kind of quasi-crime figures.
♪
And could be a source of employment,
could be a source of money, could be a source of trouble.
♪
In the early XX century, these local criminal groups
ruled across New York City.
♪
Then, in 1919, they were presented
with a new revenue stream,
and it was bigger than any racket they ever had.
Prohibition, a nationwide ban on the sale and transport
of alcohol officially began in 1920.
The opponents of alcohol, who bring us Prohibition in 1920,
think they've achieved a great victory.
But what they don't know is that Prohibition
is going to turn out to be an incredible gift
from teetotaler America to the mob because they are able
to capitalize on this gigantic national black market.
Americans do not lose their thirst
for alcohol in Prohibition.
CLAIRE WHITE: It's all about that supply and demand,
and it really allows mobsters in the city
to consolidate power and to build wealth,
becoming millionaires thanks to Prohibition.
SELWYN RAAB: Prohibition was an earthquake.
Overnight, these roving groups had
to get a semblance of how to operate.
They had to go from being just street hoods into executives.
♪
SAMI JARROUSH: Bootlegging was the illegal importation
of alcohol from Canada, the UK, from the Caribbean,
into the United States of America.
Now, in order to get the liquor in,
you need to have people that are going to meet these boats.
♪
And so bootlegging starts to pick up in places
like New York and Chicago, for example,
because these are cities with ports of entry.
Prohibition is going to turn organized crime
in New York City from very disorganized,
very competitive into, like, a corporation.
They need transportation,
they need accountants, they need lawyers.
And all of this requires a lot of sophistication
and a lot of organization, much like the legit businesses
that are thriving in America.
So Prohibition turns the mob
into a corporate business-like structure.
♪
The change in legislation gave these criminals
an opportunity to level up,
an opportunity to make more money,
demand more respect,
and ultimately redefine themselves.
♪
By the late 1920s, two men,
Joe Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano,
had emerged as two of the most powerful bootleggers
in New York City.
Masseria in East Harlem, Maranzano in Brooklyn.
Each recruited a gang of young Italian immigrants
to help run their operations.
Lines were drawn between the two factions.
And in 1930, a violent fight for control
over the bootlegging market played out in the streets.
Bodies turned up all over the city,
from office buildings in East Harlem
to courtyards in the Bronx.
It was bloody, but blood is bad for business.
Masseria's lieutenants, Lucky Luciano and Frank Costello
knew that if they wanted to make real money,
the power struggle would have to end.
So they made a move.
April 15th, 1931. Coney island.
Lucky Luciano and Joe the Boss met here at Nuovo Villa Tammaro.
Lobster, mussels, linguini with clams
and cards.
♪
After lunch...
Big Joe was put on the spot.
[gun cocks]
[gunshot]
Less than five months later, at his office in Midtown...
[gun cocks, gunshots]
...it's Sal Maranzano who meets his end.
With the old guard out of the way
and a clean slate in front of them,
a younger generation of mafioso,
led by Charles "Lucky" Luciano, established a new thing.
♪
...with new rules.
SELWYN: So Lucky Luciano was the Godfather of the Godfathers,
was the main gangster who created
not only the Five Families,
but some 20 other odd Families throughout the country.
Luciano realized he needed some sort of structure
to enforce his new ways of doing business.
He also wanted to ensure that there would never
be a war between the Families,
so he created the Commission, a ruling board
consisting of the heads of each Family.
Luciano's First Commission had seven voting members:
Chicago, Buffalo and the New York Five.
The Commission was, in effect, the Board of Directors,
a ruling body who wrote the constitution
for the American mafia.
He wanted to make sure that the Five Families
in New York would be the kingpins and they became
the only permanent members of the Commission.
So, in effect, he made the Five Families
the rulers of the entire American mafia.
♪
SAMI: The Commission is bringing together
all of New York's Five Families,
and you have the five heads of those Families
that are sort of working in tandem with one another
to make sure that no one really steps on anybody's toes.
In 1931, New York's Five Families were headed
by Lucky Luciano, Joseph Profaci,
Vincent Mangano, Tommy Gagliano and Joe Bonanno.
♪
Each Family abided by the same set of rules.
Rules that would make them powerful,
rules that would make them rich.
♪
Rules that would make them
one of the most successful organizations in America,
reputedly second in size only to the US Government itself.
Members were required to have Sicilian roots.
Each Family maintained the same organizational structure,
and were to obey the boss.
They were to live by a code of honor:
No drugs, respect other members and their significant others.
It was to be a lifetime membership
and, most importantly, Omertà, silence,
honor and absolute loyalty to the Family.
♪
SAMI: So omertà becomes probably
the most pivotal rule in mafioso lifestyle.
Never rat out your friends, never rat out your Family.
Remain loyal to your Family and you should be okay.
But if you talk outside of that code of silence...
you never know what might happen to you.
♪
They live by these rules, and the bosses demanded
with a blood oath
that even the lowest levels
of their organizations do the same.
♪
The blood oath that a lowly soldier
by the name of Joseph Valachi took
and would one day betray.
♪
New York's Five Families found success
in the early XX century for myriad reasons.
A big one was their agility.
With every political or economic shift,
be it on a city, state or national scale,
the Five Families were there to capitalize.
ED: In the aftermath of the stock market crash in '29,
the American economy goes into a free fall.
By the early 1930s, the unemployment rate
in America is 25%.
So economic suffering is all across the country.
♪
ALEX HORTIS: During the Great Depression,
when the country was suffering,
in many ways the mob was booming.
There's a great line that there's two things
that are resistant to economic downturns.
One is certain aspects of the entertainment industry,
and the other is this thing of ours,
the mafia, and the reason that it could survive,
really, and thrive is because people still were going out.
They wanted to be entertained.
The Five Families bootlegging operation thrived
despite the economic turmoil of the early '30s,
but their world changed dramatically
when Prohibition ended in 1933.
The end of Prohibition on December 5th, 1933,
is a great day for America.
It's not such a great day for the mafia
because this black market that they've made
tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in is suddenly gone.
Alcohol is now legal.
CLAIRE WHITE: This is a period when they sort
of have to reevaluate.
We start seeing the beginning of labor racketeering,
getting into the unions.
ED: The Great Depression leads to the election
of Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
and he brings to his office this idea of the New Deal.
The federal government is going to do things to pull
America out of the Great Depression.
One of the biggest achievements of the New Deal
is the Wagner Act, which is a package
of labor laws that essentially
establishes workers have the right to join a union.
And so the American labor movement
flourishes as never before.
♪
The mafia realizes that labor unions
present a tremendous opportunity
because labor unions are big organizations.
They pull in dues.
They actually have fairly large cash flow,
and they also are attached
to businesses that make a lot of money.
What made unions susceptible to infiltration,
they were run, you know, for the most part,
by people in the neighborhood.
So you could threaten people that you knew
within the labor union because they were often their neighbors,
or at least within the same borough.
Another aspect that made them vulnerable
is that labor unions could buy you, quote,
"peace," labor peace,
and so the incentives to cut deals with labor union leaders
was just very strong and overwhelming.
A lot of times, these labor unions also represented,
you know, workers that were quite individually weak,
they certainly didn't have the ability
to stand up to corruption.
You know, the classic is the docks.
♪
These docks service this enormous market.
All these goods were moving in and out of it,
but there's very limited space
down on, you know, the southern end of Manhattan.
And so, as a result, if you control the docks,
you control literally the space there.
You control commerce going in and out of New York.
♪
In this one tight region is 5% of the American population.
So if you were trying to skim a little money from some
kind of transaction, where better to do it than
where all the spending is taking place?
If you could skim off a little money from the security
apparatus, a factory inspection, or the shipping,
you could, of course, make a fortune.
And people did.
♪
CLAIRE: Every period of transition in history
sort of creates these new avenues for the mob,
and that's one of the reasons that the Italian American mafia
is so successful, is their ability to be
very nimble and sort of transition
into new business opportunities when it arises.
So during World War II, what that really means is
taking advantage of the ration card system.
MAN: A day which will live in infamy.
♪
ED: For the United States, World War II begins
on December, 1941, when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor.
Suddenly the country does everything it can to put
millions of people into uniform and into the action
in Europe and in Asia.
The United States also imposes restrictions
and rationing on all kinds of vital supplies
so that the military won't be wanting for these supplies.
All sorts of things that Americans typically
would have easy access to,
tires and pantyhose and gasoline.
So the mob turns the crisis of World War II into a fantastic
black market opportunity and they make millions.
The Five Families had not only survived, but flourished
through Prohibition, the Depression and World War II.
And by the early '40s, they were tapped into revenue streams
all over New York City.
They'd extort local businesses, traffic illicit goods,
run gambling operations in the neighborhoods
and give loans to business owners in a pinch.
Their portfolio was diversified and their lifestyle comfortable.
These were the glory years.
During this time, each of the Five Families
carved out their different expertise and territories.
Joe Bonanno could move anything anywhere.
One of the preeminent traffickers of illicit goods
in the Northeast.
Tommy Gagliano controlled garment unions in the Bronx.
Don Mangano had the Brooklyn docks
and reigned over garbage trucks all over the city.
His pal Joe Profaci had a gambling ring
in Brooklyn that brought in $5 million a week.
That'd be more than $100 million a week by today's standards.
Outside of gambling, Profaci was known as the Olive Oil King.
His Mamma Mia Olive Oil Company was the biggest importer
of olive oil and tomato paste in the United States.
Lucky Luciano, the guy who invented the Commission,
was convicted in 1936 for running a prostitution ring.
He was sent to prison for 30 to 50 years.
That didn't impact business.
Next in the chain of command was Frank Costello,
and everybody knew Frank.
♪
Costello wasn't his real name.
He adopted an Irish name,
and that was part of Costello's personality.
That he tried to represent himself
as a legitimate businessman.
[indistinct chatter]
ED: Costello is different from a lot of the mobsters
from his era.
And Costello also wants to be taken seriously,
so he dresses very nicely, he hobnobs with famous people.
He has great parties at his penthouse
where judges and politicians and business people come,
and he really craves that kind of respect.
ANTHONY: He had a certain smoothness to himself,
and he knew how to handle politicians,
how to create that aura.
♪
Frank Costello, for his time, was the gangster that people
looked up to and wanted to emulate and were envious of.
ED: Costello liked the nightlife in New York,
and so he was often seen out at nightclubs,
including a club that he owned a share in, the Copacabana.
Frank Costello was known
as the Prime Minister Of the underworld.
Another name he acquired was King of Slots.
He had illegal casinos across the United States.
He also invested in legal casinos
in Las Vegas as well as in Cuba.
ANTHONY: Frank purchased a country home, so to speak,
out on Long Island in Sands Point.
Wanted to be part of the North Shore community,
which had a certain good reputation.
SELWYN: He believed he was important,
and he tried to, in effect, say, "I'm a gambler
and I'm a businessman but I'm not really a gangster."
♪
[birds chirping]
♪
Costello hid behind an aura of legitimacy
and professionalism, and for a while that worked for him,
but when the US Senate launched an investigation
into gambling in 1950, Costello was under fire.
SAMI: So we have a first term senator from the state
of Tennessee by the name of Estes Kefauver.
Kefauver is someone that organizes and puts together
a committee that wants to look at...
what is seen as the lifeblood of organized crime
at the time, which was interstate gambling.
CLAIRE: The Kefauver committee was really looking
at these things that broke interstate laws,
that broke federal laws and transporting
of slot machines and other coin-out machines
is definitely a big thing that they were looking into,
not just with Costello, but, you know, a lot of the mobsters
who were called to testify for Kefauver
were in some way connected to illegal gambling.
♪
Once the public hearings began in 1951,
an estimated 30 million Americans tuned
into their televisions to watch.
SAMI: Now, this is incredibly exciting
for the American public for a couple of reasons.
First off, it's the 1950s.
And by the 1950s, we're looking at the burgeoning era
of a new medium known as television.
MAN: The hearing will please be in order.
So when Estes Kefauver decides that these are hearings
that need to be televised, this is a huge opportunity
for the American public to watch these hearings and to also
sort of see who are these nefarious characters
that Kefauver is specifically trying to target and go after.
[tapping sounds]
ANTHONY: Costello appeared very evasive, a bit combative,
and he became across as somebody that was shady.
Costello was so sure of himself that he could pass
as a legitimate businessman,
that, unlike all the other bosses, he went
before the committee and thought he could handle himself.
And it ruined him.
They found holes in his testimony.
So, in effect, it led to IRS investigations
and led to his imprisonment.
♪
In 1954, Frank Costello was sentenced
to five years in prison for tax evasion.
But by 1957, he was back out on the street
with much bigger problems on his hands.
SELWYN: One of Costello's problems was
that when he inherited Lucky Luciano's Family,
the real underboss at the time was Vito Genovese.
He was a very romantic guy,
and he was in pursuit of a woman.
He killed another rival and he had to flee.
Genovese had to leave the country in the late 1930s.
But Genovese finally came back to the States
and he wanted to take over the Family.
He believed it was his.
And he would stop at nothing.
No rule, no code could keep Vito Genovese
from going after what he believed was rightfully his.
♪
In 1957, the Five Families were nearing
30 years of existence in New York City.
30 years of success,
largely because there had been 30 years
of relative peace since the murders
of Joe Masseria and Sal Maranzano.
No bloody turf wars, no public slayings.
Conflict was dealt with in the shadows,
and members had, for the most part,
upheld their oath and stuck to the rules.
But that was about to change.
♪
Frank Costello had been boss of his Family
since 1937, much to the displeasure
of the Family's underboss, Vito Genovese.
Genovese thought the seat should be his,
and the tension began to boil.
ANTHONY: Genovese and Costello were working together.
They probably respected each other.
I don't think they liked each other.
SAMI: Frank Costello brings more of a businessman air
to the role.
Dapper suits, nice looking guy, well quaffed hair.
Knows how to deal with people in high places,
knows how to deal with politicians.
Genovese is a bit more rough around the edges.
He's a bit more shoot now, ask questions later kind of guy.
ANTHONY: Genovese, he tried his hand at a number
of legitimate businesses but, unlike Costello,
didn't do very well.
He had a poultry business,
a liquor business, a gambling boat venture.
They all failed. But he had control.
He was a vicious guy, more vicious than Costello,
and people, you know, gave him the deference.
SAMI: So when Genovese sees Frank Costello sitting
in the seat of power, he's like, "Well, that's not fair.
"That's supposed to be my role.
"I was the guy that was under Lucky Luciano.
How dare you sit in my spot?"
So there was this envy, I would say hate,
but it was just maybe good business sense
on Genovese's part to try to get rid of Costello.
[heart beating]
Frank Costello was having a dinner and coffee
at some Upper East Side restaurants,
not far from his home on Central Park West.
And he had to go back home.
He got into the door of the apartment building.
And heard the famously, "Frank, this is for you."
Frank turned his head.
Instead of hitting straight on,
sort of grazed Frank's turning head.
♪
And the shooter fled.
♪
Costello survived the attempt on his life.
When questioned by police after,
he claimed he never got a good look at the shooter.
But even if he had, it wouldn't matter.
The Commission rules still held... Omertà.
The Majestic's doorman, however, did not live by the same code.
He got a good look, and when presented
with photos by investigators, he identified Vincent Gigante.
PAUL W. WILLIAMS: Gigante was, according to our information,
a protégé of Genovese.
He was the bright boy.
He was the rising star of the underworld.
My name is Rita Gigante.
I am the daughter of Vincent Gigante.
Someone came to Vito and said, you know,
"Look at this kid, he's..." you know, "He's promising."
♪
He knew he had to do something to prove himself.
But he liked Frank and he missed.
I don't think he really, in a sense, wanted to do that.
ANTHONY: Frank Costello would later testify that he didn't
have a good view of who the shooter was.
The story I heard was that as Costello was leaving
the witness box, Gigante supposedly said,
"Thanks, Frank."
After that, they actually became friends.
Costello had Gigante over for dinner
and drinks at his apartment.
The hatchet, so to speak, was buried.
But this all sort of created the thought in Costello's mind
that, "Hey, maybe I should step back
and, if I want to survive, sort of retire."
♪
Frank Costello would relinquish control of his Family
to Vito Genovese and fall into the background.
He would not seek revenge in the streets
or on the witness stand.
He'd uphold his end of the deal,
put the Family first and follow the code,
but Genovese's brazen act did not go unnoticed
by the other bosses.
Albert Anastasia lobbied the Commission to approve
a hit on Genovese, and tension got high.
On the brink of an all-out war, Joe Bonanno,
the secure leader of his own Family,
mediated a peace agreement
and successfully settled the ship.
♪
In the aftermath of the intervention, Bonanno
declared himself the capo consigliere,
chief counselor of the Commission.
It was a made up title, but enough for Bonanno
to believe he was above the law
and above the rules...
especially when it came to drugs.
The rule was they didn't deal in narcotics, but the other rule
was, "We make as much money as we can, any way we can."
So in the late 1950s, America has a heroin market,
but it's very small.
Heroin was made illegal in 1924.
So there's a black market opportunity here.
CLAIRE: Joe Bonanno is definitely looking
to increase his power
and increase his financial stake in the Commission.
For him, the 1950s is a good period
for that, for a couple of reasons.
He does seize this opening in the heroin trade,
and I think he really does use this transfer
of power as an opportunity to elevate himself.
Looking to capitalize on his improved stature
within the Commission,
Bonanno arranged a meeting back in Sicily.
ANNA SERGI: So the meeting was really an occasion
for Joe Bonanno to show off his so-called leadership.
Joe Bonanno wanted to portray himself as a spokesperson
for all of the Americans, the most important boss,
the boss who could change everyone else's mind.
So we do know that a lot of Americans were at the meeting
in an attempt to set up an international
intercontinental business for drugs.
ED: And the big question on the table is,
"How can we create an organization and a system
"by which we can import heroin
from Europe into the United States?"
ALEX STILLE: And they basically divide up the world,
so to speak, and come to an agreement
about division of labor between Sicilian
and American organized crime.
♪
Bonanno and the bosses in Sicily
came up with this idea.
The Sicilians would bring the heroin
into the States, and the Americans would tell them
where there were good markets.
♪
So this was territory that the Sicilians
had no knowledge. They needed guidance.
And they brought it in. They brought it in.
They packaged it very cheap, $5 and $10 bags.
And the Americans, especially Bonanno,
believed this was a good way
of earning a buck without doing anything.
The mafia got a commission. They didn't have to do anything.
The Sicilians were happy 'cause they had a big market.
CLAIRE: Meeting in Palermo,
being able to make these connections
with the Sicilian mafia
and solidify these transportation routes
to get heroin into the United States
is what he sees as his ticket forward.
The drug trade in the '50s and '60s
is interesting because the mafia doesn't ever want to admit,
even to themselves, that they're that involved in the drug trade.
The 1950s, '60s, 90% of heroin
is coming into the United States
through the Italian-American mafia.
Joe Bonanno and the Five Families'
investment in the drug trade over the next several decades
would ultimately become a tremendous burden.
Members would choose to overlook the threat
of law enforcement in favor of increased profits,
a decision that would kill their organization
from inside out, while devastating cities
throughout the United States.
ED: With this new flow of heroin onto the streets of America,
Americans are going to take up heroin in a big way.
SELWYIN: The most grievous sin that the mafia in America
committed is the damage that it did to the big cities.
There was no heroin in Harlem.
There was no heroin in the Lower East Side
or in Brooklyn.
And what it did was it destroyed the inner cities.
And it's a sin that's still with us today.
♪
New York City, late 1957.
While Joe Bonanno and other Family leaders
worked to design a new drug operation,
Vito Genovese had officially dethroned Frank Costello and was
now one of the most powerful gangsters in New York City.
Next in his sights was Albert Anastasia.
Anastasia became boss of the Mangano Family in 1951,
and had campaigned to have Vito Genovese whacked
after Vito orchestrated the shooting of Frank Costello.
Now, Anastasia wasn't someone to mess around with.
He had come up as a member of Murder Inc.,
a band of contract killers from New York's Lower East Side.
He was known as Lord High Executioner.
That probably says enough. Guy was a killer.
So, sensing a potential threat,
Vito Genovese decided to act first.
♪
While Albert Anastasia enjoyed a fresh trim
at Grasso's barbershop in the Park Sheraton Hotel,
a hit squad from Brooklyn walked right through the front door.
[cocks gun]
REPORTER: Inside the barbershop, on the floor,
riddled with five bullets, the body of Al Anastasia.
REPORTER: They walked up inside, shot him on the head.
He fell from the chair. They fired again.
REPORTER: Chief, do you have any leads at all?
I got a dead body, haven't I?
REPORTER: Although it seemed like yesterday,
it was another era,
an era of the flamboyant mobster and the Hollywood type rub-out.
ANTHONY: Officially, the murder of Albert Anastasia
has not been solved, which is not unusual
for a lot of mob killings from that period.
But the perception is that Genovese saw him
as a threat because he was an ally of Frank Costello.
No one had pulled off a gangland style slaying
like this since the killings
of Joe Masseria and Sal Maranzano in 1931.
It was the work of an up-and-coming crew
led by Crazy Joe Gallo, a guy from South Brooklyn
with his own ideas about rules.
With the death of Albert Anastasia,
Vito Genovese seized even more power.
And, at the same time,
like Joe Bonanno and his Sicilian allies,
Vito Genovese was growing his stake
in the emerging heroin market.
ED: Part of Vito Genovese's plan in 1957
is to present himself effectively
as the boss of the bosses, the top mafia guy in America.
And so they come up with this plan to hold this summit
in a very remote area in Apalachin, New York.
♪
November 14, 1957. Apalachin, New York.
Population: 277.
182 miles from New York City.
A local here, named Joseph Barbara, sold soda,
but he used to be a bootlegger.
And anyone who knew anything up here knew
that Joe The Barber was still in the game.
State Police Sergeant Edgar D. Croswell
was well aware of Barbara's underworld ties.
So when he got wind that some visitors were in town
and 20 pounds of veal were headed to Barbara's house,
he decided to do a drive-by.
Lo and behold, a secret society, La Cosa Nostra, in plain sight.
SAMI: The problem with this meeting
is that when you have numerous vehicles
sitting outside of a home... It's not in the city.
It's in New York State,
out in the rural areas of New York.
People might get a bit suspicious.
SGT. EDGAR D. CROSWELL: These fellows just did not fit in.
They were all extremely well dressed.
Most of them had Italian accents.
Some... Two or three told us
they couldn't speak English at all.
They were standouts.
Sergeant Croswell quickly called in reinforcements.
Agents from federal, state, and county law enforcement
reported for backup.
With roads blocked and the house surrounded,
the agents captured 58
of approximately 100 mafia leaders in attendance.
ED: So this secret summit that's going to elevate Vito Genovese
as this genius new boss turns, out to be a total disaster.
And so a lot of these people are arrested, and eventually
all the charges are overturned,
but it's a massive embarrassment,
black eye for Vito Genovese.
♪
ANTHONY: Some theorize that Costello
may have set up Genovese, tipping off on the meeting.
It's been unproven.
Their names became all over the newspapers.
Their affairs were being looked into,
their Families were being looked into.
ALEX HORTIS: To a lot of people, it clearly established
that there certainly was a mafia that,
if not rule nationwide,
it had connections across state lines.
And that, of course, starts to put pressure
then on federal agencies.
ANTHONY: If this was a secret society,
you're not living in a secret society anymore.
You're all over the place, and everybody was being identified.
And it really lowered the esteem of Vito Genovese in the mafia.
♪
SELWYN: So it led to a lot of problems.
It led to problems for Genovese, for everybody else.
He was blamed for all this publicity he brought upon
by having the same place and the desire for a meeting
that nobody else wanted.
JACOB GRUMET: So far, as our fight on organized crime
is concerned, we're going to continue our efforts
unabated, and I hope that someday we'll get a break
and finally determine just what did happen
at that now notorious meeting at Apalachin.
[indistinct chatter]
Are you going to have anything to say, Mr. Genovese?
Are you going to cooperate with the Commission?
ANTHONY: Organized crime, certainly after Apalachin,
became a ground zero for law enforcement,
because a lot of them were rousted by the police,
and they faced all sorts of federal problems.
And then you had a lot of investigations spawned
off of that trouble,
which created nothing but problems
for the organized crime bosses.
1957 was quite a year.
Bonanno bet big on the drug trade.
Frank was forced into retirement.
Al Anastasia had his last shave, and then Apalachin.
The mafia was now public enemy number one.
The Families had strayed from the rules
and would pay the price for it.
As chairman of the Committee, do you want a lawyer present
to represent you while you testify?
In 1957, Congress formed a new committee
aimed at investigating organized crime.
The Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities
in the Labor or Management Field
was chaired by Senator John L. McClellan,
a Democrat from Arkansas.
This new McClellan Committee would call gangsters
to the stand into the next decade
and serve as the venue for the most revelatory look
inside the mob in the organization's history.
CLAIRE: The Senate McClellan Hearings
starts out primarily focused on the Teamsters Union.
But in November, after the Apalachin bust,
they really start to shift focus.
♪
In late 1957, roughly 100 mobsters visited
the home of Joseph Barbara in the sleepy town
of Apalachin, New York.
Law enforcement's fortuitous raid of the meeting
resulted in the booking of 58 mafia chieftains.
Investigators concluded that 22 of them were
officially employed by unions or held labor relations jobs.
So later that year, mafia bosses from New York City
and around the country were subpoenaed to testify
in front of the Senate Select Committee
on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field.
It was led by Senator John L. McClellan
and Robert F. Kennedy.
MAN: The McClellan Rackets Committee.
In an effort to prove Teamster ties with the underworld,
the Senators question many witnesses.
ED: The McClellan Committee hearings' focus
is on the connection between unions and the mob,
and they're determined to figure out,
"What can we do to root out this problem
of criminality and corruption in American unions?"
CLAIRE: One of the people who testifies in front
of the Rackets Committee was Crazy Joey Gallo.
♪
Joey Gallo and his brothers Larry and Albert
were from Brooklyn, up-and-comers
and members of Joseph Profaci's Family.
Joey Gallo is one of these old school,
larger than life gangsters.
♪
FRANK DiMATTEO: Joey was out of his mind,
wanted to kill everybody,
beat everybody up, and didn't trust anybody.
♪
TOM FOLSOM: He's erratic and he's sort of terrifying.
But he also has these ideas about the future
of organized crime that are really going against the grain
of what the traditional mob culture was at the time.
♪
FRANK DiMATTEO: Larry was always the boss.
He's the brains of the crew.
My father was Larry's bodyguard from '61 to the day he died.
♪
TOM: And then we have Albert "Kid Blast,"
the youngest one.
The Gallos performed probably the most spectacular
mob killing of the XX century,
the Albert Anastasia hit.
♪
Joey Gallo and his brother Larry
were credited as being the masterminds of that killing.
And so it's said that that's how they became
made men of the Profaci Family.
The killing of Albert Anastasia
put the Gallo brothers on the map.
When they were initiated into the Profaci Family
shortly after, or straightened out,
as they'd say, insiders knew they must have been
the ones behind the hit.
FRANK DiMATTEO: Albert Anastasia got killed.
Right after that, Joey Gallo, Larry Gallo got made
in the Profaci Family.
In this world, if you know, there's no other reason for it,
you don't straighten out somebody unless they earned it.
After the Anastasia killing, the Gallos would forever
be known as guns for hire.
But they made their real money
in South Brooklyn, in Red Hook.
They worked for Local 19, a Teamsters union
that repaired jukeboxes and extorted local businesses.
Word got around.
On February 17th, 1959, Joey and Larry Gallo were called
to testify in front of Senator McClellan's Committee.
FRANK DiMATTEO: Everybody gets called.
Joey and Larry get called.
MAN: ...shall be the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth, so help you God.
Joey gets famous on TV for that, for his glasses,
his Ray-Bans and his smoking.
♪
Joey had no fear. He would plead the Fifth 150 times.
MAN: Are you also known as a racketeer and gangster?
I respectfully decline to answer because I honestly believe
my answer might tend to incriminate me.
TOM: He's got slick back hair, the shades,
black suit jacket, no tie, just chain smoking.
The Senator's getting furious.
Have you a father and mother?
I respectfully decline to answer because I honestly believe
my answer might tend to--
Are you what's known as a thug or a hoodlum?
I respectfully decline to answer because I honestly believe
my answer might tend to incriminate me.
SEAN McWEENEY: So he was a personality,
a beacon for publicity.
If he was interviewed,
someone stopped him on the street, the newspaper,
he would talk to the papers.
Joey, what about these stories that some of your friends are
unhappy they can't get out of jail because of you?
When I left them, they were having a party over there,
and they really... were really having a good time over there.
Yeah, that civil jail is more like a hotel than a jail.
It's a big hotel, one big hotel.
- Do you miss the place? - No, no.
[laughter]
Joey Gallo, he's got the cameras rolling.
He's on national television.
It just scares the pants off of mom and pop in Omaha,
you know, watching these things.
ED: And the 1950s is a period in which almost every
American family, by the end of the decade,
has acquired a television.
And so they are able to watch these hearings
and see these characters and hear the accusations
about misappropriation of funds and intimidation,
union election fixing, and it's throwing the light
on these shady dealings between big time unions and the mob.
♪
ALEX HORTIS: It was great TV.
It was probably... its most significant
impression on the American public.
And it did sort of made people more afraid,
had more reasons to not like New York
or some of the other big cities like,
"Oh, that's where all the gangsters
and racketeers are."
CLAIRE: The 1950s and moving into the 1960s
are some big decades for Gallo.
A lot happens for him.
He's in an organization where the power dynamics
and the power struggles are challenging for him.
♪
TOM: Where do the Gallo brothers stand in this trajectory
of Five Families of New York?
♪
They're the first ones who decided,
"I don't care about your Sicilian codes,
"and I don't care about other codes Lucky Luciano
"put in place when he built the Commission.
"We're going to do it our way,
and you're going to have to deal with this."
Once you get the next generation,
especially in the 1950s,
the kids on jukeboxes, they're not coming back.
The ideas of omertà are inevitably gonna get lost
in the American cultural landscape.
♪
Joey and Larry Gallo's testimony
in front of the McClellan Committee
in February 1959 put them on a national stage
and on the radar of every mafia member in New York City.
They kept their mouths shut, honored omertà,
but still made a mockery of the hearings
and made a name for themselves in the process.
Having any sort of public persona
is never a good thing for those in a secret society,
and back in South Brooklyn,
the Gallos were starting to get a reputation.
TOM: The Gallo brothers were folk heroes
of Red Hook, Brooklyn, the sort of king
of the neighborhood, king of the streets.
♪
What you have to remember about the neighborhood of Red Hook
is that it used to be the Little Italy of Brooklyn.
♪
The highway czar of New York, Robert Moses,
decides it's a slum.
He decides he's going to lop off Red Hook
by the Brooklyn waterfront with the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
It's basically cut off from the main part of Brooklyn.
And so it loses its status as The Little Italy.
It starts to become more decrepit,
starts to become ignored.
And so that fosters a lot of anti-establishment feeling.
And the Gallo brothers fit right into that.
They're the heroes of the neighborhood.
SEAN: They hung out on President Street.
It was called the Dormitory, three story building.
They had a social club at the bottom.
A lot of people used to pass by,
and just to see him hanging out there.
They allegedly had a mountain lion in the basement.
♪
FRANK DiMATTEO: We had a lion in the early '60s.
Some guy from New York.
I think his name Tony, I think his name was.
He had at an exotic store in Manhattan.
And he called up and said that he had a lion, a cub.
So Joey and Larry said,
"Man, yeah, that's what we want."
So they went to New York, they picked him up.
They drove him to President Street.
♪
In a short time, he got big.
♪
Someone was always... wasn't paying something.
Always a problem with people gambling
or lending money to degenerates, didn't want to pay.
You gotta collect your money.
So Joey got the idea of scaring people with the lion.
♪
Chain used to rattle lion used to run up the stairs,
and these people used to get scared right away.
These guys used to [bleep] their pants.
TOM: The lion's name was Cleo.
When the idea is that you got a guy owes us a bit of money,
"What are we going to do with this deadbeat?"
Well, you know, you bring him down
to the basement and introduce him to Cleo
and all of a sudden, you know, he empties out his pockets.
This kind of became part of the Gallo-lore,
turning these pretty hardened hoods into bit of a carnival.
[growls]
"Don't mess with those Gallos. They're crazy.
That crew's crazy. Don't mess with them." You know?
The Gallos liked to march to the beat of their own drum.
But they were still a part of a larger organization.
They had a boss, just like everyone else.
And in the late '50s and early '60s,
their boss controlled all of South Brooklyn.
From lone sharks to bookies
to traffickers down on the docks,
everybody had to answer to Joe Profaci.
♪
ALEX HORTIS: Joe Profaci was an extremely long-tenured boss.
He is involved in the South Brooklyn region.
He wasn't considered a quote, unquote good boss.
He was considered a little too isolated,
a little too, quote, greedy.
So that was what his street reputation was.
I think... Joey called him a prick.
♪
The Olive Oil King.
But in the small world known as the Prick.
He was never very well liked.
Oh, yes, in his circle they liked him
'cause they were making a lot of money.
Gambling, lending money, hijacking.
That was their three main things.
Profaci was more South Brooklyn,
the docks, and Joe Profaci actually had
some legitimate industries there as well.
TOM: Again, his front is being the olive oil company.
But Joe Profaci, he's a tough nut,
and there's a tradition in old mafia lore,
which is called "Wetting the beak."
It's taking a piece of your profits where,
let's say you hijack, something or another.
"We're going to take 20% of that."
Well, Joe Profaci likes to take
more than what he should be taking.
For Joe, it's his way of keeping the troops in line.
But this starts to foster a lot of resentment.
Profaci had this great manor in Bath Beach,
and gave all his spoils to his own little children.
I think Tony Bennett sang at the Don's daughter's wedding.
The Profacis living in splendor
and the Gallos are living in their grandmother's
tenement on the edge of the waterfront in Red Hook.
MICHAEL FRANZESE: My dad was in the Profaci Family.
Dad liked Joe Profaci and got along with him.
He said he was a little bit greedy.
He said greed is what kills bosses.
But he didn't talk too much about him,
just that he was greedy.
It was excessive.
He was a hard guy to get along with.
So the Gallos said, "No, we're not doing it."
TOM: So these Sicilian traditions
that Joe Profaci was bringing in from the old country,
this just wasn't washing with Joe Gallo
and the American-born generation that he was part of.
ALEX HORTIS: Profaci was very, very conservative and quiet.
He doesn't get along with the Gallos.
And the Gallos have their own brother-led unit.
And so Profaci outgrew the era of the time.
He had overstayed his welcome.
♪
FRANK DiMATTEO: So they went to try to go to the captains
and to outside to force Joe Profaci
to do the right thing.
They wanted these guys
to go to Profaci and make him give them
what they deserve. That's what they wanted.
They wanted a piece of this, they wanted a piece of that.
They thought they'd get a piece of the book.
He never gave it to them.
So that was it, man.
♪
So Joey and Larry decided to kidnap Joe Profaci.
♪
Ask not what your country can do for you,
ask what you can do for your country.
[cheering]
In February, 1961, as Americans looked forward,
optimistically, with a new president in office,
members of the mafia, namely Profaci Family soldiers
Joey and Larry Gallo,
were becoming disillusioned with the life they'd chosen
and the organization they'd been a part of.
They wanted more money and more autonomy.
And if their boss, Joseph Profaci,
wasn't going to give it to them,
well, then they were going to take it.
TOM: There's already a lot of underlying resentment
among this younger generation of mafia hoods
and the Profaci Family and the Gallos boldly decide
that they're going to take the Don and his men hostage,
make them submit to their demands,
and either be killed or they'll release him.
♪
The Gallo brothers put a plan together.
They sent six, seven guys out to a couple clubs
and they kidnapped Joe Profaci's close guys.
♪
His underboss, brother, Joe Colombo.
But they missed Joe Profaci.
The whole idea was to get Profaci, but Profaci wind up
getting wind of this,
and went to Florida and checked himself into the hospital.
♪
So they missed the Don.
The Don was nowhere to be found.
They got all the Don's men,
but then the Don himself escaped.
So the Gallos find themselves
with a total disaster on their hands.
♪
So when the Gallo brothers take Don Profaci's top men hostage,
there's an argument between Larry and Joey.
The boys got in this major shouting match.
Larry wants to negotiate through the mafia Commission.
It's funny, in the mafia Commission,
you were talking about an establishment here.
This is the ruling body of not just the Five Families,
but the national mafia. There's rules.
CLAIRE: Joey Gallo and his faction attempting
to kidnap his own boss is a clear breach of etiquette.
The thing is, though, with the mafia, you know,
there's always breaches of etiquette,
and that's sometimes the only way
that these Families move forward.
♪
TOM: Larry wants to abide
by the mafia Commission's rules behind a coup.
He's like, "If we get permission
"from the Commission about what we're going to do next
and we work through them, then they're gonna help us out."
And there's talk from the top men
in the Commission, there's murmurings like,
"Yeah, we'll help you boys out, but just let them go."
♪
NARRATOR: At the time of the kidnapping,
the five New York bosses on the Commission
were Vito Genovese, Joe Profaci,
Carlo Gambino, Tommy Lucchese and Joe Bonanno.
To have their coup approved,
the Gallos would need support from at least two of these men.
But Profaci had tenure.
He was one of only two remaining original bosses
on the Commission.
The other, his close friend and ally, Joe Bonanno.
Bonanno's son had married Profaci's niece back in 1956.
Bosses on the Commission could entertain
the Gallo's request all they wanted,
but no boss in their right mind
would side against Joe Profaci.
And Joey Gallo was well aware.
Joey, on the other hand, is like, "Forget it, Larry.
We're going to kill him right now."
He wants to kill them all.
Blood in the streets.
FRANK DiMATTEO: Somebody came back with a package from Profaci
that, if he lets them go, then he'll negotiate with them,
give them some territory and stuff like that.
Joey didn't want to let the guys go
because Joey didn't believe Joe Profaci.
That's why he said, "Let's just go kill them,
"and then they'll know for real, we're going to go to war.
Let's go to war."
♪
Larry grabbed Joey in passion and said, "We can't do this.
Listen to us. Can't kill these guys."
A high pressure situation.
In this world that you're not supposed to kill made guys,
and there was a lot of trouble here.
♪
Joey's actions shocked even the boldest underworld figures.
But Crazy Joe wasn't one for the rules.
He kidnapped the higher-ups without permission,
and if given the chance, would kill without approval.
CHRIS COLOMBO: There's a story that during the conflict
that was going on within Brooklyn,
they had taken my father hostage.
I guess he was going to be executed.
And Larry spoke like a gentleman.
He said, "He's not an enemy, he's a friend,
"and he agrees with us,
but doesn't agree with our tactics."
FRANK DiMATTEO: Larry won the argument
because Larry was the boss.
He was more level-headed and explained why he thought
it wasn't a good idea to kill them.
My father said that Joey, they call him crazy.
They call him this, they call him that.
TOM: So the Gallo Brothers let Joe Profaci's men go.
Commission says, "Okay, you boys just be patient.
"We'll get you what's due.
"We're going to talk to Profaci,
"and we'll make sure that...
you guys did good for releasing them."
This goes on for months,
and the Gallos aren't really hearing anything.
And, all of a sudden, it's too quiet.
♪
And this is when the Don strikes again.
♪
FRANK DiMATTEO: At the time, no one knew that Joe Profaci
was full of [bleep].
No one knew that. We know that now.
As soon as they released the captains,
he put a hit on all of them, the whole Gallo crew.
With his top men kidnapped and threatened,
Joe Profaci felt he had no other option
than to kill off the rogue faction in his own Family.
But the Gallos wouldn't go down easy.
What ensued was one of the longest and bloodiest
sagas ever to be seen on the streets of Brooklyn,
The Gallo-Profaci War.
MICHAEL: People that are not in the know think
that Families war against each other.
That doesn't happen. That stopped in the '40s.
It's always a civil war. War over a power struggle.
Well, my dad was on Profaci's side.
We had been out in Long Island at my grandmother's house.
My dad moved us out there.
He was gone for several days. I didn't know why.
But I remember one day he came home.
It was fairly early in the morning,
and he walked into my grandmother's house.
He had a full beard. He hadn't shaved in a while.
And his right-hand guy, Joey Brancato, was also
a made guy, was out on the porch kind of watching guard.
And I'm sitting on the steps as my dad came in.
He grabbed my mom.
He hugged her, and then he came over to me
on the steps and hugged me.
How was I doing and all of that.
He was only there for a short time, and then he left.
And that was during the Gallo-Profaci war.
And it was serious.
Quite a few people got killed during that time.
One of the horrors of that life, you make a mistake,
your best friend walks you into a room,
you don't walk out again.
[gunshots]
♪
[gunshots]
TOM: The Gallo-Profaci war is like a crazy crime thriller.
The Gallo brothers, they're holed up on President Street,
in their grandmother's tenement by the Red Hook waterfront.
They've got that block.
The Profaci Family has all of Brooklyn.
So, you basically have all of Brooklyn
versus that one little strip on President Street.
It's a siege mentality.
♪
FRANK DiMATTEO: Everybody went on to the clubs on the block,
and you would just get together, get all your stuff together,
stock up food, and everybody pretty much
ate, drank, and slept there.
You threw mattresses on the floor 'cause there was no...
Everybody didn't have a bed.
Joey, when shooting started,
told everybody, "You gotta come in
and you hit the mattress."
They started the expression, "Hit the mattress."
That's the first time I heard of it.
That's how they lived for that year.
Get money and food and that's it.
Hang out until the guys who were in the street
would do what they had to do.
♪
TOM: The Gallos top bodyguard,
he was a feared hitman named Joe Jelly.
He was the Gallos' muscle.
And before the Profacis wanted to strike
the Gallos, the idea was like, "We gotta get rid of Joe Jelly,
"because if Joe Jelly's still alive and we go after Larry,
"it's going to be over for us.
This guy's a one man force. How do we get rid of him?"
FRANK DiMATTEO: Joe Jelly was a bad dude.
Very loyal to Larry and Joey.
Very loyal.
Joe Jelly went on a fishing trip.
♪
They wound up killing him, taking his jacket and his ring.
TOM: That night, a car goes past the Gallo family diner.
A package is thrown out.
Into the package is the last suit that Joe Jelly wore,
and inside that suit, dead fish.
And that's how they know Joe Jelly slept with the fish.
Right after that is when they went after Larry.
TOM: Larry Gallo, he goes to a bar.
Larry's at the bar, and he's taking a shot...
♪
...and that's when someone comes from behind
and starts to strangle him.
♪
They try to kill him, and he lived through it.
TOM: The cops take him to the precinct.
He's got this awful looking purple rash across his neck.
The cops are like, "Who did this to you?"
Larry keeps quiet. He didn't say anything.
The Gallos had lost all respect for their boss,
the Profaci Family, and the antiquated ways of the life.
So they broke rules, but never the golden rule.
Larry would stay silent and not cooperate with authorities,
and the shooting would continue.
FRANK DiMATTEO: I was with my mother.
We're coming out of a house on Union and Fourth.
We were coming out the door,
got to the corner. My mother looked up.
There was two people across the street that she recognized.
I looked up, and all of a sudden you hear pop pop.
[gunshots]
Guy hit the floor. Boom.
With his crew under siege,
losing men and strapped for cash,
Joey Gallo turned over every stone in South Brooklyn
in the fall of 1961,
looking for money wherever he could find it.
TOM: He sort of goes out on his own.
He's like, "I'm going to start making money
just the old classic way," which is extortion.
He finds this guy, and he starts to begin to shake him down,
and he's like, "You're going to give me part of your action."
"I don't have that much action here at all."
But Joey becomes, I think, increasingly obsessed
to the point where he's just got to prove something to himself.
♪
So he sets up a proper sit-down,
old Italian place called the Luna,
a classic mob hangout on Mulberry Street.
Joey basically tells this kid,
"Why don't I just put you in the hospital?
Then you have a few months to think about it."
And right then there's two NYPD detectives at the next table.
And that's when they arrest Joey Gallo.
FRANK DiMATTEO: He got pinched for it,
and he really didn't defend himself well.
Joey didn't want to be represented.
We don't know why. No one knows to this day why.
He really didn't give 100% fight in this thing.
And no one knows why.
And he winds up getting convicted.
♪
TOM: All of a sudden, the Gallo Revolution
has lost their Che Guevara.
Larry's lost his right hand.
These are dark times for the Gallos.
The Gallos had failed to overthrow Joe Profaci,
and when Joey Gallo went away,
they remained the pariahs of the Five Families.
But despite their public persona
and headline-grabbing antics,
the Gallos would never break
the organization's most sacred rule: Omertà.
A member from a different Family would soon handle that.
It had been five years of turmoil for the Five Families.
Public slayings and shamings, coups gone wrong.
By this time, the Families were led by Joe Bonanno,
Tommy Lucchese, Carlo Gambino,
Joe Profaci and Vito Genovese.
Genovese remained one of the most feared
and powerful bosses on the Commission,
despite getting nabbed on a drug charge back in 1958.
Those charges are fantastic and ridiculous.
While in prison in Atlanta, Vito Genovese feared
that a member of his own Family, who was also serving
a lengthy sentence, might be tempted to flip
and turn state's evidence, to betray omertà.
The member's name was Joseph Valachi.
SELWYN: Joe Valachi was a two bit hood
in the Genovese Family,
and he got arrested on a drug charge.
And it wound up that he was in the same prison
in Atlanta with Vito Genovese.
And at some point he either gets tipped off
or he gets the sense that he's run afoul
of Genovese and he's going to be killed.
ANTHONY: The story is that Valachi
believes that Genovese had fingered him for assassination.
♪
He said, "You know, sometimes...
"you buy a barrel of apples
"and one of these apples is touched.
They're not all rotten, they're a little touched."
He said, "That apple has to be removed
or it'll touch the rest of the apples."
Grabbed my hand and he gave me a kiss.
This is a suspicious kiss...
"The kiss of death."
♪
Valachi suspected that he was going to be set up for murder,
and he suspected one guy in particular
was supposed to kill him.
I made one lap of the yard.
It was about, I'd say, four block long.
Then I made another lap. And then I made another one.
And then on my way back, I spot Joe Beck.
♪
Well, he was walking with another guy,
and right away I saw the pipe.
I grabbed the pipe and I went to work on Joe Beck.
I... hit him on the head with the pipe very hard.
And then I...
saw a couple of guys running towards me.
They made about two attempts before the officer come over,
see, all the way to the associated warden's office.
He showed me a picture. I said to him, "Who's this?"
He said, "That's the guy you hit."
You could imagine how I felt.
I sank in the chair, you know.
I told him, "Just locked me up."
ANTHONY: It turned out it was a case of mistaken identity.
Killed the wrong guy.
The person had nothing to do with any planned hit.
Commit a murder in prison,
you're really going to face a lot of trouble.
And so he goes to the authorities and says,
"In exchange for protection and keeping myself alive,
I'm willing to talk."
And so the FBI takes him in.
They interview him, and before long, he is
before congressional committee.
REPORTER: The story of Joseph Valachi's
testimony today before Senator McClellan's
investigating subcommittee.
Valachi is going to commit the greatest sin of a mobster,
which is to break the code of omertà.
Omertà is the code of silence.
"We do not talk to the law.
We do not talk to outsiders. All of our business is private."
♪
REPORTER: The convicted hoodlum whose confessions to the FBI
have reportedly put a price of $100,000 on his head.
ED: And Valachi breaks that code,
yanks the curtain back on all the secrets of what the mob is.
For more than 30 years, law enforcement
and the American public had extremely limited information
when it came to the mafia and how it operated.
Now, for the first time, their questions
would be answered.
MAN: Do you solemnly swear the evidence
you should give before this Senate Select Committee
shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,
so help you God?
SELWYN: He actually disclosed that there were
five Families in New York.
He put on the table that the mafia
and Five Families existed, and here were their names.
JOHN McLELLAN: Are you a member of any such organization?
Yes, I am.
- What is the name--? - I was.
JOHN McLELLAN: What is the name of it?
It is Cosa Nostra in Italian.
JOHN McLELLAN: Cosa Nostra in Italian.
"Our thing and our family," in English.
JOHN McLELLAN: "Our thing and our family" in English.
We'll come back to that later,
but that is an organization, is it,
that requires absolute obedience?
- Yes. - And conformity to its policy
as handed down by those in authority?
Yes.
♪
JOHN McLELLAN: Why do you feel like it should be destroyed?
Well, through the years, I've, uh...
First of all, I want revenge.
Second of all, they've been very, uh...
I say very bad to the soldiers,
and, you know, uh...
they've been thinking for themselves
all through the years.
As the Senator put it before, what did I get out of it?
- What'd you get out? - Nothing but misery.
Misery was right.
And for New York's Five Families,
there would be much more of that to come.
♪
In the fall of 1963, Joseph Valachi,
a soldier in the Genovese Family
facing a murder charge, cut a deal
with the Justice Department
and testified on national television
before Senator John McClellan's investigations committee.
ROGER MUDD: Good afternoon.
What set off this latest round of crime hearings
by the Senate's Permanent Investigation Subcommittee was
the existence of one Joseph Valachi, 60 years old,
convicted dope peddler, convicted murderer,
and one time member of the mafia, or Cosa Nostra.
ANTHONY: He testified about the mafia,
about omertà, about the structure, who is who,
about Genovese, and about all the stories.
JOHN McLELLAN: Well, we might ask you this time,
what are the different positions in that organization?
Starting at the top, what do you have?
They used to have what we call the boss of all bosses.
JOHN McLELLAN: The boss of all bosses.
All right. You say now, however, there is a Commission.
Does it now have a boss of all bosses?
No, no more boss of all bosses.
We have what we call... is a Commission.
Charlie Luciano, Charlie Lucky put it in effect.
And we had the individual bosses of the individual Family.
Then we have an underboss.
Then we have what we call a caporegime,
which is a lieutenant.
Then we have what we call soldiers.
- Soldiers? - Soldiers.
ANTHONY: Joe Valachi created a storehouse of knowledge,
facts, impressions about the structure
of organized crime in the United States.
ALEX HORTIS: Joe Valachi's testimony to the United States
was a seminal moment because he gave
concrete evidence of what these Families actually were,
that he actually names names of bars
that the mafia owns, and so he makes it real.
And he also tells, you know, about all their secrets,
the initiation ceremonies, how somebody was made a member.
He talks about killings. He really does not hold back.
JOHN McLELLAN: Well, this is a secret organization.
How do you get to know,
that someone is a member of the same Family?
He'll introduce them to you, for instance,
as a friend of ours.
That means a member.
Now, if he happens to be with someone that isn't
a friend of ours, he would just simply say,
"Meet a friend of mine," which means nothing.
That's the code between us.
So there was a code that enabled you
to identify other members of the Family?
Yes.
MAN: Did you do anything for the Family at all
in this time, or did they just do things for you?
Just go out, kill for them.
MAN: You'd go out, what? - Kill for them.
ALEX HORTIS: And so, the gangsters were, you know...
it's absolutely abhorrent to them to have
all their secrets spilled out into national TV.
♪
CLAIRE: Valachi really does create this path forward
for any mob turncoats.
And what he does is shows that there is a way
to become an informant and still survive,
that there's a life after
for anyone who wants to take that path.
And, you know, we'll see that this continues to happen
after Valachi does it, the, you know, floodgates
in a lot of ways are open for the federal law enforcement,
and law enforcement in general,
to take advantage of people who are willing
to break the code of omertà.
Joseph Valachi would die in federal custody in 1971,
but his testimony would be studied and scrutinized
by law enforcement and journalists for decades.
From the outside, Valachi's betrayal of omertà
provided the public with a glimpse of what life
was like inside the mafia.
Amongst members of the Five Families,
his testimony was a grim reminder
of the looming existential threat to their way of life.
♪
A life saturated in violence.
RITA GIGANTE: All I remember is I'm underneath the table
and I remember this guy hitting the floor
and his face was facing me and he's bleeding.
I remember the hand coming down, hitting him, coming up,
coming down, hitting him, coming up.
And I knew it was my dad,
only because I remember his pinky ring.
The last thing he did was step on him,
and say, "Get him out of here. I'm done."
A life far removed from your typical 9:00 to 5:00.
I went on to college for a couple of months
and I wound up walking away.
I had an argument and I walked away.
And I guess you could say I took the wrong train coming back.
Back when I was around getting made,
you had to be part of doing work.
Work meaning you had to be part of a killing.
The night we killed Rick Mazzio,
my Uncle Al was supposed to pick me up.
He was never there to pick me up.
He said he got lost.
I got rid of the gun,
found my way back over the Williamsburg Bridge.
Did he do it on purpose? I don't know.
A life of respect.
A life earned through silence and adhering to the rules.
Omertà.
For a soldier, as you all understand,
once you're in, you're in. You can't get out.
♪
On the next episode of "American Godfathers:
The Five Families"...
TOM: Mobster Joe Columbo. He's on the "Dick Cavett Show."
REPORTER: As one police mafia expert put it,
a contract was fulfilled this afternoon.
NARRATOR: A new generation of mob bosses
come to rule New York City...
- Is there a mafia? - No, there is not.
...with new strategies...
REPORTER: Joe Colombo had organized a picket line
around FBI headquarters in Manhattan.
NARRATOR: ...and new obstacles.
REPORTER: Galante was shielded from photographers
by two of his daughters as he arrived
at the federal courthouse in Miami yesterday.
NARRATOR: The Families continue to bend the rules
and evolve, as they move through the 1960s and 1970s.
TOM: Joey Gallo starts to think, "If the Black gangsters
"got organized, they could team up with us.
We would really be kings of the streets then."
Decades of change...
I walked 12 steps away.
And that's when the shots fired out.
[gunshots]
...for law enforcement...
REPORTER: Eight men were taken into custody today...
NARRATOR: New York City...
CHRISTOPHER: New York lost almost
a million people in the 1970s.
...and the criminal underworld.
FRANK DIMATTEO: Joey never acknowledged
that Joe Colombo was going to be boss.
He refused him as boss.
Sort of like, "Grease the pistols,"
you know, "The war is back on."