The Valachi hearings, also known as the McClellan hearings, investigated organized crime activities across America, the hearings were named after which American gangster, notable as the first member of the Italian-American Mafia to publicly acknowledge its existence,was a major government witness against the American Mafia?
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Valachi hearings The Valachi hearings, also known as the McClellan hearings, investigated organized crime activities across America and investigated leading mafia figures of the era such as Sam Giancana of Chicago. The hearings were initiated by Arkansas Senator John L. McClellan in 1963. The hearings were named after the major government witness against the American Mafia, Joseph Valachi.
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Joseph Valachi Joseph Michael "Joe Cargo" Valachi (September 22, 1904 – April 3, 1971) was an American gangster, notable as the first member of the Italian-American Mafia to publicly acknowledge its existence, and credited with popularization of the term "Cosa Nostra".
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Angelo Genna Angelo "Bloody Angelo" Genna (February 3, 1898 – May 26, 1925) was a Chicago bootlegger and organized crime leader during the Prohibition era. The leader of his own Sicilian crime family, he was best known for his war with the North Side Gang leader, Charles Dean O'Banion. Genna masterminded the assassination of O'Banion in November 1924.
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Havana Conference The Havana Conference of 1946 was a historic meeting of United States Mafia and Cosa Nostra leaders in Havana, Cuba. Supposedly arranged by Charles "Lucky" Luciano, the conference was held to discuss important mob policies, rules, and business interests. The Havana Conference was attended by delegations representing crime families throughout the United States. The conference was held during the week of December 22, 1946 at the Hotel Nacional. The Havana Conference is considered to have been the most important mob summit since the Atlantic City Conference of 1929. Decisions made in Havana resonated throughout the US crime families for the ensuing decades.
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Luciano Leggio Luciano Leggio (] ; 6 January 1925 – 15 November 1993) was an Italian criminal and leading figure of the Sicilian Mafia. He was the head of the Corleonesi, the Mafia faction that originated in the town of Corleone. He's universally known with the surname Liggio, a result of a misspelling in court documents in the 1960s.
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William Colbeck (gangster) William "Dint" Colbeck (November 17, 1890 – February 17, 1943) was a St. Louis politician and organized crime figure involved in bootlegging and illegal gambling. He succeeded William Egan as head of the Egan's Rats bootlegging gang in the early 1920s.
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Mario Riccobene Mario "Sonny" Riccobene (1933-1993, New Jersey) was a member of the Philadelphia crime family. He later became a federal witness after his son committed suicide with the fear of being killed from Nicodemo Scarfo and his fellow gangsters. He later returned to his old lifestyle and in 1993 murdered by his old associates. Riccobene had been in the witness protection program but eventually removed from the program because he was unable to follow the rules.
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Joseph Iannuzzi Joseph Iannuzzi, Jr., (1930 or 1931 – September 20, 2015), also known as "Joe Dogs", "Joe Diner" and "Joe Drywall", was a Gambino crime family associate and FBI informant whose cooperation influenced events surrounding the late 1985 assassination of Gambino family boss Paul Castellano and played an indirect, but valuable, role in the 1985 Mafia Commission Trial. Iannuzzi is the author of several books: "The Mafia Cookbook", "Cooking on the Lam", and his autobiography "Joe Dogs: The Life and Crimes of a Mobster". Iannuzzi died September 20, 2015, in Kerrville, Texas, at the Veterans Administrations Medical Center. He is survived by his seven children, seven grandchildren and six great grandchildren.
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Francesco Marino Mannoia Francesco Marino Mannoia (born March 5, 1951) is a former member of the Sicilian Mafia who became a pentito (government witness) in 1989. His nickname was "Mozzarella". He is considered to be one of the most reliable government witnesses against the Mafia. Antimafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone, who was first to interrogate him, recalled Marino Mannoia as an intelligent and reliable witness.
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John LaRocca John Sebastian LaRocca (December 19, 1901 - December 3, 1984) was the Sicilian-born American boss of the Pittsburgh crime family from the 1950s until his death in 1984.
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Philadelphia Greek Mob Philadelphia's Greek Mob, or the Greek Mafia, are a low-profile criminal organization of ethnic Greek Americans in Philadelphia with alleged connections to the Italian Philadelphia crime family. They were formed in southern Greece by the original boss Steve Kondonyanis. Kondonyanis also had strong ties with the Efthimiades family of Macedonia in Northern Greece. When the Efthimiades family was run out of power in the 1960s, Kondonyanis decided to move his operations to the culturally diverse America. When Kondonyanis was sentenced to jail to serve life for murder, mobster Chelsais Bouras took over.
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James Napoli James "Jimmy Nap" Napoli (November 4, 1911 – December 29, 1992) was a New York mobster who was a Caporegime in the Genovese crime family. From the 1950s to the 1980s, he controlled one of the largest illegal gambling operations in the United States.
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Alphonse D'Arco Alphonse "Little Al" D'Arco (born July 28, 1932), also known as "The Professor", is a New York mobster who became the acting boss of the Lucchese crime family. He was the first boss, acting or otherwise, of a New York crime family to become a government witness.
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Sicilian Mafia The Sicilian Mafia, also known as simply the Mafia or Cosa Nostra ("Our Thing"), is a criminal syndicate in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organisational structure and code of conduct. The basic group is known as a "family", "clan", or ""cosca"". Each family claims sovereignty over a territory, usually a town or village or a neighbourhood ("borgata") of a larger city, in which it operates its rackets. Its members call themselves "men of honour", although the public often refers to them as "mafiosi". The mafia's core activities are protection racketeering, the arbitration of disputes between criminals, and the organizing and oversight of illegal agreements and transactions.
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Carl DeLuna Carl Angelo "Tuffy" DeLuna (April 30, 1927 – July 21, 2008) was an organized crime figure who was once the powerful underboss of the Kansas City crime family (the family). He was also brother-in-law to Kansas City crime boss Anthony Civella.
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Mikey Coppola Michael J. Coppola (born in May 18, 1946), also known as "Mikey Cigars", is an American mobster and captain in the Genovese crime family. He has been a key figure in the Genovese crime family New Jersey faction. It is unknown if he is related to Michael "Trigger Mike" Coppola, who was also a member of the Genovese family. He made national headlines when he went into hiding for 11 years to avoid a possible murder conviction.
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Antonino Calderone Antonino Calderone (October 24, 1935January 10, 2013) was a Sicilian Mafioso who turned state witness (pentito) in 1987 after his arrest in 1986.
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List of Cohen crime family members The Cohen crime family, or the Siegel-Cohen crime syndicate, was a Jewish-Italian crime family that was active from 1933 to 1961. The family was founded by New York Jewish mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel in the early 1930s. He had Los Angeles Mafia boss Jack Dragna and Jewish mobsters Mickey Cohen and Moe Sedway as his lieutenants. He created the biggest prostitution ring, gambling and protection rackets in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. He also expanded into drug trafficking and bookmaking.
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Rosario DeSimone Rosario DeSimone (December 11, 1873 – July 15, 1946), was the head of an Italian crime family during the 1920s to 1940s that was the predecessor to the Los Angeles crime family of the American Mafia. Rosario was the father of the future California mob boss, Frank DeSimone. Not to be confused with the Chicago Italian Timothy Rosario DeSimone.
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John Franzese Jr. John Franzese Jr. is a former associate of the Colombo crime family and son of underboss John Franzese. He is notable for being the first New York mobster's son to turn state's evidence and testify against his father. Part of the agreement he made with the FBI prior to agreeing to testify is that he wouldn't profit from his story as a mafia figure. He was allegedly also responsible for his father's fourth parole violation, but was accepted back into his confidence after denying the allegations in tears, saying, "I would never do that, no matter what kind of trouble I had."
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Pentito Italian term pentito (] ; "repentant"; plural: "pentiti") is used colloquially to designate people in Italy who were formerly part of criminal or terrorist organizations, and who, following their arrests, decided to "repent" and collaborate with the judiciary to help further investigations. The judicial category of "pentiti" was originally created in legislation passed by the Italian government in the 1970s to combat violence and terrorism during the so-called Years of Lead. The correct technical name used for them is "collaborators of justice" (Italian: "collaboratori di giustizia" ). In the wake of the Maxi Trial in Palermo in 1986–87, and after the testimony of Tommaso Buscetta, the term came into widespread use in Italy for all former members of the Sicilian Mafia who had abandoned their organization and started helping investigators.
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Harry Vallon Harry Vallon was a New York City gambler and mob informant.