Pages added to Valachi text

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Valachi

Additional pages of Joe Valachi’s autobiography, The Real Thing, are now on the website ( Click here ). Readers are cautioned that groups of pages remain unavailable to us and some of the available pages have missing portions.

Update 5 Feb 2015: About 150 full and partial pages of the Valachi manuscript are now available on the website.

 Update 6 Feb 2015: About 225 full and partial pages are now available. These represent the entirety of the pages available to us at this time. As we acquire additional pages, they will be added to the website.

 Update 7 Feb 2015: We are experimenting with an index to the available pages of the Valachi autobiography. 

Additional chapters of Hinchey report

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Organized Crime in the Waste Hauling Industry report

A project begun four years ago is today significantly closer to completion. Additional chapters of the New York State Assembly report Organized Crime’s Involvement in the Waste Hauling Industry have been brought online. The report is now available through Chapter 9 and includes a large chart illustrating the complex web of connections among waste disposal companies.

The report can be accessed through this link: http://mafiahistory.us/maf-hinc.html

[Update 13 Nov. 2014: Two additional chapters of this report are now available on the website. Remaining material still to be web-published includes a final report chapter, several appendices and some endnotes.]

What do we know about Frankie Yale?

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It’s a question that I’ve asked myself quite a bit over the years. It seems everyone who has written about the American Mafia has written something about Brooklyn gang boss Frankie Yale. But most of that material seems based on rumor or conjecture. Factual details about Yale’s life and career are sorely lacking.

It seemed time to take stock of what we actually know about Yale. After looking through the material I had accumulated on him, I assembled this article for the website (and linked to it from the Articles menu and the Who Was Who menu):

Additional mob biographies

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Buffalo Mob website

The launch of a new book (DiCarlo: Buffalo’s First Family of Crime by Mike Tona and myself) and a new website (buffalomob.com) has taken considerable time and energy. However, I’ve managed to have that work contribute to the offerings here on The American Mafia site. A number of biographies have been added to The American Mafia collection. These link to bios created for the Buffalo-oriented site. To date, the list includes:

  • Bonasera, Cassandro (1897-1972) – Brooklyn
  • Cammilleri, John (1911-1974)
  • Carlisi, Rosario “Roy” (1909-1980)
  • Clark, “Jew Minnie” (1887-1959)
  • Crocevera, Isadoro (1873-1920) – New York City and elsewhere
  • Fino, Joseph (1915-1984)
  • Frangiamore, Salvatore (1905-1999)
  • Magaddino, Antonino (1897-1971)
  • Magaddino, Stefano (1891-1974)
  • Montana, John (1893-1964)
  • Natarelli, Pasquale (1910-1993)
  • Pieri, Salvatore “Sam” (1911-1981)
  • Randaccio, Frederico (1907-2004)
  • Sansanese, Daniel Sr. (1908-1975)
  • Tronolone, John “Peanuts” (1910-1991) – Cleveland
Visit the Who Was Who page of the site to access these and other bios. Please note, the active biography links have birth-death years after the names (others aren’t online yet). Those with asterisks are the new ones that link to the Buffalo site.

Valachi’s story in his own words

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Valachi

We have begun the process of making the autobiographical notes of Joseph Valachi, a manuscript titled, The Real Thing, available online for the free access of those interested in the subject. The manuscript is the foundation of the 1968 Peter Maas book, The Valachi Papers. In it, Valachi recalls his early personal life, his career as a burglar in New York City, his participation in the Castellammarese War, his induction into the American Mafia and a great deal more.

To this point, The Real Thing has been out of reach for most. To our knowledge, it has never been published. The original is held in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. Copies can be obtained, but with the document running more than a thousand pages long, obtaining copies can be prohibitively expensive.

Our collection of The Real Thing pages is far from complete. We are hopeful that researchers who have obtained portions of the document will decide to share them.

Our thanks to crime historian Alex Hortis for his assistance in this project.

Visit: http://mafiahistory.us/a023/therealthing.htm

Bookstore updated

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Online bookstore image

The American Mafia website’s bookstore has been redesigned. The online store – an affiliate of Amazon.com – features a selection of books relating to various areas of organized crime history. It contains a number of new releases as well as some underworld history classics. There is also a search function that enables visitors to locate books dealing with their specific interests.

UPDATE: Sorry to announce that this bookstore feature has since been turned off.

Book Notes reformatted

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Book Notes section

The Book Notes section of the website has been reformatted. Older links on the page have been repaired. And some distracting widgets have been removed. The page should have a more organized look to it than it previously did.

It has been awhile since book reviews have been added to the page. I have a bunch to add and will begin doing that shortly.