The Barrel Mystery, published in 1919 (copyright has expired), is the story of U.S. Secret Service efforts to help solve the “barrel murder” of 1903 and to dismantle Mafia counterfeiting operations supervised by Mafia boss of bosses Giuseppe Morello and his brother-in-law Ignazio Lupo. Author Flynn was head of the New York office of the Secret Service when Morello and his men were finally brought to justice.
Portions of the book were previously published on our Caged Wolves website. It is our hope to soon have the entire book available online.
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.
[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.]
I’m very pleased to announce that Edmond Valin has provided the American Mafia history website with a short article discussing a 1960s-era informer within the Bonanno Crime Family of New York. That informer provided law enforcement with a good deal of background information on crime family members during the period of the so-called “Banana War.” Edmond Valin argues that crime boss Joseph Bonanno’s son Salvatore “Bill” Bonanno was the informer. (Click here to read the article.)
Bill Bonanno
I agree with Valin’s assessment and actually reached the same conclusion through some independent research. I found it interesting that the initial claim that Joseph Bonanno was kidnapped by Buffalo boss Stefano Magaddino reached law enforcement and the media at approximately the same moment, in December 1964. At that time, Bill Bonanno was leading a shrinking group of Bonanno loyalists against the interference of Magaddino and the Mafia Commission.
The story of Magaddino’s involvement in the alleged kidnapping (I am one of those who believe the kidnapping was staged by Bonanno, by the way) was first mentioned in a column by Hearst newspaper personality Walter Winchell. (Winchell is believed to have had a role in leading Lepke Buchalter to the FBI a generation earlier.)
After just a few days, Joseph Bonanno’s attorney William Maloney confirmed the Winchell report, citing details provided to him in a telephone conversation with Bill Bonanno.
(BTW: Maloney really stuck his neck out for the Bonannos, and he probably regretted doing so. When Joseph Bonanno reappeared a year and a half later than Maloney told law enforcement he would, he did so with brand new legal counsel. Maloney no longer represented the crime boss.)
We are indebted to Justin Dugard for purchasing, editing and contributing to The American Mafia website the October 14, 2008, federal court testimony of Stefan Cicale. Cicale was the government’s key witness in the racketeering/murder trial of Bonanno Crime Family associate Joseph Young.
Cicale’s direct examination testimony is broken up into three web pages for ease of use. A subject index will be added in the near future.
Joseph Young was convicted of the gruesome 2005 murder of Robert McElvey at the historic – and allegedly haunted – Kreischer Mansion on Staten Island (see photo). Cicale was charged as an accomplice and decided to cooperate with federal investigators.
I’ve found some time to add significantly to the online presentation of a New York State report on Organized Crime in the Waste Hauling Industry. The online pages can be found through the Gov’t Sources menu selection. They can also be accessed directly using this web address: http://mafiahistory.us/maf-hinc.html
I hope to be able to add more pages in the very near future.
The website redesign, by the way, continues … slowly.
