Gangster Sonny

During the late eighteen hundreds, the four Lonardo brothers and seven Porrello brothers were boyhood friends and fellow sulphur mine workers in their hometown of Licata, Sicily. They came to America in the early nineteen hundreds and eventually settled in Cleveland.
“Big Joe” Lonardo became a successful businessman and community leader. During Prohibition, he became wealthy as a dealer in corn sugar which was used by bootleggers to make corn liquor. He was respected and feared as a “padrone” or godfather. “Big Joe” became the leader of a powerful and vicious gang and was known as a corn sugar “baron.” Joe Porrello was one of his corporals.
With the advent of Prohibition, Cleveland, like other big cities, experienced a wave of bootleg-related murders. The murders produced the same suspects, but no indictments. These suspects were members of the Lonardo gang. Several of the murders occurred at the corner of E. 25th and Woodland Ave. This intersection became known as the “bloody corner.” Many of Lonardo’s gang members had previous street battle experience in the newspaper circulation wars.
Around 1926, Joe Porrello left the employ of the Lonardos to start his own sugar wholesaling business. Porrello and his six brothers pooled their money and eventually became successful corn sugar dealers headquartered in the upper Woodland Avenue area around E. 110th Street.
With small competitors, sugar dealers and bootleggers, mysteriously dying violent deaths, the Lonardos’ business flourished as they gained a near monopoly on the corn sugar business. Their main competitors were their old friends the Porrellos.
“Big Joe” Lonardo in 1926, now at the height of his wealth and power, left for Sicily to visit his mother and relatives. He left his closest brother and business partner John in charge. During “Big Joe’s” six-month absence, he lost much of his $5,000 a week profits to the Porrellos who took advantage of John Lonardo’s lack of business skills and the assistance of a disgruntled Lonardo employee. “Big Joe” returned and business talks between the Porrellos and Lonardos began. They “urged” the Porrellos to return their lost clientele.
On Oct. 13th, 1927 “Big Joe” and John Lonardo went to the Porrello barbershop to play cards and talk business with Angelo Porrello as they had been doing for the past week. As the Lonardos entered the rear room of the shop, two gunmen opened fire. Angelo Porrello ducked under a table.
The Porrello brothers were arrested. Angelo was charged with the Lonardo brothers’ murders. The charges were later dropped for lack of evidence. Joe Porrello succeeded the Lonardos as corn sugar “baron” and later appointed himself “capo” of the Cleveland Mafia.
On Dec. 5th, 1928, Joe Porrello and his lieutenant and bodyguard Sam Tilocco hosted the first known major meeting of the Mafia at Cleveland’s Hotel Statler. Many major Mafia leaders from Chicago to New York to Florida were invited. The meeting was raided before it actually began.
Joe Profaci, leader of a Brooklyn, N.Y. Mafia family was the most well-known of the gangsters arrested. He was the founder of the Colombo Mafia family. Vincent Mangano also ranked high as founder of the Gambino family most recently headed by the “Dapper Don” John Gotti. Within a few hours, to the astonishment of police and court officials, Joe Porrello gathered thirty family members and friends who put up their houses as collateral for the gangsters’ bonds. Profaci was bailed out personally by Porrello. A great controversy over the validity of the bonds followed.
As Joe Porrello’s power and wealth grew, heirs and close associates to the Lonardo brothers grew hot for revenge.
Angelo Lonardo, “Big Joe’s” 18-year-old son along with his mother and his cousin, drove to the corner of E. 110th and Woodland, the Porrello stronghold. There Angelo sent word that his mother wanted to speak to Salvatore “Black Sam” Todaro. Todaro, now a Porrello lieutenant, had worked for Angelo’s father and was believed to be responsible for his murder. In later years it was believed that he was actually one of the gunmen.
As Todaro approached to speak with Mrs. Lonardo whom he respected, Angelo pulled out a gun and emptied it into “Black Sam’s stocky frame. Todaro crumpled to the sidewalk and died.
Eventually Angelo and his cousin were arrested and charged with “Black Sam’s” murder. For the first time in Cleveland’s bootleg murder history justice was served as both young men were convicted and sentenced to life. Justice although served would be shortlived as they would be released only a year and a half later after winning a new trial.
By 1929, Little Italy crime boss Frank Milano had risen to power as leader of his own gang, “The Mayfield Road Mob.” Milano’s group was made up in part of remnants of the Lonardo gang and was also associated with the powerful “Cleveland Syndicate,” headed by Moe Dalitz, associate of mega-mobster Meyer Lansky. The Cleveland Syndicate was responsible for most of the Canadian booze imported via Lake Erie. In later years they got into the casino business. One of the their largest and most profitable enterprises was construction of the Desert Inn Hotel/Casino in Las Vegas. Dalitz would become known in legitimate circles as the “Godfather of Las Vegas.”
By 1930, Frank Milano and his brother Tony had grown quite powerful. Frank had gone so far as to demand a piece of the lucrative Porrello corn sugar business. On July 5th, 1930, Porrello received a phonecall from Milano who had requested a conference at his Venetian Restaurant on Mayfield Road and Murray Hill Roads in Little Italy.
The meeting unexpectedly erupted in gunfire and both Porrello and his bodyguard were killed. Frank Milano and several of his restaurant employees were arrested but only charged with being suspicious persons. The gunmen were never actually identified.
Cleveland’s underworld was tense with rumors of imminent warfare. Porrello brother Vincente-James spoke openly of wiping out everyone responsible for his brother’s murder. Three weeks after his brother’s murder, Jim Porrello still wore a black shirt as he entered the I & A grocery and meat market at E. 110th Street and Woodland. As he picked out lamb chops at the meat counter, a Ford touring car, its’ curtains tightly drawn, cruised slowly past the store. A couple of shotguns poked out and two thunderous blasts of buckshot were fired, one through the front window of the store and one through the front screen door.
The amateur gunmen got lucky. Two pellets found the back of Porrello’s head and entered his brain. He was rushed to the hospital but died a few hours later.
Two local petty gangsters were arrested and charged with murder. One was discharged by directed verdict and the other was acquitted. Like almost all of Cleveland’s bootleg related murders, the killers never saw justice.
About this time, it was rumored that the Porrello brothers were marked for extermination. The surviving brothers went into hiding. Raymond, known for his cocky attitude and hot temper spoke like his brother James did of seeking revenge. Raymond was smarter though, he took active measures to protect himself.
On August 15th, 1930, three weeks after James Porrello’s murder, Raymond Porrello’s house was leveled in a violent explosion. He was not home at the time since he had taken his family and abandoned his home in anticipation of the attack. The bombing was a warning to the Porrellos from the Mayfield Road Mob. Soon, the out-gunned Porrellos were closing down their sugar operation.
The thirst for revenge had not been satisfied for members of the Lonardo family. It was generally believed that “Black Sam” Todaro instigated and perhaps took part in the murders of “Big Joe” and John Lonardo. However it was believed by members of the Lonardo family that the remaining Porrello brothers, particularly the volatile John and Raymond and eldest brother Rosario still posed a threat because of the murders of Joe and James Porrello.
On Feb. 25th, 1932 Raymond Porrello, his brother Rosario and their bodyguard Dominic Gulino (known also by several aliases) were playing cards near E. 110th and Woodland Avenue. The front door burst open and in a hail of bullets the Porrello brothers, their bodyguard and a bystander went down. The Porrellos died at the scene. Gulino died a couple of hours later. The bystander eventually recovered from his wounds. This shooting was Cleveland’s deadliest mob hit ever.
In 1933, Prohibition was repealed. The bootleg murders mostly stopped as organized crime moved into gambling and other enterprises. Frank Milano moved to Mexico leaving “Big Al” Polizzi in charge. Angelo Lonardo continued his crime career as a respected member of the Cleveland family eventually rising through the ranks to run the northeast Ohio rackets in 1980. Things were remained relatively quiet in the Cleveland underworld through the forties, fifties and sixties.
Enter Danny Greene. He was fearless and cunning - loved by his neighbors and hated by his business competitors - the members of the Cleveland Mafia. Fiercely proud of his Irish heritage, he was a Celtic warrior at heart, obsessed with the color green - green car, green jackets, green ink pens. For a decade Greene had been boldly encroaching on mob territory. Their threats didn’t worry him.
Danny got his start in racketeering in the late sixties as president of the local International Association of Longshoremen. After a shocking expose by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, he was ousted from the docks and fined $10,000 for embezzling union funds.
Later Danny worked for as an enforcer for local mobsters including Alex “Shondor” Birns, well-known Jewish racketeer. After a dispute over a $60,000 Greene refused to repay, Birns had a bomb planted in his car. It was the first in a series of botched attempts on the brash Irishman’s life. Danny found the bomb.
“Luck of the Irish,” he would often say. “I’ll return this to the old bastard who sent it to me,” Greene promised.
Sure enough, a few weeks later Birns was blown out the roof of his car, in two pieces. It was an excellent hit and Danny was proud.
A power vacuum developed in the Cleveland underworld when John Scalish, mob boss from 1944 until 1976 died during heart surgery. Danny Greene teamed up with Teamster official John Nardi in a bid to take over. Their biggest offensive and mistake was the 1976 murder of Leo “Lips” Moceri, the respected and feared new underboss of the Cleveland Mafia, and the bombing of enforcer Eugene “The Animal” Ciasullo. Aging mob boss James Licavoli ordered his henchman to “get rid of the Irishman,” but the inexperienced soldiers had no luck. The attempts by the self-proclaimed tough guys were almost comical. Then west coast wise guy Jimmy ‘the Weasel” Fratianno recommended a hired killer from Erie.
In the end, Danny went out the way he predicted. “When you live by the bomb, you die by the bomb.” The Irishman was dead.
But the Mafia’s celebration was cut short. There was much sloppy work, a few observant witnesses (one of whom was a sketch artist!) and extraordinary investigations by federal, state and local officials. The aftermath of Greene’s assassination brought about a Mafia war in Youngstown, Ohio, a mob murder plot against Cleveland Mayor Dennis Kucinich and charges against Mahoning County Sheriff James Traficant for accepting Mafia bribe money. Traficant was acquitted and is now a United States Congressman.
In 1983, Angelo Lonardo, 72, one-time Cleveland Mafia boss, turned government informant. He shocked family, friends, law enforcement officers and particularly, criminal associates with his decision which was made after being sentenced to life plus 103 years for drug and racketeering convictions. The sentence came after the monumental investigation into the murder of Danny Greene. As a direct result of Danny’s murder, Jimmy “Weasel” Fratianno also defected and co-authored The Last Mafioso and Vengeance is Mine. His courtroom testimony and that of Angelo Lonardo, once called “the highest ranking mobster ever to testify for the government” helped put away mob bosses Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno of New York’s Genovese Mafia family, Anthony “Tony Ducks” Corallo of the Luchesse clan and Carmine Persico of the Colombo family. He also testified in 1985 at the Las Vegas casino “skimming” trials in Kansas City. Federal investigators trace these major mob convictions right back to the murder of Greene. Danny would have been proud.
Currently, remnants of the once-mighty Cleveland La Cosa Nostra are thought by many to be under the control of Joseph “Joe Loose” Iacobacci.

At the opening of the twentieth century the influx of Italians in to America began to grow, New York was the second biggest Italian city after Naples, one quarter of New York - more than half a million people - were Italian .The new immigrants, bewildered by the new land, and it’s strange language, lived closely together in the Little Italys of New York, Chicago, New Orleans and other cities. They were rendered blind, deaf and dumb by lack of schooling in American language and culture.

Many mafiosi entered the US on false papers, which the Italian authority had been only too happy to supply. The mafiosi had good reasons to travel to America, the law and restrictions against ex-convicts in Italy were crippling. After leaving an Italian prison the convict would be placed on ‘Sorveglianza Speciale’ ( Special Surveillance ), meaning strict night curfew, no employment without permission from the police, regular reports to the local police station, ban on carrying weapons and a ban from frequenting all drinking places. Once they arrived in America they found already established Irish and Jewish underworlds, but did not penetrate these groups at first, instead keeping within their own communities.

Facing lynchings, hatred, poverty and extremely poor living conditions, the law abiding immigrants soon realized that the dream of the’ Promised Land’ they had travelled to was a nightmare. Living together in such closed communities created little more than a microcosm of the society they had left in Europe. As such they clung onto their distrust of the law and authority. Several mafiosi exploited this fact, and found opportunities for their traditional occupations, they began to extort fellow Italians who had a certain amount of money, bankers, barbers, contractors, wholesale dealers or merchants who already understood the capabilities of the Mafia. This was done anonymously by delivering threatening letters demanding money, the letters were signed with a crudely drawn Black Hand symbol. The following is an excerpt from one such letter :

“If you have not sufficient courage you may go to people who enjoy an honorable reputation and be careful as to whom you go. Thus you may stop us from persecuting you as you have been adjudged to give money or life. Woe upon you if you do not resolve to buy your future happiness, you can do from us by giving the money demanded. …”

People paid the Black Hand extortionists with the knowledge that American law had no understanding or power to help them, and that the threats carried in Black Hand letters were likely to be carried out if payment was not made. This an excerpt of a letter that appeared in The New York Times around this period :

“My name is Salvatore Spinelli. My parents in Italy came from a decent family. I came here eighteen years ago and went to work as a house painter, like my father. I started a family and I have been an American citizen for thirteen years. I had a house at 314 East Eleventh St and another one at 316, which I rented out. At this point the ‘Black Hand’ came into my life and asked me for seven thousand dollars. I told them to go to hell and the bandits tried o blow up my house. Then I asked the police for help and refused more demands, but the “Black Hand’ set off one, two, three, four, five bombs in my houses. Things went to pieces. From thirty two tenants I am down to six. I owe a thousand dollars interest that is due next month and I cannot pay. I am a ruined man. My family lives in fear. There is a policeman on guard in front of my house, but what can he do? My brother Francesco and I do guard duty at the windows with guns night and day. My wife and children have not left the house for weeks. How long can this go on ?”

The name ‘Black Hand’ was taken from a secret Spanish society of anarchists, that later spread to other countries, particularly The Balkans, with the purpose of assassinating monarchs and other chiefs of state.

The fear of economic and social exclusion in such a rich and dynamic country, drove many Italians to attempt their own Black Hand extorsions and they also began threatening fellow Italians, helping to perpetuate the myth of ‘La Mano Nera’. This was an easy task as a strong fear was already instilled in the community, people were incredibly superstitious during this era, and even the mention of ‘La Mano Nera’ would cause people to cross themselves with the hope of protection. Italian folklore spoke of gangsters such as ‘Lupo the Wolf’ being able to cast the evil eye and to possess other magical powers, such stories only helped to compound the effectiveness of the Black Hand fear. The Black Hand thrived on this myth, and they knew the need to carry out their threats was essential to keep the fear alive.
The trail left by the Black Hand draws a picture of an unorganized body, with no central leadership or hierarchical structure. Extortion letters were written in a mixture of dialects certainly by people originating from different regions of Italy, and the Black Hand symbols varied greatly in design. Some were an open Hand, others a closed fist and others still showed a hand with a knife.

In 1908 Police Commissioner Bingham kept a record of all crime relating to the Black Hand, here is the summary that he made :

Black Hand cases reported : 424
Arrests : 215
Convictions : 36
Discharges : 156
Pending : 23

Bomb outrages reported : 44
Arrests : 70
Convictions : 9
Discharges : 58
Pending : 3

The Black Hand fear became such a problem that a special Italian branch of the police had to be formed, this was essential as the immigrants did not trust the Irish/American law force, and the police had no understanding of Italian customs or behavior. The New York Times ran this story on the new force :

“NEW SECRET SERVICE TO BATTLE ‘BLACK HAND’”
“Police Commissioner Theodore A. Bingham, finally has his secret service. It is a secret in every sense of the word, since no one at 300 Mulberry St except Lieutenant Petrosino and Bingham himself knows its membership. Substantial funds for the maintenance of the Secret Squad have been made available to the Commissioner, but this is all he will say. He refuses to discuss their source, confining himself to the assurance that it is not public money. It is generally believed that the money was contributed by a number of prosperous Italian merchants and bankers across the city, aroused by the wave of extorsions in recent years.”

Joseph Petrosino, the tough unethical Italian policeman who headed the squad, soon realized that American law was far to relaxed, and was not capable of dealing with mafiosi. He said :

” There is only one thing that can wipe out the Black Hand, and that is the elimination of ignorance. The gangsters who are holding Little Italy in the grip of terror come chiefly from Sicily and Southern Italy, and they are primitive country robbers transplanted into cities. This is proved by their brutal methods. No American hold-up man would ever think of stopping somebody and slashing his face with a knife just to take his wallet. Probably he would threaten him with a pistol. No American criminal would blow up a man’s house or kill his children because he refused to pay fifty or a hundred dollars. The crimes that occur among the Italians here, are the same as those committed at one time by rural outlaws in Italy; and the victims, like the killers, come from the same ignorant class of people. In short we are dealing with banditry transplanted to the most modern city in the world.”

After the first bombing of the Italian Pati bank on Elizabeth Street, a society called the Association de Vigilanza e Protezione Italiana was formed by the community to help combat the Black Hand menace. Frank L. Frugone, the editor of Bollettino paper, was made president with over three hundred members.

In a 1908 eleven page magazine article, Lindsay Denison made some very interesting observations about the workings and origins of the Black Hand. She claimed the gang name had arrived from a story printed in The Herald newspaper, the story claimed that a recent murder of an Italian immigrant had been committed by the original “The Black Hand” - a secret Spanish society dating back from Inquisition days. The Herald speculated that the Black Hand was coming to life again amongst the Latin communities. Other papers seized upon the idea and the story spread.

Denison went on to speak of the organized sections of the Black Hand -

” It is not possible to speak certainly of the way in which the spoils of their plots are divided. It seems most likely that the ‘divvy’ is governed by the generosity of the head ‘bad-man’ and the risks taken by the members accumulating the loot. The worst and greediest scoundrel in the plot takes all he dares. Most of the rest goes to the men who made the threats. Half of what the chief takes goes ” higher up”. There are at least two or three old graduates of South Italian crime, who never sully their Hands with the commission of actual crimes nor trouble their minds to plan them …”

The article told of an incident involving Pasquale Pati a rich Italian banker from Elizabeth Street. Bombed once already he was again singled out by a Black Hand crew made up of mainly Mafiosi. Representations were made to the Mafia that he should be left alone, due to his connections with the Camorra. But the warnings had been made, and the discipline had to be upheld, Pati was still considered a target. When the collectors arrived at the bank for the money, they were shot by Pati and half a dozen other men, one Black Hand member was wounded badly and later died in hospital. Pati was secretly relocated and congratulated by the police as the first man of his Country to face up to the Black Hand. (It was later discovered that Lupo the Wolf had been after Pati, and a run had been made on his bank. The man Pati shot was actually a depositor and Pati had dissappeared with all the banks money). Another man to stand up the menace was Pietro Caropole of New Jersey, he killed one member of the Black Hand and wounded another. At the time of Denison’s article he was still holding his ground, despite new death threats.

The success of the Black Hand methods caused the ‘myth’ to spread all over the country. The Pittsburg police were credited with ‘the break up of the best organized blackmailing bands in the history of the Black Hand’. One of their raids produced evidence that they had ’stumbled upon a huge society combining the worst features of the Mafia and Camorra’. They had found ‘carefully written by-laws, with a definite scale of spoil division and with many horrible oaths’. Then on another raid they found what appeared to be a ’school of the Black Hand’, two young Italians had ‘actually been practicing with daggers on dummy figures’. However further investigation revealed that the Pittsburgh plant was in fact the union of the three or four local Black Hand bands and no connection with New York was ever made.

Lieutenant Petrosino learnt of a new, more sophisticated extortion method that was spreading through the community. A shop keeper in Elizabeth Street explained to him, how three men had entered his shop and said they knew he had received Black Hand letters. They offered the shop keeper protection from the Black Hand threats for a small but regular fee. Many of the Black Hand bombers slowly turned into fatherly ‘protectors’ who integrated themselves openly into society. The anonymous terrorist had become a known face in the community.