Word: capo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...upheaval to the "pervasive feeling of corruption" in the city. Last week Addonizio's own career and reputation stood in sharp jeopardy. The mayor was summoned before a grand jury to answer questions about his ties to the Mob. Federal investigators wanted to know whether Addonizio knew Mafia Capo Ruggiero ("Richie the Boot") Boiardo or his son Anthony ("Tony Boy"). They also wondered whether he had discussed with members of the city council a contract awarded to the Valentine Electric Co., for which the younger Boiardo is a salesman. Claiming the protection of the Fifth, Sixth and 14th Amendments...
...Julius Caesar's military command, Maranzano laid down the patterns that still, with minor modifications, hold today. To stop the killing, said Maranzano, the gangs that then existed would henceforth be recognized as families, each with its own territorial limits. Heading each family would be a boss, or Capo. Under him would be an underboss, or Sottocapo, and beneath the underboss would be any number of lieutenants, or Caporegimes, leading squads of soldiers, or "button men." One advantage of the scheme was the insulation it provided the men at the top. In the ordinary course of events, they would...
Brilliant as Maranzano's plan was, it had one major flaw: Maranzano himself. Like his hero Caesar, Maranzano suffered from overweening ambition. Above the family bosses, there was, under his scheme, to be a Boss of All Bosses, a Capo di Tutti Capi, by the name of Salvatore Maranzano. When several of the family bosses found out that he was plotting to kill them, they worked up an assassination scheme. Five months after he took power, Il Capo di Tutti Capi was murdered. The same day, Sept. 10, 1931, 40 leaders allied with him were slain across the country...
With Maranzano's death, a kind of peace did settle over Cosa Nostra. There have been skirmishes and murders aplenty since then, but never anything like the Castellammarese War. In place of the Capo di Tutti Capi, the mobsters formed a Commission made up of nine to twelve family bosses to guide the organization and settle disputes. While its powers have never been precisely spelled out, the Commission seems to be roughly analogous to the governing body of a loose confederation. It must approve each family's choice of boss, and it can, if it wants to, remove...
...Vito Genovese, 71, vice lord and Mafia chieftain who reputedly directed a multibillion-dollar underworld empire from federal prisons for the past nine years; of heart disease; in Springfield, Mo., Penitentiary. Arriving in the U.S. from Italy in 1913, Genovese proved himself a tough and shifty "soldier" and then "capo" (officer) in the Mafia ranks. Over the years he was indicted 13 times, including a conspiracy-to-murder rap he beat when the state's key witness was found poisoned. In 1957, Genovese assumed the Cosa Nostra throne after the barbershop slaying of rival Albert Anastasia (no indictment returned...