The Old Los Angeles Family

I get asked about the Los Angeles family all the time. Every time I’m asked, I think about how the past will soon be lost forever. The men who took part in the family during its heyday are dying off.

Peter J Milano, the longtime boss who ran the family for 28 years, died in 2012 a free man.

He was an important link to the past for the family.  He not only had an uncle who was boss of the Cleveland family, but his father was also under boss for many years.  Anthony Milano, his father moved the family to Beverly Hills, California in the late 1930’s.  Pete became his own man in Los Angeles.  He worked with Mickey Cohen who had spent some time in Cleveland.

Pete was soon working with the Los Angeles family.  Hollywood and writers who have no idea what they are talking about like to portray Mickey Cohen as a boss.  The guy was a bookie that did a lot of business.  You can read Jimmy Fratianno’s book “The Last Mafioso” which is very detailed and accurate because the author used FBI 302’s to set dates and places.

Jimmy Fratianno was only the second made guy to flip, so it is a great look inside the former world.

You can learn a lot about Jack Dragna the boss and his attempts to kill Mickey Cohen.  To set the record straight, the LA Family murdered Cohen's men and friends and not one thing happened to any LA family member.  

Bugsy Siegel has become another larger than life figure.  He was no boss, he was sent out to the west coast to watch over the Trans American racing service.  Bugsy was a kind of franchisee who controlled it in California and Nevada.  He would later be gunned down in the Beverly Hills home of his girlfriend Virginia Hill.  

The fact that Mickey Cohen went to the Roosevelt hotel with pistols looking for Bugsy can tell you a lot.  Mickey was not on the inside, he was not in the know.  In recent years there has been a few books written by some who claim someone in their family killed Bugsy.  It's a fantasy, because once he was dead guys moved right into the Flamingo before it was even on the news.  The mafia would have been looking for his killer considering how much Meyer Lansky had at the time.

Jack Dragna was the boss of Los Angeles and he was not crawling for anyone.

The decline of the family began shortly after the death of Jack Dragna when Frank DeSimone became the boss.  Johnny Roselli, who had begun as an Chicago Outfit guy, was seen as the logical boss, but he was incarcerated at the time.  DeSimone held a vote within the family and he was voted in as boss.  The fact that he never got a vote from some of the capos who were locked up didn't matter.  DeSimone would be caught at the Apalachin mafia conference in upstate New York along with his underboss.  This brought a lot of heat to DeSimone’s life.  He was a lawyer who was not known to be a criminal until the arrest.

Desimone’s father, Rosario, had been the boss of Los Angeles and his nephew Tommy DeSimone would become famous as “Tommy Two Guns” in Goodfellas.

Nick Licata would be the next boss.  He was very well connected in Detroit and with the other Midwest families.  

Louie Gelfuso used to work as a bartender at Licata’s bar and he used to talk about Licata in glowing terms.

Licata owned apartment buildings and bars across Los Angeles.  Licata also was a huge bookmaker and loan shark who did business in the black neighborhoods.

Louie Gelfuso was also friendly with another man and his brothers who were a power in Los Angeles.  That man was Joe Sica and he ran his criminal empire from the San Fernando Valley.

He controlled the rackets from the Mexican border to Northern California.  He would mentor many young up and coming mafioso including “the Cheeseman” Carmen DiNunzio, acting boss of the New England family.

The stories about Joe Sica and his brothers are priceless. There are very few today that even know who he was in the Los Angeles underworld.

We are now back to Dominic Brooklier who I wrote about last week. The death of Anthony Brooklier means we will never get the story.

I wish I knew Pete Milano well enough to hear stories about the old days.

Carmen Milano was a throwback to the past.  He was a lawyer who became a gangster who was better suited for working with the big families on intricate money making schemes.  I used to see him at the deli in Las Vegas when I was with Steve Cino or Jimmy Caci.  He loved to talk about the old days in Cleveland. The sad thing is that when he died, someone from Las Vegas called me and told me that he died.  I called a Las Vegas reporter and he did not know anything about it.  I called the morgue and they asked if I knew next of kin, I gave them Pete’s name and number.

Jimmy Caci was another story. I was close to Jimmy and he knew so many guys all over it was great. One day he would tell a story of working with a guy from the Purple Gang to blow a safe, the next day a story of driving dynamite to Rochester New York during a vending machine war.  

Jimmy was close with mobsters all over the country.

The family is gone except for a few who moved away.  It is in the hands of Sicilians and the history here is lost.

For a deeper look at Los Angeles mafia history, I suggest reading Anthony Fiato’s book “The Animal in Hollywood” in order to understand the Los Angeles family after Jimmy Fratianno.

My book Breakshot will fill in a few gaps up into the 2000s.

Rudy Giuliani

Rudolph W. Giuliani has been in the news lately because of his support of Donald Trump.  Most people know him as the mayor of New York City during the  9-11-2001 attacks by Islamic terrorists.

Rudy, as he is known, was the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

He would become famous for prosecuting Wall Street insiders Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken for insider trading.

One of the more famous cases was the Mafia Commission case.

The Mafia Commission was formed by Charles “Lucky” Luciano and the other heads of families in 1931.  They did it to stop the fight over who would be the boss of bosses.  The Commission approved who was boss of a family and set rules.  They also controlled a concrete club that took a peice of any building project that used more than two million in concrete.  

It was called the concrete club.  When a new boss took over the family they would send word to the Commission.  In 1981 when the boss of the Los Angeles family went away, Pete Milano became acting boss.  In 1984 he assumed the boss position and named his brother Carmen underboss. Carmen had worked in Cleveland as a lawyer and he knew all the guys in New York.  Carmen went to New York with some other Los Angeles guys to let the Commission know that Pete was the boss.  They approved it.  

Every boss had the same power, but the commission would settle disagreements between families. They also ordered murders like Bugsy Siegel, who stole money while building the Flamingo casino in Las Vegas.

They had a few moments when they were exposed.  One of those was the Apalachin meeting in 1957 that was raided by the local police.  

Rudy decided to crack down on the Mafia leadership instead of just settling for a few of the lower ranking members.  He used the RICO Act to bring them down.  The FBI had been able to infiltrate the Bonanno family with Donnie Brasco aka Special Agent Joseph Pistone.  He saw the civil war in the family from the ground level.  

They also were able to bug Paul Castellano, the boss of the Gambino family's home.  They bugged the Palma Boys Social Club where the front boss of the Genovese family, Fat Tony Salerno, held court every day.  They were able to bug the boss of the Lucchese family, Tony “Ducks” Corallo, in the car he was driven in everyday.  

They struck gold.  Fat Tony was heard talking to a soldier from the Cleveland family and another from the Buffalo New York family about settling a dispute over the boss of Buffalo.  He used the words, “The Commission.”

They also were able to place a bug in Jerry Langella, the acting boss of the Colombo family’s favorite table in Casa Storta in Brooklyn.  That bug gave them enough evidence to bug Colombo Ralph Scopo’s Union office where he discussed the Concrete Club business.

Rudy even subpoenaed retired boss Joe Bonanno who write the book, “A Man of Honor” about his life.  They were going to use what he wrote about the formation of the Commission to take down the Commission.   

The took down eleven defendants who would all be charged in the Commission's case.

He won a conviction against the eight defendants who made it to the end of the trial.

Rudy would retire from the US Attorney’s Office with a record of 4,152 convictions and only 25 verdicts were reversed on appeal.

As a US Attorney, Rudy Giuliani cleaned up Wall Street and brought down the Commission. As a result he had a large impact on the mafia family’s strength across the US.

Johnny Roselli

Johnny Roselli

In late 1947 fifty men were gathered inside a winery on South Figueroa Street in Los Angeles.  They were all standing in a circle around a long table.  There was a revolver and a dagger crossed at the head of the table.  Johnny Roselli then led in five men.  Three of the five will go on to become the Boss of the family one day. On this day in 1947 they were initiated into the Los Angeles family of La Cosa Nostra or the Mafia. The Boss at that table was Jack Dragna, but he respected Roselli, and even though he was part of the Outfit, on that particular day he was in LA.

Johnny Roselli had just gotten out of prison for his role in the extortion of Hollywood Studios.  He only served 4 years of a 10 year sentence (thanks to the high level Chicago bribery scandal covered in last week’s post).  He was working at Eagle Lion Studios but in reality he was doing much more.  The men in that room owned and controlled Trucking, Garment Center Businesses, Produce and Fruit delivery, Vast tracks of land in Rancho Cucomonga.  Roselli would soon be splitting his time between Los Angeles and Las Vegas because The Outfit was about to step it up.  They needed somebody who could mix in both the underworld and the business world, and Roselli fit the bill.  

The story of the Flamingo and Bugsy Siegal is well known to most people but I’ll go over it here.  Bugsy oversaw the planning and building of the Flamingo for the New York Families. They would recruit those that ran casinos for Meyer Lansky and the Mafia in other places like Kentucky and Havana to help run it. Dave Berman and Gus Greenbaum were heavily involved in the casino.  Gus was close to the Outfit but most of these guys were closer to Lansky.  The Hotel cost over 6 million dollars and lost money when it first opened.  It was a well-known fact that Bugsy was skimming money the whole time.  When Bugsy was killed in Beverly Hills, Gus Greenbaum took over.  

Sam Giancana became the boss of the Outfit in the mid 1950's and he was very close to Roselli.  Chicago had a huge bank of cash via the Teamsters so they would move to buying and building Casinos.  Roselli  would soon start a number of side businesses some that controlled the parking lots of Casinos, others that brought Broadway shows and other shows to Las Vegas.  He also started a production company, a company that sold ice machines to casinos and a company that was building a marina at Lake Mead.

Roselli was a huge earner and very important to The Outfit in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, so its amazing that Hollywood continues to churn out tall tales.  Roselli had been directly under Capone when he was boss and in Los Angeles he worked closely with Jack Dragna but after Jack died he would stay with The Outfit and the new boss Sam Giancana who he had known way back when Sam was a driver for Jack McGurn aka Machine Gun Jack.

The Mafia was riding high.  They had casinos in Cuba and Las Vegas and they had even branched out to Great Britain.  But there was trouble brewing.  

The trouble was Fidel Castro and his revolutionary army which would soon take over Cuba.   They closed the casinos and took over the hotels.  They imprisoned mafia men like Santo Trafficante and kept his cash.  The Mafia saw this happen and they were furious.  It seemed the US Government was on the same page and wanted to take down Castro.

This would not be the first or the last time the US Government would work with the Mafia.  They worked with Lucky Luciano during World War Two to secure the docks from sabotage and then again when the Allies landed in Sicily.  They would use Greg Scarpa to find the dead Civil Rights workers bodies in Mississippi during the civil rights movement.

Sam Giancana

The CIA regularly uses "cut outs" or a go between they trust to take on assignments that they cannot or do not want to be involved.  Robert Maheu, a former FBI Counter Espionage Agent who was then in private practice knew Johnny Roselli, so when the CIA approached him to find people to assassinate Fidel Castro, he thought of Roselli.  He approached Roselli and they met at the Brown Derby in Los Angeles where Maheu was claiming to represent a number of US Corporations that wanted Castro out. Roselli saw the value in the plan so he went to his boss Sam Giancana who reached out for Santo Traficante Jr in Florida and they agreed to meet with Maheu in Florida.

They would meet at the Fontainebleau in Miami with Roselli useing the name John Rawlsten when he first met with Maheu and CIA Colonel Sheffield Edwards Director of security.  Roselli then introduced two men to the two CIA agents. Sam Gold (Sam Giancana) and Joe (Santo Trificante).  They worked out a deal where the CIA would provide cash and poison pills to Cuban Exiles and other contacts to assassinate Castro.  They may have tried or they may have just kept the cash, but they would meet again at the Plaza Hotel in New York.  The Bay of Pigs disaster made the CIA step up their operations but nothing would ever come of this plan.  Roselli would later talk about Santo Traficante possibly being a double agent for Castro and sabotaging their efforts.

I have about 8,000 FBI papers on Roselli but they really pick up in 1961 and they are all marked with the San Diego FBI Office on them. This is probably because they had turned Frank Bomp in San Diego who had a grudge against Roselli.  Bomp thought that he should have gotten something from the Frontier Hotel in las Vegas because he did some work way back but it was instead Roselli who got the gift shop and some skim.  Frank Bomp knew about Roselli's secret birth name and the FBI was soon onto Roselli.  By the end of the 60's Roselli was headed for a downfall.

Roselli had been sponsored by Frank Sinatra for membership in the Friars Club.  Once there, he discovered a cheating scam going on.  They held card games in an upstairs room and these were high stakes games with some very wealthy men playing.  Some other members had drilled holes in the ceiling and they could see the hands played and they would send signals to their players to hold or fold.  It was very lucrative and soon Roselli was getting a cut.  They even had a Palm Springs Town Home that they also rigged with peepholes.  The FBI found out about this and served search warrants.  They found the peepholes and arrested everyone including Roselli. They then decided they wanted to turn Roselli so they approached him on the street in Beverly Hills on Dayton and Rodeo.  The Agents had a picture of a 4 year old Roseli and his mother which they showed him along with a paper showing his real name, Fillipo Sacco, on it. I am sure they unnerved him and the Agents told him they wanted to meet him in the valley in a week which he agreed to before they left. Rosselli went right to his lawyer's office who called the FBI Office and told them Roselli would only talk to the Agents with his lawyer in his office.  Then Rosselli made a couple of calls and made a trip to New York to meet with Colonel Sheffield Edwards about his name.

 

The FBI was watching this because they had Roselli cold because now he was an illegal Alien and could be deported.  Roselli told the FBI to kick rocks and they charged him for failing to register as an alien on top of the cheating scandal. The CIA sent a memo to the FBI asking them to take it easy on Roselli, because they would be in a bad position if the truth about the plot to kill Castro.  He would get four years for the Friars Club and another year for the Immigration charges.  Tony Accardo had now taken over again as the boss because Sam Giancana was on the lam so he demoted Roselli from his Las Vegas position until he was finished with his cases.  

Santo Trafficante

Roselli served his time and moved to Plantation, Florida where he lived in his sister’s guest house.  He made trips to LA where he met with Jimmy Frattiano and told him about the Senate Select Committee that had called him as a witness for the Castro plot.  Santo Trafficante was afraid his name would come up but it already had so he was delusional.

Jimmy had heard that Johnny was a marked man and told him in no uncertain terms, which Roselli blew off.  

July 28, 1976 Roselli left his sisters home to run errands around town and never came back.  They knew something was wrong right away.  Twelve days prior he had lunch with Santo Traficante.  He was to meet again but nobody ever called for him again.  

On August 9, 1976 some fisherman in Dumfoundling Bay saw a strange 55 gallon oil drum with holes punched in it floating on the surface.  They pulled it in and saw what they thought was a human arm through the holes, so they called the police.  It would prove to be JohnnyRoselli.

Johnny Roselli was without a doubt one of the biggest Mafioso in Los Angeles for decades but his name is never brought up.  

Rest In Peace Johnny.