ORGANIZE CRIME IN THE SMALL FRONTIER TOWN OF TUCSON

The very day I arrived in this growing town I had the impression that the only things worth reporting were the warm sun of winter days and the blackbirds that fly around cypresses. Then, in the hotel lobby I picked up a newspaper with the story of a mysterious crime that had taken place a weak earlier and that seemed just perfect to tickle the interest of my readers, probably bored with my observations and commentaries. The newspaper reported the grand jury deposition of the nineteen-year-old Dorothy Janssen, the victim’s widow. In her testimony she revealed some curious facts about the crime that was enthralling the city. She said that the night her husband was killed he had taken about three thousand dollars out of a safe full of cash and had armed himself with three handguns. He put one in his belt, one under his armpit and strapped the third to the lower leg. He left without a word and a little later he was found dead. A trail of blood led from his car, where the body was found, to a nearby apartment complex where a certain Victor Colletti lived. Colletti told the grand jury that he didn’t know Janssen, that he had never seen him before and that at the time of the crime he was in a different location engaged in a conversation with a University of Arizona professor in one of the modern, safe and respectable residential areas of this growing city. The widow also said she ignored what her husband did for a living. She added that she had never questioned her husband about the source of the money. She would see him open the magic box to take out money when she needed cash for their expenses, and that was it. Maybe another wife would have been a bit concerned knowing that her husband kept so much cash at home, but she was unfazed: “He came home every night,” she said. Her parents said the same thing. To them it was enough that “he came back at night.” He must have been a really nice boy. But, on that night he went out and did not returned. Apparently, he had mentioned a few times that he was receiving money from his family in Belgium. The police discovered that he was the one who was sending money abroad to a person with his same last name. From Belgium so far nothing has been learned. The police also discovered that Victor Colletti was the son of one of the Italian Americans who attended the famous meeting in Apalachin, NY, which, according to the police, was a Mafia summit. But Colletti’s alibi was confirmed by the college professor who, by the way, does not have an Italian name. The widow never heard her husband mention Colletti but she remembered the name of another person: Rudy. The name corresponded to that of Rudy Perfecto, or Perfetto, the vice president of a company that owns a chain of Italian restaurants in the city. I visited one of them: it’s like a glass box with a horse-shoe counter where, according to the local custom, one sits to eat spaghetti or pizza. When the police started looking for Rudy they found out that he had left town for an unknown destination four hours after the crime had been committed. Also vanished was a certain Morris Brady who had been previously arrested and sentenced twice for illegal gambling. Gone with them, apparently, are the three thousand dollars that nobody has been able to find anywhere. The grand jury in the meantime received the following information: Rudy Perfetto had been scheduled to appear in front of a different judge to face charges of domestic violence against his pregnant wife. After he had been arrested for that crime, Perfetto had been released on a bail set at three thousand dollars. When he didn’t show up for his hearing, he forfeited the money and an arrest warrant was issued for him as a “fugitive from justice.” Colletti’s landlord, a certain Mr. Grande, declared he had never met Janssen and that the day of the crime he too was out of town. Colletti apparently ran away with the help of Frank Fiore, who was never deposed as witness. Unable to solve the mystery with their own resources, the police asked for help from the FBI —which has jurisdiction across state lines— but so far nothing has emerged. To this day nobody knows how Janssen earned a living. Nobody knows why he was killed or who killed him (with a single shot to the stomach after a struggle). It is also not known whether this episode may be related to other crimes in the city or elsewhere in the United States. The silence of the witnesses is as disturbing as the crime itself. There is a smell of omertà and the general impression is that some of the witnesses have been threatened.

This probably would be a small story if it happened in a large city; if the motive didn't appear so mysterious; if it didn’t suggest analogies with similar small episodes in other American cities and, finally, if the circumstances weren’t so strange. To add to the oddity of the whole situation, we have the unusual marriage of a nineteen-year-old woman with two children who lives comfortably with an abundance of cash whose origin she does not question. This hardly feels like the typical image of the American family to me, although it is an image. But the aspect that really attracted my attention was that all the individuals involved have Italian names.

The more the police investigate the more intricate things look, more than they had appeared at first. Tucson is a very pleasant town with no local organized-crime community. Whatever crime element exists, it has been imported from Mexico following a rapid expansion in recent years. A century ago it was a frontier town where poor Mexicans and European miners (some from Italy’s Piedmont) settled. Cotton farming, copper mining and smuggling were the main industries and the city’s lifeblood. Today the first industry is tourism followed by agriculture and manufacturing. What used to be a little oasis in the middle of the desert has been transformed into a source of wealth by human ingenuity. Tucson sells its desert view the same way Posillipo[1] sells the view of the gulf [of Naples] and its climate.

The origin of Tucson’s fortune is in its climate. Doctors first discovered that the weather was ideal for tuberculosis patients and for people with arthritis: dry and warm in winter, cool during summer nights, with clean air and no wind. Slowly it has become a very desirable location and today at least a third of the tourists that come to visit end up moving here. Although the city has expanded and continues to grow, there is no shortage of space, with wide roads and very little traffic. Each house is surrounded by a garden planted with palms and other local trees that give a picturesque look to the area. It almost feels a bit like an American Egypt. The cost of living so far has not gone up, contrary to what has happened in Florida, for instance; and, based on the information I could gather, it is certainly lower than in other American metropolitan areas. The population is mixed but in general they all share the same desire for peace and quiet. Around a nucleus of tuberculosis patients; retirees and elderly people with savings, a whole community of service providers has sprung up. Real estate investors, developers, builders, business owners, lawyers and manufacturing companies all want to take advantage of the low cost of setting up business here without spoiling the environment. Nearby there are also several military bases, primarily belonging to the Air Force. There are lots of swimming pools, good hotels, a large number of motels and, finally, ranches for people in search of a rustic and simpler life. One drawback is the scarcity of water. Huge pumps work day and night to suck water from the underground to allow plants, animals and people to survive. Everybody is worried that the water is getting harder and harder to reach and it is necessary to drill deeper and deeper into the ground.

The goal of the citizens is to live in peace and quiet and, maybe for the same reason, the criminal underworld has also begun to move here. But the newly arrived gangsters don’t indulge in their preferred activities, such as extortion, prostitution, gambling, and loan sharking. They want a quiet life and enjoy the wealth they accumulated in Chicago or Los Angeles, like dignified retirees with a rap sheet long on arrests but short on convictions. Some bought a ranch, some speculate in real estate and everyone flaunts money. The native population is a bit nervous and even the mayor doesn’t like this trend. The undesirables, unfortunately, are largely Italian, or at least this is what their names suggest.

Although this region is far from the port cities where Italian immigrants settled in mass, there are still a few tens of thousands Italians living in this area. Recently, a new periodical started publication, the Tribuna Italiana, mercifully written almost entirely in English (the few articles in Italian are a graveyard of crimes committed against grammar, syntax and history.) The problem of the arrival of individuals with a checkered past and a history of criminal activities was even discussed on local television by the mayor and the chief of police. Since these people cannot be rejected or sent elsewhere, the local community believes that the best strategy is to follow the recommendations of the Kefauver commission, according to which criminals, like parasites, fear sunlight. Therefore, the worst for members of organized crime is to be exposed, denounced and to have the spotlight pointed directly at them since, in order to operate effectively, they need the cloak of darkness.

In the meantime, so far nothing has come to light about Janssen and the people who disappeared. We know nothing and, chances are, we will never find out about the murder motive and the missing money.

A couple of years ago there was another case of a man who was found dead. His name ended in a vowel and his features suggested he could be from southern Europe. He was in the trunk of a car, nicely folded like a blanket. Nobody knows who put him there. From what we can surmise, it seems evident that this was a conflict among small fish in the crime underworld: maybe it was a dispute on splitting the loot, or maybe someone shortchanged the big bosses of the money they were owed. The big bosses, meanwhile, remain unknown in their comfortable villas; they attend mass with their families; their children enroll in the best private schools and, when the die, they will have grandiose funerals. When the police interrogate them they never know anything and they always have a perfect alibi, confirmed by the people they were with. If, at a previous point in life, they were convicted for felonies, they have already paid the price to society and now they can be free—often on parole. Once upon a time, when Tucson was just an agglomeration of huts surrounded by the desert and the people didn’t have air conditioners, swimming pools and radiators for cold nights, it could happen that a horse thief, captured in the middle of the night, would end up hanging from a tree. If an Indian killed a white, chances are he would end up crucified. Those were tough times, uncivilized times, they say. And it’s true. Progress brings swimming pools, radiators, bank accounts, real estate speculation, people released on parole and also a tiny bit of organized crime.

Tucson, Arizona, January 15, 1961