PART FOUR

MAFIA RETURNS TO ITALY

THE ONLY THING ITALIAN

IN ITALIAN AMERICAN GANGSTERS IS THE NAMES

Under President Harry Truman[1] the United States Attorney General James McGrannery[2] [sic], started the implementation of a policy whereby foreign citizens or naturalized American citizens who had distinguished themselves in criminal activities would be expelled and returned to their respective countries of origin. Political and subversive activities were also included in this category. In the past the deportation process had been used rarely and mostly for political reasons rather than for law-and-order purposes. After Eisenhower’s election in 1952, the attorney general started applying much stricter enforcement and compiled a list of hundreds of people targeted for expulsion. The list contained the names of people from all sorts of countries: Stromberg is Russian; Voiler, Rumanian; Chaplin[3] (not exactly a criminal, but nevertheless undesirable because of his unpleasant political views), British. Not surprisingly, several of the undesirable guests on the list were born in Italy and have Italian names but I question whether they can be properly classified as Italiani. As I have often reported in the past, these individuals were brought here as little children and have never even learned a word of decent Italian. They grew up in the mean streets of American cities where they received a basic criminal education; then moved up to middle school in juvenile detention centers, and, finally graduated from the penitentiaries of higher learning such as Sing Sing and other infamous places. Legally, some of these people are still Italian citizens because they never bothered or forgot to request American citizenship. Others, before they could be deported, had to be stripped of American citizenship first. In some cases this process took years: with the help of smart defense lawyers they were able to drag on the legal procedure for eons. In the meantime they would get arrested for other crimes, released on bail, re-arrested and re-released many times. Expelling the big fish takes longer than dispatching the small fish, obviously. The rich and powerful can afford to spend huge amounts of money on lawyers, thus forcing the government to also invest large sums into the process to prove that the citizenship is invalid because of lies on the naturalization applications. For the suspects of politically subversive activities, usually the lie involves denied having been part, either abroad or in the United States, of any organization whose goal is the overthrow of the government itself.[4] For criminal elements, the pretext is lies about previous convictions in the country of origin or a fake date or place of birth. Everybody knows that in the United States it is extremely easy to forge or fabricate identification documents. On the other hand, the punishment for such an act is extremely harsh. If someone wants to get a second wife, all he needs to do is swear that he is not married, but in case the law finds out the consequences are rather severe.

We should also add that in many circumstances Italian criminals had questionable papers not due to forgery or outright cheating but simply because their parents were either ignorant or sloppy. In many cases when they arrived to America they didn’t even think about bringing documents for their children. Once they had settled, rather than starting the long process of requesting birth certificates from the hometown, they quickly learned that all they had to do was find a couple of witnesses willing to give sworn statements about the children’s date and place of birth. Frank Costello’s parents most likely never imagined he would have such a brilliant career in the Neapolitan camorra,[5] at least not at the time when they procured a birth certificate that declared he was born in the United States, which, unfortunately, contradicted another much more reliable birth certificate issued in Italy that showed that he was Italian by birth. For this reason he is now a target for deportation and he is in prison in the U.S., where he would prefer to stay rather than being forced back to Italy. Since the order of deportation is a police act, not a judicial one, it means that the deportation is an administrative decision and is not determined by a trial by jury. Many deportees appeal the measure and the fight can drag on for years. However, some of those who are facing long sentences in the United States accept immediate deportation in exchange for a pardon that allows them to get out of prison. This is the case of Lucky Luciano whose sentence was commuted by the governor of New York[6] in mysterious circumstances and went straight from a prison cell to the ship that took him to Italy.

The United States was unable to get rid of a certain Iccardi[7] [sic], accused in Italy of murdering for political reasons and then robbing a U.S. Army major who, during World War II, worked as intelligence agent and liaison with the Italian Resistance movement. Iccardi is an American citizen and legally cannot be tried in Italy because he was[8] under American jurisdiction when the crime was committed. He also cannot be prosecuted in America because the crime was committed in Italy. In this case the Italian government requested his extradition but the request was denied. Many of these complications stem from the fact that there is no bilateral treaty between the United States and Italy about circumstances of this kind.

In addition to Lucky Luciano, other criminals of Italian descent were deported back to Italy: Frank ”the Cripple” Coppola,[9] Joe “Peachy” Pici, Carmine Tufarelli and a few personal friends of Luciano, such as Gaetano Chiofalo, Nicola Gentile and Raffaele Liguori. Common wisdom in the media and the opinion of the Kefauver commission is that Luciano and the rest of his gang continue to maintain close working relations with the New York Mafia. It has been even hypothesized that they are actually still running the New York operations where suspicions and allegations of their involvement in the traffic of narcotics are rampant. To this regard, the murder of Eugenio Giannini[10] is at least mysterious. A common criminal, while he was held in Rome’s prison he gave information to American authorities about the international drug traffic. It is rather obscure how he managed to come back to New York despite the fact that he was supposed to be still in prison in Italy and, on top of it, at a time when there were active investigations about him in New York. None of the newspapers I read had an explanation. All we know is that he was found dead, killed in typical execution style, with a bullet to the back of his head.

All the deportees tried to fight deportation orders and now are not particularly happy living in Italy where they feel like—and they are—foreigners. They had never been there, they don’t speak the language and they don’t know the customs. In America they appear to be Italian imports but in reality they are the products of America’s tolerance toward immigrants. There is a funny story that illustrates the true feelings of deportees forced to return to Italy. In August 1953 a deportee, Michele Spinella, expelled at age 59, wrote a letter on the stationery of the Igea Grand Hotel in Palermo to the state attorney general who prosecuted him. He mentioned he was thrilled that the officer’s daughter had fallen and broken a leg. “Too bad it happened to her and not to you” he said, and continued warning the father that “those who did me wrong will be punished. Wait and see.”

After conducting many interviews with the deportees, a correspondent of the Herald Tribune observed that the deportations didn’t make anybody happy. The Italian authorities are extremely irritated; public opinion is also irritated and in some cases has even shown sympathy for the deportees; and the deportees are depressed and dream of returning to the United States—even at the cost of ending up in prison to finish their sentences. One of the reasons Giannini cooperated with the American authorities, supposedly, was the filth and the rats he encountered in Rome’s prison. He liked American prisons better.

Giuseppe Lo Curto, who, according to American police was a close friend of Luciano and was deported with him in 1946, returned to America in 1952 and was caught in May of the following year while he was watching television with his friend Muriel McCormack. Found guilty of killing two police officers, his sentence was commuted and he was deported to Italy again in 1964. After his last arrest he admitted he had already come back to the United States three times.

And here comes the question: how did he manage to get back and forth three times? Any honest Italian gentleman gets the chills just thinking about the procedure to get permission to travel America. First, one must obtain a passport from Italian authorities; then comes the application for a visa that entails an investigation by the American consulate, medical records, vaccinations and financial and criminal records. The last step is the interrogation by immigration officials on the ship and more interrogations at the port of arrival. To top it all, there are all sorts of physical barriers, uniformed inspectors, precautions, security measures, documents and translated certificates. Yet, a convicted felon sentenced to life in prison came and went three times. As if this were not enough, he was only caught because someone passed information to the police about his whereabouts in New York. It must be true what they say: laws are made to bother honest people and to sharpen the intelligence of scoundrels.

New York, September 23, 1953