A wise man once said, “I'm gonna make him
an offer he can't refuse.”
You know what that meant don’t you?
Agree to the offer, or die.
It’s a line actually taken from the movie
“The Godfather”, spoken by the fictional
mob boss Michael Corleone.
It might have been a made up line, but make
no mistake, the mafia have made many people
offers they can’t refuse.
This organized crime syndicate born in Sicily,
Italy, was relentless.
At times those mobsters could be cruel, brutal,
so at home with violence and killing you might
think the majority of the members had a bad
case of psychopathy.
Today we’ll show you just how brutal these
people were, and perhaps at the end you can
tell us if you think you have what it takes
to be part of the Italian-American mafia.
Killing the Killer of all Killers
We’ll start with what you might call the
typical hit.
The man who got taken out was actually one
of the most feared members ever in the Italian
mafia.
He killed maybe thousands of people according
to the FBI, which would make him one the deadliest
mobsters of all time.
We should say that some people think ‘thousands’
is an exaggeration, but let’s just say he
didn’t shy away from an assassination.
His name was Albert Anastasia, and although
he might have had quite a beautiful surname,
on the street he was sometimes called the
Mad Hatter or the Lord High Executioner, due
to his murderous temper and remarkable body
count.
He became one of the bosses in a contract
killing outfit we mentioned in our last mafia
show.
That outfit was simply called “Murder, Inc.”
so you couldn’t say there was much confusion
regarding what their line of business was.
After the Gambino family boss was murdered
this guy Anastasia became a boss himself.
It’s widely believed he actually ordered
the hit.
But you’ve all heard that expression, “Heavy
is the head that wears the crown,” and the
Mad Hatter didn’t just lose the crown but
he almost lost his head.
In October of 1957 he went to get a haircut
and shave, and it didn’t end well.
Men walked into the barbers and opened fire
while he was in the chair.
He then jumped from the chair and went for
the men, but they just kept firing until his
body was riddled with bullets.
You can actually see the aftermath photo online.
A certified psycho
If you have seen that photo we just talked
about, the one taken after the murder of mob
boss Carmine Galante is far worse.
The body looks like it’s been clawed at
by zombies.
When alive he was described as having dead-eyes,
of being so cold you could barely look at
him.
In fact, one of the detectives that investigated
mafia bosses once said the only mobster ever
to scare him was this guy.
With good reason, too, because he felt not
even a pang of guilt hurting or killing people.
In fact, he enjoyed it.
When he was in prison in 1931 a psychologist
diagnosed him with having psychopathic personality
disorder, so that explains a lot.
Standing at just 5 feet 5 inches (167.6cm),
he might have also had little man syndrome.
In 1974 after a boss was sent to prison Galante
became the boss himself.
The thing was, this wasn’t approved by the
roundtable of bosses called The Commission.
They took umbrage with this guy just planting
himself in the big chair, and weren’t too
keen on him trying to control the business
of narcotics and not sharing the winnings
with the Five Families.
Suffice to say, when you rankle the bosses
there is usually a debt to pay.
That debt is usually your life.
In 1979 Galante was having a bite to eat at
a place called Joe and Mary’s Italian-American
Restaurant in Brooklyn.
He didn’t finish that meal and was gunned
down.
If you look closely at the aftermath photo
you can see a cigar in his mouth.
That was put there by the killers.
The reason was Galante loved his cigars, and
as we said in our last Mafia show, murderous
mobsters would often do something to the corpse
in some way to make a point.
In this case, here’s your last smoke Carmine.
Let this be a warning to anyone else getting
on the wrong side of the commission.
Citizen Sleuth
There is a saying that crime doesn’t pay.
But being a good citizen and telling on criminals
doesn’t usually pay, either.
We will explain.
There was man called Willie Sutton, who was
actually one of America’s most prolific
bank robbers over a 40 year period.
He spent much of his life imprisoned, but
he managed to escape three times.
One time he was locked up was because a salesman
called Arnold Schuster spotted him on a subway
train in New York in 1952.
He was sure he’d seen that face before and
so followed him, realizing it was the infamous
bank robber.
He called the cops and Sutton was arrested.
What does this have to do with the mafia,
Sutton was Irish-American after all?
Well, as the story goes Mr. Schuster got his
five minutes of fame for his good deed, appearing
on lots of TV shows and doing interviews.
He was a working class American hero, helping
to take down one of the bad guys.
Ok, so you remember the man called The Mad
Hatter?
Understandably, the Mad Hatter didn’t much
like good citizens and one day he was watching
TV when he saw Schuster.
He then saw him again, and again.
It bugged him how much the public loved this
man.
He allegedly said this to a friend, “I can't
stand squealers!
Hit that guy!”
Not long after and Schuster was found outside
his home on the floor.
He’d been shot twice in the groin and once
in each of his eyes.
That’s more mafia symbolism for you.
It turned out that the killer was a mobster
called Frederick "Angel of Death" Tenuto,
and he had once escaped from prison with Sutton.
But years later during a court hearing another
mafia boss said the order to kill Schuster
was given by Albert ‘The Mad Hatter’ Anastasia.
Tenuto was also later presumed killed after
he went missing, but we don’t know why.
It’s happening today, too
Before you start to think the mafia is old
news and this kind of thing doesn’t happen
these days, listen to this.
In 2019, a mafia boss called Frank Cali was
gunned down right outside his house in New
York.
This might not have happened for a while,
but when a boss gets hit it usually means
one thing: WAR.
You can’t take out a boss without someone
getting upset, and analysts fear that the
killing of Mr. Cali could be the start of
a feud.
According to those analysts the Mafia is alive
and well and business is still going on, though
perhaps not booming and they try very hard
these days stay away from the spotlight.
That means no flashy looking guys walking
into clubs with cigar in mouth looking like
they own the place, or at least will have
the power to burn down the place if they feel
like it.
They still have rackets, they still traffic
humans, guns, drugs, and they still have their
fingers in a lot of underground pies.
As one analyst put it like this, “The economy
is bigger now, there's more to be had, the
pie is bigger.”
Now apparently the Mafia work with Mexican
drug cartels, having become part of a massive
distribution network that floods the world
with drugs.
That analyst said if you’re buying drugs
in Europe, it could have been the American
mafia that got them there for you.
We just don’t hear the word Mafia much these
days.
Entertaining Capone
The mafia boss called Al Capone needs no introduction
because he’s probably the most famous Italian-American
mobster of all time.
The man sometimes called Scarface is a difficult
character to pin down.
Sometimes he could show he had a heart of
gold, and other times he was incredibly ruthless.
This story is about a comedian and singer
called Joe E. Lewis.
He wooed the crowds at Chicago's famous Green
Mill Night Club, a club that was partly owned
by Capone’s lieutenant Jack ‘Machine Gun"
McGurn.
Because of this it was famous for being a
mobster hangout.
Capone had his own booth there.
The things is, when you kind of work for a
mob-run club you don’t stop working until
they allow you to.
When you’ve been made an offer you can’t
refuse, you really can’t refuse.
This was the problem with Lewis.
When his contract with the Green Mill was
about to end he thought he could just go and
work for another club called the New Rendez-Vous
Café.
Well, he was given a stern warning from McGurn
that taking that job would lead to blood and
tears.
The New Rendez-Vous Café was partly-owned
by another outfit, so losing one his best
entertainers to another mob kind of irked
McGurn.
To say the least he wasn’t keen on the idea
of Lewis switching jobs.
Lewis took the job anyway.
In 1927 he was attacked in a hotel and his
throat was sliced the whole way around and
tongue severed.
He was then left for dead, but somehow he
didn’t bleed out and was taken to hospital.
It took many years of therapy for him to be
able to talk right again, and when he could
talk he had a deep, croaky voice.
After that he became even more popular as
a comedian and even got into the movies.
Word on the street was that Capone never wanted
that excessive hit, even though he wanted
to keep Lewis at his club.
It was Jack McGurn that went over the top,
and Capone compensated Lewis with $10,000,
about $150,000 in today’s cash.
Capone didn’t do anything to McGurn, though.
Lewis wasn’t that important.
McGurn gets his, too
If you learn anything about the mafia when
reading the stories it is that violence begets
violence and the vicious blood-soaked circle
just keeps turning.
As we said, Jack McGurn was Capone’s right-hand
man.
He played an important part in the outfit
when Capone was filling his pockets with gold
during the prohibition days.
But as we’ve demonstrated, Jack had a bit
of a bad temper.
He’d had a pretty rough upbringing, being
a boxer and also allegedly taking out the
killers who had assassinated his own father.
Violence begets violence you see.
It’s also said McGurn could have been one
of the orchestrator’s of the St. Valentine's
Day Massacre, but that’s not been proven.
He was a wanted man, and when law enforcement
put together their famous “Public Enemies”
list he was the fourth guy on the list.
But life didn’t end well for him, and at
some point he was abandoned by the mob and
left totally broke.
In February 1936, a day after the sixth anniversary
of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, he
went bowling for the last time.
He was gunned down by three masked men.
They left a little poem next to his body.
It read, “You've lost your job, you've lost
your dough, your jewels and cars and handsome
houses.
But things could still be worse you know...
At least you haven't lost your trousers!”
This kind of exemplifies just how cold these
guys could be, but we guess you could say
they were creative.
No one really knows who killed him, but speculation
led to it being other mobsters who didn’t
like the fact that McGurn bragged a lot about
the business and so was a liability.
It might not have been the Italian Mafia,
though, and could have been someone from the
Irish-American mob.
Payback perhaps, just as McGurn had avenged
his father.
A Hands off Kind of Murder
We expect many of you have heard of the movie,
“Donnie Brasco” which tells the true story
of how an FBI agent managed to get in with
a mafia crew run by Dominick "Sonny Black"
Napolitano by pretending to be a crook himself.
For years that agent gave a lot of evidence
to the FBI but in time the FBI would reveal
to Napolitano that he had had an agent in
his crew for years.
The operation ended because the agent had
been ordered to do a hit, and that was a bridge
too far for the FBI.
They told him the truth will come out, and
so the best thing to do would be to go into
the witness protection program.
This was not what Napolitano wanted to do,
being renowned as a proud and ruthless executioner
feared by many.
The agent once said about him, “He was a
vicious killer, he would kill anybody in a
heartbeat if you crossed him.”
Despite that, the agent and him actually got
along really well.
In fact, it later came out that Napolitano
was ok with what he knew would happen, saying
he had no bad feelings about the agent.
All in a day’s work.
That’s how it went.
The mafia bosses were of course quite peeved
with him for not discovering that he’d had
a cop on his team for six years.
On August 17, 1981, Napolitano was asked to
come to a “meeting”.
It would take place in a basement, and we
all know what happens in the basements of
Italian-American mobsters.
Not much laundry and DIY, that’s for sure.
He was well aware he was going to be killed
and so gave his jewelry and his apartment
keys to his favorite bartender.
He told that man, please take care of my pigeons.
Apparently he loved those birds.
When he got to the basement a bunch of mobsters
did the deed.
As for the birds, witnesses said the day after
the mobster went missing someone got rid of
them.
A mob boss later said he died like a man.
When his body was much later discovered it
was found that the hands had been cut-off.
In a mafia court case it was later revealed
this was a warning to any other mob boss that
when you invite a man into your crew you should
always be properly introduced by someone else.
Don’t shake hands with just anyone.
As for the agent, when he found out about
the hit he said, “My intention in all of
this was to put people in jail, not get them
killed.”
So, do you think you would have liked to be
in the Italian-American mafia?
Tell us in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other video
Most Horrific Crimes - The Italian Mafia Pt.
1.
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t
forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time.
