Giannola, Salvatore (1887-1919)

Born Terrasini, Sicily, June 2, 1887.
Killed Detroit, MI, Oct. 2, 1919.

Sam Giannola succeeded as boss of a Detroit-area Mafia following the assassination of his brother Tony. Sam Giannola's brief reign included a continuation of his brother's gang wars followed by an apparent effort to establish peace. Sam was murdered nine months after Tony.

During Tony's reign, Sam appeared to be the organization's most active racketeer and top enforcer. Sam was arrested in 1911 for stealing a quantity of olive oil and wine from the D&C steamship line, misrepresenting himself at the D&C warehouse as the legitimate owner of the commodities. Law enforcement found the stolen oil and wine at a Ford City grocery run by Sam and Tony. The D&C line refused to prosecute.

During the 1910s, Sam ensured that the Giannolas had a monopoly on produce in the Wyandotte area by terrorizing competitors. When a fruit merchant named Cohen was stubborn about remaining in business, he found that his horse was badly burned by acid. Cohen filed charges against Sam Giannola but then suddenly disappeared.

Harry Paul and Morris Harris were shot to death in 1916 after opening a competing store. Sam Giannola first agreed to buy out their business and put $200 down on a sale price of $7,000 but then failed to make required payments. The sellers confronted Giannola, insisting he pay the remaining $6,800. Soon after, Paul and Harris were found dead. Sam was arrested but soon released due to a lack of evidence against him.

Around the time of brother Tony's death in January 1919, the Giannolas appeared to be preparing to move out of the Detroit area. One report suggested they intended to open a macaroni factory in Cincinnati. But Sam remained too long after burying his brother.

In February, he was nearly killed in a shooting that took the life of his brother-in-law Pasquale Danni. Sam apparently figured that rival John Vitale was behind that shooting. At the time of Danni's funeral, a drive-by shooting but numerous holes in the front of a Vitale grocery in Wyandotte. Vitale was subsequently jailed for opening on police officers investigating the incident, believing them to be Giannola gunmen.

When Vitale visitors - Vito Renda, Salvatore Evola and Vitale's teenage son Joseph - showed up at county jail on February 26, they were met by two Giannola men. Renda was shot more than 20 times. Before he died, he told authorities that his killer was Sam Giannola. Evola and Joseph Vitale were wounded but recovered.

In the early afternoon of October 2, Sam Giannola visited a bank at Russell Street and Monroe Avenue to cash a $200 check. As he exited the building, gunmen opened fire on him. Giannola managed to get back inside the bank but then fell dead with more than two dozen bullet wounds in his body.

See also:

• Detroit Crime Bosses - Mafiahistory.us.

Sources:

• Salvatore Giannola Death Certificate, State of Michigan Department of State Division of Vital Statistics, reg. no. 9756, Oct. 2, 1919.
• "Arrested often fined twice, is Sam's record," Detroit Free Press, Oct. 3, 1919, p. 3.
• "Auto bandits kill two men," Lansing MI State Journal, Nov. 16, 1916, p. 1.
• "Fruit dealer arrested," Detroit Free Press, Oct. 15, 1911, p. 16.
• "Gunmen murder 'Tony' Giannola, fuedist leader," Detroit Free Press, Jan. 4, 1919, p. 1.
• "Men in disguise of women shoot down Italians," Port Huron MI Times-Herald, Nov. 16, 1916, p. 1.
• "Murdered men suspected as German spies," Detroit Free Press, Nov. 17, 1916, p. 1.
• "Trial of 4 for Peter Bosco murder begun," Detroit Free Press, Dec. 30, 1919, p. B1.
• "Sam Giannola, feudist, slain; shot 28 times," Detroit Free Press, Oct. 3, 1919, p. 1.
• "Victim of feud gasps name of Sam Giannola," Detroit Free Press, Feb. 27, 1919, p. 1
• "Vitale, Giannola foe, builds alibi in advance," Detroit Free Press, Oct. 3, 1919, p. 3.
• "Wyandotte murder suspect released," Lansing MI State Journal, Nov. 23, 1916, p. 13.
• Murray, Riley, "Sicilian gang guns blazed in city feud," Detroit Free Press, Aug. 27, 1950, p. E8.
• Rice, Dennis, "Salvatore Giannola," Find A Grave, findagrave.com, memorial no. 7814145, Sept. 1, 2003, accessed Nov. 24, 1018.

Giannola, Antonino (1878-1919)

Born Terrasini, Sicily, Nov. 15, 1878.
Killed Detroit, MI, Jan. 3, 1919.

Tony Giannola was an early Mafia boss in the Detroit area. He and his younger brother Salvatore "Sam" built a produce monopoly in Wyandotte, extorted payments from successful Italian businessmen in Wyandotte and Detroit and engaged in a series of gang wars that eventually claimed both of their lives.

First noted in Ford City in the early 1900s, Tony Giannola established a successful produce business there. He was later connected with grocery and macaroni businesses. He also built up a Mafia organization that included many of the later leaders of Detroit's underworld.

Around 1910, Giannola pushed into Detroit's East Side business district, conducting Black Hand extortion rackets in that area. Local businessmen embraced rival underworld leader Vito Adamo as their protector and organized a vigilante White Hand Society. Giannola and Adamo fought each other for years. The Giannola brothers were arrested after a September 1913 exchange of gunfire with rivals that seriously wounded a passerby. They were charged with minor offenses and released.

The Giannola Gang lost some of its more powerful members when Tony Giannola and his business partner Peter Bosco parted ways. Giannola apparently believed that Bosco was cheating him. When Bosco was murdered in October 1918, Bosco lieutenant John Vitale and Bosco's entire underworld faction broke with the Giannolas.

Bosco followers were believed to be behind the Jan. 3, 1919, murder of Tony Giannola. That evening, Giannola was visiting the family of a just-murdered friend. As he approached the house, a gunman emerged from a dark alley and shot him in the head and body. Police found the dead Mafia boss outside of 189 Rivard Street.

See also:

• Detroit Crime Bosses - Mafiahistory.us.

Sources:

• Tony Giannola Death Certificate, State of Michigan Department of State Division of Vital Statistics, reg. no. 205, Jan. 3, 1919.
• "Alleged assassins sued by innocent bystander," Detroit Free Press, May 14, 1915, p. 5.
• "Gunmen murder 'Tony' Giannola, fuedist leader," Detroit Free Press, Jan. 4, 1919, p. 1.
• "Murdered men suspected as German spies," Detroit Free Press, Nov. 17, 1916, p. 1.
• "Trial of 4 for Peter Bosco murder begun," Detroit Free Press, Dec. 30, 1919, p. B1.
• Rice, Dennis, "Antonio Giannola, Jr.," Find A Grave, findagrave.com, memorial no. 7814142, Sept. 1, 2003, accessed Nov. 24, 2018.
• Murray, Riley, "Sicilian gang guns blazed in city feud," Detroit Free Press, Aug. 27, 1950, p. E8.

Iamascia, Danny (1902-1931)

Born New York, NY, c. 1902

Killed Manhattan, NY, June 18, 1931.

Daniel J. Iamascia worked for the Bronx organizations of Ciro "The Artichoke King" Terranova and Arthur "Dutch Schultz" Flegenheimer.

Daniel Iamascia was born in New York in 1902 to parents Giuseppe and Rosina Charamia Iamascia. His parents, born in the Province of Campobasso, Italy, crossed the Atlantic in the 1890s and settled in New York. (Giuseppe was born Feb. 10, 1867, in Macchia Valfortore. Rosina was born Nov. 15, 1881, in Pietracatella.)

He had a number of arrests on his record, but always got off the hook. He was arrested as a youth for assault and battery in Queens in 1918 but then released when the victim suddenly disappeared. He was apprehended on a rape charge in the Bronx in 1919 and then released. Police caught him on a burglary charge in the Bronx later that year, but again he was released.
He was finally convicted of unlawful entry in the Bronx in 1920, but his prison sentence was suspended. Two burglary cases in 1920 and 1924 and a robbery charge in 1922 never went to trial.

Iamascia was among several known criminals in attendance at a Dec. 7, 1929, banquet thrown for Magistrate Albert Vitale at the Roman Gardens in the Bronx. That banquet was held up by seven gunmen but all loot - including a police detective's handgun - was returned shortly after Vitale got on the telephone. The event proved a connection between organized crime and the courts and led to state-sponsored investigations of local New York City government. Vitale was booted off the bench, and eventually Mayor Jimmy Walker was forced to resign.

Daniel continued to reside with his family at 2313 Belmont Avenue in the Bronx. In addition to Daniel and his parents, the home also included his sisters Frances, Catherine and Theresa, his brothers Anthony and Andrew, and Anthony's wife Olga. Two other siblings, Nicholas and Maria, lived elsewhere. On April 15, 1930, Iamascia's father Giuseppe died.

When Joseph "the Baker" Catania was shot to death in the Bronx on Feb. 3, 1931, his close friends Iamascia and Daniel DeStefano were picked up by police as material witnesses. That killing, part of the New York Mafia's Castellammarese War, remained unsolved by police.

Serving as Schultz's primary bodyguard during his war with Vince "Mad Dog" Coll (a former member of the Schultz mob), Iamascia met his end on June 18, 1931. He and Schultz stepped out of a Schultz apartment building at Fifth Avenue and 102nd Street to observe two men apparently hiding in the shadows. Believing them to be Coll gunmen, Schultz and Iamascia opened fire. The shadowy figures reportedly turned out to be police detectives who shot Iamascia in front of 1212 Fifth Avenue and apprehended Schultz.
Iamascia was rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital nearby with gunshot wounds to his abdomen and right arm. He quickly succumbed to his wounds.

Iamascia's years of loyal service and his death apparently at the hands of the police earned him one of the most spectacular funerals New York has ever seen. There were 125 cars of mourners and 35 cars of flowers during the procession of his silver coffin (valued by some at as much as $20,000) from his mother Rosina Iamascia's Belmont Avenue home, to Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church (Belmont and 187th Street) and then to St. Raymond's Cemetery. Enormous floral displays were provided by Schultz (a large wreath of lillies) and Terranova (a 15-foot-high floral gate of lillies, roses and carnations). Iamascia was temporarily interred at the private mausoleum of undertaker Daniel Scocozzo, it was reported, while his own $25,000 mausoleum was erected. Ultimately, Iamascia was laid to rest in a fairly ordinary grave in St. Raymond's.

Coppola, Michael (1900-1966)

Born Fisciano, Salerno, Italy, July 29, 1900.
Died Oct. 1, 1966.

"Trigger Mike" Coppola became a major figure in the New York Mafia upon the death of Joe Masseria in April of 1931. A highly regarded gunman to that point, Coppola was given control of many of the Bronx and East Harlem rackets formerly controlled by Ciro Terranova, who slipped into retirement.

Coppola entered the U.S. as a child. In 1918, he became a citizen upon his father's naturalization.[1]

As a young man in East Harlem, Coppola involved himself in hold-ups. In 1922, he reportedly was convicted of grand larceny and served a prison sentence at Sing Sing. Upon his release from prison in March 1925, he involved himself in gambling and bootlegging.[2] The gangster allies of his youth included Tommy Lucchese, Joseph Stracci and Joseph Rao. Coppola appears to have become a significant member of Charlie Luciano's inner circle, based in downtown Manhattan, later in the decade.[3]

Coppola is believed to have been involved in some way in the armed robbery of Magistrate Vitale's Bronx banquet in 1929 - a banquet attended by Terranova and a number of his underworld and political allies. That robbery and the subsequent recovery of all items taken exposed city government connections with the mob. Following the robbery, attendee John "Zacci" Savino was found to be in possession of a letter referring to Vitale and the holdup. The letter was signed "M.C."[4]

In spring 1930, Coppola was noted traveling from Cuba to Florida in the company of Luciano ally Meyer Lansky.[5] Authorities suspected Coppola in the late 1930s of involvement in the smuggling of narcotics into the United States.[6]

New York Police believed he had a role in setting up the November 1946 beating death of Republican political organizer Joseph Scottoriggio in East Harlem. Scottoriggio had been actively supporting Frederick Bryan against underworld-favored Congressman Vito Marcantonio. Coppola's old friend Joey Rao and later Coppola himself were taken into custody as a material witness following the killing. Early in 1947, authorities sought Coppola's wife Doris and her father David L. Lehmann, believing they knew something about the Scottoriggio killing. By summer, Doris was located and brought before a grand jury.[7] Early the next year, Doris, then twenty-seven, died during childbirth at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York.[8] Some insist that Michael Coppola arranged her death in order to eliminate a witness to the Scottoriggio slaying.

Coppola's rackets included a monopoly on coin-operating vending and gaming machines. He was also involved in numbers gambling, sports bookmaking, loansharking, labor racketeering and perhaps narcotics. His territory included areas in Brooklyn, Bronx, and Manhattan, as well as Miami Beach, Florida. Miami Beach became his home around 1950.[9] Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno oversaw some operations for Coppola.[10]

An odd gangland connection was uncovered in February 1955. Authorities investigating Buffalo Mafioso Joseph DiCarlo learned that DiCarlo had recently hosted a wedding reception for his daughter said to have cost $35,000. DiCarlo had avoided paying a Prohibition Era government fine by pleading poverty, and investigators believed the wedding proved DiCarlo was lying. It was discovered, however, that the bills for the lavish wedding reception had been sent not to DiCarlo but to Michael Coppola.[11]

In the early 1960s, Coppola was indicted for evading income taxes during the years 1956-59. According to prosecutors, he owed a total of $385,494 in addition to penalties of up to $40,000. While there were no financial records of Coppola's dealings, the IRS calculated his taxes by approximating his net worth. In 1962, Coppola was sentenced to a year in prison, four years' probation and a $40,000 fine. He served nine months of his prison term and was released in late November.[12] By 1964, the government claimed that Coppola's tax debt had risen to almost a million dollars. A settlement of $400,000 was reached in May of 1964.

In 1963, informant Joseph Valachi identified Coppola as a leading figure in the U.S. Mafia.

Notes

1.  Coppola's date of birth is not entirely certain. Doerner, Fred W. Jr., "Crime conditions in the Miami Division," FBI report, file no. , NARA record no. 124-10208-10000, Nov. 15, 1963, p. 55; Walsh, Edward T. Jr., "Paul Joseph Correale," FBI report, file no. 92-4264-9, NARA record no. 124-90066-10151, Sept. 26, 1960, p. 13.
2.  FBI interview with Coppola, Jan. 14, 1939.
3.  Doerner, Fred W. Jr., p. 55; FBI interview with Coppola, Jan. 14, 1939.
4.  "Vitale guests granted writ; hit '3d degree,'" Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Dec. 31, 1929, p. 1.
5.  Passenger manifest of S.S. Gov. Cobb, departed Havana, Cuba, on April 2, 1930, arrived Key West, Florida, April 2, 1930.
6.  Walsh, Edward T. Jr., p. 13.
7.  "Mrs. Coppola still gone," New York Times, Jan. 14, 1947, p. 27; "Beaten party aide visited by Dewey," New York Times, Nov. 7, 1946, p. 15; "Election captain dies of beating; Dewey and police pledge capture," New York Times, Nov. 12, 1946, p. 1; "Scottoriggio death still is unsolved," New York Times, Nov. 13, 1946, p. 1; "Mrs. Coppola held in election killing," New York Times, July 16, 1947, p. 1; Turkus, Burton B., and Sid Feder, Murder, Inc.: The Story of the Syndicate, reprint of 1951 edition, New York: Da Capo Press, 1992, p. 129.
8.  "Mrs. Coppola dies after baby is born," New York Times, March 19, 1948, p. 48; New York City Death Index, certificate no. 6862, March 18, 1948; "5,000 at Coppola rites," New York Times, March 23, 1948, p. 27.
9.  Doerner, Fred W. Jr., p. 55.
10.  Walsh, Edward T. Jr., p. 13, 15; SAC Miami, "Miami winter season 1958-1959," FBI memorandum to Director, File no. 62-75147-29-742, NARA record no. 124-90110-10015, p. 7.
11.  "Some of DiCarlo party bills reported going to 'Trigger,'" Buffalo Courier Express, Feb. 17, 1955.
12.  Doerner, Fred W. Jr., p. 55.

Catania, Joseph "Baker" (1901-1931)

Born Palermo, Sicily, 1901.

Killed Bronx, NY, Feb. 3, 1931.

"Joe the Baker" Catania, a relative of the Terranova family, rose to prominence within the Bronx-East Harlem Mafia of in the 1920s and was a key figure in the Castellammarese War of 1930-31. There appears to be no significant family relationship between Catania and "Joe the Grocer" Catania, who was murdered in Brooklyn in 1902.

Sons of Antonio Catania, who ran a Manhattan bakery, Joseph and his brother James were both known by the "Baker" nickname. The Catania family entered the U.S. gradually between 1900 and 1903. The family initially settled in the Arthur Avenue neighborhood of the Bronx, then moved short distances to Hughes Avenue and then to Bassford Avenue.

Catania was arrested numerous times for assault, burglary and disorderly conduct in the mid-1920s, but the charges were repeatedly dropped. In 1928, Catania was one of seven known criminals in attendance at a Bronx banquet held in honor of Magistrate Vitale. The presence of the hoodlums led to Vitale's downfall and helped bring an end to the Jimmy Walker Administration in New York City.

By the outbreak of the Castellammarese War, around 1930, Catania was a major force in the Bronx-East Harlem underworld. Evidence of his importance: When peace feelers were sent by Catania's superior, Mafia boss of bosses Giuseppe Masseria, to Castellammarese rebel leader Salvatore Maranzano, Maranzano stated that he could not end the war yet because Joe Baker still lived. It is often said that Catania earned Maranzano's hatred by stealing his liquor shipments. However, it seems at least as likely that Catania stood in the way of Maranzano allies in the Bronx.

The 29-year-old Baker was shot six times in the head and body by a Maranzano hit squad at 11:45 a.m. on Feb. 3, 1931, in front of 647 Crescent Avenue in the Bronx. He was rushed to Fordham Hospital, where he died.

With Ciro Terranova and his allies picking up much of the tab, Catania was given perhaps the most elaborate gangland funeral in New York history. The cost was estimated at $40,000, including a $15,000 solid bronze coffin (the cost of the coffin is obviously overstated). Forty cars were needed to carry the floral displays, the largest of which - a 13-foot-high creation bearing the words "Our Pal" - was purchased by Terranova.

Terranova was apparently deeply affected by the loss of Catania (his wife's nephew) as well as a trusted aide and friend. At the funeral home, Terranova reportedly put his hand on Catania's coffin and swore to avenge his death. Maranzano spies learned of this and attempted unsuccessfully to corner and eliminate Terranova at that location.