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An Unincorporated Division of The Anonymous Anything Society    July 17, 20-13


INSTALLMENT TWO OF "THE FBI BOMBER"

Mafia - the word originally descended from Arabic. In the Sicilian - Italian dialect, it signified "Perfection in boldness and bravery."   

    Joe Bonanno, (1905-2002), was the founder of one of the nation's most enduring Mafia families. It remains a $10-million dollar a year enterprise, and is still identified with his name, although in order to save his life, he said he gave up control of the rackets in a truce with other Eastern gang members after disappearing the day before he was to have testified before a grand jury in New York. He reappeared 19 months later. 

    He claimed that he had talked his way out of a kidnapping by a divestiture of his holdings in criminal enterprises and the resignation of himself and son Bill on "The Commission" or ruling body of the syndicate. 

    Joe Senior had once chaired the organization of disparate outlaw gangs, set up in 1957 by "Lucky" Luciano in a grand conclave of Italian gangsters that took place in Apalachin, New York.    

    His son Bill (a name he much preferred to that given at birth: Salvatore), was sent to Arizona due to a childhood malignancy, a dreadful mastoid infection that he eventually overcame. His father and mother came to visit him and soon established a second home in Tucson. Bill attended a Tucson high school and the University of Arizona, prior to his introduction to the rackets. 

    The Boss's son was never accepted by the New York Mob members and once narrowly escaped execution in a trap set by jealous contenders for his seat at the "family" table.  

    It is a double irony that Sicilian-born Giuseppe Carlo Bonanno should ostracize his eldest son Salvatore for a year for breaking Omerta, the Sicilian code of silence, and to survive all of that which his son described in a book and appearances on television - and then should die of natural causes (a heart attack) at age 97.

    We should be so lucky.

    As far as I know, Joe Bonnano, The Elder, never bought into the hard-drug trade. This did not go down well with the younger Masiofi coming of age in the 1970s.  

    The three "Godfather" films directed by Francis Ford Coppola, as well as the hit TV Series, "The Sopranos," add to the mystique, the legend if you prefer, of "The Mob."

    As far as I know, Joe Bonnano never bought into the hard-drug trade. He contended that he always opposed it. 

    My title of this essay is a misnomer, according to Coppola. When asked if he based the character of Don Vito Corleone on the elder Bonnano, the Film Director stated instead that the character played by Marlon Brando was a composite of several gang leaders, but some of the characteristics were those of the elder Bonanno.  

    The greatest irony occurred when Bonanno's attorneys successful pled for his non-appearances in court, claiming that he had inherited some sort of cardiac malfunction, for it came to pass that both of Joe's sons died suddenly and early of fatal heart attacks - Joseph Junior in 2005, Bill in 2008. 

    Joe Bonnano Senior was not only a "Man of Honor," he was also a Man of Caution. Unlike the other Dons, he lived conservatively and very carefully.  When he visited his dentist, the office was cleared of all other patients and a bodyguard observed the procedures closely. 

    It was later found that he had an almost impregnable "safe room," constructed in his midtown Tucson home. He used pay telephones - a tactical error, since the FBI used long-range audio frequency dishes and amplifiers to listen in. In one, he advised Bill how to use a small-caliber pistol at the base of the brain when executing recalcitrant opponents. 

    As far as it's known, Bill never went that far. Rather, he preferred to write books with the assistance of ghost writers and helped produce TV programs about his life in the Mafia. His father once refused to talk to Bill for a year.  

    The authorities almost failed in putting Joe Senior behind bars, in fact, he was never convicted of a crime while he was a crime boss. After he supposedly "retired," he was charged with obstructing justice for not appearing before grand juries and was saved by fleeing to Canada (They deported him back to the U.S.) and by the alleged "kidnapping." For reasons not yet clear to the writer, those charges were dropped. 

    It was not until 1980, when he was 75, was he convicted of obstructing justice. A jury found him guilty of attempting to block a grand jury investigation looking into allegations of money laundering though businesses owned by his sons. Their father served one year behind bars, then was again imprisoned for 14 months in 1985, at age 80, for refusing to testify in a Manhattan, New York grand jury investigation of the Mafia gang lords operating in the New York City area. No one ever called Joe Bonnano a snitch. 

    The name lives on.

    As late as middle of this month (July, 2013), an indictment by the Manhattan District Attorney accuses several top associates of the present New York that bears the Bonanno name of involvement in loan sharking, illicit internet gambling, good old-fashioned extortion and selling "knock-off" versions of popular pharmaceuticals, such as Oxycodone and Viagra. This mob reputedly has firm ties with New York City Unions, including Teamsters Local 917, whose president, Nicolas Bernhard, was recently accused of soliciting union members to work in its criminal enterprises. 

    There is no evidence that Joe Bonanno's grandchildren or great grandchildren are engaged in unlawful activities. They are however, beneficiaries of a vast empire of legal investments, including a 3,300-acre cotton and cattle ranch in the Marana, Arizona (Tucson suburb) area, and other substantial pieces of real estate throughout North America.

    Other members of the co-operative syndicate, "Joe Banannas" (a sobriquet he despised) helped form, with the cooperation as the likes of "Lucky" Luciano, Frank Costello, Carlo Gambino, Frank Gotti and Tomaso Lucchese - who lived flamboyant lives and died in public assassinations, in prison deportation to foreign soil. 

    Mr. Bonanno shunned all of this. He quietly invested in dairy farms in upstate New York, cheese factories in Wisconsin and Canada and in vast real estate holdings in metropolitan New York and Arizona. 

    There is one meeting with a lawman that Joe Bonanno willingly attended. After a string of bombings had taken place at several Tucson businesses he owned and properties in Tucson belonging to retired Detroit gangster Pietro (Peter) Licavoli, Senior, now also deceased (1984), Tucson Police Chief, Bernard L. "Barney" Garmire, called both to a meeting in a small neighborhood park in Tucson. Both denied any part in a Mafia War or animosity toward the other. Garmire told me that he accepted that they were close confidants and partners of a sort in several enterprises. Moreover, their children were close friends. 

    He was impressed by protestations from both that the last thing they sought was a criminal enterprise in Tucson; that they both wished for a safe haven in which to raise their children. 

    Barney posed the question, "Who did they think was responsible for the bombings?"

    "It's the government. The Feds," both claimed.

     Bonnano said we went out one morning to get his newspaper and found an unexploded bundle of dynamite under his car.

    It was difficult for Barney to believe that anyone, government agent or otherwise, could be so inept.

To be continued next Wednesday, July 24th, 2013

73,

-Phil Richardson, Observer and Story Teller.

 

Phil's current post can be read at:  http://www.imrightagain.com

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