Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set (23 page)

Seeing Schuster being treated like a hero by the press, Anastasia freaked out.

“I can't stand squealers,” Anastasia told one of his killers, Fredrick J. Tenuto. “Hit that guy!”

And Tenuto did just that, gunning dow
n Schuster on a Brooklyn street not far from where Schuster lived.

Realizing that Tenuto was the only person who knew Anastasia had ordered Schuster's murder, Anastasia took care of Tenuto hi
mself, filling Tenuto with lead before Tenuto could spill the beans about Anastasia's orders.

However, word was already out that Anastasia, now called “The Mad Hatter,” had gone overboard and had disobeyed one of the Commission's biggest rules: “We only kill each other.”

As far as Genovese was concerned, Anastasia had made fatal mistake No. 1. From this point on, Genovese began plotting Anastasia's demise.

Besides Costello, one of Anastasia's closest allies was Jewish mobster Meyer Lansky, who for a while, turned a deaf ear to Genovese's pleas to kill Anastasia. Lansky was big into the gambling industry on the island of Cuba. And as all good mob bosses should, Lansky was cutting in the other Commission bosses for a piece of the pie on what he was
making in Cuba.

However, Anastasia wanted more. He approached Lansky about giving him a bigger slice,
and when Lansky refused, Anastasia began plotting to open up his own gambling operation in Cuba.

That was a big miscalculation on Anastasia's part. As Anastasia
knew well, Lansky had agreed to the killing of his childhood friend Bugsy Siegel when it was discovered Siegel had been skimming off the top at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. Money was sacrosanct to Lansky, and Anastasia was threatening to take money out of Lansky's pocket.

That was
fatal mistake No. 2 for Anastasia.

Anastasia's
fatal mistake No. 3 materialized when Genovese found out that Anastasia, in order to induct new made members into his family, was charging proposed members $50,000 apiece for induction into the their honored society. This was a definite no-no in the Mafia. Men had waited years, sometimes even decades, to “get their buttons.” In addition, the rule at the time was that each proposed member had to have been involved in at least one murder to even be considered for induction. Genovese said Anastasia had devalued the entire Mafia organization by taking cash payments from men who were not qualified to be inducted into the “La Cosa Nostra,” as mob informer Joe Valachi later said insiders called their sacred group.

On October 25, 1957, Anastasia's chauffeur parked Anastasia's car in the underground garage of the Park Sheridan Hotel in midtown Manhattan. Instead of waiting inside the garage for his boss to return, the chauffeur decided to take a little stroll out of the building. Anastasia took a little stroll of his own, and he wound up sitting in chair No. 4 in the Park Sheridan Hotel barbershop. Sitting next to Anastasia in chair No. 5 was his old friend Vincent “Jimmy Jerome” Squillante. Anastasia sat with his eyes closed, appearing to have nary a care in
this world.

Soon he would be right.

Suddenly, two men walked into the barbershop. One was carrying a .38-caliber pistol; the other a .32 caliber pistol. One of the men told barbershop owner Arthur Grasso, “Keep your mouth shut if you don't want your head blown off.”

Then the two men commenced firing. One bullet lodged
in the back of Anastasia's head and two shots hit him in the left hand. Another bullet hit him in the back and another blasted through the right side of his hip.

Anastasia staggered to his feet, facing the barbershop mirror. Seeing the reflections of his two killers in the mirror, Anastasia
mistakenly lurched towards the mirror. The killers kept firing until their guns were empty, and Anastasia fell on his back between two barber chairs, quite dead.

Squillante didn't know whether to
shit, or go blind. Seeing Anastasia dead on the floor, Squillante screamed to no one in particular, “Let me out of here!” Then he exited stage right into the lobby of the Park Sheridan Hotel, and he disappeared.

According to manicurist Jean Wineberger, one shooter was a white male, around 40-years-old, 5-feet
-10-inches, with a slight built and a blond pompadour haircut. The second shooter was also a white male, around 45-years-old, stockily built and about 5-feet-7. Wineberger thought the shooters looked Italian, but she said they could have been Jewish too.

No one was officially charged with Anastasia's murder, and about a dozen people over the years have claimed they had been involved in Anastasia's hit. The most likely scenario was that mob boss Joe Profaci was given the hit by the other Commissioner members. Profaci subcontracted the actual shooting to his underling, the unpredictable “Crazy” Joe Gallo, from the Red Hook section of Brooklyn.

Gallo was not shy about taking the credit for the Anastasia hit. Soon after Anastasia was gone, Gallo was talking to crime associate Sidney Slater. Gallo told Slater that he, Sonny Camerone, Ralph Mafrici, Joe “Joe Jelly” Gioelli, and Frank “Punchy” Illiano comprised the Anastasia hit-team.

The buttons on his shirt bursting
with pride, Gallo told Slater, “You can call the five of us the barbershop quintet.”

The most telling comment about Anastasia's murder was uttered by Anastasia's brother “Tough Tony”
Anastasio.

“Tough Tony” told a mob associate, “I ate from the same table as Albert and I came from the same womb. But I know he killed many men and he deserved to die.”

A
ppo, George – The Most Successful Pickpocket in New York City's History.

His father was a
crazed Chinese murderer, and his mother was an Irish alcoholic. As a result of his lack of proper upbringing, George Appo's mission in life was to be the quintessential “good fellow.”

George Appo's definition of the phrase “good fellow,” was a man who was an expert thief, one who would not cooperate with authorities, and one who would absolutely refuse to testify in court, even against his enemies.

Appo wrote in his 99-page autobiography, which was never published, “What constitutes a 'good fellow' in the eyes and estimation of the underworld is a nervy crook, a money getter and a spender. A 'good fellow' valiantly accepts the consequences and punishment of an arrest, even if the crime was committed by another. A 'good fellow' was a member of a fraternity of thieves.”

In the late 1840's, George Appo's father
, Quimbo Appo, ran his own tea business in New York City before he moved to New Haven, Connecticut. In 1855, Quimbo Appo met Catherine Fitzpatrick, an Irish immigrant who was in America only for a few years. They married, and in 1856, Catherine Appo gave birth to two children. The first reportedly died in childbirth, but the second was described as, “A handsome, healthy boy, very sprightly, as white as his mother, a Yankee boy to all appearances, with only the Chinaman's breadth between his eyes.”

Shortly after George Appo was born, his father returned with his family to New York City. After working as a tea tester for several companies, in 1859
Quimbo Appo opened his own tea store on Third Avenue, between Seventh and Eighth Streets.

Quimbo Appo had a violent temper, worsened by his wife's incessant drunkenness. On March 8, 1859, Quimbo Appo came home from work and found his wife, as usual, three sheets to the wind. He began beating Catherine Appo so viciously, the landlady of their building, Mary Fletcher, and two other tenants, Margaret Butler and Mary Gavigan, interceded and tried to stop the beating. Quimbo Appo became so enraged, he pulled out a knife and stabbed Fletcher twice in the chest. Fletcher fell fatally wounded to the floor, screaming, “My God.” Quimbo Appo then stabbed Gavigan in the arm, and Butler in the head.

Quimbo Appo ran to a Chinese boarding house, but he was soon found by the police hiding under a bed. After he was arrested, Quimbo Appo told the police, “Yes, I killed her.

The front page of the
Herald Tribune
read the following day, “Murder in the Fourth Ward.”

Quimbo Appo's trial took place on April 11, 1859. It took the jury less than one hour to reach a guilty verdict. Even though the prosecutor, District Attorney Nelson J. Waterbury, recommended life imprisonment, a month later, Judge Davies sentenced Quimbo Appo to the death penalty. However, Quimbo Appo's lawyer appealed th
e case, and on May 8, 1860, Governor Morgan commuted Quimbo Appo's death sentence, and instead he gave him a 10-year term in the state penitentiary at Sing Sing in Ossining, New York.

However, because of Appo's penchant for violence, and also because he was basically a lunatic
, Quimbo Appo's 10-year bit evolved into a life sentence. As a result of several violent incidents and bizarre behavior, Appo never again became a free man. He died at the Watteawan Hospital for the Criminally Insane on June 23, 1912.

After his father's incarceration, George Appo and his mother returned to their slum apartment on Oliver Street. Soon after, Catherine Appo decided to take her son and his younger sister on the ship
The Golden Gate,
to visit Catherine's brother in San Francisco. However, the ship was caught in a violent storm and sank. Both Appo's mother and his sister perished, but Appo somehow survived.

Appo wrote: “I cannot explain how I was saved, only that a sailor brought me to New York and left me with a very poor family named Allen.”

The Allen family lived in the rear-yard tenement alley “Donovan's Lane,” also called “Murderer's Alley.” The alley was located on a tiny strip of hidden dirt, with the tenements so close together, hardly any daylight could penetrate into the alley.

Appo wrote: “One entrance was on Baxter and the other entrance was on Pearl Street. Poor people of all nationalities lived on this Donovan's Lane. It was a common sight to see every morning at least 6 to 10 drunken men and women sleeping off the effects of the five-cent rum bought at 'Black Mike's,' which was located at 14 Baxter Street. Next door to Mike's was a second-hand clothing store owned by a man named Cohen, who was a fence, where all the crooks used to get rid of their stolen goods. Above Cohen's store was where all the Chinamen of the city lived.
At the time, there were only about 60 Chinamen in all New York City, and the lane was then called Chinatown.”

Donovan's La
ne was in the heart of New York City's worst slum called “The Five Points.” Stuck in this cesspool of humanity, Appo learned the tricks of the trade that enabled him to make a decent living working in a life of crime.

Appo
, at about the age of 10, became part of a group of scavengers, whom the people at that time called street urchins, street Arabs, street rats, or guttersnipes. While Appo was making an honest buck working at low-level jobs, like shining shoes, sweeping sidewalks, and selling newspapers, Appo also perfected his true love: the art of picking pockets.

It was quite easy for a young boy selling newspapers to pick the pocket of an unsuspecting mark. Appo used the guise of the “ne
wspaper dodge”: a ruse in which while he was ostensibly selling newspapers, Appo, with one hand, would wave the newspaper in a customer's face, and then with the other hand he'd pick the victim's pocket.

Appo's pickpocketing mentor was a master craftsman named Jim Caulfield. Caulfield once told a policeman, “If you will stand for a newspaper under your chin, I can take your watch, your watch and chain, and even your socks.”

In the winter of 1871, Appo was caught picking the pocket of a downtown businessman. The businessman grabbed Appo by the neck and handed him off to a passing policeman saying, “This boy just robbed $28 from my vest pocket.”

Appo pleaded guilty before Judge Joseph Dowling. The judge sentenced Appo to an undetermined time in a reform school, which was located on the naval vessel
The
Mercury. The
Mercury
housed 242 boys, who were convicted of such crimes as vagrancy, truancy, and larceny. On board
The Mercury,
boys learned seafaring skills, such as navigation, seamanship, military drills, and making different kinds of rope knots, which were essential in a seafaring life. There were also classes for the boys in reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Yet, life on
The
Mercury w
as anything but idyllic. The food was barely edible. The water was filthy, and contagious germs permeated the ship.

In 1872, the Mercury made a nine-month trip to and from Barbados. Upon returning to Harts Island off the coast of Manhattan, Appo and several other boys escaped from the vessel by lowering themselves by a rope to a rowboat. After they arrived
on shore in downtown Manhattan, Appo hustled back to Donovan's Lane, and he commenced picking pockets again.

In 1874, Appo was caught by a policeman picking the pockets of a Wall Street executive. Appo tried to flee, but a passing detective followed him in hot pursuit, firing his pistol at Appo. Appo was hit once in the stomach, but he managed to escape.

Appo staggered into a building at 300 Pearl Street, and he went to an apartment that was occupied by the Maher family. While Mrs. Maher hid Appo under a bed, she ordered her son to go out in front of the apartment building to see if any policemen were in the area. When the coast was clear, Appo fled the apartment, and he received treatment at St. Luke's hospital from a physician who was friendly with one of Appo's confederates. The bullet in Appo's stomach was removed, and soon Appo was back on the streets doing what he had been doing before. Six months later, Apple was again caught picking pockets. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to two years and six months in Sing Sing prison.