Manhattan Mafia Guide (12 page)

K
ELLY
, P
AUL

315 East 25
^th
Street, 1901; 421 East 119
^th
Street, 1908; 345 East 116
^th
Street, 1910

Born: December 23, 1876, New York City (b. Vaccarelli, Paulo Antonio)

Died: April 1936, New York City

Association: Paul Kelly Association, Morello-Terranovas

Open up any gangster book or land on any relevant webpage, and you will almost inevitably read the story of how Paul Kelly was leader of the Five Points gang and responsible for breeding the likes of Johnny Torrio, Charlie Luciano and Al Capone.

345–53 East 116
^th
Street, the street where Paul Kelly lived by 1910, today.
Courtesy of Shirley Dluginski
.

I would like to go out on a limb here by saying that the common Five Points gang story may not be accurate. After years of painstakingly sifting through original source documents, re-creating the timeline and studying all the prominent characters involved, it is my contention that any connection between Paul Kelly and the Five Pointers has been misidentified or exaggerated. The person with the most enduring effect on what was called the Five Points gang was a boxing manager and saloon owner named Jack Sirocco, who somehow has been reduced to a footnote in gangster history.

I’d also like to suggest that it is unlikely that Capone, Luciano and maybe even Torrio were involved with Paul Kelly in the Five Points gang. No author to my knowledge has ever offered specifics about their relationship with the gang, nor have I seen any documentation to support the claim.

Paul Kelly, who truly was one of the most influential gangsters of the early twentieth century (but for different reasons than folklore portrays), actually organized an entirely separate band of criminals and was in fact a rival of the Five Points gang.

Even though Kelly was not, to anyone’s knowledge, ever a member of La Cosa Nostra, I am including him in this book because he helped open the doors for Mafia control of New York City’s formerly Irish-controlled waterfront and garment unions and worked with the mob in its formative years. In addition, most of what is written about Kelly has been misconstrued, and a large portion of his post–Five Points gang-era life (when he was most influential) is usually glanced over, if ever mentioned at all.

Paul Kelly was born Paulo Vaccarelli in New York City to immigrant parents from the southern Italian city of Potenza. He attended public schools and tried his hand at several odd jobs. By 1894, eighteen-year-old Vaccarelli was working on Pier 29 on the East River as a cargo handler.

A skilled amateur boxer as a youth, Vaccarelli began using the name Paul Kelly and entered the professional ring. On April 4, 1896, in Newark, New Jersey, in one of Kelly’s earliest recorded bouts, he stopped a fellow lightweight named Gus Smith in fifteen seconds of the first round. Later that summer, on August 3, 1896, Kelly suffered a second round TKO at the hands of Tommy Dixon after being hit with a right hand that put the aspiring champ on his back. The referee, perhaps trying to give Kelly a little breather, began to count but stopped at five before dragging Kelly by the arm to his corner. Despite the help of the referee, police entered the ring and shut down the fight.

Regardless of ups and downs in his short boxing career, Kelly gained popularity as a skillful and entertaining pugilist. An October 1897 edition of the
Bridgeport Herald
praised him as one of the “fastest and cleanest little boxers in the business.”
⁶⁸

Boxers were America’s earliest sports heroes, and boxing was completely dominated by the Irish until Jewish and Italian pugilists began emerging from the immigrant slums at the turn of the century. These fighters were celebrated in their immigrant communities, and Kelly took the fullest advantage of his status by organizing his most loyal followers under the banner of the Paul A. Kelly Association (PKA). Like other similar organizations, the PKA, which was established by 1901, held meetings, organized dances and promoted athletic events such as boxing and wrestling. And like other similar associations, it acted as a conduit between criminals and politicians.

Kelly’s boxing career wound down in 1901 as his political aspirations and opportunities grew. It is during this era that Kelly is said to have led the Five Pointers; however, again, it is my contention that this was probably not the case.

The Five Points gang was actually a separate organization made up of members of the Five Points Social Club, which made its way into the headlines by the summer of 1902. Jack Sirocco and Giovanni DeSalvio, a future politician known as “Jimmy Kelly,” were early members of the Five Points gang before becoming rivals by 1905.

The King Boxing Club in 1894. Giovanni “Jimmy Kelly” DeSalvio (bottom left) and Jack Sirocco (bottom right). Daily Independent
[Murphysboro, IL], February 12, 1929
.

The Five Points Social Club was like every other semi-legitimate social or athletic club of the day—essentially a breeding ground for gangs, sort of like what AAA farm teams are for Major League Baseball. These clubs were where gang leaders and politicians alike were cultivated and trained. A 1903
New Outlook
magazine bluntly called the Five Points Social Club a “school for Tammany Hall.”
⁶⁹

The Five Points gang recruited several street gangs to help do their bidding, including at least one that was made up of dedicated Irish, Jewish, Italian and African American
girls
as young as fifteen years old.
⁷⁰

Unlike the Paul Kelly Association, headquarters for members of the Five Pointers were actually in the old Five Points district, such as Sirocco’s own saloon at 126 Park Place and “Nigger” Mike Salter’s Pelham Saloon at 12 Pell Street. Their first official headquarters, as reported in 1902, was 126 White Street. Paul Kelly is not from the Five Points, has no record of a business or home in the district and is well documented to have operated out of several locations in other Lower East Side neighborhoods during that time period.

Paul Kelly’s days as a Lower East Side gang leader were short-lived. The height of his reign only lasted from 1901 to 1905. For most of that time, the Paul Kelly and Five Points gangs appeared to tolerate a working relationship until a rivalry grew in 1905. Throughout this time, the police, press and public at large were well aware of all the characters and entities involved, yet original reports clearly identify the “Paul Kellys” and the “Five Pointers” as two separate organizations.

The often-repeated story of the legendary war between Monk Eastman and “Paul Kelly’s Five Points gang” is actually a marriage of two separate battles. Eastman did indeed skirmish with Paul Kelly in 1904, but his war with the Five Pointers in 1902 was unrelated. Somewhere along the way, the facts have morphed. It may have just been simpler to boil down turn-of-the-century gangsterism to Kelly versus Eastman, Italians versus Jews or East Side versus West Side, as is often portrayed. (It turns out that Monk Eastman was probably not even Jewish.)

The actual story is quite complex. Except for the hard-line Italians and the Chinese, the days of ethnicity-based organized gangsterism were fading by the turn of the twentieth century. There were several multiethnic gangs that made alliances (or went to war) over localized illegal rackets. Men like Monk Eastman, Jack Sirocco, Giovanni DeSalvio, Spanish Louis, Chick Tricker and Max “Kid Twist” Zweifach were virtually equal in power at one time or another. Many gangsters switched sides and loyalties frequently. Gangsterism had become a business. And much like today’s media partnerships and mergers, roles and loyalties often shifted and overlapped.

Kelly may have retrospectively earned credit for all this early century activity because, beyond Monk Eastman, he was certainly the most visible of all gang leaders. But unlike Eastman, Kelly was well spoken and a PR pro. He is often credited with becoming the first gangster “celebrity,” which is not far off the mark, using this status to rapidly expand his social circle and criminal influence. Men like Sirocco and DeSalvio may have felt that Kelly was getting too big to handle and simply decided to make a preemptive move to secure their gangland future when two Five Points gang goons shot Kelly in 1905. Yes, it was the Five Points gang that muscled Paul Kelly out of his Lower East Side rackets.

It should be noted that after the shooting in 1905, it is well documented that Kelly left the petty Lower East Side gang wars behind. At that time, Charlie Luciano and Al Capone were only nine and six years old, respectively. There is little chance either of these men was influenced by Paul Kelly during this time period, unless he coached Little League on the side.

Al Capone mug shot.

When Kelly was ousted from the neighborhood, Sirocco’s Five Pointers and Giovanni DeSalvio’s Jimmy Kelly gang absorbed much of his Lower East Side operations. Sirocco and the Five Points gang lasted almost another decade until about 1914. The term “Five Points gang” was then only referred to retroactively from that point on and was barely mentioned at all until 1923, when papers picked up on the story of how Johnny Torrio and other “former Five Point gang members from New York” were recruited by Chicago mob boss Jim Colosimo in the summer of 1921 to help battle rival gangsters.

None of these articles gives any specifics on Torrio’s relationship with the Five Points gang, nor do later articles referring to Al Capone as a former Five Points gang member provide any details. Most original reports and contemporary biographies say Capone got his start in Brooklyn, where he was born, but glance over his supposed days with the Five Pointers in Lower Manhattan, saying that he was introduced to the gang by cousins.

Before going on to what Paul Kelly actually did accomplish in his criminal career, post–Paul Kelly Association, the following is a condensed timeline of Paul Kelly and Five Points gang activities between 1901 and 1905:

November 8, 1894:
Corrupt assemblyman “Big Tim” Sullivan considers moving his association’s headquarters into 126 White Street, owned by a man named John Brennan. This address (coincidentally?) will become the home of the Five Points Social Club by 1902.

July 23, 1901:
In his last recorded contest, Kelly participates in an illegal prizefight in a blacksmith’s garage at 207 Hester Street, facing bantamweight champion John Cucco, known as “Kid Griffo.” (Cucco was later arrested for the murder of Kelly bodyguard Jack McManus in 1905 but was released.) Just minutes into the fight, police raid the venue, and a riot erupts. Paul Kelly is shot in his side and slightly wounded during the mêlée. Despite attacking police officers, Kelly is only fined five dollars for disorderly conduct.
⁷¹