When it comes to Italian heritage, alongside some Jewish, there is an elephant in the room and that’s the Mafia, aka The Outfit, La Cosa Nostra, The Mob, The Black Hand. Although organized crime isn’t something Italians, namely Sicilians, invented. Some form of it has always existed alongside human civilizations: e.g., the Yakuza of Feudal Japan and the oversimplified Thieves Guild in D&D which probably are derived from historical equivalent in Medieval Europe. The difference Italians brought was its nature and structure. Most accounts say it was derived from how political patronage worked in Sicily, minus the extreme violence.
Anyway, for many years, The Mafia was a poorly kept secret in America because FBI Director J Edgar Hoover claimed it was a myth. Never mind some crime bosses being very public figures most politicians knew not to cross. Hoover’s stance was pretty calculated, he knew The Mafia had an army of skilled lawyers so pinning their usual crimes would be extremely formidable. Getting Capone on tax evasion was just dumb luck too.
This changed with the famous Apalachin meeting in 1957, another accident but not much else was learned until the testimony of Joseph Valachi around 1963. Valachi elaborated on the Mafia’s inner workings, rituals and exposed many of the non-publicly known members. His career in crime wasn’t glamorous. He started out of as the getaway-driver with a robbery operation then became a “soldier” for the Lucchese Family and finished out as a bodyguard in the more famous Genovese Family. After serving 15 years for narcotics is when Valachi decided to cooperate with the Feds. He claimed he was doing the public a service but I’m confident he made a deal to keep his former bosses from having him murdered in prison.
A movie was made of Valachi’s career and aftermath in the early Seventies starring Charles Bronson. It’s called The Valachi Papers and I recall the film was a staple of late-night TV until the expansion of cable.
Henry Hill is a more recognizable figure. His life story was the foundation of Scorsese’s masterpiece Goodfellas. Blows away the overblown Godfather pictures in my opinion, mainly on its basis in truth and you see how unglamorous life really was in the Mafia.
Hill was born to an Irish father and Italian mother and like the narration goes, he aspired to be a mobster as he saw how easy the ones in his neighborhood had it. Given how hard his father worked, Hill probably decided that crime was a better route. He worked his way up from errand boy to arsonist to hijacking trucks full of goods. The latter activity is what Hill is most notorious for through the record-breaking Lufthansa Heist which is a funny name because Hill and his notorious compatriot Jimmy “the Gent” Burke, stole from an Air France shipment. In short, before there were computerized transfers of currency, countries would physically transfer money back from the exchanges made by American tourists and vice versa with foreign nations. What Hill and his crew did was steal about $6 million in cash France had been holding and was returning for an equivalent of francs. What followed in Goodfellas is mostly accurate. The haul was three times bigger than expected and it made Burke paranoid, thus the string of murders set to “Layla.” Hill actually participated in the heist and being close to Burke kept him alive until his narcotics arrest in 1980.
Things were looking bad for Hill. His Mafia boss Paul Vario had an edict against drugs Hill had violated and Burke needed him dead to cover up the Lufthansa Heist. Obviously Hill testified to get into the FBI’s Witness Protection Plan which then led to him providing all the material Nicholas Pileggi used to write Wiseguy, the novel Goodfellas is based on. In the end, Hill could never stop being a criminal, he got expelled from the program for continuing to deal/use drugs, a problem he continued to have until his death in 2012. But what a helluva’ story he lived.
Two cautionary tales illustrating that there is no honor among thieves.