When you're my age, Lacey says Sutherland told him, and you look back on your life, your pride will not be the size of the estate you are going to leave, but what you have accomplished know that you have an ex tremely lucrative law practice, but when you get to this point the money you didn't make won't seem to matter so much. Here are some of the most notorious instances where organized crime has been blamed for bloodshed in the Garden State: The killing of mobster Dutch Schultz in Newark captured headlines across the country in 1935. To address the elephant in the room, experts and Mafia pundits have joked for years who The Sopranos are really based on, with the DeCavalcante family often described as the obvious answer. But suddenly this all changed. ", Press release and list of defendants (PDF), Indictment filed in Newark federal court (PDF). Sixteen slugs perforated Boiardo's anatomy, and his life was probably saved by his $5,000 diamond belt buckle. ALL of this, however, will represent no final solution, Lacey feels, unless the public can be aroused from apathy. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Advance Local. It is an aluminum file cart, much like the kind used in supermarkets, and it is piled high with some 1,200 pages of white printed transcripts, the product of four years of industrious Federal Bureau of Investigation wiretapping and bugging of the phone and prem ises of Angelo DeCarlo. It destroys the officeholder, and therefore destroys the confidence of the public in its government and representatives. The man who takes these attitudes remains something of a conundrum to many. Prof. Henry S. Ruth, who had been deputy staff director of the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, touched sensitive political nerves when he declared that, in his opinion, Official cor ruption in New Jersey is so bad that organized crime can get almost anything it de sires. Another expert witness assured flabbergasted officials that Professor Ruth was ab solutely right. If our system is to survive, there must also be people who are willing to fight, willing to op pose, this kind of corrup tion. , See the article in its original context from. He was one of the first Mafia bosses to be bugged by the FBIat his headquarters, which was a plumbing and heating company in Kenilworth, New Jersey. Moore commit ted the indiscretion of having his pic ture taken with the Boot and his belt buckle. He was first eligible for parole on August 13, 2013.[11]. The arrests marked the largest federal mob takedown in history. New ark, New Jersey's largest city and only a short truck haul from the thirsting fleshpots of Manhattan, be came virtually the bootleg capital of the Eastern seaboard. The unit would be under the di rection of a Deputy Attorney General and would have the authority to investigate any where in the statea provi sion that should make it more difficult for the underworld to establish its customary fix es on the local and county levels. There are people in the Lucchese family and the DeCavalcante family that could fit [the bill] for the characters. Freed after 16 months at Bordentown, the Boot re turned to his old racket leader ship in the First Ward, and he and Longie evidently agreed to divide Newark between them; the law remained bystander. Martin has since had his release overturned and is serving a life sentence at New Jersey State Prison. Rather, there were 16 separate indictments involving many different cases which officials said all came together at about the same time, including the arrest of the entire leadership of the Colombo family. If Richie the Boot thought that the twoday wassail had made Longie Zwillman his bosom pal, he was soon to be disabused of the notion. Vailsburg is a neighborhood in the city of Newark in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. Its like The Godfatherwho was he based on? N.J. wants out of mob watchdog agency. But he wasn't just a gangster, right? SUCH is the background of Newark. Next, Lacey continues, I was as sured I would have a free hand in selecting staff and in the direction we would go. Here working crime council held daily conclave. Joshua O. Baldwin's homestead. The mobster, Nicholas Virgilio, was angered by the 12- to 15-year sentence he ultimately received, and shot Helfant multiple times as the 51-year-old judge sat with his wife in the cocktail. You mentioned Simone Sam the Plumber Decalvacante. Accetturo was put in charge of the North Jersey faction of the Luccheses, and Taccetta became his top protg. Heres what he had to say. In our schools and col leges, he said, we teach po litical science in terms of defining the powers of vari ous offices and officeholders, the requirements to vote and so forthand all of this is largely irrelevant. Taccetta stands at 5'7" and weighs close to 225 pounds with black hair and brown eyes. In a 53-count superseding indictment, Cernadas, 75, of Union Township; Nunzio LaGrasso, 60, of Florham Park, the Vice President of ILA Local 1478; and Richard Dehmer, 75, of Springfield, were charged with conspiring to extort ILA members on the New Jersey piers, bookmaking, and loansharking. That changed in 1988, as Taccetta declared war on Accetturo, and the North Jersey crew split into two factions. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Advance Local. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Lacey, however, feels that the public good out weighs any possibility of in dividual harm. Richie the Boot's private citadel is a great stone mansion (built in part with slabs his wrecking company crews had torn from the old Newark Post Office when it was demolished) that sits upon a wooded plot of several acres in Livingston, N. J. The Federal prosecutor goes into his opening address, and it quickly becomes apparent that the business with the lectern was just a bit of expert stage managing. There was another consid eration. 1977 and Ralph Perna Junior born c.a. He entered the federal witness protection program after his release from prison. He spit at me and said, You .. Trudy J Pitts-womack. And, capping all, William J. Brennan 3d (the son of the Supreme Court Justice) remarked in a speech in December, 1968, that number of legislators were entirely too comfortable with organized crime. But there were rumors before he died that he had advance-stage Syphilis and that his loose lips led to him getting killed. For one thing, there was still cash in the register when officers arrived. Like the late John Lardiere, Genovese family member Anthony "Little Pussy" Russo had spent time behind bars forrefusing to testify before the State Commission of Investigation. Peter Calabro's 1980 slaying in Saddle River was linked years later to an infamous hitman for the Gambino crime family. SUCH is the scenario. Stunningly, unlike the Mafia Commission Trial, in the case of Taccetta and Accetturo and their associates, all 20 defendants were acquitted on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act predicates, but as the trial was overdue, rivalry developed in the Jersey Crew.[4]. Franciotti, a prison acquaintence of DiFrisco's, feared Potcher was going to inform law enforcement about his drug dealing activities, DiFrisco told investigators. Eight shots in the head. Taccetta is the son of Angelo Taccetta, a self-employed building materials supplier, who law enforcement agencies reputed was a "made man" in the Lucchese crime family. So the vital question raised by the current Newark probe is this: Will the public be stirred from its decadeslong apathy by the flood of indict ments and the insidethemob revelations? Of course, the DeCavalcante family was caught on an FBI wiretap comparing themselves and certain people in their crime family to Sopranos characters, so I think the DeCavalcantes being a smaller hometown, New Jersey Mafia family kind of mirrors The Sopranos in that sense. After the conviction of Anthony Corallo in 1986, and the murder of his protg Anthony "Buddy" Luongo, Brooklyn, New York faction leaders Vittorio "Vic" Amuso and Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso chose themselves as the new Lucchese bosses. It is true that there always have been and always will be people who have frailties and who yield to temptation, but that is only part of the story. He was identified as a career criminal offender and an associate of other criminal offenders. Michael Salvatore Taccetta (born September 16, 1947), also known as "Mad Dog," is a high-ranking member of the Lucchese crime family, who controlled the family's New Jersey faction in the 1980s.[1]. A longtime mob associate with reputed ties to both the Genovese family in New Jersey and the Patriarcha family in New England, Lardiere known as "Johnny Coca-Cola" was gunned down in the parking lot of a motel in Bridgewater early Easter morning in 1977 by a killer who sped off in a waiting car, authorities said at the time. In the blackest pit of the Depression, he reached into his bootleg millions and paid the cost of running a soup kitchen for the im poverished in Newark's Military Park. https://www.nytimes.com/1970/02/01/archives/the-people-v-the-mob-or-who-rules-new-jersey-the-people-v-the-mob.html. 1969, John Perna born c.a. If the younger genera tion and the university groups finally come to the terminal point in their think ing that any government that is so corrupted isn't worthy of survivalthen we who have done nothing to stop this, we who have con sented to the existence of such a system by our inaction, will have only ourselves to blame. 1972. The new administration was Michael Taccetta as the boss of faction, Michael Perna as the underboss and Martin Taccetta as the official consigliere. First, he explains, there is one theory that a U. S. Attorney should simply prosecute the cases handed to him by Federal investigative agencies; Lacey thinks a U. S. Attorney should be aggressive and actively develop cases if the situation seems to warrant it. The indictment was the result of a four-year investigation. (The Star-Ledger). Jan. 20, 2011 -- More than 800 federal, state and local agents arrested over 100 suspected mobsters today from New York City to Italy in the single largest operation against the mob in the . Is that just a function of the media concentration in the city? The jurors are brought in. Charlie "Bug" Workman was convicted of the fatal shooting in 1941 on what the Trenton Evening Times reported was largely the testimony of two former mob enforcers. Cernadas, referred to on surveillance tapes as "The Bull," was accused last month of shaking down his members under threats of violence in what was described as a long-running racketeering operation tied to the Genovese crime family. The takedowns and court proceedings that followed played out across the New York metropolitan region like something out of the film Goodfellas, replete with the kind of colorful, made-for-tabloid names that included guys known as Mush, Nooch, Big Mike, Baby Fat Larry, Junior Lollipops, The Claw and Fat Dennis. Nicknamed "Jimmy Sinatra," Craparotta had been a "prominent gambling operative" with connections to the Lucchese crime family, investigators said. In that case, Lacey says now, I found conditions shockingand I hadn't con sidered myself at all naive. Nine yearslater, four bullets ensured Russo then the target of a state grand jury probe would never say a word to anyone. Robert Buccino, a New Jersey organized crime expert, said that Taccetta and Ricciardi ran with a gang that thought nothing of "beating up someone 10 to 1". He was kind of a well-known character on the nightclub scene in New York and New Jersey. The suspiciously stuffed ballot boxes were impounded but somehow managed to flit past bemused guards and out of the City Hall basement as if they had been carried on a witch's broomstick. The DeCarlo tapes cover everything from the mundane to what they were watching on TV down to business. When he reaches an especially dra matic point, he rests his right elbow on a corner of the lectern, his lower arm and pointed finger stabbing at the jury. Municipal Judge Edwin Helfant was on trial in Trenton on case-fixing allegations when he was gunned down in the cocktail lounge of Atlantic City's Flamingo Hotel in 1978. On Jan. 7, 1963, according to the F.B.I. Essex County Prosecutor Joseph P. Lordi began an 18month grand jury investigation, and state legis lative hearings were held. Pictures of a fallen Schultz in a Newark hospital were widely circulated in the national press. It corrupts and it destroys. No one has ever been charged in the case. What made him so remarkable, even iconic? 'Guys like that don't get wiped out in a day.' I don't think they know what they're letting themselves in for, he's a dynamo, said one of his law partners when Lacey was appointed. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Rutgers University and a graduate of the Cornell Law School (where he was editor of the Law Review), a lieutenant com mander in the Navy, a former city councilman in Glen Ridge, Lacey had moved at a furious pace to the top of his profes sion and was considered an expert on cases involving aerial and medical law. Helfant, a municipal judge in Somers Point, became a target of the Philadelphia crime family in 1978 after he failed to deliver on a bribe he accepted to arrange a light sentence for a mob associate. Garden State Gangland describes a cornucopia of corrupted businessmen, mobsters, unions, and politicians, many of whom have since passed away, but who nonetheless left a legacy that resulted in the state being labeled "the most corrupt in the country." 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