Joseph Bruno's Blog, page 68

Joe Bruno on the Mob – NYPD Cop William Masso Called a "Wiseguy."

 

Just because a cop is a relative of a known organized crime figure, doesn't make that cop a mobbed-up guy himself.

 

Officer William Masso is one of the eight cops recently arrested on gum smuggling charges in New York City, after the FBI ran a sting allegedly duping the eight cops into thinking that a gun transaction was about to take place. Maybe Masso, who is described as the "ringleader" of this gang of cops, is guilty, and maybe he's not guilty. That's besides the point.

 

Now through innuendo and a family association with a well-know organized crime figure, Masso reputation is being sullied with accusations that he is a Mafia associate himself. The FBI said in the article below that they have secretly made recordings of Masso in which they said he "sounded like a wiseguy."

 

Well, how exactly does a wiseguy sound?

 

Some wiseguys speak better English than some FBI agents. It's a stretch to say that just because a person sounds like someone the FBI portrays as wiseguy-sounding, makes that person an actual wiseguy. (Get it?)

 

Then we have the guilt-by-association charge.

 

Alphonse "Allie Shades" Malangone is a mob figure who people in law enforcement say is a relative of Masso's, but they don't say exactly how he is a relative.

 

Is Malangone Masso's cousin?

 

Is one of the two men married to the others cousin?

 

Not that it really matters anyway, because it's all irrelevant.

 

When Malangone was about to be sentenced more than 15 years ago, Masso allegedly wrote the presiding judge a letter asking him to "go easy on his relative."

 

Well, who wouldn't do this for a relative? I know I would. Wouldn't you?

 

Is it such a crime to write a letter asking for leniency for a relative, or even for a good friend?

 

Look, there are a lot of bad guys out there and the FBI is doing a good job putting them behind bars. But this extraneous bull crap is not necessary.

 

Try Masso on the merits of his case. That's all the FBI needs to do, and should do.

 

How Masso speaks, and the social quality of his relatives, are not pertinent to the case of gun smuggling, of which Masso is charged.

 

Period.

 

 

You can see the article below at:

 

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/10/2...

 

Officer William Masso, Accused In Smuggling Ring, Described As Wiseguy

October 26, 2011 8:52 PM

 

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — The arrests of eight current and former NYPD officers on gun smuggling charges has rocked the department. The alleged ringleader of the operation, William Masso, is a veteran of the force.

 

Unlike most of his co-defendants who dashed past the cameras, Masso walked with a slight swagger as members of the media snapped pictures and asked questions. He didn't run at all and practically posed.

 

While Masso's alleged actions may have been for the sake of his family, it also could have been because Masso knows the code of the streets better than most — he's a cop with family in the mob.

 

Robert Morgenthau, the legendary former Manhattan District Attorney put a relative of Masso's, Alphonse "Allie Shades" Malangone, away.

 

"He was the captain of the Genovese family, represented the Genovese interest in the fish market as well as in the carting industry," Morgenthau told CBS 2′s Pablo Guzman.

 

When "Allie Shades" was about to be sentenced, Masso wrote the judge a letter asking him to go easy on his relative. "Allie Shades" got out of prison a couple of years ago after serving a 15-year sentence.

 

The FBI said they picked up Masso and secretly made recordings in which they said he sounded like a wiseguy.

 

For example, Masso is allegedly heard on a tape putting a crew together saying:

 

"(I can get a) retired cop, active cop, ex-cop, bad guy…one guy seven-foot tall, with muscles out to here…You want a guy to beat the [expletive] out of somebody, we got that. We got cops with vests and guns."

 

Now, all the investigators are comparing notes. To see if there's more about Masso. That they should know.

 

 

Joe Bruno on the Mob – Italian Mob Boss Gets Back at Bulger

 

They say one good turn deserves another. Well, now New England mob boss Michael Deluca is doing to Whitey Bulger what Bulger did to the Mafia in Boston for many years.

 

It is estimated that Whitey Bulger had been an informant for the FBI dating back to the late 1960′s. During the 70′s and 80′s, and up till 1995 when Bulger went on the lam, Bulger gave the FBI information on his Italian Mafia cronies, especially the Angiulo brothers, Jerry and Frank, who ruled North Boston. This information helped put the Angiulo brothers and several other Mafia figures in the can for a very long time. For the most part, Bulger kept from the Feds the activities of his Irish cronies in the Winter Hill Mob. But that changed later, when Bulger started dishing the dirt on them too.

 

Now a new bombshell has been dropped, when Michelle McPhee of Newschannel 5 in Boston broke the news that Rhode Island Mob boss Robert Deluca, who was indicted in 1995 with Bulger, Steven "The Rifleman" Flemmi, James "Jimmy the Bear" Martorano and Francis "Cadillac Frank" Salemme in a "plethora of racketeering charges," has gone over to Team America too, and has agreed to be the "star witness" at Bulger's upcoming trial.

 

While Bulger was on the lam living a life of luxury, Deluca pleaded guilty to six counts of conspiracy, racketeering and interference with commerce by threats of violence charges and served 34 months in a federal prison. According to law enforcement sources, DeLuca was losing his Mafia power in Rhode Island, as the power base shifted back to Boston.

 

According to McPhee's article, "Deluca has vanished from his base on Federal Hill and has not been seen in the North End. His North Providence home has been sold and his wife and two kids have vanished"

 

"We saw the moving truck there and they were gone,'' said Grace Olsen, Deluca's next-door neighbor."

 

So now Bulger, who is facing numerous charges, including 19 murder raps, is on the opposite end of the ratting business. And it's Deluca, his former pal, who is sticking it to Bulger, and sticking it to him good.

 

Don't you just love it when there's a happy ending to a sordid story?

 

 

 

 

You can read the article below at:

 

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/white...

 

 

Mafia Boss Betrays Oath, Will Testify Against Bulger

Robert DeLuca Co-Operating With FBI, Sources Say

 

POSTED: 12:14 pm EST November 13, 2011

UPDATED: 5:46 am EST November 14, 2011

BOSTON — In a Mafia induction ceremony in 1989, Robert Deluca drew blood from his trigger finger as fellow alleged mobsters burned a Madonna prayer card and vowed to never betray the mob's code of silence.

 

"As burn this Saint, so will burn my soul. I enter into this organization alive, and I will have to get out dead,'' Deluca recited in Italian as he became a "made man" in the mob at the Medford initiation that was secretly bugged by the FBI.

 

 

Newscenter 5 has learned that Deluca, who is a reputed capo in the New England crime family, has betrayed the blood oath.

 

He has agreed to cooperate with the FBI and act as a star witness in the James "Whitey" Bulger case, several sources said.

 

In 1995, DeLuca was indicted along with Bulger, Steven "The Rifleman" Flemmi, James "Jimmy the Bear" Martorano and Francis "Cadillac Frank" Salemme in a plethora of racketeering charges.

 

But, by the time Deluca and his codefendants were arrested, Whitey Bulger was gone. He was tipped off to the pending indictment and went on the lam until his arrest in Santa Monica this June.

 

While Whitey Bulger was on the run, Deluca pleaded guilty to six counts of conspiracy, racketeering and interference with commerce by threats of violence charges and served 34 months in a federal prison, according to court documents.

 

By the time Bulger – who topped the FBI's Most Wanted List – was captured, law enforcement sources said Deluca was losing his Rhode Island power base as the Mafia's leadership roles shifted back to Boston.

 

In recent months, Deluca vanished from his base on Federal Hill and has not been seen in the North End.

 

His North Providence home has been sold.

 

His wife and two kids have vanished.

 

"We saw the moving truck there and they were gone,'' said Grace Olsen, Deluca's next-door neighbor.

 

Deluca is one of several mob bosses to "flip" in recent years. In New York, Bonanno crime family boss Joseph "Big Joey" Messina cooperated with the government to avoid a death sentence. The Philadelphia Mafia's boss, Ralph Natale, also made a deal.

 

"Historically it was very rare,'' retired Massachusetts State Police Det. Lt. Bob Long said of Mafia leaders becoming cooperators. "Now rumors are that Deluca is doing the same thing…

 

"It appears that the old days of following the code of silence, the omerta, of this thing of ours is crumbled. It's like a bygone era," said Long.

 

Deluca's neighbor said living next to a mob boss had its benefits.

 

"We were very sad to see him go,'' Olsen said.

 

When asked if she knew about his cooperation agreement, she nodded.

 

"Knowing him and having broken bread with him,'' she said, "I think that he did what he had to do to protect his young family."

 

Copyright 2011 by TheBostonChannel.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Read more: http://www.thebostonchannel.com/white...

 

Joe Bruno on the Mob – Jon Roberts (Riccobono) Has No Remorse For His Gruesome Crimes

I never thought Jon Roberts (Riccobono) was a boy scout, but some of the revelations in his new book "My Life — From Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset," makes me want to puke.

The book, co-written by Evan Wright, has some startling passages, so much so New York Post's writer Susan Cahalan asked in a recent interview asked Roberts, "So would you call yourself a psychopath?"

"Well, that depends on how you define psychopath," Roberts said.

"A lack of empathy or remorse."

"Well, then, yes I am," Roberts said. "I enjoyed my life. How many other people lived the life I did? Maybe that Bernie guy, but who else?"

That Bernie guy must mean Bernie Madoff. But even Madoff, a different kind of psychopath, didn't do the things Roberts said he did. Roberts claims in the book that he unemotionally carved up dead bodies of guys he just killed.

Roberts explained the process as such: "Smash the teeth in with a hammer, and sprinkle these in the water. Then take a sharp knife — like a fillet for fish — and cut the body from a–hole up to the solar plexus. The guts will pop out like Jiffy Pop."

There's one thing in the Post article below I just don't agree with. Cahalan claims, "To be fair, Roberts didn't have much of a shot at normalcy."

Then she cites the fact that Roberts witnessed his father kill a man when Roberts was only seven-years-old. Plus, Roberts claims he was brought up by an abusive step-father.

Both are hardly reasons for anyone to embark on a life of crime, where chopping up dead bodies is the norm. Roberts had free will, just like we all do. I just don't buy Cahalan's reasoning. If she were right, we'd have a heck of a lot more homicidal maniacs on our hands then we presently do.

A scary thought indeed.

You can view at article below at

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/...

Confessions of a psychopath

By SUSANNAH CAHALAN

Posted: 13 Nov 2011 08:34 AM PST

- Roberts claims that he drugged Ed Sullivan and tried to blackmail him with a prostitute. -

Unapologetic to the end, a career killer tells of his crimes

American Desperado

My Life — From Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset

by Jon Roberts and Evan Wright

Jon Roberts was a made man, a drug smuggler, a killer. He hobnobbed with OJ Simpson and Ed Sullivan, rubbed shoulders with Pablo Escobar and Carlo Gambino, and made enemies out of John Gotti and Ronald Reagan.

He tortured college students for fun, helped snuff-out "mob accountant" Meyer Lansky's stepson and admits to brutalizing his ex-girlfriend with a belt when she tried to leave him. He flooded the country with cocaine in the 1980s.

Regrets? He has none.

"So would you call yourself a psychopath?" The Post asked him on Friday.

"Well, that depends on how you define psychopath," Roberts said.

"A lack of empathy or remorse."

"Well, then, yes I am," he said. "I enjoyed my life. How many other people lived the life I did? Maybe that Bernie guy, but who else?"

A new disturbing but intensely enthralling as-told-to memoir, "American Desperado," co-written and vetted by "Generation Kill" author Evan Wright, gets deep inside the head of a lifelong criminal.

While the book is littered with famous names — a testament to what Wright refers to as his place as the "Forrest Gump of crime and depravity" — there are also passages so dark and violent that you wonder how a man this sinister can sleep at night.

One example is his blithe advice about how to dispose of a body: "Smash the teeth in with a hammer, and sprinkle these in the water. Then take a sharp knife — like a fillet for fish — and cut the body from a–hole up to the solar plexus. The guts will pop out like Jiffy Pop."

"In a lot of other books, they take these monstrous people and they edit down and shave off the rough edges," Wright said. "I tried to render him as accurately as possible, as the frightening, monstrous person he is."

To be fair, Roberts didn't have much of a shot at normalcy.

In 1955, when Roberts (who was born John Riccobono in The Bronx) was 7 years old, his father, a made man in the Gambino crime family, took him to New Jersey. A car blocked their passageway on a bridge.

"I'll take care of this," his father said, pulling out a gun.

"I saw him take it out of his waistband and say something to the man in the car. Then he pushed his gun into the window."

Bam, bam, bam.

The scene instilled in him his father's philosophy: "The evil path is the strong path because evil is stronger than good."

He lived a large portion of his life upholding his father's credo.

Two years later, his illegal-alien father was deported to Italy, leaving him with an abused mother and an abusive stepfather.

Source: nypost.com

 

Joe Bruno on the Mob The Brooklyn Theatre Fire of 1876

It started out as a gala performance of Two Orphans, at the Brooklyn Theatre on Washington Street in Brooklyn, but thanks to inefficient and incompetent theater personnel, it wound up being the third worst fire, occurring either in a theater or public assembly building, in the history of the United States of America.

The title roles were played by Maude Harrison and Kate Claxton, who was thought to be one of the best stage actress of her time. Others in the cast included well-known actors Claude Burroughs, J.B. Studley, H.S. Murdoch, and Mrs. Farron. All would play leading roles in the tragedy that followed.

The Brooklyn Theatre, which seated 1600 people, had been built in 1871. It was an L shaped brick building with its main entrance on Washington Street, and a secondary entrance on Johnson Street, a smaller thoroughfare, which ran perpendicular to Washington Street, 200 feet to the east. One block to the north was what was then Brooklyn's City Hall, and one block to the south was Fulton Street, the main thoroughfare to the Manhattan ferries, which brought theater-goers from the mainland of Manhattan to the Brooklyn Theatre. The Brooklyn Bridge wasn't built until 1886.

The Brooklyn Theatre had three floors of seating. The ground floor was called the "Parquet and parquet circle" seating. It contained 600 seats. The second floor balcony seats were called the "dress circle" seats, and they seated 550 patrons. The third floor gallery, which was called the "family circle" seats, contained 450 seats.

The top level family circle seats, at 50 cents a pop, were the cheapest seats in the house, and had it's own box office on Washington Street. It also had one set of 7-foot-wide stairs, designed with a zigzag of right and left angle turns, leading directly from the street outside to the third floor. The theater was set up as such that the people in the family circle seats had no access to the balcony below, or to the main floor of the theater. This turned out to be their undoing.

The second floor dress circle seats, costing one dollar, had two flights of stairs to enter and exit the theater. One was a 10-foot set of stairs that led to and from the lobby. The other was a smaller set of emergency stairs that led to Flood's Alley, a tiny strip of dirt behind the theater. The ground floor door to Flood's Alley was usually locked to stop gatecrashers from entering the theater on the sly.

The ground floor seating was comprised of three price ranges. The least expensive was the parquet seating, disadvantageously situated on the side of the stage, and costing 75 cents. The parquet circle seats, which were in the middle of the auditorium cost $1.50. There were also eight private boxes, four on each side of the stage, which were the most fashionable and expensive seats in the house. Each private box contained six seats. Box seats cost a whopping $10 apiece, a kingly sum in the 1870′s.

Illumination in the theater was provided by gas jets in the lobby and in the vestibule. A few gas jets covered by ornamental globes were set on the orchestra floor. Border lights were set in a row along the proscenium arch, which is the rectangular frame around the stage. These lights had tin on the side facing the audience, and were covered by wire netting. Above the boarder lights was thin pieces of cloth that served as scenery. Some of these pieces of cloth dangled precariously close to the boarder lights.

As a precaution, buckets of water were usually kept on the side of the stage in case the dangling scenery caught fire. And there was a fire hose backstage that was connected to a two and a half inch water pipe.

On December 5, 1876, approximately a thousand people were in attendance at the Brooklyn Theater. About 400 people were seated in the upper family circle seats (an exact figure was never determined). 360 people sat in the dress circle seats, and 250 people sat in the parquet and parquet circle seats.

Edward B. Dickinson, who was seated in the middle of the parquet seats about five rows from the stage, thought the auditorium floor was not more than half full. However, Charles Vine, who was sitting in the top family circle seats, thought it was "one of the biggest galleries" he had seen in a long time at the Brooklyn Theatre.

Everything was fine in the Brooklyn Theater until the the short intermission between the forth and fifth acts. During this time, the curtain was down, hiding the stage, and the orchestra was playing during the intermission. People in the parquet circle heard loud noises from behind the curtain. But this was not considered unusual.

Seconds before curtain came down, stage manager J. W. Thorpe saw a small flame coming from the lower part of a drop scenery hanging near the center stage border light. Thorpe later said the flame was about the size of his hand. Thorpe looked for the water buckets, but for some reason, they were not where they were supposed to be. He thought about using the fire hose backstage, but so much scenery was in the way, he decided it was quicker to extinguish the fire by beating it with long stage poles. Thorpe directed his carpenters, Hamilton Weaver and William Van Sicken, to attempt to quell the fire by banging it with two large stage poles.

At around 11:20 pm, the fifth and final act started. When the curtain came down, Kate Claxton, playing a blind orphan girl, was laying on a stack of straw, looking upward. B. Studley and H. S. Murdoch, had taken their places on stage, in a box set representing an old boathouse on the bank of the Seine. And Mary Ann Farren and Claude Burroughs were waiting in the wings for their cues to enter into the scene. Miss Harrison was not in this scene, so she stood backstage and watched the production.

Murdock had delivered but a few lines, when he heard someone whisper "Fire" from backstage. Murdock looked up toward the proscenium arch and he saw heavy black smoke and the flickering of small flames. Murdock could see that the fire was spreading quickly upward towards the domed ceiling of the theater. Murdock stopped delivering his lines, but the audience had not yet noticed the fire and smoke.

Murdock heard Claxton whisper, "Go on. They will put it out. Go on."

Murdock finished his lines, and Farren and Burroughs entered the scene from the wings. Miss Claxton had just delivered her lines to Murdock, saying, "I forbid you to touch me. I will beg no more," when flaming parts of the ceiling fell onto the stage, igniting Claxton's costume. Studley hurried over and extinguished the flames on Claxton with his bare hands.

The orchestra, for some reason, broke out into a cheerful song, but it did nothing to quell anyone's fears.

By this time, the people in the theater had realized a fire was occurring, and screams of terror began to reverberate against the theater's walls. Farren and Murdock stopped play acting and stood on one side of the stage, imploring the people to leave quietly and quickly. Claxton and Studley did the same on the other side of the stage.

Claxton yelled to the crowd, who were now on their feet in an extremely agitated state, "You can all go out if you can only keep quiet. We are between you and the flames! Keep cool and walk out quietly."

But the frenzied crowd had a mind of their own. People ran out into the aisles and panic ensued.

Studley yelled to the crowd: "If I have the presence of mind to stand here between you and the fire, which is right behind me, you ought to have the presence of mind to go out quietly!"

Claxton later told the police, "We were now almost surrounded by flames; it was madness to delay longer. I took Mr. Murdoch by the arm and said 'Come, let us go.' He pulled away from me in a dazed sort of way and rushed into his dressing room, where the fire was even then raging … To leap from the stage into the orchestra in the hope of getting out through the front of the house would only be to add one more to the frantic, struggling mass of human beings who were trampling each other to death like wild beasts."

Burning timber began raining onto the stage and the actors were forced to run into the wings. Claxton suddenly remembered that there was a small hallway which led from her dressing room, though the basement and into the box office. Claxton ran backstage, met Harrison, and both leading ladies fled though this passage in their dressing room to the box office outside. On the other hand, Murdock and Burroughs ran back to their dressing rooms to get warmer clothing, to fend off the frigid December air outside the theater. Neither man made made it out of the theater alive.

By this time a fire alarm was sent out from the First Precinct police station, which was next door to the theater. Also, a telegram was sent to Mayor Schroeder, informing him of the dire situation.

Some of the theater's crew ran for the Johnson Street exits, and the made it safely outside. But soon the fire spread and cut off access to those exits. All of the remaining exits were either in the front of the theater, at the main entrance on Washington Street, or through the emergency doors on Flood's Alley.

While the crown was set in panic mode, head usher Thomas Rochford rushed to the rear of the theater and opened the special exit doors on Flood Street. Because of Rochford's action, the people on the ground floor were able to exit the theater in less than three minutes. So in effect, the least crowded part of the theater had the fastest escape routes.

However, the open doors on Flood Alley caused a brisk airflow to enter the theater, which increased the intensity of the fire inside.

The people on the second floor had two stairways from which they could escape. The main seven-foot-wide stairway, the one in which they had entered the building, led to the vestibule near the Washington Street exit. The other was a more narrow stairway that led to Flood's Alley. Most decided to rush for the main stairway, because it was the one they were most familiar with. This caused a logjam of the greatest proportions, since instead of an orderly exit, the people started to work themselves into a frenzy. People started getting tangled with each other. Some jammed into doorways and others fell forward down the stairs into the people below them, casing the flow of people out of the building to stop completely.

Sergent John Cain from the First Precinct next door fought his way into the theater, and with the help of janitor Van Sicken, he began to untangle the fallen people so that the crowd behind them could get down the stairs to safety. By all accounts, almost all the people from the second floor dress circle seats were able to exit the theater alive. But the people jammed into the gallery on the third floor were doomed from the start, and they knew it.

People started jumping from the family circle seats into the auditorium below. Some were injured so badly from the jump, they were not able to exit the theater. Other people lowered themselves from a small third floor window to Flood's Alley below. One man forced himself through a ventilator shaft, which deposited him onto the roof of the police station next door.

But most of the people in the gallery had no way to save themselves. After a few people were able to stumble down the stairway from which they had entered the building to the safety outside, the supports for the gallery collapsed, thrusting hundreds of people three floors down onto the bottom level.

Charles Straub had been sitting in the gallery near the stairway. He was sitting with his friend Joseph Kremer. Straub said afterwards, "We could hardly run down the stairs; we were crowded down."

Even though hundreds of people had tripped and fell on top of him, Straub was somehow able to make it down the stairs and out of the theater. He estimated about 25 people from the gallery had made it out before him, and about 12 people after him. The rest were trapped inside. He never saw his friend Kremer again.

Charles Vine had been sitting in the gallery, but far away from the only stairway. He thought about jumping from one of the windows facing Flood's Alley, but it was a sixty-foot drop and he would certainly perish from that jump. So Vine hurried to the front of the gallery and decided to jump from there to the dress circle below. Vine cut himself badly on a chair and was knocked out for a moment. But Vine quickly retained consciousness, and was able to force his way down the second floor stairs to the exit door below. Fire Marshall Keady said later that he thought Vine had been "the last person to leave the gallery alive."

Fifteen minutes after the fire had started, the entire interior of the theater was in flames. And at 11:45 p.m., the east wall of the theater fell with a loud grumbling, burying more than 300 men, women and children under tons of bricks and burning debris.

Thomas Nevins, Chef Engineer of the Brooklyn Fire Department, had arrived at the theater around 11:26 p. m. He saw immediately that there was no way to save the theater, and that his job was now to confine the fire to that single structure. When the additional fire fighting equipment arrived just before midnight, Nevins used that equipment to keep adjoining buildings free of sparks and burning debris.

By midnight, around 5,000 spectators had assembled in the streets outside the theater; some looking for signs of loved ones who had gone to the theater, but had not returned home At one a.m. the Flood's Alley wall collapsed, and by 3 a.m. the fire had started to burn itself out. At that point, Chief Nevins considered the fire under control. The early newspapers that morning reported the fire, but said that only a handful of people had been killed.

At the break of daylight, Chief Nevins led a contingent of fire personnel into the building. Chief Nevins discovered almost the entire theater had collapsed into the cellar. As the firemen made their way through the ruins, they made a terrible discovery. What appeared to be plain rubbish, was in fact, a mangled mess of charred human bodies. Some of the bodies were intact, and some had missing limbs. All were burned beyond recognition. It was latter determined that almost all the dead had been sitting in the third floor gallery when the fire started.

Removal of the bodies took three days. It was a long and tedious project because, considering their charred condition, the bodies would fall apart instantly when they were moved.

Forensic science being in its infant stages at the time, an exact body count was impossible. Initial reports in the newspapers said there were anywhere from 275 to 400 fatalities in the Brooklyn Theatre Fire. A coroner's report later said there were 283 fatalities, but that was only an educated guess. 103 unidentified bodies, and parts of bodies, were buried in a common grave at Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

The death count in the Brooklyn Theater Fire of 1876 was only exceeded by the The Iroquois Theatre fire which occurred on December 30, 1903, in Chicago, Illinois, where at least 605 people died as a result of the fire, and the Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire in Boston, on November 28, 1942, which killed 492 people.

The Brooklyn Theatre Fire of 1876 did spur New York City to institute safeguards that reduced the possibility of a similar fire ever happening again. Changes in the building code barred the presence of paints, woods, and construction material in the stage area. The code also mandated the use of a solid brick proscenium wall, "extending from the cellar to the roof, to minimize the risk of a stage fire spreading into the auditorium."

Other changes to the code decreed that "proscenium arches were to be equipped with non-flammable fire curtains." Other openings in the proscenium wall required self-closing fire-resistant doors. And heat activated sprinkling systems were required for the fly space above the stage.

Starting in the early 1900′s, a half hour before the scheduled performance, each theater was to have a "Theatre Detail Officer" on duty. Before the play started, the Theatre Detail Officer's job was to "test the fire alarms, inspect fire wall doors and the fire curtain." During the performance the Theatre Detail Officer would "roam the theater, making sure that aisles, hallways, and fire exits were clear and accessible to all patrons."

There were contradicting accounts about what happened to Kate Claxton after she escaped from the Brooklyn Theater Fire. One newspaper said she was seen sitting safely in the First Precinct police station one hour after the fire. Another report said that three hours after the fire, a New York City news reporter found Claxton wandering in a daze in Manhattan's City Hall. Her hands and face were bloated with burn blisters, and she could not remember taking the ferry from Brooklyn to Manhattan.

Scant months later, after Claxton had recovered from her injuries, she traveled to St. Louis to appear in another play. As soon as she arrived in St. Louis, she checked into the Southern Hotel. In hours, that hotel went up in flames, but Claxton and her brother, whom she was traveling with, made a miraculous escape, seconds before the hotel collapsed.

This effectively ended Kate Claxton's theatrical career. Fearing she was some kind of a jinx, other actors refused to appear with her on stage. And theater-goers, fearing another fire, boycotted her performances.

Nine years after the Brooklyn Theater Fire, Kate Claxton shared her thoughts with the New York Times. She said, "We thought we were acting for the best in continuing the play as we did, with the hope that the fire would be put out without difficulty, or that the audience would leave gradually or quietly. But the result proved that it was not the right course… The curtain should have been kept down until the flames had been extinguished, or if it had been found impossible to cope with them, the audience should have been calmly informed that indisposition on the part of some member of the company, or some unfortunate occurrence behind the scenery compelled a suspension of the performance, and they should have been requested to disperse as quietly as they could. Raising the curtain created a draft which fanned the flames into fury."

Hindsight is 20/20, but Kate Claxton's later observations were absolutely correct. The Brooklyn Theater Fire of 1876 could have produced minimal damage if only the theater personal had not bumbled, but had acted in a coherent, methodical and calm manner.

Joe Bruno on the Mob – Fat Freddie Thompson Out On Bail in Spain.

 

 

As was predicted in an earlier blog, Fat Freddie Thompson's wise move to allow himself to be extradited from Cloverhill prison in Ireland to Spain to face charges worked out perfectly. Days after he was extradited, Thompson was brought to a courthouse in Estepona where he faced charges of drug trafficking, weapons smuggling, money laundering and unlawful assembly.

 

And guess what?

 

The judge allowed Thompson out on bail, which would have never happened had Thompson remained in custody in Ireland.

 

According to the article below, "Sources believe that his decision to agree to extradition to Spain to face the charges is a 'tactical maneuver' to allow him to continue his life of crime."

 

Ya think???

 

Just so Thompson won't miss any conjugal visits, reports say it is likely Thompson will be joined in Marbella, Spain by his girlfriend Vicky Dempsey and his young son.

 

It's amazing how a criminal like Thompson was able to play the system in Europe, which is a place that is notoriously light on crime. Sure the cops in Europe put on a big show or arresting this one and that one. Yet Thompson, for all his alleged criminal activities, was able to avoid prosecution in Ireland. Then instead of languishing in an Irish jail after he was arrested on a European arrest warrant issued by Spain, Thompson said something like, "I think I rather go to Spain, where those dopes will be stupid enough to let me out on bail."

 

Kiddies, they used to say, "Only in the movies."

 

Now I say, "Only in Europe," where the last time I looked, two European counties named Greece and Italy, are looking for a European bailout because they have run out of money, basically because of runaway socialistic spending.

 

Now I know why so many rich Europeans are breaking down the door in America, trying to get into a country that only screws the rich a little bit. Europeans are fighting to get E-2 visas in America, like fat men fighting for the last meatball on the dining room table.

 

Criminals like Freddie Thompson perform country-hoping exercises in Europe to avoid jail as easily as an Italian drinks a bottle of wine. And to make matters worse, people are rioting in the streets in Europe because their big bad country is trying to pull the ever-present safety net from out under their lazy fat butts.

 

Give me the good old U.S. of A. anytime. Every time an American arrives home from across the pond, they should kiss the ground as soon as they get off the plane.

 

And the girls are prettier in America too.

 

No mustaches.

 

 

 

The article below can be seen at:

 http://www.herald.ie/news/sun-shines-...

 

and

 

http://www.euroweeklynews.com/2011110...

 

Sun shines on 'Fat' Freddie as he gets bail

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By Niall O'Connor

 

Tuesday November 01 2011

 

GANG Boss 'Fat' Freddie Thompson was today enjoying the Mediterranean sunshine after being freed on bail from a Spanish court.

 

The 30-year-old criminal was brought by armed officers to a courthouse in Estepona where he faced charges of drug trafficking, weapons smuggling, money laundering and unlawful assembly.

 

Thompson was extradited to Spain last Friday at the request of officers probing his links to Irish gang boss Christy Kinahan's €1bn crime empire.

 

Sources believe that his decision to agree to extradition to Spain to face the charges is a "tactical manoeuvre" to allow him to continue his life of crime.

 

However the Crumlin gangster was spared more prison time after agreeing to bail conditions and was today soaking up the Spanish sunshine.

 

Thompson was ordered to hand over his passport and to sign on at the court twice per month until his case is heard — a requirement that is likely to bring him into contact with alleged associates John Cunningham and Kinahan's sons Daniel and Christopher.

 

And it is likely Thompson will be joined in Marbella by girlfriend Vicky Dempsey (30) and his young son.

 

He is believed to be staying in a plush villa along with his cousin, Liam Byrne (32).

 

Spanish officers are expected to keep close tabs on the gangland boss over fears he may be targeted by enemies.

 

If convicted, Thompson is facing nine years in prison.

 

Thompson spent 13 days on the D2 wing of Cloverhill prison before being flown to Spain. He is thought to have then spent the weekend in prisons in Madrid and Alhaurin de la Torre — home to killers Dermot McArdle and Eric 'Lucky' Wilson.

 

Sources at Cloverhill have revealed that Thompson indicated being on bail in Spain would be a more attractive option than an Irish jail.

 

"He was always polite and caused no trouble whatsoever," according to a senior officer.

 

While awaiting his extradition hearing, Thompson received three visitors.

 

One of these visitors is believed to be a close associate of fugitive Eugene Cullen, who is being sought for questioning by detectives in relation to a robbery in Dundrum and a fatal shooting in 2009.

 

hnews@herald.ie

 

 

Suspected gangland boss, 'Fat Freddie' Thompson bailed in Spain

 

Costa del Sol

Friday, 04 November 2011 18:49

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SUSPECTED crime boss 'Fat Freddie' Thompson was released on bail following a court appearance in Estepona. Thompson was arrested in Dublin on a European arrest warrant on October 14 and consented to extradition.

 

The 30-year-old Dubliner spent 13-days in Cloverhill Prison in Ireland before being flown to Spain last Friday and spending the weekend in prisons in Madrid and Alhaurin de la Torre.

 

While he has not been officially charged with any crimes he "has been informed he is under investigation for crimes including money laundering, unlawful assembly and drugs trafficking," a court source told Irish daily the Independent.

 

"The three conditions of his bail are that he cannot leave Spain, hands in his passport to the authorities and signs on at court twice a month on days fixed by the court."

 

If convicted he faces nine-years in prison in Spain

 

Joe Bruno on the Mob – Lewis Kasman's Divorce is a Nasty Affair

Joe Bruno on the Mob – Lewis Kasman's Divorce is a Nasty Affair

 

 

Let's just say it couldn't have happened to a nicer family (I'm being sarcastic).

 

Lewis Kasman is the rat-fink who once called himself John Gotti's adopted son. Kasman was seen often around Gotti Sr., doing menial tasks; like opening car doors for the Teflon Don. I'm sure Kasman would have shined Gotti's shoes too, if he had been asked to do so.

 

But after Gotti perished in prison, in order to make some heavy cash, Kasman went over to Team American and became a wired-up informant inside various organized crime families. Kasman even wore a wire while talking to Gotti's wife Victoria, while Mrs. Gotti was recovering from an illness.

 

According to the article below, for his blood-money work assignments for the Feds, Kasman was paid a whopping $12,000 a month – $144,000 annually, from 2005 to 2007. When his work for the government was over, Kasman told the court during his nasty divorced from his wife Eileen, that his income was $250 a month, and that his momma was paying for his divorce. After the divorce was final, the Kasmans sold their house in Boca Raton, Fl, and split the proceeds. Eileen was awarded one dollar a year alimony and $400 a month in child support for the one daughter still living with her.

 

But Kasman's ex- wife's anger didn't end there. Eileen Kasman was convinced that her former husband had a "treasure chest" loaded with cash sitting somewhere, so she used her proceeds from the sale of their house to hire lawyers and an accountant to find the missing money.

 

Only, there doesn't appear to be any missing money, and if there was, the government would have the first crack at it, claiming it was unlawfully obtained when Kasman was working for John Gotti.

 

Eileen Kasman is now claiming her former lawyers bled her dry, and left her virtually broke. She's suing her former lawyers for $1.6 million, more than three times what she said she paid them in the first place.

 

In addition, Eileen Kasman's former husband, "King Rat," says he's now totally broke and is living off an advance he got for his upcoming book "The Last Son," where he says he "tells all" about his relationship with Gotti and the Gambino Crime Family.

 

I don't know what kind of advance Kasman got, but whatever it was, it was way too much. I've made it a policy not to read books that government informants write, because then I would be subsiding rats, one of the lowest forms of human life. And I would urge those who are reading this to do the same.

 

Also, I find it hard to feel bad for Eileen Kasman, because she lived the good life for a very long time with dirty money her husband finagled from various illegal activities.

 

Like I said up top; it couldn't happened to a nicer family.

 

 

 The article below can be seen at:

 

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/mob...

 

Mob informant's ex-wife's new lawyer sues old lawyers, saying their tactics left her penniless

 

 

 

By Jane Musgrave

 

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

 

 

WEST PALM BEACH — Eileen Kasman says she paid $550,000 to a Boca Raton law firm that promised to milk her former mobster husband for everything he had.

 

Not surprisingly, after finking on his former associates in the Gambino crime family and being taken into protective custody by the FBI, Lewis Kasman's fortunes had run dry, her new lawyer said last week.

 

Having given her divorce lawyers the cash she made when she and her husband sold their house in suburban Boca Raton, Eileen Kasman is now in living in Long Island with her parents, collecting food stamps. She is unable to sustain herself and her three children on the $1 a year in alimony that was ordered or the roughly $400 she gets monthly in child support for the one daughter who is still at home.

 

"To me that's the same thing as stealing," attorney Bennett Cohn said of the raw deal Eileen Kasman got in the divorce.

 

In a lawsuit filed last week in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, Cohn accuses her former lawyers at the politically connected law firm of Weiss, Handler, Angelos and Cornwell of engaging in "Rambo" or "scorched earth" tactics to get as much money out of Eileen Kasman as possible.

 

He is seeking $1.6 million – three times the amount he said she paid for legal representation, mainly from firm lawyer, Carol Kartagener.

 

Henry Handler, a partner in the firm, disputed Cohn's claims. The sometime Democratic powerbroker said his firm charged Kasman less than $200,000. The cost of experts would have added at most another $50,000, he said.

 

"It's a fantasy," he said of the $550,000 price tag. "I have no idea where that number came from."

 

He speculated that it included fees charged by New York lawyers, whom he said Eileen hired independently. He declined comment on specific allegations in the lawsuit, saying only they are "ludicrous and false."

 

Cohn maintained he has a plethora of evidence that says otherwise. While he expressed confidence that his dollar figures are correct, he acknowledged the exact amount will become clear as the case moves through the court.

 

"I guess we'll find out," he said.

 

Some of the expenses the firm rang up would be laughable if they weren't so outrageous, he said.

 

For instance, he said, Kartagener hired a vocational rehabilitation counselor to figure out how Lewis Kasman could earn a living after famously destroying his ties with the Gambino crime family and living with the reality that angry mobsters might kill him for wearing a wire to collect information used for various criminal cases, including the failed prosecution of John Gotti Jr.

 

"What was this person going to say?" Cohn asked of the vocational counselor. "This retired snitch for the federal government who used to be involved with the Gotti family can now earn 'X' amount of dollars a month doing thus and so. Are you going to hire him?"

 

Cohn voiced similar disdain for the decision to pay an accountant more than $20,000 to unearth an alleged "treasure chest" Lewis Kasman supposedly stashed away. Even if the accountant had found buried cash, which he didn't, the money wouldn't have gone to Eileen. Knowing that the Lewis got rich working for the late mob boss John Gotti Sr., government officials would have snared any cash that was uncovered, he said.

 

"At some point the light needs to go on and it never went on in this case," Cohn said. "They were looking for a pot of gold that didn't exist."

 

Kasman, the self-proclaimed adopted son of John Gotti Sr., was well-compensated for his government work. An FBI agent testified in 2009 that Kasman was paid $12,000 a month – $144,000 annually – from 2005 to 2007. By the time his work and his divorce was winding down, Kasman said he earned $250 a month and his mother footed the cost of his divorce. Now living in an undisclosed location, protected by retired U.S. Navy Seals, he said he survives on the advance he got for a tell-all book.

 

Eileen Kasman's lawsuit is one of several spawned from the tortuous case of Kasman vs. Kasman. After the divorce was final in 2009, Lewis Kasman sued two of his former lawyers, Barry Roderman and Lewis Shafer. He claimed they didn't represent him properly because of their relationships with Weiss Handler. Both lawsuits have been settled for undisclosed amounts, Kasman and attorneys said.

 

During the protracted divorce that chewed through at least five judges, Lewis Kasman accused one of them – Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Martin Colin – of failing to reveal his ties to the firm. Weiss Handler briefly represented Colin's wife in her divorce from a previous husband. While Colin had been ordered by the Fourth District Court of Appeal to tell litigants who came before him about his wife's connection to the firm, he didn't tell Lewis Kasman.

 

Colin was only involved in the Kasman divorce for a short time but made a significant decision. He sent Lewis Kasman to jail for nine days for violating a previous judge's order to pay child support. Later, it was discovered no written order existed. The contempt order was overturned by another judge who ruled Kasman had no ability to pay.

 

Ultimately, Colin recused himself from hearing the Kasman divorce case but not before Lewis Kasman filed complaints with the Judicial Qualifications Commission. The state agency that oversees the conduct of judges didn't take any action.

 

Cohn said attorneys at Weiss Handler should have divulged their relationship with Colin as well. He called the law firm's actions "outrageous" and "scandalous."

 

"If you can't trust your lawyer, who can you trust?" he said.

 

 

 

 

 

Joe Bruno on the Mob – Jon Roberts (Riccobono) – A Rat Selling Some Limburger Cheese

 

It really annoys me when a guy lives a really despicable life. Selling drugs. Cracking heads and who know what else. And when he finally gets caught, he folds like a cheap suitcase and becomes a rat for the government.

 

Then he has the nerve to write a book that we are supposed to buy.

 

No, I'm not talking about Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, but some other slug called Jon Roberts, real name Riccobono.

 

Roberts has just co-wrote a book with Evan Wright called "American Desperado – My Life—From Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset." The list price is $28, and it's also available on Amazon Kindle for a whopping $13.99. (That's more than Steven King charges for his Kindle books, and mine sell for 99 cents.)

 

Supposedly, Roberts saw his father kill a man, when Roberts was seven years old. Then he saw his two friends shot to death in Viet Nam, one by a 30-year-old woman, and other by a 10-year-old Viet Cong.

 

Then when he was discharged from the armed forces, Roberts said he was involved with the Gambino Crime family in the night club business. A man was killed. A rat said Roberts was involved in the killing.

 

So Roberts took it on the lam and went to Miami, where in a few years he became a major drug dealer with connections to the Medellin cartel. He also says he became tight with Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.

 

Maybe it's true. Maybe it's not true. Who knows?

 

Mob guys who co-write books don't always tell the truth. They tell maybe their version of the truth, or downright fibs, because after all, they are mob guys, not alter boys.

 

I've made it a policy not to buy any book written by a mob rat. I read Sam Gravano's book when it first came out, and now I know it was mostly fiction.

 

If I want to read fiction, I'll read Steven King, whom I said earlier, sells his Kindle books for under 10 bucks.

 

At least I'll get some bang for my buck. Not some crap from a slug.

 

The following article can be read at:

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/30/1416963...

 

From Mafia Soldier To Cocaine Cowboy

 

by NPR Staff

 

 

October 30, 2011

 

Jon Roberts was born into the Mafia.

 

His father, Nat Riccobono, and his uncles came to New York City from Sicily and made money by running shady businesses throughout New York in the late 1940s. After his father was deported and his mother died, Roberts moved from home to home until he was 16 and joined his uncles in the Mafia.

 

By the time Roberts was 26, in 1978, he was a practiced criminal — committing robberies and dealing cocaine in New York City; but he was getting bored. That's when he moved to Miami and started working with the Colombians, importing cocaine.

 

 

American Desperado – My Life—from Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset

 

by Jon Roberts and Evan Wright

 

 

"It was organized, it wasn't a slap affair like you saw on the TV with bombs going off," Roberts tells Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered.

 

Roberts, who was featured in the 2006 documentary Cocaine Cowboys, just released a book he co-wrote with journalist Evan Wright called American Desperado: My Life — from Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset.

 

When Roberts was 7 years old, he witnessed his father commit murder.

 

"There were mornings when my father would take me to school … and some mornings he chose not to take me."

 

On one of those mornings, when Roberts' father decided he was too busy to drop his son off at school, they were in the car heading toward a single-lane bridge when another car began to cross.

 

"[My father] decided to make the other guy back up, and the other guy must have refused," Roberts recalls. "The next thing I saw was a flash, and he had shot the guy in the head. He told the bodyguard to get in the car, they backed the other car off the bridge, and we just drove on and went about our day."

 

Roberts says that moment changed him, but it wasn't until he was a soldier in Vietnam that killing became a norm.

 

"When you see your best friend get stuck in the back with a knife from some lady that's like 30 years old, and you see a little boy like 10 years old shoot your friend, your values change a little bit," he says.

 

"Nobody really controlled us. And eventually after you do this for a while, you decide you're pretty much your own boss," he says. "And to me it was an education in how to do things."

 

While in New York, Jon Roberts had close ties with the Gambino crime family. He attended his last wiseguy party — a New York wedding — before fleeing to Miami in 1973.

 

Roberts returned from Vietnam to New York with screws and a metal plate in his head — the aftermath of an explosion. By the time he was 20, he was one of New York's biggest nightclub impresarios, rubbing shoulders with everyone from Jimi Hendrix to John Lennon.

 

But after a business partner turned up dead and an informant told the police Roberts was involved, he hightailed it to sunny Miami. The year was 1975.

 

"When I first came to Miami, I wasn't smuggling: I was like all the other dealers on the street just trying to make a living, and it got to a point where I had so much business that these people just couldn't supply me," he says.

 

That's when Roberts shifted from being a drug dealer to a drug importer for the Colombian Medellin cartel.

 

Importing paid well: By the end of 1976, Roberts says he was moving 50 kilos of cocaine worth $500,000 or more a month. Roberts was living it up: He had half a dozen servants, a Porsche, multiple houses, dozens of race horses and friends in high places, including the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.

 

The U.S. government labeled Roberts the "American Representative" of the Medellin cartel; he became known as "the bearded gringo" on Miami's streets.

 

Roberts and a few American partners created a highly advanced drug-smuggling system that included secret airfields, listening posts to eavesdrop on Coast Guard communications, and homing beacons for tracking cocaine shipped by sea.

 

"We ended up getting, up by Tampa, a 450-acre farm and it was all surrounded by trees and we put two runways in there and we put hangars in for the planes to go in," Roberts says.

 

Their drug-smuggling schemes stymied the U.S. government for nearly a decade.

In 1986, Jon Roberts was arrested as part a cocaine bust that ultimately unraveled his empire.

 

 

In the late 1980s, one of Roberts' associates ratted him and several other people out to the government. Roberts immediately went into hiding.

 

For five years, he evaded the police, but they caught up with him in 1992 and charged him with overseeing the importation of billions of dollars of cocaine. Roberts was able to avoid a lengthy prison sentence by becoming a cooperating witness and informant for the federal government.

 

When he was released from prison in 2000, he says he had no plans. He worked at the old Beachcomber Hotel on Miami Beach and went looking for the money he had hidden in various locations around the city. It was all gone.

 

That same year, Roberts became a father. Today, he tells NPR's Raz that he wants his son to take away an important lesson from his memoir.

 

"I want him to realize that I went about doing things the wrong way," he says. "That's not to say to you that if I had my life to live over again that I would have changed it, but that what I did was wrong."

 

 

Joe Bruno on the Mob – Satan's Circus

At the end of the Civil War, New York City was a den of iniquity, with prostitution as common as warm beer in a cold dive. Although flesh peddling was available on the lower east and west sides of Manhattan, the most prolific area of prostitution was called Satan's Circus, which was the area between 24th and 40th Streets, and between 5th and 7th Avenues. The "Main Street" of Satan's Circus was Broadway between 23rd and 42nd Streets, which was then known as "The Line." Satan's Circus later became part of a larger tract of decadence called "The Tenderloin," which was also known for it's grifters and numerous gambling houses.

In the 1890′s, after Tom Edison electrified New York City, that stretch of Broadway in the Tenderloin was called "The Great White Way," because of the numerous lighted advertising signs prominent on the streets. In the early 1900′s, when the theater district moved uptown above 42nd Street, the "Great White Way's" name was conveyed to the area on Broadway above Times Square.

After the Civil War, the New York City police were greatly demoralized; destroyed by corruption within their own ranks and by a Tammany Hall political system that reeked of graft. As a result, the police spent very little time actually policing Satan's Circle. In fact, there is great evidence that the police themselves profited from the prostitution houses by getting their weekly cuts from the proceeds.

John A. Kennedy, the Superintendent of Police in New York City was one of the few New York City cops not on the take. During the Civil War Riots of 1863 Kennedy was almost beaten to death when he tried to step in and personally stop the riots. The angry crowd descended upon Kennedy, pummeling him unmercifully. Kennedy was saved only because a sympathetic passerby witnessed his beating and told the angry crowd that Kennedy was already dead.

Kennedy tried as hard as he could to diminish the bordello epidemic in Satan's Circus, but he was overwhelmed by the noncooperation of his cops, and by direct intervention by the powers that be at Tammany Hall. The simple fact was, as soon as Kennedy ordered a bordello closed and its occupants arrested, the dirty politicians stepped in. The very next day, the bordello was back open and it's employees dutifully back at work.

In 1866, Kennedy released a report to Bishop Simpson of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who lorded over 20,000 parishioners. Bishop Simpson had made a sermon where he said there were more prostitutes in New York City than he had parishioners. Kennedy rebutted Bishop Simpson by saying his police records showed that there were "3300 prostitutes in New York City, working in 621 bordellos and 99 hotels. This figure also included 747 waiter girls employed in concert saloons and dance halls."

Bishop Simpson chided Kennedy over his report, saying Kennedy was not considering the thousand of "street walkers," who frequented dive bars and stalked the streets of New York City during the dimly lit night hours. Reverend Thomas De Witt Talmage, who was on a mission to end the sins of Satan's' Circus, called the entire city of New York "the modern Gomorrah" for allowing Satan's Circus to exist.

In the 1860′s, the most famous of the bordellos in Satan's Circus was called Sisters' Row, which was located at 25th Street near 7th Avenue. Sisters' Row was a series of seven side-by-side brothels run by seven sisters, who had come to New York City from a New England village seeking fame and fortune. At first, the seven sisters tried to get legitimate jobs, but then they realized that the sex trade was rampant, out in the open, protected by the police, and quite profitable. So why not make some serious money from this phenomenon?

Sisters' Row was considered the most expensive bordello in New York City. It was frequented by the blue-bloods of society, and quite frankly, only the rich could afford their prices. The working girls were advertised as "cultured and pleasing companions, accomplished on the piano and guitar, and familiar with the charms and graces of correct sexual intercourse." On certain days of the month, no man was admitted unless he had an engraved invitation, wore evening dress, and carried a bouquet of flowers. And on Christmas Eve, all the proceeds garnered that night on Sisters' Row was donated to charity.

By 1885, police estimated that half of all the building in Satan's Circus was dedicated to some form of deviant behavior. Sixth Ave itself was teeming with brothels, dives, and all-night saloons. Plus the streets were packed with seedy customers looking for a few bright moments in their otherwise dull lives.

Satan's Circus and the entire Tenderloin district was the responsibility of the 29 Precinct, which jurisdiction ran from 14th Street to 42nd Street, and from Fourth to Seventh Avenue. In 1876, Captain Alexander "Clubber" Williams was transfered to the 29th Precinct to be its leader. Williams, the exact opposite of Kennedy in honesty, was quite pleased with his transfer. He told a pal, "Well, I've been transferred. I've had nothing but chuck steak for awhile, and now I'm going to get me a little of the tenderloin."

One of the most famous joints in Satan's Circus was the Haymarket, on Sixth Avenue between 29th and 30th streets. The Haymarket originally opened right after the Civil War as an opera house and was named after a similar playhouse in London, England. But The Haymarket could not compete with the more established playhouses like the Trivoli Theatre and Tony Pastor's, so it closed down in 1878.

Soon after, the Haymarket was renovated and it re-opened as a dancehall. But it was actually a dancehall in only the very restrictive sense of the word. Quite frankly, the Haymarket became a three-story, yellow brick den of iniquity. It was a hunting ground for prostitutes, thugs, and pickpockets who preyed mostly on out-of-town yokels who had heard of the infamous Haymarket and wanted to experience its storied vices. The Haymarket reached the height of its fame in New York City's Gilded Age of the 1880′s and 1890′s, but after enduring several closings, the Haymarket remained open, in one form or the other, until 1913.

Woman at the Haymarket were admitted at no charge. However, men were obliged to pay a 25 cent admission fee, which allowed them to buy cheap drinks, dance, and carouse with the young ladies, the vast majority of whom were base and cheap prostitutes. In addition to a huge bar, all three floors of the Haymarket contained little private cubicles, where raunchy woman gave their marks a cheap rendition of the can-can, and for a few bucks more they turned these cubicles into a New York City version of the French peep shows. And one can imagine what a few bucks more might entice these woman to do, and do quickly, so that they could move on to their next customer.

The real action came well after midnight, when the Haymarket's floors were littered with drunken revelers, some of whom were barely conscious. That's when the muggers and pickpockets sprang into action, leaving the poor men, again, most of them out-of-towners, with no loose change to make their way back home.

If you wanted to see with a bearded lady with a bat, the place to go in Satan's Circus was the French Madame's on 31st Street just off Sixth Avenue. The place was named after it's owner, a big bruiser of a broad who had a five o'clock shadow all day long and every day of the week. This female moose sat on a high stool near the cash register, and if a young lady was making too much noise, or making a fool of herself, the French Madame would clock them on the head with a bludgeon, then fling them out into the street by their hair.

The main room of the French Madame's looked like a dinning room, but in fact, no food was sold there except black coffee. Booze flowed freely, and there were small cubicles on the second floor where women, young and old, pretty and pretty-ugly, danced the can-can for anyone who cared to watch. For a buck, a young lady would dance in the nude, and for an additional fee, who knows what else transpired in those small private cubicles.

If someone wanted an alcoholic beverage mixed by the best bartender in town, the place to go in Satan's Circus was the Star and Garter, located at Sixth Avenue and 30th Street, owned by Ed Coffee, a renowned sportsman of his time. Coffee employed Billy Patterson, who was generally thought of as the best darn mixer-of-drinks in all of New York City. Billy made a mean martini, but he also was an expert in creating exotic mixtures, containing two more more types of liquors, which if you asked for these same drinks in virtually any other gin mill in town, you would have been thrown out by the scruff of your neck. A sign stating "Booze or beer, or get the heck out of here" was the norm in virtually every dive in New York City, but not at the Star and Garter.

Patterson was such a jovial fellow, and he made so many people happy with his drink concoctions, it was thought that Patterson didn't have an enemy in the world. But apparently that was not the case, since one day as Patterson left the Star and Garter by a side entrance, someone clocked him in the side of the head with a rock slung from a sling shot. The assailant was never found, but the phrase "Who Struck Billy Patterson?" resounded throughout the street of Satan's Circus for many days to come.

That phrase took on a life of it's own, when it was uttered whenever people were mystified over anything. "Who Struck Billy Patterson?" could be said when somebody robbed a cash register, or if a favored sports team was somehow beaten by a rank underdog. "Who Struck Billy Patterson?" could also be exclaimed when someone, who was one day very poor, somehow came into some cash, by legitimate, or illegitimate means.

Another popular Satan's Circus hotspot was the Cremorne which was located in the basement of a building on 32nd Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. The owner of the Cremorne, which was said to have been named after a British tavern, was an overbearing dolt known only as Don Whiskerandos. The Don was a whale-shaped man with a huge beard and a walrus-type mustache which ran down both sides of his bloated face. Don Whiskerandos' mission in life was to make sure the scantily clad ladies whom he employed made sure the men who staggered inside his dive bought the ladies drinks at inflated prices.

Men's drinks cost 15 cents, or two for a quarter. But ladies' drinks cost a whopping 20 cents, of which the ladies were paid a small commission by Don Whiskerandos. Every time a sap bought a lady a drink, the lady received a small brass check to keep a tally on what she was owed at the end of the night. And if a sucker sprang for a bottle of wine for the lady, she kept the cork as proof of purchase.

Next door to the Cremorne was an establishment of the same name. It was not a drinking joint, nor a place where a man might pick up a chick. It was, in fact, a mission run by a former alcoholic named Jerry McAuley. Quite often, and always by accident, some lad looking for a good time would wander into the wrong Cremorne. When this happened, McAuley sprung into action. He quickly locked the door behind the befuddled chap. Then after plying him with sandwiches and coffee as thick as mud, McAuley would launch a mighty sermon on the wages of sin caused by the excesses of alcohol.

Needless to say, McAuley and Don Whiskerandos were not the best of pals, since The Don blamed McAuley for any shortages in The Don's cash register.

Other noted dives in Satan's Circus were Egyptian Hall on on 34th street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, Sailor's Hall on 30th Street (which was mostly frequents by Negroes), Buckingham Palace on 27th Street, which was famous for its masked balls, and Tom Gould's on 31st Street, which was basically a large saloon with rooms for rent upstairs; rented by the day, and sometimes even by the hour.

By the turn of the 20th Century, Satan's Circus was in a steady decline. The advent of the Ladies Temperance Movement, and the stalwart work of people like Carrie Nation and the Reverend Charles H. Parkhurst, prompted the New York City police to crack down on the vices being perpetrated in Satan's Circus. In 1895, Mayor Strong appointed Teddy Roosevelt as Police Commissioner of New York City. Roosevelt went hard after crooked cops who were taking pieces of the pie from the dives in Satan's Circus. Soon places that were teeming with sex and sexual innuendo, were the exception and not the rule in the area between 24th and 40th Streets, and between Fifth and Seventh Avenues.

After the police crackdown in Satan's Circus, drinking establishments still abounded in all parts of New York City. But bawdy play and sex for pay was moved from out in the open to behind closed doors, where of course they remain until the present day.

As much as things change, sometimes they still remain the same.

Joe Bruno on the Mob – Hells Angel Sues Livermore Police Over False Gun Charge

This may be another case where police have planted false evidence against an innocent person. Only instead of this happening in New York City, it happened 3000 miles away in a suburb of San Francisco.

According to a suit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Hells Angels member Joel Silva claims he was arrested in 2008 by Livermore police on a false gun charge. Silva is seeking $1 million in damages from Liverpool.

It all started on September, 5, 2008, when Silva and 11 other motorcycle riders stopped at a gas station on First Street off Interstate 580. At the gas station, Michael Fenton got into an argument with off-duty air marshal Shawn Futrell, who claimed Fenton tired to force him off the road, which caused him to lose control of his motorcycle. Futrell called Livermore police, who arrested Felton. They also handcuffed Silva, but they finally let him go.

As Silva was mounting his motorcycle to leave the gas station, he was surrounded by police who demanded that they search his motorcycle. Silva refused, but the police searched his motorcycle anyway, and they claimed they found a .38 caliber handgun.

Silva was arrested on suspicion of being an ex-felon in possession of a firearm and he spent 24 hours in jail before he was released. Strangely, no charges were filed in Alameda County, but Silva was later charged in federal court on possession of an illegal handgun. However, the judge threw out the case, saying that whether Silva had a handgun or not, the police had violated Silva's Fourth Amendment rights.

All too often in America, rogue policemen get caught playing the role of God; thinking they can get away with just about anything because they are the law. In New York City, several narcotics detectives were recently arrested and charged with "flaking," or planting drugs on innocent people. What happed to Silva could happen to any one of us, if in the eyes of a policeman, he considers us a "suspicious looking character."

I hope Silva is successful with his lawsuit. Maybe then it will force more policemen in America to start playing by the rules.

You can see the article below at:

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-n...

Hells Angel sues Livermore, seeks $1 million in damages

By Robert Jordan

Contra Costa Times

A member of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club has sued Livermore for $1 million, claiming police violated his civil rights by falsely accusing him of carrying a handgun.

Joel Silva filed suit against the city in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Friday. The Sonoma County resident claims the false handgun claim stemmed from a Sept. 5, 2008, incident when another club member was involved in an altercation with an off-duty air marshal.

Livermore has not yet responded to the claim.

According to court records, the incident occurred after Silva and a group of 11 other riders on Interstate 580 exited onto First Street to stop for gas. While filling up, member Michael Fenton got into an altercation with Shawn Futrell, an off-duty air marshal, who accused Fenton of trying to force him off the freeway, which caused him to lose control of his motorcycle.

Futrell called Livermore police, who detained Silva and the 11 other members. Silva said he was handcuffed, searched and detained twice by police before being let go. Fenton was arrested.

As Silva was preparing to leave, officers surrounded him and demanded to search his motorcycle. According to the suit, Silva refused but police searched anyway and claimed to find a .38 caliber handgun.

Silva was arrested on suspicion of being an ex-felon in possession of a firearm. He spent 24 hours in jail but no charges were filed in Alameda County. Silva was later charged in federal court based on the claim that he had a handgun.

A federal judge later ruled that whether or not Silva had a handgun, his Fourth Amendment rights were violated and suppressed the evidence, according to the suit.

Joe Bruno on the Mob – Smokin' Joe Frazier Dies of Liver Cancer

This one was personal to me. Joe Frazier was my friend.

I didn't actually meet Joe Frazier until after he had retired from boxing. At the time I first met him, Frazier was handling the pro career of his son Marvis, a former Olympian like his father, who fought regularly at the Felt Forum in Madison Square Garden, and in Atlantic City. I'd run into Frazier at press conferences for his son's fights, mostly at the San Remo Restaurant across the street from Madison Square Garden. After the press conferences, which usually began around noon, some sportswriters, like myself and Bert Sugar, would make a bee line to the bar to have a few, before we went back to work, if we indeed did go back to work. Frazier would join us sometimes, and he'd regale us with stories about his fights, mostly of his three fights with Muhammad Ali.

Joe Frazier was also a frequent guest at the Downtown Athletic Club at 19 West Street, of which I was a member. The DAC had several yearly sports dinners, and in the late 70′s and early 80′s, the Heisman Trophy Dinner was held at the DAC. I'd run into Frazier at the street level piano bar and we did what we liked to do in those days, have a few drinks. Sometimes we'd go upstairs to the 3rd floor bar, which at one time, was the longest bar in New York City. One night my girlfriend, now my wife Jeanie, asked Joe to autograph a Mets shirt she was wearing. Joe obliged, and I don't think Jeanie ever washed that shirt afterwards.

One night we were at the DAC drinking so long, Frazier remembered the indoor garage where he had parked his car was closing at 11pm. I left my wife at the bar, and Frazier and I hurried to the garage. They were closing the doors, when we convinced the parking lot workers letting Joe Frazier get his car before they closed was the right thing to do. They agreed and we parked Frazier's car in an outdoor garage on West Street, right across the street from the DAC. Then we went back inside the club and resumed drinking.

I do remember one incident with Frazier at the San Remo restaurant that will never leave my mind. It was at a press conference for Frazier's son Marvis' next fight. Marvis had just been destroyed in less than one minute by the up-and-coming heavyweight sensation Mike Tyson. Marvis was really nothing more than an overstuffed light heavyweight, and a mediocre one at that. Marvis had nowhere near the talent of his father, who is without a doubt, one of the top 10 heavyweights of all time.

At the press conference, while Joe and Marvis were on the dais, I asked a question that went something like, "Marvis, do you think maybe your father is moving you a little too quickly in the heavyweight division?" It was a relevant question; one someone else would have asked if I hadn't.

After the press conference, while I was standing at the bar, chatting with my friend Larry Venturato. Joe Frazier came over to us. He wasn't smiling. I was wearing a suit, with a matching tie and pocket handkerchief. Frazier casually took the pocket handkerchief out of my breast pocket. I thought he was going to smack me in the face with it. Instead, Frazier smiled, refolded the pocket handkerchief, then put it back into my breast pocket. Then he said, "Those were some tough questions you were asking there, Joe."

Then Frazier smiled and had a drink with us.

I had to go immediately to the men's room to change my diapers.

In 1990, I pretty much got out of the boxing business, and I never ran into Joe again. In 1996, I did get a good kick out of what Joe said when he was asked what he was thinking when Ali was lighting the Olympic torch at the Olympics. Joe said, "I was thinking they should throw him in the fire."

Pure Joe Frazier. Ali treated Frazier badly when they were fighting, and Joe never forgot the slights. I don't think they ever fully made up, although Joe said recently, "I forgave him. He's in a bad way."

Now Joe Frazier is dead and Ali is a shell of himself, a victim of Parkinson's disease.

They fought three wars (Ali won two), the last one being the "Thrilla in Manila" in 1976. As Frazier was protesting he wanted to go out for the 15th and final round, Frazier's trainer Eddie Futch stopped the fight in Frazier's corner. Ali was so exhausted, that when he heard the fight was over, he collapsed to the canvas. Ali said it was the closest he ever came to dying. Both fighters were immediately rushed to the hospital after the fight.

Former AP Boxing Writer Eddie Schuyler, another scribe who frequented the bars at boxing press conferences, covered the Ali-Frazier fight. Recently Eddie said, "They both should have retired after that fight. They left every bit of talent they had in the ring that day."

Both fighters fought on for several more years, and I wonder if maybe Ali's condition today was the result of too many punches to the head, during and after the Thrilla in Manila.

As for Joe Frazier, he died of liver cancer at the age of 67. Joe drank a bit, but I know people who had liver cancer who never touched a drop. So I choose to believe Joe's death was just an Act of God.

And if you believe in God and the concept of heaven, you can be sure Joe Frazier is up there in a heavenly bar, bending his elbow and regaling everyone with tales about his three fights with Muhammad Ali.

God Bless you Joe Frazier. They'll never be another fighter like you. Or another man either.