The End for "Pretty Boy" Floyd

Two cars traveled down a country road towards the Conkle farm, two miles south of a small town named Clarkson on the eastern edge of Ohio. It was 4:10 on the afternoon of October 22, 1934, and history was about to unfold.

In one car were four Bureau agents, led by Chicago Special Agent in Charge Melvin Purvis. In the other were four local law enforcement officers, headed by East Liverpool Chief of Police Hugh McDermott.

The group was searching for Charles Arthur Floyd—known far and wide as “Pretty Boy,” a nickname he hated and refused to answer to, preferring “Choc”—and they quickly realized they’d found him. Wearing a navy blue suit, Floyd jumped from a car he was riding in and bolted across a rolling field, pistol in hand.

Within minutes, Floyd would breathe his last.

Law enforcement had been closing in on Floyd over the past two days. Floyd, just 30 years old, had been in trouble with the law for about a dozen years. He’d stolen money, robbed banks, and reportedly killed some 10 people. But it was his participation in the so-called Kansas City Massacre—a brazen attack in June 1933 that killed four lawmen, including a Bureau agent—that brought the FBI into the chase.

Floyd had been traveling across the country in the fall of 1934 with another conspirator in the Kansas City attack—Adam Richetti, an ex-sheriff turned bad—and their two girlfriends when the net tightened. On the wet, foggy evening of October 20, not long after the foursome had crossed into Ohio, Floyd ran their car into a telephone poll. Floyd and Richetti camped out nearby as the women went to have the car repaired. The men were eventually spotted, and law enforcement was called.

Richetti was soon captured, but Floyd ran off on foot. Hungry and tired, the fugitive ended up on the Conkle place on the afternoon of October 22 and tried to hitch a ride. That’s when the FBI and law enforcement finally caught up with him.

Fleeing the pursuing officers, Floyd zigzagged across the farm towards a group of trees. All eight law enforcement officers followed, calling on him to stop. As Floyd looked over his shoulder to see the pursuit, gunfire rang out. Floyd fell. “I’m done for, you’ve hit me twice,” he said after officers approached.

As he lay dying, Floyd was questioned. He admitted his identity, but little else. He slipped into unconsciousness and died soon after.

After his death, the legend of “Pretty Boy” just continued to grow. His myth even sparked a revisionist ballad by folk singer Woodie Guthrie, suggesting Floyd saved “many a starving farmer” from losing their homes. While Floyd reportedly destroyed mortgage notes from a bank or two that he robbed in hopes of saving a few farmers from foreclosure, his reputation as a humanitarian or a “Robin Hood” is undeserved. He robbed and stole to support a lifestyle of flash and ease and didn’t hesitate to shoot and kill when it suited him.

For the FBI, Floyd’s death was another key victory in the war against gangsters.

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Guilty Plea to Tax Evasion by Reputed Mobster, Rudy Fratto

Reputed suburban Chicago mobster Rudy Fratto pleaded guilty Tuesday to evading thousands of dollars in federal income taxes.

Fratto, 65, of suburban Darien, pleaded guilty to a single charge of evading $30,052 in taxes on income of $199,595 for 2005. But he admitted in a signed plea agreement that he actually evaded $141,192 in taxes on $835,641 in income over seven years starting in 2001.

The maximum sentence on the charge is five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The plea agreement, however, said the sentence could be more like 12 to 18 months under federal sentencing guidelines.

Fratto remained free on $4,500 bond pending sentencing, which U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly set for Jan. 12.

Fratto admitted in his plea agreement that he had arranged to have income funneled into the bank account of a defunct company in an effort to evade the scrutiny of the Internal Revenue Service. He received income in 2005 from jobs ranging from handyman to pasta salesman, according to the document.

Fratto's name has come up at least twice in connection with organized crime in recent federal cases.

Prosecutors introduced evidence that he was an associate of the Chicago police department's former chief of detectives, William Hanhardt, who is now serving a federal prison sentence as the leader of a mob-related jewel theft ring.

Fratto's name also came up in connection with the landmark 2007 Operation Family Secrets case -- the biggest Chicago mob trial in decades. He was listed on papers prepared by the FBI as a serious threat to the safety of the government's star witness in the case, admitted mobster and hit man Nicholas Calabrese.

Fratto's name also appears on a chart published by the Chicago Crime Commission in 1997, showing the structure of the so-called Chicago Outfit.

Thanks to Mike Robinson

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Reputed Bonanno Mafia Crew Pleads Guilty in Fort Lauderdale

Six men have pleaded guilty in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to taking part in a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy allegedly tied to the Mafia, police say.

Authorities said the men had ties with organized crime's Bonanno family, The Miami Herald reported.

The men, all from Florida, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate the federal racketeering statute. They were accused being involved in a variety of crimes including identity theft, drug trafficking, arson and Medicare fraud - all to benefit the organized crime group.

The alleged leader of the crew, Thomas Fiore of Boynton Beach, has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial, along with four other alleged co-conspirators.

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Mobsters Are Passed by Cheats on the Casino "Black Book"

Of the 21 people banned from Nevada casinos between 1990 and 2000, most had alleged mob connections. From 2001 to today, only seven names were added to the list, and all except one were casino cheats.

This twofold change — the decline of additions to the list and the emphasis on cheaters instead of mobsters — is an easy indicator of how Clark County and its casinos have been transformed. The contrast reveals a Las Vegas that has perhaps outgrown a landmark bit of gaming regulation: the infamous Black Book.

"How important is the Black Book today?" asked Bill Eadington, director of the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada, Reno, then answered his own question: "I would say not very."

At least not in comparison to the first List of Excluded Persons, issued in 1960 with 11 names tightly tied to organized crime — mob bosses with hidden interests in casinos, enforcers connected to gangland murders, drug traffickers and a person linked to a Castro assassination plot.

"It was a very powerful symbol," said Robert Faiss, a gaming attorney and former Gaming Commission secretary. Federal authorities saw Las Vegas as a town where mobsters colluded with casinos; the list began as a public relations counter-strike intended to forestall federal regulation of gambling.

Today's Black Book, by contrast, is used to combat the threat of cheats, people who damage Las Vegas' revenue.

Consider the last two names to be added: William Cushing and Michael McNeive. Both pleaded guilty in court late last month to cheating at slots with devices that tricked the machines into thinking $1 bills were $100 bills. Cushing and McNeive have no apparent connections to organized crime.

The first cheaters without mob connections appeared in the Black Book in the mid-'80s, when gaming was becoming increasingly corporate. The threat had shifted from something political — the appearance of organized crime — to something fiscal — lost revenue.

In the past nine years, the board has focused almost solely on cheats, and the rate of additions to the list has considerably dwindled — a change that may also reflect larger changes on the Strip. It's no longer possible to cheat a slot machine with fishing line attached to a quarter. Anyone suspected of marking cards will have surveillance cameras zoomed into their pores. Gaming is now coinless and computerized; cheats who can't crack a computer are out of luck.

This means one of two things: There are now fewer cheaters, or there are now better cheaters.

"It's just much more difficult to cheat the machines," said Jerry Markling, chief of enforcement at the Nevada Gaming Control Board, "and, logically, it's much more difficult for us to detect those types of cheating."

If cheaters are caught, it's certain casino operators won't fight the Control Board adding them to the excluded list. With casinos keeping their own in-house records of undesirables, the board's list is — depending on whom you ask — a doubling up of noble and mutual efforts, or a redundant relic.

"As Vegas changes we have to change with it," Markling said. "The Black Book is probably a good example of that."

Thanks to Abigail Goldman

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Junior Gotti Martini Drinking Contest Prize is a Stabbing According to Construction Worker

A self-styled construction coordinator testified Tuesday on how he once won a martini-drinking contest with John Gotti Jr. and got knifed in the shoulder for his trouble.

The appearance of Michael Finnerty, 43, came after seven days of colorful and sometimes horrific testimony from John Alite, a one-time top Mafia sidekick and buddy but now the sworn enemy of Gotti, a Howard Beach native.

Gotti lashed out at Alite, the star witness for the prosecution, after the jury left the courtroom last Thursday, calling him a dog and a punk.

Gotti is on trial for the fourth time since 2005 in Manhattan federal court on charges of racketeering and two murders. The prosecution contends he was kingpin of the Gambino crime family after his father died. The first three trials ended in hung juries.

The defense, headed by attorney Charles Carnesi, maintains Gotti had turned his back on organized crime by 1999, disillusioned and chastened by the death of John Gotti Sr., his colorful father, the Teflon Don, who was serving a life prison term for murder after avoiding conviction three times.

Finnerty told the jury about a night “in the mid-1980s” at the Shellbank bar on Cross Bay Boulevard in Howard Beach.

“John [Gotti] Jr. challenged me to a vodka martini contest and after we had been drinking awhile he left to go to the bathroom,” Finnerty said. “When he got back, I pointed to his glass and reminded him that he didn’t finish his drink.”

Finnerty said Gotti raised his arm as if to strike his drinking companion, “but at first I didn’t see the knife he had. He stabbed me twice in the shoulder blades.”

Finnerty said he fled the bar to a hospital.

“Did you give your real name at the hospital?” he was asked by the prosecution.

“No, they would have called the police,” Finnerty said. “The Gottis ran that neighborhood.”

Finnerty said he hid out until he got word through the grapevine that Gotti no longer was angry with him. He said Gotti explained to him their altercation was about “respect.”

Finnerty pleaded guilty to racketeering charges on the condition that he testify in the Gotti trial in the hope his sentence might be reduced. Finnerty, raised in Howard Beach, testified he dropped out of Christ the King High School as a senior and fell in with friends who operated a car theft ring, selling stolen automobiles to a junkyard.

Finnerty said he later saw Gotti and other Gambino crime family members in various bars and other locations in Queens.

Asked by a prosecutor what his occupation was, Finnerty replied “construction coordinator.”

On his seventh and final day of testimony last Thursday, Alite was being escorted out of the courtroom when he passed the defense table where Gotti was seated.

“You got something you want to say to me?” Alite said to Gotti, who shouted, “You’re a dog and a punk. A dog all your life.”

Judge Kevin Castel admonished Gotti, who apologized.

“You are not doing yourself any favors,” said Castel, who had prior to testimony in the case directed the defendant to remain silent throughout the proceedings.

Meanwhile, a juror in the trial was excused Tuesday after reporting that an incident in which a car nearly struck her had made her afraid to continue. The 55-year-old secretary had asked last week to be excused.

Judge Kevin Castel announced as the trial resumed that she would be released and replaced with an alternate. The juror explained that a car grazed her as she crossed a Manhattan street Oct. 2.

Thanks to Phillip Newman

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