Las Vegas Mayor, Oscar Goodman, Calls Chicago TV Reporter, Chuck Goudie, A Moron Over Mob Museum Report

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman lambasted a Chicago television reporter as a "moron" today for casting aspersions on the city's planned Mob Museum and an artifact held up as a main attraction — part of the bullet-ridden wall from the St. Valentine's Day massacre.

The report on WLS-TV claimed that Las Vegas was overstating how much of the wall it had, and — because of a miscommunication between the city's public relations staff and the reporter — mixed up a photograph of the wall section the city is getting and a fake wall that Goodman and former Nevada Sen. Richard Bryan pretended to knock down at an event marking the beginning of the museum's interior remodeling and construction.

"We never said we're buying it all!" Goodman shouted at his Thursday morning press conference. "That's what's wrong with members of the media who aren't honest. They put out a very untrue message.

"First of all, he called Sen. Bryan the senator from Arizona, this moron. And then he said ... what we busted into was not the St. Valentine's Day wall. We never pretended that it was."

Actually, the story said Bryan is the former governor of Arizona. He is not. He was once the governor of Nevada.

A nonprofit group that's administering the museum project paid about $300,000 for the section of the wall from a Chicago warehouse that was the scene of a brutal gang murder on Feb. 14, 1929. Coverage of the murders cemented the event as a symbol of the violence of organized crime of that era. The collection once belonged to Canadian business George Patey, who originally had about 400 bricks but sold many off to collectors over the years. The museum has 331 of those bricks, said city spokesman David Riggleman.

Any story about the Mob Museum, formally known as the Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement, generates widespread interest, and this one is no different, Goodman crowed.

"Morons get punished," he said. "And this guy's getting punished now. You know why? Because the phone is ringing off the hook now by people who heard the moron's story, or read the moron's story, who want to give us things for the Mob Museum."

Thanks to Alan Choate

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How Much of the Infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre Brick Wall Will End Up in the Las Vegas Mob Museum?

Chicago's most infamous wall stood up to the St. Valentine's massacre. But now, Las Vegas officials say they will be relocating the massacre wall for a new mob museum.

Las Vegas, never known for its understated approach, is spending $50 million to build a mob museum. So it seemed credible when sin city officials announced that they bought the actual bullet-riddled brick wall from Chicago's St. Valentines Day massacre. But as the I-Team found out, Las Vegas doesn't have all of the St. Valentines Day massacre bricks because what happens in Vegas isn't always as billed.

Wide-brimmed mobsters ready to whack a rival bootlegger. Or not. Actually, it was the mayor of Las Vegas, Oscar Goodman, and former Nevada governor Richard Bryan dressed in their outfit best for the big unveiling of the mob museum.

"What makes Las Vegas distinctive? What makes us distinctive from any other place? What gives us our mystique? It's the mob," said Oscar Goodman, Las Vegas mayor. And nothing in all of mobdom has more mystique than the St. Valentine's Day massacre.

SMC Cartage on Clark Street in Lincoln Park. February 14, 1929, 80 years ago this year. On that snowy morning, several hoodlums believed to be sent by Al Capone, enter the warehouse dressed as Chicago policemen. They line up seven henchmen from the rival Bugs Moran North Side gang, faces to the brick wall.

"Carnage. Some of the guys took about fifteen machine gun bullets which at that range could cut you in half," said John Binder, mob historian.

The building was used until 1967, when it was one of many gangland landmarks ordered demolished by Mayor Richard J. Daley.

"During the time it was being torn down that's when people came and liberated parts of the wall for their own collections," said Richard Crowe, mob collector.

Richard Crowe and a business partner have more than 100 bricks from the St. Valentines Day execution wall. Another Chicago collector obtained 200 bricks in 1967. And Canadian promoter George Patey secured the largest number, 414 bricks. According to an agreement with the demolition company, Patey's bricks had supposedly been in the line of fire. It is those bricks that Las Vegas officials say they bought for their mob museum.

"I can't think of an event they were involved in that was more bloody and more gory which represented how they did business," said Goodman. But not so fast. Before promoter Patey died five years ago, he sold more than 150 of the bricks, most of them through a now-defunct Web site. So the Chicago massacre wall that Las Vegas unveiled last week is, at best, only a partial relic.

"Mayor Goodman does not have all of the bricks that Patey bought," said Binder.

"How many are going to wind up in Vegas is a mystery," said Crowe.

When Vegas officials announced that the massacre wall would soon be on display, they showed a large picture to reporters. A city spokeswoman now tells the I-Team that it really wasn't a photo of the Chicago bricks, just a look-a-like illustration.

For two days Las Vegas officials would not tell us how much of the wall they actually have or what they paid.

A city spokeswoman sent the I-Team a statement on Wednesday night that they are "fully aware some bricks have been sold off" over the years. But she contends that they purchased the "vast majority" of the massacre wall.

Thanks to Chuck Goudie

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Gennaro "Jerry" Angiulo Underboss in New England Has Died

Gennaro "Jerry" Angiulo, the former underboss of the New England Mafia who ruled the Boston rackets from the 1960s until his headline-generating arrest and conviction in the 1980s, died today. He was 90.

Angiulo and his three brothers, Donato, Francesco, and Michele were all convicted in February 1986 in the region's first sweeping federal racketeering case against the mob. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison in the case.

The son of Italian immigrants who ran a North End grocery store, Gennaro Angiulo rose through the Mafia ranks under Raymond L.S. Patriarca of Providence because of his keen skill at making money. The Angiulo brothers were disciplined hands-on operators, who had a virtual monopoly on the region's illegal gambling and loansharking, according to law enforcement officials. But the Angiulo empire was toppled when the FBI planted bugs in their Prince Street headquarters and at a social club on North Margin Street for three months in 1981, as Angiulo ordered murders and beatings and boasted of his misdeeds.

When he was hauled by FBI agents out of Francesco's Restaurant in the North End in 1983, he yelled, "I'll be back before my pork chops get cold."

But he was wrong. He wasn't released on parole until 2007. In recent years, he has been living quietly at his home in Nahant.

Thanks to Shelley Murphy

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$100+ Million Verdict for Men Framed by the FBI in Mafia Slaying is Upheld

A federal appeals court upheld yesterday a landmark verdict for four men framed by the FBI in a gangland slaying, although the appellate judges said the $101.7 million damage judgment awarded by a lower court was “at the outer edge of the universe of permissible awards.’’

The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said the 2007 damage judgment to the families of Peter J. Limone, Joseph Salvati, Louis Greco, and Henry Tameleo, believed to be the largest of its kind nationally, was considerably higher than any of the three appellate judges would have ordered. “But when we take into account the severe emotional trauma inflicted upon the scapegoats,’’ the appeals court wrote of the wrongly imprisoned men, “we cannot say with any firm conviction that those awards are grossly disproportionate to the injuries sustained.’’

Limone, now 75, of Medford, spent more than 33 years in prison as a result of his wrongful conviction in the 1965 murder. Salvati, now 76, of the North End, was in prison for more than 29 years. The other two men, Greco and Tameleo, died in prison after decades of imprisonment.

Juliane Balliro, a Boston lawyer for the Limones and Tameleos, said she had expected the appeals court to uphold the ruling by US District Court Judge Nancy Gertner. “We hope the government will pay this award and allow these folks to move on with their lives and enjoy what little time they have left with their families,’’ she said.

She said the Justice Department can seek to appeal to the full Court of Appeals for the First Circuit or to the Supreme Court, but predicted those challenges would fail. “It really is time for the government to put the sordid past of the FBI behind them and just move on,’’ she said.

Beverley Lumpkin, a Justice Department spokeswoman in Washington, said the government is reviewing the ruling, but she declined to comment further.

In a dramatic ruling on July 26, 2007, Gertner found the FBI “responsible for the framing of four innocent men’’ in the murder of a small-time criminal, Edward “Teddy’’ Deegan, in a Chelsea alley.

She concluded after a 22-day bench trial that the FBI deliberately withheld evidence of the four men’s innocence and helped hide the injustice for decades.

The discovery of secret FBI files that were not handed over during the men’s 1968 state murder trial prompted a state judge in 2001 to overturn the murder convictions of Limone and Salvati. Limone was immediately freed from prison. Salvati had been paroled in 1997. The convictions of Tameleo and Greco were later set aside posthumously.

Documents in the Deegan slaying showed that the FBI knew that the key witness in the case, notorious hitman-turned-government witness Joseph “The Animal’’ Barboza, may have falsely implicated the four men while protecting one of Deegan’s real killers, Vincent “Jimmy’’ Flemmi, an FBI informant.

Gertner found that the FBI protected Barboza and Flemmi because both provided valuable information against the Mafia, which was the bureau’s top priority at the time.

During oral arguments before the appeals judges in May, lawyers for the Justice Department contended the FBI could not be held liable for malicious prosecution because the four men were prosecuted in state court by state authorities. The appellate court agreed yesterday, saying FBI agents helped the state make its case but did not initiate it.

Nevertheless, the appeals court said Gertner was right to hold the government liable for intentional infliction of emotional distress by covering up evidence that the four men were innocent.

Writing for the court, Judge Bruce M. Selya wrote that the FBI “stooped too low’’ to try to stamp out organized crime and that “the large damage awards mark the last word of a sad chapter in the annals of federal law enforcement.’’

Thanks to Jonathan Saltzmen

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The First Family: Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder, and the Birth of the American Mafia

Author Mike Dash makes lavish claims at the beginning of "The First Family," noting that "hundreds of books have been written about the Mafia, but this one is different from the rest. focus is the birth of the American branch of the fraternity during the years between 1892 and 1930 — a period that has, to my astonishment, been almost entirely neglected." That neglect means readers of Mafia books are usually uncertain why the United States of America ended up as the stronghold of a violent Sicilian brotherhood that terrorized entire urban areas.

For many years, I reported about organized crime, especially the activities of Sicilian Americans. That meant reading lots of books as background for my reporting. The glamorization of murder, the treatment of Mafia bosses as twisted heroes with catchy nicknames, the failure to explain how Sicilian-American crime syndicates operated in ways similar to Fortune 500 corporations, used to enrage me.

It's a shame Dash's book was unavailable to me back then. Like so many researchers, I have learned that the past is prologue. Dash has conducted painstaking research about the past of the Mafia, in Sicily and, beginning during the 1890s, across the United States. Dash's book does venture into matters previously unknown to me.

Before Dash's research, the "knowledge" spreading throughout American society — often due to popular-culture iterations such as "The Godfather" — came from sources so vague that many media consumers believed the mobsters were Italian American, rather than Sicilian American. The distinction is deeply important to those of Italian descent, and meaningful to an accurate history of organized crime.

Dash, a British academic historian/popular journalist, seems to have learned about every immigrant Sicilian mobster, every murder committed by them, every scheme to extort money from law-abiding Americans. His book is impressive, but so unrelenting in its description of gore that I often felt queasy.

When Dash occasionally gives the gore a rest, he relates little-known stories, not only about the criminals, but also about law-enforcement officers determined to alleviate the violence while resisting tempting bribes from Mafia leaders.

Among the memorable protagonists are Giuseppe Morello, founder of the first Mafia family to rule the New York City crime scene. Born in Corleone, Sicily, during 1867, he arrived in the United States during 1892. Although already an experienced, ruthless criminal, Morello mostly avoided prison time because he insulated himself well from the dirty deeds. Police and prosecutors finally made criminal charges stick, leading to Morello's imprisonment from 1910 to 1920. But even while imprisoned, Morello managed to direct criminal activity. He could not be halted by government authorities. It took a rival Mafia organization to silence Morello — via a 1930 murder.

On the law-enforcement side, Dash provides an especially rich word portrait of William Flynn, a New York City native who directed that city's branch of the U.S. Secret Service. Flynn pursued members of the Morello family relentlessly, even managing to infiltrate the seemingly impregnable Mafia inner circle.

The rest of the cast is huge. But because Dash provides a detailed, well-organized cast of characters at the front of the book, readers can erase lingering confusion quickly.

"The First Family" provides well-researched history for readers fascinated, and even repulsed, by organized crime.

Thanks to Steve Weinberg - the author of eight nonfiction books, most recently "Taking on the Trust: The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller," just published in paperback.

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