In Galante’s Grip, Montreal “Wept and Bled”

Carmine Galante went up to Montreal in the 1950s to "organize" crime having at his disposal a crew of sadists and killers, including his second in command, Frank Petrula.
Man of Steel...
Cosa Nostra News: The Cicale Files, Volume 1: Inside the Last Great Mafia Empire is not a full-sized book; it is about 70 pages and the ebook is $2.99, the price Amazon suggested.

If you signed up for my newsletter you will have already read this excerpt.

Here I attempted to drill down into an  infamous piece of Mafia history, specifically Bonanno crime family history.

Galante went up to Montreal in the 1950s to "organize" crime. He actually had under him a crew of sadists and killers.

In fact his second in command, Frank Petrula, was nearly every bit as ruthless as Lilo himself.

Petrula is the Canadian mobster who is believed to have launched a campaign to entice the New York Mafia to establish an outpost up north in Montreal.

Joseph Bonanno took him up on it, using Galante.

Petrula screwed up, though, and disappeared. He'd never get to benefit from the results of his savvy effort.

Adrian Humphreys in his book The Enforcer: Johnny Pops Papalia: A Life and Death in the Mafia wrote about Lilo's campaign.

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While caught in Galante’s grip, Humphreys wrote, Montreal “wept and bled."

Here is an excerpt from Inside the Last Great Mafia Empire by way of Cosa Nostra Newsletter:

Carmine Galante. No one could accuse the murdering Mafia strongman and former underboss to Joe Bonanno himself of not having the right stuff to be boss. Linked to more than 80 gangland murders, he stood a mere 5-foot-4, though there was “power and little compunction packed into his wiry… frame,” noted Adrian Humphreys in his book, The Enforcer: Johnny Pops Pappalia: A Life and Death in the Mafia. Utterly fearless, Galante—of whom an NYPD lieutenant famously said: “The rest of them are copper; he is pure steel”—was among the first to recognize the importance of Canada as a drug smuggling route into the U.S. He had, in fact, gone to Montreal in 1953 at the age of 43 and had literally organized the region’s criminal activity for boss Joe Bonanno.

“He was a very motivated and motivating man,” Humphreys wrote in The Enforcer, “and his organizing drive in Montreal was alarmingly thorough.”

Backing Galante was a gang of strong enforcers led by Frank Petrula, who helped cultivate Bonanno’s initial interest in Montreal. But fueling Bonanno’s immediate personal concern were the 100 bookies who had fled to Montreal to escape litigation created in wake of the 1950-1951 televised “Kefauver Committee.” Galante went up there to tell them that although they had departed New York, they were still beholden to the Bonanno crime family. In Galante’s grip, Montreal “wept and bled,” Humphreys wrote. Every nightclub and brothel, even underground abortionists, was shaken down by Galante and Petrula, who shared a sadistic streak. Humphreys relates a story about the two forcing a busboy in one establishment to dance barefoot atop crushed glass.

Galante brought organized crime in Montreal under his purview, but his wandering eye quickly sized up and remained forever focused on the opportunities Montreal afforded heroin trafficking. It was where drug wholesalers from Europe could meet with American and Canadian dealers to make their trafficking arrangements. The Mafia—particularly the Bonannos, straddling both countries—enjoyed supremacy in the heroin trade; they wholesaled the diluted heroin to dealers in major cities throughout the U.S. As Alexander Hortis noted in The Mob and the City: The Hidden History of How the Mafia Captured New York, their heroin was “superior” due to [the mob’s] overseas connections in the underworld. 
The Mafia was supplied with heroin by the Sicilian Cosa Nostra working with crime families based on the French Island of Corsica. The Corsicans were culturally similar to the families of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra. Although they were French, they even spoke in an Italian dialect. From the port city of Marseilles, the Corsicans ran smuggling operations throughout the Mediterranean. ...

Comments

  1. Thank you Ed,very interesting.

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  2. Ed, got anything new? This is just old rehashed crap you are heating up and trying to serve to us like you got a "scoop." YAWN.....

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  3. Not really interesting. Ed is gonna give a hot story on Joe Massino flipping shortly! Stayed tuned! Extra! Extra! Read all about it. Ed Scarpo reveals that Big Joey Massino is now a rat!!!!

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  4. You knew all this about Galante and Petrula reorganizing crime? Maybe you did but I didn't until I researched it. I'm trying to sell a book too so maybe I could earn a couple of dollars from a blog that costs about 20% of my time. And which I write for free. I'm sorry if every story isn't breaking news to you. Read the Calandra story. You won't have known anything about that. Or read some other blog the rehashes the Post and Daily News constantly.

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  5. Are you Canadian? You are such an authority did you know this..http://www.cosanostranews.com/2014/05/the-ndrangheta-in-america-torontos.html

    Why has that story gotten so many hits when it is also "not breaking news?" You're either Canadian, in which case I'd apologize, or you have an agenda behind your comment.

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  6. Thanks.... I like the other guy, who I deleted and who won't be commenting on here again; he never commented on this blog before but he felt compelled to write his nonsense about this story. Obviously I'm trying to promote something. What a jackass....

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  7. This guys is a dick: these are not legit comments -- I wonder who he is... a competitor? I didn't claim this was breaking news, did I? Are the details of Galante and Petrula so well known as he says, putting them on par with Joe Massino flipping? Also, according to this wingnut, every story I write on a blog that is available for FREE should be breaking news, as per HIS standards, which I should know based on (I can only assume) my ability to read minds. Why do biographies of Lincoln, for example, continue to get written? Look at every nonfiction book in the world. A percentage of the information will be based on background and context. And I routinely come across things in my reading that I use to build stories. This shitthead here never commented on this blog until these two comments. Now, I wonder: why? Why do such a thing -- deliberately try to discredit me with what is pure bullshit? Here are his comments and his name, which he was proud enough to post publicly (assuming it is his name)....


    Colby Zazarack • yesterdayz
    Not really interesting. Ed is gonna give a hot story on Joe Massino flipping shortly! Stayed tuned! Extra! Extra! Read all about it. Ed Scarpo reveals that Big Joey Massino is now a rat!!!!
    Cosa Nostra News: In Galante’s grip, Montreal “wept and bled,”
    Colby Zazarack • yesterdayzazarack@outlook.com • 24.113.167.77
    Ed, got anything new? This is just old rehashed crap you are heating up and trying to serve to us like you got a "scoop." YAWN..
    Approve
    Spam
    Delete

    Colby Zazarack -- kiss my ass, pal.
    ...

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  8. Yes, this Zazarack is an ass ... I never heard about the Galante/Petrula/Bonanno/Heroin/Canada connection before so it was interesting reading to me

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