The Grand Avenue Legend Who "Filled Up A Cemetery Or Two"
"I’m like an old-time general. They’d better give me some stars.” -- Giuseppe (Joey the Clown) Lombardo, caught on wiretap The Clown He was The Clown, but he was an intelligent clown who read the Wall Street Journal. (FBI agents who knew Joey the Clown Lombardo were amazed by his business and financial acumen.) He also embodied such an extreme paradoxical nature, he almost shouldn't have existed. “[H]e was no clown; he was a deadly killer,” Bill Roemer, the late FBI Outfit investigator, once wrote. “I believe he filled up a cemetery or two," Michael Corbitt, the former corrupt police chief, now deceased, who spilled secrets in a best-selling book once said of Lombardo. Some in law enforcement even found positive feedback to offer. "It’s kind of refreshing to have people like Joey Lombardo out there,” Peter Wacks, a former FBI agent who once helped put Lombardo away said when the mobster lammed it for the family Secrets case. "There are...
