Cosa Nostra News

It was 1959. The year that signaled the end of days for mobsters running around unhindered in the paradise playground of cash that is Sin City. The installment of a new, dazzling (and now iconic) “Welcome Las Vegas Nevada” sign meant welcome - but only for some folks and not others. The welcome sign that didn't welcome everyone.   It was in this year that the Gaming Control Act came into force and spelled the end of a mainly drama-free run for underworld figures, who had been moonlighting around the city at the various gaming establishments taking their cut off the top of profits and gaming the system. It’s Cosa Nostra News served fresh from the files of history.   Introduction of the Nevada Gaming Control Act - and the Nevada Gaming Commission In July of 1959, the Nevada Gaming Control Act was brought into effect which outlined a two-tier regulatory system that defined how gambling was going to go down from now on in Nevada. The tiers were that of a Gaming Control Board - w...

By Nick Christophers  I had the pleasure of visiting the Mob Museum not long ago and was floored by what it had to offer. As a mob historian the Museum offered me a journey that I will not soon forget.... The Las Vegas Mob Museum displays the bullet-riddled wall from the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, among other things. Each floor offered a different layer of mob history that was exciting with surprising artifacts that only they could offer. From the bullet riddled wall of the St. Valentines Day Massacre to letters from Pablo Escobar it was wild to see. Of course, all the items go through a rigorous authentication process.  Geoff Schumacher the Museum’s vice president of exhibits and programs , plays a huge role in offering a memorable tour for the many visitors to the Museum.  Geoff first came to the Museum in 2014 only two years after it opened its doors. When he arrived, he worked on building the Museum’s internet presence (via social media platforms) and artifact ac...

Providence, Rhode Island was once Raymond Loreda Salvatore Patriarca's fiefdom, and now it's where violent confrontations between outlaw motorcycle clubs are on the up. Santo Trafficante Jr., once among the most powerful Mafia bosses in the United States. controlled organized criminal operations in Florida, where the Outlaws, or the American Outlaw Association, is the dominant outlaw motorcycle club. Last year in Newark, New Jersey, a Hells Angels associate was brutally beaten with baseball bats in what law enforcement believed was part of a broader attempt by the Pagans Motorcycle Club to expand its territory into northern New Jersey. Outlaw MC violence was spotlighted this summer in Las Vegas, when an undercover agent who infiltrated a Las Vegas chapter of the Vagos Motorcycle Club for two years offered a glimpse into the underworld of outlaw bikers as he testified during a federal racketeering trial. “If the leadership decides to declare war,” Agostino Bra...

On the evening of May 2, 1957, Frank Costello dined at Chandler’s Restaurant at 49 West 49th Street. In preparation for his role in The Godfather, Marlon Brando reportedly watched recordings of Costello speaking.  His companion may have been Philip Kennedy, a former semi-pro baseball player who was a sometime actor who managed a modeling agency. Costello likely enjoyed Kennedy’s company because Kennedy moved nimbly and freely among Manhattan’s wealthiest denizens. Costello, the insecure Don, was supposedly fixated on being accepted by those folks. The blue bloods made him self-conscious about his voice and his inability to lose the “deeze, doze, dem” East Harlem diction. (Bizarre stuff for the mob boss who filled Lucky Luciano’s shoes, but it is the insecurities that keep us interested in the guy, anyway.) Costello’s gravelly voice (which wasn’t as gravelly as you might think, as per the video below, which includes more of Frank talking than any other clip we’ve seen...

REVISED, EXPANDED This year marks the 60th anniversary of Apalachin,  which has always been of great interest to me.. .. Police in pursuit in Apalachin on the day. .... Apalachin, NY, the infamous location of the November 14, 1957, Mafia Summit , changed everything by finally bringing the full resources of the FBI onto the nation's crime families . That ill-fated meeting in upstate New York left two legacies in place: The enormous free reign with which the wiseguys operated for so long was coming to a close as the FBI launched a full-court investigative press against the mob that wouldn't let up -- ever.....(Law enforcement's mob investigations may have periodically waned, but the efforts were forever renewed....) And, never again could J. Edgar Hoover deny Cosa Nostra's existence without looking like a fool.

Allen Smiley worked for around 10 years of his life with Cecil B. DeMille, "a founding father of the Hollywood film industry, and the most commercially successful producer-director in cinema history," as noted in The Art of the Hollywood Epic  biography. But Smiley decided it was more worthwhile to join with Benjamin (Bugsy) Siegel, who'd installed himself in Los Angeles to get pieces of various action for his New York friends (and himself). Despite what one high-profile biography says about Smiley growing up in Manhattan with Siegel and Meyer Lanksy, his daughter told us otherwise. Allen Smiley on left; Luellen on right; unidentified woman in middle. Allen Smiley was born Aaron Smehoff in Kiev. His family immigrated to Canada and settled in Winnipeg when Allen was five years old, his daughter writes in her memoir, Cradle of Crime: A Daughter's Tribute . "Dad met Ben in 1937," Ms. Smiley told us. "Dad spent one year in New York af...

Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel was killed on June 20, 1947, at 10:45 pm West Coast time. [Watch film footage below, the man wearing the maroon jacket is said to be Bugsy. I don't know... but first see the rare footage that is Bugsy Siegel ....) The gangster often identified as the visionary of Las Vegas was 41 years old. As recounted (here) , he was killed around three months after The Flamingo reopened in March 1947, once construction was completed. This IS rare footage of Bugsy Siegel..... At least one gunman crept up to a French window with a 30-30 carbine, resting the rifle on the lattice work of a trellis outside the Moorish‐style mansion Siegel shared with Virginia Hill at 810 North Linden Drive in Beverly Hills, California. Siegel sat on a couch, his back facing the gunman, who was only about 15 feet away, separated by glass. Siegel flipped through a copy of the Los Angeles Times he had picked up after dining at Jack’s on the Beach, when the gunmen squeez...

"Nevada owes a debt of gratitude to Frank Schreck," a Las Vegas Sun editorial recently noted . Schreck was named this year's International Association of Gaming Advisors honoree and in recognition gave quite a speech. It included a head-turning revelation about a major Mafia figure notorious for his stint working in the  Stardust hotel and casino  (among other places), which once occupied a prime slot on the fabled Las Vegas strip. Geri, on Lefty's left, looks like Sharon Stone.   Schreck, considered a premier gaming attorney in Nevada and elsewhere, recounted his personal take on Las Vegas history, including the enduring legacy of oddball billionaire Howard Hughes . Schreck's rise commenced in 1971 when then-governor Mike O’Callaghan’s appointed the then-27-year-old lawyer to the Nevada Gaming Commission, setting a record. Schreck remains the youngest commissioner ever appointed to that regulatory body, which was charged with policing whether someone could...

Excerpted from I Pity the Poor Immigrant: A Novel  by Zachary Lazar (Fiction; April 8, 2014). The Bomb magazine published this first proof. Lazar is the author of three books, most recently the novel Sway , about the Rolling Stones' early days, and the memoir Evening’s Empire: The Story of My Father’s Murder , which may be of interest to regular readers.  When he was just six years old, Zachary Lazar's father, Edward, was shot dead by hit men in a Phoenix, Arizona parking garage. The year was 1975, a time when, according to the Arizona Republic, "land-fraud artists roamed the state in sharp suits, gouging money from buyers and investors." How did his father fit into this world and how could his son ever truly understand the man, his time and place, and his motivations? In Evening's Empire, Zachary Lazar brilliantly attempts to reconstruct the sequence of events that led to his father's murder. Lazar's writing has appeared in t...

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. Breitbart News reported that an investigation of the home exercise accident story told by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) appears basically "to discredit his version of events surrounding a New Year’s Day incident that left him with gruesome injuries to his eye, face and ribs." On January 22, three weeks following the accident, Reid told his version of how he obtained his injuries to the assembled Washington DC press: "I know there are a lot of rumors as to what happened, but that’s very simple. My wife and I were in our new home. I was doing exercises that I’ve been doing for many years with those large rubber bands and, uh, one of them broke and spun me around and I crashed into these cabinets and injured my eye."

Frank Cullotta warned "Frankie Blue" An interesting story on  Tony Spilotro is on Gangland Wire : On June 9, 1980, the night Frank Bluestein, aka “Frankie Blue” , was murdered, Frank Cullotta had warned him that the Las Vegas police department was following him. "Frankie Blue" knew someone was on his ass, but he was certain it was criminals -- a group with bad intentions, looking to rob him. And that didn't give him a moment's pause. It was actually an occupational hazard. Garbage men may tweak their back while hefting trash cans, mobsters might get shot or robbed or both. So "Frankie Blue" was like “ I got a gun if anybody tries to rob me .”

R Frank Cullotta, 1970s? Sky Valley Chronicle Washington State News : "So what's Frank Cullotta doing these days in his golden years? At the age of 75 he's running five-hour bus tours in Las Vegas to the former murder scenes and other crime haunts he inhabited during his mobster years in Vegas. Back then Cullotta says his crew "controlled Las Vegas" on behalf of the Chicago mob . Now he says he wants to show visitors the reality of life as a mobster." Cullotta gave the BBC Radio 5 show an interview about his new job that you can listen to here . Gotta say, I wasn't impressed with the broadcaster; his questions, for the most part, were repetitive. Seems like he wasn't listening to Cullotta, just asking fabricated questions.

The  Las Vegas Review-Journal  recently wrote about the mob's role in the evolution of Las Vegas, describing Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel once again as the gangster with the vision to create America's greatest gambling mecca. They ought to have known better. Benjamin (Bugsy) Siegel According to the myth, Siegel drove his car across the open Nevada desert under a pale-blue sky with nothing but sun-scorched sand on either side. He stopped the car to relieve himself -- and a vision flooded his brain of a fantastic hotel-casino sprouting up out of the barren wasteland like a flashy mirage, where people could gather to enjoy in upscale splendor the best food and entertainment as well as first-rate service and, of course, gambling, all kinds of gambling, from felt-covered card-gaming tables to ever-hungry slot machines into which anxious patrons thumbed their coins, gleefully awaiting the ringing bells and flashing lights of the jackpot while sipping a martini. ...