Frankie Carbo

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Paul G. Carbo

Born	February 4, 1904 Lower East Side, Manhattan, New York, USA
Died	November 22, 1976 Miami Beach, Florida, USA

Frankie Carbo (February 4, 1904 - November 9, 1976) was a Italian-American mobster who operated as a boxing promoter and as a member of Murder, Inc.

Born Paul Gianfranco Carbo on New York's Lower East Side. His father was from Manlleu, Catalonia. Frankie Carbo was sent to the New York State Reformatory for juvenile delinquents at the age of eleven. Over the next ten years, Carbo would frequently be in and out of prison on charges including assault and grand larceny when he was arrested for the murder of a cab driver in which he had refused to pay protection money. Pleading not guilty, Carbo claimed self-defense but eventually agreed to a plea bargain to plead guilty to manslaughter in exchange for a reduced charged of 2-4 years imprisonment. After serving 20 months, Carbo was released and began working as a hired gunman for various bootleg gangs during Prohibition.

In 1931, Carbo was charged with the murder of Philadelphia mobster Mickey Duffy in Atlantic City; however, he was eventually released. During the early 1930s, Carbo began working for Murder Inc. member Louis "Lepke" Buchalter before being charged with the deaths of former Waxey Gordon bootleggers Max Greenberg and Max Haskell. Although he was held by authorities for over 6 months, he was eventually released when witnesses refused to testify.

By the end of the decade, Carbo had been arrested 17 times (including 5 murder charges according to his police record) and was suspected in the 1939 west coast gangland slaying of police informant Harry "Big Greenie" Greenberg. While Brooklyn mobsters (and former Murder Inc. members) Abe "Kid Twist" Reles and Allie "Tick Tock" Tannenbaum agreed to testify against Carbo, Reles apparent suicide by throwing himself through a window of the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island would eventually cause the case to be dismissed.

During the 1940s, Carbo became a boxing promoter and, operating though a New York bookie operation, was highly successful in fixing high profile boxing matches, and eventually would become known throughout the underworld as the "Czar of Boxing". In 1947 it was rumored that Carbo had engineered the Bugsy Siegel hit in Las Vegas. However, Carbo began to run into legal troubles in the late 1950s being sentenced to Riker's Island for two years for managing boxers without a license. Following his release in 1960, Carbo was subpoenaed to appear before a Senate investigation committee and, in attempts to question his involvement in prize fighting; Carbo answered "I cannot be compelled to be a witness against myself." a statement he would repeat 25 times. The following year Carbo was charged with promoter Blinky Palermo of conspiracy and extortion of then NBA Welterweight Champion Don Jordan. After a three month trial, in which U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy served as prosecutor, Carbo was sentenced to 25 years in McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary. Granted early parole due to ill health, Carbo was released from prison and died in Miami Beach, Florida on November 9, 1976.

[edit] Further reading

Rosen, Charley. The Wizard of Odds: How Jack Molinas Nearly Destroyed the Game of Basketball. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001. ISBN 1-58322-562-5
Nack, William. My Turf: Horses, Boxers, Blood Money, and the Sporting Life. New York: Da Capo Press, 2003. ISBN 0-306-81250-9
Scott, Peter Dale. Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. ISBN 0-520-08410-1