Danny Greene
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Daniel "Danny" Patrick Greene (November 9, 1933–October 6, 1977) was an Irish American mobster and associate of Cleveland mobster John Nardi during the gang war for the city's criminal operations during the late 1970s.
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[edit] Youth
Daniel Patrick Greene was born to first generation Irish-American immigrants John Henry Greene and his girlfriend, Irene Cecilia Fallon. At the time of Daniel's conception they were both twenty-year olds. On November 9, 1933 they were legally married in a simple wedding before a justice of the peace. Five days later after Irene gave birth to Daniel she died of complications brought on from an enlargened heart. The baby's identity remained simply "Baby Greene" until the burial of his mother. Afterward, John Greene decided to name his son Daniel after the baby's paternal grandfather.
Shortly after the death of his wife, John Greene began drinking heavily. He had lost his job as a travelling salesman for Fuller Brush and moved in temporarily with his father, a newspaper printer, who himself had also been recently widowed. Unable and unwilling to provide for his son, Greene placed the child in an orphanage.
At St. Jerome Catholic School he developed a great fondness for the nuns and priests. He developed a lasting friendship with some of his teachers, although he did misbehave in class often. During his enrollment at St. Jerome he served as an altar boy. He was quite athletic and excelled at baseball and all-star basketball player. Even though he was a poor student the nuns at St. Jerome let him play sports because he was too valuable for the team. He was placed in Parmadale, a Roman Catholic-faith based orphanage.
When Greene reached the age of adolescence he was enrolled in Roman Catholic-faith based St. Ignatius High School and lived with his paternal grandfather. It was at St. Ignatius High School that he would frequently get into fights with fellow Italian-American students and was subjected to their racist remarks about his Irish-American heritage that fueled a hatred for Italians that lasted his entire life. He was suspended from Collinwood and later transferred to the St. Ignatius High School in hopes that the change of environment would benefit his floundering grades.
In 1939 Daniel's father began dating a nurse. Within a year the couple married, moved into an apartment and started their own family. Daniel who was six years old at the time did not like his stepmother and ran away on several occasions. Daniel was then taken in by his grandfather who he lived with for the rest of his childhood years and an aunt. When John Greene died in 1959, the newspaper obituary acknowledged him as the father of the children from his second marriage, but had no mention of Daniel.
He was also involved in Boy Scouts for a very short period of time before he was kicked out. Daniel stood at 5'10 with curly blond hair and handsome looks, although he was extremely self conscious about his personal appearance. He was heavily involved in personal physical fitness lifting weights and jogging, and as he grew older he quit smoking and drinking, underwent hair prosthesis, and disciplined himself further by going on a rigid diet of fish, vegetables and vitamin supplements.
Eventually, Greene was expelled from Collinwood High School in Cleveland, Ohio due to excessive tardiness which was caused by the constant bullying from fellow students.
Ironically, while Greene privately hated Italian Americans, he would later collaborate with many Italian American business associates and made members of La Cosa Nostra in lucrative business interests that benefited him. He came to believe that Cleveland family mobster Anthony Liberatore was his friend, even though, later on in life, Liberatore would later help plan and orchestrate his demise.
[edit] Adulthood
Leaving high school in 1951, he enlisted in the U.S. Marines in 1951 and was noticed for his abilities as a boxer and his excellent marksmanship. A few weeks later he was inducted and shipped off to Camp LeJeune, North Carolina. He was transferred many times which may have been because of behavioral issues. Still, he was promoted to the rank of corporal in 1953 and taught new recruits how to be artillerymen. He was honorably discharged later that year.
In the early 1960's Daniel earned himself steady work as a longshoreman at the Cleveland, Ohio docks years before the docks would become monopolized by the International Longshoremen's Association. In his free time he read ravenously about his homeland of Ireland and it's turbulent history. He began to think of himself as a "Celtic warrior". Impressed with the history of the Celts, he would try to emulate the ancient Celtic warriors. It has been speculated that it was, at least in part, the reading about his noble roots that fueled his criminal ambitions.
Daniel became outspoken for his fellow dockworkers and through sometimes violent protests and strikes forced the stevedore companies to allow the ILA to oversee the hiring of its dockworkers. As a prerequisite in landing a job as a longshoreman many longshoremen were forced to unload grain from the boats on a temporary basis and turn over their paychecks over to Greene.
The funds were said to be going towards paying for a union hall, but most of the funds ended up in Greene's personal bank account. A unidentified ILA member would later recall about Greene, "He read On the Waterfront. He imagined himself a tough dock boss. But he was thirty years too late. He used workers to beat up union members who did not come in line, but he was never seen fighting himself. He was a spellbinding speaker and a good organizer."
As a union organizer he would declare non-sensical, work stoppages on occasion, as often as twenty-five stops a day solely to demonstrate his authority on the docks to company owners. On one occasion he threatened to murder the son and daughter of one company owner, whose house had to be put under constant protection from the FBI and would have his children escorted to and from school by armed U.S. Marshals.
After Sam Marshall, a courageous investigative reporter collected affadavits that proved charges of extortion, Greene was exiled from the union and convicted of embezzlement. The conviction was later overturned during an appeal. But rather than face a second trial trial he pled guilty to the lesser charge of falisfying union records, was fined $10,000 and received a suspendid sentence. Afterwards, he did not pay the fine or receive any prison time. After he returned to his rackets on the waterfront he met and became close friends with Teamsters boss Louis Triscaro. Louis later introduced Daniel to Jimmy Hoffa. After the friendly meeting Hoffa would later reportedly say to Triscaro, "Stay away from that guy. There's something wrong with him."
He began working on the docks as a longshoreman and was quite popular with the other workers. In 1961, the president of the local union was removed from office by the International Longshoremen's Association and Greene was chosen to serve as interim president. After his service as interim president, he handily won re-election.
Once president, Greene had the union office painted green and installed thick green carpeting. He was known to drive a green car, wear green jackets, and often handed out green ink pens. In office, he raised dues 25 percent and pushed workers to perform "volunteer" hours to assist in providing a "building fund." It was unwise to refuse as those who did often found themselves losing out on work. He also fired more than fifty members denouncing them as "winos and bums" to the other workers.
[edit] Informant
Having contact with other union leaders who were under investigation by the F.B.I. brought Greene a visit from agent Marty McCann of the Organized Crime Division.
Much like Whitey Bulger, Greene became a confidential informant, quietly passing along information to the F.B.I. but only that which suited his personal needs and nothing that would hurt himself or those he valued. His codename was "Mr. Patrick", a reflection on his steadfast Irish pride.
By 1964, the members of the union were fed up with Greene's behavior and the Cleveland Plain Dealer began writing a nine part series about him. The series brought Greene unwanted attention from U.S. attorney, the Internal Revenue Service, the Labor Department, and the Cuyahoga County prosecutor.
The International Longshoremen's Association began their own investigation and soon Greene was removed from office.[1] Eventually, Greene was convicted of embezzling $11,500 in union funds as well as two counts of falsifying records. The verdict was overturned by an appeals court and federal prosecutors finally settled for Greene's guilty plea of two misdemeanors. All in all, he was only fined $10,000, but even then he only paid a fraction of it. Some think that his F.B.I. connections were at work to lessen his punishment.
[edit] Mob
Greene soon found employment with the Cleveland Solid Waste Trade Guild wherein he was hired in a capacity to "keep the peace". Impressed with his attitude and abilities, Alex Shondor Birns hired Greene to be an enforcer for his various numbers operators.
In May 1968, Greene was driving in his car when a bomb exploded. He told the police that a passing car had tossed the bomb into his vehicle at which point he managed to push it away. The explosion threw Greene nearly 20 feet (6 m) from the demolished vehicle and he claimed "the luck of the Irish" for having only minor injuries. The truth of the matter was that Greene was transporting a bomb and it exploded prematurely. In the future, he would only trust professionals to handle bombs for him.
One of the men in charge of the Cleveland Solid Waste Trade Guild, Mike Frato, decided to end the group and form a more legitimate trade group called the Cuyahoga County Waste Haulers Association. The Cleveland Solid Waste Trade Guild fell apart shortly thereafter.
In 1971, Frato's car was destroyed by a bomb. The body inside wasn't Frato, but instead was an accomplice of Greene named Art Sneperger. A month later, Frato was shot and killed. Greene was arrested and interrogated. He admitted to the killing but claimed it was self-defense. Evidence seemed to corroborate Greene's story and he was released.
Soon after, Greene left his wife and their two daughters and moved to Collinwood. There, as Ned Whelan wrote in a Cleveland Magazine story called "How Danny Greene's Murder Exploded the Godfather Myth": "Imagining himself as a feudal baron, he supported a number of destitute Collinwood families, paid tuition to Catholic schools for various children and, like the gangsters of the Twenties, actually had turkeys delivered to needy households on Thanksgiving."
He also formed his own gang of young tough Irish hoodlums called The Celtic Club. His main lieutenants were Keith Ritson, Kevin McTaggart, Brian O'Donnell, Danny Greene Jr., and Billy McDuffy. They started setting up their own gambling dens across the city. He also allied himself with John Nardi, a Cleveland family labor racketeer who wanted to overthrow the Cleveland family leadership.
The relationship between Greene and Birns also began to sour. Greene had requested Shondor Birns for a loan of $75,000. Greene wanted the money to set up a "cheat spot," a speakeasy and gambling house. Therefore, Shondor had arranged a loan for Greene through the Gambino family. Somehow later, the money wound up in the hands of Billy Cox, a numbers operator, who used it to purchase narcotics. The police raided his house, arrested him, seized the narcotics and what was left of the $75,000.
The Gambino family, from whom Birns had borrowed the loan, wanted their money. Shondor pressed Greene but Greene flatly refused to return the money. He told Birns that it wasn't his fault that it was lost.[2]
Not long after, Greene found an unexploded bomb in his car. Suspecting that Birns was behind it, Greene decided to retaliate. On Holy Saturday, the eve of Easter, Shondor was blown up via a bomb outside St. Malachi Church.
Reportedly, Birns had left $25,000 with an associate. It was to hire a hit man in case anything happened to Birns. Shortly after Birns's death, an unidentified gunman fired shots at Greene and his girlfriend on the street. The shots had missed their target.
On May 12, an explosion rocked Collinwood. Greene's building was destroyed, but Greene somehow had only minor injuries. As the second floor fell, he was shielded from the debris by a refrigerator which had lodged against a wall. A second, and more powerful, bomb had failed to explode. This second explosion would surely have killed Greene. Greene credited his miraculous escape to the intercession of St. Jude, whose medal he always wore around his neck.
In 1975 Green started asserting himself in the vending machine racket and began muscling into many of the Cleveland mafia's gambling operations. This greatly angered the Cleveland family leadership.
In 1976, longtime mobster John Scalish died, leaving control of Cleveland’s lucrative criminal operations, specifically the cities' Teamsters Union locals, up for grabs. Before his death, Scalish had appointed James Licavoli as his successor. However, other mobsters such as John Nardi challenged him for leadership of the organization. With the assistance of Greene, Nardi had many of Licavoli's supporters killed within weeks. That included Licavoli's underboss, Leo "Lips" Moceri, whose bloodstained car was found in a hotel parking lot in Akron, Ohio. This started a long standing war between Licavoli's Cleveland crime family and Greene's Celtic Club.
As the mafia began to chase Greene, he retaliated. In 1976 alone, 36 bombs exploded around Cleveland. It was soon to be called "Bomb City, U.S.A.". According to the book "To Kill The Irishman" by Rick Porrello, Greene personally assassinated at least eight of the Mafia hit men, sent to kill him. Most of these killings were either through the use of bombs or bullets.
[edit] Final days
During a televised interview, Greene denied any knowledge of the underworld war. However, Greene added, "I have no axe to grind, but if these maggots in this so-called Mafia want to come after me, I'm over here by the Celtic Club. I'm not hard to find." This was a public insult to the reputation of the Cleveland family and reduced their stature in front of the other families including the five families of New York. Their constant inability and failure to kill Greene made them look like a laughingstock and give them an impression as "the gang that couldn't shoot straight" in the criminal underworld.
On May 17, 1977, Greene's long time ally, John Nardi was killed by a bomb explosion. Greene was now left without an ally and was now fighting alone against the mafia.
After the killing of Nardi, Greene tried to unsuccessfully make peace with the Cleveland Family . But mafia boss James Licavoli made a cease fire with Greene, hoping he would relax so he could kill Greene while offguard. Shortly after the meeting, Greene quickly muscled in on a large West Side gambling operation that was originally ran by John Nardi. Greene offered Licavoli a percentage, but he declined.
On October 6, 1977, Greene went to a dental appointment in Lyndhurst, Ohio. Members of the mafia, who had listened in on Greene's phone line they had tapped, anticipated this visit. After Greene left his dentist's office building and approached his car, the automobile parked next to his exploded. Greene was ripped apart. His clothing, except for his brown zip-up boots and black socks, was blown clean off his body. His left arm was torn free and was thrown 100 feet away. One gold ring with five green stones was still on one of the fingers. Greene had had his dentist repair a loose filling.
In 2001, this story was optioned for a film to be entitled The Irishman: The Legend of Danny Greene.[3]
[edit] See also
[edit] Further reading
- Porrello, Rick. To Kill the Irishman: The War that Crippled the Mafia. Novelty, Ohio: Next Hat Press, 2004. ISBN 0-9662508-9-3
- English, T.J. Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish-American Gangster. Regan Books, 2005. ISBN 0-06-059002-5
[edit] References
- ^ Organized Crime And The Labor Unions
- ^ Cleveland Magazine, December 2007
- ^ Filmforce.com article http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/036/036695p1.html
[edit] External links
- Danny Greene: The Most Influential Mobster You've Never Heard Of by Rick Porrello
- Danny Greene at the Crime Library
