Willie Moretti
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| Guarino Moretti | |
 Willie Moretti during one of his outbursts at members of the Kefauver Committee.
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| Born | 1894 Bari, Puglia, Italy |
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| Died | October 4, 1951 Fort Lee, New Jersey, U.S. |
Guarino "Willie" Moretti (1894 - October 4, 1951) was an underboss of the Genovese crime family and a cousin of family boss Frank Costello.
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[edit] Early life
Born Guarino Moretti in Bari, Puglia, Italy in 1894, Moretti came to America in the early 1930s to join his family in New Jersey.
From 1933 to 1951, Willie Moretti, During the 1940's, Moretti, in association with Joe Adonis, Settimo Accardi and Abner Zwillman, ran lucrative gambling dens in New Jersey and Upstate New York from his Monmouth County, New Jersey, home.
In 1950, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Organized Crime started an investigation known as the Kefauver hearings. Along with other members of Genovese family, Moretti was called to testify. Moretti was the only one who cooperated with the committee. While other mobsters were repeatedly invoking the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution and refusing to speak, Moretti told jokes, talked candidly, and generally played it up for the cameras. In doing so, he was violating the Mafia code of silence, known as omertà.
[edit] Hollywood Connections
In the 1940's, Morretti became friends with singer Frank Sinatra. Sinatra's first wife, Nancy Barbato, was a paternal cousin of John "Johnny Sausages" Barbato and a veteran sidewalk solider for Moretti. In 1948, Sinatra sang at the wedding of John Barbato's daughter. According to testimony from Moretti, he helped Sinatra arrange performances in return for kick-backs. It was also rumored that Moretti persuaded band leader Tommy Dorsey to release Sinatra from his contract by threatening to kill him. This incident inspired the similar incident in The Godfather [1]
In September 1951, Moretti become acquainted with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. The two comedians were performing at Ben Marden's Riviera nightclub in Fort Lee, New Jersey; at that time, Moretti and Longy Zwillman were watching the club's cardroom for Marten. On a later occasion, Martin and Lewis did a command performance at the wedding of Moretti's daughter.
[edit] Final Lunch
As Moretti's mental deterioration worsened, possibly resulting from syphilis,[1] it was decided to kill him. On October 4, 1951, three of Anastasia's hitmen took Morretti to lunch, then shot him repeatedly in the chest, killing him. He was 57 years old. On the day of his murder, Martin and Lewis had a lunch date scheduled with Morretti. However, earlier that morning, Lewis learned that he had contracted the mumps and both men totally forgot about lunch. Later, while trying to reach Morretti to apologize and explain, they learned he was dead from the television news (Lewis 2005).
[edit] In popular culture
In A Man of Honor: The Autobiography of Joseph Bonanno, Simon & Schuster , ISBN 0-671-46747-6, Joseph Bonanno referred to Willie Moretti as Frank Costello's "strength". This would later be compared to the relationship between Mario Puzo's character "Luca Brasi" and "Don Vito Corleone's" so-called "strength" in the novel The Godfather. [2]
[edit] References
- Lewis, Jerry and James Kaplan. Dean & Me (A Love Story). New York: Doubleday, 2005. ISBN 0-7679-2086-4
[edit] Further reading
- Reid, Ed and Demaris, Ovid. The Green Felt Jungle. Montreal: Pocket Books, 1964. 241 pages.
- Bonanno, Joseph. In A Man of Honor: The Autobiography of Joseph Bonanno, Simon & Schuster, 1984. ISBN 0-671-46747-6
