| Joe Adonis | |
|---|---|
| Born | Giuseppe Antonio Doto November 22, 1902 Montemarano, Campania, Italy |
| Died | November 26, 1971 (aged 69) Rome, Italy |
| Allegiance | Johnny Torrio organization, Luciano crime family |
| Conviction(s) | Illegal gambling |
| Penalty | 2 years |
Joe Adonis (born Giuseppe Antonio Doto; November 22, 1902 – November 26, 1971), also known as "Joey A", "Joe Adone", "Joe Arosa", "James Arosa", and "Joe DiMeo", was a New York mobster who was an important participant in the formation of the modern Cosa Nostra crime families.
Contents |
Adonis was born Giuseppe Antonio Doto in the small town of Montemarano, Italy, near Naples. In 1915, Doto stowed away on an ocean liner to the United States and settled in Brooklyn, New York. He was a cousin of Genovese crime family capo Alan Bono, who overlooked operations for Adonis in Greenwich Village in the 1940s and 1950s. Adonis fathered one son, Joseph A. Doto Jr.
Doto started supporting himself by stealing and picking pockets. While working on the streets, Doto became friends with future mob boss Charles "Lucky" Luciano and mobster Settimo "Big Sam" Accardi, who were involved in illegal gambling. Doto developed a strong loyalty to Luciano that would last for decades. At the beginning of Prohibition, Luciano and Adonis borrowed $35,000 from other mob associates and started a bootlegging operation in Brooklyn. This operation soon began supplying large amounts of alcohol to the show business community along Broadway in Manhattan. Doto soon assumed the role of a gentleman bootlegger, socializing with the theater elite.
In the early 1920s, Doto changed his name to "Joe Adonis", from the Greek god of love, Adonis. Doto allegedly received this nickname from a Ziegfeld Follies chorus girl that he was dating at that time.[1] However, another version states that Doto adopted the Adonis name after seeing it in a magazine article on Greek mythology. Extremely vain, Adonis spent a great deal of time in personal grooming. On one occasion, Luciano saw Adonis combing his thick, dark hair in front of a mirror and asked him, "Who do you think you are, Rudolph Valentino?" Adonis replied, "For looks, that guy's a bum!"
During the 1920s, Adonis became an enforcer for Frankie Yale, the boss of some rackets in Brooklyn. While working for Yale, Adonis briefly met future Chicago Outfit boss Al Capone, who was also working for Yale. Meanwhile, Luciano became an enforcer for Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria, who ran an organization loosely based on clans from Naples and Southern Italy. After the 1928 assassination of Yale, Masseria took over Yale's criminal organization.
Masseria soon became embroiled in the vicious Castellammarese War with his arch rival, Salvatore Maranzano. Maranzano represented the Sicilian clans, most of which came from Castellammare del Golfo in Sicily. As the war progressed, both bosses started recruiting more soldiers. By 1930, Adonis had joined the Masseria faction. As the war turned against Masseria, Luciano secretly contacted Maranzano about switching sides. Since Adonis' loyalties were to Luciano, he followed him to Maranzano. On 15 April 1931, Adonis joined Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, Vito Genovese, and Albert "Mad Hatter" Anastasia, all part of the Masseria organization, in an attack on Masseria at a Coney Island restaurant, killing him.
With the death of Masseria, the war ended and Maranzano was the victor. To avoid any future wars, Maranzano reorganized all the Italian-American gangs into families and anointed himself as the "boss of all bosses". Luciano and his loyalists quickly became dissatisfied with Maranzano's power grab. When Luciano discovered that the suspicious Maranzano had ordered his murder, Luciano struck first. On September 10, 1931, several gunmen attacked and killed Maranzano in his Manhattan office.
With Maranzano's death, Luciano became the pre-eminent organized crime boss in New York City. However, unlike Maranzano, Luciano did not want to become the "boss of all bosses". Instead, he established a National Crime Syndicate that united all the Italian-American gangs across the country and allowed for shared decision-making. For his part in murdering Masseria, Adonis received a seat on the Syndicate "board of directors". He then changed his name to Joe Adonis.
Adonis soon controlled the Broadway and Midtown Manhattan area of New York, building a criminal empire worth millions of dollars. Adonis made large profits from illegal alcohol sales, Adonis also bought car dealerships in New Jersey. When customers bought cars from his dealerships, the salesmen would intimidate them into buying "protection insurance" for the vehicle. Adonis soon moved into cigarette manufacturing, buying up vending machines by the hundreds and stocking them with stolen cigarettes. Adonis ran his criminal empire from Joe's Italian Kitchen, a restaurant he owned in Brooklyn. By 1932, Adonis was also a major criminal power in Brooklyn. Despite all his wealth, Adonis still participated in jewelry robberies, a throwback to his early criminal career on the streets.
Adonis also placed many politicians and high-ranking police officers on his payroll. Adonis used his political influence to assist members of the Luciano crime family, such as Luciano and Genovese, and mob associates such as Meyer Lansky and Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, the head of Murder, Inc.
As a syndicate board member, Adonis, along with Buchalter, may have been responsible for assigning some murder contracts to Murder Inc.
In the late 1930s Thomas E. Dewey, then a state-appointed special prosecutor in New York, started looking for ways to prosecute Luciano. In 1936, Dewey convicted Luciano on highly suspect pandering charges and sent him to prison in upstate New York for 30 years. Adonis remained relatively untouched by this crackdown because he was a still relative unknown to prosecutors. Luciano now left Frank Costello in charge of the Luciano family and Adonis in charge of the Syndicate.
In 1946, in return for helping the U.S. Government in World War II, Luciano was released from prison and immediately deported to Italy. In December 1946, Adonis and Luciano met at the famous Havana Conference of U.S. organized crime bosses in Cuba. It was Luciano's goal at the conference to regain his mob influence, using Cuba as a base, and being loyal, Adonis willingly agreed to help by handing over his reins of power in the syndicate. However, the U.S. soon discovered Luciano's presence in Havana and pressured the Cuban government to deport him back to Italy.
By the late 1940s, the government had begun watching Adonis. During this period, prosecutors successfully recruited Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, the second-in-command Jewish-American killer for hire gang Murder, Inc., to testify against Buchalter and his other associates. Reles also provided the government with valuable information on Adonis, but prosecutors were unable to indict Adonis.
In 1950, the U.S. Senate began televised committee hearings in several U.S. cities on organized crime. When summoned to the Kefauver Commission, Adonis repeatedly refused to testify, citing his right against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Although Adonis escaped contempt charges, he suffered undesirable national exposure as a mobster. In 1951, Adonis pleaded guilty to illegal gambling charges in New Jersey and was sentenced to two years in state prison.
In 1953, a court ruled that Adonis was an illegal alien and issued a deportation order to send him back to Italy. Adonis fought a long legal battle that delayed his deportation until 1956. Once in Italy, Adonis moved to a luxurious villa outside the city of Milan. Although Luciano and Adonis were both in Italy, the two men reportedly never met or spoke to each other during this period. It was speculated that Luciano was angry at Adonis for ceding too many New York City rackets to Genovese. On January 26, 1962, Luciano died of a heart attack in Naples at age 64. Adonis attended the funeral in Naples, bringing a huge floral wreath with the words, "So Long, Pal".
On November 26, 1971, during an anti-mafiosi criminal operation, Italian police forces took Adonis from his villa and transported him to a small hillside shack for interrogation. During the lengthy questioning, Adonis suffered a heart attack and died. Adonis had a quiet funeral attended only by his immediate family. He was buried in Madonna Cemetery in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||