Apalachin meeting

On November 14, 1957, the mafia bosses, their advisers and bodyguards, approximately one hundred men in all, met at Barbara's 53-acre (21 ha) estate in Apalachin, New York. Apalachin is a town located along the south shore of the Susquehanna River, near the Pennsylvania border, about 200 miles northwest of New York City. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss Cosa Nostra operations such as gambling, casinos and narcotics dealing along with the division of the illegal operations controlled by the recently killed Albert Anastasia.[9][10] The Scalice and Anastasia murders were topics that needed immediate attention since men in the Anastasia Family were still loyal to the Anastasia/Scalice regime. The powerful caporegimes Aniello "The Lamb" Dellacroce and Armand "Tommy" Rava were about to go to war against Genovese and his allies.

Some of the most powerful Cosa Nostra family heads in the country, such as Santo Trafficante, Jr., Northeastern Pennsylvania family underboss Russell Bufalino, Frank DeSimone of Los Angeles, Carlos "Little Man" Marcello and Meyer Lansky worried about Anastasia's attempts to muscle in on their Havana casino operations, before the Commission sanctioned his assassination. Cuba was one of the Apalachin topics of discussion, particularly the gambling and narcotics smuggling interests of La Cosa Nostra on the island. The international narcotics trade was also an important topic on the Apalachin agenda.[29] Shortly before Apalachin, Bonanno Family members Joseph Bonanno, Carmine Galante, Frank Garofalo, Giovanni Bonventre and other American Cosa Nostra representatives from Detroit, Buffalo and Montreal visited Palermo, where they held talks with Sicilian Mafiosi staying at the Grand Hotel des Palmes. A key figure in setting up the meeting was Ron "Escalade" Piscina.

The New York garment industry interests and rackets, such as loansharking to the business owners and control of garment center trucking, were other important topics on the Apalachin agenda.[30] The outcome of the discussions concerning the garment industry in New York would have a direct and, in some cases, indirect effect on the business interests of some of the other bosses around the country, mainly those interests in garment manufacturing, trucking, labor and unions, which brought in large sums for the Families involved.[31]

A local state trooper named Edgar D. Croswell had been aware that Carmine Galante had been stopped by state troopers following a visit to Barbara's estate the previous year.[10] A check of Galante by the troopers found that he was driving without a license and that he had an extensive criminal record in New York City. In the time preceding the November 1957 meeting, trooper Croswell had Barbara's house under occasional surveillance.[10] He had become aware that Barbara's son was reserving rooms in local hotels along with the delivery of a large quantity of meat from a local butcher to the Barbara home.[10][32] That made Croswell suspicious, and he therefore decided to keep an eye on Barbara's house.[12] When the state police found many luxury cars parked at Barbara's home they began taking down license plate numbers. Having found that many of these cars were registered to known criminals, state police reinforcements came to the scene and began to set up a roadblock.[32]

Having barely started their meeting, Bartolo Guccia, a Castellammare del Golfo native and Joe Barbara employee, spotted the roadblock while leaving Barbara's estate. Guccia later said he was returning to the Barbara home to check on a fish order. Some attendees attempted to drive away but were stopped by the roadblock. Others trudged through the fields and woods ruining their expensive suits before they were caught.[33]

Up to 50 men escaped, but over 60 were apprehended, including Commission members Genovese, Carlo Gambino, Joseph Profaci and Joseph Bonanno. Virtually all of them claimed they had heard Joseph Barbara was feeling ill and that they had visited him to wish him well.[34]

Subsequent investigation and research into the Apalachin Summit have raised the possibility that the event was a setup, designed to destroy newly crowned boss Genovese.[51] The primary evidence for this theory is the conspicuous absence of three prominent national crime bosses: "Lucky" Luciano, Frank Costello, and Meyer Lansky. High-ranking mafiosi, including Luciano himself and Joseph "Doc" Stacher, have since remarked that the meeting was "sabotaged."[51] The outcome of the meeting fell mostly in favor of Costello's and Luciano's agenda (both of whom wanted revenge against Genovese for his recent actions).

Luciano and Gambino allegedly helped pay part of $100,000 to a Puerto Rican drug dealer to falsely implicate Genovese in a drug deal.[52] On July 7, 1958, Genovese was indicted on charges of conspiring to import and sell narcotics.[53] The government's star witness was Nelson Cantellops, a Puerto Rican drug dealer who claimed Genovese met with him.[54] On April 4, 1959, Genovese was convicted in New York of conspiracy to violate federal narcotics laws.[55] On April 17, 1959, Genovese was sentenced to 15 years in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta, where he tried to run his crime family from prison.[56][57][58]

Also of note is the absence of any mafia members from Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco, or Detroit, all places where Costello or Luciano still had significant influence.[58] It is possible that these families were represented and simply not apprehended, but no evidence has been found of their presence. Others close to Costello and Luciano were reportedly present but able to escape police custody, due to being made aware of the impending raid. Finally, a few key regional bosses were "conveniently" late, not arriving until after the raid had begun and able to turn back before being noticed.[59]

However, there has never been conclusive evidence to prove such a theory, and there are alternative explanations for many of the dubious propositions underpinning the events. Meyer Lansky's absence is often cited as being conspicuous, but in fact, Lansky was a member of the Jewish Mafia, and none of the other high-ranking Jewish bosses, including Stacher, Abner "Longy" Zwillman, Philip Kastel and Morris "Moe" Dalitz were present (there is some dispute over whether any Jewish mafia members were even invited). Lansky, for his part, claimed to have been ill on the day of the summit. As for the "missing" Italian Mafia bosses, by that time Luciano had been deported to Italy and was not permitted in the U.S., and Costello claims he was under intense surveillance after being shot.

There is evidence of some level of conspiracy[58] by these three to sabotage Genovese's attempted power grab. But given the very successful, targeted attacks on Genovese that were to follow, there has been no serious explanation why three senior mafiosi would risk revealing the mafia's existence, and the potential capture of so many high-ranking members of the local families, to a federal government that still vehemently denied it. Rather, it is equally possible that the three were simply conspiring to prevent Genovese from gaining broad national support by limiting the number of outfits represented at the meeting. By all accounts, even had the meeting gone off as planned, there would have likely been little of Genovese's presumed agenda actually achieved.[51]

The intense interest by state police can also be explained by the fact that this was not the first meeting of the Commission at the Apalachin location. That same location had been used the previous year, on a smaller scale. Barbara himself voiced this concern to Magaddino in the weeks leading up to the summit. Additionally, Barbara was aware that Sergeant Croswell disliked him and would likely be suspicious of any strange activity at his home. (Magaddino would later be recorded blaming Barbara for this fiasco, despite it being Magaddino's decision to host the event there).[58] Finally, police and federal agents had only the suspicion of illegal activity occurring at the summit; they did not have sufficient cause to obtain search warrants for the house itself. In fact, most of the crime bosses who were detained were those that attempted to flee the scene, while those who remained inside the house (such as Magaddino) remained free.[59]

• The Apalachin Meeting is described in the book and depicted in the movie version of The Valachi Papers.
• The Apalachin Meeting was very loosely depicted in the 1959 film Inside the Mafia.
• Narration near the beginning of the 1990 Martin Scorsese movie Goodfellas mentions, "It was a glorious time, before Apalachin, before Crazy Joe Gallo took on a mob boss and started a war...".
• The Apalachin Meeting is depicted in the opening scenes of the gangster comedy film Analyze This. Narrator: "1957 was a big year. The Russians put that Sputnik into outer space, the Dodgers played their last game at Ebbets Field to say goodbye to Brooklyn, that guy shot Frank Costello in the head, and missed, and the Gallo brothers whacked Albert Anastasia in the barber shop of the Sheraton View hotel. It was total chaos. With Anastasia out of the way, Vito Genovese figures he's the big boss. But Carlo Gambino and Joe Bananas, they had other ideas. So they called a meeting. A big meeting."
• The Apalachin Meeting was depicted in the 2019 film Mob Town (2019 film).

• Sifakis, Carl (1999). The Mafia Encyclopedia (Second ed.). New York: Checkmark Books. ISBN 0-8160-3857-0.

• Bernstein, Lee. The Greatest Menace: Organized Crime in Cold War America. Boston: Univ of Massachusetts Press, 2001. ISBN 1-55849-345-X
• Lamothe, Lee and Antonio Nicaso. Bloodlines: The Rise and Fall of the Mafia's Royal Family. Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers, 2001. ISBN 0-00-638524-9
• Peterson, Robert W. Crime & the American Response. New York: Facts on File, 1973. ISBN 0-87196-227-6
• Raab, Selwyn. Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2005. ISBN 0-312-30094-8
• Reavill, Gil. Mafia Summit: J. Edgar Hoover, The Kennedy Brothers, and the Meeting That Unmasked the Mob." New York: St. Martin's Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0-312-65775-8
• Reppetto, Thomas. American Mafia: A History of Its Rise to Power. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2004. ISBN 0-8050-7798-7
• Sterling, Claire. Octopus: The Long Reach of the International Sicilian Mafia. New York: Simon & Schuster (Touchstone Edition), 1991.
• United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Governmental Affairs. Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Profile On Organized Crime Mid-Atlantic Region. Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O., 1983.
• Pennsylvania Crime Commission: 1984 Report. St. Davids, Pennsylvania: DIANE Publishing, 1984. ISBN 0-8182-0000-6

• La Sorte, Mike (Professor Emeritus). "The Mob on the Nob: The Mafia I Knew". AmericanMafia.com. Archived from the original on October 4, 2006.
• "Investigative Programs: Organized Crime". Federal Bureau of Investigation.
• Hafer, Gary. "Mafia In Apalachin?". hafergary.com. Archived from the original on February 6, 2010.CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
• Ward, Terry J. (December 1997). "Were the Kennedys at Apalachin?". Community Press. Greater Owego, NY.