Fellas any insight on pittsburgh mob activities in Morgantown,WV? Past or present... I read by other posters LaRocca set up operations with some casinos in wheeling and other spots and chucky porter had some wv rackets going on I believe
Stricly curious bc I graduated from WVU in mo-town...thanks guys
To my knowledge, no Pittsburgh mob activities in Morgantown. Jo Jo Pecora oversaw all the WV rackets and appointed Paul "No Legs" Hankish as his chief lieutenant for many years. Paul was Lebanese but was very close to Joseph "Demus" Covello of the Gambino's New Jersey Faction. Demus was godfather to one of Paul's daughters and Joey Naples from Youngstown was godfather to his son Chris, who just died about 4-5 years ago. Paul ran gambling in 8 states and laid off to Demus in New Jersey as well as Louie Mannocchio in Rhode Island.
Late in 1982 I had to talk with Zebo regarding a video game room I wanted to install in the back room of a restaurant I was going to open the following year. I had a source, that he knew well, to supply the games. He was willing to provide all the necessary sound equipment I would need to open as an inducement to use his games in addition to the usual 50% cut.
We were given the OK as long as the vendor didn't provide either a cigarette machine or jukebox. Any or all of those had to come from Youngstown United Music.
We had to meet him in Morgantown on site of a rather large strip mine. When I pulled up he was operating a D-9 dozer as were several other large machines. We went downtown to lunch and I asked him what was this about. He simply said: "Family" business. That was as far as it went and it was never brought up again. Go figure?
