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Mafia Takes Over

Arizona aka “Baby State” (because Arizona is the newest continental state in the Union) and also the land of sunshine is in the southwestern region of the United States. It is the sixth largest and the 15th most populous of the 50 states. Arizona had been a state for less than two decades when the mob arrived. In the past many infamous mob figures came to Arizona allegedly to retire from their every day mob businesses or for the state of their health and they favoured Arizona as a recreation spot. But in reality, Arizona also has a strategic position for mob business. You see, Arizona is one of the Four Corners states meaning it has borders with New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, California, and Mexico, and one point in common with the South Western corner of Colorado.

There’s a great dilemma on which was the first crime family that took over in Arizona. Some say it was the Detroit or the Cleveland mob and others say it was the New York mob. I say that no crime family did because Arizona was like Vegas, an "open territory" for the national mob, meaning anyone can do their own legal or illegal operations with out any problems. One of the first criminal “dons” that operated in Arizona was Pete Licavoli from the Detroit mob. Licavoli was big time in Tucson since the early1930’s.He operated an illegal gambling wire service and also liquor distribution. In the late 1930’s the Cleveland mob also owned their own ranch in Arizona near the Mexican border. The same period Cleveland big shot Moe Dalitz came to Arizona and added the Tucson Steam Laundry to his chain of washhouses and was involved in the numbers racket. Also other visitors were New York’s mobsters Louis Buchalter and Mike Coppola. Lepke’s Arizona trips were occasioned by charges arising from mob infiltration in the fur-dressing industry. Coppola had a residence at Tucson’s East 5th Street and was constantly observed by government officials because he was always in the company of other national mobsters. In the late 30’s Al Polizzi, Lepke Buchalter and Pete Licavoli met at Mike Coppola’s house in Tucson to discuss the Nazi government, which disrupted their traditional drug trafficking routes out of Europe and tried to sort out alternate routes for their raw materials source. They decided that Mexico would be the best location and they were probably dealing with Enrique Diarte, a Tijuana based Mexican narcotics trafficker, who in the late 1930s and early 1940s was probably the biggest drug dealer in Mexico.

The Chicago Boys

The Chicago Outfit, Al Capone’s legacy, at one point controlled the Windy city and later became national criminal organization. It was a separate and different criminal organization, or in other words it was not like the traditional mafia groups, for example the New York crime families. During the 1950’s and 60’s the Outfit spread like a cancer through out the United States and also the whole world. I know that this sounds like script for a fictional movie but it’s true. The former Capone gang had interests in the Middle East, Europe, South Africa, Central and South America and even Japan. Yes, the boys were ridin’ high. Chicago Outfit “gods” like Sam Giancana were considered like international mobsters and besides their business adventures on all of these different continents, their prime dirty cash came from home, or to be exact, the Western part of the U.S.

The first big scheme was during the mid 1930’s when the Chicago mob took over the movie unions and the unions that ran the entertainment business in Los Angeles, including Hollywood. All went smooth until in 1943 when the top echelon of the Chicago Outfit was indicted for attempting to extort over a million dollars from several Hollywood studios, including Columbia Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, RKO Pictures, and 20th Century Fox. The Hollywood extortion case spread a lot of waves through out the underworld which resulted with reinforcing their operations east of Los Angeles and that is Las Vegas and a little bit more eastern to Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona. When it comes to organized crime, Arizona has had quite an interesting history dealing with this subject. The national mob considered Arizona as a "haven" and virtually untapped territory.


As additonal info, the top guys on this picture by order are Charlie Gioe(hand on mouth), Louis Campagna(hand on mouth) and Phil D'Andrea(with glasses).The second guy(with bald head) from the right is Paul Ricca

During the 1940’s Pete Licavoli owned the Grace Ranch which became meeting place for the national crime syndicate. With the “emigration” of the Chicago mob in Arizona after the big extortion case, Licavoli often had mob meetings with the Outfit’s boss Tony Accardo. Later other big shots who often visited Licavoli’s ranch were Sam Giancana, Paul Ricca and also Presidential Candidate and Senator Barry Goldwater. So during the late 40’s Arizona became the headquarters for the Midwest mob which spread its rackets in the areas of New Mexico, Nevada, South Western Texas, Southern California and Mexico.

Never break the “Omerta”

In the late 40’s organized crime retiree "William ”Bob” Nelson" moved to Tucson,AZ and lived rather quietly in his then-rural East Bethany Home Road neighborhood for six years. "Nelson" in fact was a former Outfit associate and extortionist named Willie Bioff who changed his surname into Nelson, which was his wife's maiden name..Back in 1943, Bioff testified against the top leadership of the Chicago mob about their role in the infamous Hollywood extortion scandal which resulted in convictions for mob boss Paul Ricca, Johnny Roselli and others. In exchange for selling out his partners, Bioff walked away from prosecution a free man and got to keep the millions he had stolen as well.The thing is that Bioff wasn't really hiding out in Arizona, in fact he became a rich and very likable person among high society. Bioff was a natural fixer and understood politics and soon he became popular within the golden elite of Arizona politics and met Senator Barry Goldwater, in November of 1952. So again Bioff had the power to make cash and started many legal and illegal enterprises. Eventually the mob heard about Bioff’s whereabouts and payed him a visit. The mob knew he had the power and connections in Arizona and they also knew that he had stashed millions of dollars from the Hollywood extortion case so in 1955, Peter Licavoli and Paul Ricca started to shake Bioff down for cash. Willie paid off for a while, but then he started making noise about going to the feds through his new pal, Barry Goldwater. But Bioff didn’t know that Goldwater already knew Licavoli and Ricca.So one day, on November 4, 1955 many people were shocked when Bioff got blown to pieces in his automobile. The score was settled. Bioff’s death sent shock waves through the high society in Phoenix.


Willie Bioff mugshot


Bioff's murder scene

The First Golden Jew

By the late 1950’s, many of the crime families owned businesses in Arizona with the help of their underlings. Arizona had a lot of action going on during that period and there was plenty of cash to be made for everyone. Crime bosses ran the gambling, prostitution, and liquor industries but freely interacted with more reputable merchants.

So on thanksgiving day in 1958, Licavoli chaired a national mafia meeting at his ranch in Phoenix. Some of the attendees were Joe Profaci, Joe Bonanno, Joe Magliocco and Tony ”Joe B” Accardo. Federal agents dubbed the meeting the “Four Joes”.The mob bosses had several agendas on that meeting, which one of them was Gus Greenbaum.

Born in 1894, Greenbaum in the first few decades of his life worked as an associate of New York gangster Meyer Lansky and than moved to Al Capone’s Chicago during prohibition, and just before World War II was given control of Chicago crime syndicate’s gambling operations in Las Vegas. Greenbaum knew Bugsy Siegel and had ties to Chicago. He also owned a bookie wire service in Phoenix, which was originally established in 1941 for the Outfit. Greenbaum was a Phoenix socialite seen at all the society balls, usually in the company of the Barry Goldwaters, Harry Rosenzweigs and Kemper Marley, Phoenix millionaire rancher and wholesale liquor dealer. In 1946, according to police sources, Marley took up still another line of business, one that brought him into contact with organized crime.


Gus Greenbaum

Greenbaum was a wild man who was addicted to heroin, always drunk and when he wasn't high he was running around with women half his age who stole from him, and was deeply in debt from gambling at the tables, losing up to $20,000 a week. And on top of that, he was skimming from the mobs joints and casinos.In fact Gus was skimming from the split between the New York crime families and Chicago. Ricca and Giancana got wind of the situation but they considered it as a reasonable thing. So they decided that Greenbaum is going to give them a cut from his steal and also to sell his share from the profits.At first Gus played along but after a while he stopped sending money, obviously because he spent his money on drugs and gambling. Kemper Marley and his associates were previosly instructed by the Chicago mob to move Greenbaum out of the Phoenix wire service, and they did so.So now Gus had nowhere to go and blinded from his addictions he stubbornly refused to step down.

After the meeting of the “Four Joes” in Phoenix on December 2, mob boss Sam Giancana on the orders of his mentor Paul Ricca, sent for Marshal Caifano, a bloodthirsty and ruthless Chicago's enforcer. On December 3, 1958, the police found Greenbaum dead in bed, his throat was cut so completely, that his head was almost falling off. Down the hall, in a different bedroom, they found Greenbaum's wife's throat cut as well. She had been knocked out with a heavy bottle which caved in the right side of her eye. Local lore has it, the hitmen then ate the steaks the Greenbaums had just cooked. This inaugurated a series of grisly gangland-style slayings.


The body of Bess Greenbaum

The Bonanno’s Arrived

New York’s big shot Joe Bonanno had a seniority as a La Cosa Nostra boss and was considered a legend. He was a very ambitious man who had many operations in and out of the country, for example in Montreal and Quebec, Canada. He had extensive business enterprises, including large holdings in cheese companies and other legitimate businesses in Wisconsin, California and Arizona. Joe Bonnano had the first taste of Arizona in 1941.He settled in Tucson, left his family there and traveled back and forth to New York. When he needed to keep a low profile, Arizona was his place. In 1953, when the U.S. Government brought deportation proceedings against him, Bonanno was able to get personal testimony or affidavits on his behalf from many prominent persons in Arizona, including a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church Francis J. Green, a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives Harold Patten, and Evo DeConcini a member of the State Supreme Court. Many of Bonanno’s associates arrived in Arizona in the mid 1950’s and they expanded their legitimate business all over the state. Joe was parlaying some of his illegal profits from New York into a large land holding and legitimate businesses in Arizona. One of the biggest projects was the building of a giant cotton farm midway between Phoenix and Tucson. Bonanno kept a low profile but he also attended a lot of “high profile” parties. Tom Renner, an experienced reporter assigned full-time to organized crime obtained a guest list of one of those parties held in 1959, which included the Arizona governor, the states attorney general, the Pima County sheriff, two state congressmen, the heads of Arizona’s major regulatory agencies and Joe Bonanno. While forming new alliances and developing new businesses in Arizona, during this period Joe was very much still active and very powerful figure back in New York.

The Treachery

Joe Bonanno was aware of the tremendous wealth emerging on the west side of the country and wanted to make close connections with the Los Angeles crime family which had an alliance with the Chicago mob. Rumours are that Bonanno had plans to depose Frank DeSimone, the southern California leader, and replace him with his son Bill Bonanno. As a member of the commission, Bonanno already had oversight jurisdiction over the two northern California families--in San Francisco and San Jose. Also back in New York, commission boss Joe Profaci died in 1962 and was succeeded by another good friend of Bonanno's, Joe Magliocco. Story goes that Bonanno and Magliocco plotted to kill some of the members of the commission. Some say that it wasn’t Bonanno who made the plan but it was Magliocco himself and others say that it was some members from the other crime families and his partners in crime, who were planning behind his back. I belive that the biggest problem was the conflict and distrust between Bonanno and his cousin Stefano Magaddino. Whatever’s the truth, by 1963 Bonanno was in serious trouble. He was called before the commission to explain himself but Bonanno refused and rumours were that he was hiding in Tucson, Arizona. Then in 1964 he came back to New York and mysteriously disappeared and was not heard from again for almost two years. It was claimed that Joe was kidnapped in front of his lawyer's apartment in New York City by rival factions. It still remains a mistery whether this is true or not, during this period there were many tapped conversations between mobsters from around the country, badmouthing Joe Bonanno. The same year his crime family split into two factions and that was the start of the infamous “Banana Wars”.


The English Bros

So the Chicago Outfit got wind of the Bonanno situation and Sam Giancana decided to make some swift inroads by sending the English brothers out to Arizona to enforce their real estate deals, jukeboxes and vending machine operations. Story goes that by this time Joe Bonanno refused to cut in the English bros in some of his operations and usually ignored them and Sam Giancana saw this as a disrespect.

Chuck English and his brother Sam arrived in Phoenix in 1962 and were greeted at the airport by their other brother Joseph English and Leonard Russo. First they stayed at the Safari hotel near Phoenix and later bought their own ranches near Tucson and Flagstaff, Arizona. The English brothers were very enthusiastic over their property holdings and business enterprises in Arizona. They mostly bought and than re-sold many properties. Each of the brothers usually received 15 times the amount of their previous investment. They were also involved in bootlegging music records which became big business at the time. The English brothers monopolized the distribution of records to juke box operators in the state of Arizona. Rather than selling original recordings, the English bros had original records cheaply duplicated by the thousands and then put counterfeit manufacturers’ labels on them. And of course, they didn’t bother making royalty payments to anyone. Sam and Chuck travelled very often back and forth to Arizona but Joseph was their guy over there, overseeing their operations. Joseph had his own place, the Guiseppe's Italian Restaurant, at 7018 E. Main St., Scottsdale. Sam and Charles English together often visited Joe at Giuseppe's which became a place for many Outfit meetings.

In 1963 Sam English incorporated the Rim Rock Ranch, 265-acres high in the mountains near Phoenix, Arizona. He purchased it for about $330,000 and also had a million dollar business formed of real estate, construction, loans, and expansion of jukebox operations. He also made some extra money on the side working as a bookie, gambler, and loan shark. Sam even had his own corporation named The Rim Rock Inc. Frontman for his corporation was Marvin Browning, a business associate who came from Cicero. Thru his brothers film capital connection, Sam managed to transform his mountain ranch into a place for staging cowboy and Indian movies. He also made his ranch available for Hollywood stars and also for mob meetings. He also developed a part of his big ranch for filled with deers, antelopes, wild pigs and mountain lions for the purpose of hunting trips. When the reporters visited his ranch, Sam appeared in cowboy outfit.


Sam English

One of his most often visitors at the ranch was Berwyn alderman George Vydra. Vydra had a personal and business relations with Sam.They were both involved in the pornography business in Arizona thru a movie firm and also in the music business. On Christmas day 1965, the lifeless body of George Vydra was found in his car.He allegedly died from carbon monoxide poisoning, but the evidences showed otherwise. The cops found a four page suicide note in Vydra’s pocket. Authorities had problems in finding out whether the hand writing was his. Vydra’s father said that when he found the body in the car,the ignition key was turned off, the gasoline tank was almost full and the truck motor was cold. Also his father said that when he entered the garage, he didn’t smell any exhaust fumes. People that knew him also said that he never showed any signs of depression and never had any suicidal thoughts. So some government officials like Charles Siragusa suspected that Vydra’s death might have been a murder. Vydra was also a business manager of female singer Jane Darwyn. After Vydra’s death, the singer said that she, Vydra and Sam English were splitting profits from a corporation formed to sell her records. Sam English was also questioned by the feds but they got nothing.

Sam’s ranch business was shortly lived because of the massive heat from the government that the place recived and so the ranch fell into desuse. So in 1966 Sam decided to go back to Chicago and lay low for a while because he also started having heart problems. He gave the leftovers from his empire to his brother Joseph.

Rivalry

Now this is the time when a lot of rumours surfaced in Arizona that there was a rivalry between the Bonnano group and the Chicago guys.

Bonanno's hold on his crime family slowly faded away, however many of his crime family members and associates that were out of New York were still loyal to him, like in Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona. Now the Chicago guys again saw this as a threat for their business on the west and they also saw it as a chance to dominate over Bonanno’s national rackets and rumours spread around that the Outfit disliked him a lot. Don’t forget that Bonanno was a very wealthy and powerful figure at the time. He had connection everywhere and was considered as international mobster. He dominated over many illegal or legal operations on many different territories so greed prevailed over his fellow mobsters and other organized groups like the Chicago Outfit. There were numerous wiretapped conversations between Tony Accardo and Sam Giancana discussing Joe Bonnano's presence in Arizona. Giancana was also caught talking to other national bosses around the country that they should kill Bonanno. Also Milwaukee mob boss Frank Balistrieri once did a favour for Joe Bonanno and this angered Sam Giancana when he learns of it, understandably because of Joe’s current situation with the commission. Giancana and Accardo were too very greedy persons and were not interested in the truth of Bonanno’s situation at all. They just wanted whats his or as they considered what belonged to them. Also story goes that Chicago even supported Gaspar DiGregorio against Bonanno in the infamous “Banana wars”.


Outfit boss Sam Giancana

When the problem occurred, Joe’s son Bill Bonanno had a meeting with some of New York’s top mafia guys about the missunderstanding of Joe´s involvement in the plot and sorted it out. Also in 1965 Bil Bonanno came to Chicago to attend a meeting with the Outfit’s top echelon at a restaurant located in Melrose Park.The agendas of the meeting were the New York plot, Bonanno’s huge presence in Arizona and dividing territories. Also story goes that Bil asked for help from the Outfit to operate freely in Arizona and that Outfit top boss Paul Ricca agreed, after all Arizona was an open territory. Later Bill said that he was very impressed by Ricca and that he was a true mafia “Don”. By this time Ginacana was running around the continent hiding from the FBI’s radar so he wasn’t in position to attend the meeting. His brother Chuck Giancana wrote in his book that Sam once told him that a lot of Outfit guys would loved to see Bonanno taken out but “He’s not worth the bullet”.


Mafia boss Joe Bonanno

Finally in 1968 Joe Bonanno suffered a major heart attack and that was the last straw. He informed the National Mafia Commission that he was retiring in Arizona, this time for good. The Commission was naturally wary of anything Bonanno did or said, but as time passed, the shootings diminished. Bonnano, one of the bosses who sat on the Mafia commission became the most mysterious figure when he decided to allegedly retire from his mob business in Arizona. It was claimed that he became legit but the thing was that no one really believed him, not even his fellow mobsters, who already had their stakes in Arizona. Rumours started to spread that Joe Bonnano was still a big fish and with the help of his Machiavellian skills, he still commanded respect and at the same time did business. By this time many investigators and reporters thought that some of these mobsters were still loyal to Joe Bonanno. But the truth is that there was no Bonanno crews operating in Arizona after the infamous wars. Many of the members ended up in different crime families, went legit or did business independently or retired. I believe the truth was that Joe really buried the hatchet during this period and all of these rumours started from the fact of a massive hysteria that he was once one of the devils that walked this earth.