Okay, now for my first post, is gonna be partly rant, and party my own opinion… Shall we begin? Great…
Now, ladies and gentlemen, the crema della crema, the one and only:
Salvatore C. Lucania a.k.a Charlie “Lucky” Luciano a.k.a. My great-great-grandpa’.
I thought that this picture was justified enough. I really hate how everyone uses those damn mug shots.
I mean, really, c’mon. Who’s mug shot looks good? Nobody’s. That’s who. No one…
… And now that my rant about the picture is over, on the the point of this post!
I have to admit, I really love the guy. and that’s something that I’m anything but ashamed to admit.
Even if I hated the fact that “America’s biggest vice-lord” was my great-great-grandfather, I wouldn’t be here without him.
I’d be somebody different, and to tell ya’, I really don’t like the idea of being somebody different. I like me too much.
Grandpa’ Charlie might not have been no saint, I don’t think that he was, nor did he. But I certainly don’t think that he was as bad of a guy that the media and judicial system made him out to be.
Hell, they was more crooked then he ever was. And they still are.
But outta all the bad he did, a lotta good came outta it.
After he was deported back to Italy, he settled in Naples. Neapolitans who didn’t have money for food, bills, or doctor visits, he would give money to them.
Most of the time it was as much as 25,000 lire. At times he would even have a doctor sent to their houses… Now if that’s not a tear-jerker, then I dunno what the hell is.
Do any of you remember a schmuck by the name of Dewey?.. Uh, this schmuck:
Personally this bastard reminds me of a miniature Hitler. Yeah, that’s right, I said it. As in Adolph. Whadda ya’ gonna do? Put me in Sign-Sing, huh?
Aw, c’mon, you remember Thomas E. Dewey don’t ya’?
Federal prosecutor, special prosecutor, Manhattan District Attorney, then Governor of New York. He ran against Franklin D. Roosevelt but lost {thank God}.
Did I mention that he’s the one responsible for taking away the best 10 years of my grandpa’s life, did I? Well, he did.
Dewey, or as I like to call him “the little man on the wedding cake” was a strong supporter of the death penalty in New York. In his 12 years as governor, 90 people were electrocuted, two of which were women.
Mr. Wedding cake here used grandpa’ Charlie’s trial as a front, if you will, to boost his own importance. Note that after the Luciano trial in 1936, in 1937 one year later, Dewey here becomes the Manhattan D.A.
In ‘36, Dewey had all the bordellos in New York City raided, and the madams and prostitutes arrested. Which months later resulted in grandpa’ Charlie’s conviction…
Dewey threatened the madams and prostitutes with a 7 year prison term if they did not cooperate. If they did, they could go free… In Layman’s terms, either they told Dewey what Dewey wanted to hear or they went to prison.
These “witnesses” as the madams and prostitutes were made out to be, were not highly creditable. There were drug addicts addicted to heroin and morphine. Most of them drank heavily after court each night. 12 brandies or more.
Two prime examples of the credibility of these witnesses are the call-girls: Florence “Cocky Flo” Brown and Nancy Presser.
1- Florence Brown
Occupation: prostitute and heroin addict.
They arrested her during the raids and put her through a “quickie cure.” She was basically colder than a freezer turkey waiting on Thanksgiving. Given being so rapidly taken off the drug, her memory wasn’t all that clear, and for the fact that she most likely didn’t wanna go to prison, she’s gonna say whatever Dewey wants to hear. Needles to say is exaclty what she done.
2- Nancy Presser
Occupation: Prostitute.
Now if this don’t show you how crooked the prosecution was, then you’re either blind, deaf or just plain ignorant… When Miss Presser was put on the stand, she testified that she knew Mr. Luciano and that she had been to his suite in the Waldorf=Astoria Towers on several occasions, but her visits were strictly platonic.
She was asked to give a description of Mr. Luciano’s suite. The description was anything but close to being correct. She couldn’t remember how many bedrooms there were, which it was a two bedroom suite. She couldn’t remember if there was a refrigerator or even what the furniture looked like. Of course her story and descriptions changed once or twice, later she finally recanted her testimony.
The prostitutes were asked to describe the defendants, who most had to take a second guess. And some even, sometime after the trial admitted to being coaxed into perjury by the prosecution.
At some point during the trial, “Lucky” Luciano took the stand. To most, this was unexpected. He was caught in a few minor lies by Dewey. But mostly he told the truth.
He was asked about the January 17th, 1916 charge for narcotics possession, which he was sentence 6 months for. Lucky readily admitted to that. He was asked about the December 15th, 1921 charge in Jersey City for possession of a concealed weapon. Lucky and a few friends had been pulled over for speeding, and the cop found a pistol and shot guns in the back of the car. They were taken into the precinct and booked. Only thing is, the gun was registered in New York under Lucky’s name, the charges were eventually dropped.
The answer for this that Lucky gave Dewey was simple, “We was out in the country shootin’ peasants.” Which Dewey corrected as “pheasants.”
Dewey even accused him of being a “stool pigeon.” At one time Lucky had given the police the location of a box of heroin. Even then he refused to give any names.
The original charge that Dewey was gonna try to bring him to trial on was narcotics. When he couldn’t find the grounds for that, he trumped it up to leading a prostitution racket.
Sure, Charlie Luciano knew some prostitutes. Sure, he knew Polly Adler, the famous madam who wrote the book “A house is not a home.” But he only knew them as a customer. Polly Adler called him one of her best customers.
“Her girls was pretty” as he put it. But look at it this way: What wealthy guy in Manhattan didn’t know a call-girl or two? What politician didn’t?
Of course Charlie wasn’t one to call Polly for a girl every-other-night. I don’t think you could even call him a frequenter… Why would he even want to be, when he was dating the lush Galina “Gay” Orlova.
She was a Russian-French immigrant, who worked in Broadway, dancing in Earl Carroll’s “Murder at the Vanities.” Lucky called her “Gay all Over” “Because if you say ‘Orlova’ different, it sounds like ‘all over’.”
Dewey tried to label him a pimp. He never forced any any of those girls into any bordello or any sorta work like that. They did that purely on their own free will. If Lucky and his guy did anything, it sure was helping the girls outta jail.
Lucky’s so-called prostitution ring became known as the “bonding combination” or just “the combination.” What the “combination” did was, they would have a collector pick up money from the bordellos. The madams gave 10$ for themselves and 5$ for each girl. This money was put towards half of the bail money, if one of them got arrested and held in jail. Then Lucky and his guys would put of the other half, or however much else was needed to bond the girls out.
All that stuff about the heroin peddling, that was all Vito Genovese’s idea. Lucky even warned Vito to keep outta it. But if Vito insisted on doing it then, “do what you want. But do it away from me. I don’t wanna hear about it. I don’t wanna know about it. If it gets ya’ in trouble, don’t come to me.”
I’m not saying that he never did anything bad. Or that what good that he done overrules the bad. Alls I’m saying is, even a blind man could see that those witnesses were not creditable. And that the court got a 30 to 50 year sentence from nothing but crumbs of evidence, which even the crumbs were merely circumstantial.
Even with that, Lucky was sentenced to 30 to 50 years in “Sing-Sing” prison. Which in the period of 10 years, he would be transferred to “Danemorra” prison, and then to “great meadows” prison. And finally release in 1946 for assisting in giving information in the invasion of Sicily and then deported back to Italy where he would spend the last 16 years of his life…
Hell I’ve heard of people convicted of murder that’s only served 1 year in prison. Which, well I guess grandpa’ Charlie was right in saying, “Prostitution? I’d rather be tried for murder.” And he always thought that prostitution was “as low as a guy could sink” anyways.
And on one last note: Nobody can sit there and tell me that if Thomas Dewey had all of that money and power that grandpa’ Charlie had, and had that certain something about him that made him attractive to women {which he could’ve really used}, and could have anything he wanted, that he wouldn’t have lived like Charlie?
Shit, yeah, he wouldn’t have lived like that. He would’ve lived in a shack and kept the money in a wood box over the fire-place, and had a old maid for a wife… And the sarcasm ends here….
Ya’ know, I’m sorry, but I’m on Lucky’s side…
… I just felt like rambling. And i think I did a pretty good job at it.
That’s all for now.
