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  Garden State Gangland

  Garden State Gangland

  The Rise of the Mob in New Jersey

  Scott M. Deitche

  ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

  Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

  Published by Rowman & Littlefield

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  Copyright © 2018 by Rowman & Littlefield

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Deitche, Scott M., author.

  Title: Garden state gangland : the rise of the mob in New Jersey / Scott M. Deitche.

  Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017019023 (print) | LCCN 2017033238 (ebook) | ISBN 9781442267305 (Electronic) | ISBN 9781442267299 (cloth : alk. paper)

  Subjects: LCSH: Organized crime—New Jersey—History. | Mafia—New Jersey—History. | Crime—New Jersey—History.

  Classification: LCC HV6452.N5 (ebook) | LCC HV6452.N5 D45 2017 (print) | DDC 364.10609749—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017019023

  TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Acknowledgments

  I first thank my wife for all her love, support, and, especially, patience through the writing of this and all of my books.

  I thank my family for their continued support. Thanks as always to my literary agent, Gina Panettieri, who is always there with advice, guidance, and the ability to make things happen. Thanks to Kathryn, Will, and all the staff at Rowman & Littlefield for their hard work in bringing the book to print.

  For help with references, sources, and stories I thank Scott Burnstein, Christian Cipollini, Ed Leiber, Myron Sugerman, Joe Ricciardi, Oscar Goodman, T. J. English, George Anastasia, Tom Hunt, Dominic Woods, David Uslan, Michael Uslan, Mike Russell, John Alite, Sean Richard, Lou DiVita, Ron Fino, Sandy Lansky, G. Robert Blakey, Bob Delaney, the staff at the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation (Kathy Hennessy Riley, Lee Seglem, and Mike Hoey), Lennert van ’t Riet, Diane Norek Harrison, David Amoruso, Kenny K., Gary Rappaport, The Black Hand Forum and Real Deal Forum (especially B.), Avi Bash for the use of his photos, Lorcan Otway at the Museum of the American Gangster in New York, Newark Museum archivist and librarian William A. Peniston, Paul Guzzo, Glenn G. Geisheimer at Old Newark, Professor Michael Green, the staff at the Mob Museum in Las Vegas (especially Jonathan Ullman, Geoff Schumacher, Ashley Misko, and Ashley Erickson), and all my other “sources.”

  Special thanks to Richard Warner for sharing with me his trove of materials on D’Amico and Troia. And another big shout-out to Fred Martens, who allowed me access to his unparalleled library of books and materials.

  For anyone I forgot, I’ll catch you on the next book!

  Introduction

  Perth Amboy, New Jersey, is located at the confluence of the Raritan and Arthur Kill River in central New Jersey, just across the Outerbridge Crossing from Staten Island. Once an industrial powerhouse, Amboy became a rust-belt city but was able to hold on to enough of its blue-collar workers to keep it from sliding into total decay and population loss. In the 1950s, when the factories were still running, the city’s population of forty-one thousand included thousands of hard laborers, working hard every day for a paycheck that paid the bills and little more.

  They gathered in the local taverns and watering holes, like the Bridge Plaza Bar, after work to swap stories, drink a few beers, and maybe place a bet. Large-scale dice games and bookmaking drop-offs were scattered throughout the city. Bookmaking was happening in diverse businesses like Sciortino’s Market, the Elks Club, George’s Shoe Repair Store, and the Midway Restaurant. There was some oversight by organized crime. Joseph “Whitey” Danzo, local labor leader, and an associate of the Elizabeth-based DeCavalcante crime family, oversaw gambling operations across Middlesex County. Gamblers like Jack Brennan and Pat Russo covered parts of Perth Amboy, and raids were not uncommon, like one in October of 1963 that netted over a dozen gambling figures.

  John Lester Deitche was known to friends and family (including his grandson, the author) as Jay. He was an ironworker. Though a member of Local 399 in Camden, he worked out of Local 373 in Perth Amboy, where he also lived. Working on municipal projects and office buildings across the New York/New Jersey metro area, Jay’s work was tiring and physically demanding. After-work happy hours with coworkers was as common then as now.

  Jay brought home the same pay as his coworkers laying out rebar. But unlike his coworkers Jay always seemed to be a little ahead. When his buddies pulled a few crumpled dollars out of their wallets to pay for drinks after work, Jay pulled out a fat money clip. At social events, while his friends wore threadbare suits that had been patched up repeatedly, he wore tailor-cut suits with encrusted tie clips. For a guy netting two hundred dollars a week, he had quite a collection of five hundred dollar suits.

  Truth be known, for the better part of thirty years, Jay Deitche was a bookmaker. A World War II veteran, Deitche started bookmaking after returning home from Europe. He took bets at the bar on the ground floor of the Palace Hotel on Madison Avenue in Perth Amboy, the same hotel where he would stay when his wife, Dorothy, kicked him out for his philandering. His other betting-shop locations were the Lido Gardens Chinese restaurant and Lehighs Tavern, both in downtown Perth Amboy. When Jay was not at home, Dorothy and their son, Peter, would take any bets that came via phone. The operation had run that way for years, winding through the network of old-man bars and corner watering holes that dotted the city.

  Jay also ventured southward, across the Victory Bridge that spanned the Raritan River, to South Amboy. When the bulk of his customer base started shifting that way, Jay followed. His main place of business in the early 1970s was the Gay 90s bar in South Amboy. The Gay 90s was located on First Street, in the downtown core. The bottom floor was the bar, with two apartments upstairs. The bar was a popular neighborhood hangout, a member of the local Tavern Association. It was famous for its thin-crust tomato pies. It had the usual bar amenities like a pool table and a piano player who sat behind the bar belting out the latest sing-alongs for the sloshed crowd. To the underage drinkers who frequented the bar, Jay was known as “Raccoon Eyes.”

  In late 1972, unbeknownst to Jay, the New Jersey State Police were looking into the bookmaking activities going on at the bar, specifically targeting the bartender, whom they believed to be the ringleader. They sent in some undercover agents to stake the place out and gather intelligence. One of the undercover officers was a woman who managed to turn some heads, including Jay’s. Though he spent his life married to Dorothy, his eyes—and hands—wandered often. Once, during World War II, he had his sergeant’s bars stripped off after making a pass and grabbing the bare leg of one of the Andrews Sisters before a USO performance.

  Jay sauntered over to the undercover agent and started chatting away, letting slip what a big deal he was in town and how he was a major bookmaker.
She was very interested and pressed him for more information. Jay willingly talked away. It turned out that, in addition to gathering intel, she was also equipped with a recording device she had hoped to use on the bartender. Instead she found a new target.

  Jay went in for the sale, asking if she wanted to make some bets on a couple football games. She willingly gave him a few dollars, and he accepted. They talked for a few more minutes, and then she excused herself. She walked outside and waited, along with a couple of fellow law-

  enforcement personnel. After a while, Jay walked outside, toward his car. The police arrested him and took him to the station, where he was charged with bookmaking.

  After the arrest, Jay scaled back on his betting operation while awaiting trial. Although the state attorney was prosecuting gamblers at a record pace, Jay may have been able to make a deal had he been willing to turn on his fellow bookies (which he wasn’t going to do) or if he had a competent criminal attorney representing him. Jay did not want to the neighbors to think he was a criminal, so, instead of hiring a criminal defense attorney, he hired a real estate attorney who lived up the street from him.

  As expected, with a real estate lawyer representing him, things didn’t turn out all too well for Jay at the trial. Unable to come up with any sort of reasonable defense, Jay was found guilty. He went home to prepare for his sentencing hearing.

  On the day of his sentencing hearing, Dorothy stayed at home, expecting that Jay would get off with just a slap on the wrist. It was his first brush with the law, after all. She made a big dinner while Peter took his father to court.

  At the hearing Jay and his real estate attorney stood in front of the judge, who addressed Jay.

  “I sentence you to a year and a day in prison and a thousand dollar fine.”

  Jay cupped his hands to his ear and leaned forward, offering, in a meek voice, “I’m sorry, I can’t hear too good since the war.”

  The judge leaned forward and shouted, “A year and a day and a thousand dollar fine!” Down came the gavel.

  On January 22, 1973, Jay reported to Trenton State Prison to start serving his sentence. A few months later he was transferred to Bayside State Prison in Leesburg, New Jersey, a minimum-security facility. Due to good behavior, he was paroled on June 19, 1973. He swore his days as a bookmaker were over, as he didn’t want his grandson to think of him as a criminal.

  Authorities never worked far enough up the ladder to see who the ultimate contacts were. In the grand scheme of things Jay Deitche was a small fish in the vast underworld. But there were Jay Deitches in every seedy old-man bar across Jersey. They were the workhorses, the ground-level face of the mob figures who controlled vast swaths of industry, unions, and the underworld in New Jersey for most of the twentieth century.

  Chapter 1

  The Newark Family

  To trace the start of traditional organized crime (the mob, the syndicate, the Mafia) in New Jersey, you could begin in a few cities around the state where new immigrant groups at the turn of the twentieth century fell victim to extortion gangs and police indifference. It was in these tight-knit immigrant neighborhoods where the strands and threads of organized-crime groups began. But if there was one focal point, one birthplace where originated the larger, more influential crime figures who would shape both the underworld and overall history of the state through much of the twentieth century, it would be Newark.

  Newark, to many, is defined by the airport, the factories, the fuel refineries, and the acres of shipping containers lined up in a patchwork of faded colors and logos. In short, the image of the crowded, postindustrial New Jersey landscape is literally defined and reinforced by the flight into and out of Newark. As one of the dominant nexuses of air, rail, and port shipping in the country, the city’s economic vitality is often overshadowed by a certain lack of aesthetics. But beneath the veneer lies a city with a rich and varied history that traces back to the Puritans.

  By the early 1900s Newark was the largest city in New Jersey, a title that it continues to hold today despite population losses in the middle part of the twentieth century. In the early twentieth century, buoyed by expanding industries and its emergence as the epicenter of transportation in the region, Newark attracted domestic immigrants from across the United States as well as foreign immigrants making their way through Ellis Island. They settled in immigrant neighborhoods like the First Ward, which was primarily Italian, and the Third Ward, the Jewish section of town. In these densely packed neighborhoods, with new citizens wary and suspicious of the police, criminals saw easy pickings. By preying on their own community, they could make money with little fear of law-enforcement retribution. As a newspaper editor in 1909 stated, “The leeches for the most part prey on their own countrymen.”[1] Even through the mid and later decades of the 1900s Newark was a fertile ground for wiseguys, the neighborhoods acting as catalysts, churning out young wiseguys out of neighborhoods, like Vailsburg. “Listen, I grew up in that life. It was as normal as rain. Okay? It was everywhere; there were seven crime families in my neighborhood [Vailsburg] as a kid growing up, as well as my father who had spent a great deal of his life in prison, and other relatives. These were my role models.”[2]

  One of the earliest type of gangs—though not an “official” organized-crime group—that plagued Italian immigrant communities was the Black Hand. The moniker referred to the practice of placing a print of a black hand on a letter to the family of a kidnapping victim, demanding money for the person’s return, often a store owner or other wealthier member of the community. Other missives bearing the black hand would simply be letters of extortion, exhorting their targets to pay up or suffer the consequences. The Black Hand was not a monolithic organized-crime enterprise but, rather, loosely affiliated groups of criminals looking for a quick payday, and kidnapping an immigrant whose family would be fearful of going to the police was for many street-level criminals an easy way to make money.

  The letters that Black Hand gangsters sent their targets often fell along the same lines. One such letter was received by a wealthy Italian immigrant in the town of Bound Brook, about thirty miles southwest of Newark, in 1904. It is here translated from the original Italian.

  We have spent much time and have been bothered a great deal about the matter, and have decided to take twenty-five persons for example. We will begin with you. You have no children who will benefit us. You make $25 to $30 a week and in the period of two years you have accumulated $1500.

  You must now donate us $200 and you have to bring that amount of money to the first bridge in Somerville at 11:30, Saturday, New Year’s Eve.

  There you will find a boy sitting on the rail of the bridge. When you stop he will come up to the front of you. After you give him the money you will be safe. If you do not give him that sum of money and you run away we will follow you all over, wherever you may go, and you will be killed.

  After you will be other people that will have to pay their amount. We are 1,000 people who live that way and we can’t starve to death with our families. Therefore send the money or be killed. Say nothing to nobody, it will be worse for you. Killed, killed, killed. Sig. Black Hand.[3]

  The earliest Black Hand gangs operated in nearby New York and among early Italian immigrant neighborhoods in the early 1900s. In New Jersey the activities spanned small towns through the north and central parts of the state, like Bridgewater and Bound Brook, but many of the Black Hand crimes were aimed at merchants and businessmen in the Italian enclave of Newark’s First Ward.[4]

  The activities of the gangs did not go unnoticed to the population at large. The residents themselves spread word of the Black Hand extortionists through neighborhood tales and calls in local newspapers to stand up to the gangs. And along with cries of justice for the neighborhoods under siege of the Black Hand was a call for restraint in the face of anti-immigrant, especially anti-Italian, sentiment that was growing along with the outrage. The April 16, 1909, issue of the Asbury Park Press wrote, “The vast majority
of Italians that come to America are hardworking, law abiding, desirable immigrants. These decent nine-tenths are the ones most interested in stopping the importation of the degenerate one-tenth. . . . The Italians themselves are the sufferers. They are the ones chiefly entitled to sympathy and protection. Therefore the last thing that should be permitted to result from this atrocity is any trace of race prejudice. The crusade is against criminals, not against any nationality.”[5]

  There was also the understanding that the Black Hand activities in the early 1900s may have been connected not only to Italy’s Mafia and Camorra (an organized-crime group based out of Naples) but also to the presence of those underworld syndicates in the United States. “Just how much connection there is between the operations of the Black Hand in America and the nefarious doings of the Camorra, the Mafia and other secret criminal societies in Italy the best informed police will not or cannot say.”[6]

  Some in law enforcement did see the connection as the Mafia and Camorra were becoming a presence in America. Though the Black Hand was not a structured criminal enterprise and often more accurately described as a method of criminal activity rather than an organization, it was out of these gangs that some of the early Mafia figures emerged, and extortion activities brought them income for their climb up the underworld ladder. In many ways these gangs served as internships for career criminals who learned their trade with other like-minded gangsters. Some of the earliest true Mafia bosses and soldiers started their criminal careers as young men in these street gangs.

  Even though the initial suspicion of the Italian community in dealing with law enforcement kept may victims of Black Hand crime from going to police, there were some major steps forward in assisting them with the help of local Italian immigrants who joined the police force.