Joe Valachi . First member of the mafia to speak publicly of the existence of it.
Summary
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- 1 Biographical synthesis
- 1 Trajectory
- 2 Death
- 2 Sources
Biographical synthesis
I was born on 22 September as as 1903 , nicknamed Joe Cargo and also called Charles Chanbano and Anthony Sorge.
Trajectory
Responsible for popularizing the term Cosa Nostra . He was the son-in-law of Gaetano Reina when he married Mildred, his eldest daughter, despite the objections of his mother, his brother and his uncles.
In October of 1963 , Valachi “soldier” in the family Genovese powerful in organized crime in New York , whose “work” principal in the family was the driver, had testified before the committee of Congress that the mafia existed. Despite the fact that Valachi held a lower position within the mafia and was never persecuted by the great leaders of the mafia , he could provide many details about the organization : operations and mode of action, several unsolved murders, as well as information on the main ones. crime families and the appointment of many members. His testimony, which was broadcast in theRadio and television and published in newspapers had a tremendous impact on public opinion. This impacted on the events that occurred on 14 of November of 1957 , when the police accidentally discovered the Apalachin meeting where several heads of various parts of the United States were cited in the home of mobster Joseph Barbara. After what happened in Apalachin and Valachi’s testimony, the mob was no longer invisible to the public.
Valachi’s motivations for becoming an informant have been debated. The dementia was present in his family, four of his brothers and sisters were in mental institutions, and two of them ended up committing suicide. Valachi wanted to testify like a service public and a way to show the powerful organization criminal who had ruined his life , but it is possible that he was interested only in protecting the government of EE. UU . to avoid the death penalty for the murder he committed on June 22 , 1962 . In this murder, committed with a gunAt a site near a construction site, he killed a prison man whom he had mistaken for a mob member named Joseph DiPalermo who had tried to kill him previously, Genovese apparently had ordered Valachi to kill him, although he subsequently offered to anyone to assassinate him 100,000 dollars. The powerful mob boss believed that Valachi had betrayed him because he had negotiated with the authorities in exchange for a lesser prison sentence, thus violating the strict mafia oath known as omerta, the punishment of which was death .
Death
He died of a heart attack in 1971 at the La Tuna Federal Correctional Institution in Texas, surviving Vito Genovese’s revenge for two years. The generous sum of $ 100,000 Genovese offered for Valachi’s head was never collected.
