Joe Valachi – September 22, 1902

“We’d put dark glasses and wigs on him and take him to the Roma restaurant. He was a hell of a guy…. My days with Valachi convinced me that the Cosa Nostra was the most overrated thing since the Communist Party.” – William G. Hundley, Valachi’s Justice Department handler while he was testifying against the mob.

Joseph Michael Villache was born in East Harlem, New York City, to Italian Immigrants Maria Michela Casale and Domenico Villacci, a raging alcoholic whom Valachi blamed for his criminal activities. Valachi’s birth year is listed as 1903 or 1904 in various documents. The April 1910 census claims he was 7 years old on his last birthday, which would make his birth year 1902. The 1950 census confirms this, as does the 1925 state of New York census taken while he was in Sing Sing.

Dominick Villache, his wife (listed as Cassalie), and their 3 children lived on East 108th Street according to the 1910 Manhattan census. They had a boarder, Mike Murphy, who was employed as a shoveller. Dominick was a street peddler of vegetables. Other occupations represented on the street included baker. dressmaker, milliner, and maker of feathers (at home). There were two feather makers and four shovellers on the street.

Nearly everyone on the street was an Italian immigrant (including Mike Murphy), or the child of an Italian immigrant. There were a few Russian backgrounds and one German. One-quarter of the people listed (including Mrs. Villache) could neither read nor write and half (including both of Valachi’s parents) did not speak English.

Valachi’s first criminal experience was with a gang called the Minutemen, known for their one-minute-long smash and grab burglaries. Valachi was the getaway driver, but when he didn’t get away, he was sent to Sing Sing prison, where in the 1925 New York state census, he listed himself as a chauffeur.

Later life

How to live as Joe Valachi:

• Upon leaving Sing Sing form your own burglary gang.
• By 1930 become a made man in the Mafia and work for several families whose bosses keep getting assassinated until you ended up working for Lucky Luciano and the Genovese family.
• Work in the Genovese family, including arranging the killing of a mobster who was supposed to supervise Genovese’s wife while he was in Italy but allowed her to engage in love affairs.
• Get involved in narcotics and end up with a 15-year prison sentence in 1959.
• Somehow get on the wrong side of Genovese and have a $100,000 price put on your head.
• Kill an inmate you mistakenly believe had been sent to kill you.
• Decide to turn informant “as a public service,” or maybe to get a plea deal in the inmate killing.
• Testify before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Senate Committee on Government Operations, or what has become known as the Valachi hearings.
• Become the first Mafia member to violate omerta and violate your blood oath to admit there is a Mafia, and detail its rituals and traditions. Bring the term Cosa Nostra to the public eye.

Valachi was never hit in prison. He died of a heart attack in 1971 at the Federal Correctional Institution, La Tuna, in Anthony, Texas. More information.

Francis Ford Coppola stated that the scenes in The Godfather II depicting the Senate committee interrogation of Frank Pentangeli was based on Valachi.

• The Mariana Islands were struck by a magnitude 7.5 earthquake, which caused major damage on Guam and Saipan.
• The Republic of Cuba’s President, Tomás Estrada Palma, requested that the United States withdraw its artillery companies stationed in the island nation.
• In Canada, the Canadian Pacific Railway, through its subsidiary, the Ottawa, Northern and Western Railway, acquired the Pontiac Pacific Junction Railway.
• Born: John Houseman, British-American actor and producer, in Bucharest, as Jacques Haussmann (d. 1988).

Tomorrow – Worshipped as a god but demoted to saint

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Sources

• Wikipedia.org
• Ancestry.com
• Onthisday.com
• Picryl.com
• Youtube.com