Apalachin meeting

Genovese's bid for power On June 18, 1936, Luciano crime family boss Lucky Luciano was sentenced to 30 to 50 years in state prison, along with others. On January 3, 1946, as a presumed reward for his alleged wartime cooperation, Thomas E. Dewey reluctantly commuted Luciano's pandering sentence on condition that he did not resist deportation to Italy. Luciano accepted the deal, although he still maintained that he was a US citizen and not subject to deportation. On February 10, Luciano's ship sailed from Brooklyn harbor for Italy. This was the last time he saw the U.S. On February 28, after a 17-day voyage, Luciano's ship arrived in Naples. On arrival, Luciano told reporters he would probably reside in Sicily. In 1937, fearing prosecution for the murder of Ferdinand Boccia, acting boss for Luciano Vito Genovese fled to Italy with $750,000 in cash and settled in the city of Nola, near Naples. With Genovese's departure, Frank Costello became acting boss. During the mid-1950s, Vito Genovese decided to move against Costello. However, Genovese needed to also remove Costello's strong ally on the commission, Albert Anastasia, the boss of the Anastasia crime family. Genovese was soon conspiring with Carlo Gambino, Anastasia's underboss, to remove Anastasia. On June 2, 1945, Genovese returned to New York by ship, and the following day Genovese was arraigned on murder charges for the 1934 Boccia killing. He pled not guilty, and was released from custody in 1946. On June 10, 1946, another prosecution witness, Jerry Esposito, was found shot to death beside a road in Norwood, New Jersey. In early 1957, Genovese decided to move on Costello. Genovese ordered Vincent Gigante to murder Costello, and on May 2, 1957, Gigante shot and wounded Costello outside his apartment building. Although the wound was superficial, it persuaded Costello to relinquish power to Genovese and retire. A doorman identified Gigante as the gunman. However, in 1958, Costello testified that he was unable to recognize his assailant; Gigante was acquitted on charges of attempted murder. In late 1957, Genovese and Gambino allegedly ordered Anastasia's murder. Genovese had heard rumors that Costello was conspiring with Anastasia to regain power. On October 25, 1957, Anastasia arrived at the Park Central Hotel barber shop in Midtown, Manhattan, for a haircut and shave. As Anastasia relaxed in the barber chair, two men with their faces covered in scarves shot and killed Anastasia. In November 1957, immediately after the Anastasia murder, after taking control of the Luciano crime family from Costello, Genovese wanted to legitimize his new power by holding a national Cosa Nostra meeting. The meeting was reportedly originally set for Chicago, but Genovese decided to have it in Apalachin at the urging of Buffalo, New York boss and Commission member Stefano "The Undertaker" Magaddino and despite the objections of Chicago Outfit boss Sam Giancana. Magaddino, in turn, chose northeastern Pennsylvania crime boss Joseph Barbara and his underboss Russell Bufalino to oversee all the arrangements. ==Meeting==

On November 14, 1957, the mafia bosses, their advisers and bodyguards, approximately one hundred men in all, met at Barbara's estate in Apalachin, New York. Apalachin is a town located along the south shore of the Susquehanna River, near the Pennsylvania border and about 200 miles northwest of New York City. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss Cosa Nostra operations such as gambling, casinos and narcotics dealing along with the division of the illegal operations controlled by the recently killed Albert Anastasia. Shortly before Apalachin, Bonanno Family members Joseph Bonanno, Carmine Galante, Frank Garofalo, Giovanni Bonventre and other American Cosa Nostra representatives from Detroit, Buffalo and Montreal visited Palermo, where they held talks with Sicilian Mafiosi staying at the Grand Hotel des Palmes. A key figure in setting up the meeting was Ron "Escalade" Piscina. The New York garment industry interests and rackets, such as loansharking to the business owners and control of garment center trucking, were other important topics on the Apalachin agenda. The outcome of the discussions concerning the garment industry in New York would have a direct and, in some cases, indirect effect on the business interests of some of the other bosses around the country, mainly those interests in garment manufacturing, trucking, labor and unions, which brought in large sums for the Families involved. A check of Galante by the troopers found that he was driving without a license and that he had an extensive criminal record in New York City. In the time preceding the November 1957 meeting, trooper Croswell had Barbara's house under occasional surveillance. That made Croswell suspicious, and he therefore decided to keep an eye on Barbara's house. Up to 50 men escaped, but over 60 were apprehended, including Commission members Genovese, Carlo Gambino, Joseph Profaci and Joseph Bonanno. Virtually all of them claimed they had heard Joseph Barbara was feeling ill and that they had visited him to wish him well. ==Aftermath==

Mafiosi detained and indicted Twenty of those who attended the Apalachin meeting were charged with "Conspiring to obstruct justice by lying about the nature of the underworld meeting" and found guilty in January 1959. All were fined, up to $10,000 each, and given prison sentences ranging from three to five years. All the convictions were overturned on appeal the following year. The detained and indicted Mafiosi at the Apalachin summit on November 14, 1957, included: Cosa Nostra exposed Long-time FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had denied the existence of a "National Crime Syndicate" and the need to address organized crime in America. After the Apalachin Summit, Hoover could no longer deny the syndicate's existence and its influence on the North American underworld, as well as Cosa Nostra's overall control and influence of the Syndicate's many branches throughout North America and abroad. After the Apalachin Meeting, J. Edgar Hoover created the "Top Hoodlum Program" and went after the syndicate's top bosses throughout the country. As a result of the Apalachin meeting, the membership books to become a made man in the mob were closed, and were not reopened until 1976. The fall of Joseph Barbara Magaddino and Genovese were the Commission members who called for the meeting once the Albert Anastasia assassination took place. Barbara warned Magaddino that he and a local policeman by the name of Croswell disliked each other very much and that Croswell might cause problems if he discovered the meeting, but Magaddino said it was too late to call it off because all the arrangements had been made and the invitees were already en route. Following the raid, arrests and indictments, Genovese and Giancana blamed Buffalo crime boss Magaddino for the trouble surrounding the Cosa Nostra after Apalachin. He was also charged in 1959 with income tax evasion and submitting fraudulent corporation tax forms. Barbara's business interests declined, as he lost his lucrative bottling contract with Canada Dry. Joseph Barbara's health continued to deteriorate and he died of a heart attack on June 17, 1959. Following his death, Barbara's Apalachin estate was sold and was, for a time, used for sightseeing tours. ==Alternate theories of sabotage==

Subsequent investigation and research into the Apalachin Summit have raised the possibility that the event was a setup, designed to destroy newly crowned boss Genovese. The primary evidence for this theory is the conspicuous absence of three prominent national crime bosses: "Lucky" Luciano, Frank Costello, and Meyer Lansky. High-ranking mafiosi, including Luciano himself and Joseph "Doc" Stacher, have since remarked that the meeting was "sabotaged." On July 7, 1958, Genovese was indicted on charges of conspiring to import and sell narcotics. The government's star witness was Nelson Cantellops, a Puerto Rican drug dealer who claimed Genovese met with him. On April 4, 1959, Genovese was convicted in New York of conspiracy to violate federal narcotics laws. On April 17, 1959, Genovese was sentenced to 15 years in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta, where he tried to run his crime family from prison. Also of note is the absence of any mafia members from Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco, or Detroit, all places where Costello or Luciano still had significant influence. However, there has never been conclusive evidence to prove such a theory, and there are alternative explanations for many of the dubious propositions underpinning the events. Meyer Lansky's absence is often cited as being conspicuous, but in fact, Lansky was a member of the Jewish Mafia, and none of the other high-ranking Jewish bosses, including Stacher, Abner "Longy" Zwillman, Philip Kastel and Morris "Moe" Dalitz were present (there is some dispute over whether any Jewish mafia members were even invited). Lansky, for his part, claimed to have been ill on the day of the summit. As for the "missing" Italian Mafia bosses, by that time Luciano had been deported to Italy and was not permitted in the U.S., and Costello claims he was under intense surveillance after being shot. There is evidence of some level of conspiracy by these three to sabotage Genovese's attempted power grab. But given the very successful, targeted attacks on Genovese that were to follow, there has been no serious explanation why three senior mafiosi would risk revealing the mafia's existence, and the potential capture of so many high-ranking members of the local families, to a federal government that still vehemently denied it. Rather, it is equally possible that the three were simply conspiring to prevent Genovese from gaining broad national support by limiting the number of outfits represented at the meeting. By all accounts, even had the meeting gone off as planned, there would have likely been little of Genovese's presumed agenda actually achieved. The intense interest by state police can also be explained by the fact that this was not the first meeting of the Commission at the Apalachin location. That same location had been used the previous year, on a smaller scale. Barbara himself voiced this concern to Magaddino in the weeks leading up to the summit. Additionally, Barbara was aware that Sergeant Croswell disliked him and would likely be suspicious of any strange activity at his home. (Magaddino was later recorded blaming Barbara for this fiasco, despite it having been Magaddino's decision to host the event there). Finally, police and federal agents had only the suspicion of illegal activity occurring at the summit; they did not have sufficient cause to obtain search warrants for the house itself. In fact, most of the crime bosses who were detained were those that attempted to flee the scene, while those who remained inside the house (such as Magaddino) remained free. ==In popular culture==

The Apalachin meeting is mentioned or depicted in several popular novels, films, and television series, including: • The book and movie version of the 1972 film The Valachi Papers. • The narration near the beginning of the 1990 Martin Scorsese film Goodfellas mentions, "It was a glorious time, before Apalachin, before Crazy Joe Gallo took on a mob boss and started a war ...". • The meeting is referenced several times in the 1999 gangster comedy film Analyze This, including in the opening scene where the protagonist, Paul Vitti (Robert De Niro), remembers his father and best friend Dominic attending the meeting but fleeing the State Troopers by "commandeering" a farmer's tractor to escape back to Manhattan. • The meeting is also mentioned in the 2013 film The Family. • The meeting is depicted in the 2019 film Mob Town. • The meeting serves as the denouement of the 2025 film The Alto Knights, which focuses on the rivalry between Frank Costello and Vito Genovese (both played by Robert De Niro). ==References==