Eugenio Giannini

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Eugenio "Gene" Giannini (* 1910 in Bari , Apulia , Italy ; † September 20, 1952 in East Harlem , New York City ) was an Italian- American mobster in the vicinity of the Genovese family and Lucchese family ; but especially from Lucky Luciano after his deportation to Italy in 1946.

Life

Early years

Gianinni came to New York City as a child and grew up in Greenwich Village ; other sources give the Bronx and Harlem instead . As a teenager, he is said to have started boxing and achieved 13 wins by knockout .

How Gianinni began his criminal career is unclear. His first entry in his police record is based on a robbery that earned him several months in prison in Newport RI in 1927; In 1928 he was sentenced to a total of five years in prison in Dannemora for carrying a gun. In 1934 he was again involved in a robbery; he also shot a policeman during an inspection. In the shooting between him, his accomplices and the policeman, not only was the policeman killed, but three other bystanders were also injured. Gianinni was never charged.

Before starting his career as an illegal underworld businessman, he was a watchdog in high society restaurants . Its task was u. a. to protect guests from nuisance. This also included preventing the frequent throwing of stink bombs in restaurants at the time. He also monitored the kitchen to prevent inferior goods from being used there.

This job, which was well paid for the time, was not enough for him and so he got into the betting business - especially horse racing - and into the drug trade. In the latter, however, he was caught and sentenced to 15 months in prison in 1942. During his detention he met Lucky Luciano . The former head of the Genovese family had been in prison since 1936, but still had good contacts with the outside world.

Europe

At the suggestion of Luciano, after the war he began to set up a smuggling ring with the new penicillin from the USA to Italy and brought false US dollar bills into circulation in France , as this was considered lighter there than elsewhere. However, he was betrayed by one of his helpers. Since he didn't want to remember anything in court, the trial failed.

Apparently, Giannini had already been recruited as an informant during his imprisonment in 1942 by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), a sub-agency that was part of the US Treasury and combated the emerging trade in hard drugs . For a long time Giannini managed neither to betray members of La Cosa Nostra nor to be exposed as an informant. After all, his activity as a spy protected him from investigations into his illegal activities; however, he was betrayed by one of his helpers. Since he didn't want to remember anything in court, the trial failed.

The end

When he was smuggling penicillin and other goods to Italy again in 1950 in order to take heroin with him on the way back , he was caught by the police in Naples with a large sum of counterfeit money . He was imprisoned in Poggio Reale prison and contacted the head of the FBN Charles Siragusa from there . Apparently he promised him information about Lucky Luciano , who had lived in Naples since his deportation to Italy in 1947. Presumably he succeeded in persuading the Italian authorities to release Ganinni, who immediately returned to the USA.

Luciano learned of Giannini's offer and passed the information on to New York City. Despite the tension between Vito Genovese and Luciano, this meant the death sentence for Giannini. The "hit contract" (am. = Murder order) was delegated to Tony Bender (alias Anthony Strollo ). On September 20, 1952, Eugenio Giannini was gunned down in the street in East Harlem by Joe Valachi , Joseph and Pasquale Pagano . Fiore “Fury” Siano , a nephew of Valachi, who earned his first spurs to be accepted into the “family” , also acted as accomplices .

estate

The body was found the following day at 221 East 107th Street in Harlem, leading to speculation whether the killing was a special warning from the 107 Street crew associated with Giannini to all potential Pentiti . However, it was later found that Giannini had been found alive near the Jefferson Major Athletic Club on 2nd Avenue ; When Giannini died in the car on the way to the hospital, the rescuers who were unable to help threw him out of the car so as not to get into trouble with the police.

The background to the crime was revealed by Valachi when he became a Pentito in the 1960s and also reported on this murder case.

literature

  • Dieter Sinn: The great criminal lexicon . Licensed edition 1984. Manfred Pawlak Verlagsgesellschaft mbH. S. 188 ISBN 3-88199-146-8
  • Frederic But: Brotherhood of evil: The Mafia ; Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1959
  • Carl Sifakis: The Mafia Encyclopedia . Sonlight Christian-M, 2005, ISBN 978-0-8160-5694-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Hit in Harlem: The Life and Times of Eugenio Giannini on gangstersinc.ning.com November 17, 2010; Retrieved August 21, 2013
  2. Anthony Strollo on /www.lacndb.com; Accessed August 21, 2013