Jack Dragna

Jack Dragna (1915, mug shot)

Jack Dragna , born as Ignazio Dragna (born April 18, 1891 in Corleone , Sicily , † February 23, 1956 in Los Angeles ), was a Sicilian-American mafioso who in the 20th century both in Sicily for the original Cosa Nostra and worked in the USA for the American company La Cosa Nostra ; in Sicily mainly as a blackmailer. During the alcohol prohibition in the United States , he was a well-known "bootlegger" in California and from 1931 local boss of the "Los Angeles Crime Family ”.

Life

Early years

Ignatius Dragna was the son of Francesco Paolo Dragna and Anna Dragna ; on October 18, 1898, he arrived with his mother, older sister Giuseppa and older brother Gaetanodie on board the SS Alsatia in the USA. Together with Antonio Rizzotti's family , they first went to Brooklyn . Dragna, however, returned to Sicily after ten years, joined the Italian army and apparently became a member of the original Mafia : the Sicilian Cosa Nostra .

In 1914 he returned to New York City ; apparently he had an arrangement with Gaetano Reina and led his own group in the Manhattan and Bronx neighborhoods . He was linked to the murder of Bernard Baff that same year ; he fled to California and took the name Charles Dragna . Despite his repatriation to New York, no charges were brought.

In 1915 he was sentenced to three years in prison for extortion in Long Beach, California ; from this time on he used the name Ignazio Rizzoto .

After his imprisonment he worked closely with Joseph Ardizzone ; a well-known mobster in Los Angeles . During the alcohol prohibition he called himself Jack Ignazio Dragna and his brother Gaetano became Tom Dragna . In 1922 he married Francesca Rizzotto .

Head in Los Angeles

After the Castellammare War , the Mafia was reorganized. As a rule, all families of La Cosa Nostra were dependent on either the Five Families from New York or the Chicago Outfit . The leaders of these six gangs formed the commission - the supreme executive body of the mafia. How independently he could act depended on the personality, relationships and influence of the respective local leader. After 1931 Dragna took over from Joseph Ardizzone , who - like some other Mustache Petes - was sidelined. Dragna may also be responsible for Ardizzone's murder; this disappeared in 1931 without a trace. His brother Tom was considered to be his consigliere ; but was less involved in the family's activities than his son Louis Tom Dragna .

With Dragna, the leading families on the east coast hoped for greater influence on the west coast of the USA , since after the end of Prohibition more investments were to be made in gambling . Games were moved to ships to be safe from raids . In the city of Los Angeles, Dragna and his Los Angeles family basically dominated illegal gambling.

The classic business - as u. a. Extortion of protection money - continued and there were also drug smuggling activities ; especially with heroin . There was a close collaboration with gangsters and bullies like Girolamo "Momo" Adamo and John Roselli from Chicago Outfit .

Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen

In New York there was a close collaboration between Lucky Luciano , boss of the mafia family, later classified as the Genovese family, and his childhood friend, the Kosher Nostra Meyer Lansky . Lansky had convinced the Italians to invest more in gambling and to act cooperatively instead of assigning cities and areas to individual families in the classic way.

Bugsy Siegel was sent to the west coast to organize these joint gambling activities. At Luciano's direct instruction, Dragna therefore worked closely with Siegel, and both of them organized the takeover and expansion of the “Trans-America Race Wire Services”, which provided bettors and bookmakers with information about the racecourses .

However, when Siegel was murdered in June 1947 - he had twisted himself while building the Casino Flamingo - Dragna was no longer willing to accept similar dominance from Mickey Cohen , bodyguard and successor to Siegel. Numerous assassinations have been committed on Cohen . In 1949 two bombings were committed on his home on Moreno Avenue in Brentwood . Sitting in the car, Cohen was shot at and attacked in front of a restaurant in August 1949, with his companions - his then bodyguard and a movie star - seriously injured. Cohen himself was hit in the shoulder.

Even against other Kosher Nostra as Moe Sedway and Doc Stacher went Dragna against violent. When Lansky approached Tommy Lucchese about it, there was initially no solution. Lansky did not seek the conflict, but offered Jack Dragna a share in the flamingo, which the latter refused.

Last years

Jack Dragna - Mugshot

In the 1950s, the Los Angeles Police Department under William H. Parker began a campaign against organized crime and Jack Dragna was also targeted by investigators. Dragna and his men have now been arrested several times. When Dragna's wife, Francesca, died in 1953 , Dragna's interest in remaining head of Los Angeles waned .

The judiciary had finally collected enough material against Dragna and in 1953 it was decided to deport Dragnas to Sicily because he had never become a citizen of the USA. In particular, he was z. B. returned illegally to the USA across the Mexican border in 1932 . Dragna took legal action against his deportation and managed to stay in California until his death.

On February 23, 1956, Jack Dragna died of heart failure in Los Angeles and was buried in Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles .

estate

Jack Dragna left two children; a son, Frank Paul Dragna , who graduated from the University of Southern California (USC) and was a World War II veteran ; and a daughter, Anna Rosalia Dragna , who changed her last name to Niotta after they married .

His successor as head was Frank A. DeSimone , who did not get his seat in the "Commission" of the National Crime Syndicate . The interests of the family from Los Angeles were now perceived there through the Chicago outfit .

Adaptations

• 1991: Bugsy ; Film about film from Bugsy Siegel's last ten years . Jack Dragna is played by Richard C. Sarafian.
• 2013: Gangster Squad ; Film about the "Gangster Squad" and their fight against Mickey Cohen . Jack Dragna is played by Jon Polito.
• 2013: Mob City ; Series about the "LAPD" and mobsters in Los Angeles in the 1940s. Jack Dragna is played by Paul Ben-Victor.

literature

• Ovid Demaris : The Last Mafioso: The Treacherous World of Jimmy Fratianno . Bantam Books, 1981. ISBN 0-553-27091-5
• David Fisher: Joey the Hitman: The Autobiography of a Mafia Killer . Da Capo Press: Massachusetts, 2002. ISBN 978-1560253938
• Brad Lewis: Hollywood's Celebrity Gangster. The Incredible Life and Times of Mickey Cohen , Enigma Books: New York, 2007. ISBN 978-1-929631-65-0
• Carl Sifakis: The Mafia Encyclopedia, Third Edition , Checkmark Books: New York, 2005. ISBN 978-0816056958
• Richard N. Warner: "The First Mafia Boss of Los Angeles? The Mystery of Vito Di Giorgio, 1880-1922." On The Spot Journal (Summer 2008), 46-54.

Web links

• Jack Dragna on Find A Grave (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jack Ignatius Dragna on familysearch.org (English)
2. ↑ AmericanMafia.com - Muscling In by John William Tuohy on www.americanmafia.com (English)
3. ↑ Sarasota Herald-Tribune of March 3, 1953 (English)
4. ↑ Frank Paul Dragna on pqasb.pqarchiver.com (English)

predecessor	Office	successor
Joseph Ardizzone	Leader of the "Los Angeles" family of La Cosa Nostra 1931 - 1956	Frank DeSimone