Joe Adonis

Joe Adonis (police photo, 1937)

Joe Adonis alias Giuseppe Antonio Doto (* 22. November 1902 in Montemarano (AV) , Italy ; † 26. November 1971 in Ancona ) was a notorious leader of the Mafia of New York City and a long-time companion Lucky Luciano .

Life

Early years

Born under the name of Giuseppe Antonio Doto in the small Campanian town of Montemarano, Adonis immigrated to the United States in 1915 as a stowaway on a ship .

Criminal career

There he settled in New York and initially found his way through the streets of Brooklyn as a pickpocket . In Brooklyn he met Lucky Luciano, who, like Adonis, was driven by the ambition to make as much money as possible with criminal machinations. The two became friends, with Adonis developing a special respect for Luciano. Soon they made money by gambling illegally and promoting prostitution .

Sometime in the early 1920s, Adonis dropped the name Doto. It is believed that he chose the name Adonis because he was extremely vain and considered himself a particularly handsome man and Mediterranean lover. In fact, at the time, he was constantly on the lookout for new female conquests and was eventually convicted of rape .

At the time, Adonis was serving as a thug for Frankie Yale , who controlled organized crime in Brooklyn. During this work he briefly made the acquaintance of the later Chicago underworld boss Al Capone, who also worked for Yale .

Luciano had meanwhile joined Joe Masseria , the then head of the New York Mafia. Both Adonis and Luciano rose in the ranks of their gangs. From around 1930 Adonis also worked for Masseria. Adoni's real loyalty, however, was still to Luciano. Both have worked with Kosher Nostras in the so-called Broadway Mob since the alcohol prohibition .

The Young Turks' collaboration with non-Italians was not viewed with pleasure by Mustache Petes like Joe Masseria, as it was viewed as a risk. In 1929 Luciano only barely survived an assassination attempt and his childhood friend Meyer Lansky revealed the authorship of Joe Masseria to him.

Mafia war

When Luciano therefore switched to Salvatore Maranzano's side during the Castellammare War , according to Luciano, Adonis is said to have been one of the four murderers who shot Joe Masseria on April 15, 1931 in an Italian restaurant on Coney Island while Luciano was in the washroom. However, this version can now be considered refuted.

After Luciano had now Salvatore Maranzano murdered, he became the most powerful man in organized crime in New York.

After the mafia war

As such, he founded the so-called National Crime Syndicate , in which the most important mafia groups in the country were represented. Their leaders formed the commission, which was supposed to decide on disputes within organized crime. As a reward for his service in the conflict with Masseria, Luciano Adonis got a seat on the commission, which made Adonis one of the most important mafia leaders in the country. Many politicians and high-ranking police officers accepted bribes from Adonis, so that he also gained influence in the spheres of power of his cronies Vito Genovese , Meyer Lansky and Louis Buchalter .

Adoni's own turf stretched around Broadway and Midtown Manhattan . However, his headquarters were in the Italian restaurant Joe's Italian Kitchen in Brooklyn, which he ran. He made enormous profits during prohibition from illegal smuggling and trafficking of alcohol, as well as from promoting prostitution. These profits were reinvested by him and he amassed a great fortune.

From 1932, Adonis also controlled Brooklyn. He was not caught by the US government's offensive against organized crime, which began four years later, because the public did not perceive him to the same extent as Luciano or Buchalter. While Luciano was arrested and later deported to Italy, Buchalter ended up in the electric chair . In place of the absent Luciano, Adonis took over the chairmanship of the commission and thus controlled the business of organized crime throughout the country.

In December 1946, Adonis took part in the infamous Havana Conference , during which Luciano briefly returned to power in the commission. Adonis, however, continued to make profits from illegal business in New Jersey. In addition, there were also profits as legal ventures that were financed with the money earned by criminals. In the late 1940s, the investigative authorities began to take an interest in Adonis, after Abe Reles , a notorious mafia killer from the Murder, Inc. group who had become a police informant, had named Adonis as one of the most powerful gangsters in the country. During an interrogation, Adonis was only able to get out of the affair several times by invoking the 5th Amendment to the United States Constitution , according to which no one has to incriminate himself.

Expulsion

In 1953, it was decided to expel Adonis from the country, as he had never obtained US citizenship . Adonis appealed against the decision - ultimately unsuccessful - and had to leave the country on January 3, 1956, but was allowed to keep his large fortune. In Italy he initially lived with relatives outside Naples ; near the residence of Luciano. However, the two men are said not to have exchanged a word with each other, as Luciano is said to have been angry that Adonis had left his territory in New York to Vito Genovese . He settled briefly in Rome, but was expelled from there as a "socially undesirable element". He then lived in different places before settling in Milan . He was expelled from there about four months before his death and spent the last months of his life in Serra de 'Conti .

death

Adonis died on 26 November 1971, the course of a pneumonia of multiple organ failure . He was buried in small groups in the Madonna Cemetery in Fort Lee, New Jersey . His son was Frank Adonis , who played several mafia roles for Martin Scorsese .

supporting documents

1. ↑ Joe Adonis Dies At 69 , Daytona Beach Morning Journal , Nov. 27, 1971, p. 6.

Web links

• Joe Adonis in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• Joe Adonis on rotten.com (English)