Vincent Alo

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Vincent Alo

Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo (born May 26, 1904 in Manhattan , New York , † March 9, 2001 in Florida ) was a high-ranking American mobster of the La Cosa Nostra .

Life

Vincent Alo was born in Manhattan in 1904 and started making money on Wall Street at the age of 14 . In 1923 he landed in Sing Sing after being convicted of armed bank robbery. In 1926 he became a member of the US Mafia family under Joseph Masseria , which was later classified as the Genovese family .

Under Chief Lucky Luciano , Alo came into contact with Meyer Lansky and Alo became his bodyguard, as Luciano feared that his childhood friend and business partner could be attacked in the upcoming disputes, especially between the five families . As is well known, it was always the resources of the Bugs and Meyer Mob that had helped Luciano with his conflicts.

In the 1930s, Vincent Alo and Meyer Lansky began working together directly and entered the gambling business. The starting point was Hallandale (today: Hallandale Beach ) in Broward County , Florida, where Julian “Potatoes” Kaufman wanted to convert a building into a kind of casino . Kaufman himself did not have enough capital to achieve his goal, so Alo and Lansky got involved in this project. In the years that followed, Alo was one of Lansky's closest Italian-American friends - especially after Luciano's imprisonment and subsequent deportation - and was involved in other gambling projects with the gang boss, who came from Eastern Europe. Including in Cuba during the Batista dictatorship in the 1950s, when American gangsters benefited from the political situation and were able to build a gambling paradise. For example, Alo also owned a stake in Lansky's Riviera Hotel in Havana .

Vincent Teresa described Alo as a watchdog who on the one hand made sure that Lansky did not make short work of the bosses of La Cosa Nostra , but on the other hand also protected Lansky from their attacks.

Alo died in Florida in 2001 at the age of 96 and was later buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx .

Movie

The person Vincent Alo was immortalized in the film The Godfather - Part II by Francis Ford Coppola by the character of Johnny Ola (played by Dominic Chianese ). Johnny Ola plays the right hand of Hyman Roth (portrayed by Lee Strasberg ), which is an allusion to the Lansky-Alo partnership. The character Victor Tellegio , played by Robert De Niro in the film American Hustle (2013) is also based on Alo.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Teresa, Vincent: My Life In The Mafia . Buccaneer Books. December 1994. ISBN 978-1-56849-377-0 . German translation by Helmut Degner : "My life in the mafia". Hoffmann and Campe Verlag. Hamburg 1973. ISBN 978-3-455-07675-2
  2. ↑ New York Books - A Colorful Look Back at Pre-Castro Cuba - page 1

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Alo, Vincent
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jimmy Blue Eyes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mobster
DATE OF BIRTH May 26, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH new York
DATE OF DEATH March 9, 2001
Place of death Florida