November 2024 issue of Informer

November 2024 issue contents

The Treacherous World
of Joseph Valachi

A rare primary source into Castellammarese War-era Mafia history, Joseph Valachi also described early the gangland of East Harlem, Manhattan and the Bronx, and provided a unique soldier-level view of New York-area organized crime from Prohibition to Apalachin. An early FBI informant, Valachi was the focus of a best-selling book and a popular movie, as well as televised Senate testimony and a lengthy autobiography. Yet, a great deal of the true Valachi story has remained untold. 

Now, 60 years after Valachi put pen to paper to tell his story, a team of historians from around the globe is revealing long hidden aspects of his life and investigating the individuals who influenced him.

Contributors to the issue: Thomas Hunt (U.S.), Steve Turner (U.K.), Fabien Rossat (France), Jon Black (U.K.), Thibaut Maïquès (France), J. Michael Niotta PhD (U.S.), Thom L. Jones (New Zealand), Patrick Downey (U.S.), Ellen Poulsen (U.S.).

This Informer issue features articles on various phases of Valachi's existence in and out of "cosa nostra," bios of those who played important roles in his life and background of his time and place. The issue is illustrated with photos, documents and maps. 

In addition to Informer's traditional print and electronic magazine formats, this issue is available in hardcover, paperback and ebook formats.The magazine and e-magazine editions total about 260 pages, and the book editions are about 500 pages. The available formats are compared in this table.

This issue is available in six formats. Use the table below to determine the appropriate format for you. Clicking a seller logo will take you to the related preview/purchase website.

Type	Identifier	Dimensions	Color?	Seller	Price (USD)
MAGAZINE LAYOUTS
Print Magazine	ISSN: 1943-7803	8 1/4" x 10 3/4" 262 pg incl covers	Yes	MagCloud	$62.00
PDF EMagazine1	ISSN: 1944-8139	N/A	Yes	MagCloud	$20.00*
BOOK LAYOUTS
Print Hardcover2	ISBN5: 9798340925138	6" x 9" x 1.5" 500 pages	No	Amazon	$32.95
Print Paperback2	ISBN6: 9798340935007	6" x 9" x 1.25" 500 pages	No	Amazon	$24.75
Kindle EBook3	ASIN: B0DJD793GL	N/A	No	Amazon	$15.75
EPUB EBook4	GGKEY: EYCX505E9B9	N/A	No	GooglePlay	$15.75
1 - PDF document reader - such as Acrobat Reader - required. 2 - The printed books are indexed. (Ebooks/Emagazines can be searched.) 3 - Kindle device or Kindle reader software required. 4 - EPUB device or reader software - such as Calibre - required. 5 - Print hardcover also has ASIN: B0DJX7678D. 6 - Print paperback also has ASIN: B0DJXBBZ2F. * - PDF e-magazine is free with print magazine purchase.

Issue contents

Introduction: Betrayal ranks among the worst emotional wounds in the human experience. The pain of betrayal probably impacts every person's life to some degree. But in Joseph Valachi's life story, betrayal became a strong and recurring theme...

This section runs 5 magazine pages / 8 book pages.
It includes a map, an image, endnotes.

The issue contains the following articles and columns (click for additional information):

• Growing up Valachi 
• The Murder Stables (Jon Black)
• Mafia minor leaguers (Thibaut Maïquès)
• Mystery victims 
• How a mafioso is 'made' (J. Michael Niotta PhD)
• 'Little Apples'; big lie (Patrick Downey)
• Killing of off-dury officer linked to Valachi kin (Thomas Hunt, Ellen Poulsen)
• Valachi and women 
• Valachi and 'the French Connection' (Fabien Rossat)
• Murder by Mistake 
• Was Valachi insane? 
• Valachi and the FBI rechristened the Mafia 
• DOJ vs FBI 
• Testimony was 'a mixed bag' 
• Minor characters in the Valachi epic (Hunt, Steve Turner)
• Elusive Crime Figures (Hunt, Turner)
• Getting the story printed 
• End of Days (Thom L. Jones)
• Valachi's exit 
• Last will and testament of Joseph Valachi 
• Marie Jackson mysteries remain 
• Valachi's life: the motion picture 
• Historians review 'Valachi papers' movie
• New books

Feature 1

November 2024 issue contents

Growing up Valachi

East Harlem boy becomes Mafia soldier

As the newborn “Giuseppe Vilacio” took his first breath in autumn 1903, his East Harlem community was home to an already substantial and still growing population of first- and second-generation Italian Americans...

18 magazine pages / 34 book pages.
Includes sidebar articles on New York Catholic Protectory; Anthony Valachi; John Valachi; Filomena, Maddalena, Antonetta Valachi.
Map, documents, images, endnotes.

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Feature 2

November 2024 issue contents

The Murder Stables

By Jon Black

A menacing maze of run-down structures played a significant role in the East Harlem childhood of Joseph Valachi. The structures, built and rebuilt over time from discarded building debris, packing crates and old sheet iron, stood at the corner of First Avenue and East 108th Street. They included junk and rag collection shops, wagon storage and other business uses. At the heart of the ramshackle complex was a boarding stable infamous for criminal activity. Due to its presence, the cluster of shacks acquired an evil reputation and became collectively known as the “Murder Stables”...

10 magazine pages / 17 book pages.
Map, images, endnotes.

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Feature 3

November 2024 issue contents

Mafia minor leaguers

East Harlem gangsters became 'mobbed up'

By Thibaut Maïquès

Pushed by poverty and peers, by about 1920 young Joseph Valachi was engaged in gang crime. He was excluded as many of his contemporaries graduated into regional racketeering. The pressure of the underworld conflict known as the Castellammarese War caused a Mafia organization to induct Valachi late in 1930...

5 magazine pages / 10 book pages.
Images, sources.

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Feature 4

November 2024 issue contents

Mystery victims

Two killed due to underworld deal were not identified by Valachi

Consiglio

Two rebel groups in the New York area joined forces against the reigning Mafia boss of bosses in 1930. But before they did so, they needed to prove commitment to their shared cause by murdering two men. Valachi described the arrangement in his autobiography but did not identify the victims...

4 magazine pages / 7 book pages.
Image, endnotes.

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Feature 5

November 2024 issue contents

How a mafioso is 'made'

Comparing underworld induction ceremonies of different times and places

By J. Michael Niotta, PhD

By the time Joe Valachi bared all in front of television cameras for Arkansas Senator John L. McClellan and his subcommittee in October of 1963, the agencies working “Italian crimes” in America already had a fair amount of intel on the Mafia, including versions of the criminal society’s induction ceremony...

5 magazine pages / 10 book pages.
Images, sources.

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Feature 6

November 2024 issue contents

'Little Apples'; big lie

We weren't told the truth about Valachi's early Mafia murder contract

By Patrick Downey

Reggione

Having survived both the Castellammarese War and the purge of Salvatore Maranzano’s faithful that followed, by the fall of 1932, Joe Valachi was settling into Mafia life. As a new member of a crew run by Anthony Strollo, aka Tony Bender, he became safely entrenched in the Mafia organization headed by Charlie “Lucky” Luciano (Salvatore Lucania) and his underboss Vito Genovese. Through The Valachi Papers, we learn that Joe received his first Luciano Crime Family murder contract via Bender that autumn. The victim was twenty-one-year-old hoodlum Michael Reggione, nicknamed Little Apples, who hung around a coffee shop on East 109th Street...

4 magazine pages / 7 book pages.
Images, documents, sources.

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Feature 7

November 2024 issue contents

Killing of off-dury officer linked to Valachi kin

By Thomas Hunt with Ellen Poulsen

Officer Loreto

The killing of off-duty New York Police Officer Alfred Loreto in the summer of 1950 occurred in a Bronx neighborhood familiar to Joseph Valachi and may have resulted from the criminal ventures of Valachi’s brother-in-law Giacomo “Jack” Reina...

6 magazine pages / 12 book pages.
Images, sources.

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Feature 8

November 2024 issue contents

Valachi and women

Through his teen years and early adulthood, Valachi avoided serious romantic entanglements, feeling shame over his poor living conditions and the crimes he was committing in an effort to remedy them. Around his mid-twenties, he began to more highly value his bonds with women. While fidelity was never his strong suit, he formed a series of meaningful connections with women...

5 magazine pages / 10 book pages.
Images, endnotes. 

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Feature 10

November 2024 issue contents

Murder by mistake

Saupp was fatally beaten because he physically resembled a mobster

Though reportedly involved in thirty-three homicides, Valachi generally denied committing killings with his own hands. The one murder he admitted to performing himself, the vicious beating death of prison inmate John Joseph Saupp, was said to be the result of a mistake...

11 magazine pages / 16 book pages.
Images, endnotes.

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Feature 9

November 2024 issue contents

Valachi and 'the French Connection'

By Fabien Rossat

Frank Caruso, Vincent Mauro, Salvatore Maneri

On December 27, 1961, Joseph Valachi, a member of the Genovese Crime Family, and ten codefendants were convicted of importing into the United States $150 million worth of heroin. Sentenced to twenty years for this affair, it was the end of Valachi’s long racketeering career. A few months later, he would become the first penitent to publicly testify to the existence of Cosa Nostra in the U.S. While Valachi had been an important link in the drug operation, that link was near one end of a vast chain – a multinational trafficking network that the general public would later know (thanks to Director William Friedkin's 1971 film) as The French Connection...

11 magazine pages / 18 book pages.
Images, map, endnotes.

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Feature 11

November 2024 issue contents

Was Valachi insane?

Joseph Valachi’s rationality and emotional stability were questioned by a number of sources on a number of occasions. Some issues were raised by Valachi’s history, actions and comments; some by the underworld colleagues he publicly betrayed; some by a critical press...

7 magazine pages / 13 book pages.
Sidebar articles on Counting up the 'crazies,' Lipton's troubles.
Images, document, endnotes.

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Feature 12

November 2024 issue contents

Valachi and the FBI

rechristened the Mafia

J. Edgar Hoover

The Federal Bureau of Investigation hesitated to join U.S. law enforcement’s battle against the Mafia underworld network. The Bureau refused even to recognize the existence of the secret criminal society until circumstances left it no option. FBI did not fully engage organized crime until, with Joseph Valachi’s televised assistance, it had rebranded the syndicate...

7 magazine pages / 13 book pages.
Images, endnotes.

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Feature 13

November 2024 issue contents

DOJ vs FBI

Government agencies squabbled over the release of Valachi's information

Robert Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and its parent Department of Justice had very different ideas of what to do with informant Joseph Valachi and the organized-crime data he provided. In a feud that lasted a year, each agency worked to block and undermine the other and eventually made its own secret publicity arrangements...

8 magazine pages / 14 book pages.
Sidebar articles on Courtney Allen Evans, Miriam Ottenberg
Images, documents, endnotes.

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Feature 14

November 2024 issue contents

Testimony was 'a mixed bag'

Valachi's televised appearances amounted to something less than a law enforcement triumph

The televised testimony of Mafia turncoat Joseph Valachi in the early autumn of 1963 certainly was a media spectacle. However, it was not universally regarded as a turning point in law enforcement’s war against organized crime...

12 magazine pages / 22 book pages.
Sidebar article on Early slot machine opposition.
Images, endnotes. 

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Brief bios

November 2024 issue contents

Minor characters in the Valachi epic

By Thomas Hunt and Steve Turner

Joseph Valachi came into contact with many interesting people, on both sides of the law, during his lifetime. He discussed dozens in his autobiography and in interviews with author Peter Maas, which became the foundation of The Valachi Papers. Though minor characters in the Valachi life story, many are deserving of the special attention of crime historians. In this section, we look at a number of these individuals, providing a summary of what Valachi had to say about them, as well as the data we have been able to assemble from historical records...
(Biographies of Judge Matthew Thomas Abruzzo, Frank “Big Dick” Amato, Ludwig “Dutchman” Augustine, Brother Abel, Frank “Chic 99” Callace, Edward “Eddie Starr” Capobianco, Angelo Caruso, Stephen “Buck Jones” Casertano, Joseph “Muskie” Castaldo, Carmine “Dolly Dimples” Clementi, Ettore “Eddie” Coco, Vincent “Doc” D’Anna, John “Johnny Dee” DeBellis, Dominick “Dom the Sailor” DiQuarto, Michael DiBenedetto, Assoc. Warden Marion Jesse Elliott, Stephen Franse, Narcotics Agent George H. Gaffney, Eugene “Gene” Giannini, Peter “Thomas O’Neill” Heslin, Peter “Muggin” Leone, Frank “Cheech” Livorsi, Samuel “Sam Medal” Medaglia, Nick Paduano, Michael “Little Apples” Reggione, John “Bum” Rodgers, John “Curley” Russomano, “Sadie,” Fiore “Fury” Siano, Innocenzio “John the Bug” Stoppelli, Giuseppe “Diamond Joe Peppe” Viserti, Tony “Sharkey” Zaccaro.)

86 magazine pages / 163 book pages.
Images, endnotes.

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