Mafia warrior and boss of Trapani

August 2019 issue contents
Columns

The Warner Files

Mafia warrior and boss of Trapani

By Richard N. Warner

For this special issue on Salvatore Maranzano, it's worth providing a little info on his background. He was born in Castellammare del Golfo on July 31, 1886, to Domenico Maranzano and Antonina Pisciotta. He married Elisabetta Minore, the sister of Salvatore "Don Toto" Minore of Trapani, probably around 1912. Together they had one daughter and three sons.

Joseph Bonanno tells us that when he was a boy, "Maranzano was a chief warrior under Uncle Stefano Magaddino in Castellammare, and he too had fought against the Buccellatos"...

One page.

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• Kindle e-book edition can be ordered through Amazon.

Was there a post-Maranzano purge?

August 2019 issue contents
Columns

Just One More Thing...

Was there a post-Maranzano purge?

By Thomas Hunt

One persistent Maranzano-related legend relates to a supposedly widespread post-assassination purge of Maranzano's followers. The slaughter has been referred to as "the Sicilian Vespers."

The term "Sicilian Vespers" originally referred to a Palermo uprising against an oppressive Angevin occupying force on the Easter holiday way back in 1282. The Sicilian community, apparently gathering for an evening Vespers religious service, suddenly and brutally attacked the occupiers. According to legend, thousands were slaughtered in the uprising...

The American Mafia-related version of the Sicilian Vespers legend suggests that Salvatore "Charlie Luciano" Lucania, successor to Maranzano's defeated Castellammarese War opponent "Joe the Boss" Masseria, organized a secret conspiracy against Maranzano...

Seven pages including two images and one page of notes.
 

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• Kindle e-book edition can be ordered through Amazon.

Vinnitta: The Birth of the Detroit Mafia

In Vinnitta, author Daniel Waugh offers an in-depth account of the violent birth of the Detroit Mafia and its impact on the city's Little Sicily residents. The book climaxes with the Giannola-Vitale War of 1918-1921.

Vinnitta is available now in paperback and in Kindle e-book through Amazon and in paperback and e-book editions through other booksellers.

ISBN: 978-1483496276
ASIN: B07R72N5CV

What will we find out about Maranzano?

Informer's special issue on Prohibition Era boss of bosses Salvatore Maranzano will be released by Aug. 12, 2019. 

E-book version available for pre-order

The official release date of Informer's special issue on Salvatore Maranzano is still a few weeks away, but the issue - in Kindle e-book form - can be pre-ordered NOW through Amazon.com. (Link: https://amzn.to/32GaLgr or click on the cover image below.)

This is only the second time an Informer issue has been available for purchase through Amazon. It is the first time that an issue has been sold in the Kindle "MOBI" e-book format. (The July 2011 issue was provided for Kindle as a PDF conversion.)

Our usual magazine formats - standard-size print and electronic PDF - will be available soon through the MagCloud service.

Maranzano issue taking shape

 The August 2019 issue of Informer will deal exclusively with Prohibition Era Mafia leader Salvatore Maranzano - life, career, assassination and post-assassination aftermath. Through articles, photos and maps, Informer will tackle the many questions about Maranzano, including:

• Who was Salvatore Maranzano?
• What did he look like? (And what did he certainly NOT look like?)
• What does a recent discovery tell us about him?
• What was said about him by those who knew him in life?
• Where were the locations significant to his life and career?
• When did Maranzano-related events occur?
• Why was he important in U.S. Mafia history?
• How has he been portrayed by Hollywood?
• What do we know of Maranzano's life in Sicily?
• Was there really a post-Maranzano Mafia purge?

Pages for the issue are currently being laid out. (Issue is expected to weigh in at around seventy-two pages.)

Plans call for the August Informer to be released in the usual print and electronic/PDF formats (through the MagCloud service). And, with some luck, the issue also will be available in a Kindle ebook format.

Stay tuned.

Maranzano issue deadlines approach

Articles deadline for this summer's special issue is just a couple of weeks away. Unless an extension is arranged with the editor, all articles must be received by July 8, 2019.

Advertisement deadline is about a month off. If you plan to advertise in this issue, contact us by email by July 15, 2019.

August 2019 special issue: Maranzano

An August 2019 special issue of Informer will focus on enigmatic Prohibition Era Mafia leader Salvatore Maranzano. 

Editorial deadline for the issue is July 8. 

Advertising deadline is July 15 (email for advertising rates). 

The issue will be released on or before August 12.

November 2018 issue of Informer

November 2018 issue contents
Editorial

Adhesive tape was a fairly recent invention when robbers began finding it especially handy in their field of endeavor. It was quicker and easier to bind and gag a victim with strips of the sticky material than with cloth or rope. And a roll of tape was far easier to carry around. Due to the novelty of this approach, newspapers dubbed groups that used it, “tape bandits.”

We learn in this issue’s feature by Jeffery S. King (Preview), that notorious gangster George “Baby Face” Nelson once led a group of these enterprising tape bandits.

Also in this issue:

• Saving a person from the electric chair may not always be the same as saving the person’s “life.” Thomas Hunt’s article (Preview) reveals that one wrongly convicted man was emotionally destroyed despite Detective Joseph Petrosino’s heroic efforts to free him from Sing Sing’s Death House.
• Did Albany’s powerful O’Connell Machine ensure the 1930s conviction and electrocution of widow Anna Antonio merely to shield local bootlegging and narcotics rackets? Ellen Poulsen considers the question (Preview).
• Author Christian Cipollini reveals past, present and what might happen if he ever smiled for a photograph (Preview).
• Richard N. Warner explores the unsolved murder of Chicago’s Sam Giancana (Preview).
• Thomas Hunt ponders “Wherefore art thou, [Frank] Romeo?” (Preview).
• Book reviews and announcements (Preview).

Sixty-eight pages.

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Nelson and the Tape Bandits

November 2018 issue contents
Features

Baby Face Nelson

and the Tape Bandits

By Jeffery S. King

In 1930, George “Baby Face” Nelson committed major crimes for the first time with the so-called “Tape Bandits.” The group earned its name by temporarily ensuring the silence of its victims through the use of adhesive tape.
Although the gang had several members, we only know about Nelson, Stanton John Randall (real name John Francis Haggerty) and Harry Lewis Powell (real name Harry Lewis Pinsky)...

Eight pages including twelve images and a half page of notes.

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'Keep him away!'

November 2018 issue contents
Features

'Keep him away!'

'He's coming to take me to the CHAIR!'
 

By Thomas Hunt

Carbone

One of the more celebrated murder investigations of legendary New York Police Department Detective Joseph Petrosino involved his effort to save the life of a man condemned to die in the electric chair. While Petrosino succeeded in correcting a miscarriage of justice and establishing the innocence of the convicted murderer by locating and arresting the actual guilty party, whether he can be said to have saved a “life” depends largely on one’s point of view...

Eleven pages including twelve images and a page and a half of notes.

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Dope and duplicity in 1930s Albany

November 2018 issue contents
Features

Dope and duplicity in 1930s Albany

By Ellen Poulsen

Anna Antonio

Struggling against the pain and weakness that resulted from his many wounds, he pulled himself to the top of the roadside ravine and onto the dark two-way highway between Albany and Hudson, New York. The bloody and prostrate hitchhiker, appearing to be the victim of a gangland hit, was observed and picked up by some on-the-road college students, who took him to Albany’s Memorial Hospital...

Eight pages including eleven images and a half page of notes.

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Interview: Christian Cipollini

November 2018 issue contents
Interview

Interview: Christian Cipollini

"My interest was sparked by my father’s interest in history, especially the lesser known corners of it. On the surface one would think my mob fascination was an obvious influence because my dad was a narcotics cop, but oddly enough, not overtly. His job lit a spark that didn’t fully flame until years later, leading me toward fact-finding as a whole, and instilling in me that history is always relevant: We’re never given all the clues at once, there’s always more to piece together, and somehow all of it does indeed repeat itself, for better or worse, if we don’t pay attention to it."

Six pages including three images.

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Book reviews, announcements

November 2018 issue contents
Books

Reviews for Behind the Murder Curtain by Bruce Sackman, Michael Vecchione and Jerry Schmetterer: Ghost: My Thirty Years as an FBI Undercover Agent by Michael R. McGowan and Ralph Pezzullo.

Announcements for Inspector Oldfield and the Black Hand Society, Carmine the Snake, Chasing Dillinger.

Five pages including five images.

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Who killed Sam? A mystery solved?

November 2018 issue contents
Columns

Warner Files: 

Who killed Sam? A mystery solved?

By Richard N. Warner

Giancana

Earlier this year, on June 27, 2018, Frank Calabrese Jr., son of the late Outfit hitman Frank "the Breeze" Calabrese Sr., gave an interview on WGN-TV in Chicago in which he threw out a potential bombshell revelation into the biggest mystery in the history of the Chicago Outfit: "Who Killed Sam Giancana?"

His answer made a lot of mob-watchers rethink what they thought they knew.

Four pages including five images.

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Wherefore art thou, Romeo?

November 2018 issue contents
Columns

Just One More Thing:

Wherefore art thou, Romeo?

By Thomas Hunt

His deeds forgotten and his remains misplaced, Frank Romeo is a mysterious figure in New Orleans underworld history.

Recalled by history merely as one of eleven men murdered in an 1891 lynch mob assault on Orleans Parish Prison, Romeo, also known as Romero, actually served a key, longtime role in the evolution of organized crime in southern Louisiana.

Eleven and a half pages including eight images and two and a half pages of notes.

Preview/purchase electronic and print editions through MagCloud.