01 - Mafia, 1929 Atlantic City Conference. cover art

01 - Mafia, 1929 Atlantic City Conference.

01 - Mafia, 1929 Atlantic City Conference.

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 Mafia, 1929 Atlantic City Conference. The Atlantic City Conference, held between 13 and 16 May 1929, was a historic summit of leaders of organized crime in the United States. It is considered by most crime historians to be the earliest organized crime summit held in the US. The conference had a major impact on the future direction of the criminal underworld and held more importance and significance than the Havana Conference of 1946 and the Apalachin meeting of 1957. It also represented the first concrete move toward a National Crime Syndicate. Details about the conference are difficult to verify. However, it is thought that crime leaders at the conference discussed the violent bootleg wars in New York City and Chicago and how to avoid them in the future, diversification and investment into legal liquor ventures, expansion of illegal operations to offset profit loss from the potential repeal of Prohibition, and reorganization and consolidation of the underworld into a National Crime Syndicate. The conference. In early May 1929, Meyer Lansky, the Jewish-American crime syndicate boss, married. He concluded that the resort town of Atlantic City, New Jersey would be an ideal place not only for his honeymoon, but also for a conference of major organized crime figures, allowing Lansky and the rest of the bosses to mix pleasure and business. Together with his closest underworld associates, Italian-American mobsters Johnny "The Fox" Torrio, Charlie "Lucky" Luciano and Frank Costello, Lansky planned the conference for the weekend of May 13–16. The organizing host of the conference was Atlantic City and South Jersey crime boss, Enoch "Nucky" Johnson, who provided the hotel accommodations, food, and entertainment for all, while guaranteeing that there would be no police interference. The conference was the first known underworld summit of its kind and the first concrete move towards establishing the National Crime Syndicate that eventually controlled all major organized crime activities across the United States. The largest delegation came from the New York/New Jersey area. Attendees included Torrio, who had formerly led the largest organized crime outfit in Chicago before turning over control to Al Capone and who had more recently helped organize a loose cartel of East Coast bootleggers in which Lansky, Luciano, and Costello were active. Luciano and Costello, then part of the Masseria family, attended, along with their associates Giuseppe "Joe Adonis" Doto and Vito Genovese, and Guarino "Willie Moore" Moretti, who handled the Masseria family's Newark, New Jersey interests. Giuseppe Masseria himself was not invited. In addition to the Masseria family members, Albert "The Mad Hatter" Anastasia, Frank "Cheech" Scalise, and Vincent Mangano came from the D'Aquila/Mineo Family of Manhattan, while Gaetano "Tommy Brown" Lucchese represented the Reina Family out of the Bronx. Lansky and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, the bosses of the Bugs and Meyer Mob, took part, as did Louis "Lepke" Buchalter and Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro, also known as the "Gorilla Boys". Abner "Longy" Zwillman, who was based in Newark, attended, as did Dutch Schultz, Bronx beer baron and Harlem numbers king, Owen "Owney the Killer" Madden, boss of Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen, and Frank Erickson, a Costello associate who had formerly been a lieutenant to Arnold Rothstein. Chicago was represented by Al Capone, Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti, Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik, Frank "Frank Cline" Rio, all top members of the South Side Capone Gang and representing Midwest interests. Capone's delegation also included Frank McErlane of the South Side Saltis/McErlane Gang, a Capone bodyguard and only one of two Irish gangsters present. From Philadelphia came the top Jewish-American bosses, Irving "Waxey Gordon" Wexler, Harry "Nig Rosen" Stromberg, Max "Boo Boo" Hoff, Irving "Bitzy" Bitz and Charles Schwartz. From Cleveland came the "Little Jewish Navy" of Morris "Moe" Dalitz and Louis "Lou Roddy" Rothkopf, along with adopted Polizzi Family member, Leo "Charles Polizzi" Berkowitz, who represented Cleveland's "Mayfield Road Mob". The feared Purple Gang of Detroit was represented by Abe Bernstein and his brother Joseph "Bugs Bill" Bernstein. Boston's most prominent bootlegger, Charles "King" Solomon, was present, while Kansas City's "Balestrere Gang" and the "Pendergast Machine" were represented by boss John Lazia. Delegations from Florida and Louisiana were also present at the time, which would most likely be Luciano and Costello allies, Santo Trafficante, Sr. of Tampa and Sylvestro "Silver Dollar Sam" Carolla of New Orleans. Two of the underworld's most powerful leaders, Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano of New York, were not invited. Nor was Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonanno, then Maranzano's top lieutenant and aide and later one of the architects of the "National Crime Syndicate" and the La Cosa Nostra Commission. The old guard ...
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