Joseph Valachi
Who was Joseph Valachi?
What was Joseph Valachi’s role during the Castellammarese War?
Why did Joseph Valachi begin cooperating with federal authorities?
What did Joseph Valachi reveal in the Valachi hearings?
Joseph Valachi (born September 22, 1903, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died April 3, 1971, La Tuna Federal Correctional Institution, Texas) was an American gangster and a member of the Genovese crime family who turned informer in 1962.
Early Mafia career and the Castellammarese War
Valachi entered the Mafia world during the Castellammarese War of 1930–31, when rival factions led by Joseph Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano fought for control of New York’s Mafia. The conflict intensified after crime boss Gaetano Reina was killed in 1930, reportedly on Masseria’s orders. Members of Reina’s faction resisted Masseria’s effort to extend his control over the gang. Reina’s ally, Tom Gagliano, brought in new men who could be used against rival forces without immediately exposing his own circle; Valachi was among them. By the early 1960s Valachi had spent some three decades in the Mafia, much of that time in the New York crime family that later became known as the Genovese family. He never rose above the rank of soldier and supported himself by dealing narcotics and serving as a gunman. Despite never facing a murder conviction, he was suspected by investigators in more than 20 killings, sometimes pulling the trigger, other times driving the getaway car.
Prison killing and decision to cooperate
In 1960 Valachi was convicted of federal narcotics violations and sentenced to 15 years in prison. In February 1962 he received a second, 20-year sentence on another narcotics conviction to run along with the first. He was confined to the same federal prison in Atlanta where his boss, Vito Genovese, was also serving time on a drug charge. Rumors spread that Valachi was cooperating with authorities, although he had not yet become an informant. Valachi came to believe that Genovese had accepted the rumors and marked him for death. He became increasingly fearful for his safety. That June, Valachi attacked a fellow prisoner with an iron pipe, thinking that the man was Joseph DiPalermo, who he suspected had been sent to kill him. The victim was instead Joseph Saupp, another inmate. The killing resulted in a murder charge against Valachi.
Soon after the killing Valachi asked to speak with federal narcotics authorities and began offering information about organized crime. While awaiting trial he informed the U.S. attorney’s office in New York that he was willing to cooperate more fully. Valachi pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and received a life sentence. Federal authorities subsequently kept him in protective custody as he provided information about the Mafia.
The Valachi hearings and revelations
Valachi admitted the existence of New York’s Five Families, named leading figures, and outlined the workings of omertà, the Mafia code of silence.
Beginning in 1962 Valachi provided information about organized crime to federal authorities, including the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, the FBI, and the U.S. Justice Department. In 1963 he testified publicly before the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, headed by John L. McClellan. Valachi was the first syndicate member to describe the history, membership, and inner workings of the national crime cartel popularly called the Mafia—what Valachi referred to as Cosa Nostra (“Our Thing”). U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy called Valachi’s testimony the “biggest single intelligence breakthrough yet in combating organized crime and racketeering in the United States.” Investigations, indictments, and convictions followed Valachi’s testimony.
Memoir and final years
In 1964, while in prison, Valachi wrote a detailed account of his experiences in organized crime at the request of the Justice Department. His memoir, “The Real Thing: The Expose and Inside Doings of Cosa Nostra,” is preserved in the Joseph Valachi Personal Papers collection at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. It later served as the basis for Peter Maas’s book The Valachi Papers (1968), which was adapted into a film of the same name in 1972. Valachi remained in federal custody under protection the rest of his life. He died of natural causes at La Tuna Federal Correctional Institution in Texas on April 3, 1971, at age 67.
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