Frankie Carbo
Frankie Carbo | |
|---|---|
| (1961) | |
| Criminal penalty | 2 to 4 years' imprisonment; served 20 months 2 years' imprisonment 25 years' imprisonment |
Paul John "Frankie" Carbo
Early years
Carbo was born in
Prohibition
With the passage of Prohibition, he began working as a hired gunman for several bootlegger gangs. In 1931, Carbo was charged with the murder of Philadelphia mobster Michael "Mickey" Duffy in Atlantic City, New Jersey; however, Carbo was eventually released. During the early 1930s, Carbo began working for Murder, Inc. under boss Louis "Lepke" Buchalter.[3]
Murder record
By the end of the 1930s, Carbo had been arrested 17 times and had been charged with five more murders. In 1939, Carbo allegedly participated in the murder of informant Harry "Big Greenie" Greenberg in California; he was arrested for it two years later.[3] This time, former Murder Inc. members Abe "Kid Twist" Reles and Allie "Tick Tock" Tannenbaum agreed to testify against Carbo. However, before the trial began, Reles, who was under police protection, fell to his death from a window of the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island. His death was ruled a suicide, and the case against Carbo was eventually dismissed. Former Philadelphia crime family boss Ralph Natale has claimed that Carbo was responsible for murdering Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel in Beverly Hills, California, in 1947 at the behest of Meyer Lansky.[4]
Boxing promoter
During the 1940s, Carbo became a boxing promoter, working along with
In a 2002 interview with
...Frankie Carbo, the mob's unofficial commissioner for boxing, controlled a lot of the welters and middles... Not every fight was fixed, of course, but from time to time Carbo and his lieutenants, like Blinky Palermo in Philadelphia, would put the fix in. When the Kid Gavilán-Johnny Saxton fight was won by Saxton on a decision in Philadelphia in 1954, I was covering it for Sports Illustrated and wrote a piece at that time saying boxing was a dirty business and must be cleaned up now. It was an open secret. All the press knew that one - and other fights - were fixed. Gavilan was a mob-controlled fighter, too, and when he fought Billy Graham it was clear Graham had been robbed of the title. The decision would be bought. If it was close, the judges would shade it the way they had been told.[7]
Saxton was managed by Blinky Palermo. After losing his title to Tony DeMarco in 1955, he would regain it in a 1955 title match against welterweight champ Carmen Basilio, another fight considered to be fixed.[8]
Sonny Liston
By 1959, Carbo and his partner Blinky Palermo owned a majority interest in the contract of heavyweight boxer
According to both FBI and newspaper reports, Vitale and other mobsters "reportedly controlled Liston's contract",[9] with Vitale owning approximately twelve percent.[10] Liston fought 12 fights under the control of Carbo and Palermo.
Further legal troubles and death
In the late 1950s, Carbo started running into legal troubles. First, he was convicted of managing boxers without a license and was sentenced to two years in the New York City jail on
Former world welterweight and middleweight champion Carmen Basilio testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly during its investigation of professional boxing, giving evidence on Carbo, Carbo's partner Frank "Blinky" Palermo (a member of the St. Louis crime family), and Carbo's aide, Gabriel Genovese, a cousin of Mafia Don Vito Genovese who was convicted in 1959 of being an unlicensed boxing manager. Calling for a house cleaning of professional boxing, Basilio's testimony revealed that his former managers had to pay off organized crime for his title shots and that he essentially had a behind the scenes manager in Genovese.[11]
Evidence submitted to the subcommittee showed that Basilio's on-the-record managers, John DeJohn and Joseph Netro, paid Gabriel Genovese $39,334.41 and approximately $25,000, respectively, during the time Basilio fought for and defended his welterweight and middleweight titles. Genovese was a frontman for Carbo.[12]
In 1961, Carbo and boxing promoter Frank "Blinky" Palermo were charged with conspiracy and extortion against the National Boxing Association welterweight Champion Don Jordan. After a three-month trial in which U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy served as prosecutor, Carbo was sentenced to 25 years in prison, serving his sentence at Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary in California, McNeil Island in Washington state and United States Penitentiary, Marion in Illinois.[13][3]
Granted early parole due to ill health, Carbo was released from prison. He died in Miami Beach, Florida, on November 9, 1976.[3]
In popular culture
Character Tommy Como (
References
- ^ Murphy, Mildred (July 25, 1958). "Carbo Is Indicted on Ten Counts Of Undercover Ties to Boxing; CARBO IS INDICTED ON BOXING COUNTS". The New York Times. Retrieved February 1, 2020.
- ^ Bureau of Narcotics, Sam Giancana, The United States Treasury Department. Mafia: The Government’s Secret File on Organized Crime. 2007. (pg. 85)
- ^ a b c d e f "Frankie Carbo, Underworld Figure Once Known as the 'Czar' of Boxing". The New York Times. November 11, 1976.
- ^ Serranti, Seth (15 March 2017). "The Story of the First Mob Boss to Turn Rat". Vice Media. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
- ^ a b Bureau of Narcotics, Sam Giancana, The United States Treasury Department. Mafia: The Government's Secret File on Organized Crime (2007) (pg 399)
- ^ My Rugged Education in Boxing by Robert K. Christenberry (May 26, 1952) Life Magazine pg.114-116, 118, 120, 123-124, 126, 129-130
- ^ Hagerty, Bill. "Budd the wiser". Observer. Retrieved 16 May 2012.
- ^ Acevedo, Carlos. "STRANGE DAYS: The Johnny Saxton Story". The Cruelest Sport. Retrieved 16 May 2012.
- ^ Associated Press. "Probers Search for Underworld Ties with Boxers, undated newspaper clipping. FBI file" Retrieved July 18, 2011.
- ^ Picou, Tommy. "The Sonny Liston Story: He Always Had Cop Trouble". Chicago Daily Defender, September 11, 1962, pp. 22
- ^ Professional Boxing: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Eighty-sixth Congress, Second Session, Pursuant to S. Res. 238. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. 1960. pp. 471–484. Retrieved 25 May 2023.
- ^ "Ex-Managers of Basilio Tell of Payments; DeJohn and Netro Say Title Fights Came Only Then" (PDF). Washington Evening Star. 3 December 1960. Retrieved 25 May 2023.
- ^ A Report on Chicago crime. Chicago Crime Commission (1961) pg.67
- ^ Ecksel, Robert. "Raging Bull: A Tragedy in Three Acts". Boxing.com. Retrieved 11 September 2016.
Further reading
- Rosen, Charley (2001). The Wizard of Odds: How Jack Molinas Nearly Destroyed the Game of Basketball. New York: Seven Stories Press. ISBN 1-58322-562-5.
- Nack, William (2003). My Turf: Horses, Boxers, Blood Money, and the Sporting Life. New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-81250-9.
- Scott, Peter Dale (1993). Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. Berkeley: University of California. ISBN 0-520-08410-1.
- Sifakis, Carl (2005). The Mafia Encyclopedia. New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-8160-5694-3.
- Mitchell, Kevin (2012). Jacobs Beach: The Mob, the Fights, the Fifties. U.S.: Open Road Media. p. 102. ISBN 978-1605982731..
- Anderson, Anne Margaret; Binder, John J. (2014). Philadelphia Organized Crime in the 1920s and 1930s. U.S.: Arcadia Publishing. p. 47. ISBN 978-1467121170.
