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"Murdertown," "Bombtown," "Crimetown."
Through decades, the City of Youngstown, Ohio, has been branded with such painful nicknames, due in large part to the rackets, violence and corruption of organized crime in the region. The streets of Youngstown and other communities in the Mahoning and Shenango valleys of northeastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania have been bloodied through numerous shootings and stabbings and, during an especially disturbing period, a series of gruesome car-bombings. In too many cases, public officials and officers of the law were complicit in the criminal activity, profiting through bribery and graft. Some authorities who resisted corruption and attempted to perform their public duties found themselves the targets of underworld violence.
In this November 2022 issue of Informer: The History of American Crime and Law Enforcement, we tackle the history of organized crime in Youngstown region, from the earliest reports of the 1890s through the apparent dissolution of the Mob presence more than a century later. It is a complex subject, as elements of at least four regional Mafia organizations (Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit and Buffalo) and a persistent non-Mafia Calabrian organization, in addition to other criminal elements, all collided, cooperated, combined and clashed with each other at different times. This resulted in a wealth of interesting but often uncoordinated stories and personalities.
Our strategy for dealing with the subject is to present a number of individual standalone articles on the more interesting of these stories, bringing to light the significant personalities, groups, areas and eras. The effort might be compared to the photographic "stitching" of a collection of images into a panorama.
Readers will discover the secret criminal organizations behind names like "Society of Honor," "Sacred Circle" and "Society of the Banana" and will encounter such characters as "Fats" Aiello, Ernie Biondillo, Frank Cammarata, "Cadillac Charlie" Cavallaro, Joe Cutrone, "Tony Dope" Delsanter, Vince DeNiro, "Wolf" DiCarlo, "Big Jim" Falcone, Mike Farah, "Red" Giordano, "Big Dom" Mallamo, Dominick Moio, "Two-Gun Jimmy" Prato, Rocco Racco, Rocco Strange, Lenny Strollo, "Zebo" Zottola, along with the Barber brothers, the Carabbia brothers, the Naples brothers, the Romeo brothers and many more.
While it is our hope that a coherent image of the history of Youngstown-area organized crime (and its connections to criminal entities outside the region) will emerge, we are concerned by the fact that some of our individual historical "snapshots" do not overlap with or even touch each other while others may overlap quite a bit. We hope that the obvious voids and repetitions will not be a great distraction and that, with some patience, our readers will be able to "get the picture."
Note: In addition to print book and ebook formats, this issue is available in print and electronic (PDF) magazine formats through the MagCloud service.
Contributors to this Informer issue: James Barber, Justin Cascio, Margaret Janco, Thom L. Jones, Michael A. Tona, Edmond Valin and Thomas Hunt
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