Joe Valachi
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| Joe Valachi | |
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| Born | September 22, 1903 Brooklyn, New York, USA |
| Died | April 3, 1971 Texas, USA |
Joseph 'Joe Cargo' Valachi (September 22, 1903 – April 3, 1971) was the first Mafia member to publicly acknowledge the existence of the Mafia. He is also the person who made Cosa Nostra (meaning "our thing") a household name. In October 1963, Valachi (a "soldier" in New York City's powerful Vito Genovese crime family, whose primary "job" within the family was that of a driver) had testified before Arkansas Senator John L. McClellan's congressional committee on organized crime that the Mafia did exist. Although the low-ranking Valachi's disclosures never led directly to the prosecution of any Mafia leaders, he was able to provide many details of its history, operations and rituals, aiding in the solution of several uncleared murders, as well as naming many members and the major crime families. The effect of his testimony, which was also broadcast on radio and television and published in newspapers, was devastating for the mob, which was still reeling from the November 14, 1957, Apalachin Meeting where state police had accidentally discovered several Mafia bosses from all over the United States meeting at the Apalachin, New York, home of mobster Joseph Barbara. After the Apalachin exposures and then Valachi's testimony, the mob was no longer invisible to the public eye.
Valachi's motivations for becoming an informer have been the subject of some debate. While Valachi had claimed to be testifying as a public service and a way to expose a powerful criminal organization that he blamed for ruining his life, it is also possible he was simply hoping for US government protection to avoid the death penalty after his August 1962 murder of a man in prison whom he had mistaken for a Mafia member intending to kill him (Valachi and Genovese were both serving a sentence for heroin trafficking). Genovese had apparently ordered Valachi killed (offering $100,000 to anyone who did so) because the powerful mob boss had believed Valachi had betrayed him to the authorities in exchange for a lighter prison sentence, thus violating the strict Mafia oath of Omertà (silence) which traditionally had carried the death penalty.
After the U.S. Department of Justice first encouraged and then blocked publication of Valachi's memoirs, a biography heavily influenced by those memoirs and by interviews with Valachi was written by journalist Peter Maas and published in 1968 as The Valachi Papers, forming the basis for a later movie of the same title starring actor Charles Bronson as Valachi. Valachi also reportedly inspired the character of Willie Cicci (Joe Spinell) in the hit film The Godfather Part II (1974).
In 1966, Valachi attempted unsuccessfully to hang himself in his prison cell, using an electrical extension cord. He died of a heart attack in 1971 at La Tuna Federal Correctional Institution in Texas, having outlived his chief nemesis Vito Genovese by two years. The $100,000 bounty placed on Valachi's head by Genovese went uncollected.
