Mountain Mafia: Organized Crime in the Rockies

By Betty L. Alt and Sandra K. Wells

MOUNTAIN MAFIA IS A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BLACK HAND AND MAFIA in the Rocky Mountain region. It brings to life some of the more colorful leaders in the West's organized crime operations throughout the 20th century, including Roma, Colletti, and the Smaldones. Especially examined is the famous court case of "Scotty" Spinuzzi, who was acquitted of murder "because no one saw the bullet leave the gun." Also mentioned is the connection these western mobsters had with notorious crime members in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781984585202

Betty L. Alt

Betty Alt is the author or co-author of numerous books, both fiction and nonfiction. She has an M.A. from Northeast Missouri State University and has taught at several colleges and universities in the U.S. and overseas. Alt is now retired and living in Tennessee.

Book preview

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter1 The Rise Of The Black Hand

Chapter 2 The Battle For Southern Control

Chapter 3 The Challenge For Colorado

Chapter 4 The New Leaders

Chapter 5 The Brothers Smaldone

Chapter 6 [Policeman Richie] Rose was carried to a tavern . . . ambulance

Endnotes

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

T he history of the Mafia in the Rocky Mountain region reads like a fascinating story from a true crime magazine. Although there were many individuals involved from the era of the Black Hand, the bootlegging times of Prohibition and into the 1980s, this book cannot present all of their stories. It deals chiefly with the lives of the major players on Colorado’s organized crime scene.

A great amount of information has appeared in America’s media, especially movies and television, about the Mafia in the eastern part of the nation. Only a few recent books even mention the Colorado mob. This may be understandable when considering that the total population of the state during most of the twentieth century was smaller than that of New York City, Chicago or Philadelphia. However, up and down the front range of the Rockies, the exploits of the Mafia can be traced in the pages of newspapers in Denver, Pueblo, Trinidad, Colorado Springs, etc.

In presenting an overview of the Mafia in Colorado, the authors selected material from hundreds of pages of research and coped with many discrepancies. In both national and local material, they encountered names that were spelled differently, dates that did not mesh, and events that were sometimes distorted. Even in those few books that mention Colorado’s mafia, sources do not always agree, endnotes often do not match citations, and bibliographies are either incomplete or not furnished at all. Data from national crime commissions contain dates different from Mafia obituaries, and, occasionally, someone has been listed as having been killed when the individual was only wounded or cannot be located.

Because those involved in Colorado’s organized crime were continually arrested, charged, out on bond, tried, sentenced, pardoned or paroled, it is impossible to include all of the interesting material or to cover all of the illegal activities that took place. (For example, the lengthy NCCD report lists over 240 crimes in Denver attributed to organized crime just during a two-year period in the late 1960s.) Every attempt has been made by the authors to glean and present an accurate summation of organized crime in the Rocky Mountain area for most of the twentieth century. For those wishing to know more details about various individuals and their crimes, trials conducted, and sentence imposed, the book has an extensive bibliography. Also, microfilm in libraries from Denver to Trinidad can provide an endless source of information from Colorado newspapers.

The authors wish to thank the research department at Colorado State University-Pueblo, librarians in Trinidad, Pueblo, Canon City, Colorado Springs and Denver, who were so helpful, those individuals interviewed who provided some highlights on Colorado’s organized crime figures, and those persons who sent information they had gleaned from various sources. They also thank their families for their help and patience during the completion of this project.

CHAPTER1

The Rise Of The Black Hand

49328.png

. . . You may stop us from persecuting you as you have been adjudged to give money or life. Woe upon you if you do not resolve to buy your future happiness, which you can do from us by giving the money demanded. Preparati per la tua morte. (Prepare for your death.)

—Black Hand letter,

The Cosmopolitan, June 1909

49340.png

S now glistening on the peaks of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range was a beautiful sight; however, it was not the scenery that attracted Italian immigrants to southern Colorado in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Fertile land along the Arkansas River could be put under irrigation and promised ripe harvests in the otherwise arid climate. Families were able to purchase small farms, and fields of tomatoes, onions and peppers began to dot the countryside to the east of Pueblo.

Still, only a small portion of these early ‘immigrants settled on the land. Coal mine owners in Colorado were begging for men to drop into the earth and haul out its black bounty. Prior to Congress prohibiting in 1885 the importation of foreign workers to work under contract in the United States, representatives from various industries went to Europe to hire cheap labor.(¹) During these times Pueblo was known as the Smelter Capital, Steel City, or Pittsburg of the West. Both its smelters and the Colorado Fuel and Iron Corporation (CF&I) were in need of laborers, and the steel mill advertised overseas and in eastern newspapers for men and families to come west. Many of these settled in Pueblo’s Italian community known as Smelter Hill or, because some had one or more goats, as Goat Hill. However, goats were not what the steel industry needed, and finding an adequate supply of hands willing to handle dirty, heavy jobs was difficult.

As late as 1907, the local newspaper, The Pueblo Chieftain, advised employers that steamers of the North German Lloyd line would be arriving at Galveston with large numbers of immigrants seeking work. Those needing workers were told to contact an Otto Letzerich in Galveston and let him know the number of men needed, nature of the work and wages. For a small fee Letzerich would contract for the laborers and ticket such as may be secured through to destination,(²) This service provided by Letzerich was of immense aid both to those seeking employment and to their prospective employers.

Between 1900 and 1910 nearly one and a quarter million Italian immigrants came to the United States from Italy, a large proportion from Sicily. The oppression of landlords, high taxes and poverty in Italy and Sicily were the impetus for this migration.(³) Although many of these immigrants remained in the eastern section of the United States where they found employment in America’s expanding industries, many who entered in the southern part of the country at ports in New Orleans or Galveston headed north.

Trinidad, Walsenburg and Canon City, along with the small community of Aguilar, became the hub of Colorado’s coal industry, and the slopes and valleys of the nearby mountains were dotted with mine shafts. Those Italian immigrants who settled along this eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains and labored in the coal mines usually ended up living in company towns erected by the mine owners. Outside of Trinidad, coal camps such as Starkville, Sopris, Berwinds, Majestic, Cedarhurst, Bon Carbo and several others sprang up, and Morley was constructed just north of the New Mexico border on Raton Pass. By the early 1900s in Huerfano County, the coal camps of Pryor, Cameron, Ludlow, Ravenwood, Herzron and Walsen were established outside of Walsenburg.(⁴)

Family housing in these early company towns generally consisted of poorly constructed buildings which were little more than shacks. Water, always in scarce supply, was obtained from community pumps, and outhouses dotted the landscape, Sewage disposal was a constant problem with residents sometimes being warned of an outbreak of typhoid and advised to boil all drinking water. In addition, if a miner engaged in some activity—either on the job or in his personal life—that seemed to conflict with the interests of the company," he and his family would be given notice to vacate their house, often within a five-day period.(⁵)

)In many instances the miners living in company towns were not paid in cash. Their wages consisted of "scrip, a company’s system of money which compelled employees to shop only in Company-owned stores even if supplies could be purchased more cheaply elsewhere. To get cash men often sold scrip at a discount of 15 to 25 percent,(⁶) which added to the poverty of the families. Most families tended small vegetable gardens and kept a few chickens and goats as a supplement to their diet. Some owned a dairy cow for their own use or, to get some cash, sold milk to residents in nearby towns. Like people everywhere, the miners shared a sense of community. They attended weddings and other social events, celebrated births, and mourned deaths. Still, isolated in canyons along the foothills of the mountains, the immigrants who had heard that America’s streets were paved with gold came face to face with reality, The men and their families pretty much lived a life of drudgery, eking out a living as best they could.

For some immigrants, slaving in the coal mines or moving further north to Pueblo, toiling in the heat of the blast furnace at the CF&I was unacceptable. There were easier ways of making money, and crimes associated with those of Sicilian origin began to pop up from the New Mexico border to north of Denver. Chief among these was extortion—apparently quite profitable as victims usually tried to comply with the demands for money. What later would be known in the United States as the Mafia had arrived in the American West.

While the term Mafia is now commonly used, prior to 1920 the American Mafia was usually called the Black Hand (Mano Nera), a term which has now become recognized by many Americans due to its use in the popular film The Godfather II. With the rise of criminal activity in the United States (particularly extortion demands from blackmailers), Italian-American writers attempted to determine the origin of the term. Some claimed that Carlo Barsotti, editor of Il Progressor Italo-Americano in New York "coined the term in order to avoid using the word ‘mafia’.(⁷) According to Gaetano D’Amato, former President of the United Italian Societies of New York, the term was first used in Spain during the Inquisition or in the 1880s by thieves and murderers who thought of themselves as guardians of the poor against the wealthy. D’Amato indicated that the term may have come into use by some Italian desperado who had heard of the exploits of these Spaniards and thought the term either elitist-sounding or one that would inspire terror.(⁸) Eventually, by the beginning of the twentieth century, most newspapers across the nation applied it to any crime committed by Italians in the US.

Whether criminal activity committed by those of Italian descent in the Rocky Mountain region was part of an organized effort or merely individual acts is difficult to determine. Interviews are seldom possible because most who lived in the earlier time are now deceased. Written sources are scared, other than a few historical books or pamphlets and newspaper articles. Newspaper accounts vary with some referring to groups, gangs or so- called society with at least some rudimentary organization involved. Others indicate that shooting or murders were only the result of Sicilian feuds between individuals, families or, sometimes, rival factions.

A 1909 article in The Cosmopolitan stated bluntly that the Black Hand in the United States was not and had never been a highly organized secret society and was, in fact, only a myth.

It is not and never has been a society. It knows no chieftain no scale of spoil division, no sacred oath. it has no meeting places, consequently holds no meetings. It is. . .but a name fora brand of crime peculiar to Italian crooks, and it is. . .successful because. . .of its south Italian victims and their inborn dread of the extortionist.(⁹)

Authors Michael Lyman and Gary Potter support the above comment, indicating that the Black Hand was never a formal organization and had no national nor international ties . . . it was an extortion racket that preyed chiefly upon Italian citizens, first in Italy and Sicily . . . and later in the United States. It was never a secret society, nor was it ever tied to organized crime groups.(¹⁰)

However, whether it was organized or not, Italian immigrants often showed their anxiety with anything remotely resembling the feared Black Hand. In 1909, those arriving in Pueblo, Colorado, were gleeful to be in the city of plenty of work. Suddenly, after departing the train at Pueblo’s Union Depot, their leader pointed to a sign hanging from a building. On it was the word Society in electric lights and in the center was an immense hand painted black. The Black Hand society, they muttered in terror, "and they even advertise their location in this place. Santa Maria, what are we doomed for?(¹¹)" Little did they know that the sign had no connection with the Black Hand but was merely advertising a restaurant located on B street in that city.

Still, in the Rocky Mountain region, and particularly in Colorado from 1900 to the Prohibition era, the Black Hand was very active. Newspapers continually reported threats received by members of front-range communities. Sometimes the threats in the letters were not for money but were made to solve other problems. For example, Professor Alvin Powell, a teacher in the small town of Beulah, Colorado, apparently was threatened for being too strict with punishment, receiving letters from the Black Hand for more than a month. Eventually, shortly after seven o’clock in the evening, two shots were fired at the professor while he was in his backyard garden: I made up my mind to stick it out for the term, Powell stated, "even if they did fire two bullets through my hat but the nervous strain was too much for Mrs. Powell, so for her sake I decided to look for a more congenial location. At first the letters had only suggested that the teacher, originally from Missouri, look for employment in some other state but later gave him the command to leave or face death. Apparently, Powell took the threats seriously as he soon left town.

On a lighter note, twenty-three-year-old Puebloan May Allen received a letter written on wrapping paper with a life-sized hand sketched in black on the bottom that was concerned with her romantic involvement. The letter told May to stop keeping Company with a particular young man and stated that if Miss Allen did not heed the warning, death would result and that in a short time. When the letter was examined by police, it was felt that the hand might be that of a young boy which was considered an important clue.(¹³) Police speculated that the letter actually had not been sent by the Black Hand but instead was the work of a jealous rival of the young woman.

Jealousy also may have played a part in the letter received by Arthur Chubb. Like Miss Allen, Chubb’s letter supposedly was from the Black Hand and warned him to leave his wife or be killed, Chubb’s wife had been engaged previously to an Italian man, and although she was Irish by descent, her stepfather also was Italian. Mrs. Chubb, opting to marry outside the Italian community, appeared to be the problem. Neither Chubb nor the police could determine who had sent the letter, but it gave him only thirty days in which to get a divorce.(¹⁴) Whether or not he got the divorce is not indicated.

Some of those men involved in making steel at the CF&I also were not immune to letters from the Black Hand as in the case of Mike Puish, who received a typical extortion threat. I write you a few lines. I know you have money. We want it. We are Black Hands. Put $1,000 under the slag dump bridge near the steel plant by the middle of the road by the end of this week. If you refuse to do this, you will die. This is no joke and unless you pay the money we murder you.(¹⁵)

Puish believed he knew who had written the note, and that man, Joseph Pisipi, was arrested by detectives near the slag dump bridge. The police indicated that several wealthy Italian citizens had received such letters with one Bessemer man depositing $250 as he had been directed to do. From the way the letter was written, it appeared that Pisipi had an accomplice, but that individual must have left Pueblo to keep from being arrested.(¹⁶)

The Black Hand even tried to resolve work-related issues with a threatening letter. John Thompson, a foreman of brick masons at the CF&ls received a letter demanding the removal of a laborer that some of the other workers disliked. Poorly written, the letter still got its message across: I been think to write few line . . . to tell you save your life. . . if you do not do what I wish you will lose your kneck [sic] on few days . . . if do not obey me what I tell you to do so you and your brother must think that to save your life.(¹⁷)

The letter was signed by initials B. D. which were printed in the form of a cross as shown below.

D

D

BBBBBBBBBBB

D

D

D

D

The cross signature added a more sinister meaning to the threat, enough so that secret service men became involved with the local authorities in trying to track down the perpetrators. Shortly after the secret service men arrived in Pueblo, several Italians gave up their jobs at the steel plant and left the area. Since Thomson received no further letters, it was believed that the writer was among those who moved.(¹⁸)

Usually, when money was the issue, people would do their best to pay the requested amount and pacify the extortionist. At other times, in fear for their life, some would abandon everything and flee, Apparently the threat of death was taken seriously by Lucca Zito, a prosperous farmer on the St. Charles Mesa near Pueblo. Zito had been told to leave $ 1500 by a fence post on which would be hanging a black rag. He refused to go to the spot and deposit the money and also would not assist the sheriff in locating the letter writers. Still, Zito did not stay around