The Rise and Fall of the Cleveland Mafia: Corn Sugar and Blood

By Rick Porrello

This enduring and fascinating chronicle of the Cleveland Mafia was written after the author's many years of research into the murders of his grandfather and three uncles, who were mob bosses. The seven Porrello brothers and four Lonardo brothers, former boyhood friends in Licata, Sicily, had a wholesale lock on corn sugar, a luc

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rick Porrello
• Release date: Aug 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798987831229

Rick Porrello

Author, drummer, and former police chief Rick Porrello has a knack for writing books that attract interest from filmmakers. Hollywood snapped up Kill the Irishman: The War that Crippled the Mafia before it was even published, and turned it into the movie Kill the Irishman, starring Ray Stevenson, Vincent D’Onofrio, Christopher Walken, and Val Kilmer.

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THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CLEVELAND MAFIA

The Rise and Fall of the Cleveland Mafia

CORN SUGAR AND BLOOD

Rick Porrello

Next Hat Press, LLC., Cleveland, Ohio

Published by Next Hat Press, LLC.

www.rickporrello.com

[e-mail]

Originally published by Barricade Books Inc., 1995

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023904181

Names: Porrello, Rick, author.

Title: The rise and fall of the Cleveland Mafia : corn sugar and blood / Rick Porrello.

Description: Cleveland, Ohio : Next Hat Press, LLC, [2023] | Originally published: New York: Barricade Books, 1995. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: ISBN: 979-8-9878312-0-5 (trade paperback) | 979-8-9878312-1-2 (hardcover)| 979-8-9878312-2-9 (ebook) | LCCN: 2023904181

Subjects: LCSH: Lonardo, Angelo. | Porrello, Rick--Family. | Mafia--Ohio--Cleveland--History--20th century. | Gangsters--Ohio--Cleveland--History--20th century. | Corn sugar--History--20th century. |

Prohibition--Ohio--Cleveland--History--20th century. | Witnesses--United States--History--20th century. | LCGFT: True crime stories. | BISAC: HISTORY / United States / State & Local / General. | TRUE CRIME / Organized Crime.

Classification: LCC: HV6248.L65 P67 2023 | DDC: 364.1060977132--dc2

DEDICATION

Dedicated to my father Angelo (Raymond) Porrello and his father Raymond Porrello

ANGELO (RAYMOND) PORRELLO 1927-2006

RAYMOND PORRELLO 1896-1932

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I WOULD LIKE to thank the following persons and organizations for their contributions to this project: Rick Balkin, Anita Benedetti, Tom Bird, Timothy R. Cannon, Louis C. Capasso, Robert J. Cermak, Betty J. Chan, Cleveland Police Department-Division of Homicide and Police Museum, Cleveland Public Library, Cleveland State University, Cuyahoga County Archives, Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office, Euclid Public Library, Kathleen K. Fana, Edward P. Kovacic, Mayfield Regional Branch of the Cuyahoga County Library System, Doris O'Donnell, John J. Porrello, Joseph J. Porrello, Raymond A. Porrello Sr., Lee Porrello, Raymond Villani, Gene Volk, Western Reserve Historical Society, and the many persons who wish to remain anonymous.

Thank you to my original editor, Eileen Brand, and my current interior and cover designer, Carmela Cohen. Special thanks to my original publishers, Lyle and Carole Stuart, who brought nine years of work to fruition.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Principals

Preface

1. The Birth of the Cleveland Mafia

2. The First Bloody Corner

3. Secret Plot

4. The Cleveland Meeting

5. Vendetta

6. The Rise of the Cleveland Syndicate

Photo Section

7. The Ascendency of the Mayfield Road Mob

8. Secession of Power

9. Dr. Romano

10. Top Notch

Author’s Request

Post Script

What Happened To Them

References

Index

About The Author

Also By Rick Porrello

Visit Rick Porrello

PRINCIPALS

Alessi, Frank–Ally of Porrello brothers.

Angersola, John, a.k.a. Johnny King–Ranking member of Cleveland Mafia - under Frank Milano and Al Polizzi.

Barry, Edwin–Cleveland Safety Director.

Brancato, Frank–Gunman allied mainly with Lonardo and Milano families. Rose to Number Two ranking in Licatese faction of Cleveland Mafia.

Cavolo, Charles–Cleveland police officer who investigated many of the Sugar War killings.

Chiapetta, Marco Mlke– Sugar dealer associated with Porrello brothers.

Cleveland Syndicate–The Jewish Boys, powerful group of racketeers headed by Moe Dalitz. Backed by Meyer Lansky.

Cody, Cornelius–Cleveland Police Inspector who investi gated many of the Sugar War killings.

Colletti, Charlie–Gunman allied with Lonardo and Milano families.

Dalitz, Moe–Leader of the powerful Cleveland Syndicate allied with

DeMarco, John–Cleveland Mafia figure who rose to head Licatese faction. Cousin to Lonardo family.

Guell, Dominic, a.k.a. Mangino–called Terra-Terra. Devoted Porrello bodyguard.

Lonardo, Angelo Big Ange– Son of Big Joe. Rose through ranks to become boss of Cleveland Mafia.

Lonardo brothers–Joe, Frank, John, Dominick.

Lonardo, Concetta–Common-law wife of Big Joe. Mother of Angelo Lonardo.

Lonardo, Dominick–Brother of Big Joe. Moved to California to avoid prosecution for murder.

Lonardo, Frank–Brother of Big Joe.

Lonardo, Joe Big Joe–Sugar dealer and first boss of Cleveland Mafia.

Lonardo, John–Brother of Big Joe.

Lupo, Larry–Lonardo bodyguard.

MIiano, Frank–Leader of powerful Mayfield Road Mob of Little Italy. Allied with Cleveland Syndicate. Given original seat on national Mafia commission.

Milano, Tony–Powerful Little Italy figure who rose in power to become respected consigliere of Cleveland Mafia. Brother of Frank Milano.

Polizzi, Al Big Al–Top lieutenant to Frank Milano. Took over as head of Cleveland Mafia.

Polizzi, Chuck–Adopted brother of Big Al Polizzi. High-ranking member of Cleveland Mafia.

Porrello, Angelo–One of seven Porrello brothers prominent in corn sugar and feared by rivals. Sugar War survivor.

Porrello brothers–Rosario, Vincenzo (Jim), Angelo, Joe, John, Ottavio and Raymond.

Porrello, Jim–Corn sugar dealer.

Porrello, Joe–Sugar dealer and leader of six brothers. Recognized as second boss of Cleveland Mafia.

Porrello, John–Sugar War survivor. Porrello, Ottavlo-Sugar War survivor.

Porrello, Raymond–Corn sugar dealer.

Porrello, Rosario–Corn sugar dealer.

Romano, Joseph, Dr.– Skilled surgeon.

Tilocco, Salvatore Sam–Lieutenant and bodyguard to Joe Porrello.

Porrello, John–Sugar War survivor. Porrello, Ottavlo-Sugar War survivor.

Porrello, Raymond–Corn sugar dealer.

Porrello, Rosario–Corn sugar dealer.

Romano, Joseph, Dr.– Skilled surgeon.

Tilocco, Salvatore Sam–Lieutenant and bodyguard to Joe Porrello.

PREFACE

I NEVER KNEW my grandfather. He was murdered when my father was six years old. I didn’t know much, only that his death had something to do with gangsters. My father spoke little of this painful history. My curiosity led to exhaustive research that sparked a calling in writing and eventually led to the book in your hands and my subsequent book, To Kill the Irishman – the War that Crippled the Mafia. That story of 1970s Cleveland mob foe, Danny Greene, would be adapted for a feature film starring Ray Stevenson, with Vincent D’Onofrio, Val Kilmer, Christopher Walken, and Paul Sorvino.

The story of Danny Greene is domino number one in the Cleveland mob’s dramatic collapse. The Prohibition-era sugar war represents the organization’s birth. It was this series of battles (primarily over control of corn sugar—a lucrative bootleg ingredient) that nearly annihilated two large families of Sicilian immigrant brothers, the Lonardos and the Porrellos.

As a boy of 12 years old, I found two books about the Mafia on my father’s shelf. In the indexes I found my family’s name. A few years later, armed with the date of my grandfather’s murder, I headed for the library and started paging through newspaper microfilm. Frontpage headlines like: GANG GUNS KILL TWO PORRELLOS AND ALLY, and follow up articles like HUGE CROWD AT FUNERAL OF LONARDOS–PORRELLO IS DISBELIEVED left me in awe at the magnitude of coverage. Obviously, the Porrello and Lonardo names drew instant recognition. Their names in the banner sold newspapers like Capone and O’Banion did in Chicago.

Leave it alone, my father had said when I told him I was going to write a book, but it was too late. It was just too big of a story, though I might have listened if I had known it would take nine years to complete and get published. Fortunately, I had developed a penchant for researching, investigating, and interviewing. I ferreted out newspaper and magazine articles, books, police and coroner reports, and court documents. I sought and accomplished interviews with an unlikely and diverse assortment of sources. As the project went on, my dad’s disapproval waned—this despite each new discovery reviving his memories of an era long obliterated by gunfire and anguish. In the end he gave me his blessing and helped fill in details. He remembers when he was rushed home from a spot near his father’s murder by a family friend who carried the little six-year-old in his arms and yelled, They got Raymond! They got Raymond! And he never forgot how, during the wake in the crowded living room, he stood on the kneeler to get a better view inside the casket.

I shared his grief, which was well hidden, perhaps alleviated but not eliminated by the passage of time. I have had occasional misgivings about rehashing painful memories for all affected but more than fifty years has passed since the last shootings and bloodshed of the sugar war. I found keen interest and encouragement from an impressive number of people, especially relatives of my generation, who also wanted to know the whole story.

With the passing of that half-century when the Porrello and Lonardo names made headlines, the 1970s came along and it was DANNY GREENE blaring in the banners. Again I wanted to know more. This story went national and one powerful player would bridge the rise and fall of Cleveland’s once mighty crime family. That man was Angelo Big Ange Lonardo. And to a large extent, this is his story.

It should be noted that I occasionally fictionalized (or partially fictionalized) some lines of dialogue. This was done at the suggestion of my original publisher to increase dramatic effect. However, these relatively few instances were based on my extensive research and always depicted what I believed to be the essence of the true story.

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CLEVELAND MAFIA

CHAPTER ONE

The Birth of the Cleveland Mafia

Once America's largest cities were hot with the passion of many hopeful immigrants looking for wealth and ready to exploit a nation's thirst for illegal booze. It was the roaring nineteen twenties, a decade of eras. It was a postwar decade of hope. Americans who had been absorbed during World War I with obligations of national loyalty were eager to return to their pursuit of personal happiness.

It was the decade that began with President Warren G. Harding and the complacency, cronyism, and corruption of his administration of normalcy. With the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution giving them the vote, women found the twenties a time of unprecedented independence after having been excluded for more than a century, by the founding fathers, from electing their representatives.

And of course, it was the dry era. Unfortunately, Prohibition accompanied the birth and growth of nationally organized crime. Newly conceived Mafia families jockeying for power were waging battles that killed scores of gangsters, terrified the citizenry, and gave birth to screaming headlines and grand funeral processions never before experienced in the New World.

But it had all begun years ago and miles away.

Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, was a strategically located land with a long history of foreign invasion. Over the centuries, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Normans, French, Spanish, and Austrians conquered the island, and the Sicilian peasants were little more than slave labor for their foreign overlords.

The Catholic Inquisition also raised its iron fist to the Sicil ians, as Norman Lewis, author of The Honored Society, explains. Lewis shows how the Papacy victimized the Sicilian people and fueled the perversion of the once noble mission of the Mafia: More and more to the modern observer the Holy Office appears as a device concerned primarily with economic situations, and only secondarily with matters of faith. Drawing its revenues from heresy, it saw to it that heresy was abundant....Heresy started as religious dissent, but as religious dissenters-understandably enough-were remarkably few, the Inquisition widened its scope to include a miscellany of bigamists, philosophers, usurers, sodomites, priests who mar ried their concubines, and finally opponents of any kind, who automatically became classed as heretics.

Lewis details the abuses: The familiars of the Inquisition dominated Sicily for three centuries. They stripped rich men of their property and sentenced them to murus largus, the most comfortable kind of incarceration the day had to offer. The poor were punished for their lack of seizable goods by torture and murus strictus, which meant that they were flung fettered into a deep dungeon and endured the 'bread and water of affliction' until they died.

Thus the Mafia was born, a secret society that provided the poor, oppressed Sicilians with protection, stability, and pride. The Mafia vendetta was the Sicilian form of justice. The victimized could be quiet and patient so long as vengeance was saved for a future time.

Consequently, the Mafia golden rule of omerta (translated as honor) was born. Sicilians came to distrust all forms of government. Subsequently, it became an unwritten rule to exclude them from private affairs. Crimes were considered personal issues, with rough justice to be served by the vendetta.

The code of omerta, if put into words, might say: Whoever appeals to the law against his fellow man is either a fool or a coward. Whoever cannot take care of himself without police protection is both. It is as cowardly to betray an offender to justice, even though his offenses be against yourself, as it is not to avenge an injury by violence. It is dastardly and contemptible in a wounded man to betray the name of his assailant, because if he recovers, he must naturally expect to take vengeance himself. A wounded man shall say to his assailant: If I live, I will kill you. If I die, you are forgiven.

As the Mafia grew in power, its mission degenerated. The leaders had become greedy and hungry for power and viewed themselves as the people's government. And for many practical purposes, they were. By the time Sicily became a part of the newly unified Italy in 1861, the island had seen seven governments in one century. Yet, for the Sicilians, the Mafia, with all its sins, meant stability and patriotism.

Licata is a city of about 50,000 located on the southern coast of Sicily, at the mouth of the Salso River. The area is a mostly flat section of the Agrigento region but a low vine and olive-planted ridge rises to the west. At one time, Licata harbor bustled as the chief outlet for Sicily's sulfur trade, but the port sees relatively few ships today.

Two large families-the Lonardos and Porrellos-shared the same heritage, loyalties, and friendships. The four young Lonardo brothers, who in America would call themselves Joe, Frank, John, and Dominic, labored in the sulfur mine owned by Angelo Porrello and his wife, Frances. Alongside the seven Porrello sons, the Lonardo boys dug in the earth for the noxious substance. But, both families dreamed of an America where thousands of other Sicilians were already prospering.

Joe Lonardo was the first to emigrate, arriving in New York City with the new century, on February 4, 1901. He settled on Mulberry Street in thriving Little Italy. His brothers and their sister soon followed. The Porrellos, too, abandoned Sicily for the Promised Land. Rosario Porrello arrived in New York in 1904, and his brothers Vincenzo, Angelo, Joe, John, Ottavio, and Raymond followed.

Joe Lonardo moved to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1905, sparking a further migration of Lonardos and Porrellos to the big city on the shore of Lake Erie. They all settled in a district known as Woodland on Cleveland's lower East Side, where other Italians were settling. The Lonardos and Porrellos took on typical immigrant trades, working as fruit and vegetable peddlers, hucksters, day laborers, and storekeepers. Joe Lonardo, the most enterprising of his family, opened a wholesaling fruit business, then started a confectionery company. By the early Twenties, he had taken in his brothers Frank and John and their friend Salvatore (Sam) Todaro as partners in the confectionery business. It was a fateful move.

The Porrellos were similarly occupied in entrepreneurial endeavors. Several became barbers. Angelo Porrello and Frank Lonardo had their own confectionery business, and Joseph Por rello worked for Joe Lonardo. The families were as intertwined in Cleveland as they had been in Sicily.

The Woodland district was a typical lower-class, immigrant settlement where the Italians clustered to find comfort in old ways little recognized in their strange new world. As one former resident put it, Everybody had at least one thing in common—they all had very little.

One of the most challenging adjustments for some new immigrants was accepting the legitimate way to success in America, the Puritan Ethic. The white Anglo-Saxon Protestant belief held that God would reward on earth and in heaven those who obeyed His laws and set good examples for others. Wealth was therefore seen as proof of God's grace.

The Puritan Ethic bound religion with the economy in that God would reward moral living with material wealth. This belief was convenient for newcomers to the Promised Land.

In short, they approved of the religious reward system without understanding or accepting the responsibilities for moral living.

In the coming years, American society would offer many opportunities for wealth, the vast majority legal. Newcomers worked hard and enjoyed the fruits of their labor as they advanced to the middle class with family businesses and homes in the suburbs.

A few immigrants, and not just Italians but Irish, Jews, and others, pursued lawless enterprises in greedy searches for prosperity.

Around 1913, big cities across America were experiencing the prelude to organized Prohibition-era gang warfare: the newspaper circulation wars. During this pre-television and radio era, print publications were the sole media. Politicians found newspapers to be a powerful influence on voters. Tough men were hired to head newspaper circulation departments, and fierce battles for choice street corners began. Thomas Jefferson McGinty was hired as circulator of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. His competitor was Arthur B. Mickey McBride of the Cleveland News.

McGinty was a former boxer and later a fight promoter. In the early Twenties, he was one of Cleveland's biggest bootleggers. He and two family members operated McGinty's Saloon on West 25th Street. In 1924 they were indicted in federal court for engaging in a gigantic wholesale and retail conspiracy. McGinty was convicted and served eighteen months in prison. When he was released, he resumed bootlegging. He went on to own race tracks, casinos, and nightclubs in Cleveland, Miami, and Havana.

Mickey McBride, from Chicago, had a reputation for being a good organizer. Many years after the newspaper wars, he gained a monopoly on the taxicab business and became known in Cleveland as the king of the cabs. From taxicabs, he would go on to organize the Cleveland Browns football team.

The circulation war violence started in Cleveland when McGinty hired young thugs who chased McBride's newsies from choice intersections. McBride retaliated by hiring tougher young hoodlums who used lead