a bombing so thorough that it is reminiscent of Indian attacks on settlers' cabins—nothing left standing except a chimney and a few smoking timbers.
New York restaurants that failed to pay tribute to the little-known but prosperous parsley racket were threatened with a firebombing. In the 1980s, the Montana State Crime Commission found the parsley racket had moved west under guidance of a New York crime family. Restaurants that failed to buy a large amount of parsley—so much that it would have to be served with every meal and with virtually every mixed drink—were being hit by Apache Indian jobs.
See also: Parsley Racket.
Apalachin Conference: Underworld convention The 1957 Apalachin, New York, Conference of the Mafia was a landmark in the history of crime in America. Ill fated—indeed, something of a comic opera—the conference nonetheless had a profound affect on the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover, who for almost three decades had been denying the existence of both the Mafia and anything called organized crime. (It was a convenient stance for Hoover; after all, he could hardly be expected to combat what did not exist.)
The New York State Police raid on the Apalachin meeting created a thunderbolt in FBI headquarters. The late William C. Sullivan, Hoover's former assistant, related in his memoirs, The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover's FBI: "Hoover knew he could no longer duck and dodge and weave his way out of a confrontation with the Mafia, and he realized that his policy of nonrecognition left him and the FBI open to criticism."
To protect himself, Hoover launched the FBI into a giant game of catch-up, gathering all the information he could about the Mafia and organized crime. Apalachin (and Robert Kennedy's later appointment as attorney general) prompted an agency wiretap and eavesdropping campaign from which, some observers have pointed out, the FBI gained a lot of information, not all of which it understood. FBI surveillance men heard big mafiosi referring to "our thing," and not knowing better, capitalized the words and came up with a "new" criminal organization—La Cosa Nostra. Happily for Hoover this gave him a sort of out. He didn't have to concede the existence of the Mafia and could stick with La Cosa Nostra or the LCN. No matter, it forced Hoover at last into the game, leaving the "there-ain't-no-Mafia'' school to a dwindling number of uninformed "experts"—and, of course, to the mafiosi themselves.
But the Apalachin Conference was not intended to incite FBI investigations. By most theories the conference was mainly concerned with Vito Genovese's ascendancy plans in wake of the assassination just 20 days earlier of Albert Anastasia, as well as the earlier attempt on the life of Frank Costello.
The bare-bones history of the conference is easily stated: It never really got off the ground. Some 60 or more underworld leaders were on hand in Joseph Barbara's stone mansion in Apalachin when the sudden appearance of New York State troopers and federal agents disrupted matters. It was something of a modern version of the Keystone Kops in chase of the bad guys, starring immaculately groomed crime bosses, who, in their fifties and older, were hardly fleet of foot but were scurrying about, climbing out windows, bolting through back doors and diving through bushes, burrs and undergrowth while trying to escape. It can only be speculated exactly how many got away, but authorities the next day listed 58 detainees. While most of those arrested were from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, a healthy representation of out-of-towners indicated the national interest of the conference. There were crime leaders from Florida, Texas, California, Illinois and Ohio. The arrest roster bore the names of men whom law enforcement had tried for years to net: Trafficante, Profaci, Genovese, Magliocco, Bonanno, DeSimone, Scalish, Riela, Gambino, Magaddino, Catena, Miranda, Zito, Civello, Ida, Ormento, Coletti, Galante. Of the 58, 50 had arrest records, 35 had convictions and 23 had served prison sentences. Eighteen had been involved in murder investigations, 15 netted for narcotics violations, 30 for gambling and 23 for illegal use of firearms.
The conference might simply have been broken up on account of a state police sergeant who, suspecting that something was up at the Barbara mansion, ordered the raid. However, such an interpretation requires a certain suspension of critical analysis. The fact that Vito Genovese became the emperor caught without his clothes and was destroyed at the meeting suggests a setup. Through hindsight—and the revelations made by such figures as Lucky Luciano and Doc Stacher that the police were tipped off and the meeting sabotaged—it became almost impossible to reject insider foul play.
If Genovese thought he was going to call a meeting of the syndicate—and it wasn't merely a Mafia conference, since among those invited (but not attending) were Meyer Lansky and Doc Stacher—and simply rearrange affairs to suit himself he would be, and was, rudely disillusioned.
Newspaper speculation suggested that the Apalachin meeting was intended as a forum for presenting Genovese with his "boss of bosses" crown. Much was also made of the fact that a total of $300,000 was found on the arrested crime bosses; "envelope money" perhaps to be given to Genovese? More likely the money was a total of typical fat wads carried by dons. And Carlo
