and Capone were prime suspects—Capone would probably have enjoyed doing the hit—but each presented unassailable alibis for the time of the murder. Frankie Yale imported by Torrio and Capone from New York, actually made the hit.
Perhaps the champion at alibis among the recentvintage Mafia dons was Joe Bonanno. He seemed to have developed a sort of clairvoyance that got him out of town whenever big doings were about to occur—such as the erasure of another crime boss, an event that more often than not required an exchange of information between New York crime families.
Bonanno's autobiography, A Man of Honor, is replete with examples of being away at the right time. When crime family boss Vince Mangano disappeared permanently, Bonanno could do nothing but read about it in the newspapers ''at my winter residence in Tucson, Arizona." It is nigh unto impossible to get much farther away from New York City in the continental United States than Tucson. When Albert Anastasia was murdered in a conspiracy that included Vito Genovese, Carlo Gambino, most likely Meyer Lansky, and certainly with Tommy Lucchese's okay, only Frank Costello—who needed Anastasia as a shield—could have been deemed free of motive. Bonanno? He was on an international jaunt that took him to France, Sicily and far-off India.
But sometimes alibis aren't quite good enough. When Joe Profaci's successor, Joe Magliocco, sought to have a number of crime bosses murdered—the general theory is that it was under Bonanno's influence and orders—Bonanno pointed out he was on the move at the time to avoid legal summonses and subpoenas. The national commission did not buy that line, being all too familiar with Bonanno's "I wasn't around" patter, and moved to strip him of control of his crime family.
Today, some crime experts say, alibis are not considered important by crime big shots. It is generally conceded by the press, public and police that they seldom carry out their own executions. On the rare occasions when they do, usually out of personal pique, care is taken that the victim's corpse is never found, making time and place of the murder obscure and the need for an alibi obsolete.
Alo, Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" (?– ): Syndicate gangster Vincent Alo, nicknamed Jimmy Blue Eyes, is a giant among mafiosi, a sort of Paul Bunyan in organized crime. The Mafia is a society of myth builders and above all myth believers. One of the more astonishing myths held among low-level mafiosi (the higher-ups have always known better) is that Alo was the boss over Meyer Lansky, the Jewish criminal mastermind who together with Lucky Luciano set up organized crime in America as we know it today.
Alo was a close, lifelong friend of Lansky's, but his mythical elevation over Lansky is attributable solely to the psyche of the Mafia's lower levels, where it is important to believe that Italians are superior in all matters and always in control. After all, it was the exclusive privilege of Italians to be mafiosi. (These lowly soldiers were convinced accordingly that Lansky could not vote at mob confabs because he was Jew. In fact Lansky voted from a position of power; his word often carried the force of law. When Luciano in exile in Italy once thought of allowing a motion picture of his life to be made, Mafia couriers brought word to forget the project. Their clincher: "The Little Man [Lansky] says so.")
Some of the most famous informers to come out of the Mafia also perpetrated the Alo myth, thereby confirming that their disclosures were from a low-level view in organized crime. In My Life in the Mafia Vinnie Teresa says of Alo: "He's got one job in life. He's the mob's watchdog. He watches Lansky to make sure he doesn't short shrift the crime bosses." Significantly, Teresa has to add: "He protects Lansky from any mob guy who things he can shake Lansky down. Anyone in the mob who had any ideas about muscling Lansky would have Jimmy Blue Eyes on his back in a second." In The Last Mafioso Jimmy ''the Weasel" Fratianno quotes and believes the word from higher-ups that "Meyer makes no move without clearing it with Jimmy Blue Eyes."
The fact is that Alo always functioned as a liaison between Lansky and the various crime families. Everyone knew that because of Lansky's friendship and trust in Alo, he could be relied on and that he always bore the true word and orders of Lansky.
Because of his warm feelings for Alo, Lansky took care of him, allowed him part ownership in various gambling enterprises in Florida and Las Vegas. After all, they had been youthful allies in crime. In 1930 Meyer's wife Anna gave birth to a son who was born a cripple. Anna Lansky suffered a breakdown over this and blamed her husband for calling down the wrath of God on the child to punish him for his wicked way of life.
It was too much for Lansky and he fled New York for a hideout in Boston where he drank himself into oblivion. Only his buddy Jimmy Blue Eyes was with him, consoling him and helping through his weeklong crisis. Finally, Lansky came out of it and he and Alo drove back to the New York gang wars.
Since that time Alo prospered under Lansky or, as an investigation by Robert M. Morgenthau when he was U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York demonstrated, Lansky closely guarded the interests of
