Gangbusters: The Destruction of America's Last Mafia Dynasty [Hardcover]

Ernest Volkman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1998

The American Mafia, legendary for its ability to survive and flourish in the face of all attempts to stamp it out, now lies in ruins. The pivotal battle in that war was the destruction of the Mafia's most glittering crown jewel, the Lucchese Family of New York. Gangbusters is the story of how this supremely successful criminal gang was finally destroyed. It is the tale of how a colorful coterie of FBI agents, prosecutors, and police detectives - among them such singular characters as Dr. Bugs, Marathon Man, Jaws, Kenny the Giant, The Falcon, and Ghost Who Walked - overcame the early years of bureaucratic inertia, high-level political corruption, and interagency rivalry to achieve final victory. In a decade of hand-to-hand combat, they destroyed the men long considered untouchable - Tommy Three Fingers, Tony Ducks, Christy Ticks, Tom Mix, Gas Pipe, and The Terminator. Based on interviews with antagonists on both sides of the law, court records, transcripts, and police intelligence files, Gangbusters tells the history of a criminal enterprise from the inside - the men who made it flourish, how they operated, and the real world of organized crime.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

After coauthoring an Edgar-nominated bio of John Gotti (Goombata, 1990) and an account of the $8-million 1978 Lufthansa robbery that provided grist for the film Goodfellas (The Heist, 1986), among other books, Volkman has now written an exciting, intelligent and detailed study of the most successful law-enforcement assault on organized crime in U.S. history. Of the five rival Mafia clans vying for control of New YorkAthe Lucchese, Bonnano, Colombo, Genovese and Gambino familiesAthe Luccheses were the richest and best organized of the lot. Yet by 1995, high-ranking capos were reduced to shaking down deadbeats for pocket money. Volkman charts the family's meteoric rise in lively detail, capitalizing on colorful gangland anecdotes without losing sight of the murderous brutality and crushing stupidity that accelerated their descent. He identifies as the main causes of their decline the Narcotics Control Act of 1955, the reorganization of the FBI following the death of J. Edgar Hoover in 1972 and, most tellingly, the "reverse natural selection" that seemed to breed dumber and dumber Dons, and explains their respective impacts. The Mafia history is balanced with profiles of the dedicated police detectives, FBI agents and U.S. attorneys who pioneered and perfected the tactics that brought the Lucchese family to its knees. Well-paced, evenhanded and insightful, this look into a derelict empire's rise and fall is excellent both as a case study and as an introduction to organized crime.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Volkman (Espionage, LJ 11/1/95) tells the story of the rise and decline of the American Mafia, specifically of the long-powerful Lucchese crime family of New York. He traces the Lucchese organization from its beginnings in New York's East Harlem just after World War I to its sorry state in the mid-1990s. The passage of Prohibition was a growth opportunity the Lucchese family saw and grabbed. They were further helped by the refusal of J. Edgar Hoover to recognize "organized crime families" as a reality. The FBI instead spent the late 1940s and 1950s fighting "Cold War" enemies as the Mafia grew powerful. In the early 1960s, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy forced Hoover to recognize and target the Mafia. Ammunition was provided by the Civil RICO act, which made organized crime a federal offense. Ultimately, the Lucchese family suffered an assault by the FBI, Organized Crime Task Forces, RICO, informants, and its own inability to produce new leaders. Well researched if not scholarly, this popular account has all the appeal of Mario Puzo's The Last Don. A colorful description of a colorful aspect of American crime; highly recommended for public libraries.ASandra K. Lindheimer, Middlesex Law Lib., Cambridge, MA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 318 pages
• Publisher: Faber & Faber; 1St Edition edition (May 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0571199429
• ISBN-13: 978-0571199426
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,076,949 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, not great, January 14, 2002

By 

Joseph (Quebec, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gangbusters: The Destruction of America's Last Great Mafia Dynasty (Mass Market Paperback)

The fact that Volkman decided to write a biography on a crime family other than the Gambinos and John Gotti (for once) was the initial reason for my interest in the book. To be sure, Volkman's writing style is pleasant and does not contain personal interjections (thankfully), or apostrophes -- another irritating feature in some books -- but it lacks the substance needed for a solid read. There has been much more media attention and surveillance of the Gambino crime family and its ineffective boss, John Gotti, than the Lucchese family or another other New York criminal organization. This is mainly due to the aforamentioned Gotti's disposition for the cameras and mainly because his family was the largest and most powerful, at least at the time. However, the Lucchese family was one of the most deceptive, small and confined to a remote borough, yet powerful enough to cripple JFK airport and bring the garment district to its knees. Beyond this, its past bosses (with the exception of the poorly chosen previous bunch, Amuso et al.) were circumspect, keeping their heads low, and their royalties hidden. As a result they were still powerful in 1986, when Antonio Corallo went away to prison forever, and it took two intellectually-challenged hooligans to finally bring it down crashing. There is less material to work with, therefore, and a biography on a criminal enterprise such as the Lucchese family would be most difficult to achieve, contrary to the Gambinos.
While Volkman tries to counter this, mainly by creating dialogue between the characters when it was later proven this was just bolony to fill the pages, it is painfully obvious that he is just putting together a massive newspaper article, with clippings from sources reliable and not, and from his own imagination at the same time. He later publicly apologized for making countless mistakes and anacronisms in the story. We never got to know anything about Thomas Lucchese other than that he ran a garment centre and was fidgety with objects around him. We never got to know what Tony Corallo's house looked like or what he talked about in his jaguar (other than very brief snippets of conversations in the car, which was said to contain a 770 hours of tape [why did he not research more dialogue?]). Finally, in the end of the book, the entire dialogue in the prison cell between prosecutor Charles Rose and Anthony Casso was later revealed by the author himself to be complete fantasy. This is where Rose supposedly dangled an autopsy report in front of Casso to test his abilities at being truthful about the victim's injuries, only to realize that he is a total liar (no kidding).
In the end, we end up with a story that has no solid substance, just gloss value, and does not inform us at all on the characters themselves or any intelligence resulting from the surveillance by the agencies who followed them. Perhaps Volkman will write another Gambino biography in the near future.

6/10

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Middle-of-the-road Mafia rehash, September 7, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Gangbusters: The Destruction of America's Last Great Mafia Dynasty (Mass Market Paperback)

This book might be interesting to someone from Iowa or Kansas or somewhere where the Mafia has not been reported on much. To anyone who is knowledgable about the subject this will be a plodding, not terribly well-written rehash of familiar material. Don't be fooled by the five-star customer reviews. This book doesn't even belong on the shelf with the really good mob books (Wiseguy, Donnie Brasco, The Westies, etc.).

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Top Notch, July 20, 2000

By 

Timothy Ritter (Colorado) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gangbusters: The Destruction of America's Last Great Mafia Dynasty (Mass Market Paperback)

This book is quite an achievement. The breadth of historical and political research is reminiscent of Robert Caro. The delivery and pacing is Scorcesian. The attention to details of method (such as a team of detectives practicing for weeks the speedy dismantling of a Jaguar's dashn order to plant a bug) brings to mind Stuart Herrington's book on spy catching.

Beyond all the above, what I liked most about Gangbusters was the way it gives the lie to the Hollywood version of the mafia. Ever since Puzo hit the jackpot in the seventies, writers and filmmakers have given us progressively more romantic and glamorous versions of ever more despicable acts by the mob, almost as though its lawbreaking was exempt from social condemnation because it was a part of their culture, and therefore valuable. In this worldview, Thomas Dewey is a martinet and Gaetano Lucchese a pillar of society. Rudolf Giuliani is a fanatical fascist and Sam Gravano a courageous hero. The CIA and FBI are evil conspiracies, while the Cosa Nostra is a benevolent organization devoted to helping the working guy.

Gangbusters demolishes these ridiculous social myths in many ways, probably the most powerful being the story of Jerry Kubecka, a simple man with the modest aspiration of running a garbage hauling business on Long Island. Refusing to pay off the mafia thugs who demanded control of his business, Kubecka let himself in for decades of vandalism and violence, that only ended after his son had been murdered.

The political powers in New York and elsewhere looked the other way for decades. Special sections were set up in prisons for mobsters to pass away nominal sentences in luxury. As early as the thirties J. Edgar Hoover was saying there was no such thing as the mafia. As late as 1986 Mario Cuomo was saying in the New York Times that there was no such thing as the mafia. Volkman skillfully tells the story of the people who exposed and put a stop to these monstrous public lies, and the vast crimes they were intended to conceal.