Samuel Ruggere and three associates hijacked a trailer from a freight terminal in Kingston, Pennsylvania, a borough across the Susquehanna River from Wilkes-Barre. Samuel's first confidential interaction with the FBI occurred on April 20, 1967, when he tipped off federal agents about a stolen load of cigarettes. According to Samuel, his father had "never refused to answer questions concerning the Organization." He told the FBI that, if there was any question he couldn't answer himself, he would take it to his father. The brothers' motivation to talk may have emerged from the way the crime family treated their father. According to Samuel, he was his father's "favorite son," and his father wanted to "enlighten him on the Organization's membership and activities." His father took him into his confidence, he said, "for his own personal protection." Steven LaTorre seems to have advised his sons to avoid the organization at all costs. Samuel and his family lived in his father's house. Samuel advised that his information was trustworthy because it came directly from his knowledgeable father. There is no evidence from the available FBI reports that either brother was aware the other brother was talking. The available FBI files don't provide a reason why he began to talk, and the timing of his cooperation doesn't overlap with any known arrest. In April 1967, Samuel LaTorre, age forty-nine, started to share confidential information about the Pittston Crime Family and its membership. Margiotti may have advised LaTorre to act out in court in an attempt to game the legal system. In attendance were Samuel's bother Joseph, co-defendant Parisi and Pittsburgh LCN members Kelly Mannarino and Charles Barchia. Margiotti was the former attorney general of Pennsylvania and a well-known political fixer. Before trial, LaTorre attended a meeting in the law offices of Pittsburgh attorney Charles Margiotti. Samuel LaTorre and an associate, Charles Parise, were arrested on counterfeiting charges in 1954. Samuel eventually pleaded guilty to the charges, and he was sentenced to a four-year term in the federal penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
#MAZAIKA COAL CO. TRIAL#
The resulting chaos delayed the trial further. The assistant district attorney Stephen Teller was furious.
He attempted to enter the courtroom on a stretcher carried by two attendants, but the judge refused to let him in. However, three doctors appointed by the court examined Samuel and determined he was fit to proceed.Īt his next court appearance, Samuel arrived at the court building in an ambulance straight from his hospital bed. His doctors claimed he sustained severe injuries in the accident and requested the trial be delayed.
#MAZAIKA COAL CO. SERIES#
A reporter covering Samuel's trial called it the "most unusual series of legal and medical maneuvers ever witnessed in these parts." On the eve of the trial, Samuel crashed his car into a pole and required hospitalization for ten days. The legal proceedings turned into a fiasco. Samuel faced a maximum fifteen-year prison term if convicted. Samuel passed some of the bogus bills in crap games and sold the rest to an undercover secret service agent. He bought them from Charles Parise, a suspected LCN member from Ohio. In 1954, police arrested Samuel for possessing and selling $3,000 worth of counterfeit ten-dollar bills. But at a time when the Pittston Crime Family had no member-informants, the brothers were the nearest thing to inside sources. Their value lay mostly in retelling their father's criminal past. For the most part, their knowledge of LCN came secondhand from their father.
They were semi-legitimate guys, confessed "gamblers" with criminal records. They didn't take a blood oath to keep mob secrets. Neither brother was a La Cosa Nostra member.
#MAZAIKA COAL CO. CODE#
The FBI assigned him informant symbol code "PH-872." In 1967, his younger brother, Samuel LaTorre, also became an informer.
īut Joseph wasn't the only member of his family to talk. The FBI assigned him informant symbol code "PH-521." He would communicate on and off with the Federal Bureau of Investigation until at least the late 1960s. Before the Apalachin meeting and Joe Valachi's revelations put the Mafia on the front page, Joseph was giving federal investigators Intel about its members and criminal activity. In 1951, thirty-eight-year-old Joseph LaTorre began to share with the authorities confidential information about a criminal group called the "Organization." Joseph was the eldest son of former Pittston Crime Family boss Steven LaTorre.
0 kommentar(er)
