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In Gothams Shadow
Chapter 5
Sin City
The urban growth machine of the 1950s in Utica was a coalition between the political machine and the business elite. By 1957, Utica appeared to be on the way to a full recovery from the economic dislocations of the previous ten years. The metropolitan area was home to the first commercial computer in the world, new colleges, and several large manufacturing facilities to take the place of the mills fleeing to the south. The city administration practiced a progressive urban policy that stressed the need for improved education, infrastructure, and quality of life (see Clavel and Kleniewski 1990). But underlying the lubricating mechanism of the emerging urban growth machine was a parallel organization silently coexisting with the city’s more noble endeavors. As a result, a series of events toward the end of the year jeopardized the power of the political machine, and the coalition between business and the machine fell apart within two years. The impact would be devastating.
Wide-Open Town- Alcohol has been called America’s drug of choice, and so it is not that the roots of Utica’s so-called “sin city” scandals are rooted ultimately in Prohibition. However, with the prohibition of alcohol mandated by the Eighteenth Amengment in 1919 an old market for the drug was energized with a dynamism never before seen in the United States (Inciardi 1992; Levine and Reinarman 1992). As the legitimate business enterprises dealing in alcoholic beverages were forced to shift their focus to drinks such as root beer and sarsaparilla, those willing to risk
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prison to supply an overeager market would enjoy profits only dreamed of by the former suppliers. Like many other cities, Utica spawned its own class of bootleggers.
The streets of Utica were the perfect breeding ground for bootlegging gangs. The predominantly Italian and Irish neighborhoods of east Utica were willing markets filled with Catholic immigrants by and large uncommitted to the rural protestant prohibition movement (Kobler 1973). Local residents had been accustomed to an occasional drink after work in neighborhood bars or a glass of wine with dinner. Thus, Prohibition was not merely a disagreeable new federal policy but an assault on the neighborhood social structure as well. In fact, several scholars have suggested such an assault on the immigrant social structure to be a strong motivation on the part of the Prohibition movement (Gusfield 1963; Kobler 1973; Musto 1999). Bootleggers, within this context, merely supplied the community with a desired commodity.
The rise of bootlegging across the country was a response to this fact. There were two main developments to come about as a result of bootlegging, the first in regard to the industry’s status as illicit, the second concerning the networks that were formed in the interest of bootlegging (Levine and Reinarman 1992).
Business is by nature a risky endeavor, and many of the legal protections in place in a modern society are designed to remove much of that risk. A business owner risks having goods stolen or customers refuse payment after services have been performed. Without the recourse to the legal protections available to legitimate businesses, bootleggers by necessity found different mechanisms to perform the same functions as law. When a shipment of goods was stolen, the police were of course unable to help because the result would have been that both the perpetrators and the victims of the theft would have faced prosecution. Similarly, a lawsuit was not an option when a customer refused to pay for services rendered. Without such legal recourses, those interests who are willing to perform acts of violence to both punish the offender and deter any future would-be thief are better able to conduct business. The result is that the more violent organizations are able to outcompete those less inclined to violence, and so a spiral of increasing violence ensues. It is thus not surprising that by the end of the 1920s bootlegging gangs tended to be extremely violent. Indeed, as mechanisms of social control they have today become legendary, and so have such practitioners as Lucky Luciano and “Scarface” Al Capone. (Interestingly, their gun of choice was the Thompson SubMachine Gun, made by Savage Arms in Utica). In Utica, by 1930 there had been several murders that would never be solved and rackets operating in gambling, loan sharking, and protection as well. Like
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similar operations today, they were run in a manner that resembled legitimate corporations (Padilla 1992).
The second major development during Prohibition was the forging of alliances between criminal organizations in major cities throughout North America. Whereas the manufacture, sale, and transport of alcohol was illegal in the United States, it was not in Canada. The result was that border communities, such as Buffalo and Detroit, could readily secure quality alcoholic beverages from commercial producers in Canada and then trade them with organizations in other American cities. What had developed by 1930 was a syndicate of bootleggers throughout the United States, each operating on their own in their respective cities but linked to other organizations through the network.1 In Utica, three such figures—Joe Falcone, Salvatore Falcone, and Rosario Mancuso—would become the center of Utica’s image problems in the late 1950s (OD, 6 Feb. 1958).
The networks established during the bootlegging period made Utica one of a number of cities with a local syndicate. Because it was a major center of the textile industry, it is not surprising that Utica area mobsters had ties with their counterparts in New York City who operated in the garment industry (Turkus and Feder 1992 [1951]). However, most scholars of organized crime have stressed the importance of major cities, which, as in other economic ventures, dominate the smaller communities in their shadows. Indeed, as far as the national organization of the Mafia is concerned, no major scholar has ever claimed Utica to be anything more than one of many cities with a local organization. Utica was a minor link in the syndicate, strong locally but weak within the international context of the Mafia. There is simply no evidence to the contrary.2
In any case, it is true that by the 1930s Utica had developed a strong local branch of the Mafia with connections with organized crime leaders in New York and around the world. Though Prohibition officially ended in 1933, the networks that had been created during the bootlegging years would remain, and criminal activities would continue.3
And the events of the late 1950s would illuminate the details of this organization for the world to see.
A Day in the Neighborhood Also, of course, centered in east Utica and controlled primarily by Italian and Irish immigrants and their children was the machine of Rufus Elefante and Charles Donnelley. By the late 1950s, the aging Donnelley had by and large left day-to-day operations to Elefante, who wielded an enormous amount of power in the city. Allied with
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many in the business community who appreciated the efficiency of the machine, but still beholden to the interests of the immigrants who gave the machine its power, the political bosses acted in many ways as power brokers in a modern urban growth machine while they still retained the bossism of a classical political machine. Although Charles Donnelley was able to deliver many of the votes of the primarily Irish and Polish west Utica wards, the machine’s center of power was in Elefante’s territory in east Utica.
Born in 1903, Rufus Elefante came of age during Prohibition just as the Falcones were solidifying their hold on the liquor business in the city. Living in the same neighborhoods as the bootleggers, it seems unlikely that young Elefante would not have had some familiarity with some of the local alcohol suppliers. As he was beginning his career with the local Democrats, the twenties were roaring and, in Utica as in many other cities, much of the population learned to look the other way when it came to bootlegging. Such a condition reflects a cultural trait shared by many (but certainly not all) Americans during this time—look the other way and don’t get directly involved. The Utica Daily Press commented in 1959:
Riding the crest of the post-war boom, people were preoccupied with their own affairs—raising families, building homes, improving their economic status. Commercial sin was something for conventioneers, salesmen, and outside college students to endulge in. Gambling was considered a petty vice. As for big dice games—let the riff-raff and visiting hoodlums roll crooked dice and shoot each other, if they chose!
For many, it was easier to simply not pay attention to what appeared to be petty offenses. Indeed, assuming that Elefante himself would have had the occasion to interact with people involved in some way with the trafficking of alcoholic beverages, it would have been disrespectful at the very least to discuss the illegal activities.4 William Lohden, an Observer-Dispatch reporter who wrote about the machine was quoted in 1989 as saying, “Elefante certainly wasn’t Mafia, but he closed his eyes. He did his thing, and they did theirs” (see Ehrenhalt 1989, 35).5
What machine members were involved with was what George Washington Plunkitt (1995 [1905]) called “honest graft.” The former leader of New York City’s Tammany Hall political machine claimed that there was a distinction between honest graft, or the utilization of city resources for the enhancement of one’s private wealth through legal means, and blatant corruption, which involves the enhancement of one’s personal wealth through criminal means. Plunkitt pointed out that criminal behavior was overly risky when compared to the oppor-
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tunities that were available legally through corrupt means. Leaders of Utica’s machine were certainly involved with honest graft, although the legality of such operations was not as clear-cut in the 1950s as during the nineteenth century.
For instance, Elefante was a partner in the firm of Elefante & Mazza Inc., which shared a Broad Street address with Nick Laino & Sons and Laino-Fisk Tires. Deputy Police Chief James Laino was a relative of the operator of Nick Laino & Sons and a part owner of Laino-Fisk tires. Both Elefante & Mazza and Nick Laino & Sons were implicated by the Utica newspapers as being two of only four companies to receive contracts worth more than fifteen thousand dollars for snow removal after a blizzard; together with the other two east Utica firms, the snow removal cost the city thirty-seven thousand dollars without the statemandated competitive bidding (OD, 6 May 1958; 16 May 1958). LainoFisk Tires and Rock’s Tires were implicated by the papers in selling tires to the city without competitive bidding, costing the city about one-third more than the county paid through the same dealers (OD, 30 Jan. 1959). A state audit of city buying practices concluded that city officials had “circumvented and defeated” the law requiring competitive bidding (OD, 24 Sept. 1958). For instance, tires were bought in quantities that totaled less than five hundred dollars in order to be in technical compliance of the law, and therefore no laws were broken even though nearly fifty-two thousand dollars’ worth of equipment had been bought from Laino-Fisk alone (OD, 24 Sept. 1958). This was despite the fact that the city also paid these same firms to repair used tires (OD, 20 May 1958). The newspapers uncovered numerous such practices involving, for example, coal (OD, 9 Sept. 1958), police cars (OD, 12 May 1958), and electrical supplies (OD, 24 Sept. 1958). In the latter case, the treasurer of the company that sold the city more than $4,500 worth of supplies was also on the Zoning Board of Appeals and was the secretary of the city’s Electrical Licensing Board. Such conflicts of interest were seemingly common at the time, although often not technically illegal.
While the political bosses indulged in honest graft, they also failed to properly enforce the law. Prostitution and gambling had become quite common toward the end of World War II, and the Utica newspapers exerted pressure on the city administration to crack down by editorializing against “lax law enforcement.” Similar outbreaks of editorial venom against poor law enforcement occurred in 1948 and 1954 as the police department ostensibly did very little to correct the vice problem in the city.
Similar charges were directed at the practices of the machine itself. In 1948, a scandal involving the city civil service commission ensued when a number of underqualified men were appointed to the police
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and fire departments. It resulted in the state taking the administration of civil service exams away from the city. In 1949, a voting scandal resulted in Elefante himself being implicated in bribery, although it led to no more than verbal jousting between the city administration and the newspapers. When Mayor John McKennon appointed machine-friendly officials after his election in 1955, the Utica newspapers ran eighty editorials “dealing with lax law enforcement, suspected collusion among political leaders and intimations of a conspiracy to defraud the taxpayers” (DP, 5 May 1959).
Such reporting by the Utica newspapers led to a number of embarrassments for the machine, such as a series of arrests in 1949 and continued (and warranted) charges of corruption by Republicans. Simply stated, Utica’s budding urban growth machine was still beholden to the rules of bossism. Rather than the efficient development generator that similar machines in other cities eventually became (Logan and Molotch 1987), the Utica machine of the 1950s was still a cross between its former incarnation as a classical political machine based on its appeal and patronage for immigrants and a modern urban growth machine responsive to the business community, which it was striving to become. It is possible that had the machine shed its reliance on bossism earlier the press would not have exposed its excesses to the extent that it did.
Call in the Posse With a local organized crime syndicate and a corrupt political machine that seemingly looked the other way, the stage was set for the embarrassment of an expose. The newspapers had been collecting evidence for years and regularly editorialized against machine politicians. But the national culture was engulfed in hysteria of its own, and Utica was positioned for national exposure.
The roots of what became known as the Sin City Scandals are found not only in local events prior to 1957, but also in a widespread moral panic concerning the influence of the Mafia and other organizations (e.g., communists) in American institutions (Anechiarico and Jacobs 1996; see Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994). Concern over a national organized crime network began to grow after an eerie discovery in New York City:
Early in 1940, while digging into the source of a local felony, the District Attorney’s office in Brooklyn ran head on into an unbelievable industry. This organization was doing business in assassination and general crime across the entire nation, along the same corporate lines as a chain of grocery stores. (Turkus and Feder 1992, 1)
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What had been discovered was an organization called Murder, Incorporated, a branch of the Mafia that specialized in supplying trained murderers for hire. Chief among them was Albert Anastasia, considered to be the “lord high executioner” of the mob (Newsweek, 24 Feb. 1958). After World War II, concern over communism, immigrants, and organized crime coalesced into a series of trials, investigations, and media campaigns during the 1950s. For example, Jimmy Hoffa, president of the Teamster’s union, stood trial for corruption and ties to organized crime. A general concern about the influence of organized crime led to a series of investigations at the federal level, including one led by Robert F. Kennedy, and in numerous states. In New York, two different committees, one controlled by Republicans (Legislative Watchdog Committee) and the other controlled by the Democratic administration (Reuter Investigation), competed for media attention as well as the facts. At times, witnesses would testify before the Watchdog Committee only to be questioned by Reuter a few days later. Given the cultural atmosphere of concern over the influence of the Mafia, only a single precipitating event was necessary for the scandals that took place in Utica during the late 1950s to occur. The Sin City Scandals would be a turning point in the history of Utica.
Murder, Incorporated The events that engulfed Utica in 1958 and 1959 were the results of activities not just in Utica but as far away as Havana, Cuba.6 Albert Anastasia, the reputed chief assassin of Murder, Incorporated, had for several years been trying to expand his operations in the profitable (illegal) gambling rackets when he traveled to the wedding of his nephew in Utica. Apparently, while in the city he made contact with members of the Utica organization who ran high stakes gambling operations. It was reputed that games would travel from place to place throughout east Utica, and that it was not uncommon for hundreds of thousands of dollars to change hands at such games. Games operated by the syndicate were considered protected; if somebody tried to interfere with a game in some way, they would be dealt with harshly. According to the New York Journal-American, a “small time hoodlum” named Frank Caputo who robbed one such game in 1954 was later found dead in the trunk of a car in suburban Frankfort—the murder was never solved. Anastasia, who had connections with the Cuban Lottery (also illegal), had been able to get a ten percent share of the Utica operation and put his nephew in charge earlier in the decade. By 1956, Anastasia wanted a stake in the gambling operations in Cuba, a country that would soon be fighting a civil war against the
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rebels led by Fidel Castro. But Anastasia was regarded as unacceptable by Meyer Lansky, a powerful operative considered to be the gambling front man for Cuban President Fulgencio Batista. Rejected by Lansky, Anastasia then contacted the powerful Frank Costello and offered him a 25 percent stake in the Cuban gambling operations should Anastasia get control. With the help of Lucky Luciano, who had been deported and was living in Italy, a meeting was set up between Anastasia and the developers of the Havana Hilton, then under construction. Lansky responded by bringing in the Gambino crime family as his partners in Havana, and Costello promptly backed out of the deal.
With Frank Costello no longer a partner, Anastasia turned to the Falcone brothers for help, offering them the same terms he had offered Costello. Sensing that the growing feud between Anastasia and other mobsters was becoming critical, the Falcones stalled Anastasia who, impatient, declared himself the owner of a 25 percent stake in Utica gambling. This act was considered extremely disrespectful to the Utica Mafia and was contrary to the principles of home rule that reigned in the syndicate, and the Uticans were added to the lengthy list of Mafia figures mistreated by Anastasia. An emissary was sent to try to smooth things over, who notified Anastasia that there would be a meeting of Mafia leaders in the rural town of Appalachin, New York, to resolve the Cuba issue. However, he was informed, he should stay out of Utica. In the meantime, on a yacht off the coast of New Jersey, major Mafia figures decided to have Anastasia killed.
At one of those times when fate intervenes, the wife of Anastasia’s nephew died. Anastasia decided to travel to Utica in order to attend the funeral, and sent a message to the Utica syndicate that they should mind their own business. The syndicate leaders decided that Anastasia would die at the cemetery after the funeral, but he arrived at the burial surrounded by six armed gunmen. The assassins decided to avoid a bloody gunfight by letting Anastasia leave the cemetery. They then hunted him for six weeks until, on October 24, Albert Anastasia was shot to death while sitting in a barber chair at the Hotel Park Sheraton in New York City.
Visible Government In October 1957, John McKennon was running a reelection campaign based on his “record of accomplishment” as mayor. Chosen and supported by the Elefante machine, McKennon was young and on his way up in politics. His Republican challenger, William Halpin, criticized McKennon for poor law enforcement after the American Social
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Hygiene Association found Utica to have “semi-flagrant” prostitution in February. As Paul Kinsie, who testified about the report a year later, stated, “there was no solicitation from windows or doorways, but any person who sought admission was promptly admitted to brothels” (OD, 6 Feb. 1958). Similarly, Halpin continually brought up charges of corruption in city supply contracts and the bossism of Rufus Elefante. The Observer-Dispatch was clearly dismayed as to whom to endorse, writing just before the election, Messrs. Halpin and McKennon are two young men well liked and we won’t be alarmed by the election of either. But Mayor McKennon has the advantage of a term in office and the two years have undeniably seen construction and new life in the community. (OD, 31 Oct. 1957)
The weak endorsement of McKennon was reversed the day after the election as they editorialized,
This newspaper could not support the Mayor for re-election since it believes he has yet to achieve needed renovation of the police bureau . . . (OD, 6 Nov. 1957).
Nevertheless, McKennon was popular in Democratic Party circles, and the state committee was considering him for the senate or even Lieutenant Governor (OD, 12 Dec. 1957).
The November 6 newspaper contained more than just a public questioning of McKennon’s effectiveness as mayor. In one column to the side of page one, a story entitled “How Party Came to an End at Mansion,” described the scene as state troopers entered a party hosted by Joseph Barbara near Binghamton and “some of the expensivelydressed guests took off into the woods, others jumped into their cars, others called taxis, some even called private homes and asked the occupants to call cabs for them” (OD, 6 Nov. 1957). It was the same meeting described to Anastasia by the envoy of the Utica mobsters, now being held to divvy up the empire vacated by the death of the assassin. Appalachin had occurred.
Among the guest list of fifty-eight reputed mobsters were the Uticans Joe Falcone, Salvatore Falcone, and Rosario Mancuso. The meeting sparked even more intense interest in the influence of the Mafia nationwide and a renewed vigor in the existing investigations. On November 20, New York Governor Averill Harriman ordered the State Investigations Commissioner to investigate the meeting and its participants, and the Legislative Watchdog Committee would follow suit. At the Watchdog Committee hearings in December, most of those called refused to testify—one racketeer in the garment industry invoked his Fifth Amendment rights not to incriminate himself 161 times; Joe
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Falcone would take the Fifth a mere eighty-four times. By the end of December, the investigation spread throughout New York State, from Vito Genovese and Carlo Gambino in New York City to Sam Lagatutta and John Montana in Buffalo.7
The scandal threatened important people. John Montana, for instance, invoked his connections with Vice-President Richard Nixon and Governor Averill Harriman as well as lesser political figures from both parties. As hysteria over the possible influence of the Mafia in government spread, Utica’s political machine, with its penchant for looking the other way in regard to vice, stood in line for exposure. Being smaller than the other major cities in the state, Utica provided fewer votes for the Democrats but its machine had grown accustomed to asking for expensive forms of patronage. For Elefante, Utica’s fate as center of the scandal was sealed not because of corruption but because of a personal dispute between himself and Harriman related to state patronage:
Elefante told Harriman that he’d promised Uticans that Harriman would help the city get a much-needed arterial highway “and we promised it in your name.” The governor was livid. “Him and I got into a hell of an argument,” [Elefante said]. I [Elefante] said, “I’ll go back and tell the people you don’t want to do it.” He [Harriman] said, “Don’t do that.” Elefante said he got the money for the first phase of the North-South Arterial—and more: “He came after me.” That, said Elefante, was a major reason Harriman started the investigation into graft and corruption in Utica. Harriman was “mad at me.” That 1958–1962 investigation was “repaying me for arguments we had on the arterial highway.” (OD, 28 Sept. 1986)
Although it is unlikely that the Utica sin city scandals were due to a mere personal dispute between a political boss and the troubled governor, the insistence on expensive patronage for a city that brought relatively few votes on election day certainly did not help matters. Of all the cities implicated in the Appalachin affair, however, Utica was the least powerful and thus the most expendable to state leaders. That such a calculus was not used by state officials in choosing the site of the main focus of the investigations is difficult to fathom. By December 1957, the Observer-Dispatch reported on rumors that Utica city officials were under investigation by Reuter, the administration’s investigator.
As word of the scandal spread throughout the state and the nation, major news outlets sold papers by pandering to people’s worst fears. When Rosario Mancuso, slated to testify in front of the Watchdog Committee a second time, failed to appear on January 14, 1958, the New York Journal-American speculated that he had fled the country or
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been murdered. The next day, the diabetic Mancuso had his attorney call the Observer-Dispatch to say:
Call up that New York Journal-American and tell them I’m not dead. . . . What do they use for reporters, a bunch of schoolgirls? I’m sick and under a doctor’s care. When I’m okay, I’ll come as I did before. (OD, 15 Jan. 1958)
Four days later, all of Utica would question the intentions of the JournalAmerican.
Invisible Government The series began on a Sunday, and was one of many that appeared in the New York Journal-American during this time period. The language, as in tabloid papers today, was meant to evoke emotion: fear, distrust, hate, whatever. And so that series began:
An Invisible Government of the underworld today controls politicallyprotected rackets in parts of New York State and Pennsylvania with tentacles going in New Jersey and as far south as Cuba. (JA, 19 Jan. 1958). Over the next two days, the series spotlighted Utica as the major center of Mafia activities in the northeast: Murder is no stranger to Utica, a city controlled by the invisible government. Since the 1930s there have been 13 unsolved gangland type killings in this city of 100,000 people. (JA, 20 Jan. 1958)
The paper then described the murder of Frank Caputo, alleging that two police officers who tried to investigate the case were punished for their efforts and that the reporter was told by a separate officer, “The word is out that you’re up here digging into mafia activities. For your own safety you’d better get out of town as soon as possible” (21 Jan. 1958).
The response from Utica power brokers was unanimous. The Observer-Dispatch pointed out in an editor’s note that “[a] reporter from the Journal-American spent slightly more than two days in Utica about a week ago” (OD, 20 Jan. 1958). The Oneida County district attorney stated that “the situation as pictured about Utica in the Hearst Journal-American simply does not exist” (OD, 20 Jan. 1958). Members of the business community, who perceived the budding scandal as a slight on Utica’s reputation and thus a threat to business, attempted to minimize the damage. Vincent Carrou,
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the president of the Chamber of Commerce, released a statement for the Observer-Dispatch:
In the past ten years there has been no city in the United states that has received more national acclaim and recognition than the city of Utica. . . . Only last October Fortune Magazine termed Utica one of the two “most wide awake cities in the United States.” (OD, 20 Jan. 1958)
Aubrey Detweiler, the general manager of Sperry-Rand Corporation, stated:
I know Utica for its fine city spirit of progress and cooperation, a city among the first in New York State to offer refuge to the Hungarian patriots, a city that has undergone a revolution from cotton mills to diversified industry, a city acclaimed by the Wall Street Journal and periodicals of nationally high repute. It is up to those of us who are proud of our city to separate fact from fiction and then to be sure to make every effort we can to keep it the city of which we can boast. (OD, 20 Jan. 1958)
But despite the exaggeration and innuendo that appeared in the article, the fact was that there was corruption in Utica, there was organized crime in Utica, and there were some ties between the city administration and the reputed Mafia leaders. As a letter to the editor noted on January 24, “Well, ‘the boys’ have finally made headlines— national headlines—for us all. Now please sit down, all of you, and examine your consciences” (OD, 24 Jan. 1958).
Over the next four years, numerous city officials and machine leaders would be called in front of the eight various committees investigating the charges, including Rufus Elefante. Elefante had been alleged by the Journal-American to have told the state trooper investigating the Frank Caputo murder, “If you don’t keep your nose out of other people’s business, you’ll wind up in the canal.” However, the state trooper denied having told the reporter of the incident. Although Mafia control of the city was never established, the corruption was quite apparent. For instance, the following exchange took place between Police Chief Leo Miller and Watchdog Committee counsel Arnold Bauman:
Bauman: To your knowledge, prostitution has gone on in Utica for 25 years, and the Cuban lottery and bookmaking, and seven to 12 gangland slayings in the last twenty-five years, does that not indicate to you as chief of police of Utica that open racketeering has operated? What have you done?
Miller: We make investigations on all this, but we don’t get anywhere with them.
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Deputy Police Chief Vincent Fiore testified that he had been friends with Falcone for thirty years, that he had the police provide protection to Albert Anastasia when he came to Utica for the wedding of his nephew, that the bride was the daughter of one of Fiore’s friends, and that he had also sent “four or five” officers to protect Anastasia at the recent funeral but not to the cemetery where Anastasia was to be killed originally. In apparent distress, Fiore proclaimed of Falcone, “He attends the same church I do. With his wife. He goes to holy Communion” (OD, 11 Feb. 1958). At one point during 1958, the Observer-Dispatch had the scandal on the front page every day for several months and ran almost weekly editorials against the administration, the “bossism” of Rufus Elefante, and corruption in general. Periodically, the New York Journal-American would reference Utica’s corruption in a variety of stories. The New York Times and countless other newspapers also covered the scandals that started in Appalachin but soon were centered on Utica.
Utica acquired a national reputation for Mafia activities as the media utilized the city as a symbol of what was wrong with America. The case of Utica was treated not merely as the corruption of a medium-sized American city, but as involving the most corrupt of all cities and truly the most despicable. As time went on, the charges heaped on Utica became all the more unbelievable. Whereas the Utica syndicate was one of many in cities across the country, the Journal-American had branded Utica the “upstate headquarters of the Invisible Government which has turned the city into a cesspool of vice and political corruption” (JA, 25 Jan. 1958). A month later, Newsweek had magnified the claim:
Utica is the town the gangsters own. It is a wide-open town, where the brothels and the call-girls operate under the tolerant eye of the cops, where the after hours clubs flourish and it is no trick to find a dice game or a horse parlor. . . . It is a town where the gangsters know the cops and where they know the politicians. It is the headquarters town for big-time mafia operations in most of the Eastern half of the nation, with strings reaching all the way to Cuba. It is a place run by the shadowy figure of a “Mr. Big,” far more important than the civic leaders who get their pictures into the newspapers. (Newsweek, 24 Feb. 1958)
That Utica was a headquarters town for organized crime was never established. The corruption that existed there was in all likelihood no worse than the corruption found in Albany, New York, or Chicago. Although there was reason for concern, the city did not deserve the reputation it gained. Look magazine stated it best:
Utica is no more a sin city than, say, Toledo, Ohio or Kansas City, Missouri. Could be that there is the same kind of five-and-ten cent corruption in all
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three and elsewhere as well.... Before the probes are finished, a few more cops may find it expedient to line up for their pensions. But I doubt anyone will lay a disrespectful hand on Joe Falcone or that Rufus Elefante will be deposed. I expect that the public apathy will return. Then, someday, maybe a thruway will start cutting its way across Utica, and there’ll be something else to get worked up about. (Look, 8 July, 1958)
Robert Fischer was appointed as a special prosecutor in the case by Governor Harriman in June 1958, and the federal government made Utica one of seven cities to be investigated for racketeering. The other cities were New York, Chicago, Detroit, Miami, Los Vegas, and Havana. The two Utica newspapers continued to exert pressure on the city administration for better law enforcement, and in response unidentified “friends” of the administration began a campaign of intimidation. There were dead of night calls to editor’s homes. The callers made profane threats and predictions of physical harm. . . . (They) told reporters not to be out alone at night. Reporters and others discovered they were being followed on or off duty by persons not known to them. (DP, 5 May 1959)
By the time the last of the investigations ended four years later, “22 residents of the city had been sent to prison . . . and numerous city officials loyal to the machine had been forced to resign” (Ehrenhalt 1989, 35).
On May 4, 1959, in the midst of the trials that resulted from the scandal, the Observer-Dispatch quietly announced in a small article on page one that the paper would share the Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service with its sister paper, the Daily Press. The next day, the Daily Press acknowledged the role of the national scandal in bringing attention to its work:
The award, it should be noted, has significance beyond the bestowal of a gold medal. It means that a jury of distinguished newspapermen and educators reviewed what had been going on in Utica. They decided the steps the newspapers had taken to arouse public interest and bring about reforms were a meritorious achievement. (DP, 5 May 1959)
End of the Line John McKennon was not to run for reelection as mayor in 1959, and the machine ran Leo Wheeler instead. McKennon’s career in politics was over. But removing the figurehead from a corrupt Democratic administration did not make voters believe that corruption had ended.
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Frank Dulan, a Republican who had also run for mayor in 1953, ran for mayor as the “un-McKennon”: not connected with the machine, and thus honest. He ran campaign advertisements that attacked the bossism of the Elefante machine, but often not Wheeler. In one, six cartoons make the case for the Republicans, but only one discusses their plans for the future; the other five target the machine. The ObserverDispatch repeatedly editorialized against the machine, reminding voters of the corruption found in the city:
[T]hese records of arrests over a 10-year period tell their own story of the laxity that resulted in the sensation reports that were bound to ensue:
1948 17 gambling arrests, 2 lottery, 3 prostitution
1949 13 gambling arrests, 2 lottery, 3 prostitution
1950 20 gambling arrests, 1 lottery, 16 prostitution
1951 6 gambling arrests, 1 lottery, 9 prostitution
1952 9 gambling arrests, 3 lottery, 11 prostitution
1953 14 gambling, 2 lottery, 10 prostitution
1954 10 gambling, no lottery, 3 prostitution
1955 No gambling, no lottery, no prostitution
1956 1 gambling, no lottery, no prostitution
1957 4 gambling, no lottery, 1 prostitution
. . . It is indeed time for a change. (OD, 1 Nov. 1959)
Voters remembered that the chief of police testified that he had kept several brothels under surveillance for up to twenty years but had ostensibly found no evidence of wrongdoing. That there were thirteen unsolved murders in the city, though most of them did date to Prohibition. That “the old man” (Elefante) called the shots. And on November 3, 1959, city voters elected Dulan as mayor as he “cut into East Utica, the foundation of Elefante’s strength” (OD, 4 Nov. 1959). The machine continued its influence on the common council, but would not again win the mayoralty until 1977 (Ehrenhalt 1992). The Observer-Dispatch announced “Independence Declared” in a glowing editorial on November 4.
The business community, who had benefited from the efficiency of city government prior to the scandals, seemed more interested in continued economic recovery than in clean government. The newspapers were attacked for “besmirching the fair name of the city” and “driving business out of town” (DP, 5 May 1959). Although such arguments from members of the political establishment were understandable, the Daily Press lamented:
One protest came from an unexpected quarter—a group of recognized civic leaders, mostly Republicans, intent on selling the idea that things were no
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worse than in Syracuse or other upstate cities, and on sweeping the whole mess under the rug again and keeping it there. (DP, 5 May 1959)
The problem was that although the collusion between the Republican leaders, the business community, and the political bosses was quite common, the degree to which the corruption was noticeable was not. Utica’s political machine had allowed its corruption to become too visible through a degree of latitude given to mobsters that was insulting to many of the city’s residents. By the end of the sin city scandals, the business community perceived the machine, no matter how efficient, as more of a liability than it was worth. Rather than a collapse of the political structure, however, the scandals led to a bifurcation of political interests. The machine would continue to control the inner city and thus the common council, but could not win the mayoralty until 1977. Gone were the days when an interested corporation could just sit down with Elefante and hammer out a deal.
As the decades wore on, decisions within the city took longer and longer to implement, and many companies simply found Syracuse, Albany, and Binghamton to be more efficient communities. Business is most often hurt by the inability of a city to make things happen, not necessarily by political corruption (Anechiarico and Jacobs 1996). And so over the next several decades, Utica area politicians would take out bonds for a new firehouse in south Utica and then fail to agree on a location; bicker repeatedly about the municipal water supply; bicker over how many schools to have; bicker over what to do with empty urban renewal lots; bicker over how to fix downtown; bicker over where to build expressways; bicker over new developments and shopping centers.8 And in time, Utica’s reputation as sin city faded and a new one developed. As one resident of Cooperstown noted in 1998:
"I used to think of Utica as Mafia. Hookers, drugs, parties. That’s when I was a kid (in the 1960s). Now I think it’s just a dump"
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