The Mafia and the Machine by Frank R. Hayde

Author:Frank R. Hayde [HAYDE, FRANK R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-56980-336-3
Publisher: Barricade Books
Published: 2014-07-20T16:00:00+00:00

The Binaggio Era

LIKE CHARLES CAROLLO before him, Charles Binaggio was a pallbearer at Johnny Lazia’s funeral. Binaggio was born to Sicilian immigrants in 1909 and dropped out of school after the eighth grade. His brother Dominic was the owner of the Saratoga Horse Room and allegedly provided safe haven for Pretty Boy Floyd and Adam Richetti the night before the Union Station Massacre. Binaggio’s police file, like so many others during the Mob’s reign over the police department in the 1930s, was removed, so there is little record of his early criminal activities except for a 1927 conviction for motorcar theft. Helping to carry Lazia’s coffin at the age of twenty-four indicated a meteoric rise for a young soldier of La Cosa Nostra. Lazia had made Binaggio his golden boy and molded him into a near facsimile of himself.

The handsome Binaggio even looked like Brother John and emulated his manners, style, and dapper wardrobe, which featured matching monogrammed shirts and ties, a Franklin Roosevelt-style cigarette holder, and a large diamond ring on his left pinky. Binaggio also managed to duplicate his mentor’s success in blurring the lines between gangster and politician. He was schooled as a precinct captain in the eastern part of the First Ward, where he delivered votes and did favors with a tireless enthusiasm that made him a respected Democrat and the Mob’s natural choice to succeed Carollo as faceman.

Binaggio’s Syndicate backers were so confident in him that they charged him with the Herculean task of electing a friendly governor and opening up the entire state of Missouri to police-protected gambling and vice. The eastern families were flush with cash and eager for expansionist opportunities. Bugsy Siegel was planting their flag in Las Vegas during this time, and the Syndicate was forging a partnership with the Batista government in Cuba. The Chicago Outfit was also looking to grow and could be counted on for capital. The prospect of a Missouri-sized Las Vegas was tantalizing, to say the least. In the land of the Pendergast Machine, it seemed entirely possible, an investment worth the risk. All this would have to wait, however, for in the early 1940s, the Kansas City family was occupied with some business of a nonpolitical nature that was about to expose the national Mafia Syndicate like it had never been exposed before.

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