Investigations: Killers in Prison

When Hoodlum Joe Valachi appeared before Arkansas Senator John McClellan’s Permanent Investigations Subcommittee last week, he rasped out a 31-hour rhapsody of names, crimes and Cosa Nostra syndicate secrets. Valachi’s song held nothing new for U.S. lawmen: he had been holding private recitals for them for more than a year. But his testimony might provide some ideas for show biz scriptwriters.

Valachi is an aging (60), two-bit punk—once a thief, a dope pusher, a willing killer for syndicate chiefs, now turned stool pigeon. Yet last week he found U.S. Senators treating him with patronizing respect. John McClellan addressed him warmly as “Joe,” inquired if he wasn’t tired from testifying, quickly adjourned the hearings until this week when the mug from the Mafia said he was indeed weary. In fact, Valachi’s act was introduced—with some pride—by none other than Bobby Kennedy, Attorney General of the U.S. Boasted Bobby: “For the first time an insider, a knowledgeable member of the racketeering hierarchy, has broken the underworld’s code of silence.”

Thinking of Themselves. No one seemed certain just what Valachi’s appearance before the committee might gain. Bobby spoke about new wiretap laws and extending immunity from prosecution for racketeers who cooperate with the Justice Department. McClellan said vaguely that he had in mind some kind of law to “prohibit membership in such a criminal and secret organization as Cosa Nostra.” And Joe Valachi thought organized crime should probably be outlawed—largely because “the bosses been thinking only of themselves for years.”

But if Valachi’s testimony does nothing else, it has already produced a shocking commentary on the underworld jungle in the U.S. prison system. When Joe went to the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary on a narcotics conviction in 1960, the Cosa Nostra “boss of bosses” Vito Genovese, a prisoner, was there too. Valachi said Genovese arranged for them to be cellmates. One night in their cell Genovese said to Valachi:

“You know you buy a barrel of apples, and one of them is touched. That apple has to be removed, or it’ll touch the rest of the apples.” Then Genovese kissed Valachi. It was the Mafia’s “kiss of death,” to let Valachi know he was the apple to be removed.

Mistaken Murder. Valachi quickly kissed Genovese back “to let him know I was smart and I would answer him in the same style—kill him too.” Valachi was so frightened he asked prison guards to put him in solitary confinement. But as soon as he got out, Mafia Mobster John Dioguardia (Johnny Dio), who was in charge of the prison shower room, invited Valachi in to take a shower. Valachi, convinced he would be murdered there, refused. Panicky, he tried to “stay out of crowds” in the prison yard, finally grabbed a length of iron pipe lying conveniently in the yard and bludgeoned a prisoner he thought was going to kill him. An associate warden told him a few minutes later that he had murdered the wrong man. “You can imagine how I felt,” said Valachi. “I just told them to lock me up.”

It was then Valachi began to sing to federal officials. Ever since he has been under heavy guard—and kept away from federal prisons. When McClellan asked him what might happen if he went back to prison, Valachi croaked: “I’d have to kill or be killed. If they got at me, I wouldn’t last five minutes.”