This Day In History

November 14: Apalachin Mafia Raid

On November 14, 1957, mafia bosses, their advisors, and many bodyguards (about a hundred men in all) met at mob boss Joe Barbara's 53-acre estate in Apalachin to discuss the organisation and its future.

Apalachin is a small place located about 200 miles west of New York City along the south shore of the Susquehanna River not far from the Pennsylvania border. Barbara had been harassed by the local small town cops for a while after moving to the rural upstate region of New York. A local state trooper named Edgar D. Croswell had been aware that a guest had visited Barbara's estate the previous year; state troopers had pulled over Carmine Galante as he drove away from Barbara's house in 1956, and they had found that Galante was not only driving without a license, but he had an extensive criminal record in New York City. In the time immediately preceding the November 1957 meeting, Croswell had become obsessed with the goings on there, and became aware that Barbara's son was reserving rooms in local hotels. That made Croswell suspicious, and he therefore decided to keep an eye on Barbara's house.

When the state police found many luxury cars parked at Barbara's home, they began taking down license plate numbers. Having found that many of these cars were registered to known criminals, state police reinforcements came to the scene and began to set up a roadblock. Since no crime was being committed, this was overdoing it, but gangsters made it worse, by fleeing. Having barely started their meeting, Bartolo Guccia and Joe Barbara employee (with a criminal record) spotted the roadblock while leaving Barbara's estate. Guccia would later state he was returning to the Barbara home to check on a fish order. Some attendees attempted to drive away but were stopped by the roadblock. Others trudged through the fields and woods, ruining their expensive suits and tossing guns and cash away in case they were caught. Locals reported finding 0 bills scattered about the countryside for months afterwards.

Up to fifty men escaped, but fifty-eight were apprehended, including Commission members Vito Genovese, Carlo Gambino, Joseph Profaci and Joseph Bonanno. Virtually all of them claimed they had heard Joseph Barbara was feeling ill and that they just had popped in to see him and wish him well. Everyone thought it very curious that so many men of Italian descent from various cities, the majority with criminal records, should happen to be all gathering at one place at the same time, but as no crime had been committed the men who were caught were all eventually released. It was a great embarrassment to La Cosa Nostra and also to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Long-time FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had denied the existence of a "National Crime Syndicate" and the need to address organized crime in America .

After the Apalachin Summit, Hoover could no longer deny the National Crime Syndicate's existence and its influence on the North American underworld, as well as La Cosa Nostra's overall control and influence of the Syndicate's many branches throughout North America and abroad. After the Apalachin Meeting, J. Edgar Hoover created the "Top Hoodlum Program" and went after the National Crime Syndicate's and La Cosa Nostra's top Bosses throughout the country. Many of the National Crime Syndicate's most powerful Bosses such as Vito Genovese, Joseph Bonanno, Sam "Momo" Giancana, Stefano Magaddino, Frank Costello, Carlos Marcello, Meyer Lansky, Abner "Longy" Zwillman and Philip "Dandy Phil" Kastel just to name a few, found themselves with greater law enforcement scrutiny, indictments and grand jury subpoenas being handed down.The Cosa Nostra was no longer a secret society.