Danny Greene - Plus 25
By Rick Porrello
With almost daily media coverage of terrorist bombings, it’s hard to believe that such a vicious weapon was once used on a regular basis in Cleveland, Ohio’s underworld to settle scores and eliminate competitors -“headaches” as the mobsters called them. So many bombs were being detonated in 1970s Cleveland that it became known as Bomb City, U.S.A. To deal with the problem, the local office of the Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, the federal agency charged with regulating explosives and investigating bombings, had to be tripled in manpower.
Danny Greene, a flamboyant mob associate with a penchant for the color green and excessively proud of his Celtic heritage got his start in the 1960s as president of the local International Longshoremen’s Association of. He could have been a highly successful businessman but he wanted excitement. After a shocking expose by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, he was ousted from the docks and fined $10,000 for embezzling union funds. Danny had been forcing longshoremen to unload filthy grain boats and "donate" their paychecks to a union hall "renovation fund." The hall had already been renovated - painted green when Danny took office.
About this time Danny was recruited by an F.B.I. agent as a C.I. or confidential informant. Because of Danny’s connections to labor racketeers and mobsters and the information he was privy to, he became classified as a highly-prized T.E. or Top Echelon informant.
Later Danny worked for as an enforcer for local mobsters including Alex "Shondor" Birns, well-known Jewish racketeer labeled as Cleveland’s Public Enemy Number One during the 1950s and 1960s. After a dispute over a $60,000 loan Greene refused to repay, Birns had a bomb planted in his car. It was the first in a series of botched attempts on the brash and lucky Irishman's life. Danny found the bomb.
"I’ll return this to the bastard who sent it to me,” Danny swore.
Sure enough, a few weeks later Birns was blown out the roof of his car, in two pieces.
In 1976 there was a bombing war being raged in Cleveland for control of the rackets. Danny Greene and labor union figure John Nardi teamed up against James “Jack White” Licavoli, a former member of the Purple Gang. The aging but powerful and wealthy Licavoli reluctantly took over the reigns after the death of longtime mob boss John Scalish.
Greene and Nardi’s strategy was a quick and aggressive offensive. In 1976 Licavoli’s cousin and mob underboss Leo "Lips" Moceri, disappeared. A few days later a pool of blood was found in the trunk of his car. Moceri’s body has never been found. Next Greene and Nardi went after Eugene Ciasullo. Nicknamed "the Animal," Ciasullo was the Cleveland mob’s most feared enforcer. He was seriously injured and put out of commission for several months with a bomb that was placed on his front porch.
James Licavoli had enough and ordered his henchman to "get rid of the Irishman," but the inexperienced soldiers had no luck. The attempts by the self-proclaimed tough guys were almost comical. In one attempt, the hitmen placed themselves too far from Greene for the radio signal from their remote transmitter to detonate a bomb placed next to their target’s car.
Finally Licavoli’s men got Greene’s partner John Nardi. Nardi had been carrying a .38 revolver, but it was no match for the powerful bomb that was planted on a car, parked next to Nardi’s vehicle and detonated by remote control.
But the mob soldiers still couldn’t seem to eliminate Danny Greene who sat boldly outside the headquarters of his “Celtic Club,” under an Irish flag. After so many failed attempts on his life, Danny had developed an aura of invincibility that intimidated many of those mobsters trying to kill him. Danny knew it and was taking advantage of it.
He was interviewed by a television reporter and boldly issued a challenge to the Mafia.
Greene declared. “I have no axe to grind, but if these maggots in this so-called Mafia want to come after me, I'm over here by the Celtic Club. I'm not hard to find."
Cleveland Mafia members were incensed. An exasperated mob lieutenant complained, “how did this guy ever come into the picture?”
But in the end, Danny went out the way he predicted. "When you live by the bomb, you die by the bomb."
It happened on Oct. 6th, 1977, a sunny afternoon in the Cleveland suburb of Lyndhurst. near Interstate 271. Danny Greene arrived at the Brainard Place Medical Building for a dental appointment. He parked his car, grabbed a leather bag which contained a 9mm pistol and went up to have a loose filling repaired.
Mob associates Ronnie Carabbia from Youngstown and Ray Ferritto from Erie, PA. were already there in the parking lot and watched Greene enter the building. This was the chance they had been waiting for. They parked a “Joe Blow” car with a fake registration next to Danny’s car. Inside the car was a specially built door packed with a powerful explosive charge and wired to a remote-controlled detonator.
When Greene returned to his car, the two mobsters detonated the bomb killing Greene instantly. The Irishman was dead. And the Cleveland Mafia was celebrating.
Several days after Greene's murder, the F.B.I. intercepted some interesting conversation through their Title III hidden microphone surveillance at Mafia boss James Licavoli's house. Apparently Licavoli, his right-hand man John Calandra and an unidentified male were complaining about Frank Embrescia, Frank Brancato and John Nardi. They felt that these men, deceased mobsters, as well as the F.B.I. were responsible for Greene's rise to power.
LICAVOLI: Embrescia was so fuckin' burned up when Shondor got it. Hey if he couldn't handle him, that's his own fault.
CALANDRA: That's right. That's right.
UNIDENTIFIED: How can a marked man put a big flag in front of his house. He had a big Irish flag out by the side, anybody could see it. He put it there on purpose. He'd be sitting out there under the sun.
CALANDRA: He has some pretty good connections though.
LICAVOLI: He had some connections all right. The fuckin' F.B.I. He used to tell them about every goddamed thing everyone did.
CALANDRA: You know that with Greene. He was the F.B.I.'s boy.
LICAVOLI: Oh fuck yes. But he didn't work with the F.B.I., he told them what to do! He told them what to do. He said F.B.I. your ass. He thought he got so fuckin' big. Well he wanted it all that's all. Him and Nardi. That fucker. He used to give them the money and he used to give them all the information. He created a monster.
CALANDRA: Nardi and Brancato.
LICAVOLI: That's right. They created that guy. And all the fuckin' headaches we used to have.
Licavoli didn't know then but his headaches were just beginning.
The Mafia's celebration was cut short. There was much sloppy work and a few observant witnesses and extraordinary investigations by the Lyndhurst Police, Cleveland Police, F.B.I. and other law enforcement agencies.
One of the witnesses was a sketch artist who drew an amazing likeness of Ray Ferritto for authorities. When a search warrant was executed at Ferritto’s house in Erie, police found the registration papers for the bomb car and arrested him. Another embarassing blunder.
But Ferritto was the only one who had been picked up. Mafia boss Licavoli and his crew had a plan. They would merely kill Ferritto and be in the clear. But word bot back to Ferritto. When he found out that the very mob he was serving had put out a contract on his life, he “flipped” and made a deal with police.
As a result, numerous Cleveland mobsters were arrested. Ronnie Carrabbia and Pasquale “Butchie” Cisternino were convicted of state murder charges and sentenced to life in prison. Cisternino died while incarcertated. Carrabbia was paroled in September of this year after serving twenty-four years.
As a result of Ferritto’s testimony and federal charges that followed the state trial, Southern California mob captain Jimmy "Weasel" Fratianno (who recommended Ferritto for the Greene murder) defected and co-authored The Last Mafioso.
In 1982, acting Cleveland mob boss Angelo “Big Ange” Lonardo, a product of Cleveland’s Prohibition-era sugar war, sentenced to life for drug racketeering also went to work for the government and was eventually released from prison. At the time Lonardo, called "the highest ranking mobster ever to testify for the government" helped put away mob bosses Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno of New York's Genovese Mafia family, Anthony "Tony Ducks" Corallo of the Luchesse clan and Carmine Persico of the Colombo family. It all started with Danny Greene.
A Cleveland attorney defending a local mobster commented in 1982: “Danny Greene died five years ago and he’s still fucking with us.”
Danny would have been proud.
Danny Greene lies dead next to his car.
