Danny Greene was as Irish as they come, a red-headed fireplug of a man who proudly flaunted his heritage by driving a green Lincoln, giving out green Cross pens and copies of “Trinity” by Leon Uris and wearing a large green and gold Celtic cross necklace.
In the Cleveland underworld, Greene was a powerhouse, a vicious killer who was known to have gotten away with murder and who openly dared those who opposed to him to take their best shot.
Two of those who tried paid with their own lives.
In the end, Greene was powerful enough to attract the highest levels of ire from the Cleveland mafia and when they finally got their act together to take him down, Greene’s influence with local and federal law enforcement helped cripple the Northern Ohio mob.
The Rise of Danny Greene
He got his start running a pool hall on Cleveland’s rough waterfront, waiting until he could get his longshoreman’s card. When he did, he got a job unloading ore carriers in the Flats and getting active in the longshoreman’s union. In 1961 he was elected president of his local and began looting the treasury and hiring out his goons for muscle work. They reportedly beat one man so harshly that he lost an eye and burned another with cigarettes after he rejected their protection offer.
Greene quickly attracted the attention of police and the media, and in 1964 a newspaper expose of waterfront corruption cost Danny his job as president. He was convicted of embezzlement and falsifying union records, but four years later, a federal court threw out the conviction.
By the 1970s, Greene was working with the Solid Waste Trade Guild and lobbied the city of Cleveland to privatize its trash collection services. His former coworker and close friend, Mike Frato, was also working for the same goal on behalf of a rival union.
On November 26, 1971 Greene was out jogging as Frato pulled up in his car. Greene later told police he thought Frato was going for a gun and pulled a .45 automatic from the waistband of his shorts and fired two rounds. One caught Frato between the eyes.
The shooting was judged accidental and no charges were pursued.
Four years later, another former friend, Shondor Birns, a numbers operator who used Greene for enforcement, went to war with the Irishman over a $25,000 dispute. Birns had a bomb placed under Greene’s car, but Danny found it before it exploded.
“I’m gonna send this back to the bastard who sent it to me,” he reportedly vowed.
On the day before Easter 1975, Birns was coming out of St. Malachi’s Catholic Church on West 25th Street in Cleveland. Shortly after he started his car, a bomb exploded, blowing bits of Shondor Birns back onto the steps of the church.
An attempt by Birns’s gang to retaliate failed when a shrapnel-laden bomb left outside Danny’s office failed to go off.
The mob that gave the world Moe Dalitz, Cleveland’s mafia is as storied as any in America. The best historian of the Cleveland mob is author Rick Porrello, whose books on the mafia in Northern Ohio are all worth reading and are available at most online bookstores.
I won’t go into much historic detail here, and recommend that those interested in the Cleveland mob and its many bloody battles, visit Rick’s site online.
Like any organization, disorderly transitions of leadership play havoc on the mob. So when John Scalish, don of the Cleveland Mafia died on the operating table without leaving a strong successor, a number of men had designs on the office.
Jack Licavoli, a Detroit import with connections with the old Purple Gang was eventually named to head the gang with Angelo Lonardo serving as underboss. One of those who wanted the job and who was angered by his snub was John Nardi, a Teamsters official.
Nardi contacted Danny Greene and together the men when into direct competiton with the Murray Hill mafia, as Cleveland’s Italian organization was known.
Greene had an ace up his sleeve as he went to war with Licavoli, Lonardo and the rest of the Italians. He was serving as an informer for the FBI, turning over information on his rivals.
What Danny didn’t know was that the Murray Hill mob had a mole in the office who had provided it with a list of mob informers.
During the summer of 1977, the war between Greene and Nardi and the Italians got hot.
The first big name to die was Lips Moceri, who disappeared in late August. His blood was found in the trunk of his girlfriend’s car, but his body has never been found.
Three weeks later, the Italians got revenge, blowing up Nardi and the entire Teamster’s headquarters in Cleveland.
A retaliatory strike by Greene ended up killing an innocent man, but no Murray Hill mobsters.
The Italians spent the rest of the summer stalking Greene without success, but in October their mole in the FBI office revealed that Danny was scheduled to visit his dentist.
Ray Ferritto and Ronald “the Crab” Carabbia of Youngstown, Ohio were brought in to plant a bomb. They put it in the door of a Chevy and parked the car next to Greene’s at his dentist’s office.
Greene killed instantly after the Crab pulled the switch.
As Ferritto and Carabbia fled the scene, a young woman managed to get a good look at the two of them. She was the worst possible witness — a police sketch artist. Her drawing of Ferritto looks as if he had actually posed for her.
Within weeks, Ferritto, Carabbia, Licavoli, Lonardo and five others were accused of killing Greene. They were indicted on various racketeering charges and murder.
Three days after they were picked up, Ferritto offered to talk.
In a three-month trial featuring Ferritto as a key witness, the results were mixed, thanks in part to the dream team of attorneys put up by the mobsters.
Licavoli and Lonardo walked, Carabbia and one other man were convicted of aggravated murder but cleared of racketeering.
A later trial would convict two others of Greene’s murder.
The Cleveland mob was reeling from the publicity and the convictions. Four years after Greene’s death, federal prosecutors would get their shot at the Murray Hill mob, convicting Licavoli, Lonardo and four others of RICO violations. Lonardo was also convicted on drug charges. Facing a long, long stretch, Lonardo turned.
Until Sammy the Bull Gravano turned, Lonardo was the highest ranking mobster ever to cooperate with the feds. He testified at countless trials around the country, including ones in Youngstown, Kansas City, Nevada, New York and before the United States Senate.
How deeply Northern Ohio was saturated with the mob was spelled out by the Cleveland Plain Dealer in an article announcing the parole of Ron Carabbia after 25 years in the pen.
“In Youngstown, organized crime — affiliated with the Pittsburgh mafia — controlled judges, prosecutors and sheriffs for decades. The stranglehold is just now beginning to be broken after the federal probe that culminated in the convictions of mob boss Lenny Strollo and Congressman James Traficant.”
Adds the U.S. Attorney: “I couldn’t believe there was a place as a corrupt as Mahoning County,” said Julia Stiller. “That was why malls didn’t go in or projects didn’t get done, just on the fact that the mob always owned everything.”
http://organizedcrime.about.com/?once=true&;
Close to Hamilton County?
