Events
- October 8 - Albert Agueci, French Connection heroin smuggler for the Buffalo crime family, is severely tortured and murdered. He threatened to inform on crime boss Stefano Magaddino because Magaddino did not provide bail money and assistance to his family. When his remains were found in a field near Rochester, N.Y. on November 23, he was naked, his hands were bound behind his back, his front teeth were knocked out and 30 lbs. of flesh were cut from his body, all while he was alive, a clear message from Don Stefano. His death would cause his brother Vito Agueci to label Albert's friend and heroin customer Joe Valachi a government informant. Vito Aguecci's rumors are what prompted Vito Genovese to put a contract on Valachi and Valachi agreeing to become a government informant and be the first Cosa Nostra Rat. He testified in the 1963 Senate Hearings.
- May 4 - A federal investigation reveals decades long corruption as a grand jury finds evidence of Kansas City, Missouri police officials cooperating with organized crime figures allowing criminal activity.
- June 29 - After serving nearly a year, Frank Costello is released from prison and retires to his gambling and legitimate business interests.
- October 31 - Bernard McLaughlin, leader of the Charlestown Mob, is killed by members of the Winter Hill Gang (however other sources claim gunman of the Patriarca crime family responsible), an early victim of the Boston Irish Mob Wars which would continue throughout the decade.
- November - Albert Testa, a counterfeiter and burglar as well as an associate of tortured and murdered Chicago Outfit member William "Action" Jackson, is murdered.
Read more about this topic: 1961 In Organized Crime
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“There are many events in the womb of time which will be delivered.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“If I have renounced the search of truth, if I have come into the port of some pretending dogmatism, some new church, some Schelling or Cousin, I have died to all use of these new events that are born out of prolific time into multitude of life every hour. I am as bankrupt to whom brilliant opportunities offer in vain. He has just foreclosed his freedom, tied his hands, locked himself up and given the key to another to keep.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Whatever events in progress shall disgust men with cities, and infuse into them the passion for country life, and country pleasures, will render a service to the whole face of this continent, and will further the most poetic of all the occupations of real life, the bringing out by art the native but hidden graces of the landscape.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)