Later Years
In the 1930s, Torrio returned to the United States to testify in Capone's trial. At that time, he suggested to top New York City-based crime lords such as Lucky Luciano that they create one crime syndicate encompassing all the smaller gangs that were constantly at each other's throats. He presented this idea in New York to Luciano, as well as Lepke Buchalter, Longy Zwillman, Joe Adonis, Frank Costello, and Meyer Lansky at a four-star Park Avenue hotel. (This conference and its attendees were later disclosed by Abe Reles.) His idea was well received, and he was given great respect, as he was considered an "elder statesman" in the world of organized crime. Once Luciano implemented the concept, the National Crime Syndicate was born.
Read more about this topic: Johnny Torrio, Biography
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“The anarchy, assassination, and sacrilege by which the Kingdom of France has been disgraced, desolated, and polluted for some years past cannot but have excited the strongest emotions of horror in every virtuous Briton. But within these days our hearts have been pierced by the recital of proceedings in that country more brutal than any recorded in the annals of the world.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)