Guarino "Willie" Moretti (February 24, 1894 – October 4, 1951), also known as Willie Moore, was an Italian-American mobster who served as underboss of the Luciano crime family, later known as the Genovese crime family, and a top member of its New Jersey faction under Frank Costello. He was murdered in 1951 after his testimony before the Kefauver Committee made his organized crime colleagues anxious that he would reveal the details of their criminal activities to law enforcement or the press.

Criminal career

Born Guarino Moretti in Bari, Apulia, in southern Italy, Moretti emigrated to the United States with his family as a child. He grew up in East Harlem, a neighbor of Frank Costello. As a young man he boxed as a featherweight under the name "Willie Moore," a nickname that stuck with him for the rest of his life.

On January 12, 1913, after being convicted of robbery, Moretti was sentenced to one year in state prison in Elmira, New York. He was released after several months.

After his release from prison he organized dice games in his neighborhood in East Harlem and acquired a reputation for toughness. He forged a bond with his neighbor Frank Costello, who was part of the Morello gang.

With the advent of Prohibition Moretti was active as a rumrunner, both in and around New York City and in the Buffalo, New York area, where he worked closely with Stefano Magaddino, boss of the Buffalo crime family. Moretti later went to work for Waxey Gordon, one of the leading bootleggers in the New York and New Jersey area, and took over Gordon's North Jersey rackets in 1933 when Gordon was sent to prison. He later acquired a home in the upscale community of Deal, located in Monmouth County, New Jersey along the Jersey Shore.

From 1933 to 1951, Moretti, in association with Joe Adonis, Settimo Accardi and Abner Zwillman, ran lucrative gambling dens in New Jersey and upstate New York. These ranged from "sawdust joints," where only men were allowed to gamble, to "carpet joints" that admitted women and catered to a higher class of clientele, for whom Moretti provided limousine service from Manhattan. These casinos also attracted local businessmen and judges, who often left with debts that Moretti and Adonis were able to exploit to their advantage.</blockquote>

In addition to buying political support (and protection from prosecution) through bribery, Moretti also won broader public support through private acts of generosity. Moretti often sent hundreds of dollars anonymously to families facing eviction; Moretti himself estimated that he had given needy friends more than a million dollars in uncollectable "touches." His philanthropy reaped rewards: when Willie Moretti's brother Salvatore was indicted for operating unlawful casinos in Lodi, New Jersey, the court could not find twelve potential jurors out of 300 citizens who were questioned who would swear they were not prejudiced in favor of the Moretti family.

Moretti also owned interests in some ostensibly legitimate businesses, such as U.S. Linen Supply Co., Inc., which supplied hotels, restaurants and bars with uniforms, towels, and linens. With members of Moretti's crew acting as salesmen, the laundry soon was handling the linen for most of the restaurants and bars in northern New Jersey.

He was also reputed to be the "banker" for prostitution and drug trafficking in New Jersey. As for drug dealing, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics considered Moretti to be a major drug trafficker, describing him in a 1941 record as "Overlord and financier of rackets, including narcotics, within his bailiwick" and listing "every member of the Italian mob in Northern New Jersey" among his associates. There is no record, however, that Moretti or any members of his crew were ever charged with commission of any drug-related crimes. To the extent that Moretti engaged in or financed either prostitution or drug trafficking, they were secondary to his most lucrative business, gambling.

Moretti was, for most of his life, a trusted lieutenant of Frank Costello, with whom he had been friends since their boyhood days in East Harlem; Costello was also best man at Moretti's wedding. Moretti provided Costello with muscle when necessary while Costello cultivated an image of being a legitimate businessman and gambler.

When Costello was acting boss of the Luciano crime family he made Moretti underboss. Moretti was high up enough in the ranks of organized crime to have attended the Havana Conference in 1946. but not his godfather in the conventional sense. Sinatra's first wife, Nancy Barbato, was a paternal cousin of John Barbato, a Moretti associate. Moretti helped Sinatra get bookings in New Jersey clubs and arranged for an audition that helped him land a job singing at the Riviera, which he controlled. That gig brought Sinatra even greater exposure and led to a job with Harry James' orchestra.

In 1939, Sinatra signed a three-year contract with band leader Tommy Dorsey. By the early 1940s, Sinatra had achieved national popularity and wanted to move on to a solo career. In order to be released early from his contract with Dorsey he entered into a new agreement that required Sinatra to turn over 43 percent of all future earnings to Dorsey and Dorsey's agent. Sinatra soon realised just how bad a deal he had made and, with assistance from Jules Stein of MCA Inc., unsuccessfully tried to buy his way out of it.

Sinatra denied throughout his career that either Moretti or anyone else had threatened Dorsey with violence to cancel that contract indicated that the story was broadly true, without confirming all the details.

In the late 1940s, Moretti became acquainted with entertainers Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis while they were performing at Bill Miller's Riviera nightclub in Fort Lee, New Jersey. In earlier years, Moretti and Abner "Longy" Zwillman were watching the club's cardroom when it was previously owned by Ben Marden. In 1947, Martin, Lewis, Sinatra, and comedian Milton Berle all performed at the wedding reception of one of Moretti's daughters.

Moretti's organized crime colleagues, on the other hand, were not amused. Moretti had, in fact, been showing signs of instability for years before his appearance before the Kefauver Committee; his friend and boss, Frank Costello, sent Moretti to California in 1943 to seek a cure for his medical condition, with a male nurse serving as a bodyguard to keep him out of trouble.

Moretti's performance before the Kefauver Committee made all of those concerns even more salient. Moretti did not help his case by speaking regularly to the press after he appeared before Congress, giving his opinions about the state of the world and how to curb the growing power of the mob. Members of the Commission feared that Moretti might start sharing more damaging information about the internal workings of the Mafia and particular crimes by them.

As it turned out those fears were not unfounded: around the time Moretti was joking with and deflecting questions from the Senate Subcommittee and the press he was also speaking with an agent of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.

These heightened concerns about Moretti came at an opportune time for Vito Genovese. Costello had made Moretti the underboss of the Luciano crime family after Lucky Luciano was imprisoned and Genovese had fled to Italy. Genovese had never accepted his demotion to capo of a crew operating in Greenwich Village, rather than reinstatement as underboss or acting boss, upon his return from Italy in 1945. Genovese directed his anger chiefly at Moretti, who he thought stood in his way, and started talking as early as 1949 about the need to eliminate Moretti, according to Joe Valachi, one of Genovese's soldiers. Genovese also was covetous of Moretti's gambling rackets, which he hoped to seize once Moretti was eliminated, and positioned his lieutenant Jerry Catena to be prepared to take over on Moretti's death. </blockquote>

Moretti's funeral service was conducted at Corpus Christi Church in Hasbrouck Heights and his burial at St. Michael's Cemetery in South Hackensack, New Jersey. Over 5,000 mourners attended the event, resulting in a circus-like atmosphere that required police intervention to clear away the crowds to permit the casket to be brought into the family mausoleum. Frank Costello, receiving medical treatment in Hot Springs, Arkansas, did not attend; nor did Albert Anastasia, who was being X-rayed in a hospital fifteen miles away at the time of the slaying. He had sold his Hasbrouck Heights for cash shortly before his murder. The sequence was edited by George Lucas as a favor to Coppola for funding American Graffiti.

References

Further reading

  • Reid, Ed and Demaris, Ovid. The Green Felt Jungle. Montreal: Pocket Books, 1964.
  • Bonanno, Joseph. A Man of Honor: The Autobiography of Joseph Bonanno, Simon & Schuster, 1984.
  • Blackwell, Jon. Notorious New Jersey: 100 True Tales of Murders and Mobsters, Scandals and Scoundrels. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rivergate Books, an imprint of Rutgers University Press, 2007.
  • New York Stories – Part I by John William Tuohy
  • TIME Magazine Archive Article – Willing Willie – December 25, 1950
  • TIME Magazine Archive Article – Willie's Million – February 26, 1951