Informer

Considering Vegas issue in 2026

2026-04-01T06:39:00.004-04:00

A new issue of Informer for 2026 is currently under consideration. The issue most likely would focus on the organized crime history of Las Vegas, Nevada.

If you are interested in contributing an article to a Las Vegas-focused Informer issue, please let me know through an email to informerjournal@gmail.com. Please be specific about the article subject, the sources you intend to use and your own background, if any, in research and writing.

Thanks!

- T.

MobHistory on Substack

2025-05-20T08:17:00.000-04:00

I am sorry to announce that, due to a variety of factors including competing commitments and recent (now apparently resolved) health concerns, there is no plan to produce an issue of Informer for 2025.

I am hopeful that Informer readers will find my newest (a bit more casual / far less demanding) venture, MobHistory on Substack, to be suitable as a substitute at least in the short term.

Kindle version cracks top-100 lists

2024-11-10T11:25:00.002-05:00

The Kindle edition of Informer's November 2024 issue, The Treacherous World of Joseph Valachi, has become a top-100 seller in two Amazon.com categories: Biographies of Organized Crime and History of Mid-Atlantic U.S.

Click here to learn more about this issue.

November 2024 issue of Informer

2024-10-30T02:55:00.001-04:00

November 2024 issue contents

The Treacherous World
of Joseph Valachi

A rare primary source into Castellammarese War-era Mafia history, Joseph Valachi also described the early gangland of East Harlem, Manhattan and the Bronx, and provided a unique soldier-level view of New York-area organized crime from Prohibition to Apalachin. An early FBI informant, Valachi was the focus of a best-selling book and a popular movie, as well as televised Senate testimony and a lengthy autobiography. Yet, a great deal of the true Valachi story has remained untold.

Now, 60 years after Valachi put pen to paper to tell his story, a team of historians from around the globe is revealing long hidden aspects of his life and investigating the individuals who influenced him.

Contributors to the issue: Thomas Hunt (U.S.), Steve Turner (U.K.), Fabien Rossat (France), Jon Black (U.K.), Thibaut Maïquès (France), J. Michael Niotta PhD (U.S.), Thom L. Jones (New Zealand), Patrick Downey (U.S.), Ellen Poulsen (U.S.).

This Informer issue features articles on various phases of Valachi's existence in and out of "cosa nostra," bios of those who played important roles in his life and background of his time and place. The issue is illustrated with photos, documents and maps.

In addition to Informer's traditional print and electronic magazine formats, this issue is available in hardcover, paperback and ebook formats.The magazine and e-magazine editions total about 260 pages, and the book editions are about 500 pages. The available formats are compared in this table.

This issue is available in six formats. Use the table below to determine the appropriate format for you. Clicking a seller logo will take you to the related preview/purchase website.
Type	Identifier	Dimensions	Color?	Seller	Price (USD)
MAGAZINE LAYOUTS
Print Magazine	ISSN: 1943-7803	8 1/4" x 10 3/4" 262 pg incl covers	Yes	MagCloud	$62.00
PDF EMagazine¹	ISSN: 1944-8139	N/A	Yes	MagCloud	$20.00*
BOOK LAYOUTS
Print Hardcover²	ISBN⁵: 9798340925138	6" x 9" x 1.5" 500 pages	No	Amazon	$32.95
Print Paperback²	ISBN⁶: 9798340935007	6" x 9" x 1.25" 500 pages	No	Amazon	$24.75
Kindle EBook³	ASIN: B0DJD793GL	N/A	No	Amazon	$15.75
EPUB EBook⁴	GGKEY: EYCX505E9B9	N/A	No	GooglePlay	$15.75
1 - PDF document reader - such as Acrobat Reader - required. 2 - The printed books are indexed. (Ebooks/Emagazines can be searched.) 3 - Kindle device or Kindle reader software required. 4 - EPUB device or reader software - such as Calibre - required. 5 - Print hardcover also has ASIN: B0DJX7678D. 6 - Print paperback also has ASIN: B0DJXBBZ2F. * - PDF e-magazine is free with print magazine purchase.

Issue contents

Introduction: Betrayal ranks among the worst emotional wounds in the human experience. The pain of betrayal probably impacts every person's life to some degree. But in Joseph Valachi's life story, betrayal became a strong and recurring theme...

This section runs 5 magazine pages / 8 book pages.
It includes a map, an image, endnotes.

The issue contains the following articles and columns (click for additional information):

Feature 1

2024-10-30T02:50:00.000-04:00

November 2024 issue contents

Growing up Valachi

East Harlem boy becomes Mafia soldier

As the newborn “Giuseppe Vilacio” took his first breath in autumn 1903, his East Harlem community was home to an already substantial and still growing population of first- and second-generation Italian Americans...

18 magazine pages / 34 book pages.
Includes sidebar articles on New York Catholic Protectory; Anthony Valachi; John Valachi; Filomena, Maddalena, Antonetta Valachi.
Map, documents, images, endnotes.

Click for more information on this Informer issue.

Feature 2

2024-10-30T02:45:00.000-04:00

November 2024 issue contents

The Murder Stables

By Jon Black

A menacing maze of run-down structures played a significant role in the East Harlem childhood of Joseph Valachi. The structures, built and rebuilt over time from discarded building debris, packing crates and old sheet iron, stood at the corner of First Avenue and East 108th Street. They included junk and rag collection shops, wagon storage and other business uses. At the heart of the ramshackle complex was a boarding stable infamous for criminal activity. Due to its presence, the cluster of shacks acquired an evil reputation and became collectively known as the “Murder Stables”...

10 magazine pages / 17 book pages.
Map, images, endnotes.

Click for more information on this Informer issue.

Feature 3

2024-10-30T02:40:00.000-04:00

November 2024 issue contents

Mafia minor leaguers

East Harlem gangsters became 'mobbed up'

By Thibaut Maïquès

Pushed by poverty and peers, by about 1920 young Joseph Valachi was engaged in gang crime. He was excluded as many of his contemporaries graduated into regional racketeering. The pressure of the underworld conflict known as the Castellammarese War caused a Mafia organization to induct Valachi late in 1930...

5 magazine pages / 10 book pages.
Images, sources.

Click for more information on this Informer issue.

Feature 4

2024-10-30T02:35:00.000-04:00

November 2024 issue contents

Mystery victims

Two killed due to underworld deal were not identified by Valachi

Consiglio

Two rebel groups in the New York area joined forces against the reigning Mafia boss of bosses in 1930. But before they did so, they needed to prove commitment to their shared cause by murdering two men. Valachi described the arrangement in his autobiography but did not identify the victims...

4 magazine pages / 7 book pages.
Image, endnotes.

Click for more information on this Informer issue.

Feature 5

2024-10-30T02:30:00.000-04:00

November 2024 issue contents

How a mafioso is 'made'

Comparing underworld induction ceremonies of different times and places

By J. Michael Niotta, PhD

By the time Joe Valachi bared all in front of television cameras for Arkansas Senator John L. McClellan and his subcommittee in October of 1963, the agencies working “Italian crimes” in America already had a fair amount of intel on the Mafia, including versions of the criminal society’s induction ceremony...

5 magazine pages / 10 book pages.
Images, sources.

Click for more information on this Informer issue.

Feature 6

2024-10-30T02:25:00.000-04:00

November 2024 issue contents

'Little Apples'; big lie

We weren't told the truth about Valachi's early Mafia murder contract

By Patrick Downey

Reggione

Having survived both the Castellammarese War and the purge of Salvatore Maranzano’s faithful that followed, by the fall of 1932, Joe Valachi was settling into Mafia life. As a new member of a crew run by Anthony Strollo, aka Tony Bender, he became safely entrenched in the Mafia organization headed by Charlie “Lucky” Luciano (Salvatore Lucania) and his underboss Vito Genovese. Through The Valachi Papers, we learn that Joe received his first Luciano Crime Family murder contract via Bender that autumn. The victim was twenty-one-year-old hoodlum Michael Reggione, nicknamed Little Apples, who hung around a coffee shop on East 109th Street...

4 magazine pages / 7 book pages.
Images, documents, sources.

Click for more information on this Informer issue.

Feature 7

2024-10-30T02:20:00.000-04:00

November 2024 issue contents

Killing of off-dury officer linked to Valachi kin

By Thomas Hunt with Ellen Poulsen

Officer Loreto

The killing of off-duty New York Police Officer Alfred Loreto in the summer of 1950 occurred in a Bronx neighborhood familiar to Joseph Valachi and may have resulted from the criminal ventures of Valachi’s brother-in-law Giacomo “Jack” Reina...

6 magazine pages / 12 book pages.
Images, sources.

Click for more information on this Informer issue.

Feature 8

2024-10-30T02:15:00.000-04:00

November 2024 issue contents

Valachi and women

Through his teen years and early adulthood, Valachi avoided serious romantic entanglements, feeling shame over his poor living conditions and the crimes he was committing in an effort to remedy them. Around his mid-twenties, he began to more highly value his bonds with women. While fidelity was never his strong suit, he formed a series of meaningful connections with women...

5 magazine pages / 10 book pages.
Images, endnotes.

Click for more information on this Informer issue.

Feature 10

2024-10-30T02:10:00.001-04:00

November 2024 issue contents

Murder by mistake

Saupp was fatally beaten because he physically resembled a mobster

Though reportedly involved in thirty-three homicides, Valachi generally denied committing killings with his own hands. The one murder he admitted to performing himself, the vicious beating death of prison inmate John Joseph Saupp, was said to be the result of a mistake...

11 magazine pages / 16 book pages.
Images, endnotes.

Click for more information on this Informer issue.

Feature 9

2024-10-30T02:10:00.000-04:00

November 2024 issue contents

Valachi and 'the French Connection'

By Fabien Rossat

Frank Caruso, Vincent Mauro, Salvatore Maneri

On December 27, 1961, Joseph Valachi, a member of the Genovese Crime Family, and ten codefendants were convicted of importing into the United States $150 million worth of heroin. Sentenced to twenty years for this affair, it was the end of Valachi’s long racketeering career. A few months later, he would become the first penitent to publicly testify to the existence of Cosa Nostra in the U.S. While Valachi had been an important link in the drug operation, that link was near one end of a vast chain – a multinational trafficking network that the general public would later know (thanks to Director William Friedkin's 1971 film) as The French Connection...

11 magazine pages / 18 book pages.
Images, map, endnotes.

Click for more information on this Informer issue.

Feature 11

2024-10-30T02:05:00.000-04:00

November 2024 issue contents

Was Valachi insane?

Joseph Valachi’s rationality and emotional stability were questioned by a number of sources on a number of occasions. Some issues were raised by Valachi’s history, actions and comments; some by the underworld colleagues he publicly betrayed; some by a critical press...

7 magazine pages / 13 book pages.
Sidebar articles on Counting up the 'crazies,' Lipton's troubles.
Images, document, endnotes.

Click for more information on this Informer issue.

Feature 12

2024-10-30T02:00:00.000-04:00

November 2024 issue contents

Valachi and the FBI

rechristened the Mafia

J. Edgar Hoover

The Federal Bureau of Investigation hesitated to join U.S. law enforcement’s battle against the Mafia underworld network. The Bureau refused even to recognize the existence of the secret criminal society until circumstances left it no option. FBI did not fully engage organized crime until, with Joseph Valachi’s televised assistance, it had rebranded the syndicate...

7 magazine pages / 13 book pages.
Images, endnotes.

Click for more information on this Informer issue.

Feature 13

2024-10-30T01:55:00.000-04:00

November 2024 issue contents

DOJ vs FBI

Government agencies squabbled over the release of Valachi's information

Robert Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and its parent Department of Justice had very different ideas of what to do with informant Joseph Valachi and the organized-crime data he provided. In a feud that lasted a year, each agency worked to block and undermine the other and eventually made its own secret publicity arrangements...

8 magazine pages / 14 book pages.
Sidebar articles on Courtney Allen Evans, Miriam Ottenberg
Images, documents, endnotes.

Click for more information on this Informer issue.

Feature 14

2024-10-30T01:50:00.000-04:00

November 2024 issue contents

Testimony was 'a mixed bag'

Valachi's televised appearances amounted to something less than a law enforcement triumph

The televised testimony of Mafia turncoat Joseph Valachi in the early autumn of 1963 certainly was a media spectacle. However, it was not universally regarded as a turning point in law enforcement’s war against organized crime...

12 magazine pages / 22 book pages.
Sidebar article on Early slot machine opposition.
Images, endnotes.

Click for more information on this Informer issue.

Brief bios

2024-10-30T01:45:00.000-04:00

November 2024 issue contents

Minor characters in the Valachi epic

By Thomas Hunt and Steve Turner

Joseph Valachi came into contact with many interesting people, on both sides of the law, during his lifetime. He discussed dozens in his autobiography and in interviews with author Peter Maas, which became the foundation of The Valachi Papers. Though minor characters in the Valachi life story, many are deserving of the special attention of crime historians. In this section, we look at a number of these individuals, providing a summary of what Valachi had to say about them, as well as the data we have been able to assemble from historical records...
(Biographies of Judge Matthew Thomas Abruzzo, Frank “Big Dick” Amato, Ludwig “Dutchman” Augustine, Brother Abel, Frank “Chic 99” Callace, Edward “Eddie Starr” Capobianco, Angelo Caruso, Stephen “Buck Jones” Casertano, Joseph “Muskie” Castaldo, Carmine “Dolly Dimples” Clementi, Ettore “Eddie” Coco, Vincent “Doc” D’Anna, John “Johnny Dee” DeBellis, Dominick “Dom the Sailor” DiQuarto, Michael DiBenedetto, Assoc. Warden Marion Jesse Elliott, Stephen Franse, Narcotics Agent George H. Gaffney, Eugene “Gene” Giannini, Peter “Thomas O’Neill” Heslin, Peter “Muggin” Leone, Frank “Cheech” Livorsi, Samuel “Sam Medal” Medaglia, Nick Paduano, Michael “Little Apples” Reggione, John “Bum” Rodgers, John “Curley” Russomano, “Sadie,” Fiore “Fury” Siano, Innocenzio “John the Bug” Stoppelli, Giuseppe “Diamond Joe Peppe” Viserti, Tony “Sharkey” Zaccaro.)

86 magazine pages / 163 book pages.
Images, endnotes.

Click for more information on this Informer issue.

Just One More Thing

2024-10-30T01:40:00.000-04:00

November 2024 issue contents

Elusive Crime Figures

Identities of some Valachi underworld associates remain frustratingly uncertain

By Thomas Hunt and Steve Turner

Our plan to define the vaguely described characters in Joseph Valachi’s life story encountered a few significant obstacles. While we were able to establish the identities and outline the activities of many of the individuals Valachi referred to in his autobiography and other statements, a number of individuals continue to be frustratingly unknown...

6 magazine pages / 12 book pages.
Endnotes.

Click for more information on this Informer issue.

Feature 15

2024-10-30T01:35:00.000-04:00

November 2024 issue contents

Getting the story printed

Deemed dangerous, Valachi's autobiography was suppressed by the White House

Peter Maas

Though the Lyndon Johnson Administration initially endorsed a plan to publish Joseph Valachi’s autobiography, political pressures caused the administration to quickly reverse course and block publication. When journalist Peter Maas attempted to publicize the details of Valachi’s life story, the government sued to stop him...

6 magazine pages / 13 book pages.
Sidebar articles on Peter Maas, Notes to Maas.
Images, endnotes.

Click for more information on this Informer issue.

Mob Corner

2024-10-30T01:30:00.000-04:00

November 2024 issue contents

End of Days

by Thom L. Jones

La Tuna Federal Prison

This is how it might have been...
It’s hard work being Joe Valachi.
Sitting in his prison cell, just this side of the Texas border from Ciudad Juarez, he spends his days in reflection. A lot...

4 magazine pages / 8 book pages.
Images, endnotes.

Click for more information on this Informer issue.

Feature 16

2024-10-30T01:25:00.000-04:00

November 2024 issue contents

Valachi's exit

Much was omitted from official reports

The New York newspapers of April 4, 1971, reported that Joseph Valachi had died of a “heart attack” the previous day. The New York Daily News suggested, “It was an incongruously peaceful end for a professional killer who had run with the mobs since he was 15…” While the final narcotic-dulled seconds of Valachi’s troubled life must have been tranquil, his last moments of full consciousness were tortured...

3 magazine pages / 6 book pages.
Image, document, endnotes.

Click for more information on this Informer issue.

Feature 17

2024-10-30T01:20:00.000-04:00

November 2024 issue contents

Last will and testament

of Joseph Valachi

Joseph Valachi composed his last will and testament in the spring of 1967, while he was in the Federal Correctional Institution at Milan, Michigan. In contrast with the extraordinarily lengthy autobiography he wrote in 1964-1965, the will was just a page and a half. It was penned about a year after Valachi – desperately unhappy over his transfer to Milan and the government’s withdrawal of permission to publish his book – tried to take his own life. The bruises he suffered in the attemped hanging had healed, and author Peter Maas was moving ahead with plans to publish Valachi’s story, but the famous informant still had death on his mind...

3 magazine pages / 5 book pages.
Document, endnotes.

Click for more information on this Informer issue.

Feature 18

2024-10-30T01:15:00.000-04:00

November 2024 issue contents

Marie Jackson mysteries remain

Much about the relationship between Joseph Valachi and Marie Katherine Jackson still remains a mystery more than five decades after it concluded with Valachi’s passing...

5 magazine pages / 11 book pages.
Image, endnotes.

Informer

Considering Vegas issue in 2026

MobHistory on Substack

Kindle version cracks top-100 lists

November 2024 issue of Informer

The Treacherous Worldof Joseph Valachi

Issue contents

Feature 1

Growing up Valachi

East Harlem boy becomes Mafia soldier

Feature 2

The Murder Stables

Feature 3

Mafia minor leaguers

East Harlem gangsters became 'mobbed up'

Feature 4

Mystery victims

Two killed due to underworld deal were not identified by Valachi

Feature 5

How a mafioso is 'made'

Comparing underworld induction ceremonies of different times and places

Feature 6

'Little Apples'; big lie

We weren't told the truth about Valachi's early Mafia murder contract

Feature 7

Killing of off-dury officer linked to Valachi kin

Feature 8

Valachi and women

Feature 10

Murder by mistake

Saupp was fatally beaten because he physically resembled a mobster

Feature 9

Valachi and 'the French Connection'

Feature 11

Was Valachi insane?

Feature 12

Valachi and the FBI

rechristened the Mafia

Feature 13

DOJ vs FBI

Government agencies squabbled over the release of Valachi's information

Feature 14

Testimony was 'a mixed bag'

Valachi's televised appearances amounted to something less than a law enforcement triumph

Brief bios

Minor characters in the Valachi epic

Just One More Thing

Elusive Crime Figures

Identities of some Valachi underworld associates remain frustratingly uncertain

Feature 15

Getting the story printed

Deemed dangerous, Valachi's autobiography was suppressed by the White House

Mob Corner

End of Days

Feature 16

Valachi's exit

Much was omitted from official reports

Feature 17

Last will and testament

of Joseph Valachi

Feature 18

Marie Jackson mysteries remain

The Treacherous World
of Joseph Valachi