YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — In the late 1950s and through the ’60s, everything was booming in this former Ohio steel town.
That included mobsters.
The charming sobriquet for the litany of car explosions that befell gangsters here was called a “Youngstown tune-up.”
At the time, the city had a population of 168,000 compared to today’s 59,000. Men were willing to spend their paycheques on a litany of vice, be it gambling, girls or something else.
But like Belgium and Holland in the Second World War, Youngstown was caught between two warring armies. Halfway between Pittsburgh and Cleveland, the two underworld clans began battling over Youngstown’s rich rackets in 1950.
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Sometimes it was a bullet parked in the back of the head of a wiseguy who stepped out of line. And sometimes the gangsters would vanish into thin air off a busy downtown street.
The car bombings made America sit up and take notice, but it was the double murder of the Pittsburgh faction’s main man in Youngstown, Sandy Naples, that kicked off the bloodshed.
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On March 11, 1960, Naples, 52, and his young gal pal, Mary Ann Vrancich, were shotgunned to death while he was on a weekend furlough from the joint. Hitters for the Cleveland faction — suspected to be Cadillac Charlie Cavallaro and Vinnie DeNiro — knew that Naples made a booty call around 11 p.m. every night. Mobster and moll were both dead at the scene.
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Then came the bombings as Cleveland took its revenge. DeNiro, 39, got hit first. The charismatic gangster was a protege of Cadillac Charlie and his street enforcer.
On July 17, 1961, DeNiro was obliterated in a car bombing outside his restaurant, Cicero’s, where he ran a numbers racket called the “bug” by locals. Pittsburgh then whacked Naples’ brother Billy with a car bombing.
It was the ghastly murders of Cadillac Charlie and his 11-year-old son Tommy that brought an end to the rash of “Youngstown tune-ups.”
On Nov. 23, 1962, the day after U.S. Thanksgiving, Cavallaro planned to pay for some grapes. His two boys, Tommy and Charles, 12, would be dropped off at football practice.
He put the key in the ignition of his prized Cadillac, turned it and kaboom. The gangster and his younger son were killed instantly, Charles clung to life and would walk with a cane for the rest of his days. The blast demolished the garage and car.
“[Cavallaro’s] torso was impaled on a fence post several hundred yards away,” ex-FBI agent Cecil Moses said. “That was burned into my mind.”
“Why the boy? Knew it was coming but he didn’t expect it this way,” one local told the Youngstown Vindicator, adding the killers knew the kids would be around.
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The Saturday Evening Post — a magazine that sold millions of copies — dubbed Youngstown “Crime Town U.S.A.” The heat was on with FBI agents crawling into every crevice in the city. One agent recalled that he moved his pregnant wife and their toddler son to Cincinnati to get them out of harm’s way.
“It was scary, because it was being said that [the mafia] was going to blow up an FBI car to make a statement,” Moses said. “You hated to turn the key.”
Not only were the feds outraged, mobsters across the U.S. were furious. On wiretaps, they talked about how careless the hit was and moaned about the heat coming down on them. Seventy-five bombings and 11 deaths will do that.
“There was no clear line on who was calling the shots [in Youngstown], and that’s what caused the infighting,” Moses said, adding that the Cleveland mob got greedy.
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Things quieted down in Youngstown but underworld violence and corruption continued coupled with tough economic times as a result of mill closures that threw thousands out of work.
The hits kept rolling through the 1970s and ’80s. One nice touch was the dozen long-stemmed white roses victims received — just before they disappeared. The sudden death of long-time Cleveland godfather John Scalish in 1976 sent the family into chaos.
They were challenged by union boss Danny “The Irishman” Greene for control of the Ohio rackets. Greene would whack their guys and they’d try and get to him but kept botching the rubouts. There were an estimated 40 car bombings in the mid to late-1970s.
Finally, on Oct. 6, 1977, Youngstown mechanic Ronald “Ronnie the Crab” Carabbia and itinerant hitman Ray Ferrito took Greene off the board outside his dentist’s office via a remote-controlled bomb. Witnesses ID’d the killers.
Gangland whispers suggested Ferrito’s days were numbered so he turned canary against the Cleveland mob, sending that family into the tank.
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Crime wasn’t as fruitful as it had once been in Youngstown, but as the New Republic noted in 2000, it remained America’s most corrupt city. The mag said the mob controlled “the chief of police, the outgoing prosecutor, the sheriff, the county engineer, members of the local police force, a city law director, several defence attorneys, politicians, judges and a former assistant U.S. attorney.”
Then, in 1996, boss Lenine “Lenny” Strollo made a cataclysmic mistake: He ordered a hit on new county prosecutor Paul Gains. The work was botched and Lenny got pinched. He too flipped.
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In December 2021, famed Youngstown hitter and boss Ronald “Ronnie the Crab” Carabbia left this mortal coil. He was 92.
He came home after serving 25 years in the slammer for the Danny Greene hit. “Ronnie the Crab” came out and wanted what was his.
But by that time in Youngstown, there wasn’t much left.