[Carmine Galante] was also trying to unite with the columbos and take over the porno business in los angeles.
Any weblinks to Galante trying to unite the Colombos and taking over the LA porn business?
Galante travelled to Los Angeles in August, 1975, to meet up with his contacts in Orange County. According to a source close to the Anaheim Police Department, he was organizing a possible take-over of the pornography rackets in Southern California.
‘Lilo’ was spotted meeting with people at Disneyland, dressed like a tourist in a white T shirt, sporting a ‘Coney Island hat’ and puffing away on his usual cigar. He was first spotted strolling down Main Street, and then he was seen in earnest conversation with a group of men as they banged around on the go-cart stand. He also spent time on payphones located outside the park’s main entrance, near the Mickey Mouse train stop.
The major mob player in the porno business of Southern California, up to this time, was the Gambino Family through their capo, the seventy-one year old Ettore ‘Tony Russo’ Zappi. He and his son, Anthony, were managing the business using North Hollywood based William Haimowitz, a protégé of Zappi’s, who had moved from New York and set up shop with the help of Jimmy ‘The Weasel’ Fratiano, a member of the L.A. family, and Anaheim based John Lombardozzi, the brother of another powerful capo, Carmine Lombardozzi, who belonged to Carlo Gambino‘s crime family back in New York.
Galante’s man in the porn business, Mickey Zaffarano, was making major inroads into the industry, stealing business away from the Gambino representatives, and one of the reasons for Galante’s visit, may well have revolved around these activities. Galante was also seen with these people at a restaurant in a major city in Los Angeles County, and meetings between porn operators and the Mafia representatives took place while Galante was visiting the area. Underworld sources indicated that Galante also had ambitions to consolidate Colombo and Luchese family members who operated here in Southern California, into one super family.
In the early 1960s, organized crime had established a west coast base of operations in the San Fernando Valley. The Colombo crime family sent people out with money to start their west coast operations. It became the very first pornography business that created a corporate structure for the different parts of the business - distributing, producing, recruiting participants for the movies, filming, packaging, advertising, they created different corporate identities to make law enforcement think it was all owned by different people. Joe ‘The Whale’ Peraino and his brother Louis, both made men in the Colombo crime family, were the producers of the innovative and ground-breaking film, ‘Deep Throat.’
