Part 2 of the article continued:

As the summer waned and Nardi prepared for his Florida trial, he and Moceri had what was to be their last encounter. During the mid-August Feast of the Assumption in Little Italy, Nardi demanded a cut of the gambling games run by White and Moceri at the huge street festival. Moceri flatly refused.

Moceri was last seen in Little Italy on August 22 of that year at the close of the Feast. Ten days later his car was found in the parking lot of an Akron motel, the trunk soaked with blood. He has not been seen since. Although Nardi denied knowledge of the suspected murder, the national underworld was disturbed that one of their stellar lights had been dispatched without the normal approval given at a "sit down" of local chieftains.

Jack White, once the peacemaker, now wanted revenge. But he needed someone more professional than his ambitious unskilled young soldiers. Even Eugene (The Animal) Ciasullo, believed by the FBI to be a hit man and the brightest if not toughest of White's aides, wanted nothing more to do with the struggle. Two bombing attempts on Ciasullo's life that summer and fall convinced him to move to Florida. (He is now believed back in Cleveland.)

White and his friend Tony Del Santer sought the help of Jimmy (The Weasel) Fratianno, an important West Coast Mafia member and hired killer who had grown up in Cleveland and still has relatives here. Fratianno introduced White and Del Santer to Raymond Ferritto, a hoodlum from Erie, Pennsylvania with whom he had served time in California. Fratianno knew of Ferritto's reputation as a gunman — in 1969, Ferritto had killed Julius Petro, an ex-Cleveland thug, by luring him into a car in Los Angeles and shooting him in the side of the head — and felt that Ferritto, who was close to many Cleveland mobsters, could be trusted. Ferritto was said to be eager for the work, and the Clevelanders were anxious to have him, because he was not known to Greene and Nardi.

Yet Feritto, 49, a sometime bookmaker, nightclub operator and vending machine company employe, hardly fit the stereotyped image of a sophisticated and cool hit man. Tall, thin, with salt-and-pepper hair, Ferritto was known to be highly volatile, flying into rages at the slightest annoyance. Some years back, part of his stomach had been removed because of aggravated ulcers. To ease his nerves, Ferritto ate antacids by the bottleful or smoked marijuana.

Later, after Ferritto was identified by a secret witness at the Greene bombing and arrested, he told the FBI that White had been unsure of how to get at Greene and Nardi, but gave him the go-ahead to kill either. Information regarding their habits was to be provided by Pasquale (Butchy) Cisternino and Ronald Carabbia, the latter being the Youngstown under-boss to Del Santer.

"White told me not to worry," Ferritto told the FBI, "that I would be taken care of ... that they could either pay me one lump sum or, if the work was done, he could 'make me' in 'our thing.' " "Our thing" translates "Mafia."

Ferritto had left his meeting with White believing he would hear from Cisternino or Carabbia. For a long while he didn't. Then, one September night, Nardi, still exultant over his acquittal in Florida, was leaving the Italian-American Brotherhood Club when bullets pierced the windshield of his car. He escaped, but believed Jack White's underlings — Butchy Cisternino, Joe Iacobacci, Glenn Pauley, Allie Calabrese and Joseph Bonariggo — were responsible for the assassination attempt.

"These efforts," Ferritto later said, "made me begin to believe that the deal made with me no longer was a deal."

A few days after the assassination attempt on Nardi, a bomb was placed in Calabrese's 1975 Lincoln Continental, which was parked across the street from his house in a neighbor's driveway. When the neighbor, Frank Pircio, tried to move Calabrese's car, the bomb exploded. He was the first innocent victim of the gangland struggle.

By the spring of 1977, after various bombings and shootings attributed to both sides, it became clear that Jack White did not care who hit Greene and Nardi, as long as they were eliminated. Indeed, White was so overwhelmed by the task that he brought into his confidence several longtime associates to debate and analyze the situation. Among these men, according to Ferritto, was John Calandra, the mild-tempered, 68-year-old owner of a Collinwood tool and die shop whom the FBI had investigated a few years before for loansharking.

"Calandra told me there were a lot of people all over the country concerned over the killing of Leo Moceri and something had to be done to get this thing over with," Ferritto explained to the FBI. "He told me people wanted to know what was being done and asked that if help was needed they would send any help to take care of it. Calandra told me that White had refused this help because he felt it was his problem, and to 'save face' he had to take care of it himself as it would be embarrassing to be the boss of Cleveland and have to ask for outside help."

By the spring of 1977, Ferritto still had not received the requisite back-up support or the advance money he had been promised. He made occasional trips from Erie to Cleveland so Cisternino could show him Greene's green Lincoln and other cars, his home, and his favorite restaurants. But because Greene's habits were so erratic, he was difficult to pin down. Other attempts on Greene's life were unproductive. According to information provided the FBI by an informant, Calabrese and Iacobacci followed Greene to Texas in early 1977, where he was putting together a deal to purchase a cattle feeding lot and processing plant. But they could not find him there.

A month later, in March, Calabrese and Cisternino learned that Greene and Nardi were traveling to New York City together. They hooked a bomb to Nardi's car, parked at Cleveland-Hopkins Airport, and then rented a room at the airport motel, waiting for Greene and Nardi's return. But the bomb, which was activated by an electronic garage door opener, was not connected properly. As Nardi and Greene departed safely, Cisternino and Calabrese reportedly ran through the motel lobby, electronic activator in hand, pushing the starter button repeatedly.

By May 1977, Greene had learned through a street source that Jack White was planning Nardi's murder. He sent his aides, Brian O'Donnell, an electrician for the Curry Music Company, and Keith Ritson, an ex-Golden Gloves boxer, to warn the Teamster official. But Nardi told Greene's emissaries:

"Don't worry, Jack White is my friend. I've known him all my life."

Nardi would normally leave his car at a gas station on Carnegie Avenue while at the nearby Teamster offices. On the afternoon of May 17 — the same day Greene's emissaries visited him — he inexplicably broke with his routine and parked in the regular Teamster lot.

While he was inside, someone parked a car loaded with a bomb next to his Cadillac. Nardi left the Teamster hall for the last time at 3 p.m. and got into his car just as the bomb in the adjacent car was electronically detonated. He was killed instantly.

The FBI suspected the fine hand of Jack White in the murder, but when Ferritto asked Ronnie Carabbia specifically if Cisternino was involved, the Youngstown hoodlum replied: "No, his is the gang that couldn't shoot straight."

Despite their previous bungled attempts, "the gang that couldn't shoot straight" was now more determined than ever to kill their last remaining enemy. But Danny Greene was not an easy target — for anyone. He had encouraged Nardi to attempt taking over the street rackets and become the number one man on Murray Hill. Greene had killed people and instructed his associates to kill others. He was cunning, brutal and fearless. He knew he was going to be killed but did not seem to care. He refused to compromise with his enemies.

And no other man scared them more. Cisternino and some associates actually sequestered themselves in a Collinwood apartment hideout after the Nardi murder — "going to the mattresses," in mob parlance — because they believed that Greene was stalking them.

No Cleveland hoodlum ever lived on headlines and myth like Danny Greene. He loved publicity and relished the very thought that though his enemies had tried to shoot and bomb and maim him, he still came out on top. And no one hoodlum, with the exception of the late Shondor Birns (who helped bring Greene along, then was reportedly killed by him), has quite caught the city's interest like Danny Greene.

Psychiatrists would probably say Greene had a martyr complex and a death wish. After Nardi was blown away, Greene sat bare-chested outside his dumpy office trailer on Waterloo Road in Collinwood beneath an Irish green, white and gold flag and told newspaper reporters: "If they want me, they know where to find me."

Just who was this brazen man? A homicidal maniac? An FBI informant? A shrewd businessman? A Robin Hood?

Greene's origins are somewhat murky. "It is too painful to talk about," he would often say about his childhood. This much is known:

He was born in 1929 of Irish-American parents. His mother's maiden name is Fallon, an alias he frequently used. His father left or died when he was a child and Danny was placed in Parmadale, a Catholic orphanage. He attended Collinwood High School, where he had his first of many encounters with tough neighborhood Italian kids, spawning a lifelong hatred of Italians.

Oddly enough, while privately disparaging Italians, he cooperated with a good many of them — when it was in his own interest. He believed, for example, that Tony Liberatore was his friend, even while Liberatore was conspiring behind his back to have him murdered.

After leaving Collinwood, Greene joined the Marines, where he boxed and became an expert marksman — a talent that would spur his criminal career.

By the early Sixties, Danny was working on the Cleveland docks and before long had taken over the leadership of the then-somnolent local of the International Longshoreman's Union. Greene forced the stevedore companies to allow the ILA to control the hiring of dock workers. As a prerequisite for a regular job, many workers were forced to unload grain boats on a temporary basis and turn their checks over to Greene. The money ostensibly was for a union building fund, but most of it wound up in Greene's pockets.

"He read On the Waterfront," recalls one ILA member who helped Greene take over the union. "He imagined himself a tough dock boss. But he was 30 years too late. He used workers to beat up union members who did not come in line, but he was never seen fighting himself. He was a spellbinding speaker and a good organizer."

So effective a leader was Greene that he often lay in the sun while his men worked or — incredibly — actually coated him with suntan oil. When the weather was bad, he would practice target shooting in the union hall. At 5 feet, 10 inches, with curly blond hair, Greene was handsome but extremely self-conscious about his physical appearance. Not only did he lift weights and jog, but in later years he gave up drinking and smoking as well, underwent a hair transplant, and applied himself to a rigid diet of fish, vegetables and vitamins.

Solely to demonstrate his authority on the docks to company owners, he would call nonsensical, periodic work stoppages — often as many as 25 a day. Greene's aim was to shake down his employers for payoffs — but most refused. He even went as far as threatening to kill the children of one company owner, whose house had to be put under FBI protection and whose children were escorted by armed guard to school.

Reporter Sam Marshall gathered affidavits from dock workers charging Greene with taking their paychecks for a lengthy Plain Dealer expose. Greene was forced out of the union and convicted in federal court of embezzlement — a conviction which was overturned on appeal. Rather than face a second trial Greene pleaded guilty to a lesser crime of falsifying union records, and was fined $10,000 and given a suspended sentence. He neither paid the fine nor ever went to prison for any of his activities.

While on the docks, Greene was befriended by Babe Triscaro, the late Teamster boss who owned a day-laborer employment service. Once when Jimmy Hoffa, the former national Teamster president, came to Cleveland, Triscaro hauled Greene down to Burke Lakefront Airport to meet the legendary union leader. Hoffa apparently was not impressed by Greene's wild talk. "Stay away from that guy," he cautioned Triscaro, "there's something wrong with him."

Through Triscaro's introductions, Greene came into contact with various local organized crime figures, including the late Frank Brancato, under-boss to John Scalish. At one point, Greene chauffeured Brancato around town to pick up his loansharking tabs.


Greene also worked with Shondor Birns, helping him enforce peace in the numbers business. When Birns needed a timely bomb placed under some renegade operator, Greene was most obliging. But in 1968, the rising Irish hoodlum almost killed himself when throwing a bomb at an East Side numbers drop. A short-fused stick of dynamite blew back in his car, demolishing the vehicle and shattering Greene's right ear drum. He was hard of hearing for the rest of his life.





Greene eventually started his own business, Emerald Industrial Relations. His modus operandi was simple. Some union friends would stall or cause trouble on a construction site. Greene would then step in and guarantee labor peace — for a price. Many companies paid rather than suffer costly delays. Greene was investigated for his labor shakedowns on, among other projects, the Central National Bank Building and the Justice Center.

Under the protective wing of Frank Brancato and Tony Liberatore — himself a rising star in labor and organized crime — Greene was asked to organize the many local private rubbish haulers into the Cleveland Trade Solid Waste Guild. He bombed, burned and poured acid on equipment of haulers who were uncooperative, but was forced to abandon the guild when newspapers exposed his tactics.

Greene had many flaws, but perhaps the most serious was his noisy boasting. It was not unusual for Greene, during an otherwise pleasant conversation, to blurt out his intentions — sometimes in earnest, sometimes in jest. "That son of a bitch is going to get dumped if he's not careful," he would say.

Greene was, in fact, not above "dumping" anyone — even friends — if he believed they had crossed him. In October 1971, Greene dispatched his muscleman, Arthur Sneperger, to Cleveland Heights to fix a bomb on the car of Mike Frato, an independent rubbish hauler who once was so close to Greene that he named a son after the mobster. Sneperger wired the bomb while Greene, holding the electronic detonator, reportedly stayed a block away. Police believe he pushed the button early, killing Sneperger. Why? Just weeks earlier Greene had learned that Sneperger made a detailed account of Greene's criminal activities to the intelligence unit of the Cleveland Police Department.

How Greene found out is open to conjecture. But according to testimony in the recent trials of those accused of killing him, Greene himself was a productive FBI informant. He even went so far as to adopt a nickname for himself, the early code name of his FBI contact — "Mr. Patrick."

But Greene's relationship with the bureau, which the FBI refuses to discuss, did not cause him to mend his ways. Consider: Some years ago, Greene borrowed $75,000 from Shondor Birns in order to open an East Side after-hours spot. When he did not make good the loan — he claimed that he was not responsible for repayment since the money had gone to a black numbers figure, Billy Cox — Birns unsuccessfully tried to have him killed. When a bomb was found on the axle of Greene's car, he announced, "I'll return this to the old bastard who sent it."

Shondor Birns left Christie's Lounge, a near-West Side go-go spot, early on Holy Saturday evening in 1975 and opened the door to his Mark IV. A bomb, triggered electronically, cut his body in two.

Police believe today that Greene was responsible for the murder.


Less than two months later, Greene himself escaped yet another attempt on his life when his apartment was bombed, and he walked away from the rubble.