Pretty simple I'd like to gather all of your opinions on this topic. I would stick to individuals active after proabition because before and during there were so many powerful Jewish and Irish gangsters a realistic list would not be possible. My picks would be humphries or lanskey

Joe the German Watts

Lewis Kasman




The Windy city has had a few in their time.


Jimmy Hoffa was quiet powerful (until he wasnt).

Watts was an associate in the Gambino crime family who Gotti was very close to. Gotti told him if he can show proof that he was a quarter Italian like the guy said he would give him his button. It was too late because Gotti went to jail in the early 90's not long after telling Watts that.

Hoover

I wouldn't say the most powerful, but Jimmy Burke pulled a lot of weight and kicked up plenty to the Vario crew. If he was Italian he'd have been made quite a while ago. He had his own crew at Robert's lounge and had all sorts of rackets, even though he's mostly known because of the Lufthansa heist (and Goodfellas)

Papa smuf. Should have inducted him yesterday. Angelo Ponce owns a lot of sq yards of NYC. I just watched this big lady kill 2 big ass pancakes in 1 min. Wow.

one choice.. its lansky ..

The OP maybe should have said "besides Meyer Lansky" because everyone is going to pick him first.

Besides Lansky, I would say Al Capone before he was recognized as a mafia family in 1931.

Outside his own neighborhood he wasn't as powerful as you might think. And he had zero pull in trade unions or with anything remotely legitimate. In my opinion, to say "most powerful ever" would imply that he could pick up a phone and shut down a million dollar construction site, or order a wildcat strike. But it's like I always say, power is a relative term. And in Ozone Park Jimmy Burke was no one to be trifled with.

IDK. Burke was the brains behind the Lufthansa heist wasn't he? One of the biggest scores in mob history, no?

And the motley crue he did it with didn't seem to be the brightest bunch.

He's not quite at the top (Lansky) but in terms of post 60's and 70's mob guys surely he has to be up there.

I never said that he wasn't a moneymaker. And I said that in his area of operations that he was no one to be fucked with. So again, power is a relative term. But in terms of powerful on a citywide level? No, he wasn't.

Forget that he went off half-cocked and killed Batts. Burke was owned by the Italians. The real old time Italians looked at Lansky as an equal and called on him for his input. The Italians in Queens looked at Burke as a partner in crime, nothing more. They respected him, but at the same time they owned him.

Shoot, Lansky counts as made in my book. That's how much pull he had and respect, from Italian hoods back then.

And by the way, Moe. I pm'd you last week and you never got back to me.

Burke was an evil sociopath and murderer with a chip on his shoulder.

And he was almost as big a drug addict as Hill, which is really saying something. He's a little before my time and I'm a Bronx guy, but I've heard from very reliable people that he was so fucked up on speed and booze that he'd go weeks without sleeping. And when that sleep deprived paranoia would set in, that's when people would start disappearing.

I believe it, PB! I'm shocked the Italians put up with him for so long without killing his ass, like the Varrio crew members, maybe they didn't know about all the wannabe hoods and real mobsters he clipped.

In a parallel universe where they didn't end up dying in prison, the Gotti crew probably would have killed Burke after Vario died and John was at the peak of his power (late '80s).

true...pizza

Hmmm sounds familiar

I realize that, PB. I was just giving an example of somebody who is not/cannot get made and pulls a lot of weight like the OP asked... but as in the most powerful ever, not even close.
Burke was into almost every "blue collar" racket you can think of and he had quite a reputation at the time.

I'm not surprised he was using uppers all the time and like you said when his drug-fueled paranoid schizophrenia set in, that's when people would start disappearing. Two bits I remember from the Wiseguy book to fit the discussion:
-Burke would spend his nights when he was at home watching TV and smoking cigarettes (like a true paranoid schizo) and when Martin Krugman's wig commercials would come up, he'd get very pissed and that would just be one more reason to keep him up at night.
-After the Lufthansa heist, at least according to Hill, at one time they were in the car together Jimmy slipped up and said that the money was "cursed." When you think about it he was right, not in the literal sense but that it was too much money for the heat to ever go away.

He turned down a button.

do you mean ponte?

Ponte and Franco had too much to lose to get their buttons. I've said this here a million times. But generally speaking, the Westside shies away from making the big garbage guys. There's just too much to lose via the anti-trust laws. You breach those and you're chased from the industry.

And before someone mentions Cockeyed Nick, that was a LONG time ago. And he was made LONG before he became the King of Garbage in Westchester.

Moe Dalitz, Ruby Stein possibly. Marat Bagaula

my choice would be murray Humphries out of Chicago. this man was responsible for mob guys taking the 5th amendment, it was his idea, and it worked great for them.

as far as burke goes, he was really too small time to handle a heist like Lufthansa, don't forget it was handed over to him on a silver platter, it was an inside job, the guys that worked there gave him all the information.

with what the inside guys gave burke, anybody could have pulled it off, I don't think made guys feared burke, he could have been whacked any time.

Lansky, Moe Dalitz, Murray Humphreys, Gus Alex. Sidney Korshak qualifies, I would think.

People forget how powerful Lepke Buchalter was. The guy was basically on the same level as the LCN bosses.

Danny Greene. Brought the Cleveland mob to its knees single-handedly.

The balls on this Irishman. His ballsiness had implications on cosa nostra stateswide.

moe, great book on him " kill the Irishman"