Agueci brothers

Alberto and Vito Agueci, also known as the Agueci brothers, were Sicilian mafiosi who were involved with the "French Connection" in smuggling heroin from Canada into the United States during the late 1950s and early 60s with Hamilton, Ontario mobster Johnny Papalia.

Alberto, born in 1922, immigrated from Trapani, Sicily in 1950, settling in Windsor, Ontario where he worked in construction until he met Johnny Papalia in 1957.

Alberto Agueci became known for his torture-murder in late 1961 by members of the Buffalo Magaddino crime family for threatening to inform to the police on the family after boss Stefano Magaddino did not raise his bail money while he was jailed. His charred body was found in a field near Rochester, New York, on Thanksgiving Day of that year. A subsequent investigation found that over a period of several days his teeth were knocked out; his limbs, jaw and skull were broken; his eyes were burned out with a blowtorch; and over 30 pounds of flesh were sliced away from his body. His killers had also bound his hands with barbed wire, cut off his genitals and stuffed them in his mouth before strangling him with a clothesline and setting fire to the body. Vito Agueci was sentenced to 15 years in the same Atlanta Federal Penitentiary as New York boss Vito Genovese and his underling, Joseph "Joe Cago" Valachi. Valachi was a former member of the Agueci brothers' heroin network until he was arrested along with the Agueci brothers and all the members of their operation in 1961. Vito harbored ill feelings towards Valachi while they were in prison and conspired to have him killed by lying to Valachi's boss, Genovese.

Further reading

  • Humphreys, Adrian. The Enforcer:Johnny Pops Papalia, A Life and Death in the Mafia. Toronto, Canada: Harper Collins, 1999. ISBN 0-00-200016-4
  • Lamothe, Lee. & Nicaso, antonio. Bloodlines:Project Omertà and the Fall of the Mafia's Royal Family. Toronto, Canada: Harper Collins, 2001. ISBN 0-00-638524-9
  • Edwards, Peter. & Nicaso, Antonio. Deadly Silence:Canadian Mafia Murders. Toronto, Canada: MacMillan, 1993. ISBN 0-7715-9017-2
  • Dubro, James. Mob Rule:Inside the Canadian Mafia. Toronto, Canada: Totem Books, 1985. ISBN 0-00-217657-2
  • Kelly, Robert J. Encyclopedia of Organized Crime in the United States. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000. ISBN 0-313-30653-2
  • Sifakis, Carl. The Mafia Encyclopedia. New York: Da Capo Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8160-5694-3
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.