Colombo family

This page is a hub for the Brooklyn family that the 1963 Senate record calls “known originally as the Profaci family,” later under Magliocco, and that later records name for Joseph Colombo. The chart above stays empty: no record filed here is a cited, separate decision to place a name in a seat. Each person page below quotes the strongest statement a record makes about that person, and those statements are of different kinds.

• What the government established, as a court summarizes it. An appeals court stating what the prosecution proved at trial. The court affirmed on that record, but the sentence describes the government’s proof.
• Charge. An indictment, civil complaint or detention proffer, as a court summarized it. An allegation, not a finding.
• Testimony. Sworn testimony as printed: Joseph Valachi and NYPD Deputy Chief Inspector John Shanley in 1963, FBI officials in 1988, and trial witnesses as a court summarized them. A witness’s “yes” to counsel’s question counts as testimony; the question alone does not. Quotations from the 1963 hearings correct obvious errors in the scan’s text layer; the person pages note each correction.
• Chart exhibit. A name printed on the 1963 subcommittee’s Exhibit 8 or Charts A to E. A chart entry is the committee’s or the police department’s summary; it never fills a role or a seat here.
• Attorney General’s statement. Robert F. Kennedy’s prepared statement to the subcommittee in 1963. An official statement, not testimony about events he saw.
• FBI memo or history page. The Bureau’s own memoranda, reports and teletypes, often relaying informants, and its later history essays.
• DOJ release. A U.S. Attorney’s press release. It reports the government’s position.

The person pages

The order is roughly that of the records’ dates. It is not a succession chart.

• Joseph Profaci: “In Brooklyn, Joe Profaci, when I left the streets in 1960.” Testimony (Valachi, 1963). The police witness agreed the later Magliocco family “was known originally as the Profaci family.” Testimony.
• Giuseppe Magliocco: asked who succeeded Profaci, “It appears to be Joseph Magliocco.” Testimony (NYPD, 1963). The Attorney General said he “has not been confirmed by the commission and will probably not be.” Attorney General’s statement.
• Joseph Colombo: “‘boss’ of the Colombo La Cosa Nostra ‘family’.” FBI memo (1971). FBI testimony in 1988 refers to the “shooting of then-boss Joseph Colombo in 1971.” Testimony.
• Carmine Persico: “Persico was boss of the Colombo family.” What the government established, as the Second Circuit summarizes it (1989). The 1987 appeal in the Colombo case records the government’s description, “Carmine Persico, the Boss of the Colombo Family.” Charge. His page cites court records only.
• Gennaro Langella: “Langella its underboss.” What the government established (1989); “assisted by Gennaro Langella, the Underboss,” in the government’s description (1987). Charge.

What the chart still waits for

The seats are Boss, Underboss and Consigliere. The statements above that put one of those titles on a named man for this family come from the 1963 testimony (Profaci, then Magliocco), from FBI memoranda (Colombo), and from the Commission appeal’s account of what the government established (Persico as boss, Langella as underboss). Each holds for its own period, and none is yet a separate, cited decision on this page; the Salerno opinion’s account stays on its own page. No record opened names a consigliere. The 2011 indictments and the 2012 guilty pleas are filed as records; the names and positions in those releases are not copied here. A name goes into a seat only by a separate, cited decision.

The Five Families section’s other pages are Genovese, Gambino, Lucchese, Bonanno and the Commission.