FBI Detroit report page summarizing Commissioner George Edwards's McClellan testimony (October 1963)

A report page headed “DE 92-228” and numbered 5. After a redacted informant passage, it states: “The ‘Detroit Free Press’, a Detroit, Michigan daily newspaper, edition of October 11, 1963, contained an article which reflected that Detroit Police Commissioner GEORGE EDWARDS had testified on October 10, 1963, before the McClellan Subcommittee at Washington, D.C.” It says Edwards testified that the Detroit crime syndicate “appears to be part of the same national organization that JOSEPH VALACHI called ‘Cosa Nostra’,” a name he had not heard before, though he had heard “The Mafia,” “The Syndicate,” and “The People.”

The page continues: “EDWARDS testified that the Detroit area was controlled by a five-man group known as ‘the council’ and these men are referred to as ‘dons.’” It says their function was to designate authority, settle disputes and set penalties, and that “EDWARDS named JOSEPH ZERILLI, JOHN PRIZIOLA, ANGELO MELI, PETER LICAVOLI and WILLIAM TOCCO as being ‘the dons.’” Below them, it says, Edwards described “big men,” then “chiefs,” “lieutenants” and “section leaders.”

This is the FBI’s summary of a newspaper’s account of testimony; it is two steps from the hearing record. The printed volume of those hearings is filed at volume level as Part 2 of the 1963 hearings, and the Detroit police chart Edwards presented is Exhibit 18, whose “Ruling Council” band carries the same five names; Edwards’s spoken testimony in that volume has not been read for this archive. The report’s own date is not on this page; the preceding page carries an informant statement of October 25, 1963, so the report is later than that. The names are the newspaper’s account of a police commissioner’s testimony, not findings, and this archive does not put them on any chart.