Record
Hearing
1988-04-15
Internet Archive, text of the microfiche scan of the printed hearing 'Organized Crime: 25 Years After Valachi'
Senate subcommittee hearing, 1988: testimony of FBI Special Agent in Charge Joseph E. Griffin, Cleveland
Joseph E. Griffin, head of the FBI's Cleveland office, described two task-force RICO cases, 'Buzzmark' and 'Gangmurs', and walked the subcommittee through the Cleveland conflict of the 1970s between James Licavoli's faction and Danny Greene and John Nardi.
- Date
- 1988-04-15
- Kind
- hearing
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- Docket
- Organized Crime: 25 Years After Valachi, Hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, 100th Cong., 2d Sess. (1988), S. Hrg. 100-906
- Rights
- A work of the United States Congress: a Senate hearing printed by the Government Printing Office. Public domain in the United States. 17 U.S.C. § 105.
Printed pages 126 to 136 of “Organized Crime: 25 Years After Valachi,” April 15, 1988; his prepared statement is printed from page 574. Griffin said he would discuss “two major RICO investigations. One was code named ‘Buzzmark’ and the other ‘Gangmurs’,” worked by a task force with the Cleveland police, the Cuyahoga County sheriff and prosecutor, the United States Attorney and the federal strike force.
Showing photographs (exhibits 31a to 31y, printed in the appendix but not extracted here), he said: “This is a photograph of John Scalish, who for many years was boss of the Cleveland LCN Family. He became boss in the mid-1940s.” He said Scalish’s health began to fail in 1965, that Danny Greene, “a west side mobster,” moved against the family, that after Scalish’s death in 1976 James Licavoli took over and named Leo “Lips” Moceri underboss, and that “John Nardi, who was a nephew of the former boss of the family, joined forces with Greene.” He said that in May 1977 Nardi “left the Teamster Hall in Cleveland and entered his car” and was killed by a bomb, and that Greene was killed by a bomb when he left a dentist’s office in October 1977.
He closed: “With the conviction of the Cleveland LCN leadership, the vacuum was quickly filled by an acting boss, a former Consigliere or advisor for the Cleveland Family, John ‘Peanuts’ Tronolone,” then on trial in New York. Griffin’s account is an FBI official’s testimony. Where it differs from the Sixth Circuit’s account in United States v. Licavoli, the opinion governs on this site.