# Testimony of Tampa Police Chief Neil G. Brown, October 15, 1963 (opening pages)

Canonical: https://mobfiles.org/items/tampa-brown-testimony-1963-10-15/

Tampa's police chief introduced the Tampa chart (Exhibit 45) and said he believed it "completely accurate in showing that Santo Trafficante is the boss of this criminal group." His statement says 1958 Senate testimony had Trafficante taking over Havana's Sans Souci casino from "the Mannarino brothers in Pittsburgh, Pa."

Part 2 of the 1963 hearings. The Tampa witnesses, Chief Neil G. Brown and Sergeant Jack de la Llana, were sworn on Tuesday, October 15, 1963 (printed page 519, NCJRS PDF page 577). Brown said he had been chief of police of Tampa for four years and in the department sixteen. This archive has read printed pages 519, 523 and 524 of the Tampa testimony, not the whole of it. The stored image is printed page 524.

At page 523 the chairman received the chart, titled "The Mafia Organization in the Tampa, Fla., Area," as Exhibit 45. Brown said it "cannot be considered as a definitive 'table of organization' of the Tampa Mafia," but added: "However, I believe it is completely accurate in showing that Santo Trafficante is the boss of this criminal group." Asked whether this was the group Joseph Valachi had described, he said: "Yes, sir; it is."

At page 524 his statement gives Santo Trafficante, Jr.'s birth in Tampa on November 14, 1914, and says: "Testimony in the 1958 hearings of the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field identified Santo Trafficante, Jr., in the operation of the Sans Souci gambling casino in Havana. That testimony stated that Trafficante took over the Sans Souci from the Mannarino brothers in Pittsburgh, Pa. Gabriel Mannarino was a fellow delegate with Santo Trafficante, Jr., to the Apalachin crime convention in 1957." The page also lists "Sam Mannarino" among Trafficante's associates.

This is a police chief's sworn statement. His account of the Sans Souci is his summary of other testimony, which this archive has not opened. "Boss" is his belief about a police chart, not a finding, and it is not copied onto any family page.

## Sources

- National Criminal Justice Reference Service, scan of the printed hearings (NCJ 119303): https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/119303NCJRS.pdf
- NCJRS catalog record (NCJ 119303): https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/organized-crime-and-illicit-traffic-narcotics-hearing-us-senate