Mob FilesPublic-domain archive of American organized crime

Record

Hearing

1964-07-30

National Criminal Justice Reference Service, scan of the printed hearings (NCJ 119303)

Narcotics hearings, Part 4, printed page 924: the 1959 John Freeman heroin case

The Bureau of Narcotics account of a 1959 case says John Freeman, Sr., a New York flower-shop operator, supplied large quantities of heroin to west Harlem, the South Side of Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles, with Joseph Valachi as his principal source, and that Valachi and Freeman were each sentenced to twenty years.

Date
1964-07-30
Kind
hearing
Source
National Criminal Justice Reference Service, scan of the printed hearings (NCJ 119303)
Retrieved
2026-10-12
Docket
Organized Crime and Illicit Traffic in Narcotics: Hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations, United States Senate, 88th Cong., pursuant to S. Res. 278, 88th Cong., Part 4
Rights
A work of the United States Senate, printed by the Government Printing Office. Public domain in the United States. 17 U.S.C. § 105. The NCJRS cover sheet records reproduction permission as "Public Domain / U.S. Senate."

Printed page 924 of Part 4 (NCJRS PDF page 1050), in the Bureau of Narcotics’ account of significant cases, printed with the testimony of 30 July 1964.

It says: “Another significant case made in 1959 by the Bureau of Narcotics involved John Freeman, an important Negro trafficker, Joseph Valachi, Michael Monica, and others.” In May 1959 two people, one of them John Freeman, Jr., were arrested in New York City “as they were about to deliver 3 kilograms 430 grams of heroin to an undercover narcotic agent,” and three others were arrested with a further quantity. It continues: “John Freeman, Sr., operator of two flower shops in New York City, supplied large quantities of heroin to the west Harlem section of New York City, the South Side of Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles. Freeman’s principal source of heroin supply was Joseph Valachi.” Valachi, it says, was a fugitive until arrested in November 1959 in Connecticut, and “was sentenced to 20 years in prison in this case, Freeman to 20 years, and Monica to 8 years.”

This is the Bureau’s account given to a Senate subcommittee; no court record of the Freeman case has been opened. The page does not say which Freeman received the twenty-year sentence. Part 3 gives Valachi’s sentence in the same case as fifteen years (page 788); the hearing prints both figures. Others named in the paragraph are not repeated here. “Negro trafficker” is the Bureau’s term.

itemOrganized Crime and Illicit Traffic in Narcotics, Part 4 (July 30, 1964)The fourth printed volume: the afternoon session of July 30, 1964, with Bureau of Narcotics testimony on heroin routes and fold-out route and case charts.itemNarcotics hearings, Part 3, printed page 788: the Bureau of Narcotics entry for Joseph Valachi and John FreemanThe Bureau of Narcotics entry for Joseph Valachi says that in the 1930s he supplied heroin to John Freeman, whom the Bureau calls one of the most active interstate heroin traffickers, and that in 1960 Valachi was sentenced to fifteen years in a case involving Freeman's son. The Freeman sentence is paraphrased because the OCR is garbled.itemCriminal record of Joseph Valachi, as printed in the 1963 hearing recordThe police and FBI identification record of Valachi, read into the record by Sergeant Ralph Salerno: arrests from 1921, Sing Sing sentences in the 1920s, federal narcotics cases from 1944, and Atlanta penitentiary entries.