Married to the Mob

A couple of weeks ago the news went old school with word that more than 100 people were arrested in a sweep that targeted seven mob families in New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island. The round-up was impressive in its scope, playing like an episode of “Crime Story,” and reminding us of the days when the Rhody motto was – to use the expression long made popular by Providence Phoenix columnists Phillipe and Jorge – “Mobsters and Lobsters.”

Rhode Island’s notorious independent streak rears up at a time like this. Although proudly New England, the state has an unhealthy affinity for the Mid-Atlantic, as evidenced by its mobster history, disproportionate number of Yankees fans, and connections to TV shows ranging from “Jersey Shore” to “The Sopranos.” Local viewers of the latter used to look for episodes based on Rhody mob lore. In season 4’s “The Weight,” one subplot involved Uncle Junior telling Tony to put a hit on Johnny, according to the Wikipedia summary, “using the skills of a notorious crew of an elderly hit man from Rhode Island, Lou “DiMaggio” Galina – nicknamed for his use of a baseball bat as a murder weapon.” The incident is pulled directly from a Rhody mob moment, when, as the story goes, “Bobo” Marrapese bashed in the head of a teenager with a baseball bat after getting cut off in Pawtucket on a ramp leading to I-95.

Even the DiMaggio reference is an in-joke. Once at The Mews in Wakefield, I talked with a guy at the bar who said that, in his youth, he drove back and forth from Providence to Boston running numbers for the mob. He said that the only difference between the bars were the pictures inside. In Boston, it was the Virgin Mary, John F. Kennedy and Ted Williams. In Providence, it was the Virgin Mary, Frank Sinatra and Joe DiMaggio.

The mob arrest made headlines around the world and was of particular interest to the newspapers of England, which can’t ever seem to get enough of the underbelly of America. As far back as 1993, the English newspaper The Independent (no relation) published a lengthy piece on Rhode Island as the “US Mob state,” in which reporter Patrick Cockburn opens as if he’s warming up an audience in the Catskills:

A joke, much resented by Rhode Islanders, is that things got so bad in their state during the recent recession that the mafia had to lay of two of its judges.

The only thing the reporter got wrong is the “much resented by Rhode Islanders” clause. Most Rhode Islanders love mob jokes. Chances are if you ever hear a mob joke, a Rhode Islander made it up in the first place.

It’s politically incorrect to harp on it now, but growing up in this state, hearing stories, rumors and gossip about the mob was a given. Even as elementary school kids, we watched “Godfathers” I and II and compared Hollywood scenes with local details of murder, racketeering and extortion we heard secondhand during recess between games of Muckle The Kid With The Ball.

As much as the state has changed, its Rogues Island reputation lives on. The first European settlers may have moved to Rhode Island to pursue religious freedom, but it wasn’t long before the rascals and radicals took root. We were a haven for pirates, an industry so lucrative that the state decided to make it legal by calling it privateering. During Prohibition, rumrunning was rampant in Rhode Island. (It’s rumored that Tara Mulroy’s Joyce Family Pub, still hanging on the edge of the earth in Matunuck, was one of many Rhody watering holes involved in the trade.) And Providence, of course, was home to the New England mob for generations. Even now, if Half Shell ever goes under, I could start my own mob blog, using the Internet’s Mob Name Generator. (Depending on whether I use the informal or formal version of my first name, I am either Doug “The Jeweler” Norris or Douglas “The Vampire” Norris, either of which would be appropriate in a state with its own Jewelry District and vampire legends.)

What is your favorite Rhode Island crime story?