Giuliani's Father Harold, Uncle Leo Were Mobsters - The Whole Story

The crime occurred on April 2, 1934, at 12:05 p.m. in the unlit first-floor corridor of a 10-family residential building at 130 East 96th Street in Manhattan. Shortly before noon, old Giuliani and an accomplice positioned themselves in shadowy recesses near the stairwell. Within 10 or 15 minutes Harold Hall, a milkman for Borden's Farms, entered the building to make routine payment collections. As he began to make his way up the stairs, Giuliani emerged from the shadows and, according to the indictment, pressed the muzzle of a pistol against Hall's stomach. "You know what it is," he reportedly said. He forced the man into a nook behind the stairwell, where his counterpart was waiting. The other man plunged his hand into Hall's pants pocket and fished out $128.82 in cash.

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Two weeks before he was committed to Sing Sing, Giuliani underwent a psychiatric exam. Benjamin Apfelberg, a psychiatrist with the city's Department of Hospitals, sent his report to Judge Bohan on May 18. "A study of this individual's makeup," wrote Apfelberg, "reveals that is a personality deviate of the aggressive, egocentric type. This aggressivity is pathological in nature and has shown itself from time to time even as far back as his childhood. He is egocentric to an extent where he has failed to consider the feelings and rights of others."

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Most important, Vincent's Restaurant became the headquarters of Leo D'Avanzo's loan-sharking and gambling operations, ventures he ran with a partner, Jimmy Dano, who was a made man. Dano had once worked as a runner for the powerful numbers-racket operator and narcotics distributor James (Jimmy the Clam) Eppolito. and Leo had a secret wire room tucked in the back of Vincent's and employed a small army of as many as 15 runners. "There was a lot of booking and numbers and all that nonsense," Leo's former mistress of nearly 30 years, Elizabeth Mandelino, who was the daughter of the prior owner, Philomena. (The Mandelinos were related by marriage to the Eppolitos). "That's how they survived."

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That was the gist of Harold's job: enforce Leo's law through threats or violence. He shoved people against walls, broke legs, smashed kneecaps, crunched noses. He gave nearby Kings County Hospital a lot of business. "People in the neighborhood were terrified of him," said a frequent customer at Vincent's, who was one of Leo's son Lewis's best friends and whose family borrowed money from Leo. He remembers what happened early one Saturday morning after his own father failed to make a payment. "When I was a kid, my father borrowed money from Leo," he said. "He couldn't pay, so Harold came to collect. He knocked on the door and yelled, 'I want the money now, or I'm going to break both your arms!' "

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Gambling, loan-sharking, and booze weren't the only sources of income at Vincent's. A black man who worked in the payroll office at a local hospital would stop by the bar every week or so to give Harold several dozen fake paychecks. The checks were made out to a host of fictitious employees and were drawn on the hospital's bank account. "Harold would cash them in the bar," said Lewis's friend. "There would be several thousand dollars' worth of checks every week. Harold would get half, and the black guy would get the other half."

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