Gioacchino (Jack) Reina

Jack Reina was the son of early borgata boss Gaetano (Tom) Reina. He was also the brother-in-law to infamous future mob informant, Joe Valachi. Jack Reina became a soldier in what became known as the Lucchese Family under the tutelage of his father and mostly dealt in the narcotics rackets.

Gioacchino (Jack) Reina - aka Giacomo Reina, Giacomo Rina, Jack Ricca, and Henry Reina - was born in Manhattan on September 21, 1909, and was the son of the early borgata boss Gaetano (Tom) Reina and the former Angelina Oliveri.

Reina stood 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighed 155 pounds with dark brown eyes, salt-and-pepper hair, and a shallow olive complexion.

Jack Reina

Gioacchino's father, Tom Reina was one of the most powerful mafiosi of his era. Born in Corleone, Sicily, he was one of five such powers who ruled over the city. So, Jack was under the tutelage of one of the early masters of Cosa Nostra.

Jack Reina was also the brother-in-law to Joe Valachi. Reina’s sister Mildred had married Valachi in the 1930s. Valachi was affiliated early in his life with the Gagliano Family before shifting to the Genovese Family by the early 1930s.

Mildred Valachi

Jack was raised at 227 East 107th Street in East Harlem, a notorious street and the original headquarters of “The 107th Street Gang,” the precursor to what would eventually become known as the Gagliano/ Lucchese Family. By 1930, Tom Reina and his wife had moved with their nine kids to a nice private residence at 3183 Rochambeau Avenue, the Bronx. It was a home befitting his status as a boss.

The Reina Family. Jack is on the far left.

As a young man of 20 and already following in his father's footsteps, Jack Reina ostensibly listed his occupation as an ice dealer and later as a mason. But in truth, he was already in the streets as a young mafioso in training.

By 1930, Reina was also registered as an inmate of the New York State Reformatory. This was during an era of great upheaval in the Italian underworld, and young Reina was already involved with his father.

The infamous Castellammarese War was raging. His father had allied with Salvatore Maranzano and his followers from Castellammare del Golfo against the forces of Giuseppe Masseria for control of New York. Within a year, his dad Tom Reina would be assassinated in front of their family home in the Bronx. This event would be pivotal to young Jack, not dissuading him from Cosa Nostra but by actually drawing him in closer.

NYCPD # B-73123, FBI # 193805, Kearny-PD # 4680

Young Reina officially started his criminal career with his first arrest in 1919. His record included at least a dozen arrests for such charges as follows:

1919 - truancy, juvenile delinquency

1920 - petty larceny

1928 - felonious assault with a gun

1929 - armed robbery (10 years in Elmira)

1930 - robbery by gun

1931 - assault and robbery

1933 - felonious assault

1934 - parole violation

1942 - Harrison Act conspiracy (drugs)

1955 - Federal narcotics violations, conspiracy to sell heroin (5 years)

1958 - investigation

1960 - criminal contempt (2 years)

1961 - larceny

Within a short time, he was formally inducted as a “soldier” of the Gagliano Family. Mafioso Gaetano Gagliano had risen to the leadership of the Family against Masseria. Tom Gagliano named Tommy Lucchese as his underboss.

Jack would do well under Gagliano’s leadership, and by the late 1940s, Reina had married. By then, he and his young wife Filomena (called Phyllis) had relocated to a house they purchased in Kearny, New Jersey, residing at 152 Kearny Avenue. They became parents of a daughter they named Jacqueline.

Although originally from Upper Manhattan, he most often frequented and hung around Lower Manhattan, specifically 121 Mulberry Street and 49 Market Street.

Reina used his surname and dead father's respect to befriend and ingratiate himself with many important members of the mafia. By this time, he had also started to dabble in the heroin business. Maybe more than dabble.

A Little Bit of Dabbling

The Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) had started tracking his movements and was now documenting his associations with some of the biggest narcotics traffickers in the country. They recorded multiple trips he made by plane to Europe, specifically Paris and Marseilles, France, where he was making contact with the Corsican underworld.

They suspected he was negotiating prices and the logistics of the purchase and transportation of kilo loads of drugs into the United States. Reina was said to have close ties to several top kingpins of the Corsican and Marseilles underworld that helped him facilitate these smuggling efforts.

Among these connections were Giuseppe (Joe Dorney) Orsini, Marius Ansaldi, Dominique (Nickey) Reissent, and Francois (Big Frank) Spirito, four key European racketeers who controlled heroin chemists and operated heroin-producing laboratories.

Marius Ansald

Reina was especially close to Nickey Reissent of Marseilles, who directed one of the biggest groups responsible for importing opium and morphine base for conversion into heroin for ultimate distribution to the United States.

This international narcotics conspiracy included many mafia members from at least three New York-based borgatas, the Lucchese, Genovese, and the Gambino Families.

Reina collaborated with his in-law Valachi among others such as underboss Antonio (Tony Bender) Strollo, Salvatore (Sally Shields) Shillitani, Vincent (Vinny Bruno) Mauro , Ottilio (Frank the Bug) Caruso, Pasquale (Paddy Mush) Moccio, and brothers Pat and Joey Pagano. They were said to have smuggled several million dollars worth of heroin into the ports of New York City. These interlocking drug smuggling conspiracies operated for years, but by the mid-1950s, the narcotics agents had started closing in on several of them.

Vinny Bruno Mauro

After being indicted, by 1955, Reina, Valachi, and their associates were convicted in federal court of trafficking kilo quantities of heroin in interstate and international commerce.

During these same years, several other major narcotics networks were being broken up, leading to the biggest case of all: boss Vito Genovese, Bonanno underboss Carmine Galante, and other top leaders of the networks and their aides.

In Reina’s trial, prosecutors accused him of being one of several important mafiosi to facilitate the contact and purchase of morphine base for conversion to heroin in French laboratories and then arranging for the smuggling of those narcotics into the United States through a variety of methods.

He received a 5-year federal prison term and was sent down to Atlanta Federal Penitentiary to count the days. While away at “college,” Reina was pulled out of his cell and grilled before a federal grand jury back in New York about the heroin rackets.

He was asked over 80-some odd questions. For his silence in 1960, a federal judge tacked on two more years of imprisonment. This was done after Reina had been granted immunity from prosecution and was now compelled to answer on the grounds that he no longer could be charged with any crimes derived from his said testimony.

With his release from prison, he seems to have settled down quietly and didn’t face any other serious charges or criminal cases for the rest of his life. By then, his one-time brother-in-law, Joe Valachi, has shamed their family by becoming the first publicly known and certainly the biggest rat in the history of the mafia.

And although Reina himself wasn’t an informant, in those heady salad days of Cosa Nostra before the litany of modern-day rats, it still cast a shameful light on the entire family to be connected to such a traitor.

Giacomo (Jack) Reina died in August of 1979. He was 68 years old.

Until next time...”The Other Guy!”

Dive Deeper into the Underworld

The Joseph (Joe Beck) DiPalermo Regime: “The Prince Street Crew”

Stephen Oddo: The Undertaker

Marc Antonio Orlandino: The Regular Joe Who Wasn’t

Welcome Back!

Create New Account!

Retrieve your password

Not enough quota to unlock this post

Are you sure want to cancel subscription?