Bart Guccia: The Fishmonger at Apalachin- The New York Mafia

Bartolomeo (Bart) Guccia, born in 1891 in the picturesque Sicilian town of Castellammare del Golfo, seemed like an unassuming figure. A small, wiry man with thick glasses and a Sicilian accent, he eked out a living as a fishmonger in the quiet village of Endicott, New York. Or so it appeared.

But beneath the humble facade lay a man with a shadowy pasta -- a loyal soldier of the Castellammarese Mafia faction, tied to infamous crime boss <a href="http://Bartolomeo (Bart) Guccia, born in 1891 in the picturesque Sicilian town of Castellammare del Golfo, seemed like an unassuming figure. A small, wiry man with thick glasses and a Sicilian accent, he eked out a living as a fishmonger in the quiet village of Endicott, New York. Or so it appeared. But beneath the humble facade lay a man with a shadowy past—a loyal soldier of the Castellammarese Mafia faction, tied to infamous crime boss Joe Barbara. Guccia’s unremarkable demeanor served as the perfect cover for a life steeped in organized crime. From prohibition-era bootlegging to being caught at the notorious Apalachin meeting that exposed the Mafia to the world, Bart Guccia’s story is anything but ordinary.">Joe Barbara . Guccia’s unremarkable demeanor served as the perfect cover for a life steeped in organized crime. From prohibition-era bootlegging to being caught at the notorious Apalachin meeting that exposed the Mafia to the world, Bart Guccia’s story is anything but ordinary.

Bartolomeo (Bart) Guccia -- aka Bartolo Guccia, Bartallo Gucci, Bartalo Vicio, Bartolo Vecia, and Bartolomeo Guercia -- was born on December 26, 1891, in the seaside village of Castellammare del Golfo in Northwestern Sicily (Trapani Province).

The Guccia family immigrated to the United States in 1908. Bartolo was 17 when he arrived at the New York Harbor with his mother and brother. The family eventually relocated to Binghamton in Upstate New York. It was an area where many of his fellow Castellammarese countrymen had migrated and formed a settlement.

Bart Guccia

By 1913, Guccia returned to Brooklyn for a bit before moving to Philadelphia. But he soon relocated back to Binghamton around 1920. He was naturalized there on January 11, 1927.

The Guccia family first lived on Oak Hill Avenue. Later, Guccia bought a little home for his wife Vita (nee’ Sciblia) and their five children at 208 Vermont Avenue in the little village of Endicott. They would reside there for many years.

Guccia's home in Endicott.

By the late 1950s, the Guccia’s moved back to Oak Hill Avenue to number 202. This was a notorious street that housed other families of mafiosi such as Anthony Guarnieri and Louis Marconi to name but a few.

FBI #1183087, Binghamton-PD #1130, IN&S #C-2-478-228

Looks Can Be Deceiving

Guccia's first business was said to have been a poolroom he bought in 1920 in Endicott.

Through the years, he owned and operated four restaurants and little eateries. He even worked at the famous Endicott-Johnson Shoe Factory for a time before going into the seafood business.

Years later, Bart Guccia was ostensibly just the owner-operator of a small retail fish stop at 120 Odell Avenue in Endicott.

He gave the outward appearance as an unassuming lowly fishmonger who scaled and sold fish for a living. But appearances can be very deceiving, especially in the case of Bartolomeo Guccia.

The old man stood only 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighed less than 150 pounds, soaking wet. With grey hair, brown eyes set behind thick eyeglasses, and a thick Sicilian accent you could cut with a knife, he seemed like nothing more than a little old man who was barely eking out a living by selling a few pieces of fish from a broken-down pickup truck.

Caught with the Big Fish

But the FBI didn't buy it. They started taking a closer look at Guccia after he was detained and later indicted for attending the infamous November 14, 1957, Mafia conclave at mob boss Joseph Barbara’s sprawling country estate in Upstate Apalachin, New York.

The quiet, unassuming Guccia was among 62 of the most important and notorious mafia racketeers from across the United States captured by New York State Troopers who grew suspicious of all the fancy black Cadillacs and Lincolns converging on their little upstate hamlet that particular weekend.

Joseph Barbara

NYS Police Sergeant Edgar D. Croswell became curious and decided to investigate the matter further and soon requested backup to surveil Barbara’s home and property line. The troopers eventually set up roadblocks along all exits leaving the Barbara estate so they could stop and detain Barbara’s house guests as they tried departing the premises.

Many guests were stopped inside their shiny new Cadillac and Lincoln automobiles as they drove down Barbara’s long driveway and questioned by the police. Other hoodlums who witnessed what was happening to their fellow mafiosi tried fleeing through the woods to access other roads abutting the Barbara estate.

Comically, they ran in their camel-haired topcoats, silk suits, and polished alligator shoes to no avail. Some were suspected of having successfully escaped, but many more were captured! Many of them were notorious racketeers back in their hometowns and states. They represented a cross-section of the entire Italian underworld from coast to coast.

Police and federal investigators soon began to realize that what they had uncovered was nothing less than a watershed moment in the government’s long fight against organized crime and the dreaded Mafia thought to operate in America.

The previously little-known Bartolomeo Guccia found himself right in the middle of it all.

Stuck in the Middle

For his part, Guccia feigned innocence and told authorities he was only a friendly fish purveyor who visited the Barbara’s periodically to deliver fresh fish. He added that Mrs. Barbara sometimes ordered from his store.

He told police he had only driven to the Barbara residence that afternoon to deliver “three porgies and a mackerel that Mrs. Barbara had requested.” But the authorities were not so sure.

Guccia exposed.

In later testimony before the Federal Grand Jury that was impaneled to investigate the whole affair, it was revealed that it had been Bart Guccia who first spotted the NYS Troopers posted all around the Barbara estate as he drove past them in his pickup truck on his way up the driveway.

Once he got to the house, Guccia quickly informed Joe and his shadowy guests of the impending danger that loomed before them. It triggered a mass exodus from the estate

Not So Innocent

After checking into Guccia’s background, federal investigators discovered the elderly man before them was actually a dyed-in-the-wool, old-time hoodlum with a very serious police record.

He had a long string of arrests dating way back to 1916 for such serious offenses as bootlegging, conspiracy and the sale of unlicensed and untaxed alcohol, illegal possession of a revolver, assaulting a peace officer, reckless driver, driving at an excessive rate of speed, illegal gambling , bank burglary, breaking and entering, armed robbery, grand larceny, two counts of first-degree murder, and obstruction of justice of a Federal Grand Jury.

In 1923, he was one of four men charged with involvement in a bank burglary in the town of Candor that later went to trial.

Court testimony revealed that Guccia was the alleged getaway driver who had driven the robbery suspects to the bank and later drove them away.

At the time, Guccia claimed he was just a simple taxi driver who had innocently picked up a fare for a round-trip ride to Candor and back that paid $9 for his trouble.

On June 21, 1924, Guccia pled guilty in Federal Court through his attorney for a May 12 arrest for prohibition violation.

Federal Prohibition “Dry” Agents had conducted a surprise raid on an underground "speakeasy" Bart was operating at 4 Madison Avenue in Endicott. He ended up paying a fine of $450.

A Wild Man...

It also seems that Guccia was a bit of a wild man and hothead back in his younger days.

On April 13, 1925, when he was already 34 years old, Bart was speeding in his car when a Binghamton patrolman spotted him and flagged him over.

Upon asking Guccia for his driving license, Bart quickly took a defensive attitude and suddenly punched the officer right in the face. The officer eventually subdued his suspect and called for backup.

Guccia was hauled off to the county lockup, where he was charged with assault and battery on a police officer, speeding, and reckless driving. He was given $500 bail.

He was eventually found guilty, fined, and placed on criminal probation. He also had his NYS driver's license suspended.

On September 21, 1925, Guccia was one of seven men arrested after the Endicott Police Department staged a raid on a known gambling den operating at 30 Hill Avenue.

It was the second time in ten days that police had stormed the place. Guccia was hauled into the station house along with his buddy Joe Catalina and five others and hit with a promoting gambling count.

They were all formally charged with frequenting a gambling establishment and maintaining a gambling den. The men later paid fines and were released.

...And a Dangerous One

Side Note: In October 1936, Guccia was charged with the double murder of the Van Cise brothers four years earlier in 1932.

Six suspected hoodlums, including Guccia, Anthony (Tony Bello) Mistretta, Onofrio (Jimmy Ross) Coraci, Constantine (Gus Alex) Alexopolis, and a father and son team named Joseph and Anthony Silinonti were all accused of going to the Van Cise farm to commit a robbery. They were initially held without bail but were later released on a bond of $35,000 apiece to await trial.

Later trial testimony by Anthony Silinonti, who had turned state’s witness for the prosecution, revealed the men first robbed the brothers of $6500 in cash before Guccia then personally shot Frank and William Van Cise to death with a .32 caliber revolver.

After four weeks of highly contentious testimony, it took a Steuben County jury less than six hours to declare the mafiosi not guilty. Each defendant was acquitted of all charges.

The disgusted local District Attorney John A. King, who prosecuted the case, labeled their acquittals a major “miscarriage of justice.”

It cost the state of New York more than $18,000 to bring the six men to trial; a whopping sum of money back in 1937...money wasted as it turned out! Following his acquittal, Guccia seems to have quietly gotten back to basics and assumed his role as a devout mafioso and disciple of the Mafia.

That following year, in December 1937, he was photographed with fellow Concordia Society of Castellammare del Golfo members.

The Concordia Society (Guccia is sitting,far right)

The Concordia Society was a fraternal order of men born back in Trapani Province, Sicily, who had started a private social club of sorts in the cities of Binghamton and Buffalo to honor their common heritage and to fraternize together at social events.

Among the listed members were numerous members of the dreaded Castellammare del Golfo Mafia clan.

His Closest Associates

Guccia numbered among his closest daily associates, many important members of Binghamton’s underworld.

These included Mafia soldiers Pasquale (Patsy) Turrigiano, Giuseppe (Joe) Galante, Emanuele (Manny) Zicari, Ignazio (Nat) Cannone, Pasquale (Patsy) Sciortino, Joseph Barbara Jr., family caporegime Anthony (The Gov) Guarnieri, and the boss himself, Giuseppe (Joe the Barber) Barbara Sr .

Side Note: There is some controversy among mob aficionados about the true “status” of Joe Barbara as to whether he was a family “boss” per se or just a top subordinate of Buffalo family boss Steve Magaddino , who served in the capacity of a caporegime over the city of Binghamton.

Let me assure you that Joe Barbara was, in fact, the “Representante” of his own family. He was officially connected to the Volpe-Sciandra Family based in Pittston, Pennsylvania.

Barbara originally served as the “caporegime” over their New York State membership. But with former boss John Sciandra’s passing around 1949, Joe Barbara was then elected “boss.”

Guccia

He served in that capacity until his own death from natural causes a decade later in June 1959, when Russ Bufalino became the boss.

Side Note: Joe Barbara died of heart failure on Wednesday, June 17, 1959, when he was only 53 years old.

Local police and federal law enforcement agents took note of the fact that although throngs of family, friends, and curious onlookers visited the funeral home that waked him, with many of them then going to Saint Anthony of Padua R.C. Church for his burial mass and later traveling to the cemetery for his interment, only four recognized mafiosi showed up to console his grieving widow and three children.

They were Barbara crime family members Gov Guarnieri, Patsy Turrigiano, Manny Zicari, and our man, Bart Guccia.

Authorities also noted that seven “floral carloads” of open-backed black Cadillacs were filled to the brim with elaborate floral displays for the former underworld leader.

His 22-year-old daughter Angela wept uncontrollably, crying out, “Let me kiss my daddy goodbye,” as her father's silver-plated casket was lowered into the grave.

Her brothers, Joseph Jr. and Peter, also reduced to tears, had to restrain her. Barbara’s wife Josephine wept openly along with her children as heavy rain poured down on the gravesite.

More Apalachin Probing

During his later questioning before the U.S. Senate Committee Investigation that was empaneled to probe the Apalachin meeting further, Guccia admitted to being intimate friends with Buffalo family crime boss Stefano Magaddino and his brother Antonino (Nino) Magaddino.

Guccia claimed they grew up together back in Castellammare del Golfo. He then stated that while living up in the Buffalo-Niagara Falls area in the 1920s, he had rekindled his past friendship with the Magaddino brothers before relocating to the Binghamton area, where he permanently settled.

It also appeared in testimony that Joe Barbara had served as the baptismal godfather to one of Guccia’s children. The two old mafiosi had been very close.

The frail 67-year-old Guccia was hauled back before the grand jury repeatedly and grilled about his sordid police record and his Cosa Nostra associations., but the wily old mafioso stood firm and either continued to feign innocence or hid behind his constitutional rights by pleading the Fifth Amendment.

Bart Guccia, the fishmonger

When he did answer the senator's questions, it was in a vague and disjointed, sing-song kind of way, shrewdly using his thick Sicilian accent and broken English to successfully buffer against providing any kind of meaningful and pertinent answers to questions asked of him.

Bartolo gained a lot of public exposure during the intensive investigation that followed the Apalachin affair.

Except for his highly publicized murder trial back in 1936, it was more than the old man was used to facing during his long criminal career.

We now know that he had been a trusted minion, feared gunman, and loyal soldier of the Castellammarese Mafia faction all along under the direction of Joe Barbara for over five decades.

It is believed that Bartolomeo (Bart) Guccia passed away in 1978. He lived to the ripe old age of 87 years old.

Until next time…”The Other Guy”

Watch the Bart Guccia Story on Mob Fireside Chat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkAsBAd6Q0g

Bart Guccia: The Devout Mafioso Who Fooled the FBI

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