Charles (Charlie Brown) Clemenza - The Sahara Lounge Bartender

One of the most anonymous and virtual unknowns among the original members of the old Joseph Profaci family of Brooklyn was the shadowy Charles (Charlie Brown) Clemenza. He was one of eight children and the oldest of five brothers, three of whom would gravitate to the underworld.

His two younger brothers, James (Jimmy Brown) Clemenza and Frederick (Freddy Brown) Clemenza were both long recognized by law enforcement as important underworld figures. But Charlie was not. Little did law enforcement understand at that time, or later for that matter, that Charlie was also a very respected mafioso.

Charlie Brown also had a role in the infamous 1961 attempted murder of Larry Gallo at the Sahara Lounge, along with Carmine Persico and Sally D'Ambrosio - a scene recreated in the movie The Godfather II.

Charles Clemenza - aka “Charlie Brown” - whose true name was Calogero Clemenza - was born around the turn of the century in 1901 in Partanna, Sicily. The Clemenza family was believed to have first immigrated to the United States by the late 1910s, settling into what was then the bucolic open landscape of early Kings County.

He would reside and generally operate within the borough of Brooklyn throughout most of his life.

Looking every bit the mafioso he was, a duked-out Charles (Charlie Brown) Clemenza ducks a cameraman.

By the 1950s, Charlie decided to relocate with his wife Helen and their daughter out to the Ozone Park section of South Queens. He purchased a private home for them at 99-04 98th Street. It was a quieter neighborhood, well enough away from the epicenter of the gritty mob jungle of Brooklyn. But he still drove into Brooklyn daily.

Ostensibly he was the owner of a popular bar and grill named the Sahara Lounge located at 1201 Utica Avenue, Brooklyn. But in reality, he was a trusted Profaci insider, who along with his kid brothers Jimmy and Freddy were active in gambling and the shylocking of money in the immediate neighborhood.

The Sahara Lounge served for years as a conduit and drop-off point for horse bets and policy action among their runners and associates. It’s was also where some of the weekly “vigorish” envelopes were paid.

Well-Placed Mafiosi

Charlie was a fully “inducted” Profaci soldier, the same as his two brothers were. He was a respected and trusted member of their Brooklyn faction. That fact became clearly evident as later events unfolded.

Similar to his brothers, Charlie operated for years in a low-key and quiet fashion. He was a virtual unknown to both local law enforcement and the general public. But he was well known among Brooklyn’s underworld glitterati.

The Clemenza brothers, or “Brown brothers,” had been trusted mafia “soldiers” for decades. In fact, Jimmy Brown was known to be one of Joe Profaci’s most trusted men and overseer for much of Profaci family interests in Manhattan’s garment district.

Side Note: Both Jimmy and Freddy were deeply involved in both labor union infiltration and industry control. Jimmy Brown was a longtime power in the garment industry through his position as an official of the Greater Blouse, Skirt, and Neckwear Contractors Association, an industry group of 300 manufacturers who allied to gain collective bargaining strength with the ILGWU - International Ladies Garment Workers Union (AFL-CIO).

But Jimmy played it both ways because he was also a behind-the-scenes powerhouse with ILGWU - Local #25, which represented over 6500 blouse craftsmen, waist-makers, and allied employees. Their brother Freddy Brown was also enmeshed in several different union locals over the years mostly relating to the construction industry among other trades.

The three Clemenza brothers were well-placed mafiosi.

The Sahara Lounge

It is believed by federal law enforcement that the Clemenza brothers had first served in the “regime” of capo Enrico (Harry) Fontana, who was one of the most low-key, yet powerful “capo di decina” of the Profaci borgata.

Fontana had control over their South Brooklyn territory. In later years, it was thought that Jimmy Clemenza was elevated to serve in a capo's post, taking over from Fontana after Harry retired and moved down to Tampa, Florida. Charlie most likely served under his kid brother.

But Charlie’s decades-long anonymity came to an abrupt and unexpected end one quiet, sweltering Sunday afternoon on August 20, 1961. That’s the day Profaci soldiers Carmine (The Snake) Persico, Salvatore (Sally D) D’Ambrosio, Johnny Scimone, Tony Abbatemarco, and a fifth hood attacked rogue Profaci soldier Larry Gallo inside Clemenza’s bar and grill and threw a rope around Larry’s neck attempting to garrote the life out of him.

It's Just a Drink

Having been lured to the Sahara by Scimone and Junior Persico under the guise of mending fences in order to quell the growing civil unrest brewing within the Profaci family, no sooner had Johnny, Carmine, and Larry ordered a drink at the bar from “Charlie the bartender” when two other hoods hiding behind a wall emerged from out of the shadows of the bar and proceeded to strangle Gallo.

As fate would have it, at that very moment at approximately 3 p.m., an alert New York City Policeman named Sergeant Edward Meagher was on neighborhood patrol with his partner, Officer Melvin Blei, and just happened to stroll by the Sahara.

Meagher looked inside the front window and decided to investigate after he saw a dim light on inside and some strange movement at an hour when the establishment was normally closed.

Stepping just inside the front door of the tavern, Meagher inquired of Clemenza, “How are things?”

The nervous bartender responded, “Everything’s fine. Everything’s great.”

Just then Meagher heard moans coming from a darkened area in the back.

Walking toward the back of the ginmill to investigate, he spotted a set of feet sticking out from behind the wall. He bent down to get a better look and immediately saw a man with a rope tightly wrapped around his neck with a steel pipe wedged inside as a lever by which to tighten the rope.

The victim was half unconscious, purple, gasping for air, and near death. As the officer attempted two loosen the garrote, suddenly four men rushed past the officer, knocking him down as they ran out. The cop then heard a gunshot from outside.

Gunshots Outside

Rushing out after the suspects he found his partner Blei on the pavement bleeding profusely from a gunshot to the face. Meagher fired several shots from his own service revolver at the getaway car but missed his mark.

He called in for police assistance and an ambulance saying “cop down,” and then attempted to stem the blood pouring from Blei’s cheek. Within minutes every squad car in the precinct had converged on the Sahara.

Officer Melvin Blei in his hospital bed after being treated for the gunshot wound.

Several ambulances soon arrived as well and attended to both victims. They quickly transported both men to Kings County Hospital.

By this time, Gallo was starting to come around again as he was being questioned by police. They quickly recognized who he was and immediately placed a call to Police Inspector Raymond V. Martin, head of Brooklyn South Rackets Squad, who was heading up the Profaci-Gallo Gang War investigation task force.

I Don't Know

Inspector Martin immediately wanted to question Larry as to what had happened (as if the seasoned inspector didn’t already know,) but Larry feigned ignorance as to whom, what, and how he had wound up on the barroom floor.

He claimed the perpetrators had snuck up behind him and he didn’t see his assailants. Gallo and Martin were old adversaries, after all, so the cop knew better than to even try and push the issue with the badly battered and bruised hoodlum.

Larry was released from questioning and accompanied from the precinct house by his kid brother Joey, who was better known as “Joey the Blond” in those days. The “Crazy Joe” moniker would come later.

A battered Larry and Joe the blond.

Gallo claimed he was in tremendous pain, was foggy, and with his throat crushed like that, was hardly able to even talk to anybody at that moment.

I’m sure Gallo wasn’t lying either. He had narrowly missed the grim reaper by only seconds at the hands of his old “friends,” but the excuse was enough to buy him time with the police and get him released from the hospital, as well as, from police custody.

A Front Row Seat

The detectives next questioned the bartender Charles Clemenza as to why he had first told Sgt. Ed Meagher that everything was okay when, in fact, it clearly was not. They also wanted to know what part Clemenza had played in the murder attempt.

After all, Charlie had had a front-row seat to the entire macabre gangland incident. They kept grilling him both at the scene of the crime, and later down at police headquarters.

For his part, the sixty-year-old hoodlum automatically went into his “D and D” routine, or “deaf and dumb” as they say in New York gangland.

“Charlie Brown” immediately clammed up in the purest fashion of the Sicilian code of “Omertà,” the way any self-respecting mafioso was taught and expected to do in such situations. He was immediately placed under arrest and held in jail as a material witness to the attempted underworld murder.

When he went before the judge the next day with his attorney for the initial arraignment of the case, and to seek bail, New York State Judge Samuel S. Leibowitz chastised both Clemenza and his legal mouthpiece, Matthew Brandenburg.

Mind-Boggling

“If what the district attorney and the police say is so," said Leibowitz, “he is the man who stood behind the bar in his tavern while Larry Gallo sat at the barstool facing him when two assassins crept up behind and put a rope around Gallo’s neck. Perhaps Gallo is telling the truth in saying he did not know who the men were. But the man who did see them, Counselor, was your client.”

A no-nonsense judge.

Leibowitz then set a mind-boggling $100,000 bail on Clemenza and flatly refused any consideration for a bail reduction.

He added, “He is the key to the solution of the attempted murder. If he wants to play the code of the underworld of silence to authorities…I’ll keep him in jail until the cows come home, or unless a higher court changes my ruling.”

“Anytime your client wants to go before the grand jury and tell the truth, come see me. So long as he remains silent, so long will he also remain behind bars.”

Side Note: In 1961, for a court to impose a bail bond of $100,000 on any given criminal defendant, regardless of the crime charged was very rare indeed. A $100,000 bail for that era is the equivalent of saying $2,000,000 nowadays. It was a whopping amount of money. It was essentially the same as the judge just denying bail completely because nobody was gonna make that type bail.

A Small Concession

The judge did make two small concessions though. The lawyer said he had not been permitted to see his client and wanted visitation rights, and he asked that Clemenza be transferred from City Prison to the more comfortable Civil Jail.

“Certainly you may see your client," Leibowitz said.

And while instructing Assistant District Attorney Benjamin Schimler to arrange for Clemenza’s transfer, Leibowitz warned, “Make sure there are enough guards.We want no jail deliver.” (whatever that meant)

Subsequently, Clemenza was later moved from the City Prison in Manhattan under a writ of habeas corpus to less oppressive accommodations. Nonetheless, he remained behind bars while the wheels of justice continued to grind slowly.

Shaking the Trees

While all this was happening the New York City Police Department, under the supervision of Inspector Martin, were out shaking trees interrogating all their informants as well as every other known hoodlum in Kings County.

They soon received solid information from those underworld informants that the hoodlums they were looking for were Sally D, Junior, Johnny Scimini, Abby Shots, and Al Cirillo.

Martin and his rackets squad detectives immediately recognized those nicknames as being attached to well-known hoodlums, several notorious ones at that.

“Sally D” was none other than Salvatore D’Ambrosio, one of the top gunsels in the Profaci mob; “Junior” was Carmine Persico, another top gunsel, prime gang war combatant, and Profaci stalwart; “Johnny Scimini” was none other than Giovanni Scimone, Joe Profaci’s personal driver and bodyguard; “Abby Shots” was Anthony Abbatemarco, another family figure who was the son of the murdered policy banker Frank Abbatemarco and one of the top policy game bankers in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of the borough in his own right; and “Al Cirillo” was Alphonse Cirillo, a young longshoreman and known hoodlum who they suspected had been the getaway driver in the Cadillac that sped away from the Sahara with the would-be killers inside.

Nabbed for Attempted Murder

Based on available information to them and claiming they had several positive eyewitness “IDs,” law enforcement ended up grabbing Scimone, Abbatemarco, and Cirillo, arresting them for the attempted murder of a police officer. They were specifically charged with first-degree felonious assault.

Forty-nine-year-old Scimone was held on a bail of $100,000 bond. Police suspected him of being the man who knocked Meagher down to the floor as they escaped.

As the owner of the getaway Cadillac, Cirillo was held on $7500 bail. Abbatemarco was also held on $100,000 bail as a suspected participant in the Gallo attack.

Arrest warrants were issued for both D’Ambrosio and Persico who had made themselves scarce.

The Details Emerge

Informants later testified that Scimone was the one who had actually lured Larry into the death trap. As an old and trusted friend, Scimone had allegedly slipped a folded crisp $100 bill into Gallo’s palm as they drove in Scimone’s car to the Sahara Lounge together, under the guise that the money was a token and sign of better days to come for them both.

But once they were in the tavern and had saddled up to the bar for a drink, things got ugly real fast.

No sooner had Clemenza placed those drinks in front of the men for a three-way toast to their mutual health and good fortune, the garrote was thrown over Gallo’s head from behind by Sally D with he and Junior at either end doing their very best to choke the life out of Larry while the other two men held their prey down.

Back on his feet after a tough few weeks, Officer Blei was one lucky guy!

As this was happening, the wily old mafioso Charlie Brown was laying “chicky” for the cops as he watched his fellow younger Cosa Nostra members quickly drain the life out of Gallo.

In some ways, it can almost be looked upon as though the quiet and shadowy senior mafioso Charlie Clemenza was overseeing the entire sordid affair from his perch behind the bar as the murderous task at hand was carried out by younger members of his borgata.

Side Note: Although he was a virtual unknown to law enforcement for upwards of sixty years, the Gallo incident undoubtedly speaks to Clemenza’s true standing as a senior and highly trusted mafia member.

The very fact that family boss Joe Profaci entrusted the murder to be carried out directly inside the Sahara Lounge is significant enough, in and of itself. But the fact that the murder was attempted with Charlie Clemenza present, and him actually participating in the gangland hit as a lure and supervisor, and then his attempt to divert the cop’s attention away from the assault scene and Gallo’s body on the floor by saying everything was fine, is indicative of his culpability and mentality.

When he was first questioned by the cops, and later by the judge, he quickly clammed up and was sent to jail as a material witness for contempt of the court It clearly shows how deeply Clemenza was “in the life.” He was a mafia adherent of “Omertà” to the core and jail for his silence was just part of the job description.

Cracking Down

Over the next six months to a year, Brooklyn South detectives and all the other local police precincts were under a directive from the top police brass and City Hall to crack down as never before on all Profaci family racket operations.

They also made it their business to break balls on the other four known borgatas in the city as well in an effort to encourage them to finally put an end to the wanton violence that turned Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island into a veritable shooting gallery with rival hoodlums found shot in the streets almost daily.

Plainclothesmen and detectives, as well as uniformed police raiding parties, crashed into all the mob’s known hangouts including private social clubs, bars and taverns, restaurants, after-hour joints, crap games, the private homes and apartments of family and friends, ostensibly legitimate businesses run by wiseguys, mob girlfriends and “comares,” and anybody or anywhere else they knew would get under their skin and annoy the hoods.

And although the Gallo Gang was outnumbered and outgunned five to one, Ray Martin’s marauders were equal opportunity ball busters. They made sure to hit the Gallos just as hard as they were hitting the Profacis.

Crews of detectives scoured Brooklyn’s streets daily looking for every known racketeer and hoodlum hanging around a street corner or congregating together. The NYCPD accelerated a time-honored law enforcement campaign to pick up and arrest every single known hoodlum they could for such minor infractions as vagrancy or disorderly conduct.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, judges would either throw the case out completely or impose minor $5 and $10 fines on the defendant. But it served the dual purpose of keeping the hoods off the streets which in turn slowed the street warfare.

Coordinated Raids

Other more coordinated raids were repeatedly conducted against stationary targets such as mob social clubs and gambling dens.

Detectives armed with search warrants would conduct surprise raids in search of guns and other illegal contraband by hitting the Gallo headquarters at 51 President Street and an adjacent private social club they ran directly across the street known as the Longshoremen’s Club.

They rousted such top Gallo members as Larry and Joey themselves, their kid brother Albert (Kid Blast) Gallo, John (Mooney) Cutrone, Frank (Punchy) Illiano, Joseph (Joe Jelly) Gioelli, Joseph (Butch) Musumeci, Vincent (Chico) Regina, Nicky Bianco, Rosario (Roy-Roy) Musico, Salvatore (Sally Boy) Mangiamelli, Leonard (Big Lenny) Dello, Leonard Durso, Louis (Cadillac Louie) Mariani, and dozens of others.

Among the Profaci troops, some of the high-profiled mob figures targeted for this harassment campaign included men whom the police considered to be the top young gunsels on the frontlines of street combat.

These included Junior Persico; Sally D’Ambrosio, and his twin brother Alfonse (Funzi D); Dominick (Donny Shacks) Montemorano; Gennaro (Jerry Lang) Langella; Frederick (Fred No Nose) Delucia, and Hugh (Big Apples) McIntosh.

Old-timers such as John (Johnny Bath Beach) Oddo, Enrico (Harry) Fontana, Nicholas (Jiggs) Forlano, and Calogero (Charlie the Sidge) Lo Cicero were also focused on.

There were scores of other hoods, both big-time and small, who figured into the mix as well, but the list is way too numerous to name them all here.

The Smoke Clears

The Gallo-Profaci gang war continued despite the best efforts of law enforcement and the mob’s peacemakers alike. It would rage on for the next several years until by late 1963, an uneasy truce was finally called between the combatants.

When all the smoke cleared, there were dozens of mafiosi and their young allies who had either been killed, wounded, were missing, had been jailed, or had otherwise been adversely affected by their involvement in this unprecedented underworld conflict.

In time, the attempted murder cases and subsequent investigations into both Patrolman Blei’s shooting as well as Larry Gallo’s attempted strangling slowly washed out. Witnesses were not forthcoming, and the cops were hard-pressed to gather enough solid evidence to properly prosecute all those they knew had been responsible for the crimes.

People were not so forthcoming in that “shooting gallery” atmosphere where potential trial witnesses had to fear for their own lives. Evidence was scant.

Everybody in Brooklyn was “D and D.” Can you blame them? Every time they picked up the daily newspapers there was another front-page gangland murder splashed across it about an underworld rat or hoodlum having being whacked out.

Into Oblivion

By that point in time, the name of Charlie Clemenza had also long since faded into oblivion from the memory of law enforcement. And it was exactly the way Charlie Brown had originally designed it and liked it!

As he aged, Charlie went on to operate whatever rackets he had in the same old-fashioned way he and his two siblings always favored…Quiet and low-key while keeping their heads under law enforcement's radar.

It allowed Charlie, Jimmy, and Freddy, to live their lives without any of them ever having to serve any heavy time behind bars. This allowed them to take good care of their wives, children, and extended families properly.

It also helped them avoid the constant turmoil and havoc typically associated with the life of a mobster; especially a Profaci-Colombo mobster. I must say, Charlie and his brothers were very smart men.

Calogero Clemenza passed away at the respectable age of 78 years old on Friday, October 26, 1979. He was waked for two days at the famed A Torregrossa & Sons Funeral Home in Brooklyn, a mobbed-up funeral home if ever there was one. Literally thousands of mafiosi have been laid out there through the decades…Charlie was said to have had a big turnout.

In closing his story, I just wanna say that Charles (Charlie Brown) Clemenza was yet another one of those mafioso who would have been lost to history had it not been for that one incident back in 1961 that catapulted him into the spotlight for a brief moment.

You gotta ask yourself, how many more mafia members have operated in New York and throughout the country over the years whose names never surfaced?

Until next time…”The Other Guy”

Charles (Charlie Brown) Clemenza – The Sahara Lounge Bartender

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