In the hierarchy of the Genovese Crime Family, there are the headlines and then there are the lifers. Ralph Serpico was a lifer. While his brother Frank “Farby” Serpico was rubbing shoulders with “Trigger Mike” Coppola in East Harlem and Miami, Ralph stayed grounded in the North Queens neighborhood of Corona — the “Crown” of the borough.
For over sixty years, Serpico treated the streets of Corona and Flushing like his personal counting house. Despite a rap sheet that started in 1935 and included dozens of arrests for bookmaking and policy-numbers, Ralph was the consummate survivor. He was a man who preferred the dim light of a social club to the flashbulbs of a courtroom, pivoting seamlessly from operating floating dice games to building a suburban real estate firm aptly named Farby Homes, Inc.
But being a “member in good standing” didn’t make him untouchable. From a terrifying broad-daylight kidnapping at the hands of a postal-disguised gang to being outed in a U.S. Senate subcommittee decades after he first picked up a betting slip, Ralph’s story is a deep dive into the longevity and loyalty of the Genovese rank-and-file.
Ralph P. (Ralph Farbs) Serpico — aka Farby, Ralph Serpin, Ralph Sertico, and Raffaele Pasquale Serpico (TN) — was born on October 22, 1911, in Naples, Italy (Campania Province), the oldest of four children born to Rosa Serpico. His younger brother and two sisters were, in age order, Frank, Felicia, and Mary.
A 1925 U.S. census lists their ages as follows: mother, Rose Serpico (age 34); Ralph Serpico (13); Frank Serpico (12); Felicia Serpico (11); and Mary Serpico (10).
Upon their arrival in the United States, the Serpico family quickly settled into a newly developing community called Corona, a quiet neighborhood located in the northwest part of Queens County that was quickly becoming home to a large influx of newly-arrived Southern Italian immigrants.
The Serpicos rented ia a small second-floor apartment in a building located at 110-26 Corona Avenue.
110-26 Corona Avenue, Corona
This is the neighborhood where Ralph, Frank, and their sisters were raised and reared, and the neighborhood that the Serpico brothers would utilize as a base of operations for their entire lives. At some point, Ralph and each of his siblings also became naturalized citizens of the United States.
By his mid-twenties, Ralph was already dating a local neighborhood girl named Mary D’Amelio, who was two years older than him. Originally born in East Harlem, as a child, Mary’s family relocated over the bridge from Upper Manhattan to Corona, Queens.
After a short courtship, they officially tied the knot in 1940. The newlyweds rented a small apartment in Corona at 40-69 97th Street, just a few blocks away from Ralph’s childhood home on Corona Avenue.
Later that same year, with World War II raging in Europe, Ralph was required to register for the draft, which he did on October 21, 1940, at United States Draft Board Office #257, located at 99th Street and 34th Avenue, in nearby Elmhurst.
Despite the war in Europe — or maybe because of it — Mary and Ralph decided to quickly start a family of their own. And on December 4, 1943, they did just that when Mary gave birth to a son they named Francis — who was later nicknamed Frank. Shortly after the end of the war, around 1947, Mary and Ralph were blessed with a second child, a daughter they named RoseMary.
The Crown of Queens
For many years, Corona had a reputation as being a rough-and-tumble neighborhood and an area known as an underworld stronghold that had given birth to a number of notable racketeers and gangsters.
Often Imitated. Never Duplicated. Button Guys of The New York Mafia...There's Only One!
