Joseph Michael (Joe) Valachi, nicknamed Joe Cargo, (East Harlem (New York City), September 22, 1904 - El Paso (Texas), April 3, 1971) was a US mafia star. He was the first person to be a member of the American Mafia and also the first person to give revelations about the background and work of the Cosa Nostra. Using gigantic schedules with hundreds of different names, he identified the headlines of organized crime in America, revealing the name: Cosa Nostra, translated by him as Our Thing and / or Our Family. In Dutch, the name is usually translated as "Our Case".
During the legendary hearings given by Joe Valachi under oath, America and the world for the first time got a glimpse of the hard-working mafia who had nurtured in the US. Joe Valachi gave details about the families, the heads of the families, the organizational structure, initiation rituals, the omnipotence and the methods of the mafia.
The last words of Valachi during the trial:
Valachi: Senator, senator, can I say something senator? Senator: Yeah Valachi: Eh...After what I'm telling you now, I need to go no further and say nothing else. This here, what I am telling you, what I am exposing...to you and the press and everybody. THIS IS MY DOOM!
This meant Valachi, that he had broken the omnipotence and that anyone who betrayed the Cosa Nostra is to be sentenced to a death sentence. Joseph Valachi was always guarded by armed bodyguards, and died in a heart attack in his cell in 1971.
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