On this date in 1971:
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| New York Daily News |
Giuseppe Doto, better known by gangland nickname Joe Adonis, died Friday, November 26, 1971, at the general hospital in Ancona, Italy. He was sixty nine years old. Death was caused by complications of pneumonia and heart disease.
Born in Montemarano, near Naples, late in 1901, young Doto entered the U.S. with his parents and settled in Brooklyn. As Adonis, he grew into a U.S. Mafia powerhouse from the days of Prohibition into the 1950s. Hounded by city authorities in the early 1940s, he relocated to the Fort Lee, New Jersey, area. Though involved in numerous rackets for decades, he managed to avoid prison until a New Jersey gambling conviction in 1951 earned him a two- to three-year sentence.
In 1954, he got into some trouble due to his under-oath claims of being born in Passaic, New Jersey. A supporting record was found to be fraudulent, and Adonis was traced to his origin in Montemarano. Faced with prison sentences and likely deportation for perjury, Adonis agreed to leave the country.
Leaving behind his wife Jean and four children in New Jersey, he sailed for Italy aboard the ocean liner Conte Biancamano in 1956 (reportedly booking an expensive three-room cabin for the trip). He stayed for a time with relatives in the Naples area, but eventually settled in downtown Milan in northern Italy.
He was reported to be weak and in poor health in spring of 1971, when authorities decided that his apparent continuing underworld connections were a threat to order. A court sentenced him to four years of close police surveillance in the small community of Serra de Conti, about twenty five miles inland of the Adriatic coastal community of Ancona. At the time, Adonis protested his relocation: "I'm just a poor old man. I don't understand what you've got against me." He called the sentence an exile within an exile and expressed his certainty that the move "will kill me."
On appeal, Adonis succeeded in having the surveillance sentence reduced from four years to three. But he was losing a battle against pneumonia. On November 23, 1971, he was admitted to the hospital in Ancona. When he died, a few days later, his thirty-two-year-old secretary, Rosemarie Bloch, was by his bedside. According to one report, Adonis's wife and two of their four children, learning of his illness, flew to Italy and arrived in Ancona just minutes before he passed away.
Rosemarie Bloch and Adonis's daughter, Mrs. Dolores Maria Olmo, made arrangements with the U.S. consulate at Rome to have Adonis's remains flown back to the U.S. for burial. The body arrived at Kennedy Airport in New York on December 2. It was contained in a burnished bronze coffin in the cargo hold of an Alitalia jet. The A.K. Macagna Funeral Home of Anderson Avenue in Fort Lee, New Jersey, handled the final arrangements.
Adonis was buried at Madonna Cemetery in Fort Lee on December 6. His send-off was modest by gangland standards. Three cars of floral tributes led a cortege of fifteen cars between the funeral home and Epiphany Church, where a funeral Mass was celebrated. Family members and close friends proceeded on to Madonna Cemetery, straddling the Fort Lee-Leonia boundary. They were met there by a group of newsmen. The family left the site before the coffin was lowered into the ground.
Sources
- "Adonis to lie in N.J. grave," New York Daily News, Nov. 30, 1971, p. 80.
- "Adonis' body returned for U.S. burial," Newsday (Nassau Edition), Dec. 3, 1971, p. 33.
- "Adonis' mourners," photo caption, Newsday (Nassau Edition), Dec. 7, 1971, p. 32.
- "Joe Adonis one of 8 cited in Dewey reply," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Dec. 3, 1937, p. 1.
- "Joe Adonis, underworld gambling king, dies," New York Times, Nov. 27, 1971, p. 34.
- Charlton, Linda, "Returned to Italy in '56," New York Times, Nov. 27, 1971, p. 34.
- Lee, Henry, "Joe Adonis dies unwanted," New York Daily News, Nov. 27, 1971, p. 2.
- Murray, Leo, "Offer birth certificates from Italy in Adonis case," Paterson NJ Morning Call, Jan. 15, 1954, p. 1.
- Packard, Reynolds, "Adonis' kin here asks for body," New York Daily News, Nov. 28, 1971, p. 14.
- Plosia, Les, "Few turn out for Adonis burial," Passaic NJ Herald-News, Dec. 7, 1971, p. 12.
- Pugh, Thomas, "The late Joe Adonis home again," New York Daily News, Dec. 3, 1971, p. 4.
- Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, Investigation of Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, Part 7, New York - New Jersey, U.S. Senate, 81st Congress 2nd Session, 82nd Congress 1st Session, Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1951, p. 280-301.
