S
OB
M
S
R TE
T
Tampa's underworld
The Tampa Family by FC
ampa crime started with Charlie Wall who, in the 1920s, controlled a number of gambling rackets and corrupt government officials. Wall controlled Tampa from the neighborhood known as Ybor City, he employed Italians, Cubans and men of other ethnicities into his organization. Charlie Wall's only competition was Tampa's earliest Mafia boss Ignacio Antinori.
Antinori gang The first Italian gang in the Tampa Bay area was created by Ignazio Antinori in 1925. a Sicilianborn immigrant, became a well-known drug kingpin and the Italian crime boss of Tampa in the late 1920s. A smaller Italian gang in the area was controlled by Santo Trafficante Sr., who had lived in Tampa since the age of 18. Trafficante had already set up Bolita games throughout the city and was a very powerful man. Antinori took notice of Santo Trafficante and invited him into his organization and together they expanded the Bolita games across the state. By the 1930s Ignazio Antinori and Charlie Wall were in a bloody war for ten years, which would later be known as "Era of Blood". Wall's closest associate, Evaristo "Tito" Rubio, was shot on his porch on March 8, 1938. The war ended in the 1940s with Ignacio Antinori being shot and killed with a sawn-off shotgun. Both Wall's and Antinori's organizations were weakened leaving Santo Trafficante as one of the last and most powerful bosses in Tampa. Trafficante Sr. era
26 I’M ITALIAN ISSUE #005
Santo Trafficante Sr. had now taken over a majority of the city and started to teach his son Santo Trafficante Jr. Santo Trafficante at San Souci’s bar. Havana, Cuba. how to run the city. In Trafficante Sr.'s adult life he only portrayed himself as a successful Tampa cigar factory owner.Santo was being watched closely by police and made Salvatore "Red" Italiano the acti acting ng boss. With the unti untimely mely Trafficantes Kefauver hearings and Charlie Wall testifying in 1950, both Traffi cantes fled fled to Cuba. He always wanted to make it big in Cuban casinos and dispatched his son, Santo, Jr., to Havana in 1946 to help operate a mob owned casino. The Tampa mob made a lot of money in Cuba, but never achieved its ambition of making the island part of its own territory. Aft After er the hearings ended fled the Trafficantes returned to Tampa to find out that Italiano had just fl ed to Mexico leaving after finding Jimmy Lumia the biggest mobster in the city. Santo had Lumia killed aft er fi nding out he was bad mouthing him while he was in Cuba and he took over again. In 1953 Santo Jr. survived a Trafficante shooting. The family suspected it was Charlie Wall and they had him killed in 1955. Traffi cante remained the boss of Tampa until he died of natural causes in 1954.
26