Joseph "Joe the Barber" Barbara and Apalachin

While this article may not be news, it is important that I tell this story and the players involved because I'm from this area (Endwell, NY) and there is reason why I mention it. I was a young boy when I first heard about the Mafia in upstate New York and even had a Mafia soldier living up the street from me. What I remember about the mob was that had their hands into everything here. They were getting a cut from all the vending machines in the area and all the meat markets. Other enterprises they were involved in are pure speculation so I won't comment on them. What I do know is that the north side of Endicott was a place you did not want to commit a crime. If you did, you might end up under the runway at the regional airport or never be seen again. This was a nice area to live in when the mob was prevalent. Believe or not, they kept our neighborhoods safe.

Unless you are from upstate New York, Tioga County is a place you probably have never have heard of but in 1957 one small town in Tioga County gained world wide attention. Apalachin, NY is a very small town with a population of around 1126 people according to the 2000 census and hasn't grown much in recent years. The town is about 5 miles from where I live. However on November 13, 1957, Apalachin's population grew by over 100 people. On this date, Joseph "Joe the Barber" Barbara hosted the most famous Mafia conference in American history.

Born Giuseppe Maria Barbara in 1905, He was raised in the fishing village of Castallmare on the island of Sicily. He came to the United States in 1921 and joined his brother in Endicott, NY to work at one of the Endicott-Johnson Shoe factories. Barbara began associating with members of the Northeast La Costa Nostra which mainly operated out of Scranton-Wilkes Barre, PA, Pittsburgh, PA and Buffalo, NY. No one knows for sure when Joe "made his bones" or was inducted into the Mafia but for all intent and purposes Joe Barbara was a "hit man" for the mob. In 1931 he was arrested in New York City for carrying a submachine gun in car he didn't own. He was also implicated in a couple of unsolved murders in Brooklyn. Joe was arrested for those murders but the charges were dropped for lack of evidence. In 1940 Scranton crime boss Johnny Sciandra was murdered and many think Joe Barbara was behind his killing. This made Barbara the boss of what would later be known as the Bufalino Crime Family. Barbara eventually gained bottling and distribution rights for the Canada Dry Beverage Company in Binghamton, NY.

In October of 1956, a New York State trooper pulled over two mobsters, notorious for trafficking heroin, in Windsor near Binghamton for speeding. The driver, Carmine Galante of the Bonanno LCN and his passenger Joseph "Joey Beck" Depalmero, a top mobster in the Lucchese crime family were questioned by police and later the police found out that Galante and Depalmero had stayed the previous night at Binghamton's Arlington Hotel with two other members of the Bonanno family. The tab for the hotel was signed by Joseph Barbara under his bottling company's name. Police were worried that the mob was setting up a major heroin trafficking ring through the region. For the record Galante was murdered June 12, 1979.

So on November 13, 1957, twenty five of the twenty six known La Costa Nostra families from around the country met at "Joe the Barber's" house. There were also bosses from Canada and Italy. Police noticed an unusual amount of Cadillac cars heading to Barbara's Apalachin estate. The took down licence plate numbers and ran background checks. When they noticed the criminal backgrounds on these people they raided the place and could not believe how many mobsters were in attendance. It was a who's who of mob bosses there. Carlo Gambino, Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonanno, Paul "Big Paul" Castellano, and Vito Genevese just to name a few that were in attendance. Some scrambled into the woods and would getaway while others were arrested and detained. All stuck to the same story that they had come to wish Joe Barbara well after he suffered a heart attack. Nothing came in the way of prosecutions but what that meeting did was force the federal government to admit that there was a secret society called the La Costa Nostra or the Mafia. The only faction of the LCN not to show up that day was the Detroit mob because they had arrived late and by the time they got into town the word was out about the raid.

After the meeting and because of bad publicity, Barbara was forced to sell his Canada Dry business and he retired for about a year before he died of a heart attack in June of 1959. Joseph Barbara's name isn't spoken as much today as it was in years past. I know a lot of people who knew Joe and they tell me stories about him. Some may be true but I doubt it. These old timers miss the good old days when our neighborhoods weren't controlled by crack dealers and thugs with guns that will shoot you on the spot just because you 'dissed" them. I myself miss the good old days when you could walk down Washington Avenue in Endicott at three in the morning and you felt perfectly safe. This is no more for the New York City gang bangers from "Crooklyn" have taken over our streets with their pathetic way of doing business.

The Italian-American Mafia might have some of the most dangerous criminals ever but they flew under the radar for the most part and were men of honor. We in this community respected them as much for there potential for violence as we did for them keeping our neighborhoods safe. They are mostly gone now and like most crime families across the country their numbers have dwindled. I still see signs that the mob is still around. You have to keep your eyes and ears open and what ever you do, keep your mouth shut. I'm proud to be from this area and I'm also proud of its history. It would not bother me one bit if Bufalino family rose to power once again and cleaned up this area. Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel once said that "we only kill our own, never any civilians" which makes me feel a whole lot safer with them around than the scum from NYC. Yes there are some of us who really do miss Joseph "Joe the Barber" Barbara and the peace that came with him.