Many modern residents of New York associate Red Hook with the inviting beacon of its IKEA store’s familiar blue and yellow palette. However, this modest dockland region has carved a distinct and intriguing place in Brooklyn’s timeline as the first point of contact for goods, and unsanctioned items entering the city. This attraction, it seems, drew an unsavory element and for a young Frank Dimatteo in the 1960s, that translated to his first encounters with the Mafia. In ‘Red Hook – Brooklyn Mafia, Ground Zero’, co-written by Dimatteo and Michael Benson, they share, ‘The only future I could imagine for myself as a child was intertwined with the life of a mobster. I had no other aim.’
Arriving at the gentle age of five, Dimatteo bore witness to his inaugural mob killing and, soon after, understood that murder was merely a dark facet of Mafia business. Red Hook, throughout its history, was often poorly regarded as one of Brooklyn’s more unsavory neighborhoods, steeped in criminal activity and extreme violence. During the early years of the 20th century, the Irish gang, the White Hand, had their stranglehold over Red Hook’s docks. An echo of Dimatteo’s voice reveals them to have started as mere thieves, with violence held at bay, but in due course things descended into chaos.
As further time passed, the Italian community grew in number, overpowering the resident Irish, and with their increases came escalated ferocity in their battle for control, particularly during the height of Prohibition, when both factions engaged in the illicit liquor trade. The Irish and Italian mobs managed to reach an accord in later years, but at the onset of the 20th century, they couldn’t so much as be present in the same room without tensions igniting. The unfortunate reality for the Irish community was their ill-suited match with their adversaries.
When Prohibition unveiled the bountiful riches of the underground, members of the White Hand began to harbor grandiose and impractical expectations far beyond their means. In Dimatteo’s words, ‘The transition of Italians assuming control over the piers was only a matter of time.’ The newly established rulers of Red Hook named themselves la Mano Nera, or the Black Hand, and their ranks swelled with eager recruits. Many found the Mafia to be an apppealing alternative to low wage, back-breaking labor jobs.
When the local youth were drawn into the criminal world, it was chiefly due to the scarcity of decent employment alternatives. To them, plundering cargo trucks was an easier and far more profitable venture. As a consequence, Red Hook recorded the highest rate of juvenile delinquency among New York City’s five boroughs. Violent acts were a recurring episode in Red Hook, as fist fights and random gunfire were frequent and bodies with gruesome injuries or even decapitated ones surfaced often at the docks. Justice in this world was both brutal and immediate.
Nowadays, the Gowanus canal empties itself into the sea at Red Hook, an area that’s undergoing an incremental overhaul and refurbishment. In the time of the Black Hand’s reign, when Francesco ‘Frankie Yale’ Loele controlled the docks, he had numerous illicit ventures. He took a cut from all illicit trade in Red Hook – if that business was a brothel, Yale received his share, and even a portion of payments for ice supply for refrigeration in the household was not exempt. He also introduced an escalated level of extortion.
Yale ruled the Italian immigrant community with an iron fist. They lived under the constant shadow of death if they failed to cough up their protection money. Yale’s ruthless tactics spared no one and those who refused to cough up the pay found themselves targeted. By the age of 21, Yale was said to be responsible for the demise of numerous men. When word reached his associate, Al Capone, that Yale was rerouting Capone’s liquor consignments as they were transferred from Chicago to New York, Capone orchestrated the assassination of Yale.
Subsequently, one fateful Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1928, Yale was attacked in his car and he did not survive. They first disrupted his journey with a hail of gunfire and once Yale’s vehicle crashed, they made sure he was dead – a .45 calibre bullet to the head ensured this. When the police arrived, they found his head nearly severed from the body, with most of his neck blasted away by the impact of a shotgun blast.
Capone, a native of Brooklyn, initiated his criminal career in New York City before earning the infamous nickname ‘Scarface’, having his face scored with a blade while working as a bouncer at a dance hall in Coney Island. The authors hinted at an interesting piece of trivia, crediting Yale’s killing as the first mob murder featuring a tommy gun, pre-dating the infamous Valentine’s Day massacre that later became synonymous with this weapon and its usage in the public consciousness by just fewer than eight months.
Presently, Red Hook retains its old-world charm with its cobblestone streets and boasts panoramic views of the iconic Statue of Liberty. In the 1920s, it was a bustling port, but by the time the 60s came around most of the sea freight had moved out. The construction and subsequent expansion of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (originally Gowanus Expressway) to a six-lane highway effectively severed Red Hook from the rest of Brooklyn. While it’s currently undergoing regeneration, this process is proving to be slow, with traces of the past, such as abandoned warehouses and undeveloped land, still visible today.
Although hailed as the next up-and-coming area, with rocketing rents pushing out most traditional blue-collar families, Red Hook still hasn’t quite managed to achieve the same kind of verve as seen in neighboring communities like Carroll Gardens and Park Slope. Even after the city committed a whopping $80 million for the renovation of three piers and planning towards a monumental refurbishment of the entire 122-acre Red Hook port, the tangible impact of these initiatives remains to be seen. Dimatteo also shares anecdotes of his father fraternizing with a gang governed by ‘Crazy Joey’ Gallo, a notorious villain from Red Hook, and his two brothers, feared by all.
Despite witnessing an incredible amount of violence in his youth, Dimatteo maintains that he wouldn’t have chosen a different upbringing. Drawing parallels with dramatic Western and gangster film narratives of his time, he describes his past as merely mirroring those stories, but carved within the context of reality. Today, he leads a peaceful life in Gerritsen Beach with his wife Emily and their three children. He laughs at the idea of the younger version of himself becoming an author, a publisher, and the head of a wonderful family. Dimatteo is grateful for having the opportunity to grow up; a chance he observes many did not get.