Joe Valachi

A lower-level Mafia hoodlum for most of his life, Joe Valachi became a household name in the 1960s as the first Mafioso to break the code of "omerta" (silence) about the notorious organized crime syndicate. Valachi was a member of the family run by Vito Genovese and had been convicted and sent to prison for 20 years on narcotics charges in the early 1960s. He blamed Genovese for his predicament, and word got back to him that Genovese had put out a contract on his life. One day in the prison yard at Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, where Valachi was serving his sentence, he became suspicious of an inmate named John Saupp, and suspected that Saupp was the man hired to carry out the Genovese contract. Valachi attacked Saupp and beat him to death, only to discover later that Saupp had nothing to do with either Genovese or the Mafia and just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Valachi was charged with murder, and in his anger at the Mafia in general and Genovese in particular, made a deal to tell everything that he had learned about the Mafia in his more than 30-year career in it. He testified at a televised hearing in front of the U.S. Senate's McClellan Committee investigating organized crime in the U.S., and his explosive testimony riveted the country for weeks. He provided the names of the bosses of virtually every Mafia family in the U.S. - many of whom up until that time had been completely unknown to the public - and recounted the more than 30 murders he had been involved in, who had ordered them, why they had been ordered, and in general gave the world its first look at the inner workings of the Mafia. His testimony resulted in the convictions and imprisonment of many Mafia leaders and finally forced FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to admit that there actually was a Mafia, a fact that Hoover, for reasons that became known after his death, had been denying for more than 30 years. After his testimony Valachi was transferred to various jails and prisons, eventually winding up in the Federal Penitentary at La Tuna in Texas, where he spent the remainder of his life.