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MAGADDINO'S APALACHIN BLUNDER LED TO AN AFTERMATH OF MURDER, ARRESTS HERE

By Mike Hudson

The Apalachin conclave of Nov. 14, 1957, was a disaster. For the American Mafia, it was the biggest blow suffered since its establishment in New York City some four decades earlier by Charles "Lucky" Luciano. And no Mafia organization came away from the meeting more battered and bruised than the Niagara Falls-based Buffalo family led by Stefano Magaddino.

Just weeks prior to Apalachin, the cross-dressing head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover, assured members of Congress that no such organization existed. At the same time he lambasted them for worrying about such trivial nonsense when the real threat to the country -- Communism -- was being allowed to run unchecked.

In that respect, the raid was as big an embarrassment for the nation's top cop as it was for Don Stefano. Nobody tried to kill Hoover over it, though.

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