In 1898, a German chemist called Gerhardt Dressen discovered a drug called heroin. This derivative of opium was hailed by the world as a great boon to mankind. It was as important, the medical journals of the day said, as the discovery of morphine had been back in 1803. They were both painkillers, and the best thing about them was that neither drug was habit forming. By the time medical authorities had discovered just how wrong they had been in their analysis, millions of people had become victims to the narcotic habit. It wasn’t until 1906 that federal legislation outlawed the importation of opium and other habit-forming drugs. Even then, all those years ago, it was too late.

The Lucchese crime family generated its money from many sources -- union control, loan-sharking, gambling, hi-jacking, numbers and drugs. The huge amount of profits from importing and selling heroin, or as they called it “babania,” was so enormous, that Lucchese, like so many of his peers, turned a blind eye to the edict that had been laid down many years before, prohibiting the involvement in drug trafficking.

This had been introduced not for any philanthropic reason, but simply to avoid the intense pressure that was applied by the FBN in their investigations and continual scrutiny of drug pushers. They were an elite unit, impossible to control and not sensitive to bribery or corruption. Their intense dedication to their job had the effect of impeding other criminal activities and enterprises, and their ratio of successfully prosecuting cases was high enough to create a lot of bad publicity for the Mob.

In 1961, the Lucchese family was involved in one of the highest profile cases ever, involving heroin importation. It became famous world wide because of a book that was written about the case, and an award-winning movie that followed. The incident was known as “The French Connection.” A police investigation resulted in the seizure of the biggest single heroin shipment discovered in America up to that time. The drug traffickers, some high level members of the Lucchese family, were arrested and the police congratulated on their achievement.

Ten years later, the same police force lost the seized shipment from their property office at police headquarters. The resulting investigation, uncovering graft and corruption typical in many ways of the time, also unlocked the fact that one of the main perpetrators in the theft was a member of the Lucchese family.

Following the book and the movie in 1971, the French Connection case became legend. From the story line, filmgoers must have thought New York City possessed the most dedicated narcotic cops in the land. However, like most movies, it was fantasy based on fact. The truth behind the story was a lot more prosaic. In some ways not unlike the mob lore that surrounds the Mafia.

Angelo Tuminaro was a long established member of the Lucchese family. He was part of a crime family in more ways than one. His wife was Jewish, and her father was a major figure in Jewish-dominated rackets. As a result, Angelo gained recognition as number-one liaison between Italian and Jewish wings of organized crime. He was closely involved with fellow family capo John Ormento, supervising heroin trafficking into the United States from Europe and the Middle East. Tuminaro and his best friend and second-in-command, Ignacio “Uncle Iggy” Pellegrino, had organized heroin shipments from France through a group of three Corsican criminals, called Francois Sgalia, Jean Jehan and J. Mouren. The first shipment arrived early in 1961 and came into the country stashed away inside an imported car. By the middle of 1961, when the second shipment was being organized, Tumarino was on the run from the police in connection with a gangland murder, and was keeping off the streets to avoid arrest.

Through his partner, Pellegrino, he was having the heroin delivered to buyers by his nephew, his sister’s son, Patsy Fuca. Patsy at times used his brother Tony to help, but not often, as Tony Terrible as he was known, was a bit of a useless moron. Patsy was paid a straight salary of $200 a week to do the job, and seeing the huge amounts of profit to be made from drugs, was also making a chunk on the side. He did this by diluting down the heroin in his safekeeping with milk sugar, keeping some for himself and selling it to dealers and junkies on the streets.

Patsy Fuca (NYPD Photo)

All was going well until Patsy was injured in a car crash on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Desperate to keep the wheels rolling, he employed his brother full time to handle his operation until he recovered from his injuries. Tony would deliver the drugs that Patsy had been delivering for Angelo. He would also deliver the portion of dope that Patsy was siphoning off for his own little deals. Naturally, in keeping with the family tradition, Tony started stealing from Patsy’s stolen portions in order to do a little dealing of his own. Angelo was bringing in the heroin from France, Patsy was stealing from Angelo and Tony was stealing from Patsy.

Tony Fuca (NYPD photo)

The second shipment of heroin organized by the Corsicans was due to arrive, hidden away in a 1960 Buick Invicta owned by a French entertainment personality called Jacques Angelvin. He was an emcee on France’s most popular television show, “Paris-Club.”

Heavily in debt to French loan sharks, he had no option but to co-operate and allow his car to be used as the vehicle for the transportation of the drug. Scaglia, one of the importers, was flying into New York ahead of the shipment, which was coming over on a ship called the SS United States, sometime in November.

Police officers Eddie Egan

About this time, as a result of information received from Johnny Walsh, a drug addict and one of Patsy’s street drug customers, the police started surveillance of Patsy Fuca. Two of the cops assigned to the case became world famous as a result. Their names were Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso. At this stage, their investigation was simply focussed on a petty drug dealer. They had no idea just how big the case was going to be, and probably would never have known had an old man not died.

Sonny Grosso

Towards the end of the year, the old and sick father of Angie Tuminaro died. In keeping with Mafia tradition, his wake was a grand affair, not in respect to him, but to his son, a leading and respected member of the Lucchese family. Angie was still on the lam, and the arrangements for the funeral fell to his nephew, Patsy Fuca. It was a big do, and it was his undoing.

The wake lasted three days. The coffin cost $5000 and there were enough flowers sent to refurbish Central Park. Many members of organized crime came to pay their respects, and Patsy was prominent, moving through the crowds, pressing flesh and accepting condolences. Along with all the visitors were members of the FBI, taking down car licence plate numbers and photographing guests, to pass on to local law enforcement agencies. Grosso and Egan suddenly found out that Patsy who they had considered a simple street dealer, was none other than the eldest nephew of Angelo Tuminaro, known to them as a major criminal and drug trafficker. Patsy was very visible as provisional head of Angie’s own family within the Lucchese organization. So surveillance of Patsy began in earnest.

On January 10^th, 1962, the ship arrived. The car was in due course driven to a garage in the Bronx and the heroin -- over one hundred pounds of it -- was removed and stored in the basement.

After eight days of intensive surveillance by both the Narcotics Bureau of the NYPD and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, most of the principal suspects were arrested. Some of the heroin was found stored in the basement of Patsy Fuca’s parents home in Brooklyn, and the bulk of it was recovered along with the arrest of Tony Fuca at his home in the Bronx.

In one of those never-ending ironical twists, on Monday January 22nd, at about the time the police discovered the bulk of the drugs, that had been hidden in the basement of Tony Fuca’s apartment building, thousands of miles away, Charlie Luciano, exiled czar of the Mob, died of a heart attack at Naples airport. At the time of his death, American and Italian narcotics agents, along with the help of the French police, were poised to arrest him on charges of having directed the smuggling of more than $150 million worth of drugs into the United States over the previous decade.

Eventually, by early March, the investigation was over. Patsy and his associates and the Frenchmen, Angelvin and Scaglia were arrested, tried, convicted and sent to prison.

Patsy Fuca (left) and his associates (NYPD photo)

The heroin with a street value of over thirty million dollars was stored in the Property Clerk’s office of the NYPD on the second floor of 400 Broom Street, in lower Manhattan. A building with cast-iron doors and walls eight feet thick, it appeared impregnable. Locked at night and guarded during the day, it was the repository for a huge collection of evidence and criminal memorabilia collected over the years. The shelves and cubicles were crammed with every imaginable type of article: telephones, a ground to air missile launcher as well as every possible type of weapon, a jar containing a pickled rattlesnake, one containing a human finger, 150 urns of cremated ashes, the list was endless. Packed into one blue and two red suitcases, the French Connection heroin was stashed in a locked cage called a “safe area.”

Property Clerk’s Office (POLICE)

From time to time, it was used as evidence in several grand jury and court proceedings, and in 1964 was sent to Washington as a display at hearings of a United States Senate inquiry on drug trafficking. And there it should have ended, but more was to come.

On November 21^st, 1972, ten years after the heroin was lodged in the Office, it was checked on, following an unrelated case. Inside the three suitcases where it was seemingly stored, police found bags of flower and cornstarch. A detective called Nuzziatto had last signed out the heroin on September 29^th, 1969. Subsequent investigations discovered that in addition to the “French Connection” heroin, over 300 lbs. of cocaine and heroin stored as evidence in other cases, had also been stolen. The street value of these drugs was estimated at seventy-three million dollars. It was the biggest robbery ever in the history of America, and it had taken place right under the noses of the New York Police Department.

Months and years of investigations followed the theft of the drugs. The main suspects were an ex-cop and a criminal connected to the Lucchese family. The cop was called Frank King and the mobster’s name was Vincent Pappa.

Pappa was born in Queens in 1917. He was married and had three children. His first recorded arrest occurred in 1938 for attempted burglary. In 1959, he received his first conviction and sentence for drug peddling -- 5 years in prison. By the end of the 1960’s, he had built up a major drug organization, working with known Mafia gangsters such as Louis Inglese, Joseph DiNapoli and Carmine Tramunti. He was one of the few dealers big enough to handle heroin shipments in the 50-100 kilo range. He ran his business from either Ditman’s Private Car Services, one of the legitimate businesses he owned, or his social club in Queens called the Astoria Colts Social Club.

Pappa was short and stocky in build with dark Mediterranean features and greying hair. He dressed conservatively, and was known as a generous friend. He was also a deadly enemy. During one of the many investigations of which he was the subject, two of his associates named Jack and Louis were suspected of being police informers. Jack disappeared in 1973 and was never seen again. Shortly after, Pappa sent a message from his prison cell to one of his associates. “Don’t send anybody to Jack. Don’t send anybody but Louis to Jack.” Five months later the decomposed body of Louis LaSerra was found in Queens. He had been shot in the back of the head. He had been sent to Jack.

Pappa was the subject of an intense investigation by the SIU and subsequently was tried and convicted and sent to prison for five years on drug charges.

The SIU-Special Investigating Unit of the NYPD was the most corrupt law enforcement agency in American history. It was said of its officers that they were poor in their twenties, rich in their thirties and in jail in their forties. Their unique assignment was to investigate major narcotic traffickers in New York, and their creation as an anti-crime unit stemmed directly from the French Connection case. The eighty men and women who formed the SIU roamed across the city at will, chasing leads, following suspects, arresting drug dealers and filling their pockets with huge amounts of money siphoned off the criminals they arrested. Pocketing money and drugs became a standard procedure. At their peak, an SIU agent was known as a “Prince of the City.”

One of these freebooters was called Joe Nuzziatto, the same name used to sign out the drugs, although no evidence was found to connect him to that case. His name had been forged on the documents. He was subsequently found deceased in mysterious circumstances, shot dead in a squad car in the middle of the day in Brooklyn. His death was determined as suicide. At the time of his death, he was the subject of a Police Internal Affairs investigation. One of his team at the SIU was a big, tough Irish cop, called Frank King, who became one of the chief suspects in the French Connection heroin case. It was suspected that he was one of the men on the “inside” who allegedly helped in the theft of the drugs. He was indicted in 1974 for conspiring with Vincent Pappa to obstruct justice, and also on charges of hindering prosecution investigation of the French Connection thefts.

Although he was cleared in due course of all charges relating to the theft of the drugs, he was convicted on tax evasion, based on a case involving him illegally taking money from drug dealers. Found guilty on that, he went to prison for five years.

In July 1977, while continuing his drug trafficking prison sentence at the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta, Vincent Pappa was stabbed to death by a group of black convicts who had been paid to kill him. A group of inmates, lead by a Jewish drug dealer called Herbie Spering, had become convinced that Pappa was corroborating, and Spering had allegedly laid down a contract on Pappa. To men locked away forever, money was a way of finding relief, through illegally obtained drugs and alcohol. The price for the murder of Vincent Pappa was just two thousand dollars.

He had spent more on a night out at a good restaurant.