Intermezzo: The murder of Danny Greene and the fall of the Cleveland Mafia
The mechanics of a desperate but historic contract killing
After I completed but before the release of my second book, The Hunting of Cain (1983), a true story about a contract killing in Bath, Ohio, I started looking for another book project. Then, after reading a fascinating series of articles in Cleveland Magazine about the Cleveland Mafia, I contacted the author, the legendary Ned Whelan, who was well-known and respected for his true-crime work.
Ned and I agreed to consider co-authoring a book about the life and the 1977 slaughter of Danny Greene, the boss of the Irish Mafia in Cleveland. Our working title was Ashes to Ashes.
We agreed to focus our basic plot on the two U.S. Strike Force attorneys who prosecuted the murder case, Abe Poretz, who died in 2001, and John Sopko, both of whom I had interviewed at length. (Notably, Sopko was and still is a close friend of mine.)
On March 25, 1983, we delivered our proposal to my literary agent, Philip Spitzer, who pitched it to a handful of publishing houses in New York. Unfortunately, we did not receive what we considered a legitimate offer. Consequently, Ned and I dropped the project and went our separate ways.
In 1998, author Rick Porrello published an outstanding book about the rise and fall of Danny Greene, To Kill the Irishman: The War That Crippled the Mafia (Next Hat Press). Rick’s remarkable work, which did not deal with the prosecution of Greene’s killers, was later adapted as an action-packed 2011 motion picture.
Here is how Ned, who sadly passed away in 2013, and I opened our proposed project.
* Part 1: “Consequences after the death of mob boss John Scalish,” June 8, 2025.
* Part 2: “James Licavoli succeeds John Scalish as the local crime boss,” June 15, 2025.
* Part 3: “A comedy of errors foils an impromptu attempt to kill Greene and Nardi,” June 17, 2025.
* Part 4: “Penetrating Greene’s world,” June 22, 2025.
* Part 5: “The killing: ‘Carabbia flipped the switch, detonating the bomb,’" June 29, 2025.
* To be continued. . . .
