58 Mobsters Who Got Caught Visiting a "Sick Friend"

In 1957, a state trooper chasing a bad check drove up a dead-end road in Apalachin, New York, and found the leaders of the American Mafia. Police stopped 58 men that afternoon, and most of them said they'd come to visit a sick friend. Two years later, 20 of them were convicted. In 1960, an appeals court threw out every one of those convictions. The video follows Sergeant Edgar Croswell and trooper Vincent Vasisko, from a motel booking billed to Canada Dry to the roadblock below Joseph Barbara's house on McFall Road and the men who ran into the fields, including Vito Genovese, Carlo Gambino, Joseph Bonanno, Santo Trafficante and Rochester's Valenti brothers. It also covers what the state report and the federal court record actually say about why they met, the story that the FBI didn't know the Mafia existed (its own history says otherwise), the McClellan Committee hearings with Robert Kennedy, and why United States v. Bufalino reversed the case. Where sources disagree on a number, the video says so. #MafiaHistory #Apalachin #TrueCrime