Joe Adonis, born Giuseppe Antonio Doto, was an Italian organized-crime leader who became a major figure in New York and New Jersey during Prohibition and helped shape the modern American Mafia. His activities included bootlegging, gambling, labor racketeering, political corruption, and control of illicit businesses before his 1956 departure for Italy.
Background
Joe Adonis was born Giuseppe Antonio Doto on November 22, 1902, in Montemarano, a town in Campania near Naples, Italy, to Michele Doto and Maria Doto. His family moved to the United States when he was a child or teenager and settled in Brooklyn, New York. He later used the name Joe Adonis, reportedly adopting it in connection with his concern for his appearance and reputation.
As a young man in New York, Adonis supported himself through theft and pickpocketing. He became associated with Charles “Lucky” Luciano and Settimo Accardi through illegal gambling, beginning a relationship with Luciano that continued through the major reorganizations of American organized crime. Adonis was known for careful grooming, expensive clothing, and a polished public manner.
Education
No documented formal education is associated with Adonis. His early life unfolded in immigrant neighborhoods of New York, where street economies, informal political connections, and illicit gambling formed part of the urban environment in which he began his career.
Career
Adonis was first arrested at about twenty-three, on charges of auto theft and gun possession, but the charges were dismissed. During Prohibition he worked with Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, and Bugsy Siegel in bootlegging operations supplying liquor to Manhattan nightlife. He opened Joe’s Italian Kitchen in Brooklyn, a speakeasy that attracted politicians, gamblers, and gangsters and became a meeting place linking criminal and political networks.
Adonis also operated legitimate-looking businesses, including automobile dealerships and the Automotive Conveying Company of New Jersey. In 1932, Harry Bennett of the Ford Motor Company gave the company a contract to haul new automobiles from Ford’s Edgewater, New Jersey, plant to the New York area. These enterprises allowed Adonis to combine commercial activity with influence over transportation, labor, and local political relationships.
Adonis became associated with the criminal organization headed by Joe Masseria and later with Salvatore Maranzano’s network. He was traditionally identified as one of the gunmen involved in Masseria’s murder at Nuova Villa Tammaro in Coney Island on April 15, 1931, although the precise details of his role have been disputed. After Maranzano’s death in September 1931, Adonis and Luciano became central figures in the reorganization of New York’s criminal families and the wider National Crime Syndicate.
During the 1930s and 1940s, Adonis specialized in gambling, labor racketeering, political corruption, and hijacking. His influence extended to Brooklyn’s docks and to gambling establishments in New York, New Jersey, Saratoga, and Hallandale, Florida. He owned Duke’s at 73 Palisades Avenue in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, which became a meeting place for figures including Albert Anastasia and Willie Moretti. He also operated the Barn, a New Jersey club known for high-stakes craps games; gambling consultant John Scarne described it as one of the most profitable illegal casinos in American history.
Adonis maintained connections with politicians, including William O’Dwyer, who later served as Brooklyn district attorney and mayor of New York City. The election of Fiorello La Guardia as mayor and the appointment of Thomas E. Dewey as a special prosecutor increased pressure on New York racketeers during the 1930s, and Adonis moved from Brooklyn to Fort Lee, New Jersey. During World War II, Meyer Lansky recalled that Adonis helped provide Italian contacts to United States Navy intelligence officers seeking information about Sicily.
The Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, chaired by Estes Kefauver, summoned Adonis in December 1950. He refused to answer questions about organized crime and gambling, invoking the Fifth Amendment. In 1951 he pleaded no contest to operating gambling rooms in New Jersey and was sentenced to two to three years in state prison and fined $15,000.
Adonis later faced deportation proceedings after the federal government established that he had been born in Italy, had never become a naturalized American citizen, and had made false statements about being born in Brooklyn. He left the United States voluntarily in January 1956 aboard the Conte Biancamano and went first to Naples, then to Rome and Milan. Italian authorities expelled him from Rome and later removed him from Milan in 1971 for alleged Mafia activity, sending him under police surveillance to Serra de’ Conti near Ancona. He died in an Ancona hospital on November 26, 1971, after suffering serious heart and lung complications.
Achievements
Adonis was traditionally identified as one of the participants in the 1931 killing of Joe Masseria, an event that helped clear the way for the reorganization of New York’s criminal families under Luciano and his allies.
He developed extensive gambling, labor-racketeering, and political connections across New York and New Jersey and became a major figure in the emerging National Crime Syndicate.
He was portrayed by actors in the films Gangster Wars, Bugsy, and the television movie Lansky, and was featured in the documentary programs American Justice and Making of the Mob: New York.
Personality
Contemporary descriptions emphasized Adonis’s polished manners, elaborate wardrobe, attention to grooming, and ability to move between criminal, commercial, political, and social circles. His public presentation contrasted with the coercive and violent activities associated with his gambling and racketeering operations.
Physical Characteristics:
Adonis was frequently described as carefully groomed and fashionably dressed.
Quotes from others about the person
John Scarne described the Barn as one of the greatest money-making illegal gambling casinos in history. Estes Kefauver characterized Adonis as one of the most sinister figures in the American underworld.
Interests
Gambling, automobile businesses, fine clothing, and personal grooming.
Connections
Adonis married Joan Doto and had four children identified in contemporary accounts as Joseph A. Doto, Dolores Maria Olmo, Anna Arrieta, and Elizabeth Doto. His family remained in New Jersey after he left the United States in 1956. His son Joseph later became associated with organized crime in Bergen County, New Jersey.
Adonis maintained long-standing professional and criminal associations with Charles “Lucky” Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, Albert Anastasia, Willie Moretti, and other leading figures of American organized crime. Virginia Hill was also identified as a personal associate. After Adonis died in Italy, his family returned his body to New Jersey, where he was buried at Madonna Cemetery in Fort Lee under the name Joseph Antonio Doto.
Father:
Michele Doto
Mother:
Maria Doto
Daughter:
Anna Arrieta
Daughter:
Elizabeth Doto
Daughter:
Dolores Maria (Doto) Olmo
Son:
Joseph A. Doto
He later became associated with organized crime in Bergen County, New Jersey.
Son:
Frank Adonis
He later became an actor known for gangster roles.
Partner:
Virginia Hill
She was associated with Adonis and other leading figures of organized crime.
Wife:
Joan Doto
References
Luciano's Luck
A commercially published work concerning Charles “Lucky” Luciano and the organized-crime world associated with Joe Adonis.
