Up next in 10
In 1963, one man did the unthinkable - he broke the Mafia's sacred code of silence. This is the shocking true story of Joseph Valachi, the mobster who exposed La Cosa Nostra to the world.
In this video, you'll discover:
✓ The terrifying moment Valachi decided to betray the mob
✓ Secret recordings from the historic Senate hearings
✓ Why Vito Genovese wanted him dead in prison
✓ The hidden Mafia structure he revealed to the FBI
✓ How his testimony changed organized crime forever
📺 EXCLUSIVE CONTENT:
• Rare footage from the 1963 Senate hearings
• Never-before-seen FBI documents
• Expert analysis from former FBI agents
• The real story behind "The Valachi Papers"
⏰ CHAPTERS:
0:00 The Kiss of Death
2:15 Rise of a Soldier
5:30 Inside the Genovese Family
8:45 The Prison Betrayal
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
Imagine a world where power is absolute and betrayal is a daily occurrence.
0:05
Where a man's word is sealed in blood. Where silence is safety and a whisper
0:11
can be a death sentence. Now imagine the first man who stood up in daylight,
0:17
broke that code of silence and told the world how the underworld really worked.
0:23
Welcome to the story of Joseph, the first mobster to break Omea. Was he
0:29
a traitor, a survivor, or the reluctant key that unlocked the mafia's darkest secrets? Introduction. The man who broke
0:37
the silence. For decades, America heard rumors of families, of bosses with names
0:43
most people couldn't pronounce, of quiet hands that controlled rackets and politicians with equal ease. But the
0:48
mafia denied it. Lawyers dismissed it. Even some in law enforcement treated it like a ghost story. Then in 1963, a man
0:58
in prison stood before the United States Senate and confirmed what many suspected
1:04
but couldn't prove. There was a highly organized criminal society, an American
1:10
Kosanostra with a hierarchy, rituals, rules, and a code that bound its members
1:16
tighter than any contract. His name was Joseph Valache. Why did he do it? Was it
1:23
revenge? Was it fear? Was it a bid to save his own life in a world where the
1:29
only way out had always been a coffin? And once he spoke, could the mafia ever
1:35
go back to the shadows it came from? Background, East Harlem, poverty, and
1:41
the education of a thief. Before the bright lights of televised hearings,
1:47
there was a boy. Joseph Michael Velache was born on September 22nd, 1904 in East
1:56
Harlem, an immigrant neighborhood where factories snorted smoke and tenementss
2:01
swallowed whole families. His father was a violent alcoholic. Home wasn't safety.
2:08
It was another battlefield. The streets offered their own kind of logic. Quick money, quicker fists, and a code that
2:15
made sense if school never did. He became what the neighborhood allowed him to become, a thief with speed in his
2:23
feet and nerves in his hands. He gravitated to a crew known as the
2:28
Minutemen. Burglars prized for how fast they could break, grab, and vanish. In
2:34
that world, a good driver was a prize. Velace was that man. Quiet, efficient,
2:41
in and out before most people finished a cigarette. The nickname fit. A minute
2:47
was the goal. A minute could be the difference between a score and a cell.
2:53
But speed doesn't outrun everything. In 1921, he was arrested for grand larseny.
3:00
2 years later, another arrest, attempted burglary, landed him in singing. He
3:07
served half his sentence and came out with the only diploma his world respected. Hard time. On the outside, he
3:15
learned the cruel truth that every criminal learns eventually. No one saves
3:21
your seat. He'd been replaced, so he built his own crew. If the front door
3:26
closed, the side door waited. What pulls a man from petty theft into organized
3:32
crime? Money, respect, the illusion of family, all three. And in 1930, his life
3:40
took the turn that would define it. He took an oath, not a handshake. In that
3:46
world, an initiation is a ritual, an adoption, a one-way street. The sponsor
3:52
vouches for you. A finger is pricricked. A sacred image is burned in your hands.
3:58
You swear to Omea, the code of silence, and to the family above all else. From
4:05
that moment, you're not just a hanger on, you're a made man, a soldier. He was
4:12
initiated into the Raina family run by Gaitano Tommy Rea. A quiet powerful
4:18
figure whose crew would later be known as the Lucesi family. The timing
4:24
couldn't have been more dangerous or more consequential. Italian organized crime in America was
4:31
in the middle of a civil war, the Castellamares War, named for the Sicilian town that supplied some of its
4:38
leaders. On one side, Joe, the boss, Maseria. On the other, Salvator
4:44
Maranzano. Blood bought the future. Main events, war, allegiance, and the long
4:51
road to a witness stand. The Castellamares war. Velace's early days
4:56
as a soldier were forged in that conflict. He fought on the Marenzano
5:02
side, Maseria's rival. In April 1931, Maseria was shot to death in a Coney
5:09
Island restaurant in a killing widely attributed to a plot by rising stars who
5:16
were weary of oldworld feuds and ready for business over bloodshed. A few
5:22
months later, Maranzano crowned himself Capo Ditutikapi, boss of all bosses, and
5:29
installed a pyramidal hierarchy with himself at the top. For a brief moment,
5:35
he was the king. Accounts say Valachi even served as one of Maranzano's
5:40
bodyguards, proof that loyalty could earn proximity to power. But kings make
5:45
targets. In September 1931, Charles Lucky Luchiano, a visionary,
5:51
calculating, and modern, toppled Maranzano in a coup. The era of the boss
5:57
of bosses ended. In its place, Luchiano built a commission of equals, bosses of
6:04
New York's five families who would settle disputes, divide territory, and keep the peace when possible. War meant
6:12
lost money. The future was business. Shifting families rising names, Valachi
6:17
adapted. He aligned with the Luchiano family, later renamed for its formidable boss, Vito Genevves. under capor regime
6:24
Anthony Tony Bendero he served as a soldier earning enforcing and doing what needed to be done he was never a boss he
6:31
wasn't a strategist he was a worker dependable invisible useful and in that world utility is currency but violence
6:40
was never far in 1953 according to later testimony and reports
6:46
was allegedly tasked with luring Steven France an associate who had fallen out
6:52
of favor into to a Bronx restaurant. There, France was murdered by others close to Valache, Pascal Pagano, and
7:00
Fior Ciano, Valach's nephew. In the mafia, friendship can be fatal. And
7:06
loyalty is measured in actions, not words. When a superior says, "Do this,"
7:12
you don't ask why, you ask when. Narcotics, conviction, and a cell with a
7:19
shadow. By the late 1950s, another force was reshaping the underworld. Narcotics.
7:27
Heroin money was fast, massive, and corrosive. It brought heat. It brought
7:33
long sentences. It brought informance. Men suddenly willing to talk when facing
7:38
decades behind bars. In 1959, Joseph Vel was convicted on narcotics
7:45
charges and sentenced to 15 years. He entered a prison system that held men
7:51
from his world and one man in particular whose shadow fell over everyone. Veto
7:57
Genevves who by then had been convicted of narcotics conspiracy himself. Imagine
8:04
the psychological strain. Two men from the same world. One of them the boss of
8:09
the family Velachi served. Now sharing space where fear can ferment into
8:14
hallucination. Rumors in prison are oxygen. One of those rumors, according to Velacei
8:21
himself, was that Genevvesi had put a $100,000 bounty on his head. Whether
8:27
true or not, the effect was real. It fed paranoia the way a spark feeds dry
8:35
brush. In 1962, inside prison walls, something snapped. Mistaking a fellow
8:42
inmate for a hitman sent to kill him, Velacei attacked and beat the man to death with a metal bar. It was a
8:49
terrible, irreversible act, and it changed everything. A murder inside
8:55
prison meant he now faced a life sentence, maybe worse. The walls closed
9:01
in. The family couldn't help him. The family might want him dead, and the
9:06
government strangely could. The decision to talk. Why does a man break a code he
9:13
swore to for life? Is it cowardice? Is it courage? Or is it desperation?
9:19
Wearing a new name. Facing a lifetime in a system where he believed he was marked
9:25
for death. Joseph made the decision that would define him forever. He began to
9:32
cooperate with federal authorities. First in private, then in public. He
9:38
told his story. He told them what the mafia called itself kosanostra our
9:44
thing. He explained the hierarchy soldiers capor regimes underboss
9:50
consiglier boss. He described the initiation ceremony and the oath of aa
9:57
that bound a man under penalty of death. He talked about the commission the
10:02
boardroom that managed disputes between families. He linked names to faces. For
10:08
the first time, the government had an insider confirming what had long been suspected but rarely proven. 1963, the
10:18
Valache hearings. His testimony moved from confidential debriefings with
10:23
investigators to the most public stage available, the United States Senate,
10:29
under the chairmanship of Senator John L. Mlelen, with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy as a driving force. The
10:37
Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations convened hearings that would come to be known simply as the
10:43
Velace hearings. Picture it. A guarded prisoner flown under high security,
10:49
escorted by US marshals, rumored to have a price on his head, seated before a
10:55
wall of microphones. America watched. For the first time, the
11:00
mafia was not a whispered rumor, but a televised reality. In careful words,
11:06
under oath with charts and names and structures, Valachi pulled back the
11:12
curtain. He wasn't glamorous. He wasn't a charming rogue. He was a working
11:18
soldier, plain spoken, matterof fact, at times almost weary as he described a
11:24
life where violence wasn't a movie scene but a maintenance task. He explained how
11:31
disputes were settled, how debts were collected, how promotions were negotiated, how the commission
11:38
arbitrated wars before they started. He described an organization that wasn't a
11:44
myth, it was a machine. Why did this matter? Because law enforcement can't fight a ghost. It needed shapes, names,
11:51
rules, routines. It needed a picture. Balachi drew it. Omea and the cost of
11:56
words. Let's pause and ask the question, what did it mean to break Omea? In the mafia, the code isn't a suggestion. It's
12:03
a sacrament. Speak and you forfeit protection. Speak and you endanger your family. Speak and you mark yourself
12:11
forever. In that world, there is only one reason to talk. To try to live long
12:17
enough to see the world beyond your cell or to try to die on your own terms.
12:23
Velace knew this. He knew he would never be safe again. Not inside, not outside.
12:30
He knew the word rat would cling to his name like a shadow. And he talked
12:35
anyway. Heroin, power, and the national picture. The hearings did more than
12:41
confirm an organization. They traced its bloodstream. Senators pressed on the heroin trade,
12:49
how it reached US streets, from sources in the Middle East and Europe, how it
12:54
was transformed from poppy to powder, how couriers and corrupt officials moved
13:00
it across oceans and onto corners. Velace along with law enforcement and
13:06
expert witnesses sketched the roots and the profits. Robert F. Kennedy testified
13:13
to the scale of the problem, the billions in illicit profits, the violence attached to those profits,
13:20
murders, suicides, intimidation. He called for new tools, legal wiretaps,
13:27
immunity for key witnesses, stronger racketeering laws. He understood
13:32
something vital. The bosses were insulated by layers. To convict the top,
13:37
you needed a net that could capture the whole school at once. New York police leadership explained the practical
13:45
difficulties. Bosses didn't touch contraband. Didn't make phone calls they
13:50
didn't have to. Didn't sign documents. Their hands were clean by design.
13:56
Building cases required patience, intelligence, and leverage. The hearings
14:02
provided leverage. They also provided urgency. The five families and the
14:08
commission explained for the nation. Another piece of the puzzle clicked into
14:14
place for the public during these hearings. the map. New York's five families, Gambino, Lucasi, Geneovves,
14:22
Banano, and Columbbo, formerly Profacei, weren't random clusters of criminals.
14:29
They were structured organizations with territories, leadership, and a seat at
14:34
the commission. Beyond New York, similar structures existed in Chicago, Detroit,
14:41
Kansas City, Philadelphia, and beyond. Felace helped lay out the Genevese
14:47
family structure in particular. Its reach across the Westside waterfront,
14:53
its tug on the Fulton Fish Market, its influence in unions, gambling, and lone
14:58
sharking. He didn't pretend to know everything. He was a soldier, not a
15:04
boss. But his clarity about what he knew gave weight to what investigators
15:09
suspected about what he didn't. The Genevese family's evolution then and
15:15
later. To understand the fallout of Valach's testimony, it helps to understand the family he came from. The
15:23
Genevves organization, the old Luchiano family was and remains a force. Under
15:30
figures like Veto Genevves and later Vincent the Chin Gigante, it mastered
15:36
invisibility. Gigante, notorious for his bathrobe walks and mumbled lines in Greenwich
15:43
Village, sustained a public persona of instability that kept prosecutors guessing. Behind the act, the family
15:50
thrived, quiet, profitable, surgical. As decades passed, the Genevvesi family
15:57
adapted as did the others. When unions declined, they found new revenue. When
16:04
cash businesses dried up, they adapted to plastic and later to the digital
16:09
bloodstream of money. Mortgage fraud during the housing bubble, online
16:15
gambling through offshore sites. These were the new rackets made possible by
16:20
lacks oversight and technology that moved faster than laws. Allegedly, even
16:26
as leadership changed, Gigante dying in 2005, Whispers of Liorio Barney Balommo
16:34
and others guiding later eras, the family remained disciplined, secretive,
16:39
and by reputation truer to Omea than some of its rivals. Was that because of
16:46
Valachi, or in spite of him? Did his testimony make the Genevese family more
16:51
careful or simply more selective in what risks it took? From hearings to laws, a
16:58
new arsenal. The impact of the Velace hearings didn't stay on television. It
17:05
migrated to law books. In 1965, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on
17:10
Investigations released a bipartisan report detailing the scope of organized
17:16
crime and the narcotics crisis. It recommended tools law enforcement had lacked, legal wiretaps, immunity
17:23
statutes, stronger penalties for witness intimidation, and new approaches to treat addiction as well as prosecute
17:29
trafficking. Those recommendations turned into law. The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968
17:37
allowed court ordered wiretaps critical for mapping organizations that spoke in
17:43
codes and avoided paper trails. The Gun Control Act of 1968 implemented
17:49
licensing and restrictions designed in part to slow the trade in weapons that
17:55
fueled underworld enforcement. And then in 1970, the gamecher, the
18:02
organized crime control act, which included RICO, the rakateeer influenced
18:07
and corrupt organizations act. RICO allowed prosecutors to connect a series
18:12
of crimes to a criminal enterprise and charge leaders for the patterns they
18:17
commanded, not just the acts they personally committed. Why does RICO
18:23
matter? because it matches the mafia's structure with a legal structure built
18:28
to address it. Bosses gave orders but rarely pulled triggers. Under RICO, the
18:35
orders themselves could be crimes. Patterns became proof. And in the 1980s,
18:41
that proof led to the commission trial, which convicted multiple New York bosses and underbosses, including figures
18:48
associated with the Genevves family. The door that Velache opened, the move from
18:53
rumor to structure made those cases possible, culture and controversy, the
18:59
Valache papers and the Godfather. Valach's cooperation extended beyond the
19:06
hearings. At the urging of the Department of Justice, he wrote a manuscript about his life in the
19:12
underworld, a document intended to educate law enforcement and the public.
19:18
It was titled The Real Thing: Politics Intervened.
19:23
Fears about ethnic stereotyping surfaced. The book was suppressed by the
19:28
government after internal debate. But the story didn't disappear. Journalist
19:34
Peter Mars interviewed Velace and published the Velace Papers in 1968,
19:40
a third person account that became a bestseller and later a film. Mario Puzo
19:47
drew from the atmosphere of these revelations as he wrote The Godfather, a novel that transformed public
19:53
understanding of the mafia, mixing myth and reality in a way that still shapes
19:59
conversation today. Informants after Velace are damn broken. Did Velace break
20:05
the dam? Not entirely, but he cracked it. In the decades after his testimony,
20:12
others followed his path. Sometimes out of fear, sometimes out of self-preservation,
20:17
sometimes out of strategy. Under boss Salvatoreé, Sammy the Bull Graano
20:23
eventually testified against John Goti, the Gambino boss, detailing 19 murders
20:30
and dismantling the myth of the Teflon dawn. Waves of lower and mid-level
20:36
members cooperated is sentences lengthened and the calculus changed.
20:42
Serve decades in silence or talk and live to see the other side. The code of
20:48
a meta still existed and in some families it still held. But the
20:53
certainty was gone. Law enforcement's evolution, intelligence, strike forces
20:59
and patience. If Falachi taught the public about the mafia, he taught law
21:04
enforcement about patience. The Justice Department created organized crime
21:10
strike forces, teams of prosecutors and agents who built long, methodical cases.
21:16
The FBI shifted from denying the existence of a national syndicate to mapping it, naming it, and infiltrating
21:23
it with undercover agents like Joseph Piston, Donnie Brasco, who spent years
21:30
inside a Banano crew. Wiretaps caught conversations that proved patterns.
21:36
Immunity deals pried open internal secrets. Rico turned those secrets into
21:42
leverage. The process was slow, but it worked. The meaning of amer, honor,
21:49
fear, or leverage. Let's pause on the code itself because it's easy to treat
21:54
it as a plot device instead of the binding ritual. It wasn't
21:59
just don't talk. It was identity. It meant your family, your real one, and
22:05
your criminal one could trust you. It meant disputes stayed in house. It meant
22:11
the state had no jurisdiction in your world. Breaking it wasn't just betrayal.
22:18
It was existential. That's why the first man to break it mattered. He proved the
22:24
code could crack. Once the first crack appears, others follow. Never in a
22:29
flood. But drip by drip, case by case, until the dam leaks whenever pressure
22:35
mounts. the larger landscape, Kosa Nostra's roots and reach. Valach's
22:41
testimony also invited Americans to look backward beyond New York, beyond 1930 to
22:48
Sicily. The word mafia traces to mafiu,
22:53
a term that once meant swagger, pride, fearlessness, a kind of individual glory
23:00
in communities where the state was weak and protection was privatized. When that
23:05
culture crossed the Atlantic, it didn't arrive labeled for customs. It arrived in habits, mistrust of authorities,
23:12
reliance on clans, the belief that wealth and safety were in your hands, not on some laws page. The American
23:19
mafia Kosanostra was not a photocopy of its Sicilian ancestor. It was a hybrid.
23:24
Sicilian, Neapolitan, Calabrian elements blended with the opportunities and temptations of America. New York's five
23:31
families carved their territories. Manhattan's westside docks and markets.
23:37
Brooklyn's neighborhoods, the Bronx's grids, Queens's sprawl. Beyond New York,
23:43
Chicago's outfit, Detroit's partnership, Kansas City's family, Philadelphia's and
23:50
New England's crews, each with their own rhythms, their own bosses, their own
23:55
times of peace and war. The commission kept a fragile order. The money flowed
24:02
from gambling, lone sharking, extortion, labor racketeering, construction
24:07
kickbacks, and increasingly narcotics, and through it all ran the code. Don't
24:14
talk, handle your business. Protect the family. That code met its first public
24:20
breaker in Joseph. A return to the Genevese mystique,
24:25
Gigante. And after after Valache, the Genevvesi family seemed to double down
24:30
on invisibility. Vincent Chin Gigante, the oddfather,
24:36
perfected a persona, bathrobe, mutters, aimless walks that kept prosecutors
24:42
fuming for years. Behind the theater, he ran a careful, disciplined organization
24:49
that preferred steady income to flashy spectacle. Following Gigante's demise in
24:55
2005, federal indictments, convictions, and occasional informant leaks suggested
25:02
continued adaptation, quiet investment. In modern grifts, cautious partnerships,
25:09
an organizational culture that still prized silence. Rumors persist about who
25:15
leads and how. The name Liboreio Barney Balomo surfaces often in reporting, but
25:21
as always with the Genevves family, the rumors outnumber the certainties. Was this strategic invisibility a reaction
25:29
to the age of informance that Velacei helped create? Likely. When the enemy
25:35
knows your outline, you either remove yourself from the frame or redraw your shape. The personal cost, a life in
25:43
custody. What did cooperation buy? Joseph Velache, safety of a kind. He
25:49
became the first federal witness to receive what we now think of as protection, isolated housing, special
25:56
handling, intense security. He was moved, guarded, hidden. He lived, but he
26:03
did not live free. In 1971, he died of a heart attack in custody. He was buried
26:09
at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Lewon, New York. No red carpet, no movie
26:15
ending, just a man who told the truth as he knew it, paid for in exile and fear.
26:23
Engagement questions along the way. What makes a man break a blood oath? Is it
26:29
fear or the clarity that comes when the math changes and you realize the family
26:35
you served can't or won't protect you? Was Valache the cause of the mafia's
26:41
exposure? Or just the first symptom of a larger disease, longer sentences, better
26:47
investigations, a shrinking world for old crimes? If the mafia's true currency
26:53
is invisibility, did Velace bankrupt the organization? Or did he simply force it
26:58
to switch banks? The legacy, laws, lessons, and the shadow he left behind.
27:06
In the years after the Velace hearings, the United States built a legal and investigative toolkit that reshaped the
27:13
fight against organized crime. Wiretaps caught men carefully not saying what
27:18
they meant, but saying enough to bind them. Immunity converted low-level
27:25
soldiers into eyewitnesses to patterns of power. Rico put bosses in courtrooms
27:31
for the first time with cases designed to match the enterprise they ran. Strike
27:37
forces coordinated investigations across cities, seeing what local police
27:42
couldn't always see alone. And culturally the veil lifted. The public
27:48
learned the words capo consiliier made man. And for better or worse, the mafia
27:55
became a subject of fascination as much as fear. Was that fascination dangerous?
28:01
Romanticizing men who hurt communities and extorted businesses. Yes. But it
28:07
also meant the mafia could no longer hide behind ignorance. The more Americans understood, the fewer shadows
28:15
the organization could find. Meanwhile, the underworld adapted. When the state
28:22
infiltrates your meetings, you move your meetings. When the phone is tapped, you talk in code or you don't talk at all.
28:30
When Ricocharges your patterns, you complicate your patterns. Some families invested in quieter, whiter collar
28:36
crimes. Others splintered. Informants remade the map in every decade after the 1960s. The code wasn't dead, but it
28:44
bled. The bigger picture, a tale of two forces. Ultimately, the story of Joseph Velache is the story of two forces
28:51
colliding. A closed society that thought it could police itself forever and a
28:57
nation that finally built the tools to pry it open. On one side, ritual, fear,
29:05
honor among anointed criminals, a parallel justice system with its own rules. on the other law, patience,
29:13
cameras, and the slow power of a public willing to look. Which force wins in the
29:19
short term? Neither. The mafia is still here. It's smaller. It's quieter. It's
29:25
more careful. But it exists. Law enforcement is still here, too. Smarter
29:31
with every case, bolder with every conviction. The struggle didn't end with Velace. It began for real. conclusion.
29:41
The man, the code, and the question he leaves us. So, who was Joseph Velace? A
29:47
thief who became a soldier who became finally a witness. A man shaped by
29:53
poverty and violence who entered a family for protection and purpose. Then discovered that the family could be as
30:00
dangerous as any enemy outside it. A convict who believed a price had been
30:06
placed on his head by the boss he once served. A killer in a moment of panic
30:12
and a storyteller in a moment of clarity. The first man to stand up on
30:17
national television and say, "Yes, it's real. Here's how it works." Did he break
30:22
Omea out of cowardice or courage? That's a question every viewer must answer for
30:29
themselves. If courage is resisting fear, then facing down a world of silent
30:35
killers to tell the truth in public is a kind of courage. One born not of purity
30:41
but of necessity. If cowardice is abandoning your oath, then breaking Omea
30:47
is cowardice by definition. The truth, as with all things in this world, is
30:53
complicated. But this much is clear. When Joseph Falachi spoke, the ground
30:58
shifted. The myth became a map. The code once unbreakable bent. Laws changed.
31:06
Cases followed. Bosses got older in cells. And the families learn the cost
31:11
of being seen. Imagine that world again, the one we began with where power is
31:17
absolute and betrayal is a daily occurrence. Ask yourself, in a system
31:23
built on silence, who is more dangerous? the man who talks or the truth he tells.
31:29
And in the end, which is stronger, the oath that binds a man to darkness or the
31:35
light that makes the darkness visible. As you consider the legacy of Joseph
31:40
Valache, the first voice to break the stillness, remember that history doesn't move in straight lines. It moves when
31:48
someone decides to say what everyone else is afraid to hear. in 1963 that
31:54
someone was a small unremarkable soldier named Joe whose words did what no
32:00
bullets could. They made the underworld real to the world above it, and nothing
32:05
has been the same since.