The First Mafia Rat: Joe "Joe Cago" Valachi

Born September 22, 1903 – Died April 3, 1971, Mr. Valachi was the first foot solider in the Mafia to admit to the existent of the Cosa Nostra which is Italian for "This Thing of Ours". Up unit this point, there was no proof of the Cosa Nostra and even  J. Edgar Hoover, head of the F.B.I., had publicly denied the very existence of Cosa Nostra. By the time Valachi finished, feds could not only substantiate the reality of the Mafia but could identify key players in the hierarchy of the organized crime syndicate.

Valachi was the perfect fit for an FBI informant. Even though a strong soldier he was often refereed to as having more bronze then brains. In-fact about the only thing that Valachi succeed at was being an informant to the FBI.

Coming up in the criminal world, Valachi was with a small time gang called the Minutemen gang. They performed robberies that lasted less then a minute, hence the name Minutemen. Valachi was eventually arrested and sent to prison for a 18 months. After nine months he was release and started up his own gang after finding out his old gang had replaced him. In the early 1930's, Valachi would connect with a mobster named Dominick "The Gap" Petrilli and this would be his first taste of the Mafia. When he started out he ran with the Lucchese Family, but after a nasty war with other Mafia families that left his boss Joseph Masseria dead, Valachi would find himself working as a foot soldier in the Genovese Family under the famous boss Charles "Lucky" Luciano.



In 1963, while serving time for heroin trafficking, Valachi deciding to talk. There was much speculation of why he decided to take the road of a rat. Valachi claims it was because he felt that the Mafia not only ran his life but ultimately ruined it. Authorities believed it was because he was trying to avoid a death sentence that was looming over his head for a murder he committed, but many other people believed it was because the Genovese family had a bounty out on his head.

But in the end, Valachi would be the first person to admit to the existent of the Mafia and his testimony broke free an investigation into the Mafia that has yet to be stop to this day.

Valachi would die of heart failure in prison, but not before he managed to committee another murder and managed to try to commit suicide.