The theft of two tiaras and a crown, amongst different jewels, from the Louvre final month acquired some Brooklynites recalling the time, nearly seventy-five years in the past, when two gem-encrusted crowns had been swiped proper off the heads of the infant Jesus and his mom in an Italian Renaissance-style basilica in Dyker Heights. The Louvre thieves dropped the crown as they fled; again in 1952, in Brooklyn, each stolen crowns had been returned to the church, Regina Pacis (“Queen of Peace”), in a manila envelope, days after the physique of Ralph (Bucky) Emmino, a identified jewel thief, was present in Tub Seaside, sleeping close to the fishes.
It turned out that the rich supporter who’d helped increase cash to construct the church the place the 18k.-gold crowns had been displayed was doubtless the identical man who ordered the hit: Joseph Profaci, the “olive-oil king” and boss of the Mob clan that later grew to become the Colombo household.
Not way back, Profaci’s sixty-five-year-old grandson and namesake travelled from his residence in SoHo to go to the Brooklyn sanctuary, on a household fact-finding mission. The principle merchandise on the agenda: decide if his mobster grandfather is on the ceiling.
Among the many church’s many design prospers is a sequence of overhead murals displaying the same old suspects (saints, angels, Mary, a Pope), together with a gaggle of civilians who look as in the event that they wandered in from a Howard Hawks movie, in nineteen-forties clothes and fits. The person on the far proper, holding a fedora over his coronary heart, is extensively believed to be Joe Profaci.
The up to date Joe Profaci, a Harvard-educated enterprise lawyer who works within the olive-oil commerce, was two years previous when his grandfather died, in 1962. “I’d heard that he was on the ceiling,” Profaci stated. However his kin had at all times pooh-poohed the thought. He craned his neck to review the mural. “It doesn’t seem like him,” he stated. Nonetheless, native lore, together with on-line dialogue threads, insists that the clever man looms above the pews. The ninety-two-year-old organized-crime reporter Nick Pileggi, a Bensonhurst native, stated in a telephone dialog that “multiple particular person” had instructed him that Profaci is up within the Regina Pacis clouds. “From my conversations with Mario Puzo when he was nonetheless writing ‘The Godfather,’ ” he added, “Profaci was the closest to Vito Corleone, out of all of the mobsters.”
The youthful Profaci, slim and soft-spoken, had on a plaid shirt, tan denims, and trainers, and was accompanied by his spouse, Beth Saidel, a author. He made two laps across the church trying to find different traces of his household. “I ought to most likely kneel,” he stated, passing the altar. He pointed as much as a stained-glass window that contained the phrases “In reminiscence of Salvatore and Rosalia Profaci,” the Mafia chief’s mother and father. One other window was a present from Mrs. Joe Profaci’s brothers. Profaci just isn’t a daily churchgoer, however his mom has the household coated. “She used to go to Mass each day,” Saidel stated.
Congregants started to enter for a midday Mass. Requested concerning the legend of the mobster on the ceiling, one aged parishioner replied, “All I do know is, Cioffi is up there.”
Monsignor Angelo Cioffi was the priest who spearheaded the marketing campaign to assemble Regina Pacis again within the forties, with beneficiant help from Joe Profaci. Together with encouraging parishioners to pledge cash, Cioffi requested them to donate their jewellery, to be melted down and long-established right into a crown to be affixed to a portray of the Virgin on the altarpiece. Rings, bracelets, and brooches poured in, with sufficient diamonds, sapphires, and rubies to decorate two crowns—one for Mary and a smaller one for Jesus, who sat in her lap. Earlier than the crowns had been positioned on the portrait, Cioffi flew them to Rome to be blessed by Pope Pius XII, which you’d suppose would supply safety for eternity. However simply days after they went on show, in Might, 1952, the crowns, insured for 100 thousand {dollars}, disappeared. The thief had sawed by a bronze grille that protected the portrait and its bling.
When the crowns reappeared—who could be dumb sufficient to rob a church linked to a Mob kingpin?—cheers erupted all through Brooklyn. The actor Dom DeLuise, then a neighborhood teen, instructed the Brooklyn Eagle, “My mom had been to 10 o’clock mass. She burst into the home and cried out, ‘They’re residence, they’re residence.’ ” Later, an F.B.I. informant reported that Profaci had ordered the disposal of Emmino.
“I’ve no details about that,” Profaci’s grandson stated, when requested concerning the incident. He stated that he first discovered of his household’s connection to the Mafia “at school, when ‘The Valachi Papers’ got here out.” Peter Maas’s 1968 best-seller spilled the secrets and techniques of the Mob as recalled by a soldier within the Genovese crime household. Joe Profaci figures within the narrative.
Astonishingly, the crowns had been stolen from Regina Pacis once more, eleven years after Profaci died. (The F.B.I. instructed the Day by day Information that organized crime helped get better them once more.) The crowns are now not on common show, however they appeared on Mom’s Day with police standing by.
“I don’t suppose criminals must be romanticized,” Profaci’s grandson stated. “Aside from perhaps Robin Hood.” The query remained: Why accomplish that many individuals suppose his grandfather is on the ceiling? He has no thought. “It’s a man in a fedora,” he stated. “A lot of guys had been sporting fedoras then.” ♦
