'Sunshine State Mafia' offers details about Tampa's infamous Trafficante mob family

Spend any amount of time in Ybor City, and someone is bound to talk to you about the mob.

Doug Kelly digs deeper than the tunnels under the historic district in his new book, “Sunshine State Mafia,” which covers the entire state from Al Capone in South Florida to the Blackburn gambling empire in Orlando, and of course Tampa mobsters like Santo Trafficante Jr. (pictured).

PR whiz Charlie Wall, a Trafficante rival, gets ink in the work, along with many pages about “bolita,” a money-and-widow-making illegal Tampa lottery.

And if you're worried about the mob in this day and age, fret no more.

Kelly told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that the growth and clout of the Mafia in the Sunshine State, and nationally, has tapered off since its heyday in the 1920s through the '80s.

“The reasons include greater heat by law enforcement, the formation of the DEA in 1973, more sophisticated eavesdropping gear and techniques, longer prison sentences that encourage mobsters to become informants or cooperate with prosecutors, and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act that's made it easier to connect top mobsters to crimes," Kelly said. "In Tampa Bay, the once-powerful Trafficante family now has far fewer members. Some mob observers allege that Vincent LoScalzo may still be the boss of the Trafficante family while others say he's in his late 80s and retired, with control now overseen by the Gambino family in NYC.”

Kelly, a licensed private investigator, and writer, will talk about his book, and show off never-before-seen photos from mob family archives at this book talk.

There’s no cover for the “Sunshine State Mafia” author talk happening Wednesday, June 26 at Centro Asturiano de Tampa in Ybor City.

Read an excerpt from "Sunshine State Mafia" below. [event-1]

Excerpted from Sunshine State Mafia: A History of Florida’s Mobsters, Hit Men, and Wise Guys by Doug Kelly. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, March 2024. Reprinted with permission of University Press of Florida.

Excerpt from Chapter 15, “Trafficante’s Tampa”

The emergence of Santo Trafficante Sr. in Tampa would inevitably change the entire power structure and, over the years, diminish the clout wielded by Wall. Some of the names on organizational charts of Tampa criminals besides Trafficante included Antinori, Augustine Lazzara, James Cacciatore, Salvatore Italiano (Trafficante Sr.’s underboss), Ignacio Italiano, Joe Vaglica, Jimmy Velasco, Steven Bruno, Jimmy Valenti, the Diecidue clan and Jimmy Lumia. From 1930 to 1959, 25 gangland murders bloodied the streets of Ybor City and Tampa, to be known by historians later as “The Era of Blood.” Three of those notable murders involved prominent Mafiosi Antinori in 1940, Velasco in 1948, and Lumia in 1950.

When Lumia got snuffed in 1950, Santo Trafficante Sr. was well established locally with fellow Italian mobsters, and he’d entrenched himself in various business and social organizations. But he recognized that this alone wouldn’t win the day in terms of becoming the boss. So he’d already laid the groundwork by courting Mafia leaders in NYC, such as Luciano, as well as dons in Chicago and New Orleans. The tactic succeeded, and soon Trafficante came to recognized as the go-to guy in Tampa.

Born in Sicily in 1886, Santo Trafficante ultimately landed in Tampa just after the turn of the century. He married and started a family that produced four sons, most notably the one named Santo Jr. As the family grew, Trafficante Sr. immersed himself in the local crime scene, especially as it involved bolita, bootlegging during the Prohibition years, and, beginning in the 1940s, involvement in the lucrative drug trafficking trade.

But Trafficante had a vision wider than just presiding over his Tampa Mafia family. He networked with criminal elements in South Florida and visited Cuba, forming a relationship with then dictator Batista. Although already recognized as such by the five NYC Mafia families, by 1950 Santo Trafficante Sr. became the de facto don of what became known far and wide as the Trafficante family—Florida’s
very own Mafia organization.

The aging Charlie Wall had long before been pushed into the background, and in fact Trafficante Sr. greased that skid by promising Wall freedom from harm if he peacefully bowed out of the scene so as to negate another gangster war. It was an offer he couldn’t refuse.

One of the ways Trafficante Sr. secured his family’s dominance focused on helping his son Luigi Santo Trafficante Jr. learn the ropes from the inside. He’d accompanied his dad on trips to Cuba and they both established a friendship with future dictator Fulgencio Batista. In concert with Meyer Lansky, Santo Jr. became one of the most prominent hotel and casino owners in Havana. The mob long recognized Cuba as being an open country free of the increasing hassles from national and state law enforcement agencies and the U.S. government itself.

Under Santo Jr. the family expanded to the point that Mafiosi visiting Florida or doing business in the state first needed to obtain his approval.

A major event unfolded in 1950 when Tennessee U.S. Senator Estes Kefauver began public hearings in various cities across the nation that exposed the extent of organized crime. One of the hearing sites: Tampa. The Trafficantes avoided testimony by taking up temporary residence in Cuba, but Charlie Wall made the tragic mistake of agreeing to testify. In doing so, Wall put his resentment of the Trafficante family in the center of the bull’s-eye, which called into question the tax returns of Santo Sr. and Jr., among others. Evidently believing that Trafficante Sr.’s word of nonviolence a decade earlier was still binding, Wall even took to badmouthing the Trafficantes around town, including racial slurs about Italians.

When Santo Sr. died from cancer in 1954, Santo Jr.—who was not a party to any oath of protection for Wall—likely retaliated as the family’s boss. On April 18, 1955, Wall’s throat was cut and his head was hammered flat with a blackjack, according to a police file. Sown over his body was bird seed, and with it a copy of Kefauver’s book Crime in America , which included Wall’s testimony. While the identity of all’s killer remains a mystery, most historians suspect Santo Jr. ordered it.

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