7 Questions With Scott Deitche, Author and Organized Crime Historian

Scott M. Deitche is an author who specializes in organized crime and other topics of interest. He is the author of 7 books on the mob, including Cigar City Mafia and The Silent Don: The Criminal Underworld of Santo Trafficante Jr. For more, go to https://tampamafia.com/ , and if you're in Tampa, take a walking tour with him.

1. How and when did you get  hooked on history?

My parents, especially my Mom, always loved history so I grew up enjoying it as well. I was in AP history in high school and ended up with a minor in history in college (majored in marine science, my primary career). I clearly recall some of the earliest non-fiction books I read- one was about the seven wonders of the ancient world. I remember that book distinctly and can recite passages from memory. 

I can’t find my sunglasses almost daily, but I remember a book I read in 1981.

2. What role does history play or has it played in your personal life?

Well, with the writing I do, part of my spare time, which fishing used to fully occupy, has been replaced by digging into old court records or FBI files. With the opening up of so many more avenues to access primary source material and law enforcement/curt records, it’s been a boon for Mafia researchers ( mobologists in our science parlance) and writers.

The other area is personal family history. My paternal grandfather was a small time bookie who was arrested in 1970 in New Jersey for bookmaking and did a short prison stint. It’s become a great family story and I actually tell it in the introduction to my book Garden State Gangland: The Rise of the Mob in New Jersey.

3. How does history play  a part of your professional life/career?

So, even though I was always generally interested in history, around 1990, after seeing Goodfellas in the movies, I really started becoming more interested in organized crime history.  I grew up in New Jersey, so the mob was always around. My mom loved old mob movies and we would get NYC TV, so obviously stories about gangsters were common fodder on the local news. I clearly remember eating dinner and seeing the breaking news that Paul Castellano had been killed, in December 1985.  But after seeing Goodfellas, I really started diving into the available Mafia books at the time. In the mid-1990s I started getting into more of the research and digging up newspaper articles, and law enforcement reports. IN 1995, back when the web was very primitive, I met a historian from England, David Critchley, on an old text website about the Mafia (long since gone). He had a copy of the Kefauver hearings from Tampa (I had relocated to the Tampa Bay area by that time). After reading those, I became really hooked and started diving into the Tampa Mafia as well as some of the other families. 

I started writing short articles for web sites like That Life (also long gone) and Rick Porello’s Americanmafia.com. And started writing my first book, Cigar City Mafia. I found an agent and sold the book in 2003. It was released in January of 2004, and my writing career began.

I also run the Tampa Mafia walking tours (www.tampamafia.com), which I have been doing for a little over 10 years now.

So another part of this is my primary career. As an environmental professional for a private engineering consulting firm, business development is a core part of my job. We have taken clients out on the walking tour (just last week in fact). And I lean into my love of history and the mob stuff many times while networking. It definitely sets a conversation apart from the usual small talk!

4. Why is studying/knowing history important?

History is the glue that holds our collective experience together, both good and bad. Certainly recent efforts against the teaching of true history, because it highlights some of the less than glamorous aspects of this country’s founding, is a testament to how important it is to preserve and teach history, especially forgotten and “uncomfortable” topics. 

Crime history, especially when dealing with a subject like the Mafia, gives surprising windows in general American 20th century history. The Mafia are intertwined with various important subjects, from the labor movement in America, to World War II and the European campaign, the founding of one of our most popular cities (Vegas baby, Vegas!) to Cold War geopolitics, to maybe even (ok, getting a bit conspiratorial here) the assassination of a President. But even taking that last one off. Mafia history is truly American history.

5.          What is your favorite period or aspect of history to learn about and why?

I like the 1950s/60s era, especially in relation to Mafia-adjacent topics like pre-Castro Cuba, Las Vegas, and the Cold War. That interest seeps out in to my admiration for mid-century. Google architecture and cocktails of that era. Oh, and you can’t really be a mobologist, or mob author, without some love for the Rat Pack.

6.        Why did Tampa become a center of organized crime activity?

Tampa was a thriving port City with a significant industry- cigar making. By the early 1900s it had attracted various ethnic groups to the Ybor City area- primarily Cuban, Spanish, and Sicilian immigrants (there was a small German and Jewish population as well) Like many immigrant communities at that time, there was a certain level of intra-community crime, especially related to extortion and Black Hand activities. We see the emergence of a Mafia organization in the early 1900s in Tampa with tie to Mafia groups in New Orleans, New York, and other cities. 

Prohibition really kickstarts the underworld in Tampa, Port Tampa Bay becomes a hotbed for rumrunners, illegal immigrant smugglers, and narcotics traffickers. By then the Mafia was coalescing as a hierarchal group in Tampa.

But the first significant crime boss was not a Mafioso. He was the son of one of the most prominent families in Tampa. His name was Charlie Wall. By the 1920s, he was in charge of most of the local rackets. Eventually he loses ground to the Mafia and steps aside. But he made many enemies along the way and was found dea din his house, throat cut and head bashed in with a blackjack, in April 1955.

7.     How did organized crime shape Tampa in particular and Florida in general?

 

One of the most prominent ways it shaped the City was through political corruption. By the 1920s organized crime had already started to infiltrate the political sphere of the City, as well as corrupting law enforcement. Underworld figures were pouring money into political campaigns ranging from local offices, all the way up to gubernatorial races. This started under the reign of Charlie Wall and continued through the ascension of the Mafia. Things came to a head in 1950 when the Kefauver Commission chose Tampa as one of the sites to hold their hearings. In December 1950, Tampa citizens (called Tampans or Tampanians, though Tampenos is a term that is becoming increasingly popular of late) finally were able to see just how deeply organized crime had infiltrated City and county political offices, the police departments, and the Sheriff’s department. 

 

7 Questions with Melissa Sullebarger, Curator of Education at the Henry B. Plant Museum, Tampa

 

    Melissa Sullebarger considers herself a native of Tampa, FL, despite the minor detail of having spent the first several months of her life in upstate New York. She began working in informal education at 15 years old, teaching children about nature and history as a counselor at local summer camps. She has been working in the museum field since graduating college, when she took on a part-time position at a living history museum and fell in love with museum work. Eight years and a MA in Museum Studies later, Melissa is the Curator of Education at the Henry B. Plant Museum of Tampa, FL. ( https://www.plantmuseum.com/ )

 

1.            How and when did you get hooked on history?

 

My parents were both big advocates for education both in traditional academia and as a form of casual entertainment. Every family vacation from a very young age included museums, historic sites, botanical gardens, aquariums… all kinds of informal education. My parents made a particular point of traveling around different parts of Florida as my brother and I were growing up—neither of my parents is originally from Florida, but after moving here when I was less than a year old they wanted us to grow up knowledgeable about our new home.

Growing up as the talkative youngest child in a family full of well-educated lively conversationalists may have also been a contributing factor. I wanted to participate! It was a strong early motivator both to learn and to get good at communication.

I didn’t truly recognize how much interest I had developed in history until I was working toward my undergraduate degree—initially an English major, I added History and became a double major due to the influence of several excellent history professors.

 

2.            What role does history play or has it played in your personal life?

 

A shared interest in history connects me to my family as well as my closest friends. My partner and I initially bonded as friends by watching documentaries together and discussing history as filtered through the lenses created by our respective experiences.

 

3.            How does history play a part of your professional life/career?

 

As a current Curator of Education and in my previous roles in museums, history has played an extremely prominent role in my work. Communicating history to the public via planned exhibits and programming, training docents, and writing physical signage and online content has made up a large portion of my work.

In a less direct sense, as someone who works inside a National Historic Landmark, I am surrounded by history both in the sense that the walls of my office are lined with books and binders full of research, and in the sense that 100 years ago, my office was a part of a suite of guest rooms in the Tampa Bay Hotel that served as temporary home to countless prominent people throughout the years of the Hotel’s operation.

 

4.            Why is studying/knowing history important ?

 

We all benefit from larger context and broader understanding of the world we live in, and we all benefit from more of us having that understanding. No moment is an island, every event or development in our modern world has roots throughout historical events, which in turn have their own genealogies through history. Knowing history, and continuously broadening our knowledge of history from multiple perspectives gives each of us a stronger understanding of the world we live in, and better prepares us to create a positive future.

 

5.            What is your favorite period or aspect of history to learn about and why?

 

This question is a real challenge—the answer changes constantly. My work over the past decade both in my current and previous positions has been very focused on Reconstruction Era-1910s Florida, and it is a region and era that I have loved studying and bringing to the public. In many way it is an era in which Florida accelerated rapidly into “modernity.”

My first historic love was ancient and classical Mediterranean history, in my case with a particular interest in Egypt and the Phoenicians. I also have a strong interest in 20^th century American sociocultural history, I’m fascinated by the shifted forms of Americana throughout the decades.

 

6.            What is the history of the Henry B. Plant Museum?

 

The Henry B Plant Museum occupies the first-floor south hallway of the enormous minaret-topped brick building in downtown Tampa. The structure and 150 acres of the land surrounding it (most of which is now the University of Tampa campus) were once the rail and steam tycoon Henry Plant’s most elaborate all-inclusive winter hotel—the Tampa Bay Hotel. The Hotel opened in 1891 and in 1898 became the staging point for US military forces fighting in the Caribbean theaters of the Spanish-American War. The hotel was purchased by the City of Tampa in 1905 and continued operating as a hotel until 1932, when the costs of operation became too high in the face of the Great Depression.

 

7.            What do you hope visitors to the Plant Museum learn and take away with them?

 

The Henry B. Plant Museum holds the distinction of accreditation by the American Alliance of Museums. Its mission is to interpret the Tampa Bay Hotel and the experiences of the diverse individuals who contributed to its success. The Museum ignites thought and transports visitors to another era through exhibits and innovative programs, so that they may be educated and inspired by the lifestyles, times and experiences of Florida’s early tourist industry. Visitors are immersed in the opulence of the 1891 Tampa Bay Hotel and its rich history.