By autumn of 1975, the city of Tampa, Florida was in a state of near chaos. Fresh from the Vietnam War, Watergate, the Civil Rights Movement, the petroleum crisis, high unemployment, and rapidly rising inflation, Tampa had yet another war to sort out.
Although coexisting for decades, the Cracker Mob was practically on the way out while the Italian families were ever on the annex. Drug smuggling, prostitution, gambling, racketeering, extortion, contract arson, and murder-for-hire were not uncommon for both organizations. Earlier in the 1960s when Castro destroyed their legitimate enterprises in Havana, the exiled Italians returned in full force and continued capitalizing on their existing operations. Through the illegal lottery known as “bolita”, mafiosos had entirely taken over Florida’s gambling rings. By the ‘70s, different mob factions mostly learned to work together under the direction of Giuseppe Cantonello, Tampa’s local don. The only sticking point remaining was the matter of who controlled the local nightclubs. The “Lounge Wars” raged on with numerous cases of contract arson and contract murder.
Robert F. Kennedy’s legacy, the 1970 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO, drafted by G. Robert Blakey), gave law enforcement organizations sharp teeth in which to pursue the mobsters. Little did the newly empowered law enforcement organizations know, their war was not only with the criminal families infesting Tampa, but also from every agency level within their own corrupted institutions. This war culminated around the contract assassination of a controversial street detective named William “Bill” Brume.
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