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Joe ValachiJoseph 'Joe' Valachi (September 22, 1904 - April 3, 1971) was the first person to publicly acknowledge the existence of the Mafia. He is also the person who made La Cosa Nostra a household name. In October of 1963, he testified before John L. McClellan's congressional committee that the Mafia did exist and provided details of many of its operations and rituals, as well as naming many members and the major crime families. The effect of his testimony, which was also broadcast on television and published in newspapers, was devastating for the mob. After his testimony, the mob was no longer invisible to the public eye. Valachi's motivations for becoming an informer have been the subject of some debate. While he claimed to be testifying as a public service and a way to expose a criminal organization that he blamed for ruining his life, it is also possible he was simply hoping for government protection from the Mafia and to avoid the death penalty after his August 1962 murder of a man in prison whom he had mistaken for a Mafia member intending to kill him (Valachi was at the time serving a sentence for heroin trafficking). After the U.S. Department of Justice first encouraged and then blocked publication of Valachi's memoirs, a biography heavily influenced by those memoirs and by interviews with Valachi was written by Peter Maas and published in 1968 as The Valachi Papers, and formed the basis for a later movie of the same name. In 1966, Valachi attempted unsuccessfully to hang himself in his prison cell, using an electrical extension cord. He died of a heart attack in 1971 at La Tuna Federal Correctional Institution in Texas, the $100,000 bounty placed on his head by the Mafia going uncollected. Valachi, Joe Valachi, Joe Valachi, Joe See also External Link Valachi
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