The theft of two tiaras and a crown, among other jewels, from the Louvre last month got some Brooklynites recalling the time, almost seventy-five years ago, when two gem-encrusted crowns were swiped right off the heads of the baby Jesus and his mother in an Italian Renaissance-style basilica in Dyker Heights. The Louvre thieves dropped the crown as they fled; back in 1952, in Brooklyn, both stolen crowns were returned to the church, Regina Pacis (“Queen of Peace”), in a manila envelope, days after the body of Ralph (Bucky) Emmino, a known jewel thief, was found in Bath Beach, sleeping near the fishes.
It turned out that the wealthy supporter who’d helped raise money to build the church where the 18k.-gold crowns were displayed was likely the same guy who ordered the hit: Joseph Profaci, the “olive-oil king” and boss of the Mob clan that later became the Colombo family.
Not long ago, Profaci’s sixty-five-year-old grandson and namesake travelled from his home in SoHo to visit the Brooklyn sanctuary, on a family fact-finding mission. The main item on the agenda: determine if his mobster grandfather is on the ceiling.
Among the church’s many design flourishes is a series of overhead murals showing the usual suspects (saints, angels, Mary, a Pope), along with a group of civilians who look as if they wandered in from a Howard Hawks film, in nineteen-forties dresses and suits. The man at the far right, holding a fedora over his heart, is widely believed to be Joe Profaci.
The contemporary Joe Profaci, a Harvard-educated business attorney who works in the olive-oil trade, was two years old when his grandfather died, in 1962. “I’d heard that he was on the ceiling,” Profaci said. But his relatives had always pooh-poohed the idea. He craned his neck to study the mural. “It doesn’t look like him,” he said. Still, local lore, including online discussion threads, insists that the wise guy looms above the pews. The ninety-two-year-old organized-crime reporter Nick Pileggi, a Bensonhurst native, said in a phone conversation that “more than one person” had told him that Profaci is up in the Regina Pacis clouds. “From my conversations with Mario Puzo when he was still writing ‘The Godfather,’ ” he added, “Profaci was the closest to Vito Corleone, out of all the mobsters.”
The younger Profaci, slim and soft-spoken, had on a plaid shirt, tan jeans, and running shoes, and was accompanied by his wife, Beth Saidel, a writer. He made two laps around the church searching for other traces of his family. “I should probably kneel,” he said, passing the altar. He pointed up to a stained-glass window that contained the words “In memory of Salvatore and Rosalia Profaci,” the Mafia chief’s parents. Another window was a gift from Mrs. Joe Profaci’s brothers. Profaci is not a regular churchgoer, but his mother has the family covered. “She used to go to Mass every day,” Saidel said.
Congregants began to enter for a noon Mass. Asked about the legend of the mobster on the ceiling, one elderly parishioner replied, “All I know is, Cioffi is up there.”
Monsignor Angelo Cioffi was the priest who spearheaded the campaign to construct Regina Pacis back in the forties, with generous assistance from Joe Profaci. Along with encouraging parishioners to pledge money, Cioffi asked them to donate their jewelry, to be melted down and fashioned into a crown to be affixed to a painting of the Virgin on the altarpiece. Rings, bracelets, and brooches poured in, with enough diamonds, sapphires, and rubies to embellish two crowns—one for Mary and a smaller one for Jesus, who sat in her lap. Before the crowns were placed on the portrait, Cioffi flew them to Rome to be blessed by Pope Pius XII, which you’d think would offer protection for eternity. But just days after they went on display, in May, 1952, the crowns, insured for a hundred thousand dollars, disappeared. The thief had sawed through a bronze grille that protected the portrait and its bling.
When the crowns reappeared—who would be dumb enough to rob a church linked to a Mob kingpin?—cheers erupted throughout Brooklyn. The actor Dom DeLuise, then a local teen, told the Brooklyn Eagle, “My mother had been to 10 o’clock mass. She burst into the house and cried out, ‘They’re home, they’re home.’ ” Later, an F.B.I. informant reported that Profaci had ordered the disposal of Emmino.
“I have no information about that,” Profaci’s grandson said, when asked about the incident. He said that he first learned of his family’s connection to the Mafia “in school, when ‘The Valachi Papers’ came out.” Peter Maas’s 1968 best-seller spilled the secrets of the Mob as recalled by a soldier in the Genovese crime family. Joe Profaci figures in the narrative.
Astonishingly, the crowns were stolen from Regina Pacis again, eleven years after Profaci died. (The F.B.I. told the Daily News that organized crime helped recover them again.) The crowns are no longer on regular display, but they appeared on Mother’s Day with police standing by.
“I don’t think criminals should be romanticized,” Profaci’s grandson said. “Except for maybe Robin Hood.” The question remained: Why do so many people think his grandfather is on the ceiling? He has no idea. “It’s a guy in a fedora,” he said. “Lots of guys were wearing fedoras then.” ♦
