Andy DeLigio, ace investigative reporter, has gone farther inside the Norwegian Mob than anyone who’s lived to tell the tale.<\/p>\n
Let’s pick up with part one of the story.<\/p>\n
\nInside The Norwegian Mob<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Andy DiLigio<\/strong><\/p>\n
“Your people are \u00a0from what part of Norway, then?”<\/p>\n
Jeff Hartelowen looks at me with a focused but blank concentration as I sit across the table from him at the Ace Cafe in Sauk Rapids, Minnesota.\u00a0 In his early fifties, with thin, graying blond hair and ruddy red cheeks over a beard that needs trimming, he looks like he could be any of the other farmers sitting around the cafe, drinking his Folgers and eating krumkakke. <\/em>Indeed, he is <\/em>one of the farmers.<\/p>\n
But he’s more than that.\u00a0 He’s known by a name that’s never, ever said in public, and almost never in private; De Godenfar<\/em>.\u00a0 “The Godfather”.\u00a0\u00a0 And from this cafe in rural Minnesota, he runs the biggest, most powerful – and yet most secretive – syndicate in the history of organized crime.\u00a0 A syndicate that is so powerful it manipulates the other crime syndicates at will – and yet remains not only unknown, but its very concept sparks derision at the very idea.<\/p>\n
Hartelowen is sitting at a table with his R\u00e5dgiver <\/em>(Norwegian for Consigliere<\/em>), Art Yetterboe, and Hartelowen’s oldest son Chuck, a beefy 6’4 inch guy with a light blond mullet, leaning back in his chair, his sorel boots tapping nervously on the cement floor, cradling a Big Gulp mug he’s just filled with Folgers.<\/p>\n
“Finnmark”, I respond.\u00a0 “They were Saani”, I add, to account for my swarthy, Mediterranean features.<\/p>\n
“Reindeer herders, then?” Yetterboe asks.<\/p>\n
“Oh, yah”, I answer, adopting the local patois.<\/p>\n
“Hm. Interesting” the elder Hartelowen\u00a0 respondes.\u00a0 “OK, then”.<\/p>\n
And he starts to tell me the story.<\/p>\n
———-<\/p>\n
The tale of the Norwegian Mob started in 1891, when a 15 year old boy, Bj\u00f8rn Knudsson, from the village of\u00a0\u00a0Hjertel\u00f8ven in S\u00f8r-Tr\u00f8ndelag, landed at Ellis Island.\u00a0 His backstory was unclear – his father, Knud, had apparently been ostracized for applauding after the special music in church – but the clerks at the Immigration station, mistaking his naming his hometown for his last name, entered him in the record as Bj\u00f8rn Hjertel\u00f8ven, the name he carried until his death and gave to his family.<\/p>\n
The ferry carried him from Ellis to the teeming, reeking streets of the Lower East Side, where young Bj\u00f8rn took a job delivering ice.<\/p>\n
It didn’t take long to figure out where the power was on the Lower East Side; his boss paid protection to the Scunzillis, the Italian gang that ran the local cartage rackets, while the landlord of the sleazy tenement he lived in paid protection to the Fitzpatrick gang of Irish thugs.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Being neither Irish nor Italian, Hjertel\u00f8ven was not welcome to join either gang; being Norwegian, he had no desire to.\u00a0 But he noted and processed two key facts about these gangs as he went through his days and observed their actions, their comings and goings throughout the neighborhood.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n
- Being aggressive people from demonstrative ethnic groups, they resorted to violence on the drop of a pin.<\/li>\n
- Their gangs were “secret societies” in the sense that Nicole Ritchie is “garboesque”.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Hjertel\u00f8ven hatched his plan.<\/p>\n
———-<\/p>\n
On a hot July day in 1892, Bart Sklopnik, another ice deliverer, called in sick.\u00a0 He complained of stomach pains after having had a traditional dinner of Lutefisk <\/em>and\u00a0\u00a0R\u00f8mmegr\u00f8t <\/em>at the apartment of his co-worker Hjertel\u00f8ven.\u00a0 Being a stolid, thrifty Scandinavian, Hjertel\u00f8ven volunteered to cover his route.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sklopnik’s route included the home of both Don Guiseppe Scunzilli, capo <\/em>of the gang that bore his family name.\u00a0 And his regular route included the home of Dougall Fitzpatrick, head of the Fitzpatrick gang.<\/p>\n
He stopped at the Fitzpatrick’s brownstone on Delancy Street.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Top ‘o the mornin'”, said Colleen Fitzpatrick, answering the service door.\u00a0 “Fifty pounds, lad”.<\/p>\n
“Oh, yah”, Hjertel\u00f8ven responded.\u00a0\u00a0 He hauled his load into the house – and then, as planned, stop and did a theatrical double take at the photograph of Dougall Fitzpatrick.\u00a0 “Oh, it’s a small world, aint it?”<\/p>\n
“What fer ya be sayin’ that missus?” Mrs. Fitzpatarick asked, as if on cue.<\/p>\n
“Oh, nuttin”, Hjertel\u00f8ven responded.\u00a0 “He just ordered some ice from me yesterday, for some drinks he was making.\u00a0 Over at dat Italian lady’s place…”.<\/p>\n
“Scunzilli?” Mr.s Fitzpatrick asked, her face already during redder.<\/p>\n
“Is dat the name?\u00a0 Could be”, Hjertel\u00f8ven replied.\u00a0 “Probably weren’t nuttin”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He left the house.<\/p>\n
Four hours later, at the Scunzilli brownstone in the middle of Sklopnik’s route, while putting a fifty pound block into the icebox in the kitchen, he waited for Antonia Scunzilli, the wife of the clan’s leader Guiseppe, to strike up the inevitable conversation the damn always-talking Italians wanted to have.<\/p>\n
Sure enough…<\/p>\n
“So youse ain’t da regular ice guy?”<\/p>\n
“Nope”.\u00a0\u00a0 Two beats of silence.\u00a0 “I’m Bj\u00f8rn Hjertel\u00f8ven”<\/p>\n
“Antonia Scunzilli”.<\/p>\n
Hjertel\u00f8ven looked at Scunzilli, feigning surprise.\u00a0 “Oh, wow.\u00a0 Well, dat’s\u00a0a surprise then”.<\/p>\n
“What?” Scunzilli asked, in that way people ask when they’re used to getting their answers right way.<\/p>\n
“Oh, it’s just dat you look like a regular lady”.<\/p>\n
“What’s ‘dat supposed to mean?”\u00a0 Scunzilli asked, getting red under the collar.<\/p>\n
“Oh, it’s just dat dat Fitzwhatsis guy said you was…y’know…a little butch<\/em>, if you know what I mean.\u00a0 But he’s obviously mistaken”.\u00a0 Hjertel\u00f8ven paused for a brief rhetorical flourish.\u00a0 “Very mistaken”.<\/p>\n
Mrs. Scunzilli paused from her building rage for a moment to thank Hjertel\u00f8ven for the compliment, as he excused himself.<\/p>\n
———-<\/p>\n
The New York papers over the next few weeks were filled with stories of inter-gang warfare, as the Irish and Italian gangs slaughtered each other in the streets.\u00a0And then, a week later, as quickly as the violence had started, it ended.<\/p>\n
Bj\u00f8rn Hjertel\u00f8ven moved into a town house on Park Avenue three weeks later.\u00a0 And for the next several years, an uneasy peace reigned between New York’s gangs – one that neither the police nor the newspapers could explain.<\/p>\n
In 1895, Hjertel\u00f8ven married Gerda T\u00f8rstensdottir.\u00a0 In short order, they had four children; Lars, Berndt, Knud, and the youngest, daughter Ingrid.<\/p>\n
And it’s there that the next generation of the story picks up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
More soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Andy DeLigio, ace investigative reporter, has gone farther inside the Norwegian Mob than anyone who’s lived to tell the tale. Let’s pick up with part one of the story. Inside The Norwegian Mob Andy DiLigio “Your people are \u00a0from what part of Norway, then?” Jeff Hartelowen looks at me with a focused but blank concentration […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-and-punishment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6373"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6375,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6373\/revisions\/6375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}