Stanley Allen Diamond

Stanley Diamond a.k.a "Stanley", born December 9, 1940 was a Jewish-American mob associate of the Lucchese crime family.

Biography

Stanley Diamond was born in Forest hills Queens to Ben and Betty Diamond. He was a sociopath and a degenerate gambler. He is a distant blood relative of David Diamond, an American composer of Classical music. Stanley was an expert "stick up man" during hijackings who would jump into the hijacked truck and shove a gun in the driver's face. Despite La Cosa Nostra regulations that only Italians could become officially initiated into the mafia, Diamond reportedly believed that his expertise as a "stick up man" and willingness to murder might eventually lead to his becoming a made man in the Lucchese crime family.

He was paid a fixed rate for each hijacking, usually a flat several thousand dollars just for shoving a gun in the truck driver's face. He did not receive any percentage of the actual hijacked goods. Stanley is also suspected in murdering Jimmy Burke’s business partner and friend Dominick Cersani including a warehouse foreman who lived in the Boontown Projects of Hoboken, New Jersey in the early 1970s. Stanley was one of the fortunate members of the Vario Crew to survive the after effects of the Lufthansa heist and when Henry Hill turned state’s evidence in 1985 and testified against the members of the Vario Crew. Stanley was a regular habituate of Robert's Lounge, The Bamboo Lounge and The Suite.

Association with the Vario Crew

Stanley was a close friend of Henry Hill, Thomas DeSimone, Anthony Stabile, Jimmy Burke and Joseph Allegro,. Stanley could never become a made member of the Vario Crew, like Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke because of his Jewish heritage, but did not suffer the racial discrimination as did African-American crew member Parnell Edwards. Like Tommy DeSimone, Stanley was known to have a violent temper and was prone to outbursts which made him feared even by fellow mobsters. Stanley Diamond was one of Paul Vario's shooters who was known who sit around all day and brag to the other soldiers about his favorite mob executions he performed. He became friends with Tommy DeSimone, Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke. When hijacking transport trucks it was either Tommy DeSimone, Joseph Allegro or Stanley Diamond who would run up to the truck as it was stopped at a red light in the early morning hours and threaten the driver with a gun and put him in the mobster's car while other guys drove the truck to the stop.

The Beating of Frank Menna

In 1970, after Jimmy Burke told of plans to extort his thriving bookmaking business and Krugman threatened to go to the District Attorney, Frank Menna was the unfortunate employee who was beaten in the salon, in front of Krugman, by Stanley Diamond and Thomas DeSimone on orders by Jimmy Burke. Frank is lucky to have survived the beating due to DeSimone and Diamond's ruthlessness as sidewalk soldiers for Paul Vario. The beating was shown in the film to involve Martin Krugman and not Menna who is strangled by Jimmy Burke with telephone wire in the presence of Henry Hill.

Failed hijacking & murder

Stanley murdered the freight supervisor of the legitimate truck warehouse near the James A. Farley Post Office New York City's General Post Office, located at 421 Eighth Avenue, between 31st Street and 33rd Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the street from Pennsylvania Station and Madison Square Garden at West 36th Street. The identity of the supervisor is not discovered, but he is described by Henry Hill as a "big chesty guy" who did not know who Jimmy Burke was and would not let Burke unload the hijacked cigarettes after his unloaders could not produce their union identification cards.

After they could not come to an agreement Stanley Diamond and Henry Hill, while driving the truck several blocks from the warehouse down 9th Avenue, they noticed the back doors to the truck were open and cartons of Laredo cigarettes were spilling out onto the street. The truck was blocked off by a police cruiser and Diamond and Hill both bolted from the truck as it sat idling in the street. That very night Burke sent Diamond and Tommy DeSimone to Hoboken, New Jersey where the cargo supervisor lived as a bachelor to "straighten him out".

They were just supposed to rough him up and tell him about Jimmy Burke. Instead Diamond and DeSimone got so mad at the cargo supervisor that they murdered him. The two were so angry that the supervisor wouldn't listen to Jimmy Burke at the warehouse, that he lived in Hoboken, New Jersey, and that they had drive twenty-five miles all night to New Jersey to talk to him, they got themselves so worked up, that Diamond and DeSimone couldn't stop themselves from killing him.

Attack at Don Pepe's

Stanley Diamond was ordered along with Henry Hill, Jimmy Burke, Thomas DeSimone and two carloads of Lucchese crime family side-walk soldiers to beat up the waiters and kitchen staff at Don Pepe's Vesuvio Restaurant located at 135-58 Lefferts Boulevard in South Ozone Park, Queens, just a few blocks south of the Lucchese crime family hijacking headquarters, Robert's Lounge. He assisted in beating the employees with an inch of lead pipe as the kitchen staff left the restaurant at 11 P.M. Some of the employees fled the scene and scrambled into the cars, so Stanley and others had to chase them all around the neighborhood late into the night. Stanley and the others had been ordered to beat the staff after a certain waiter spilled a drink all over Paul Vario's wife, Phyllis and then sloppily tried to blot up the spilled drink on the front of her dress.

In Popular Culture

Stanley Diamond is excluded from Martin Scorsese's film "Goodfellas". Ironically, later in Scorsese's film "Casino" he has a character named "'Lester Diamond'" based on the real life Leonard Marmor who is portrayed in the film by James Woods. Scorsese possibly excluded Stanley's character for tarnishing his respected relative composer David Diamond who was still alive at the time of the film. It is suggested that Scorsese thought up the Marmor-based character "Lester Diamond" from Stanley Diamond.

References

* "Wiseguy: My Life In A Mafia Family" by Nicholas Pileggi