No Haven

Boston to the north and New York City to the south, Connecticut’s history of organized crime is often overlooked. Here’s the untold story of New Haven’s illegal past.

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No Haven is the story of how the Mafia operated in New Haven, told through the experiences of some of the key players in the Connecticut organized crime scene. From the 1930s, Connecticut became a region where Mafia families like the Genoveses, Gambinos, Colombos, and Patriarcas shared turf for most of the twentieth-century—at times, working together with enough profits to go around and, at other times, descending into open war to rival that experienced in any major city. Representing the Genoveses, Midge Renault reigned supreme over the city thanks to his reputation for wanton violence. At the same time, Colombo capo Ralph ‘Whitey’ Tropiano maintained a lower profile, which belied his reputation is a vicious killer. It was his lieutenant, Billy ‘The Wild Guy’ Grasso who ultimately rose to the top of the heap, though. When Grasso signed up with the Patriarca Family out of New England, he began a campaign of conquest that only ended when his body was found on a riverbed outside of Hartford in 1989. These events take place in a city going through transformative urban renewal and social change, in a concerted effort to make it America’s “Model City.”