When Sonny learns that the driver (“Paulie”) was the rat (working for Barzini in the attempted murder of the Godfather), be give Clemenza the order to whack him. This was done by ordering him to pull off the road 9in the Jersey Marshes), and a bullet to the head.
The murder weapon was disposed of, but Paulie was left in the car-I did not see any effort to hide it, so how hard would this murder be to trace (in 1946)?
Would the police just assume that Paulie had been the victim of the gang war, and just leave it at that? Or would the family have told the police to expect it, and just let it slide into the ünsolved homicides"file?
No witnesses. Untraceable gun. I’m assuming its a clean car or in paulie’s name. No forensics. Random mob hit.
But take the cannoli.
I think Paulie was working for Tattaglia, not Barzini. And the idea behind leaving Paulie there to be easily found was to send a message to Tattaglia that the Corleones knew Paulie was working for them. Frankly, I think that was a mistake. I think it would have been wiser to just disappear Paulie rather than to leave him there to be found. I’ve always thought ‘confusion to your enemies’ was good strategy. But Sonny Corleone was never a subtle man. He was more of a tactical than a strategic thinker.
Those GF murder scenes, as brutal as they are, pale in comparison with the real life mob. Paulie, and especially the guy who put the bomb in the car in Sicily, would have been tortured first, and then disappeared.
Look back at the real mob hits of the past. The only way any were solved was if someone later talked. They just didn’t leave enough evidence.
The only way they got convictions was if there was an informer. Everybody generally knew who was responsible. That’s the whole point of terror.
We had a discussion of this topic a few years ago:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=474732&page=2
The idea is that you don’t want any way for the cops to tie you to the murder weapon. Leave it at the scene and the cops have the murder weapon, but that means they will never find it with you, or a witness who sees you drop it in the Hudson river. Since the gun can’t be traced to you before the murder, it can’t be traced to you after the murder, so it’s safer to just leave it at the crime scene.
Plus, if leaving the murder weapon behind is the mark of a professional mob hit, it’s a signal to the cops that they’re not gonna solve this one. Some knucklehead gets iced by his buddies, and nobody’s gonna miss him, and nobody knows anything, so don’t bother spending much time on this case.
As mentioned in the older thread, another issue is not the fingerprints on the gun, but all over the place in the car. These 3 have been riding around all day. Shoot, in the Saga version they show Clemenza having a big lunch while the other 2 wait in the car. Plus who knows about previous trips in it. They spend no time wiping it down.
And who knows how many people saw the 3 of them driving around that day. Remember, this is on the toll causeway so you have toll takers that apparently are affiliated with/can be easy bought off by Barzini. It would take the police less than an hour to find out who took Paulie for a drive.
It all comes down to just enough deniability plus bribery. Forensics can be co-opted.
I never felt that Paulie was definitively implicated in the hit on Don Corleone. To me, it looked more like Sonny jumping to conclusions in his rage. A sign that he would not be a good don because he’s not very thoughtful or insightful in business matters. In a scene later on his step broer Tom is adamant that the hit was purely business, not personal, and would he please consider that?
Maybe Paulie really was sick that day. Or have I missed something?
Well, Pauli certainly took a turn for the worse. Yes, they might be wrong about Pauli, but he did happen to get sick on the exact day a gang war starts at his job. It does leave some ambiguity. But you can get killed in the mafia with less damning evidence. That is the whole point. They all thought Pauli was in on it. Clemenza and Tom had enough respect to say something if they thought it was wrong.
Is it possible that even at this early date, Fredo had been compromised? Paulie "calls in sick -and Fredo acts as driver/bodyguard for the Don. When the killers strike, Fredo cannot even find his pistol.
Of course, this would mean that Fredo was incredibly naïve (as well as stupid).:rolleyes:
Trivia note: Supposedly the last two actors who were considered for the part of Paulie were Johnny Martino and Robert De Niro. If De Niro had been cast instead of Martino he wouldn’t have been able to play Vito in the sequel and maybe his entire career would have peaked in 1972 as Martino’s did.
In the book, the Corleone Family’s contacts at the phone company indicated that on the days Paulie called in sick, he received a phone call from a certain phone booth. Can’t really remember 1. If there was a more definite link or 2. If that was mentioned in the movie.
AND, there also was no hesitation from either Hagen or the Capos when Paulie’s execution was mentioned; only in re: a war.
In the book, Fredo was the toughest of the three (before the Vito hit.) His failure to protect his father shook him badly.
I remember reading somewhere that DeNiro’s resemblance to the young Marlon Brando was noted at the original casting interview, and he was considered to be the perfect actor to play Vito in GF II pretty much from the start (they were already thinking of doing the sequel). If this is true, it’s no surprise that Martino was chosen to play Paulie instead.
They probably didn’t have prints all over the car. It was cold weather, and they probably wore gloves. Even if their prints were in the car, they were fellow employees in the Corleone family, so, there is no need for any payoffs to establish an alibi. Also, there is no evidence that at the time the toll takers were in with Barzini. Sonny didn’t get killed until at least a year later. The toll booths weren’t a local hoodlum hangout. Had the toll takers been active Barzini/Tattaglia agents at the time of Paulie’s demise, every low level button man in the whole of NY would have known it. And, if the toll booths were populated by mob people, the cops only need to look up and find Sonny Corleone’s killers.
And, even if they were, there is no idea that, at the time, they were on the lookout for Clemenza, Lampone, and Paulie. The War hadn’t started yet.
An even more obscure place than the “unsolved homicides” file because it’s harder to find alphabetically.
Re: 'The Demise of “Pauli”(Godfather I)
I had no idea the mob was branching out from racketeering and prostitution into theoretical physics.
“Nice particle accelerator you CERN guys got. Would be a shame if anything happened to it.”
(Note for the potentially confused: Wolfgang Pauli - Wikipedia)
It’s been years since I read the book but as Harry, above writes… no question they had the evidence that Paulie was in on the Don assassination attempt. Also, from that scene and the book, Clemenza had a new Cadillac which he …loved. Recall…He was polishing it with his handkerchief as he left his house to get in it with Rocco and Paulie… from the movie. However, they changed cars to a nondescript chevy sedan while they were driving around… as I recall from the book. That’s the car they wacked Paulie in.
Read the book if you haven’t it very good and fills in many gaps the film doesn’t cover.
I haven’t watched GF is some time now. So it’s getting harder to remember things exactly. But my recollection is that Clemenza directly got into the car Rocco was driving in Clemenza’s driveway. Clemenza did have a car he wiped down, but he didn’t get in it in that scene. IIRC.
While many times a cite to the book doesn’t really clarify the movie since almost all the time so many changes are made that the two aren’t in sync. The Godfather is an exception in being amazingly true to the book. Large chunks of dialogue are directly out of the book. Of course the book is too long to make a single movie so a lot was left out (in particular Sonny’s mistress Lucy and Johnny’s adventures in Las Vegas as well as back stories). I think some of the Michael and Kay stuff was changed, though. The book makes it clear that Paulie was a rat due to the phone record thing.