So, I bet you think this house looks superordinary. It’s a nice Midcentury Ranch that probably needs a few updates, but it’s a thoroughly ordinary mob house. Nooooothing to see here, right?
Hah! Wrong! Are you new here? It’s the Wednesday WTF. OF COURSE THERE IS SOMETHING TO SEE HERE.
So, I will admit to this: I picked this house so I could encourage you to make an offer they can’t refuse, but then by the time I actually got ready to hit publish, it had a pending offer.
Meet the former home of the late Joey Naples in Youngstown, Ohio. “Who the heck is Joey Naples?” you ask.
Joey Naples was, according to Mafia Wiki, “a member of the Pittsburgh crime family and capo of the Youngstown, Ohio, faction.”
And Joey Naples (seriously, you can’t not say his whole name), ran a gambling operation for the Pittsburgh family, and is known for being one of the Pittsburgh Associates that bribed former athlete James Traficant when he was running for county sheriff, in hopes that he would turn a blind eye should he get elected.
Naples was gunned down by a sniper in 1991, just outside the new home he was building, so even if he had lived, this house would’ve been on the market eventually. It apparently sold in 1992, and again in 1995, and then was listed again this year.
So what does a mob boss’s house look like? Well, we don’t necessarily know how much was changed after the house sold following his death, we can at least get an idea of the layout.
But I did get one interesting detail about the basement (isn’t it always the basement with these guys?): At one point, a search warrant was served on the Naples home because police “had information from an informant that there was a secret room in the cellar of this residence.”
A secret room, y’all.
“Detective Krohn continued the search by hitting the panelled wall, when all of a sudden a door popped open, exposing a room and its contents,” a court document read. “The contents of this room included a quantity of guns of various kinds, gun silencers, ammunition, a Bolex camera, a mink coat, lottery slips, and lottery records.”
No idea if the secret room is still secret, though.
So if you want a former mob house with a potentially secret room in the basement, and have more than $129,000, and really want to live in Youngstown, check here.
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