Rocco
DeCord

ROCCO DE CORD

Camden Courier-Post - January 2, 1928

BABE PARADISE ADMITS HE IS NARCOTIC KING
3 Others Held by Camden Police as Leaders in Dope Peddling Gang
OPERATIONS COVERED ALL OF SOUTH JERSEY
Tell of Making Buys With Auto Used as ‘Silent Salesman’

Captured after a lengthy investigation, Anthony ‘Babe’ Paradise, of Camden has confessed to being the head of a narcotic ring operating throughout South Jersey, it was declared yesterday by Captain John Golden, head of the city detective bureau.

Paradise also admitted that he is a drug addict, Golden said, making the fact known when he became ill in his cell at the city jail and calling for Dr. W.G. Bailey, who has been treating him for the drug habit.

With three other men, who are accused as accomplices, Paradise is being held for a preliminary hearing in Police Court tomorrow morning. The four men, Golden said, will probably be held without bail pending grand jury action and be committed to the Camden County Jail. At the jail, detainers will be lodged against the quartette by Federal narcotics agents, who co-operated with city and county authorities in the investigation, which resulted in the arrests.

Golden declared that city detectives had purchased more than $500 worth of drugs from Paradise and his agents, in obtaining evidence against the ring, which authorities said reaches into Atlantic City and other South Jersey communities as well as Camden.

The three men arrested with Paradise are James Mucci, 18 years old, of 324 Stevens Street, Rocco DeCord, 21 years old, of 221 Spruce Street, and Andrew Hill, of Locust Street, near Kaighn Avenue. According to the detectives, the base of operations of the “ring” was in the Third Ward. Mucci and DeCord were arrested in a barbershop at Third and Locust streets, three blocks from the Wiley M. E. Church where the pastor, Rev. John S. Hackett, recently exposed vice con­ditions existing in the Third ward and assailed the Department Public Safety for laxity. The arrest of Paradise and the others is believed to be a result of the result of the clergyman’s scathing sermons.

Paradise and Hill were arrested several hours before the other two men. Fearing that they get word to other members of the “ring” police took the two men to Merchantville police headquarters, where Assistant Prosecutor Joseph Varbalow and Chief County Detective Lawrence T. Doran were waiting. Statements were obtained from the two, and meanwhile Mucci and DeCord were taken into custody. Paradise, who is 34 years old, served a year In State Prison five years ago for selling narcotics.

Detectives George Ward, Louis Shaw, and Thomas Cheeseman, of the city, and M.H.  Shapiro and J.H. McFadden, of the federal office in Philadelphia, arranged the purchase of a ‘deck” of heroin from Paradise, and ‘caught him with the goods’  when he met them at Nineteenth Street and River Road, near his, home at 927 North Nineteenth Street.

Paradise was in his expensive automobile when arrested. It was the machine he had used to distribute narcotics to his agents and addicts during the past few years, the detectives said.

Decks  of dope which sold for $1.50 each, police said, were placed in the automobile which was driven to a certain point as prearranged, and then Paradise would leave it parked, the detcrt1ves said.

Peddling Scheme Bared

At a  stated hour an agent or addict would approach the machine, take the “dope” inside, and leave money as payment. Paradise would return and collect the money received, it was said.

That the ring extended to Philadelphia, New York, and other large Eastern cities was indicated by the many times the automobile was parked at Camden bridge plaza for hours, when exchanges would be made, the detectives said.  

February 9, 1928

Anthony "Babe" Paradise was arraigned in Criminal Court, Judge Samuel M. Shay  presiding, along with James Mucci and Rocco DeCord.

Convicted by a Criminal Court jury of conspiracy and the possession and sale of narcotics, Joseph Colanduno, 29 years old, 431 Walnut Street, said by police to be a member of a powerful dope ring in Camden, will be sentenced by Judge Shay tomorrow morning.

The jury deliberated less than an hour before returning a verdict of guilty on seven indictments, marking the end of the first of a series of "dope" trials scheduled to be heard by Judge Shay. The most important hearing will be that of Anthony "Babe" Paradise, who has been indicted in eleven counts on narcotics charges, six of them true bills accusing Paradise and James Mucci with conspiracy to sell narcotic drugs. Another alleged member of the gang, Rocco DeCord, 221 Spruce Street, who recently pleaded guilty to six indictments and who turned state's evidence at yesterday's trial, will be sentenced later. Still another alleged "dope runner", Alex Frumento, is being sought by police.

DeCord and three confessed addicts testified against Colanduno at the trial yesterday. DeCord said that he had been hired by the defendant and Frumento to sell small packages marked "H" and "C" to certain men who had been introduced to him. DeCord declared that he did not know what the packages contained, nor did he ever use dope.

The drug users, Nolan Clark, 28 years old who gave no address; George "Gyp" Haines, 29 years old, 527 Spruce Street, and Andrew Hill, 20 years, Locust Street and Kaighn Avenue, declared they had brought dope from Colanduno on various occasions.

Colanduno, who until last December operated the Primrose Inn at Barrington with Frumento as his partner, denied that he ever possessed drugs or hired DeCord. His arrest, he said, was a "frame-up" engineered by his "enemies". His wife Hazel and his wife's grandmother, Mrs. Laura Brakeman, who lives with Mrs. Colanduno, both testified that they never had seen DeCord or the three addicts buying drugs at the inn, as they declared on the witness stand.

James Gatti, 18 years old, of Philadelphia, who is serving a six-month term in the county jail for robbery, took the stand on Colanduno's behalf. He testified that DeCord had told him in the jail that the confessed dope peddler's statement implicating Colanduno had been forced from him by police.

Assistant Prosecutor Joseph A. Varbalow stated that the Paradise case probably would be disposed of next week with the return from Florida of Samuel P. Orlando, attorney for the alleged "Dope King of Camden.",