Free Enterprisers

The five sturdy sons of Giuseppe Messina were dependable boys, and each went into the family business: prostitution. At first they were successful in a small way, with a chain of North African brothels. But when they aimed at bigger things, there was trouble: Salvatore Messina was jailed in Egypt for six months, and when the other brothers--Alfredo, Eugene, Attilio, Carmello--tried to set up houses in France, Spain and Italy, they ran afoul of competitors and the law.

Pimps & Panders. In 1934 Eugene Messina, describing himself as a merchant, traveled to London to investigate conditions. On the surface, Britain appeared sternly moralistic, with puritanical drinking laws and a prim observance of the Sabbath. But it was also full of men devoted to pleasure and prepared to pay. The Messinas decided that what London vice needed was organization, and they set out to provide it. To his delight, Eugene Messina discovered that it cost no more in legal fines to obstruct a London street with a tart than with a car.

Within a year, all the Messinas were in London and in the family business. Three of them got arrested as pimps and panders, but beat the rap, making the police hesitant to try again, for fear of being wrongly accused of persecuting innocent men. The war years were golden years for the Messinas. After 1945 they scoured the Continent for likely women-for-sale, spent lavishly to enchant their prey. Of her date with Attilio, one girl says: "For the first time in my life, I felt someone wanted me. His voice was so soft, so ingratiating. I said to myself after our first meeting, 'This is a gentleman.' "

Pavement Patrols. On paper, the Messinas were ostensibly in business as antique dealers, diamond merchants, exporters, and one by one they took on British-sounding names--Raymond Maynard, Charles Maitland, etc. Each brother had three or four addresses. Frequently a girl who paid her earnings to one brother lived in a flat owned by another. As the boys became more polished, they got themselves measured for Savile Row suits, and liked to keep a wary eye on the pavement patrols of their girls by cruising Curzon Street and Shepherd Market in Rolls-Royces. By the 1950s, the police estimated that at least 200 of London's most expensive prostitutes were Messina fillies.

One of the boys, Eugene, did get into trouble in 1947, when he slashed a rival body-trader with a razor, but he celebrated his release--after two years in prison --by buying a $16,000 black-and-cream Rolls. In 1950 Reporter Duncan Webb of the Sunday People ran a well-documented expose of the Messina brothers. Four of them promptly left the country. Only Alfredo, against whom Reporter Webb found no evidence, stayed on in a London suburb with his so-called "wife," Hermione Hindin, a fulltime prostitute. Arrested and accused of living on Hermione's earnings, Alfredo said he was aghast to learn how Hermione passed her time. Though Hermione, rattling her gold bangles and chain-smoking, refused to testify against him, Alfredo got two years.

Latin Passports. Brother Attilio, returning to Britain as Alfredo's replacement, was promptly sentenced to six months as a pimp. So Carmello and Eugene ran the business from Belgium; using Brazilian and Cuban passports, they traveled from Rome to Paris to Vienna, recruiting new girls. A typical example was pretty Belgian Marie Vernaecke, who was set up in a Mayfair flat, married to a complaisant Englishman to qualify for British citizenship; she earned the brothers around $5,600 a month. Unfortunately, Belgian police caught Carmello and Eugene in a nightclub just as they were closing a deal with two more Belgian girls.

By that time, Attilio had finished his British sentence and was ready to take over things again. But the unexpected happened at long last: one of the girls talked. Ill, exhausted and unwanted after ten years' labor for the Messinas, 39-year-old Edna Kallman told the police that Attilio hired a maid to watch her, and to knock on her bedroom door if she spent more than ten minutes with a client. Once, when she complained of having to work daily, in sickness and in health, he shouted: "I'm tired of this! I could get a 17-year-old who would work harder than you, and I could sleep with her as well."

Smashed Ring. This time Attilio got four years, and his brother Carmello six months. Furthermore, the authorities had finally searched out the tangled ancestry of the Messinas, proved they were Italians from Sicily and not, as they claimed, Maltese who were entitled to British citizenship. Carmello was deported, and Attilio will be when he gets out of jail. "The Messina vice ring was finally smashed!" cried the London Daily Express.

But was it? Last week Eugene was keeping busy in his Belgian jail cell signing checks for rent and taxes on his London property, which, according to the Sunday People, is still being used for the customary purposes by Messina girls. And two more of the ubiquitous brothers are still on the loose somewhere in Europe.

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