Joe Kennedy certainly had dealings with Frank Costello. But I think he did his liquor smuggling in Chicago. None of this is absolutely certain, and it never went to a court of law.
Here’s one article that suggests Chicago ties to Sam Giancana as well as NYC Mafia ties:
http://gangstersinc.tripod.com/SamMomoGiancana.html
I know the tie to Giancana ran til his death, didn't know when it started. Whatever the liquor split, he certainly dealt with the bad guys.
My favorite story is that Giancana sent Roselli and another guy to talk to Joe about calling the boys off because they had helped him win the WVA primary and Chicago. Joe said he would talk to them when the family got together at Christmas. In the meantime Joe had the massive stroke and the conservation supposedly did not take place.
Any current information at that link?..
Oh I know if you told me, you'd haf to kill me.
Joseph Kennedy had ties to Costello (per Costello's private boasts to John Miller, Peter Maas, and others), Sam Giancana (per FBI surveillance), Paul D'Amato (Giancana representative at Cal-Neva), Johnny Rosselli (per Rosselli and police files, cited in Charles Rappleye and Ed Becker's biography of Rosselli; Rosselli coordinated the hit on JFK, IMO), Miami gangster Tom Cassara (per Joey Fusco's testimony to the Kefauver Committee, as recorded by Kefauver, who took six pages on handwritten notes on this, on file at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, per Seymour Hersh's
The Dark Side of Camelot), Charlie Block (an employee of Kennedy's and a partner of Bert "Wingy" Grober), and most fundamentally to New Jersey's
Abner "Longy" Zwillman of the
Combined/Big Seven Group that preceded the rise of Lucky Luciano's National Crime Syndicate. In 1946, after his employee Cassara got shot, Joseph Kennedy sold his business Somerset Importers to Zwillman and his associate Joseph Reinfeld (aka Renfeld). Kennedy also owned a 17 percent controlling interest in Miami's Hialeah Race Track.