The Organization

The Organization, a loose confederation of organized crime figures often called the Mafia or the Mob, represents the most sinister chapter in the Overlook Hotel's already checkered history. Its presence at the hotel was not a brief, accidental visitation but a calculated infiltration that turned the mountain resort into a private playground for some of America's most powerful and violent criminals. The evidence of this occupation, buried in the hotel's basement archives and later uncovered by Jack Torrance, reveals a story of corruption, murder, and the cynical manipulation of a grand hotel for the purposes of organized crime.

Infiltration and the Key Club

The Organization's takeover of the Overlook was executed through a complex web of shell corporations and front companies, a strategy designed to obscure the true ownership and purpose of the hotel. The key figure in this scheme was Charles Grondin, a former director of the California Land Development Corporation who later became an executive vice president in the Chicago home office of Derwent Enterprises. In 1963, a Las Vegas group calling itself High Country Investments purchased the Overlook, ostensibly to turn it into an exclusive "key club" for high-echelon executives. However, investigative journalist Josh Brannigar later revealed that High Country was likely a dummy company controlled by Horace Derwent, and that its real purpose was to serve as a secure, isolated meeting place for Organization overlords. The hotel's remote location, accessible only by a single road that closed in winter, made it an ideal retreat for men who needed to conduct business away from the prying eyes of law enforcement.

Key Members and Their Activities

The guest list for the Overlook's "key club" during the week of August 16-23, 1964, reads like a who's who of mid-century organized crime. Among those present were Charles "Baby Charlie" Battaglia, a Vegas impresario with a long arrest record stretching back to 1932, including an acquittal for gangland murder; Richard Scarne, a slot machine magnate who had done time for assault and tax fraud; Peter Zeiss, a Miami importer fighting deportation who had been convicted for receiving stolen property; Vittorio Gienelli, also known as "Vito the Chopper," who had been tried twice for gangland-style murders, including the ax-murder of a Boston vice overlord; and Carl "Jimmy-Ricks" Prashkin, a San Francisco investor and reputed heir apparent to Gienelli's power, who was suspected of laundering money skimmed from Vegas casinos. These men, along with others, used the Overlook as a base for making deals that turned over millions of dollars, often in the very suites where American presidents had once stayed. The hotel's staff, including the maintenance man Watson, were well aware of the unsavory nature of these guests, noting the presence of expensive prostitutes and the general atmosphere of corruption.

The Gangland Murder and Aftermath

The Organization's tenure at the Overlook came to a violent and bloody end in June of 1966. A triple shotgun slaying occurred in the Presidential Suite, where Vittorio Gienelli was cut down by attackers using heavy-gauge shotguns at close range. Two of his bodyguards, Victor T. Boorman and Roger Macassi, were also killed outside the suite's door. The murder was a classic gangland execution, and the hotel manager at the time, Robert Norman, reported that two men wearing stockings on their faces had fled down the fire escape. A chilling note written in ball-point pen below the newspaper clipping of the murder read: "They took his balls along with them." The murder marked the end of the Overlook's most notorious era. The hotel was sold again, and the Organization's direct involvement ended, but the stain of its presence remained, a dark layer in the hotel's accumulating history of violence and scandal. The scrapbook Jack Torrance found in the basement, which meticulously documented this criminal period, served as a testament to the Organization's deep and corrupting influence on the Overlook.