Lost Jack Kerouac story found among assassinated mafia boss' belongings

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Source: SF Gate

CULTURE
Lost Jack Kerouac story found among assassinated mafia boss' belongings

By Andrew Chamings,
Editor-at-Large
Oct 13, 2025


Jack Kerouac Alley in North Beach was named after the legendary beat writer in 2007.
Wikimedia Commons

A lost story written and signed by legendary San Francisco writer Jack Kerouac has been found among the belongings of an infamous mafia boss who was gunned down in 1985. The two-page story, titled “The Holy, Beat, and Crazy Next Thing,” was written shortly before the publication of Kerouac’s 1957 masterpiece “On the Road.”

The story details, in Kerouac’s typical ecstatic and spontaneous style, an evening of joy and yearning in Denver with Neal Cassady, LuAnne Henderson and Allen Ginsberg, using their alter egos Dean Moriarty, Marylou and Carlo Marx. The typed story is signed by Kerouac with a green fountain pen, something he was known to do at the time.



A photo of writer Jack Kerouac in 1956. His classic novel “On the Road” was published one year later.
Tom Palumbo via WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 2.0

The story’s existence was unknown to the public until recently, as it spent many years among the belongings of the former head of the Gambino New York crime family Paul Castellano. After succeeding Carlo Gambino to become don in 1976, Castellano was shot dead in front of Sparks Steak House in Manhattan in 1985.

It’s not clear exactly how and when Castellano took ownership of the literary relic, but whispers of the existence of the story arose in 2024 when an estate sale was organized at Castellano’s former mansion. … “A friend of mine tipped us off that there was an estate sale going on that day and they had seen some ephemera in the auction,” Jerry Braunfield of online auction house Your Own Museum told SFGATE on Monday. “There were roughly 10 to 15 people attending, and we were serendipitously bidding against no one interested in the items. It happened by pure fate. It was an unexpected and fortunate opportunity.”


The lost story was discovered at an estate sale at crime boss Paul Castellano’s former mansion.
Wikimedia Commons

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Read more: https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/lost-jack-kerouac-chapter-found-mafia-boss-estate-21098566.php