The mayor and police chief of San Bernardino and a Superior Court judge wrote some very odd letters in 1969 on behalf of an Upland man accused of lying to the Grand Jury.

Apparently touched by the quality of the man, their letters praised his community involvement and family life in asking the court to go easy on his sentencing.

What made this so bizarre was that the man for whom they so greatly praised was Joseph C. Dippolito, identified by the Justice Department as one of the leaders of the mafia in Los Angeles.

The letters were supposed to have been sealed but a San Bernardino Sun article by writer Ted Harp on July 24, 1970, not only revealed their existence but published copies of the letters.

San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Joseph A. Katz wrote on his office stationery that he knew Dippolito (misspelling his name) as a man who “enjoyed a reputation of honesty and reliability.” Mayor Al C. Ballard said he was acquainted with Dippolito for 20 years and he had “raised a wonderful family and was an outstanding citizen.”

Police Chief Louis J. Fortuna said as far as he knew Dippolito had never really violated any serious laws locally. Almost apologetically, he admitted that Dippolito had been frequently harassed by members of his own vice squad. “They wasted time and effort while other crimes in their field were being violated.”

The letters were all dated May 26 or 27, just 10 days after Dippolito was convicted of lying about ownership of Charlie’s Market on East Fourth Street in Ontario. Because of his background, he had been barred from having a liquor license for the store. Its ownership had been hidden by registering it in the name of a relative.

Katz, Fortuna and Ballard said they met Dippolito during the years he lived in San Bernardino. Incredibly, the judge and police chief claimed they didn’t really know much of Dippolito’s criminal background when he called them and asked for their letters of support. Ballard told a fellow councilman he wrote the letter after being asked to do so by “local businessmen.”

Despite the letters, Dippolito was given 10 years in prison in June 1969 for lying to the Grand Jury, though on appeal it was reduced to five years. Finally, in ill health due to diabetes, he was released in December 1971 after only eight months at the Terminal Island federal prison in San Pedro. He died in January 1974 and is buried at Bellevue Cemetery in Ontario.

There was really no secret about Dippolito’s Mafia activities which had been fairly well-publicized by state and federal crime-fighting agencies. He had been arrested a number of times, mostly for relatively minor bootlegging offenses years before.

But the real extent of Dippolito’s role in Los Angeles’ Mafia came to light in the pages of the 1981 bestseller, “The Last Mafioso,” by Ovid Domaris. It was based on interviews with Los Angeles Mafia leader and government informant Jimmy Fratianno as well as access to police files.

Fratianno told Domaris that Dippolito — known as “Joe Dip” — was “built like a heavyweight wrestler, with a bull neck and barrel chest, and legs like tree stumps.”

The book detailed two incidents in 1949 and 1953 which “Joe Dip” participated in the killings of gangsters Frank Niccoli and Louis Strauss using what Domaris called “The Italian Rope Trick.” In both cases, Dippolito grabbed the intended victim from behind in a bear hug while an associate strangled him.

Such victims “would be buried with a sack of lime in his (Dippolito’s) Cucamonga vineyard, a burial ground for many other past and future victims of unsolved ‘disappearances.’ ” The book left no clue as to what property Dippolito used as a dumping spot for crimeland bodies.

The book also described how Dippolito and five other men early in 1952 were formally initiated into the Mafia ranks as “made men” in a storeroom at a Dippolito vineyard. It also claimed a Mafia associate’s connections with the Justice Department “got Joe Dip’s sentence reduced,” presumably in the perjury case.

In the last decades of his life, Dippolito was involved in numerous land transactions and had vineyards producing grapes for local winemakers. His land deals involved properties in San Bernardino, Rialto, Fontana and Cucamonga, according to files in the San Bernardino County Hall of Records.

(Interestingly, listed among the many items at the Hall of Records are several mid-1960s transactions, including a loan and property transfers, involving the late singer and actor Danny Kaye and his wife Sylvia Kaye.)

In his latter years Dippolito and his wife lived on North Third Avenue in Upland where they managed their “Dippolito Grape Vineyards” holdings.

Not surprisingly, the release of the letters in 1970 shook up the halls of local government. But politically speaking, the three pretty much escaped scot-free.

Mayor Ballard’s reaction to criticisms over the letters was to demand an investigation into how they were obtained by the newspaper.

The day after the letters were published, the Redlands Daily Facts editorialized that Judge Katz should be removed from office because “he is simply too naive to justify public confidence.” Oddly enough, the Sun didn’t comment editorially for almost a week before finally saying the letters by the three “are the seeds of an erosion of confidence.”

In the political uproar, Fortuna was the easiest target of the three because he could be removed from his position by a vote of the San Bernardino City Council. He admitted he used poor judgment in deciding to write the letter.

After several meetings full of harsh accusations and political charges, the council on Aug. 17 voted, 4-3, not to fire Fortuna as head of the 200-member police force. Fortuna kept his job but later was off duty for a number of months due to surgery for ulcers. He retired after eight years as chief on March 1, 1973.

Judge Katz retired in January 1985 after more than 20 years on the bench. He won two subsequent re-election campaigns during which his Dippolito letter was a frequent focus of discussion. Ironically, in 1974, the Sun endorsed him for re-election despite admitting that his judgment in writing the letter was “at the very best, injudicious.”

Ballard, who went on to testify in person on behalf of Dippolito at his sentencing hearing, first announced he would run for a fourth term of mayor in 1971, but then changed his mind. He cited “severe financial and personal hardships” for his family while serving as San Bernardino’s mayor.

He jumped back into politics in 1973, unsuccessfully running for mayor. In 1989 he received 10 percent of the vote for mayor as a write-in candidate and was third among 10 candidates in the March 1993 primary.

So, was it merely doing a favor to an acquaintance that motivated the three men to risk their careers to assist a known Mafia leader? Or, as a cynic might think, was it because of collusion or even threats from the mob?

Nearly a half-century later, the real answer has been simply left to everyone’s imagination.

Joe Blackstock writes on Inland Empire history. He can be reached at joe.blackstock@gmail.com or Twitter @JoeBlackstock.