Joe arrived in the US in 1921 where he joined his bother Singing Sam Catalonotte as a key member in the Detroit chapter of the Unione Siciliana. Within ten years of his arrival in the Motor city the mob prince had established himself as one of the Unione's most feared gunmen as he piled up arrests two of which were for the shooting of two Detroit police officers, one of which died of his wounds. In addition to these shootings Catalonotte was known to be an active participant in the smuggling of narcotics, bootlegged liquor and illegal immigrants into the country byway of Canada.
Catalonotte proved just how dangerous he could be when his operation was tampered with when he and 15 of his men beat two undercover prohibition agents and dumped them in a road side ditch when the attempted to raid a Catalonotte liquor warehouse. Following the death of brother in Febuary of 1930, Cockeyed Joe was the favorite to succeed his brother at the helm of the Unione but instead chose to merge the Unione with other local organizations that had participated in his brother's peace plan over the years. Catalonotte became an intrigal part of the newly formed Partnership working closely with members of the Licavoli family in a continuation of a profitable arms smuggling operation they had run under the protection of the Unione Sicilana since the early '20s. So fearsome was the reputation of Cockeyed Joe that when Detroit police officers conducted a raid on Catalonotte's home in an exclusive section of Grosse Pointe, they came in force "60 in all," armed with gas masks, machine guns and automatic pistols.
Among the items seized from the Catalonotte home was a cache of 54 weapons one of which turned out to have been used in the murder of crusading radio journalist Gerald Buckley who had been killed on the order of the Licavoli brothers. As a result of the raid and the subsiquent public outcry from the revelation that he had played a part in the death of Buckley. Joe Catalonotte was ordered out of the country yet recived no jail time. Joe Catalonotte moved his operation across the Detroit River into Windsor Ontarion Canada which had long been a strong hold of the Detroit crime syndicates in the smuggling of practically anything they desired.
Catalonotte remained in Windsor area for the rest of his life making frequent trips across the Detroit river for conferences with his friends and family on the Americain side of the border. Joe Catalonotte ruled the Windsor Ontario branch of the Detroit family "along with Louis Cichini and Onofrio Minauado untill his demise in the '70s.
