Gangster Sonny

The first don of what was later called the Colombo crime family, Joe Profaci, came to power upon the conclusion of the Castellammarese War. Profaci thus served with Lucky Luciano, Vince Mangano, Joe Bonanno and Tom Gagliano as head of one of the five Mafia families in New York that comprised the nucleus of the Mafia force in the national crime syndicate.

Profaci ruled for more than three decades, an amazing feat since he was regarded by other mafiosi and many of his own soldiers as the worst don in New York. Profaci’s failing - greed. Alone among the dons Profaci levied a tax of $25 a month from each member, allegedly to build a slush fund to take care of mobsters who got arrested. Of course, he pocketed the funds. And he constantly demanded tribute. Joe Valachi later quoted Carmine “the Snake” Persico as complaining: “Even if we go hijack some trucks he taxes us. I paid up to $1,800.”

Eventually Profaci was faced with revolt. A number of his soldiers, including the kill-crazy Gallo brothers, Persico and Jiggs Forlano (a capo and perhaps the biggest loan shark in New York), were rumbling for his demise. Ever cunning, Profaci was not about to cave in to all the rebels and so he divided them, promising rewards that brought Persico, Rotlano and others back into the fold, while leaving the Gallos out in the cold. (Persico and Forlano became the staunchest battlers against the Gallos for Profaci.)
Profaci died in 1962 and the power passed to his underboss Joe Magliocco. Like Profaci, Magliocco was upset the way two of the other city crime bosses, Carlo Gambino and Tommy Lucchese, had been interfering in Profaci affairs. Now they tried to undercut Magliocco. Gambino clearly had designs to dominate the Profacis. Only Joe Bonanno stood with Profaci and his successor, while the fifth boss, Vito Genovese, was in prison at the time.
It was not that Bonanno, in his own quest for supremacy, concocted a scheme to kill off Gambino and Lucchese, as well as a few other crime bosses around the country. It may be that Bonanno felt he had no options, that if Magliocco fell, Gambino would turn next on the Bonanno family.
Magliocco agreed to join Bonanno in his plot and gave out the contracts on the two New York City leaders to a dependable hit-man capo for Profaci, Joe Colombo. But Colombo was not dependable this time. Instead of carrying out the hits, he revealed the plot to the intended victims. This lead eventually to the so-called Banana War to dethrone Bonanno; but Magliocco tumbled easier. Summoned to appear before the commission of which he was a member, Magliocco, extremely ill and suddenly very tired, confessed. He was allowed to live (he was to die of a heart ailment in a matter of months) and dethroned.

The grateful Gambino installed the accommodating Joe Colombo as Profaci family chief and thus gained another firm vote in the commission. In time Gambino would rue his choice of Colombo, a man who had ambitious ideas. One idea that Gambino bought at first was that it would be smart to rally Italian Americans into an anti-defamation league to say they were being smeared by all this talk about an Italian Mafia. Actually what Colombo wanted to do was clothe the Mafia with the respectability of the vast majority of Italian Americans. (By contrast the Jewish Anti-Defamation League has never objected to stories about Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Gurrah Shapiro, Louis Lepke, Mickey Cohen, Mendy Weiss, Arnold Rothstein or Jake Guzik and other Jewish gangsters.)
After a year of protests by Italian Americans led by Colombo, including picketing of the FBI offices in New York, Gambino had enough and ordered Colombo to cool it. He didn’t and he was assassinated.
Unlike other volumes on the Mafia, I will offer no chart listing the various Mafia crime families and their bosses and other leaders. One reason is that any such chart, given the nature of the mob, is subject to abrupt change. But more important, the chart would be inaccurate. Federal listings and those of state and local police agencies frequently vary with one another about who was or is in power when.
The post-Colombo succession was a particular special problem for law enforcement agencies. Despite the fact that hostility between Colombo and the FBI made it the most intensely watched crime family, it took the government three years to discover the new boss was Thomas DiBella. That was with four federal agencies and three local agencies maintaining 24-hour surveillance and eavesdropping on both the Colombo and Gambino families. In 1971 when Colombo was shot (he lingered in a vegetable state for seven years) DiBella was listed as only a low-ranking soldier in the Colombos. Actually DiBella, a retired tractor foreman on the docks, had been in the mob since 1932, but until 1974 no one in official circles ever suspected his importance. He had only one conviction, for bootlegging in 1932.
Because of age, DiBella eventually stepped aside for younger blood although he continued as a top adviser. The leadership passed to former rebel Carmine Persico. There would have been an era of peace for the mob - the Gallo threat had been settled with the death of Larry Gallo and the assassination of Crazy Joe Gallo - except for Persico’s constant involvement in criminal prosecutions. He was to spend a total of 10 of the 13 years prior to 1985 in various prisons. The family was in something like chaos until Jerry Langella wrested the leadership to himself, subject to some dispute from Persico at a later date. By late 1986, with both Persico and Langella facing long years in prison, authorities indicated that Victor Orena a distant Persico relative, had been named boss pro tem.

The family can only boast of about 115 members as well as few hundred more supporters, making it with today’s Lucchese crime family one of the two smallest in New York. But the roster of crimes the family is involved in is impressive: narcotics trafficking, gambling, loans-sharking, cigarette smuggling, pornography, counterfeiting, hijacking and bankruptcy frauds, to name just a few.
Murder is also in the picture, but the boys can be rather understanding about that. According to the police, one potential victim asked that he not be put in cement blocks and tossed into the Gowanus Canal, mob standard procedure. He requested that instead his body be dumped in the streets so that “my family wont have such a hassle getting my life insurance.”
The boys agreed, but for various reasons the hit was not carried out. Maybe the Colombos aren’t that bad a sort.

Although Joe Bonanno has been out of power since the mid-1960s, the family he ran for some three and a half decades is still known by his name, not because of a partilineal succession, but rather because of inept successors.

Bonanno was put in charge of his Brooklyn family on the assassination of Salvatore Maranzano in 1931. He was at the time only 26 years old, the youngest crime family boss in the country. Traditionally his was one of the smaller of the New York families, but it was for a number of years very tight-knit and extremely profitable under Bonanno. Because of its limited manpower, Bonanno over the years sought consistently to ally himself with another crime boss or two to cement his position. Until they fell out much later, he could rely on support from his cousin Stefano Magaddino, the head of the Buffalo crime family, and in Brooklyn from Joe Profaci, with whom he remained very tight until Profaci’s death in 1962. Under Bonanno the major sources of crime revenue derived from numbers, the Italian lottery, bookmaking, loan-sharking and, although he always denied it, narcotics. But when Bonanno underboss Carmine Galante went to prison in the early 1960s, it was for his involvement in drug trafficking, and to this very day the Bonanno family is regarded as one of the major suppliers of drugs to New York City.

By the time of Profaci’s death in 1962 Bonanno had become convinced that some of the other family chiefs - especially Carlo Gambino, Tommy Lucchese and even his cousin Magaddino - were plotting his downfall. Feeling isolated, Bonanno developed a counterplot to kill those three and apparently a few other crime leaders around the country. It was viewed as an effort by Bonanno to become a new “Boss of Bosses.” Allied with Bonanno was the ailing Joseph Magliocco, the successor to Profaci, and the uncle of Bonanno’s eldest son’s wife. The plot blew up when Magliocco passed the contract for the hits on Gambino and Lucchese to one of his most proficient hit men, Joe Colombo, who in turn sold out to the other side.

Called before the national commission Magliocco confessed and was allowed to retire from his crime family. (He was in extremely poor health and sure to die shortly.) Bonanno however admitted nothing and refused to appear. Instead, he disappeared and seemed to be concentrating his efforts on expanding the crime family’s interests in Arizona, Canada and elsewhere.

Advancing in age himself, Bonanno had already started boosting his son Bill to become the active head of the family, a move that brought stiff resistance within the Bonanno organization, many of whose members felt Bill was incapable of the task. By that time many of the mobsters had become disenchanted with Bonanno’s rule in general, feeling his interest in expanding elsewhere was adversely affecting their bread-and-butter - the Brooklyn operations.

Backed by the national commission or, perhaps more accurately, rammed in as family head was Gaspar DiGregorio. The commission ruled that Bonanno by his treachery had lost all rights. As a result a split developed within the family, about half the members going with DiGregorio and the test with Bill Bonanno. In October 1964 the elder Bonanno was kidnapped at gunpoint in front of a luxury apartment house on Park Avenue. It was unclear whether it was an arranged disappearance by Bonanno, who was due to go before a federal grand jury, or the work of the rival crime families. In any event, Bill Bonanno was on his own. The result was the Banana War, “Banana” being a pet journalistic corruption of the Bonanno name.

In January 1966 the DiGregorio forces lured Bill Bonanno and some of his supporters with the promise of the peace meeting into an ambush and then bungled the attempted assassination. Although well over 100 shots were fired nobody was so much as scratched. Dissatisfied by DiGregorio’s inability to handle the war, the commission forced him out in favor of Paul Sciacca, a tougher man and a close friend of Gambino.

In May, however, Joe Bonanno reappeared, refusing to say where he had been the past 19 months. It appeared he had been held by the commission and had only been released on his promise he would leave the crime family permanently and retire to Arizona. Bonanno did no such thing, instead prosecuting the Banana War. The Sciacca forces did not give anywhere near as good as they got, many more falling to Bonanno gunners than the other way around. A heart attack in 1969 finally slowed Bonanno and he shifted back to Arizona while the Banana War petered out. Bonanno held on to his western interests while the Brooklyn holding shifted to Sciacca, later to Natale Evola and finally to Phil Rastelli.

The national commission’s dream, or at least Gambino’s dream, of a subservient Bonanno crime family was shattered by the return of Carmine Galante, who quickly took over affairs. If the commission was upset with Bonanno, it was especially unhappy with Galante - all the more so after Gambino died in 1976. Newspaper talk settled on Galante becoming the new boss of bosses, but he was assassinated by the combined agreement not only of all the New York crime families but also of many the dons around the country. It was said that even the hated Bonnano was consulted before Galante was eliminated.

Returning as ruler after Galante was Philip “Rusty” Rastelli. Under him the organization’s principal activities were described as home video pornography, pizza parlors (regarded as an excellent business in which to hide illegal aliens), espresso cafes, restaurants and a very large narcotics operation. But Rastelli seemed by the mid-1980s to be in less than total control as one segment of the family pushed it deeper into drug trafficking. With Rastelli facing a long prison term in 1986, he was said by law officials to have placed Joseph Massino in charge of family affairs.

By 1998, under Massino, the Bonanno family was thriving. While the overall strength of the five New York families was said to have been declining, there was no doubt that, much to the chagrin of law enforcement, the Bonannos were clearly gaining strength. The crime family that had been in much disgrace following the Galante period and had even been booted off the National Commission made a remarkable recovery with about 100 active wise guys and was fast approaching the Gambinos under the imprisoned John Gotti as the country’s second-most-dangerous Mafia faction.

The earliest organized American Mafiosi family,
hailing from Corleone in Sicily they soon held New York in their grip.

In 1892 Giuseppe Morello arrived in New York from Corleone. Six months later his family arrived including his mother, step-father, four sisters, his brother Nicolo and his two step-brothers Ciro and Vincent Terranova. All four brothers shared the same mother. The family stayed in New York for around a year, but suffered from the lack of available work. Morello travelled to Louisiana to stay with a cousin, and within two months the family followed him. The father and Morello worked, for about a year planting sugar cane before moving on to Bryan, Texas. They worked in Texas as cotton pickers, but left after two years when the family was hit with Malaria. In 1896 they arrived back in New York.

Morello worked with his father as an ornamental plasterer. The younger step-brothers, Ciro and Vincent, went to a New York school but helped out during the evenings and weekends. Morello eventually opened a coal basement, but sold that after a year and around 1898 opened a saloon on 13th Street, soon followed by a second saloon on Stanton Street. Due to bad business he closed the Stanton Street Saloon and sold the one on 13th Street. He then opened a date factory, and employed around fifteen people, the business ran at a loss and was closed. Ignazio Lupo arrived in New York in 1898, he was fleeing arrest in Palermo after killing a customer of his dried goods wholesale business. Lupo opened a store on E72nd Street with a cousin named Saietta. After falling out with Saietta he moved his business to Brooklyn, selling olive oil, cheese and wine.

On June 11th 1900, Giuseppe Morello was arrested along with Colagero Meggiore. They were accused of selling counterfeit money and held on $5000 bail. The arrests had grown out of a Secret Service investigation that began when counterfeit $5 bills were being passed in Brooklyn and North Beach. Morello and Meggiore were believed to be the suppliers of the money, which was described as being printed on very poor paper with crude workmanship. Morello later walked free from court.

In 1901, Lupo moved his business from Brooklyn back to Manhattan. He opened a saloon at 8 Prince Street and had an import shop next door at 9 Prince Street. In 1902 Lupo sold the saloon to Giuseppe Romano, a barber from First Avenue.

On July 23rd 1902, at around 8pm, four boys swimming at the Bay Bridge 73rd Street made the gruesome discovery of a body in a potato sack. The body was eventually identified as Giuseppe Catania, a Brooklyn grocer. The secret service, through their investigations, believed he had been a member of the Morello gang. They also believed the gang had disposed of him due to his habit of drinking and talking too much. Ignazio Lupo was one of the last men seen with Catania before his disappearance.

Giuseppe Morello’s next business move was the opening of a restaurant at the rear of the 8 Prince Street saloon, his younger brother, Ciro, worked as a waiter. The front saloon was now owned by Antonio Russo. Lupo held his import business next door at 9 Prince Street.

Benedetto Madonnia, brother-in-law to the jailed De Primo, was murdered in April 1903. The case became known as ‘The Barrel Murder’ after Madonnia’s body was found cut and stuffed into an old barrel, in East 11th Street. Morello and Lupo were again arrested, they were eventually cleared due to lack of evidence.

In relation to a 1902 counterfeiting case, Lupo was charged by a Grand Jury on Thursday 30th April 1903 and held on $5000 bail. Pietro Inzerillo was also arrested on a bench warrant from the US District Court. He was indicted along with Lupo on the counterfeiting charge. The charge dated back to 18th September 1902 when Lupo had mailed a letter to Salvatore Matise aka Andrea Polora in Canada. The letter was found to contain a single five dollar counterfeit note. Inzerillo and Lupo were finally bailed from the counterfeiting charge on June 25th, 1903. They would later forfeit this bail, but the charges were eventually dropped.

After the Barrel trial had finished in June 1903, the whole Morello family were searched and hounded on a regular basis. One night, Ciro Terranova was travelling home from work with his brother Vincent, nephew Charlie and Nick Sylvester when they were all arrested and kept overnight. On another occasion Ciro and Nicholas Morello were arrested whilst trying to locate a doctor for Giuseppe’s son, Charles. Following the Barrel Murder trials Morello gave up his restaurant interest and briefly moved into the olive oil business at 628 138th Street. Lupo also gave up his import store at 9 Prince Street and opened a new store at the seven storey building that was 210-214 Mott St. It was reported to be ‘one the most impressive import stores in the neighborhood, many of the locals could only dream of shopping there’.

In 1904, Ignazio Lupo joined the Morello family when he married one of the Morello sisters. Giuseppe Morello and Lupo started a real estate company, The Ignazio Florio Association, they were involved in the construction and selling of properties in Harlem. The company office was based at 630 E138th Street, also the home of Giuseppe Morello. With the brothers as presidents, and largest stockholders, the company lasted for around four years but went out of business in 1908 and was later investigated by the Bankers Association of America.

Lupo was arrested on March 7th 1906 after he was identified by John Bozzuffi, an Italian boy who had been kidnapped and held on 59th Street. Lupo was sent to the tombs in default of $1000 bail.

In November 1908, Lupo claimed bankruptcy against his import business. On Monday 30th November the store was closed under order of the US Court. The receivers moved in, and the inventory for his store only reached $1,500. Lupo was missing, and his debts were up to $100,000. The attorneys for the receivers discovered that Lupo had made around $50,000 worth of purchases in the week leading up to his disappearance . Most of the goods had been delivered to warehouses, and paid for with loans that Lupo had taken out. The produce he purchased included meat ($5,000), oil ($5,000) and canned goods($6,000). On Friday 4th December, $50,000 of goods were found on a transatlantic pier in New York, sent there by Lupo they were bound for Italy. The receivers also discovered Lupo was the owner of real estate in Harlem worth $110,000 and that he had just taken out new mortgages on his properties before disappearing. On December 16th, Salvatore Manzella, an importer of wine and Italian produce at 196 Elizabeth St, filed for bankruptcy. William Blau, the receiver, presented Manzella to Judge Holt when he refused to show his accounts. Manzella testified that for over three years he had been a victim of extortion from Lupo the Wolf, and as a result he had lost his business. He also claimed that Lupo, one week before he disappeared, had visited his store and taken over $1000 in cash. In the search for Lupo, the police discovered he had a brother, John, living in Newark NJ, who ran a grocery store in Hoboken.

On February 11th, 1909, Giuseppe Morello relocated to 207 E107th street. His current home/office at 630 138th Street was built by his failed real estate company, the Ignazio Florio Corporation, and the building had to be handed over to the company receivers. After Morello moved from his home a meeting of the shareholders was held and the 630 E138th house was sold. E107th street would be a welcome area to Morello, number 231 was one particular address that contained many important names - Giovanni Rao who ran the feather shop on the ground floor and was father to Joey Rao, Steve LaSalle lived there and also Angelo Gagliano who ran a saloon at 277 E107th with Ippolito Greco. Further along on E107th was Salvatore Romano the Morello family doctor, Romano’s mother had been the midwife for Morello’s mother in Corleone.

On November 12, 1909, Ignazio Lupo walked into the office of his receivers with his counsel, Charles Barbier. He had been missing for a year after his store was served with bankruptcy. He made a claim that he had been blackmailed for $10,000 which left him broke and caused him to flee to Baltimore and Buffalo. Lupo was arrested on November 17th in connection with the extortion of Salvatore Manzella. He was arraigned on November 22nd, however Manzella failed to appear and Lupo was discharged. He was immediately rearrested by a Deputy Marshall in relation to a counterfeiting charge from September 1902, he was later released on $5,000 bail.

In 1910, Giuseppe Morello and Lupo were sent to Atlanta Penitentiary under the charge of counterfeiting.

In January 1911, almost one year after his imprisonment for counterfeiting, Giuseppe Morello was reported to have spoken to the Attorney representing the US authorities. In the hope of shortening his sentence he supplied information about the murder of Lieutenant Petrosino. Morello later with drew his statements and refused to sign them. The contents of the talks were never officially released, but it was claimed that he had pointed to Carlo Costantino for the murder of Petrosino.

Giuseppe Morello was 40 at the time of his arrest in 1910, his brother, Nicholas Morello, was the next most important figure within the family.

Nicholas, Ciro and Vincenzo, were seen as very wealthy and powerful criminals in East Harlem. The family owned several cars, a two seater sports car, a black, touring body Packard and a red Hudson. They kept the cars at a garage on West144th St, the cars were available for public rental. A favorite hangout for gangsters on 116th St was the Venezia Restaurant. Joe Valachi described the Venezia when he used to visit in 1923: “Guys were coming there from all over the city. Besides us Italians, there were the Diamond brothers, Legs and his brother Eddie, there were the Jew boys, and the Irish guys from down around Yorkville. Sometimes you saw Lepke and Gurrah and also Little Augie from the East side downtown. But the big man on 116th was Ciro Terranova, the Artichoke King.”

On June 24th 1916 a meeting took place at Coney Island between the Sicilian Morello gang, the Neapolitan Navy Street gang and the Neapolitan Coney Island gang. The idea of the meeting was to discuss the consolidation of the gangs to control illegal activities in New York, including gambling, drugs and extortion. Pelligrino Morano, from Coney Island, began talking about the lucrative Italian Zaconette card games. Nick Morello and Steve LaSalle explained that Joe DeMarco would have to be killed before they could control all the gambling lower Manhattan. Lauritano from the Navy Street gang explained that they should meet at his Cafe to discuss the DeMarco matter further.

After the murder of DeMarco on July 20th, 1916, some members of the Navy St gang travelled to Philadelphia to meet Andrea Ricci and to discuss the removal of the Morello gang to gain complete control of Manhattan. Even though the two gangs had worked alongside each other for sometime, the killing of DeMarco had angered Allesandro Vollero and he now wanted the Morellos dead. They hatched a plan where they would try and lure the entire Morello leadership down to Brooklyn and ambush them.

On September 7th 1916, Nicholas Morello and Charles Ubriaco travelled downtown to meet with the Navy St gang. Ralph Daniello served the men drinks before Pagano arrived to take them to a coffee house where Lauritano and Morano were waiting. The men walked together towards Myrtle Avenue when they were ambushed at the junction of Johnson St and Hudson Avenue. Nicholas Morello was shot dead by Tom Pagano, and Ubriaco was slain by Thomas carillo and Lefty Esposito. Later that evening Ciro Terranova was called to identify his brothers body.

The Morello gang and the Brooklyn Camorra were at all out war. They were travelling the city in cars hunting each other, Ciro was the owner of a very modern, black, open body Packard, and his brother Vincent had a red Hudson. The Camorra hatched various plans to wipe out the rest of the Morello leadership, but they were either foiled or were never completed, however four associates of the Morello gang were murdered by the Camorra in Philadelphia.

Ciro Terranova was tried for complicity in June 1918, in connection with the DeMarco/Lombardi killing. Johnny Esposito, the killer of Lombardi, had turned state evidence the same Daniello, and testified against Terranova. Ciro was acquitted due to lack of corroboration when it was tenuously proved that Esposito and Terranova were part of the same gang.

From Joseph (Joe The Boss) Masseria to Vincent (Chin) Gigante, the Genovese Family has probably been the most powerful La Cosa Nostra family of the last hundred years. You could call it the Ivy League of Organized Crime.

In the 1920’s, Masseria, was recognized by Cosa Nostra leaders as the ultimate arbitrator of all major decisions that cut across family lines. Masseria enjoyed this prestige and didn’t hesitate to flex his muscle at the least opportunity.

In the early 1920’s, Masseria sent one of his soldiers to Chicago to help strongman Johnny Torrio take control of that city. Al Capone would eventually replace Torrio and come into conflict with an LCN Family headed by Joseph Aiello. In an attempt to aid Capone, Masseria tried to end the Detroit family’s support of Aiello. These events escalated into the famous Castellammarese War.

When the conflict spread to New York, Masseria found himself at war with the forces led by Sal Maranzano, the boss of what eventually became known as the Bonanno Family. Masseria was certainly a formidable foe, but things changed quickly with the killing of his chief strategist, underboss Peter Morello, and the ambush slaying of Al Mineo, a strong supporter and boss of what we now know as the Gambino Family. An ambitious Masseria capo, Lucky Luciano, recognized Masseria’s weakened position and plotted with Maranzano to kill off Joe The Boss.

Luciano easily assumed control of the family, and then parlayed his newly achieved status to take on and outfox his scheming former ally Maranzano, who was apparently planning to kill Luciano. In September of 1931, after Maranzano was executed, Luciano was on top of the LCN world.

Unlike Masseria and Maranzano, Luciano recognized that other Mafia leaders had grown weary of an autocratic style of leadership, the endless battles, and the possibility of an early death. Luciano is credited with creating a Commission of seven bosses to arbitrate inter family disputes and set broad policy as a sort of Mafia Board of Directors. The actual architect of the scheme is not clear, but there is no doubt that without the backing of Luciano, this method of leadership would not have been accepted. It was the most influential and long lasting achievement of Luciano’s career.

By the mid 1930’s, Luciano was a household name, much to his regret. He became an important target of famous rackets buster, Thomas Dewey, and soon found himself accused of controlling prostitution in New York. Whatever the merits of the case, Luciano, at the height of his power, was convicted and sentenced to a thirty to fifty year jail term. His slow decline had begun.

Normally, Vito Genovese, the fearsome underboss, would have become acting boss with the jailing of Luciano. However, Genovese had been accused of murder and had fled to Italy. Capo Frank Costello was the next choice as stand in for Luciano, who hoped to achieve a reversal of his conviction.

Luciano was not to win his appeals, but, shortly after the end of World War II, Luciano was freed and deported to Italy. Many myths have arisen over these events but what appears to be factual is that the U.S. Government, fearful of sabotage along the vital New York docks, left no stone unturned in its attempts to prevent such acts. One scheme involved enlisting the support of the many longshoremen whose unions were controlled by the mob. Luciano was asked to use his influence in this area, and he apparently did. In recognition of these efforts, he received an early release. However, the secrecy surrounding these negotiations led to the many rumors and half truths. Some writers even had U.S. allies telling Luciano of their secret invasion plans for Sicily so he could prearrange the support of the Sicilian Mafia. This is patently ridiculous.

Late in 1946, Luciano secretly traveled to Cuba. Joe Bonanno said that beginning in 1931, LCN held a national meeting every five years. He mentioned the 1946 event but did not indicate where it took place. It is likely that the documented gathering of many Mafia bosses in Havana in late 1946 was this meeting. Obviously, Luciano would have been eager to be present to reassert his power. The leadership status of the newly freed Luciano and that of Vito Genovese, who had been recently exonerated of a murder charge, would require some clarification.

If Luciano’s leadership of the Family was confirmed in Havana it was soon rendered mute. Luciano’s presence became known to the U.S. government which exerted pressure on Cuba to expel him. Shortly thereafter, he was once again on a boat returning to Italy. Whatever power he had retained all those years in jail was now just about dissipated. Over the next 15 years, Luciano was reputed, among other things, to be involved in narcotics trafficking from Italy to the U.S. but never charged. However, it is clear that he no longer was a dominant player, and greatly resented his slide. He died of a heart attack in 1962. His purported autobiography was released in 1974.

By 1950, Luciano was definitely out. Who would assume the spot atop the powerful crime family became a serious bone of contention between Vito Genovese and Frank Costello. As Luciano’s underboss, Genovese felt the top spot rightfully belonged to him. Costello was very much aware of Genovese’s feelings and made alliances to counter them. Unfortunately for Costello, his enemies were more successful. In 1957 Costello was wounded by a young Chin Gigante, on orders from Genovese, and quickly retired. When Albert Anastasia was killed a few months later, any possibility of a Costello return was gone. During his 20 year reign, Costello earned a reputation for preferring negotiation over violence. He particularly was able to exert great political influence by using the corrupt Tammany Hall “system” to do his will. Once “retired,” Costello lived quietly, playing no part in the rackets, till his death of natural causes in 1973.

Genovese had finally achieved the prize he had sought for so long. But the enjoyment of his new status would be very brief. By 1959, Genovese had been implicated in a major heroin conspiracy which led to conviction and a stiff jail sentence. From prison, however, he still wielded control over his family. It was this power that led to the first public betrayal of omerta, the oath of silence that all mobsters take when inducted into a family. It was one of his soldiers, Joe Valachi, who gave the public the first real insider information on LCN. Valachi had also been convicted of heroin charges and was suspected of being an informer. Believing he was marked for death, Valachi killed another prisoner whom he mistook for a mobster preparing to kill him. With nowhere else to turn, Valachi called the feds and began talking about his personal understanding of the history of LCN. In his revelations, Valachi referred to his organization as the Genovese Family and this moniker has been used ever since despite Genovese’s death in prison in 1969.

When Genovese first went off to jail on the drug charge, he left the family under the day to day control of Tommy Eboli with assistance from powers Jerry Catena, Mike Miranda and Anthony (Tony Bender) Strollo. Strollo fell out of favor and disappeared in 1962. Gradually Eboli gathered momentum and with the death of Genovese, is said to have become official boss. By 1972, Eboli had lost his support and consequently was gunned down in the street by persons unknown. No great unrest then ensued within the family, suggesting the hit was sanctioned beforehand by the Commission, whose dominant boss then was Carlo Gambino.

Next up was capo Frank (Funzi) Tieri who reportedly was a long time friend of Gambino. Mob turncoat Joe Cantalupo briefly mentions Tieri in his book. Cantalupo claims that Tieri, although small physically, was able to instill fear in much larger mobsters. Jimmy Fratianno, another mob informer, also had a few encounters with Tieri. According to Fratianno, he was invited to a mob sitdown where Tieri presided over and approved the killing of a Genovese associate within a few minutes. Earlier, Tieri had also warned Fratianno to stay away from former mob boss Joe

Bonanno because Bonanno was now “a leper” in the world of Cosa Nostra. Famous FBI undercover agent, Joe Pistone also mentions Tieri in his book. In the fall of 1980, Bonanno soldier and Pistone mentor, the late Lefty Guns Ruggiero, told Pistone that Tieri had stepped down from the Commission. No doubt this was because of Tieri’s ongoing RICO trial in which he eventually was convicted of being boss of the Genovese Family. Sentenced to ten years in January of 1981, Tieri avoided any jail time by dying a few months later.

Around this time the facts surrounding the leadership of the Genovese Family get confusing. Like all “facts” involving the Mafia, there is plenty of room for questioning their validity or interpretation. LCN keeps few written records and even wiretap evidence is suspect especially when those being overheard are talking about events in the past. Mistaken beliefs, exaggeration and deliberate lying have often been overheard on FBI bugs. John Gotti’s taped claim that the police probably killed Paul Castellano is probably the best known example of the latter, and the need to use caution when interpreting information about the mob. With that in mind it is difficult to sort out the truth about who was the “real” boss of the Genovese Family from the late 1970’s on.

Even though Tieri was identified as Genovese family boss in a 1978 New York magazine article by none other than, ahem, Jerry Capeci, AND even though Tieri was convicted of being the Genovese boss, there are those who dispute that he ever was the boss. Among them are John Gotti and Sammy Bull Gravano, who were picked up on an FBI bug discussing Philip (Benny Squint) Lombardo as the Genovese boss during that period. If Gotti and Gravano were right, and Gang Land himself thinks they were, it wasn’t the only time that the wrong guy got convicted of being Genovese boss.

Until recently, it was thought that Fat Tony Salerno took over from Tieri and ruled until Salerno’s 1986 conviction in the Commission Case. Salerno had been identified in the indictment as the family boss, and along with the leaders of the Colombo and Lucchese family, was sentenced to 100 years. He died in prison a few years later.

Soon after Salerno was sentenced, however, the second Genovese soldier to publicly break his vow of silence, Vincent (Fish) Cafaro, told the FBI that Salerno was “taken down” after suffering a stroke in 1981, and that Chin Gigante became the official boss, but allowed Salerno to serve as the family’s “up front” boss in an effort to keep the FBI from identifying him as the real boss.

Gigante did not like the flamboyant John Gotti, especially when he orchestrated the assasination of Gambino boss Paul Castellano without approval of the Commission. Gigante’s consigliere, Louis (Bobby) Manno, has been convicted of plotting Gotti’s death, and mob turncoats, including Little Al D’Arco and Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso have confirmed that Gigante wanted Gotti to pay the ultimate price for killing Castellano. Casso claims to have been on the scene in April 1986, when Gotti’s first underboss, Frank DeCicco, (above right) was blown up in a Sunday ambush that had been planned to get both DeCicco and Gotti. Gigante was looking to install Gambino capos Jimmy Brown Failla and Danny Marino in place of them, but Gotti, a late riser, thwarted that idea by deciding at the last minute to meet up with his underboss later in the day, according to John Gotti: Rise and Fall, by Capeci and Mustain.

The Genovese Family lost a major source of income when the Mafia’s “concrete club” was shut down in the mid 1980’s with the Commission indictment and conviction. Profits from another long standing money producer, the Fulton Fish Market, has diminished as well. The feds and New York city have combined to eliminate the family’s 70-year control of the San Gennaro Festival in Little Italy. In addition, convictions of the family’s acting boss, acting underboss, and consigliere on racketeering charges have hurt the family. So too did the 1991 racketeering conviction of underboss Benny Eggs Mangano, as did the 1997 and 2003 racketeering convictions of Chin Gigante.

But the family’s structure is still solid and in place. A close ally of Gigante who seems and acts like a carbon copy minus the crazy act, Dominick (Quiet Dom) Cirillo, has been serving effectively as the family’s “street boss” for several years. Nicknamed Quiet Dom for his laid back, reserved manner, Cirillo is much like Gigante in the way he conducts his Mafia business, shunning telephones and social clubs in favor of “walk talks” in public streets, and opting for older, less flashy cars than the Mercedes Benz’s and Lincoln Continentals that Gotti favored. Like Gigante, he had a narcotics conviction in the 1950’s and toiled as an amateur and professional boxer before turning to organized crime. Liborio (Barney) Bellomo, the capo Gigante tabbed as acting boss when he was indicted in 1990, is serving a ten year sentence, but Bellomo is young, and due out in 2006. And with a membership of nearly 250 soldiers, and only three known cooperating witnesses (Valachi, Cafaro and George Barone), the Genovese Family is still strong. It’s the richest and most powerful family in the New York area, and arguably the entire country. (The only other candidate, the Chicago Outfit, is aided by its one-family monopoly over the second city’s rackets.)