Salvatore Maranzano

Was there really a Mafia boss of bosses in America? A man more powerful than Al Capone, Lucky Luciano or Meyer Lansky?

Salvatore Maranzano was so powerful he could compose an execution list that included the names of Luciano, Frank Costello, Vito Genovese, Joe Adonis, Willie Moretti, Dutch Schultz and the “fat guy” in Chicago, Capone. Maranzano could do all this because he was the boss of bosses. He said so himself.

Unfortunately, Maranzano’s reign came to a violent end after only four months. After that, despite the earnest efforts of enterprising journalists, the Mafia boss of bosses title was relegated to the scrap heap. Organized crime was more powerful than any so-called superboss. In that sense Maranzano died a fraud; still, he was one of the most important personalities in American crime. He founded, if we are to completely trust informer Joe Valachi, what was to be known as the Cosa Nostra.


Maranzano was an old-line mafioso, holding to the crime society’s tradition of “respect” and “honor” for the family boss and continuing the blood feuds with enemies of decades past. But he did have modern ideas about crime and wanted to institutionalize it in America—with himself on top. If he had survived the bloodletting of the early 1930s, organized crime may well have had a different look today.

When Maranzano initially came to the United States is not certain. It appears he was here in 1918, again in 1925, and once more in 1927, and it’s possible he moved in and out of the country several times before settling here in 1927. At that time Maranzano was sent by the most powerful Mafia leader in Sicily, Don Vito Cascio Ferro, specifically to organize the American crime families, even non-Italian ones, under one leadership.

Don Vito, who had been in America in earlier decades, apparently saw himself heading such an organization, and apparently Maranzano was content to be his most favored follower. However, shortly after dispatching Maranzano, Don Vito was arrested by the Fascists and put in prison for the rest of his life. That left Maranzano on his own.

Maranzano surrounded himself with gangsters who had emigrated from his hometown in Sicily, Castellammare del Golfo. By 1928 he had attracted so many supporters that the foremost Mafia boss of New York, Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria realized he was a danger. A cunning adversary, Maranzano— college educated and originally a candidate for the priesthood—indeed intended to depose Joe the Boss and so exploited the idea that Masseria hated all Castellammarese.

Joe the Boss was a glutton in personal habits as well as in his administration of criminal activities. He demanded that other mafiosi pay him enormous tribute. Maranzano cultivated the resentment this stirred up in Masseria’s subchiefs and he worked on winning defections by promising a fair division of loot.

The dead of Salvatore Maranzano

Maranzano particularly tried to lure away Lucky Luciano who had by that time become one of Masseria’s most valuable aides and had reorganized gang activities for maximized profits. Luciano, however, resisted Maranzano’s overtures, having plans of his own.

To check Maranzano’s growing strength, Joe the Boss finally declared war. Masseria could field a few hundred more gunners than Maranzano and was confident he could crush him. From 1928 to 1930 the death toll between the two camps probably exceeded 50. The police were handicapped in trying to get a count; it was hard to tell which corpse belonged to the Castellammarese War (as the conflict was known) and which to the ordinary booze wars raging in the underworld.

As the Castellammarese War continued, it took on a third dimension. Luciano was cultivating younger gangsters on both sides with his ideas for an entirely different crime setup. His would ally the Italian criminals with powerful Jewish mobsters into a syndicate that would slice up the crime pie fairly and would even make the pie bigger. What impressed many young mafiosi was that Luciano, through Frank Costello enjoyed excellent relationships with important elements in the police and in politics. He offered far better protection than either Joe the Boss or Maranzano. Luciano soon was in a position to know what each chief was up to, having secret supporters spying for him in both camps.


For years Luciano had been close to Jewish mobster Meyer Lansky who he regarded as the most brilliant criminal mind in the country; their original plan was for Lansky to line up the Jewish mobsters around the country and Luciano the various Italian elements. Lansky had the easier chore, all but a few important Jewish mobsters saw the virtues of a national crime syndicate.

Among the Italian crime families, Luciano had to proceed more cautiously. The pair decided the safest course was to let Masseria and Maranzano weaken each other with continual bloodletting until one or the other perished. Then as the Luciano/Lansky team gained strength, they would strike the remaining old don.

However, by 1931 Masseria and Maranzano were still at it. Maranzano gave far better than he got, but he was not yet the victor. Fearful that Maranzano would accumulate too many supporters as the conflict continued, Luciano and his cohorts decided to eliminate Joe the Boss. On April 15, 1931, Luciano lured Masseria to lunch at a restaurant in Coney Island. After the meal the pair played cards while all the other patrons cleared out. Then Luciano went to the men’s room. While he was gone, four assassins rushed into the establishment and laid down a fusillade of 20 bullets. Masseria was struck six times and was dead when Luciano strolled out of the men’s room.

Luciano then declared peace with Maranzano. Maranzano was pleased and, in supposed gratitude, made Luciano his number one man in his new organization. In a remarkable conclave, he summoned 500 gangsters to a meeting in the Bronx and outlined his grandiose scheme for crime. The New York Mafia would be divided into five major crime families, each with a boss, a sub-boss, lieutenants and soldiers. Above all the five families would be a “boss of bosses.” That was Salvatore Maranzano. Maranzano dubbed this new organization Cosa Nostra, which really meant nothing more than “our thing.”

All would be peaceful and profitable, he asserted. Secretly though, Maranzano did not believe that. He rightly gauged Luciano’s great ambition, and realized that by dealing with non-Italian mobsters, Luciano was creating his own power base, one that would soon threaten Maranzano. He also knew that Luciano still commanded the loyalty of many important men within this new Cosa Nostra. He composed a death list of top mobsters who had to be eliminated. The list included Luciano, Costello, Genovese, Adonis, Moretti, Schultz and Chicago’s Capone, who had been friendly with Luciano for years.

Maranzano knew it would not be easy to kill all these men and he decided not to risk all-out war before at least some were eliminated. Otherwise, he could not be sure who was on whose side and who might betray him to Luciano. Maranzano decided to have the job handled by non-Italians so that he could pose as innocent. He recruited the notorious young Irish killer Vince “Mad Dog” Coll and arranged for him to come to his office in the Grand Central building at a time when Luciano and Genovese would be present.

Apparently Coll was to kill the pair that day and “lose” their bodies so that he could knock off as many of the others as possible before the murders became known. Maranzano gave Coll $25,000 as a down payment and promised him $25,000 more on the elimination of the first two victims.

However, Luciano got wind of the assassination plan and knew the murder operation would start when he got a phone call summoning him to Maranzano’s office. Luciano, through Lansky, already had his own murder team in training with a plot to kill Maranzano. He ordered that training speeded up. On September 10, 1931, Maranzano telephoned.

Shortly before Luciano and Genovese were slated to arrive at Maranzano’s headquarters, Tommy Lucchese walked in. Maranzano was unaware of Lucchese’s link to Luciano. (In fact, Lucchese was Luciano’s main spy inside the Maranzano organization even before Masseria’s murder.)

Shortly after Lucchese arrived, four men walked in flashing badges and announcing they had questions to ask Maranzano. The four were Jewish gangsters Luciano had borrowed for his counterplot since Maranzano did not know them. They also did not know Maranzano which was why Lucchese was present—to make sure they got the right man.

The bogus officers lined up Maranzano’s bodyguards against the wall and disarmed them. Then two went into Maranzano’s office and stabbed and shot him to death. The assassins and Lucchese charged out. So did the bodyguards when they found that their boss had been executed. On the way down the emergency stairs, one of them ran into Mad Dog Coll coming to keep his own murder date. Informed of the new situation, Coll turned and left whistling. He was $25,000 to the good.

Maranzano’s death had far-reaching effects on organized crime in America. Essentially, it marked the end of the Italian Mafia in America. What remained was a new American Mafia that would become part of a national syndicate with other ethnics, something the old Mafia was too rigid to allow. Luciano immediately eliminated the post of “boss of bosses” and called the new organization the “combination” or “outfit” or as a sop to the traditionalists among the mafiosi the “Unione Siciliano,” a corruption in spelling of the longtime Sicilian fraternal organization.

The concept of “Cosa Nostra” died as well with Maranzano, not to be revived by federal authorities and a cooperative Joe Valachi until the early 1960s, as a way to get J. Edgar Hoover out of a deep hole. For decades he had denied the existence of the Mafia and organized crime, but now he could announce with a straight face that the FBI had been studying the “Cosa Nostra” for a long time. Thus even when he was partially right he was 30 years behind the times.

Carlos Marcello

One of the most stolid, hardline crime family bosses in the country, Carlos Marcello ran New Orleans and Louisiana like a closed shop—a tradition in that Mafia chapter since its creation in the last century.

Nobody from any crime family “insulted” Marcello by coming to New Orleans without permission. Informer Joe Valachi once told Vito Genovese, his New York boss, he wished to go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Genovese’s reply, Valachi testified, was, “‘Don’t go.’ No explanations, just ‘Don’t go.’ They didn’t want anybody there. And I was told if I ever had to go to Louisiana, Genovese would call ahead and get permission. Genovese himself had to get permission. It was an absolute rule.”

Carlos Marcello was born Calorso Minicari, in Tunis, North Africa, in 1910, of Sicilian parents. He was brought to America at the age of eight months. His first arrest occurred when he was 20 for bank robbery. The case was dismissed, a not unusual beginning for the future bigs of crime. His police record includes such charges as dope peddling, gambling, income tax evasion, robbery and aggravated assault. Marcello won a full pardon from Louisiana’s governor for the assault conviction; the New Orleans family has always enjoyed a cozy relationship with many local and state officials.


By the mid-1930s, the young Marcello had become one of the most trusted aides of Mafia boss Sam Carolla, and while the latter sojourned for a brief period in federal prison, Marcello took charge of discussions with the Luciano-Lansky-Costello clique from New York. The trio had won rights from the Kingfish, Senator Huey Long, to bring their gambling operations and slot machines into the state.

In a sense, this violated the New Orleans crime family’s rule excluding outsiders, but the offer was too good for Marcello to refuse. The New Yorkers supplied all the capital, Long provided the political protection, and the New Orleans family took a hefty share of the profits. Years later, an irate Crazy Joe Gallo demanded “Who gave Louisiana to Frank Costello?” It would have been interesting to see how long the Gallos might have lasted had they come down to New Orleans and asked that of Marcello directly.

Over the years Marcello was subjected to a number of deportation attempts, none of them successful. Once, when efforts were being pressed to have him sent to Italy, it was said Marcello responded by sending off a lawyer to Rome with a bagful of money. The going rate for key figures in the Italian Parliament was put at $10,000 each, and, in due course, the Italian foreign ministry informed the U.S. government that Marcello was not an Italian citizen and would not be accepted for deportation.

Remarkably, the U.S. government had not made until then a formal deportation request. It was said payments continued for another three years while further unsolicited decisions emanated from Rome. The U.S. government did try to interest France and Tunisia to take Marcello, but these efforts came to naught. Finally, in a bizarre episode, the United States virtually kidnapped Marcello and deposited him in Guatemala, claiming he was a citizen of that country.

Finally, facing popular outrage, Guatemala demanded the United States take him back. Washington refused and Marcello was virtually smuggled into El Salvador. From there Marcello and his lawyer trekked through the jungle into Honduras. Then, in a zany conclusion to the affair, Marcello simply got on a commercial airliner to Miami and walked right through customs and immigration without even being checked. He was back in the United States to stay.

In December 1960, Attorney General–designate Robert Kennedy announced he had two priority targets on taking office: Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa and Carlos Marcello. Bobby Kennedy’s ability to go after Marcello disappeared with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

In the meantime, Marcello had grown in stature within the Mafia. He was consulted on all major syndicate actions and appears to have made friends within the CIA, having been involved in the supposed plots to kill Fidel Castro of Cuba.

Ever since the assassination of President Kennedy, theories contrary to the findings of the Warren Commission have often pointed to the Mafia as the real killers, especially toward Santo Trafficante Jr. of the Tampa, Florida, crime family and Marcello, both of whom were quoted as making threats against the Kennedys because of the administration’s pressure on organized crime. According to this thesis, the mob’s real target was Bobby Kennedy. The best way to tame the attorney general’s office was to eliminate the president.

Marcello throughout the years denied the charges. He was subjected to considerable legal problems near the end of his life but persisted in his claim that he was no more than a “legitimate businessman” being harassed by the government. Essentially, Marcello’s rule over his family—out of the country, in prison or on the loose—was ironclad. Also beyond dispute is that Marcello was a multimillionaire, his wealth in 1975 estimated at more than $60 million. In failing health, he died in 1993.

Marion Penitentiary

It became home for Mafia boss John Gotti after his conviction in 1992. It was also labeled inhumane by Amnesty International. It is the United States Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois, the most restrictive of all federal penal institutions for its time.

When Gotti was delivered to the Marion warden, there were at least two mob men he knew (but never got to see) in the prison—Nicodemo “Nicky” Scarfo, the brutal ex-boss of the Philadelphia family, and Jimmy Coonan, the top honcho of the Westies, the New York Irish mob affiliated with the Mafia, and some of the crime cartel’s most ardent killers.

Other notorious prisoners included John Walker, the Navy man who sold classified information to the former Soviet Union; Edwin Wilson, a U.S. government employee who sold weapons to Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi and conspired to kill eight witnesses to his crime and Jonathan Jay Pollard who spied for the Israelis. It was an open question whether these prisoners were there because they constituted a continuing menace to the nation and society or because they were incarcerated in such a way to inflict great mental punishment on them.


Kept in the most restrictive level of confinement in prison, an 8-by-7-feet underground cell for 22 to 23 hours a day, Gotti had no work, no communal recreation, no communal education classes. Food was delivered through a slot in the cell door. All that he was allowed in his cell was a single cot, a basin, a toilet, a radio and a black-and-white TV.

There was not even a chair to sit on. Rather than spend all his hours prone on his cot, Gotti folded his mattress into an L shape, which he propped against the wall to simulate a chair. It was said he read, watched television (mostly talk shows) and exercised by doing probably 1,000 pushups a day.

He was taken to his shower shackled in chains inside a movable cage. His contact with the outside was limited to five monthly visiting periods, mostly with his lawyers or his son Junior. The FBI admitted Gotti continued to rule the Gambino family through his son, who served as acting boss of the family, passing along his father’s instructions.

Most lifers sent to Marion are kept there 30 months and then transferred to a regular maximum security prison elsewhere. Gotti’s time on that basis was completed in 1995, but he remained in Marion. It was said that his lawyers did not press the issue of his long confinement for fear it would prolong the situation or possibly cause his transfer to an even harsher federal prison that had since opened in Colorado.

Some speculated that authorities still harbored hopes that Gotti would “break” and finally turn informer against the mob in exchange for some form of leniency. Some members of the media insisted they had indications that there had even been an attempt on Gotti’s life, most remarkable considering his isolation.

Other observers saw Gotti being used as a “horror example” for other mafiosi who get arrested on what could await them if uncooperative.

Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria

By the mid-1920s Joe the Boss Masseria was the undisputed boss of the New York Mafia, a tribute to treachery, extreme good luck and a willingness, even an eagerness, to kill. A stocky, 5-feet-2-inch gunman with cold, beady eyes, Masseria had fled a murder charge in Sicily in 1903. Within a few years in New York he was arrested for extortion and burglary and became a member of the notorious Morello Gang, the city’s first important Mafia crime family.

While the Morellos’ top killers, Lupo the Wolf and Ciro Terranova, dominated the gang, Masseria considered himself more than their equal. In 1913, with Morello and Lupo the Wolf in prison, he led a faction seeking to take over much of the Morello rackets. Masseria brazenly led attacks directly on the Morello headquarters at 116th Street, once killing a cousin, Charles Lamonti, right on the doorstep. Six months later he knocked off Lamonti’s brother on the same spot.

Then Masseria hit a run of luck. Nick Morello, the acting head and the most far-sighted of the family, was killed by rival Camorristas in Brooklyn. The Camorra leaders themselves went to prison for the murder, leaving Masseria an open field. And, by the time Joe Morello and Lupo the Wolf came out of prison in the early 1920s, the rotund but deadly Masseria had locked up much of the bootlegging racket in the Italian sections of New York.


After his release, Lupo retired from the crime scene, but the Morellos tried to rally under Peter Morello. Peter allied himself with another rising mafioso, Rocco Valenti, who was regarded by Masseria as a major threat. Once Valenti caught up with Masseria and a couple of bodyguards on Second Avenue. He cut down the unarmed Masseria’s protectors, and then calmly reloaded and followed the fleeing Masseria into a millinery shop.

Valenti fired several times at Masseria at fairly close range and in what must have looked like a grim Keystone Kops comedy sequence, his rotund target ducked and weaved and all the bullets whizzed by him. It was amazing since Valenti had committed at least 20 murders and was regarded as a cool, accurate shooter. Frustrated and fearing the arrival of the police, Valenti retreated, and thereafter Masseria gained a reputation as “the man who could dodge bullets.”

Finally, Joe the Boss let Valenti know he was willing to make peace and a meeting was arranged in a restaurant on East 12th Street. When Valenti showed up with three cohorts, Masseria was not present, but three of his men were. Suspecting a doublecross, he raced for the street. The Masseria gunmen wounded two of Valenti’s men and chased after Valenti, who hopped on the running board of a passing taxi and was shooting back, when he was shot dead by one of the gunmen. Valenti’s assailant: Charles Luciano, a man destined for big things.

The Morellos shortly thereafter sued for peace. Some were retired while others were absorbed into Masseria’s operations. Masseria was now the top Mafia power, and five crime families in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx were subservient to him. For a time his only problem was the rising Luciano, a valuable crime organizer, but an upstart who was too chummy with Jewish gangsters like Meyer Lansky and the young and homicidal Bugsy Siegel.

Masseria hated Jews and told Luciano to break off with them and to put his operations with them in the Masseria pot. He was wasting his breath. Luciano wasn’t the only headstrong lieutenant. Frank Costello bridled under Masseria’s criticism for paying off the politicians. Joe the Boss allowed it was all right to bribe an official once in a while when necessary but his boys should not “sleep with them” all the time because the politicians would eventually corrupt them. Costello marveled at anyone so stupid as not to understand it was the other way around.

By 1927, Masseria faced a new threat. A newly arrived Sicilian mafioso named Salvatore Maranzano sought to push him aside. It was generally believed that Maranzano was the advance representative of Don Vito Cascio Ferro, the most important Mafia leader in Sicily, who was looking to move into American crime. But Don Vito would never come; Mussolini’s fascists imprisoned him. Nevertheless, Maranzano decided to advance on Masseria and become the American boss of bosses on his own.

Masseria at first was not worried by the Maranzano threat. He had more gunners and better men. One was his old foe, Peter “the Clutching Hand” Morello. And he had brilliant youngsters headed by Luciano, and including such stalwarts as Joe Adonis, Frank Costello, Willie Moretti, Albert Anastasia and Carlo Gambino. However, these Young Turks were not as loyal as he thought. All of them were working with Lansky and Siegel and with Dutch Schultz whom Masseria particularly disliked.

However, the Young Turks stayed in line for a time. They couldn’t switch gangs; they hated Maranzano as much as they hated Masseria. They were waiting instead for a time when they would be able to operate without any of the so-called Mustache Petes and their outmoded, old-country, Mafia-style codes. The only code these young gangsters were interested in was making money. Fighting Mafia wars was a hindrance to that goal, and the Castellammarese War between Maranzano and Masseria was just such a hindrance.

Luciano organized the Young Turks. Their plan: bide their time until Masseria killed Maranzano or vice versa. But by 1931 both were still around and the Castellammarese War was taking a bloody toll. Luciano decided it was time to act. He had thought Maranzano would perish first, but, as the war continued, Maranzano got stronger and Masseria weaker. Since it was easier to murder someone who trusted you than someone who did not, Luciano and his supporters—including outsiders like Lansky and Siegel—decided to take out Masseria.

On April 15, 1931, Luciano suggested to Masseria that they drive out to Coney Island for lunch. They dined at Nuova Villa Tammaro, owned by Gerardo Scarpato, a friend of a number of mobsters. Joe the Boss stuffed himself and after all the other diners left, he and Luciano played cards while Scarpato went down to the beach for a walk.

About 3:30 P.M. four men came charging through the door to Masseria’s table. They were Bugsy Siegel, Joe Adonis, Vito Genovese and Albert Anastasia. All produced guns and blazed away at Masseria. Six bullets struck Joe the Boss and the Castellammarese War was over.

Newspaper accounts of the sensational murder focused on Luciano’s statement to the police that he had gone to the bathroom and when he heard the shooting, he dried his hands and came out to see what was happening. It was a bit of self-censorship by the press. Actually Luciano told the police, “I was in the can taking a leak. I always take a long leak.”

After the assassination Luciano negotiated a peace with Maranzano and pledged support to him. However, both Maranzano and Luciano were aware that sooner or later one or the other would have to go.

Joseph Massino

To all outward appearances, Joe Massino is hardly a charismatic Mafia don. By looks he could be said to resemble the murderous Luca Brasi, the dull-witted enforcer of The Godfather, but Massino is by no means a dullard. By the turn of the 21st century, Massino was regarded by both federal investigators and Mafia wise guys of the five New York families as the toughest, meanest and most resourceful of the mafiosi still at large after the far-flung prosecutions by federal authorities.

By then the leaders of the other four families, from John Gotti on down, were safely incarcerated and hardly likely ever to return to their positions of power on the outside. But Massino seemed to be untouchable. The head of the long-dormant Bonanno crime family, he took over the leadership in the late 1980s and seemed to function as little more than a vassal under Gotti’s control of the powerful Gambino family.

There is no record of Massino ever contradicting any of the acts of Gotti, although he undoubtedly felt Gotti frequently went off on birdbrain tangents. Certainly Massino must have bridled under Gotti’s insane policy of constantly ordering his wise guys to show up at Gambino headquarters on Mulberry Street in Little Italy. The FBI’s cameras grinded away nonstop, and thanks to Gotti the agency built up a fabulous rogues gallery to identify wise guys.


Massino could not offend Gotti by not showing up himself and was therefore present as government bugs picked up an overblown Gotti assuring him that if “they would leave us alone for another year, we will be so set up they can never take us apart.” All Massino could do was listen silently and contribute nothing to the conversation. Gotti of course would be proved wrong, and his empire would soon destruct—even self-destruct.

From early on in his career Massino moved up steadily because of his penchant for secrecy and guarding himself and his allies from surveillance by the law. Now as the head of a fairly ineffective crime group, Massino needed Gotti’s sponsorship, and Gotti in turn needed Massino. By rehabilitating the Bonannos from the purgatory of nonrecognition by the other three families, Gotti worked to restore them to membership in the Commission so that he always would have a second vote and be that much closer to actual control of the entire Commission.

By 1992 Gotti was put away by the feds, something which was close to a godsend for Massino. He turned the Bonannos into the powerhouse it had not been since the early part of the reign of the legendary Joe Bananas. Massino set up a wall of secrecy that challenged the FBI. Meetings by the family’s top brass often involved the renting of five or so trucks from various legitimate rental outfits, and the boys would be picked up with, say, four of the trucks and all transferred to the fifth, which would go on to the final destination.

Since all the vehicle outlets were clean, there was no way the feds could bug them in advance. Massino also came up with the idea of holding mob meetings far outside New York, as far away as Mexico, France or England. Then a few of the boys would sojourn on to Sicily to check out possible talent for import to the States.

Massino also became “king of the ‘uh,’” never saying anything on the phone for fear of wiretaps. If the speaker always simply said “uh,” in response to other mobsters, it would be much harder to convict him of involvement in a criminal enterprise. Other mafiosi tried that as well but seldom with the same success. The late crime boss, Carmine Galante, was one of the most prudent phone users in the Mafia, and the FBI seldom got more than a simple “uh” out of him. His legal defenders claimed he was simply expressing his disinterest in the entire subject. Once in a while Galante might slip, but it does not appear that Massino ever did.

The transformation of the Bonannos under Massino was stunning. When he took over in 1986, the Bonannos were in total disrepair. Their activities seemed to be home video pornography, pizza parlors (with a fillip as an ideal way to hide illegal aliens), espresso cafés, restaurants and a major narcotics trade over which the bosses had by then started to lose control to rogue members. Massino led a determined operation to bring the outfit to bay.

Jockeying with the approval of Gotti, Massino built up a force of about 100 active wise guys and while crackdowns were going on elsewhere, no major figure in the Bonanno family was under indictment. By 1998 the family had grown so much in stature that it was rivaling the Gambinos and was close to being the second most powerful outfit in the East. Chagrined law officials shifted the main efforts to getting Massino and the Bonannos.

Further sticking in the craw of the law was the fact that Bonanno wise guys had become so enamored with Massino that they started calling the family the Massino crime family— although the law and the Mafia itself have long sought to restrict the naming of crime families to the leadership power in force in the early 1960s.

By 2004 the prosecutors were ready to bring Massino up on a number of murder charges, the cases all built around defecting members facing prosecution. For Massino to be convicted it was clear a strong case against him would have to be made by independent evidence, especially since federal prosecutors revealed they were considering seeking the death penalty—a first for any godfather.

Part of the reason for this move obviously was pressure about death sentences handed down to blacks and Hispanics for committing relatively few murders while ignoring the Mafia godfathers who ordered the murders of foes by the scores if not hundreds. Even so, the approval was less than enthusiastic, and the suspicion would not die down that the law was going after Massino simply because he had been such an embarrassment for so long.

The outcome of the death sentence strategy was unclear by 2004, and some legal observers insisted the government would drop execution for a guilty plea from Massino, also not considered a sure thing. Massino in any event represented a part of a wiser, tougher and, above all, meaner new leadership for the American Mafia. Whatever his own fate, it seemed obvious that others will adopt his tactics in rebuilding a stronger era of mobdom.

Massino was convicted of ordering seven murders. Witnesses included six inducted Bonanno wise guys, the first ever to testify against the family. Massino was due to get life without parole. However, one charge remained, and the government said it would seek the death penalty in that case.

Within legal circles, there was a strong objection to the ploy. Detractors said the charge should have been linked to the other seven. Even the judge on the case offered strong criticism of outgoing attorney general John Ashcroft. Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis said, “Mr. Ashcroft’s choice to make such a sobering and potentially life-ending decision now, after several delays, and only after tendering his resignation to the president and announcing to the country that he no longer wishes to preside over the Department of Justice, is deeply troubling to this court.”

The judge agreed that Ashcroft was within his rights but urged Ashcroft’s successor to reach an “independent assessment.” The judge clearly indicated it might be a year or longer before the case would come before his court.

Some suspected that the actual motive behind the decision was simply to get Massino “to rat out,” something no top Mafia boss had ever done. Then came another bombshell: Joe M. was singing about family secrets and offering even more. Within and without the mob the revelation was doubted as an effort to sow panic. Leaks of this sort are not at all unusual.

There were leaks that big shots in the Gambino crime family, including tough and mean Aniello Dellacroce, John Gotti’s mentor, had spied for the FBI and that Gotti himself was about to go for a deal. Clearly, again here the ploy was meant to cause the Gambinos to self-destruct. It never happened. The mobsters wouldn’t buy it. In Massino’s case, his fate may be of little consequence. The accepted theory is that the main thrust was an attempt to get the mobsters suspicious of one another until finally “the wheels would come off.”

Early reports were that the plan, if there was one, was not working. The mob still held Massino in high regard. Mafia beliefs die hard. Time will tell if such respect is viable in the mob.

Charles Matranga

After the infamous mass lynching of mafioso criminals in New Orleans in 1891—an incident clearly accompanied by strong, general anti-Italian bias— Charles Matranga remained as the sole Mafia chieftain in power in the city. He was in parish prison when the lynch mob of many thousands stormed the establishment, in response to the murder of Chief of Police David Hennessey, and hanged a number of Italians being held there. Matranga evaded the mob. Later he was set free because the case against him was too weak, based on the testimony of only one informer.

The early history of the Mafia in America is rather hazy. Indeed, even the firm statements of crime historians are contradictory. Yet without dispute is the fact that New York and New Orleans were the most common ports of entry for Italian immigrants in the 19th century and that among these immigrants were a number of Italian criminals with some ties to such organizations as the Mafia in Sicily and the Camorra in Naples.

The members of these societies tended to band together in the new country, not necessarily with the same loyalties as previously. In New Orleans, the mafiosi element clearly won out over the Camorristas. By 1891, the main contenders were two rival groups of mafiosi, one headed by the Provenzano brothers and the other by the Matranga brothers— Antonio and Carlo or Charley.

Some historians insist the real leader of the Matranga mafiosi was Joseph Macheca, a prosperous fruit importer and shipping company owner who was among those lynched. In any event, after the lynchings Charley Matranga continued his crime rule. One observer who disputes this is Humbert S. Nelli, who, in The Business of Crime, insists “if indeed he had ever headed a mafia group, he lost this prominent position. Nothing occurring in the remaining fifty-two years of his life connected him with criminal activities ... he led a quiet life as a stevedore for the Standard Fruit Company ... until his retirement after fifty years of service in 1918....”

Actually nothing in Matranga’s remaining “life connected him with criminal activities” because the 1891 lynching not surprisingly left a profound impression on him. Matranga was one of the first mafiosi to appreciate the value of using a buffer between him and public awareness of his role. For some years before his retirement from active leadership of the New Orleans Mafia in 1922, Matranga used young Sam Carolla as his front man, issuing all orders through him.

Until Matranga died on October 28, 1943, at the age of 86, he continued to receive tribute from the longshoremen’s associations and steamship lines which benefited from his benign approval. He was given a lavish funeral, attended by executives of Lykes, United Fruit, Standard Fruit, and large steamship companies—a remarkable tribute for a lowly stevedore, one who had been arrested for murder and almost lynched. The fact was Charles Matranga was a Man of Tradition and his big-business victims had to honor that tradition right up to the end.

Mickey Mouse Mafia

The Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose and San Francisco crime families are known to criminal groups and crime-fighters alike as the Mickey Mouse Mafia. When in 1984 police in southern California launched an all-out drive to stop an attempt by organized crime to take over some $50-million-a-year bookmaking operations, they labeled the campaign “Operation Lightweight.” Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates explained: “We feel the name is appropriate because organized crime is such a lightweight in Southern California.”

All the California crime families have been considered second rate—even Los Angeles when it was bossed by Jack Dragna, considered to have been California’s toughest mafioso. The Chicago mob, for instance, extended its influence in Hollywood, especially in movie rackets, regardless of the Los Angeles family’s feelings.

The New York mobs did the same, sending in Bugsy Siegel and others to extend their gambling empire into the West. This extension was Meyer Lansky’s idea and he got Lucky Luciano to warn Dragna not to interfere. Dragna acquiesced to Luciano’s orders even though Lucky was at the time in Dannemora prison. Clearly, a Luciano behind bars was more awesome than a Dragna on the loose.


Another who showed contempt for the West Coast Mafia mobs was Jimmy “the Weasel” Fratianno, as near to an efficient killer as ever flourished in those climes. Of James Lanza, boss of the San Francisco family, Fratianno once told an underworld associate: “What has he ever done besides sell olive oil and insurance? Them guys in San Francisco and San Jose wouldn’t last two minutes if some real workers moved into their towns. Maybe we ought to move in and take over both towns. Knock off a couple of guys, scare the rest shitless.”

Fratianno considered doing just that but instead moved into a power vacuum in Los Angeles where the imprisonment of the then boss and underboss left Louie Tom Dragna, the deceased Jack’s nephew, in charge. Dragna was a weakling and Fratianno, brought in as acting boss, tried to put some backbone into L.A., pointing out that the other crime families had no respect for them and the more they failed to resist incursions, the more incursions would follow.

Fratianno’s plan never reached fruition. He aroused hostility among several important mobsters, especially in Chicago, and came under suspicion of being an informer. (He started feeding federal investigators bits of information, mainly because that allowed him to operate more freely without FBI interference since the agency did not maintain strict surveillance over those whom they thought were serving them.)

To this day, even though they represent one of the lushest areas of the country, the California mobs remain the weak sister of organized crime, truly the Mickey Mouse Mafia.