Great men are creations of their times. When Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky formed the national crime syndicate in the early 1930s, they succeeded because the underworld could at that time be logically organized. But Luciano was not the first to dream of a national crime syndicate.
Nicholas Morello, of the notorious Morello family, rose far above his relations to realize that the Americanization of the gangs would have to give birth to a great criminal network, each of its components at peace with the others and in concert controlling all the rackets in the country.
Morello probably saw less need to cooperate with other ethnics than Luciano would later, mainly because during World War I the great ethnic Irish and Jewish criminal gangs were disintegrating. This was even true to some extent of the Italian gangs, but the mafiosi and Camorristas maintained their cohesion. (With the later advent of Prohibition the Irish and Jewish mobs would reorganize.)
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In fact, Morello should have had an easier time organizing crime in America than Luciano and Lansky would later, but he found himself too mired down by old-country conflicts. While Morello’s Sicilian gangs controlled the rackets of East Harlem and Greenwich Village in Manhattan, the Brooklyn Camorristas, immigrant criminals from the Camorra gangs of Naples, extended their power in Brooklyn, collecting protection money from Italian storekeepers, coal and ice dealers and other businessmen, as well as operating rackets on the Brooklyn docks.
The Camorristas were under the leadership of Don Pelligrino Morano, a man who had his own dreams of expansion—all aimed solely at eliminating the Manhattan mafiosi. When Morano ordered his men to move in on the East Harlem rackets, money considerations were probably secondary. He really looked to demean his Old World rivals.
The more forward-looking Morello thought it foolish to continue such old battles and offered to make a peaceful settlement. Morano took such a move as a sign of weakness and spurned the offer. By 1916 the warfare was so intense that only the most hardy mafioso or Camorrista dared cross the East River into the other’s domain. They usually returned home in a hearse.
Then, surprisingly, that same year Morano announced he was in favor of Morello’s call for an armistice. He invited Morello to come to Brooklyn to discuss terms, of course guaranteeing him safe conduct.
Morello proved wisely cautious and for six months did no more than dicker about holding such a peace meeting, though he realized he would have to go if he hoped to advance his master plan. The meeting was arranged in a café on Navy Street, and Morello showed up accompanied only by his personal bodyguard. Morano was deeply disappointed. He had hoped Morello would bring his top lieutenants with him. Still, Morello was the main prize, and as soon as the mafioso and his bodyguard stepped from their car, a five-man execution squad opened up on them, killing them in broad daylight.
Morano was greatly surprised when he was arrested for murder. He had been under the assumption that the payoffs he had made to a New York police detective, Michael Mealli, had “cleared the operation with the cops.” Some of the killers cooperated with the law for lighter sentences and Morano and his top aides were sent to prison for life. When the sentence was pronounced, the Brooklyn Eagle reported: “Morano was surrounded by a dozen Italians who showered kisses on his face and forehead. On the way to the jail other Italians braved the guard and kissed Morano’s hands, cheeks and forehead.”
With Morello dead and Morano imprisoned, what the newspapers called the first Mafia War came to an end. So too did the dreams of Nick Morello for a “great combination” of the gangs. At the time Salvatore Luciana was only a teenage thug, but already he appreciated what Morello had tried to do. When he grew older he would Americanize his name to Charles “Lucky” Luciano and he would Americanize the Mafia as well.
