THE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN MAFIA

Vito Genovese was considered one of the most treacherous, double-dealing and ruthless mafia bosses of the American Mafia.

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Tommaso Gagliano was certainly the godfather of the Bronx. We can define him as an inconspicuous if not even reserved character. He was also little known outside mafia circles.

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Giuseppe A. "Socks" Lanza. He was a mobster who controlled New York's syndicate rackets and a member of the Genovese crime family. He controlled the general seafood market in Lower Manhattan through the United Seafood Worker's Union local 359 from 1923 to 1968.

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Gaetano Reina, known as Tom or Tommy, is considered one of the most powerful Mafia Bosses in New York. He worked in the 1910s and 1920s. It can be said that he was the first boss of what is still remembered today as the Lucchese mafia family.

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Lucky Luciano, the man who changed the mafia into the criminal organization we know today. This is part 5 of a 5 part series about Lucky, listen to all 5 and learn all about his story.

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Lucky Luciano, the man who changed the mafia into the criminal organization we know today. This is part 4 of a 5 part series about Lucky, listen to all 5 and learn all about his story.

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Lucky Luciano, the man who changed the mafia into the criminal organization we know today. This is part 3 of a 5 part series about Lucky, listen to all 5 and learn all about his story.

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Lucky Luciano, the man who changed the mafia into the criminal organization we know today. This is part 2 of a 5 part series about Lucky, listen to all 5 and learn all about his story.

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Charles “Lucky” Luciano can be called the one who brought the Mafia to a far-reaching level of influence. He was considered by Time Magazine among the 20 most influential men of the twentieth century. He can undoubtedly be considered the father of modern organized crime in the United States. He helped form the American Mafia's governing body called the Commission that continues to wield power in the world of crime today.

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Diamond's gang began working for Rothstein in various capacities as bodyguards and ensuring, with the use of firearms, that agreements were kept. Rothstein was not a gangster; rather he was a forward-thinking businessman who appreciated and utilized the skills that only gangsters could provide. With the advent of Prohibition, Diamond and his gang turned to smuggling alcohol.

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Arthur Simon Flegenheimer was born on August 6, 1902 in the Bronx, a populous neighborhood of New York. Known as Schultz the Dutch. He is the son of two poor German immigrants of Jewish origin. His father abandoned him and the rest of the family when he was still a child. This traumatized little Arthur greatly. It was during this critical period that the little boy dropped out of school and joined the juvenile petty crime gangs in the Bronx

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Meyer Lansky is one of the legendary figures of American organized crime. Lansky was a man of small stature: as a mature adult he measured 162 cm tall and weighed 61 kg. Perhaps it was because of his short stature that he was forced to use his intellectual abilities to succeed in the world. What Lansky lacked in brawn he made up for in brains. Although he was a member of the Jewish Mafia, Lansky undoubtedly had a strong influence with the Italian-American Mafia and played an important role in the consolidation of the criminal underworld.

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Virginia Hill, the Alabama farm girl who became the queen of the mafia. She was born in Lipscomb, Alabama, on August 26, 1916. As a child, she and her parents and nine siblings moved to Georgia. Tired of the abuse and brutal beatings that she and her brothers and mother suffered from her alcoholic father, at the age of seven, she burned her father with sausage fat. In November 1931, when she was 15, she married 16-year-old George Randell and ran away from home with him to Chicago. There she very quickly found herself immersed in the violent world of some of the most infamous gangsters.

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Meyer Lansky is one of the legendary figures of American organized crime. Lansky was a man of small stature: as a mature adult he measured 162 cm tall and weighed 61 kg. Perhaps it was because of his short stature that he was forced to use his intellectual abilities to succeed in the world. What Lansky lacked in brawn he made up for in brains. Although he was a member of the Jewish Mafia, Lansky undoubtedly had a strong influence with the Italian-American Mafia and played an important role in the consolidation of the criminal underworld.

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Meyer Lansky is one of the legendary figures of American organized crime. Lansky was a man of small stature: as a mature adult he measured 162 cm tall and weighed 61 kg. Perhaps it was because of his short stature that he was forced to use his intellectual abilities to succeed in the world. What Lansky lacked in brawn he made up for in brains. Although he was a member of the Jewish Mafia, Lansky undoubtedly had a strong influence with the Italian-American Mafia and played an important role in the consolidation of the criminal underworld.

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Benjamin Bugsy Siegel had a formidable intuition. He thought of transforming Las Vegas, a desolate city in the middle of the desert, into a gambling mecca. For Siegel that idea became an obsession. He thought of building a casino with an adjoining hotel.

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The star of American mobsters who inspired characters on the big screen, a refined man welcomed in the inner circles of the stars who were proud to present him as a friend, that was who Bugsy Siegel was and so much more. Listen to his story and many more in the History of the American mafia

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THE FIVE POINTS GANG: Considered the foundation of the American criminal organization known as Cosa Nostra, The Five Points Gang included some of those who would become the big names in the criminal organization such as Paul Kelly, Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Joe Torrio, Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel. It became one of the most prominent street gangs in US history and changed the way gangs operated in the US.

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The boss who inspired a character in 'The Great Gatsby' and was portrayed in the 'Boardwalk Empire' series. Who was Arnold Rothstein and what was his role in the History of the American Mafia? Listen to this new episode of the series to find out.

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In 1931, after the deaths of Masseria and Maranzano, Lucky Luciano became the boss of what would become his own crime family. Vito Genovese became his deputy and Costello became his advisers, an important function within the Mafia clan. Costello was a prominent figure in the criminal underworld, earning large sums of money by becoming the head of the gambling industry. In 1936 Lucky Luciano was arrested for exploiting and aiding and abetting prostitution and sentenced to serve a prison sentence of at least thirty years. At first he tried to run his mafia family directly from prison. He later promoted his deputy Vito Genovese to the role of boss. In 1937 Vito Genovese was suspected of a murder and therefore was forced to return to Italy and take refuge in Naples. At that point Luciano named Costello as the new boss of his crime family.

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The turning point in the criminal career of Frank Costello but also of many criminals was dated January 17, 1920. This date coincides with the beginning of the period that will be remembered to this day as prohibition. With the introduction of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the production and sale, but not the consumption, of alcoholic beverages was prohibited.

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If there was ever a mobster who looked like a politician it is surely Frank Costello. It is no coincidence that he was nicknamed the minister of the underworld. We can, without a doubt, state that Costello must be classified in a class apart among the many mobsters who gave birth to American organized crime. The peculiarity of Frank Costello is that his criminal power was not linked exclusively to the violence exercised but to his ability to earn illicit money with prohibition, slot machines and other gambling operations. He effectively controlled much of the gambling industry in New York, Florida, Louisiana and other states and the casinos in Las Vegas. He was very influential in the organization that determined New York politics in those years, namely Tammany Hall which collected the votes for the Democratic party.

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Michael Coppola aka "Trigger Mike" Trigger Mike was a prominent criminal of the New York Mafia, with a reputation as a sadistic and violent killer. Upon Joe Masseria's death in April 1931, he received control of many rackets in the Bronx and East Harlem. He took charge of the lucrative lottery racket that illegally invoiced about 1,000,000 dollars a year, and monopolized the fruit and vegetable market of artichokes and other vegetables previously controlled by Ciro Terranova, after the latter had retired.

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His majesty the executioner was just one of his nick names. Who was one of the most ruthless and feared members of cosa nostra? listen all about it in Albert Anastasia , a podcast from the series The History of the American Mafia

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During the commission wanted by Lucky Luciano, VINCENT MANGANO was the representative of one of the five mafia families of New York, and he was from 1931 until 1951, as well as one of the co-founders of the Commission.

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Nicola Gentile maintained the relationships and contacts between the various American mafia families, traveling from one end of America to the other. He built a reputation for mediating disagreements between rival Mafia families, regularly traveling interstate as a peacemaker. For this reason he earned respect and credibility by contributing to the creation of strategic alliances.

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Who were the big seven group? And who do gansters of the period have to thank for being saved by this genious organization. Listen to “The big 7” , a new episode from the popular series “The History of the American Mafia” by Fabio Fabiano and Grace Carlisi on spotify, spreaker, itunes and everywhere else.

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Among the most important collaborators of Lucky Luciano, the Italian-American Joe Adonis must undoubtedly be mentioned. Giuseppe Antonio Doto this is his real name, then Americanized, during the 1920s, in Joe Adonis, referring to the "beautiful" par excellence of Greek mythology, or Adonis

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Guarino Moretti, known as Willie, was born on February 24, 1894 in Bari, Puglia, Italy, and projected to the US state of New Jersey with his family. Moretti, having arrived in America, immediately began his criminal activity, so much so that in 1913 he was convicted of robbery. In the mid-1920s it became part of the Masseria family. During the war Castellammarese distinguished himself as a ruthless killer and as a soldier in the dozen of Lucky Luciano.

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When did the mafia criminal organization start calling themselves “cosa nostra” ? and who were the new leaders post prohibition ? listen to the new episode of The History of the American mafia to find out.

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The criminal organizations were doing so well that a joint stock company was founded to "keep business in order" so to speak. Hence the birth of murder inc.

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The infamous massacre still remembered today that took place on St. Valentine's day considered one the most heinous crime acts of all times in Chicago.

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Who was Al CAPONE? Listen to the true story about his life and how he became one of the most feared and respected names of the American Mafia, still talked about today.

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In May 1929 in a well-known location on the Atlantic coast, namely Atlantic City, there was a meeting of the members of the Big Seven Group and the most important gangsters of the United States.

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The Chicago Mafia, known as The Outfit, is the only independent mafia organization, not controlled by the Cosa Nostra "Five Families" of New York. The Outfit's influence extends from Chicago to the Midwestern United States to Las Vegas and parts of Florida.

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Lucky Luciano thrives over Maranzano's death which leads to the beginning of "cosa nostra".

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Maranzano devises a plan to eliminate Lucky Luciano and Genovese, but things take a nasty turn.

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The true story about The History of The American Mafia continues. In this episode we see how Maranzano takes over , proclaiming himself Boss of Bosses and a “renovation” of the mafia in America.

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In 1927, he landed in America, at the age of 43, one of the most important protagonists in the history of the American mafia. He was a completely different criminal from previous or later Italian American gangsters. The underworld portrayed him as a true leader. Salvatore Maranzano was a cultured and ambitious character. We must consider him the last of the second wave bosses. At first glance, he certainly did not look like a mobster. He was a distinguished person, he could easily have been mistaken for a banker.

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HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN MAFIA

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Vito Cascioferro. can be considered the link between criminal organizations from Sicily with those already branched in the United States. His unwavering ambivalence allows him to build a network of trafficking, connivance, favors, murders, also making use of popular support that sees in him a champion of the oppressed, at that time he becomes in the eyes of his countrymen a Godfather.

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Contrary to popular belief, the Mafia made its first officially documented appearance in the United States in 1890 in New Orleans and not New York. On October 5, 1890, New Orleans police chief Captain Hennessy was killed in an ambush by some men, In that city in the south of the United States there was a feud between the criminal families of the Provenzano and that of the Matragna. Following the murder, 19 Italian residents were arrested there. The suspects were imprisoned in the parish prison. At the end of the trial in March, some of them were acquitted. This determined the inhabitants' violent reaction so much so that the next day a huge crowd formed outside the prison. The troublemakers forced the prison doors and 11 of the arrested were lynched to death. Notable is the ruling of the Grand Jury of New Orleans, which in 1891, called to rule on those criminal facts, ruled: "The extent of our investigation has identified the existence of the secret organization called mafia."

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Music by Syon (Thomas Nicosia) Prelude in Em.

By 1900, the center of economic development was New York, one of the most prosperous and cosmopolitan cities in the world. Eighty percent of the biggest billing companies in America were based in this metropolis. Everything was happening in those streets, in fact you crossed the capitals from Wall Street with the labor of Italian migrants landed by the transatlantic at Ellis Island.
In the island were waiting for a hundred inspectors and health officers inside a huge center for immigration.
By 1910, the number of Italians living in New York was nearly half a million, two-thirds of whom were men. They lived in promiscuity and in the almost total absence of hygiene.
The neighborhoods in which immigrants went to live were the oldest in the city, occupied by two generations before by the Irish. It was Elizabeth and Mulberry Street.
The only advantage over those who worked in Italy was the salary. Decidedly higher in the United States of America. Even if life cost much more Italian immigrants, enduring tremendous deprivations, were able to put something aside and then send it home.
Immediate were the clashes with the Irish community already present in New York. The two communities immediately began a real racial conflict.
In those years, the Irish controlled the metropolis through Tammany Hall, an Irish political organization. It was clear that social political control was carried out with violence.

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Music by Syon (Thomas Nicosia) Prelude in Em
Initially, counterfeiting and the spending of counterfeit notes was, together with the crimes of extortion and kidnapping, one of the first criminal activities, or rather a racket, in which the Italian criminals arrived in the new continent. On July 5, 1865, the federal government, and precisely the Treasury Department, set up secret services to counter counterfeiting. The first phenomena were evident in several cities in the United States such as New Orleans, Washington, Pittsburgh, and clearly they could not miss in New York. The American intelligence branch was headed by an Irish officer named William Flynn. He was an imposing man, very astute and determined. At the end of the 19th century the situation in that metropolis was very serious. A large number of counterfeit notes and coins circulated.

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Music by Syon (Thomas Nicosia) Prelude in Em
In the early years of the twentieth century a wave of terror unprecedented in peacetime crossed the United States. The members of the secret organization threatened to kill the members of the Italian community if they did not agree to pay. The acolytes of the black hand burned or blew up the houses, kidnapped the children of the victims, so much so that in 1899 in Brooklyn it was already a habitual phenomenon. There were cases in which the torturers, armed with guns and knives, faced in broad daylight on the street the victims. The leaders of the Black Hand were originally members of the Sicilian Mafia. Many of the worst criminals had emigrated, along with the many honest Italians, to the USA.

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The activity of extortion always began with a latch letter of which a dark association called The Black Hand materializes. What was a letter of scrocco? It was an extortion letter that was delivered to Italian families who had a minimum of income aggredibile. The extortion letters were written with several dialects, from this it was deduced that they were certainly written by people from different regions of Italy.

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Music by Syon (Thomas Nicosia) Prelude in Em
It is not the American dream that pushes Italian migrants to reach the American shores. Therefore to understand the phenomenon it is necessary to ask two questions.
Who were the migrants? Why were they willing to risk their lives, and that of their loved ones, by traveling in inhumane conditions in the third class of ocean liners for about two weeks?

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Music by Syon (Thomas Nicosia) Prelude in Em
Thanks to the investigations of the Secret Services aimed at the contrast and the falsification and spending of counterfeit banknotes in New York, the evidence was gathered that it operated "The most secret and terrible organization in the world" as the eminent New York Times wrote defining the mafia.

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Music by Syon (Thomas Nicosia) Prelude in Em. Giuseppe Morello was another and dangerous, he used to wear a .45 caliber pistol on his belt and a knife tied to his left leg, the tip of which was covered with a small cork to avoid injury while walking. He arrived in the United States of America in 1982. He was born in Corleone in 1867. He escaped from Sicily because he was suspected of a murder and abigée and was also convicted of the crime of counterfeiting coins and spending false coins. In the period between 1898 and 1899 Morello most likely resumed the activity of forger. He could make use of a network of small drug dealers and some workers capable of mixing inks and making clichés for printing.

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Music by Syon (Thomas Nicosia) Prelude in Em. Ignazio Lupo was born in Palermo in March 1877. His family of origin was part of a Palermo mafia gang and he himself was part of a gang of extortionists. In 1898, following a quarrel in his shop, Salvatore Morello shot and killed a trader competing with him. As a result of this crime, on March 12, 1899, Lupo was sentenced to twenty-one years for premeditated murder. A year before the sentence became enforceable, favored by his family, he illegally expatriated to New York.

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Music by Syon (Thomas Nicosia) Prelude in Em. The crimes for which the Morello gang was suspected were numerous and varied. Most of these went undiscovered but three murders were initially attributed to New York's first Mafia family. In reality in all three cases the accusations failing to stand in the courts ended up exonerating the members of the coterie.
In this podcast we will deal with two of the three bloody facts. The third, that is, what will come down to our days as the "Case of the crime of the barrel" we will deal with in another podcast in a very thorough manner.

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The character on which this case revolves is Antonio Comito. Born in 1880 in Catanzaro, before emigrating to New York in June 1907, he had worked as a typographer. Once in the United States of America he tells of living at 72 James Street. He found a job as a printer in a printing house on Park Row. Comito, despite being married in Calabria, a New Yorker with a partner named Katrina Pascuzzo.

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In January 1909, media were procured for printing the counterfeit dollars. Therefore Comito and the men on the farm began printing Canadian $ 5 proof bills. Immediately after obtaining the first Cinà and Cicala prints, with printed proofs, rolled up in a newspaper, they left for New York to have their quality checked. After three days they returned with the new arrangements. The counterfeiters were told to print more tickets in a darker shade. Counterfeiting Canadian banknotes was very complex and tiring.

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In the summer of 1909, the secret services received complaints from banks and shop owners for the large amount of counterfeit currency injected. initially the investigations did not lead to concrete results. Then a turning point came when William Flynn went to Pittston, Pennsylvania to investigate. It was a very dirty and very violent coal city. There was the presence of many Italians and the flow of counterfeit money was substantial. The investigative activity rewarded the diligent investigators, in fact a Sicilian named Sam Locino was identified.

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Once the secret service agents had a clear idea of ​​the organization that dealt with the counterfeiting and the sale of fake dollars, they began to plan the capture of the members of the Morello gang. The difficulty of the operation was due to the timing for proceeding with the arrest and searches. In fact, it was necessary to undertake the raids at the same time in several places in order not to benefit the members of the gang not involved in the first instance. The director of intelligence gathered all the men in New York to make as many raids as possible at the same time.

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Music by Syon (Thomas Nicosia) Prelude in Em. With most of the Morello gang members effectively detained, the trial date was set for January 26, 1910 in New York at the Houston Street Federal Courthouse. The defendants were 9 and judge George Ray presided over the jury. An elderly magistrate who had already tried counterfeiting cases. Lupo and Morello had hired the lawyer Mirabeau L. Towns for their defense. He was a highly qualified American lawyer, with the advantage of speaking in Italian.

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Music by Syon (Thomas Nicosia) Prelude in Em. On April 14, 1903, a barrel with the body of a man came to New York on East 11th Street. The victim had his throat cut from ear to ear, and his head was almost detached from the trunk with eighteen stab wounds to the neck. The body had been compressed into the barrel with the head resting between the knees. The suspects of this murder, who were also arrested, were the most representative members of the Banda Morello, which was the first Mafia family in New York.

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Music by Syon (Thomas Nicosia) Prelude in Em
The case of the murder of the barrel passed to Detective Sergeant Arthur Carey. He was the first investigator with experience in homicide cases to conduct the investigation. The sergeant advanced a hypothesis, namely that he was an Italian and that the murder was probably linked to one of the many feuds that took place in Little Italy. For that case, the intervention of the only policeman that the New York Police Department could have successfully investigated, namely Sergeant Joe Petrosino, was required. Following the reading of the newspaper, a character that we have now learned to know and observe has an important clue for the identification of the corpse found inside the barrel. It was the head of the New York Secret Service, the stubborn and brilliant investigator William Flynn.

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Despite the arrests carried out by the New York Police Department against members of the Morello gang, the investigations into the crime of the barrel do not seem to bring decisive elements for the resolution of the case. The turning point came with the arrival of an anonymous letter. In which it was written verbatim:
“I know who the man found in the barrel is. He came from Buffalo to get some money ... he was convicted of selling counterfeit banknotes. The police have arrested the right people, get inmate Giuseppe Di Primo to Sing Sing, promise him freedom, and he will tell you many things, do as I tell you and you will know everything. We salute you. Your friends S.T. "

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The head of the New York agency of services, William Flynn had expressly stated that the best way to proceed is to continue to keep an eye on the butcher shop and the men of Giuseppe Morello's gang who frequented it. Moreover, the criminals did not know they were under observation and therefore further elements could be acquired regarding the case of the murder of the barrel.

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In many of the podcasts you have listened to, the name of one of the greatest policemen of all time often recurs, whose exploits are now remembered and narrated. This is Joe Petrosino. He is not a literary policeman, fruit of the imagination of a skilled crime writer, but he lived and died as a hero. He was not only a great investigator but he represented the ransom for many honest Italian immigrants who came to America to escape from hunger and misery.

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In addition to the crime of the barrel which we have extensively discussed in previous podcasts, there are so many cases to which the Italian-American policeman devoted himself. As soon as he joined the police, Petrosino adopted techniques that are still part of the investigative activities of current use by the police all over the world.

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Petrosino was now aware that he was not just a simple employee of the New York Police Department. The policeman felt the responsibility. He probably became a celebrity was the most famous Italian American in the USA. He was troubled by the growing intolerance of Italians on the part of public opinion. In 1904 he began to work out a plan to stop the growing spread of Black Hand crimes.

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Theodore Bingham had a secret plan to defeat the Black Hand. it was the development of Petrosino's idea, namely to stem the flow of criminals who emigrated from Italy to the USA. To achieve this, the Police Department would undertake to send the Italian-American police officer to Italy where he would consult the criminal records of the offenders of emigrants to America.

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The cases we have dealt with related to the Black Hand happened in New York. But ignorance and fear and lack of collaboration all concerned the places in the USA where there was urban isolation and a deep, atavistic distrust of authority. However, there were also exceptions like the one in the Midwest. One of these, the subject of our narration today, concerns the story of a man who decides not to bend over and not to keep his mouth shut. This happened in Columbus (Ohio) in January 1909.

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The postal inspector Oldfield investigated the extortion report filed by the Italian-American merchant Giuseppe Amicone. Furthermore, thanks to a director of a post office, he learned that Sam Lima, the head of the criminal organization called the Marion Banana Society, sent large sums of money to Italy via the post office.

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Starting from the twenties, the underworld in the United States of America and consequently the Cosa Nostra changed drastically. The cause of all this was to be attributed to Prohibition. In addition, as regards the American mafia, an important contributing cause should not be overlooked, namely the strong repression of the fascist regime against the Italian mafia, which took place in the same period of time. In fact, this led to the flight of many Sicilian mafia to the new continent. The era of so-called Prohibition comes into force in the United States with the approval of the eighteenth amendment to the American constitution. According to this new law, passed in 1919, the production and distribution and retail sale of any alcoholic beverage was prohibited in the United States of America, essentially the offender committing a federal crime.

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In the creation of these podcasts dedicated to the history of the American mafia we have given a lot of space to those who have fought against the most powerful criminal association in the world. This was the case of New York Police Lieutenant Joe Petrosino and Detective Frances Dimaio. In this podcast we are dealing with a policeman whose worth, the solved cases and the greening of his memory need to be remembered. Today we are dealing with Michael Fiaschetti. Unjustly known alone and finally as the number two of the Italian Squad. In fact he was the one who inherited the command of the Italian team after the heinous murder of his boss and creator Joe Petrosino. Let's start with some biographical information of Fiaschetti known by friends and colleagues such as Mike.

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Today we think of the "mafia" as a synonym for organized crime, in reality at the beginning the American mafia was not that organized. In the early 1900s it was poorly structured. The symptom of this lack of organization was the brutal wars between the minor gangs waged against each other for domination over the various rackets. The gangs formed by the Italians compared to those of the Jews and Irish were much better organized and the components disciplined, ruthless and efficient, especially at times when wars were unleashed over the disputes over territories and customers. The survival of individual criminals required courage, cruelty and a lot of luck. Joe Masseria was one of the few organized crime leaders who embodied these qualities.

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In the history of the American mafia the sinister fame of the criminal group called the “Good killers” is still indelible. The gang was composed in the 20s of the last century by mafia immigrants from the Bonventre and Magaddino families of Castellammare del Golfo, in Sicily, and their allies, namely Stefano Magaddino, his brother-in-law Bartolo Di Gregorio, Vito Bonventre, Giuseppe Lombardi, Mariano Galante, whose family was related to Magaddino, and Francesco Puma. The gang had been in a constant state of war for a decade and a half. The name of the secret coterie was first published in the New York Times edition of August 17, 1921.

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The Good Killers. Who were the Good Killers ? how did they operate? And who were their victims? Two podcasts, part 1 and part 2 from the series “The history of the American Mafia” written and adapted to podcast by Fabio Fabiano , translated and read by Grace Carlisi, that shed light on the mystery of the criminal group that operated inside the mafia.

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Who are the protagonists of the Castellammarese clan, and what led them to the war that characterized significantly the American Mafia.

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The Castellammarese War is an important stage in the history of the American mafia, since it coincides with the birth of a new form of organized crime that will be known as the "Cosa Nostra". The new organization will be American and no longer just Sicilian, but also Campania, Calabrian, Irish and Jewish.

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After the death of Mineo Lucky Luciano had become one of the most important collaborators of Masseria. The first misunderstandings began between the two. Masseria did not trust anyone except Sicilians to make criminal deals. Luciano, on the other hand, did not have these limits. Among his best allies were two Jews like the two criminals Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel. Luciano could not stand Masseria's refusals to his innovative ideas to expand the business into new criminal activities such as prostitution, gambling and trade unions. The Castellammarese war had caused deaths on both sides.

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In 1910, after the arrest of the head of the bosses Giuseppe Morello and his brother-in-law Ignazio Lupo known as the wolf, for the crime of counterfeiting and the subsequent conviction, a power vacuum was created at the top of the first Mafia family in New York. To fill it the mafia families elected D'Aquila, Salvatore meant Totò or Zio Totò who at that point was considered as the boss of the American mafia bosses. He was born in Palermo in 1873. He arrived in New York in 1904 as an importer of cheeses. D'Aquila began his career in the underworld as a soldier of Giuseppe Morello and Ignazio Lupo and operated in the Bronx.

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Originally, the Bonanno mafia family was led by VITO BONVENTRE and COLA Schirò '. We have already dealt with the first talking about the case of the Good Killers, the Castellammaresi fighting against their rivals from the Buccellato family. BONVENTRE was born in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, in 1875, second cousin of Joseph Bonanno arrived in the USA in 1906. He became a successful smuggler in Brooklyn and a prominent member of Nicola Schiro's crime family. Probably he was also for a short time Schiro's successor at the top of the mafia family of the same name. Vito Bonventre seems to have played an important role in the elimination of the members of the Buccellato family in the United States. In 1921 in New Jersey he was also suspected of the murder of Camillo Caiozzo (the Good Killers case). According to Bonanno, Bonventre became the richest member after Cola Schiro in the Brooklyn family of the same name in the late 1920s.

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