King of the Godfathers:. Anthony M. DeStefano
Talese states. “So in his first year in Brooklyn, Bonanno affiliated himself with the neighborhood Mafiosi, who were obviously doing well; they were driving new cars and wearing finer clothes than their humble countrymen who got up each day at dawn to toil in factories or work in construction gangs.”
Aligned with Maranzano, Bonanno made a name for himself in the rackets of the time. There was bootlegging, gambling, and smuggling of weapons. The Brooklyn Italian lottery was also controlled by Bonanno, and it was his organizational ability, as well as his polished, diplomatic manner that earned him respect. Wise enough not to squander his earnings, Bonanno invested in other legitimate businesses such as garment factories, cheese producers, and even a funeral parlor.
Success of Castellammarese men like Bonanno served to make Masseria suspicious of the growing strength of Maranzano and his followers. Historians of the Mafia are unanimous in saying that Masseria, concerned about the independence being shown by Maranzano and his men, planned to strike against them to eliminate their rivalry. Larger tribute payments were demanded by Masseria. These were rebuffed by Maranzano’s allies and Masseria knew by 1930 that he had to annihilate the competition.
But just as he was preparing to go to war against the Castellammarese, Masseria’s hunger for money and power led him to make a big tactical mistake. Masseria attempted to extort the ice-making business of one of his own crime captains, Gaetano Reina. When Reina resisted, Masseria had him killed in February 1930, just as the ice merchant was leaving a building on Sheridan Avenue in the Bronx. The killing of Reina prompted his gang members to ally with Maranzano and a period of Mafia assassinations and gunfights known as the Castellammarese War broke out in New York. It was a time of bloodshed that would ultimately go a long way to shaping the modern Mafia in the United States.
The killings went on for over a year as Masseria struck against the bootlegging businesses of the Maranzano crowd. With allies like Thomas Lucchese, Carlo Gambino, Vito Genovese, and of course, Lucky Luciano, Masseria seemed in a stronger position. But Maranzano had important alliances as well, including the help of a young mob associate known as Joseph Valachi, who would eventually marry the daughter of the assassinated Reina. There was intense mob bloodshed in the war, with some estimates saying over fifty men died on both sides. Whatever the body count, the war proved bad for business and the costs were troubling Luciano and Genovese. They reached out to Maranzano in an effort to stop the fighting.
In return for setting up Masseria for the kill, Maranzano agreed with Luciano and Genovese that the war would stop and that they would be safe. Masseria had escaped death a number of times, so he would not be an easy target. It was Luciano who rose to the task of setting the old man up for the kill. What happened next was reminiscent of a scene right out of The Godfather. Convincing Masseria that it was safe to have dinner outside of his Manhattan apartment, Luciano accompanied his boss on the afternoon of April 15, 1931, to Coney Island. The restaurant was a well-known Italian eatery run by Geraldo Scarpato. Masseria’s prodigious appetite was on display as he consumed plates of pasta and drank Chianti. After lunch Luciano convinced Masseria to play some cards and then excused himself to go the bathroom.
With Luciano out of the room, several armed men suddenly arrived outside Scarpato’s at around 3:30 P.M. in a car driven by Ciro Terranova, the mafioso known as the “Artichoke King” because of the way he extorted the myriad pushcart peddlers in East Harlem. With Terranova remaining behind the wheel, a handful of gangsters—no one is certain just who took part—entered the restaurant and blasted away at Masseria, who died as soon as he hit the floor. When police arrived, Luciano told them he had been in the bathroom, a fact corroborated by the restaurant staff. Apart from a commotion when the shooting started, Luciano said he saw and heard nothing.
With Masseria out of the picture, Maranzano moved quickly to consolidate his power and bring the other mobsters under his control. It was at a meeting in a Bronx social hall that Maranzano threw a big dinner attended by hundreds of Mafia members and associates. It was an event that for all practical purposes marked the formal organization of Italian organized crime in the United States as it would be known for decades. Though powerful mobsters like Capone in Chicago and Luciano were said to be against the idea of a big boss lording over the crime families, Maranzano pushed the idea of himself being anointed the Caesar of organized crime. According to the recollection of mob turncoat Joseph Valachi, Maranazano spelled out an organization of criminals that was modeled on the legions of ancient Rome.
“Mr. Maranzano started off the meeting by explaining how Joe the Boss was always shaking down members, right and left,” Valachi said in his memoirs, the Valachi Papers, which were written by Peter Maas. “He told how he had sentenced all the Castellammarese to death without cause.”
“He was speaking in Italian,” Valachi recalled, “and he said, ‘Now it is going to be different.’ In the new setup he was going to be the Capo di tutti Capi, meaning the ‘Boss of All Bosses.’ He said that from here on we were going to be divided up into new Families. Each Family would have a boss and an underboss.”
Beneath the top echelon of bosses were to be lieutenants or capodecini under which were the regular members or soldiers. Instilling a military-style structure to the crime families, Maranzano set up a chain of command that required soldiers to talk about problems with their lieutenant who might then go higher up the chain to the underboss or boss.
Surrounded by a large crucifix and religious pictures, Maranzano talked continuously to the multitude of gangsters about the code of conduct that mafiosi must live by. The Mafia came before everything, and its members who violated the secrecy of the organization and talked to outsiders about its business would be killed, Maranzano said.
As a result of the Bronx meeting, bosses for five Mafia families emerged with Maranzano’s blessing. They were Luciano, Thomas Gagliano, Joseph Profaci, Vincent Mangano, and Frank Scalise. By his own account, Joseph Bonanno was part of Maranzano’s family and was an aide-de-camp to the crime boss. But while Luciano and the others should have felt comfortable with the power they now had and the relative peace in their world, they saw Maranzano as a power-hungry despot who threatened their rackets. Maranzano proceeded to shake down other mobsters under the guise of requiring them to buy tickets for banquets in his honor, affairs that netted him more than $100,000, a princely sum in 1931. Luciano in particular thought that the rule of a supreme boss lording over the crime families was an anachronism. Maranzano had turned out to be as much of a destructive force as Masseria had been. If Valachi was accurate in his recollection, Maranzano saw Luciano, Capone, and Genovese as threats and wanted them killed.
Maranzano’s plan was to summon Luciano and Genovese to his office at 230 Park Avenue for a meeting and then have an Irish gangster by the name of Vincent Coll kill the both of them. But in a classic double cross, one of Maranzano’s associates tipped off the intended victims. Luciano then moved quickly and turned to his Jewish cronies from the East Side of Manhattan to set up a counterattack to take place the day of the meeting. Meyer Lansky, who would become the fabled financial wizard of the mob, hired four other Jewish gangsters who dressed as policemen, and on September 10, 1931, they confronted Maranzano in his Park Avenue office. The crime boss had been expecting Luciano and Genovese, but when two of the fake cops said they wanted to talk business, Maranzano went with them into an inner office. Using knives and guns, the assailants killed Maranzano.
Mob folklore has it that the day Maranzano died there was an orgy of blood in which as many as sixty of Maranzano’s men in New York and other cities died. Even Bonanno subscribed to the story in his autobiography. The murders became known as the Night of the Sicilian Vespers and while that label has a certain grandiose ring harkening back to Sicilian history, the factual basis for the bloody legend appears way more modest. One historian checked police records in thirteen major cities for the days around the killing of Maranzano and found no indication of a large Mafia bloodbath—only three other mob homicides. Those three victims were Maranzano associates who author Peter Mass, in his book The Valachi Papers, identifies through police records as James LePore, Samuel Monaco, and Louis Russo. LePore was shot dead at an Arthur Avenue barber shop in the Bronx the same day as Maranzano, while the bodies of Monaco and Russo were pulled out of Newark Bay in New Jersey on September 13, 1931, three days after the Maranzano assassination.
With Maranzano out of