Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires by Selwyn Raab
Authors: Selwyn Raab
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“Lucky” Luciano; Castiglia would change his baptismal name to Frank Costello; and Lucchese would be better known as Tommy “Three-Finger Brown.” Later the trio would attain eminence in the American Mafia’s pantheon.
In 1925 the Castellammarese clan was rejuvenated by the arrival of Salvatore Maranzano, another illegal immigrant driven out of Sicily by the Mussolini-Mori juggernaut. A well-established mafioso with the honorific title Don Turriddu, Maranzano, then in his early forties, was a devoted defender of Mafia tradition. One of the clan’s best warriors in the old country, he came to America with a small fortune and quickly branched out into bootlegging.
No small-time operator, Maranzano built quality whiskey stills in Pennsylvania and upstate New York, and took the twenty-year-old Joe Bonanno under his wing. Bonanno handpicked a squad of armed marksmen to safeguard Maranzano’s whiskey trucks, often camouflaged as milk tankers, from rival hijackers.
Unlike Joe the Boss Masseria, Maranzano fancied himself a sophisticated, educated European. Although he had sparse command of English, Maranzano bragged about being literate in Latin and Greek and, in his basso profundoSicilian dialect, delighted in lecturing his unschooled, barely literate minions on classical literature and the virtues of his idol, Julius Caesar. As a cover to conduct his bootlegging business, Maranzano set up a company in Little Italy that supposedly was involved in export and import trade.
There was a harsher side to Maranzano’s business and personality that he revealed in a monologue to young Bonanno. He cautioned his protégé that hunting animals was relatively simple, but taking the life of another man demanded courage and caution. “When you aim at a man, your hands shake, your eyes twitch, your heart flutters, your mind interferes,” Bonanno recalled Maranzano advising him. “If possible you should always touch the body with your gun to make sure the man is dead. Man is the hardest animal to kill. If he gets away he will come back to kill you.”
Those words soon proved to be prophetic. In 1930 other members of the Castellammarese borgata turned to Maranzano for guidance and leadership when Masseria demanded $10,000 payoffs as tributes recognizing his assumed position as “Joe the Boss” of all New York mafiosi. Masseria also began dispatching hit men against recalcitrant Castellammarese soldiers. The firebrand Maranzano refused to submit to Masseria or acknowledge his supremacy, thereby igniting an unprecedented large-scale conflict between the area’s two largest borgatas. As casualties mounted, each side sought reinforcements from the other New York gangs and from mafiosi in other cities. In the Sicilian-Italian underworld, the Mob carnage was spoken of as “The Castellammarese War.”
Aware that they were prime ambush targets, Masseria and Maranzano surrounded themselves with bodyguards, traveling around town in convoys of armored-plated cars. Maranzano relied on a custom-built Cadillac with metal-plated sides and bulletproof windows. He shared the rear seat with a machine gun mounted on a swivel to fire out the windows; for backup weapons in close combat, he carried two large-caliber handguns and a dagger.
Although he worked as a top lieutenant for Masseria, twenty-nine-year-old Lucky Luciano worried that the shoot-outs, with cadavers and wounded men sprawled on streets, attracted unwelcome notoriety to the borgata gangs. Even worse, the fighting compelled the police to launch investigations that could endanger the smooth stream of loot flowing to him and his pals.
From the start, Luciano had opposed the tyrannical thrust for absolute control and power by Joe the Boss, fearing that it would end in death and chaos for the main participants. Before the war broke out, Luciano had become increasingly frustrated by Masseria’s refusal to adopt his ideas for modernizing andexpanding their rackets. Content with the easy
In 1925 the Castellammarese clan was rejuvenated by the arrival of Salvatore Maranzano, another illegal immigrant driven out of Sicily by the Mussolini-Mori juggernaut. A well-established mafioso with the honorific title Don Turriddu, Maranzano, then in his early forties, was a devoted defender of Mafia tradition. One of the clan’s best warriors in the old country, he came to America with a small fortune and quickly branched out into bootlegging.
No small-time operator, Maranzano built quality whiskey stills in Pennsylvania and upstate New York, and took the twenty-year-old Joe Bonanno under his wing. Bonanno handpicked a squad of armed marksmen to safeguard Maranzano’s whiskey trucks, often camouflaged as milk tankers, from rival hijackers.
Unlike Joe the Boss Masseria, Maranzano fancied himself a sophisticated, educated European. Although he had sparse command of English, Maranzano bragged about being literate in Latin and Greek and, in his basso profundoSicilian dialect, delighted in lecturing his unschooled, barely literate minions on classical literature and the virtues of his idol, Julius Caesar. As a cover to conduct his bootlegging business, Maranzano set up a company in Little Italy that supposedly was involved in export and import trade.
There was a harsher side to Maranzano’s business and personality that he revealed in a monologue to young Bonanno. He cautioned his protégé that hunting animals was relatively simple, but taking the life of another man demanded courage and caution. “When you aim at a man, your hands shake, your eyes twitch, your heart flutters, your mind interferes,” Bonanno recalled Maranzano advising him. “If possible you should always touch the body with your gun to make sure the man is dead. Man is the hardest animal to kill. If he gets away he will come back to kill you.”
Those words soon proved to be prophetic. In 1930 other members of the Castellammarese borgata turned to Maranzano for guidance and leadership when Masseria demanded $10,000 payoffs as tributes recognizing his assumed position as “Joe the Boss” of all New York mafiosi. Masseria also began dispatching hit men against recalcitrant Castellammarese soldiers. The firebrand Maranzano refused to submit to Masseria or acknowledge his supremacy, thereby igniting an unprecedented large-scale conflict between the area’s two largest borgatas. As casualties mounted, each side sought reinforcements from the other New York gangs and from mafiosi in other cities. In the Sicilian-Italian underworld, the Mob carnage was spoken of as “The Castellammarese War.”
Aware that they were prime ambush targets, Masseria and Maranzano surrounded themselves with bodyguards, traveling around town in convoys of armored-plated cars. Maranzano relied on a custom-built Cadillac with metal-plated sides and bulletproof windows. He shared the rear seat with a machine gun mounted on a swivel to fire out the windows; for backup weapons in close combat, he carried two large-caliber handguns and a dagger.
Although he worked as a top lieutenant for Masseria, twenty-nine-year-old Lucky Luciano worried that the shoot-outs, with cadavers and wounded men sprawled on streets, attracted unwelcome notoriety to the borgata gangs. Even worse, the fighting compelled the police to launch investigations that could endanger the smooth stream of loot flowing to him and his pals.
From the start, Luciano had opposed the tyrannical thrust for absolute control and power by Joe the Boss, fearing that it would end in death and chaos for the main participants. Before the war broke out, Luciano had become increasingly frustrated by Masseria’s refusal to adopt his ideas for modernizing andexpanding their rackets. Content with the easy
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