When one thinks of Cosa Nostra, or better known as the Mafia, it strikes fear in knowing that a ruthless criminal enterprise existed and still thrives today. The Mafia is something that Hollywood movie producers and Americans alike can’t simply seem to get enough of.

The name Cosa Nostra, translated as "Our Thing," goes back hundreds of years and was founded in Sicily to offer protection to the common people of that country from police, bandits and even government agencies. Cosa Nostra, not surprisingly were treated as folk heroes, saviors of the people. The practice of keeping your mouth shut was the code and if you violated it, the wrath was swift and deadly not only to the culprit, but to his own family as well.


Joe Masseria
This served as the power base for the American Mafia which was organized, depending on who you ask, during the 1920s by several leaders, most notably Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria and up and coming mobster, Salvatore Maranzano. These old style gangsters were known as "Mustache Petes" for their traditional and conservative ways of doing business. To them, rapid change and too much ambition were out of the question. In other words, they wanted their members to be complacent while they reaped the fruits of others' dastardly deeds.

Salvatore Maranzano arrived in the United States in 1927. He came here not as your ordinary Italian immigrant, but was sent by the Sicilian "Boss of Bosses" Vito Cascio Ferro. Don Vito had a vision of organizing all the American crime families, including non-Italians groups, under one leadership. Once on American soil, Maranzano’s authority was recognized by Gaetano Reina of Brooklyn and his capos, Thomas Luchese and Gaetana Gagliano, by Joey Aiello, the boss of Chicago, and by Joe Zerilli, underboss of the Detroit family. These men entered the United States illegally and were identified by Italian police records as members of the Sicilian Mafia.

Other Sicilian Mafia members to arrive in this manner were Carlo Gambino, Joe Bonanno, Stefano Maggadino and Joe Profaci. Collectively, these mobsters were known as the Twenties Group. When these men hit the American coast, they took shelter in an organization called Unione Siciliana which found them housing, jobs when they wanted them, and identities to cover up their illegal activities. Unione Siciliana also afforded these men the opportunity to learn English and the American way of life. This organization has received a bad rap by history because it helped mobsters and was considered "Mafia owned." This however was not true. Unione Siciliana also helped thousands of law abiding Italian immigrants in adjusting to American life. Including the family of Salvatore Lucania. Better known as Lucky Luciano.

Charles "Lucky" Luciano was born in 1897 in Lercardia Friddi, Sicily. The town was known for its sulfur mining and was short jaunt from the largest city of Sicily, Palermo. His parents worked hard as they could to provide for young Charles, but the long hours and chapped hands still didn’t put enough food on the family dinner table. Not only that, little Charles had a penchant for hanging around older kids that contributed to his mischievous behavior.

The Lucianos looked at their bleak surroundings long and hard. Should they continue to stay in an area that their ancestors lived for hundreds of years? What about their friends and other relatives, it would be difficult to part from them. But they knew they had to find a better way of life and fast because Charles wasn’t getting any younger. They heard about the promised land of America from friends. They were told about plentiful work and good schools. They would soon realize that this simply was not true.

The Lucianos set sail for America in 1906 and arrived at New York harbor in November of that year. Mischief and mayhem were the key factors in describing Charles’ youth. He logged his first arrest in 1907 for shoplifting. During the same year, he started his first racket. For a penny or two a day, Luciano offered younger and smaller Jewish kids his personal protection against beatings on the way to school; if they didn’t pay, he beat them up.


Lucky Luciano
One runty kid refused to pay, a thin little youngster from Poland, Meyer Lansky. Luciano fought him one day and was amazed at how hard Lansky fought back. They became bosom buddies after that, a relationship that would continue long after Luciano was deported back to Italy years later.

In his teens, Luciano became adept at various vices, most notably narcotics. At age eighteen he was convicted of peddling heroin and morphine and was committed to a reformatory for six months. Upon his release he resumed narcotics dealing. By 1916, Luciano was a leading member of the notorious Five Points Gang and named by police as the prime suspect in a number of murders. His notoriety grew as did his circle of underworld friends.

By 1920, Luciano was a power in bootlegging rackets (in cooperation with Lansky and his erstwhile partner Benjamin "Bugsy Siegel), and had become familiar with Joe Adonis, Vito Genovese and most important among Italian gangsters, Frank Costello. It was Costello who introduced him to other ethnic gangsters like Big Bill Dwyer and Jews like Arnold Rothstein, Dutch Shultz and Dandy Phil Kastel. Luciano was impressed by the way Costello bought protection from city officials and the police, which his buddy Meyer Lansky had already told him was the most important ingredient in any big-time criminal setup.

Luciano later joined forces with Joe "the Boss’ Masseria. He soon realized that Masseria didn’t see the future like he did.

Luciano was becoming very impatient with the way Masseria was handling business. He saw many opportunities slip by that could have brought immense profits for the organization. In order to get a piece of this delicious pie, he felt Masseria had to expand and diversify his business. This, unfortunately, would not occur because the bull-headed Masseria didn’t do business with non-Italians. Masseria undoubtedly was aware of Luciano’s ambitions and felt he was threat to him. He later committed an act that would prove fatal to him, and launch Luciano to gangland superstardom.


Lucky
Luciano was standing one day on Six Avenue in New York when a limousine, with curtains drawn, rolled up beside him. Three men leaped from the vehicle and prodded Luciano in the back with gun muzzles and forced him to the back of the limo. This was the beginning of the long ride.
The adhesive tape was applied, then came the kicks and punches and knife wounds. Luciano thought for sure he would die and felt himself get weaker and weaker until the lights in his brain went out. Hours later he woke up on the beach, staring unbelieving at the waves rolling in from lower New York Bay.

His head was aching from fist and gun butt blows and there was a knife wound on his chin. He tore off the tape and staggered almost a mile before he reached the police booth at the Tottenville Precinct. "Get me a taxi," Luciano pleaded. "I’ll give you fifty bucks if you do and let me go on my way." One of the cops ignored the offer and took Luciano to the hospital instead.

At the hospital the detectives began to ask a series of questions. Suddenly, Luciano became mute. He remembered the code of Omerta and kept his mouth shut. The cops wouldn’t give up, relentless, they asked, so it seemed to Luciano, a thousand questions. He finally blurted out in anger, "Don’t you cops lose any sleep over it, I’ll attend to this thing myself later."

He refused to say any more and denied that he had recognized the men who had taken him for the ride and wearily insisted that he had no enemies. The cops were inclined to the theory that Broadway racketeers had thrown Luciano on the beach in a belief that he was dead.


Sal Maranzano
Initially, Luciano had no idea who would want him dead. He was fully aware of the infighting and rivalries that existed in the ranks and what a good way for some young maverick, looking to make it big, take him out.
Luciano turned to his wise and trusted friend, Meyer Lansky, for an answer. It didn’t take Meyer long to come up with not only the answer, but a solution that would be beneficial for Luciano, and also himself. Meyer explained to him that Masseria was behind the plot and it would be wise to think about joining forces with Masseria’s arch-enemy, Salvatore Maranzano.

Several months later, after recovering from the beating, Luciano did just that. He met secretly with Maranzano and agreed to betray Masseria. This put in motion one of gangland’s biggest purges or as some like to call it, the war of attrition. History would call it The Castellammarese War.

Business in crime until the late 1920s was run by the "Mustache Petes." They were very slow to change and hindered mobsters like Luciano and others. They also refused to do business with non-Italians, which stepped on the toes of the likes of Meyer Lansky. Luciano later became the chief aide to "Joe the Boss" Masseria. After observing "Joe the Boss" pass up lucrative deals with other gangsters due their ethnicity, Luciano had enough.

In a sense, he was a visionary; he saw the vast potential of having a national crime network that crossed all ethnic lines. Luciano believed the old line mafiosi were the problem and should be wiped out. Thus in 1928, all hell broke loose. Long standing feuds and power grabbing changed the way organized crime would play in years to come.

The Castellammarese War erupted between the numerous forces of Joe the Boss and those of a fast-rising New York mafioso, Salvatore Maranzano. Over the next two years, dozens of gangsters were killed. Luciano avoided the conflict as much as possible and, instead, cemented relationships with the young, second-line leadership in the Maranzano outfit. It soon became clear that younger mobsters in both camps were waiting for one boss to kill off the other. Then the second-line could dethrone the remaining boss. Luciano soon emerged as the leader of this clique.

The war moved into 1931 with Maranzano winning, but Masseria was still powerful. Luciano finally felt he could wait no longer without imperiling his supporters in both camps. Three of his men and Bugsy Siegel, lent by the cooperative Lansky, shot Joe the Boss to death in a Coney Island restaurant. Luciano had guided him there and stepped into the men’s room just before the execution squad marched in. The assassination made Maranzano the victor in the Castellammarese War and, in supposed gratitude to Luciano, Maranzano made him the Number Two man in his new Mafia empire. Maranzano proclaimed himself the "Boss of Bosses" in New York and set up five crime families under him. That was only the beginning of Maranzano's plans. He was determined to become the supreme boss of the entire Mafia in the United States.

To achieve that end, Maranzano compiled a list of two gangsters who had to be eliminated: In Chicago, Al Capone; in New York, Charles Luciano. Maranzano understood Luciano had his own ambitions and figured to crush him quickly. But Maranzano was not quick enough. Luciano and Lansky learned of Maranzano’s plans in advance. Maranzano was going to summon Luciano and Vito Genovese to his office for a conference. He had lined up a murderous Irish gunman, Mad Dog Coll, to assassinate the pair either in his office or shortly after they left. Instead, moments before Coll arrived to set up the ambush, four of Lansky’s gunners, pretending to be government agents, entered Maranzano’s office, and shot and stabbed him to death.

Luciano was now at the top, a dandy dresser and well-known sport on Broadway. He looked menacing, thanks to a famous scarring he received in 1929, when knife-wielding kidnappers severed the muscles in his right cheek, leaving him with an evil droop in his right eye. Contrary to popular belief, he didn’t get the nickname "Lucky" for this incident, but instead got it for being a whiz at selecting winning horses at various tracks.
Lucky Luciano could not have built a national crime syndicate alone, he needed alliances. What Lucky needed was someone he could trust—someone with brains and guts. He found this and more with his childhood buddy, Meyer Lansky. Meyer was called, with total respect, the "Little Man," and Lucky’s advice to his followers was always "listen to him." An agent of the FBI would say of him with grudging admiration:


Meyer Lansky
"He would have been chairman of the board of General Motors if he’d gone into legitimate business."
Born Maier Suchowljansky, a Jew from Grodno, Poland, he truly had the first and last word in organized crime. Everybody, especially Luciano, listened to Meyer because it paid. If they listened well, he might, for instance, give them a slice of the pre-Castro Cuban action. Lansky cut in Chicago, Detroit, New Jersey, and New York.

When the Trafficantes of Tampa tried to go in big on their own in Cuba, Lansky used his Batista connection to squash the move. Then he gave them a slice, smaller than what many other mafiosi got. That was Lansky’s way. Jack Dragna, the Los Angeles Mafia boss, once tried to use muscle in on Lansky to get a piece of Las Vegas. Lansky talked him in circles and gave him nothing. It was Lansky’s way.

Both Luciano and Lansky independently said that they had planned the formation of a new syndicate as early as 1920, when Luciano was in his early 20s and Lansky was only 18. Lansky and Luciano together survived the crime wars of the 1920s by cunning alliances, eliminating one foe after another, even though they lacked the manpower and firepower of other gangs. When they effected the killings of Masseria and then Maranzano, they stood at the pinnacle of power in the underworld. Even Al Capone realized they were more powerful than he.

Luciano once explained, "I learned a long time before that Meyer Lansky understood the Italian brain almost better than I did…I used to tell Meyer that he may’ve had a Jewish mother, but someplace he must’ve been wet-nursed by a Sicilian." Luciano often said Lansky "could look around corners," or anticipate what would happen next in underworld intrigues, and that "the barrel of his gun was curved," meaning he knew how to keep himself out of the line of fire. Through the years that was Lansky’s way.

Meyer Lansky was a pro at staying out of the limelight. Even during the Kefauver investigation (1950-51) into crime, Lansky was considered so unimportant that he was not even called as a witness to testify. The committee did not even mention him until the final report when they found evidence of a Costello-Adonis-Lansky alliance.

It was Lansky who opened up what was for a time the Syndicate’s greatest source of income, gambling in Havana. He personally handled negotiations with the dictator Batista. Luciano was pleased with this money machine and never stepped on the toes of Meyer Lansky and listened to him intently. It was Meyer who had the brains of the outfit, but it was a group of remorseless hired killers who had the muscles to keep the ship running. Known infamously as Murder, Incorporated.
The mob never had any of society’s misgivings about the justification of the death penalty. They decided it would be very businesslike to set up a special troop of killers that the Syndicate could call on for rub-outs. By doing this, they felt it would eliminate animosity and conflict of interest in killing each other’s members. Under the rules, Murder, Inc., killed only for pressing business reasons, and was never to be brought into action against political figures, prosecutors or reporters. Bugsy Siegel probably best summarized the top gangsters’ attitudes toward Murder, Inc., when he informed construction executive Del Webb, rather philosophically, that he had nothing to fear from the mob because "we only kill each other."


Dutch Schultz
The principal that "we only kill each other," was never better illustrated than in the rubout of New York numbers king, Dutch Schultz, himself a founding ruler of the Syndicate. In 1935, Schultz had become the prime target of special prosecutor, Thomas E. Dewey, and he demanded that Murder, Inc., hit Dewey. This was in direct violation of the founding rules of the organization, and Schultz was voted down. Then Schultz stormed out of the meeting with Luciano, Lansky, Costello and Adonis, insisting he was not bound by such a decision and that he would handle the hit himself.
Immediately, a new vote was taken, and the principle of law and order prevailed. Schultz got the death penalty. The job was carried out shortly thereafter in a Newark chop house.

Albert Anastasia is often described as the "Lord High Executioner", or operating commander of the troop, but he took orders from Louis Lepke, the country’s number one labor racketeer and a member of the Syndicate’s ruling circle. Lepke later earned the distinction of being the only top Syndicate member to be executed by a state or federal body, when he died in Sing Sing’s electric chair. At times, Joey Adonis also issued orders. However, none of the estimated 500 murders believed to have been committed by Murder, Inc., ever went ahead without the concurrence of Luciano, Lansky or Frank Costello.


Albert Anastasia
Directly below Anastasia, Lepke and Adonis were a number of lieutenants, including Louis Capone (no relation to big Al), Mendy Weiss and Abe "Kid Twist" Reles. Instructions for specific assignments came from Luciano, Lansky or Costello and then passed on to the underlings. This way it could not be proved in any criminal prosecution that the men at the top were involved.
In 1940, Murder, Inc. unraveled when a number of lesser mob members were picked up on suspicion of various murders. Also picked up was Abe Reles. He became known as the "Canary of Murder, Inc.," and eventually gave details on some 200 killings in which he personally participated or had knowledge. He died while in police custody under mysterious circumstances. He "fell" 75 feet out a hotel window.

Life in the 1930s was tough for the average American. The Depression left numerous people homeless and without jobs. This wasn't the case for Lucky Luciano and his cohorts. Luciano knew that people were the same regardless of social status, when it came to gambling, drinking and prostitution—the more the merrier. This insight enabled Lucky to reap enormous profits from these vices for himself, and others in the Syndicate. Prostitution was Luciano’s forte, and he mastered the art of pimping. But just like a drug dealer shouldn’t sample his product, Luciano shouldn’t have sampled his girls.
He was a celebrity now. Everywhere he went, he enjoyed himself hugely, gambling at the racetracks, preening in the glory of golden girls from Hollywood, and watching Joe Dimaggio slam a baseball at Yankee Stadium.

Sexually transmitted diseases spared no one, as Luciano can testify. Seven times a gonorrhea victim, and once a syphilitic. He was also concerned about the humiliation of being a pimp. He expressed doubts in particular about his prostitution business. Luciano felt that more money could be extracted out of the business if he would Syndicate every whorehouse in New York and put all the madams on salary. "We’ll run them like chain stores," Lucky blurted to one of his men.


Thomas Dewey
The madams who did not fall into line ended up in the hospital, and in the words of one of the girls: "They worked us six days a week, the Syndicate did. They worked us like dogs and then they kicked us out." When Special Prosecutor Thomas Dewey and his team of twenty racket busters went after a conspiracy in the prostitution racket, they secretly set up a massive raid on approximately eighty brothels. Forty of the raids were successful. Almost a hundred madams and girls were brought in.
Then Luciano got caught, and it was an astonishing story. Lucky had worried most about his prostitution business for good reason. Under Dewey’s pounding, it began to fall apart. The prostitutes were talking. The madams were talking. Soon the bookers of the women were talking. As the weeks passed, Dewey, who at first had not wanted to venture into prostitution, a social matter, realized he had an unassailable case against Luciano in just this one field.

A warrant was issued for Luciano’s arrest, and, in Hot Springs, Arkansas, he was taken in. Soon Lucky’s greatest fear came to pass, he was put on trial. Dewey’s witnesses were convincing. They corroborated with ease the fact that Luciano had, if nothing else, been running an illegal vice combine. He denied all charges and still felt that even he was convicted, the sentence would not be very much to worry about. Oh, how wrong he was. In Dewey’s masterfull summation to the jury, he translated his points of evidence into a general onslaught against Luciano. The jury was convinced and found him guilty of all charges. The judge handed the thirty-eight-year-old

Luciano a staggering sentence of thirty to fifty years imprisonment.

Within a handful of hours, his empire left to his associates, Luciano was interviewed by Dr. L. E. Kienholz, assistant psychiatrist in the classification clinic at Sing Sing Prison, just like all other humiliated new inmates. Kienholz found Luciano a man of "borderline intelligence." "He should attend school and learn a trade while here," Keinholz recommended in his diagnostic report. Keinholz later wrote, "Due to his drug addiction, he should be transferred to Dannemora Prison." It looks like Lucky’s luck had finally run out.



So Lucky Luciano, unlucky at last, was shipped out of Sing Sing to the Clinton State Prison at Dannemora, near the village of Malone in upstate New York. Dannemora was known the "Siberia" of all American penitentiaries. There Luciano, Inmate No. 92168, diagnosed in a second psychiatric interview as a "normal criminal type," was put to work in the laundry.
Dannemora, the third oldest maximum-security institution in the state, was a cold, neglected, unfeeling, inhuman place in which men like Lucky Luciano were supposed to think on their sins and repent them while being kept apart from society. He was confined in his cell for fourteen to sixteen hours day after day, week after week, month after month, from the second of July in 1936 until the warm, wartime spring of 1942. Out of sight, out of mind. Or so it was assumed.

Luciano and his Syndicate associates back in New York City were influential enough to ask the warden for one important favor. Let Lucky have unrecorded visits from friends and family. The requests were granted.

It was business as usual and Lucky was able to continue to run his empire from the walls of Dannemora. On one particular visit, two narcotics agents dropped by thinking that Luciano might be ready to talk. As soon as he saw the agents he said, "Take me out of here. I won’t talk to these people." Another visit brought none other than his sentencing judge, Phillip J. McCook. In an interview attributed to Luciano in a book whose authenticity has been questioned, The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano, by Martin A. Gosch and Richard Hammer, Judge McCook is alleged to have fallen to his knees, pleaded for forgiveness, and begged Luciano to remove a Sicilian curse that was ruining his life. Nobody who knew the rugged, no-nonsense judge believed this—and it never happened. Actually, McCook was visiting Luciano to check out a rumor that turned out to be unfounded -- that Luciano had been threatened with underworld violence.

World War II was grinding on in 1942 and the United States had entered it in 1941 when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Luciano was ready in the spring of 1942 for almost any idea that would help get him out of dreary Dannemora. As it was, he was not even eligible to apply for parole until April 24, 1956. Meyer Lansky, in trying to help his friend get out of prison, sent out feelers that suggested that Lucky could help the United States war effort in Sicily and at home. Some serious thought was made to enlist Luciano’s help in securing the waterfront docks in New York from Nazi saboteurs.

Naval Intelligence got wind of the idea, and eagerly decided to approach Luciano with their proposal. But first, they needed to get him out of Dannemora and send him to a more secure location. The place they had in mind was Great Meadow Prison in Comstock, New York. Luciano was ecstatic and jumped at the opportunity to leave Dannemora to what he felt like was a country club. On May 12, 1942, he was headed for Great Meadow Prison.

Luciano felt that Great Meadow was a great place to visit, but didn’t want to live there. Shortly after his arrival there, he was hospitalized for iritis of his right eye, the eyelid which had drooped ever since his ordeal back in 1929. He recovered and would soon be healthy enough to be assigned chores in the cement shack . He attended no chapel services and never set foot in a classroom. Afterall, what trade could he learn for life on the outside?
Lucky didn’t break a single prison rule and was considered a model prisoner. Friends dropped by on a frequent basis, especially Meyer Lansky. However, there were other visitors that Lucky didn’t know, but expected.

The Allies in war torn Europe were about to launch an invasion of Sicily. The U.S. could use some help in acquiring intelligence on German troop movements and other vital military information. The U.S. had reason to believe the Mafia wanted the Axis forces off the island, so that they could get back to peace and prosperity for its own purposes. Naval Intelligence made numerous unrecorded visits to Great Meadow to solicit help from Lucky. Can he get word to the Mafia leaders on Sicily asking for help? Lucky assured them he could, and it was later proven he did.


Lucky enjoys a glass of wine in retirement
Lucky did what you would call easy-time at Great Meadow. He could get anything he wanted—booze, good food, and reportedly women. With his service to the U.S. government, he felt this justified an early release from prison. At war’s end and in a strange twist of fate, the person who could grant commutation of sentence was also the person who put him in jail, Thomas Dewey, who was now the Governor of New York.
Maybe Dewey felt obligated in giving Luciano a break because he had heard about Dutch Schultz’s intention on having him killed and how Luciano disposed of Dutch instead. At any rate, in January, 1946, Dewey granted commutation of sentence with the condition that he be deported to Italy. Dewey found that Lucky never became a naturalized citizen in his own right.

At 8:50 a.m., Sunday, February 10, 1946, Charles "Lucky" Luciano set sail away from America aboard the S.S Laura Keene. Ready to begin a new life in the old country, yet never gave up hope of return. He never did, alive.

The Italian government gave strict rules on Luciano’s livelihood. He could venture no more than a few miles from Naples and had to tell them about any visitors from outside Italy. That was a rule he broke frequently. He still conducted business back in the states through runners and even the telephone. His friendship with Meyer Lansky began to sour in the late 1950s, because he felt Meyer was cutting him out on more lucrative deals back in the States. Regardless, Lucky remained a very rich man.

Lucky’s heart was weak and he suffered several heart attacks. On January 26, 1962, he was scheduled to meet a scriptwriter who was to do a story about him. Upon greeting him at the Naples airport, he clutched his chest, face contorted, and died of a massive heart attack. Only after his death was Lucky Luciano allowed to come back to the United States. He is buried at St. John’s Cemetery in New York City.


There are several good books on the life of Lucky Luciano. I highly recommend the following.

Balsamo, William & George Carpozi, Jr., Crime, INC.: The inside Story of the Mafia's First 100 Years

Campbell, Rodney, The Luciano Project.

Chandler, David Leon, Brothers in Blood, The Rise of the Criminal Brotherhoods.

Feder& Joesten, Luciano Story

Fraley, Oscar & Marshall Smith & Sal Vizzini, Vizzini: The Secret Lives of America's Most Successful Undercover Agent.

Gosch, Martin A. & Richard Hammer, The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano.

A&E Biography Video: Lucky Luciano; Chairman of the Mob

By "yours truely" do you mean that you wrote all of the above?

Who is Ron Nichols, BTW?

I don't think it goes back 100's of years. The was Mafia created somewhere around 1860.

By "yours truely" do you mean that you wrote all of the above?

Who is Ron Nichols, BTW? [/b][/quote]I can't seem to find the reference to "Ron Nichols" in Frankie_Pedrino's post. It seems that plawrence's question about Nichols was posted at 11:03 a.m., and Frankie's post was edited two minutes later. Was the reference to Nichols removed at 11:05? I'd like to check out Nichols, as it appears that he's quite a scholar.

Looks like all of the above was edited out, which answers my question, I guess.

I'll assume that Ron Nichols wrote it.

http://www.crimelibrary.com/about/authors/nichols/index.html

There's a link in there to the Lucky Luciano essay.

Great minds....

....really do think alike!


Don Cardi