I even heard this crap growing up in Chicago forty and fifty years after it supposedly happened. The story goes that on September 10,1931 all the old greaseball's from the boot got whacked in one night so Charlie Lucky could make a sweep of it. Turns out it was only three guys in Jersey. hahahaha

theres was more like 4-5 old mustache petes wacked out

Gerard Scarpato was whacked that night. He wasn't even a mobster- he owned Nuova Villa Tammaro in Coney Island, which was the restaurant where Joe the Boss was clipped.

Good call Karona... Jimmy Marino and a handful and the two Jersey guys in the bay.

Sam Monaco and Louis Russo were the guys found in the bay , they were close allies if salvatore maranzano

The five men, killed around the time Maranzano was killed, were Sam Monaco, Louie Russo, Jimmy LaPore (Marino), Joseph Siragusa (Pittsburgh) and a Philly mafioso whose name escapes me right now. Dutch Schultz´s lawyer, Richard "Dixie" Davis, is most probably the one responsible for the myth of the purge, claiming more than 30 old mustache petes were knocked out across the country the day Maranzano was killed. This number snowballed later into 50 and more by newspapermen and authors. Dixie claimed he had learned about the purge from one of Schultz´s gunmen Bo Weinberg. But no crime historian or Mafia expert has ever found any evidence of 50 plus mafiosi killed. The story was retold in The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano, claiming close to 100 mafiosi were killed around the same time as Maranzano. Plain bullshit! The myth is a prime example of Mafia sensationalism, the kind used to sell newspapers and books. The story even made The Guinness Book of Records! And it was all lies.




Monaco and Russo were close allies of Masseria, not Maranzano. They were the leaders of a Newark, NJ Family, formed by Masseria and unhappy about Maranzano´s and Luciano´s joint effort in the Masseria killing.

After maranzano was murdered , James Marino , Sam Monaco and Louis Russo were murdered for being allies of salvatore maranzano

Maranzano Russo and Monaco were killed on the same day

The Philly guy I think your talking about is salvatore sabella

They were last seen on Sep 10th, the same day Maranzano was killed. But their dead bodies were found three days later. It has not been established when exactly Monaco and Russo were killed.




How do you know exactly Monaco and Russo were Maranzano allies? Do you have any source for this. They were leaders of a Family, formed by Masseria and disbanded by the Commission in the mid 1930s. Check Bill Bonanno´s "The Last Testament" page 73.

From what I have read after Luciano orchestrated the murder of maranzano he went on a purge killing all known allies of maranzano , Russo , Monaco and Marino were part of that group , but I don't suppose we will know for sure because we where not there , it's all hersay and speculation , but this is what I believe from what I have read

I've got that book and every other book related to the bonnanos and to be honest I wouldn't believe a word either of them said , apparently they wernt in the drug trade ha ha . Every word that came out of there mouths were lies . They both should have been clipped wen they started causing problems in the 60s

Hairy, I looked it up in the LToLL. Lucky said the story was complete BS. That's where I got the info where Scarpa to was killed. I agree there's inaccuracies in the book, but the Night of Sicilian Vespers is not one of them, iirc.

You are right. I stand corrected. It wasn´t in the Luciano book those figures came up. Must have read it in some other book. Or read in in an article. However I disagree with you on Scarpato. After the Masseria killing, Scarpato was struck with fear and left for Italy. He came back to New York in 1932 and was killed soon afterwards. So Scarpato wasn´t part of the group of men killed around the time Maranzano got it.

It is a myth. Alan Block, a professor, set out to do a story on it for his 1979 book, and found there was no evidence of it ever hapening. No one can even be sure if the two deaths in Jersey were related to Marranzno or Masieria, they are just the only two deaths that could be found that day. It is a fairy tale that grew into a legend, and though it was debunked, people still repeat the story as truth.

Do u not find it a coincidence that two maranzano allies were killed or disappeared the same day ,????

Good post. And the same can be said about a lot of other bullshit stories on the Mafia. For example (just off the top of my head) the claim that Capone was responsible for hundreds of gang killings, the claim that Luciano was the one who formed LCN etc, etc.

Humbert S. Nelli was the first one to go after the myth in his book The Business of Crime (Oxford University Press, 1976). Block searched the whole country for newspaper articles and found a possible Pittsburgh connection, but that was it. There's a possibility that Joe Ardizzone's (Los Angeles boss) death was connected too.