VITO GENOVESE

Why was vito allowed to break the rules by an assasination attempt on frank costello and by murdering albert anastsia with no reprisals?

It was a power struggle and changing of the guard.Vito was secretly backed up by other bosses but got screwed in the end.Anastasia was doing the same....

Vito tried to get permission from the commission to kill costello a few times before and they would'nt give it, so he tried to kill him against thier will and nothing happened to him, from mu understanding he also killed anastasia without thier permission and still, nothing happenned

Vito had gained enough power that he was able to get away with attempting to kill Costello without Commission approval. Costello had begun to run out of allies anyway with Lucky and Joe Adonis being deported and Anastasia destined for the slab himself by the end of the year. Bonanno and Profaci were rivals of Costello and probably wouldn't have minded him being rubbed out anyways.

In 1957 Vito Genovese convinced Carlo Gambino to side with him against Anastasia, Costello, and Luciano. Genovese devised a plan to convince Anastasia that they were not making enough money from the casinos in Cuba. He used Gambino to deliver the message to Anastasia that Meyer Lansky, the man in control of the casinos in Cuba, was holding out on them. When Anastasia confronted Lansky about the missing money, Lansky threw his support to Genovese and Gambino.

Vito don't get enough credit for being a sly fox

Vito had machiavellian skills but he was a very violent and greedy man...in other words,blind.

Vito was a ruthless guy and a stone cold gangster, no doubt. Unfortunately for him, he made too many enemies on his way to the top and it ended up costing him the last ten years of his life.

Frank had the commission but vito had the streets, when its all said and done its better to have the streets on ur side: gotti, merlino, the cigar etc...

Frank Costello was a member of the Commission, so if Vito had asked permission to kill him then Costello would have had a legitimite reason to kill Genovese instead, with the Commission's approval, so I doubt it.

But he seeked the commission approval a few times to kill frank sndvthey refused, and frank wasnt really a violent person

Genovese did, however, obtain approval for the crimes after the fact. It was an extraordinary sequence of events that Attorney General Kennedy noted in September 1963, when he stated that Genovese "… wanted Commission approval for these acts-which he has received." The Genovese plot against Anastasia and Costello and the ex post facto commission approval were integral events in the rise to dominance of organized crime figures for the years that followed. It directly led to the assemblage of national syndicate leaders at the Apalachin conference three weeks after the Anastasia murder, and to the rise of Carlo Gambino to a position of pre-eminence in La Costa Nostra.

As i said,there was a changing of the guard.

IMHO Vito Genovese was the ultimate gangster. When he was a kid Nicky Scarfo probably had dreams about Vito.

Everyone says that Gambino, Luciano,and Lansky set up Genovese for that smack arrest that had him die in prison. But afterwards don't you think he would of known he was setup? Why didn't he have Gambino or Lansky hit if he believed it was them that put him in prison to die? He still had had the juice to have it done. Ok Luciano was in italy but Gambino and Lansky were do-able.

Not true. Genovese never asked for approval to hit Costello. After the fact, he claimed (falsely) that Gigante had shot Costello on his own, without Genovese´s consent. But how exactly he managed to save Gigante is not known. Anastasia however wanted war. Although no evidence of it, I believe the Commission met and solved the issue and thereby avoided a war, by approving the hit on Anastasia. Probably because the Commission members found Anastasia harder to restrain. At the same time, Genovese had support from Lucchese who had for a long time competed for influence in the same political sphere as Costello. So Lucchese was glad to see Costello gone. Anastasia, fatally, had no support on the Commission.

Nobody ever "punished" Vito for the failed hit because he was probably the most feared mobster in the country at that point. Once he went to jail he lost a lot of power, even within his own family, and there was not a lot he could do as far as getting back at Gambino, who had consolidated his own power after Vito's imprisonment.

This is Vito Genovese we're talking about, i have a feeling he could of gotten someone to do the work.

Where did it first originate that Genovese was setup by Luciano, Gambino, and Lansky? Have made guys ever been caught on tape talking about it? Did Valachi have anything in his book on that?

Just curious..thanks.

Like a lot of underworld theories, it gets a lot of print but it's never been definitively proved. I certainly find it very plausible as once Genovese was out of the way, Gambino really had no opposition as far as underworld supremacy was concerned. Couple that with Luciano, Costello, and Lansky still having enough connections behind the scenes to set up Vito, Carl very well may have just taken that and ran with it, despite Vito helping him out with the whole Anastasia deal just two years prior.

Keep your friends close but your enemies closer...

The theory that lanskey and the fellas set vito up is false, they was able to connect vito to the drug dealer through conspiracy, they knew mutual people and he was in the same company with vito once before eventhough vito never dpoke to him, couppled with the fact that the fellas didnt take care fo him like he thought they would after he got locked up so he flipped, but that lanskey myth is just that

Someone should call the Mythbusters!?!?

we'll never know...

QUACK QUACK

Vito genovese should have his own movie

The best theory about who killed Anastasia was that it was a conspiracy led by Joe Biondo. Under Mangano, Biondo was the consigliere but was demoted to captain by Anastasia. Steve Armone was part of his group. Jerry Capeci covered this in more detail. There's no proof that Genovese had anything to do with it.

Genovese gets credit for more than he did. He was said to have hired Carmine Galante to kill Carlo Tresca in 1943. The major problem here is that Genovese and Galante were in different borgatas, and Tresca was known to have gone after Frank Garofalo in his newspaper. It's clear that the order came from Joe Bonanno or Frank Garofalo. Genovese had nothing to do with it.

As for who set up Genovese against Costello, it was discovered that Tony Bender was giving both Genovese and Costello information against each other, so Genovese was led to believe that Costello was going after him. Costello and Genovese reconciled in prison and the order was given to make Bender "disappear;" and regarding Genovese going to prison for narcotics trafficking, Tom Tripodi of the Bureau of Narcotics wrote that he helped in "setting him up."

A known dealer was recognized by Genovese. He said "Hi" or something to him, and that act of recognition was used against him to put him away. Other Mob members who were around during that time period and knew him denied that Genovese was a drug trafficker. No doubt he took a cut from the proceeds from members of his crime family who were traffickers, but probably gave lip service to the order to lay off drugs of face the death penalty. It seems what they did instead was to cut off all aid to their members who were arrested for drugs.

Vito Genovese's time as boss of the former Costello crime family lasted for eleven years, but almost ten of those were in prison in Atlanta. For most of the time Genovese was boss, his crime family was run by his underboss, Gerry Catena. For all the claims about Genovese being a "boss of bosses" or the most powerful boss on the Commission, the evidence shows that simply wasn't true. In fact, the whole claim that one boss gave orders to the others is bogus. All of the New York bosses were equal, except for Joe Bonanno who essentially lost his Family and was in a war from 1964 to 1968. Carlo Gambino didn't move up to become boss of bosses after Genovese went to prison or died: there was no boss of bosses, not since 1931.

Good post, Faith. I totally agree with it. Since becoming a menber of this forum, I have been trying to explain numerous of times on here much of what you wrote, especially the "boss of bosses" thing but it seems to have been to no avail and received just marginal support. (I´m thankful for the marginal support.) But I´m amazed that some people still thinks there was a boss of bosses after the murder of Maranzano.

"First among equals" might be a better expression. Just a little more juice then the others and might control enough votes on the commission to sway things the way he'd like. I think of Gambino in that role.

While Lucchese was still alive, Gambino was his puppet.

I agree to a certain degree with you on that. People don't realise the power Tommy Lucchese wielded. Gambino didn't become the true #1 guy until Lucchese died in 67 i think it was. Carlo made a smart move having his son marry Luccheses daughter.

Well, there was no #1 in a sense that #1 controlled everything. One boss, one vote on the Commission. What it all came down to was to have allies on the Commission. It all worked while there were two philosphical blocs on the Commission. When the conservative bloc was no more, the idea of having a Commission, went downhill.

I agree with you that it was a smart move by Gambino having his son marry Lucchese´s daughter. I´m sure you know this, but having offspring marrying eachother to strengthen and preserve a friendship/business relationship between two bosses with same philosophy and mentality did not start with Gambino. It´s a tradition as old as the Sicilian mountains.

I agree with you on that #1 comment, nobody has supreme power over the others but it pays to have families with a commission vote on your side.

In Leonetti's book he commented that besides getting alot of Tony Caponigros north jersey assets he believed another motive to kill Bruno was to take control of Philly's vote on the commission which seemed to be controlled by the Gambinos while Bruno was the boss in philly. The Genovese namely Gigante wanted to have an ally in philly who he could depend on and thats what he got in Scarfo. Bobby Manna even asked Scarfo where the family would stand if anything should happen to Bruno and Scarfo told him they would be with the Genovese. It's in Leonetti's book.

It can get very frustrating when you run up against people who still believe that "Boss of all Bosses" is an actual title,and that he is the "Head of the Mafia". The same people will swear up and down that the mafia doesn't deal drugs, they only kill other mobsters,and that every Made Guy is a criminal mastermind who rolls around in piles of money.

I think a lot of the misinformation comes from the sheer volume of BS that is thrown out there by TV and movie productions. In many cases the desire to tell a good story trumps the truth. It really is a shame,because as this board knows,the real stories are way more fascinating than the crap that the hacks are putting out .

Exactly, and to the extent a boss or voting bloc control the majority vote, they can control the Commission. I think the one man, one vote is being overstated. On the streets, the most powerful family will always have more influence, one way or another. It's like arguing that the United States and the Cameroon are equal in power since they both have a single vote at the UN general assembly.

Well, you can't make that comparison about the USA and Cameroon since the USA is on the Security Council. Anyway, saying one boss one vote does not contradict saying that they also made political alliances. Of course they tried to sway people to their sides and had voting blocs. They're both true.

I think ht2´s comparison is very good. Think of a functioning Commission in the same way as a functioning UN, before the collaps of the USSR.

In the 1960s, Lucchese could count on Gambino´s support in one matter, while Gambino could count on Lucchese´s support in another matter. At the same time, Bonanno could count on Profaci´s support in one matter, while Profaci could count on Bonanno´s support in another matter.

On street level, yes the Gambinos for example were much more powerful than the Pittsburgh Family. But keep in mind that the Pittsburgh Family had it´s representative on the Commission, speaking for them. So in a sense the Pittsburgh Family did have some influence on the Commission. In real life, and in real life politics, a small country like Cameroon has no influence in the UN or in the security council.

Good point ht2 They cannot compare the U.S. and Camerron on the same table,theres always a supreme force on the table.Yes they all have equal vote,but votes can be controlled.My opinion is that the commision was formed so the more powerful families can have some sort of control and information over the less powerful families,about uncovering plots,solving conflicts and stuff like that.Good example is the uncovering the Bonanno plot against Lucchese and Gambino.

I agree with the analogy, just not the comparison of the USA to Cameroon. On this final point we are all in agreement.

I DO NOT THINK THIS STORY is true on Genovese rules, or he was set up, you would have to think VITO GENOVESE would have hit back if set up he was still boss for years when in jail.