Queens History

My two favorite entertainment research subjects are history and the mob. This question kind of covers both, I'm sure as soon as I post I'm going to search and find part of my answer but I want your opinions as well. Queens isn't usually ever mentioned when the origins of the mafia are discussed. When did the borough begin its population boom and when and what and who were some of the first organized criminals to make queens their home?

I have no idea about the first mafiosi, but I know that when the secret service was investigating the Morello gang counterfeit operation during the first decade of the 20th century, there were Morello members with Queens address. Ignazio "Lupo the Wolf" Saietta died in Queens in the 40's, but I don't know how young he was when he moved there.

Jimmy Coonan had Mickey Spillane shot in Woodside Queens on May 13th, 1977. This secured control of the West Side rackets for Coonan, even though Spillane had retreated to Queens. Coonan acquired Spillane's top enforcer, Eddie "the butcher" Cummiskey, after the rubout.

A few years later, in 1981, Queens bred Joey Massino buried 3 Bonanno captains in an open pit called "city line" near Howard Beach.

Throughout the 80's and 90's Queens was very much a mob hotspot. And not just because of Gotti. The Genovese had a strong crew in Corona. The Gambinos controlled Woodhaven, Ozone, Howard and Richmond Hill. The Lucheses and Bonannano's had a presence on Cross Bay BLVD, Maspeth and Middle Village as well.

The Westside had been in Corona long before the '80s. Farby's father came out of that crew and helped break in the Two Tonys. And if he was still alive he'd be at least ninety.

Wasn't that a Sopranos episode?

Or was it Seinfeld. I can never remember.

Thanks PB.

I'm guessing it's Tony Federicci and Anthony Romanello.

There were some early Bonannos there before 1920, like the Navarras and the Galantes. Nick Alfano was there in 1930. Going further back, there was a Vito and Antonio Giglio there in 1900.

I was actually just checking your Informer article on the early NY mob regarding this, and it only had one reference to Queens, Daniel Demanna who was shot in Bronx. I'm only on page 40/108 and so far it's very informative and gives a ton of additional information compared to what I've read before, including the First Family which is the best one I've seen so far.

For example the First Family doesn't really underline that Lupo the Wolf and Morello ran different families, although the way they're referred as Lupo-Morello gang and they're called each others lieutenants in press indicated to me that they were really both individual bosses.

Here's a good example: http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85058397/1912-08-24/ed-1/seq-5.pdf

In this one Flynn also talks about the political power that the mafia apparently already had at that time.

Glad you like the article. Have to credit Angelo and Lennert also for their own research and additions.

The cause of the confusion, as we pointed out, is that the Secret Service and other law enforcement entities just weren't interested in learning the details of criminal organizations and failed to ask probing questions. The Secret Service had a potential goldmine of info available to them with Salvatore Clemente, but because they were only interest in counterfeiting they scraped the surface. It's the same when Nick Gentile started talking with the OSS in the late 1930s. At least now, thanks to their information being made available to the public and sites like Ancestry.com and online historical newspapers, we can start fitting the pieces of the puzzles together and make sense out of them.

For the article I did look into Queens, but only up to a point. We didn't have grant money to pay for all this so couldn't obtain as many resources as we would have liked. First, we looked into how different communities developed. Bronx and Queens developed late compared to Manhattan and Brooklyn, so that had to be taken into consideration. Then immigrant patterns. In different areas like Manhattan's Little Italy, parts of Mid-Manhattan, South Brooklyn, and Williamsburg, we can see immigration from specific Italian cities and towns. Because of chain migration and the padrone system, they would move near each other. Bronx developed later, mostly with the Terranovas moving up there after D'Aquila declared war on them. In Queens, I saw the Navarras, and they were connected to the Galantes by marriage. The Giglios may have been part of the early Bonannos, but we aren't certain of their affiliation. Some Giglios intermarried with the Manganos, but that was later on.