great find..there was an article in the 70's called "the two hundred"..might have been ny times..is it possible to track that down?

Sounds like someone reaching out for a freebie.

That photo of Tommaso Gagliano came from his citizenship registration that I took myself at the national archives.

I'm looking at the photos. That's the whole problem. The Gagliano there looks like a completely different person from the narrow faced Gagliano in the above chart.

And I noticed that Gagliano is listed in your link as "Tommaso "Tommy Gaetano" Gagliano". That is just not credible to me. I think before these books were put out, there was only one photo of Gagliano, that of the round faced man, and one name...Gaetano Gagliano. Now there are two photos circulating everywhere and more than one name ("Tommasso"). These guys over at the informer even tried to reconstruct the face of Maranzano himself. But if you use google, you will find that what the person did was take a photograph of the movie star Rudolph Valentino and transpose some editing over it, then claim that the artwork was the result of studying crime scene drawings and descriptions of Maranzano's body.

Look at the face on the right,

True Face of Maranzano according to the Informer Crowd

Now look at this,

Rudolph Valentino

They flipped the photo backwards and I'm supposed to accept that that is a credible Salvatore Maranzano? And that thin faced guy is Gaetano Gagliano? I don't think so.

You caught on to us, Alfa. On the basis of someone else's photo reconstruction you dismiss our article. Keep your $5.

LOL I worked for that 5 dollars.

Look, don't disown this. The one who put out Rudolph Valentino as Salvatore Maranzano was David Critchley himself, and he did it in the Informer magazine. The article is called "Maranzano Muddle".

Now the same crowd of people are trying to tell me that this guy...

Gaetano Gagliano

and this guy....

Tommasso Gagliano

are the same guy.

Yes I will keep my 5 dollars.

I have none of any of your posters knowledge, however in my remembering of the book " the valachi papers" joe valachi mentions he was married to mildred reina, the daughter of Gaetano reina who is listed in the chart in the last page. according to valachi reina was to become the leader of his own family, but was killed before maranzano appointed him. valachi also mentions that bonaventurna pinzolo was masserias underboss, and reina was one of his captains. now, a lot made have came to light after valachis book. written I believe in 1968. im sure you all know this but valachi is never used as a source, and I was wondering why.

Binnie, thank you for that. The whole pre Commission arrangement really isn't clear. We needed Bill Bonanno just to tell us that there were originally 3 families and not 5. Of course after you organize a thing, you have everyone on record, what their rank is, who their skipper is, and on and on. But back in the dark ages, back when "guys were blowing each other up every 2 minutes just because they came from a different part of Sicily", it's extremely murky. We shouldn't argue or try to impose our beliefs onto others regarding the pre-1931 Mafia. We should relish the discovery process of shining light into that dark part of American history and the history of many of our major American cities.

In regards to your comment Binnie, I must add that Gaetano Reina, just like the Morellos (and Terranova's?) was Corleonesi and probably mafia before he even came to America. So basically, most if not all of the Corleonesi were allied to Masseria, and all of the Castellammaresi were allied to Don Maranzano. But Maranzano was a Castellammaresi himself. Masseria was not from Corleone so far as we know. Yet the Corleonesi acknowledged him as the Boss.

Something is left out.

yes, and knowing you, you will solve this riddle. it might take you awhile but, I don't think youre going to give up. look forward your posts.

leaving aside the specific question of why the corleonesi would defer to an outsider, there is the basic question of the "mechanism" of affiliation . . . .

that is, if there were in essence 3 main "fields" of ny mafia pre-1931, one Corleone, one Palermo, one Castellammarese, then did gangsters with ties to one of these areas "naturally" or "automatically" gravitate toward the respective field? or was the mechanism much looser?

obviously mobsters like Costello and Anastasia had nowhere to go other than to join a family from a different region than their own

but how to account for a mobster like Lucchese, born in Palermo, but a close associate of such Corleonesi figures as Gagliano, Reina, Luciano, etc?

Well I hope you guys figure it out like we did. Should make for good entertainment :-)

hey hey hey now -- i intend to order the Informer issue pretty soon -- I meant only to say that based upon the charts, it looks as though the composition of the pre-1931 families was based largely upon regional affiliations, and yet there would seem to be many exceptions --

first, the major exception of joe "the boss" Masseria

and second, the many instances where mobsters with roots in one part of Sicily joined families that were heavily rooted in another part

and so all of this points to the question of affiliation -- which factors determined how mobsters affiliated pre-1931?

-- clearly the regional factor carried a lot of weight, as palermo mobsters seem to have joined palermo families, the castellammarese gravitated to the castellammarese, etcetera

and yet it appears the regional factor was not the only factor, whether in terms of which family a mobster might join, or even in the case of an outsider (masseria from marsala in trapan) taking over a corleonesi group

so what were the other factors? personal charisma? personal affinities? growing up in a certain neighborhood?

dominic calabrese ... ive been reading every post on this thread and find it very interesting. must take a ton of research to understand the structure of families before 1931. it appears as though your last question is really baffling. its as alfa romeo posted last night. something is missing here. something is left out. and your question alludes to this mystery. what else mattered besides the regional affiliations? I hope I read where someone answers this.

The only way genuine pictures of these guys can ever be authenticated is to track down family as I'm sure many of them had large families and photos have survived generations. The original maranzano picture is actually a guy named salvatore Messina a London gangster. There is so much info missing and the only way some of the blanks will be filled in is through research follow up and the use of family members to get background on these guys

Ok, from what I can glean so far, the dark horse that might help explain the mysterious power Joe the Boss had over the Morellos might be the Camorra.

After the Mafia/Camorra war ended in 1917, there was a merger of sorts that brought men like Rocco Valenti (originally a member of Camorra) into the Morello/Terranova group. Joe the Boss was also in the mix starting from some point unclear, though his Sicilian pedegree means Masseria was likely Cosa Nostra from the get-go, whenever that was.

I am suspecting, and I could be wrong, that Joe the Boss could control the Morellos because some of the old Camorra that were adsorbed into the Morello organization supported him. It's hard to imagine a blood related family of black hand terrorists paying monetary tribute to one man and not assassinating him, no matter how rich he was.

Could it be? The root of Joe the Boss Masseria's power was Camorra?

I am reading Last Testament of Bill Bonanno and he's not much help either.

The guy uses the name Tommasso Gagliano. One time. I saw that and thought, hot damn there it is. The name of the old Gagliano Boss was Tommasso. Then he uses the name Gaetano Gagliano twice after that, with no explanation. I wondered right there maybe he was influenced by some of the esteemed writers on this very board because even he, Bill Bonanno, seemed unsure.

Also, I notice on the impressive chart posted on this thread that the Camorra are not mentioned, neither is the Mafia Camorra War of 1916ish, or the subsequent merger between the Camorristi and Morellos that happened directly before and preceding the advent of Guiseppe Masseria. That's a huge omission. This thread is about who Joe the Boss' caporegimes were. No doubt some of them had to be former Camorristi. You give them positions of power to keep the peace.

Umberto Valenti was never a member of the Camorra. If you're going by Wikipedia the writers mix him up with Rocco Valente. Two different people.

I think you may be onto something here. the camorra may have been the strongest faction. they and the calabrian may be the oldest. not much is mentioned of the calabrian. but, I read where their the oldest of all. I got to read dashs book.thank you for the info alfa.

Correct

And btw, that is an old tiny factoid that I already knew from years ago and forgot.

You're too kind Binnie. And what you say merits notice. If the Camorra are needed to explain the origin of Joe Masseria and the base of his power, we cannot ignore any other "mafias" extant at that time to help us understand just what the Masseria organization was composed of.

It sort of all fits together. Maranzano being ethnocentric and disinterested in having relationships with non Sicilians naturally ended up being the general of the smaller army.

Masseria by dealing with different varieties of Italians (Camorra, Al Capone, etc) accumulated the more massive organization. Masseria would even back a non Sicilian (Capone) against a Sicilian (Aiello).

yes, and backing a non-Sicilian against another Sicilian was absolutely unheard of. nobody would dare do it. unless of course hes not Sicilian. I would suggest that masseria had the backing of the old country camorra. if he lived would his faction have won the war?

Masseria was less organized, and he was taken by surprise. Plus he had double agents in his ranks (Lucky and Three Fingers).

For him to win he needed a less ethnically diverse army. The Castellammarese were uniform because they all came from the same village. When the order went out to start shooting, there was no delay because the whole village took orders from one man. Masseria on the other hand had a variety of different bosses with differing degrees of loyalty to him. In Masseria's situation, he probably couldn't organize everyone underneath him to move like one army. He was less organized.

He was taken by surprise. The opening salvo was when Gaetano Reina was felled. But depending on who you read, either Masseria hit him, or Lucky and his confederates did it to make it look like Maranzano started shooting (and to keep Reina from making Maranzano too strong and thus wiping them all out). Either way, Joe the Boss couldn't choose how the war would turn out because he wasn't permitted to choose how and where it would begin.

He had double agents around him. That doesn't need any explanation. That really did him in. He would have been better off leaving Charlie Lucky alone.

How could Masseria have won it? Wow. All I can say is that if he couldn't get someone within the loyal tight nit Castellammarese clan to whack Maranzano, he probably would have to bomb them with TNT in their neighborhoods and speakeasies. There's no other way. I don't think Joe the Boss had the type of loyalty from his supporting cast that they would go out in unison and shoot down 500 Castellammarese.

Maybe the problem was that Joe The Boss's empire was too spread out? Maybe he had more men than Maranzano, but those men were not geographically situated in such a manner that they would be able to surprise the Castellammarese with a unified simultaneous attack.

I read somewhere that the match up was 500 Maranzano men versus 600 Masseria men, and about 200 people under Lucky Luciano and Company before he merged into the Masseria mob. But as soon as the Castellammarese war started, it became clear that Maranzano was stronger solely by the number of soldiers Joe the Boss was losing.

I'm reading Bill Bonanno. He says that Gaetano Gagliano resigned as Boss at a 1953 Commission meeting he (Gagliano) attended in person. If that is the truth then he and Tommasso are not the same person.

Bill got the year wrong. It was in 1951 (or possibly 1950) Gagliano announced that he is stepping down and asked the Commission to approve Lucchese as his successor. Gagliano´s first name was Tommaso and he DID die in February of 1951. End of story. I posted his obituary in one of the threads here some time ago. Use the search function to find it.

for whatever reason, it seems that the following figures were known both as Gaetano and as Tommaso/Tommy/Tom

--Gaetano "Tom" Reina, b. 1889 in Corleone - d. 1930 (his daughter Mildred married Joe Valachi)

--Tommaso "Tommy Gaetano" Gagliano, b. 1884 in Corleone - d. 1951

--Gaetano "Tommy" "Two-Finger Brown" Lucchese, b. 1899 in Palermo -- d. 1967

I used to know an old man everyone called "Tom" but his real name was Gaetano. I think the names Thomas and Gaetano have some close connection for Italians.

this is probably a stretch, but maybe this informs how Italians relate the two names =

Thomas Cajetan (pronounced Ca-'je-tan), also known as Gaetanus, commonly Tommaso de Vio or Thomas de Vio (20 February 1469 - 9 August 1534), was an Italian philosopher, theologian, cardinal (from 1517 until his death) and the Master of the Order of Preachers 1508-18. He was a leading theologian of his day who is now best known as the spokesman for Catholic opposition to the teachings of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation while he was the Pope's Legate in Wittenberg, and perhaps also among Catholics for his extensive commentary on the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas.

De Vio was born in Gaeta, then part of the Kingdom of Naples, as Jacopo Vio. The name Tommaso was taken as a monastic name, while the surname Cajetan derives from his native city.

The english translation for the name Gaetano is Tommy. It might have something to do with the Italian nickname for Gaetano being Tano, which becomes Tom.

Carmela, I realize that you speak Italian, and that I, sadly, do not (though I intend to reclaim my heritage in this regard before I die) --- however, I thought it was Tommaso that is the Italian name for Thomas?

In other words, we have this series =

Tommaso (italian) ---> Tomas (Spansh) ---> Thomas (English/French)

Gaetano (Italian) ---->Cayetano (Spanish) ----> Gaetan (French)

but it appears that there is no English cognate of Gaetano

Gaetano derives from the city of Gaeta, whereas Tommaso derives from the Greek & Aramaic for "twin"

same with vincenzo.. some called jimmy..