There HAD to be remnants from Masseria's, Maranzano's, and Morello's family who had WAYYY more seniority who definitely wanted to take him out and refuse to take orders from a child. 26 is a child more today but also back then.
Is it possible that since all the young turks were fed up and currently cleaning house, the older guys actually feared them more?
If this is the truth, this methodology could and should have been put into effect in future years. Let's not kid ourselves, just like unions, it is strength in numbers and, the bottom feeders could ABSOLUTELY collude and take out all the old guard. NO GUTS, NO GLORY!
Carlo proved this theory. Take out the biggest and toughest and you become the newly feared.

So what was the reason? Was there no Capo, Soldier, Associate rank before the Commission creation?.....Were most families based upon favortism? If you kissed the boss's ass, you essentially were a capo in theory. If you didn't, you got the dirty work?

Any light that could be shed on this issue is always appreciated.

Read his dad was a boss and his uncle so he was backed.

My thinking is that since Lucky Luciano backed him as a boss and included him in the commission that he was safe from everyone else. By the time he became boss the castellammarese war had just ended and those who gained the power were interested in peace after the war was over.

Once the commission and peace was established and organization was brought to the streets, taking out a another boss would be pure suicide for those responsible.

Bonnanos power didn't come from no protection from Lucky, it's very likely Bonnano went along with the murder of Maranzano. Only question is before or after the fact.... I lean towards after, being that Lucky used Luchesse to set him up, and Bonnano always seemed sore at Luchesse because of this....

I've said before Bonnanos power came from the fact he was La Marese. That's what his soldiers loyalty was based on. I've described it as a kinda criminal form of nationalism, where as Masserias people followed him out of fear, but also
because they operated in territory he controlled. So it was mostly a business arrangement, ( look at Luciano, he wasn't LOYAL to Masseria, he had to pledge fealty cause Masseria was stronger, but I think even that was strategic, he didn't hesitate to set him up when a better deal came along, he and Lansky probably killed Rothstein as well, again just business...) not REAL loyalty based off a shared history, or family, also Bonnano came from mafia anyway. PLUS, people tend to forget, he made his bones in the war, he was respected in the streets.

For all his cunning and business acumen, people forget often, Lucky was more like a Torrio than a Capone or a Bonnano. Bonnano didn't HAVE to stop the war, he coulda kept it going, and the La Marese woulda backed him. Don't be naive and think they woulda automatically won a war with him, he was BETTER at fighting wars than them. Same with Profaci, same type of guy......

Remember, Masseria had Lucky, all his guys, and ALL HIS OWN GUYS, Plus Rienas outfit with Luchesse in it, and they were STILL losing badly from what I've read, versus a Sicilian upstart and his mob from primarily
Castellamare..

I always like this contrast... Bonnano described Maranzano as a guy comfortable sitting in a room of silence, cleaning rifles, with ammunition strapped to his body ready to go out and kill at a moments notice.

Okay contrast this with Luciano with the suits, the fine living, the women, FUCKIN WALDORF ASTORIA!!

This guy will ALWAYS need cunning to win a fight. Lucky was Tywin, Bonnano was a Robert, I hope you get the reference...

Good post as usual Cabrini! Bonanno also seemed to have been more like Carlo Gambino in the sense that they were both born into Mafia royalty from Sicily. They weren't just some street punks who made it big like John Gotti, they had their entire family history behind them.

I don't know too much about their families from way back then in Sicily, but they must've been very powerful in their respected hometowns.

That's not to say that Bonanno and Gambino didn't earn their respect, they were both certainly well respected for decades (at least until Bonanno was forced into exile).

And yeah, it's very interesting that the Bonanno Family was almost exclusively Castellamarese back when it formed and for decades after. People seem to say that before the Five Families was formed that Luciano wanted to wipe out the old school "Mustache Petes" who only cared about regional stuff (whether someone was Sicilian, Calabrese, etc.) but the Bonannos were a very localized family.

Great insight as usual CG



Woah, I haven't looked too much into Rothstein's death but where do you get this from?

When ray patriarcas office is bugged in 60tys at the height of bonanno vs the commission he talks about how his father and uncle are or were bosses. So its not like he came out of nowere he was some type of mafia royalty. He goes on to tell all members of his family stop doing business with any bonanno till the commission appoints a new boss.

yeah, I always assumed Bonanno went along with Maranzano's murder, either gave his okay and was in on it or said he was fine with it after he was killed.

@MightyDR

It's all circumstantial, but everything points to Rothsteins business partners, aka the young Turks Luciano, Lansky, Costello, Adonis......


A couple of excerpts for you,....

“In this respect Rothstein was not unlike the robber barons of his times. But unlike Morgan, Mellon, and Rockefeller, his stock in trade was human vice.

Throughout the 1920s, Rothstein was America’s premier labor racketeer, bookmaker, bootlegger, and drug trafficker. He knew that people would drink despite Prohibition, hire prostitutes despite marriage, and gamble despite bad luck.

Having been an opium smoker in his youth, he also understood the euphoric hook of narcotic drugs.
(Similar to Luciano here...)

So, when the federal government outlawed opiated patent medicines in 1915 with the adoption of the Harrison Narcotic Act, he knew that people with no other cure for their ailments, as well as the thrill-seeking sporting
and theater crowds, would find a substitute on the black market.


Rothstein, however, always played the odds, and the profit margin in trading illicit narcotics wasn’t wide enough until 1921, when the Supreme Court ruled that it was illegal for doctors to prescribe narcotic drugs to addicts.

It was at this point, when the legitimate outlets vanished, that Rothstein cornered the wholesale black market. Using a procedure he had developed for smuggling liquor, he sent buyers to Europe and organized front companies for importation and distribution.

By the mid-1920s he was in sole control of the lucrative black market in heroin, morphine, opium, and cocaine, and had set up a sophisticated system of political payoffs, extortion, and collusion with the same gangsters who would eventually kill him and divvy up the spoils of his vast underworld.

“Yes, Rothstein was fatally flawed. Discretion was the cardinal rule of any criminal enterprise, yet in July 1926 he posted bond for two employees who had “been arrested for smuggling a substantial quantity of narcotics from Germany.

. Rothstein likewise posted bail for drug runners arrested in 1927 and 1928. Alas, posting bond for his employees brought the attention of the press upon his business associates, and that indiscretion – plus the fact that his protégés felt it was unfair that one man should control all the rackets – cost him his life.


In the end the evil genius, who preyed upon human weakness, was destroyed by the folly of pride. On the evening of 4 November 1928, Rothstein was shot in the groin while in his room “at New York’s swank Park Central Hotel. It was a terrible wound, intended to inflict maximum pain, and Rothstein died several days later amid much controversy and mystery. To this day his murder remains officially unsolved. However, many of his secrets were revealed as a result of his bookkeeper’s penchant for keeping accurate records.”

“At the law enforcement level, the Rothstein investigation revealed the staggering extent of illegal drug trafficking in the US.

This revelation would lead to the reorganization of the Narcotics Division of the Internal Revenue Service’s incredibly corrupt Prohibition Unit (fondly referred to as “the Old PU”) and result in the creation of the Bureau of Narcotics in June 1930.



These bureaucratic developments began when certain documents were found at a realty company Rothstein used as a front for his illegal enterprises.

The documents confirmed that Rothstein was financing an international drug cartel based in Holland.

They also revealed that the cartel had been supplying “primarily through trans-shipment points in Canada) millions of dollars’ worth of illicit drugs to American gangsters since 1925, when Rothstein’s emissaries first contacted a Chinese gang in Shanghai.
( The more things change.....)



Treasury Department narcotic agents, having confiscated the incriminating papers from reluctant police detectives, were certain that his murder was related to an ongoing struggle for control of the burgeoning underworld drug trade. They also felt that his papers would provide additional leads in several major narcotics investigations.
( Americas biggest gangster killed cause he welched on a bet??!!!! Ridiculous..IMO.....)

The Treasury agents “agents were right. Although the police would never solve the murder case, Rothstein’s financial records did enable Treasury agents – operating independently of the police – to seize several million dollars’ worth of narcotics in early December 1928 and to establish a link between Rothstein and the narcotics, which had been legally manufactured in Europe, then diverted onto the black market and smuggled from France.



While the law enforcement developments of the Rothstein investigation were significant, they were eclipsed by the resulting political fallout.


The biggest impact was felt in New York, where newspapers printed rumors that Rothstein had financial ties with the city’s most prominent public figures, including New York’s celebrated mayor, James John “Jimmy” Walker.


More importantly, the New York Times reported that Rothstein had used a portion of his drug profits to finance communist-sponsored strikes in the city’s garment district.


This was the first time in American history that politicians and policemen were linked with Bolsheviks and drug traffickers.


In conjunction with charges that Democratic Party officials were on Rothstein’s payroll, the specter of sedition enabled Republican US Attorney Charles H. Tuttle to demand the immediate dismissal of all officials associated with Tammany Hall (the Democratic Party’s infamous headquarters in New York), including a number of judges.

( I suspect Costello got his start I. Tammany Hall by inheriting Rothstiens network of corruption, they had the most to gain from his death...)

“In the weeks following Rothstein’s assassination, Treasury narcotic agents questioned material witnesses in the case, one of whom, Sidney Stajer, provided critical information about the organization’s international dimensions.


Under arrest on another charge and unable to make bail, Stajer, “in exchange for his freedom, told investigators that he had gone to Europe in 1927, as Rothstein’s purchasing agent, to buy narcotics that had been diverted from pharmaceutical firms in Germany. Stajer also revealed that he had been in China, Formosa, and Hong Hong in 1925, establishing contacts and buying opium for Rothstein on the unregulated Far East market.”

“Treasury agents also questioned an uncooperative witness identified in the New York Times as Charles Luciano. A Sicilian immigrant (real name Salvatore Lucania), Luciano was being held in connection with an armed robbery. The federal agents knew that he had been a dope peddler since 1916, when he was arrested for possession of a small quantity of heroin, and that he and his partners

– Frank Costello, Meyer Lansky, and Louis Buchalter – were the self-appointed heirs to Rothstein’s drug-trafficking operation.


They also knew that Luciano and associates had formed ties with America’s major new sources of narcotics: the Ezra brothers in China, and the Eliopoulos ring in Paris.

By 1929, these two gangs were the primary exploiters of the economic forces that drove illicit drug “drug manufacturing deeper underground and opened up the Far East as the main source of narcotics in the wake of the Rothstein investigation.



A Greek national and cosmopolitan conman whose father had been a diplomat in Turkey, Elie Eliopoulos launched his drug-smuggling operation in 1927, when he visited China and contacted Greek nationals involved in the opium trade.


He arranged to ship raw opium to two complicit manufacturers in France, purchased police protection in Paris, and by May 1928 was selling diverted pharmaceutical grade narcotics to America’s major illegal drug distributors.


In 1930 he financed a clandestine laboratory in Turkey, and thereafter narcotics from Turkey and China were routed to Paul Ventura (alias Paul Carbone), the Corsican crime boss in Marseilles, and then forwarded by American Express to Parisian restaurateur Louis Lyon for packaging and shipment to America. In 1930 and 1931, on behalf of the Eliopoulos syndicate, Peruvian diplomat Carlos Fernandez Bacula made six trips to New York, each time carrying 250 kilograms of narcotics under the protection of his diplomatic passport.

GREAT ANNALOGY CABRINI !

I'M LIKE RAVEN ... he had to be in on it . they won the war, and marazano gets offed c,mon . no retaliation ???

Yes, Bonanno could have retaliated against Lucky for killing his mentor, but why he didn't is up to him. Maybe he wanted to keep the peace, maybe he began to fall out with his mentor, could be a myriad of reasons.

Thanks for that CG. Now that you mention it, that does sound ridiculous.

I agree. Taking on any boss would have been suicidal. Not to mention a lot of guys were probably content (as long as they were earning money), no need to take on a boss.

Even though 26 is still ridiculous, a lot of big shots in the mob were quite young in 1931 when Bonanno was crowned boss.

Lucky Luciano was 34
Vito Genovese was 34
Joe Adonis was 29
Meyer Lansky was 29
Albert Anastasia was 29
Tommy Lucchese was 32
Joe Profaci was 34
Joe Magliocco was 33
Al Capone was 32
Paul Ricca was 34

Jews had always strong ties to Amsterdam. Even today the city is considered the center of the Dutch Jewish community.

@Regoparker100

You kinda hit it on the head.... In his book, Bonnano said HE was beginning to have problems with Maranzanos dictatorial style, and was chaffing under his leadership as well.

I think a lot of it was the time period. There was just TOO much money to be made, by too many people, at TOO young an age, and TOO ambitious to sit around waiting for permission from someone a generation removed to go out and grab what was right in front of their faces.

I think more than anything, AGE played a big part in it. At that point in time, even though he was a Sicilian through and through, Bonnanos ambitions and needs were more in line with the similarly aged Luciano, Adonis types.......

I said it before, businesses like liquor, drugs, they are actually BIGGER than the mafia, bigger than JUST the Sicilian community, or the WASP community, or the Jewish community, or the Irish community, or Black community.

(Think about it, you could ONLY do something like the black hand, or similar extortion in like your own ethnic area, whereas you can sell drugs, liquor, tobacco to anyone, basically anywhere... Hell they coulda sold sacramental wine to CHURCHES!!)



Everyone is going to drink, as long as people work long hard hours, or have to deal with a breakup or death in a family. Or want to unwind on the weekend, or have to deal with emotion they don't want to, as long as there is human nature, there will always be a market for things like alchohol, tobacco, drugs.....

These things transcend any race, religion, gender, territory, geography, whatever.....

@MightyDR

It's one of the silliest myths IMO. Imagine a bookmaker hitting a boss who lost and then didn't pay.

Imagine the bookies hitting Gotti instead of beefing. Like Joey Merlino wasn't even made, basically shaking down bookies. Then the bookmaker has him HIT??!!!!

And then of course, NO retaliation by Lansky or Luciano?!!!'

But they were dependent on Rothsteins connections both with the Scottish distillers in England, AND the drug connects from the Far East right? As long as this was true, I believe Rothstein could control them.

Unless, (very similar to how guys like Galante and Rizzuto became obsolete once guys get their own connect together..) they had formed their new connections to the Ezra's, and the Greek guy and DIDNT NEED ROTHSTEIN ANYMORE.... Especially when you consider Costello and Adonis buying police protection in Manhattan and Brooklyn, what did they need him for anymore???

c'mon guys me personally I love Bonnano's courage and man did he have balls.But there were at least 7 or eight guy's ahead of him before his mentor's death. Did he cut a deal with luciano ?.HE WAS ONLY 26 !

Like who? Can you name these guys ahead of him?

No one was ahead of him, that's why he was made Boss. Maranzano's Underboss Angelo Caruso, according to Valachi, asked Bonanno to parly with Luciano. That shows the standing he already had due to his family connections and his closeness to Maranzano. If anyone was better qualified, they would have got the job.

As for Bonnano's age. In 1931 Luciano was 34; Mangano 43; Gagliano 48 and Profaci 33.
Age was not an issue then as it would be now.
They were the young turks.

i think that people miss one component to the Mafia. Cooperation!!!.... Bonanno wasn't technically in line to run the after the Maranzano hit. Angelo Caruso was the underboss and represented the old timers but Bonanno because of age and his primary business (bootlegging) was probably more accessible to the likes of Luciano, Costello, Anastasia and the new order.
there was another Maranzano guy vying for position named Francisco Italiano. He was made Consiglieri but was whacked several years later. and if you research, after the "end" of the Castellamarese war, in all five families, many guys were whacked for residual issues from the war but mainly for not cooperating with the new order.

Bonanno could be worked with, plus he was a known Maranzano bodyguard with a strong familial faction, plus ties to the Boss of Buffalo......