Puzo had been covering the Bonanno and first Colombo war as a journalist, and turned what stories he heard or his investigation revealed about the Italian criminals, and put them as characters in his book. Luca Brasi was based off Gaspario Magaddino, AL Neri was based off a former NYPD cop who became a driver and bodyguard to a Capo in the Genovese crime family after Appalachian.
I know this is old but uhh, got any links Mr. Vacari of Puzo's articles which covered the Bananas War and the Colombo War? Because I call bullshit.
Puzo himself admitted after the unforeseen success of the book and the film, that he was a literal outsider when it came to the world of the Mafia. Meaning he knew jack shit about the mafia. He admits in his memoir "The Godfather Papers and Other Things" that he was ashamed to admit that he wrote "The Godfather" entirely from research. And that he'd never met a "real honest-to-god gangster". He says he knew the gambling world pretty well, but that was the extent of it.
He'd been a novelist since 1955. I haven't seen any articles from him in relation to the Colombo or Bonanno wars, or any other articles he'd written for papers. He was hired as an editor for a group of mens magazines, in which he essentially wrote war stories for the readers. Nothing Mafia related though. And it's very well known, that like his book "The Fortunate Pilgrim", the Vito Corleone character was based on his mother, not any gangster. And these are Puzo's own words.
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/03/movies...dead-at-78.html
