Salvatore Maranzano

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Salvatore Maranzano
Born(1886-07-31)July 31, 1886
Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, Italy
DiedSeptember 10, 1931(1931-09-10) (aged 45)
New York City, U.S.
Cause of deathStab wounds and gunshots
Resting placeSaint John's Cemetery, Queens, New York, U.S.
NationalityItalian
Other names"Little Caesar"
OccupationCrime boss
AllegianceMaranzano crime family

Salvatore Maranzano (Italian: [salvaˈtoːre maranˈtsaːno]; July 31, 1886 – September 10, 1931) was an organized crime figure from the town of Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, and an early Cosa Nostra boss who led what later would become the Bonanno crime family in New York City. He instigated the Castellammarese War in 1930, to seize control of the American Mafia, winning the war after the murder of rival faction head, Joe Masseria, in April 1931. He then briefly became the Mafia's capo di tutti capi ("boss of all bosses") and formed the Five Families in New York City, but was murdered on September 10, 1931, under the orders of Charles "Lucky" Luciano, who established an arrangement in which families shared power to prevent future turf wars: The Commission.

Early life[edit]

Salvatore Maranzano was the youngest of 12 children born to Domenico Maranzano and Antonina Piscotta. Five of his siblings lived to adulthood: Mariano, Angelo, Nicolo, Giuseppe, and Angela. As a youngster, Maranzano had wanted to become a priest and even studied to become one, but later became associated with the Mafia in his homeland.[1] Maranzano had a very commanding presence and was greatly respected by his underworld peers. He had a fascination with Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire, and enjoyed talking to his less-educated American Mafia counterparts about these subjects.[2] Because of this, he was nicknamed "Little Caesar" by his underworld peers.

Early career[edit]

Maranzano emigrated from Sicily to the United States in the 1920s, settling in Brooklyn.[3] The Sicilian mafioso Don Vito Ferro decided to make a bid for control of Mafia operations in the United States. From his base in Castellammare del Golfo, Maranzano was sent to seize control.[4] While building a legitimate business as a real estate broker, Maranzano also maintained a growing bootlegging business, using the real estate company as a front for his illegal operations. He soon became involved in prostitution and the illegal smuggling of narcotics; he also took a liking to a young Joseph Bonanno and became his mentor.[3]

Castellammarese War[edit]

To protect the criminal empire that Maranzano had built up, he declared war on his rival Joe Masseria, the boss of all bosses, in 1930, starting the Castellammarese War.[3] In early 1931, Lucky Luciano decided to eliminate his boss, Masseria. In a secret deal with Maranzano, Luciano agreed to engineer Masseria's death in return for receiving Masseria's rackets and becoming Maranzano's second-in-command.[3] On April 15, Luciano invited Masseria and two other associates to lunch in a Coney Island restaurant. After finishing their meal, the mobsters decided to play cards. At that point, according to mob legend, Luciano went to the bathroom. Four gunmen – Vito Genovese, Albert Anastasia, Joe Adonis and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel – then walked into the dining room and shot and killed Masseria.[5] With Maranzano's blessing, Luciano took over Masseria's gang and became Maranzano's lieutenant.[3]

Boss of All Bosses[edit]

With Masseria gone, Maranzano reorganized the Italian American gangs in New York City into Five Families headed by Luciano, Profaci, Gagliano, Vincent Mangano and himself.[3] Each family would have a boss, underboss, capos, soldiers, and associates, would be composed of only full-blooded Italian Americans, while associates could come from any background.[6][7][3] However, Maranzano called a meeting of crime bosses in Wappingers Falls, New York, and declared himself capo dei capi ("boss of all bosses").[3] Maranzano also whittled down the rival families' rackets in favor of his own. Luciano appeared to accept these changes, but was merely biding his time before removing Maranzano.[5] Although Maranzano was slightly more forward-thinking than Masseria, Luciano had come to believe that Maranzano was even more greedy and hidebound than Masseria had been.[3][8][5]

Maranzano's scheming, his arrogant treatment of his subordinates and his fondness for comparing his organization to the Roman Empire (he attempted to model the organization after Caesar's military chain of command) did not sit well with Luciano and his ambitious friends, like Vito Genovese, Frank Costello and others.[8] Despite his advocacy for modern methods of organization, including crews of soldiers doing the bulk of a family's illegal work under the supervision of a caporegime, at heart Maranzano was a "Mustache Pete" — an old-school mafioso too steeped in Old World ways. He was opposed to Luciano's partnership with Jewish gangsters such as Meyer Lansky and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel. Luciano and his colleagues had intended all along to bide their time before getting rid of Maranzano.[5]

Death[edit]

By September 1931, Maranzano realized Luciano was a threat, and hired Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll, an Irish gangster, to kill him. However, Tommy Lucchese alerted Luciano that he was marked for death.[9] On September 10, Maranzano ordered Luciano and Genovese to come to his office at the 230 Park Avenue in Manhattan. Convinced that Maranzano planned to murder them, Luciano decided to act first. He sent to Maranzano's office four Jewish gangsters whose faces were unknown to Maranzano's people. They had been secured with the aid of Lansky and Siegel.[10] Disguised as government agents, two of the gangsters disarmed Maranzano's bodyguards. The other two, aided by Lucchese, who was there to point Maranzano out, stabbed the boss multiple times before shooting him.[11] This assassination was the first of what would later be fabled as the "Night of the Sicilian Vespers."

Although there would have been few objections had Luciano declared himself capo di tutti capi, he abolished the title, believing the position created trouble between the families and made himself a target for another ambitious challenger.[12] Luciano subsequently created The Commission to serve as the governing body for organized crime.[13]

Maranzano is buried in Saint John's Cemetery, Queens, New York, near Luciano's grave.[14]

Photographs[edit]

The only known photographs of Maranzano are from the scene of his death. In 2009, Informer author David Critchley had identified the picture once claimed to be a mugshot of Maranzano, as that of the London-based gangster Salvatore Messina instead.[15] In August 2019, the Informer had issued another photo believed to be Maranzano, but later retracted the statement in September due to European historians identifying the image to be that of German criminal Peter Kürten.[16]

In popular culture[edit]

  • Maranzano plays a small fictionalized role in Mario Puzo's The Godfather. Maranzano refused Don Vito Corleone's proposal to share his monopoly on gambling in New York City, in exchange for police and political contacts and expansion into Brooklyn and the Bronx. Maranzano arranged for two of Al Capone's gunmen to come to New York and finish Corleone. Through his contacts in Chicago, Corleone found out, and sent Luca Brasi to murder the gunmen. With Capone out of the picture, the great mob war of 1933 had begun. Desperate for peace, Maranzano agreed to a sit down in a restaurant in Brooklyn, where he was killed by Salvatore Tessio, a capo in the Corleone family. Afterwards, Corleone took over Maranzano's organization and held a meeting to reorganize the American Mafia, something that the real-life Maranzano did.
  • In the 1972 film The Valachi Papers, Maranzano is portrayed by Joseph Wiseman.
  • In the 1981 NBC mini-series The Gangster Chronicles, Maranzano is portrayed by Joseph Mascolo.
  • In the 1990 film Mobsters, Maranzano is portrayed by Michael Gambon, but is known as "Faranzano".
  • In the 1999 film Lansky, Maranzano is portrayed by Ron Gilbert.
  • In the 1999 Lifetime film Bonanno: A Godfather's Story, Maranzano is portrayed by Edward James Olmos.
  • In the 2011 Torchwood episode "Immortal Sins", Maranzano is portrayed by Cris D'Annunzio.
  • In the fifth season of Boardwalk Empire, Maranzano is portrayed by Giampiero Judica. In the show, his assassination is depicted as being ordered by Nucky Thompson, and Nucky's brother Eli is one of the participating gunmen, finishing Maranzano off by shooting him in the head.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Critchley, p. 144
  2. ^ Raab, pp. 26-27
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Selwyn Raab (2005). Five Families. Thomas Dunne Books.
  4. ^ Sifakis, Carl (2005). The Mafia Encyclopedia. New York: Checkmark Books. p. 56. ISBN 978-0816056958.
  5. ^ a b c d Sifakis, Carl (1987). The Mafia Encyclopedia. New York City: Facts on File. ISBN 0-8160-1856-1.
  6. ^ "A Chronicle of Bloodletting". Time Magazine. July 12, 1971. Retrieved 31 October 2012.
  7. ^ Dash, Mike (2010). The First Family: Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder, and the Birth of the American Mafia. New York: Ballantine Books. pp. 384–386. ISBN 978-0345523570.
  8. ^ a b Raab, pp. 28-29
  9. ^ Maas, p. 80
  10. ^ "Lucky Luciano: Criminal Mastermind," Time, Dec. 7, 1998
  11. ^ "The Genovese Family," Crime Library, Crime Library Archived December 14, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  12. ^ David Wallace (2012). "Capital of the World: A Portrait of New York City in the Roaring Twenties".
  13. ^ "The Commission's Origins". The New York Times. 1986. Retrieved 22 February 2017.
  14. ^ Torbatnejad, Mehrnoosh (2008-02-26). "Cemetery has a mob of mafiosi". New York Daily News. Retrieved 2013-01-07.
  15. ^ Critchley, David (July 2009). "Maranzano Muddle". Informer: 22–23.
  16. ^ "Informer adds to 'Maranzano muddle' by reprinting a mislabeled portrait". Informer. September 16, 2019.

Further reading[edit]

American Mafia
Preceded by
Nicolo Schiro 		Bonanno crime family
Boss
1930–1931 		Succeeded by
Joseph Bonanno
Preceded by
Gaspare Messina 		Capo dei capi
Boss of bosses
1931 		Succeeded by
Lucky Luciano
as chairman of the Commission
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