Chronicles of Events and Biographies Related to the American Mafia
Ralph Capone Sr. was born on January 12, 1894 in Angri, Italy. He was one of nine siblings born to Gabriel and Teresa Capone, and the older brother to Al “Scarface” Capone, future boss of the Chicago outfit. Ralph, his brother Vincenzo, and his mother arrived in the United States at Ellis Island on June…
The 1930’s were a prosperous time for Luciano. With control of the commission he was able to increase his reach in illegal gambling, bootlegging, loan-sharking, and labor rackets. His reign was short lived however and in 1936 he was charged with prostitution after special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey led a raid on 80 New York…
The youngest of the “Five Families” and the creation of Joseph Profaci in 1928 is the Colombo crime family. Profaci was one of the longest serving mafia bosses in history and ruled virtually unchallenged from 1928 until the late 1950’s. Beginning in 1959 the Colombo family started an internal strife that lasted through three wars…
Aniello “Neil” Dellacroce was born in New York on March 15, 1914 to Italian American immigrants named Francesco and Antoinette Dellacroce. He had had one brother, Carmine and grew up in Little Italy, a section of Manhattan. As an adult he would sometimes wear a priest uniform to throw off law enforcement as he climbed…
The Genovese crime family is one of the “Five Families” of New York and one of the most powerful organized crime families in the nation. Only the Gambino and Chicago Outfit are larger in terms of made men and associates. The family was founded after Charles Lucky Luciano in the 1930’s but was renamed after…
The Gambino crime family is the most publicized family of the American Mafia. It’s one of “Five Families” based out of New York that dominates organized crime in the United States. The Gambino family got its name from previous boss Carlo Gambino who controlled the family from 1959 until his death in October 1976. The…
Thomas Anthony DeSimone was born on May 24, 1950. He was an Italian- American mobster that worked as an associate of the Lucchese crime family of New York and was one of the real-life goodfellas. Tommy or “Two-Gun Tommy” because he always had two guns, had three siblings, a sister named Delores and two brothers,…
Giuseppe “Joe” Profaci was born on October 2, 1897 in Villabate a province Palermo, Sicily. His life as a child is mostly unknown but he is suspected of having been associated with the Sicilian mafia and spent one year in a Sicily prison on theft charges. On September 4, 1921 Profaci boarded ship bound for…
Paul Castellano dropped out of school in the eighth grade to become a butcher — then rose to lead the most powerful crime family in America. Read his full biography at AmericanMafiaHistory.com.
Joe Magliocco spent 31 years as underboss of the Profaci family, only to lose everything in a matter of months after plotting to assassinate rival bosses. Read his full story at AmericanMafiaHistory.com.
Gaetano Lucchese was born on December 1, 1899 in Palermo Sicily and immigrated with his parents Giuseppe and Maria in 1911. They settled in East Harlem, an Italian neighborhood of Manhattan where Lucchese’s father worked as a laborer hauling cement. Lucchese worked in a machine shop to help this family earn money until an accident…
Spring 1942 Anastasia, who was under constant scrutiny from the FBI and local law enforcement secretly ordered the murder of associate Anthony Romeo. Like Reles, Romeo had been arrested and was talking to authorities to implicate Anastasia in several murders. By the end of June, Romeo’s body was found beaten and shot multiple times near…
Carmine Galante was born February 21, 1910 in East Harlem and had two brothers and two sisters. His parents immigrated from Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily in 1906 where his father worked as a fisherman. Galante was a handful for his parents early on and by 1920 at the age of 10 had been in and…
Charles “Lucky” Luciano was born Salvatore Lucania on November 24, 1897 in Lercara Friddi, Sicily. He immigrated to the United States in 1906 where his family settled on the Lower East Side of New York where Lucky promptly integrated himself in the neighborhood as a small time hoodlum. By his 10th birthday, Salvatore Lucania had been…
Born in Calabria, in southern Italy on September 26, 1902, Albert’s birth name was Umberto Anastasio. His parents were Raffaelo Anastasio and Louisa Nomina de Filippi. Raffaelo was a railway worker who died after World War I, leaving behind nine sons and three daughters. Albert’s brothers included Salvatore, Frank, Joseph, Gerardo, and Tony Anastasio who…