Deceased mobster Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano died in prison over three decades ago and may be forgotten by all but historians and people deeply interested in organized crime. However, Provenzano, like many of the more infamous 20th Century gangsters, played a small but colorful role in American history, albeit an infamous one. Provenzano’s criminal career…
Category: Genovese
Lucky Luciano – Organizes The Commission
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…
Genovese Family – One of the “Five Families”
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…
Nicolo Terranova – Morello (Genovese) Family Boss
Nicolo Terranova was born in Corleone Italy in 1890. When he was two years old his family, including his brother’s Ciro, Vincenzo and four sisters immigrated to the United States. They arrived in New York on March 8, 1893 joining their step brother Guiseppe Morello who arrived six months earlier. The Terranova family stayed in…
Anthony Strollo – A Reputation for Switching Sides
Anthony Strollo, most notably known as Tony Bender, was born June 18, 1899 in New York City. He had two brothers, Emilio and Dominick. His playground as a young man was Manhattan, where he worked as bootlegger and enforcer for Joe Masseria. Early in his mafia career Strollo earned a reputation for switching sides when…
Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria – “The Man who could Dodge Bullets”
Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria was born on January 17, 1886 in Menfi, Sicily although he lived most of his childhood in Marsala. Masseria had no siblings, and his father was a tailor by trade. Masseria immigrated to the United States in 1903 at the age of 17 to avoid a murder indictment in Italy….
Joe Valachi – The First Rat
Joseph M. “Joe Cargo” Valachi ranks as one of the most notorious Mafia informants, the first mobster to acknowledge, in public, on television, under oath, that Cosa Nostra is real. Long before Sammy “The Bull” ratted out John Gotti, Valachi’s turncoat testimony gave a face to a Mafia the public knew nothing about. Joseph Valachi,…
Vincent Louis “Chin” Gigante – Part II – The Robe
Genovese was a ruthless boss who ruled with an iron fist, but his grip began to loosen throughout the 1960s. He was sent to prison for 15 years in 1959 on what were thought to be trumped-up heroin charges, and though he maintained technical control of his family, a panel of three other men made…
Frank Costello – Prime Minister of the Mob Part I
Frank Costello was one of the most notorious Italian Mafia bosses in American history, with a reach that covered a vast national racket and extended deeper into politics than any other. He was dubbed the “Prime Minister of the Underworld” and led an organization nicknamed the “Rolls-Royce of organized crime.” Born in 1891 in Lauropoli,…
Vincent Louis Chin Gigante – Muscle on Both Ends Part I
Vincent Louis Chin Gigante, also known as “The Oddfather” for his largely successful efforts to dodge criminal punishment by faking mental illness, was a one-time boxer who rose from low-level enforcer to become don of one of the infamous “five families” of organized crime in New York City. Unlike most of his predecessors in the…