Cosa Nostra News

Is the structure of the New York Mafia somehow based on the Roman legions? (We recently received an email posing that question.) It all started about 100 years ago with a Sicilian mobster named Salvatore Maranzano, who was the capo of all the clans in Sicily’s Castellammare del Golfo region, the birthplace of many powerful Sicilian American gangsters. Salvatore Maranzano on September 10, 1931. The Fascist government of Benito Mussolini kicked Maranzano out of Italy in the 1920s. He came to America, settling in Brooklyn. Maranzano built a legitimate real estate brokerage business, which he used as cover for his criminal operations, which included a growing bootlegging business. Eventually, Maranzano was atop an immense criminal organization sprawled across the Northeast United States. He took to mentoring a young man named Joseph Bonanno. Maranzano enjoyed talking about himself and was known to spend an inordinate amount of time telling everyone around him that he had studied for the pr...

Meyer Lansky had a dream that rivaled the one widely ( and inaccurately ) attributed to Benjamin (Bugsy) Siegel regarding transforming a sizeable stretch of the Nevada desert into a gambling mecca. Lansky wanted to create an empire of Mafia-owned casinos that stretched across the Caribbean. He'd use Havana, Cuba, as his base of operations, where he and childhood friend/chief criminal cohort  Charlie (Lucky) Luciano could work together. Charlie Luciano in Rome after he was kicked out of Cuba.... Fate in the form of Fidel Castro didn't allow things to develop the way Lansky and Luciano hoped. Lansky lost out on a major opportunity to build another fortune.  Luciano, however, had it worse.  He was returned to Italy, a country he despised. The  Sicilian Mafia was robbing him blind.

Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel was killed on June 20, 1947, at 10:45 pm West Coast time. [Watch film footage below, the man wearing the maroon jacket is said to be Bugsy. I don't know... but first see the rare footage that is Bugsy Siegel ....) The gangster often identified as the visionary of Las Vegas was 41 years old. As recounted (here) , he was killed around three months after The Flamingo reopened in March 1947, once construction was completed. This IS rare footage of Bugsy Siegel..... At least one gunman crept up to a French window with a 30-30 carbine, resting the rifle on the lattice work of a trellis outside the Moorish‐style mansion Siegel shared with Virginia Hill at 810 North Linden Drive in Beverly Hills, California. Siegel sat on a couch, his back facing the gunman, who was only about 15 feet away, separated by glass. Siegel flipped through a copy of the Los Angeles Times he had picked up after dining at Jack’s on the Beach, when the gunmen squeez...

In 2003, New York-based Bonanno crime family members called Montreal Mafia boss Vito Rizzuto and told him the worst possible news. The Bonanno crime family's boss, Joseph Massino , had flipped, they told Rizzuto. Rizzuto faced serious trouble. Massino could implicate him in a triple homicide in New York City, in 1981. Massino had actually orchestrated the hit on three dissident Bonanno capos. Alerted to a pending arrest for three homicides, Rizzuto and his wife promptly flew to Cuba, taking a flight the very next day to the Melia Las Americas, a resort in Varadero, Cuba. There, the Rizzutos bided time in the five-star resort's tropical-style rooms, each of which offers a beach-side view via a balcony; they could dine in any one of its seven restaurants (ranging from casual, poolside snacks to fine dining), as well as pay a visit to the hotel's three bars and one nightclub. Meyer Lansky represented the mob in Cuba . Santo Trafficante Jr. hated him. "...

Charles (Lucky) Luciano was born Salvatore Lucania, today, Nov. 24, in 1897 in Lercara Friddi, Sicily. American Mafia founding father. He's considered the father of organized crime in the United States . Historians in recent years have worked to put the iconic mob boss into proper perspective, as his personal impact on America's Cosa Nostra had been appreciably exaggerated for the greater part of the 20th century. The bogus Last Testament of Lucky Luciano , by Martin Gosch and Richard Hammer, certainly didn't help matters. ( As unbelievable as it sounds, some of today's foremost organized crime writers still reference it .) Consequently, we compiled this "updated" Luciano sketch. It's certainly not comprehensive, but it's substantial enough. Christian Cipollini, an award-winning author and comic book creator, has written two books about Luciano, Lucky Luciano: Mysterious Tales of a Gangland Legend and LUCKY (with Evgeny Frantsev as...

Tony Sokol, the admitted "Gangster Geek" at Den of Geek , wrote an excellent story about The Godfather that he allowed Cosa Nostra News to republish. Now, he's lent us another gem. From January 2015, an interview with Anatol Yusef, who played Meyer Lanksy. Meyer Lansky as portrayed by Anatol Yusef. Tony also writes for a host of interesting sites, among them, The Chiseler , KpopStarz.com , and hypnocloud.com . Previously, he wrote for Altvariety, Coed.com , Daily Offbeat, Dark Media Press, Wicked Mystic and other magazines. Tony also is a musician and is a playwright who has had more than 20 plays produced in NYC, including Vampyr Theatre and the rock opera “AssassiNation: We Killed JFK.” He also appeared on the Joan Rivers (TV) Show, Strange Universe and Britain’s “The Girlie Show.” The real Tony Sokol, in his 20s...  In the beginning, Boardwalk Empire had vast potential to fill the great void created when The Sopranos ended. The show was filled ...