Cosa Nostra News

Luciano offers a rare smile. Lucky Luciano: Mysterious Tales of a Gangster Legend , scheduled for release next month, will put to bed some key mysteries surrounding one of the most mythical Mafia figures in organized crime's history. The book's author, Christian Cipollini, in a recent interview, told me he's made some startling discoveries while writing the book about "Lucky," including how the gangster got his famous nickname, which believe it or not, has never been adequately detailed. With Lucky Luciano, a lot of facts are up for grabs. No one has ever even categorically explained how one of the founding members of the modern Mafia got the scars for which he was so famous. Some will even argue that he was not even a founding member of the modern Mafia. "The guy fascinated me," Cipollini said.“There’s so much mythology around him."

Meyer Lansky and his wife, Teddy; photo taken in  Havana, Cuba.  Meyer Lansky kept a written record of some events -- he kept a diary, as  Rick Porrello's AmericanMafia.com  reported. Lanksy, who was there at the dawn of organized crime in America and was known for his razor-sharp business and street acumen, was the one most likely to have kept such a document. Throughout his life, he spoke of the importance of a good education, not something that Lanky friends and partners such as  Lucky Luciano or Bugsy Siegel  are known to have proclaimed. Nicknamed the "Mob's Accountant" by the press, Lansky was instrumental in the development of the mob's gambling rackets in Las Vegas and Cuba, when the island off Florida's coast seemed to be a potential new frontier for the Mafia, a place where it thought it could operate with impunity under the auspices of a friendly government. The goal was to operate where it had the freedom to develop its business r...

Arthur Nash posted the image below on his Facebook page:  New York City Gangland - Rare Photo Book . He is the author of  New York City Gangland , a compilation of some 200 rare photos of mobsters obtained primarily from private collections and law enforcement sources. Mob figures included go all the way back to Prohibition Days, but the book also includes contemporary gangsters, such as John Gotti. This images features items found in Joe Gallo's wallet after he was shot to death in Little Italy. Crazy Joe Gallo died on the night of his 43rd birthday, on April 7, 1972. Gallo had spent the evening celebrating at the Copacabana nightclub, then he and a few others stopped at Umberto’s Clam House on Mulberry Street in Little Italy. It was around 5 a.m. A short while later, shooters materialized at the restaurant and fired a volley of shots; Gallo staggered out of the eatery and fell dead in the street. Apparently Gallo thought he was safe because there suppos...