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...

Thomas Hunt is among America's most preeminent mob historians, and anyone interested in anything Cosa Nostra-related should be familiar with his work, and that assortment would include Tom’s blog, his Informer journal, and his books (links to all follow below). We are popping this up belatedly (a mild health issue knocked us out of the game last week, but we’re poised to make up for lost time). Tom also is one of several who blog at The Writers Of Wrongs.com site; Christian Cipollini, about whom we've written , and Patrick Downey, who's written great books, including on Legs Diamond , also blog there. Cover of Informer, with historical story on one of the American mob's founding fathers.... Researchers have long been bothered by the lack of a photograph of Prohibition Era Mafia "boss of bosses" Salvatore Maranzano. But an image of the underworld chief, lost for nearly 88 years, was recently rediscovered. The remarkable find will be featured in an Au...

Today marks the Kindle debut of Louis P. DiVita's A Wiser Guy -- so readers can purchase it in whatever format they prefer: ebook , hardcover or paperback . (Be sure to check out Louis's website , where the above trailer is posted, along with additional information.) In A Wiser Guy , DiVita -- whose grandfather was Paul Palmeri and great uncle Benedetto Angelo, aka "Buffalo Bill," Joseph DiCarlo 's partner -- shares personal and colorful anecdotes about life among high-profile members of the American Mafia from around the 1920s to the present. DiVita's forebears, originally from Sicily's Castellammare Del Golfo , first played a decades-long role in upstate New York where they were closely allied with mob bosses Stefano Magaddino and Joseph DiCarlo. The Palmeri brothers initially planted their flags in Buffalo and Niagara Falls; they had associations with major Canadian mobsters of the day, such as Rocco Perri. These relationships had ramificatio...

Nicola "Nick" Gentile  was a Sicilian Mafioso who traveled around the United States to witness many pivotal moments in the formation of the American Mafia. He knew firsthand many of men who established the foundation for Sicilian-based organized crime here. Nicola Gentile's memoir about the formation of the American Mafia is unavailable in English.... Born in the southern Sicilian community of Siculiana in 1884, he arrived in the U.S. at age 19. Western Pennsylvania, Ohio and Missouri were his chief American home bases. He was a trusted confidant of New York Mafiosi from the early 1900s through the Castellammarese War, and was also called upon to mediate a dispute between the Morello-Lupo clan and boss of bosses Salvatore D'Aquila in the 1920s. He mediated disputes in Chicago and Los Angeles, even in New York City, the Mafia's capitol. Gentile briefly served in leadership roles for the Kansas City, Cleveland and Pittsburgh Mafia families. Pitts...

"Reds" Cohan, a bookmaker of a bygone era. I am proud and pleased to present this excerpt from Hillary Cohan's published memoir, titled " Growing Up Jewish in the Mob ." [This is a revised version of a story originally posted prior to the book's publication.] Hillary's father was Nathan "Reds" Cohan, a top mob bookie who operated in the Washington, D.C., area for much of Hillary's early life. Reds passed away on December 2, 1988, in Savannah, Georgia. Hillary does not "name names" in her book, admitting her father was connected to one of New York's five families as a top bookie. He was of the Jewish faith; many don't understand the extent of the contribution made by the "Jewish mafia" to the establishment of Cosa Nostra; before the Italians, Jews and other ethnic groups had together formed an outfit called "The Combination," which developed and implemented many of the racketeers that the Mafi...

A Scar Is Born: Mysterious Tales of a Gangland Legend | Cigar City Magazine : This chapter addresses the numerous myths and folklore tales that circulated after Luciano was found in a bloody state in 1929. From the scars to the nickname to the possible culprits in the attack–all are discussed, but the following section truly adds yet another convoluted piece to the puzzle.

This is a picture of Salvatore, but not Maranzano.  Salvatore Messina. Author David Critchley, Ph.D., made a compelling argument in an Informer article that the picture above, widely viewed for many decades as being a photograph of Salvatore Maranzano, is not actually him. "An apparent photograph of 'Salvatore Maranzano' has appeared in varied venues, ranging from books to the Internet. What those who print it fail to mention [Ed. Note: I'd say they fail to mention because they fail to know!] is that it's not of Maranzano at all. The mistake made is a classic case of the much broader problem of inaccuracies plaguing accounts of the American Mafia, which spread myths and misunderstandings." The history of the American Mafia is riddled with more holes than a 1920's-era Ford in Chicago during the Capone years. But this one about Maranzano likely has thrown quite a few of you for a loop....

Joe the Boss Masseria For most aficionados of America's Cosa Nostra, the starting point is always the war between Joe "The Boss" Masseria, pictured above, and Salvatore Maranzano. Much about the early Mafia seems open to debate. For instance, we'd thought Maranzano created each crime family's boss, underboss, consiglieri, capo, solder and associate pyramid structure, based on the Roman Legionnaires, though recent research suggests these positions were already in place. Maranzano, however, named himself Boss of Bosses and it was his doom. Lucky Luciano did away with that title after doing away with Maranzano. It was agreed no one man would ever hold that title, though over the years, some bosses seemed to fit the bill on an informal basis nevertheless. Carlo Gambino was definitely one of them. According to First Family: The Birth of the American Mafia by Mike Dash , the Morello family was the first Mafia family -- Mafia as in the criminal organization based in...