The Santaniellos of Massachusetts

Not all people named Santaniello are related, but if they’re both gangsters, I’m going to at least check.

Sources claim that Anthony Santaniello (1903-1960), “The Arbitrator” of Boston’s underworld, had a brother called Albert “Leo” Santaniello (1913-1977), active on the North Shore and in nearby Lynn, Massachusetts, as a bookie and loan shark.¹ The two men are not brothers, but the truth about the Santaniello gangsters in Massachusetts who are close kin is a lot more interesting.

“The Arbitrator,” aka “The Old Man” was born Antonio Aniello Giulio Santaniello in Boston on 9 June 1903.² His father was from Quindici, east of Naples; it’s through him that Anthony and Leo Santaniello are second cousins—not brothers. Anthony married fellow Bostonian Agnes C. Sullivan in 1932 in Portsmouth, NH.³ He owned the Paddock Restaurant and Bar on Tremont Street in Boston’s theatrical district in the 1950s. He and his wife had one child, a son named Robert.⁴

Leo Santaniello was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, where he got his start in organized crime as a colleague of Frank “Skyball” Scibelli. They and two other ringleaders, along with ten other men said to be associated with their gang, were accused of conspiracy and attempting to extort money from the Deckers, a married couple and the owners of a traveling carnival, in 1932.⁵

Santaniello is a common surname in the Campania region of Italy surrounding Naples where Quindici is located. In the comuni from which dozens, if not hundreds, of families emigrated and settled in Massachusetts, a significant percentage of the population is named “Santaniello.” However, only a very small fraction of the Italian-American community have ever been involved in organized crime. Being a Santaniello is not an indication of Mafia affiliation. 

It is never a safe bet to assume two people with the same surname are related. That doesn’t stop mafia researchers (myself included) from asking and attempting to answer the question of how any two gangsters named Santaniello operating in the Bay State are related. In other words, while I can’t assume two Santaniellos are related, that doesn’t mean I’m not going to check.

In 2022 I wrote “Born into the Life: Amato Santaniello (1921-1964): Springfield, Massachusetts Mafia Family Member,” which was published in MASSOG: the Massachusetts Society of Genealogists’ official publication. “Born into the Life” tells the story of Springfield resident Roberto Santaniello, his sons, Angelo and Amato, and how a senseless shooting over a game of cards destroyed their family and set the youths on course for lives of crime.

The Mafia crew in Springfield, Massachusetts, of which I’ve written on a number of occasions, comes mainly from Campania, and has some notable members named Santaniello. Not that long ago, Amedeo Santaniello and his son, Ralph, of Longmeadow, MA were running the Springfield crew for the Genovese. Amedeo was born in Bracigliano, a comune adjacent to Quindici, in Avellino, but in a different province: Salerno.

In the cases of the families from Quindici and Bracigliano, the records have allowed me to trace their roots to the early 1800s. There is no known relationship between Amedeo Santaniello and any of the Santaniellos from Quindici mentioned in this post. A relationship of common descent between Amedeo Santaniello and any of the Santaniellos from Quindici would have to occur before around 1802, when their ancestors lived under feudalism. Italian peasants were bound to the land they lived on, making a marriage with an outsider very unlikely.

Which is not to say that Italians didn’t frequently marry people from other comuni after they emigrated. Italians from the same region congregated in their new homes as expatriates, and formed close social networks in cities like New York and Boston. Pasqualina Albano and Carlo Siniscalchi, the “bootleg royalty” of Springfield, Massachusetts, at the outset of Prohibition, were from Bracigliano and Quindici, and very likely met through a network of extended family and friends living in New York.

Roberto Santaniello and his sons have some intriguing family relations, among them Anthony “The Arbitrator” Santaniello and Albert “Leo” Santaniello, Springfield’s bootleg king, and the extended family who were fatally entangled with Raffaele Cascone in New York City in 1903. 

“The Arbitrator” and Leo from Lynn are Boston-area gangsters who are part of an extended Santaniello family that includes Leo’s cousins, the brothers Amatobene and Giovanni Marino Santaniello, and Leo’s cousin once removed Roberto Santaniello, who killed a man and ran, leaving his teenage children to fend for themselves in Springfield. Roberto’s young victim was also a Santaniello: Bernardo. Being no follower of my own sensible advice, I traced his tree back as far as I could, to his great-grandparents, but I still haven’t found any of his relations among my research subjects.

Leo (1) and Anthony (2) Santaniello are related through their paternal grandparents, both sets of whom are in double-Santaniello marriages. Leo’s paternal grandparents, Giovanni (3) and Giuditta (4), were both Santaniellos. His grandmother, Giuditta, and Anthony’s paternal grandmother Teresa (5), who was also married to a Santaniello, were sisters.

Roberto Santaniello, seen in the image above with a pink border and a line trailing away from it offscreen to the right (pointing to his victim, Bernardo Santaniello, in an unconnected family tree), is a paternal first cousin of Leo Santaniello, the bookie. Roberto is related through his wife—another Santaniello—to her uncles, Giovanni Marino, aka Giovanmarino, and Amatobene, whose icons have a blue background and arrows pointing to and from a box labeled Raffaele Cascone. Giovanmarino Santaniello, the elder uncle, was killed by Cascone in New York City in 1903 and his younger brother avenged him six years later.

Read: The Victims of Raffaele Cascone on Patreon

Through his paternal aunt Agnes Santaniello, Leo (1) is related to the tragic Bonavita brothers of Springfield, MA. His cousin, Ginevra Rossi (G), married twice, first to Nicola Bonavita. Nicola’s father, Tommaso, emigrated with Vittoria Vona, sister of Carlo Siniscalchi, Springfield’s “Bootleg King,” who was killed in 1921 by his rival, Joseph Parisi.

The story of the Bonavita brothers—some of which is encapsulated in this family tree—is convoluted and disturbing. Look for “The Bonavita Brothers” this month on Patreon.

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Want to know more about the early history of the Mafia in Springfield? My new book Pasqualina: The Bootleg Queen of Springfield, Massachusetts is coming to Amazon on November 10th.

Footnotes

1. One was a Facebook page called “Mobsters, Thugs, & Gangsters,” and another was the usually reliable Bill Feather’s Mafia Membership Charts website. ↩︎
2. “Massachusetts, United States records,” images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-67QS-523?view=explore : Sep 22, 2025), image 844 of 1019; Massachusetts. State Archives. Image Group Number: 004341234 ↩︎
3. “Sanborn, Hampton Falls, Rockingham, New Hampshire, United States records,” images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-N3Y9-W43?view=explore : Sep 22, 2025), image 2858 of 3287; New Hampshire. Bureau of Vital Records. Image Group Number: 004245791 ↩︎
4. Santaniello [Obituary]. (1960, October 2). The Boston Globe. P. 64. ↩︎
5. Early date set for trial of alleged racketeers in conspiracy and extortion. (1932, May 28). The Republican. P. 17; Four are held for grand jury. (1932, June 7). The Morning Union. P. 3; Material witnesses surrendered at jail. (1932, July 28). The Springfield Daily Republican. P. 4. ↩︎