For organizations like the American Italian Anti-Defamation League, reporting on the Mafia, or even using the term "Cosa Nostra," was an ethnic slur against Italian Americans.
Colombo plays Columbus
Tommy Lucchese
Tommy Lucchese spent his formative years in a neighborhood dominated by the Morello-Terranova gang of Corleone. At the height of his power, some of the men closest to him were Corleonesi, people who’d worked with Giuseppe Morello, and who Tommy had known and worked with since his teens.
Garbage hauling cartels: the dark matter of organized crime
The waste hauling cartel in New York City is a corruption as old as the industry in which it is embedded.
The Mangano brothers and Joe Profaci
Sources claim Vincent Mangano emigrated in 1921 with fellow future Mafia boss, Joe Profaci.
The Castellammarese War
The Castellammarese War of 1930 in New York was a colonial war. On one side was Joe Masseria, the most powerful figure in organized crime, with a coalition of allies including the Corleonesi Giuseppe Morello, Lucky Luciano (from Lercara Friddi), and Al Capone (born in New York of Italian mainland parents). On the other side were Salvatore Maranzano and the Castellammarese, backed by Don Vito Cascio Ferro, one of the most powerful men in Sicily....
The First Great Wars
The rise of fascism in Italy nearly destroyed the Sicilian Mafia before the end of WWII, but due to the political blunders of the Allies following Operation Husky, the Mafia was able to reform itself under their protection. Angelo di Carlo, a veteran of the Italo-Turkish War in Libya, is considered one of the architects of this renaissance.
Legacy of the Rapanzino gang
While most of Rapanzino’s gang was exterminated by the police in the mid-1830s, their legacy continues, with a clear line of descent, all the way to the Five Families of New York and the Mafia in Corleone today. The Rapanzino gang of cattle thieves, active in the early 1830s in Palermo province, were closely related... Continue Reading →
Gay Liberation and the Mafia
Lucky Luciano built the Genovese monopoly on gay nightlife in New York City in the 1930s. The Stonewall Inn was the site of a violent protest against police raids---and against mafia involvement in gay bars. Ed "The Skull" Murphy (top right) was working the door of the Stonewall Inn the night of the famous riot. Of the... Continue Reading →
Killer Queens
Are Toto Riina and Tommy Reina related? A few days ago, I discovered that I confused the histories of two different gangsters from Corleone, Toto Riina (b. 1930- ) and Luciano Leggio (1925-1993), in this blog, a couple of weeks ago. I wrote that Leggio’s father was killed in an explosion that was, in fact, based on... Continue Reading →
Mafia genealogy
Founders of two of the Five Families of New York, Giuseppe Morello and Gaetano Reina, came from Corleone around the same time as my great-grandparents. They're also family.
Mafia Genealogy 