Because family is at the heart of the Mafia
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....
There are three first cousins from Corleone who immigrated to New York around the same time, and had the same name: Stefano la Sala. One would become known as Steve LaSalle, a high-ranking member of the Lucchese crime family for half a century.
When the Fascists rose to power in 1922, it soon declared a war on the mafia in Sicily, nearly wiping them out, and forcing di Carlo to flee. Meanwhile, his future associate, a Fascist propagandist, was making a name for himself in the United States.
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.
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 →
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 