Because family is at the heart of the Mafia
Anthony "The Old Man" Santaniello of Boston and Albert "Leo" Santaniello of the North Shore are not brothers, but the truth about the Santaniello gangsters in Massachusetts who are close kin is a lot more interesting.
I don’t think evildoers are punished after they die, but the trauma they inflict lives after them, and not only in their victims.
Were Carlos Marcello and murdered Lucchese associate Theresa Ferrara distantly related, as is rumored?
Family trees are like Ore graphs: everyone has two parents, and no one is their own ancestor. In my most recent post here on Mafia Genealogy, about the hierarchy of a Mafia “Family,” or cosca, I briefly demonstrated the utility of network science in understanding how the Mafia is organized. Looking at the hierarchy from... Continue Reading →
Justin Cascio of Mafia Genealogy talks with Bob Sorrentino about his ancestors’ olive oil business, doing genealogy research, and what distinguishes old school gangsters from the New Mafia.
Some of the most telling of "Capitano" Angelo di Carlo’s associations are those who signed affidavits in support of his release from internment at Fort Missoula in the summer of 1943.
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.
Jonathan F. Shulz (2016) has shown that not only is consanguineous marriage highly significantly correlated with mafia activity, “cousin marriage is a highly significant and robust predictor of democracy.”
In a controlled study of Mafia marriages in Corleone, Mafia members are more closely related to their brides than their non-mafiosi neighbors in Corleone.
I hypothesized that the control group would have a rate of consanguineous marriage close to that found throughout Sicily by Cavalli-Sforza et al (2004), and that the study group would have a higher rate than the control.
Mafia Genealogy 