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.
Pip the Blind
Joseph Gagliano, who was known by the nickname “Pip the Blind,” was called “the mastermind of one of the biggest opium rings in the country” by the assistant district attorney who prosecuted him for narcotics trafficking in 1946.
Capitano’s Lucchese connection
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.
Looking for Steve LaSalle
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.
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 