Because family is at the heart of the Mafia
Several families of Prohibition-era bootleggers in Rockford, Illinois were related through marriage and their Sicilian origins. When a suitor to one of the Domino girls wouldn't take no for an answer, he resorted to an Old World practice: kidnapping.
For years, I assumed Lucia Terranova’s first marriage ended with her husband's murder in 1903. Then I saw this census record.
The extended family of brothers Ciro and Vincent Terranova and their nephews, Jimmy and Joe “Baker” Catania, have three distinctive “tells” of Mafia families.
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.”
Over the next several weeks, I will share the results of my first study, into the rates of consanguineous marriage among known members of the Mafia in Corleone, and a control group matched by year of marriage. I’ve noticed that Mafia members in Corleone appear to marry into other known Mafia families, engage in double... Continue Reading →
