Global Crime

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Buster, Maranzano and the Castellammare War,

1930–1931

David Critchley

To cite this article: David Critchley (2006) Buster, Maranzano and the Castellammare War,
1930–1931, Global Crime, 7:1, 43-78, DOI: 10.1080/17440570600650141

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GLOBAL CRIME VOLUME 7 NUMBER 1 (FEBRUARY 2006)

Buster, Maranzano and

the Castellammare War,
1930 – 1931

David Critchley

More than most issues surrounding the American Mafia, the history of the
Castellammare War is contestable at both theoretical and empirical levels. As the
alleged pivotal event in the creation of the contemporary structure of the US Mafia
or Cosa Nostra, it is of obvious importance as a topic of historical investigation.
But a survey of published works on the War and its consequences reveals
confusion, inaccuracies, erroneous assumptions and missing information. This is
the first major systematic attempt to explore the War and its consequences made
since the 1970s. Aside from adding substantially to the stock of knowledge of the
War and its participants, debates on the War are critically evaluated, using
original source materials where possible. The Castellammare War did not have the
ramifications assumed, when placed either in a broader context or from the
vantage point of internal American Mafia dynamics.

Keywords organised crime; USA; New York; Mafia; history

The origin of this article is the realisation that systematically accurate data on the
formative era (1890 – 1931) of Italian-American crime families, or the “mafia,” in
New York City, has been absent in published works. One example is released data
on the so-called “Castellammare War.” After reviewing the extant material on the
war, criminologist Donald R. Cressey admitted, “We do not have a chronology of
the battles, let alone interpretations of the reasoning involved in tactics,
strategy, and peace agreements.”1
Lasting from June 1930 to April 1931, Ralph Salerno, the New York Police
Department’s principal organized crime specialist in the 1960s, endorsed

David Critchley is an independent scholar, a former hospital worker who gained degrees at the
universities of Manchester, Salford and at the John Moores University in Liverpool. He was awarded his
doctorate in 2003 from JMU for his study of working practices and malpractices on waterfronts. In
1984, Vance Publications released his bibliography on international organized crime. Dr. Critchley has
carried out related research work for several authors. He is currently researching for an article in
California History magazine and for a book-length history of the New York Mafia, returning to original
source materials where they are available.
1. Cressey, D. R. (1969) Theft of the Nation, Harper and Row, New York, pp. 36–45

ISSN 1744-0572 print/1744-0580 online /06/010043-78

q 2006 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/17440570600650141
44 DAVID CRITCHLEY

the war’s supposed watershed magnitude.2 Donald Cressey wrote that, “The
1930 – 1931 war and the 1931 peace treaty had immediate effects in most of the
large cities of the nation.”3 Fighting American mafia “boss of bosses” Giuseppe
(Joe the Boss) Masseria in the Castellammare War was Salvatore Maranzano, who
had spent most of his previous life in Sicily. Maranzano came to head the Brooklyn,
New York, crime family that with aligned groups fought Masseria for control over
the New York City Italian underworld.
Although the murder in February 1930 of crime family head Gaetano (Tommy)
Reina is sometimes cited as marking the start of the struggle, this was
disconnected from the Castellammare War since it did not involve those from
Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily. It did, however, draw into the struggle a
renegade faction in the Reina family lead by Tommaso (Tommy) Gagliano who
blamed Masseria for Reina’s downfall.4
During the summer of 1930, open war was declared between the forces of
Masseria and Maranzano, the former declaring that all mafiosi from Castellam-
mare be destroyed. Ultimately, Masseria was betrayed by his closest associates
and killed in April 1931. Maranzano’s influence across the American mafia was, at
this juncture, probably unique, until he was shot and stabbed to death in
September of 1931
The reasons for Masseria’s war against the “Castellammaresi” were sufficiently
serious to get the backing of the mafia general assembly. But why this step –
unprecedented so far as is known – was taken are far from fully understood. His
opponents put it about that the Castellammare factions within crime families
were simply resisting Masseria’s demands, but this would seem an unlikely reason
for general assembly members, who had the final say and no interest is seeing the
crime families wracked apart by violence, to become involved.
The war’s importance for most writers lay in several far-reaching effects. Most
of all, the war was considered to have ‘created’ La Cosa Nostra (LCN) and the LCN
Commission, the most advanced, thus dangerous, form of organised crime yet
developed. Through the LCN, men of Italian ancestry allegedly came to control
American organised crime. The War represented a decisive, dramatic leap
forward in the history of the American mafia. Each major claim made about the
events of the conflict in this context will be challenged, utilising primary source
materials where possible.
Existing efforts to chronicle this war are frequently cursory, error-prone, and
leave as many questions unanswered as they address. Despite these obvious
weaknesses, the events as bared in journalistic and other secondary accounts laid
the empirical basis for subsequent analyses and models of organised crime in

2. Salerno, R. (1969) The Crime Confederation, Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y., p. 85

3. Cressey, Theft of the Nation, p. 47
4. Those who mistakenly considered that the war began with Reina’s downfall include Cressey,
Theft of the Nation, p. 39, Chandler, D. L. (1976) The Criminal Brotherhoods, Constable, London,
p. 145 and the US Senate Committee on Government Operations, Organized Crime and Illicit Traffic in
Narcotics Report, 1965, p. 12
 BUSTER, MARANZANO AND THE CASTELLAMMARE WAR 45

America. As Albanese asserted, “it still forms the basis for much of the
thinking and writing about organized crime today.”5 At the time of its occurrence,
the war was perceived by police officials as just another in a long series of
Italian feuds, with no particular significance attached to it for the broader
underworld structure.6
Interacting with it, however, was a debate that gained momentum later in the
1930s about a mythical New York ‘Unione Siciliana.’ The Unione’s lodge in Chicago
was apparently taken over by gangsters and, it was supposed, Unione lodges in
New York - which never existed - suffered the same fate.7 Through the Unione, it
was held, mobsters controlled Sicilian communities in major cities and the
bootlegging market. And according to later 1930s and 1940s commentators, it was
from its base in the Unione that Italians came to take over organised crime.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the focus moved to the War as currently treated and
understood. In this interpretation, the struggle between Masseria and Maranzano
assumed titanic dimensions. Although the Unione Siciliana angle to the violence of
1930 and 1931 was by then discarded, the outcome of the war was perceived in
1965 in similar terms as in 1939, as the single most important event in twentieth
century American organised crime.8
Salvatore Maranzano as much as ‘Buster of Chicago’ was, in the process,
mythologised. His murder allegedly gave rise to a group of dynamic younger crime
family leaders, notably Salvatore (Charlie Lucky) Luciano, who fitted perfectly
with the demands of big-city American crime. From such legends, powerful
images of the Mafia were drawn, informing police responses (with its
focus on Italians) and legislation at the federal and state levels, typified in
draconian anti-racketeering laws. But the war was less revolutionary than
usually considered, and did not supply a launch pad for the Italian takeover of
organised crime. Conceptual models informed by this perspective may therefore
be wide of the mark.
This paper explores key aspects of the war, questioning most of the major
claims made and helping to complete the historical record. Our methodology
seeks to compare the published materials with surviving primary records.
The conclusions can thus be considered robust and accurate. Three books
authored by those who had first hand knowledge of the war form the backbone of
this article. Joseph Bonanno, Nicolo Gentile and Joseph Valachi all gave their
perspectives on the conflict. There are differences between them, especially
related to the identities of some of the war’s murder victims (see Table 1).
Despite this, their accounts are broadly in agreement. A book by Gosch and

5. Albanese, J. (1989) Organized Crime in America 2nd edn, Anderson Publishing, Cincinnati, Ohio,
p. 92
6. See for example the press coverage in Detroit and New York City from February 1931 to
September 1931
7. Intensive research has failed to uncover any Unione Siciliana lodges in New York. This included
searches of city directories and communications with persons familiar with the New York situation
(information kindly supplied by Rick Mendoza and M. R. Nelson).
8. The major writers are noted throughout the text.
46 DAVID CRITCHLEY

Table 1 Major Sources - Murders

Bonanno Gentile Valachi

Reina Yes Yes

Milazzo-R. Parrino Yes Yes
Bonventre Yes
Morello Yes Yes
Pinzolo Yes Yes
Two men Yes
Aiello Yes Yes Yes
Mineo-Ferrigno Yes Yes Yes
G. Parrino Yes
Catania Yes
Masseria Yes Yes Yes

Hammer allegedly based on the reminiscences of Luciano, another wartime

participant, is excluded because of its recognised reliability issues.9
Two personalities are initially investigated. Through their life stories a range of
questions such as changing mafia families’ recruitment practices are raised that
an exclusive focus on, for example, the mafia leadership would obscure.
As the erstwhile leader of the victorious forces in the Castellammare War,
Salvatore Maranzano is of obvious historical importance. A decision was taken to
include alongside the discovered Maranzano material, fragments of the life and
death of a triggerman loyal to him, identified until now only as “Buster of
Chicago.” Like Maranzano, Buster has assumed a larger than life persona since his
demise, with fact and fancy bandied about indiscriminately.

“Buster of Chicago”
This section begins with an exploration of “Buster of Chicago.” Buster’s untypical
background for a New York City mafioso is highlighted. The Buster saga also
illustrates, as Block maintained, the chaotic and informal nature of organised
crime in New York.10 Following the cessation of hostilities in which he was known
simply by his nickname, Buster seems to have lost direction and become
distanced from former friends such as Valachi. Like Maranzano, Buster was a
‘misfit’ in the post-War organised crime environment and he left no recorded
assets when he died.11

9. Gosch, M. A. & Hammer, R. (1975) The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano, Macmillan, London. See
the criticisms contained in the New York Times, 17 December 1974 and in the FBI’s file on Luciano, in
its electronic reading room (Online. Available at: http://foia.fbi.gov). The FBI called the contents of
Gosch and Hammer’s work “a complete fraud” which has no “value to the FBI, or to anyone else for that
matter.” (FBI memorandum of 2 October 1974, titled ‘The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano’).
10. Block, A. (1982) East Side West Side, Cardiff University Press, Cardif.
11. Check of estate records in room 402, 31 Chambers Street, Manhattan, New York.
 BUSTER, MARANZANO AND THE CASTELLAMMARE WAR 47

Contemporary descriptions
Speculation about Buster’s name began on the day he was publicly described by
Valachi in September 1963 before the US Congress. But researchers have ignored
obvious clues. Chandler argued, “Buster was undoubtedly the number one killer in
the Maranzano organisation, and he drew all the important hits . . . “12 Because of
Buster’s exalted position in the Maranzano organisation, he was an usher at the
wedding of crime boss Joseph Bonanno, who replaced Maranzano.13
During lulls before executions, Buster told Valachi that he came from Chicago,
where the mob killed someone in his family. Buster “had to leave Chicago because
he was fighting them.”14 He was aged about 22, was “a sharpshooter” in the
Maranzano crime family,15 and carried a trademark weapon in a violin case.16
“His speciality,” according to Bonanno, “was the machine gun, with which he
was a virtuoso.”17

Namings of Buster
When or where Buster died has been shrouded, as much as his life, in
controversy.18 David Evanier, for example, claimed that Buster “died in
Los Angeles in 1990 at the ripe old age of 83 and of natural causes.”19 Gallagher,
in her study of the Carlo Tresca murder, placed him as the driver of the car used in
the death,20 apparently unaware of the statement made by Valachi that Buster
died in the 1930s.
The most methodical effort to identify Buster was made by Allan May in June
2002.21 But it too failed at the empirical level, leaving May to assert that Buster
never existed and was merely a figment of Valachi’s imagination, created to cover
up his own crimes. More recently, Downey resurrected this theory, adding that if

12. Chandler, The Criminal Brotherhoods, p. 158

13. Bonanno, J. & Lalli, S. (1983) A Man of Honour, Andre Deutshe, London, p. 142
14. US Senate, Committee on Government Operations, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations,
Organised Crime and the Illicit Traffic in Narcotics, hearings 88th Congress 1st Session, 1963
(hereinafter OCN), p. 167
15. Valachi, J. ‘The Real Thing’, unpublished manuscript, NARA, Record Group
16. OCN, p. 168
17. Bonanno, A Man of Honour, p. 105
18. According to Sifakis, Buster was assassinated in September 1931, “in a poolhall on the Lower East
Side and his body carted away and discretely disposed of” after Luciano and Genovese considered him a
threat. Although Valachi recalled that Buster was slain on the lower east side of Manhattan, “there was
no record on Buster, when I say no record I mean it was off the police record that Buster got killed.”
Ralph Salerno, the New York Police Department’s organised crime expert at the time Valachi
confessed, claimed in his book that the real name of Buster “is still unknown. He appears in police files
as Buster of Chicago.”
19. Online. Available at: http://www.mobmagazine.com/ManageArticle.asp?C¼ 160&A¼10
20. Gallagher, D. (1988) All the Right Enemies – the Life and Murder of Carlo Tresca, Rutgers
University Press, New Brunswick, N.J., p. 219
21. May, A. (2002) “Buster from Chicago”–Revealed? 10 June. Available at: www.american
mafia.com
48 DAVID CRITCHLEY

faulty memories of Buster were taken into account, he probably existed,

with his real name being Frank Marco. But Downey’s theory in turn contradicted
other evidence 22
Researchers have overlooked that Valachi in his unreleased memoirs
stated that Buster came from Castellammare del Golfo, in Sicily: “He is
Castellammarese (sic) and that’s why the old man got him to join in with us.”23
Far more important though, Bonanno, who knew those on the Maranzano side
well, gave history the name of “Bastiano Domingo” as the man whom “Valachi
talked about.”24 Sebastiano Domingo was also known as Charles Domingo. This is
confirmed by various sources outside of newspaper reports, which at first
confused the issue.25

Early life
Sebastiano (“Bastiano”) Domingo was born in Castellammare del Golfo in Sicily in
1910, the son of a farm worker, Giuseppe Domingo and Mattia, or Matilda,
Farina.26 Through kinship and marriage, the Domingos were related to several
other families from Castellammare who were to feature in the American
Prohibition era story (1920 – 1933) as rural alcohol manufacturers and dealers. The
Domingo family transplanted from Sicily to America in 1913. Records showed
Sebastiano, aged 3, the youngest family member, his brother Francesco (Frank),
15-years old sister Vita and mother Mattia Farina Domingo entering New York
about 22 October, headed for the Oak Street, Chicago, address of Tony Domingo,
another brother of Sebastiano.27

22. Downey, Patrick, Gangster City, Barricade, 2004, pp. 159–60. Allan May put forward that a
Chicago gangland figure murdered in February 1931 in New York, Frank Marco, possibly matched the
description given to Buster. Marco was hit by 7 bullets fired by unknown men and his body found on a
sidewalk on East 19th Street, Manhattan. However, neither Valachi’s own unpublished manuscript, nor
any other materials, are consistent with this identification (Chicago Tribune, 18 February 1931,
Chicago Tribune, 2 October 1963 Marco’s death certificate is Manhattan # 5500, 1931)
23. Valachi, “The Real Thing”, p. 288
24. Bonanno, A Man of Honour, London, p. 119
25. Domingo’s death certificate identified Charles Domingo named in press reports as Sebastiano
Domingo. The certificate gave the correct naming of Sebastiano’s parents and of Sebastiano’s right age
in 1933 (23 years of age). Corresponding St. John’s Cemetery records in New York, where he is buried,
show him as Sebastiano, not Charles. In Benton Harbor, the age of Charles Domingo at the time of Mary
Domingos’ murder (see below) was, 17 in 1927, matching the age that Sebastiano would be. A 1930
census return featuring Charles Domingo was disfigured, but indicated his year of immigration as 1913,
tallying with Sebastiano’s, and with the same age as Sebastiano. Additional checks were made, but
results when looking for a Calogero/Charles Domingo from Castellammare were in the negative.
26. His birth certificate gives 10 April 1910 as the day of birth while his headstone in New York City
gives it as 29 March 1910.
27. In Chicago, they stayed in the notorious neighbourhood locally known as ‘Death Corner’ or
‘Deadman’s Corner,’ one of the worst Italian dives and infamous for its high homicide rate. Tony
married Mary Dimaria of Benton Harbor, Michigan, in 1918, cementing ties between the two families
that had crossed over from Castellammare. (Official records: February 1918 marriage certificate, Ellis
Island passenger lists, October 1905, April 1908)
 BUSTER, MARANZANO AND THE CASTELLAMMARE WAR 49

Benton Harbor, Michigan

Nothing is known of their stay in Chicago, but by 1920, Tony Domingo and his wife
Marie (Mary) Dimaria were listed on the US census as resident in Benton Harbor,
Michigan,28 living alongside other Italians in the ‘Brooklyn’ section. In 1926, the
official population of Benton was estimated at between 18,000 and 19,000
inhabitants.29 The notorious ‘Black Hand’ was present even there, preying off
immigrant Italians.30 Over the 1920s, Benton Harbor became important as a
leisure centre for Chicago gangsters. Underworld-related mayhem touching the
township occasionally resulted.31 (As if to underline its unusually close ties to
Chicago, Al Capone, “as a farewell to his friends before his departure Friday for a
stay in Leavenworth Penitentiary,” organised his going-away party at the Hotel
Vincent in Benton Harbor).32

Domingos and kin in Benton Harbor

Among Benton Harbor’s Italian community, the profile was of a self-contained
bootlegging fraternity involving the Domingos and related Sicilian families. All
were born in Castellammare del Golfo, as was Maranzano. Police action,
misfortune and the occasionally fatal outcome of bootlegging activities blighted
the lives of the Dimaria, Ciaravino and Valenti families, related by blood ties or by
marriage to the Domingos.33

28. 1920 US Census, Berrien County, Michigan

29. Keenan, L. T. (1925) A Civic and Industrial Survey of the City of Benton Harbor, Benton Harbor
Chamber of Commerce, Michigan, p. 7
30. Berrien County Historical Association, Fede, Famiglia, e Amici: The Italian Experience in Berrien
County 1900–2004, presented by the Sons of Italy and the Berrien County Historical Association
31. The body of an unidentified Italian male was found in early September 1928 in Hagar Township,
near Benton Harbor, with a bullet through his temple. A burned-out car stolen in Chicago was found
close by. All identification marks had been removed, but his build and clothes matched the description
given of one of the suspects in the Tony Lombardo assassination. Chicago Police Department officials
speculated that the man was killed on the orders of Capone to avenge the murder of Lombardo.
Chicago police also reported in October 1929 how Mrs Frank Biege, the wife of a Capone gunman, had
told them that in August 1928, shortly before his murder, Lombardo had ordered her husband Frank,
“to do a job” in Benton Harbor. Frank Biege denied the charge and the police had no other evidence
against him except for her statement (News-Palladium, 16 October 1929 and 10 September 1928,
Chicago Tribune, 14 September 1928)
32. New York Times, 26 July 1931
33. The catalogue of deaths including the Domingos and their kin was impressive. On 31 December
1925, Matilda, the daughter of Tony and Mary Domingo, was accidentally shot and killed by her 10 years
old uncle, Leo Dimaria, using a revolver he said had been left by a Chicago ‘visitor.’ In August 1926, two
members of the Dimaria family accidentally died when they fell into a vat of “corn sugar and the other
processes of fermentation” behind the back of a barn on the edge of the town. The Ciaravino clan,
related to the Domingos through Lena Dimaria, was equally entangled in liquor manufacture, ending up
in convictions and the murder of Carlo Ciaravino in April 1929, when a shotgun-using assassin crept into
his house on Riford Street. This erstwhile ‘bootleg king’ of Benton Harbor, a brother in law to Mary
Domingo, was slain, according to police, in an “alky feud.” Valenti family infighting spilled over and
caused the accidental death in September 1927 of Marie Valenti. Searching the house in which all the
Valentis lived after the crime, police found guns and ammunition of the type that slew Sam Amato in
August 1927 on Miller Street.
50 DAVID CRITCHLEY

Driving back to their outlying farm, Mary Domingo died on 22 September 1927
when a bomb planted in the Ford Coupe car belonging to Tony she was driving
exploded. Mary’s body “was mutilated almost beyond recognition,”34 thrown
fifteen feet away from the wreckage of the car. The force of the explosion
scattered parts of the car for 200 feet along the road. Police found that the bomb
had been wired to the manifold under the car’s hood.35
Newspaper accounts continued the tale. Tony and his brother ‘Charles’
Domingo, aged 17, opened fire in the Republican Club, where the supposed
assassin, Louis (Louie) Vieglo, was located. Shooting carried on in nearby streets
and the Domingo brothers were finally arrested while stalking Vieglo at his store.
By then, Vieglo had escaped in a stolen car and was not heard from again.36
About late 1928, Tony Domingo sold his farm to return to Chicago, where he
rented out flats. Near to his original Oak Street base, in a North Side café on 29
August 1929, Domingo was shot nine times as he was eating. An assassin pressed a
shotgun to his back, pulled the trigger then dashed out to escape by car.37 Tony
died instantly.38 According to the News-Palladium, Tony’s “vow to avenge the
dynamite death of his wife . . . must remain forever unfulfilled.”39 The body of
Tony Domingo was returned for burial in Benton Harbor a day later,40 leaving an
estate owing $25.36.41
As Charles Domingo, Sebastiano was seen with Tony in front of a West Erie
Street, Chicago, candy store in the weeks before Tony was shot down.42
Surrounded during his formative years with such lawlessness and bloodshed
involving his immediate family and close relatives both in Benton Harbor and in
Chicago, he made an excellent new recruit for Maranzano. Criminal talent
unknown to Masseria or his force from out of New York was invaluable, enabling

34. News-Palladium, 24 September 1927

35. News-Palladium, 30 September 1929
36. St. Joseph Herald-Press, 22 September 1927. Tony and Charles Domingo were held at the county
jail for questioning. The latter accused Vieglo, a local grocer, of planting the explosive. Vieglo and
Tony Domingo had once been business partners but had ended their arrangement. According to the
wife of Vieglo, Tony Domingo blamed her for his estrangement from his wife Mary and the families had
not spoken for a year (News-Palladium, 22 September 1927, 24 September 1927). Marie Domingo left
$2,070 in cash and some real estate held jointly with her husband. The Italian community closed ranks
and remained silent when questioned by the police. In the face of the killing, the Domingos remained
attached to illicit liquor profits in Benton Harbor (Official Probate Court for the County of Berrien,
8.12.27: File # 8999, Probate Court, Deceased Records, Berrien County. The death certificate for Mary
Domingo, Michigan Department of Health, Benton Township # 2836, wrongly gives 22 October 1927 as
her date of death)
37. News-Palladium, 30 August 1929
38. Chicago death certificate # 1296 (1929)
39. News-Palladium, 30 August 1929. Patsy Spilotro, the father of Tony Spilotro the future notorious
Chicago and Las Vegas Chicago outfit member, owned the restaurant in which Tony died, a hangout for
Circus Café Gang members (Roemer, W. F. (1994) The Enforcer, Donald I. Fine, New York, p. 12)
40. News-Palladium, 31 August 1929
41. Office of the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County: Probate – estate of Antonio Domingo,
archives reference # 03–5112
42. State of Illinois County of Cook, Inquest on the Body of Antonio Domingo (Inquest No. 95 of
August 1929)
 BUSTER, MARANZANO AND THE CASTELLAMMARE WAR 51

Domingo to attack the enemy with impunity because of his anonymity. Domingo’s
background was also why those who later spoke of the war such as Valachi and
John Morales43 had never met Domingo before it, and could only talk in the
vaguest of terms as to his biography.
By the time the April 1930 census was taken, Sebastiano had moved in with
Mattia and Joseph Domingo to rented accommodation in the tiny upstate
community of New Castle Township in Westchester County.44 Nearer to New York
City, Sebastiano Domingo was poised to join the Castellammare War.

Death
Sebastiano Domingo was murdered on 31 May 1933 in the Castle Café on First
Avenue and East First Street, Manhattan. Five or six gunmen burst into the café
and opened fire on card-players in the coffee house.45 Domingo was found dead on
the sidewalk outside the establishment. Salvatore Ferraro later died of his
wounds.46 Over 100 friends and relatives attended the St. John’s Cemetery burial
of Domingo and Ferrera.47

American Mafia Family Recruitment Practices

This episode dovetails with a rarely discussed topic, the recruitment of fresh
manpower into New York’s five crime families.48 In distinction from common
versions of the Castellammare War, in which Maranzano drew his major military
strength from illegally-imported Sicilian gunmen (see below), Sebastiano
Domingo entered the United States legally as a young child with his parents.
Nor was he a child of the big city American slums.
Maranzano’s fighters were likely to have been former Sicilian residents, mostly
from Castellammare. Those identified in the literature are:

A Giuseppe Bonanno

A Nick Capuzzi

43. Morales, to become a Bonanno crime family ranking member, also knew Buster in the war as a
young man, but was as confused as Valachi as to Buster’s identity and context (email from Anthony
Morales, 1997)
44. 1930 US Census, New Castle Township, Westchester County, New York
45. New York Herald Tribune, 31 May 1933
46. New York Times, 31 May 1933
47. Domingo’s undertaker was Annello and Bonventre of Central Avenue, Brooklyn. Peter Bonventre,
brother of Ignazio (John) Bonventre, stopped at the infamous Apalachin ‘summit’ mafia meeting in
1957 and the uncle of Joseph Bonanno, was a partner in the firm (New York Times, 4 June 1933, FBI
report, Changed: Joseph Barbara, Sr. Was Joseph Barbara, Giuseppe Barbera, Joseph Barber, 26
December 1957 from the Albany Office)
48. The only extended analyses remains those in Cressey, Theft of the Nation, pp. 236–242 and
Salerno, The Crime Confederation, pp. 93– 100, but they deal only with recruitment from American
settings
52 DAVID CRITCHLEY

A Vincent D’Anna

A Charles DiBenedetto

A Gaspare DiGregorio

A Sebastiano Domingo

A Joseph Stabile

Other New York City families, so far as is known, recruited in the latter 1920s and
during the war from recognised centres of youth criminality in the Italian ghettos
of New York. New recruits to the Gagliano faction operating against Masseria with
Maranzano, for instance, were generally associated with Valachi in the Manhattan
burglary business:

A Frank Callace

A Nick Paduana

A Dominick Petrelli

A Stefano Rannelli

A Girolomo Santuccio

A Salvatore Shillitani

A Joseph Valachi
Aside from the case of Rannelli, they had been known to each other for years. But
as long-time residents of “rackets-prone” neighbourhoods, their opponents in the
mafia, who often came from the same sections, could easily identify them as
hostiles in the war and respond appropriately.49 However, there was no large-
scale recruitment either during the war or in its aftermath, reflecting the
extremely narrow basis for membership before 1930. US Mafia recruitment in this
period followed three routes:

A Previous membership of the Sicilian ‘parent’ organisation (Maranzano and

Gentile).50

49. One example would be Frank Amato, a Masseria man murdered in 1931, who knew Valachi from
their days together around East 107th Street.
50. “Because of his position in Sicily, Maranzano was accepted into the Castellammare Family in
Brooklyn when he immigrated” (Bonanno, A Man of Honour, p. 76).
 BUSTER, MARANZANO AND THE CASTELLAMMARE WAR 53

A Association with families still active in Sicilian Mafia affairs (Bonanno).51

A Through membership in an inner-city ghetto gang in the New World.52 This
route into Mafia membership became increasingly important (Valachi).53

Domingo was, however, unique so far as is known. Unlike Maranzano’s other

Sicilian-born ‘musketeers,’ Domingo’s knowledge of New York’s Italian families or
the local criminal milieu was probably sparse. His age at US immigration, 3, was
far younger than the mean age for those others selected by Maranzano from the
Sicilian born talent (arriving on American shores at between the ages of 15 and 17
(see Tables 2 and 3).54
Apart from the advantage of his ‘invisibility’ to the Masseria camp, Maranzano
probably recruited Domingo into the war on the basis of their mutual connections
to Castellammare, which was renowned as a centre of mafia influence well before
1930.55 Since the war was, according to its observers, one of racial domination,
this factor alone was extremely important. Gagliano’s men, typically socialised on
the mean streets of New York, were likely as not, like Valachi, more interested in
the material spoils that came with victory than with defending the honour of the
“Castellammaresi.” The Domingo family’s involvement in illicit liquor trafficking
in Benton Harbor also suggested that Sebastiano would be a safe pair of hands to
rely upon when the shooting began.
Maranzano’s enthusiastic recruitment of immigrants from his hometown in
Sicily to fight his corner replicated the fading and shortly abandoned practice of
admitting Sicilian immigrants with the right credentials directly into American
crime families. Gentile reminds us of this custom in his autobiography. Thus,
“with the arrival of the telegram of ‘nulla osta’ consent (from the family in Porto
Empedocle, Sicily) I was quickly taken into the new Famiglia . . . of Schiro.”56

51. “Because kinship can help the cohesion of a Family, nephews, brothers, and sons are often
brought into the organisation” (Dickie, J. (2004) Cosa Nostra, Hodder and Stoughton, London, p. 83).
52. Abadinsky, H, (1990) Organised Crime, 3rd ed, Nelson Hall, Chicago, pp. 49– 52
53. US President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, Task Force
Report: Organised Crime Annotations and Consultants’ Papers, Washington, D.C., 1967: those viewed
as potential members are observed by “syndicated criminals in the neighbourhood” (p. 55). FBI report.
La Cosa Nostra, 31 January 1963 from the New York field office, file # 92– 2300, notes that an informant
told how, in East Harlem, New York City, delinquent youngsters were “closely observed” by made men
looking to see how they conducted themselves (p. 19).
54. Cressey, Theft of the Nation, pp. 236–40; Firestone, T. A. (1993) ‘Mafia Memoirs,’ Journal of
Contemporary Criminal Justice, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 197– 220
55. Dolci, D. (1968) The Man Who Plays Alone, Macgibbon and Kee, London, p. 213 Cf. Costanza,
Salvatore, La Patria Armata, Corrao Editore, 1989; Maxwell, G. (1960) The Ten Pains of Death,
Longmans, London, pp. 60–67. Dolci says “before the First World War, the mafia of Castellammare and
that of Monreale were probably the most powerful in Western Sicily.”
56. Gentile, Nicolo (E), Translated Transcription of the Life of Nicolo(E) Gentile. Background and
History of the Castellammare War (n.d.), p. 36. Direct transfers from the Sicilian to the American
crime families can be seen also in the 1900s. In one celebrated capture, that of Giuseppe Morello in
1909, Secret Service agents uncovered “letters of admittance into the society of a man who is
questioned by the leaders in New York.” (Flynn, W. J. (1920) The Barrel Mystery, The James A. McCann
Company, New York, p. 207)
Table 2 Maranzano family member and affiliates, 1930 – 1931

54
Name Place born Year of Birth Year migrated to USA Aged (approx.) Age c. 1930

Aiello Giuseppe Bagheria 1890 1907 17 40

DAVID CRITCHLEY
Bonanno Giuseppe Castellammare 1905 1924 19 25
Bonventre Vito Castellammare 1875 1905 30 55
Biondo Giuseppe Barcellona 1897 1898 1 33
Callaci Francesco Corleone 1900 1907 (2) 7? 30
DiGregorio Gaspare Castellammare 1905 1921 16 25
Domingo Sebastiano Castellammare 1910 1913 3 20
Evola Natale US-born 1907 23
Gagliano Tommaso Corleone c. 1884 1905 21 46
Garofalo Frank Castellammare 1891 1921 29 39
Lucchese Gaetano Palermo 1899 1911 12 31
Magaddino Stefano Castellammare 1891 1909 18 39
Magliocco Giuseppe Villabate 1898 1914 16 32
Maranzano Salvatore Castellammare 1886 c. 1925 c. 39 44
Meli Angelo San Cataldo 1897 1913 16 33
Milazzo Gaspare Castellammare 1887 unk. unk. 43
Parrino Giuseppe Alcamo 1886 1910 24 44
Parrino Rosario Alcamo 1890 1910 20 40
Petrelli Dominick Pescasseroli? 1900 1910 11 29/30
Profaci Giuseppe Villabate 1897 1921 23 33
Rannelli Stefano Palermo 1902 unk. unk. 28
Sabella Dominick Castellammare 1899 1915 16 31
Sabella Salvatore Castellammare 1891 1912 21 39
Santuccio Girolamo Floridia 1900 1908 8 30
Shillitani Salvatore US-born 1906 24
Traina Giuseppe Belmonte Mezzagno 1883 1901 17 47
Valachi Giuseppe US-born 1903 27
Zerilli Giuseppe Terrasini 1897 1914 17 33
TOTAL: 28 MEAN 1896 17 (1) 34

Notes: (1) Excluding American-born figures and those for whom information is unavailable(2) Unconfirmed through Ellis Island passenger records. Listed on 1930
census return.
Table 3 Masseria family members and affiliates, 1930 – 1931

Name Place born Year of Birth Year migrated to USA Aged (approx.) Age c. 1930

Adonis Giuseppe Montemarano 1902 1909 7 28

Anastasia Albert Tropea 1902 1917 15 28
Biondo Giuseppe Barcellona 1897 1898 1 33

BUSTER, MARANZANO AND THE CASTELLAMMARE WAR

Capone Alfonso US-born 1899 31
Carfano Anthony US-born 1895 35
Costello Frank Cosenza c. 1892 1895/6 c. 4 c. 39
Gambino Carlo Palermo 1900 1921 21 30
Genovese Vito Risigliano 1897 1913 16 33
Gentile Nicolo Siculiana 1884 1903 19 46
Livorsi Frank US-born 1903 27
Luciano Salvatore Lercara Friddi 1897 1907 9 33
Mangano Vincent Palermo 1888 1905 17 42
Masseria Giuseppe Marsala 1887 1901? 14? 43
Mineo Manfredi Palermo c. 1880 1911 31 50
Morello Giuseppe Corleone 1867 Unk.(3) Unk. 63
Moretti Guarino US-born 1894 36
Pinzolo Bonaventure Caltanesseto 1887 1906 19 43
Pollacio Saverio Villa Frate 1887 1904 17 43
Rao Giuseppe US-born 1901 29
Rosato Giuseppe Palermo 1904 1920 16 26
Scalisi Frank Palermo 1893 1912 17 37
Terranova Ciro Corleone 1888 1893 5 42
TOTAL: 21 MEAN 1893 (1) 15 37 (2)

Notes: (1) Excluding Morello, 1894

(2) Excluding Morello, the mean age is 34
(3) Various estimates, from 1892 to 1896.

55
56 DAVID CRITCHLEY

With the end of the war in 1931, this type of enrolment of Sicilian mafiosi into
American families ceased. New blood thereafter came exclusively from American
sources, where youths “grew up in neighbourhoods dominated by the Mafia, with
gangsters as their role models.”57 The issue of a use of ‘immigrant’ firepower by
Maranzano before and during the war fed into a wider discussion over the very
character of the New York mafia families involved in this war, of ‘greasers’ and
‘Americanisers.’ The theme is returned to later.

Salvatore Maranzano
“Because of his position in Sicily,” noted Bonanno, “Maranzano was accepted into
the Castellammarese Family in Brooklyn when he immigrated.”58 Maranzano
assumed command of the forces ranged against Masseria in approximately July
1930, about a month after “open” warfare was declared. As a Schiro crime family
soldier, Maranzano’s liquor operations were unusually wide in their scope, and he
was acquainted with Salvatore D’Aquila in 1926, among other mafia leaders.59
Masseria took over as boss of bosses when D’Aquila was murdered in October 1928.
Maranzano’s military victory against Masseria in April 1931 ending the war made
him the most influential single force in the United States mafia.
What do we know about Salvatore Maranzano? Reading the literature, the
answer is very little. Virtually all that researchers know about Maranzano is
contained in Valachi’s brief description, and that of Bonanno. According to
Valachi, Maranzano “looked just like a banker . . . he was an educated man . . . and I
understood he spoke seven languages.”60 Bonanno tells us that he was “a bold man
and a ready fighter, an apostle of the old Tradition” and was “a fine example of a
Sicilian male.” Maranzano’s linguistic skills were highlighted by both men, as was
his time spent in a seminary school in Sicily.61

57. Firestone, ‘Mafia Memoirs,’ p. 200 New York City and Philadelphia informants gave the FBI details
of the recruitment process in their cities in the 1950s. Unlike Buster’s rapid recruitment during the
war, it was always a drawn out sequence, often taking years. Delinquent-prone youths would be
discretely observed by “made” men to assess their conduct under pressure from law enforcement
agencies. A prospective member would have his own sponsor who was responsible for vouching for the
individual’s reputation, placing the man “on the record” with him. He would also accept responsibility
for the man’s future behaviour (FBI report, La Cosa Nostra, 14 May 1963 from the Philadelphia office,
FBI report, La Cosa Nostra, 31 January 1963 from New York office). See also Pistone, J. D. (1987) Donnie
Brasco, Sidgwick and Jackson, London; Maas, P. (1997) Underboss, Harper Collins, New York.
58. Bonanno, A Man of Honour, p. 76
59. Maranzano and D’Aquila used the same 295 Jersey Street, Buffalo, address of Angelo Palmeri, a
Niagara Falls/Buffalo family leader, to obtain pistol permits in 1925 –1926. Palmeri (1878–1932), had
unusually wide connections in the mafia, including to the Mangano brothers (Vincenzo and Fillipo),
Joseph Bonanno and Ciro Terranova in New York City, Salvatore Sabella in Philadelphia and Joseph
Lonardo in Cleveland; all situated in the top echelon of the secret society. Angelo Palmeri’s brother
Paul was also prominent. They helped to run the regional mafia with Joseph Peter DiCarlo and his
successor, Stefano Magaddino (material kindly supplied by Mike Tona)
60. Maas P. (1969), The Canary That Sang, MacGibbon and Kee, London, pp. 87, 97
61. Bonanno, A Man of Honour, p. 70. Davis, J. H. (1993) Mafia Dynasty, Harper Collins, New York, p.
34. Gosch and Hammer indicated that he spoke five languages (p. 46) while Downey (in his Gangster
City) gave the figure as seven languages (p. 165) as did Valachi (The Canary That Sang, p. 96)
 BUSTER, MARANZANO AND THE CASTELLAMMARE WAR 57

Even Maranzano’s year of birth is a matter of controversy within the genre.62

Moreover, his year of entry into the United States yields a number of options.63
Confusing matters further, at least two other adult Sicilian males with the same
name as Maranzano lived in the New York region during the 1920s.64

Sicily
In fact, Salvatore Maranzano was born 31 July 1886, in Castellammare del Golfo,
Trapani, the son of Dominick Maranzano, a landowner, and Antonina Pisciotta.65
On 11 January 1913, Maranzano was married to Elisabetta Minore at a ceremony
before the civil registrar in Castellammare.66 According to Joseph Bonanno,
Minore was “the sister of don Toto of Trapani”67 and the Minores were a power in
mafia affairs in Castellammare.
Today’s Maranzano family, who still live in Castellammare, remember
Salvatore as someone who was studying for the priesthood when cattle were
stolen from the family. He waited until after his father “left” before avenging this
act of disrespect.68 Bonanno described Maranzano as the “chief warrior” under
Bonanno’s uncle Stefano Magaddino in Castellammare before Maranzano moved
to Palermo to seek his fortune, ostensibly as a food merchant.69

North America
For reasons that remain unclear, Maranzano left Sicily at some point between
1924 and 1925, entering the United States probably through Canada. First reports
after his murder cited Maranzano as entering the United States illegally in 1927.70
More recently, Bonanno, one of his intimates in Sicily and New York, argued that
Maranzano emigrated much earlier, in 1925. But Bonanno was seemingly unaware
that Maranzano’s family had lived in New York for two years.71

62. Celeste Morello put it, for example, in 1868. Nelli, in an otherwise knowledgeable discourse,
claims the right year as 1880. Sifakis and Nash both give the year of Maranzano’s birth as 1868
63. Scaduto, T. (1976) Lucky Luciano, Sphere Books, London, p. 68. One result of the low quality of
secondary source materials is that Sifakis for example gives three different dates for Maranzano’s year
of arrival in America. Nor is the alleged photograph of Maranzano in books such as Bonanno’s and that
on the internet of the right man. It is actually a picture of Salvatore Messina, a renowned 1950s vice
merchant living and operating in London, England. To the author’s knowledge, there exist no genuine
photographs in circulation of Maranzano.
64. The first was born in 1891, sailing to the United States in 1910 and by 1919 living in Mott Street,
part of the lower Manhattan Little Italy. Gosch and Hammer (pp. 44, 46) have Luciano meeting
Maranzano in this lower east side neighbourhood in 1923, leading to a possibility that their own
researches unwittingly uncovered ‘this’ (ie, the wrong) Maranzano.
65. Official Atti di Nascita, Archivio di Stato di Trapani. As well as on his birth certificate in Sicily, his
exact date of birth in July 1886 appears on Maranzano’s driving license and in the recollections of
Joseph Palma, which is accurate in most other respects.
66. Commune of Castellammare del Golfo, Marriage Certificate
67. Bonanno, A Man of Honour, p. 70
68. Information supplied by Claudio Todaro, Castellammare, January 2004
69. Bonanno, A Man of Honour, p. 70
70. New York Times, 15 September 1931
71. Bonanno, A Man of Honour, p. 71
58 DAVID CRITCHLEY

In October 1923, the whole of the Maranzano family, minus Salvatore, decamped
to New York City, headed for an address in Brooklyn. Elizabeth gave her husband’s
name as Giuseppe Maranzano, who was in fact a brother of Salvatore’s.72 Born in
1876 in Castellammare, Giuseppe had lived quietly in Manhattan from the date of
his immigration in 1902. In 1925, a certain Nicolo Maranzano and his family lived at
the address given by Elizabetta in 1923. How he fitted in is unknown.
Joseph Palma told the Kefauver Committee in 1951 that Maranzano had fled
Sicily in 1925 to Canada. After Maranzano was murdered in 1931, Dutchess County,
New York, police found a bank account held by him in Wappingers Falls “seven
years” previously, which it true would imply his presence in New York State as
early as 1924.73
Contrary claims that Maranzano was seen in New York just after World War One
or in about 192074 are easily refuted by the confessions of Dr Melchiorre Allegra,
“made” into the Sicilian Mafia during 1916. Maranzano was introduced to Allegra in
Palermo as the “’chief’ of the Province of Trapani,” who would help him politically.
The time frame for the meeting can be accurately fixed, since according to Allegra,
“April 6, 1924” was “the day I presented my political candidacy.”75
We also know that by 1926, Maranzano had interests in or around Hamilton,
Ontario. In February 1926, for example, he was recorded travelling across the border
from Buffalo to Saltfleet, near Hamilton, where he claimed to have a farm,76
coinciding with an entry for a Salvatore Maranzano in the 1926 Buffalo city directory.
Another source also stated that Maranzano bought property in Hamilton.77

Dutchess County, New York

In May 1927, Salvatore Maranzano bought a house at 2706 Avenue J in Brooklyn.
But the focus of his criminal enterprises moved in about 1928 to Dutchess County
including Wappingers Falls, New York, where, as Bonanno tells us, a barn was used
by Maranzano as a “transfer point” where whiskey shipments were stored for
pickup and distribution elsewhere.78
Maranzano’s enterprises included an import-export business, real estate holdings
and “considerable interests in the bootlegging industry.” Whiskey stills were sited in

72. But Giuseppe Maranzano was, in fact, the brother of Salvatore, born in 1876 in Castellammare,
and who had lived lawfully (working for the municipality) and quietly in the New York City from 1902. In
1925, Nicolo Maranzano and his family lived at the address given by Elizabetta. How he fitted into this
scheming is unknown.
73. The Beacon News, 12 September 1931
74. Downey, P. (2004) Gangster City: The History of the New York Underworld 1900–1935, Barricade
Books, Fort Lee, N.J., p. 165; Maas, The Canary That Sang, p. 96
75. L’Ora, 23– 24 January 1962
76. National Archives of Canada, RG 76, C 5 a, vol. 1, p. 146, reel T–15349
77. Communication from M. R. Nelson. In 1928, when Domenico and Rose Vultaggio of Brooklyn sold
Maranzano fish boats, equipment, land and real estate in the city of Sea Isle, Maranzano’s residence
was still given as Hamilton, Ontario.
78. Bonanno, A Man of Honour, p. 75
 BUSTER, MARANZANO AND THE CASTELLAMMARE WAR 59

Pennsylvania and upstate New York.79 Maranzano probably owned a truckload of

alcohol that, in March 1929, was fired upon by Rocco Germano in Poughkeepsie.80
Germano, before he fell out with Maranzano over it,81 also transferred a farm in
Wappingers Falls to Joseph and Marie Trifano of Brooklyn, who in turn transferred
their interest in October 1928 for $6,000 to Maranzano “of Hamilton, Ontario
Canada.”82
In January 1930, two large stills, mash, redistilled alcohol and liquor-manufacturing
chemicals were found on the land owned by Thomas and John Harrigan. Maranzano
had leased 75 acres of the farm shortly before the raid. 83 Germano was the agent
for the syndicate that rented the Harrigan property at Gayhead on which an
unidentified body was found in the Binnewater Pond, in the middle of April 1930.84
Twine binding the dead body was similar to that found on Maranzano’s farm.85
Maranzano’s Wappingers Falls residence could well have been the site for the
mafia initiation ceremonies in November 1930 described by Valachi.86 Although
his Dutchess County liquor operations seem to have wound down during the
Castellammare War, Maranzano’s residence in Wappingers Falls was noted as late
as April 1931 when he applied for and received a pistol permit.87

Maranzano and Alien Smuggling

Particularly mythologised has been Maranzano’s supposed “major racket,” the
smuggling of immigrants from Sicily into America in order to complement his army.
This theme was pursued equally uncritically by both scholars and journalists, inclu-
ding Hammer,88 Powell (Maranzano’s supporters included “an army of trigger men

79. Bonanno, A Man of Honour, pp. 74–5. With the arrival of Maranzano into bigger league liquor
manufacture and distribution in Dutchess County, other Brooklyn mafia personalities became known to
the local police as associates. These included Santo Vultaggio, a fellow townsman of Maranzano from
Castellammare, born 1878, arriving in the US in 1905, and Pietro (Peter) Sciortino. Vultaggio’s main
residence became Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn in which, during August 1931, he was arrested for
concealed gun possession. Fellow arrestees included Joseph Barbara, who would become famous as the
“host” of the Apalachin Mafia conference in 1957, and Natale Evola, an upcoming member of the New
York mafia’s Bonanno crime group. Police surmised that the men were out to murder Vultaggio for his
perceived role in the ‘Binnewater’ murder case discussed above. Sciortino, also primarily a Brooklyn
resident, was questioned over the same case. Born in 1903 and identified as a Bonanno crime family
“soldier” in his later years, Sciortino moved to Tucson, Arizona in the 1960s, where he died
80. Beacon News, 12 September 1931 The police believed that Germano, a Poughkeepsie real estate
broker and fellow Maranzano associate born in Italy in 1882, was trying to stop the truck from being
hijacked He was jailed and fined in December 1929 after pleading guilty to third degree assault
81. Beacon News, 27 December 1929 and 12 September 1931
82. Deed to Salvatore Maranzano, 22 October 1928 in Liber 490 of Deeds, page 212, Dutchess County
Clerk’s Office
83. Beacon News, 11 September 1931
84. Beacon News, 21 April 1931
85. The Harrigans themselves claimed ignorance of the identity of the men to whom they leased the
barn in which the liquor was seized. They were charged with illegal possession of liquor and the
ownership of the two “large-capacity stills” located on their farm.
86. Valachi, The Canary That Sang, p. 86, OCN, pp. 180-1
87. Communication from Mike Tona, Buffalo
88. Hammer, R. (1975) The Illustrated History of Organised Crime, Courage Books, Philadelphia, p. 102
60 DAVID CRITCHLEY

from abroad through a system of alien smuggling”),89 Nelli,90 Block and by Feder and
Joesten (in which Maranzano brought in aliens “whose guns were ready for hire”).91
The original source for the allegation seems to have been press reports upon
Maranzano’s death of his imagined activities in this field and of incriminating
“notebooks” found in Maranzano’s office. But rather than showing, as Chandler
claimed, that Maranzano “had arranged the illegal entry of some three thousand
Italians,”92 the Justice Department’s reports in the case indicated that few, if
any, of the allegations of alien smuggling could be substantiated,93 and no
newspapers checked them for accuracy.94 Moreover, those who knew Maranzano
while he was alive and who wrote of him (Bonanno, Gentile and Valachi) did not
mention alien smuggling as one of his rackets.

The Mori Anti-Mafia Crusade

Linked by Cressey, Salerno and others to the smuggling issue, as the reason for this
mass exodus of mafiosi from Sicily in the 1920s, was Mussolini’s anti-Mafia
campaign in Sicily, led by Prefect Mori. Thus, Nelli tells us that the Mori offensive
“forced high-level Sicilian Mafiosi out of Italy.”95 Chandler and Fried mirrored
each other in an account of how a “Twenties Group” of New York mafia members
was composed of those who left Sicily under the pressures exerted by fascists.96
Hammer’s work narrated how “Mussolini’s ruthless campaign against the Sicilian
Mafia” brought Maranzano many new recruits.97
The Mori ‘purge,’ began in late 1925, Cesare Mori having been appointed prefect
of Palermo that October.98 But a detailed analysis, reproduced in Tables 2 and 3,
shows that, with a handful of exceptions (most clearly Maranzano and Bonanno),99
Sicilians who became involved in the Castellammare War arrived on American shores
well before the Mori or even Fascist period.100

89. Powell, H. (1939) Ninety Times Guilty, Robert Hale, London, p. 81

90. Nelli, H. S. (1976) The Business of Crime, Oxford University Press, New York, p. 200
91. Feder, S. & Joesten J. (1994) The Luciano Story, Da Capo Press, New York, p. 78; Block, A. A.
(1978) ‘History and the Study of Organised Crime,’ Urban Life, vol 6, no 4, p. 463
92. Chandler, The Criminal Brotherhoods, p. 161
93. U.S. Dept. of Justice report New York City 9.10.31 title “James F. Alescia,” report of 29.1.32 from
New york City titled “James F. Alescia.”
94. A discarded black memorandum book found “on the sidewalk below the office of Maranzano and
Alescia,” that caused a momentary stir in the media in fact belonged to James Alescia, the lessee of
the suite from whom Maranzano had subleased the office in which he was murdered. Maranzano left
few records, and none led to fruitful leads.
95. Nelli, The Business of Crime, p. 200. See also Salerno, The Crime Confederation, p. 277
96. Fried, A. (1980) The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America, Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
New York, p. 124
97. Hammer, The Illustrated History of Organised Crime, p. 103
98. Dickie, J. (2004) Cosa Nostra, Coronet Books, London, p. 184
99. Bonanno, A Man of Honour, p. 70
100. Chandler for instance declared that the Mori Purge in Sicily caused the leaving for New York of
“the youngest and brightest of the Sicilian Mafia”, among them Carlo Gambino (in 1921), Joseph
Bonanno (1924), Steve Magaddino (1924), Joseph Profaci (1924), Joseph Magliocco (1924) and
Salvatore Maranzano (1927). (Chandler, The Criminal Brotherhoods, p. 135)
 BUSTER, MARANZANO AND THE CASTELLAMMARE WAR 61

Sicilian illegal immigrants of the 1920s could not have substantially reinforced
Maranzano in 1930 and 1931. Nor were they available to bolster the army of
traditionalists that, according to mob lore, were eliminated by mafia modernisers
in the Purge of September 1931. The Purge is returned to, after first outlining the
events of the Castellammare War itself.

The Castellammare War

Because the outlines of the Castellammare War has been addressed elsewhere,101
this section sketches only the major themes with additions and corrections where
needed. In also highlights areas where the difference between evidence and
allegation are at their greatest. As Capeci observed, “The term ‘Castellammarese
War’ encompassed a series of conflicts within a number of families around the
nation to see who would be the boss.”102 The “military” aspect to the War
covered, apart from New York City, Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago and Buffalo.
There were large numbers of non-Castellammare del Golfo born participants
fighting on the Maranzano side, following Masseria’s early strikes.103 What the term
“Castellammaresi” conveyed, however, was a sense of unity among those in opposition
to Masseria, permitting some of those who saw action to cloak their less than
honourable motives for taking part inside the idea of a noble struggle against Masseria’s
“unjust rule.” Most important in this particular group were those gunmen led by
Tommaso (Tommy) Gagliano, from Corleone, Sicily, and Giuseppe Aiello in Chicago.104

101. For instance, in Nelli, The Business of Crime, pp. 199-206

102. Capeci, J. (2002) The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Mafia, Alpha Books, Indianapolis, p. 272
103. Nicolo (‘Cola’) Schiro was one of those whose origins in Sicily are by no means clear. Despite
leading the putative “Castellammare” faction of the Brooklyn Mafia before Maranzano, his birthplace,
for example, may not have been Castellammare at all. The author, in the course of this research,
located three mature New York City resident Italian immigrants of this name in 1930. The most likely
match to ‘Cola’ Schiro, the crime family leader, came from Roccanamena, Sicily. This man was born in
1872 in Roccanamena, Sicily, arriving at the port of Boston in 1902 and living at one stage on Throop
Avenue, Brooklyn, not far from the centre of the Schiro crime family operations in Williamsburg. When
this Schiro took up permanent residence in Italy in the 1940s, his US citizenship was revoked, perhaps
explaining why crime boss Schiro vanished so completely from American crime history annals in 1930
104. Joseph Aiello, the family head, was born 1890 in Bagheria to the east of Palermo. Before moving to
Chicago, the Aiellos lived in Buffalo and maintained contacts there. Aiello was arrested in 1917 in a
shooting affray in Utica, New York. It began with the shooting and wounding on Bleecker and Niagara
Street, Utica, of Antonio Gagliano by 2 men. Sam LaFata and Aiello were charged with the shooting of
Gagliano. Aiello was found by policemen, “hidden between two mattresses in a bed” at the home of
Attavio and Samuel Amara. But when the case came to trial, Gagliano refuted his statement against
LaFata and Aiello and they were freed. In early October 1917, LaFata was killed in Buffalo, in “the work of
real gunmen who knew their job.” Slightly over a week later, also in Buffalo, Aiello married Catherine
(Kate) Amara, also of Bagheria, and the daughter of Attavio Amara. The Aiello family upped sticks to
Chicago in the first years of the 1920s, where three more infants after Carlo (born 1919 in Utica) were
added to the Aiello family. Carlo Aiello, the family patriarch from Bagheria, joined Andrea, who by 1920
lived on Locust Street in Chicago. Bonanno (A Man of Honour, p. 119) says that Aiello sought “refuge” in
Buffalo during 1930, when Capone was gunning for him in Chicago. Two years after his murder in October
1930 at the hands of Capone gunmen, Aiello’s body was removed to Rochester, New York, where he lies
today with his wife in Riverside Cemetery. A nephew of Joseph Aiello, Frank Aiello, was killed gangland-
style in Milwaukee in May 1931. Frank was a relative, in turn, of Peter Guardalabene, the boss of the
Milwaukee Mafia for a time whose family came from Santa Flavia, a short distance from Bagheria.
62 DAVID CRITCHLEY

Financing The War

Headline statistics on the supposed profitability of Italian-American organized
crime enterprises hide huge variations, but usually grossly overstating their
levels.105 Salvatore Maranzano left his widow Elizabetta mortgages on properties
in Wappingers Falls, Sea Isle (New Jersey) and in New York City. Maranzano’s total
estate when he died, at the height of his authority inside the mafia, was worth
$87,595 gross, $54,056 net. In 2003, that was equivalent to just over a million
dollars gross, $653,614 net.106 These recorded assets compared poorly to the
bootlegging profits made by not only Al Capone in Chicago, but equally by Waxey
Gordon, a Jewish beer runner of the same era.107 And by comparison to the
primarily Jewish-run Reinfeld Syndicate, Italian Prohibition era alcohol
operations were small change.108
As the profits from Italian bootlegging were of a more modest magnitude,
financing the Castellammare War became an issue. Helping to make ends meet
was Tommaso Gagliano’s lathing company in the Bronx that, Valachi stated,
supplied most of the funds for Maranzano’s struggle against Masseria.109 Gagliano
gave the most individually, (estimated at between $140,000 –$150,000) while
Stefano (Steve) Magaddino the Buffalo family leader, and Aiello gave $5,000
weekly apiece until Aiello’s October 1930 killing in Chicago by Capone’s men.110
At the same time, Valachi complained that the men doing the fighting were paid a
pittance by Maranzano, $25 each week, split between him and his compatriots
Buster, Capuzzi and Shillitani. To supplement this, Valachi returned to
burglary.111
Taking the $140,000 figure as about right, worth $1.54 million in 2003
money,112 the question arises as to where all Gagliano’s cash went. Unless there
were huge numbers of wartime participants we know nothing of and who had to be
maintained, or the money was siphoned off, most of this sum’s whereabouts is

105. Naylor, R. T. (1997) ‘Mafias, Myths, and Markets,’ Transnational Organized Crime, vol. 3, no. 3,
p. 25
106. Kings County Surrogates’ Court, file no. 7873 Year 1931. Online, available at:
eh.net/hmit/compare/
107. According to Dewey, Gordon headed a syndicate with holdings that numbered 2 breweries, 60
trucks, 5 offices, 2 houses, various hotel suites and offices in New York City and New Jersey (Dewey,
T. E. (1974) Twenty Against the Underworld, Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y., p. 121)
108. Edwin Baldwin, who led the investigation of the group, indicated before the Kefauver Committee
that the Schultz and Gordon gangs “were pikers compared to this mob,” which made vast profits in
supplying maybe 40 percent of the illicit liquor consumed in America from 1926 –33 (US Senate,
Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, hearings, part 18, pp. 765–8)
109. The Gagliano business venture in the Bronx, the United Lathing Company, was the cause of his
only jail sentence, in May 1932 for income tax evasion. One of the original investors was Giuseppe
Morello, also known as Peter Morello, a key figure in the Castellammare War.
110. OCN, p. 193, in which Valachi “learned this from being in the house with Maranzano.” Valachi,
The Real Thing, p. 338. Valachi told his FBI interrogators that Gagliano “contributed $150,000” to
Maranzano’s cause
111. “I felt $25 a week was kind of rough” (OCN, p. 194)
112. Online. Available at: eh.net/hmit/compare/
 BUSTER, MARANZANO AND THE CASTELLAMMARE WAR 63

a mystery. More likely, Valachi was given (or mistakenly recalled) an inflated and
wholly unrealistic figure for Gagliano’s contribution, which does not appear in
either Bonanno’s or Gentile’s accounts.113

Key Wartime Murders

In New York City, following early successes against the Castellammaresi by
Masseria, Sebastiano Domingo was involved with Valachi and a small cadre of
other assassins in a number of high-profile murders. These decided the course of
the War.

Gaspare Milazzo and Rosario Parrino

As Milazzo, the Detroit family leader, and his associate Parrino were eating in the
back room of a Detroit fish market on 31 May 1930, two armed men burst in and
shot them both. Milazzo, who was born 1887 in Castellammare, died instantly.
Parrino lingered near to death before succumbing to his wounds.114 Maranzano
successfully used these two deaths to argue the case for attacking Masseria before
the entire Schiro family membership in Brooklyn. He asserted that Masseria was
using the Detroit murders to intimidate into submission the Castellammaresi
factions in Detroit and in Brooklyn (Parrino was a former Schiro family member).
The Brooklyn family overthrew Nicolo Schiro, their long time leader who espoused
a conciliatory tone in dealings with Masseria, for the fiery Maranzano.115

Vito Bonventre

The murder of Vito Bonventre, also from Castellammare, on 15 July 1930 was a
severe blow to Maranzano. “Next to Schiro,” Bonventre was probably the
wealthiest member of the family and his murder supplied the cue for Maranzano
to take over the crime family from Schiro.116

Giuseppe Morello

Domingo’s first known assignment for Maranzano was to kill Joseph Morello,
one of the original architects of the American mafia before his incarceration
for counterfeiting in 1910.117 Gentile described Morello as a one-time

113. Gentile’s only observation on the money aspect of the War concerns cash raised at a gigantic
feast on Coney Island (Vita di Capomafia, p. 115). Bonanno has even less to say on the financial
underpinnings of the Castellammare War, except that he once held onto $80,000 for Maranzano (p. 130)
114. Parrino was born 1890 in Alcamo, Sicily, the brother of Schiro member Joseph Parrino (Detroit
News, 1 June 1930, Wayne County death certificate no. 7449, 1930)
115. Bonanno, A Man of Honour, pp. 93–4
116. Bonanno, A Man of Honour, pp. 102–3; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 16 July 1930; New York World, 16
July 1930. The death certificate is Brooklyn certificate # 14800. The coroner’s report is at Office of the
Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York, Borough of Brooklyn, case # 2448
117. Although called Peter Morello in many accounts, including that of Joseph Bonanno, he was in fact
old-time Mafia leader Giuseppe Morello, as confirmed by his death certificate (Certificate of Death,
Borough of Manhattan, #19631, 1930)
64 DAVID CRITCHLEY

“boss of bosses” in the American Mafia. Morello and Joseph Perrano were shot and
died in their East 116th Street office; a third man was badly wounded. Two gunmen
were seen fleeing the murder scene.

Manfredi Mineo and Stefano Ferrigno

Valachi first met Domingo in the lead-up to the murders in early November 1930 of
Mineo and Ferrigno, two of the top men in the Masseria camp. They were shot
dead from a ground floor apartment while walking through a garden of the
Alhambra Apartments, Pelham Parkway in the Bronx.118 Three killers were used,
employing pistols and a shotgun.119

Giuseppe Catania

The sixth murder on the list, also involving Domingo, was that of Joseph (Joe The
Baker) Catania in the Bronx. Related to the Terranova family, Catania controlled
the Italian bread industry in his locality120 but had fallen foul of Maranzano and
was aligned with Masseria. Six lead slugs tore into him in front of a store on
Belmont Avenue, hitting him in the head, neck, back and left side.121 Shotguns
were again used, discharged from a building across the street and were found in a
vacant apartment.122

Giuseppe Masseria

Last of the Castellammare War victims was Masseria himself, on 15 April 1931. His
murder formally ended the hostilities. Police trying to piece together what
happened claimed that Masseria was slain by several shots fired by two or three
unknown men as he was seated playing cards at a table in the back room of the
Nuova Villa Tammara restaurant in Coney Island. When the police arrived “there
was no one who could give a clear description of the slayers or of the men playing
cards with Masseria.” Three used revolvers were found on the floor near the scene
of the crime.123

118. OCN, p. 179

119. As indicated by Valachi, they were Santuccio, Capuzzi and Domingo, with Valachi acting (so he
claimed) as the getaway drive (OCN, pp. 172, 178, Maas, The Canary That Sang, p. 84)
120. NY Municipal Archives, WPA Italians of New York, MN # 21261 roll # 262
121. Death certificate Bronx # 1453 (1931)
122. New York Times, 4 February 1931
123. Brooklyn Eagle, 16 April 1931. All the police found at the site of the murder were the hats and
coats of men who it was assumed accompanied him into the restaurant. Contrary to reports that
Masseria “gorged himself on antipasto, spaghetti with red clam sauce, lobster Fra Diavolo, a quart of
Chianti,” before his death, it was discovered by the Medical Examiner that Masseria’s stomach was
“practically empty.” (Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York, Borough of
Brooklyn Case # 1457) A consensus of sorts built up that Luciano, who had accompanied Masseria to the
restaurant in this version, was in the men’s washroom when the gunmen slipped in to finish off his
leader. Luciano was alleged to have told the police that he heard several shots and found Masseria
dead. But contemporary press reports on the Masseria slaying make no such claims, and Luciano’s rap
sheet shows no arrests at all in April, 1931. As Lacey stated, “It made no sense for him to wait in the
restaurant to test out such a thin alibi when everyone else had escaped.” (Lacey, R. (1991) Little Man:
Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life, Arrow, London, p. 462)
 BUSTER, MARANZANO AND THE CASTELLAMMARE WAR 65

Table 4 Casualties of the Castellammare War

Name Date Locality

Gaspare Milazzo 31 May 1930 Detroit

Rosario Parrino 31 May 1930 Detroit
Vito Bonventre 15 July 1930 Brooklyn
Giuseppe Morello 15 August 1930 Manhattan
Two Unidentified Masseria Men September-October 1930 New York127
Joseph Aiello 23 October 1930 Chicago
Manfredi Mineo 5 November 1930 Bronx
Stefano Ferrigno 5 November 1930 Bronx
Giuseppe Parrino 19 January 1931 Manhattan128
Joseph Catania 4 February 1931 Bronx
Chester Lamare 7 February 1931 Detroit
Joseph Masseria 15 April 1931 Brooklyn

The Death Toll

Embellishment has been a hallmark of attempts to estimate the number of deaths
in the War. Maas stated that, for example, “before the bloodletting was over,
some sixty bodies would litter US streets.”124 Valachi, similarly, quoted a figure of
from 40 – 60 dispatched on the Masseria side of the conflict.125
A careful reading of newspapers and other materials reveals a far lower fatality
figure, as indicated, albeit depending somewhat on when the War was adjudged as
starting “officially.” Complicating the question of the full death toll was “run-of-the
mill” killings unconnected to the war but still involving Italians. As Sifakis points out,
“it was hard to tell which corpse belonged to the Castellammare War and which to
the ordinary booze wars raging in the underworld.”126 Sticking to murders mentioned
by at least one of the three participants-writers (Bonanno, Gentile or Valachi) gives
the far shorter list in Table 4.

124. Maas, The Canary That Sang, p. 90

125. OCN, p. 214
126. Sifakis, C. (1987) The Mafia Encyclopaedia, Facts on File, New York, p. 215
127. According to Downey’s Gangster City (p. 155), the two New York crime families led by Maranzano
and Tommaso Gagliano sealed their pact by cooperating over the Ferrigno murder. Maas (The Canary
That Sang, pp. 81– 4) told a not dissimilar tale, in that “they agreed to kill a top Masseria henchman
together” which turned out to be Ferrigno and Mineo. Chandler even gave an account of how the
Gaglianos killed Pinzolo as part the pact, while the Maranzano element for their part rubbed out
Morello (The Criminal Brotherhoods, p. 146). But a careful reading of Joseph Valachi’s testimony, the
original source of the story, reveals that Valachi himself had no idea who the two murdered men were;
when asked who they were, Valachi stated clearly, “I don’t know. I never did know” (OCN, p. 167).
During his debriefing by the FBI, Valachi said the same: he “did not know the names of the bosses
selected for elimination” (FBI report Girolomo Santuccio, 18. February 1963 from New Haven office).
The two killings happened at some point in-between the death of Pinzolo (5 September) and the violent
downfall of Ferrigno and Mineo in early November 1930. Within this time frame, several fatal Italian
underworld shootings occurred, but proof of any ties to the Castellammare War remains elusive.
128. Parrino was killed when he sought to take over the Schiro/Maranzano crime group and was willing
to reach terms with Masseria over it, despite Masseria’s role in his brother’s Rosario (Sam) Parrino’s
death (Bonanno, A Man of Honour, pp. 106–7).
66 DAVID CRITCHLEY

Thirteen confirmed murders are a far cry from the claims made or implied by the
huge coverage given to the wartime violence in published histories of the US
Mafia.129 The conflict was chiefly played out inside Italian communities and the
victors continued to draw sustenance and manpower from them.

The War’s Outcome

When Masseria was betrayed by his men and permanently dispatched in April
1931, the war ended, with Maranzano the beneficiary. As Maranzano’s underworld
power grew, so did the problems this created. In the last analysis, Masseria’s
crime family was an economic coalition arranged around the liquor traffic and
gambling. His clumsy actions in trying to extend his power base through crude
manipulation and even murder cemented together in effective opposition
otherwise uninterested Italian gangsters. Maranzano’s genius was in bridging
divisions that had always existed in the crime families in a single fight to rid them
of Masseria. Once that goal was achieved, the families went their own ways. The
core of the Maranzano-led struggle was a faction from Castellammare that never
wavered and could be relied upon in a tight corner. Maranzano’s wartime
operation was also comparatively well resourced, with better contacts in the
opposing camp. Finally, Masseria failed to capitalise on his initial numerical
strength because he could not envisage, let alone plan for, a backlash on the scale
he experienced.
The Chicago syndicate (‘the Outfit’) gained in prestige from the War. Capone, a
Masseria family group leader at the start of the war, was important enough to be
included in the discussions to kill both Masseria and Maranzano. It reflected the
growing economic might of Chicago and Capone’s political clout in the Windy City,
which overshadowed that of New York’s five families.

Death of Maranzano
Not long before his death, Valachi recalled, Maranzano showed him a list of top
organised crime figures in New York he wanted murdered. Valachi was told,
“we must get the mattresses again, by that he meant that we are going to war
again.”130 Maranzano explained how “we have to get rid of” them all. These he
couldn’t “get along with.”131 They were those in fact who had either actively
opposed Maranzano in the war, or had refused to commit themselves to
Maranzano soon enough during it.

129. There is no evidence, for example, that the other murders quoted by Patrick Downey (with one
exception) were in any way connected to the combat. The exception was Frank Italiano, who was
wounded in October 1930 as he was walking down the street, a member of the Castellammare crime
family. With him was “Patsy Tango” Dauria, who was shot dead (Downey, Gangster City).
130. Valachi, The Real Thing, p. 361
131. OCN, p. 221, Maas, The Canary That Sang, p. 99, Valachi, The Real Thing, p. 362
 BUSTER, MARANZANO AND THE CASTELLAMMARE WAR 67

When news of Maranzano’s plans leaked out, he became a marked man and was
subsequently slain. On 10 September 1931, Maranzano was taken by surprise
inside his office on Park Avenue in Manhattan, and murdered by a team of gunmen
on loan from Jewish crime organisations allied to Luciano, a former Masseria man
who had been instrumental in Masseria’s murder and now in Maranzano’s.132
This explanation as the reason for Maranzano’s death achieved wide
circulation and matched the dominant view from 1963 that every event of the
war could be read solely with reference to mafia-centred conspiracies. But another
view of why Maranzano was murdered was available, mostly forgotten but once
influential, reflecting a comment made by Joseph Bonanno in 1983. As Bonanno
recalled, “a likely bone of contention was New York’s garment.industry.”133
Powell first made the story public in 1939134 In this analysis, Luciano and
Maranzano came to blows during a clothing workers’ union strife. It ended in the
accidental murder of Guido Ferraro at the hands of Maranzano gunmen in late July
1931. Ferraro’s murder brought to a head pre-existing tension between Luciano and
his associate Louis (Lepke) Buchalter on the one hand, and Maranzano on the other,
over their respective ambitions in the extensive Manhattan clothing industry.135

Greasers and Americanisers

Both these developments probably came together to force the hand of Luciano,
who quickly moved against not only Maranzano, but (according to legend) his
entire coterie of traditionalistic supporters in the mob, referred to by their
detractors as “greasers” or “moustache petes.” They were supposedly “purged”
or killed en masse, removing the principle obstacle to the more “Americanised,”
streamlined, and innovative organisation Luciano and his allies wished to see.
The “greaser-Americanised” dichotomy lives on in the works of Salerno, Cressey,
and Nelli as an “underlying” cause of the War.136

132. Death certificate, Borough of Manhattan # 22124. Although Downey (p. 166) states that the
gunmen who slew Maranzano came from the “Bug and Meyer guys,” the assassination squad was
composed, as well, of gunmen from the Dutch Schultz outfit with another possibly from the Abe
Zwillman organisation across the Hudson River in New Jersey.
133. Bonanno, A Man of Honour, p. 140
134. Powell, Ninety Times Guilty, p. 81
135. Turkus, B. B. & Feder, S. (1974) Murder Inc., Manor Books, New York, pp. 71–73. Ferraro, owner
of a Brooklyn clothing factory, was slain by a gunman who alighted from a car in front of his home on
Ocean Parkway on 31 July 1931 (New York Times, 1 August 1931, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1 August 1931).
There is no support for Gus Russo’s claims of involvement by the garment industry racketeer Lepke
Buchalter or union leader Sidney Hillman in the Ferraro murder. And contrary to Russo’s contention,
Buchalter did not make a “last minute” confession that Hillman ordered the Ferraro assassination
(Russo, G. (2001) The Outfit, Bloomsbury, New York, p. 221)
136. Powell, Ninety Times Guilty, pp. 65–6, Nelli, The Business of Crime, p. 200. Sifakis, The Mafia
Encyclopaedia, p. 68 Peter Lupsha pursued a similar argument. When the “smoke had cleared,”
according to Lupsha, “the new men of the Luciano group were in the dominant positions, and the
Italian-American crime “families” organisational and coordinating structures were modernised and
increasingly democratised.” Lupsha, P. A. (1981) ‘Individual Choice, Material Culture, and Organised
Crime,’ Criminology, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 3–24.
68 DAVID CRITCHLEY

Masseria was frequently cited as an example of the “greaser” element in the

American mafia. Seeking solutions through precedent, compromise and caution,
they refused to move with the times and to exploit the vast opportunities
available in the New World. Maranzano was also seen in this light, as an Italian
colony figure more interested in increasing his status there than in making money.
Americanised family members, their rivals for power, were defined as more
materialistic, individualistic, willing to take risks and to cooperate with non-
Italians.137
Americanised members gathered around their unofficial leader Luciano were,
in this model, either born in America or entered the American urban environment
soon after birth “and learned American ways.” Their most enduring characteristic
was a willingness “to work with fellow hoods not of the same blood” for the
common goal of making money.138 By distinction, the greasers denied “the
“American way,” the rational way, of doing business.”139
We have insufficient data on Luciano’s closest followers in the early 1930s (he
was jailed in 1936 and removed from circulation) to decide if they were
“Americanised” enough to fit the theory. However, Gentile says that regularly
accompanying the “greaser” Masseria in 1931 were Vito Genovese, Salvatore
Loverdo, Vincent Mangano, Joseph Biondo and Gentile himself 140 Biondo,
however, would probably qualify as Americanised by the criteria of his age
at immigration, since he entered America aged 1. But Gentile and Mangano were
old-time figures, and at the ages of entry of 19 and 17, would likely be considered
as “greasers.”
The general picture is thus one of variety and differences that cannot be
predicted using the greaser-Americaniser dichotomy. Luciano was slightly
younger than the statistical norm in this sample. But even younger was Joseph
Bonanno, at the age of 25 a self-proclaimed and resolute traditionalist who took
over Maranzano’s crime family in late 1931. Furthermore, Genovese, with whom
Luciano was most publicly connected, was 16 when he migrated from Italy, at
about the same age at entry as many of the “greasers.”
Peter Lupsha’s attempt to bolster the argument that “young Americans took
over the organisation in the wake of the Castellammare War” used misleading
data, conflating information on those who took part in the war with those who did
not.141 A close analysis, given in Figures 2a and 2b, of key Masseria and Maranzano
followers does not show a clear pattern, either by age at birth or by age at

137. Luciano was described in his 1936 probation report so: “His ideals of life resolve themselves into
money to spend, beautiful women to enjoy, silk underclothes and places to go in style.” (New York
Times, 19 June 1936)
138. Feder and Joesten, The Luciano Story, pp. 74– 5
139. Cressey, Theft of the Nation, p. 44. Bonanno reflected this sentiment when describing Luciano:
“Charlie Lucky paid lip service to our tradition, largely because he had to deal with Sicilians in the
course of his affairs; but he thought the Tradition was antiquated.” Luciano “believed in business”
(Bonanno, A Man of Honour, p. 163)
140. Gentile, Translated Transcription, p. 99
141. Lupsha, Individual Choice, Material Culture, and Organised Crime, pp. 8–9
 BUSTER, MARANZANO AND THE CASTELLAMMARE WAR 69

immigration that allows individuals to be labelled with any confidence as a greaser

or an Americaniser. Moreover, Luciano took over and headed Masseria’s
supposedly predominantly “greaser” family, further complicating the question
of which of the two “groups” he thenceforth led.
Masseria and Maranzano, however, were older than most of the members in the
sample, especially when compared to Luciano, who also entered America at a
much younger stage than either. This may have unduly influenced writers.
In the final analysis, New York City mafia members who had emigrated from
Italy at an older age than Luciano carried over nicely into the post-Maranzano
world. This theme is illustrated below deploying a sample of crime family leaders
for which we have good data. The status quo from 1931 was also captured on the
inter-family “Commission,” a largely advisory body composed of the most
powerful syndicate bosses on which, Bonanno recalled, the “conservative” wing
outnumbered the so-called “liberals.”142
The figures show that Maranzano could count on a core of acolytes from his
hometown of Castellammare. No non-Sicilians were found in the Maranzano
sample, unlike that for Masseria. The city of Palermo supplied the single largest
number of Masseria followers. In contrast to the Maranzano people, there were a
sprinkling of Calabrians (Adonis and Costello) and a Neopolitan (Genovese) with
Masseria’s family. And as Dickie suggested, “Whatever criminal aptitudes Joe ‘the
Boss’ had brought with him to New York from Palermo had been modern enough to
enable him to build a career lasting more than two decades.”143 Mafia members
sooner rather than later adapted to American pressures, regardless of their
heritage. Indeed, members of all ranks were expected to forge an independent
role for themselves in the rackets, one of the more unique aspects of mafia
organisations rooted in Sicily over Neopolitan “Camorra” ones for instance.144
Victors of the war who would make the peacetime settlement were quite simply
those who supported Maranzano during the conflict; the one consistent factor that
they shared. In that context, Sicilian traditionalists like Joseph Profaci continued
to carry weight in the councils of “Cosa Nostra.”
While difficult to pin down as to its exact meaning, since it depended on who was
doing the saying, it seems that the ‘greaser’ label tended to be cast on a fellow
member who was disliked for a personal characteristic or mode of behaviour. One
alleged trait was thus a proclivity towards unnecessary violence (‘kill crazy’) and a
willingness to extort from ‘fellow immigrants’ (an apparent reference to the Black
Hand). Whether such aspersions were fair comment was an entirely different thing.
Members who had fought their way up through personal effort were also more likely
to make derogatory remarks about those who were perceived as having it easy, due
for instance to the power of nepotism at the higher ranks.145

142. Bonanno, A Man of Honour, Bonanno, Bill, Bound by Honour, St. Martin’s Paperbacks, 1999
143. Dickie, Cosa Nostra, p. 228.
144. Bonanno, A Man of Honour, p. 161
145. FBI Criminal Intelligence Digest, 11 March 1963, FBI, La Cosa Nostra Chicago Division, 16 July
1964, report from Chicago office.
70 DAVID CRITCHLEY

Table 5 New York City crime families’ elites, 1931 –1936

Position in Family Age at entry to US Age in 1930

Albert Anastasia Underboss 15 28

Joseph Bonanno Boss 19 25
Tommaso Gagliano Boss 21 46
Frank Garofalo Underboss 29 39
Vito Genovese Underboss 16 33
Salvatore Lucania Boss 10 33
Gaetano Lucchese Underboss 12 31
Joseph Magliocco Underboss 16 32
Vincent Mangano Boss 17 42
Joseph Profaci Boss 23 33
Mean age 17.8 34.2

The influence of upcoming figures – the so-called ‘Americanisers’ - was limited

as well by the localised crime family system. A mixture of ‘old world’ crime figures
and younger family members led families throughout the 1930s and 1940s,
cooperating where fruitful with the dynamic youngsters who modelled themselves
on Luciano.

‘Purge Day’
The idea that dozens of old-time crime family members allied to Maranzano and
standing in the way of Luciano’s “Americanisers” were slaughtered en masse has a
long pedigree. Estimates of the number of murdered ranged from about 30 to 90
“all over the country,” and all either on 10 September 1931, or within a few days
of Maranzano’s murder then.146
By this single breathtaking move, Luciano guaranteed that the American
mafia’s direction would be away from a traditionalistic system of deference and
reward. When Maranzano’s old-world supporters blocking the march of progress
were eradicated, so was their power in the mafia’s councils. Cressey for instance
stated, “the decisions made in 1931 wrested power from old-country”
Mafia figures to “Young Turks bent on doing things ‘the American way’.”147
Eventually, so the argument continued, the Luciano-inspired structures that

146. J. Richard ‘Dixie’ Davis in August 1939 was one of the first to tell readers that “about ninety
guineas (were) knocked of all over the country” on the same day Maranzano was slain, a tale repeated
that same year by Hickman Powell: “There were plenty more gunmen abroad that day” and from 30–90
of Maranzano’s supporters “were murdered within the next few days.” Many other writers such as
Cressey followed suit. Davis, J. R. (1939) ‘Things I Couldn’t Tell Till Now,’ Collier’s, 5 August; Ianni,
F. A. J. & Ianni, E. R. (1972) A Family Business, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, p. 56; Powell,
Ninety Times Guilty, p. 83; Cressey, Theft of the Nation, pp. 44–5; Nelli, The Business of Crime,
pp. 200–3; Chandler, The Criminal Brotherhoods, pp. 160–1; Scaduto, Lucky Luciano, p. 94.
147. Cressey, Theft of the Nation, p. 44
 BUSTER, MARANZANO AND THE CASTELLAMMARE WAR 71

emerged from the Purge formed the foundation stone for the American mafia as
recognised today.
Nelli and Block exploded the Purge myth in the 1970s, by the simple expedient
of searching major American newspapers for the weeks after Maranzano’s death.
Using this methodology, the only killing that Nelli could link to Maranzano’s
demise occurred in Denver, where Pete Carlino was slain. Even there, the death
had at best a tenuous connection to New York developments.148 Alan Block
followed in 1978, also finding that a reading of “newspapers in selected cities
beginning with issues two weeks prior to Maranzano’s death and ending two weeks
after” failed to validate the assertion of multiple assassinations, possibly outside
of three deaths described by Valachi and Joseph Siragusa’s demise. That made a
grand total of four.149
Nonetheless, the author of this article found a number of other Italian gangster
slayings in the second half of September 1931, shortly after Maranzano’s end.150
How these slayings were depicted and treated depended on how the argument
ran. Block, for instance, looked only for newspaper stories “that could be
connected, even remotely, with the Maranzano case.” Thus, Joseph Siragusa of
Pittsburgh was included as a potential Purge victim by Block, because the car
driving away from the murder scene was “bearing New York license plates.”151
This method of arriving at the truth was fraught with difficulties. Gentile (whom
neither Nelli nor Block seemed to have consulted on this point) related how Saverio
(Sam) Pollaccia, the old Masseria consigliere, lost support after Maranzano died,
but his subsequent murder never made the press since his body was disposed of
without fanfare.152 More importantly, it failed to take into account any less obvious
knock-on effects from the Maranzano murder that, for example, eventually caused
an upsurge in violence as new leaders came to the fore with their own agendas and
scores to settle. Some figures that had once been protected by the dead Maranzano
were now at risk. However, it would take time for their opponents to mobilise a
whispering campaign against them of sufficient momentum to justify their killing.
Block’s guess that Siragusa was a victim was correct. Identified by Gentile as the
Pittsburgh family’s “representative,” Siragusa according to Gentile “in his time,
had done everything possible to have me killed.” And “No sooner did news of the
death of Maranzano reach” Gentile and John Bazzano, a member of the Pittsburgh

148. Nelli, The Business of Crime, p. 183. Carlino, a major Denver bootlegger, was slain on 11
September 1931, and his body found near Pueblo, Colorado
149. Block, “History and the Study of Organised Crime,” p. 460
150. These were: New York City: Joseph Manino (shot dead on Union Street, Brooklyn on 12
September by three unknown Italians), Frank Piescia (“a bootlegger and narcotic peddler,” was
found on 14 September dead “with ten bullets through his body”); Massachusetts: Samuel Russo
(killed 11 September in “an alleged bootleg feud”), Joseph Caranna, alias Joaquim Declaccio, of
East Cambridge (found dead on 17 September, a suspected rum-runner); Greater Chicagoland: Carlo
Piazza (shot 16 September 1931 “by unknown person” in a “gang killing”), Joseph Pellegrino
(27 September 1931 – his body was found on the roadside north of Proviso, Illinois, with gunshot
wounds).
151. Block, “History and the Study of Organised Crime,” p. 460
152. Gentile, Translated Transcription, pp. 113, 116
72 DAVID CRITCHLEY

family (and possibly its boss), than they thought of murdering him.153 Sure enough,
Siragusa was shot dead on 13 September 1931 in his home outside Pittsburgh.154
Salvatore Loverde also found the ground shifting under him upon Maranzano’s
murder. He “deserved the same” as Siragusa, contended Gentile.155 An
anonymous telephone caller alerted the police to Loverde’s last moments a
couple of months afterwards. They discovered him on 5 November 1931, suffering
from three gunshot wounds in the Italian-American Republican Club, in Cicero
near Chicago. He died on the way to hospital.156
The idea of a hammer blow on the mammoth scale necessary for the Purge as
usually described defies what is known about the crime organisations limited means
and what informers close to Maranzano on the scene had reported.157 Valachi did
not mention the Purge in any forum,158 simply confining himself to relating how two
Newark mobsters, Luigi Russo and Samuel Monaco, and one in the Bronx, James
LaPore alias Marino, were slain after Maranzano’s murder.159 A New York Police
Department spokesman made no mention of other killings either.160 Gentile notes
the Purge, but no description is given of it, leaving the impression that he, like
Bonanno when speaking of Masseria’s final hours, was repeating a tale current at
the time or thereabouts (Gentile’s recollections in writing were first made in about
1958; Bonanno waited until 1983 before committing himself to print).
Even critics of the Purge Day thesis accepted the three murders occurring on 10
September 1931, mentioned by Valachi.161 LePore was shot dead from bullets fired
from a car on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx Monaco (the Newark family underboss)162
and Russo were last seen alive the same day in Newark. They were subject to
beatings before their bodies were thrown into Hackensack River and Newark Bay,
where they were discovered three days later.163
During his 1963 testimony, Valachi only said that a certain “Nick” told him of
the three killings on the same day Maranzano died, but did not associate them
with Maranzano’s fate.164 Still more worryingly, Valachi suggested in his
unpublished autobiography that he came to the conclusion that the three were

153. Gentile, Translated Transcription, p. 113

154. Pittsburgh Press, 14 September 1931, 3 August 1932
155. Gentile, Translated Transcription, p. 113
156. Chicago Tribune, 5 November 1931
157. As Capeci commented, it would have been “beyond the capability of highly trained special forces,
let alone gangsters whose successful hits are most often preceded by many aborted attempts” (Capeci,
The Complete Idiot’s Guide, pp. 276–8)
158. This included Peter Maas’ biography of Valachi, his 1963 Senate testimony and an unpublished
autobiography.
159. Maas, The Canary That Sang, p. 106
160. OCN, pp. 232–3. For the Louis Russo and Samuel Monaco murders, see Newark Star-Eagle, 14
September 1931 and Jersey Observer, 14 September 1931
161. For example, Nelli, The Business of Crime, p. 183
162. Frank Monaco, Sam’s brother, was questioned in April 1955 following the knifing to death of
Newark crime family head Steve Badami inside Vito Oddo’s Clam Bar in Newark. Badami had, it was
revealed, been a former partner of Steve Monaco in an illicit lottery venture.
163. Newark Star-Eagle, 15 November 1931; Downey, Gangster City, p. 166
164. OCN, p. 232
 BUSTER, MARANZANO AND THE CASTELLAMMARE WAR 73

dispatched because of their ties to Maranzano after reading in newspapers about

their deaths. He got his information on the LaPore, Monaco and Russo killings, in
other words, in the same manner as did the general public - through the press.
Though his knowledge of the New Jersey and Bronx based crime families was
minimal, Valachi seems to have reasoned that as they were apparently important
crime family members, slain at the same time as Maranzano, all four deaths were
interconnected.165
No hard evidence has emerged since 1931 that any of the three were close to
Maranzano and certainly none on why they would be slain with Maranzano. Other
hypotheses as to why Monaco and Russo were eliminated were current in the Newark
press after they died but forgotten by the 1960s.166 Furthermore, their murders were
not linked to Maranzano in the New York or Newark newspapers of September 1931,
as Block notes.167 Downey’s assertion that the car used in the murder of Monaco was
found “near Maranzano’s office” on Park Avenue, as somehow proof of the elusive
connection, is not correct.168 In fact, detectives seized it several blocks away.
The moment Maranzano died, Valachi, Bonanno and others identified with him
disappeared from their normal haunts until they knew it was safe to come out of
hiding. Several men known to be under the protection of Maranzano were shot at
but uninjured on the streets just after Maranzano’s removal.169 “Even when
Maranzano’s funeral was held,” Bonanno commented, “none of us felt it was safe
to show up.”170
Why the fabricated Purge tale achieved such wide currency is more profitable a
question to explore. One possibility is that the murder of such a forceful and
important man of honour as Maranzano could be expected to cause others.
Luciano’s emergence as a leading new-type mafioso also had to be explained, at a
time when the variations between and inside mafia families were not appreciated.
Also, as Block says, the Purge legend probably gained acceptance through
repeated usage and via the mechanisms of rumour and hyperbole, “standard fare
in the secretive oral culture of the underworld.”171
Moreover, the months after the deaths of Masseria and Maranzano were
extraordinarily tense ones for the New York families, which the family heads were
no doubt anxious to calm. The concept of a Purge may have performed a useful
function, by implying that those who supposedly died in it were Maranzano
diehards who would otherwise destroy the peace. It followed that those family
members remaining alive could be trusted.

165. Maas, The Canary That Sang, p. 106, Valachi, The Real Thing, pp. 365–6
166. The newspapers in New Jersey associated their murders with the wine brick racket or to the
November 1930 slaying of Dominick Pacelli in the Newark General Hospital (one of his killers used the
name of Russo) (Newark Star-Ledger, 14 September 1931, Jersey Observer, 14 September 1931)
167. Block, “History and the Study of Organized Crime,” p. 460
168. Downey, Gangster City, p. 166
169. Peter (Petey Muggins) Mione, Steve (Buck Jones) Casertano and John (Johnny Dee) DeBellis were
shot at. They had conducted surveillance operations during the war for Maranzano.
170. Bonanno, A Man of Honour, p. 137
171 Block, “History and the Study of Organised Crime,” p. 463
74 DAVID CRITCHLEY

“La Cosa Nostra”

Notwithstanding that the list of murders attributable, directly or not, to
Maranzano’s downfall can be extended, it never amounted to anything like the
killing spree that has been depicted.172 Maas with others suggested that “La Cosa
Nostra” was created in 1931 with the removal of the ‘greasers’, after which
“warring factions of the Italian underworld” came together. In their new guise as La
Cosa Nostra, the Italians came to “completely dominate organized crime. . .
throughout the country during the next decade.”173 But Maranzano did not establish
“La Cosa Nostra,” as for example the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division believed,
but that the recollections of Gentile and Bonanno, and others, refuted.174
Even the FBI’s own informers sometimes denied a single ‘title’ for the Italian
crime organisations they were more knowledgeable about. One informer indicated
that “Cosa Nostra” and “Mafia” were one and the same group, with the Mafia its
original name.175 Another declared, “there is no name for the overall
organization.”176 In Milwaukee, the Italian organisation was known locally as “the
outfit” or just “the organization.”177 The most important difference from the “La
Cosa Nostra” paradigm was found in Chicago, where terms common in New York City,
such as “caporegime” and “button men” were seldom utilised.178 Chicago’s
organised crime structure was cemented by business and neighbourhood links, giving
it a distinctive set of characteristics from those evident in New York City’s model.179
Arrangements within American mafia families as expressed in organisational
charts masked highly fluid patterns of authority and action based on the nature of
illicit enterprises, social relations and other factors. But as Italian organised
criminals moved into the mainstream of organised crime, a reliance on kinship or
town of origin - the ostensible cause of the Castellammare War - as the major
means of identity faded. But it was not extinguished.180

172. Inside the mafia, some knew this already. Steve Magaddino, the Buffalo family leader who was
embroiled in the war, in a conversation secretly recorded boasted, “when Maranzano died, I was the
one who managed things so that no one got killed.” (FBI, Steve Magaddino AKA AR, report of 31 March
1965 from SAC Buffalo to the FBI Director, p. 10)
173. Maas, Peter, Underboss, Harper Collins, 1997, p. 33
174. US Department of Justice, FBI, Organized Crime Section, Criminal Investigative Division, The
Sicilian Mafia and Its Impact on the United States (c. 1985) p. 6
175. For example in San Francisco (FBI, Criminal Commission, report of 23 January 1963 from SAC
San Francisco)
176. FBI, La Cosa Nostra, report of 31 January 1963 from New York office
177. Confirmed in numerous FBI reports from the Milwaukee office titled La Cosa Nostra.
178. FBI, La Cosa Nostra Chicago Division, report from the Chicago office of 16 July 1964.
179. See the Chicago syndicate family trees contained in NARA, RG 170 Accession No. 170–74– 4, BNDD
“Subject Files of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs” box 52
180. In the 1960s, an FBI informer indicated how “there is often a deep resentment, bias or prejudice
among members who are Neopolitan for Sicilian, and vice versa.” Corleone-born mafiosi like Stefano
(Steve) LaSalle and Vincent Rao moved up into the higher echelon in the Gagliano family, while a
succession of bosses from the city of Palermo headed the old D’Aquila grouping. The St. Louis group had
“something of a caste system, and that makes a difference as to their standing within the organisation
as to where they or their families originated in Italy” (FBI report of 12 September 1967 from St. Louis
office)
 BUSTER, MARANZANO AND THE CASTELLAMMARE WAR 75

“Combinations” and the War

Although Valachi is often blamed with spreading a centralised and undiffer-
entiated concept of Italian-American organised crime (as Naylor remarked,
Valachi “is credited with putting an end to scepticism about the existence of a
formal, hierarchical mafia at the core of the American crime problem.”181), it was
a recurrent theme in journalistic works from the late 1930s. Authors saw behind
the 1930 – 31 conflict a movement, which the conflict accelerated, towards the
consolidation of smaller, multi-ethnic criminal gangs that cumulated in the
“combination” (with offshoots in major cities) referred to in books about ‘Murder
Incorporated’ and described in Block, and Feder and Turkus.182 Powell claimed
that under Luciano’s guidance, “Where once there had been small and isolated
neighbourhood gangs, now the major interests of the underworld were really all
one mob.”183 “Cosa Nostra, a federation of the former American Mafia families, “
Chandler stated, ”now became the nucleus around which a national crime
confederation gathered.”184
The Castellammare War, in reality, signalled a revolt against tendencies
towards centralisation under first Salvatore (Toto) D’Aquila, then his successor as
boss of bosses, Joseph Masseria. Problems the boss of bosses system created lay at
the heart of the Castellammare War, which, caused the wrestling of power back
to local family leaders

The ‘Commission’
Probably the most significant effect of the war for US mafia families was the
destruction of the divisive ‘boss of bosses’ system and the establishment in late
1931 of the ‘Commission,’ as an agency for consensus.185 Despite American mafia
‘general assemblies’ being called long before the Commission came into being,
according to Gentile these appear to have been far more improvised and crises-
led in their nature. Nonetheless, their existence showed that the Commission was
not such a break from past practice as commonly supposed.186

181. Naylor, “Mafias, Myths, and Markets,” pp. 1–45. Even in the heyday of the alien conspiracy model,
there were doubters. Virgil Petersen, the director of the Chicago Crime Commission, was one. He
indicated in the Commission’s 1963 report that Valachi’s version was “a highly over-simplified and
unrealistic picture of organized crime as it actually exists.” Recent research by Reuter and others have
cast further doubt on this perspective. Reuter found for example, the illicit gambling and usury
enterprises in New York City remained diverse, without a single command centre in the 1960s (Chicago
Crime Commission, A Report on Chicago Crime for 1963, p. 71).
182. Block, East Side West Side, Feder and Turkus, Murder Inc.
183. Powell, Ninety Times Guilty, p. 80
184. Chandler, The Criminal Brotherhoods, pp. 161 –2. Journalist Hank Messick expressed the most
extreme example of this line of reasoning in his National Crime Syndicate (NCS) notion, composed he
said of “regional boards” and “an overall commission of gang lords to hear appeals and make final
judgements.” (Messick, H. (1973) Lansky, Robert Hale, London, p. 72–5)
185. Cressey, Theft of the Nation, p. 49
186. Refer to the unpublished Nicolo Gentile manuscript and the released autobiography of Gentile
(Gentile, N. (1963) Vita di Capomafia, Editori Riuniti, Rome).
76 DAVID CRITCHLEY

The principal role of the Commission’s membership (“representando officiale”)

was to maintain the peace between the families, after the turbulence of the
Castellammare War. It operated as an “agent of harmony,” relying principally on
the respect its members collectively and individually had inside the broad mafia
constellation. As Bonanno (who sat on the Commission from its inception) stated,
“More than anything else, the Commission was a forum.”187

Relations with Sicily

The war seems to have also exacerbated a secular trend that severed the
activities of American families from those in Sicily. An FBI report stated that after
the Castellammare War, “self-governing rights were reportedly granted to the
United States group.”188 Dickie’s notion that the war therefore marked “the point
when the mafia in the United States became an Italian-American organisation
rather than a Sicilian one” has merit.189 This was the true “Americanisation” of
the mafia.
Partly explaining this was the establishment of the exclusively American
“Commission,” together with an influx of new crime family members during the
war, most with no direct connections to Italy, let alone to Sicily. Communications
between the Mafia organisations in Sicily and American were weakened further by
the 1920s anti-Mafia drive in Sicily (Gentile details his problems in that area190).
Finally, international ties based, for example, on the narcotics trade did not
exist until the 1950s, and those revolving around the manufacture and
distribution of counterfeit American dollars, using Sicilian sources, were
discontinued in the 1900s.

Conclusion
This article directly engages with the major themes and debates about the
Castellammare War. Allowing for exaggerations and distortions, the war marked
the first and last time that an American mafia war had taken in so many crime

187. Bonanno, A Man of Honour, pp. 141, 159

188. FBI memorandum La Cosa Nostra, 7 January 1965, from Mr. Gale to Mr. Belmont.
189. Dickie, Cosa Nostra, p. 229. In one important expression of this, a previous practice stating that
Sicilian Men of Honour were to be automatically accepted as American members was quietly dropped,
or allowed to decay, from about 1930. Gentile, for example, told how previously, “The Sicilian Mafia
member who emigrated to America was either preceded or followed by a “letter of reference” issued
by a Sicilian “family.” This document was the “credentials” required to be accepted into a Mafia family
of the United States.” Proof of the change in practice came in the early 1970’s, when a Sicilian man of
honour, Carmelo Cuffaro, was overhead in conversation with Montreal mafioso Paolo Violi in his bar.
Antonino Calderone, a 1980s Sicilian supergrass, said the same thing that Sicilians had to “prove”
themselves in North America before even being considered for family membership in North America
(family). Paese Sera, 21 September 1963; Sterling, C. (1990) The Mafia, Hamish Hamilton, London, p.
133; Falcone, G. (1992) Men of Honour, Warner, London, pp. 103–4; Arlacchi, P. (1992) Men of
Dishonour, William Morrow, New York, p. 78.
190. Gentile, Translated Transcription, pp. 74–79
 BUSTER, MARANZANO AND THE CASTELLAMMARE WAR 77

families, even though the numbers of casualties and families caught up in it have,
as suggested, been highly overblown.
Manpower for Maranzano’s fight came from Buffalo and Philadelphia, while
Detroit helped by eliminating Masseria’s chosen representative in that city,
Chester LaMare. Among the Philadelphia family reinforcements was family head
Salvatore Sabella, the brother of Maranzano family member Dominick (Mimi)
Sabella, both from Castellammare and who had jointly lived in Nicolo Schiro’s
Brooklyn territory.191 Valachi led his FBI debriefers to understand that the Buffalo
family under Magaddino sent “at least” 12 men to help Maranzano, and that they
“participated in a very active manner” in the war.192 Calogero (Charlie Buffalo)
DiBenedetto was probably one of those Valachi had in mind; the others were
unidentified. A Brooklyn-Buffalo axis predating the war was thereby strength-
ened, articulated in Buffalo’s award of a permanent seat on the “Commission.”
The outcome of the war did not, however, generate a more centralised and
consequently powerful organisation of the sort typified by the notion of La Cosa
Nostra or of an underworld ‘combination.’ Continuity with the pre-war mafia
arrangement, prior to Masseria’s bid for power, was the watchword, with the
emphasis on the practical, as well as formal, autonomy of families. In theory,
families had always been self-governing but for this to become a reality, they had
fought the war. Since some bosses died in the wartime battles, changes in
New York City’s leadership came about. Away from New York City and Detroit,
though, the crime families’ top stratum was unaltered.193
More far-reaching than the limited scope of the war and its modest results were
radically changed popular perceptions of the American mafia and of the supposed
threat it posed to all manner of native institutions, based upon an “infiltration”
concept and selective recollections and interpretations of the Castellammare
War. After Valachi’s public evidence in 1963, the formal constituents of Italian

191. Before going their own ways, they lived at 105 Roebling Street, where Stefano Magaddino, the
forthcoming Buffalo boss, lived. Roebling Street and the adjoining North 5th Street housed a number of
important immigrant mafiosi from Castellammare del Golfo such as Bonanno, Bonventre and Milazzo,
who featured in this analysis
192. FBI, Thomas Luchese, report of 25 February 1963 from New York office, field office file no. 92–
665. The reporting informant was locked up in Westchester county early in 1963, exactly when and
where Valachi was.
193. A case in point was the Buffalo, New York, family leadership, which remained constant from
about 1922 until 1974. Stefano Magaddino, the longest serving Buffalo family boss, took over from
Joseph Peter DiCarlo, born October 1873 in Vallelunga, Sicily. By 1909, the DiCarlo family had settled in
the west side Sicilian neighbourhood of Buffalo. Until his death from a heart attack in July of 1922,
DiCarlo owned the Buffalo Italian Importing Company, saloons and restaurants. His daughter Sara
married in 1933 Anthony Bonasera, a Buffalo/Brooklyn hoodlum who hailed from Vallelunga. The
respect accorded to the DiCarlos was demonstrated in 1919 when Jennie DiCarlo, Joseph Peter’s wife,
was buried. It was reported as “perhaps the largest funeral ever held in Buffalo in memory of a private
citizen,” and among those who sent flowers were well-known police characters from Detroit, Chicago
and Buffalo. Magaddino, born on October 10, 1891, came from Castellammare del Golfo and originally
settled in Niagara Falls, where he had a power base in the western Sicilian immigrant community and
from where he expanded into Buffalo
78 DAVID CRITCHLEY

crime families’ activities came to dominate thinking. So did ideas about Italian
supremacy in virtually all aspects of US organised crime and racketeering.
Those, however, who wrote of the Castellammare War created false images
and dichotomies through uncritical acceptance of the released evidence and
given analyses. Its historical significance shrinks when viewed inside the totality
of US Mafia and other organised crime relations both before and after Prohibition.

Acknowledgements
My thanks go to the anonymous reviewers of this article, Fred Romanski, Mike
Tona and Kenneth Cobb. Extended appreciations go to Steve Turner, Peter
McGivney and to Jill Rauh, whose unfailing help was indispensable.