Curated playlist

American gangsters of Italian descent

Vito GenoveseOn the 2nd of June 1958, Vito Genovese sat before the McClellan Hearings of the United States Senate on organized crime, called there under subpoena. He answered nothing. Instead, he cited his Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution…
Russell BufalinoRussell Bufalino was born Rosario Alfredo Bufalino on the 29th of October 1903 in Montedoro, Sicily. He grew up to be an Italian-American mobster, and he led the Northeastern Pennsylvania crime family for decades. People came to call it…
Carlo GambinoCarlo Gambino spent more than fifty years in organized crime and was locked in a prison cell for less than two of them. In New York, his name now belongs to an entire Mafia family. The men around him were shot, jailed, forced into…
John A. GottiJohn Angelo Gotti, called Junior, sat through four racketeering trials between 2004 and 2009, and not one of them ended in a conviction. Yet he had already been to prison. In 1999 he was jailed for racketeering, after running the Gambino…
Frank NittiFrank Nitti, born Francesco Raffaele Nitto, rests in Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois. His grave lies to the left of the main Roosevelt Road entrance, about 50 ft from the gate. To the right of that gate is the family plot of Al…
Carmine PersicoCarmine Persico, known as Junior and as Immortal, had a projected prison release date of the 20th of March 2050. By then he would have been 117 years old. The sentence behind that date began in 1987, and he served 32 years of it. Yet the…
Henry HillIn 1955, an eleven-year-old boy named Henry Hill crossed the street from his Brooklyn home and wandered into a dispatch cabstand, hoping for a part-time job after school. The men who gathered there were local mobsters, and Hill had admired…
Joseph BonannoJoseph Bonanno, nicknamed Joe Bananas, headed a New York crime family from 1931 until 1968. He took command at just 26, which made him one of the youngest bosses any crime family has ever had. On the 21st of October 1964, the day before he…
Al CaponeAl Capone always turned the left side of his face away from the camera. Three knife slashes had scarred that cheek, and he told people they were war wounds. The nickname they earned him, Scarface, was one he loathed. His closest friends…
Lucky LucianoLucky Luciano, born Salvatore Lucania, was arrested 25 times between 1916 and 1936 and spent no time in prison. The charges ranged from assault and illegal gambling to blackmail and robbery. Then a trial over a prostitution racket ended…
Frank CostelloFrank Costello, an Italian-American crime boss, tried to keep his face off television during the Senate's organized crime hearings. The attempt backfired. Cameras settled on his hands instead, and his fidgeting and evasive answers played…
Joey MerlinoJoseph Salvatore Merlino, known as Skinny Joey, was born on the 13th of March 1962 and rose to become the reputed boss of the Philadelphia crime family. His reign ran from the 1990s until 2024. Once, a television reporter asked him about a…
Gregory ScarpaGregory Scarpa Sr. sometimes left the numbers 666, the biblical number of the beast, on his victims' pagers. His longtime girlfriend Linda Schiro later recalled the habit. Scarpa was called the Grim Reaper and the Mad Hatter. He was a…
Tony AccardoIn 1939, Tony Accardo stood for a photograph beside a 400-pound tuna he had caught on a fishing trip to Wedgeport, Nova Scotia. Chicago newspapers promptly christened him "The Big Tuna." Accardo was a mobster in the American Mafia, and…
John GottiJohn Gotti ran the Gambino crime family of New York City, and one of his fellow mobsters once delivered a harsh verdict on him. Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, the former underboss of the Lucchese crime family, said: "what John Gotti did was the…
Sammy GravanoSammy Gravano, known to the world as Sammy the Bull, once faced up to 20 years in prison and received a sentence that amounted to less than one year. In 1994 a federal judge gave him five years, but he had already served four. The judge…
Michael FranzeseIn 1986, Fortune magazine ranked Michael Franzese number 18 among the wealthiest and most powerful Mafia bosses in America. He was 35 years old. Franzese was a caporegime, or crew captain, in the Colombo crime family of New York City.…
Anthony CassoAnthony Casso signed his letters "Tony Gaspipe." In 2006, writing to his biographer Philip Carlo from a federal cell, he made a startling statement for a man in his position. "I have always hated rats and as strange as it may sound I still…
Anthony SalernoAnthony Salerno, known to everyone as Fat Tony, was 75 years old in October 1986 when Fortune magazine named him the most powerful, wealthy and influential gangster in America. It was an odd honor for a man whose health was failing. He had…
Sonny FranzeseSonny Franzese walked out of the Federal Medical Center in Devens, Massachusetts, on the 23rd of June 2017, at the age of 100. On that day he was the oldest federal inmate in the United States, and the only centenarian in federal custody.…