Albert Anastasia
Albert Anastasia was born Umberto Anastasio in Calabria, Italy, and died in a barber's chair in Manhattan on the 25th of October 1957. Along the way he collected the nicknames The Earthquake and The One-Man Army. Few figures in American organized crime were as ruthless or as feared. He helped found the modern American Mafia, controlled New York City's waterfront through dockworker unions, and rose to lead the family that became the Gambino crime family.
The man who frightened the underworld was finally brought down by it. How did an immigrant who deserted a freighter in New York end up commanding a crew of contract killers? How did he come to wear a United States Army uniform and earn citizenship? And why did his own partners decide that he had to die?
Parghelia, a town in Calabria, Italy, is where Umberto Anastasio was born on the 26th of September 1902. His father, Bartolomeo, worked on the railways and died after World War I, leaving nine children. His mother was Marianna Polistena. Umberto had seven brothers, including Anthony, Joseph and Gerardo, and a sister named Maria.
In 1919, Umberto and his brothers Joseph, Anthony and Gerardo deserted the freighter they were working aboard in New York City. They had entered the United States illegally. Before long they were working as longshoremen on the Brooklyn waterfront.
On the 17th of March 1921, he was convicted of murdering longshoreman George Turino after a quarrel. He was sentenced to death and sent to Sing Sing State Prison in Ossining, New York. A legal technicality won him a retrial in 1922. By then four of the original prosecution witnesses had disappeared, and he went free. In this period he legally changed his surname from Anastasio to Anastasia. On the 6th of June 1923 he was convicted of illegal possession of a firearm and sentenced to two years. In 1928, Brooklyn charged him with another murder, but the witnesses disappeared or refused to testify.
By the late 1920s, he was a top leader in the International Longshoremen's Association, controlling six local chapters in Brooklyn. He allied himself with Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria, a powerful Sicilian-born crime boss in Brooklyn. He also grew close to Joe Adonis, Charles "Lucky" Luciano, Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, all of whom would later lead Cosa Nostra families.
Early in 1931, the Castellammarese War broke out between Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano. Luciano made a secret deal with Maranzano to engineer Masseria's death. In exchange he would receive Masseria's rackets and become Maranzano's second-in-command. On the 15th of April, Luciano lured Masseria to the Nuova Villa Tammaro restaurant on Coney Island. While the two men played cards, Luciano allegedly excused himself to the bathroom. Anastasia and other gunmen then shot Masseria dead. Adonis, Genovese and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel are reportedly among them.
Ciro "The Artichoke King" Terranova drove the getaway car. Legend says he was too shaken to drive, and Siegel had to shove him out of the driver's seat. Luciano took over Masseria's family, with Genovese as his underboss.
In 1932, Anastasia was indicted for killing another man with an ice pick, but the case was dropped for lack of witnesses. The following year he was charged with killing a laundry worker, and again no witness would testify. Luciano soon rewarded his loyalty with command of the underworld's enforcement arm.
Midnight Rose's was a candy store in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, owned by the mobster Louis Capone. Its back room was the base for a group of Jewish and Italian contract killers known as The Brownsville Boys, or Murder, Inc. Luciano placed Anastasia and Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, the leading labor racketeer in the country, in control of the group. It served as the enforcement arm of the National Crime Syndicate. During about ten years of operation, it is estimated to have committed thousands of murders, many of them never solved. Anastasia's leadership earned him the nicknames the Mad Hatter and the Lord High Executioner.
In 1935, the Commission, the governing body Luciano had set up after Maranzano's murder in 1931, ordered Dutch Schultz to drop his plan to kill Special Prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey. The Commission feared the law enforcement crackdown that such a killing would bring. An enraged Schultz refused and walked out of the meeting. Anastasia then went to Luciano with news that Schultz had asked him to stake out Dewey's apartment building on Fifth Avenue.
The Commission held a discreet meeting about it. After six hours of deliberation, it ordered Buchalter to eliminate Schultz. On the 23rd of October 1935, before he could kill Dewey, Schultz was shot in a tavern in Newark, New Jersey. He died the following day.
Dewey's office did eventually reach Luciano himself. On the 7th of June 1936, following a prosecution masterminded by Eunice Carter, Luciano was convicted on 62 counts of forced prostitution. On the 18th of July he received a sentence of 30 to 50 years in state prison. Genovese became acting boss, but he fled to Italy in 1937 after being indicted on a 1934 murder. Costello then became acting boss of the Luciano crime family.
In May 1939, Anastasia allegedly ordered the murder of Morris Diamond, a Teamsters Union official in Brooklyn. Diamond had opposed Buchalter's attempts to keep control of the Garment District in Manhattan. That summer, Anastasia allegedly organized the murder of Peter Panto, an International Longshoremen's Association activist. Panto had been leading a movement for democratic reforms in the union's local chapters, and he refused to be intimidated by ILA officials. He disappeared on the 14th of July 1939, and his body was later recovered on a farm in New Jersey.
Abe Reles, a gang leader from Brownsville, had supplied Anastasia and Murder, Inc. with hitmen for about a decade. When law enforcement arrested him in 1941, it effectively ended Murder, Inc. Reles chose to testify for the government to save himself from the death penalty. His testimony led to the conviction of seven members of the group. He also held information that could implicate Anastasia in the Diamond and Panto murders. Fearful of prosecution, Anastasia offered a $100,000 reward for Reles's murder.
On the 12th of November 1941, Reles was found dead on a restaurant roof outside the Half Moon Hotel on Coney Island. He had been guarded in a sixth-floor room during an ongoing trial. In 1951, a grand jury ruled that Reles died by accident while climbing down to the fifth floor on sheets tied to a heating radiator. Many officials still suspected that he had been murdered.
In the spring of 1942, Anastasia allegedly ordered the murder of an associate named Anthony Romeo. Romeo had been arrested and questioned over the Panto killing. At the end of June, his body was discovered near Guyencourt, Delaware, beaten and shot a number of times. That same year, Anastasia joined the United States Army.
Luciano sat in prison while World War II raged, and Anastasia reportedly conceived a plan to win his release. The United States needed allies in Sicily to advance its invasion of Italy. The Navy also wanted to dedicate its resources to the war. Anastasia reportedly orchestrated a deal: the Mafia would protect the waterfront, and Luciano would help with his associates in Sicily. In return, Luciano would receive lighter treatment and eventual parole.
Anastasia's own enlistment may have been motivated by a wish to escape the criminal investigations that were dismantling Murder, Inc. He reached the rank of technical sergeant and trained soldiers to be longshoremen at Fort Indiantown Gap in Pennsylvania. In 1943, he received United States citizenship as a reward for his service. The following year he was honorably discharged and moved his family to a ranch house on Bluff Road in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
He had married Elsa Bargnesi in 1937. They had two sons, Umberto and Richard, and two daughters, Joyana and Gloriana.
The wartime bargain paid off for his friends. In 1945, military authorities in Sicily returned Genovese to the United States to be tried for the 1934 murder of Ferdinand Boccia. After the main prosecution witness died, all charges against Genovese were dropped. In 1946, New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey commuted Luciano's sentence, and the federal government immediately deported him to Italy. In 1948, Anastasia bought a dressmaking factory in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, and left his waterfront activities in the hands of his brother Anthony.
In 1951, the United States Senate summoned Anastasia to answer questions about organized crime at the Kefauver Hearings. He refused to answer any of them.
Vincent Mangano had ruled his crime family for 20 years when Anastasia served nominally as his underboss. Anastasia was a mob power in his own right. Mangano resented his close ties to Luciano and Costello, who had obtained Anastasia's services without first seeking Mangano's permission. This and other business disputes led to heated, almost physical fights between the two men.
On the 19th of April 1951, Mangano went missing, and his body was never found. The same day, the body of his brother Philip was discovered in Jamaica Bay. No one was ever arrested, but it was widely assumed that Anastasia had ordered the killings.
Anastasia had been serving as acting boss of the family. He met with the Commission and claimed the brothers had wanted to kill him, though he did not admit to killing them. Costello pushed for his ascension, wanting Anastasia as an ally against the ambitious and resentful Genovese. Joseph Bonanno also supported him, simply wanting to avoid a gang war. The Commission confirmed Anastasia as boss of the renamed Anastasia family.
In March 1952, Anastasia allegedly ordered the murder of Arnold Schuster, a New York man who had identified the fugitive bank robber Willie Sutton, leading to Sutton's arrest. According to the account, Anastasia saw Schuster interviewed on television, said he could not stand squealers, and ordered the man hit. On the 8th of March 1952, a gunman shot Schuster dead on a street in Borough Park, Brooklyn. In 1963, government witness Joseph Valachi accused Anastasia of ordering the killing, but many in law enforcement were skeptical. No one was ever arrested.
On the 9th of December 1952, the federal government filed suit to denaturalize Anastasia and deport him, because he had lied on his citizenship application.
Vito Genovese could not take control of the Luciano family without killing Frank Costello, and he could not do that without also eliminating Anastasia. He went looking for allies. He portrayed Anastasia as an unstable killer who threatened to bring law enforcement pressure on Cosa Nostra. He also pointed out that Anastasia had been selling memberships in his family for $50,000, a clear violation of Commission rules that infuriated many high-level mobsters. According to Valachi, Anastasia had also been losing large sums betting on horse races, making him more surly and unpredictable.
Over the next few years, Genovese secretly won the support of Carlo Gambino, one of Anastasia's caporegimes. He offered Gambino the leadership of Anastasia's family in return for his cooperation.
On the 23rd of May 1955, Anastasia pleaded guilty to tax evasion for underreporting his income in the late 1940s. On the 3rd of June he was sentenced to one year in federal prison and a $20,000 fine. The government then petitioned to revoke his citizenship so he could be deported. A higher court overturned the revocation on the 19th of September 1955.
On the 2nd of May 1957, the gunman Vincent Gigante shot and wounded Costello outside his apartment building. The wound was superficial, but it persuaded Costello to hand power to Genovese and retire. Bonanno later credited himself with arranging a sitdown that kept Anastasia from taking Genovese to war immediately. On the 17th of June, Frank Scalice was murdered. He was Anastasia's underboss and the man directly responsible for selling family memberships. According to Valachi, Anastasia approved that hit, and the later murder of Scalice's brother Joseph, after offering to forgive his threats of revenge.
The Park Sheraton Hotel stood at 56th Street and 7th Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, and its barber shop was where Anastasia went that morning. His driver parked the car in an underground garage and then took a walk outside, leaving him unprotected. As Anastasia relaxed in the barber's chair, two men with scarves covering their faces rushed in and shoved the barber out of the way. They fired at him. After the first volley, Anastasia reportedly got up, then fell into the mirror as the gunmen kept shooting. They continued firing until he fell dead on the floor.
The killing generated enormous public interest and a high-profile police investigation. Selwyn Raab, a New York Times journalist and author of Five Families, wrote, "The vivid image of a helpless victim swathed in white towels was stamped in the public memory". No one was charged. Speculation has centered on Joe Gallo of the Profaci crime family, the Patriarca crime family of Providence, Rhode Island, and certain drug dealers within the Gambino family.
The NYPD initially concluded that Genovese and Gambino had arranged the killing and that a crew led by Gallo carried it out. At one point Gallo boasted to an associate of his part in it, saying, "You can just call the five of us the barbershop quintet". It was also rumored that Anastasia was killed because he had tried to move into Cuba, where Santo Trafficante Jr. had already established himself.
The Diocese of Brooklyn refused to sanction a church burial, so his funeral service took place at a Brooklyn funeral home. He was interred in Green-Wood Cemetery in Greenwood Heights, Brooklyn, with only a handful of friends and relatives attending. The grave is marked "Anastasio". In 1958, his family emigrated to Canada and changed their name to "Anisio".
The Apalachin Meeting on the 14th of November 1957 was called by Genovese to discuss the future of Cosa Nostra after his takeover. Gambino was expected to be proclaimed boss of Anastasia's family there. Police raided the meeting, to the detriment of Genovese's reputation, and Gambino's appointment was postponed to a later meeting in New York City. Under Gambino, Anthony Anastasio saw his power curtailed. In frustration, he began passing information to the FBI shortly before his death in 1963.
Genovese enjoyed only a short reign. After the Apalachin disaster, Luciano, Costello and Gambino conspired to entrap him with a narcotics conviction, bribing a drug dealer to testify that he had personally worked with Genovese. On the 7th of July 1958, Genovese was indicted on narcotics trafficking charges. On the 17th of April 1959, he was sentenced to 15 years in state prison.
A 25-room, hilltop mansion in Fort Lee, New Jersey, was Anastasia's home from 1947 until his death. In 1958, less than a year after the murder, the comedian Buddy Hackett and his wife bought it. After renovations, they lived there through most of the 1960s. The mansion sold for $6.9 million in late December 2017. It sold again in December 2018 for $3.6 million and was demolished in March 2019. The actor and former heavyweight boxing contender Jack O'Halloran claims to be Anastasia's illegitimate son.
At the Park Sheraton, the barber chairs were repositioned to face away from the mirror. The chair Anastasia died in was later auctioned for $7,000. In February 2012, it became an exhibit at the Mob Museum in Las Vegas.
The movies came early. The character Johnny Friendly, played by Lee J. Cobb in the 1954 film On the Waterfront, was partially based on Anastasia. The 1959 film Inside the Mafia opens with his murder. Later portrayals include Fausto Tozzi in The Valachi Papers in 1972, Richard Conte in the 1973 Italian film My Brother Anastasia, and Gianni Russo in Lepke in 1975. Garry Pastore played him in both The Irishman and Mob Town in 2019, and Michael Rispoli plays him in The Alto Knights in 2025. The 1999 film Analyze This references his murder and the Apalachin Meeting.
Television and fiction kept returning to him. The Sopranos has Junior Soprano and his nephew Tony discuss the Mafia in Anastasia's time. In an episode of The West Wing, Toby Ziegler and his father discuss the murder. In MAS*H, Hawkeye Pierce sarcastically calls a sleeping soldier "Albert Anastasia's doorman". The brutal title character of the Netflix series Dirty John claims to be a descendant. Frederick Forsyth's 1973 novel The Day of the Jackal mentions the murder, and the prologue of The Shining describes a fictional payback hit for it. Harold Robbins's 1995 book The Raiders features a version of it as well. The video game Mafia II bases its character Don Alberto Clemente partly on Anastasia, and Rick Ross named a 2010 mixtape The Albert Anastasia EP.
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Common questions
Who was Albert Anastasia?
Albert Anastasia was an Italian-American mobster, hitman and crime boss, born Umberto Anastasio on the 26th of September 1902 in Parghelia, Calabria. He co-founded and later led Murder, Inc., controlled New York City's waterfront through dockworker unions, and became boss of the family that later became the Gambino crime family.
Why was Albert Anastasia called the Lord High Executioner?
Anastasia earned the nicknames Mad Hatter and Lord High Executioner for his leadership of Murder, Inc. The group was the enforcement arm of the National Crime Syndicate and is estimated to have committed thousands of murders over about ten years.
How did Albert Anastasia die?
Anastasia was shot dead on the 25th of October 1957 in the barber shop of the Park Sheraton Hotel at 56th Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan. Two masked men burst in while he sat in the barber's chair, and no one was ever charged.
Who ordered the murder of Albert Anastasia?
Vito Genovese and Carlo Gambino ordered Anastasia's murder. The NYPD initially concluded that a crew led by Joe Gallo carried it out, though speculation has also named the Patriarca crime family and drug dealers within the Gambino family.
What was Albert Anastasia's role in Murder, Inc.?
Luciano placed Anastasia and Louis "Lepke" Buchalter in control of Murder, Inc., which operated from the back room of Midnight Rose's candy store in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Anastasia's leadership of the group earned him his nicknames.
How did Albert Anastasia become a United States citizen?
Anastasia entered the United States illegally in 1919 after deserting a freighter in New York City. He joined the Army in 1942, reached the rank of technical sergeant, and received citizenship in 1943 as a reward for his service.
What happened to Albert Anastasia's mansion in Fort Lee, New Jersey?
Anastasia lived in the 25-room hilltop mansion from 1947 until his murder. Buddy Hackett bought it in 1958, it sold for $6.9 million in late December 2017, and it was demolished in March 2019 after a December 2018 sale for $3.6 million.
All sources
74 references cited across the entry
- 1Lord High Executioner is the title given to the character Ko-Ko in The Mikado
- 2BookFive Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia EmpiresSelwyn Raab — 2005
- 4BookBoss of Murder, Inc.: The Criminal Life of Albert AnastasiaMichael Newton — March 23, 2020
- 5NewsCosì hanno ammazzato mio fratello AlbertoSalvatore Anastasio — 1967
- 6NewsCosa nostra, Chiesa miaFabrizio Zampa — October 5, 1973
- 7NewsANASTASIA ROSE IN STORMY RANKS; One of 4 Feared Brothers, He Survived Death House and Violent Rackets Six Came To America Offered Plot on DeweyIra Henry Freeman — October 26, 1957
- 8BookThe OutfitGus Russo — Bloomsbury USA — 2002
- 10BookFive Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia EmpiresSelwyn Raab — St. Martin Press — 2005
- 11NewsConey Island's Big HitMichael Pollak — June 29, 2012
- 12Sifakis, (2005). pp. 87–88
- 13BookThe Last Testament of Lucky LucianoMartin A. Gosch et al. — Little, Brown and Company — 1975
- 14BookMafia Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the Gambino crime familyJohn H. Davis — HarperPaperbacks — 1994
- 15Davis, p. 57
- 16Murder, Inc.: Dutch gets hisMark Gribben — Crime Library — October 9, 2008
- 17BookThe Last Testament of Lucky Luciano: The Mafia Story in His Own WordsMartin A. Gosch et al. — Enigma Books — 2013
- 18Newark, p. 81
- 23NewsSTORY OF MURDER, INC.: BIG BUSINESS IN CRIME; Kefauver Revelations Disinter Sordid Account of 'Combination' at WorkEmanuel Perlmutter — April 1, 1951
- 25Davis, p. 58
- 26NewsEXCERPT; 'Dark Harbor'Nathan Ward — September 24, 2010
- 27BookThe canary sang but couldn't fly : the fatal fall of Abe Reles, the mobster who shattered Murder, Inc.'s code of silenceEdmund Elmaleh — Sterling Pub. Co., Inc. — 2009
- 28BookMurder Inc.: The Story of The Syndicate Killing MachineBurton B. Turkus et al. — Da Capo Press — 2003
- 29Davis, pp. 59-61
- 31BookHavana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba and Then Lost It to the RevolutionT. J. English — Harper — 2008
- 32Davis, pp. 62-64
- 34NewsCarlo Gambino, a Mafia Leader, Dies in His Long Island Home at 74Nicholas Gage — October 16, 1976
- 35Raab, p. 101
- 36NewsCITY LORE; Willie Sutton, Urbane ScoundrelPeter Duffy — May 5, 2020
- 38NewsU. S. Files Suit as First Step to Deport Albert AnastasiaDecember 10, 1952
- 39Davis, pp. 78-79
- 40NewsAnastasia Admits Evading U. S. Taxes; ANASTASIA GUILTY OF EVADING TAXESMay 24, 1955
- 42NewsANASTASIA WINS PLEA; Citizenship of Racketeer Is Upheld by Supreme CourtMay 15, 1956
- 44Raab, pp. 110-111
- 45BookThe Valachi PapersPeter Maas — G. P. Putnam's Sons — 1968
- 46NewsANASTASIA SLAIN IN A HOTEL HERE; LED MURDER, INC.; Victim's BrothersOctober 26, 1957
- 47Raab, p. 116
- 48Raab, p. 726
- 49NewsThe Mafia at WarNicholas Gage — July 10, 1972
- 50BookGangsterismo: The United States, Cuba, and the Mafia 1933-1966Jack Colhoun — OR Books — 2013
- 51NewsAnastasia Is Buried In Stark Ceremony; ANASTASIA BURIED WITH STARK RITES Linked to NarcoticsEmanuel Perlmutter — October 29, 1957
- 52Elsa (Bargnesi) AnisioJune 25, 2008
- 53Davis, pp. 83-84
- 54Davis, pp. 88-90
- 55Maas, p. 208
- 56The Smoking Gun: Tough Love20 September 1999
- 57Davis, pp. 92-93
- 59NewsGenovese Is Given 15 Years in Prison In Narcotics Case; Genovese and 14 Others Given Stiff Terms in Narcotics CaseAlexander Feinberg — April 18, 1959
- 61NewsCOMEDIAN BUYS HOME; Buddy Hackett New Owner of Anastasia House in Fort LeeAugust 30, 1958
- 62NewsRubber-faced funnyman whose talent stretched farJuly 11, 2003
- 65BookFamily LegacyJack O'Halloran — MP Publishing — 2011
- 69BookBoss of Murder, Inc.: The Criminal Life of Albert AnastasiaMichael Newton — McFarland — 2020
- 70NewsMartin Scorsese’s The Irishman Glosses Over a Key PointTony Sokol — 29 November 2019
- 71News‘The Alto Knights’ Review: It’s Double the Robert De Niro but Half the Fun in Barry Levinson’s Gimmicky Mafia DramaFrank Scheck — 19 March 2025
- 72MagazineBefore the PlayStephen King — 1982
- 73BookDancing to "Almendra": a NovelMayra Montero — Picador — 2007
- 74BookLord High Executioner: The Legendary Mafia Boss Albert AnastasiaFrank DiMatteo et al. — Citadel Press — 2020