Lucky Luciano

• 1. Introduction

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  Lucky 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 that streak, and in 1936 a judge sent him away for decades.

  Luciano was an Italian gangster who operated mainly in the United States. Many historians call him the father of the Italian-American Mafia.

  How did a boy born in Sicily climb to that position? What did he build, and why did older bosses see it as a threat? And how did the same government that locked him up end up putting him on a ship to Italy as part of a bargain?

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• 2. Street Gang to Bootlegger

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  Salvatore Lucania was born on the 24th of November 1897 in Lercara Friddi, Sicily. His parents, Antonio Lucania and Rosalia Caffarella, raised four other children, born between 1885 and 1903.

  His father worked in a sulfur mine and was stubbornly set on reaching the United States. A book published after Luciano's death, The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano, describes that drive. It says the father bought a new calendar from a Palermo steamship company every year and hid the fare money in a jar under his bed. He was too proud to ask for help, so a cousin named Rotolo quietly gave money to Luciano's mother.

  Treat that book with caution. It claims to rest on conversations between Luciano and the Hollywood producer Martin Gosch. Shortly before it appeared, The New York Times reported that it quotes Luciano on events years after his death. The paper also noted that it repeats errors from earlier books on the American Mafia and places him at meetings held while he was in jail.

  In 1906, when Luciano was eight, the family emigrated to the United States. They settled on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a favorite landing place for Italian immigrants. At 14 he left school and took a job delivering hats for $7 a week. After winning $244 in a dice game, he quit and began earning money on the street. That same year his parents sent him to the Brooklyn Truancy School.

  As a teenager Luciano started his own gang and joined the older Five Points Gang. Most street gangs lived on petty crime. Luciano sold protection to Jewish youngsters, shielding them from Italian and Irish gangs for ten cents a week. Around the time of World War I he began learning the pimping trade.

  His most important recruit was a younger boy named Meyer Lansky. Luciano tried to extort protection money from him on his walk home from school. Lansky answered with defiance, Luciano respected it, and the two formed a lasting partnership.

  On the 17th of January 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment took effect, and Prohibition began its thirteen-year run. The law banned the making, sale and transport of alcohol, but demand did not disappear. The black market that grew up around it handed criminals a new income stream.

  Through the Five Points Gang, Luciano had already met Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, who would become a longtime friend and business partner. In 1920 the Lower Manhattan boss Joe Masseria recruited Luciano as a gunman. Around the same time, Luciano and his close associates began working for the gambler Arnold Rothstein. Rothstein saw the Prohibition windfall at once and taught Luciano to treat bootlegging as a business. With Rothstein's financing, Luciano, Costello and Genovese started their own bootleg operation.

  Rothstein became a mentor in other ways too. He showed Luciano how to move in high society and how to dress well. Rothstein employed Jack Diamond as a bodyguard and enforcer, and Luciano often worked alongside him.

  Luciano also sold heroin smuggled in from Montreal. In 1923 he was caught in a sting, selling to undercover agents. He saw no jail time, but being exposed as a drug dealer hurt his standing with wealthy associates and customers.

  He repaired the damage with a grand gesture. He bought 200 expensive seats for the Jack Dempsey and Luis Firpo boxing match in The Bronx and handed them out to top gangsters and politicians. Rothstein took him shopping at Wanamaker's Department Store in Manhattan for fine clothes to wear to the fight. The plan worked.

  By 1925 Luciano was grossing more than $12 million a year, with a personal income of about $4 million. The money came from illegal gambling and bootlegging in New York, reaching into Philadelphia. In 1927 he moved into the Barbizon-Plaza hotel under the alias Charles Lane and stayed for years. His employer Masseria, as the next stretch of Luciano's career would show, had little of Rothstein's polish.

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• 3. The Castellammarese War

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  By the late 1920s, the Sicilian-born boss Salvatore Maranzano of the Castellammarese clan had become the chief rival of Joe Masseria. Luciano was by then a top aide in Masseria's organization. Masseria was uneducated, rude in manner and a weak manager.

  The two bosses were known as Mustache Petes. These were older, traditional Mafia leaders who had begun their careers in Italy. They preached supposed Old World values of honor, tradition, respect and dignity. They refused to work with anyone who was not Italian and distrusted anyone who was not Sicilian. Some of the most conservative would deal only with men from their own Sicilian village.

  Luciano was willing to work with Italians, Jews and Irishmen alike, so long as there was money in it. He was startled when traditional Sicilian mafiosi lectured him about his friendship with Costello, whom they called "the dirty Calabrian".

  Luciano gathered younger mobsters who had been born in Italy but trained as criminals in the United States. They chafed under their bosses' conservatism. The group came to include Costello, Genovese, Albert Anastasia, Joe Adonis, Joe Bonanno, Carlo Gambino, Joe Profaci, Tommy Gagliano and Tommy Lucchese. They believed their bosses' greed was keeping them poor while Irish and Jewish gangs grew rich.

  Luciano dreamed of a national crime syndicate in which Italian, Jewish and Irish gangs would pool their resources. He founded it after a conference in Atlantic City in May 1929, hosted by Luciano, Lansky, Costello and Johnny Torrio.

  In October 1929, three men forced Luciano into a limousine at gunpoint. They beat and stabbed him and strung him up by his hands from a beam in a Staten Island warehouse. He survived, but the attack left a scar and a drooping eye.

  His abductors were never identified. He told the police he had no idea who they were. In 1953 he told an interviewer that the police themselves had grabbed him, hoping he would lead them to Jack "Legs" Diamond. Another story pinned the attack on Maranzano.

  The attack is one candidate for the origin of his nickname. It is not clear how he became "Lucky". Some say it came from surviving a savage beating and throat-slashing, which in that version happened in 1929 because he refused to work for another crime boss. Others credit his luck at gambling, or a plain mispronunciation of his surname. Even the spelling "Luciano" may come from newspapers that kept getting the name wrong.

  On the 26th of February 1930, Gaetano Reina was murdered. He had been one of Masseria's lieutenants before switching to Maranzano, and Masseria ordered Luciano to arrange the killing. The rivalry between the two bosses then exploded into the bloody Castellammarese War.

  By early 1931 the war was turning against Masseria, and Luciano saw a chance to change sides. He struck a secret deal with Maranzano. Luciano would engineer Masseria's death, and in return he would get Masseria's rackets and become Maranzano's second-in-command.

  Adonis had joined Masseria's faction. When Masseria learned of Luciano's betrayal, he asked Adonis to kill Luciano. Adonis warned Luciano instead.

  On the 15th of April 1931, Masseria was shot dead at Nuova Villa Tammaro, a restaurant on Coney Island in Brooklyn. He was playing cards when Luciano allegedly excused himself to use the bathroom. The gunmen reportedly were Anastasia, Genovese, Adonis and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel. Ciro Terranova drove the getaway car. Legend says he was too shaken to drive, so Siegel shoved him out of the seat.

  With Maranzano's blessing, Luciano took over Masseria's gang and became Maranzano's lieutenant. The war was over.

  Maranzano then reorganized New York's Italian-American gangs into five families, headed by Luciano, Profaci, Gagliano, Vincent Mangano and himself. At a meeting of crime bosses in Wappingers Falls, New York, he proclaimed himself capo di tutti capi. He also trimmed the rackets of the other families to build up his own.

  Luciano seemed to accept all this while waiting for his moment. Maranzano was slightly more forward-looking than Masseria, but Luciano had decided he was greedier and even more set in his ways.

  In September 1931, Maranzano concluded that Luciano was a threat and hired an Irish gangster, Vincent Coll, to kill him. Lucchese warned Luciano. On the 10th of September, Maranzano summoned Luciano, Genovese and Costello to his office in the Helmsley Building in Manhattan.

  This killing was the first of what legend later called the "Night of the Sicilian Vespers". On the 13th of September, the bodies of Samuel Monaco and Louis Russo, two Maranzano allies, were pulled from Newark Bay with signs of torture. Joseph Siragusa, who led the Pittsburgh crime family, was shot dead at home. Joe Ardizonne of the Los Angeles family vanished on the 15th of October.

  The idea of a mass purge of old bosses, directed by Luciano, has been debunked as a myth. With Maranzano dead, though, Luciano faced a choice the dead man had never needed to make. He could claim the title Maranzano had seized, or he could turn it down.

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• 4. The Commission

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  Luciano abolished the title capo di tutti capi, boss of all bosses, after Maranzano's death. Few would have objected had he claimed it. He believed the position bred trouble between families and painted a target on whoever held it, inviting the next ambitious challenger.

  Instead he kept control quietly, through unofficial alliances with other bosses. He did not throw out all of Maranzano's changes. Luciano thought the "made man" initiation ceremony was a Sicilian relic. Genovese talked him into keeping it, arguing that young men needed rituals that encouraged obedience. Luciano also stayed committed to omerta, the oath of silence, as protection against prosecution. He kept the five-family structure for New York as well.

  Luciano now stood as the dominant boss in the country. His own family ran gambling, extortion, bookmaking, loansharking and drug trafficking in New York City. It held strong sway in labor unions and controlled the Manhattan waterfront, garbage hauling, construction, Garment District businesses and trucking.

  He promoted his most trusted Italian associates. Genovese became underboss and Costello consigliere. Adonis, Michael "Trigger Mike" Coppola, Anthony Strollo, Willie Moretti and Anthony Carfano served as caporegimes.

  Lansky and Siegel were not Italian, so neither could hold an official post in a Mafia family. Lansky served as a top advisor to Luciano, and Siegel was a trusted associate.

  Later in 1931, Luciano called a meeting of bosses in Chicago and proposed a Commission as the governing body of organized crime. It would settle disputes and decide which families held which territories. It has been called his greatest innovation. Luciano wanted to keep his own power over the families without announcing it, and to head off future gang wars. The bosses approved.

  The Commission began with representatives of New York's five families, the Buffalo family and the Chicago Outfit. Families from Philadelphia and Detroit were added later, and smaller families were formally represented through a Commission family. It also gave a voice to Jewish criminal organizations in New York.

  Its first test came in 1935, when Dutch Schultz planned to murder Special Prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey. The Commission ordered him to drop the plan. Luciano argued that killing Dewey would bring down a huge law enforcement crackdown. The syndicate had a firm rule that prosecutors and police were not to be harmed. Schultz, furious, said he would do it anyway and walked out.

  Then Anastasia came to Luciano with news that Schultz had asked him to watch Dewey's apartment building on Fifth Avenue. The Commission quietly met again. After six hours of debate, it ordered Lepke Buchalter to eliminate Schultz.

  On the 23rd of October 1935, Schultz was shot in a tavern in Newark, New Jersey, before he could reach Dewey. He died the next day. The prosecutor the Commission had saved would soon turn on Luciano himself.

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• 5. The Pandering Case

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  In June 1935, New York Governor Herbert H. Lehman appointed Thomas E. Dewey, a United States Attorney, as a special prosecutor against organized crime in the city. Luciano's crime family had spent the early 1930s taking over small prostitution operations. Dewey's assistant, Eunice Carter, led an investigation that tied Luciano to that network. She built a case of prostitution racketeering from interviews with prostitutes and from wiretaps.

  On the 2nd of February 1936, Dewey authorized raids on 200 brothels in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The raids made him a nationally known "gangbuster". To keep police corruption from spoiling them, he used 160 officers from outside the vice squad of the New York City Police Department. They waited on street corners and received orders only minutes before the raids began.

  Sixteen men and 87 women were arrested. Unlike in earlier vice raids, they were not released. They were taken to Dewey's offices, where Judge Philip J. McCook set minimum bail at $10,000, far beyond what they could pay.

  Carter had earned the trust of a number of the women and madams, some of whom said mafiosi had beaten and abused them. She persuaded many to testify rather than serve extra jail time. By mid-March, several defendants had named Luciano. Three of the prostitutes identified him as the ringleader, with David Betillo and Thomas Pennochio reporting up to him.

  In late March 1936, Luciano got a tip that his arrest was near and fled to Hot Springs, Arkansas. A New York detective who was there on a different assignment spotted him and told Dewey. On the 3rd of April, Luciano was arrested on a New York warrant charging 90 counts of compulsory prostitution.

  His Arkansas lawyers fought extradition fiercely. On the 6th of April, Owney Madden, once the owner of the Cotton Club, offered Arkansas Attorney General Carl E. Bailey a $50,000 bribe to help Luciano. Bailey refused and reported it at once.

  On the 17th of April, with every legal option spent, Arkansas handed Luciano to three NYPD detectives for the train trip back. In St. Louis, Missouri, they changed trains under guard by 20 local policemen, to head off a rescue attempt by the mob. They reached New York on the 18th of April. The next day Luciano was arraigned and jailed because he could not post the $350,000 bond.

  The trial opened on the 11th of May 1936. Dewey prosecuted it himself, with Luciano and twelve co-defendants in the dock. He charged that Luciano belonged to a vast prostitution ring called "the bonding combination".

  Luciano took the stand, and Dewey caught him lying through direct questioning and telephone records. Luciano could not explain why his federal income tax records showed earnings of only $22,000 a year when he plainly lived as a rich man. Dewey also pressed him on his long arrest record and his ties to Masseria, Terranova and Buchalter.

  On the 7th of June, Luciano and his remaining eight co-defendants were each convicted on 62 counts of compulsory prostitution. On the 18th of June he was sentenced.

  Many have since questioned the case. Selwyn Raab, longtime organized-crime columnist for The New York Times, wrote about it in his book Five Families. He said a number of scholars doubt that Luciano was directly involved in the bonding combination. Raab accepted that Luciano profited from prostitution and that members of his family ran a protection racket over New York's madams and brothel keepers. But he noted that several Mafia and legal scholars thought a boss of Luciano's rank would never have handled prostitution personally.

  Raab called Dewey's evidence "astonishingly thin" and argued that an extortion charge would have fit better. He also believed that Luciano's lawyer, George Morton Levy, made a mistake by letting his client testify. That gave Dewey the chance to attack his credibility.

  All four prostitutes who directly implicated Luciano took back their testimony after the trial. They were Nancy Presser, Mildred Harris, Thelma Jordan and Florence "Cokey Flo" Brown. At least two of Luciano's contemporaries denied that he ever belonged to the combination. The society madam Polly Adler wrote in her memoirs that she would have known if he had. Bonanno said the same in his book A Man of Honor. He thought several of Luciano's soldiers had used the boss's name to scare brothel keepers into paying, and that Dewey built his case "not so much against Luciano as against Luciano's name".

  Other testimony pointed the opposite way. Key witnesses said Luciano took part in prostitution racketeering and often talked about the business. One recalled him likening it to "the same as the A&P stores are, a large syndicate" and "the same as chain stores". Another heard him tell an underling to "go ahead and crack the joint" when a brothel fell behind in its kickbacks. One witness said Luciano hired him personally, from a suite at the Waldorf-Astoria, to collect from bookers and madams.

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• 6. Prison and Operation Underworld

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  Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York, was Luciano's first prison. Later in 1936, authorities moved him to Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, a remote site far from New York City. He kept running his crime family from inside, passing orders through acting boss Genovese.

  At Clinton, Betillo cooked special dishes for Luciano in a kitchen that authorities set aside. Luciano worked in the prison laundry. He also used his influence to help obtain the materials for a prison church. It became famous as one of the only freestanding churches in the New York State prison system. Two original doors from the Victoria, the ship of Ferdinand Magellan, stand on its altar.

  In 1937, Genovese fled to Naples to avoid a looming murder indictment in New York. Luciano named his consigliere, Costello, as the new acting boss. Luciano's appeals ran out on the 10th of October 1938, when the United States Supreme Court refused to review his case. He stepped down as boss, and Costello formally took over.

  In 1942, the Office of Naval Intelligence feared that German and Italian agents might slip into the country through the New York waterfront, and that facilities there might be sabotaged. The Navy knew the Mafia controlled the docks, so it approached Lansky about a deal with Luciano. To ease the talks, authorities moved Luciano to Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, New York, much closer to the city.

  The Navy, the State of New York and Luciano struck a bargain. In return for a commuted sentence, he promised his organization's full help in gathering intelligence for the Navy. Anastasia, an ally who controlled the docks, allegedly promised no dockworker strikes during the war. Before the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943, Luciano allegedly gave the U.S. military contacts in the Sicilian Mafia. The partnership became known as Operation Underworld.

  How much Luciano really helped is hotly disputed. In 1947, the naval officer in charge of Operation Underworld played down the value of his aid. A 1954 report ordered by Dewey, by then governor, said Luciano had performed many valuable services for Naval Intelligence.

  One story concerns the sinking of the SS Normandie in New York Harbor. Luciano allegedly said the fire was proof of an enemy threat to the docks, directed by Anastasia's brother, Anthony Anastasio. The official investigation, however, found no evidence of sabotage.

  On the 3rd of January 1946, Dewey reluctantly commuted Luciano's sentence, on condition that he not resist deportation to Italy. Luciano accepted, though he still insisted he was an American citizen and could not be deported.

  On the 2nd of February 1946, two federal immigration agents took him from Sing Sing to Ellis Island in New York Harbor. On the 9th of February, the night before he left, he shared a spaghetti dinner aboard his freighter with Anastasia and five other guests. The ship sailed from Brooklyn on the 10th of February and reached Naples on the 28th, after 17 days at sea. Luciano told reporters he would probably live in Sicily. That plan did not last long.

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• 7. Havana and Exile

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  On the 29th of October 1946, Luciano landed at Camagüey, Cuba, at the end of a deliberately tangled journey. He had taken a freighter from Naples to Caracas, Venezuela. From there he flew to Rio de Janeiro, then to Mexico City, and doubled back to Caracas. A private plane finally took him to Cuba, and he was driven to an estate in the Miramar section of Havana.

  Luciano wanted to be nearer the United States so he could take charge of American Mafia business again and eventually go home. He was already a major investor in Cuban gambling and hotel projects. Lansky suggested that he and Siegel put in half a million dollars to fund Luciano's casinos. Lansky delivered the money to the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, who was guaranteed between three and five million dollars a year.

  Lansky also called together the heads of the major crime families in Havana in December 1946. The stated reason was to watch Frank Sinatra perform. The real agenda was mob business, with Luciano present. They discussed the heroin trade, Cuban gambling and what to do about Siegel and his struggling Flamingo Hotel project in Las Vegas. The Havana Conference met at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba and lasted a little over a week.

  On the 20th of December, Luciano held a private meeting in his hotel suite with Genovese. The year before, the United States Army Criminal Investigation Division had sent Genovese from Italy to New York to face a murder charge from 1934. In June 1946 the charges were dismissed, leaving him free to return to the rackets. Unlike Costello, Luciano had never trusted him.

  Genovese urged Luciano to become a figurehead "boss of bosses" and let Genovese run everything. Luciano coolly refused: "There is no Boss of Bosses. I turned it down in front of everybody. If I ever change my mind, I will take the title. But it won't be up to you. Right now, you work for me, and I ain't in the mood to retire. Don't you ever let me hear this again, or I'll lose my temper."

  The secret did not hold. Luciano was seen with Sinatra and visiting many nightclubs, so his presence in Havana was no mystery. The U.S. government learned of it soon after the conference began. On the 21st of February 1947, Federal Bureau of Narcotics Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger warned Cuba that the United States would block all shipments of narcotic prescription drugs while Luciano stayed. Two days later, Cuba announced that Luciano was in custody and would be deported to Italy within 48 hours.

  He was put on a freighter for Genoa and arrived on the 11th of April 1947. Italian police arrested him and sent him to a jail in Palermo. On the 11th of May, a regional commission in Palermo warned him to stay out of trouble and let him go. He spent the rest of his life in Italy under close police watch.

  In Sicily he kept close ties with important Palermo Mafia figures, especially Antonino Sorci and Rosario Mancino. He was allegedly involved with them in real estate speculation and in coordinating narcotics trafficking across the Atlantic.

  In early July 1949, police in Rome arrested him on suspicion of involvement in shipping narcotics to New York. They released him on the 15th of July after a week, with no charges, and banned him from Rome for good. On the 9th of June 1951, Naples police questioned him for 20 hours on suspicion of illegally bringing in $57,000 in cash and a new American car. Again he was released without charge.

  In 1952, Italy revoked his passport after complaints from American and Canadian law enforcement. On the 1st of November 1954, a judicial commission in Naples imposed strict limits for two years. He had to report to the police every Sunday, stay home every night and not leave Naples without permission. The commission cited his alleged part in the narcotics trade.

  By 1957, Genovese felt strong enough to move against Luciano and Luciano's acting boss, Costello. Gambino, now underboss of the Anastasia family, helped him. On the 2nd of May, on Genovese's orders, Vincent Gigante ambushed Costello in the lobby of his Central Park apartment building, The Majestic. Gigante called out, "This is for you, Frank", and shot at Costello's head as he turned.

  The bullet only grazed him. Costello refused to help police, and Gigante was arrested for attempted murder but acquitted. He thanked Costello in the courtroom after the verdict. Costello retired and handed what is now the Genovese crime family to Genovese. Luciano could do nothing to stop it.

  On the 25th of October 1957, Genovese and Gambino arranged the murder of Anastasia, another Luciano ally. The next month, Genovese called a meeting of bosses in Apalachin, New York, to approve his takeover and establish his national power. Law enforcement learned of it and raided the meeting. More than 65 high-ranking mobsters were arrested, the Mafia suffered heavy publicity, and grand jury summonses followed. The furious mobsters blamed Genovese.

  Luciano allegedly attended a hotel meeting in Palermo about the heroin trade, part of the French Connection. He then allegedly helped pay part of $100,000 to a Puerto Rican drug dealer to falsely implicate Genovese in a drug deal. On the 4th of April 1959, Genovese was convicted in New York of conspiracy to violate federal narcotics laws. He received fifteen years and tried to run his family from prison until he died in 1969.

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• 8. Private Life and Legacy

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  In 1929, Luciano met Gay Orlova, a featured dancer at Hollywood, one of Broadway's leading nightclubs. They were inseparable until he went to prison, but they never married.

  In early 1948 he met Igea Lissoni, a ballerina from Milan who was 20 years younger. He later called her the love of his life. She moved in with him that summer, at his house in Naples. Some reports said they married in 1949, while others say they only exchanged rings.

  He kept having affairs, which led to many arguments. During those arguments he physically struck her. Lissoni died of breast cancer in 1959.

  Luciano never had children. He once explained why: "I didn't want no son of mine to go through life as the son of Luciano, the gangster. That's one thing I still hate Dewey for, making me a gangster in the eyes of the world."

  On the 26th of January 1962, Luciano died of a heart attack at Naples Airport. He had gone there to meet the American producer Martin Gosch about a film on his life. He had refused to authorize a film before, to avoid angering other Mafia members, but reportedly gave in after Lissoni's death. Italian drug agents had followed him to the airport, expecting to arrest him on drug smuggling charges.

  Three days later, 300 people attended his funeral service in Naples. A horse-drawn hearse carried his body through the city's streets. With the U.S. government's permission, his relatives brought the body back to New York. He was buried in Saint John Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens, in front of more than 2,000 mourners. His longtime friend Gambino gave the eulogy.

  In 1998, Time named Luciano the "criminal mastermind" among its 20 most influential builders and titans of the 20th century.

  The screen has returned to him often. Marked Woman, released in 1937, fictionalized Dewey's prosecution, with Humphrey Bogart playing the Dewey character and Eduardo Ciannelli the Luciano character. Gian Maria Volonte starred in Lucky Luciano in 1973, and the narcotics agent Charlie Siragusa played himself. Andy Garcia took the role in Hoodlum in 1997. Decades later, Vincent Piazza played him in the television series Boardwalk Empire, which ran from 2010 to 2014.

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