Lucky Luciano
Charles "Lucky" Luciano (/ˌluːtʃiˈɑːnoʊ/ LOO-chee-AH-noh,[1] Italian: [luˈtʃaːno]; born Salvatore Lucania [salvaˈtoːre lukaˈniːa];[2] November 24, 1897[nb 1] – January 26, 1962) was an Italian-born gangster who operated mainly in the United States. He started his criminal career in the Five Points Gang and was instrumental in the development of the National Crime Syndicate. Luciano is considered the father of modern organized crime in the United States for the establishment of the Commission in 1931, after he abolished the boss of bosses title held by Salvatore Maranzano following the Castellammarese War. He was also the first official boss of the modern Genovese crime family.
For the 1973 film, see Lucky Luciano (film). For the Mexican-American rapper, see Lucky Luciano (rapper).
Lucky Luciano
Saint John's Cemetery, Queens, New York
First head of the modern Genovese crime family, establishing the Commission, head of the modern American Mafia, and the first and only head of the National Crime Syndicate
Compulsory prostitution
30 to 50 years' imprisonment (1936)
Gay Orlova
(1929–1936)
Igea Lissoni
(1948–1959; possibly married 1949)
In 1936, Luciano was tried and convicted for compulsory prostitution and running a prostitution racket after years of investigation by District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey. He was sentenced to 30 to 50 years in prison, but during World War II an agreement was struck with the Department of the Navy through his Jewish Mob associate Meyer Lansky to provide naval intelligence. In 1946, for his alleged wartime cooperation, his sentence was commuted on the condition that he be deported to Italy. Luciano died in Italy on January 26, 1962, and his body was permitted to be transported back to the United States for burial.
Early life[edit]
Luciano was born Salvatore Lucania[6] on November 24, 1897, in Lercara Friddi, Sicily.[nb 1] His parents, Antonio Lucania and Rosalia Caffarella, had four other children: Giuseppe (born 1885), Bartolomeo (born 1890), Filippa, called Fanny (born 1901), and Concetta (born 1903).[7][8][9] Luciano's father worked in a sulfur mine in Sicily.[10]
His father was very ambitious and persistent in eventually moving to the United States. In The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano: The Mafia Story in His Own Words, a purported semi-autobiography that was published after Luciano's death, Luciano described how his father always had a new Palermo-based steamship company calendar each year and would save money for the boat trip by keeping a jar under his bed. He also mentions in the book that his father was too proud to ask for money, so instead his mother was given money in secret by Luciano's cousin, named Rotolo, who also lived in Lercara Friddi.
Although the book has largely been regarded as accurate, there are numerous problems that point to the possibility that it is, in fact, fraudulent.[11] The book was based on conversations that Luciano supposedly had with Hollywood producer Martin Gosch in the years before Luciano's death. As The New York Times reported shortly before the book's publication, the book quotes Luciano talking about events that occurred years after his death, repeats errors from previously published books on the Mafia, and describes Luciano's participation in meetings that occurred when he was in jail.[11]
In 1906, when Luciano was eight years old, the family emigrated from Sicily to the United States.[12] They settled in New York City in the borough of Manhattan on its Lower East Side, a popular destination for Italian immigrants.[13] At age 14, Luciano dropped out of school and started a job delivering hats, earning $7 per week. However, after winning $244 in a dice game, Luciano quit his job and began earning money on the street.[10] That same year, Luciano's parents sent him to the Brooklyn Truancy School.[14]
As a teenager, Luciano started his own gang and was a member of the old Five Points Gang. Unlike other street gangs, whose business was petty crime, Luciano offered protection to Jewish youngsters from Italian and Irish gangs for 10 cents per week. He was also learning the pimping trade in the years around World War I. Luciano met Meyer Lansky as a teenager, when Luciano attempted to extort Lansky for protection money on his walk home from school. Luciano respected the younger boy's defiant responses to his threats, and the two formed a lasting partnership.[15]
It is not clear how Luciano earned the nickname "Lucky". It may have come from surviving a severe beating and throat slashing by three men in 1929 as the result of his refusal to work for another mob boss.[12] The nickname may also be attributed to his gambling luck, or to a simple mispronunciation of his last name.[16] From 1916 to 1936, Luciano was arrested 25 times on charges including assault, illegal gambling, blackmail and robbery but spent no time in prison.[17] It is also not clear how his surname came to be rendered "Luciano". This too may have been the result of persistent misspellings by newspapers.
Prohibition and the early 1920s[edit]
On January 17, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution took effect and Prohibition lasted until the amendment was repealed in 1933. The amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. Since the demand for alcohol continued, the resulting black market for alcoholic beverages provided criminals with an additional source of income.
By 1920, Luciano had met many future Mafia leaders, including Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, his longtime friend and future business partner through the Five Points Gang. That same year, Lower Manhattan gang boss Joe Masseria recruited Luciano as one of his gunmen.[18] Around that same time, Luciano and his close associates started working for gambler Arnold "The Brain" Rothstein, who immediately saw the potential windfall from Prohibition and educated Luciano on running bootleg alcohol as a business.[19] Luciano, Costello, and Genovese started their own bootlegging operation with financing from Rothstein.[19]
Rothstein served as a mentor for Luciano; among other things, Rothstein taught him how to move in high society. In 1923, Luciano was caught in a sting selling heroin to undercover agents. Although he saw no jail time, being outed as a drug peddler damaged his reputation among his high-class associates and customers. To salvage his reputation, Luciano bought 200 expensive seats to the Jack Dempsey–Luis Firpo boxing match in the Bronx and distributed them to top gangsters and politicians. Rothstein then took Luciano on a shopping trip to Wanamaker's Department Store in Manhattan to buy expensive clothes for the fight. The strategy worked, and Luciano's reputation was saved.[20]
By 1925, Luciano was grossing over $12 million per year, and made a personal income of about $4 million per year from running illegal gambling and bootlegging operations in New York that also extended into Philadelphia.[21]
Reorganizing Cosa Nostra and the Commission[edit]
With the death of Maranzano, Luciano became the dominant crime boss in the United States. He had reached the pinnacle of the underworld of the United States, setting policies and directing activities along with the other Mafia bosses. His own crime family controlled lucrative criminal rackets in New York City such as illegal gambling, extortion, bookmaking, loansharking, and drug trafficking. Luciano became very influential in labor union activities and controlled the Manhattan Waterfront, garbage hauling, construction, Garment District businesses, and trucking.
Although there would have been few objections had Luciano declared himself capo di tutti capi, he abolished the title, believing the position created trouble between the families and made himself a target for another ambitious challenger.[40] Instead, Luciano chose to quietly maintain control through the Commission by forging unofficial alliances with other bosses. However, Luciano did not discard all of Maranzano's changes. He believed that the ceremony of becoming a "made man" in a crime family was a Sicilian anachronism. However, Genovese persuaded Luciano to keep the title, arguing that young people needed rituals to promote obedience to the family. Luciano remained committed to omertà, the oath of silence, to protect the families from legal prosecution. In addition, he kept Maranzano's structure of five crime families in New York City.[29]
Luciano elevated his most trusted Italian associates to high-level positions in what was now the Luciano crime family. Genovese became underboss and Costello consigliere. Adonis, Michael "Trigger Mike" Coppola, Anthony Strollo, Willie Moretti and Anthony Carfano all served as caporegimes. Because Lansky and Siegel were non-Italians, neither man could hold official positions within any Mafia family. However, Lansky was a top advisor to Luciano and Siegel a trusted associate.
Later in 1931, Luciano called a meeting in Chicago with various bosses, where he proposed a Commission to serve as the governing body for organized crime.[41] Designed to settle all disputes and decide which families controlled which territories, the Commission has been called Luciano's greatest innovation.[29] Luciano's goals with the Commission were to quietly maintain his own power over all the families, and to prevent future gang wars; the bosses approved the idea of the Commission.[42]
The Commission was originally composed of representatives of the Five Families of New York City, the Buffalo crime family, and the Chicago Outfit; later, the crime families of Philadelphia and Detroit were added, with smaller families being formally represented by a Commission family.[42] The Commission also provided representation for Jewish criminal organizations in New York.[43]
The group's first test came in 1935, when it ordered Dutch Schultz to drop his plans to murder Special Prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey. Luciano argued that a Dewey assassination would precipitate a massive law enforcement crackdown; the national crime syndicate had enacted a hard and fast rule stating that law enforcement and prosecutors were not to be harmed. An enraged Schultz said he would kill Dewey anyway and walked out of the meeting.[44] Murder, Inc leader Albert Anastasia approached Luciano with information that Schultz had asked him to stake out Dewey's apartment building on Fifth Avenue. Upon hearing the news, the Commission held a discreet meeting to discuss the matter. After six hours of deliberations the Commission ordered Lepke Buchalter to eliminate Schultz.[45][46] On October 23, 1935, before he could kill Dewey, Schultz was shot in a tavern in Newark, New Jersey, and succumbed to his injuries the following day.[47][48]
World War II, freedom, and deportation[edit]
During World War II, the US government struck a secret deal with the imprisoned Luciano. In 1942, the Office of Naval Intelligence was concerned about German and Italian agents entering the US through the New York waterfront. They also worried about sabotage in these facilities. Knowing that the Mafia controlled the waterfront, the US Navy contacted Lansky about a deal with Luciano. To facilitate negotiations, Luciano was transferred to Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, New York, which was much closer to New York City.[67]
The Navy, the State of New York and Luciano reached a deal: in exchange for a commutation of his sentence, Luciano promised the complete assistance of his organization in providing intelligence to the Navy. Anastasia, a Luciano ally who controlled the docks, allegedly promised no dockworker strikes during war. In preparation for the 1943 allied invasion of Sicily, Luciano allegedly provided the US military with Sicilian Mafia contacts. This collaboration between the Navy and the Mafia became known as Operation Underworld.[65]
The value of Luciano's contribution to the war effort is highly debated. In 1947, the naval officer in charge of Operation Underworld discounted the value of his wartime aid.[68] A 1954 report ordered by now-Governor Dewey stated that Luciano provided many valuable services to Naval Intelligence.[69] The enemy threat to the docks, Luciano allegedly said, was manufactured by the sinking of the SS Normandie in New York harbor, supposedly directed by Anastasia's brother, Anthony Anastasio.[70][71] However, the official investigation of the ship sinking found no evidence of sabotage.[72]
On January 3, 1946, as a presumed reward for his alleged wartime cooperation, Dewey reluctantly commuted Luciano's pandering sentence on condition that he not resist deportation to Italy.[73] Luciano accepted the deal, although he still maintained that he was a US citizen and not subject to deportation. On February 2, 1946, two federal immigration agents transported Luciano from Sing Sing prison to Ellis Island in New York Harbor for deportation proceedings.[74] On February 9, the night before his departure, Luciano shared a spaghetti dinner on his freighter with Anastasia and five other guests.[75]
On February 10, Luciano's ship sailed from Brooklyn Harbor for Italy.[75] On February 28, after a 17-day voyage, Luciano's ship arrived in Naples. On arrival, Luciano told reporters he would probably reside in Sicily.[76]
American power struggle[edit]
By 1957, Genovese felt strong enough to move against Luciano and his acting boss, Costello. He was aided in this move by Anastasia family underboss Carlo Gambino. On May 2, 1957, following Genovese's orders, Vincent "Chin" Gigante ambushed Costello in the lobby of his Central Park apartment building, The Majestic. Gigante called out, "This is for you, Frank," and as Costello turned, shot him in the head. After firing his weapon, Gigante quickly left, thinking he had killed Costello. However, the bullet had just grazed Costello's head and he was not seriously injured. Although Costello refused to cooperate with the police, Gigante was arrested for attempted murder. Gigante was acquitted at trial, thanking Costello in the courtroom after the verdict. Costello was allowed to retire after conceding control of what is called today the Genovese crime family to Genovese. Luciano was powerless to stop it.[90]
On October 25, 1957, Genovese and Gambino successfully arranged the murder of Anastasia, another Luciano ally.[91] The following month, Genovese called a meeting of bosses in Apalachin, New York to approve his takeover of the Luciano family and to establish his national power. Instead, the Apalachin Meeting turned into a fiasco when law enforcement conducted a raid. Over 65 high-ranking mobsters were arrested and the Mafia was subjected to publicity and numerous grand jury summonses.[92] The enraged mobsters blamed Genovese for the disaster, opening a window of opportunity for Genovese's opponents.
Luciano allegedly attended a meeting in a hotel in Palermo to discuss heroin trade as part of the French Connection. After their meeting, Luciano allegedly helped pay part of $100,000 to a Puerto Rican drug dealer to falsely implicate Genovese in a drug deal.[93] On April 4, 1959, Genovese was convicted in New York of conspiracy to violate federal narcotics laws.[94] Sent to prison for 15 years, Genovese tried to run his crime family from prison until his death in 1969.[95]
Personal life and death[edit]
In 1929, Luciano met Gay Orlova, a featured dancer in one of Broadway's leading nightclubs, Hollywood.[96] They were inseparable until he went to prison, but were never married.[96]
In early 1948, he met Igea Lissoni, a Milanese ballerina 20 years his junior, whom he later described as the love of his life. In the summer, Lissoni moved in with him. Although some reports said the couple married in 1949, others state that they only exchanged rings.[10][97] Luciano and Lissoni lived together in Luciano's house in Naples. He continued to have affairs with other women, resulting in many arguments with Lissoni during which he physically struck her. In 1959, Lissoni died of breast cancer.
Luciano never had children. He once provided his reasons for that: "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."[98]
On January 26, 1962, Luciano died of a heart attack at Naples International Airport. He had gone to the airport to meet with American producer Martin Gosch about a film based on his life. To avoid antagonizing other Mafia members, Luciano had previously refused to authorize a film, but reportedly relented after the death of his longtime lover, Igea Lissoni. After the meeting with Gosch, Luciano had a heart attack and died. He was unaware that Italian drug agents had followed him to the airport in anticipation of arresting him on drug smuggling charges.[10]
Three days later, 300 people attended a funeral service for Luciano in Naples. His body was conveyed along the streets of Naples in a horse-drawn black hearse.[99] With the permission of the US government, Luciano's relatives took his body back to New York for burial. He was buried in St. John's Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens. More than 2,000 mourners attended his funeral. Gambino, Luciano's longtime friend, gave his eulogy.[100]
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