Castellammarese War
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The Castellammarese War is the name given to a bloody internal power struggle between two factions of the Italian-American mafia that took place in 1930 and 1931. It culminated in the brief establishment of Salvatore Maranzano as capo di tutti capi, before he himself was killed and "the Commission" of five mafia families of equal stature was established.
The name is derived from the fact that one side in the conflict consisted, at least at first, of immigrants sent by powerful Sicilian mafioso Don Vito Cascio Ferro from the vicinity of the town of Castellammare del Golfo in western Sicily, including Joseph Bonanno, Stefano Magaddino, Joseph Profaci, Joe Aiello, and the faction's leader, Salvatore Maranzano. Their adversaries, who hailed both from elsewhere in Sicily and adjacent of regions of southern Italy such as Calabria and Campania (particularly Naples) were led by Joe "The Boss" Masseria and also included Alphonse Capone, Lucky Luciano, Albert Anastasia, Vito Genovese, Alfred Mineo, Willie Moretti, Joe Adonis, and Frank Costello. Outwardly, the Castellammarese War was between the forces of Masseria and Maranzano, but in reality the war was between the "Mustache Petes", or the old guard Sicilians in the American Mafia, and the "Young Turks" following Luciano and their multi-ethnic allies.
Tensions between the two factions were readily evident as far back as 1928, with one side frequently hijacking the other's alcohol trucks (alcohol was then illegal in the United States due to Prohibition). According to most sources, the opening salvo in the war itself was fired not by one side against the other but rather within the anti-Castellammarese faction, when on February 26, 1930, Gaetano Reina (whose daughter Mildred would marry Joe Valachi two years later) was murdered by order of Lucky Luciano in order to protect his secret allies Tommy Gagliano, Tommy Lucchese, and Dominic Petrilli (known as "The Gap"). However, Gaspar Milazzo, a Castellemmarese native and Maranzano ally who was the president of Detroit's chapter of Unione Siciliane, was assassinated by a triggerman sent by Masseria a couple of weeks prior to Reina's death.
After Reina's murder, Masseria appointed Joseph Pinzolo to take over the ice-distribution racket - but on September 9, 1930 Pinzolo was shot to death by Reina's former subordinates at a Times Square office rented by Lucchese. Meanwhile, on August 15, 1930, Maranzano loyalists executed a key Masseria-allied mob enforcer, Pietro Morello, at Morello's East Harlem office (another man who had been visiting the office, Giuseppe Pariano, was also killed). After these two murders, which were carried out independently of one another, the Reina crew formally joined forces with Maranzano, whose side suffered a setback on October 23, 1930 when Aiello, at the time president of the local Unione Siciliane, was murdered in Chicago, presumably on Capone's orders (in Chicago during this time, separate - and mutually hostile - Sicilian and non-Sicilian factions existed within the Italian-American organized crime apparatus), though Luciano said the hit was performed by Al Mineo on orders of Masseria.
Following the death of Aiello, however, the tide of the war rapidly turned in the Maranzano faction's favor (a key member of Masseria's gang, Stefano Ferrigno, was murdered, along with Alfred Mineo, on November 5, 1930) and members of Masseria's gang began to switch sides, rendering the original battle lines of the conflict (Castellammarese versus non-Castellammarese) meaningless. After another important Masseria lieutenant, Joseph Catania, was gunned down on February 3, 1931 (he died two days later), Luciano and Genovese agreed to betray Masseria if Maranzano would end the conflict thereafter - and on April 15, 1931, Masseria was killed while eating dinner at Nuova Villa Tammaro, a restaurant in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn. The hitters were Albert Anastasia, Joe Adonis, Vito, Genovese, and Benny Siegel; Ciro Terranova drove the car.
After Masseria's death, Maranzano laid out the organizational structure of the Mafia in the United States which has since remained essentially unchanged - the basic family unit headed by a boss, assisted by an underboss (the third-ranking position, that of consigliere, was added somewhat later) and divided into crews, each headed by a capo and staffed by soldiers, the latter often assisted by associates not yet members (or as they became known later, "wiseguys"). Except for New York City, major urban areas in the Northeast and Midwest were organized into one family per city; New York City was organized into five separate families (whose respective bosses, appointed by Maranzano, were Luciano, Profaci, Gagliano, Bonanno, and Vincent Mangano).
Maranzano set himself above, and apart from, the five families of New York City, appointing himself capo di tutti capi or "boss of all bosses"; however, his reign would prove to be shortlived. On September 10, 1931 Maranzano was shot and stabbed to death in his Manhattan office by a team of out-of-town Jewish triggermen recruited by Meyer Lansky and led by trusted Luciano gunman Red Levine. The effective takeover of the Mafia by a younger, more ruthless generation of mobsters, headed by Lucky Luciano, was then complete, and allowed the expansion of organized crime into a truly national and multi-ethnic national combination.
