Albert Anastasia

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Albert Anastasia

Albert Anastasia (born September 26, 1902 in Tropea , Calabria , † October 25, 1957 in New York ) was a high-ranking member of the Cosa Nostra in New York City and leader of the Gambino family . He was best known as one of the leaders of the group known by the press as Murder, Inc. , whose job it was to carry out murder assignments for the National Crime Syndicate . Because of this role, he was often referred to as the "Lord High Executioner" of organized crime. In gangster circles, however, he was known as the "Mad Hatter".

Early years

Born under the name Umberto Anastasio in Tropea, southern Italy, into a family with eight other brothers, Anastasia immigrated to the United States around 1919 and settled in New York. There he found a job as a stevedore in the Brooklyn harbor area . He soon succeeded in gaining an influential position in the local stevedore union. It was here that his tendency towards extreme violence became evident for the first time, even for trivial reasons, when he killed a fellow stevedore in the early 1920s. For this act he was imprisoned in the famous Sing Sing Prison in Ossining . Anastasia was released after just 18 months in prison because he had obtained the retrial. However, this trial was never completed as four key witnesses disappeared forever soon after his release. From now on, Anastasia should always eliminate "annoying" witnesses when he came into the sights of the investigative authorities.

In Brooklyn, Anastasia began his career as a Mafioso when he joined the Joe Masseria clan , later classified as the " Genovese family ". There he met Lucky Luciano and Frank Costello . He soon became a follower of Luciano whom he admired.

Rise in the mafia

When Luciano planned in 1930 to exploit the conflict between the Mustache Petes Joe Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano , which was known as the War of Castellammare , he let Anastasia know about his plans. Anastasia joined the up-and-coming Luciano along with other young bullies such as Meyer Lansky , Bugsy Siegel and Joe Adonis . He may have been driven by the hope that in the event of Luciano's victory, he would secure part of the profits from criminal activities that would then be redistributed. According to Lucky Luciano, Anastasia is said to have been one of the four murderers who shot Masseria on April 15, 1931 in an Italian restaurant in Coney Island .

After the murder of Masseria and the murder of Maranzano, who briefly acted as sole boss of the five families of La Cosa Nostra , Luciano became the most powerful boss in New York, if not in all of America. In order to avoid further bloody power and distribution struggles in the future if possible, Luciano established the so-called National Crime Syndicate , in which, in addition to the Sicilians and other Italians of La Cosa Nostra, Irish and mobsters of Kosher Nostra had a seat and vote. In addition to the leaders of the Five Families and the Chicago Outfit , Meyer Lansky also had a great influence on the Syndicate's “Commission” . The "Commission" should serve to settle disputes within the groups within the syndicate. Among other things, she was responsible for staking out and assigning territories to individual "families" and distributing shares in lucrative criminal transactions such as prostitution , extortion , gambling and alcohol smuggling. With the illicit distillery and the smuggling of alcohol, enormous profits could be made by the end of the alcohol prohibition in 1933.

In the course of the reorganization, Anastasia was rewarded with the fact that he and Louis Buchalter were entrusted with the management of a group of contract killers, which should serve to enforce the decisions of the "Commission". This group, later known as Murder, Inc. , consisted mainly of members of the La Cosa Nostra and Kosher Nostra . The group had their headquarters in the back room of the candy store "Midnight's Roses" in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Brownsville . During the ten years that Murder Inc. existed, the contract killers are said to have killed between 400 and 700 people, the majority of whom were Mafiosi and other gangsters. Many of these murders have not yet been resolved. Unlike his partner Louis Buchalter and many other members of Murder, Inc. Anastasia was able to permanently hide his involvement in the group's actions from the investigative authorities, so that he was never charged with murder. Whenever appropriate proceedings against Anastasia threatened, the incriminating witnesses disappeared.

In 1939, Anastasia also ordered the death of the dockworker and union activist Peter Panto , who wanted to draw the public's attention to the mafia-like structures in New York's stevedore and dock workers' union and threatened to name the mafiosi involved in the infiltration of the union to call. Anastasia then made the decision to have Panto murdered by Murder, Inc. After the activist's disappearance, his body was found two years later in a lime pit. According to a government informant and former Murder, Inc. member, Panto was strangled. Anastasia is said to have been present at the murder herself.

In the early 1940s, investigators struck a decisive blow against Murder, Inc. when the infamous killer Abe Reles was arrested. Against the assurance of his own immunity, Reles agreed to pass on his knowledge of the machinations of the group to the police. As a result, Buchalter and several of the contract killers were arrested. You should eventually be sentenced to death for multiple murders and executed on the electric chair . Although he led the group with Buchalter, Anastasia was not prosecuted by the police. However, he is said to have placed a bounty of $ 100,000 on Reles. Reles died on November 12, 1942 when he fell from a window of the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island on the eve of his official testimony. This happened under the eyes of the police, who kept the confessed Reles under close supervision in his hotel room. Since Reles was the only witness for prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey , the indictment against Anastasia failed.

After Buchalter's execution in 1944, Anastasia became the sole leader of Murder, Inc. However, the group could not recover from the beatings of the investigative authorities and quickly broke up. Contract killings should now be committed by the individual Mafia families on their own.

Activities during World War II

After the public prosecutor Thomas Dewey had already succeeded in 1936 in arresting Luciano for pimping and sentencing him to a long prison term, Anastasia took part in a deal during the war aimed at freeing Luciano from prison. For this purpose, La Cosa Nostra had to participate in the country's war efforts or not to hinder them.

When the Japanese attacked the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii on December 7, 1941 , the United States entered World War II and Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941. During Operation Paukenschlag, German submarines sank a number of merchant ships on the east coast of the United States from January 13, 1942 , so that the American side suspected that collaborators and spies were at work in their own ports .

These assumptions reached their climax when, in February 1942, the confiscated French passenger ship Normandie was to be converted into a troop carrier with the new name Lafayette . As part of the renovation work, however, aided by serious safety deficiencies and negligence, a fire broke out during welding work, killing several workers. During the fire fighting the ship capsized due to the unevenly absorbed extinguishing water .

Rumors arose that the ship had been sabotaged by German spies. It was later deduced from this that the US government had decided to work with the American mafia to fend off further attacks in the port of New York City . Without a doubt, Luciano, who controlled the dockworkers via Frank Costello and the docks via Albert Anastasia, would have been the contact person for such an arrangement and thus the forerunner for the proven cooperation between the CIA and the mafia in the case of Cuba ( Operation Mongoose ) in the 1960s.

Another thesis is that Anastasia organized some incidents in the New York harbor so that the authorities got ready to engage the mafia to prevent further acts of sabotage. Anastasia is said to have been responsible for the fire in Normandy and to have commissioned his brother Anthony with the arson.

In addition, it is still suspected to this day that the US government used contacts with Luciano to secure the Allied landing on Sicily in 1943 and the subsequent Italian campaign. These circumstances are said to have led to Luciano's release after 10 years in prison. Jack Higgins took this as a model for his novel "Luciano" (OT: Luciano's Luck), published in Germany in 1982. Here, too, Luciano is said to have established the connections to the Sicilian Cosa Nostra . At least the direct cooperation in relation to the landing in Sicily is rejected by the Mafia expert John Dickie. This is also supported by Vito Genovese's support for the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini , who organized the assassination of the labor leader Carlo Tresca on January 11, 1943 in New York City. The persecution of the Mafia in Sicily had long since ended; only after the Allies landed in Italy did Genovese switch to their side.

Leader of a family

Supported by Luciano and Costello, who knew how to control his extreme violence, Anastasia rose in 1951 to become the leader of the later Gambino family of the New York Mafia. His predecessor Vincent Mangano had long been disturbed by the direct contact between Anastasia, who was formally subordinate to him, to Luciano and Costello. Mangano particularly bothered that Anastasia was working for the two without asking Mangano for his consent beforehand. These disagreements and a few other quarrels meant that Anastasia's relationship with Mangano was so shattered that it was only a matter of time before one of the two tried to eliminate the other. In early 1951, Mangano suddenly disappeared while his brother Phil was found murdered at the same time. With the active support of Costello, Anastasia now took control of the Mafia family, which had been run by Mangano until then. Costello justified Anastasia's move by stating that Mangano intended to kill Anastasia and therefore Anastasia had to act in self-defense. The commission then accepted Anastasia's rise to head of a family.

Costello supported Anastasia, among other things, because he urgently needed allies in a dispute with Vito Genovese , who challenged Costello's position after Luciano's expulsion from the United States. In addition, Willie Moretti , a leader of the New Jersey Mafia , whom Costello had previously used as a strong arm, began talking loudly in public about his Mafia activities and was eliminated. Costello therefore needed Anastasia as a new strong arm and as a counterweight to Genovese.

In his new role as the leader of a Mafia family, Anastasia should finally let his brutality run free. Finally he got so out of control that in 1952 he even ordered the murder of journeyman tailor Arnold Schuster, whom Anastasia had heard speak on television about Schuster's role in the conviction of bank robber Willie Sutton . On this occasion, Anastasia is said to have exclaimed angrily: “I can't stand nonsense; kill this guy! ".

With the murder of Schuster, Anastasia had violated a basic rule of the Mafia, according to which outsiders should not be touched if possible. In this way, he created an undesirable public interest in the activities of organized crime. Costello had to accept Anastasia's behavior, however, as he urgently needed him as an opponent to Genovese.

The end

Genovese used the brutal behavior of Anastasia as an argument to turn his followers and supporters away from him. He secretly won Carlo Gambino , one of Anastasia's subordinates, to his cause. However, Genovese could only dare a blow against Anastasia and Costello if Meyer Lansky, a particularly influential member of the commission, agreed. Both had long-term hostility, which was based on various disputes in the 1920s.

During the 1950s, Lansky controlled the particularly lucrative gambling business in the casinos in Cuba . He granted other Mafia leaders smaller shares of his profits and businesses. Anastasia asked Lansky for a larger share of the money from the Cuban business. When Lansky refused, Anastasia began to set up a corresponding business in Cuba herself. The increasingly angry Lansky, who had previously been content with looking at the power struggle between Anastasia and Genovese from the outside, now actively supported Genovese and agreed to Genovese's planned murder of Anastasia. At this point in time, Costello no longer posed a major threat to Genovese, as he himself had barely escaped a Genovese murder and had withdrawn from the business for the time being.

On the morning of October 25, 1957, Anastasia entered a hair salon in the Park Sheraton Hotel in New York. His bodyguard parked Anastasia's car in the hotel's underground car park and then went for a walk, which made what later happened a lot easier. While Anastasia was relaxing in a barber chair, two men stormed into the salon. The two murderers, their faces covered with cloths, pushed the hairdresser out of the way and immediately started firing at Anastasia. After the first volley, he should have jumped up to defend himself. However, he only turned against the images of his attackers, which were thrown back from the mirrors in the hairdressing salon. The attackers continued to fire, so that Anastasia finally fell dead to the ground.

Like most murders within the Mafia, the murder of Anastasia remained unsolved. At first it was often assumed that Joe Profaci was entrusted with the organization of the crime and that he had used the Gallo brothers to carry it out. However, more recent findings point more towards Joseph Biondo as the organizer. Biondo, who rose to one of Gambino's subordinates after the murder of Anastasia, is said to have left the execution to Stephen Armone , Arnold Wittenberg and Stephen Grammauta . Grammauta, a convicted drug trafficker, is said to have been a high-ranking member of the "Gambino family".

Genovese could not long enjoy his victory over Anastasia. Soon after, he was betrayed by Carlo Gambino , who secretly sided with Costello and revealed to him Genovese's plans to head the mafia. Genovese was then lured into a trap by his rivals by getting involved in a drug transaction known to the authorities. Genovese spent the rest of his life in prison.

In the movie

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nine Hundred & Forty Thieves . In: Time . December 29, 1952 (American English, article online at Time Magazine website [accessed April 23, 2011]).
  2. ↑ Lucky Luciano , time.com, May 7, 1998
  3. ↑ a b "Bad Guys Done Good" , nypost.com
  4. ↑ Jack Higgins: Luciano . Bastei-Verlag Gustav H. Lübbe GmbH, Bergisch Gladbach 1985. ISBN 3-404-10579-6
  5. ^ John Dickie: Cosa Nostra: The History of the Mafia, Frankfurt a. M. 2006, Fischer Verlag, pp. 265, 265, 273ff, 279ff, 291ff, 351, 358, 362ff, 381ff, 419. ISBN 978-3-596-17106-4
predecessor Office successor
Vincent Mangano Head of the
" Gambino family " of the American Cosa Nostra
1951–1957 		Carlo Gambino
personal data
SURNAME Anastasia, Albert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Umberto Anastasio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mafia boss in New York
DATE OF BIRTH September 26, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Tropea , Italy
DATE OF DEATH October 25, 1957
Place of death New York City