War of Castellammare
The Castellammare War was a bloody conflict between the Italian-American gangs of the Cosa Nostra in 1930 and 1931, which took place predominantly in New York City and killed between nine and twelve bullies .
The opponents
The name is derived from the fact that the opponents on one side all come from the neighborhood of Castellammare del Golfo in Sicily , including Joseph Bonanno , Stefano Magaddino , Joseph Profaci , Giuseppe "Joe" Aiello and their leader Salvatore Maranzano . Their opponents, who came from all over Sicily and neighboring regions of southern Italy such as Calabria and Campania , were led by Joe Masseria . Masseria included Al Capone , Lucky Luciano , Vito Genovese , Willie Moretti , Joe Adonis and Frank Costello .
“In addition to the Masseria group, the Al Mineo Gang operated in Manhattan and Brooklyn, closely following Masseria . The Bronx was controlled by Gaetano Reina , the son of Giacomo Reina from Corleone […]. Staten Island was Joseph Profaci's field of work . The fifth group was special as it recruited its members exclusively from immigrants from Castellammare del Golfo . The nominal boss of this formation was Cola Schiro , but Salvatore Maranzano was in charge . The Castellammarese had also chosen Manhattan and Brooklyn as their area of operation ... "
The outbreak of the conflict
The conflict was triggered by Vito Cascio Ferro's sending Salvatore Maranzano to New York City . He became the leader of the immigrants from Castellammare del Golfo in New York City. More men from the region came to New York, including Joseph Bonanno, Joseph Profaci, and Stefano Magaddino, with whom Maranzano allied. Instead of commuting between the USA and Italy as a contact person, however, he allegedly received an order from Don Vito in 1927 to take over the other five families , which in fact already existed, in New York. Thereupon he began to penetrate during the alcohol prohibition in particular on the territory of Joe Masserias by appropriating his alcohol deliveries and beginning to take over his illegal bars (" speakeasy "). The latter fought against this "hostile takeover" and a bloody battle ensued in the underworld, known as the "War of Castellammare".
Tensions between the two factions were already evident in 1928. When Gaetano Reina rejected a demand for a higher fee from his gang, which was the forerunner of the later Lucchese family , and contacted Maranzano, he was murdered on February 26, 1930. Joseph Pinzola was appointed as the leader of the gang, who thus u. a. also took control of most of the ice cream sales in New York City ; Back then, when electrical cooling devices were still rare, it was a popular business.
The sub-leaders Gaetano Gagliano and Tommy Lucchese were not enthusiastic about this appointment from the outside, but officially continued to support Masseria. However, on September 9, 1930, Pinzola was shot by unknown killers and Gagliano became boss of the Reina gang.
Unofficially, both had probably already joined Lucky Luciano . Like Gagliano and Lucchese, he was officially a loyal supporter of Masseria. However, Luciano was attacked by unknown perpetrators in 1929 and tortured almost to death. When his childhood friend Meyer Lansky revealed to Luciano the true perpetrators of Masseria, the latter apparently decided to play a double game with Maranzano and Masseria. Behind the power struggle between the traditional Mustache Petes Masseria and Maranzano, a generation conflict between the American-born (the so-called “young turks”) around Luciano and the “greaseballs” (at: fat dumplings), like the Mustache Pete internally, was revealed were called.
In the course of the conflict, Maranzano's hired man Peter Morello , a key ally of Masseria, had killed in Harlem on August 15, 1930 , and Masseria's people had murdered Vito Bonventre , one of Maranzano's subordinates. The murder of Morello marks the obvious beginning of this conflict.
Luciano later claimed to have murdered Morello himself, as his plan to pit the two bosses against each other threatened to fail because of him. Peter Morello, a brother-in-law of "Blackhander" Ignazio Saietta , was a veteran of Italian-style organized crime in New York City and was an experienced tactician.
After these two murders, Gagliano and Reina apparently joined Maranzano. On October 23, 1930, Joseph Aiello was murdered in Chicago, presumably on Capone's orders - at that time, hostile Sicilian and non-Sicilian factions were in mixed coalitions that had nothing to do with the original situation at the beginning of the conflict.
The turn
As a result of Aiello's death, Maranzano gained the upper hand in the war. Among other things, Stefano Ferrigno and Alfred Mineo were murdered on November 5, 1930 , who were important allies of Masseria, head of the La Cosa Nostra faction, later known as the “ Genovese family ” . Members of Masseria, including his successor Francesco Scalice as the head of the group later known as the “ Gambino Family ”, began to switch sides, which meant that the original constellation - Castellammare versus non-Castellammare - was finally abolished.
On February 3, 1931, Joseph Catania, another important underboss of Masseria, was gunned down and died two days later. The hot phase of the war then ended with the murder of Joe Masseria on Coney Island , where he was killed on April 15, 1931 over lunch in a restaurant. According to what is now known as a legend , it was a meeting between Luciano and Masseria. Luciano was in the washroom when four men, allegedly Albert Anastasia , Joe Adonis , Benjamin Siegel and Vito Genovese , committed the act. Ciro Terranova is said to have driven the getaway car. A recently published police report by the NYPD assumes a meeting between Masseria and his underboss Sam Pollaccia , who then first went to the washroom. In his absence, Johnny "Silk Stocking" Giustra entered the restaurant, who then shot Masseria together with Pollaccia. Pollaccia disappeared after the fact and was probably murdered, Giustra was shot in "East Harlem " in 1931 . Lucky Luciano, who was inclined to make legends, had then appropriated the story. Like Luciano, Pollaccia and Giustra were originally members of the Five Points Gang or one of the successor organizations to Frankie Yale .
The consequences
After Masseria's death, Maranzano announced the new organizational structure of the Mafia in the United States , which has remained largely unchanged since then. Every family should have a boss who is supported by an underboss , and later the third rank consigliere was added. Each family is to be divided into individual teams, crews , consisting of soldiers , each of whom has a capo . With the exception of New York City , every major city in the Northeast and Midwest of the United States had a family, while New York had five families, led by Luciano, Profaci, Gagliano, Bonanno, and Mangano. It is believed that the term Cosa Nostra ( Our Cause ) was created around this time.
Maranzano sat down on the Five Families in New York City and called himself Capo di tutti i capi (it: boss of all bosses) of the city. He planned to eliminate Luciano, but Luciano got ahead of him: on September 10, 1931, he had Maranzano murdered and, through his influence, ensured a more decentralized structure through the National Crime Syndicate . A popular legend is that on the same night, the "Night of Sicilian Vespers", Luciano had dozens of bosses loyal to Maranzano killed across the country. This story was circulated by “Bo” Weinberg , one of Maranzano's killers.
In reality, only two or three lower-tier gangsters died nationwide that night. And even after that, the violent exchange of leading figures was limited. On October 15, 1931, Joseph Ardizzone - apparently the victim of a Lupara Bianca - disappeared without a trace. Ardizzone had supported Maranzano in the dispute. Successor Jack Dragna as head of the family in Los Angeles , however, had excellent contacts with Lucky Luciano.
literature
- Carl Sifakis: The Mafia Encyclopedia. Third edition. Facts on File, New York City 2005, ISBN 0-8160-5694-3 , pp. 87f.
Web links
- American Mafioso: The Castellammarese War ( Memento of November 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (English); in the Internet Archive
Individual evidence
- ^ Hannelore Gude Hohensinner: Die Genoveses , Europa Verlag, Munich / Vienna, 1998. ISBN 3-203-77533-6
- ↑ "Final Resting Place of Joe Masseria" ( Memento of the original from July 20, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on www.hollywoodusa.co.uk (English)
