Charles "Lucky" Luciano ( ; ; born Salvatore Lucania ; November 24, 1897 – January 26, 1962) was an Italian mafioso who operated mainly in the United States. He started his criminal career in New York City's Five Points Gang and was instrumental in the development of the National Crime Syndicate. Luciano is considered the father of the Italian-American Mafia for the establishment of the Commission in 1931, after he abolished the capo dei capi (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.
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. Although he was sentenced to thirty to fifty years in prison, an agreement was struck with the United States Department of the Navy through his Jewish Mob associate, Meyer Lansky, to provide naval intelligence during World War II. In 1946, for his alleged wartime cooperation, Luciano's 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 U.S. for burial.
Early life
Charles "Lucky" Luciano was born Salvatore Lucania on November 24, 1897, in Lercara Friddi, Sicily, Italy. His parents, Antonio Lucania and Rosalia Caffarella, had four other children: Giuseppe (born 1885); Bartolomeo (born 1890); Filippa, or "Fanny" (born 1901); and Concetta (born 1903)."New York, County Naturalization Records, 1791-1980", database with images, FamilySearch, New York > Petitions for naturalization and petition evidence 1919 vol 359, no 88851-89100 > image 571 of 629; citing multiple County Clerk offices of New York. November 7, 2018."Atto di nascita, Filippa Lucania". February 2, 1901. Record no. 50. Archivio di Stato di Caltanissetta > Stato civile italiano > Serradifalco > 1901 > Nati. Img 35 of 323."United States, Social Security Numerical Identification Files (NUMIDENT), 1936-2007", Concetta Digiacomo. database, FamilySearch, 10 February 2023.
Luciano's father, who worked in a sulfur mine, 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 published after his death, Luciano described how his father always purchased 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, 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. 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 American Mafia and describes Luciano's participation in meetings that occurred when he was in jail.
In 1906, when Luciano was eight years old, his family emigrated to the U.S. They settled in New York City, in the borough of Manhattan on its Lower East Side, a popular destination for Italian immigrants during the period. At age 14, Luciano dropped out of school and started a job delivering hats, earning $7 per week. After winning $244 in a dice game, Luciano quit his job and began earning money on the street. That same year, his parents sent him to the Brooklyn Truancy School.Stolberg, p. 117
As a teenager, Luciano started his own gang and became a member of the old Five Points Gang in Lower Manhattan. Unlike other street gangs, who were focused on petty crime, Luciano offered protection to Jewish youngsters from Italian and Irish gangs for ten cents per week. 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.Lacey, Robert. Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1991.
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 crime boss. The nickname may also be attributed to his luck at gambling, or to a simple mispronunciation of his last name. It is also not clear how his surname came to be rendered "Luciano", and this too may have been the result of persistent misspellings by newspapers. From 1916 to 1936, Luciano was arrested twenty-five times on charges including assault, illegal gambling, blackmail and robbery but spent no time in prison.
Prohibition and the early 1920s On January 17, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution took effect and Prohibition was enforced for the next thirteen years. 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, the latter a longtime friend and future business partner, through the Five Points Gang. That same year, Lower Manhattan crime boss Joe Masseria recruited Luciano as one of his gunmen.Newark, p. 22 Around that same time, Luciano and his close associates started working for gambler Arnold Rothstein, who immediately saw the potential financial windfall from Prohibition and educated Luciano on running bootleg alcohol as a business.Stolberg, p. 119 Luciano, Costello and Genovese started their own bootlegging operation with financing from Rothstein.
Rothstein served as a mentor for Luciano; among other things, he taught how to move in high society and to dress stylishly.Newark, Tim, p. 30 Rothstein employed Jack "Legs" Diamond as a bodyguard and an enforcer; Luciano often worked with Diamond.Newark, p. 32 Luciano also started selling heroin smuggled in from Montreal.Newark, p. 36-37 In 1923 he 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 save face, 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 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. 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. In 1927, he started living at the Barbizon-Plaza hotel; living under the alias Charles Lane, he lived there for a number of years.Newark, p. 39
Rise to power and the late 1920s Luciano soon became a top aide in Masseria's criminal organization. In contrast to Rothstein, Masseria was uneducated, with poor manners and limited managerial skills. By the late 1920s, his main rival was Sicilian-born boss Salvatore Maranzano of the Castellammarese clan. After Gaetano Reina, one of Masseria's lieutenants, switched sides to Maranzano, Masseria ordered Luciano to arrange Reina's murder. After the murder took place on February 26, 1930, the rivalry between Masseria and Maranzano escalated into the bloody Castellammarese War. Masseria and Maranzano were "Mustache Petes": older, traditional Mafia bosses who had started their criminal careers in Italy. They believed in upholding the supposed "Old World Mafia" principles of "honor", "tradition", "respect", and "dignity". These bosses refused to work with non-Italians and were skeptical of working with non-Sicilians. Some of the most conservative bosses worked with only those men with roots in their own Sicilian village. In contrast, Luciano was willing to work with not only Italians, but also Jewish and Irish gangsters, as long as there was money to be made. Luciano was shocked to hear traditional Sicilian mafiosi lecture him about his dealings with close friend Costello, whom they called "the dirty Calabrian".Sifakis
Luciano soon began cultivating ties with other younger mobsters who had been born in Italy but began their criminal careers in the U.S. and chafed at their bosses' conservatism. Luciano wanted to use lessons he learned from Rothstein to turn their gang activities into full-blown criminal enterprises.Maas, Peter. The Valachi Papers. As the war progressed, this group came to include future mob leaders such as Costello, Genovese, Albert Anastasia, Joe Adonis, Joe Bonanno, Carlo Gambino, Joe Profaci, Tommy Gagliano and Tommy Lucchese. They believed that their bosses' greed and conservatism were keeping them poor while the Irish and Jewish gangs got rich. Luciano's vision was to form a national crime syndicate in which the Italian, Jewish, and Irish gangs could pool their resources and turn organized crime into a lucrative business for all – an organization he founded after a conference was hosted in Atlantic City by Luciano, Lansky, Costello, and Johnny Torrio in May 1929.Howard Abadinsky, Organized Crime, Cengage Learning, 2009, p.115"Genovese family saga". Crime Library. In October 1929, Luciano was forced into a limousine at gunpoint by three men, beaten and stabbed, and strung up by his hands from a beam in a warehouse in Staten Island. He survived the ordeal, but was forever marked with a scar and droopy eye. The identity of his abductors was never established. When picked up by the police after the assault, Luciano said that he had no idea who did it. In 1953, Luciano told an interviewer that it was the police who kidnapped and beat him in an attempt to find Jack "Legs" Diamond.Feder & Joesten, pp. 67–69 Another story was that Maranzano ordered the attack.
Power play
By early 1931, the Castellammarese War had turned against Masseria, and Luciano saw an opportunity to switch allegiance. In a secret deal with Maranzano, Luciano agreed to engineer Masseria's death in return for receiving his rackets and becoming Maranzano's second-in-command. Adonis had joined the Masseria faction, and when Masseria heard about Luciano's betrayal he approached Adonis about killing Luciano; however, Adonis instead warned Luciano about the murder plot.
On April 15, 1931, Masseria was killed at Nuova Villa Tammaro, a Coney Island restaurant in Brooklyn. While they played cards, Luciano allegedly excused himself to go to the bathroom, at which point gunmenreportedly Anastasia, Genovese, Adonis and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegelentered the restaurant. Ciro Terranova drove the getaway car but legend has it that he was too shaken up to drive and had to be shoved out of the driver's seat by Siegel.Sifakis, (2005). pp. 87–88 With Maranzano's blessing, Luciano took over Masseria's gang and became Maranzano's lieutenant, ending the Castellammarese War.