Salvatore Maranzano

Salvatore Maranzano (1868-1931) was a gangster who came from the town of Castellamarresse, Sicily, Italy[?]. Maranzano as a youngster wanted to be a priest and he even went to the seminary to study to become one, but soon he gave up that dream and became associated with the Mafia in his homeland.

Maranzano was a hard line, old time Mafioso, and he favored the violent, old fashioned Mustache Petes way of solving differences.

Maranzano came into the United States in 1918. For the next nine years he would travel back and forth between the States and Italy, but in 1927, Vito Cascio Ferro[?], Maranzano's boss, who wanted to dominate Mafia business both in Italy and in North America, ordered him to try to take over American territory for the other Mafiosi who were already established there. He began to associate with other Mafiosi sent over by Don Vito, including Joseph Bonanno and Joseph Profaci[?].

During the late 1920s, there was another very powerful mobster in the New York area, his name being Joe The Boss Masseria[?]. Masseria realized Maranzano was a very dangerous man to his empire, and soon after, the street war known as the Castellamarresse war had broken out. It is said that this war claimed the lives of about 50 gangsters. But, during this war, a group of opportunistic young gangsters, including Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel sat and waited, waiting for a perfect chance to make their move. They learned that Masseria had planned to kill them, and they struck first, killing Masseria at a Coney Island restaurant, and making Maranzano the winner of the Castellamarresse war. Maranzano realized that Luciano, Lansky and Siegel were power hungry, and he wanted Luciano to join his side so badly that he even gave Luciano a beating once, leaving him for dead. But Luciano, true to his nickname, survived and was never able to forget the beating.

Luciano then made peace with Maranzano and shook his hand and jumped sides to Maranzano's gang. Maranzano, hoping that a gesture by his part would show Luciano his good faith, made Luciano the second man in his organization.

Maranzano then had become the boss of all bosses. He called out the rest of the bosses from all different parts of the country, and held a large banquet dinner for all of them. He proposed the idea of establishing The Commission, and the idea was accepted. According to Maranzano's idea, The Commission would have him as boss and five lieutenants (idea which gave the base for the five families organization): Bonanno, Luciano, Profaci, Tom Gagliano[?] and the brothers Phil and Vincent Mangano[?], which actually gave The Commission six lieutenants instead of five. Maranzano also laid down some rules for the Commission: he 'outlawed' random killings; he prohibited anyone in The Commission from talking about the Mafia or its activities to anyone outside, even if the outsider was just the gangster's wife, and he banned all non Sicilians from entering the organization. Anyone who broke any of those rules would be punished by death.

Maranzano became worried about his subordinates and made a list of Mafiosi he wanted to kill, among them , Luciano, Vito Genovese[?], Al Capone, Frank Costello and many others. He hired Mad Dog Cole[?] to murder Luciano and Genovese, but Luciano, aided by Lansky, found out about Maranzano's deadly intentions, and on the day that Luciano and Genovese were to be killed at Maranzano's offices, Luciano, who had learned that some IRS agents had an appointment with Maranzano, had four of his men go to Maranzano's offices dressed as government men, disarm Maranzano's security guards, and shoot and stab him to his death.