6. The Last “Boss of All Bosses”
Salvatore Maranzano (1886 – 1931), of Castellamare, Sicily, founded what became the Bonano crime family, and instigated the Castellamarese War against Joe Masseria for control of New York’s criminal world. After winning that war, he reorganized the American mafia, setting up a basic hierarchical structure that survives to this day. Each established family would henceforth have a boss and underboss, and beneath them would be caporegimes, or captains, in command of soldiers. Above them all, Maranzano declared himself capo di tutti capi, or Boss of All Bosses – the last such occurrence in the American mafia’s history.
Maranazano, was an egomaniac with delusions of grandeur, who fancied himself a Julius Caesar of crime. When he tried to impose Italian mafia customs upon American mobsters raised in the US, it backfired. Five months after Maranzano declared himself capo di tutti capi, Lucky Luciano arranged for four mobsters to visit his office on September 10th, 1931, posing as tax men. They disarmed Maranzano’s guards, then shot and stabbed him to death. After that hit, Luciano abolished the Boss of All Bosses title, and set up a collective mafia leadership council, The Commission, to avoid future gang wars.
