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Facts About These Notorious Law Breakers and Their Criminal History

Khalid Elhassan May 20, 2020 34 min

Al Capone - Bugsy Siegel — 1930s mobsters. Eugene Cannevari Collection

16. The Kingpin Who Laid the Foundations of the Modern Mafia

Joe ‘The Boss’ Masseria, Salvatore Maranzano’s enemy. Wikimedia

Salvatore Maranzano (1886 – 1931) of Castellammare, Sicily, was a powerful Mafiosi who emigrated to the US and laid the foundations of the modern American mafia. He founded what became the Bonano crime family, and instigated the Castellammarese War against Joe “The Boss” Masseria for control of New York’s criminal world. Winning that war, Maranzano declared himself capo di tutti capi, or “Boss of All Bosses” – the last such occurrence in the American mafia’s history.

Maranzano had initially studied to become a priest before turning to crime. Immigrating to America soon after WWI, he started a legitimate real estate business as a front for his criminal activities, such as bootlegging, narcotics, gambling, and prostitution. Maranzano was a huge fan of Julius Caesar, whom he sought to emulate, and had a habit of lecturing his less-educated American mafia peers about the Roman dictator, earning him the nickname “Little Caesar”. It was not meant as a compliment.

Read More: 20 Significant Mafia Hits.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.