← Back to the front page

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

15. Trouble Shipped Over From Sicily

A 1902 mugshot of Don Vito Ferro. US Treasury Department

Years of mounting tensions between the New York City criminal organizations of Salvatore Maranzano and Joe Masseria finally came to a head. The result was a bloody struggle for control of the Italian-American mafia, waged from February, 1930, to April, 1931, that came to be known as The Castellammarese War.

Joe Masseria had been the dominant mafia figure in the 1920s, running a powerful crime family whose ranks included future mob bosses such as Lucky Luciano, Vito Genovese, and Frank Costello. However, a Don Vito Ferro, a mafia chieftain from Castellammare, Sicily, decided to reach out and wrest control of the American mafia. So he sent Salvatore Maranzano to establish the rival Castellammarese faction, whose ranks included future mob bosses such as Joe Profaci, Joe Bonano, and Stefano Magaddino.

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.