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Fascinating Facts About the Birth of the Italian-American Mafia

Khalid Elhassan February 13, 2025 17 min

Mafia - Lucky Luciano, who midwifed the birth of the modern Italian-American Mafia — Lucky Luciano, who midwifed the birth of the modern Italian-American Mafia. The Mob Museum

1. The End of the “Mustache Pete” Mafiosi

Maranzano was an old school “Mustache Pete” who grew up and rose in Italy’s Mafia culture. He tried to impose traditional Italian Mafiosi customs and norms upon American mobsters raised in the US. That only alienated and rubbed them the wrong way. As a result, Maranzano’s reign as Boss of All Bosses proved to be farcically brief. Five months after Masseria’s murder, Lucky Luciano had Maranzano assassinated, and abolished his grandiose title. In the ensuing weeks and months, Maranzano’s allies across the US, the remaining Mustache Petes, were purged on Luciano’s orders. In lieu of a single boss, Luciano created a committee, which came to be known as The Commission, that oversaw the Italian-American Mafia ever since.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Annals of Crime – The Real Father of Organized Crime in America

Behr, Edward – Prohibition: Thirteen Years That Changed America (1996)

Capeci, Jerry – The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Mafia (2005)

Costanzo, Ezio – The Mafia and the Allies: Sicily, 1943, and the Return of the Mafia (2007)

Critchley, David – The Origin of Organized Crime in America: The New York City Mafia, 1891-1931 (2008)

Downey, Patrick – Gangster City: The History of the New York Underworld, 1900-1935 (2004)

Duggan, Christopher – Fascism and the Mafia (1989)

Gambino, Richard – Vendetta: The True Story of the Largest Lynching in US History (2000)

Gigantino, Anthony, La Salle University Digital Commons, The Histories, Volume 4, Issue 1, Article 3 – Il Duce and the Mafia: Mussolini’s Hatred of the Mafia and the American Alliance With Organized Crime

History Collection – Mysterious Slayings and Crimes of the Victorian Era

Hortis, Alexander C. – The Mob and the City: The Hidden History of How the Mafia Captured New York (2014)

Mafia History – What Do We Know About Frankie Yale?

Mob Museum – Prohibition Profits Transformed the Mob

New Orleans Historical – Sicilian Lynching at the Old Parish Prison

Orkent, Daniel – Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (2010)

Raab, Selwyn – Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires (2005)

Washington Post, May 5^th, 2017 – Five Myths About the Mafia

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.