JOSEPH BONANNO



Joe Bonanno was one of the founder members of the commission. He helped cultivate the American Mafia in to a national phenomenon. Along with Lucky Luciano, Tommy Lucchese, Frank Costello and Vito Genovesse and others they put together an organization that would effect nearly every part of the American economy. In his later years he would write a book about that same Commission, with that book he would bring down that same Commission.

A young Joseph BonannoJoseph Bonanno was born on January 18, 1905 the son of wealthy and powerful parents in the western part of Sicily. In 1908he and his parents sailed for the United States, arriving eventually in New York, where they settled in a home on North Fifth Street in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. In 1911 the family moved back to Sicily. When Joseph was about fourteen, his mother, who was only thirty-seven, died and he went to live under the protection of his uncle, Stefano Magaddino. Joe together with Peter Magaddino, decided to leave Sicily and go to America. Joseph was now nineteen. Because they had some trouble getting into the U.S. legally they tried it illegally. They were arrested by officers of the immigration service and detained for three days. Everything worked out. Joseph was back in New York for the second time.

In his first year back in New York, Joseph spent much of his time mixing with the neighbourhood Mafiosi, one of his closest friends at this time was Gaspar Di Gregorio. Gaspar and his friends were running a bootlegging operation. The Volstead Act had been passed, and Prohibition had created a whole new wonderful world of opportunity for all the criminal elements across America. Joseph joined up with his friends, and within a remarkable short space of time was being recognised as a mover and shaker, with a precocious talent for organising and administering, as well as seizing opportunities. He opened a bakery in 1926 with Vito Bonventre, brother of Peter and this was followed by investments in clothing factories, cheese shops and a funeral parlour. He became involved in the Italian lottery, expanding its domain to other parts of Brooklyn.

Lucky LucianoBonanno went to work for Maranzano boss of the Castellammarese Mafia. Sometime, probably before 1929, Joe became inducted into the Castellammarese Mafia Family. Bonanno joined Maranzano when Organized Crime was changing. The old bosses were challenged and the Families across the U.S. were trying to organize and become one major organized structure, working together instead of constant war. Things were changing and when the 2 major bosses of New York (including Bonanno's boss Maranzano) were killed, restructuring began. The entire project was started by Charles "Lucky" Luciano, Luciano had big plans for Organized Crime and didn't need these old fashioned guys, they were in his way and he took them out. With Maranzano dead and Maranzano's underboss Angelo Caruso turning down the position because he didn't want the job, Joseph Bonanno became the new boss. As of October 1931 at the age of 26 Joe Bonanno found himself on top of an organization of at least 300 made men. As boss Bonanno was also invited to be on the commission, an invention by Luciano and Lansky to make Mafia business a smoothly run business without war.

Bonanno used the wealth he had accumulated during Prohibition to help fund his way into legitimate businesses. In time he became a partner or whole owner of a wide range of interests: clothing factories, laundries, a funeral home, and the Grande Cheese Company of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. He kept these business ventures clean and tidy, paying his taxes on time like any good citizen. He also operated on the other side of the law, running the Italian lottery, operating gambling and "numbers" ventures and, no doubt, generating cash through loan-sharking, which has always been a speciality of the Mob. He based himself initially in a social club called the Abraham Lincoln Independent Political Club on Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The years that followed were productive and relatively peaceful among the five rival families, as they all manoeuvred around each other, competing for a bigger slice of the Big Apple.

The Commission was set up so that the Mafia would not go to war as fast as they did in the past. Bosses could talk over their wishes instead of planning eachothers death, that was the idea...things turned out not to be that simple. The Commission brought the wars and doublecrossing to the highest level with bosses playing bosses, eye to eye. The Commission had all the major LCN bosses of the U.S. as a member. The 5 New York Families all had their bosses on it and they made up the bulk, the ones who attended every meeting. Pretty soon the double crossing and backstabbing that had been going on before the Commission began right there on the Commission, with the Commission as the startingpoint for the ultimate take over.

Albert AnastaciaBy the mid 1950’s, the world of Joseph Bonanno was orderly and running on all cylinders. At the age of fifty, he was a very wealthy man. He had a home at 1726 DeKalb Avenue in Brooklyn, another on Long Island, a third house in Tucson, Arizona, and a fourteen-room mansion near Middletown in New York State. His personal family had grown; there were now two sons and a daughter. As the boss of his own crime family, he also shared in the wealth generated by the men under his command. Their gambling interests were extensive in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side of Manhattan; they dominated the Italian Lottery, and were heavily into loan-sharking and extortion. Things were going well and it looked like it would keep on going like that untill Bonanno went on vacation to Sicily and came back to a warzone, Frank Costello was shot down by Genovese soldier Vincent Gigante, and survived but stepped down as boss. Underboss of the (then) Anastacia Family (later Gambino Family) Francesco "Don Ciccio" Scalise was shot down and unlike Costello died on the spot. The 3rd person to go during Bonanno's vacation was Albert Anastacia boss of what is now known of the Gambino Family. When he came back to New York Bonanno said that no one was more surprised than he to hear the news. He also claimed ignorance of the forthcoming national meeting that was to be hosted by Joe Barbara at his estate near Apalachin, a small rural township in upstate New York. Ignorance or not it was a smart move not to guy to that meeting, it would be the meeting that would erase the myth of fearless Mafia bosses. The meeting would also mark the day that the F.B.I. started taking on the Mafia, F.B.I. director Hoover had always denied there was such a thing as organized crime after the meeting he couldn't anymore. In 1959, a federal grand jury indicted Joseph Bonanno charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice, stemming from the Apalachin affair. He was however severed from the case before any trial even began, as he suffered a heart attack. He retired to his home in Tucson to recuperate, leaving more and more of his crime family’s responsibilities to his subordinates.

Joseph ProfaciThen things started moving fast in New York as the Profaci Family (now known as the Colombo Crime Family) went into an internal war. Joseph Profaci had a crew in his Family who were headed by the Gallo brothers. The Gallo's were unhappy with Profaci and felt they were not getting enough for their actions, they reputedly shot down Anastacia and had killed a Profaci Capo who's territory was given to other men by Profaci, the Gallo's had had enough of Profaci's greed and on February 27, 1961, they started the war. Between September 1961 and September 1963 there were at least six attempted killings and nine successful hits between the two factions within the family, struggling for power. In January 1962, Joey Gallo was locked up for extortion and would be out of the firefight, but still part of the gang, until his release from prison on March 11, 1971. Throughout this war, Joseph Profaci had maintained it was an internal problem that he would resolve. Bonanno sided with Profaci in this respect, always aiming to maintain some kind of balance on the Commission. Tommy Lucchese and the emerging Carlo Gambino were siding with Stefano Magaddino. Vito Genovese was away in a federal penitentiary and his nominated successors, according to Bonanno, voted according to the majority. There was pressure brought upon Profaci to retire, which he resisted until nature took its course and he died of cancer on June 2, 1962. His right hand man, Joe Magliocco assumed command of the family and the conflict with the Gallos’s continued. But now the struggle had widened to include not just the brothers and their men, but also the men on the Commission who supported them, Lucchese and Gambino, along with Joseph Bonanno’s cousin, the boss of Buffalo, Magaddino.

Carlo GambinoAt this point, sometime in 1963, history and the passing of time blur the landscape. Intelligence gathered by law enforcement sources indicate that Joseph Bonanno set in place a plot to have Tommy Lucchese, Carlo Gambino and Stefano Magaddino murdered, organizing it through Magliocco, who would then have joined him in controlling the Commission and, in theory, the rest of the New York families. Magliocco, in turn, handed down the contract to Joe Colombo, the same man who had been one of the victims of the Gallo kidnapping two years earlier. Colombo, an enterprising gangster, who a few years down the track would create the Italian-American Civil Rights League, decided that the victims would be worth more to him than the contract. He went to Gambino with news of the coup and all hell broke loose. "The Bonanno War" was about to start.

On December 28, 1963, Joseph Magliocco died of a heart attack. It was rumoured that he had been hauled in front of the Commission and fined $50,000 for his part in the attempted coup. He was also "dumped" as family leader, his position being filled by Joseph Colombo. When the Commission sat in judgement on Magilocco, they also summoned Joseph Bonanno to appear and explain his connection to the attempted assassinations of Magaddino, Lucchese and Gambino. He refused, and according to government sources, on July 17, flew to Phoenix, Arizona. Drove to California, and then travelled to Canada in 1964. In Canada he was arrested and imprisoned for not disclosing his criminal history on his immigration-card application. Soon he was deported back to the U.S.. In February of that year, Bill Bonanno was appointed consigliere of the family. The promotion created unrest at all levels. Gaspar Di Gregorio, a senior member of the family, obviously had hounded for the position of consigliere and was disappointed that he lost out to Bill. Although he was Bill’s godfather, he apparently never forgave Bill for usurping him out of what he believed was rightfully his promotion. He evidently went to Stefano Magaddino in Buffalo and presented his complaint. Magaddino had long harboured animosity towards his cousin Joseph and through this and a combination of jealousy and distrust towards Bonanno’s movements into Montreal. The Buffalo boss brought pressure to bear on the Commission to vote Bonanno out of his position as head of the family. The Commission decided that Joseph Bonanno was no longer recognised as head of the family. DiGregorio would assume command under the protection of the Commission. Both Bonanno and his son rejected the Commission’s findings. The Family of 400 men was cut in half, one faction supporting Bonanno and one opposing him. New York was getting ready for a war.

On his return from Canada, Joseph Bonanno was subpoenaed by a federal grand jury on October 21. However Bonanno didn't plan on making that appointment. With al the heat from the Mafia and Feds he decided to fake his own kidnapping. By February 1965, Jasper Di Gregorio appeared to have cemented his position as the new official leader of the Bonanno family. His tenure was not to be long however, and more and more, as the year passed, he handed over administrative responsibilities to another capo, Paul Sciacca, who lived in Massapequa, Long Island, and operated a dress factory in Brooklyn. Later in the year, Joseph arranged a meeting with his son, Bill, and John Morales. Although through a series of coded messages, Bill knew his father was alive, this was the first time they had met since the 'kidnapping' in 1964. Gaspar Di Gregorio was not a happy man. Although he had achieved more than he may have bargained for when he replaced Bill Bonanno, first as consigliere and then when he was made family boss on the orders of the Commission, the pressure and stress were getting to him. He was unsettled by all the publicity and constant police attention he was receiving. He was getting on in years, and at the age of 63 already had suffered three heart attacks. In January, Frank Labruzzo, Joseph Bonanno’s brother-in-law, and a senior capo in the loyalist faction, received word that Di Gregorio wanted a sit down to try and resolve the family dispute. The sit down ended in a shoot out that left no bodies. The Commission was ashamed by this and demoted Di Gregorio. Paul Sciacca would replace him as leader of the dissident faction. On Tuesday, May 17, Joseph Bonanno walked into Room 318 of the federal courthouse on Foley Square and surrendered himself to the authorities. After a long legal wrangle, he was released on bail and left the courthouse and went to stay with his son, Bill, at his home in East Meadow, Long Island. He had come back to run his family. By the late summer of 1966, the war began in earnest.

Joe BonannoSeveral mobsters on both sides were whacked, and finally on February 6, 1969 the war came to an end when Thomas Zummo, 29, a Di Gregorio-Sciacca man, was machine-gunned to death as he walked through the lobby of his girlfriend’s apartment in Queens. It was time to call it a day. There was too much of everything. Too much press and publicity. Too many court appearances. Too much police attention. What there was too little of was business and profitable activity. Also, the key players were running out of steam. Di Gregorio was stricken with cancer and would die on June 11, 1970. Paul Sciacca had suffered a heart attack, although he would eventually lead the family officially until his arrest and imprisonment for drug trafficking in 1971. His place would be taken by Natale Evola he would rule the family until his death by natural causes on August 28, 1973. Joseph Bonanno’s health was fragile, and he had also suffered another heart attack; Bill Bonanno had his hands full facing an indictment on a credit card scam and a civil income tax matter. Joseph Bonanno called his troops together and told them he was retiring, this time for good, to live out his sunset years at his home in Tuscon, Arizona. Joseph Bonanno is still alive at the time of this writing (2001), Bonanno has now reached the grand age of 96.

UPDATE: Joseph Bonanno went on to live to the grand age of 97, at this age he died. On May 11th, 2002 he was dead of heart failure. 3 years earlier he had already had a stroke which did much damage to his health.

I bought the Joe Bonanno book “Man of Honor” a while ago but after reading some mafia experts bash the book saying it was I more fiction than truth, I never read it. Some of those experts were saying that the book was done with a lot flair, a lot of exaggeration and more like a fiction book than an “autobiography”. When reading people’s autobiography’s I take what they write with a grain of salt. If I am reading an ex-president’s autobiography he will tend to leave things out that would make him look bad and exaggerate on some stuff to make him look good, it is human nature. When reading a Mafioso’s autobiography, especially one that was written in his advanced stage of life, he may tend to claim that he committed more murders than he actually did, to make him look like more of a stone-cold gangster, with little or no chance of the government coming after him.

I saw on a Documentary done by A&E that Rudy Guiliani, former Mayor of NYC, former Attorney General and Head Lawyer in the Commission Case, used Bonanno’s autobiography to research his commission case which crippled the mob in the 80’s. I saw on that same documentary discussing the Commission Case, that Guiliani said that he learned a lot about the inner workings of the mob by the book, he learned of mobster’s roles in the organization to help with his case by reading the book. ISN”T THAT WHAT WE WOULD CALL BEING A RAT. Someone that gives up information about other people to help in prosecuting them is a rat in my book, whether you do it on the stand or talking to a publisher. But Bonanno did it in real Bonanno fashion. Bonanno decides to come clean in his older years (which helps older mafioso’s, in their minds, get a better chance in going to heaven, and because secrets are such a huge burden, it helps get things off their chest so they can live more comfortably) he does it in a way that makes him a ton of money, which is what he was all about.

Both he and his son have been Boss of the family and then in their retirement years have written books. Bill (Joe’s son) wrote a book called “Bound by Honor”. A book I also bought but never read. They really thought there was “honor” in the life they led. I may be different than other people, I don’t know. My family questions my mafia obsession. They feel that, because I am Italian and that I am so intrigued by the mafia that my goal is to be in it. Nothing can be further from the truth. I am very intrigued and interested in the mafia but by no means is it because I look up to these people as role models or idols or want to be one of them. These people are scum. Their main purpose in life is to make a buck and to hurt anyone that is in their way of making that buck. These people are sociopaths that walk around the same streets you and I walk. My fascination comes from thinking, how can this guy strangle this guy in broad daylight, leave him in the woods, and 5 minutes later nonchalantly pick his daughter up from a college interview like nothing happened. Or how can someone walk into a crowded restaurant and open fire on a guy who is celebrating his birthday with his family, and then finish him off in the street as he is running to his car, that is how “Crazy” Joe Gallo hit has been told to happen. There is no honor in that. Blowing up a guy in front of his wife and kids is not honorable.

That is a great piece you did about Bonanno, ScottC. He was around at the same time as many other great mafioso’s. He knew them and they knew him. When talking about the early day of the mob, you have to mention Bonanno’s name.

One Question: Did you write that yourself or did you copy and paste it from somewhere? If so where do you get most of your info from? I would love to check it out.