The Mafia Transplanted in the United States
The gang of Murder, Inc.
The first time the notion of an underground society came to light in the United States was in the 1800s in New Orleans, when the chief investigator was murdered who was uncovering the murder of an Italian immigrant. Chief David Hennessey discovered the existence of a Mafia-like organization but was assassinated before the murder trial could go underway. Twelve men were charged with Hennessey’s murder but were lynched before going to court. The Italian Ambassador demanded that the vigilantes who lynched the Italians be tried, but President Harrison, who disproved of the vigilantes, gave a large cash settlement to the families of the lynched men instead. This widely publicized case was paramount because of its involvement of the President of the United States.
In 1901, the Sicilian Capo de Tutti Capi (the chief of all the chiefs), Don Vito (Vito Cascio Ferro) fled to the US to escape arrest and formed a mob group, then became formally known as the Father of the American Mafia, In 1924, when Mussolini attempted to purge Italy of its crime ridden inhabitants, so many members fled to the US to avoid persecution, it increase the numbers and members Vito’s organization. The exiled Italians must have been aware of the endless opportunities in illegal activates in America. There was money to be made through extortion, prostitution, gambling, and bootlegging. Soon enough, every large city had its own Mafia chapter. Prohibition especially promoted the wave of illegal activity.
Lucky Luciano after being exiled from the U.S.
In 1906, Charles Luciano came to New York. Trained in the Five Points Gang, a Mafia crew under John Torrio, he became friends with Al Capone and other prominent gangsters. In the early 1920s he started his own prostitution circuit and by 1925, he was in total control of all prostitution in Manhattan. By 1935, Luciano was known as the Boss of Bosses. Previously, with the aid of Bugsy Siegel and Myer Lansky, two other well known gangsters, he established Murder Inc. Eventually, Luciano was sentenced to thirty to fifty years for extortion and prostitution by District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey. Known as a powerful Mafioso with strong ties to Italy, the American government contacted him in an official capacity: requesting his assistance in the Allied invasion of Sicily. As an exchange, he was offered deportation to Rome. Luciano contacted his Mafia associates in Italy and the deal was made. Luciano died of a heart attack in 1962 while meeting an American movie producer to do his life story.
Al "Scareface" Capone
Alphonse “Scarface” Capone was another organizer of the early American Mafia. Born in Brooklyn in 1899, his involvement with organized crime began when he was eleven years old. The older he became, the higher rank he achieved until he graduated to be a member of the Five Pointers Gang, where he became acquainted with Luciano. When the original leader of the “Five Pointers Gang,” JohnnyTorrio, moved to Chicago, he invited Capone to be his sidekick. “Big Jim” Colisimo, Torrio’s uncle, was the crime boss in Chicago, and trouble between nephew and uncle started and Capone was hired to kill the uncle leaving Torrio in charge of all Chicago. When Torrio was severally wounded in a shooting in 1925, he gave Capone his vast business empire, valued at fifty million dollars a year. During this time period, Capone fell out of favor with a few of Mafia associates, and as a revenge, he staged the Valentine’s Day Massacre in which he killed several of his enemies ending resistance to his continuing business dealings. He was finally sentenced for tax evasion and spent most of his eleven-year sentence in Alcatraz. In 1947 he died of syphilis.
The American Mafia differed from the Sicilian Mafia in a number of ways. First of all, the European Mafia was founded on a sense of loyalty and respect for culture, family and the Sicilian heritage. The Mafia’s main objectives were to protect its members’ interests and grant them freedom in business in exchange for absolute loyalty and submission to the “family.” In sharp contrast to the nobler Sicilian mafia, the American mafia has proved to be much more of a conniving, cold hearted and brutal organization. Although founded on many of the principals that the Sicilian Mafia was based on, these ideals were transplanted and the members of the Italian Mafia were nothing but a bunch of glorified pickpockets.
Organized crime in the U.S. continues to be problem and is becoming more widespread. It continues to exploit and destroy the honest citizens of our country and now that these criminal organizations not only control the adults of our communities, through the sale of narcotics, they are slowly gaining a strong hold on the next generation.