Angelo Palmeri (Jan. 12, 1878, to Dec. 21, 1932)

Benedetto Angelo Palmeri was born Jan. 12, 1878, to Francesco and Anna Caleca Palmeri in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily. Francesco was a successful merchant, and "Angelo" Palmeri was raised in an upper middle class family.

Palmeri traveled to the United States as an adult. He reached New York City aboard the S.S. Lombardia on Sept. 7, 1906. He initially found work in that city as a laborer on the docks.

In 1912, he relocated to Buffalo and opened a tavern on Dante Place. He supplemented his income by hosting gambling operations. Palmeri was one of eleven saloonkeepers arrested during an Aug. 28, 1912, gambling raid by Buffalo Police in the Canal District. He was convicted and fined $50.

Palmeri

Palmeri married Rosaria Mistretta on Oct. 5, 1913. Mistretta was a cousin of Buffalo Mafia boss Giuseppe DiCarlo's wife, Vincenza. By the end of the year, the newlywed Palmeris moved into the upper apartment of the DiCarlo family home on Buffalo's Seventh Street. There followed a period of unquestionable closeness between Angelo Palmeri and Giuseppe DiCarlo.

The two men entered into a partnership in the Dante Place saloon, and Palmeri served as underboss in DiCarlo's underworld organization.

"Their methods of operation were different," noted the police. "DiCarlo being a smooth peaceful worker and Palmeri more inclined to violence, they provided mutual protection for each other." [Buffalo Commercial Advertiser, Dec. 22, 1932.]

Palmeri's violent tendencies resulted in a 1915 arrest for assaulting a police officer. He was convicted and fined $250. His reputation was enhanced by the nickname "Buffalo Bill," reportedly awarded him because he wore cowboy hats and carried a holstered pistol.

Just a few months later, Rosaria Palmeri gave birth to a daughter. When the child was baptized in November 1915, two of Giuseppe DiCarlo's children, Joseph and Sarah, served as godparents.

Rosaria Palmeri subsequently developed serious health problems. She contracted influenza and pneumonia and died on Jan. 5, 1916, at the age of 29. Unable to tend to the needs of his infant daughter on his own, Angelo Palmeri left her in the care of his Mistretta in-laws in New York City.

Lockport Union Sun, Aug. 31, 1921

His family life in tatters, Palmeri moved away from Buffalo and opened a cigar store in Niagara Falls. The store served as a front for gambling rackets run in association with the DiCarlo Mafia. (Future New Jersey crime figure Willie Moretti reportedly got his start in the underworld by operating craps games for Palmeri in Niagara Falls.)

In 1919, Palmeri married Loretta Mistretta, the older sister of his late wife. The couple and Palmeri's daughter by his first marriage moved into a Niagara Falls apartment.

The Prohibition Era opened the following year, and Palmeri's brother Paul joined him in Niagara Falls to organize Mafia bootlegging rackets. The Palmeris worked with the Sirianni brothers, "Don Simone" Borruso, Joseph Sottile and Canadian crime boss Rocco Perri to control the smuggling of liquor between Canada and western New York.

In 1921, Angelo Palmeri was charged with the murder of Emilio Gnazzo. Gnazzo was shot by a gunman who jumped from behind a parked car and fired a bullet into his head. The victim's wife witnessed the killing and identified Palmeri as the gunman. A police investigation determined that Gnazzo, an inveterate gambler, was slow to repay a loan obtained from Palmeri.

When the murder case came to trial, prosecutors could not locate Gnazzo's wife. No other witnesses came forward to identify Palmeri as the gunman, and Palmeri was discharged due to insufficient evidence.

Following the death of Giuseppe DiCarlo in July 1922, Angelo Palmeri returned to the City of Buffalo. He moved himself and his family into the DiCarlo residence and temporarily took command of the Mafia organization in western New York. In October of that year, Stefano Magaddino was chosen as the next regional Mafia boss. Palmeri, Filippo Mazzara and Giuseppe DiBenedetto, all Castellammarese Mafiosi who held leadership positions under DiCarlo, oversaw Buffalo underworld rackets for Magaddino.

When Joseph DiCarlo was charged with intimidating a government witness in 1924, Palmeri was held as a material witness. DiCarlo and another gunman emerged from an automobile and shot at Joseph Patitucci, an informant scheduled to testify against DiCarlo in a narcotics case. Police believed Palmeri had been a passenger in the automobile.

After a review of Palmeri's pistol permit, authorities charged the underworld leader with perjury. He had sworn incorrectly on the permit application that he was a U.S. citizen. A grand jury refused to indict him, and the charge was dropped. Palmeri was naturalized a citizen on Jan. 7, 1925.

Buffalo Daily Courier, Aug. 21, 1925

Later that year, Palmeri used his influence in the Sicilian community to provide aid to the poor and emotionally devastated family of Joseph Gervase. The twelve-year-old Gervase had been molested and strangled to death by a drifter. Palmeri, Mazzara and DiBenedetto gathered donations from the shopkeepers in Buffalo's Italian colony to pay the boy's funeral expenses.

Federal Prohibition agents raided a Palmeri speakeasy in August 1928, arresting Palmeri and confiscating "a quantity of spirits."

The Prohibition Era brought vast profits to underworld organizations but it also brought violence, as rival bootlegging groups entered into bloody competition. Gangland conflict cost Palmeri a close ally in Cleveland and two western New York lieutenants. Cleveland Mafia boss Joseph Lonardo was murdered in October 1927 by Salvatore "Black Sam" Todaro and the Porrello brothers. Later that year, Filippo Mazzara was murdered in Buffalo. In February 1929, Giuseppe DiBenedetto was slain.

A bootlegging gang led by the Callea brothers was suspected in the Buffalo attacks. The Calleas, closely aligned with the Porrellos of Cleveland, sought to control bootlegging rackets in the Buffalo region.

As the Castellammarese War erupted in the U.S. Mafia in 1930, Palmeri supported Salvatore Maranzano, leader of the Castellammarese-aligned faction in New York City. Palmeri met regularly with Maranzano and Mafioso Joseph Bonanno in Brooklyn, as they plotted strategy against reigning Mafia boss of bosses Giuseppe Masseria. (In his autobiography, A Man of Honor, Bonanno discussed his close relationship with Palmeri. Bonanno told of his visit to Palmeri's home during his November 1931 honeymoon to Niagara Falls.)

Buffalo Evening News, Dec. 22, 1932.

Palmeri faced increasingly severe health problems following the end of the Castellammarese War. He died in the driver's seat of his automobile, parked in his driveway, after suffering a stroke on Dec. 21, 1932. He was 54 years old.

Buffalo Commercial Advertiser,
Dec. 22, 1932

Great numbers of residents from Buffalo's Italian colony attended Palmeri's funeral. It was said to be the "largest ever turnout for an Italian-American citizen of Buffalo." In the immigrant neighborhoods, Palmeri was remembered as a friend who provided for them in times of need, when pride kept them from appealing to organized charities.

"Many tears were shed by those whose homes were heated, whose tables were made bountiful and whose children had been clothed by the largess of Angelo Palmeri."

Ceremonies began at the Palmeri home, 295 Jersey Street, and continued with a Mass at Holy Angels Church on Porter Avenue. Palmeri was interred on Christmas Eve alongside his first wife, Rosaria, in a large family plot at Pine Hill Cemetery.

Palmeri's second wife, Loretta, also was buried in the plot following her death in 1953.

Link:

• "Death of the Mafia's 'Buffalo Bill'" (Writers of Wrongs - 21 Dec 2016)

Stefano Magaddino (Oct. 10, 1891, to July 19, 1974)

Stefano Magaddino was born in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, on Oct. 10, 1891. He was the third of eight children born to Giovanni and Giuseppe Ciaravino Magaddino. At the time of his birth, the Magaddino clan and its relatives were embroiled in a bitter underworld feud with the local Buccellato family.

Stefano arrived in the U.S. aboard the S.S. San Giorgio on Feb. 7, 1909. He settled in a Castellammarese colony in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Though a number of Mafia families existed in the New York area at that time, Magaddino was inducted into the underworld society in a ceremony held in Chicago. He was regarded as a leader of Castellammarese Mafiosi in the U.S., a group that became known as "the Good Killers."

Magaddino married Carmela Caroddo in 1913 (his brother Gaspare married Carmela's sister).

In 1916, a flareup of gangland violence in Castellammare del Golfo took the life of Magaddino's brother Pietro. Camillo Caiozzo, believed to have been an accomplice in Pietro's murder, fled Sicily for New York. Magaddino responded by plotting Caiozzo's murder. In 1921, Caiozzo's dead body was pulled from a cove of the Shark River in New Jersey. Caiozzo's killer, Bartolomeo Fontana, confessed to the crime and told authorities that Castellammarese Mafiosi had forced him into it. Magaddino and several members of the Good Killers were arrested as conspirators in Caiozzo's murder. Charges were later dropped against the Good Killers, though Fontana served about 20 years in prison.

Magaddino traveled throughout the U.S. and became well known in Buffalo in the early 1920s, as local Mafia boss Giuseppe DiCarlo was forced by declining health into retirement. Upon DiCarlo's death in the summer of 1922, Magaddino was chosen as his successor.

Magaddino in 1931

The following year, Magaddino brought his brother Antonino to Buffalo from Castellammare. Antonino became a trusted adviser, as Magaddino set up a Niagara Falls, NY, headquarters for the Mafia of western New York. Angelo Palmeri and Filippo Mazzara, Castellammarese Mafiosi who held leadership positions under DiCarlo, oversaw operations within the city of Buffalo.

Magaddino was naturalized a U.S. citizen in 1924.

In the Prohibition Era, Magaddino's western New York crime family was ideally positioned to control the flow of illegal liquor into the U.S. from Canada. Bootlegging dollars greatly enhanced Magaddino's wealth and influence.

In 1930, New York City-based Mafia boss of bosses Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria decided that Magaddino and other Castellammarese Mafia leaders in the U.S. were inciting rebellion against his administration. He summoned Magaddino to appear before him in New York City. When Magaddino did not appear, Masseria imposed a death sentence against him and other Castellammarese Mafiosi.

A war between Mafia factions erupted, as Masseria was opposed in New York by forces led by Magaddino ally Salvatore Maranzano. Treachery in the Masseria camp led to Joe the Boss's assassination in spring 1931. Maranzano briefly served as Mafia boss of bosses until his own Sept. 10 assassination. Following the violence of 1930-31, the U.S. Mafia abandoned the boss of bosses position and established a representative Commission to settle disputes among crime families. Magaddino was chosen in 1932 as one of seven Commission members.

Magaddino in 1943

With the repeal of Prohibition, the western New York Mafia focused its attention on the control of illegal gambling. In 1936, a gang of rebellious bookmakers opposed Magaddino's tax on their profits. Magaddino's sister was killed in a bomb explosion at her home. Leaders of the rebel organization were executed over the following year.

The regional Mafia extended its territory into southern Ontario, Canada, and central New York in the 1940s and 1950s. It also came to control Buffalo Local 210 of the Laborers Union. John Montana, who moved into the position of Magaddino's Buffalo-based underboss, was a leading businessman and political figure in the city and helped the Magaddino Mafia secure its connections to local government.

On Nov. 14, 1957, New York State Police and agents of the U.S. Treasury Department broke up a convention of leading Mafiosi at the rural Apalachin, NY, home of Joseph Barbara. Scores of underworld figures were rounded up and identified. Magaddino brother Antonino, son-in-law James LaDuca and underboss John Montana were all taken in and questioned by police. Magaddino reportedly escaped detection at the event by hiding within a secret room at Barbara's estate.

The following year, Buffalo's FBI field office labeled Magaddino a "top hoodlum" in its territory. (FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had instituted the Top Hoodlum Program following Apalachin.) The designation came with intense law enforcement scrutiny. He avoided Apalachin-related questioning by the New York State Crime Commission in 1960 by becoming suddenly ill with a heart condition.

Surveillance photo of Magaddino and bodyguard Sam Rangatore.

American and Canadian authorities broke up a regional narcotics ring in 1961. The operation had been approved by Magaddino, who regularly took a share of its profits. Among those arrested were brothers Alberto and Vito Agueci, Magaddino underlings from Canada. The imprisoned Aguecis expected but did not receive Magaddino protection and support. Alberto was freed on bail after his wife borrowed money and sold the family home. He reportedly intended to confront Magaddino and demand that the boss provide bail for Vito Agueci's release, threatening to expose Magaddino's involvement in the narcotics ring if Vito was not released. On Nov. 23, 1961, Alberto Agueci's charred corpse was found in a cornfield near a suburb of Rochester, NY.

A year later, the FBI installed electronic eavesdropping equipment in the Magaddino Memorial Chapel, a funeral home that served as the principal meeting place for Magaddino and his underworld associates. The device gathered enough information within three years to fill 70,000 transcribed pages.

Magaddino was identified as "irrefutable boss" of the Mafia of western New York and southern Ontario before the McClellan Senate Investigating Committee in 1963.

In 1964, following the reported kidnapping of New York City crime boss Joseph Bonanno (Magaddino's cousin), newspaper columnist Walter Winchell reported that Bonanno was being held by Magaddino at a farm in upstate New York. Magaddino was subpoenaed in May 1965 to appear before a special grand jury probing the Bonanno disappearance. Magaddino did not testify, as he developed coronary symptoms the next day and was hospitalized. The press noted that it was the second time in five years that Magaddino health problems neatly coincided with a government demand for his testimony.

Federal law enforcement launched determined strikes against the leadership of the western New York Mafia in 1967. In December of that year, Magaddino lost his two top men in Buffalo - Frederico Randaccio and Pasquale Natarelli - to long prison sentences. Magaddino began pleading poverty to his remaining lieutenants, demanding greater shares of their profits and eliminating bonuses he had previously awarded them.

Stefano Magaddino, his son Peter and several bookmakers and collectors were arrested the following year following an FBI investigation of a sports betting ring. A search of Peter Magaddino's home turned up nearly a half-million dollars in cash. Buffalo Mafia leaders used the reports of the discovered cash to ignite a rebellion against the Magaddino administration.

In July 1969, the rebel faction selected Sam Pieri as its acting boss, Joseph Fino as acting underboss and Joseph DiCarlo as acting consigliere. A demand for Magaddino's resignation as boss was refused, and the rebel group brought its case to the national Commission. The Commission took no action against its longtime member, apparently content to await the death of "toothless tiger" Magaddino.

More health problems impaired the government's ability to bring the western New York crime boss to trial. Arraignment in the bookmaking case had to be conducted in the bedroom of Magaddino's home. Doctors determined that the aging Magaddino was too frail to appear in court.

In 1973, an FBI refusal to identify an informant used in their bookmaking investigation led to the charges against Magaddino being dismissed.

Stefano Magaddino suffered a heart attack and died July 19, 1974. he was buried in St. Joseph's Cemetery in Niagara Falls.

Magaddino gravesite.

Link:

• "108 years ago: Future mob boss arrives in NYC" (Writers of Wrongs - 07 Feb 2017)
• "Magaddino's wrath" (Writers of Wrongs - 23 Nov 2016)

Carlo Gambino (Aug. 24, 1902, - Oct. 15, 1976)

Born in Palermo, Sicily, Gambino is believed to have entered the U.S. illegally. A leading figure in the Gambino-Castellano faction within the D'Aquila-Mineo Mafia organization in Brooklyn and the Bronx, Gambino sided with Salvatore Maranzano in the Castellammarese War.

In the 1950s, following Albert Anastasia's rise to command, Gambino was named underboss of the crime family. He was tentatively supported as boss following the murder of Anastasia. Anastasia loyalists continued to resist him. One leader of that cause, Armand Thomas Rava, disappeared. Gambino eventually appointed another, Aniello Dellacroce, as his underboss.

Gambino died of a heart attack at his home on Long Island in 1976.

Frank Costello (Jan. 26, 1891, - Feb. 18, 1973)

Calabrian Costello entered the U.S. at age 4. He was raised in New York City and became well acquainted with the Italian communities in East Harlem and New York's Lower East Side. A trusted adviser of the Luciano organization following the Castellammarese War, Costello became boss of the organization in the 1930s after Luciano was imprisoned and underboss Vito Genovese fled to Italy to escape prosecution for murder. Costello oversaw Mafia investments in casinos and gambling devices. In 1957, Costello survived an assassination attempt by a Genovese gunman and decided to retire. He died of natural causes in 1973.

John Bazzano (May 22, 1890, - Aug. 6, 1932)

A native Calabrian, Bazzano rose to command the Mafia in Pittsburgh. He seized the leadership after having boss Giuseppe Siragusa murdered several days after Siragusa's protector, Salvatore Maranzano, was murdered in New York City. Bazzano dealt in similar fashion with Neapolitan rivals, the Volpe brothers. Bazzano had three of the brothers shot to death at his Rome Coffee Shop in Pittsburgh. Called before a council of Mafiosi in New York City, Bazzano provided no justification for his action against the Volpes. His body, bearing multiple stab wounds from ice picks, was found within a large sack in Brooklyn.

Albert Anastasia (Feb. 25, 1902, - Oct. 25, 1957)

A native Calabrian, Anastasia entered the U.S. illegally as a teenager. He found work on the docks in New York Harbor and engaged in waterfront racketeering. Following the Castellammarese War, he was recognized as underboss in the organization of Vincent Mangano (later the Gambino Crime Family). He is believed to have had Mangano and his brother murdered in 1951, when he took over the crime family as boss. During the 1950s, Anastasia attempted to establish an independent gambling presence in Cuba. Anastasia was shot to death while sitting in a barber's chair at the Park Sheraton Hotel in New York City. His successor was Carlo Gambino.

Joe Aiello (Sep. 27, 1890, - Oct. 23, 1930)

Aiello succeeded to the leadership of the Sicilian Mafia in Prohibition Era Chicago after the departure of the Genna family. Aiello, a native of Bagheria, Sicily, lived for a time in Utica, NY, before settling in Chicago. His feud with Capone and the mediation of Mafia boss of bosses Giuseppe Masseria was a catalyst for the Castellammarese War. Aiello was shot to death by Capone gunmen Oct. 23, 1931, at the corner of Kolmar and West End Avenues in Chicago.