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Chaos Into Corporation: Luciano's Commission and the Five Families
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Lucky Luciano didn't just win a mob war — he abolished the title of boss of all bosses and replaced it with a criminal corporation that ruled for decades. This chapter traces the Castellammarese War, the 1931 hits, the Commission, and the partnerships with Lansky and Siegel that made it all work.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Most people picture the American Mafia as something ancient. A thing handed down across generations, rooted in Sicilian tradition, existing more or less as it always had.
To understand what Luciano built, you have to understand what came before it. By nineteen thirty, New York's criminal underworld was tearing itself apart.
In April of nineteen thirty-one, Luciano had dinner with Joe Masseria at a restaurant in Coney Island. After the meal, Luciano excused himself to use the restroom.
He didn't take the title of boss of all bosses. He abolished it.
No account of Luciano is complete without Meyer Lansky. The two men had known each other since they were teenagers running together on the Lower East Side.
The man who finally brought Luciano down came from outside the underworld entirely. Thomas Dewey was a special prosecutor with genuine political ambitions and a talent for making cases that other lawyers couldn't.
The reason traces back to December of nineteen forty-one. After Pearl Harbor, the United States was suddenly at war, and Naval Intelligence had a problem.
By nineteen forty-three, Allied planners were preparing Operation Husky, the amphibious invasion of Sicily. They needed local intelligence.
In January of nineteen forty-six, Governor Thomas Dewey, the same man who had prosecuted Luciano a decade earlier, commuted his sentence. The condition was immediate deportation to Italy.
By December of nineteen forty-six, Luciano had made his way to Cuba. Technically, the deportation order covered the United States, not its neighbors.
Luciano spent the rest of his life in Italy, officially. He maintained contacts, continued to be consulted, and remained a figure of genuine weight within the networks he'd built.
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