Joe Masseria

Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria (Italian: [dʒuˈzɛppe masseˈria]; January 17, 1886 – April 15, 1931) was an early Italian-American Mafia boss in New York City. He was boss of what is now called the Genovese crime family, one of the New York City Mafia's Five Families, from 1922 to 1931. In 1930, he battled in the Castellammarese War to take over the criminal activities in New York City. The war ended with his murder on April 15, 1931, in a hit ordered by his own lieutenant, Charles "Lucky" Luciano, in an agreement with rival faction head, Salvatore Maranzano.

Joe Masseria
Masseria's 1922 mugshot
Born
Giuseppe Masseria

(1886-01-17)January 17, 1886
Menfi, Sicily, Italy
DiedApril 15, 1931(1931-04-15) (aged 45)
New York City, U.S.
Cause of deathGunshot
Resting placeCalvary Cemetery, Queens, New York, U.S.
NationalityItalian
Other names"Joe the Boss"
OccupationCrime boss, mobster
AllegianceMasseria crime family
Conviction(s)Burglary (1909)
Criminal penaltyFour to six years imprisonment (1913)

Early life

Giuseppe Masseria was born on January 17, 1886 in Menfi, Province of Agrigento, Sicily, in a family of tailors. When he was young, he moved to the town of Marsala, in the Province of Trapani. Masseria arrived in the United States in 1902.[1] He then became part of the Morello crime family based in Harlem and parts of Little Italy in southern Manhattan. Masseria was a contemporary of other captains of that mafia family such as Gaetano Reina. In 1909, Masseria was convicted of burglary and received a suspended sentence.[2] On May 23, 1913, Masseria was sentenced to four to six years in prison for third-degree burglary.[3]

As the 1910s ended, Masseria and boss Salvatore D'Aquila vied for power in New York. By the early 1920s, they were at war with each other. In 1920, Masseria had recruited Lucky Luciano as one of his gunmen.[4] D'Aquila also had a vicious gunman under him, Umberto Valenti, who was given the assignment to kill Masseria. On May 7, 1922, the boss of the Morello/Terranova crime family, Terranova, was killed in a drive-by shooting near his E. 116th Street home. Valenti was believed to have been personally responsible. Mere hours later, Terranova's underboss Silva Tagliagamba was fatally wounded in Lower Manhattan by Valenti and gunmen working for him. The next day, Valenti and some of his men attacked the new boss of the rival Terranova family, Masseria. Valenti found Masseria and his bodyguards on Grand Street "within a block of Police Headquarters". Masseria got away, but the gunmen had shot four men and two women; Masseria tossed his pistol away and was arrested while fleeing the scene.[3]

On August 9, 1922, Masseria walked out of his apartment at 80 2nd Avenue, and was rushed by two armed men who opened fire on him. Masseria ducked into a store at 82 2nd Avenue with the gunmen in pursuit. They shot out the front window and shot up the inside of the store. The gunmen fled across 2nd Avenue to a getaway car idling just around the corner on E. 5th Street. The car was a Hudson Cruiser. The gunmen jumped on the running boards as the car sped west on E. 5th Street towards the Bowery, guns blazing. The gunmen then plowed through a crowd and shot randomly at the blockade, wounding six men. Masseria survived the incident and was found by police in his upstairs bedroom shell-shocked. He was sitting on his bed dazed, with two bullet holes through his straw hat, which he was still wearing on his head.[5] The incident gained Masseria new respect among gangsters as "the man who can dodge bullets" and his reputation began to rise as D'Aquila's began to wane.[6] Forty-eight hours later, on August 11, Valenti attended a meeting in a cafe at the corner of Second Avenue and E. 12th Street.[3]

Castellamarese War

Masseria became head of the Morello family and was known as "Joe the Boss" with Giuseppe Morello as his consigliere.[7]

Salvatore D'Aquila was killed on October 10, 1928.[8] Masseria, the leader of a gang that emerged from the old Morello crime family, was selected to replace D'Aquila as the new capo dei capi that winter.[9] After his elevation, Masseria began applying pressure to other mafia gangs for monetary tributes.[10] Other mobsters accused him of orchestrating the 1930 murders of Gaspar Milazzo in Detroit and Gaetano Reina in the Bronx. Nicolo Schiro tried to replicate the strategy of neutrality he used to deal with D'Aquila with Masseria but he was vigorously opposed by Salvatore Maranzano and Buffalo boss Stefano Magaddino.[11] Masseria claimed Schiro had committed a transgression and demanded Schiro pay him $10,000[12] and step down as leader of his mafia crime family. Schiro complied. Soon after, Vito Bonventre was murdered at his home on July 15, 1930.[13] This led to Maranzano being elevated to boss of the gang and a conflict with Masseria and his allies referred to as the Castellammarese War.[14]

During the Castellammarese War, between 1930 and 1931, Masseria and Morello fought against a rival group based in Brooklyn, led by Salvatore Maranzano and Joseph Bonanno. Morello, an old hand in the killing game, became Masseria's "war chief" and strategic adviser.[6]

One of the first victims of the war, Morello was killed along with associate Joseph Perriano on August 15, 1930, while collecting cash receipts in his East Harlem office.[15][16] Joseph Valachi, the first made man in the American Mafia to turn state's evidence, identified Morello's killer as a Castellammarese gunman he knew as "Buster from Chicago".[17]

Death

In a secret deal with Maranzano, Lucky Luciano agreed to engineer the death of his boss, Masseria, in return for receiving Masseria's rackets and becoming Maranzano's second-in-command.[18] Joe Adonis had joined the Masseria faction and when Masseria heard about Luciano's betrayal, he approached Adonis about killing Luciano. However, Adonis instead warned Luciano about the murder plot.[19] On April 15, 1931, Luciano had lured Masseria to a meeting where he was murdered at a restaurant called Nuova Villa Tammaro on Coney Island.[20][18] While they played cards, Luciano allegedly excused himself to the bathroom, with the gunmen reportedly being Albert Anastasia, Vito Genovese, Joe Adonis, and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel;[21] Ciro "The Artichoke King" Terranova drove the getaway car, but legend has it that he was too shaken up to drive away and had to be shoved out of the driver's seat by Siegel.[22][23]

Luciano was brought in for questioning by the police.[18] At the time, police suspected a gangster named John "Silk Stockings" Giustra as being one of the gunmen in Masseria's murder. This was based on the report of a confidential informant and that one of the coats found at the murder scene was identified as belonging to Giustra. The case was dropped after Giustra was murdered on July 9, 1931.[2]

According to The New York Times, "[A]fter that, the police have been unable to learn definitely [what happened]". Reputedly Masseria was "seated at a table playing cards with two or three unknown men" when he was fired upon from behind. He died from gunshot wounds to his head, back, and chest.[24] Masseria's autopsy report shows that he died on an empty stomach.[25] No witnesses came forward, though "two or three" men were observed leaving the restaurant and getting into a stolen car.[26] No one was convicted in Masseria's murder as there were no witnesses and Luciano had an alibi.

Masseria is buried at Calvary Cemetery in Queens, New York.

Films

TV series

See also

References
  1. Warner, Richard N. (February 2011). "On the Trail of Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria". Informer: The History of American Crime and Law Enforcement: 56–58. Archived from the original on 2016-03-07.
  2. Hortis, C. Alexander (2014). The Mob and the City: The Hidden History of How the Mafia Captured New York. Amherst, New York: Prometheus. pp. 41–44, 53–56, 71–87. ISBN 9781616149246.
  3. David Critchley, The Origin of Organized Crime in America: The New York City Mafia, 1891-1931, New York: Routledge, 2008. ISBN 0-415-99030-0 pgs. 156, 155-57
  4. Newark, p. 22
  5. "Gunmen Shoot Six In East Side Swarm. Foiled in Attempted Murder, They Pour Volley Into Crowd of Cloakmakers. Flee In Blue Touring Car. Intended Victim's Hat Pierced by Two Bullets. Police Net Gets Blackjack Crew". New York Times. August 9, 1922. Retrieved 2008-08-09.
  6. Sifakis, Carl (2005). The Mafia Encyclopedia (3. ed.). New York: Facts on File. p. 458. ISBN 978-0-8160-5694-1. Retrieved 27 September 2011.
  7. Cawthorne, Nigel (June 26, 2012). Mafia: The History of the Mob. Arcturus Publishing. ISBN 9781848589445 – via Google Books.
  8. Critchley 2009, p. 157.
  9. Hortis 2014, p. 74.
  10. Hortis 2014, pp. 80–81.
  11. Bonanno & Lalli 1983, p. 96.
  12. "CPI Inflation Calculator". www.bls.gov. Retrieved 2018-04-19.
  13. "Wealthy Baker Slain; Police Hint at Mafia: 2 Men Seen Running From Place". Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 15 July 1930. Retrieved 3 March 2016 – via Newspapers.com.
  14. Critchley 2009, pp. 165–191.
  15. Sifakis, p. 313.
  16. Arthur Nash; Eric Ferrara (2011). Manhattan Mafia Guide: Hits, Homes & Headquarters. History Press. p. 194. ISBN 978-1-60949-306-6. Retrieved 27 September 2011.
  17. Maas, Peter (1968). The Valachi Papers (1986 Pocket Books ed.). New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 60. ISBN 0-671-63173-X.
  18. Raab, Selwyn. Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires. New York: St. Martin Press, 2005. ISBN 0-312-30094-8
  19. Reppetto, Thomas (2004). American Mafia: a history of its rise to power (1st ed.). New York: Henry Holt and Company. p. 137. ISBN 0-8050-7210-1. Joe Adonis.
  20. "Racket Chief Slain By Gangster Gunfire. Giuseppe Masseria, Known as Joe the Boss, Shot Mysteriously in Coney Island Cafe. Police Say He Was Leader in Every Kind of Racket. He Escaped Death Many Times. Shooting Still a Mystery" (PDF). New York Times. April 16, 1931. Retrieved November 23, 2011. It took ten years and a lot of shooting to kill Giuseppe Masseria—he was Joe the Boss to the underworld—but his enemies found him with his back turned yesterday in a little Italian restaurant in Coney Island, and when they walked out into
  21. Pollak, Michael (June 29, 2012). "Coney Island's Big Hit". The New York Times. Retrieved 31 October 2012.
  22. Sifakis, (2005). pp. 87–88
  23. Martin A. Gosch; Richard Hammer; Lucky Luciano (1975). The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano. Little, Brown. pp. 130–132. ISBN 978-0-316-32140-2.
  24. Critchley, (2008). p. 165
  25. "Giuseppe Masseria". New York Mafia 1900-1920. GangRule. Retrieved 21 November 2012.
  26. Critchley, (2008). p. 186

Further reading
American Mafia
Preceded by
Uncertain		 Genovese crime family
Boss
c.1922–1931		 Succeeded by
Lucky Luciano
Preceded by
Salvatore D'Aquila		 Capo dei capi
Boss of bosses
1928–1930		 Succeeded by
Gaspare Messina
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