Police had called Masseria in at some point and demanded the violence cease. The final straw, according to the account of Nicola Gentile and with regard specifically to Masseria’s remaining inner circle, was a disagreement over carrying guns. In order to facilitate underworld peace, the consensus turned from diplomacy to the inevitable – one of the two bosses had to go. Such was the case for Masseria, and, a little down road, for Maranzano as well. Those resistant to change generally don’t last long. Also at play, on the broader scale, was a natural evolutionary process: The mob was progressing and expanding. Meetings of the Mafia’s elite tried to bring about an end to the bloodshed, but Maranzano consistently manipulated matters to his own advantage. Maranzano’s war of attrition proved a successful tactic in stripping away Masseria’s strength, and the latter’s own men were ready to defect. The American organized crime system had plenty of turmoil and dissent, side deals and secretive plots going on at any given time, but the battle between Masseria and Maranzano caused concern even beyond the borders of New York. Sanctioned insurrectionĪs is almost always the case, Masseria’s downfall was not the result of any single factor. This was also a time when the definition of “loyalty” became exceedingly unclear. The ongoing tit-for-tat killing wreaked havoc not just on the streets but well into the Mafia hierarchy. The same was true of his rival Maranzano. Still, Masseria represented an outdated mindset, one that could no longer be reasoned with diplomatically. One example of this is demonstrated in a widely reported 1930 Miami gambling bust, in which Masseria got pinched along with 18 other players who included not only Italians such as Lucky Luciano, but a number of Jewish gangsters as well, including Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel (using the alias Harry Rosen) and Harry Brown (forever immortalized in the 1932 Chicago arrest photo of Luciano and Meyer Lansky with a couple of Al Capone’s boys). Masseria himself had counterfeiting interests with Jews, and was aware that some of his closest aides conducted business with men of other ethnicities. For examples, and contrary to some accounts that describe Masseria as being strongly against Jewish or Irish alliances, the facts seem to indicate he was considerably tolerant of other ethnic groups. Some historical accounts imply Masseria opposed doing business outside the clan (and this contributed to his downfall at the hands of more progressive subordinates), but that’s not entirely true. The street war began in 1930 and continued until Masseria’s demise in 1931. The so-called Castellammarese War was the product of Masseria’s angst over a newly positioned Mafioso in Brooklyn – Salvatore Maranzano, who hailed from Castellemmare de Golfo, Sicily. Not unlike his contemporaries, Masseria embraced an old-school idealism, resisted change and always wanted a bigger piece of the pie. His reign of power began around 1920, and by the latter ’20s, within the region he ruled, Masseria collected payments from virtually every vendor and controlled a multitude of rackets. He already had a criminal history in Sicily and quickly inserted himself into New York’s underworld. Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria led a large New York Mafia family in the 1920s but battled with a rival, Salvatore Maranzano, who wanted to be the “boss of bosses.”īorn in Menfi, Agrigento Province, Sicily, in 1886, Joe Masseria emigrated to the United States in 1903. While those close to the assassination plot and execution remained mum for life, some critical details were divulged by a man most historians seem to trust for authenticity – Nicola Gentile. In this case, we also are privy to an insider’s account. We also have the accounts of newspaper reporters (albeit often overdramatized narratives). One thing is certain: We were not there, so we are never going to know precisely the who, what, when and why of this particular hit.įortunately we do have reports from law enforcement officers who were eyeing the mobster’s every move (though they were not as clued-in as they thought they were). It is sometimes hard to distinguish facts from folklore.
The tale of Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria’s assassination on April 15, 1931, is one of many gangland legends that have been told, retold and morphed over the decades.
The ace of spades playing card in his hand likely was planted, although he was playing pinochle when the shooting occurred. This iconic image shows the body of Joe Masseria inside a Coney Island restaurant after he was shot to death on April 15, 1931.
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