About The MOB
B
Giuseppe Balsamo
"Battista"
Balsamo was a Mafia boss in Brooklyn at the dawn of the 20th Century, according to the authors of Under the Clock.
Balsamo was reportedly a transplanted Sicilian Mafioso who settled in Brooklyn in 1895 and became Brooklyn's "first godfather." The book claims that other Mafia leaders, including Giuseppe Morello, Joe Masseria, Frank Uale and Vito Cascio Ferro (who spent some of his younger years in New York), looked to Balsamo for training and guidance, while Balsamo aided his allies in a fight for control of the docks against the entrenched Irish.
The low-key Balsamo reportedly retired from Mafia leadership in the 1920s, turning his organization over to Vincent and Phillip Mangano.
Joseph Barbara
Aug. 9, 1905, to June 17, 1959.
"Joe Barber"
A wealthy gangster operating in New York, Barbara owned the Apalachin, NY, estate that was the site of 1957's Mafia convention. Police crashed the gathering, taking most of those present in for questioning (a minority of Mafiosi managed to escape through the woods surrounding the Barbara estate or avoided a trip downtown simply by remaining within Barbara's home until the police were gone).
Barbara came to the United States from his native Sicily in 1920. In the post-Prohibition years, he gained control of the beer/soft drink distribution in the Binghamton, NY, region. He appears to have led a Mafia Family in the northeast Pennsylvania-western New York region beginning about 1940. That organization looked to be operating as a branch of the Luciano-Genovese Family.
At the time of the 1957 conference, Barbara had a severe heart condition that prevented him from traveling. Rosario "Russell" Bufalino was in command of day-to-day operations of the Barbara crime group.
It is believed that Vito Genovese, who had stepped on many toes with recent attacks against Frank Costello (unsuccessful), Frank Scalise (successful) and Albert Anastasia (successful), required Barbara's skills as a mediator and so decided that the hastily called convention would be held at Barbara's residence.
Barbara's home
However, Joseph Bonanno blamed the selection of the Apalachin meeting site on his relative, Stefano Magaddino, boss of the Buffalo area Mafia. Bonanno indicated that Genovese appealed to Magaddino's vanity - and further divided the Bonanno and Magaddino Castellammarese families - by allowing him to choose the site.
After they were apprehended, many of the 60-plus Mafiosi told authorities that they were at Barbara's home to look in on him after his recent heart attack. Barbara was able to avoid much post-convention interrogation due to his heart condition (his son, however, was repeatedly interrogated). He died in June of 1959. leaving the Family to Bufalino.
Joseph Bonanno
Jan. 18, 1905, to May 12, 2002.
"Joe Bananas"
Bonanno is the unusual case of a long-time Mafia boss who wrote his own autobiography. Bonanno's book, "A Man of Honor," deals at length with the author's personal Robin Hood fantasy and very little with the assortment of crimes of which he is certainly guilty. (It was most likely written because even the duped Gay Talese had not reported all the the malarkey handed to him by the Bonannos during his research for "Honor Thy Father.")
Born Jan. 18, 1905 in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, Bonanno first came to the U.S. with his family (established Mafia leaders) at age 3. The family returned to Sicily when he was about 7 to protect its interests there. Bonanno traveled back to Brooklyn in 1924 and settled with his relatives, the Bonventres.
Within a few years, Bonanno was actively bootlegging for the Cola Schiro organization. The group appears to have been cofounded by another Bonanno relative, Stefano Maggadino, some years earlier. It included a large number of Castellammarese immigrants.
Bonanno was a staunch supporter of Salvatore Maranzano in the Castellammarese War, but was welcomed into the new Mafia hierarchy after Maranzano's assassination in 1931.
Bonanno claims to have been made boss of the Brooklyn Castellammarese clan after Maranzano's death. He held that role and expanded his family's interests into Canada, Arizona and California - with some serious competition (made famous in the press as the "Banana Wars") and occasional interruptions (he was once allegedly kidnapped) - into the 1980s.
After Bonanno's retirement, his crime family was kicked off the Commission in the 1980s after it was learned that the group was directly involved with drug trafficking, in violation of a Paul Castellano edict.
Bonanno died of natural causes May 12, 2002.
Vito Bonventre
1875 to 1930
Born in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, in 1875, this second cousin of Joseph Bonanno became a successful bootlegger in Brooklyn.
For many years, the Bonanno-Bonventre-Magaddino clan in Castellammare battled their rivals, the Buccellato Family. In the 1910s and early 1920s, that bloody rivalry reached American shores. Vito Bonventre appears to have played a major role in the elimination of Buccellatos in the U.S., and he was briefly a suspect in the New Jersey murder of Magaddino enemy Camillo Caiozzo in 1921. (The Good Killers case.)
According to Bonanno, Bonventre became the second wealthiest member of Cola Schiro's Brooklyn Family in the late 1920s (with Schiro being the wealthiest).
As the organization of boss of bosses Joe Masseria moved to put down an uprising of Castellammarese Mafiosi in Brooklyn, Bonventre was targeted. He was murdered outside his home garage on July 15, 1930. His murder and that of Detroit Castellammarese leader Gaspar Milazzo a month earlier are often considered the opening salvo of the Castellammarese War.
John Bonventre, of the same family, was a long-time Mafioso who apparently assisted Bonanno in running the crime Family. John returned to Sicily in 1950. He was imprisoned there in 1971.
Louis Buchalter
Feb. 6, 1897, to March 4, 1944.
"Lepke"
Buchalter had the distinction of being the first organized crime lord to be sent to the electric chair.
New York-born Buchalter was the administrative head of a Syndicate enforcement group known in the media as "Murder, Inc." Under Lepke, the Murder, Inc., group would perform cold-blooded hits (devoid of detectable motive) ordered by the Mafia's ruling commission.
Buchalter also controlled labor unions in Manhattan's garment industry and apparently dabbled in narcotics trafficking.
He was convicted of racketeering and sentenced to Leavenworth Penitentiary in April of 1940. The 1940 arrest and subsequent court testimony of admitted Murder Inc. killer Abe "Kid Twist" Reles aided New York State prosecutors in convicting Lepke of murder.
Legal wrangling delayed the execution of a death sentence until 1944, when Lepke was electrocuted in Sing Sing prison.
