Carlo Gambino Crime Boss

CARLO GAMBINO, CRIME BOSS

PETE DOVER

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CARLO GAMBINO

FRANK LUCAS

PAUL CASTELLANO

BUMPY JOHNSON

ALBERT ANASTASIA

CLARENCE HEATLEY

TOUGH TONY

JUAN RAUL GARZA

Widening the Family

The smile is warm, if a little sardonic. Carlo Gambino is a disarming man, it says. Nothing to worry about with me. Your favourite uncle, your friendly neighbor. The eyes, though, tell a different story. People can control their facial muscles to generate a smile. But eyes are honest. They reveal the truth.

His Roman nose is prominent, his stature short and stocky. Dark, slightly wavy hair is swept back. Mediterranean features. Rightly so. Carlo Gambino is a first-generation Italian American immigrant. All the way from Sicily. Mafioso country.

Vito Corleone is the figure who defines modern perceptions of the Mafia, and he is, of course, fictional. The Godfather, though, was built from constituent parts of real people, and the largest portion of his imaginary make up comes from the real Godfather. That is Carlo Gambino.

Gambino was born in 1902 in the Sicilian capital of Palermo. It was inevitable that he would fall into crime since he was born into the loosely organized underworld syndicate known as the Honored Society. The word ‘honor’ seems an odd label to attach to criminal enterprise, but most probably originates from the concept of fighting for one’s honor – in other words, standing up to challenge, or disrespect, or theft of one’s property. Indeed, the term ‘Mafia,’ so widely used to describe the organized crime families which have played a role in the underworld of Italy, the US, Australia and elsewhere over the years, is really a misnomer, at least according to those from the Sicilian heartland of this organization. They are the Honored Society, not the Mafia.

For the Gambino family, such associations were decades old, but by the time Carlo had grown up and become a young adult, getting known for his violent enforcement activities, the old guard was already under threat. Benito Mussolini is renowned for many things, the majority of which are soundly evil. He did, however, challenge the Honored Society. In this he was not especially successful, and rather than putting these gangsters out of business, he made them if anything more organized, and more of a collective unit even if infighting remained a common past time. Younger men, though, feared the way matters were heading, while at the same time hearing of the rich pickings over the Atlantic. Like many, young Carlo Gambino decided to emigrate, illegally, and join his brother-in-law over the pond. That brother-in-law was the notorious Paul Castellano, who was already making a name for himself.

Gambino was just nineteen when he became a Mafia ‘made man,’ a mobster who had committed crime of sufficient seriousness that he could be trusted and enrolled into the inner circle of Mafia families.

New to the US, and an illegal immigrant, Gambino started work for the Castellano family, operating as a truck driver in their bootlegging business. Gambino was ambitious, but he was also patient. He worked hard behind the scenes until the opportunity arose for promotion. Leaving the Castellano family behind, he moved to the Masseria family, joining the evocatively named ‘Joe the Boss.’  Already, though, Gambino could see that families like the Masserias were out of date with their organization and their inward-looking approach to crime. Like many other young gangsters, Gambino saw that real power and true riches lay in expanding their influence, not in tightening it up within the Italian family. Links with other organized crime factions were the way ahead, and a group known as the ‘Young Turks’ was born.

This collective was populated by younger gangsters, men who regarded the older family heads as past their prime, and who derisively referred to these older men as ‘moustache Petes.’  They underestimated the strength of these older, more traditional gangsters, as is the wont of youth when judging their elders. Angered by the disrespect – the biggest trigger to the old-style Honored Society, the traditional families struck back at the Young Turks. The young men’s leader, ‘Lucky’ Luciano, along with other figures such as Frank Costello and the rising star, Carlo Gambino, soon became wise despite their lack of experience. By the turn of the 1930s generational in-fighting was not only leading the death of too many of their fighters, but it was also killing their profits. The leadership of the Young Turks came to the conclusion that the older families – notably the Masseria and Maranzano gangs who were involved in constant dispute – were simply too greedy to involve non-Italians in their activities.  This short-term parochialism was hampering their potential, but the Moustache Petes who sat at their top table could not see this.

And while the conflict between the Young Turks and the traditional families was also ongoing, Jewish, and Irish gangs were filling the void that they left and helping themselves to the rich pickings that were available. Luciano approached the leader of the family who were most prominent in the fight against the Young Turks, brooked a successful peace deal and promptly assassinated the man with whom he had just agreed a cease fire. The old guard was gone, and the new one – more organized, more diverse, and more willing to widen the scope of its activities – was in place. Near the top of the ladder was Carlo Gambino, and the only direction in which he was headed was upwards. The Young Turks – not so young these days – realized that any repeat of the Castellamerese War (named after the most prominent families involved) which they had just ended could devastate the prospects of their organized crime network. Together, they divided the city of New York up between five prominent families and appointed the head of each to a council which would ensure that peace – even if at times it was to be fragile – would co-exist within the wider network. But that process took many years, and meanwhile Gambino was perfecting his trade.

Carlo Gambino might not yet be at the very summit of the Mafia tree, but the Sicilian was a clever man. He knew that the best way to avoid the authorities, to avoid antagonizing his own bosses and to maximize his own power and income was to keep his head down. By now he was married to his cousin, Catherine Castellano, sister of Paul. They really did like to keep things in the family, these old Italian clans. Blood thicker than water, and all that. Together Carlo and Catherine had four children, three sons (Thomas, Joseph, and Carlo Jnr) and a daughter, Phyliss. Yet while he was accumulating considerable wealth, Gambino lived modestly, occupying a small house in Brooklyn. Stay off the radar, stay out of trouble. Gambino learned fast.

He had, in fact, been arrested back in 1930, two years before he married Catherine. It was an experience the young man had not enjoyed. Gambino had discovered at that time that the law enforcement authorities were persistent if nothing else. The initial arrest was in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was picked up as a suspicious person. The charge was dropped, but only a month later he was questioned on a larceny charge in Brockton in the same State. He failed to show up in court at that time, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He was on the run for that misdemeanor for four years, before being arrested in Manhattan for being a fugitive. He was returned to Brockton, but the charges were dropped when he made a payment of $1000 as restitution for the larceny.

It did seem, though, that the most serious charges would evade him, despite the growing enormity of his crimes. Certainly, he was given twenty-two months in the Federal Penitentiary in Lewisburg in 1937. This was for alcohol tax evasion in the state of Philadelphia. A lesser sentence of thirty days was issued to him in the early 1940s for the operation of an illegal still. This case was tried in Brooklyn, and it would be almost thirty years before he found himself facing court again.  The authorities could only snipe at the edges of Gambino’s illegal activities. But then, that was one of the strengths of the Mafia. Breaching its wall of silence was almost impossible. Infiltration not only highly dangerous, but almost impossible to achieve.

In the meantime, Gambino concentrated on securing his rise among the New York Mafia families.

On November 14th, 1957, there took place a convention involving all the most important Mafia bosses from across the entire United States. This was the goal the Young Turks had sought many years before. Gambino was there following the assassination of his own boss at the time, Albert Anastasia. Anastasia had appointed Gambino as his underboss following the Sicilian’s meteoric rise among the Mafiosi. This is one of the strange things about the Italian crime syndicate. The concept of Cosa Nostra, the code of silence which sees even opposing Mafia families refuse to communicate with the police, is extremely strong within the organization. Indeed, to break this code is to sign one’s own death warrant. Yet even within the same family grouping, there is frequently treachery. Really, the betrayal of Caesar by his own lieutenants has nothing on this more modern Italian Family structure. Here was a case in point. One of the items on the agenda was to confirm the appointment of Gambino as the new head of the Anastasia family. The cause of the murder which created this sudden vacancy? It seems unarguable that the person behind the move was its chief beneficiary, Gambino himself.

It is rare that in such a secretive society details of any agenda emerge, but on this occasion the meeting had been raided by State Troopers. Intelligence services had gotten wind of the gathering, which was in Apalchin, New York, and intervened. Gambino had not acted alone, it seemed, in gaining his seat at this convention. A release to