94 Fun Facts About Mafia

What is the traditional code of silence that is a fundamental part of Mafia honor?

Omertà bars members from telling outsiders anything about the organisation; Joseph Valachi broke it in 1963, when he described the American Mafia's inner workings to a Senate committee.

What charge finally sent Al Capone to prison in the 1930s?

Tax evasion. Capone was convicted in October 1931 on five counts of federal income-tax evasion and sentenced to 11 years, a case built by Treasury agents rather than on his bootlegging or killings.

Which two New York Mafia bosses fought the early-1930s Castellammarese War?

Joe Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano fought the 1930–31 Castellammarese War; Masseria was shot dead in a Coney Island restaurant in April 1931 and Maranzano was murdered that September.

What 1970 U.S. federal law was a significant tool for prosecuting organized crime figures?

The RICO Act punishes a pattern of crimes run through an enterprise, and in 1986 one trial under it convicted some of the highest-ranking men in New York's Five Families; G. Robert Blakey drafted it for the Senate.

In the traditional Mafia initiation rite, what is set alight in the recruit's hands as he swears his oath?

A picture of a saint, dabbed with blood from the recruit's pricked finger, burns as he passes it from hand to hand and swears that he will burn the same way if he betrays the family.

What was the Gambino crime organisation originally called when the Five Families were set up in 1931?

Mangano: Vincent Mangano ran the family from 1931 until he vanished in 1951, a killing laid to his underboss Albert Anastasia, whose own murder in 1957 handed the family to Carlo Gambino.

Which director created The Godfather trilogy?

Francis Ford Coppola first turned the job down, calling Mario Puzo's novel 'pretty cheap stuff', and took it because his own studio, American Zoetrope, owed Warner Bros. more than $400,000.

In American Mafia slang, what does it mean to be a 'made man'?

He is a sworn full member, ranking as a soldier; the rule that members be of Italian descent is why Henry Hill of Goodfellas, whose father was Irish, could never be made.

The 1980s 'Pizza Connection' case exposed a Sicilian Mafia ring that used American pizzerias to distribute what?

Heroin, refined in Sicily from Turkish morphine and valued at $1.65 billion, was sold through pizza parlours in the US Northeast and Midwest; the trial that followed lasted about 17 months.

Joseph Valachi's 1963 Senate testimony first publicly acknowledged which organization?

La Cosa Nostra was the name Valachi gave the Senate's McClellan Committee; he talked because he believed his own boss had marked him for death, and he had already killed a fellow inmate he took for the assassin.

Which Murder, Inc. hitman turned informer, then fell to his death from a guarded Coney Island hotel window in 1941?

Abe 'Kid Twist' Reles, 'the canary who could sing but couldn't fly', as the papers put it. His testimony sent several members to the electric chair; the group is believed to have carried out 400 to 1,000 killings.

Jimmy Hoffa, who vanished in 1975, had led which labor union?

The Teamsters. Jailed in 1967, Hoffa was freed by Richard Nixon in 1971 on condition he stay out of union office until 1980, and he was fighting to get his presidency back when he disappeared.

Angelo Bruno, murdered in 1980 after 21 peaceful years as boss, ran which East Coast city?

Philadelphia, where Bruno was known as 'the Gentle Don' for keeping the peace, and where his shotgun murder set off a war for succession. The Commission had installed him in 1959.

Per the OED, the Mafia's code of silence may take its name from a rare Spanish word meaning what?

Manliness: the OED points to the rare Spanish 'hombredad', reshaped after the Sicilian 'omu', man. A rival theory derives the word from a southern dialect form of 'umiltà', humility.

Which Murder, Inc. boss died in Sing Sing's electric chair in 1944?

Lepke Buchalter was convicted of ordering the 1936 murder of Joseph Rosen after one of his own gunmen turned informer; two of his lieutenants went to the chair minutes before he did.

Which of New York's Five Families was originally known by the name Gagliano?

Lucchese. Tommy Gagliano ran the family quietly from 1931 until his death in 1951, when his underboss Tommy Lucchese took over and the family was renamed for him.

Frank Lucas, who inspired 'American Gangster', operated mainly in which New York neighborhood?

Harlem, where Frank Lucas sold drugs bought directly in Southeast Asia, cutting out the Mafia's middlemen; his boast that they travelled in dead servicemen's coffins was denied by his own supplier.

Sociologist Diego Gambetta famously described the Sicilian Mafia as a cartel of what?

Private protection firms. In The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection (1993), Gambetta argued that mafiosi sell protection because the state fails to guard property and enforce contracts.

Which Chicago gang leader retired in 1925 and handed his operation to Al Capone?

Johnny Torrio. After North Side gunmen nearly killed him in January 1925, Torrio retired and handed the Chicago Outfit to his 26-year-old protégé Al Capone.

A famous 1957 mob summit was raided by police in which small New York town?

Apalachin. On November 14, 1957, state troopers raided Joseph Barbara's estate at 625 McFall Road in Apalachin, and some 60 mafiosi were detained as others fled through the woods in their suits.

Which famous American lawman insisted into the 1950s that no national Mafia existed?

J. Edgar Hoover held that crime gangs worked locally and that the rackets were a job for local police; a 1957 police raid on a summit of bosses from across the country proved otherwise.

Which nickname did John Gotti earn as prosecutors failed to convict him in three trials?

The Teflon Don, because no charge would stick: one case collapsed in 1986 when the victim lost his memory, and juries acquitted Gotti in 1987 and 1990. The coating wore off in 1992, when he was convicted on every count.

Gambino boss Paul Castellano was shot dead in December 1985 outside which Manhattan restaurant?

Sparks Steak House, where Castellano and underboss Thomas Bilotti were shot as they arrived for a dinner meeting on 16 December 1985; John Gotti, who organised the hit, was named boss within a month.

Which underboss turned state's evidence in November 1991 and testified against John Gotti?

Sammy 'the Bull' Gravano, Gotti's underboss, admitted nineteen murders in his deal, then walked out of witness protection and moved to Arizona, where he was arrested in 2000 for running an ecstasy ring.

John Gotti's expensive suits earned the Gambino boss which nickname?

The Dapper Don ended his days far from the cameras: he died of throat cancer in 2002 in a federal prison hospital in Springfield, Missouri, ten years into a life sentence.

Al Capone's 'Scarface' nickname came from a knife attack by the brother of whom?

A woman he had insulted: her brother, Frank Galluccio, slashed Capone's left cheek three times at a Coney Island saloon. Capone hated the nickname and passed the scars off as war wounds.

Two of the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre killers came dressed as what?

Policemen. The seven Moran men lined up against the wall as if for a routine raid, and afterwards the uniformed pair marched their plain-clothes partners out at gunpoint like prisoners.

Capone was moved to which newly opened federal penitentiary in August 1934?

Alcatraz. Capone was moved there from Atlanta in August 1934, weeks after it opened, amid claims that he was bribing guards for comforts; he left in 1939 with his health already failing.

Which Las Vegas hotel-casino did Bugsy Siegel open, unfinished, on 26 December 1946?

The Flamingo. Siegel opened it half-built on 26 December 1946 with costs past $6 million; within minutes of his murder in June 1947, three of Meyer Lansky's associates walked in to announce new management.

Bugsy Siegel was killed in June 1947 by a sniper firing through the window of a mansion in which city?

Beverly Hills. Siegel was shot through the living-room window of the house rented for his girlfriend Virginia Hill, who had left for Paris days earlier, fuelling talk that she had been warned.

Sicily's 1986–87 Maxi Trial sat in a bunker courtroom built beside what?

A prison, Palermo's Ucciardone: the octagonal bunker was built to withstand missile attack, and the trial of 475 accused mafiosi ended with 19 life sentences.

How did the Mafia kill judge Giovanni Falcone in May 1992?

A motorway bomb: explosives packed into a drain beneath the road were set off by remote control as his convoy passed, killing Falcone, his wife and three bodyguards. Palermo's airport now bears his name and Paolo Borsellino's.

The Sicilian Mafia's boss, caught in 2006 after 43 years in hiding, ran it through what?

Paper notes, hand-delivered and called pizzini, because he shunned the telephone; police found him by following a parcel of clean laundry from his family to a farmhouse near Corleone.

Cesare Mori, sent by Mussolini in 1925 to crush the Sicilian Mafia, earned which nickname?

The Iron Prefect led a small army from town to town rounding up suspects and besieged the hill town of Gangi in January 1926; some 11,000 arrests are credited to his campaign.

Lucky Luciano was convicted in 1936 of what offence?

Compulsory prostitution: in June 1936 Luciano was convicted on 62 counts and given 30 to 50 years, then released and deported to Italy in 1946 in return for his reported wartime help to the Navy.

Where did Lucky Luciano die of a heart attack in January 1962?

Naples Airport. Luciano collapsed there on 26 January 1962 just after meeting a producer about a film of his life, unaware that Italian drug agents had followed him and were waiting to arrest him.

Which country did Meyer Lansky flee to in 1970 to escape federal charges in the United States?

Israel. Lansky claimed a Jew's right to settle under the Law of Return, but Israel kept the power to refuse applicants with a criminal past, and he was sent back to face the charges.

Which character in The Godfather Part II is based on Meyer Lansky?

Hyman Roth, played by Lee Strasberg, was modelled on Lansky, who reportedly phoned the actor after the premiere to say he could have made him more sympathetic.

Boston mobster Whitey Bulger led which crew?

The Winter Hill Gang, an Irish-American crew from Somerville, outside Boston; the FBI listed Bulger as its informant from the mid-1970s, which he always denied, and his handler saw to it that the gang was left alone.

Which actor played Whitey Bulger in the 2015 film Black Mass?

Johnny Depp asked to meet Bulger and was turned down, so he studied surveillance tapes and took notes from Bulger's own lawyer, who visited the set to judge the performance.

Goodfellas is adapted from which 1985 nonfiction book?

Wiseguy lost its title on screen because a 1986 comedy and a TV series had already used the name; Scorsese had cold-called author Nicholas Pileggi to say he had waited his whole life for the book.

Which pork store served as a key location for Tony Soprano's crew?

Satriale's came to the family when its owner fell behind on a gambling debt to Tony's father; the Kearny, New Jersey storefront used for filming was torn down after the series and its bricks sold as souvenirs.

The word 'Mafia' is thought to have caught on in the 1860s thanks to a hit Sicilian what?

A stage play, I mafiusi di la Vicaria (1863), about a gang of inmates in a Palermo prison, was a success across Italy; oddly, its script never uses the words 'mafia' or 'mafiusi' at all.

Which turncoat's 1984 testimony to Giovanni Falcone became the backbone of the Maxi Trial?

Tommaso Buscetta, extradited from Brazil in 1984, spent weeks explaining the organisation's structure to Falcone; he turned after the Corleonesi killed several of his relatives, among them two of his sons.

The lupara, the sawn-off shotgun of Sicilian Mafia killings, is named after which animal?

Wolf: 'lupara' first meant the heavy shot hunters loaded for wolves, and it gave Italian the phrase 'lupara bianca', a Mafia killing in which the victim simply disappears.

Which Sicilian bandit was blamed for the 1947 Portella della Ginestra May Day massacre?

Salvatore Giuliano and his band were held responsible for the eleven deaths at the May Day rally, yet the memorial plaque at the site names no bandit and blames 'the Mafia and the landed barons'.

Judge Paolo Borsellino was killed by a car bomb in July 1992 as he arrived to visit whom?

His mother: the bomb in Via D'Amelio killed Borsellino and five of his police escort, 57 days after Giovanni Falcone's murder, and the red notebook he always carried vanished from the scene.

Which Corleone boss, successor to Totò Riina, was nicknamed 'the Tractor' for mowing down his enemies?

Bernardo Provenzano was 'u tratturi', the Tractor, because, as one informer put it, he mowed people down; his quiet, low-key years in charge later earned him a second nickname, the Accountant.

Where was fugitive boss Matteo Messina Denaro finally arrested in January 2023?

A private clinic in Palermo: Messina Denaro was seized on 16 January 2023 as he arrived for chemotherapy under a false name, the cancer treatment that ended his 30 years as a fugitive.

The 'Ndrangheta crime syndicate originated in which Italian region?

Calabria, the toe of Italy's boot, where the 'Ndrangheta is built from blood-related clans called 'ndrine; emigration carried those clans across northern Italy, Europe, Australia and the Americas.

Sacra Corona Unita, the 'Fourth Mafia' strongest around Brindisi and Lecce, is based in which Italian region?

Apulia, the heel of Italy, where Pino Rogoli founded the group in prison in the early 1980s to stop Naples's Camorra clans from taking over the region's jails and rackets.

Albert Anastasia was shot dead in a Manhattan hotel in 1957 while doing what?

Getting a haircut. Two gunmen shot Anastasia in the barber's chair at the Park Sheraton Hotel on 25 October 1957; Carlo Gambino, who then took over the family, was widely believed to have arranged it.

Joe Colombo was shot in 1971 at an Italian Unity Day rally held where in Manhattan?

Columbus Circle, where Jerome Johnson shot Colombo three times at the 28 June 1971 rally of his Italian-American Civil Rights League; Colombo survived paralysed until his death in 1978.

Bonanno boss Carmine Galante's nickname 'Lilo' is said to be Italian slang for what?

A stubby cigar: Galante was rarely seen without one, and the photograph taken after he was shot on a Brooklyn restaurant patio in 1979, on the Commission's orders, shows a cigar still in his mouth.

Joseph Bonanno's 1983 autobiography was published under what title?

A Man of Honor broke his lifelong silence without, he argued, breaking his code, because nobody had forced him to talk; in 1985 he chose 14 months in jail for contempt over testifying in a racketeering case.

FBI agent Joseph Pistone infiltrated the Bonanno family under what alias?

Donnie Brasco, a supposed jewel thief, fooled the family from 1976 to 1981; his sponsors were about to put him forward for full membership when the FBI ended the operation.

Which Genovese boss feigned insanity for decades, earning the nickname 'the Oddfather'?

Vincent 'the Chin' Gigante wandered Greenwich Village in a bathrobe and slippers mumbling to himself, a performance dubbed the 'Bathrobe Defense'; in 2003 he admitted the insanity had been an act.

Frank Costello, who retired after being wounded in 1957, was known by what nickname?

The Prime Minister of the Underworld, for the favours he traded with Tammany Hall politicians and judges; when a gunman's bullet grazed his head in May 1957 he refused to name the shooter, then retired.

At the televised 1951 Kefauver hearings, cameras could show only mob boss Frank Costello's what?

His hands, twisting and fidgeting while he dodged questions, became the show instead; he walked out of the hearing and was later jailed for contempt of the Senate.

The 1978 Lufthansa heist, later dramatised in Goodfellas, robbed a cargo terminal at which airport?

JFK: a bookmaker passed on word that Lufthansa flew currency into its cargo terminal, and on 11 December 1978 six robbers left with $5 million in cash and $875,000 in jewellery.

Who won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Goodfellas (1990)?

Joe Pesci, whose acceptance speech was five words: 'It's my privilege. Thank you.' The film had six nominations, and his was its only win.

In Mario Puzo's The Godfather, which post does lawyer Tom Hagen hold?

Consigliere, the family's counsellor: Hagen's German-Irish ancestry bars him from formal membership, yet Vito Corleone gives him the post anyway when old Genco Abbandando dies.

Who appeared at the 1973 Oscars to decline Marlon Brando's award for The Godfather?

Sacheen Littlefeather, an actress and activist, took the stage in Brando's place on 27 March 1973; he boycotted in protest at Hollywood's treatment of Native Americans, declining his second Best Actor Oscar after On the Waterfront.

Robert De Niro's character in Casino is based on Frank Rosenthal, who ran which Las Vegas casino?

The Stardust. Rosenthal ran it and its sister Argent casinos for the Chicago Outfit in the mid-1970s although he never held a Nevada gaming licence; the film renames it the Tangiers.

Sam Giancana was shot dead in 1975 days before he was due to testify to which Senate body?

The Church Committee, then probing CIA–Mafia collusion in plots to kill Fidel Castro; Giancana was shot in the basement kitchen of his Oak Park, Illinois home on 19 June 1975, days before his appearance.

Dutch Schultz was fatally shot at the Palace Chop House in 1935 in which city in New Jersey?

Newark, where Schultz had moved his base to get clear of New York's prosecutors; the Commission ordered the hit after he defied its refusal to let him kill one of them, and he died the next day.

Which gambler, nicknamed 'The Brain', was widely accused of fixing the 1919 World Series?

Arnold Rothstein, 'The Brain', bankrolled the 1919 Black Sox fix in the popular telling; he mentored Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky and was shot in November 1928, reputedly over an unpaid poker debt.

The December 1946 mob summit in Havana, convened by Lucky Luciano, met at which hotel?

The Nacional. A three-word message, 'December-Hotel Nacional', summoned Luciano from his Italian exile, and the bosses' cover story for the week was a gala with Frank Sinatra as the entertainment.

What do Italians call a mafioso who turns state's witness, as Giovanni Brusca did in 1996?

A pentito, literally one who has repented. Brusca, who once put his own murders at between 100 and 200, won reduced sentences for talking and walked free in 2021 after 25 years in prison.

Which seven-time Italian prime minister stood trial in the 1990s accused of protecting the Sicilian Mafia?

Giulio Andreotti walked free, though the courts found he had dealt with mafiosi until 1980, too long ago to punish; he joked that he had been blamed for everything in Italy except the Punic Wars.

Activist Peppino Impastato, murdered in 1978, mocked his town's Mafia boss as 'Tano Seduto' on what?

His own radio station, Radio Aut, where 'Tano Seduto' punned on Sitting Bull; Impastato lived a hundred steps from boss Gaetano Badalamenti's house, the distance that names the film I cento passi.

Libero Grassi, shot dead in 1991, defied the Mafia in a newspaper letter that began how?

'Dear extortionist', it began, and it refused to pay the Mafia's pizzo; other Palermo businessmen would not join the pyjama-maker and he was shot that August, but in 2004 the Addiopizzo movement took up his cause.

The Addiopizzo movement launched in 2004 with stickers designed to mimic what?

Obituary notices. Five graduates who wanted to open a bar in Palermo plastered the city with them in 2004; the text read 'A whole people who pays the pizzo is a people without dignity.'

Mafia banker Michele Sindona died in prison in 1986 after drinking coffee laced with what?

Potassium cyanide. Sindona, 'The Shark', drank the poisoned coffee in Voghera prison on 20 March 1986, two days after a life sentence for ordering the murder of liquidator Giorgio Ambrosoli, and died two days later.

'God's Banker' Roberto Calvi was found hanging beneath which London bridge in 1982?

Blackfriars Bridge, where a passing postal clerk saw Calvi hanging from scaffolding with bricks in his pockets; the first inquest called it suicide, but an Italian court later ruled that he had been murdered.

Which 2006 book by Roberto Saviano exposed organised crime in Naples?

Gomorrah (2006), Saviano's account of the Camorra's Casalesi clan, whose death threats put him under police escort from October 2006; Matteo Garrone's film followed in 2008 and a TV series ran from 2014 to 2021.

Which New York special prosecutor personally tried Lucky Luciano in 1936?

Thomas Dewey won the conviction that made his name, twice ran for president and lost, and as governor in 1946 signed the commutation that let Luciano leave prison for exile in Italy.

Where did Vito Genovese, whose name one of New York's Five Families still bears, die in 1969?

In federal prison: Genovese died of a heart attack on 14 February 1969 while serving the 15-year narcotics sentence imposed in 1959, having run the family from behind bars for a decade.

Who won his only Oscar as Jim Malone, the veteran Irish cop who teaches Eliot Ness 'the Chicago way' in The Untouchables?

Sean Connery won although he played the Irish cop in his own Scottish accent, later voted the worst film accent in an Empire poll; Brian De Palma directed from a David Mamet script.

The party game Mafia, also known as Werewolf, was invented by a psychology student at which Soviet university?

Moscow State University, where Dmitry Davidoff brought the game into psychology classes in the late 1980s as research; it spread through dormitories and student summer camps before it reached the West.

Las Vegas's Mob Museum, which opened in 2012, is housed in a former what?

Post office and courthouse. The 1933 federal building, where a Kefauver crime hearing once sat, was sold to the city for $1; the museum opened on 14 February 2012, the anniversary of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

Al Capone died in 1947, his mind ruined by syphilis, at a Palm Island mansion in which state?

Florida. Capone was at this Palm Island house, and so had his alibi, on the day of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago; he had bought it in 1928 from a member of the Busch brewing family.

Which TV host opened 'Al Capone's vault' on live television in 1986 and found only dirt and empty bottles?

Geraldo Rivera had a medical examiner standing by for bodies and tax agents for cash; about 30 million people watched him break into a sealed room under Capone's old Lexington Hotel headquarters.

Meyer Lansky, the mob's money man, spent his final decade quietly in which city, dying there of lung cancer in 1983?

Miami Beach. Despite legends of a hidden fortune, he held few assets in his own name and left no substantial estate; the man said to have kept the mob's books died looking poor on paper.

Jimmy Hoffa was last seen in 1975 outside a Machus Red Fox restaurant near which city?

Detroit. The Machus Red Fox in suburban Bloomfield Township, where his son's wedding reception had been held, was where Hoffa waited on 30 July 1975 for a meeting with mobsters; his body has never been found.

Joseph Petrosino, assassinated in Sicily in 1909, was a detective with which force?

The NYPD. Lieutenant Petrosino, head of its Italian Squad, was shot in Palermo's Piazza Marina on 12 March 1909 after being lured to a night-time rendezvous; he had earlier investigated the 1903 'barrel murder'.

Early-1900s extortion letters to Italian immigrants were typically signed with what name?

The Black Hand (La Mano Nera). The name is first reported in a Brooklyn case of 1903, when a wealthy contractor was told that his house would be dynamited unless he paid $1,000.

Cleveland's Danny Greene was killed by a car bomb in 1977 right after visiting whom?

His dentist. On 6 October 1977 Greene left a dental appointment in Lyndhurst, Ohio, and a bomb in the car parked beside his was detonated; the film Kill the Irishman (2011) tells the story.

Angelo Bruno, the 'Docile Don', was killed by a shotgun blast in 1980 while sitting where?

In his car outside his home, by a shotgun blast to the head that also wounded his driver; the family adviser blamed for ordering the hit without leave was found dead in a car boot weeks later.

Which nickname did Chicago boss Tony Accardo pick up from a fishing trip?

Big Tuna, a press nickname from a giant tuna he landed on a fishing trip; Accardo guided the Chicago Outfit for decades and died in 1992 without ever spending more than a day behind bars.

After 16 years on the run, Whitey Bulger was arrested in 2011 in which city?

Santa Monica, California, where Bulger and Catherine Greig lived quietly near the beach; the tip that led agents to them came from Iceland, from a former neighbour who had once been Miss Iceland.

Which boss, dubbed 'The Last Don', was the first sitting boss of a New York family to turn state's evidence?

Joseph Massino, convicted in 2004 on the word of his own brother-in-law and underboss, changed sides himself to escape a possible death sentence in a second murder case.

Tommy Lucchese's hated nickname 'Three-Finger Brown' compared his hand to a famous what?

A baseball pitcher: Mordecai 'Three Finger' Brown, a Hall of Famer with a maimed hand. A policeman booking Lucchese, who had lost his right thumb and forefinger in a factory accident, made the comparison.

Tony Soprano's crew belongs to which fictional crime family?

DiMeo, after Ercole 'Eckley' DiMeo, the old boss who went to prison in 1995; Tony starts the series as one of the family's capos and ends it as its undisputed boss.