An Italian-American man, Salvatore Maranzano, met a violent end at the age of 45 in his Manhattan office on September 10, 1931. His death was the bloody conclusion to a power struggle for control of the New York underworld. Maranzano, a native of Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, had only recently emerged victorious from the brutal Castellammarese War, a conflict that ended with the murder of his rival, Joe Masseria, in April of that same year.
Following this victory, Maranzano reorganized the Italian-American gangs into the now-famous Five Families and, in a moment of supreme arrogance, declared himself 'capo di tutti capi,' or the boss of all bosses.
This new title, however, proved to be a death warrant. His autocratic style and old-world traditions did not sit well with a younger, more forward-thinking generation of mobsters led by Charles 'Lucky' Luciano. Maranzano viewed Luciano's partnerships with Jewish gangsters like Meyer Lansky and Benjamin 'Bugsy' Siegel with suspicion. Recognizing Luciano as a significant threat to his absolute power, Maranzano secretly hired an Irish gangster named Vincent 'Mad Dog' Coll to eliminate both Luciano and his associate Vito Genovese. He then ordered Luciano and Genovese to meet with him at his office suite in the New York Central Building on Park Avenue.
Luciano, however, was one step ahead. He had been tipped off about Maranzano's murderous intentions by one of Maranzano's own lieutenants, Tommy Lucchese. Deciding to strike first, Luciano enlisted the help of Meyer Lansky to secure a team of four Jewish assassins who would be unknown to Maranzano or his men. On that fateful September afternoon, before Maranzano's own hitman could arrive, Luciano's crew sprang into action. Posing as government agents or police detectives, they entered the ninth-floor office, swiftly disarmed Maranzano's bodyguards, and cornered the men in the waiting room against a wall.
Aided by Lucchese, who was present to identify the target, two of the assassins burst into Maranzano's private office. Despite his attempts to fight back, the 'boss of all bosses' was overwhelmed. The hitmen stabbed him multiple times before finishing the job with several gunshots. The assassins then fled down the stairs, reportedly passing the unwitting 'Mad Dog' Coll on his way up to carry out the very hit that had just been so decisively preempted. The murder was orchestrated by Luciano, and though the names of some of the alleged shooters, like Samuel 'Red' Levine and Bo Weinberg, would circulate in underworld lore, no one was ever officially arrested or brought to justice for the assassination. The swift and brutal killing of Salvatore Maranzano ended the era of the 'Mustache Petes' and cemented Lucky Luciano's position as the most powerful figure in organized crime, paving the way for the establishment of the Commission to govern Mafia affairs.
