Giuseppe Joe the Boss

Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria was a 45-year-old Italian-American man who had risen to the top of New York’s underworld and was trying to hold his empire together as rival factions bled the city in the Castellammarese War. By mid-April 1931, the pressure around him had become a vise—alliances shifting in whispers, loyalists weighing survival over tradition, and his own inner circle watching for the moment the old order could be replaced.

On the afternoon of April 15, 1931, Mass ...