Because family is at the heart of the Mafia
On the fifth of August, a Saturday, young Angelo was lured away by members of the Nicolosi family. They were his neighbors, people he knew well. It may have taken him some time to realize that he could not go home.
Joe Profaci owed his success to a network of so-called “cousins” from the old country.
Tommy Lucchese spent his formative years in a neighborhood dominated by the Morello-Terranova gang of Corleone. At the height of his power, some of the men closest to him were Corleonesi, people who’d worked with Giuseppe Morello, and who Tommy had known and worked with since his teens.
On 14 November 1957, state police descended upon Joseph Barbara’s woodland retreat, arresting some sixty men: all of them professional criminals with connections to powerful Mafia Families.
The waste hauling cartel in New York City is a corruption as old as the industry in which it is embedded.
Admiration of the mafioso as the epitome of masculinity, Sicilianità, and entrepreneurship valorizes the Mafia’s brand.
Many consider Luca Patti the first instance of a Sicilian mafioso in recorded history, but his ring appears to have had a predecessor, or possibly competition, in Corleone.
By most accounts, Mafia associate and vineyardist Frank Borgia was last seen early in December 1951.
For years, I assumed Lucia Terranova’s first marriage ended with her husband's murder in 1903. Then I saw this census record.
This golden age for the island of Sicily is the time that Mafia propaganda reaches back to for nostalgia.
Mafia Genealogy 