To study mafia marriages, first, you need to find the mafiosi.
See Part 1 of this series.
To study the marriages of Mafia members requires several steps. First, there is the identification of members of a secret, criminal organization. A few, like members of Giuseppe Morello’s family, and the bosses of Corleone, have been written about many times, and a wealth of biographical information is available on them.
The identities of some members of the Mafia are unambiguous: they are named in trial records that give the defendants’ birthdates, hometowns, and parents’ names. Adding to the names of known members are Mafia historians Dino Paternostro, John Alcorn, and Richard Warner, and others, who have named dozens of mafiosi from Corleone, and the time periods during which they were active, both in Sicily and in the United States.
Following accepted genealogical standards, I have built cases for the identities of over a hundred individuals named in connection to the mafia in Corleone. You can find them on Wikitree, categorized as “Corleone Mafia.” Occasionally, my work overlaps with that of other “Arborists” on the site. I am not the only one who has done genealogical research on, and written biographies for, the many thousands of people from Corleone on Wikitree, but I have done a lot of it. Each profile has a history, so if you’re curious, and a Wikitree member (it’s free to join), you can find out exactly what I contributed and when on the “Changes” tab of any profile. You can also see what I’ve been doing most recently on Wikitree, on my activity feed. For the last several months, much of my activity has been the genealogical research for this consanguinity study.
Of the Mafia members who were either born or married in Corleone, thirty-five of their marriages, performed between 1815 and 1909, were selected for this study. I cut off the study at 1909 because after that year, full marriage records are not available online, making the selection of controls a degree more difficult. The earliest marriages come from the first documented, organized criminals from Corleone that I’ve yet found.
The median year of marriage is 1889. Three of the mafiosi (Nicolo’ Ciravolo, Marco Maggiore, and Giuseppe Morello) married twice, and in each case, both of their marriages are included, so they each appear twice in the test group, below.
Mafia members included in study, with profile IDs on Wikitree
Mafia Member | Wikitree ID | Year of Marriage |
Giuseppe Battaglia | Battaglia-103 | 1870 |
Antonino Cascio | Cascio-157 | 1906 |
Carmelo Cascio | Cascio-432 | 1902 |
Biagio Ciancimino | Ciancimino-10 | 1852 |
Nicolo’ Ciravolo | Ciravolo-20 | 1815 |
Nicolo’ Ciravolo | Ciravolo-20 | 1834 |
Mariano Colletto | Colletto-38 | 1898 |
Luciano Crapisi | Crapisi-12 | 1880 |
Salvatore Cutrera | Cutrera-34 | 1859 |
Bernardo di Miceli | Di_Miceli-100 | 1862 |
Domenico di Miceli | Di_Miceli-128 | 1881 |
Angelo Gagliano | Gagliano-50 | 1902 |
Calogero Gagliano | Gagliano-52 | 1906 |
Luciano Gagliano | Gagliano-9 | 1880 |
Michaelangelo Gennaro | Gennaro-85 | 1884 |
Biagio Jannazzo | Jannazzo-1 | 1843 |
Luciano Labruzzo | Labruzzo-55 | 1897 |
Antonino lo Jacono | Lo_Jacono-16 | 1872 |
Calogero lo Jacono | Lo_Jacono-18 | 1884 |
Marco Maggiore | Maggiore-8 | 1893 |
Marco Maggiore | Maggiore-8 | 1908 |
Calogero Majuri | Majuri-23 | 1893 |
Pietro Majuri | Majuri-6 | 1897 |
Giovanni Mancuso | Mancuso-307 | 1887 |
Francesco Mancuso | Mancuso-313 | 1883 |
Antonio Mariano Mancuso | Mancuso-77 | 1889 |
Giuseppe Morello | Morello-35 | 1889 |
Giuseppe Morello | Morello-35 | 1903 |
Paolino Streva | Streva-64 | 1894 |
Carlo Taverna | Taverna-7 | 1904 |
Bernardo Terranova | Terranova-29 | 1873 |
Ciro Terranova | Terranova-31 | 1909 |
Pasquale Vasi | Vasi-2 | 1895 |
Francesco Zito | Zito-78 | 1900 |
Of the Mafia members included in this study, the oldest are Nicolo’ Ciravolo and Biagio Jannazzo, members of Rapanzino’s gang of cattle rustlers who were nearly all killed by police in 1835. (Real 1836)
Biagio Ciancimino; Luciano Crapisi; Salvatore Cutrera; brothers Antonino and Calogero lo Jacono; Marco Maggiore and his uncle Calogero Majuri (note the two spellings of the same surname); Francesco, Giovanni, and Mariano Mancuso (all three of no known relation); first cousins Bernardo and Domenico di Miceli; and Carlo Taverna; are all named among Fratuzzi membership around 1900, by the journalist Dino Paternostro. (2004)
Giuseppe Morello, his stepfather Bernardo Terranova, and his stepbrother Ciro Terranova, all founding members of the Morello gang in New York, a predecessor of the Genovese crime family, are well documented, most famously by William J. Flynn in “The Barrel Mystery.” (Flynn 1919) Other New York City gangsters from Corleone include the counterfeiter Pasquale Vasi, who is described by Richard Warner et al (2014), and in contemporary newspapers.
The criminal activities of Carmelo Cascio, Mariano Colletto, and brothers Calogero and Luciano Gagliano, contemporaries of Bernardino Verro, have been written about by John Alcorn and Dino Paternostro.
Fratuzzi bosses Giuseppe Battaglia, Angelo Gagliano, Michaelangelo Gennaro, and Luciano Labruzzo are known from multiple sources, including Flynn (1919) and Paternostro, and from Italian Senate inquest and trial records, which also name Antonino Cascio (a distant cousin of Carmelo) and Francesco Zito. Flynn also describes the young Mafia captain, Paolino Streva, who collaborates as a cattle thief with Morello in Corleone, under Battaglia’s leadership.
Next week, this series continues with more on my methods, including selection of a control group.
Sources
- John Alcorn. “Revolutionary Mafiosi: Voice and Exit in the 1890s.” Accessed http://www.comune.corleone.pa.it/file%20da%20scaricare/Saggi%20palermo1_Saggi%20palermo1.pdf 5 May 2016.
- Archivio di Stato di Palermo, GP, aa. 1906-1925, b. 267, f. 3, Associazione per delinquere scopertosi in Corleone, 13 Agosto 1916.
- Dino Paternostro. «Fratuzzi», antenati di Liggio e Riina. La Sicilia: 8 August 2004.
- Dino Paternostro. La «punciuta» di Bernardino Verro. La Sicilia: 1 August 2004.
- William J. Flynn. The Barrel Mystery. The James A. McCann Co.: New York, 1919.
- Real Segreteria di Stato presso il Luogotenente Generale in Sicilia Ripartimento Polizia Repertorio anno 1836. Accessed http://archiviodistatodipalermo.it/files/inventari/file/1263903377anno1836.pdf 6 August 2015.
- Senato della Repubblica VII Legislatura. Documentazione allegata alla relazione conclusiva della commissione parlamentare d’inchiesta sul fenomeno della mafia in Sicilia. Accessed http://legislature.camera.it/_dati/leg08/lavori/stampati/pdf/023_001011.pdf 13 May 2016.
- Richard Warner, Angelo Santino, and Lennert Van ‘t Riet. “The Early New York Mafia: An Alternative Theory.” The Informer: May 2014. Accessed https://www.scribd.com/doc/222924210/2014-02-Informer-May-2014 11 January 2016.
Feature image: Giorgio Sommer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons