Are Corleone’s Mafiosi more likely to marry close relations? Part 2

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

1. 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.
2. Archivio di Stato di Palermo, GP, aa. 1906-1925, b. 267, f. 3, Associazione per delinquere scopertosi in Corleone, 13 Agosto 1916.
3. Dino Paternostro. «Fratuzzi», antenati di Liggio e Riina. La Sicilia: 8 August 2004.
4. Dino Paternostro. La «punciuta» di Bernardino Verro. La Sicilia: 1 August 2004.
5. William J. Flynn. The Barrel Mystery. The James A. McCann Co.: New York, 1919.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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

A family business

Mafia leadership for the past hundred years in Corleone have all been related to one another, through blood and marriage.

Cattle theft in Sicily, before the twentieth century, was like car theft today, in that it was a crime that required a village. A thief who takes a car needs a network of criminals to help conceal the crime and profit from it. There are chop shops and resellers, those who strip it down for parts or sell it whole. And there are other people who will tow your car away to a lot, and guard it there until you come and pay a fee to get it back. In either scenario, criminals need places large enough to secure large items away from their owners, until such time as they can be liquidated or redeemed.

Paolino Streva, with the help of one of his subordinates, Giuseppe Morello, was stealing cattle, using his network of resources for this complicated crime. The job of the guard Giovanni Vella, was to find the stolen cattle and deal with the thieves. He might do this by negotiating a return of the cattle to their owner—this was a standard practice—or by killing the thief. Vella believed Streva and Morello were behind the large number of cattle thefts that year in Corleone. Given Streva’s social position, however, murdering him was out of the question.

The Mafia boss at that time, Salvatore Cutrera, and his nephew, Paolino Streva, were among an elite of landowners in Corleone in the late 1880s. Despite his age—Streva was only nineteen in 1889—he was one of his his uncle’s chief subordinates. When Giuseppe Morello rose in the Corleonesi mob, it was under Paolino and Cutrera. According to William J. Flynn, Morello killed the guard, Vella, and following that, killed again, to silence a witness to his crime. 

When Paolino was 23, he married his first cousin once removed, Anna Giovanna Streva. Anna was just fifteen, and an orphan, the ward of her uncle Angelo. Anna’s father, who was also called Don Paolo Streva, married the mother of his children on his deathbed. Four years later, the witnesses at Anna and Paolino’s marriage were a student, Filippo Bentivegna, who would become a doctor, and Giuseppe Battaglia, the new boss in Corleone.

Paolo Streva’s marriage record, signed by himself, his uncle, his father, and two witnesses, including Giuseppe Battaglia

Battaglia is distantly related to future bosses Angelo Gagliano and Michele Navarra through his wife, Maria Rosa di Miceli, a second cousin of Gagliano’s mother, Leoluchina lo Bosco. Battaglia was boss until 1920, when he was succeeded by Michelangelo Gennaro. Michelangelo Gennaro is related to known mafiosi through both of his parents. On his father’s side, he’s the nephew of Cutrera by marriage. On his mother’s, he’s the first cousin of Don Antonino Cascio.

Don Antonino comes from a line of landowners. He was a witness at the wedding of Dr. Michele Navarra’s parents. And he is called a “capofamiglia” in a 1962 Italian Senate hearing. His daughter, Tommasa, married Dr. Navarra in 1936.

Antonino’s wife, Rosalia di Miceli, is his first cousin, once removed. Rosalia’s sister, Giovanna, was married to Angelo Gagliano, a powerful, and violent, mafioso with business on both sides of the Atlantic. He’s also the uncle of Michele Navarra.

Gennaro served for four years as the head of the Corleonesi Mafia, and was followed by Angelo Gagliano, who was killed in 1930. Before his death, it’s possible there was another boss, Dr. Marcellino Benenti. After 1930, the boss in Corleone was Don Calogero lo Bue, gabellotto of the Donna Beatrice estate. Calogero was married to Giovanna Lampo, who was a second cousin of the di Miceli sisters, and the third cousin of Michele Navarra. He ruled until his natural death, from diabetes complications, in 1943. Thereafter the boss was the hospital director and son of a teacher, Dr. Michele Navarra. Through Navarra’s second cousin, once removed, Lucia Cannaliato, he is related, somewhat distantly, both to Michelangelo Gennaro, another second cousin, once removed, from Lucia, and to Toto Riina. Lucia’s husband, Giacomo Riina, was Toto’s great uncle. Navarra was assassinated in 1958 on the orders of his successor, Luciano Leggio.

Luciano Leggio’s grandfather, Girolamo, had a sister in law, Biagia Cascio, who was a second cousin of Michelangelo Gennaro and Antonino Cascio. Leggio ran the mafia in Corleone until he was imprisoned in 1974. From then until his 1993 capture, Toto Riina was the boss. Toto’s brother, Gaetano, assumed leadership, and was himself arrested in 2011, at the age of 79.

Sources

Mike Dash. “The First Family: Terror, Extortion and the Birth of the American Mafia.” Random House, 2009.

William J. Flynn. “The Barrel Mystery.” New York: The James A. McCann Co., 1919.

Henner Hess. “Mafia and Mafiosi: Origin, Power and Myth.” NYU Press, 1988.

Nick Squires. “Head of Mafia in ‘The Godfather’ town arrested.” Telegraph. Published 1 July 2011. Accessed http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/8610833/Head-of-Mafia-in-The-Godfather-town-arrested.html 19 May 2016.

Senato della Repubblica, V Legislatura, Doc. XXIII. “Commissione Parlamentare d’inchiesta sul fenomeno della mafia in Sicilia.” 20 December 1962. Accessed http://en.calameo.com/read/0012258332ab89457a3a8 29 February 2016.

Labor and the Mafia

The image of a saint was often burned in the initiation ritual into the mafia. The feast day of Saint Isidore, patron of labrorers, is 15 May.

When the pioneering labor organizer Bernardino Verro joined the Mafia in the spring of 1893, he was inducted through a ritual involving his own blood, and the burning image of a skull.

The Fratuzzi leader at this turbulent time in Sicilian history was Giuseppe Battaglia. Critchley says that in December 1889, when Giovanni Vella was killed, the leader was Paolino Streva, whose uncle had led the cosca before him. Other sources, however, say that Battaglia took over leadership from the former capo, Salvatore Cutrera, in the early 1890s.

A proverb popular in the late 19th century in Sicily divided a peasant’s opportunities into two categories: immigrate, or become a criminal. Of course, some managed doing neither, and others did both. Birds of passage—migrant workers from Sicily who intended to return—included the father of Vito Ciancimino and his brothers, who were barbers and shoemakers. Giuseppe Morello‘s stepfather, Bernardo Terranova, and his family were also among the early wave of immigrants that left Corleone in the 1890s, seeking opportunity in America.

Critchley says that Gagliano was Giuseppe Morello’s uncle, but I have not been able to confirm this. The men shared a first name and with it, the common nickname “Piddu.” Using clues from two sources that give Battaglia’s year of birth and his father’s name to find his vital records, I’ve learned that Battaglia’s wife, Maria Rosa di Miceli, is a third cousin of Morello.

During a brief liberal period of Italian leadership around 1893, a worker’s movement arose, with Corleone as its hub. Bernardino Verro held one of the first labor conferences there in the summer of 1893, a few months after he joined the local mafia.

John Alcorn, writing about the Fasci Siciliani, offers another proverb to explain why Verro would have enlisted the aid of the criminal organization. “If he can take what you have, give him what he wants.” Unlike other successful labor movements that relied upon funds to support their members until the conclusion of negotiations, Corleone’s Fasci Siciliani (also called the Sicilian Leagues in English) used threats and violence to enforce the strike. In order to make a credible threat against landowners and potential scabs, Verro enlisted those who excelled at extorting and committing violence.

Because neither the mafia, the landowners, nor the peasants were as solidly organized as history can make them appear, the reality was one of strike interspersed with violence, but also with compromises from landowners, and strike-breaking laborers. At the end of the planting season, in the late fall, most workers were still locked out of their lands. A long simmering banking scandal erupted, taking the liberal prime minister with it. The Italian government switched to conservative rule, and peasants redirected their frustration from the landowners to the state. In the ensuing riots, government offices were burned down, and several dozen people were killed by troops who fired on demonstrators.

The failure of the strikes of 1893 to bring fair contracts, resulted in massive emigration from Sicily, writes Alcorn. An early wave of pioneering immigrants provides a critical mass in the destination country, making it easier for others to follow. As I’ve written in this blog before, part of the structure that evolved to provide such aid, was the early Sicilian Mafia in America.

 

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.

David Critchley. The Origin of Organized Crime in America: The New York City Mafia, 1891-1931. Routledge: New York, 2009.

Marzia Andretta, “La mafia corleonese e la sua continuità.” Accessed http://www.comune.corleone.pa.it/file%20da%20scaricare/Saggi%20palermo1_Saggi%20palermo1.pdf 6 May 2016. (Citing Archivio di Stato di Palermo, GP, aa. 1906-1925, b. 267, f. 3, Associazione per delinquere scopertosi in Corleone, 13 agosto 1916.)

Featured image credit: Isidore, patron saint of laborers, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=183298