![]() Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Colombian National PoliceĪs the most prominent capo of the eighties and nineties, Colombian narcoterrorist and drug trafficker Pablo Escobar is estimated to have murdered some 4,000 people. ![]() After the Apalachin Meeting in 1957, he unexpectedly took control of the American Mafia Commission, and his power grew after Vito Genovese was imprisoned.Ī discreet and secretive man, he died of a heart attack aged 74. ![]() Carlo Gambino (1902 – 1976)Įarning nicknames such as the Godfather, Don Carlo, the King of the United States Underworld, the Dictator of New York City and the King of the American Mafia, Carlo Gambino was head of the Mangano crime family, which he renamed the Gambino criminal family after he assassinated Albert Anastasia. It is said that he was the inspiration for Mario Puzo’s book and later Francis Ford Coppola’s film The Godfather. He survived an assassination attempt which killed Albert Anastasia, escaped many legal cases brought against him, and eventually died of a heart attack aged 82, leaving $52 million behind. Nicknamed the Prime Minister, he used an East Asian connection during the Vietnam War to traffic heroin, effectively cutting off the activities of the Italian mob who usually controlled trade. His alliance with Lucky Luciano in bootlegging, gambling, and building operations gained him influence, and when Luciano went to prison, Costello became head of the Luciano (later Genovese) crime family. New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection.īorn in Italy but raised in East Harlem, Costello began his criminal career at the age of 13. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Library of Congress. Inspiration for ‘The Godfather’ Frank Costello, American mobster, testifying before the Kefauver Committee investigating organized crime, 1951. He later died of a heart attack in Naples. However, his 30-50 year sentence was shortened after he cooperated with the US Navy during World War Two, then commuted on the condition he be deported to Italy. Lucky’s luck ran out when he was convicted for sex work racketeering. He established the Commission in 1931, which formally connected the different mob families and aimed to prevent future gang wars. Known for being the first gangster to ‘legitimise’ mafia power in America, Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano started his life of crime in the Five Points gang, before becoming a top assistant in Masseria’s criminal organization after the Castellammarese War. He was eventually murdered in a barbershop, likely by members of the Genovese and Gambino families. It was only after the notorious Castellammarese War, a bloody struggle for power amongst the Italian-American crime factions, that he was appointed leader of the modern Gambino crime family. He later became boss of the Mangano crime family. organisation, which allowed him to exercise control over New York’s entire shoreline. He allied himself with the mafia, and co-founded and later became boss of the Murder, Inc. Born in Italy, Anastasia began his career as a longshoreman in the US. Nicknamed The Earthquake, The One-Man Army, Mad Hatter, and Lord High Executioner, Umberto ‘Albert’ Anastasia was one of the founders of the modern American Mafia. The life and times of perhaps the most infamous gangster in American history. He died of a heart attack, leaving behind a whopping $3 billion fortune. He was eventually imprisoned for tax evasion but was later released. However, it was after he publicly murdered seven rival gang members during the infamous Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre that he was declared Public Enemy No.1 by the city of Chicago. He was a Five Points Gang member as a teenager, before moving to Chicago to start a bootlegging business as co-founder of the Chicago Outfit, which later expanded to include smuggling and sex work.Īlong with his methods of extreme violence, he often bribed police, judges and even the Mayor of Chicago. Al Capone (1899-1947)Įarning the nicknames Scarface, Big Al, Big Boy, and Snorky, Alphonse Gabriel Capone was born in New York. Here are ten of the most violent, prominent and feared mob bosses in history. As a result, gang mob bosses have almost always been notoriously untouchable. Often deeply hierarchical, wide-reaching, and difficult to infiltrate, the arm of organised crime networks often reaches further than the state, and functions as a kind of quasi-law enforcement. However, behind these fictional depictions were real bosses at the helm of vast and violent smuggling, laundering, bootlegging, sex work, drug, kidnapping and murder operations. Immortalised in Hollywood films like The Godfather, mob bosses have long sparked the public’s imagination.
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