Stelio Savante plays Joe the Boss on The Making of The Mob: New York. Street gossip says the job was done by Benny Siegel, Vito Genovese, Albert Anastasia, and Joe Adonis. From that day forward, the Ace of Spades was known as the “death card.” What a legacy. When it was over Joe the Boss was dead with an Ace of Spades in his hand. While Luciano was washing his hands, twenty bullets sprayed the place. They played some cards when they finished eating. On April 15, 1931, Joe Masseria went to dinner with Luciano at Nuova Villa Tammaro in Coney Island. Along with Frank Costello, Albert Anastasia, Joe Adonis, Vito Genovese, Meyer Lansky, Benny Siegel and Louis Lepke, Luciano carried out jobs for Masseria. Lucky didn’t swear his oath over a burning saint, but he was a loyal, if ambitious soldier. Masseria pulled in the “Broadway Mob” from fellow Sicilian Charles “Lucky” Luciano. Sicilian father Don Vito Cascio Ferro sent Salvatore Maranzano to America to take over Masseria’s turf. After Frankie Yale died in July 1928, Joe Masseria got it into his head that he wanted to be the boss of bosses of all the New York mob gangs. The Castellamarese war started after Masseria pulled a $10,000 disappearing act in a power play for Joe Parrino, but Parrino was shot before he could take the helm. The assassination squad shot six people, killed two and a horse, but ran out of bullets before they got Masseria. The hitmen jumped on the running board of their getaway car and chased Masseria across East 5th Street, blasting into a crowd of Ladies Garment Industry Union workers. Two gunmen tried to take out Masseria right outside his 2nd Avenue apartment as payback from a rival mobster. Masseria’s reputation for ducking bullets started on Aug. Masseria headed what is now the Genovese crime family. He had the table manners of a Hun,” wrote Joseph Bonanno in his authorized biography, A Man of Honor. “Though he was known as ‘Joe the Boss’ his insatiable appetite could have won him the nickname `Joe the Glutton.’ He attacked a plate of spaghetti as if he were a drooling mastiff. The narrative tells the story of how crime went nationwide after young New York upstarts like Luciano, Meyer Lansky, and Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel shook off the old world ways of “Mustache Petes” like Salvatore Maranzano and Joe “the Boss” Masseria. The death of the first real “Boss of Bosses” opened the door to usher in a new regime in crime.ĪMC is continuing its annual “Mob Week” programming with the ongoing history series The Making of The Mob: New York. He couldn’t duck a barrage of bullets that came at him after a meal and some cards with Charles “Lucky” Luciano. Giuseppe Masseria rose through the ranks of New York crime virtually unscathed as “The Man Who Could Dodge Bullets” in the early 1900s. Joe “the Boss” Masseria ate off too many plates.
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December 2022
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