Giuseppe Masseria

Giuseppe Masseria

A Sicilian immigrant from western Sicily, Masseria arrived in Manhattan around 1900.¹ He began his criminal career as a professional burglar. In 1907, twenty-one-year-old Masseria received a suspended sentence after breaking into an apartment on Elizabeth Street.² Later that year, he was arrested and discharged after making Black Hand threats against his own family.³ By 1908, he and his wife ran a saloon opposite the family home on Forsyth Street.⁴ Police believed Masseria was part of a professional burglary gang active throughout the region, after he was caught attempting to break into a New Jersey home in 1911.⁵

Masseria and three associates were captured in 1913, while trying to rob a Bowery pawnshop containing property valued at $300,000. The gang was also suspected of twelve other burglaries in the area. One of Masseria’s accomplices, Giuseppe Ruffino, was the son-in-law of Sebastiano Di Gaetano, the recent interim Mafia boss who had been suspected of a Black Hand kidnaping with Masseria in 1910.⁶

The police found an assortment of tools that “any burglar would have been envious of.” They also discovered fingerprints at the scene that matched those taken from Masseria in 1907. The science of fingerprint identification had only been recently introduced to US courts. At trial, a skeptical jury was given a live demonstration of its merits by a detective from the Bertillon Bureau. The prosecution also had Masseria display his impressive gold teeth to the court before his career as a burglar was finally ended with a four-and-a-half-year sentence in Sing Sing Prison.⁷

In 1921, Mafia leaders Ignazio Lupo, Giuseppe Morello and other allies made a short trip to Palermo.⁸ The reason for their voyage was later described in a confidential Secret Service report: ⁹ 

When Lupo and Morello were convicted fifteen or sixteen years ago on our counterfeiting case, new leaders arose. Since that time they have grown very strong and very popular. Upon the release of Lupo and Morello they tried to come back into power, but the new organization here in America would not permit this. Consequently, Lupo and Morello and a few of their old ‘standbys’ went to Sicily, taking it up there with the main headquarters endeavouring to be put back in power. They also refused … since that time Morello has moved to the West Side and both he and Lupo are living behind bars and shutters. Their assassination is expected momentarily.

Further detail was given in the memoirs of Mafioso Nicola Gentile. He explained that Lupo, Morello and ten others had been condemned to death by boss of bosses Salvatore D’Aquila at a meeting of the US Mafia’s General Assembly. “It was a question of power. D’Aquila was a very authoritative figure and that meant that those who didn’t support him were condemned to death.”¹⁰ D’Aquila made peace with one of the condemned men, Umberto Valente, with the agreement that Valente would kill Masseria, who “at the time was capo of a New York borgata” and a growing threat to D’Aquila.¹¹

The ongoing war resulted in many casualties on both sides. Vincenzo Terranova was assassinated in May 1922. He was gunned down outside the Morello family home at 338 East 116^th Street.¹² Later that day, Valente ambushed Masseria on lower Manhattan’s Grand Street in a chaotic gun battle that left five innocent bystanders wounded. Masseria survived a second assassination attempt in August that left another eight bystanders wounded.

The battle ended three days later, when Valente was killed on a crowded Manhattan Street.¹³ Masseria managed to escape conviction for any involvement with the shootings and later relocated his family from Manhattan to the relative safety of Brooklyn. He lived on Sixty-First Street, a short distance from Frankie Yale’s neighborhood and close to his own consigliere, Saverio Pollaccia.¹⁴ 

In October 1922, the Secret Service learned that Masseria was involved with a large counterfeiting operation importing notes from Italy. He had set up headquarters in Tommy Dyke’s Italian Gardens restaurant on Broome Street, where the pair were suspected of working together.¹⁵ Also suspected was “Tony Cheese” Santulli, an ex-Sirocco-Tricker gang member who had been involved in the Camorra’s 1916 killing of gambler Giuseppe Verrazano at the restaurant.¹⁶

In July 1923, Masseria was seen at cafe run by a nephew of one of Giuseppe Morello’s close counterfeiting allies. Masseria was trying to determine whether a counterfeiter who claimed to belong to the D’Aquila Family was truly a member of the “Fratellanza” (brotherhood) before agreeing to do business with him.¹⁷ The counterfeiter in question had been trying to sell printing plates without D’Aquila’s knowledge.¹⁸ Although D’Aquila was also active in counterfeiting, his deep-seated hatred toward Lupo and Morello caused him to forbid any of his clan to conduct business with their followers. Breaking the rule meant certain death.¹⁹ 

The warring families made temporary peace in August 1923 after a large conference at Highland, New York. It was agreed that Lupo would be brought back into the Fratellanza – but Morello was still to be excluded. Yale explained to an informant that peace had been declared between the counterfeiting gangs, as something “big was coming out” and they were planning to work together. Yale and Masseria were involved together in large counterfeiting schemes in the following weeks.²⁰ 

Conflict between the Mafia Families flared-up again in 1928. Fifty-year-old Mafia leader D’Aquila was killed during a family visit to a doctor’s office in Manhattan. The assassination was ordered by Masseria, who replaced D’Aquila as the new boss of bosses, with Giuseppe Morello as his second in command. Masseria’s reign was brief. Both he and Morello were killed in the “Castellammarese War,” a violent struggle for control of the Mafia which began just two years later.²¹ Morello was killed in August 1930 in Harlem at East 116th Street, bringing the career of the first boss of the US Mafia to an end. Masseria was assassinated eight months later in Coney Island.²²