1863
“I mafiusi di la Vicaria” opens in Palermo
A comedy in Sicilian dialect about the inmates of the Vicaria, the city prison, was a hit with audiences. Historians believe it was this play that spread the word “mafia” across Italy, along with the first version of the myth of the “good mafia”: initiation, a code, a ban on robbing the defenceless.
1864
Baron Turrisi Colonna describes the “sect” and its silence
Nicolò Turrisi Colonna published a book about a “sect” that kept the countryside around Palermo in fear; the word “mafia” does not yet appear. According to Dickie, omertà grew out of umiltà, “humility”: at first it was a code of submission, not of manliness.
Told in: Words, the Family Way, «Other People’s Thoughts in Your Head»
1870–1879
Franchetti finds millers under mafia patronage
The Tuscan Leopoldo Franchetti toured Sicily and wrote a book still counted among the best descriptions of the mafia. In it, the millers' societies operate under the protection of influential mafiosi; Gambetta concludes that a cartel needs a guarantor who stops anyone from cheating.
1872–1875
Dr Galati and the lemon grove
The Palermo doctor Gaspare Galati inherited a grove where the warden, Carollo, skimmed a share of the crop and stole. When Galati sacked him, the new warden was shot in the back (1874), and the doctor received letters calling the killer a “man of honour”. In 1875 Galati sent a memorandum to the Minister of the Interior; historians have reconstructed the case from his testimony.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «The Five Pillars of the Business» · Business, the Family Way, «Whetting the Appetite» · Money, the Family Way, «Forwards and Futures»
1889
Corleone: Captain Vella killed by his own routine
Vella, a captain of the rural guard, was investigating cattle rustling. The young Giuseppe Morello, Dash relates, studied his habits: the same café every evening, the Stella d'Italia, the same way home, always alone. Twenty years later the same method would work against Petrosino.
1893
Bernardino Verro joins the Corleone Fratuzzi
The peasant leader Verro was initiated into the local mafia for protection and soon regretted it: the Fratuzzi took over his club and passed counterfeit money there. He broke with them, was declared a traitor, and on 3 November 1915 he was shot outside Corleone town hall.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «How to Get into the Family» · Money, the Family Way, «Never Play with a Cardsharp»
1893
Marquis Notarbartolo, former head of the Bank of Sicily, is murdered
In the 1880s Notarbartolo ran the Bank of Sicily and fought a hopeless battle against loans to fictitious borrowers; the bank's board forced him out, and suspicion fell on a board member, Raffaele Palizzolo, who had mafia ties. In 1893 Notarbartolo was murdered; Palizzolo was later tried. For the Consigliere it is a story about what happens to other people's money when nobody is watching.
Told in: Money, the Family Way, «Banks and Seals» · Money, the Family Way, «Why “Everything in Common” Doesn’t Work»
1900-04
The Sangiorgi report and the Palermo round-up
Police chief Ermanno Sangiorgi took the Palermo mafia apart in 485 handwritten pages: eight cosche, 218 “men of honour”, the ritual, the code, the common funds. On the night of 27–28 April 1900 a round-up followed his list, but in June 1901 only 32 men were found guilty.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «Take It Apart and Count» · Business, the Family Way, «How an Organisation Grows»
1902-12-31
Morello registers the Ignatz Florio Co-operative
The Morello family's building company started with $1,200 of capital, grew on mortgages and built without a cash reserve. The panic of 1907 sent prices crashing, by the summer of 1908 the money had run out, and the co-operative, though it lingered until 1913, never made good its losses.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «Other People’s Money» · Business, the Family Way, «What You Put In, What You Lost» · Business, the Family Way, «How an Organisation Grows»
1903–1907
The Black Hand: a label anyone could use
Extortionists in New York began signing their letters to shopkeepers “the Black Hand”, but there was no single organisation behind it: gangsters wrote them, and so did jealous neighbours. Between 1903 and 1907 bombings and attacks under that name went up fourfold.
Told in: Money, the Family Way, «How They Broke the Machine» · Business, the Family Way, «At the Table» · Words, the Family Way, «How to Stir a Feeling»
1903-04
Flynn puts Stanton Street under watch
Secret Service agents dressed as labourers logged everyone who called on Morello's men, from eight in the morning until dark. In two weeks they had about ten names and seven or eight faces they could not identify, and Flynn honestly wrote down both.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «Take It Apart and Count» · Business, the Family Way, «One Thing at a Time»
1907
The panic of 1907 wipes out Little Italy's banks
Financial panic and recession hit New York's immigrant districts: in Little Italy alone twenty-five banks failed and twelve thousand customers lost their savings. Morello's building sites and Lupo's trade were caught in the same blow.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «Other People’s Money» · Business, the Family Way, «Money and Time» · Money, the Family Way, «Fat Tails and Black Swans»
1908-11
The printer Comito starts forging notes for Morello
Antonio Comito, an unemployed printer, was taken to Highland and set to printing Canadian and American notes; the ink bled and the green would not come right. Most of what we know comes from his own testimony: he later told the Secret Service everything, which helped send Morello to prison.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «A Trial Run» · Money, the Family Way, «The Price Knows Everything» · Words, the Family Way, «Free Admission»
1909-03-12
Joe Petrosino is murdered in Palermo
The New York detective had come to Sicily in secret to collect the criminal records of gangsters. He dined at the same Caffè Oreto at the same hour and went about without his revolver; on the evening of 12 March he was shot on his way from the café. A habit that saves effort is a habit the enemy can see.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «Goal and Habit» · Words, the Family Way, «Meetings and Paper»
1909-11-15
Flynn arrests Morello; in 1910 he gets 25 years
More than six years after the watch on Stanton Street, the Secret Service arrested Morello for counterfeiting, and in February 1910 the court gave him twenty-five years. Flynn held that what mattered was the conviction, not the arrest, and that is what he got.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «Character» · Business, the Family Way, «Take It Apart and Count» · Money, the Family Way, «How to Get Rid of Risk»
1910–1911
A report of victory over the Black Hand, and seventy bombs
Secret Service chief John Wilkie announced that after Morello's arrest Black Hand–style extortion had fallen by more than 75%. Critchley, however, counts 70 bombings in New York in 1911 against 35 in 1910. Different definitions can reconcile the figures, but the report needs checking, not taking on trust.
1915-05-17
Giosuè Gallucci, “the King of Little Italy”, is killed
After Morello's arrest Gallucci became master of East Harlem: the lottery, ice in summer and coal in winter, loan-sharking. Many attempts on his life had failed and he seemed untouchable, until he was shot with his son in a coffee shop on 109th Street. He left his heirs $3,402 in cash, not the million the newspapers talked about.
Told in: Money, the Family Way, «Fat Tails and Black Swans» · Money, the Family Way, «Eggs and Baskets» · Money, the Family Way, «The Bookkeeper’s Arithmetic»
1916
Brooklyn's artichoke dealers haggle down the Camorra
The Neapolitan gangs demanded $50 a wagon from the artichoke wholesalers. The dealers refused, offered $15, and they settled on $25. Even extortion turned out to be a price negotiation, in which the weaker side has its own leverage.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «Price in the Client’s Eyes» · Business, the Family Way, «At the Table»
1917-11
Ralph Daniello, “the Barber”, goes to the police
A rank-and-file man of the Brooklyn Camorra lived on fifteen dollars a week. On the run, he wrote to his boss, Vollero, asking for money and for payments to his parents, got not a line back, and so wrote to the police instead. His testimony shed light on twenty-three murders; Vollero was sentenced to death, commuted to life, and the Brooklyn Camorra never recovered.
1919-01
The Eighteenth Amendment brings Prohibition to America
The states ratified the amendment banning alcohol, and from January 1920 it took effect. Gangsters became the “best friends” of drinking Americans, and Sicilians fleeing Mori's round-ups found work and enormous profits in that America.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «What the Street Wants» · Business, the Family Way, «In Case of War» · Money, the Family Way, «How a Market Is Run» · Money, the Family Way, «Going Public»
1922-05-08
Shoot-out on Grand Street: only bystanders are hit
A block from police headquarters, five men, Giuseppe Masseria among them, opened fire on one another. The paper reported four men and two women wounded, while the gunmen missed each other; in August Masseria dodged other people's bullets with “astounding agility”.
1926-05
Mori, “the Iron Prefect”, begins his round-ups in Sicily
Cesare Mori came to Don Vito Cascio Ferro's town and launched round-ups that arrested more than a hundred people at a time; five hundred mafiosi, according to Dickie, simply left for America. In 1929 Mussolini telegraphed that the job was done, and the press was told to stop writing about the mafia. In 1943 the regime fell and the mafia came back.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «In Case of War» · Business, the Family Way, «Take It Apart and Count» · Business, the Family Way, «What Nobody Knows»
1928-12-05
Cleveland: police stumble on a meeting at the Hotel Statler
Patrolman Frank Osowski saw some tough-looking men getting out of cars outside the hotel and called for backup. Twenty-three Italians from different cities were held, all in new silk underwear; fifteen admitted to being suspicious persons. They recognised one another, and an outsider's eye gave them away.
1929-05
The Atlantic City conference: “bury the past”
After the St Valentine's Day Massacre the Chicago gang leaders, Capone and his enemies, met at the seaside resort to make peace. According to a press account, they agreed to “bury the past”, with Johnny Torrio as arbiter.
1930–1931
Capone becomes “Public Enemy No. 1”, then gets 11 years for tax
The Chicago Crime Commission put Capone first on its list of “public enemies”, and in 1931 he was jailed for eleven years for tax evasion. His love of publicity was anathema to the Sicilian mafia: the noise made him a target.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «Getting People to Talk About You» · Money, the Family Way, «Debt, Taxes and How Much to Pay Out»
1931-04-15
Giuseppe Masseria is killed on Coney Island
The “boss of bosses” was shot dead in a Coney Island restaurant; Charles Luciano was behind the killing. So ended the first phase of the Castellammarese War, which, according to Valachi, Tommaso Gagliano had funded more than anyone, with $140,000, never getting a nickel back.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «Why the Consigliere Never Went to Harvard»
1931-09-10
Maranzano, the short-lived “boss of all bosses”, is killed
Salvatore Maranzano, the war's winner, collected tribute in banquet tickets: Capone bought a thousand at six dollars each. In September he was killed in his own office on Park Avenue, leaving a mortgage rather than a fortune. The legend that Luciano then wiped out the old bosses and invented the Commission is not borne out by the documents.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «Why the Consigliere Never Went to Harvard» · Business, the Family Way, «Scout First» · Money, the Family Way, «The Kings’ Pyramids» · Money, the Family Way, «A Roof Over Your Head»
1933–1936
Luciano's syndicate and a fifty-year sentence
In the autumn of 1933 Luciano took over a syndicate that levied tribute on brothels and squeezed them ever harder. In February 1936 he was arrested by prosecutor Thomas Dewey's men; the testimony of the women who worked there proved decisive, and Luciano got fifty years. He was released and deported in 1946.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «What to Tweak» · Business, the Family Way, «Power»
1935
Terranova, “the Artichoke King”, goes broke
Ciro Terranova, Morello's half-brother, was taken for a millionaire and in 1935 gave his daughter a lavish wedding. But his racket took in less than a third of a million a year, the tax authorities did the rest, and two years later he went bankrupt over a bill for $543.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «What Stays in Your Pocket» · Money, the Family Way, «Debt, Taxes and How Much to Pay Out» · Money, the Family Way, «A Roof Over Your Head»
1936–1947
The last years of Lupo the Wolf
Out of prison, Ignazio Lupo went back to squeezing Brooklyn's bakers, but the world had changed: the bakers complained to the governor, and in 1936 he was sent back to finish his sentence. He came out on 21 December 1946 with seven dollars in his pocket and died three weeks later; the newspapers never mentioned it.
1942-02
The Normandie fire and the legend of the 1943 landing
After the liner Normandie caught fire on the Hudson, Naval Intelligence, fearing sabotage, turned to the men who controlled the port, reaching Luciano through Joseph Lanza. From this grew the legend that the mafia helped the Allies land in Sicily; most historians, Dickie writes, consider it a fable, and there is no evidence.
1947-05-01
Portella della Ginestra: Giuliano's men fire on a rally
The bandit Salvatore Giuliano, the best-known face in post-war Sicily, loved photographers and newspapers. His men opened fire on a peasants' May Day rally; eleven people died. In the summer of 1950 his body was found in Castelvetrano, and Pisciotta, who had betrayed him, died in the Ucciardone prison in 1954, poisoned with strychnine.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «Getting People to Talk About You» · Business, the Family Way, «Who to Look Up To»
1957
American families close their books until 1976
The American families decided to admit no new members for nineteen years: the title of made man was their main product, and they kept its numbers under control. Frank Scalice, who by one account was selling membership to anyone who would pay, was shot dead the same year.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «What He Bites On» · Business, the Family Way, «How an Organisation Grows»
1957-10
Lunch at the Spanò and the birth of the Palermo Commission
Over a five-hour lunch at the Spanò restaurant in Palermo, Joe Bonanno, as Tommaso Buscetta told it, suggested the Sicilians set up a Commission on the American model. It was made up of district heads; Dickie stresses that there was nothing essentially new about it, and Bonanno does not even mention the lunch in his memoirs.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «How an Organisation Grows» · Business, the Family Way, «Who to Look Up To»
1959–1963
The “Sack of Palermo”: building under the mafia
While Salvo Lima and Vito Ciancimino ran public works, the city council issued 4,205 building permits, and eight in ten were made out to five people, among them a coal merchant and a doorman. In November 1959 the Villa Deliella, one of the finest Art Nouveau houses in the city, was demolished in a single night.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «What You Put In, What You Lost» · Money, the Family Way, «A Roof Over Your Head»
1962–1963
Joseph Valachi describes how the mafia works
A soldier from one of the New York families talked under threat of the electric chair, and in 1963 he testified before a Senate committee. Critchley writes that his words, as they were interpreted at the time, became the basis of every later model of the mafia as a single centralised empire, though the FBI later saw fragmentation instead.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «Secrets» · Business, the Family Way, «How Numbers Lie» · Money, the Family Way, «Honest Protection» · Money, the Family Way, «The Kings’ Pyramids»
1963-06-30
The Ciaculli bomb and the dissolution of the Sicilian Commission
A dispute over a 1962 heroin shipment escalated into a war between clans. A booby-trapped Alfa Romeo abandoned at Ciaculli was apparently meant for the Grecos; instead it killed Lieutenant Mario Malausa and six other men trying to defuse it. Police arrested nearly two thousand people, and in the summer of 1963 the Commission decided to dissolve itself.
1971
The Italian-American League against “mafia” in The Godfather
While Coppola and producer Albert Ruddy were preparing to shoot the film, the Italian-American Civil Rights League, linked to Joseph Colombo, demanded that the words “Mafia” and “Cosa Nostra” be dropped. Ruddy agreed: “Mafia” appeared only twice in the script, and in the end the League backed the picture.
1973-03-29
Leonardo Vitale walks into Palermo police headquarters
The thirty-two-year-old mafioso described the ritual, the families and his own killings. He was declared partly sane, and at the 1977 trial only he and his uncle were convicted out of twenty-eight defendants. He spent years in an asylum, came out in 1984 and was killed soon afterwards.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «Secrets» · Words, the Family Way, «Why People Pay» · Words, the Family Way, «Other People’s Thoughts in Your Head»
1974
Sindona's empire collapses
Michele Sindona, Italy's most influential financier, funded the Christian Democrats generously and was suspected of laundering Cosa Nostra's money. In 1974 his empire collapsed and he fled to America; in 1979 he staged his own kidnapping in Sicily to frighten his former allies into saving his banks, and in 1986 he died in prison after drinking coffee laced with cyanide.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «What You Put In, What You Lost» · Money, the Family Way, «How Banks Go Up in Smoke»
1976-05
Giovanni Brusca is initiated
Brusca, aged nineteen, was asked how he felt about killing, his finger was pricked, and Totò Riina set fire to the holy picture in his hands. Then Riina introduced him to his own father as a man of honour: by the rules, members may recognise each other only through a third man. The account is Brusca's own.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «How to Get into the Family»
1976-09
FBI agent Joseph Pistone becomes Donnie Brasco
Pistone vanished from every FBI list and for almost five years, until July 1981, lived in New York among the men of the Bonanno family, posing as a small-time jewel thief. A call to his contact every two or three days, no notes on him, “the less you say, the fewer lies you tell”.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «Character» · Business, the Family Way, «A Machine Without People» · Money, the Family Way, «The Bookkeeper’s Arithmetic» · Words, the Family Way, «Match the Work, Not the Gestures»
1978-05-09
Peppino Impastato is murdered
The son of a mafia family from Cinisi broke with his father, wrote against the mafia and mocked the local boss on the radio. The mafia killed him, but the papers reported a left-wing fanatic blown up by his own bomb. It took fifteen years to establish the truth, and in 2000 a parliamentary commission found the investigation hasty and careless.
Told in: Words, the Family Way, «The Frame Decides» · Words, the Family Way, «How Minds Change»
1979-07
Carmine Galante is murdered in Brooklyn
The head of the Bonanno family, out of prison only a few months, was shot dead over lunch in the back yard of Joe and Mary's restaurant on Knickerbocker Avenue. The two bodyguards eating with him simply walked away, and soon both became captains. Pistone saw from the inside that nobody announced the change in advance, and how fast the crews regrouped afterwards.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «Politics» · Business, the Family Way, «Your Capo»
1981-04-23
Stefano Bontate is killed: the second Mafia war begins
A year earlier Tommaso Buscetta had stayed with Bontate and Inzerillo and seen that they were wholly absorbed in the heroin business: dozens of lorries stopped outside Inzerillo's villa every day, while Riina's Corleonesi patiently prepared for war. In January 1981 Buscetta flew to Brazil. Bontate was shot on his way home from his own birthday party, Inzerillo two and a half weeks later.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «Friends and Enemies» · Money, the Family Way, «How to Get Rid of Risk» · Money, the Family Way, «Too Sure of Yourself»
1981-07-26
Operation Donnie Brasco is shut down
War had broken out in the Bonanno family, high-ranking men were being killed, and the FBI decided to pull Pistone out, though he asked to stay on until August. Agents went to Sonny Black's bar and told him who his protégé really was. Sonny Black did not come back from a sit-down, and in August 1982 his body was found on Staten Island.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «When to Close Up Shop» · Business, the Family Way, «Traps in Your Own Head» · Business, the Family Way, «Leaving, Stealing, Lean Years»
1982-06-18
Roberto Calvi is found under Blackfriars Bridge
The head of Milan's Banco Ambrosiano, like Sindona, rose, fell and tried to save himself through blackmail. He was found hanged in London with bricks in his pockets; the police at first ruled it suicide. In 2002 the Italian authorities concluded it was murder, relying on a mafia turncoat's account, but in 2007 the court acquitted the accused.
1983
Allen Dorfman, keeper of the pension fund, is shot dead
From the 1950s to the 1970s the truckers' union pension fund, through Dorfman, lent money to those building and buying Las Vegas casinos, and many loans were never repaid. From the casinos themselves, by federal estimates, the mob skimmed about three hundred million dollars. Dorfman was shot dead before the verdict was read.
1983-07
A car bomb in Palermo kills magistrate Rocco Chinnici
The mafia blew up the car of Falcone's chief in the city centre; Chinnici, two bodyguards and the building's concierge were killed. Antonino Caponnetto took his place and built a team in which everyone shared the knowledge: Falcone, Borsellino, Di Lello, Guarnotta. So the death of one man could no longer stop the work.
1984-09-29
Buscetta agrees to talk: 366 arrest warrants
Caponnetto announced at a press conference that Tommaso Buscetta was cooperating and that 366 arrest warrants had been issued; there were not enough handcuffs, Dickie relates. Buscetta had agreed to talk only to Falcone. So began the preparation of the maxi-trial.
1990
Medford: the FBI records an initiation ceremony for the first time
In the Patriarca family in Medford, Massachusetts, a mafia initiation ceremony was captured on law-enforcement tape for the first time. The initiates swore not to divulge the secret; the recording became proof of what until then had been known only from turncoats.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «Secrets»
1992
The mafia murders judges Falcone and Borsellino
Cosa Nostra's two chief enemies died in bombings two months apart; Falcone's wife and bodyguards died with him. But the team Caponnetto had built was designed so that knowledge did not die with the people, and the work went on.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «The Story He Tells Himself» · Business, the Family Way, «What He’s Afraid Of» · Business, the Family Way, «Money and Time» · Business, the Family Way, «How to Look at People»
1992-01-30
The Court of Cassation upholds the maxi-trial verdicts
Cosa Nostra was sure that Corrado Carnevale, “the Sentence Killer”, would quash them as he had before. But Arnaldo Valente presided, and the verdicts stood. Riina, who had promised his men for years that Rome would fix everything, lost face and answered with war on the state.
Told in: Money, the Family Way, «Fat Tails and Black Swans» · Business, the Family Way, «What He’s Afraid Of» · Business, the Family Way, «What Nobody Knows»
1992-03-12
Salvo Lima is murdered
The Christian Democrat was shot on the road into Palermo, the first victim of Riina's war on the state, before Falcone and Borsellino. A turncoat explained that Lima had guaranteed things would be fixed in Rome and had not delivered; Dickie notes there are no grounds for claiming he ever really made such promises.
1993-01
Totò Riina is arrested
The “boss of bosses” had been on the run for almost a quarter of a century; the carabinieri had only a 1969 photograph of him. He was traced through surveillance footage in which an arrested mafioso recognised Riina's gardener, son and wife, and was seized in his car in Piazza Einstein. According to Dickie, he at first clearly panicked and only recovered on learning that his captors were carabinieri.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «A Caveman in a Suit» · Business, the Family Way, «One Thing at a Time»
1994-03-19
Father Peppe Diana is murdered in Casal di Principe
The priest who had spoken out openly against the Camorra clans was shot dead inside his church. To stop him becoming a martyr, the frame was changed at once: Giuseppe Quadrano, a camorrista turned state witness, made up motives, and a local paper claimed the priest had been a camorrista himself. In 2003 a court established that the shooter was Quadrano himself.
Told in: Words, the Family Way, «The Frame Decides» · Words, the Family Way, «How Minds Change»
1996
The number of mafia turncoats peaks at 424
Riina answered the turncoats with terror: Salvatore Cancemi heard him say their relatives should be killed to the twentieth degree. The more frightening it became inside, the more people decided they were safer with the state, and by 1996 there were 424 of them. The fear that held the organisation together began to dissolve it.
2000-03-02
Brooklyn: indictments over pumped-up stocks
A federal grand jury indicted nineteen people; six of them, according to the prosecution, were linked to the Bonanno, Genovese and Colombo families. From 1993 to 1996, through two brokerages they partly controlled, they pumped up the share prices of four companies and dumped the stock on trusting buyers.
2004
The Secondigliano feud: the “secessionists” against the Di Lauro clan
Paolo Di Lauro had built his drug trade as a franchise with autonomous lieutenants; his son Cosimo put them on salary and took away their independence. Some of the lieutenants broke away, and in Naples a war began that Saviano described from close up. One of the first targets was Ferdinando Bizzarro, the clan's former lieutenant in Melito, who had wanted to call the shots himself.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «How the Family Grows» · Business, the Family Way, «The Story He Tells Himself» · Business, the Family Way, «Friends and Enemies»
2006
Provenzano is arrested; his pizzini lead to 45 more arrests
For thirteen years after Riina's arrest Bernardo Provenzano ruled without telephones or meetings, only notes passed from hand to hand. The notes were what undid the system: in the summer of 2006, after the boss's arrest, police used the decoded pizzini to arrest forty-five people in a single morning.
Told in: Business, the Family Way, «How the Don Decides» · Business, the Family Way, «One Thing at a Time»
The Consigliere