Born: November 27, 1897, Tufino, Italy
Died: February 14, 1969, Springfield,
Missouri
Nicknames: Don Vito
Associations: Charles “Lucky” Luciano, Joe
Masseria, Joe Valachi An American Mafia don with a
complex legacy, Vito Genovese was ruthless,
ambitious and power hungry, remembered as much for
his heavily feared reputation as for being at least
partially responsible for the downfall of organized
crime in the United States in the latter half of the
20th century.
Genovese was one of the most powerful Mob lords of
his day, but his desire to be named “Boss of Bosses”
— chairman of the Commission, the Mafia’s national
governing body — led to the secret society’s
unmasking at the infamous Apalachin Summit in 1957,
as well as from the public testimony of one of his
lieutenants, Joseph Valachi, the first “made” man to
ever admit the Mob’s existence in a public forum.
When Valachi spoke in front of a U.S. Senate
committee in 1963, he revealed details about the
Mafia that had for decades been shrouded in myth and
mystery. Both incidents were crushing blows to the
brand of organized crime Genovese and his underworld
contemporaries subscribed to.
Born near Naples in Italy, Genovese came to New York
City when he was 15 years old. His family settled in
Manhattan’s Little Italy neighborhood near Mulberry
Street. By the time he was 19, he had his first
conviction in his new country (a one-year stint
behind bars for illegal gun possession) and had made
fast friends with future Mafia visionary Charles
“Lucky” Luciano, at that time a fellow aspiring
wiseguy. Genovese went on to become Luciano’s most
reliable and trusted enforcer and hitman. As
Luciano’s star rose, so did Genovese’s. They
literally killed their way to the top.
Going to work for Little Italy’s Prohibition-era
godfather Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria, the pair
grew to be two of Masseria’s main lieutenants. In
1930, Masseria is alleged to have tapped Genovese to
murder Bronx-based Mob chief Tommy Reina, a Masseria
ally suspected of conspiring with Masseria’s
archrival, Salvatore Maranzano. The following year,
as Masseria and Maranzano squared off for underworld
supremacy in New York in a bloody conflict called
the Castellammarese War (Castellammarese was the
region of Sicily where Maranzano and his supporters
traced their roots), Genovese was part of a hit team
that assassinated Masseria in a Coney Island
restaurant. Luciano and Genovese quickly turned
their attention to Maranzano, who thought they were
on his side, but in fact remained his enemies.
The pair successfully conspired to have Maranzano
slain in his office in the fall of 1931, and upon
taking complete control of the Mob in New York,
Luciano created the Commission and the Five Families
at a conference of the country’s biggest godfathers
hosted by Luciano at a luxury hotel in Chicago. With
Luciano assuming command of one of the five freshly
minted New York crime syndicates, he named Genovese
his underboss, or No. 2 in charge. Following his
wife dying of tuberculosis in late 1931, Genovese
killed an associate and married the man’s widow, a
woman he openly coveted, two weeks later in the
early spring of 1932. His reputation for viciousness
was only enhanced.
When Luciano was sent to prison for running
prostitutes in 1936, Genovese was promoted to acting
boss of the crime family. He was only in the job for
a year when he fled the United States for Italy,
worrying he was on the verge of being indicted for
the 1934 murder of Ferdinand Boccia, an associate of
Genovese who fell out with him over a rigged card
game.
While in Italy, Genovese kept his Mafia profile
high, dabbling in numerous black market rackets,
forging ties with Italian and Sicilian dons, keeping
his criminal empire back in New York growing through
acting boss Frank Costello, a notorious underworld
fix-it man and political point man. Genovese even
aligned himself with Benito Mussolini, the Italian
dictator. According to FBI records, Genovese gave
the okay for the January 1943 slaying of
anti-Mussolini newspaper reporter Carlo Tresca in
front of Tresca’s newspaper office in Manhattan.
After World War II began, Genovese offered his help
to the U.S. military in the war effort in Italy.
Genovese was arrested by Italian authorities for a
stolen-property ring involving a U.S. Army base in
August 1944. Not long after, he was back in New York
to face charges for the Boccia murder from more than
a decade before. He was indicted in June 1945 in the
wake of the FBI gaining the cooperation of Genovese
assassin Ernie “The Hawk” Rupolo months earlier.
Held in government custody for the next year, the
case against Genovese fell apart when two other key
witnesses were slain on orders of Genovese, and he
was released in the summer of 1946, rejoining
Costello on the streets in New York atop the Luciano
crime family, a syndicate that would go on to bear
Genovese’s name before the end of the next decade.
Rupolo was executed for the betrayal in the 1960s.
Genovese ordered Costello killed in May 1957, a hit
attempt that failed but nonetheless pushed Costello
into retirement. Later that same year, Genovese
conspired to have fellow New York City boss Albert
Anastasia murdered so he could gain command of the
Commission. Anastasia was slain while sitting in his
barber’s chair about to have a shave in October.
In order to solidify his power play, Genovese called
for a meeting of Mafia dons in November at the
Apalachin, New York, estate of Pennsylvania crime
boss Joseph Barbara. The summit turned into an epic
public relations disaster when local cops raided the
conference of godfathers. More than 60 mobsters were
nabbed.
Indicted for narcotic trafficking, Genovese was
convicted in 1959 and sentenced to 15 years in
federal prison. He wouldn’t leave alive. Genovese
died of a heart attack on Valentine’s Day in 1969 in
a prison hospital in Missouri. He had feuded with
Joe Valachi, Tommy Reina’s son-in-law, behind bars.
In 1962, fearing that Genovese wanted him dead,
Valachi, a hijacking specialist turned government
witness, revealed the inner workings of the Mafia,
effectively bringing down the curtain on organized
crime’s “Golden Era.”
The Genovese crime family is still operating today
in New York City, engaging in an array of criminal
rackets, including schemes involving Wall Street and
the Internet.