Lucky Luciano

Charles "Lucky" Luciano (/ˌluːtʃiˈɑːnoʊ/ LOO-chee-AH-noh; Italian: [luˈtʃaːno]; born Salvatore Lucania [salvaˈtoːre lukaˈniːa]; November 24, 1897 – January 26, 1962) was an Italian gangster who operated mainly in the United States. He started his criminal career in the Five Points Gang and was instrumental in the development of the National Crime Syndicate. Luciano is considered the father of the Italian-American Mafia for the establishment of the Commission in 1931, after he abolished the boss of bosses title held by Salvatore Maranzano following the Castellammarese War. He was also the first official boss of the modern Genovese crime family.

In 1936, Luciano was tried and convicted for compulsory prostitution and running a prostitution racket after years of investigation by District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey. Although he was sentenced to 30 to 50 years in prison, an agreement was struck with the U.S. Department of the Navy through his Jewish Mob associate, Meyer Lansky, to provide naval intelligence during World War II. In 1946, for his alleged wartime cooperation, Luciano's sentence was commuted on the condition that he be deported to Italy. Luciano died in Italy on January 26, 1962, and his body was permitted to be transported back to the United States for burial.

Charles "Lucky" Luciano was born Salvatore Lucania on November 24, 1897, in Lercara Friddi, Sicily, Italy. His parents, Antonio Lucania and Rosalia Caffarella, had four other children: Giuseppe (born 1885); Bartolomeo (born 1890); Filippa, or "Fanny" (born 1901); and Concetta (born 1903).

Luciano's father, who worked in a sulfur mine, was very ambitious and persistent in eventually moving to the United States. In The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano: The Mafia Story in His Own Words, a purported semi-autobiography that was published after his death, Luciano described how his father always purchased a new Palermo-based steamship company calendar each year and would save money for the boat trip by keeping a jar under his bed. He also mentions in the book that his father was too proud to ask for money, so instead his mother was given money in secret by Luciano's cousin, Rotolo, who also lived in Lercara Friddi. Although the book has largely been regarded as accurate, there are numerous problems that point to the possibility that it is in fact fraudulent. The book was based on conversations that Luciano supposedly had with Hollywood producer Martin Gosch in the years before Luciano's death. As The New York Times reported shortly before the book's publication, the book quotes Luciano talking about events that occurred years after his death, repeats errors from previously published books on the American Mafia and describes Luciano's participation in meetings that occurred when he was in jail.

In 1906, when Luciano was eight years old, his family emigrated to the U.S. They settled in New York City, in the borough of Manhattan on its Lower East Side, a popular destination for Italian immigrants during the period. At age 14, Luciano dropped out of school and started a job delivering hats, earning $7 per week. After winning $244 in a dice game, Luciano quit his job and began earning money on the street. That same year, Luciano's parents sent him to the Brooklyn Truancy School.

As a teenager, Luciano started his own gang and became a member of the old Five Points Gang. Unlike other street gangs, whose business was petty crime, Luciano offered protection to Jewish youngsters from Italian and Irish gangs for ten cents per week. He began learning the pimping trade in the years around World War I. Luciano met Meyer Lansky as a teenager when Luciano attempted to extort Lansky for protection money on his walk home from school. Luciano respected the younger boy's defiant responses to his threats, and the two formed a lasting partnership.

It is not clear how Luciano earned the nickname "Lucky". It may have come from surviving a severe beating and throat-slashing by three men in 1929 as the result of his refusal to work for another crime boss. The nickname may also be attributed to his luck at gambling, or to a simple mispronunciation of his last name. It is also not clear how his surname came to be rendered "Luciano", and this too may have been the result of persistent misspellings by newspapers. From 1916 to 1936, Luciano was arrested 25 times on charges including assault, illegal gambling, blackmail, and robbery but spent no time in prison.

On January 17, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution took effect and Prohibition was enforced for the next thirteen years. The amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcoholic beverages. Since the demand for alcohol continued, the resulting black market for alcoholic beverages provided criminals with an additional source of income. By 1920, Luciano had met many future Mafia leaders, including Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, the latter a longtime friend and future business partner, through the Five Points Gang. That same year, Lower Manhattan crime boss Joe Masseria recruited Luciano as one of his gunmen. Around that same time, Luciano and his close associates started working for gambler Arnold Rothstein, who immediately saw the potential financial windfall from Prohibition and educated Luciano on running bootleg alcohol as a business. Luciano, Costello and Genovese started their own bootlegging operation with financing from Rothstein.