Pod Insights Infamous America LUCKY LUCIANO Ep. 4 | "The Commission” About this episode After Luciano organizes the removal of Salvatore Maranzano, he institutes significant changes to the American Mafia. Luciano’s most notable innovation is the creation of a governing body known as The Commission. The hope is that The Commission – made up of mob bosses from across the country – will resolve internal conflicts and avoid another major war. In 1935, The Commission faces its first big test when Dutch Schultz, an infamous New York gangster, wants to kill an ambitious federal prosecutor named Thomas E. Dewey.
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1:04 Speaker 01 In April 1931, Charles Luciano brought an end to the bloody Casta La Marese War. After a year of violence and bloodshed, Luciano switched sides and organized the death of his boss, Joe Mazzaria. In doing so, Luciano made Salvatore Maranzano the victor of the American Mafia's first big war. Maranzano quickly slipped into the role of "the boss" of the Mafia. He organized all of the various gangs into five distinct families, an established structure for the families that included a boss, an underboss, captains, and soldiers. Luciano liked many of the changes,
1:45 Speaker 01 but he quickly realized that Maranzano was more dictatorial than Mazzaria. Maranzano demanded to be called "Capo di tutti capi", "the boss of all bosses". Luciano grew tired of Maranzano's behavior in near-record time, and with the help of his close friend Meyer Lansky, he orchestrated the assassination of Salvatore Maranzano. On September 10, 1931, just five months after Luciano coordinated the murder of his former boss, Joe Mazzaria, he sent four assassins to Maranzano's office.
2:21 Speaker 01 They posed as IRS agents and successfully killed the boss of all bosses. Luciano made peace with lingering Maranzano allies, and then he called a nationwide meeting of mob bosses to be held in Chicago.
2:37 Speaker 01 Bosses from all over America listened to Luciano explain his thoughts. Luciano made it clear that his mission was strictly to avoid unnecessary violence. Prohibition had been a bonanza for everyone, and gunning down people in the streets only drew unwanted attention to all of them. Luciano acknowledged the importance of Maranzano's five-family structure, but Luciano wanted to add a key player to the leadership: the consigliere. Each family would now have a consigliere to act as an advisor. The hope was that the consigliere's would be able to mediate any brewing conflicts. Luciano wanted to take a more diplomatic approach to settling disputes.
3:21 Speaker 01 Another thing that Luciano agreed with Maranzano on was keeping mafia membership strictly to those with Sicilian or Southern Italian origins. While Luciano wanted to keep working with Jewish and Irish gangsters, he believed that a member of La Cosa Nostra, which loosely translated to "this thing of ours", had to be able to trace his family lineage back to the old country.
3:46 Speaker 01 Luciano also kept omerta, the code of silence. But coinciding with omerta was a new rule: the mafia was now a lifelong membership. When a member became a so-called "made man", when he was initiated into a family, he was in it for life. The point of both rules was to make sure that no one talked to law enforcement. But the most important new development that Luciano instituted was a governing body called "the Commission". It was basically a board of directors. It consisted exclusively of bosses, and it would dictate any new rules or policies, as well as sanction murderers. Each member had a single vote, and outcomes were by majority rule.
4:31 Speaker 01 Luciano believed the Commission would help the mafia avoid another power-hungry dictator like Maranzano. But Luciano's plan wasn't entirely democratic. He made it clear that New York would be the prevailing city within the newly organized mafia. The first lineup of the commission featured just seven bosses. All five bosses from New York City, plus the boss in Buffalo and the boss in Chicago. For the moment, all the other bosses were excluded, but Luciano said there would be room for the other bosses to join in the future. Everyone at the Chicago conference agreed with Luciano's innovations. Like Luciano, they believed the creation of the commission signaled the beginning of
5:15 Speaker 01 a new era of peace and prosperity. But they would quickly discover that peace in organized crime was nothing more than a fantasy.
5:33 Speaker 01 From Black Barrel Media, this is Infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season, we're telling the story of Charles "Lucky" Luciano. He was a notorious bootlegger, a gunman, a key player in a mob war, and the father of the American mafia. This is episode four, "The Commission."
5:59 Speaker 01 Luciano and the other New York bosses returned from the Chicago conference with excitement. For too long, it seemed like achieving normalcy within the mafia was never going to happen. On the surface, Luciano appeared to have solved the problem. Now, everyone could have their territory and rackets and get on with making money. But there was one slight hiccup. The mafia had made millions through trafficking illegal alcohol because of prohibition. By the start of 1932, it became clear that that source of income was going to come to an end. Prohibition had become wildly unpopular with the public, and it had achieved none of its goals.
6:40 Speaker 01 Luciano and the others knew it was only a matter of time before prohibition was repealed. Luciano was at least a step ahead of everyone by entering narcotics trafficking early. Still, he and the others decided it would be wise to begin increasing their presence in the old rackets, like gambling, labor unions, and cargo robberies, as well as to add new rackets to their portfolios.
7:10 Speaker 01 Now that Luciano was truly the head of his own crime family, he was finally able to work unencumbered with Jewish gangsters. For the majority of his criminal career, Luciano had worked with one of his oldest friends, Meyer Lansky, in a somewhat off-the-books fashion. Now that many of the old-school leaders had been eliminated, Luciano didn't need to hide those kinds of business relationships as he diversified his crime family's portfolio. The new racket Luciano chose was one that Jewish gangsters had controlled for years: the garment industry. Jewish gangsters had entered the garment industry mostly out of happenstance. In the early 1900s,
7:52 Speaker 01 many Jewish immigrants found jobs working in sweatshops or textile factories. When tensions rose between the employees and the company, Jewish gangsters exploited the situation. They acted as strike-breakers and scabs, as well as union organizers. They didn't care whose side they were on. By the start of the 1930s, Jewish gangsters had a pretty solid handle on racketeering within the garment industry, and Luciano wanted a piece of the pie. It isn't clear exactly how Luciano moved his crime family into the industry, but his old friend Meyer Lansky was the most powerful Jewish gangster in the city, so they probably struck a deal. At the same time, Luciano's crime family snaked its way into union rackets
8:37 Speaker 01 that involved construction, garbage, trucking, and shipping. When they weren't influencing labor unions, they were working classic rackets like loan sharking, bookmaking, extortion, and gambling. And the timing of the diversification couldn't have been better.
8:58 Speaker 01 On December 5, 1933, the 21st Amendment to the Constitution was ratified by 36 states, well above the threshold needed. The new amendment repealed the 18th Amendment. Alcohol was once again legal in the United States. And with it, the mafia's biggest revenue stream dried up. But by the time prohibition ended, Luciano and his crime family were more than okay. The work Luciano did during the final two years of prohibition meant his family would survive. Overall, business boomed, even without illegal alcohol sales. And not just for Luciano, but for everyone. The new system Luciano created was working. Organized-
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10:45 Speaker 01 Crime had slowly but surely transformed into something more like a corporation than a street gang. Even better, the violence had calmed down. It wasn't like they had turned themselves into a convent of nuns all of a sudden, but there were no simmering feuds and certainly no open warfare. It looked as if civility had come to the mafia. And that's always when the turn happens. For 13 years, most law enforcement activities against organized crime had been centered on stopping the illegal importation and sale of alcohol. Large-scale bootlegging may have ended when prohibition stopped, but that didn't mean law enforcement stopped targeting organized crime groups.
11:27 Speaker 01 Unfortunately for Luciano, a young, ambitious New York prosecutor was about to launch a crusade against organized crime.
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12:19 Speaker 01 price tag. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com/infamousamerica. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash infamous America. Charles Luciano was no stranger to run-ins with the law. He had been arrested twice in his younger years for dealing drugs, but he was lucky to avoid serious consequences. During his bootlegging era, he, like most other bootleggers, benefited from police corruption
13:01 Speaker 01 to stay out of trouble. But all of that was before Thomas Dewey made it his mission to stop organized crime. Thomas Dewey was a young lawyer who was stuck in a rut. For most of his early career, Dewey's law experience centered around civil cases pertaining to estates or businesses. Nothing exciting, and nothing that could lead to climbing the ladder. But he earned a reputation for attention to detail that could send a witness spiraling during cross-examination.
13:32 Speaker 01 He impressed a man named George Medalia, one of the great trial lawyers in New York. In the spring of 1931, Medalia became a federal prosecutor and appointed Dewey as his chief assistant. Dewey jumped at the opportunity. He knew it was his big break, and he wasn't going to waste it. Initially, though, Dewey didn't target mobsters. He was assigned to cases related to fraud, but one of his earliest cases centered on a numbers racketeer in Harlem. That led him to the inner workings of New York's underworld and his new calling. Dewey's first target was a Jewish gangster named Waxy Gordon.
14:14 Speaker 01 Waxy Gordon was a prominent bootlegger in New York and New Jersey. Like Charlie Luciano and Meyer Lansky, Gordon was a disciple of Arnold Rothstein. Throughout the 1920s, Gordon brought whiskey into the US from Canada, and he also controlled Rothstein's breweries and distilleries. When Rothstein died in 1928, he left a gigantic void in his operation. Gangsters like Gordon and Lansky started picking up the pieces. Initially, they were all able to work in relative peace, but within a few short years, Waxy Gordon started feuding with other gangsters, most notably Meyer Lansky.
14:54 Speaker 01 And that meant Gordon was also feuding with Lansky's good friend, Charlie Luciano. Supposedly, tensions began around 1931. Gordon accused Lansky of ordering his men to hijack one of Gordon's trucks full of alcohol. Whether Lansky did or not isn't clear, but Gordon accused Lansky of being a thief, and things were never the same after that. Before long, the two men were at war. While it didn't reach the heights of the Castile-Marese War, plenty of men died. The body count is said to have been about a dozen in total. By the start of 1933, Luciano and Lansky knew the conflict with Gordon needed to end.
15:36 Speaker 01 The easiest option would be to order an official hit. If that were going to happen, Luciano and Lansky would most likely have used an organization called Murder Incorporated.
15:51 Speaker 01 Murder Inc. was an enforcement arm of the mafia. Based in Brooklyn, the crew was made up of Jewish and Italian gangsters, whose job was to perform contract killings ordered by the mafia. Many of the killers had earned their stripes during prohibition, and had reputations for being especially ruthless. Using them to take out Gordon would have been a no-brainer. But Luciano and Lansky came up with another, more clever idea for how to take down Waxy Gordon. One that was a little bit more humiliating. Luciano and Lansky knew Thomas Dewey was investigating Gordon for tax evasion, and they thought Dewey could use a little help.
16:34 Speaker 01 Using a go-between, Luciano and Lansky gave incriminating financial documents to the IRS. The documents were probably ledgers, similar to the book that was famously used to incriminate Al Capone. Whatever the documents were, they showed proof that Gordon was committing tax evasion. In the spring of 1933, Gordon learned Dewey was ready to make his move. Gordon fled New York and headed for the Catskill Mountains, but he was no safer there than in the city. Law enforcement received a tip about Gordon's location, and they arrested him in April 1933. Waxy Gordon was indicted on tax evasion for hiding more than $1.5 million of income,
17:19 Speaker 01 which would be more than $37 million today. Dewey's case against Gordon was solid, and it took the jury less than an hour to convict him. Gordon was sentenced to 10 years in prison and was fined $80,000. It was a big win for a young prosecutor with big ambition. More than likely, Dewey knew Luciano and Lansky provided the IRS with information. But that didn't mean Dewey was gonna spare them. He now had a taste for going after gangsters, and he was like a shark with blood in the water. But lucky Luciano still wasn't Dewey's top target. That honor belonged to an infamous gangster who used the name Dutch Schultz.
18:06 Speaker 01 In March 1935, a grand jury accused the Manhattan District Attorney’s office of not taking racketeering seriously. In response, the governor of New York appointed Thomas Dewey as special prosecutor to solely go after organized crime. Dewey now had real power, and he wanted to bring down a gangster whom he’d tangled with for years: Dutch Schultz. Schultz was a Jewish gangster whose real name was Arthur Flegenheimer. During prohibition, Schultz’s bootlegging territory was concentrated in the Bronx and Harlem. His empire was big. By the end of prohibition, his only real competition was the five families of the Italian mafia.
18:50 Speaker 01 After prohibition, Schultz turned his focus to labor racketeering and restaurant extortion. He also took over the Numbers racket in Harlem. Numbers is basically an illegal daily lottery. Through various rackets, Schultz was making a lot of money, but he wasn’t paying taxes on any of it. Prosecutor Thomas Dewey took notice and decided to go after Dutch Schultz. Lucky Luciano and Dutch Schultz rarely interacted, but the growing conflict between Dewey and Schultz would become the first major crisis for Luciano and the Commission. 1935 wasn’t the first time Dewey went after Dutch Schultz.
19:35 Speaker 01 Coinciding with Dewey’s case against Waxy Gordon, he had a case ready to go against Dutch Schultz. But Schultz heard he was going to be arrested, and he skipped town. For months, Schultz hid in Albany, New York. Then in November 1934, Schultz decided to surrender. Presumably, he got tired of hiding and wanted to get back to business as quickly as possible. Whatever the reason, he had one condition for his surrender: his trial had to take place in upstate New York. Dutch Schultz went to trial in the small town of Malone, New York, which is about as upstate as you can get. It's less than 10 miles from the Canadian border.
20:17 Speaker 01 Schultz actually went to trial twice in the spring of 1935. The first resulted in a hung jury, and the second resulted in an acquittal. During at least one of the trials, Schultz allegedly bribed the jury by giving the entire community lavish gifts. However he did it, Dutch Schultz beat the system and went back to his criminal ways. In New York City, Thomas Dewey refused to give up on his prey. If he couldn't get Schultz on tax evasion, like he had with Waxy Gordon, then he would look for other ways. While Dewey went back to work, Schultz started feeling the cost of his legal troubles. His businesses suffered while he was in hiding, and his legal fees were mounting.
21:02 Speaker 01 Throughout 1935, Schultz grew increasingly angry and unhinged. He cursed Thomas Dewey. The weather's getting colder, and maybe some thoughts are starting to drift in the direction of holiday gifts. Even if you're not there yet, it's still time for sweatshirts and hoodies, in most places, which I wear almost every day while I'm working. My newest purchase from Quince is the Flow Knit Performance Hybrid Pullover Hoodie. It's a long name, but it's ultra-soft, lightweight, and amazingly affordable. Three big retailers are charging $118 to $158 for the hoodie. At Quince, it's $45. Same quality, same eco-friendly standards, lower price. So whether you're thinking of yourself in the cool temperatures
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22:11 Speaker 01 for interfering with his business and his wallet. By the fall, Schultz wanted blood, and he knew Charlie Luciano was the only person who could give it to him. Schultz cozied up to Luciano and hoped to show that he was equal to the Sicilians. Schultz converted to Catholicism because he believed religion would help sway Luciano to his upcoming request. After weeks of ingratiating himself to the Sicilians, Schultz asked for a formal meeting with Luciano and other senior members of the mafia.
22:47 Speaker 01 The mob leaders knew Schultz was having legal problems and genuinely sympathized with his plight, so they agreed to hear what Schultz had to say. Schultz made it simple. He said Thomas Dewey needed to die. A quick and easy assassination was the only outcome that could solve his problem. And Schultz argued that Dewey wasn't just a menace for himself. Dewey would eventually go after everyone in the room. Luciano immediately voted against the request. He argued that a sanctioned hit on a federal prosecutor wouldn't solve the problem. In fact, the opposite would happen. It would bring the full force of the US government down on all of them.
23:28 Speaker 01 Luciano said assassination was a foolish, short-sighted idea, and he wasn't alone in his belief. All of the other mafia bosses voted against a sanctioned hit on Thomas Dewey, and they ordered Schultz to drop it. But Schultz wouldn't. He had a bloodlust, and the only way to satisfy it was to eliminate Thomas Dewey. Schultz stormed out of the meeting and yelled that he was gonna kill Dewey anyway. Everyone knew Schultz was a hothead, but they likely assumed he would eventually calm down and abide by the ruling. Instead, Dutch Schultz made the last mistake of his life.
24:11 Speaker 01 In October 1935, Luciano received a disturbing call from an associate named Albert Anastasia. Anastasia is believed to have been one of the four assassins who killed Joe Mazzaria. After the Castilla-Marezé War, Anastasia became the co-head of Murder Incorporated, the mafia’s enforcement gang. He had a reputation as the mob’s best gunman, so much so that one of his nicknames was “The Lord High Executioner.” Anastasia told Luciano that Schultz had hired Murder Inc. to kill Thomas Dewey. According to Anastasia, Schultz had men shadowing Dewey and learning his daily routine.
24:52 Speaker 01 Supposedly, every morning, Dewey walked down to a local pharmacy and used the payphone to call his office. Even though Dewey had bodyguards with him, Schultz figured an expert could get the job done. Thus, he contacted the experts, Murder Inc., and offered the contract to Anastasia. Anastasia accepted it, and then immediately told Luciano. Frustrated and annoyed, Luciano called a meeting of the Commission. At the sit-down, all the bosses agreed that if Schultz went through with his hit, it could spell the end of La Cosa Nostra. After several hours of discussion, Luciano and the Commission reached a decision: Dutch Schultz needed to die.
25:41 Speaker 01 The Commission contacted Murder Inc. and gave the contract to co-leader Louis Lepke Buckhalter. From there, Lepke Buckhalter handpicked two assassins he knew would do the job right. This was the first real test for the Commission and Murder Inc. Nothing could go wrong. With that in mind, Lepke chose Charles the Bug Workman and Mendy Wise. Workman and Wise realized there was really only one place to kill Dutch Schultz: a restaurant in Newark, New Jersey called The Palace Chop House. Since coming out of hiding in upstate New York, Schultz had been living in Newark, just across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Knowing that his profile was up, Schultz rarely made public appearances.
26:26 Speaker 01 When he did, it was always at The Palace Chop House where he conducted business in the restaurant’s private back room. On October 23rd, 1935, word reached Murder, Inc. that Schultz intended to have Thomas Dewey killed in the next 36 hours. That was all Workman and Weiss needed to hear. It was go time. Around 10:00 PM that night, Workman and Weiss left Manhattan. The New Jersey crime family gave them a driver who was known only as Piggy. In Newark, Workman, Weiss, and Piggy weaved through the high-rises of downtown and pulled up to the Palace Chop House. Workman and Weiss got out of the car and walked toward the front door.
27:08 Speaker 01 Weiss stayed at the door and kept watch while Workman entered the restaurant. The Chop House wasn't busy, but it still had plenty of dining patrons. Workman strolled along the bar and headed toward the back room. Before entering, he checked the men's restroom in order to avoid an ambush. In the restroom, he saw the back of a man who was hunched over the sink washing his hands. Workman thought the man looked familiar and figured it was one of Schultz's bodyguards, and Workman started the killing. Workman raised his pistol and fired. He shot the man multiple times, then quickly exited the restroom and entered the back room.
27:51 Speaker 01 Inside, Workman found three men. One was Otto Berman, Schultz's accountant. One was Abe Landau, Schultz's top lieutenant. And the third was Bernard Rosenkranz, Schultz's bodyguard. Workman shot all three men at point-blank range. Four men were down in the space of a few seconds. But as Workman looked at the three dead bodies on the ground in front of him, he knew he had a problem. None of them was Dutch Schultz. Then it dawned on him. The man in the restroom. Workman ran back to the restroom and turned over the body of the man he had shot with his first bullets. Sure enough, it was Dutch Schultz.
28:32 Speaker 01 When Workman confirmed Schultz's identity, he fled the restaurant. Despite being riddled with bullets, Schultz didn't die right away. He was rushed to the hospital, where he lingered for nearly a day before dying on October 24th, 1935.
28:50 Speaker 01 After the assassination, Luciano took control of Schultz’s extortion rackets and numbers rackets. Four years after Luciano had organized the murders of two powerful mob figures, Joe Mazzaria and Salvatore Maranzano, he had done it again. This time, in the process, he had saved the life of a federal prosecutor, not that it would do him any good. With Dutch Schultz dead, Thomas Dewey targeted the next gangster on his list. Unbeknownst to him, the target was the man who had just saved his life.
29:30 Speaker 01 Luciano didn’t lose any sleep over orchestrating the hit on Dutch Schultz. It had to be done. Schultz was a loose cannon who could have brought everyone down. And when all things were considered, the way Luciano and the Commission handled Schultz proved to all the mob leaders that Luciano’s innovations worked. Now, it was back to business as usual, except for the thorn in their collective side: Thomas Dewey. It would be years before Dewey learned that Luciano and the Mafia saved his life, so for now, he was full speed ahead on his crusade against organized crime. But in going after Lucky Luciano, he was chasing a different animal than Waxy Gordon or Dutch Schultz. Luciano was a savvy criminal.
30:15 Speaker 01 Luciano knew how to keep a low profile and to present himself as more of a businessman than a gangster. Each year, Luciano made millions through a multitude of illegal enterprises, yet he rarely kept ledgers or documents that could be incriminating. He knew that a paper trail could lead to a downfall. Just ask Waxy Gordon or Al Capone, who is currently sitting in a cell in a new prison called Alcatraz. And although Luciano had imposed a strict code of silence on his crews, he was about to learn that there was one glaring weak spot in the code: the bedroom.
30:58 Speaker 01 At some point in the early 1930s, Luciano steered his crime family into prostitution. Though he allegedly despised the practice, the reality was sex work was a profitable industry, even if it was scandalous and dangerous. Exactly how dangerous would soon become apparent. Eunice Carter, one of the first female African-American lawyers in New York, worked in Thomas Dewey's office. Carter knew that prostitution was rife with underworld activity. Despite Dewey's vehemence to take down the mob, he was surprisingly limited in his focus. He was only interested in classic gangster enterprises like extortion rackets, numbers rackets, and so on.
31:41 Speaker 01 Eunice Carter urged Dewey to look into vice rackets like prostitution, and Dewey begrudgingly agreed. They quickly discovered direct ties between the mafia and prostitution. A lot of the links came from phone taps in brothels. At that time, the federal government was not legally allowed to tap phones, but state governments were. The state of New York was tapping phones for investigations, especially in brothels in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Dewey and his team pored through wiretap transcripts and listened to recordings that dated back years. By 1933, it seemed as though the Luciano crime family oversaw nearly all of the prostitution business in New York.
32:25 Speaker 01 But the really exciting part for Dewey was that he heard gangsters specifically named Luciano over the phone. At the end of January, or beginning of February 1936, Dewey ordered a citywide raid on brothels. The police arrested hundreds of prostitutes, madams, and other workers. During interrogations, Dewey's agents threatened long prison sentences unless the workers talked.
32:52 Speaker 01 Many did, and most confessed connections to Luciano's close associates. And a precious few were able to connect the businesses directly to Luciano himself. Of course, it didn't take long for Luciano to learn about the raids. All of a sudden, he was now in Thomas Dewey's direct line of fire, and it appeared as if Dewey would arrest Luciano at any second. Luciano needed to do something about Dewey. But first, he needed to keep himself safe, and to get the hell out of Dodge.
33:39 Speaker 01 Next time on Infamous America, Luciano flees to Arkansas, the popular hotspot for gangsters in hiding. But since it's popular, Dewey's men find Luciano and bring him back to New York to face charges related to prostitution. Luciano sees the inside of a prison for the first time in many years. But an opportunity for freedom arises when the world goes back to war in 1939. That's next week on Infamous America.
34:15 Speaker 01 Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week for new episodes. They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials, and they also receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships are just $5 per month. This series was researched, written, and produced by Joe Guerra. Original music by Rob Valier. Early research and writing by Michael Byrne. I'm Chris Wimmer. Thanks for listening.
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