Pod Insights Infamous America LUCKY LUCIANO Ep. 6 | "Exile” About this episode Luciano is forced to leave the United States and return to Sicily. But, he immediately makes plans to set up a base of operations near the U. S. With the help of Meyer Lansky, Luciano organizes a meeting in Havana, Cuba to discuss the mafia’s future and deal with troublesome associates. Luciano discovers that controlling his criminal family from afar is difficult, and ambitious underlings seize the opportunity to take power.
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1:04 Speaker 01 On February 3rd, 1946, 48-year-old Charles "Lucky" Luciano sat in a prison cell on Ellis Island and waited to be deported to Sicily. He had arrived at Ellis Island as a boy 40 years earlier when his family moved from Sicily to America. Now, after spending 10 years in prison on charges related to running a prostitution business, he was being shipped back to Sicily. As sad as he was to leave, the punishment was a blessing compared to finishing his prison sentence, which would have kept him confined for another 20 to 40 years. While he was in prison, World War II had started, and the American military had made a secret deal with Luciano
1:46 Speaker 01 to ensure that the ports of New York remained safe from Nazi spies and saboteurs. When the war was over, Luciano used the deal to negotiate his release. He successfully gained his freedom, but only on the condition that he had to leave the US forever. Now, as he sat in his cell and waited for deportation, some old friends arrived to see him off.
2:14 Speaker 01 Meyer Lansky, Luciano's best and oldest friend, showed up with acting boss Frank Costello. Luciano had chosen Costello over Vito Genovese to run the crime family while Luciano was in prison. Costello had done a good job, but now that Luciano was a free man, it was time to talk business, even in a somber situation like the one they were in now. Luciano said he was still the head of the family, but since he was gonna have to rule from afar, Costello would remain in charge of the day-to-day operations. Meyer Lansky would oversee the bulk of Luciano's business investments, and Luciano wanted them to spread the word to the other bosses. Just because he wasn't in America,
2:57 Speaker 01 that didn't mean it was open season on his territory. Much of Luciano's firmness was to avoid power-hungry individuals within the Luciano family, especially Vito Genovese. Genovese was Luciano's ambitious underboss, who had fled the US right before World War II to avoid a murder indictment. Now, Genovese was back in New York, and Luciano feared that Genovese would want to take control of the family. On February 7, 1946, Charlie Luciano and Meyer Lansky had their final visit. During the meeting, Luciano informed his friend that he had a rough plan for the future. Luciano knew that Sicily was too far away
3:41 Speaker 01 to truly control business in New York. He needed to be as close to the US as possible. He revealed to Lansky that he had started making inquiries about setting up shop in South America. At least, he could be in the same hemisphere. Then, a new idea formed. Throughout the 1930s and 40s, Lansky had become friendly with the Cuban government that was run by a corrupt official named Fulgencio Batista.
4:09 Speaker 01 Lansky had already invested in a hotel in Cuba's capital city of Havana. Luciano believed that Lansky could help sway the Cuban government to allow them to quietly work from the island. Luciano said he would keep a low profile in Sicily and let the dust settle from his deportation. Then, in about six months, he would travel to Cuba. Lansky liked the idea and was happy to help his friend get back to work. Two days later, Luciano walked onto a cargo ship called the Laura Keane. The following morning, the Laura Keane left Brooklyn Harbor and headed east toward the Atlantic Ocean. As Luciano watched New York recede in the distance, he dreamed of returning to his empire.
4:53 Speaker 01 All he needed to do was survive in Sicily, and then he would thrive in Cuba.
5:08 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 six, Exile.
5:34 Speaker 01 The voyage to Italy took 17 days, and Luciano arrived in Naples before traveling down to Palermo, Sicily. From there, he visited his hometown of Locare Friadi, a village outside of Palermo. During Luciano's homecoming, he was treated like a hero. He showered the people with gifts and money. He reunited with family members, and he savored the kingly reception. But now that he was no longer confined to a prison cell, he desperately wanted to get back to business. He told a reporter, "Italy's dead. Nice, but dead. I like movement. Business opportunities here are no good. I need New York." But New York was off limits.
6:17 Speaker 01 He would have to settle for Havana, Cuba. In mid-October 1946, seven months after he arrived in Italy, Luciano began the journey to Cuba. He knew he needed to confuse any possible agents who might be following him, so he took a zigzag route through Latin America. He took a ship to Caracas, Venezuela, then he flew to Rio de Janeiro, then to Mexico City, then back to Caracas, and then finally to Cuba. In Cuba, Luciano was greeted by a couple government officials on the tarmac, and the first thing he said was, "Where's Meyer?"
6:57 Speaker 01 Moments later, a car pulled onto the tarmac and outstepped Meyer Lansky. Luciano couldn't be happier. For the first time in a decade, he was seeing his closest friend and confidant without prison guards keeping watch. After a quick lunch, they drove to Havana. Luciano checked into the Hotel Nacional, the finest hotel in Cuba. Then Lansky told his friend that he wouldn't be able to stay for dinner. He had to fly back to the United States on an important mission to inform all of the bosses that Luciano was back and ready to meet. It had been more than 10 years since Luciano met with the commission he created, and there was a lot to discuss in the new post-war world.
7:40 Speaker 01 The Havana Conference kicked off on December 20, 1946, and it was the largest gathering of bosses in a single location since the Chicago Conference of 1931. Some of New York's representatives included Vito Genovese, Frank Costello, Joe Bonanno, Tommy Lucchese, and Albert Anastasia. From Chicago, there were Anthony Icardo and Sam Giancana. From Tampa, there was Santo Trofocante. Also in attendance were bosses from New Orleans, Buffalo, and Cleveland, plus Meyer Lansky and members of the Jewish Syndicate. When everyone was gathered, Luciano and Lansky took charge of the conference.
8:22 Speaker 01 The top two items on the agenda were Cuba and narcotics. For more than a decade, Lansky had laid the groundwork for organized crime's entrance into Cuba. When Lansky saw the end of prohibition in sight, he started cozying up to influential people in Cuba in the hope of establishing business near the Florida coast. Luciano had joined Lansky in providing money which Lansky invested in early Cuban casinos. Lansky's vision for Cuba and the surrounding islands was to turn them into a Caribbean Monte Carlo. The other bosses liked the idea and agreed to help invest in Cuba.
9:03 Speaker 01 Next came narcotics trafficking. Ironically, Luciano wanted the mafia to back off of the drug business. Luciano had been at the forefront of selling drugs in the 1920s while most other gangsters shunned the idea. But when prohibition ended, other criminal families started investing in drugs. The profits were incredible, better than alcohol. But so was the risk. Now, Luciano believed the American government was going to take a much tougher stance against cocaine and heroin than it had against whiskey and beer. The weather's getting colder, and maybe some thoughts are starting to drift in the direction of holiday gifts.
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10:39 Speaker 01 But the other bosses refused to listen to Luciano's advice and request. By 1946, long before the real explosion in popularity of marijuana, cocaine, and heroin, mafia families across the country were making so much money from drugs that there was no way they were going to quit the business. With a heavy sigh, Luciano agreed to abide by the consensus. He was going to distance himself as much as possible, but of course, he was still going to accept a cut of the profits. With that, the future was set. Cuba would be a new gambling hub, and the mafia would remain in the drug trafficking business. Now, there was one other major topic that needed to be addressed.
11:23 Speaker 01 Unfortunately, it concerned one of Luciano and Lansky's oldest friends, Benjamin Bugsy Siegel.
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12:39 Speaker 01 Luciano and Lansky had known Bugsy Siegel since their adolescent days on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Bugsy, the son of Jewish immigrants, started working with Lansky, and the two rose to become dominant Jewish gangsters after prohibition. But Bugsy was by no means the brains of the operation. Though he helped Lansky with bootlegging and gambling rackets, Bugsy was muscle. He had a quick temper, which was how he earned his nickname. People said he was “crazy as a bedbug.” In the early 1930s, Bugsy closely aligned himself with Murder Incorporated, the mafia’s enforcement arm. But he didn’t limit his criminal activities to contract killings.
13:21 Speaker 01 As somewhat of a loose cannon, Bugsy had a flair for cargo hijackings. Unfortunately, his antics brought unwanted attention. As the heat grew on Bugsy, Luciano and Lansky suggested that Bugsy head west to avoid the police. Bugsy readily accepted the new change of scenery. Bugsy arrived in Los Angeles in 1936 and quickly took control of organized crime in Southern California. He built up offshore gambling rackets and extorted movie studios through labor unions. At the same time, he ingratiated himself into the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, and he became friends with actors and actresses.
14:02 Speaker 01 And then, a few years into his time in L.A., he received word from Meyer Lansky of a new assignment, one that would change organized crime forever.
14:15 Speaker 01 In the early 1940s, Lansky and Bugsy took a trip to a tiny desert town in Nevada called Las Vegas. The place was ripe with opportunity, and Lansky wanted to turn it into the gambling capital of the West. In 1931, Nevada became the first state to legalize commercial gambling. Overnight, the thing that had made mountains of illegal money for the mob was now legal. It was like a new, bottomless gold mine had just been discovered in the West. At first, Bugsy wasn’t thrilled about trying to build a gambling mecca in the Nevada desert, but he eventually understood Lansky’s vision. Lansky put Bugsy in charge of building the mob's first major casino hotel in Las Vegas,
15:00 Speaker 01 the Flamingo. The Flamingo project was a disaster from the jump. Construction began in mid-1946 and the budget skyrocketed. Using investments from New York, Bugsy had been given a budget of a little more than a million dollars. Within months, Bugsy was asking for more, and by the fall, the budget exploded to six million dollars. Some of the problems with the project had nothing to do with Bugsy, like a spat of bad weather which put construction behind schedule. But rumors quickly floated that Bugsy had fallen under the spell of his latest lover, an actress named Virginia Hill. Word around town was that Bugsy and Virginia were skimming investor money and keeping
15:45 Speaker 01 it for themselves. The rumors made their way back to New York and quickly became one of the major topics of discussion at Lucky Luciano's mobster conference in Havana in December 1946. The Flamingo was finally set to open a few days later, but for the men at the conference, it was too little, too late. Bugsy had become a menace, he was stealing money, and he needed to be dealt with. Exactly who proposed that Bugsy should be whacked has been a topic of debate for decades. Luciano claimed it was Lansky. Others have said Lansky tried to defend his old friend and argued that once the casino opened, everyone would be making millions in profit.
16:27 Speaker 01 In that version of events, Luciano took Lansky aside and said Bugsy had lost control and had broken the rules. Whatever the real version, mob leaders voted on whether or not to kill Bugsy Siegel. Charlie Luciano voted yes, as did everyone else at the conference. The Flamingo Hotel opened at the same time as the Havana Conference ended, at the end of December 1946, and the grand opening was a disaster. The casino actually lost money. Just as embarrassing, the hotel still wasn't fully constructed. After a few weeks, Bugsy closed it down and tried to solve the problems. He reopened the Flamingo in March
17:10 Speaker 01 1947, but it continued to flounder. Bugsy lived on borrowed time as he tried to fix his Las Vegas boondoggle. The Flamingo eventually flourished, but Bugsy didn't live to see it. On the night of June 20, 1947, Bugsy was reading a newspaper at a house in Beverly Hills that he rented for his girlfriend Virginia Hill. An assassin fired rounds from a 30-caliber rifle through the living room window and killed Bugsy Siegel.
17:45 Speaker 01 The Havana Conference ended on December 26. Many of the mobsters, including Lucky Luciano, stayed and celebrated. At one point during the conference, Luciano was unofficially declared Capo di tutti capi, the boss of all bosses. He wasn't going to be like Salvatore Maranzano, but his word carried more weight than the others. More importantly, it firmly placed him above his rival Vito Genovese. It had become increasingly apparent that Genovese wanted to take the family away from Luciano and Frank Costello. But Genovese would have to wait. Over the next few weeks in Cuba, Luciano gambled on horses, cozied up to local
18:26 Speaker 01 politicians, and partied the night away. And some of those parties featured one of the mafia's most celebrated friends, Frank Sinatra. Allegedly, Luciano and Sinatra were close friends. In an incredible coincidence, Sinatra's family and Luciano's family were from the same village in Sicily. Supposedly, Luciano was among the mobsters who financially supported Sinatra's early career. In return, Sinatra allegedly ran cash for the mafia. The depth of Sinatra's connection to the mob has been the subject of endless speculation, and it's impossible to know the truth. But he definitely partied with the bosses in Cuba in February 1947.
19:13 Speaker 01 Sinatra arrived in Cuba in mid-February, and he and Luciano gambled and partied and caused a ruckus at the National Hotel. Before long, a reporter heard that one of the most popular entertainers in America was down in Cuba, and the reporter wrote an article that questioned why Sinatra associated with known gangsters. When the article was published, Sinatra denied his friendship with Luciano and the others, and he quickly left Havana. Unfortunately for Luciano, the article did more than reveal a celebrity's ties to the underworld. Thanks to the article, the US government learned that Luciano was in Cuba, when he was supposed to be in Italy.
19:54 Speaker 01 The US demanded that Cuba arrest Luciano and deport him to Italy. Cuban officials politely asked Luciano to leave, and Luciano refused. On February 23rd, Havana police officers found Luciano at a restaurant eating lunch, and they arrested him. For the next month, Luciano's lawyers tried to convince the Cuban government to let Luciano remain on the island. Meyer Lansky called his contacts about freeing Luciano, but the threat of American economic pressure was too much for Cuba to ignore. On March 29th, Luciano was escorted to a Turkish cargo ship and forced to leave Havana.
20:35 Speaker 01 Luciano was furious, but he hoped his second deportation would be just another... 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.
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21:43 Speaker 01 ... obstacle. His thoughts returned to his original plan of setting up a base in South America, maybe in Brazil or Venezuela. Somehow, the FBI discovered Luciano's scheming, and J. Edgar Hoover personally warned all of the South American embassies that Luciano might try to enter their countries.
22:06 Speaker 01 Authorities also notified Italian officials that they needed to do a better job of watching the infamous gangster. When Luciano arrived in Genoa in April, he was immediately arrested. After spending more than a week in jail, he was escorted by armed guards to Palermo, Sicily. He eventually headed north to Rome and made Rome one of his bases of operations. From Rome, he attempted to organize a drug trafficking business while maintaining his power over his crime family. Unfortunately, that was easier said than done. Over the next few years, he was under constant surveillance. Throughout the 1950s, he was consistently arrested in connection with low-level drug
22:51 Speaker 01 busts. America was convinced that Luciano operated a global heroin racket and demanded that Italy help find the connections. But evidence was always flimsy, and Luciano was never charged. The harassment drove Luciano crazy. He told the press one time, quote, "If somebody slips on a banana peel, the cops call me in to find out if I'm selling bananas."
23:17 Speaker 01 But as hard as it was to do business, Luciano was still able to forge connections with the Sicilian mafia. And he considered the possibilities of the American mafia and the Sicilian mafia joining forces in the heroin trade. Luciano may have been restricted from directly controlling the flow of drugs, but he could at least facilitate a lucrative arrangement.
23:43 Speaker 01 In 1957, Luciano quietly organized a meeting between members of the American mafia and the Sicilian mafia in Palermo, Sicily. The so-called "Heroin Summit" began in the middle of October, and it reportedly featured important American mob boss Joseph Bonanno, among others. There are very few accounts of what was said, and there are lots of people who dispute that it happened at all. If it did, the story generally says that mob leaders held a four-day meeting to discuss the heroin trade. The US had intensified punishments against heroin dealers and smugglers, which made many mafia families nervous about large-scale trafficking. So, to combat that, everyone agreed that the Sicilian mafia
24:28 Speaker 01 would be the boots on the ground in the US. In return, the Sicilian mafia would pay a kind of franchise fee to the American mafia to operate on American soil. The heroin would come from Corsicans in France, which meant the mafia was now firmly involved in the infamous "French Connection" heroin ring. The result was one of the largest heroin trafficking operations in the world. Luciano couldn't be directly involved in the operation, but if it's true that he organized the summit, he proved he was still one of the most influential gangsters in the world. But at the same time, he was about to learn that his power was limited. Luciano's longtime comrade and underboss, Vito Genovese,
25:13 Speaker 01 was now a rival, and he had decided to make his move for control of the family.
25:22 Speaker 01 Vito Genovese always wanted to replace Luciano as head of the family. When Luciano went to prison in the late 1930s, Genovese thought he would become acting boss. But then the US government forced Genovese into exile, and Luciano made Frank Costello acting boss. When Genovese returned from exile after WWII, he waited for his chance to strike. Throughout the 1950s, Genovese amassed one of the most ruthless and powerful crews in the entire mafia. By the start of 1957, he knew that Luciano was never gonna return to America. It was as good a time as any to take his shot at becoming boss, and that meant he needed to take out Luciano's key allies.
26:07 Speaker 01 On May 2nd, 1957, Frank Costello exited a cab after dining with one of the family's capos. As he stepped out, a man approached him with a gun and shouted, "This is for you, Frank." Costello instinctively raised his hands to shield himself as bullets started flying. A bullet grazed Costello's head, but only did minor damage. The brush with death scared Costello, and he seriously considered handing power to Genovese. Then in late October, Genovese sent assassins to take out Albert Anastasia while Anastasia was getting a shave at a barber shop. Anastasia had been close to Luciano and Costello, and now he was dead.
26:49 Speaker 01 Costello realized he was too vulnerable, and he officially gave control of the Luciano crime family to Vito Genovese. The coup took just five months. In Italy, Charlie Luciano fumed. He wasn't gonna go down quietly, and he started looking for ways to exact his revenge. A few weeks after Anastasia's death, Vito Genovese called a meeting with all the major mob bosses. The main goal of the summit was for Genovese to celebrate his new status as boss. Other business items were gonna be discussed, but the gathering was more about Genovese's coronation than anything else.
27:31 Speaker 01 The summit was held in a sleepy New York town called Appalakin. On November 14th, 1957, more than 60 mobsters rolled up to the house of Joe Barbera in black sedans and limousines.
27:45 Speaker 01 Barbara was a Buffalo-based mobster, and the parade of black cars driving through a nondescript town drew attention. Local authorities feared a conspiracy of some sort was afoot, and they called the New York State Troopers for help. That afternoon, a mobster inside the house spotted law enforcement outside and shouted, "It's the Stades." Everyone panicked. Old men in suits scrambled out of the house and ran into the woods. Most of them were caught and brought in for questioning. All the men claimed they were just there for a friendly visit with their old friend Joe, because Joe had recently suffered a heart attack. The State Troopers didn't buy it, but they also didn't have any evidence of crimes,
28:28 Speaker 01 so they were forced to release the mob bosses. From Luciano's home in Italy, he read about the Appalakin raid and couldn't help but laugh. It didn't necessarily hurt Vito Genovese, but Luciano was tickled at the thought of Genovese slogging through the mud when he was supposed to be basking in the glory of his new role as boss. Even better, Luciano likely knew about the raid in advance.
28:58 Speaker 01 According to gangland lore, Meyer Lansky had been invited to the Appalakin meeting, but he refused to go. Maybe as an effort to help his old friend Luciano, Lansky allegedly tipped off the local sheriff that a meeting full of mobsters was taking place. And there was still more to come. The raid was humiliating, but Vito Genovese was still free to run the family. Luciano couldn't have that. He needed Genovese to pay for the coup. Not long after the Appalakin raid, Lansky reached out to one of his former drug couriers, a man who had recently been busted and was in Sing Sing Prison. Lansky was furious at the courier for getting caught, but then Lansky thought of a way for the courier to make it up to him.
29:43 Speaker 01 If the courier gave information against Vito Genovese, the courier would receive $100,000. The money would come from Luciano, Lansky, and Costello, and the courier agreed. Luciano provided details that connected Genovese to drug trafficking in the US and Europe. The courier forwarded the information to law enforcement in exchange for his freedom. In July 1958, Vito Genovese was indicted on drug trafficking charges. And in April 1959, he was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
30:23 Speaker 01 Vito Genovese may still be the boss of the family, but he would have to run it from behind bars. It was the best outcome Luciano could have hoped for. And while Luciano must have enjoyed watching Genovese suffer in prison, his own situation didn't fare much better. He was still in Italy, and it didn't look like he was ever gonna leave. Worse, the money he was making from his casino investments in Havana was starting to dry up, thanks to the new dictator, Fidel Castro. Throughout the 1950s, Castro's revolutionaries waged guerrilla warfare on Fulgencia Batista's soldiers. Slowly but surely, Castro inched closer to Havana.
31:04 Speaker 01 Finally, on January 1st, 1959, Castro overthrew the Batista dictatorship and seized control of Cuba. Very quickly, Castro broke the mafia's hold over business in Havana. Over the next couple of years, Luciano considered other ways to make money. Realizing his options were limited, he decided the easiest and best option was if he sold his own story. For decades, stories about true-life gangsters had made a lot of money in Hollywood. Fictionalized takes on Al Capone, Jack Legs Diamond, and Murder Incorporated were huge successes. And non-biographical crime films were just as popular.
31:46 Speaker 01 The American public loved sordid tales of gangsters rising to the top through a hail of bullets. Luciano was always hesitant about talking to anyone about his life. The less people knew about his affairs, the better. But by the start of the 1960s, his attitude had changed. At some point, Luciano was introduced to an up-and-coming producer named Martin Gosh. For months, Gosh visited Luciano in Italy, and Luciano slowly opened up about his life. From there, Gosh wrote a script about Luciano. But the ruling bosses discovered Luciano was talking. Allegedly, they were willing to assassinate Luciano if he revealed too much about the mafia's inner workings.
32:31 Speaker 01 Meyer Lansky sent word that Luciano should stop working with Gosh if he wanted to continue living, and Luciano took their advice. At the end of January 1962, Luciano met Gosh to discuss the project's future, either to change the deal or to shut it down altogether. On January 26th, Luciano and Gosh were at the Naples Airport while Luciano was on his way to Rome. As Luciano walked toward the airport's entrance, he suddenly felt a pain in his chest, and he stumbled. Gosh caught Luciano before he fell and asked if Luciano was okay, but Luciano went limp and fell to the ground. An airport doctor rushed over and examined Luciano.
33:15 Speaker 01 When the doctor put his finger to Luciano's neck, he didn't feel a pulse. He turned to Gosh and said Luciano was dead. Charles "Lucky" Luciano had suffered a heart attack and died at 64 years old.
33:36 Speaker 01 By the time Luciano died, the grasp of his power was mostly nonexistent. In the immediate years that followed, American and Italian authorities continued to claim that Luciano was the head of a global narcotics trafficking ring and that he had been running it for years. But the truth was probably less glamorous. He was under such heavy surveillance that it would have been exceedingly difficult to run a drug trafficking empire. The lore surrounding Luciano was exacerbated when Martin Gosh's work was finally released as a book called "The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano." Published in the mid-1970s, the book caused controversy because many of Luciano's anecdotes were quickly and easily discredited.
34:21 Speaker 01 The book appeared more myth-making and legend-building than actual fact. And the year after Luciano died, more legends were created when the five families of the American Mafia became widespread public knowledge for the first time. The US Senate had held hearings in the early 1950s in its first real attempt to fight organized crime, but the hearings produced limited results. In 1963, a new round of hearings were blockbuster events. A mob soldier named Joe Volacci agreed to testify before a Senate committee led by Senator John McClellan.
34:59 Speaker 01 In the hearings, Volacci revealed the five-family structure and provided some history. Those hearings, called the Volacci hearings or the McClellan hearings, provided the modern names for the five families. The families were referred to by the last names of the men who were the bosses at the time, each of whom was a true godfather who traced his time with the Mafia back to the Castile-Marese War of the early 1930s or beyond. The Maranzano family had always really been run by Maranzano's lieutenant, Joe Bonanno, and he was still the boss in 1963. That was the origin of the Bonanno family name.
35:42 Speaker 01 The Profaci family, originally run by Joe Profaci, was renamed the Colombo family for its boss at the time of the hearings, Joseph Colombo. The Mangano family, originally run by Vincent Mangano, was renamed the Gambino family after its boss, Carlo Gambino. The Gagliano family, originally run by Thomas Gagliano, was renamed the Lucchese family after its boss, Tommy Lucchese. And the Luciano family was renamed the Genovese family after Vito Genovese.
36:17 Speaker 01 It's hard to know which element Luciano would have hated more: the loss of the family name to his rival Vito Genovese, or the public spectacle that led to it. It was probably lucky for Luciano that he wasn't around to see either one. He will still go down in history as the architect of the modern American mafia. He ruthlessly put an end to the old generation of gangsters, and he added innovations to help avoid unnecessary violence and bloodshed to the degree that that was possible in the mob. Over the years, Salvatore Lucania, better known as Charlie Lucky Luciano, has become a cultural icon. He may have been a criminal, but he was also one of the most influential people in 20th-century America.
37:08 Speaker 01 Next time on Infamous America, we're going to start the stories of two of the most infamous arsonists in American history: John Orr and Paul Keller. The crazy story of John Orr is up first. He was a fire inspector for the Glendale Fire Department in the Los Angeles metro area, and he was also one of the most prolific arsonists in US history. That's next time on Infamous America.
37:47 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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