DiBono who was later killed for other infractions. When John Gotti heard of Gravano's defiance, he was already thinking about taking down Castellano, and he decided he wanted Gravano on his side in that war.
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Bootlegging
Bootlegging was as essential to organized crime and the Mafia as the chicken is to the egg. And it virtually saved the great criminal gangs that were collapsing in America just prior to and during World War I. Bootlegging became the great source of income that turned around the relationship between criminals and the establishment. Whereas previously criminals were bought and controlled by the politicians, bootlegging made the criminals so rich that they bought the politicians in wholesale lots.
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With the end of Prohibition, bootlegging declined but hardly disappeared from the American scene. High liquor taxes saw to that. As a result, bootlegging continued to be a major criminal pastime and the Mafia is deeply involved. Among the crime families in recent years known to have a considerable investment in bootlegging are the Buffalo group; the Erie-Pittston, Pennsylvania, family under Russell Bufalino; and especially the Philadelphia Bruno family. For years, this last group ran in Reading, Pennsylvania, the biggest illegal still since Prohibition and blithely had it tied into the city water supply.
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Prohibition had brought to the larger cities powerful bootlegging gangs that fought bloody wars for control of the huge racket. Much of the liquor was smuggled across the border from Mexico or Canada or slipped in by fast boat. Many of the gangs found it necessary to produce their own alcohol to guarantee their supplies; they set up illegal distilleries and breweriesactivities that could hardly have been operated without police and political cooperation. In Chicago alone it was estimated that more than 1,000 men died as a result of the bootleg wars. Similar wars produced similar death tolls in such cities as Detroit, New York and Philadelphia. Some of the most brutal battles occurred in Williamson County, Illinois, the site where on November 12, 1926, a farmhouse belonging to a prominent family of bootleggers was bombed from an airplane by another bootlegging group. Although the attack was unsuccessful, it was the first and only time real bombs were dropped from a plane in the United States in an effort to destroy human life and property.
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In 1930 a federal grand jury uncovered the largest liquor operation of the era. Thirty-one corporations and 158 individuals were cited in Chicago, New York, Cleveland, Philadelphia, St. Paul, Detroit, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Los Angeles and North Bergen, New Jersey, for having diverted more than 7 million gallons of alcohol in seven years.
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Some experts say as much as 20 percent of all alcohol consumed in this country is still illicit moonshine; they base their estimates on the government's open admission that it finds no more than one-third to one-half of all illegal stills (a figure many believe is far too high). The mobs have many ways of bringing their booze to market; they can dispense it through the clubs and bars they own or sell it through the distributorships they control. Control of the waterfront is said to offer the opportunity to substitute their booze for highpriced imports.
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See also:
Hams; Prohibition; Rum Row
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Boss of Bosses: Mythical Mafia leader
Capo di tutti capi
, Boss of All the Bosses. The last man to claim the title for himself was Salvatore Maranzano in 1931. He was dead less than five months later. It seems organized crime in America, and the American Mafia, is too diverse, too greedy, too provincial, too ill-organized to follow one man.
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That hardly matters to the press, which has, through the years, continued to bestow the boss of bosses crown, sometimes one publication in conflict with another. There was a period in the late 1970s when some insisted the crown belonged to Carmine Galante of the old Bonanno family while others said the mantle should fall to Frank ''Funzi" Tieri, the head of the old Luciano-Genovese family.
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The first to claim the title of boss of bosses was Joe Masseria, who in the 1920s was the foremost Mafia leader in New York City. Masseria didn't kid around. A pudgy, squat murderous man, he simply started calling himself Joe the Bossand blasted those who disagreed. That, however, hardly settled that. According to Masseria, all the other gangsters of the eraLuciano, Rothstein, Dwyer, Lansky, Costello, Adonis, Capone, Schultz, Diamond, Genovese, Anastasia, Profaci, Gagliano and a latecomer named Maranzanohad to acknowledge his supremacy. Yet he got a war with some and treachery from within by others, supposedly loyal underlings like Luciano, who actually was busy plotting his downfall.
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The great Mafia conflict called the Castellammarese War of 19301931 ended in victory for Maranzano following Luciano's assassination of Masseria. Maranzano had plans to be an American boss of bosses and, while it is common for crime scholars to deride the idea of a boss of bosses ruling over the American Mafia from Sicily, it is rather well established that it was attempted. Maranzano was sent to America by the foremost Mafia
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