tunistic Genovese surfaced suddenly as an interpreter for the U.S. Army's intelligence service. Due to his energetic and diligent labors for the U.S. Army, a number of black market operatives were arrested in southern Italy. However, the military's pleasure with Genovese soured when it was discovered that he himself had simply taken over the operations.
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Genovese was returned to the United States after the war, but all the witnesses to the murder charge against him were silenced. He won his freedom. He then sought control of the Luciano family and the dominant role in the American Mafia. To succeed, he had to eliminate acting family chief Frank Costello and diminish the outside influence of Meyer Lansky, while continuing to pay lip service to Luciano. Not being fools, Costello and Luciano from afar continually set up roadblocks against him, and it took Genovese almost a decade to move in earnest, building a war chest out of a secret narcotics racket.
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Costello was Genovese's first target, but the murder plot backfired. Costello was only slightly wounded. A few months later, however, Genovese had Anastasia murdered, an advantageous move for Genovese since Anastasia was Costello's main muscle. Without him, Costello, the ''Prime Minister of the Underworld," was helpless.
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Next, Genovese sought to tighten his new stranglehold on the Luciano crime family. He was a prime mover in the famed Apalachin Conference in upstate New York. Genovese probably even expected to be anointed boss of bosses at the meeting, but it ended in a total fiasco when authorities raided the affair and scooped up dozens of Mafia figures. Genovese had been set up beautifully by Costello/Luciano/Lansky, none of whom were present, and by Carlo Gambino who was. (Gambino and Lansky had cooperated with Genovese in the killing of Anastasia for their own motives. Gambino wanted to take over the Anastasia crime family, and Lansky was angered by Anastasia's moves to invade the Cuban casino scene, which Lansky deemed his domain. Now, with Costello, they tipped off the authorities about the meeting.) Instead of emerging the foremost mafioso in the nation, Genovese succeeded in angering the nation's bosses, who blamed him for the Apalachin disaster.
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Genovese knew that sooner or later he had to eliminate Costello, Lansky and even Luciano. He probably did not yet suspect Gambino's role. Don Vito's mistake was in assuming he had time to act; he knew his enemies would not risk open gang warfare. But warfare was not necessary. Just as their cunning stopped Apalachin, so it stopped Genovese. Costello, Lansky and Luciano concocted a major narcotics smuggling deal. There is reason to suspect that they even induced Chicago don Sam Giancana to join the conspiracy. (All that would have taken was Lansky's offering Chicago a bigger cut in Cuba.) Then, having dropped the deal in Genovese's lap, the four conspirators pitched in $100,000 for a minor Puerto Rican drug pusher named Nelson Cantellops to implicate him. Although it was hardly credible that a low-level figure like Cantellops could have the information to trap a big shot like Genovese, the federal government chose not to be too inquisitive. Genovese and 24 of his supporters were nailed, and, in 1959, Genovese was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
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According to informer Joe Valachi, Genovese continued to direct the activities of his crime family from behind bars. Genovese became paranoid about the frameup and suspected almost everybody. He had his top aide on the outside, Tony Bender, assassinated, suspecting him of being involved. Later he also suspected Joe Valachi of being an informer and ordered him killed in prison. Desperately Valachi opted for government protection and turned stool pigeon, becoming one of the prize informers of all time, revealing many Mafia, or as he preferred calling it, "Cosa Nostra," secrets.
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In 1969 Genovese died in prison, proof that mere brawn was insufficient to take over organized crime in America. In the 1970s statements attributed to Luciano, and later confirmed by Meyer Lansky and others, revealed how they made the government their partner in getting rid of Don Vito.
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Genovese Crime Family
Lucky Luciano, who triumphed as a result of the Mafia wars of the early 1930s, reconstituted the five crime families that had been apportioned by the late, deposed Salvatore Maranzano. Maintaining control of the crime group previously headed by Joe the Boss Masseria, Luciano had inherited that family when he arranged the murder of Masseria. Within the New York Mafia, it remained for several decades the largest and most powerful of the crime families.
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In this family, soldier-cum-informer Joe Valachi served under a succession of bossesfirst Luciano, followed by Frank Costello, then Vito Genovese. Costello took over when Luciano, convicted on a prostitution count in 1936, was sent to prison. By rights Genovese, as Luciano's underboss, should have succeeded, but he had his own problems with the law. Fearing prosecution on a murder rap, he fled to Italy, where he was to ingratiate himself with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
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Costello was not an ordinary godfather. He had little time for family affairs, being too involved in his own private criminal enterprises with Meyer Lansky and othersactivities that stretched from New York to New Orleans, and later to Las Vegas and Havana,
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