A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

Prohibition had turned small-time mobsters into multi-millionaires, and so made them practically
ineradicable. ‘Ever since the purge of ‘31, Unione has been no more Mafia than a processed shot of
heroin is the original poppy.’ (Sid Feder and Joachim Joesten in The Luciano Story, chapter 4.)
With so much money, the Mafia could buy immunity and choose their own political appointees.
After the Maranzano murder, the incumbent district leader (i.e. local councillor in Tammany Hall)
was warned that, if he valued his life, he would resign. A Luciano candidate, Albert Marinelli, was
elected. In July 1932, Marinelli was present at the Democratic Convention in Chicago for the
presidential nomination; the leading Democratic candidate was Franklin D. Roosevelt. Also present
were Lucky Luciano and his friend Frank Costello. Luciano kept well in the background - it would
have benefited no one if some political commentator had wondered what leading gangsters were
doing at a Democratic Convention - but the delegates were kept well supplied with good liquor. It
made no difference that Marinelli was supporting one of Roosevelt’s rivals and that Roosevelt
gained the nomination; Luciano had friends on both sides.
So the end of Prohibition made little difference to the gangs. They had diversified into other
businesses - such as drugs, gambling and labour racketeering. Luciano’s friend Louis Buchalter -
known simply as Lepke - dominated the garment industry. Frank Costello was the gambling boss,
with a sideline in gem smuggling. Luciano had by this time decided that the future lay in the drug
trade, although he owned brothels all over the country.
The chief problem remained inter-gang rivalry. Capone’s arrest had taught the New Yorkers that it
was unwise to arouse public protest by conducting feuds in the streets. The point was driven home
at a meeting in the latter half of 1932, chaired by gangland’s respected elder statesman, Johnny
Torrio. All New York’s leading gangsters were invited: Costello, Joe Adonis, Lepke, Longy
Zwillman, Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky and Dutch Schultz. Luciano was in the chair. Torrio
pointed out that when Prohibition was repealed, politicians would cease to depend on the gangsters
for alcohol, and the gangster would cease to be regarded as a social benefactor. They would lose
valuable ‘contacts’. Therefore, they should decide in advance to stick together. Inter-gang warfare
must cease, and to achieve this, the gang leaders must keep in close contact, like the board of a
public corporation... After Torrio and Luciano had put the case, resistance melted. In effect, the
gangs were forming a cartel, and the strength of one was the strength of all. By 1934, the
advantages of this mutual-protection society were so obvious that gangs from all over the country
suggested joining. A meeting was called in Kansas City; gangsters from Kansas City, Chicago (the
Capone gang), Cleveland (the Mayfield mob) and Detroit (the Purple gang) attended, together with
delegates from Boston, Miami, New Orleans, Baltimore, St Paul and St Louis. Luciano and Meyer
Lansky - known, because of his stature, as ‘The Little Man’ - were the organisers. The result of this
meeting was the formation of the Syndicate - sometimes known as Murder Incorporated.
Whenever a body is found in the gutter or a doorway today, it is still
more or less casually dismissed by press and public as the result of
differences of mob opinion, just as it was in the trigger-happy
twenties. It doesn’t work that way any more. Not one top boss in the
underworld has been slain since 1934 unless the execution has been
sanctioned, approved, and in fact directed, by the gang lords of the
nation.
From Murder Incorporated by former District Attorney Burton B.
Turkus and Sid Feder, 1951.