A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

insisting that he had been much maligned, and that he was not a gangster. In 1961, when he was
sixty-four years old, Luciano decided to set the record straight by allowing a film producer to make
a film of his life. Then orders arrived from America: ‘The Little Man wouldn’t like it.’ Luciano
summoned the producer, Martin Gosch, and told him regretfully that they would have to drop the
idea; when Gosch pointed out that everyone knew that Luciano’s word was his bond, Luciano
replied that if he kept his word they would both end up dead. By way of compensation, he talked at
length to Gosch about his life, and these conversations formed the basis of The Last Testament of
Lucky Luciano by Martin Gosch and Richard Hammer, published in 1975. In January 1962,
Luciano died suddenly of a heart attack; he was sixty-four.
Luciano’s close associate Vito Genovese had fled from America in 1937, when the ‘heat was on’,
and spent the war in Italy. If Mussolini was embarrassed to learn that his millionaire friend was a
wanted gangster, he decided it was worth a little embarrassment when Genovese spent a quarter of
a million dollars on a new fascist headquarters in Nola. When the Americans landed, Genovese
persuaded them to take him on as an interpreter for army Intelligence. When a CIA agent
discovered that he was a wanted killer, Genovese was escorted back to New York. Then one of the
chief witnesses against him, Peter La Tempa, died of poison in his jail cell; in June 1946, Genovese
was acquitted. He lost no time in reasserting his authority over the New York mobs. In October
1951, the New Jersey Mafia boss Willie Moretti was murdered. He was a close associate of
Genovese’s chief rival, Frank Costello, who had taken over Bugsy Siegel’s gambling empire in Las
Vegas; and Genovese was determined to ‘cut himself in’. In June 1953, another Costello ally,
Steven Franse, was murdered. In February 1955, it was the turn of Longy Zwillman, who was
found hanged in the basement of his home in Orange, New Jersey, in a wire noose; the verdict was
suicide. And on 2 May 1957, Costello was entering his apartment building when someone yelled
‘This is yours, Frank,’ and shot him in the head. The shout probably saved Costello’s life; he lost a
great deal of blood, but survived. In his pockets, police found gambling receipts from a Las Vegas
casino, and when Costello declined to answer questions about them, or to name his would-be killer,
he was jailed for contempt of court. The doorman picked out the gunman from a police photograph;
it was Vincent (‘The Chin’) Gigante, a Genovese lieutenant.
Two months later, Frank Scalise, a Mafia underboss (second-in-command) was shot down at
midday on a Bronx street. He was killed, according to underworld gossip, because he had been
selling Mafia membership to non-Italians; but it seems altogether more likely that he was another
victim in the gang war.
With Costello out of the running, Albert Anastasia, the Syndicate’s chief executioner, stood in the
way of Genovese’s bid for power. Anastasia was known as the ‘Mad Hatter’ of crime because he
became insanely homicidal when angry. It was Anastasia who had ordered the murder of a publicspirited
citizen named Arnold Schuster who had recognised a famous bank robber, Willy Sutton
(Willy the Actor) and informed the police. Schuster’s murder - in March 1952 - was intended to
warn all other public spirited citizens to mind their own business. Anastasia subsequently had
Schuster’s executioners killed, to cover his tracks.
Genovese heard that Costello had been conferring with Anastasia, and that the subject was almost
certainly himself. He decided to strike first. His own gunmen were too well known to Anastasia, so
Gcnovese approached the underboss of Anastasia’s ‘family’, Carlo Gambino, and made him a
proposition. Anastasia was one of the most wanted men in New York - Burton Turkus said he had
been getting away with murder for thirty years - and his notoriety was bad for the Mafia. On 25
October 1957, Anastasia was lying in a barber’s chair in the basement of the Sheraton Hotel, his