Carlo Gambino (Italian: [ˈkarlo ɡamˈbiːno]; August 24, 1902 – October 15, 1976) was a Sicilian crime boss who was the leader and namesake of the Gambino crime family of New York City. Following the Apalachin Meeting in 1957, and the imprisonment of Vito Genovese in 1959, Gambino took over the Commission of the American Mafia and played a powerful role in organized crime until his death from a heart attack in 1976. During a criminal career that spanned over fifty years, Gambino served only twenty-two months in prison, for a tax evasion charge in 1937.
Carlo Gambino was born in Palermo, Sicily, Italy, on August 24, 1902, to a family that belonged to the Sicilian Mafia from the Passo di Rigano neighborhood. He had two brothers: Gaspare, who was not involved with the Mafia; and Paolo, who was a part of what would become the Gambino crime family. His parents were Italian immigrants Tommaso Gambino and Felice Castellano.
Gambino entered the United States on December 23, 1921, at Norfolk, Virginia, as a stowaway on the SS Vincenzo Florio. He made his way to New York City to join his cousins, the Castellanos, and worked for a small trucking firm owned by their family. Gambino later moved to a modest house located at 2230 Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn; his Long Island residence, located at 34 Club Drive in Massapequa, served as his summer home. The two-story brick house, surrounded by a low fence with marble statues on the front lawn, was at the end of a cul-de-sac in Harbor Green Estates, overlooking the South Oyster Bay.
Gambino married one of his cousins, Catherine Castellano, sister of future Gambino family boss Paul Castellano. They raised four children – sons Thomas, Joseph (March 28, 1936 – February 20, 2020) and Carlo Jr. (1934–2019) and a daughter, Phyllis Gambino Sinatra (September 22, 1927 – February 19, 2007).
Castellammarese War and The Commission
In New York, Gambino joined a criminal organization headed by Joe Masseria, another Sicilian-born gangster. In 1930 he was arrested in Lawrence, Massachusetts, as a suspicious person. That charge was dismissed, but he was seized a month later in Brockton, Massachusetts, on a larceny charge. A warrant was issued for his arrest when he failed to show up in court. Four years later, Gambino was arrested in Manhattan as a fugitive and was returned to Brockton, where the larceny charge was dropped when he made restitution of $1,000.
By the early 1930s, Masseria found himself in a fierce rivalry with Salvatore Maranzano, the head of the Castellammarese clan, which eventually escalated into the bloody Castellammarese War. Masseria and Maranzano were so-called "Mustache Petes": older, traditional Mafia bosses who had started their criminal careers in their home country and believed in upholding the supposed "Old World Mafia" principles of "honor", "tradition", "respect" and "dignity". The Mustache Petes refused to work with non-Italians and were skeptical of working with non-Sicilians. Some of the most conservative bosses worked only with men having roots in their own Sicilian village.
When the war began turning poorly for Masseria, his second-in-command, Charles "Lucky" Luciano, saw an opportunity to switch allegiances. In a secret deal with Maranzano, he agreed to engineer Masseria's death in return for taking over Masseria's rackets and becoming Maranzano's lieutenant. On April 15, 1931, Masseria was killed at Nuova Villa Tammaro, a restaurant on Coney Island, ending the Castellammarese War.
With Masseria gone, Maranzano reorganized the Italian gangs of New York into Five Families headed by Luciano, Joe Profaci, Tommy Gagliano, Vincent Mangano and himself. He called a meeting of crime bosses in Wappingers Falls, New York, where he declared himself capo di tutti capi ("boss of all bosses"). Maranzano also whittled down the rival families' rackets in favor of his own. Luciano appeared to accept these changes but was merely biding his time before removing Maranzano. Although Maranzano was slightly more forward-thinking than Masseria, Luciano had come to believe that he was even more greedy and power-hungry than Masseria had been.
By September 1931, Maranzano, realizing the threat Luciano posed, hired Irish hitman Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll to eliminate him. However, Tommy Lucchese alerted Luciano that he was marked for death. On September 10, Maranzano summoned Luciano, Vito Genovese and Frank Costello to his office at 230 Park Avenue in Manhattan. Rather than show up to be killed, they sent a team of hitmen posing as government agents who murdered Maranzano instead.
Later in 1931, Luciano called a meeting in Chicago with various bosses, where he proposed the creation of a governing body for organized crime that would later evolve into the Commission. Designed to settle all disputes and decide which families controlled which territories, the Commission has been called Luciano's greatest innovation. His goals with the Commission were to quietly maintain his own power over all the families, and to prevent future gang wars; the bosses approved the idea of the Commission.
After Masseria's death, Gambino and his cousins became soldiers in the family headed by Mangano. Gambino was arrested in 1937 for tax evasion related to operating a million-gallon distillery in Philadelphia. He served twenty-two months in prison at the United States Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, the only period in his long criminal career during which he was incarcerated.
Despite being a mob power in his own right, Albert Anastasia was nominally the underboss of the Mangano family. During his twenty-year rule, Mangano had resented Anastasia's close ties to Luciano and Costello, particularly the fact that they had obtained Anastasia's services without first seeking Mangano's permission. This and other business disputes led to heated, almost physical fights between the two mobsters.
In 1951, Mangano and his brother Philip were murdered, reportedly on the orders of Anastasia. Philip's body was found near Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, on April 19, 1951. Vincent's body was never found and he was declared dead by the Surrogate's Court in Brooklyn on October 30, 1961, ten years after he had disappeared. Anastasia succeeded Mangano as head of his crime family with the support of Costello, who had risen to leadership of the Luciano family after Genovese fled to Italy to avoid criminal charges and held on to that position after Genovese's return.
In 1957, Genovese decided to move against Costello and Anastasia, enlisting Gambino–Anastasia's underboss–in the murder conspiracy. Genovese ordered Vincent Gigante to carry out the hit on Costello, which was attempted outside Costello's apartment building on May 2, 1957. While the wound was merely superficial, this brush with death persuaded Costello to relinquish power to Genovese and retire. Although a doorman identified Gigante as the gunman, Costello claimed to not recognize him at Gigante's 1958 trial; Gigante was acquitted on charges of attempted murder.
With Costello gone, Genovese and Gambino allegedly ordered Anastasia's murder. Gambino gave the contract to Profaci, who then allegedly assigned the hit to Joseph "Crazy Joe" Gallo. Anastasia was murdered on October 25, 1957, in the barbershop of the Park Sheraton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. Gambino subsequently took over the Mangano crime family, which took his name going forward. He appointed Joseph Biondo as underboss; he replaced Biondo with Aniello Dellacroce in 1965.
Shortly after Anastasia's murder, Genovese took control of Luciano's crime family from Costello. Seeking to legitimize his new power, he called a meeting in which leaders of both the American and Sicilian crime syndicates would be in attendance. Among the items on the meeting's agenda were the Mafia's interests in gambling and narcotics smuggling in pre-revolutionary Cuba, as well as their interests in New York City's garment industry. The meeting took place on November 14 at the home of mobster Joseph Barbara in Apalachin, New York.