Joseph Bonanno

Joseph Charles Bonanno, born Giuseppe Carlo Bonanno on January 18, 1905, and later nicknamed "Joe Bananas," headed the New York City crime family that bore his name from 1931 until 1968. He came into power at just 26 years old, making him one of the youngest crime family bosses ever, following the Castellammarese War and the killing of Salvatore Maranzano. In 1963, Bonanno and Joseph Magliocco hatched a plan to murder several rivals on the Mafia’s ruling Commission, but the scheme was betrayed. Bonanno then fled to Canada, and after a brief return to New York in 1964, he vanished until 1966. The ensuing conflict, known as the "Banana War," dragged on until 1968, when Bonanno stepped down and moved to Arizona. In his later years, he wrote a memoir, *A Man of Honor: The Autobiography of Joseph Bonanno*, published in 1983. He died on May 11, 2002, in Tucson, Arizona.

Bonanno was born in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, to Salvatore Bonanno and Catherine Bonventre. His uncles, Giuseppe and Stefano Bonanno, led a local Mafia clan allied with Stefano Magaddino, a relative through Bonanno’s maternal grandmother. In the early 1900s, this clan feuded with Felice Buccellato’s group. After Giuseppe and Stefano were murdered, their brother Salvatore avenged them by killing Buccellato members. Magaddino had moved to New York in 1902 and became a key figure in the Castellammarese clan there. When Joseph was three, his family relocated to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for about ten years before returning to Italy. His father had gone back to Sicily in 1911 and died of a heart attack in 1915. In 1921, Magaddino fled to Buffalo, New York, to avoid murder charges.

Bonanno re-entered the United States in 1924 by stowing away on a Cuban fishing boat to Tampa, Florida, alongside Magaddino’s son, Peter. According to Bonanno, he was detained by immigration officers at a Jacksonville train station but released on $1,000 bail. Willie Moretti and an unnamed man welcomed him; it later emerged that Magaddino had arranged the bail as a favor for Bonanno’s uncle, Giovanni Bonventre. Bonanno first worked at a bakery owned by his uncle and later took acting classes near Union Square in Manhattan. He had been active in the Mafia in Italy and fled after Benito Mussolini’s crackdown, though Bonanno later claimed he left because he was strongly anti-Fascist. He got into bootlegging, running a distillery in an apartment building basement with Gaspar DiGregorio and Giovanni Romano, who died there in an accidental explosion. During this period, boss Salvatore Maranzano took Bonanno under his wing as a mentor.

In the Castellammarese War of 1930–1931, Maranzano and Bonanno fought against Joe Masseria and Giuseppe Morello’s Brooklyn-based faction. A secret third group of younger mafiosi, disgusted with the old-school "Mustache Petes," emerged on both sides. This "Young Turk" faction, led by Lucky Luciano, included Frank Costello, Vito Genovese, Joe Adonis, Carlo Gambino, and Albert Anastasia on Masseria’s side, and Joe Profaci, Tommy Gagliano, Tommy Lucchese, Joseph Magliocco, and Stefano Magaddino on Maranzano’s. Though Bonanno held to old traditions of honor and respect, he recognized the need for change and allied with the Young Turks. Luciano secretly agreed with Maranzano to kill Masseria in exchange for control of his rackets and the role of second-in-command; Masseria was murdered on April 15, 1931. But Luciano soon saw Maranzano as even more greedy and outdated, especially after Maranzano declared himself *capo di tutti capi*. Luciano then arranged Maranzano’s murder on September 10, 1931.

After Maranzano’s death, Bonanno took over most of his family, calling himself its boss. His exact role in the events leading to Maranzano’s killing is disputed. In his autobiography, Bonanno claimed he knew nothing of Luciano’s plans and only learned of them from Magaddino. He said he later heard that Maranzano and Luciano had clashed over influence in the Garment District, and that Maranzano had planned to kill Luciano the day after he himself was killed, having given the contract to Irish gangster Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll.