In the 1960s, a simmering rivalry between two of New York’s most powerful crime families boiled over into public insults, with members of the Genovese family reportedly branding their Gambino rivals as “sexual degenerates. ”
The derogatory remark is typically attributed to Genovese acting underboss Thomas “Tommy Ryan” Eboli, who was recorded making the comment during a period of intense friction between the two organizations. At the time, the Gambino family was transitioning power following the imprisonment of boss Vito Genovese, and tensions with the ascendant Gambinos were running high. According to one publication from the era, the Genoveses “stooped to calling the Gambinos the degenerates, a sneaking allusion to intermarried practices within the Gambino family.
” The implication was a reference to the Gambinos’ practice of marrying first cousins, a custom rooted in their Sicilian heritage. An FBI file from 1969 shows that an informant also used the term, describing the Gambino family as “perhaps the least feared” among New York’s crime syndicates and remarking that it was “full of degenerates. ”
The rumors had a factual basis. Gambino family boss Carlo Gambino married his first cousin, Catherine Castellano, who was also the sister of future Gambino boss Paul Castellano.
The two families were already intertwined: Carlo’s father, Tommaso, had married the sister of Catherine and Paul’s father, Giuseppe Castellano. Carlo’s brother, Paolo Gambino, a captain in the family, also married a first cousin, Caterina Castellano, who was the daughter of Francesco Castellano—the brother of both Felicia and Giuseppe Castellano. They were not alone. Frank Scalise, who briefly served as the family’s boss in the early 1930s and later became underboss to Albert Anastasia, also married his first cousin, Mary.
An FBI file noted that the marriage produced a child described in the file as a “deaf-mute and mentally deficient,” a detail that fueled the stigma attached to the practice. The tradition was not unique to the Gambinos. In the early 20th century, cousin marriage was a common cultural practice in southern Italy, particularly in Sicily and Calabria, where many of these mobsters’ families originated. A study of marriages in Sicily between 1930 and 1964 found that in the previous century, first-cousin marriage had accounted for nearly 50% of all unions in the region.
A separate study focusing specifically on mafia marriages in the Corleone area of Sicily around the turn of the 20th century examined 105 mafiosi, including the famous Giuseppe Morello. Researchers looked at 35 marriages and compared them to a randomly selected control group, measuring what they termed “marital consanguinity. ”
The findings showed that mafia members and their wives were, on average, twice as closely related as couples in the control group. Mafia couples were also twice as likely to have a close degree of kinship—defined as third cousins or closer, meaning they shared at least one set of third great-grandparents or a nearer direct ancestor.
The researchers suggested that the Catholic Church could play a role in disrupting these dynastic patterns. Noting that the church has stated that mafia membership is inconsistent with Catholic ideology, the study proposed that the church might reconsider its dispensation process for consanguineous marriages involving mafia families. “By withholding dispensation for consanguineous marriages between mafia families, the church might delegitimize and thus destabilize family dynasties that have terrorized Italy for more than 100 years,” the study stated. The difference in heritage helps explain the Genovese insult.
Eboli, who was of Neapolitan descent, came from a region where cousin marriage was far less common than in Sicily. For the Sicilian-born Gambinos, however, the practice was a deeply ingrained cultural norm that they carried with them to America. While the Genovese taunt was intended as an insult, it reflected a real cultural divide between two rival organizations—one that had little to do with criminal enterprise and everything to do with centuries-old traditions from their respective regions of Italy.