Carlo Gambino, who would become one of the most powerful and influential organized crime bosses in American history, was born on August 24, 1902, in Palermo, Sicily. He arrived in the United States as a stowaway on December 23, 1921, in Norfolk, Virginia, and later joined his cousins, the Castellanos, in New York City, where he worked for a small trucking company owned by his uncle’s family. Gambino relocated to Brooklyn and married his cousin Catherine Castellano in 1932, cementing his ties to the family that would play a central role in his rise and, eventually, his downfall. Gambino’s early criminal record was relatively minor.
He was arrested as a suspicious person in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1930, though the charge was dropped. A month later, he was arrested in Brockton, Massachusetts, on a larceny charge. When he failed to appear in court, a warrant was issued for his arrest. About four years later, he was apprehended as a fugitive in Manhattan and returned to Brockton, where the larceny charge was dropped after he made restitution of one thousand dollars.
By the early 1930s, the American Mafia was embroiled in the violent Castellammarese War, a bloody conflict between two powerful factions. On one side was Salvatore Maranzano, who had come from Sicily to challenge the established leadership of Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria. Both men were dubbed “Mustache Petes” because they were older, traditional Mafia bosses who had begun their criminal careers in Italy. They were committed to upholding old-world principles of honor, tradition, respect, and dignity, and they refused to work with non-Italians, often being wary of non-Sicilians.
The most conservative of these bosses only worked with men from their own Sicilian villages. Masseria’s war effort was going poorly, and a rising gangster named Charles “Lucky” Luciano saw an opportunity to change sides. In a secret deal with Maranzano, Luciano agreed to engineer Masseria’s death in exchange for receiving Masseria’s rackets and becoming Maranzano’s second in command. On April 15, 1931, Masseria was murdered in a Coney Island restaurant in Brooklyn.
Luciano took over Masseria’s gang and became Maranzano’s lieutenant, effectively ending the Castellammarese War. Following this victory, Maranzano reorganized the Italian-American gangs in New York City into five families, led by Lucky Luciano, Joe Profaci, Tommy Gagliano, Vincent Mangano, and himself. Maranzano then called a meeting of crime bosses in Wappingers Falls, New York, where he declared himself “Capo di Tutti Capi” (Boss of All Bosses). He also reduced the rackets of rival families in favor of his own.
Luciano appeared to accept these changes but was quietly waiting for the right moment to remove his new superior, having come to believe that Maranzano was even greedier than Masseria. By September 1931, Maranzano realized Luciano was a threat and allegedly hired Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll, an Irish gangster, to kill him. However, Lucky Luciano was alerted that he was marked for death. When Maranzano ordered Luciano, Vito Genovese, and Frank Costello to come to his office, Luciano instead sent four Jewish gangsters, secured with the aid of Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel, to kill Maranzano first.
In 1931, Luciano called a meeting in Chicago with various bosses where he proposed the creation of “The Commission,” a governing body to oversee organized crime in the United States. This was later called Lucky Luciano’s greatest innovation, as it ended the chaotic violence of the old wars and established a corporate-style structure for the Mafia. In the years that followed, Gambino and his cousins became soldiers in the family led by Vincent Mangano. When World War II broke out, Gambino allegedly made a lot of money on the black market by selling ration stamps.
During this time, he aligned himself closely with Luciano and Costello, which caused friction with his own boss. Mangano allegedly became concerned about Gambino’s close ties to the powerful Luciano and Costello, and their business disagreements reportedly sparked heated, almost physical clashes between the two mobsters. On April 19, 1951, Mangano’s brother Philip was discovered dead in Brooklyn. Vincent Mangano himself vanished and was never found, allegedly murdered on the orders of the family’s street boss, Albert Anastasia, who then assumed control of the Mangano crime family with Gambino as his underboss.
Anastasia’s reign was also short-lived. In 1957, Vito Genovese, who was in the midst of a power struggle, instructed Vincent “The Chin” Gigante to kill Frank Costello on May 2, 1957. Costello survived the shooting, but the wound, though superficial, persuaded him to surrender power to Genovese and retire. With Costello gone, Genovese and Gambino then allegedly ordered the murder of Albert Anastasia.
Gambino allegedly gave the contract to Joe Profaci, who allegedly passed it to the Gallo crew led by Joseph “Crazy Joe” Gallo. Anastasia was murdered on October 25, 1957, in the barber shop of the Park Sheraton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. Gambino took over the family and consolidated power by sanctioning a national crime meeting in November 1957, immediately after the Anastasia murder and after Genovese took control of the Luciano crime family. Powerful mafiosi from the United States and Italy gathered at that meeting in Apalachin, New York, which was infamously raided by police, exposing the Mafia to the public in a way it had never been before.
After Genovese was later imprisoned, Gambino took control of the Commission and the rest of organized crime in New York City. Gambino despised the drug trade, despite the fact that heroin and cocaine were highly profitable, because he believed they would draw the attention of law enforcement. By his orders, the punishment for a family member dealing drugs was death. Gambino placed his brother-in-law, Paul Castellano, in charge of the family’s operations at the airport.
Along with another boss, the pair controlled the airport’s management, security, and all airport unions. With this power, Gambino controlled organized crime in New York City, the airport, and the Commission itself. He died of a heart attack on October 15, 1976, at the age of 74, having successfully built one of the largest and most powerful criminal organizations in the United States.
Despite being convicted only once—on a 1937 tax evasion charge that resulted in a sentence of 22 months in prison—Gambino maintained his low-profile “untouchable” persona, leaving behind a criminal empire that would endure for decades.