70 Facts About Lucky Luciano

Lucky Luciano started his criminal career in the Five Points Gang and was instrumental in the development of the National Crime Syndicate.

Lucky Luciano was the first official boss of the modern Genovese crime family.

In 1936, Luciano was tried and convicted for compulsory prostitution and running a prostitution racket after years of investigation by District Attorney Thomas E Dewey.

In 1946, for his alleged wartime cooperation, Lucky Luciano's sentence was commuted on the condition that he be deported to Italy.

Lucky Luciano died in Italy on January 26,1962, and his body was permitted to be transported back to the United States for burial.

Charles "Lucky" Luciano was born Salvatore Lucania on November 24,1897, in Lercara Friddi, Sicily, Italy.

The book was based on conversations that Lucky Luciano supposedly had with Hollywood producer Martin Gosch in the years before Lucky Luciano's death.

In 1906, when Lucky Luciano was eight years old, his family emigrated to the US They settled in New York City, in the borough of Manhattan on its Lower East Side, a popular destination for Italian immigrants during the period.

At age 14, Lucky Luciano dropped out of school and started a job delivering hats, earning $7 per week.

That same year, Lucky Luciano's parents sent him to the Brooklyn Truancy School.

Unlike other street gangs, whose business was petty crime, Lucky Luciano offered protection to Jewish youngsters from Italian and Irish gangs for ten cents per week.

Lucky Luciano began learning the pimping trade in the years around World War I Luciano met Meyer Lansky as a teenager when Luciano attempted to extort Lansky for protection money on his walk home from school.

Lucky Luciano respected the younger boy's defiant responses to his threats, and the two formed a lasting partnership.

From 1916 to 1936, Lucky Luciano was arrested 25 times on charges including assault, illegal gambling, blackmail, and robbery but spent no time in prison.

Rothstein employed Jack Diamond as a bodyguard and an enforcer; Lucky Luciano often worked with Diamond.

In 1923, Lucky Luciano was caught in a sting selling heroin to undercover agents.

Lucky Luciano soon became a top aide in Masseria's criminal organization.

In contrast, Lucky Luciano was willing to work with not only Italians, but Jewish and Irish gangsters, as long as there was money to be made.

Lucky Luciano was shocked to hear traditional Sicilian mafiosi lecture him about his dealings with close friend Costello, whom they called "the dirty Calabrian".

Lucky Luciano soon began cultivating ties with other younger mobsters who had been born in Italy but began their criminal careers in the US and chafed at their bosses' conservatism.

Lucky Luciano wanted to use lessons he learned from Rothstein to turn their gang activities into full-blown criminal enterprises.

In October 1929, Lucky Luciano was forced into a limousine at gunpoint by three men, beaten and stabbed, and strung up by his hands from a beam in a warehouse in Staten Island.

Lucky Luciano survived the ordeal, but was forever marked with a scar and droopy eye.

When picked up by the police after the assault, Lucky Luciano said that he had no idea who did it.

In 1953, Lucky Luciano told an interviewer that it was the police who kidnapped and beat him in an attempt to find Jack "Legs" Diamond.

Lucky Luciano appeared to accept these changes but was merely biding his time before removing Maranzano.

Lucky Luciano sent to Maranzano's office Lucchese and four Jewish gangsters, secured with the aid of Lansky and Siegel, whose faces were unknown to Maranzano's people.

Lucky Luciano became very influential in labor union activities and controlled the Manhattan Waterfront, garbage hauling, construction, Garment District businesses, and trucking.

Genovese ultimately persuaded Lucky Luciano to keep the ceremony, arguing that young people needed rituals to promote obedience to the family.

Lucky Luciano remained committed to omerta, the oath of silence, to protect the families from legal prosecution.

Lucky Luciano elevated his most trusted Italian associates to high-level positions in what was now the Lucky Luciano crime family.

Later in 1931, Lucky Luciano called a meeting in Chicago with various bosses, where he proposed a Commission to serve as the governing body for organized crime.

Lucky Luciano argued that such an assassination would precipitate a massive law enforcement crackdown; the national crime syndicate had enacted a hard and fast rule stating that law enforcement and prosecutors were not to be harmed.

Lucky Luciano took measures to prevent police corruption from impeding the raids: he assigned 160 police officers outside of the New York City Police Department's vice squad to conduct the raids, and the officers were instructed to wait on street corners until they received their orders, minutes before the raids were to begin.

Lucky Luciano convinced many to testify rather than serve additional jail time.

In late March 1936, after receiving a tip on his imminent arrest, Lucky Luciano fled to Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Lucky Luciano accused Luciano of being part of a massive prostitution ring known as "the bonding combination".

Lucky Luciano exposed Luciano for lying on the witness stand through direct quizzing and records of telephone calls; Luciano could not explain why his federal income tax records claimed he made only $22,000 a year, while he was obviously a wealthy man.

Raab wrote that the evidence Dewey presented against Lucky Luciano was "astonishingly thin" and argued that it would have been more appropriate to charge Lucky Luciano with extortion.

Bonanno, the last surviving contemporary of Lucky Luciano's who was not in prison, denied that Lucky Luciano was directly involved in prostitution in his book A Man of Honor.

One witness testified that Lucky Luciano, working out of his Waldorf-Astoria suite, personally hired him to collect from bookers and madams.

Lucky Luciano continued to run his crime family from prison, relaying his orders through acting boss Genovese.

In 1937 Genovese fled to Naples to avoid an impending murder indictment in New York, so Lucky Luciano appointed his consigliere, Costello, as the new acting boss and the overseer of Lucky Luciano's interests.

Lucky Luciano was first imprisoned at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York.

Lucky Luciano used his influence to help get the materials to build a church at the prison, which became famous for being one of the only freestanding churches in the New York State correctional system and for the fact that on the church's altar are two of the original doors from the Victoria, the ship of Ferdinand Magellan.

At this point, Lucky Luciano stepped down as family boss and Costello formally replaced him.

The Navy, the State of New York and Lucky Luciano reached a deal: in exchange for a commutation of his sentence, Lucky Luciano promised the complete assistance of his organization in providing intelligence to the Navy.

In preparation for the 1943 allied invasion of Sicily, Lucky Luciano allegedly provided the US military with Sicilian Mafia contacts.

The enemy threat to the docks, Lucky Luciano allegedly said, was manufactured by the sinking of the SS Normandie in New York Harbor, supposedly directed by Anastasia's brother, Anthony Anastasio; however, the official investigation of the ship sinking found no evidence of sabotage.

On January 3,1946, as a presumed reward for his alleged wartime cooperation, Dewey reluctantly commuted Lucky Luciano's pandering sentence on condition that he not resist deportation to Italy.

Lucky Luciano accepted the deal, although he still maintained that he was a US citizen and not subject to deportation.

On February 2,1946, two federal immigration agents transported Lucky Luciano from Sing Sing prison to Ellis Island in New York Harbor for deportation proceedings.

In October 1946, Lucky Luciano secretly relocated to the Cuban capital of Havana, first taking a freighter from Naples to Caracas, Venezuela, then a flight to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, before flying to Mexico City and doubling back to Caracas, where he took a private plane to Camaguey, Cuba, finally arriving on October 29.

Lucky Luciano wanted to move closer to the US so that he could resume control over American Mafia operations and eventually return home.

Lucky Luciano was already established as a major investor in Cuban gambling and hotel projects.

Lucky Luciano had been publicly fraternizing with Sinatra as well as visiting numerous nightclubs, so his presence was no secret in Havana.

The US started putting pressure on the Cuban government to expel him; on February 21,1947, Federal Bureau of Narcotics Commissioner Harry J Anslinger notified the Cubans that the US would block all shipment of narcotic prescription drugs while Luciano remained in the country.

Two days later, the Cuban government announced that Lucky Luciano was in custody and would be deported to Italy within 48 hours.

On June 9,1951, Lucky Luciano was questioned by Naples police on suspicion of illegally bringing $57,000 in cash and a new American car into Italy.

Lucky Luciano was required to report to the police every Sunday, to stay home every night and not to leave Naples without police permission.

The commission cited Lucky Luciano's alleged involvement in the narcotics trade as the reason for these restrictions.

Lucky Luciano was aided in this move by Gambino, now the Anastasia family's underboss.

Lucky Luciano was acquitted at trial, thanking Costello in the courtroom after the verdict.

Lucky Luciano allegedly attended a meeting at a hotel in Palermo to discuss heroin trade as part of the French Connection.

In 1929, Lucky Luciano met Gay Orlova, a featured dancer in one of Broadway's leading nightclubs, Hollywood.

Lucky Luciano continued to have affairs with other women, resulting in many arguments with Lissoni during which he physically struck her.

On January 26,1962, Lucky Luciano died of a heart attack at Naples Airport.

Lucky Luciano had gone there to meet with American producer Martin Gosch about a film based on his life.

Lucky Luciano's body was conveyed along the streets of Naples in a horse-drawn hearse.

Lucky Luciano was buried in Saint John Cemetery, in Middle Village, Queens.