70 Facts About Lucky Luciano

Charles "Lucky" Luciano was an Italian-born gangster who operated mainly in the United States.

Lucky Luciano is considered the father of modern organized crime in the United States for the establishment of the Commission in 1931, after he abolished the boss of bosses title held by Salvatore Maranzano following the Castellammarese War.

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.

Lucky Luciano was sentenced to 30 to 50 years in prison, but during World War II an agreement was struck with the Department of the Navy through his Jewish Mob associate Meyer Lansky to provide naval intelligence.

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

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

Lucky Luciano's father was very ambitious and persistent in eventually moving to the United States.

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

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

However, after winning $244 in a dice game, Lucky Luciano quit his job and began earning money on the street.

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 10 cents per week.

Lucky Luciano was 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.

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

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

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 United States and chafed at their bosses' conservatism.

Lucky Luciano wanted to use lessons he learned from Rothstein to turn their gang activities into criminal empires.

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 beating, Lucky Luciano said that he had no idea who did it.

However, 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.

The war had been going poorly for Masseria, and Lucky Luciano saw an opportunity to switch allegiance.

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

Lucky Luciano sent to Maranzano's office four Jewish gangsters whose faces were unknown to Maranzano's people.

However, the idea of an organized mass purge, directed by Lucky Luciano, has been debunked as a myth.

Lucky Luciano had reached the pinnacle of the underworld of the United States, setting policies and directing activities along with the other Mafia bosses.

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

Lucky Luciano believed that the ceremony of becoming a "made man" in a crime family was a Sicilian anachronism.

However, Genovese persuaded Lucky Luciano to keep the title, 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 a Dewey 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 convinced many to testify rather than serve additional jail time.

In late March 1936, Lucky Luciano received a tip that he was going to be arrested and fled to Hot Springs, Arkansas.

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

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.

At least two of Lucky Luciano's contemporaries have denied that Lucky Luciano was ever part of "the Combination".

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.

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.

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 moved to Havana, Cuba, 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's objective was to be closer to the US so that he could resume control over American Mafia operations and eventually return home.

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

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

Lucky Luciano was placed on a freighter that was sailing to Genoa.

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 Anastasia family underboss Carlo Gambino.

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

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

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

Lucky Luciano was unaware that Italian drug agents had followed him to the airport in anticipation of arresting him on drug smuggling charges.

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

Lucky Luciano was buried in St John's Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens.

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.