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/-------------------- advertisement -----------------------\ Enjoy new investment freedom! Get the tools you need to successfully manage your portfolio from Harrisdirect. Start with award-winning research. Then add access to round-the-clock customer service from Series-7 trained representatives. Open an account today and receive a $100 credit! http://www.nytimes.com/ads/Harrisdirect.html \----------------------------------------------------------/ Joe Bonanno, Mafia Leader Who Built an Empire, Dies at 97 May 12, 2002 By SELWYN RAAB Joseph Bonanno, who founded one of the nation's most enduring Mafia families and rose to the pinnacle of organized crime in America, died yesterday in Tucson, where he had been living. He was 97. He died of heart failure after suffering from health problems for several years, his lawyer, Alfred Donau, told The Associated Press. Mr. Bonanno, according to law-enforcement authorities, created a criminal empire in Brooklyn that ultimately extended to California, Arizona and Canada. He ruled his family, which still bears his name, as one of New York's five organized crime families, from 1931 to the mid-1960's. Ralph F. Salerno, a former detective for the New York City Police Department and a former investigator for Congressional committees, described Mr. Bonanno as "one of the people present at the creation of the whole thing - the American Mafia." In his autobiography, "A Man of Honor," written with Sergio Lalli and published in 1983, Mr. Bonanno acknowledged that he was one of the original members of the "Commission," the select group of mob chiefs that was established to resolve internal disputes among the 20-odd Mafia families or clans in the United States. Mr. Bonanno added that during the 1950's and early 60's, he served as the Commission's chairman, the pre-eminent position in the American Mafia. Law enforcement officials said that Mr. Bonanno reached the summit of his power in the early 60's, reaping huge profits mainly from illicit gambling, loansharking rackets and heroin trafficking. The officials said that he also became a millionaire through legal investments in garment factories in New York City, a dairy farm in upstate New York, cheese companies in Wisconsin and Canada and real-estate investments in the New York metropolitan area and in Arizona. During 30 years as boss of the Bonanno family, Mr. Bonanno was never indicted for a crime. But in retirement, he served prison terms for obstruction of justice and for civil contempt of court. In his years in power, Mr. Bonanno shunned the flamboyant styles favored by many contemporary mob bosses, including Charles (Lucky) Luciano, Thomas (Three Finger Brown) Lucchese and Frank Costello, who delighted in wearing elegant clothes and being the hosts of lavish parties in nightclubs in Manhattan and Miami Beach. Mr. Bonanno was rarely seen carousing in public places; he preferred meeting with his mob cronies at his home in New York or in rural retreats, where he helped prepare pasta and steaks for his guests and associates. The exception to his otherwise conservative appearance was a fondness for ruby, sapphire, jade or onyx pinky rings, and for expensive cigars. Mr. Bonanno's authority, organized-crime investigators said, disintegrated in the mid-60's when Mr. Lucchese and another Mafia boss, Carlo Gambino, learned that he was plotting to assassinate them in an attempt to solidify his position as the nation's dominant mob leader. Mr. Bonanno's plan backfired when Joseph Colombo, the gangster who was assigned to organize the murders of the gang leaders, betrayed him and informed Mr. Gambino. Before his enemies could retaliate, Mr. Bonanno vanished for 19 months, maintaining when he reappeared that he had been abducted. But many investigators believe that he went into hiding, partly in fear for his life and partly to evade a government subpoena to testify before a grand jury. Based on information gleaned from wire taps and informers, New York City detectives and federal agents assert that Mr. Bonanno reappeared only after the other bosses on the Commission agreed to spare his life on the condition that he surrender control of his family and relinquish many of his rackets. In his autobiography, Mr. Bonanno said that in 1968, at the age of 63, he voluntarily retired to Tucson. He offered this explanation: other bosses and members of his own family had become greedy and no longer respected the Mafia's codes of behavior. He also rebuked leaders of other families for accepting members who were not of Sicilian heritage and who did not understand the Mafia's traditional rules of absolute loyalty and deference to their leaders. "Slowly, but irreversibly, our Tradition deteriorated," he wrote in his autobiography. "The ideals for which it stood became corrupted." Mr. Bonanno was born on Jan. 18, 1905 in Castellammare del Golfo in western Sicily. His parents emigrated to the United States when he was three years old and he and his parents lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for about 10 years before they returned with their son to Sicily. In 1924, Mr. Bonanno, then 19, entered the United States illegally, slipping into Tampa, Fla., on a fishing boat from Cuba. He later maintained that he was forced into exile because of anti-Fascist utterances, but most investigators believe that he left Italy to avoid arrest in a crackdown against the Sicilian Mafia by the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini. Mr. Bonanno admitted in his autobiography that he became a bootlegger in New York during Prohibition and an enforcer in a gang run by Salvatore Maranzano. He was a battle commander for Mr. Maranzano in a power struggle with a rival gang in New York City led by Joseph Masseria. The deadly conflict was known as the Castellammarese War because most of the participants came from the region near Castellammare del Golfo. The gangland war ended in 1931 with the assassinations of both leaders. To avoid future bloody conflicts that provoked police attention and to ensure prosperity for New York's nascent Mafia gangs, Lucky Luciano in 1931 proposed the creation of the Commission and the formal establishment of the five crime families in New York from the loosely knit Sicilian gangs that then existed. Mr. Luciano took over Mr. Masseria's organization and Mr. Bonnano, at 26, had gained control of the Maranzano family and a seat on the Commission. In his autobiography, Mr. Bonanno said that although heads of Mafia families from other cities were admitted to the Commission, the five New York gangs (now known as the Gambino, Genovese, Lucchese, Colombo and Bonanno families) were its permanent and most important members. Despite his prominence in the underworld, Mr. Bonanno was a relatively obscure figure to the public until November 1957, when the police raided a meeting of more than 60 Mafia bosses and their top lieutenants at Apalachin, N.Y. The conclave of gangsters from major cities across country convinced many law-enforcement officials of the existence of a national crime syndicate. Mr. Bonanno was not arrested at the meeting, and he later insisted that he had not even been present. But the raid catapulted his name to the forefront of a federal grand jury investigation of organized crime after prosecutors identified him as the head of a major crime family. He was indicted on a charge of conspiracy to obstruct justice by refusing to testify before the grand jury. A heart attack spared him from a conspiracy trial, in which many gang members who had attended the meeting at Apalachin were convicted. By the time he had recuperated the convictions were overturned by the United States Court of Appeals and the indictment against him was dismissed. In 1963, apparently trying to avoid another grand jury inquiry in New York, he fled to Canada but was deported to the United States, where he had become a naturalized citizen in 1945 despite his illegal entry into the country as a young man. On Oct. 20, 1964, the day before he was to testify before the grand jury, Mr. Bonanno disappeared. His lawyers said that after having dinner with him, Mr. Bonanno was kidnapped as he was entering the apartment house where one of his lawyers lived, on Park Avenue and East 36th Street. He reappeared in May, 1966, showing up unannounced at the Federal Courthouse in Foley Square in Manhattan, with the explanation that he had been kidnapped at gunpoint by two men who warned, "Come on, Joe, my boss wants you." In his autobiography, he asserted that his abduction was carried out by men who worked for his cousin, Stefano Magaddino, the Mafia boss in Buffalo. He said he was driven to a rural area in upstate New York, where his cousin warned him that he had fallen into disfavor with other Mafia leaders. After being held for six weeks, he wrote, he was driven to Texas by his abductors at his request and released unharmed. He said that he grew a beard to disguise his appearance and spent the ensuing months in hideaways in Tucson and New York. Law enforcement authorities doubted his account and believed he dropped out to arrange a truce with his enemies in the Mafia. He was indicted on a charge of failing to appear before a grand jury but that charge was dropped in 1971. In the late 1960's, Mr. Bonanno gave up his Long Island house in Hempstead, N.Y., and a 14-room farmhouse near Middletown, N.Y., to live in Tucson, where he had maintained a home since the early 1940's. Most investigators say that he abdicated as the head of the the Bonanno family in 1966 but that he continued to dabble in rackets in Arizona and California. After Mr. Bonanno's departure, the Bonanno crime family never regained the influence, power and illicit wealth that it held during his leadership. In 1980, at the age of 75, he was convicted for the first time, on a federal charge of conspiracy to obstruct justice. A jury found him guilty of attempting to block a grand jury investigation into allegations that he was laundering money through businesses operated by his sons, Salvatore and Joseph C. Bonanno in California. He served one year in prison and was imprisoned again for 14 months in 1985-86 after refusing to testify in a federal racketeering case in Manhattan against the reputed leaders of the five New York Mafia families. Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was then the United States attorney in Manhattan, wanted to question him about statements in his autobiography about the origins of the Maifa and the existence of the Commission. Mr. Bonanno portrayed himself as a traditionalist and said that he was distressed by his son Salvatore's cooperation with Gay Talese, in his book "Honor Thy Father,"an account of the son's acceptance of his father's life in the Mafia. But his autobiography violated the basic Mafia tenet of omerta - the code of secrecy - and he was the first Mafia boss to write about his underworld affairs. In the book, he minimized the criminal aspects of his life and tried to justify the existence of what he called "Our Tradition." "As the father of a family I was like the head of state," he wrote, in describing his role. "I too had to maintain internal order. I too had to conduct foreign affairs with other families." But being the chief of a Mafia family in New York, he said, had drawbacks. "In other cities with only one family, fathers, with rare exceptions enjoyed long careers and died of natural causes," he noted. "In New York City, however, where strife was almost routine, fathers led precarious lives." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/12/obituaries/12BONA.html?ex=1022215866&ei=1&en=cb753124dc24a9bb HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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