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Birth: Mid 1920's
Joe Masseria and
Salvatore Maranzano in 1931, the American Mafia was restructured by
Charles "Lucky" Luciano and others. Joe Profaci and his organisation were the only neutrals during the Castellammarese War, they reputidly didn't involve thimselfs in a war, although he was supportive to the Castellammarese in Brooklyn.
Joseph Profaci was also one of the men present at what is believed to be the first national commission meeting between gangsters in Cleveland, 1928, were strangely enough Masseria and Maranzano were not present. Amongst others were Joseph Porello (the host of the meeting) and Al Capone representative Pasqualino Lolordo. However, most of the men were arrested during the meetings and were jailed. Not much later Porello bailed them all out.
Under Profaci, the
Brooklyn-based family pursued the usual mob enterprises of labour rackets, extortion,
gambling, hijacking and loan sharking. Later, they joined most of the other families in the
drug trade, principally importing heroin. Profaci was also a good friend with one of the most powerfull bosses in the US, Joseph Bonanno. Instead of going public with themselves, or going to parties, brothels and expensive restaurants like Charles Luciano and many others did, Bonanno and Profaci frequently visited eachothers home with their wives to eat and talk.
In the late 1940's Profaci was spotted in Sicily to make peace between 2 fighting branches of the Greco Family (amongst those men were Michele Greco).
conflicts that would dog the family for decades began in earnest. Ever the man with an eye for
an opening, Carlo Gambino began stirring up unrest in the family to try to undermine the
Profaci-Bonanno alliance, and Costantino Gallo, Joey and Alberto Gallo proved receptive to
his overtures. Profaci had been taking a large chunk of the profits from the brothers'
racketeering activities and they had had enough. The ill feeling was compounded when
Profaci ordered the execution of Gallo crew member Frank Abbatemarco, simply for being
disloyal and disrespectful in withholding tribute to his boss.
In February 1961, the Gallos kidnapped a number of prominent members of the family including
underboss Joseph Magliocco and capo Joe Colombo. In return for their release, the brothers
demanded changes in the way profits were divided between crews, and at first Profaci appeared
to agree, following negotiations between the captors and Profaci's consigliere, Charles "The Sidge"
Locicero.
from behind the scenes, Colombo was named as the head of the family in Magliocco's place.
To remove the association with its despised former head, the family was rechristened the
Colombo family, as though to move into a new era following Profaci's greed and mistreatment
of his men, as they saw it. At the age of 41, Colombo became the youngest leader of any mob
family - many questioned his experience as a result.
The doubt at his appointment became bemusement when, following the arrest of his son on
charges of debasing currency, Colombo set up the Italian-American Civil Rights League to defend
Italian Americans from what he saw as prejudice at the hands of the law enforcement authorities.
In an organisation that prided itself on keeping a low profile, the publicity Colombo brought on the
mafia was decidedly unwelcome - through his involvement with the League, he was frequently to
be found, willingly, on television and in the press, where a Mafia boss usually only finds himself
when having to defend himself in court.
Following the high-profiled exploits of Colombo (and, in his own way, Joe Gallo),
the Colombo family needed a period of comparative calm. Colombo was in no position to
run the family and the leadership fell to Thomas DiBella, a man adept at evading the authorities
since his sole bootlegging conviction in 1932. Colombo died in 1978, and DiBella stepped down
due to ill health in 1977, leaving a vacuum at the head of the family.
Carmine Persico had grown in stature in the family and was clearly in line to take over, but he
had been in and out of prison so much over the previous decade it was unclear whether he
would be in a position to do so. He nonetheless ran the family from prison with Gennaro
"Jerry Lang" Langella as his street boss, until both men were sentenced to 100 years in jail
during a RICO trial in 1987.