Salvatore Maranzano, nicknamed Little Caesar for his fascination with Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire, had built a criminal empire in Brooklyn behind the front of a real estate brokerage, running bootlegging, prostitution and narcotics rackets. Born in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, and married to Elisabetta Minore, he was sent to New York to seize control of Mafia operations for his Sicilian backers.
In 1930, he went to war with rival boss Joe Masseria, sparking the Castellammarese War. Maranzano secretly convinced Masseria’s own lieutenant, Lucky Luciano, to betray him, and after a lunch at a Coney Island restaurant on April 15, 1931, Masseria was gunned down.
Maranzano emerged as capo di tutti capi, the boss of all bosses, and reorganised New York’s underworld into the Five Families. His triumph lasted only five months. After plotting to have Luciano killed, Maranzano discovered too late that Luciano had moved first. On September 10, 1931, four gunmen posing as government agents entered Maranzano’s Manhattan office and shot and stabbed him to death, dying in a manner fittingly similar to the fate of his idol, Julius Caesar.
