What acquaintances revealed about Maranzano

August 2019 issue contents
Features

What was revealed about Maranzano

by those who actually knew him?

Magaddino

Several Maranzano contemporaries wrote autobiographies that included descriptions of Maranzano and his actions. Another close associate of Maranzano discussed him at length within range of an FBI listening device, resulting in a fourth authoritative source on the Prohibition Mafia leader.

A rough draft of Nicola Gentile’s memoirs may have been the first of these to reach U.S. authorities. But Gentile’s story would not be released to the public until it was published in Italy in 1963 under the title, Vita di Capomafia. In the same year, Americans were spellbound by the testimony of Mafia turncoat Joseph Valachi. At the government’s urging, Valachi composed his own autobiographical work, The Real Thing, which became source material for The Valachi Papers by Peter Maas, released in 1968. In between those Mafia memoirs, in 1965, the FBI benefited from electronic surveillance of the Niagara Falls headquarters of western New York Mafia boss Stefano Magaddino.

The public received another large dose of Maranzano information in 1983, when Joseph Bonanno’s autobiography, A Man of Honor, was published by Simon and Schuster.

Eleven pages including eight images and one page of notes.

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