The Agrigento Network

[B.]

You've got it to the best of my knowledge, re: captains. Another name is Domenico Arcuri, who came from Tampa and eventually became a Gambino captain but I don't know when he's first ID'd. Many if not most of the Sciacchitani and Agrigentesi were in Manhattan before crossing over to Brooklyn. A number of those who ended up in Franco-Lombardozzi's Brooklyn crew had roots in Manhattan. The Arcuri crew was based in Manhattan.

The Trupia crew may be connected to Pietro Stincone's Queens crew. Trupia was in Manhattan but many from Canicatti ended up in Astoria where they had their fraternal club. Based on those early Italian reports, Canicatti appears to have been an early mafia stronghold in Sicily so it would make sense they'd be tightknit in NYC.

The DiLeonardo-Garofalo crew was mostly Palermitani for generations. Aside from DiLeonardo's friendship to Andrea Torregrossa and Onofrio Modica I'm not aware of any early overlap with the Sciacchitani crews. Onofrio Modica was a Sciacchitano with the Lombardozzi decina and his son/grandson would end up connected to Michael DiLeonardo, so there is a long-term relationship but I wouldn't include the DiLeonardo-Garofalo crew in this discussion -- they were D'Aquila's closest people and mostly Palermitani unless there is some unrecorded early connection, i.e. some of the Sciacchitani reported to them for a time.

I'm hesitant to assume direction succession in many of these cases. As followers of this subject, there is a tendency to want everything to follow a clearcut succession that we can list out top to bottom. Brooklyn in particular had many different stages of crews being broken up and absorbed by other Brooklyn crews. Certain groups of members appear to have stuck together through this process, though, which makes me wonder about all of the Sciacchitani under Lombardozzi. Were they absorbed from one of these earlier crews or did Franco take over from a Sciacchitano?

I think Michael DiLeonardo's words on the D'Aquila and Traina crews come into play here... he was told that these were the longest running uninterrupted crews. This would imply that these other early Brooklyn crews may have been broken up or reconfigured over the years which makes sense when you look at the membership.

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As for Messina, I'm thinking less about a formal mafia group (or even member) there and more general association. It seems inevitable that the Sicilian mafia would have some kind of interaction or influence there, so even if the crime was independent or more affiliated with Calabria, I suspect there was something there that eased the transition of Messinese into the US mafia.

[Antiliar]

My thinking on Valenti and DiMino, if I recall correctly, was that DiMino was assisting him. But maybe it should have been the other way around. Not sure. It was a best guess.

Candelaro Bettini was the guy from Messina you were thinking about.

Bill Balsamo linked his great-great-uncle, or great-uncle, to Frankie Yale and Vincent Mangano, but who really knows? We only have his word. Maybe he was really with Cola Schiro. Maybe he was a long-forgotten early boss, or maybe he was nothing more than an associate.

[Angelo Santino]

My thinking on Valenti and DiMino, if I recall correctly, was that DiMino was assisting him. But maybe it should have been the other way around. Not sure. It was a best guess.

Candelaro Bettini was the guy from Messina you were thinking about.

Bill Balsamo linked his great-great-uncle, or great-uncle, to Frankie Yale and Vincent Mangano, but who really knows? We only have his word. Maybe he was really with Cola Schiro. Maybe he was a long-forgotten early boss, or maybe he was nothing more than an associate.

He lived in Red Hook, smack dead in Palermitan territory. His funeral was also attended by Carlo Gambino. I don't think he was a NY boss, certainly not Mangano's predecessor like Bill Balsamo claimed. I would speculate Battista was either a soldier or captain early on, with no evidence really.

[B.]

There was a younger Battista Balsamo ID'd by the FBI as a suspected Brooklyn Gambino member but not sure his membership was ever confirmed.

Also a John Balsamo closely associated with Profaci leaders. His family came from Palermo and settled in Brooklyn shortly after the turn of the 20th century. Balsamo's mother was Cusimano which is a common enough name but is shared by some Gambino members. This Balsamo was strongly associated with the Profacis, though.

I wouldn't rule the elder Battista Balsamo out of the Mineo family picture.

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Looks like Bettini died in 1901, long before Valenti and Biondo were on the scene, but that's another important Messinese working with Palermitani in Manhattan. Curious if there are any links during the interrim.

Another potential Agrigento connection to Umberto Valenti is Silvio Tagliagambe though Tagliagambe's affiliation and background has to be untangled quite a bit:

- Silvio claimed to be from Finale, Palermo, but his brothers came to the US from Bivona, Agrigento, and his brother Giovanni claimed to be born in Licodia Eubea, Catania, but had been living in Bivona at the time of his immigration. Many different records confirm they shared the same parents, but to add another strange twist, the parents also lived in Caltanissetta province for a time where another brother was born. I have to figure the Tagliagambes' father had a profession that caused him to move or travel, as it's rare to find a single Sicilian family with ties to so many completely separate towns/provinces (another example is the Cascio Ferros).

- Silvio Tagliagambe originally lived in Williamsburg and was best man to mafia member Paolo Palmeri from Castellammare del Golfo, likely a Schiro member then as he hadn't yet moved to Buffalo. Silvio's brother Giovanni Tagliagambe would marry a Palmeri from Castellammare Del Golfo (her mother being a DiFilippi -- a Bonanno name). Giovanni's son Dr. Mario Tagliagambe, Silvio's nephew, was a physician who became a made member of the Bonanno family.

- Silvio himself would marry a woman born in Godrano, a small village in Palermo province, but she was living in Menfi, Agrigento, when she came to the US. Her mother was a Ferrugia. Future Bonanno leader Salvatore Ferrugia's family came from Agrigento but could be a coincidence.

- Mafia member Giuseppe Trifiro appears to have arrived on the same ship as Mario Tagliagambe's mother and grandmother, both from Castellammare. Trifiro was from Monreale and lived in Brooklyn, then Cleveland, and ultimately ended up in San Francisco. Stefano Magaddino mentions Trifiro on one of his office tapes. I have suspected that Trifiro was with the Bonanno family in NYC and this Palmeri/Tagliagambe connection could be a coincidence or it could lend itself to that.

Based on the above, there is reason to suspect Silvio Tagliagambe was under the Schiro-Bonanno family, like his nephew would be, but his background is complex and muddy. His nephew may have ended up with the Bonannos due to his maternal relatives being well-known names from Castellammare, but Silvio had the Williamsburg and Palmeri connections himself. However, he was also involved with Umberto Valenti and other mafia figures so he def didn't operate in a vacuum (as few if any of these guys do).

[B.]

Other early Messinese figures of interest are the Restuccias:

Francesco Restuccia b. 1887 (Savoca, Messina)
Manhattan mafia figure associated with early members Eduardo Aronica (Gambino / Canicatti),Vincenzo Randazzo (Profaci / Carini), and Mariano Marsalisi (Lucchese / Corleone). Opium trafficker, formal affiliation unknown. Later deported and returned to Messina.

Andrea Restuccia b. 1878 (Messina)
Philadelphia resident and business partner of boss Salvatore Sabella. Spoke on Salvatore Sabella's behalf and arranged his bail during the 1927 murder trial. Also reported to have made underworld negotiations that led to witness Musky Zanghi leaving town instead of testifying. Believed by Celeste Morello to have been an early Philadelphia mafia member, which would make him something of a predecessor to Messinese leaders like Avena and Bruno Dovi.

[Antiliar]

Antonino Lombardo of Chicago is another one. He was born in Galati Mamertino in Messina in 1891. He was relatively unknown then suddenly he was made the boss in 1925. I believe he married Carmela (Camille) Piro, the daughter of Vincenzo Piro of New Orleans and who later moved to Los Angeles around the time Vito Di Giorgio was boss. They had two children, Salvatore (Samuel) and Rose.

[Angelo Santino]

So Antonino Lombardo and Antonio Musso each married a daughter of Vincenzo Piro and both went onto become bosses of other cities?

[Angelo Santino]

There was a younger Battista Balsamo ID'd by the FBI as a suspected Brooklyn Gambino member but not sure his membership was ever confirmed.

Also a John Balsamo closely associated with Profaci leaders. His family came from Palermo and settled in Brooklyn shortly after the turn of the 20th century. Balsamo's mother was Cusimano which is a common enough name but is shared by some Gambino members. This Balsamo was strongly associated with the Profacis, though.

I wouldn't rule the elder Battista Balsamo out of the Mineo family picture.

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Looks like Bettini died in 1901, long before Valenti and Biondo were on the scene, but that's another important Messinese working with Palermitani in Manhattan. Curious if there are any links during the interrim.

Another potential Agrigento connection to Umberto Valenti is Silvio Tagliagambe though Tagliagambe's affiliation and background has to be untangled quite a bit:

- Silvio claimed to be from Finale, Palermo, but his brothers came to the US from Bivona, Agrigento, and his brother Giovanni claimed to be born in Licodia Eubea, Catania, but had been living in Bivona at the time of his immigration. Many different records confirm they shared the same parents, but to add another strange twist, the parents also lived in Caltanissetta province for a time where another brother was born. I have to figure the Tagliagambes' father had a profession that caused him to move or travel, as it's rare to find a single Sicilian family with ties to so many completely separate towns/provinces (another example is the Cascio Ferros).

- Silvio Tagliagambe originally lived in Williamsburg and was best man to mafia member Paolo Palmeri from Castellammare del Golfo, likely a Schiro member then as he hadn't yet moved to Buffalo. Silvio's brother Giovanni Tagliagambe would marry a Palmeri from Castellammare Del Golfo (her mother being a DiFilippi -- a Bonanno name). Giovanni's son Dr. Mario Tagliagambe, Silvio's nephew, was a physician who became a made member of the Bonanno family.

- Silvio himself would marry a woman born in Godrano, a small village in Palermo province, but she was living in Menfi, Agrigento, when she came to the US. Her mother was a Ferrugia. Future Bonanno leader Salvatore Ferrugia's family came from Agrigento but could be a coincidence.

- Mafia member Giuseppe Trifiro appears to have arrived on the same ship as Mario Tagliagambe's mother and grandmother, both from Castellammare. Trifiro was from Monreale and lived in Brooklyn, then Cleveland, and ultimately ended up in San Francisco. Stefano Magaddino mentions Trifiro on one of his office tapes. I have suspected that Trifiro was with the Bonanno family in NYC and this Palmeri/Tagliagambe connection could be a coincidence or it could lend itself to that.

Based on the above, there is reason to suspect Silvio Tagliagambe was under the Schiro-Bonanno family, like his nephew would be, but his background is complex and muddy. His nephew may have ended up with the Bonannos due to his maternal relatives being well-known names from Castellammare, but Silvio had the Williamsburg and Palmeri connections himself. However, he was also involved with Umberto Valenti and other mafia figures so he def didn't operate in a vacuum (as few if any of these guys do).

You're an encyclopedia... Sorry if I don't comment but I have nothing to add. I read it (a few times) and take it in.

- I remember Antiliar and I discussing Tagliagambe and he wasn't sure his affiliation either at the time. Interesting background.

- The Corleonese had members/affiliates from Godrano, name escapes me right now but its very close within that cluster of Corleonese towns.

- Re Balsamo. I have no idea. He could have been with Schiro or Mineo. I was just basing it off where he lived, Gambino attended his funeral and his grand or great grandson linking him to the Gambinos. While his place in events were overblown I left open the possibility of there being truth in Battista being affiliated with the Gambinos before Mangano became boss.

- All these small town family connections from different areas... makes wonder if this was a continuing trend. As we know, the Mafia in Sicily wasn't exclusively localized but also firmly connected with other cities. This glue that binded them together in the US across 2000 miles had to have been an ongoing trend in Sicily which could fit into most US states.

- Re Messina... I have no idea and I leave the possibility open. Italians from all regions came to America, some more than other regions appeared to have a more criminally engaged population, eastern Sicily being one place. If there wasn't an established Family there, there still could have been members with affiliates back west (140 miles west to Palermo).

- The American Mafia shares many similarities with its Sicilian parent. One thing I am beginning to wonder is if the large/small town dynamic was also similar. Palermo and NYC were the hubs with the majority of the membership concentrated into relatively small districts. Going outside to Buffalo, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Chicago these cities had fewer members but their territorial control spanned cities/states. These Families were not localized city affairs but statewide. Perhaps outside of Palermo it was similar with smaller mafia families controlling multiple cities/areas.

[B.]

If I'm an encyclopedia, I'm a ripped one you found in the gutter, filled to the margins with illegible pencil notes.

These guys from mafia blood families knew people all over the island, that much becomes clear with each glimpse we get. The recent Schiro thread is a great example.

The mandamento system could play into your last point. I don't believe they had capimandamenti until later (don't quote me on that, though), but the towns within a mandamento likely had a similar relationship to each other regardless of the formal designation. Early in this thread I talked about how certain clusters of Sicilian towns had relationships in the US and while they don't necessarily correspond to mandamenti, some of them definitely do and there are at least parallel relationships with the way certain towns cluster together. I've said before that most of the families in the US were much more like a mandamento than they were a cosca -- the boss of a US family was boss of a wider territory that included different cities/towns and even states (or in Buffalo's case, a country).

What's different between NYC and Palermo is Palermo families were divided based on district while NYC families crossed over throughout the boroughs/neighborhoods with some exceptions. It seems like there was some crossover between families/districts in Palermo, too, but not as much as NYC. Palermo Centro might be an example of that, as we see mafia members from different groups living there.

[Angelo Santino]

If I'm an encyclopedia, I'm a ripped one you found in the gutter, filled to the margins with illegible pencil notes.

These guys from mafia blood families knew people all over the island, that much becomes clear with each glimpse we get. The recent Schiro thread is a great example.

The mandamento system could play into your last point. I don't believe they had capimandamenti until later (don't quote me on that, though), but the towns within a mandamento likely had a similar relationship to each other regardless of the formal designation. Early in this thread I talked about how certain clusters of Sicilian towns had relationships in the US and while they don't necessarily correspond to mandamenti, some of them definitely do and there are at least parallel relationships with the way certain towns cluster together. I've said before that most of the families in the US were much more like a mandamento than they were a cosca -- the boss of a US family was boss of a wider territory that included different cities/towns and even states (or in Buffalo's case, a country).

What's different between NYC and Palermo is Palermo families were divided based on district while NYC families crossed over throughout the boroughs/neighborhoods with some exceptions. It seems like there was some crossover between families/districts in Palermo, too, but not as much as NYC. Palermo Centro might be an example of that, as we see mafia members from different groups living there.

Hmm. Interesting theory.

The mandamento system applies due to the sheer number of families, at its essence it's a consolidation system at the political level. I believe it started in the 50's or 60's. Interestingly Palermo has 8 Mandamento, I think that's the number of groups ID'd in the Sangiorgi in 1890's Palermo. I compared the original groups and noted which split into which and then later on looked at the Mandamento reformations and yes. With the exception of 1 or 2 districts, over the course of 100 years you had 8 groups split into 20 something and then reformed into the 8 mandamenti system. Outside of Palermo its less clear, we don't have the splinters recorded like we do in the capital.

In the USA I don't really see an equivalent. If I was trying to force it, maybe Chicago's exertion over other local families? Maybe LA in the 70's when SF and SJ were on the decline? I don't even know I agree, these are American renditions brought on from current circumstances. In terms of groups of people from neighboring towns clustered together, that was served by the decina system, a role reserved for larger families in Sicily, was in NY applied to accommodate 30 streams going into one river. In Sicily, Palermo likely had decine whereas its possible Castellammare likely did not, it has never been a large family and ironically, there were likely more made Castellammaresi in Brooklyn than in Cast del Golfo at one point.

This kinda goes into the differences between NY and non-NY families. I thought about starting a thread on this. They all shared the same model, but the operandi of a 300 man outfit in a major metropolitan area alongside 4 other groups is very different than a 60 man organization spanning cities and states.

[B.]

I'm not suggesting US families are a direct translation of mandamenti, only that the idea of a family in the US (at their peak) covered a larger body of territory comprised of different cities/towns with their own activities, sometimes with captains and influential soldiers serving more like bosses of certain towns/areas within the regional territory. The true bosses of these families were more of a political representative of the regional territory than boss of a singular group, which is why the bosses of these larger territorial families often had a seat on the Commission.

From reading Nino Giuffre's testimony about the 1980s, as capomandamento he was essentially "boss" of multiple separate families in the Caccamo mandamento and some of his stories brought to mind US families like Philadelphia, Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago, New England, and really any family with a boss who represented a wider region of territory opposed to a single concentrated unit. The big difference is the other groups in Giuffre's mandamento were families with their own bosses, but his role was not unlike a US Commission member in that he was the political representative and authority in the area. To reinforce this idea, the heads of mandamenti did have their own Commission.

This also plays into the idea that there were more families in the early US mafia who were later combined into one larger regional family, but whether or not that's what happened doesn't really matter as they still adopted a regional model with a head political representative one way or another. In Sicily, where each cosca/family had a deeper history corresponding to a certain town/village, it would make more sense to keep them as separate families, while in the US where there was no history and whether they combined separate groups or created larger regional bodies right off the bat doesn't make a difference. The bigger point is that both the US and Sicilian mafia saw the use in combining all of the groups in a region into one political body with a higher-level representative who then participated in a Commission.

Now is that unique to the mafia? No. It's the nature of human beings, geography, and politics. But the point is, both the US and Sicilian mafia used a similar system for political representation and authority. The decision to use this kind of structure was not an arbitrary decision but something that allowed the mafia to be more cohesive and controlled on a national scale. If the mandamento system wasn't put into place until the 1950s/60s that's interesting, as wasn't the US mafia credited with helping the Sicilian mafia re-organize itself during that period? I recall some reliable source (Buscetta?) saying that US mafia leaders including Joe Bonanno helped set up a new Sicilian Commission.

I am specifically comparing these larger US territorial families to the mandamento system and not the provincial system, which had its own Commission made up of capiprovincia. You could make a comparison between the provincial groups in the Sicilian mafia and larger regions of the US, i.e. midwest, west coast, east coast. The families in these larger regions did have subtle unique qualities within their region and certainly some families had more influence in their region (i.e. Chicago), but there was no high-level "west coast", "midwest", "south", or "east coast" representative and we can see where Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland all had seats on the Commission, meanwhile the west coast relied on east coast families for Commission representation.

[Villain]

What's different between NYC and Palermo is Palermo families were divided based on district while NYC families crossed over throughout the boroughs/neighborhoods with some exceptions. It seems like there was some crossover between families/districts in Palermo, too, but not as much as NYC. Palermo Centro might be an example of that, as we see mafia members from different groups living there.

The old Chicago Outfit operated in similar fashion for a long time. Thanks again for every info bud, you are the best one on these types of subjects, pls keep it up

[B.]

What's different between NYC and Palermo is Palermo families were divided based on district while NYC families crossed over throughout the boroughs/neighborhoods with some exceptions. It seems like there was some crossover between families/districts in Palermo, too, but not as much as NYC. Palermo Centro might be an example of that, as we see mafia members from different groups living there.

The old Chicago Outfit operated in similar, if not same fashion for a long time

Those are decina, though, not separate families unless you mean the early Chicago and Chicago Heights families. That's common with decine in most families.

What's unique about NYC and Palermo is you have multiple distinct families in one city/metro area.

[Villain]

What's different between NYC and Palermo is Palermo families were divided based on district while NYC families crossed over throughout the boroughs/neighborhoods with some exceptions. It seems like there was some crossover between families/districts in Palermo, too, but not as much as NYC. Palermo Centro might be an example of that, as we see mafia members from different groups living there.

The old Chicago Outfit operated in similar, if not same fashion for a long time

Those are decina, though, not separate families unless you mean the early Chicago and Chicago Heights families. That's common with decine in most families.

What's unique about NYC and Palermo is you have multiple distinct families in one city/metro area.

The old Outfit (during and after Capones reign) operated for decades with the help of four "separate" factions or "families" under one top admin (which is probably the main diference). The so-called territorial bosses had their own district capos and crew bosses who sometimes went in each others areas and so besides their capos, they also kicked up to the capos and territorial bosses who ruled those same areas which they "invaded"

EDIT: This type of process probably originated in Sicily and was later transferred or adopted by the mainlanders...or maybe it was the other way around, i dunno

[B.]

The old Outfit (during and after Capones reign) operated for decades with the help of four "separate" factions or "families" under one top admin (which is probably the main diference). The so-called territorial bosses had their own district capos and crew bosses who sometimes went in each others areas and so besides their capos, they also kicked up to the capos and territorial bosses who ruled those same areas which they "invaded"

EDIT: This type of process probably originated in Sicily and was later transferred or adopted by the mainlanders...or maybe it was the other way around, i dunno

I started a thread with some analysis of Chicago I've been throwing around for a while. Please feel free to weigh in, as I completely respect your dedication to the subject but there is a major disconnect in our views. Unless you're talking about a period pre-1930s where there was a Chicago family, Chicago Heights family, possibly an Indiana family under Paolo Palazzolo, and another group(?), I have no clue how four families fit into Chicago.