TMA: The Camorra's Influence on American Cosa Nostra

[Angelo Santino]

9am EST

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZWH4g3VHI4

[Angelo Santino]

And we're live... er, premiering.

[Angelo Santino]

Advertised the forum so there may be some new people looking to join.

Hope everyone enjoyed.

[CabriniGreen]

It was really good. Guys like Colosimo and Torrio, and Capone even, who kinda never made sense, now do. They were Cammoristi.

Also explains how all the non sicilians were incorporated.

I got a few questions but it's all on contemporary stuff...

For example.....

The crazy membership numbers from like, the 50s and 60s. Is it possible, a lot of these were Cammoristi who got absorbed by the families like all at once?

I've always wondered.....for example the Bonnannos. Where did the other 200 guys go? If they had a family of 400 soldiers?

[B.]

Thanks, Cabrini. We appreciate you, man.

For those higher numbers, in most cases I think it was just members overestimating the size of the Families because they only saw them from the street level. Even without those high estimates like 400 to 1000 members the Families were extremely large compared to any other mafia groups in history and that may have been the result of bringing in some of these guys in addition to other non-traditional recruitment,

An org that otherwise would have had maybe 50 members at most if they stuck to traditional recruitment methods (paesani, mafia kin) grew to 150 to 300 because they brought in not only a wider number of Sicilians but also Camorristi, other unaffiliated Italians, and they existed in a much different cultural environment from a Sicilian paese. But groups like the Bonannos and Colombos also managed to get relatively large while remaining primarily Sicilian though they were pan-Sicilian, i.e. instead of just recruiting from one to three neighboring comuni they pulled some guys from other provinces, guys that otherwise may not have been made, etc.

I do think it helps explain how the Genovese in particular grew to the size they did, though, as they started as a splinter of the Morello Family and grew to be a huge group with a ton of mainlanders, a number of which looked to have Camorra roots.

[Harrism]

Loved the podcast. Always felt their was more to the maffia's history than just 'the cammora ratted on eachother in the 1916 wars and were absorbed in to the sicilian maffia'. As you guys said, this podcast raises many more question. I am very much interested in the culturalaspects of the maffia. How come we know of almost no rituals/habits from the cammora were incapsulated in to the American Maffia? Were the Sicilians numerically or culturally so dominant we see almost none?

[PolackTony]

Loved the podcast. Always felt their was more to the maffia's history than just 'the cammora ratted on eachother in the 1916 wars and were absorbed in to the sicilian maffia'. As you guys said, this podcast raises many more question. I am very much interested in the culturalaspects of the maffia. How come we know of almost no rituals/habits from the cammora were incapsulated in to the American Maffia? Were the Sicilians numerically or culturally so dominant we see almost none?

They didn’t create a new, hybrid organization. Camorristi or Camorra-affiliated guys joined Cosa Nostra and were subject to the same rules and organizational structure of LCN. When mafiosi from Palermo inducted guys from Campania in the 20th century and created a Cosa Nostra Family there, they likewise didn’t make a hybrid organization for them, it was just Cosa Nostra with non-Sicilian members. Now some of the former Camorristi who joined American LCN may have interpreted or understood the system a bit differently than their Sicilian brethren, but they basically came in to someone else’s house to live, they didn’t go around knocking down walls or making their own rooms. The Sicilians and the Mainlanders came to inhabit the same house, even if their cultural orientations at the outset may have been somewhat different (one shouldn’t overstate these differences either, as Southern Italians in general share much of the same broad culture).

Cosa Nostra in the US had more prestige as its membership was more restrictive and they made significant inroads into “legitimate” society, something the Sicilian mafia had done from its inception in Sicily. As we note in the show, the early Camorra was an explicitly criminal society in orientation and its membership largely made up of ruffians and excons and mainly recruited from the lowest levels of the rural and urban working class and underclass, while the Sicilian mafia included a spectrum of class backgrounds and types of criminal conduct. Hence, Cosa Nostra was also in a much better position to weather LE pressure, as they were often shielded by their connections to important people in ways that the Camorristi were not (eg, the Honored Society apparently totally collapsing in Napoli and then Provincial Campania due to major government crackdowns and trials in the 1910s to 1920s).

[Cbert1]

9am EST

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZWH4g3VHI4

Some interesting 1916 camorra induction ceremony court transcripts from nyc murder trial. Explained is the induction ceremony

[johnny_scootch]

Finally got a chance to finish this episode, really good stuff fellas.

A few times I could tell Angelo wanted to jump in to say something but he was hesitating so he didn't cut anyone off and ends up not commenting.
I was rooting for you but seems like you have to be more aggressive with those guys sometimes, we all want to hear what you have to say especially on that subject.

If I had to describe this episode with one word it would be GROUNDBREAKING.

[Brovelli]

Still working my way through the episode but really enjoying it. Random question: in the Morello era who was that gangs main guy(s) downtown? They were close to Lupo but he was in a separate family? Thanks

[B.]

If you mean Lower Manhattan, Salvatore Loiacano (Marineo) and Giovanni Pecoraro (Piana dei Greci / San Cipirello) were top Morello Family figures in Little Italy. All of the Families had a presence in Lower Manhattan much as they would later but both of them were part of the Morello leadership.

And yeah, the May 2014 Informer found a letter from 1909 where Lupo is identified as a "rappresentante" and found a bunch of circumstantial evidence all but confirming he was boss of the future Gambino Family (which may have included the Colombos at that stage). His membership was sprawled between Lower Manhattan, East Harlem, Brooklyn, and New Jersey to some degree. It's hard to say 100% who was affiliated with which group but guys from metro Palermo and Agrigento are the strongest candidates for Lupo's Family while the guys from Corleone, Villafrati, Marineo, Baucina and other inland interior towns toward the eastern side of Palermo province are either confirmed or likely Morello members. It may not have been 100% black and white but that was the pattern.

The 1909 "We of Corleone" letter is telling as Morello is discussing formal matters with New Orleans and signs the letter with the names of a bunch of important NYC members, all from Corleone and surrounding areas. Even though Morello associated with many other names at that time, Lupo's name is absent and so are the names of many other close Morello associates who came from backgrounds that would produce generations of Gambino and Bonanno members. The statement "We of Corleone" and the list of names Morello included had obvious organizational significance beyond simply listing his paesans and this fits well with other evidence that Lupo was boss of a separate Family.

I highly recommend you read the May 2014 Informer.

--

Cbert -- thank you for sharing. I asked in the episode if there is evidence confirming Tony Paretti was a Camorrista (I meant formal evidence, as clearly he was) and this account of him participating in a Camorra ceremony is exactly what I was looking for. That Genovese, Frank Amato, and one of the Volpe brothers from Pittsburgh visited him on death row provides a solid link between the early Brooklyn Camorra groups and Camorristi / suspected Camorristi who joined Cosa Nostra in other neighborhoods (Genovese) and cities (Amato/Volpe).

If you watch the episode, it should be pretty obvious I know relatively little about the guys from Campania / Terra di Lavoro / Caserta as I've mainly researched Calabrian Camorra figures, specifically as they fed into Cosa Nostra. I'm still getting up to speed on the "Neapolitan" network.

--

Scootch -- glad you enjoyed it. I'm from the Magaddino school of rambling monologues. Someone says the word "the" and guys like me and Tony automatically think of a million things we have to bring up and want the audience to know the different ways "the" can be interpreted.

[Brovelli]

Appreciate your in depth response

[PolackTony]

Cbert -- thank you for sharing. I asked in the episode if there is evidence confirming Tony Paretti was a Camorrista (I meant formal evidence, as clearly he was) and this account of him participating in a Camorra ceremony is exactly what I was looking for. That Genovese, Frank Amato, and one of the Volpe brothers from Pittsburgh visited him on death row provides a solid link between the early Brooklyn Camorra groups and Camorristi / suspected Camorristi who joined Cosa Nostra in other neighborhoods (Genovese) and cities (Amato/Volpe).

Just for context for anyone reading, the account that Cbert posted above was from Tony Notaro’s testimony in the trial of Pellegrino Morano.

[Ivan]

It was really good. Guys like Colosimo and Torrio, and Capone even, who kinda never made sense, now do. They were Cammoristi.

Jerry Capeci identified Capone and Torrio as Camorra guys in his Idiots Guide to the Mafia, released around the turn of the millennium. Not sure how he came to this conclusion. Here's the passage:

[PolackTony]

It was really good. Guys like Colosimo and Torrio, and Capone even, who kinda never made sense, now do. They were Cammoristi.

Jerry Capeci identified Capone and Torrio as Camorra guys in his Idiots Guide to the Mafia, released around the turn of the millennium. Not sure how he came to this conclusion. Here's the passage:

Good chance he got it from the FBI’s LCN timeline presented in the 1988 “25 Years After Valachi” hearings that we brought up briefly in the show.