Franke Costello and Vito Genovese were a partnership born amidst the flurry of Prohibition that devolved into a vicious rivalry when a power vacuum opened up within the New York crime scene. Their saga, which serves as the inspiration for the new movie The Alto Knights starring Robert De Niro as both mobsters, unfolded during a time which saw both a violent gang war and a paradigm-shifting World War.
As they wrestled for power over New York’s Five Families, the two men embodied radically different ways the Mafia could be run. In the end, it’s unclear who really won their tumultuous and bloody conflict.
Costello and Genovese were both Italian immigrants and teenage criminals
Frank Costello was born Francesco Castiglia on January 26, 1891, in Calabria, Italy, just two decades after the capture of Rome signified the completion of the Risorgimento, the unification of Italy as a nation. Roughly six years and 250 kilometers away, Vito Genovese was born in the province of Naples on November 21, 1897.
Costello came to the United States in 1895 and eventually fell in with the Five Points Gang in Lower Manhattan. According to The Mob Museum, Costello was jailed “at least four times” for assault, robbery, and weapons possession during the span of 1908 to 1918. But 1918 reportedly changed Costello, as the museum notes that during that year “he married and vowed never again to carry a gun. He would not go to jail again for almost 40 years.”
Genovese, conversely, didn’t arrive in America until 1913, when the then-15-year-old moved with his family into the New York City neighborhood of Little Italy. Just four years later, at age 19, the young Genovese was serving a year in prison for illegal firearm possession.
They were bootleggers with Lucky Luciano in the 1920s
The passage of Prohibition in America offered an array of new rackets for those working in less-than-legitimate enterprises. Costello and Genovese were both recruited under the bootlegging operations of Giuseppe “Joe The Boss” Masseria at the start of the 1920s. Their paths crossed not just with each other, but also with Charles “Lucky” Luciano. The three worked together on bootlegging operations, with funding in part from the infamous Jewish Mob kingpin Arnold “The Brain” Rothstein.
While Costello had forsaken carrying a gun, the same wasn’t true for the violently ambitious Genovese. It’s been alleged that in February 1930 Genovese murdered Bronx-based mob leader Gaetano Reina with a shotgun blast to the back of the head. Reina had been an ally of “Joe the Boss,” but Masseria had allegedly come to suspect Reina was secretly colluding with his rival, Salvatore Maranzano, and ordered the hit.
The tension between what The Mob Museum describes as a now “dictatorial” Masseria and his rival Maranzano escalated into a brutal gangland conflict called the Castellammarese War (named for the Sicilian town from which Maranzano hailed). Luciano, though working under Masseria, covertly made a deal with Maranzano to kill his boss, in exchange for being Maranzano’s second-in-command in whatever enterprise emerged after the war; Masseria was killed in April 1931 at a Coney Island restaurant he’d been lured to by Luciano.
Drunk on the power of his victory, Maranzano reorganized all of New York’s disparate Italian American criminal organizations into the Maranzano, Profaci, Mangano, Luciano, and Gagliano families, collectively known as “The Five Families.” He then declared himself capo di tutti i capi, the “boss of all bosses,” to whom all other families must pay tribute.
Sentiment, unsurprisingly, had turned against Maranzano, and with his power grab came paranoia. Luciano got word that Maranzano sought to kill both him and his closest confidants in Genovese and Costello, so Luciano arranged to strike first. On September 10, 1931, Maranzano called for Luciano, Costello, and Genovese to meet him at his office, but the men who answered Maranzano’s call were Jewish mob hitmen arranged by Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Seigel at Luciano’s behest.
Genovese and Costello took on high-profile roles within one of the Five Families
With Maranzano dead, Luciano took over, reforming the Five Families into “The Commission,” a more equitable arrangement over which Luciano served as “chairman of the board.” Luciano appointed Genovese as his “underboss,” or second-in-command, while Costello took on the role of “consigliere,” his chief advisor.
When, in 1936, Luciano was convicted of prostitution charges and sentenced to 30 to 50 years in prison, Genovese ascended to the top position and sought to expand the operation’s business into narcotics. But within a year, Genovese would leave it behind out of concern that the law was closing in on him over a murder he allegedly committed in 1934. Rather than stand trial and risk a protracted prison sentence of his own, Genovese fled to safety in the now-fascist Kingdom of Italy, where he ingratiated himself to Benito Mussolini’s son-in-law.
Back in New York, Frank Costello took over The Commission’s operations. Costello eschewed the narcotics importation favored by Genovese, notes The Mob Museum, “while expanding legitimate businesses such as large poultry and meatpacking operations.” Costello’s reach extended beyond the boundaries of New York as he grew the organization’s gambling activities into Florida and Cuba. He also made inroads into the Louisiana crime scene through a deal with populist political megastar of the day, Governor Huey Long (whose presidential aspirations would be dashed by non-mob-affiliated assassin’s bullet in 1935).
In Italy, Genovese initially positioned himself as a fascist supporter, making copious donations to the party and even allegedly arranging the assassination of an anti-Mussolini journalist on American soil. But when the Allies defeat of Italy was evident in 1943, Genovese switched sides, offering his support to the United States. His murder charge caught up to him, but after two of the trial’s witnesses mysteriously turned up dead, the charges against Genovese were dismissed.
Genovese’s return from Italy prompted a fight for power with Costello
Genovese had hoped to finally reclaim his place at the top of The Commission, but Costello, with the backing of Luciano, had no intention to returning control to Genovese. Initially, Genovese merely oversaw his Greenwich Village Crew, but in October 1951, after the assassination of Costello’s second-in-command Willie Moretti, Genovese was appointed Costello’s underboss.
Unsatisfied with this smaller role, Genovese began plotting to take out Costello. In 1957, Genovese ordered Vincent Gigante to kill Costello, which Gigante attempted to do that May when he shot Costello in the head.
The shot, however, only left a superficial wound, and Costello survived. Although Gigante was arrested for the attack, Costello refused to identify his shooter, and Gigante wasn’t convicted. Despite the failed hit, Genovese’s end goal was still achieved: The attack was enough to convince Costello to step aside, ceding control of the organization back to Genovese.
Genovese didn’t stay on top for long
Does this mean Genovese emerged the ultimate victor of the story? The answer is more complicated. Costello’s ostensible retirement came as the walls were closing in on organized crime. Whereas in the days before Genovese fled to Italy some matters could be settled by simply greasing the right palms, now known mobsters were being called before Congress in televised Senate hearings.
In 1958, Genovese was arrested on narcotics charges. The Asbury Park Press reported that “Vito Genovese… expects a two-and-a-half-year sentence and is more or less reconciled to it,” but what actually was handed down to the newly ascended mob boss was a 15-year sentence, from which no bribes nor killings could help Genovese wriggle out of. He died of a heart attack while imprisoned in February 1969 at age 71.
Costello, for his part, lived a relatively quiet life in New York after he ceded power. “He was considered a top Mafia boss and commanded respect from Mob capos who turned to him for advice,” The Mob Museum says of Costello’s final days, “He maintained his friendship with Luciano (who died in Italy in 1962) and [Meyer] Lansky.” Costello ultimately outlived Genovese, the man who ordered his death, by three years. The 82-year-old died of natural causes in February 1973.
Michale Natale is a News Editor for the Hearst Enthusiast Group. As a writer and researcher, he has produced written and audio-visual content for more than fifteen years, spanning historical periods from the dawn of early man to the Golden Age of Hollywood. His stories for the Enthusiast Group have involved coordinating with organizations like the National Parks Service and the Secret Service, and travelling to notable historical sites and archaeological digs, from excavations of America’ earliest colonies to the former homes of Edgar Allan Poe.
