How Carlo Gambino Quietly Became One Of The Most Powerful Mafia Bosses Of All Time
Wikimedia CommonsDespite a Mafia career of 50 years, Carlo Gambino only ever spent 22 months in prison.
If you met Carlo Gambino on the street, you might not guess that he was a powerful mob boss. Quiet, understated, and known for offering FBI agents coffee and dessert when they visited him at home, Gambino was nevertheless cunning and cold-blooded like few other bosses before or since. By the time he died of natural causes at the age of 74 in 1976, he’d climbed through the ranks of the mob to become one of the Mafia’s most powerful and wealthy leaders.
Gambino was born in Sicily in 1902, in a neighborhood so tightly controlled by the Mafia that The New York Times reports that Italian police were hesitant to even enter it. He made his way to Brooklyn, New York, in the 1920s, and soon joined up with the criminal gang led by Joe Masseria.
When Masseria was killed during the Castellammarese War, Gambino went to work for his rival, Salvatore Maranzano. When Maranzano was killed, Gambino joined up with the Mangano Family. When its leaders were killed by Albert Anastasia, Gambino became loyal to Anastasia. But when Anastasia started breaking Mafia taboos in the 1950s — he ordered a hit on a civilian, something forbidden by Mafia code — Gambino helped orchestrate a hit on his own boss, carried out on October 25, 1957. Then, Gambino became boss of the family.
Bettmann/Getty ImagesCarlo Gambino was known for offering coffee and desserts to the FBI agents who came to his home.
Though Gambino kept a low profile, he swiftly amassed great power and wealth. The New York Times reports that his family had as many as 1,000 men involved in gambling, loansharking, hijacking, narcotics, and labor racketeering up and down the Eastern Seaboard.
Indeed, the Gambino Family was perhaps the nation’s largest and most powerful, while Gambino himself also exerted strong influence over the other four New York families. And his power was all the more chilling for how calm and quiet it was. For example, Gambino said nothing when an associate named Dominick Scialo drunkenly insulted him one night during dinner. But soon afterward, Scialo was found buried in cement.
Gambino died in 1976 at the age of 74. Despite his illegal activities during his reign as a Mafia boss, he only ever served 22 months in jail. And when he died, it was in the comfort of his Long Island home.
