Carlo Gambino was a Sicilian-American mobster and former boss of the Gambino crime family, which is still named after him.
Background
Gambino was born on August 24, 1902 in Palermo, Italy, to a family that belonged to the Honored Society. Gambino began carrying out murder orders for new mob bosses in his teens. In 1921, at the age of 19, he became a "made man" and was inducted into Cosa Nostra. He was a cousin and brother-in-law of Gambino crime family mobster Paul Castellano. He had two brothers, Gaspare Gambino, who was never involved with the Mafia, and Paolo Gambino who had a big role in his brother's family.
Career
Gambino came to the United States as a stowaway, arriving in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1921 at the age of twenty-one. He settled in Brooklyn, New York, where several close relatives lived, and fell in with the borough's Mafia groups. During Prohibition Gambino took up bootlegging and kept at it after repeal. In 1937 he received a twenty-two-month sentence for conspiracy to defraud the government of liquor taxes in connection with an illegal still near Philadelphia. The conviction was thrown out eight months later because the evidence had been based on illegal wiretaps. During World War II, Gambino specialized in stolen ration coupons. Gambino became associated with the Mafia family headed by Vincent Mangano. When Albert Anastasia became boss of the family in 1951 upon Mangano's death, he made Gambino sottocapo, or underboss. Anastasia was shot to death on October 25, 1957, while he was sitting in a barber's chair at the Park-Sheraton Hotel, his face covered with hot shaving towels. The murder's primary architect was Anastasia's Mafia rival, Vito Genovese. But most organized crime historians assign Gambino at least partial responsibility for the murder and suggest he arranged for Anastasia's bodyguards to leave the barbershop shortly before the shooting. Gambino, at any rate, became boss and consolidated his position by arranging to share power with Aniello Dellacroce, an Anastasia loyalist. Dellacroce became underboss and controlled the family rackets that relied on violence or the threat thereof, such as loan-sharking and extortion; Gambino focused on more subtle operations that ultimately proved more lucrative, including labor union corruption, construction bid-rigging, and monopolization of garbage collection. He also gained interests in a growing number of legitimate and quasi-legitimate enterprises that relied on Mafia muscle to scare competitors. A few weeks after Anastasia's death, scores of mobsters from around the nation met at the Apalachin, New York, farm of Joseph Barbara. Police raided the "crime convention" and arrested about five dozen attendees, including Gambino. The meeting offered evidence of a national criminal conspiracy, which Federal Bureau of Investigation director J. Edgar Hoover had said did not exist. Gambino's crime family was one of the largest and most powerful, with hundreds of initiated members; each member, in turn, had his own group of criminal associates. Although its activities were largely limited to metropolitan New York, the network reached into New England, Pennsylvania, Florida, Nevada, and California. Anastasia was merely the first of Gambino's rivals to fall. Genovese went to prison on a narcotics trafficking conviction; Joseph Bonanno, boss of another of New York's five Mafia families, was forced into retirement after a failed power play; Joseph Colombo, boss of the family bearing his name, was shot and critically wounded after he reportedly angered Gambino by staging public demonstrations to protest what he called persecution of Italian Americans by police and the FBI. The newspapers called Gambino the "capo di tutti capi, " the boss of bosses. But while he may have been the single most influential denizen of New York's underworld, the Mafia was not a corporation and Gambino was no chief executive officer. The Gambino family rackets were mostly autonomous operations run by various members or associates. Gambino provided a range of services, including contacts with corrupt police and politicians and protection from other criminals. He financed fledgling enterprises, criminal or legitimate. He was respected enough to arbitrate inter- and intra-family disputes, and powerful enough to make his decisions stick. By the mid-1960's Gambino was constantly being subpoenaed to appear before grand juries. He would remain home as his lawyers filed medical documents certifying that he was too ill to appear, usually because of heart problems. The boss and his family lived on the upper floor of a two-family brick house on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn. Later they purchased a modest house in the Long Island community of Massapequa, where Gambino entertained mobsters and other associates at a large party each July 4. In 1973, when a jeweled crown was stolen from a statue of the Virgin Mary in a church in Brooklyn, newspapers reported that Gambino had ordered it returned. Eleven days after the theft, the FBI received an anonymous tip that the crown was in a locker at an airlines transfer terminal in Manhattan. It was. Gambino's reputation undoubtedly was exaggerated, however. Gambino died on October 15, 1976, of a heart attack. His position was assumed by his cousin and brother-in-law, Paul Castellano.
Achievements
Personality
Gambino's frail appearance belied his wealth and power. Small of frame and long of face, he dressed simply and was driven around in an inexpensive Buick or Chevrolet sedan by James ("Jimmy Brown") Failla.
Quotes from others about the person
A government informer, Colombo family hanger-on Joseph Cantalupo, later described Gambino as "very even-tempered, very polite, very much the gentleman in the presence of others. " Some even viewed Gambino as a bulwark against street crime.
Connections
Gambino and his wife, Kathryn Castellano, had four children. His son Thomas married a daughter of Thomas Lucchese, boss of another of the city's crime families. Gambino's sons ran trucking businesses in Manhattan's garment district and, according to prosecutors, used intimidation tactics to protect an illegal transportation cartel. Kathryn Gambino died in 1971.