Castellammaresi network (New York City)
 Nicolo “Cola” Schiro in 1923; he organized a Williamsburg Mafia family within the wider Castellammaresi migration network | |
| Origins | |
|---|---|
| Founding Location | Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City |
| Territory | Williamsburg, Brooklyn |
| Lineage | |
| Successor(s) | Bonanno crime family (through the Schiro–Maranzano organization) |
| Profile | |
| Structure | Compaesani, kinship and Mafia network |
| Activities | Extortion and protection rackets Bootlegging (later period) Murder |
| Politics | |
| Leader | Nicolo “Cola” Schiro (New York Mafia organization) |
| Notable Members | Vito Bonventre Stefano Magaddino Salvatore Maranzano Joseph Bonanno |
| Activity | |
| Status | Developed into a formal Mafia family |
| Years Active | c. 1902–1931 (formative and Schiro–Maranzano periods) |
The Castellammaresi network was a hometown, kinship and Mafia network formed by immigrants from Castellammare del Golfo in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, during the early twentieth century. Castellammaresi means people from Castellammare. The label describes overlapping migration and criminal relationships rather than a single self-named organization encompassing every immigrant from the town.
Unlike the Palermitani and Corleonesi connections documented in New York during the 1890s, the securely supported New York Castellammaresi organization dates from the arrival of Nicolo “Cola” Schiro in 1902. It should therefore not be assigned a late-nineteenth-century founding date without further evidence.
Williamsburg network
Historian David Critchley writes that Schiro's Williamsburg organization became strongly oriented around interrelated Mafiosi from Castellammare del Golfo. Shared kinship and birthplace affiliations produced networks as Castellammaresi immigrants settled within a few blocks of one another. Within several years of Schiro's arrival, this circle developed into what Critchley calls New York's second Mafia family after Giuseppe Morello's organization.[1]
The network extended through marriage and blood relationships to Castellammaresi in Buffalo, Chicago, Philadelphia and other American cities. Figures associated with its New York development included Vito Bonventre, Stefano Magaddino and other interrelated migrants.[1] These connections facilitated cooperation and movement but did not place every Castellammaresi group under one national command.
From compaesani network to Mafia family
Schiro's organization was a more formal Mafia family nested inside the broader migration network. Contemporary investigations associated several Castellammaresi with the 1921 “Good Killers” case, but individual accusations and family relationships should not be generalized to the entire immigrant community.[2]
Schiro left the field around 1930 amid pressure from Giuseppe Masseria. Salvatore Maranzano then led the organization during the Castellammarese War, after which Joseph Bonanno inherited the surviving family.[3] The war faction and subsequent Bonanno family represented later organizational stages; they were not synonymous with every person connected through the original Castellammaresi compaesani network.
The New York group maintained familial and fraternal links to Sicilian men of respect, but the available evidence supports networks and particular personal connections rather than routine command from Castellammare del Golfo.[4]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 David Critchley, The Origin of Organized Crime in America: The New York City Mafia, 1891–1931 (New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 212–230.
- ↑ Critchley, Origin of Organized Crime, pp. 218–223.
- ↑ Critchley, Origin of Organized Crime, pp. 178–191.
- ↑ Critchley, Origin of Organized Crime, pp. 69–71.