Background and career
Frank Costello (Italian: [koˈstɛllo]; born Francesco Castiglia [franˈtʃesko kaˈstiʎʎa]; January 26, 1891 – February 18, 1973) was an Italian-American mafioso and boss of the Luciano crime family (later known as the Genovese crime family) in New York City from 1938 to 1957. Known as the “Prime Minister of the Underworld”, Costello was noted for his political connections and for a leadership style that emphasized diplomacy and business dealings. His televised testimony at the 1951 Kefauver Committee hearings caught nationwide attention and brought public awareness to the extent of organized crime in the United States. Born in Calabria, Italy, he moved with his family to the United States as a child. As a youth he joined gangs in New York City. Working with Charlie “Lucky” Luciano, Costello was involved in bootlegging operations during Prohibition. In 1929 they joined the National Crime Syndicate. After Luciano was imprisoned in 1936, he continued to run the family from prison through acting boss Vito Genovese. In 1937, Genovese fled to Naples to avoid a murder indictment in New York. Following this, Luciano appointed Costello, who had risen to the rank of consigliere, as the new acting boss. After the United States Supreme Court refused to review Luciano’s case in October 1938, Costello became boss of the Luciano crime family, although Luciano continued to wield considerable power and influence within the American Mafia. In the 1950s, Costello was convicted of tax evasion and served time in prison. In 1957, he survived an assassination attempt in which he was shot in the head outside his Manhattan apartment building by Vincent Gigante, acting on the orders of Genovese. However, the bullet only grazed his head. Costello subsequently retired, with Genovese succeeding him as boss of the family, which became known as the Genovese crime family. He remained largely out of the spotlight for the remainder of his life until his death from a heart attack in 1973 at the age of 82.
Costello was born Francesco Castiglia on January 26, 1891, in Lauropoli, a frazione of the town of Cassano allo Ionio in the province of Cosenza in the Calabria region, Italy. In 1895, he boarded a ship to the United States with his mother and his brother Edward to join their father, who had moved to New York City's East Harlem several years earlier and opened a small neighborhood Italian grocery store. While Costello was still a boy, his brother introduced him to gang activities. At 13, he had become a member of a local gang and started using the name Frankie. Costello committed petty crimes and went to jail for assault and robbery in 1908, 1912, and 1917. On September 22, 1914, Costello married Loretta "Bobbie" Geigerman, a Jewish woman, whose parents had immigrated from the German Empire. That same year, Costello served ten months in jail for carrying a concealed weapon.
While working for the Morello gang, Costello met Charlie "Lucky" Luciano, the Sicilian leader of Manhattan's Lower East Side gang. The two Italians immediately became friends and partners. Several older members of Luciano's mob family disapproved of this growing partnership. They were mostly old-school mafiosi who were unwilling to work with anyone who was not Italian, and skeptical at best about working with non-Sicilians. To Luciano's shock, they warned him against working with Costello, whom they called "the dirty Calabrian." Along with Italian American associates Vito Genovese and Tommy "Three-Finger Brown" Lucchese, and Jewish associates Meyer Lansky and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, the gang became involved in robbery, theft, extortion, gambling, and narcotics. The Luciano-Costello-Lansky-Siegel alliance prospered even further with the passage of Prohibition in 1920. The gang went into bootlegging, backed by criminal financier Arnold "the Brain" Rothstein. The young Italians' success let them make business deals with the leading Jewish and Irish criminals of the era, including Dutch Schultz, Owney "the Killer" Madden and William "Big Bill" Dwyer. Rothstein became a mentor to Costello, Luciano, Lansky and Siegel while they conducted bootlegging business with Bronx beer baron Schultz. In 1922, Costello, Luciano, and their closest Italian associates joined the Sicilian crime family led by Joe "the Boss" Masseria, a top Italian underworld crime boss. By 1924, Costello had become a close associate of Hell's Kitchen's Irish crime bosses Dwyer and Madden. He became involved in their rum-running operations, known as "The Combine"; this might have prompted him to change his last name to the Irish "Costello." In 1925, Costello became a U.S. citizen. On November 19, 1926, Costello and Dwyer were indicted on federal bootlegging charges. They were accused of bribing two U.S. Coast Guardsmen, presumably so that they would not disturb the unloading of liquor from boats in New York Harbor. The largest boat in the Combine fleet could carry 20,000 cases of liquor. In January 1927, the jury deadlocked on the bootlegging charges for Dwyer and Costello. In 1926, Dwyer was convicted of bribing a Coast Guard official and sentenced to two years in jail. After Dwyer was imprisoned, Costello and Madden took over the Combine's operations. This caused friction between Madden and a top Dwyer lieutenant, Charles "Vannie" Higgins, who believed he should have been running the Combine instead of Costello. Thus, the "Manhattan Beer Wars" began between Higgins on one side, and Costello, Madden, and Schultz on the other. At this time, Schultz was also having problems with gangsters Jack "Legs" Diamond and Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll, who had begun to rival Schultz and his partners with Higgins's help. Eventually, the Costello-Madden-Schultz alliance was destroyed by New York's underworld. In the late 1920s, Johnny Torrio helped to organize a loose cartel of East Coast bootleggers, the Big Seven, in which a number of prominent gangsters, including Costello, Luciano, Longy Zwillman, Joe Adonis, and Meyer Lansky played a part. Torrio also supported creation of a national body that would prevent the sort of all-out turf wars between gangs that had broken out in Chicago and New York. His idea was well received, and a conference was hosted in Atlantic City by Torrio, Lansky, Luciano and Costello in May 1929; the National Crime Syndicate was created.
Costello claimed to have been involved in bootlegging with Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., the father of future president John F. Kennedy. He told a number of friends, including the columnist John Miller, that he had been in business with Kennedy. According to Costello, Kennedy approached him for assistance and an arrangement was reached whereby Kennedy brought the liquor to Rum Row and Costello took care of the rest. Costello biographer Leonard Katz interviewed a former New Orleans attorney for Costello who wished to remained anonymous; he told Katz that one day he arrived in Costello's apartment to find him having an angry telephone conversation, when Costello hung up he asked who he was speaking with, to which Costello allegedly responded "that Kennedy fella from Boston". The Kennedy family has denied this, with Kennedy's son-in-law Stephen Edward Smith stating there was no evidence in Kennedy's business records that he was involved in bootlegging, stating "I can't say he never talked to Costello, but I never heard of it, and I'm sure it would come as news to anybody in the family". One of Costello's biographers George Wolf has also been critical of the claims. He points to Costello's testimony in a closed session of the State Liquour Commission in the late 1940s. When asked about his connection with the House of Lords Scotch distribution he listed a "Joe Kennedy" as a partner. When the committee inquired if this was the well-known Joe Kennedy, he replied "Hell, no" and clarified that he was speaking about "Joe Kennedy, the old bootlegger in Toronto. I known him twenty-five years". Wolf considered Costello's claims to be "yet another indication of Frank's long yearning for legitimacy, to be "associated with the right people"."
In early 1931, the Castellammarese War broke out between Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano. In a secret deal with Maranzano, Luciano agreed to engineer the death of his boss, Masseria, in return for receiving Masseria's rackets and becoming Maranzano's second-in-command. On April 15, 1931, Luciano had lured Masseria to a meeting where he was murdered at a restaurant called Nuova Villa Tammaro on Coney Island. While they played cards, Luciano allegedly excused himself to the bathroom, with the gunmen reportedly being Genovese, Albert Anastasia, Joe Adonis, and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel; Ciro "The Artichoke King" Terranova drove the getaway car, but legend has it that he was too shaken up to drive away and had to be shoved out of the driver's seat by Siegel. Luciano took over Masseria's family, with Genovese as his underboss. In September 1931, Luciano and Genovese planned the murder of Maranzano. Luciano had received word that Maranzano was planning to kill him and Genovese, and prepared a hit team to kill Maranzano first. On September 10, 1931, when Maranzano summoned Luciano, Genovese, and Costello to a meeting at his office, they knew Maranzano would kill them there. Instead, Luciano sent to Maranzano's office four Jewish gangsters whose faces were unknown to Maranzano's people. They had been secured with the aid of Lansky and Siegel. After assassinating Maranzano, Luciano subsequently created The Commission to serve as the governing body for organized crime.
In 1931, after the Masseria and Maranzano murders, Luciano became the leader of the new Luciano crime family, with Genovese as underboss and Costello as consigliere. Costello quickly became one of the biggest earners for the Luciano family and began to carve his own niche in the underworld. He controlled the slot machine and bookmaking operations for the family with associate Philip "Dandy Phil" Kastel. Costello placed approximately 25,000 slot machines in bars, restaurants, cafes, drugstores, gas stations, and bus stops throughout New York. In 1934, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia confiscated thousands of Costello's slot machines, loaded them on a barge, and dumped them into the river. Costello's next move was to accept Louisiana governor Huey Long's proposal to put slot machines throughout Louisiana for 10% of the take. Costello made Kastel overseer of the Louisiana slot operation. Kastel had the assistance of New Orleans mafioso Carlos "Little Man" Marcello. Costello brought in millions of dollars in profit from slot machines and bookmaking to the Luciano family.
