He Was Untouchable — His Own Ally Shot Him in the Head Over Breakfast – HT

 

 

 

May 2nd, 1957, 10:25 p.m., the Majestic apartment building, Central Park West, Manhattan. Frank Costello stepped out of his Cadillac and walked toward the lobby doors. He never made it inside. Vincent “The Chin” Gigante emerged from the shadows, raised a .38 revolver, and screamed, “This is for you, Frank.

” The bullet grazed Costello’s skull, tearing through his fedora. Blood poured down his face as he collapsed on the marble floor. The hit that should have killed America’s most powerful mob boss had failed by inches. This wasn’t just another mobster. Frank Costello was the prime minister of the underworld, the man who bought mayors, judges, and police commissioners like other people bought newspapers.

 For 20 years, he’d been untouchable, running the most sophisticated criminal empire in American history. He controlled slot machines from New York to New Orleans, fixed elections, and sat at the head of the commission that governed organized crime nationwide. This is the story of how one man built an empire through bribes instead of bullets, only to watch it crumble when his own partner decided he’d become too powerful to live.

 From a Calabrian olive oil racket to the corridors of Tammany Hall, from Las Vegas casinos to a congressional hearing room where he became the face of American organized crime. This is the rise and violent downfall of Frank Costello. But here’s what the history books don’t tell you. Costello’s assassination attempt wasn’t random mob violence.

 It was the final move in a decade-long chess game between two men who’d built the modern mafia together and could only watch one of them survive to control it. Francesco Castiglia was born in 1891 in Laurapoli, a mountain village in Calabria where olive oil meant survival and respect meant everything. His father scratched out a living as a laborer.

 His mother carried 4-year-old Francesco to America in 1905, hidden in a cooking pot to avoid immigration fees. They settled in East Harlem where Italians crowded into tenements and children learned that cops weren’t there to help. Frank hated poverty. He watched his father accept handouts, bow his head to Irish landlords, work 16-hour days for pennies.

 By age 10, Frank had decided he’d never be powerless again. He quit school in fifth grade and hit the streets stealing from pushcarts, running numbers for neighborhood gamblers, learning that money bought the one thing his father never had, options. His first arrest came in 1908 for assault. He was 17, built like a boxer with dark eyes that never blinked first in a staredown.

The cops beat him bloody in the precinct basement. Frank never said a word. That silence taught him something crucial. Violence was temporary, but information was forever. He started paying attention to who really ran the neighborhood. It wasn’t the cops. It wasn’t the politicians.

 It was the men in expensive suits who whispered in restaurant corners and never got arrested. In 1918, Frank got pinched carrying a concealed weapon, a year in prison. Behind bars, he made a decision that would define the rest of his life. No more guns. No more muscle. From now on, Frank Costello would use his brain, his charm, and other people’s money to get what he wanted.

 He changed his name from Castiglia to the more Irish-sounding Costello, married a Jewish girl named Loretta Geigerman, and went looking for the smartest criminals in New York City. He found them in Arnold Rothstein’s circle. Rothstein was the brain, the gambler who allegedly fixed the 1919 World Series, and taught a generation of street punks how to think like businessmen. Frank became a student.

 He learned about leverage, about political protection, about the difference between making a score and building an empire. When Prohibition arrived in 1920, Frank was ready. While other bootleggers hijacked trucks and shot up speakeasies, Frank went fishing, literally. He bought fishing boats, hired crews, and set up the most efficient rum-running operation on the East Coast, 20,000 cases per trip, delivered to private docks, distributed through a network of legitimate businesses.

 The Coast Guard couldn’t catch what they couldn’t find, and Frank’s boats looked exactly like every other fishing vessel in New York Harbor. By 1925, Frank was moving $50 million worth of liquor annually. More importantly, he’d learned the golden rule of organized crime. Cops and politicians weren’t obstacles to be fought.

 They were assets to be purchased. Frank began systematic corruption of the Democratic machine, starting with Tammany Hall district leaders and working his way up to judges and police captains. He had a gift for friendship. Frank could sit with a longshoreman or a Supreme Court justice and make both feel like they were talking to their best friend.

 He remembered wives’ names, kids’ birthdays, personal problems. When a politician needed campaign funds or a judge needed help with gambling debts, Frank was there with cash and no questions asked. He never demanded immediate favors. He invested in relationships. That’s how Frank met Charlie “Lucky” Luciano, the Sicilian kid from the Lower East Side who was also tired of the old world mustache petes running crime like a feudal system.

 Together with Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel, they formed an alliance that would reshape American organized crime forever. But Frank’s real partner, the man who would eventually try to kill him, was Vito Genovese. Genovese was everything Frank wasn’t. Born in Naples, raised on violence, suspicious of outsiders, and absolutely convinced that might made right.

 Where Frank charmed, Vito intimidated. Where Frank built networks, Vito eliminated competition. They needed each other. Frank provided political protection and strategic thinking. Vito provided muscle and the respect that came from being feared. The partnership was cemented in blood on April 15th, 1931. Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria, the old world don who controlled most of Manhattan’s Italian gangs, was playing cards at Nuova Villa Tammaro Restaurant in Coney Island.

 Lucky Luciano excused himself to use the bathroom. Four gunmen, including Vito Genovese, walked in and pumped 20 bullets into Masseria’s back. The Castellammarese War was over. The Commission was born. Frank became the political mastermind of what would eventually be called the Genovese family. He revolutionized mob corruption, turning random bribes into systematic control.

 His slot machine empire generated 40 million annually, one-armed bandits in every bar, restaurant, and social club from the Bronx to Brooklyn. When Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia smashed Frank’s machines and dumped them in the East River, Frank simply moved his operations to Louisiana, where Governor Huey Long welcomed him with open arms.

 But Frank’s greatest innovation was his relationship with Tammany Hall. He didn’t just bribe politicians, he became their partner. Frank helped elect judges, funded campaigns, and provided muscle for vote fraud. In return, he got advance warning of police raids, favorable court decisions, and contracts for everything from construction projects to garbage collection.

 By 1940, Frank Costello effectively controlled the Democratic machine in New York City. Meanwhile, Vito Genovese was building his own empire through fear. He’d eliminated several dozen competitors, taken control of drug trafficking, and established himself as the Outfit’s premier enforcer. But in 1937, Vito made a mistake that would haunt both partners for the next 20 years.

 He murdered Ferdinand “The Butcher” over a gambling debt, then fled to Italy when the heat got too intense. Frank found himself running the entire family alone. Without Vito’s muscle, he had to be smarter, more careful, more politically connected than ever before. He succeeded brilliantly. By 1945, Frank Costello was arguably the most powerful criminal in America.

 He controlled gambling operations in a dozen states, owned pieces of Las Vegas casinos, and had politicians from City Hall to Washington on his payroll. That’s when Vito came home from Italy expecting to reclaim his position as Frank’s equal. But 20 years had passed. Frank had built something bigger than a crime family.

 He’d created a political machine that generated hundreds of millions in revenue without the random violence that brought federal heat. Vito’s old school methods seemed primitive, reckless, dangerous. The tension exploded at the 1946 Havana Conference where mob bosses from across America gathered to discuss the future of organized crime.

Lucky Luciano, now deported to Italy, was trying to maintain control from exile. Frank represented the new generation, sophisticated, political, focused on white-collar crime. Vito represented the old ways, territorial, violent, rooted in ethnic loyalty rather than business efficiency. They fought over everything.

 Drug trafficking, Frank opposed it as too risky. Vito saw it as the future. Political corruption, Frank wanted systematic long-term influence. Vito preferred direct intimidation. Leadership style, Frank ruled through consensus and persuasion. Vito demanded absolute obedience through fear. By 1950, their partnership had become a cold war.

 Frank controlled the family’s political connections, legitimate businesses, and gambling operations. Vito controlled the drug trafficking, loan sharking, and enforcement crews. Neither could eliminate the other without destroying the organization they’d built together. The first shot was fired in 1951. Willie Moretti, Frank’s cousin and underboss, had been talking too much during the Kefauver Committee hearings on organized crime.

Moretti was suffering from syphilis that affected his judgment, making jokes and admissions that terrified other commission members. Vito argued that Moretti had to die before he revealed serious secrets. Frank resisted. Moretti was family. And his testimony hadn’t actually damaged anyone. On October 4th, 1951, four gunmen walked into Joe’s Elbow Room Restaurant in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, where Moretti was having lunch with associates.

 They shot him six times in the head and face. Vito later called it a mercy killing, but Frank understood the real message. Vito was willing to eliminate anyone who threatened the organization’s security, including Frank’s closest allies. Frank’s political empire started crumbling in 1950 when the Kefauver Committee made him the poster child for organized crime’s corruption of American democracy.

Senator Estes Kefauver had decided to make his political career by dragging mob bosses before televised hearings, and Frank became the star witness. The hearings were a disaster. Frank refused to answer most questions, citing his Fifth Amendment rights over 100 times. But the cameras captured something more damaging than any testimony, Frank’s hands.

They shook uncontrollably throughout the proceedings, making him look nervous, guilty, afraid. Millions of Americans watched the prime minister of the underworld reduced to a stammering defendant who couldn’t stop his fingers from trembling. The political fallout was immediate. Frank was convicted of contempt of Congress and sentenced to 18 months in federal prison.

More damaging, his political allies began distancing themselves from a man who’d become radioactive. Judges stopped taking his calls. Police commissioners claimed they’d never met him. The corruption network Frank had spent 30 years building started dissolving. Vito saw his opportunity. With Frank weakened by federal prosecution and political isolation, Vito began consolidating control over family operations.

He eliminated potential Frank loyalists, promoted his own crew leaders, and positioned himself as the strong leader needed to survive increased law enforcement pressure. The final confrontation came in May 1957. Frank had just been released from prison, determined to reclaim control of his organization.

 He’d learned that Vito was planning to eliminate Albert Anastasia, the powerful boss of what would become the Gambino family, who was one of Frank’s closest allies on the commission. Frank called a meeting for May 2nd at his apartment on Central Park West. He planned to confront Vito directly, to force a final resolution of their 20-year power struggle.

 But Vito had made his own plans. He decided that Frank Costello was too dangerous to live. Vincent “The Chin” Gigante was perfect for the job. Young, ambitious, completely loyal to Vito, and unknown to Frank’s security network. Vito’s instructions were simple. Wait outside Frank’s apartment building, shoot him when he returns home, make sure he’s dead.

Gigante waited for 3 hours in the shadows near the Majestic’s entrance. When Frank’s Cadillac pulled up at 10:25 p.m., Gigante stepped forward and raised his gun. But at the last second, he made a fatal mistake. Instead of shooting silently from behind, he yelled, “This is for you, Frank!” Either from nervousness or a desire to see Frank’s face when he died.

Frank turned toward the voice just as Gigante pulled the trigger. The bullet that should have exploded through the back of Frank’s skull instead grazed the top of his head, tearing through his fedora and opening a bloody furrow across his scalp. Frank collapsed, but he was alive. Gigante panicked and ran.

 Frank was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital where doctors found that the bullet had traveled along his skull without penetrating his brain. He’d lost blood and suffered a concussion, but he would survive. The assassination attempt accomplished exactly what Vito had intended, even though it failed to kill Frank. Within hours, Frank announced his retirement from active leadership of the family.

He claimed he was too old, too tired, too marked by federal investigators to continue running day-to-day operations. In reality, he knew that if he stayed, Vito would try again, and next time Gigante might not miss. Vito Genovese finally had control of the organization he’d helped build 30 years earlier. But his victory was pyrrhic.

Frank’s shooting brought massive federal heat down on the entire commission. FBI surveillance increased dramatically. Political corruption networks that had protected organized crime for decades began shutting down. The golden age of mob political influence that Frank had created was ending. Ironically, Vito’s triumph lasted less than 2 years.

 In 1959, he was convicted on federal drug trafficking charges and sentenced to 15 years in Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. The evidence against him had been provided by a paid informant, exactly the kind of law enforcement penetration that Frank’s political protection had prevented for decades. Frank Costello officially retired to his penthouse apartment, claiming to be out of the mob business forever.

But he continued to receive visitors, commission members seeking advice, politicians wanting guidance, businessmen needing favors. Even in retirement, Frank remained the most politically connected criminal in America. Vito Genovese died in federal prison in 1969, never admitting that his old-fashioned approach had doomed the organization he’d seized from Frank.

 The family that bore his name would survive, but it would never again achieve the sophisticated political influence that Frank had built during his 20-year reign. Frank lived until 1973, dying peacefully of a heart attack in his Manhattan apartment. Even after his death, his enemies couldn’t leave him alone. Carmine Galante, the volatile Bonanno family boss, allegedly ordered the bombing of Frank’s mausoleum in 1974, claiming that the old generation of politically connected bosses had made the mob weak.

Frank Costello’s real legacy wasn’t violence or territory or even the millions he earned. It was the proof that systematic corruption could be more powerful than any gun, that political influence could provide better protection than any army of bodyguards. For 30 years, Frank had made the American Mafia a partner of legitimate political power rather than its enemy.

But he’d also proved that such partnerships were ultimately unstable. They required a level of sophistication, patience, and long-term thinking that most criminals couldn’t maintain. When the next generation demanded immediate results and maximum violence, Frank’s empire of handshakes and favors couldn’t survive.

 The bullet that grazed Frank Costello’s skull in 1957 didn’t just end his career. It marked the end of the Mafia’s golden age when mobsters could sit down with governors and judges as equals. After Frank, organized crime would be about territory and drugs and violence, never again about the quiet, terrible power of owning the people who made the rules.