Gaetano Lucchese – A Powerful Mafioso and founder of the Lucchese Mafia Family

It was on 1st December 1899 that Gatano Lucchese was born in Palermo Sicily. However, in 1911, his parents Maria and Giuseppe had immigrated to East Harlem, United States and settled in Manhattan’s Italian neighborhood. Here, his father had worked hauling cement. In 1915, when Lucchese was trying to help his family financially by working at a machine shop, he lost his right forefinger and thumb.

His life as a mafia

On turning 18 years old, he worked with a window cleaning firm that was dubbed as extortion racket for 107th Street gang. He was its member. Businesses that refused using his services were noticed to have their windows to be broken.  The gang also included his close friends Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello and Charlie Luciano. Together, they specialized in stealing wallets, burglarizing stores, smalltime gambling, etc. Although they were a gang, they were protected by Gaetano Reina, a popular gangster and boss of Bronx-East Harlem boss.

He got arrested in 1920 for auto theft, where the police officer had compared his deformed hand with  that of Mordecai Brown, the professional baseball pitcher, known popularly as ‘Three-Finger’. Hence, Lucchese was nicknamed as Three-finger brown by the police a name that remained for the rest of his life and got shortened to just Brown.

He got convicted and served 13 months in prison at Sing Sing Correctional place. It is regarded to be the only and first conviction in his life. he was arrested several times for receiving stolen goods and murdering small-time hood. But charges against him were dropped.

The murder of Pinzolo at a Manhattan office owned by Luchesse made the law enforcement officials to suspect the latter of committing the crime. But on his self surrendering to the police authorities on 8th September 1930, saw him to be acquitted due to lack of evidence. The end of Castellammarese War saw the rise of Maranzano who had declared himself to be boss of bosses, placing Luciano as second in command and Lucchese was made the underboss.

Lucchese had been naturalized to become an American citizen on 25th January 1943, but securing the good conduct certification from Parole Board of the State of New York, took him another 7 years. He was successful as a VP of the garment factory by early 1950s, however, had controlled its worker unions, trucker unions and longshoremen unions. Also he had influenced numerous government officials of the city of New York as well as local entertainment industry. He had become a powerful entrepreneur, businessman and controller of unions, while being the entertainment industry’s friend. It was on 16th February 1951 that he died.