mafiosi ever to be called a boss. Terranova came to the fore during the heyday of New York's Morello family and Lupo the Wolf; as long as he had them to lean on, he too was a dynamic crime figure. He could and did order a number of murders but gained a reputation as a man who could not do the dirty work himself.
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Actually he operated quite well as a number two man and was to thrive as a junior partner to Dutch Schultz in the Harlem numbers racket. He was also called "the Artichoke King" by the newspapers for running an efficient racket with Morello muscle behind him. As informer Joe Valachi explained: "He tied up all the artichokes in the city. The way I understand it he would buy all the artichokes that came into New York. I didn't know where they all came from, but I know he was buying them out. Being artichokes, they hold; they can keep. Then Ciro would make his own price, and as you know, Italians got to have artichokes to eat."
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With the passing from the active roster of most of the leading Morellos and Lupo the Wolf by the 1920s, Terranova was in position to claim the leadership of mafioso elements in New York. He proved incapable of that and had to settle as an underboss to Joe the Boss Masseria. During the Maranzano-Masseria war of 1930-1931, he had another opportunity to assert his leadership but could only watch as Lucky Luciano took up the reins. Luciano and his assistant Vito Genovese tabbed Terranova a weakling and one who could be, according to Valachi, "stripped [of power] ... a little at a time."
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Luciano's disdain for Terranova was rooted in the cowardly role the latter had played in the murder of Joe the Boss. Luciano arranged the killing by luring Masseria to a meal in a Coney Island restaurant. While Luciano went to the men's room, four killersGenovese, Albert Anastasia, Joe Adonis and Bugsy Siegelmarched in and ventilated Masseria. The quartet marched rapidly out of the restaurant to a waiting black limousine where Terranova sat at the wheel. The four killers were cool and relaxed, but Terranova was trembling, so much so that he was unable to put the car in gear. Contemptuously, Siegel shoved him away, took the wheel himself and sped off.
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When, in the new order in the underworld, Luciano ordered Dutch Schultz's murder, Terranova moved to take control of the Harlem numbers racket. Luciano and Genovese informed Terranova he was now in retirement, replaced by Trigger Mike Coppola. Usually, such displaced crime leaders are assassinated for fear they will go to war to retain their rights. Luciano correctly figured that Terranova would do nothing.
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Three years later, according to a gloating Valachi who hated Terranova for personal reasons, "he died from a broken heart." Generally speaking the death of Terranova was considered the final demise of the old Morello Gang, the first Mafia family established in New York. Many descendants of the Morellos are still active but have been absorbed by the other crime families.
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See also:
Lupo the Wolf; Morello Family
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Testa, Philip "Chicken Man" (19241981): Philadelphia Hafia boss
Few American cities acknowledge their mafiosi as freely as Philadelphia, the City of Mafia Love. Mafiosowatching has long been considered a fine spectator sport. A restaurant in the city noted as a feeding place for the Mafia, Cous' Little Italy, even sported a hamburger called the Testa Burger, named after a godfather of the early 1980s, Philip "Chicken Man" Testa. The
Wall Street Journal
, a publication much impressed with effective methods of salesmanship, cited the pitch for the Testa Burger, "If you didn't eat it, you'd get your fingers broken.''
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It was a gag, but Phil Testa, in his criminal activities, was no laughing matter. Classified by the FBI as one of the most violent members of the Angelo Bruno crime family, Testa was also its underboss. Bruno, known as "the Gentle Don," was assassinated in 1980, almost certainly by New York Mafia crime families seeking to take over Atlantic City's new and enormously valuable crime concessions (flowing from now-legal casino gambling). The consensus among crime specialists was that Testa would be a tougher man to down than Bruno and that he would fight for what the Philadelphia mafiosi regarded as their turf.
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Testa, in fact, was considered a man who would fight almost anybody over almost anything. Testa operated from the cover of a chicken shop on Christian Street. One time a rookie FBI agent, doing a routine check on a federal job applicant, wandered into the place to question the proprietor. Testa had four of his brawny enforcers heave him out into the street.
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With Testa running the mob, a local newspaper thought it would be wise, considering the great public interest in local mafiosi, to have its resident astrologer study the Testa future in the stars. "With Neptune in exact conjunction with his retrograde Jupiter," the horoscope proclaimed, "no matter what's going on, Testa will come out in a better position than he started."
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It was at best a short-term forecast. In March 1981, almost a year after Bruno's rubout, Chicken Man Testa got his. He was blown to bits when a shrapnel-filled remote control bomb tore up his house and porch as he returned there in the middle of the night. Most theories lent themselves to the likelihood that the New York mobs had struck again. But the once-homogenous
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