bing the iron grating of a window. Then a third man appeared and fired the coup de grace, a bullet directly in the detective's face.
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Don Vito, according to this version, had been dining that evening in the house of a deputy to the Italian Parliament. Midway through the cheese serving he had excused himself, taken his host's carriage and driven to the Piazza Marina. After killing Petrosino, he took the carriage back to his host's home and continued dining. The host later swore Don Vito had never left his company the entire evening.
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There is little doubt that the killing of Petrosino added much prestige and power to Don Vito, both in Sicily and with grateful gangsters in America. Don Vito concentrated for several years on building his power in Sicily, but he had long-range plans for becoming the head of the Mafia in America as well. In 1927, Don Vito sent his agent, the cunning Salvatore Maranzano, to New York to organize the Mafia forces there under one leadership. It is not clear whether he intended to install Maranzano in power there or follow himself. Chances are he had the latter course in mind since Benito Mussolini, jealous of Mafia power, was seeking to destroy the criminal society in Sicily.
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In 1929 Don Vito was arrested by the Italian government. Because he could not find real evidence against Don Vito, Mussolini's chief agent in his anti-Mafia campaign, Cesare Mori, manufactured a frame-up charge of smuggling. Don Vito contemptuously refused to speak at his trial until its conclusion when he said, "Gentlemen, since you have been unable to find any evidence for the numerous crimes I did commit, you are reduced to condemning me for the only one I have not." Don Vito was confined in Ucciardone Prison where he died in 1932, and for many years other criminals took it as a high honor to be confined in the cell where the greatest Mafia chieftain spent his final years.
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Meanwhile, in America Maranzano was on his own once Don Vito was imprisoned. He decided he could fill the void as the boss of bosses of the American Mafia. He fought the Castellammarese War to a successful conclusion with the death of his arch-foe Joe the Boss Masseria. Maranzano organized the New York Mafia into five families with himself above them all.
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However, Maranzano's and Don Vito's dream of a Sicilian Doss of bosses in America lasted less than five months. Maranzano was murdered by the LucianoLansky combination that would instead put in place a multi-ethnic national crime syndicate.
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Five iron Men: Kansas City crime rulers
It has been said there were few cities in America west of Chicago that could match the corruption that gripped Kansas City, Missouri. Yet numerically the number of actual mafiosi in the city was rather small. This may be explained in part by the presence of the Chicago Outfit which, from the time of the establishment of the national crime syndicate by Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, laid claim to everything to its west. (Chicago's claim was recognized basically everywhere but in Nevada and California and, to a limited extent, in Arizona.)
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The other mobs had little interest in going into Kansas City; they recognized it as being an empire to itself under the powerful administration of political boss Tom Pendergast. As a matter of fact, in the deliberations started in the late 1920s and early 1930s that culminated in the formation of the national syndicate, Pendergast was the only political boss invited to take part. When Pendergast found it inopportune to attend himself, he sent Johnny Lazia, the king of the North Side wards, as his spokesman.
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Pendergast, who controlled the Mafia in Kansas City far better than did other political machines, made it obvious to the mobsters that he was as ready to use violence and murder as they were. When Lazia was hit with a tax evasion conviction in 1934, he showed signs of turning informer against the machine; his lips were sealed by a machine gun assassination almost certainly decreed by the Pendergast forces.
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According to a report of the Federal Narcotics Bureau, the Kansas City Mafia entered into the narcotics trade in 1933 with the end of Prohibition. Among the main personnel in the operations were such important mafiosi as Joseph De Luca, Nicole Impostato and James De Simone.
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With the death of Lazia, Charley Binaggio, the fastest rising criminal light in Kansas City, eventually took over the North Side wards and delivered votes for the Pendergast machine. When Tom Pendergast and his machine got in deeper legal troubles, Binaggio continued to advance. As an apparent Mafia member himself (to others he insisted there was no such thing as a Mafia, past, present or future), he became one of the "Five Iron Men" who ruled much of Kansas City criminal activities. Others of the five were Binaggio's enforcer, Charley Gargotta (of whom Senator Estes Kefauver, following the crime hearings of the 1950s, would say, "If ever a human being deserved the title of 'mad dog' it was Gargotta") and three other mafiosi, Tano Lococo, fat Tony Gizzo and grizzled old Jim Balestrere, the reputed Mafia boss in the city.
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Balestrere, an ancient Sicilian-born mobster, had a public line of playing dumb and representing himself as a poor old jobless fellow who lived on a little income from a piece of business property (which turned out to be used for a gambling enterprise) and on a few dollars given him by his children. He used the same ploy before
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