WANTED: Joe Masseria
REWARD: $20,000
Joe Masseria: "Joe The Boss"
original name Giuseppe Masseria
born 1887, Italy
Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria was an early Mafia don in the United States. He was boss of what is now called the Genovese crime family, one of the New York Mafia's Five Families, from 1922 to 1931.
leading crime boss of New York City from the early 1920s
Emigrating from Sicily at age 16, he associates with a band of Italian killers and Black Hand extortionists and committed burglaries and other petty crimes.
But in 1920 he began to create the power that gave him control or a percentage of the profits of most of the Italian-run rackets in New York.
In 1930 he declared war on Salvatore Maranzano and allied rivals, and some 60 gunmen and leaders on both sides were slaughtered in the resultant gang war. It ended on a Wednesday afternoon in April 1931.