Culture
The mafia appeared in the mid-19th century in Sicily. The American mafia is a branch of the Sicilian mafia that worked on the “waves” of Italian immigration in the late 19th century. Members and associate members of the mafia group needed to kill in order to intimidate prisoners and dissuade them from trying to cut their sentences.
Sometimes murders were committed out of revenge or disagreements. Murders have become a profession in the mafia. Throughout history, killing skills have been constantly refined. Planning, executing, and covering up the tracks were all part of a “trade” agreement with a skilled assassin. However, most murderers ended their lives violently or spent long periods of their lives in prison.
10. Joseph “The Animal” Barboza (Joseph “The Animal” Barboza)
Barbosa is known as one of the worst killers of the 1960s, and is believed to have killed more than 26 people. He received his nickname during an incident that occurred in a nightclub, when, after a short disagreement, he “fermented” the whole face of the offender. Some time after that, he continued his career as a boxer, winning 8 out of 12 fights under the pseudonym “Baron”.
Despite the fact that he did make several attempts to return to legal life, “nature took its toll”, because no matter how much you feed the wolf, he still looks into the forest, so he soon started studying again crime. In 1950, he served 5 years in the Massachusetts Correctional Colony, and he repeatedly attacked guards and other prisoners. After serving three years of his term, he escaped, but was soon caught.
After his release, he immediately joined a gang of gangsters and started his “own business” of burglary. At the same time, his career as an “assassin” within Patricia's Crime Family began to develop. Over the years, his number of victims has grown, as has his reputation as an assassin. His weapon of choice was a silenced pistol, although he also enjoyed experimenting with car bombs.
Over time, Barbosa became a respected figure in the underworld, but his reputation made it impossible not to gain dangerous enemies. After he went to jail on murder charges and found out that an assassination attempt was being prepared, he agreed to testify against mafia boss Raymond Patriarca in exchange for FBI protection. He was protected for some time as part of a witness protection program, but enemies still managed to get hold of him. In 1976, he was ambushed outside his home and killed on the spot with a shotgun.
9. Joe “Crazy” Gallo (“Crazy” Joe Gallo)
Joseph Gallo was a prominent member of the Profasi crime group based in New York City. He killed mercilessly and was believed to be involved in many contract killings ordered by his boss Joe Profaci himself. Ironically, his nickname has nothing to do with his “murderous” reputation.
Many “colleagues” called him crazy because he liked to quote dialogues from gangster movies and pretend to be fictional characters. His reputation was significantly “hardened” in 1957, when Joe was suspected (although this has never been proven) that he was among those who killed extremely powerful mafia boss Albert Anastasia ( Albert Anastasia).
A year later, Gallo assembled a team to overthrow Profasi's family leader Joseph Profasi. The attempt was unsuccessful, after which many of his friends and relatives were killed. Gallo was doing very poorly, and in 1961 he was convicted of robbery and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
During his time in prison, he tried to kill several other prisoners by politely inviting them into his cell and feeding them strychnine. Most of them became seriously ill, but none died. After serving eight years of his term, he was released early.
After his release, Gallo was determined to take on the role of leader of the Colombo crime family. In 1971, an African-American gangster shot then-gang leader Joe Colombo in the head three times. However, Gallo will soon face his own tragic end. In 1972, while dining at a fish restaurant with his family and bodyguard, he was shot five times in the chest. The main suspect in the murder was believed to be Carlo Gambino, who did so in retaliation for the murder of Joe Colombo's friend.
8. Giovanni Brusca
Giovanni Brusca is known as one of the most violent and sadistic members of the Sicilian mafia. He claims to have killed more than 200 people, although this is actually unlikely, even officials did not accept this figure. Brusca grew up in Palermo and began to communicate with the underworld from an early age. He eventually became a member of the Death Squad, which committed crimes on the orders of boss Salvatore Riina.
Brusca participated in the murder of anti-mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone in 1992. A huge bomb weighing almost half a ton was placed under the motorway in Palermo. When the car was driving at the place where the bomb was planted, the explosive device detonated, killing, in addition to Falcone, many more ordinary people who were nearby at that fateful moment. The explosion was so powerful that it pierced a hole in the road, and local residents thought an earthquake was about to begin.
Shortly thereafter, Brusca began to face numerous challenges. His former friend Giuseppe di Matteo became an informant and spoke about Brusque's involvement in Falcone's murder. To keep Matteo quiet, Brusca kidnapped his 11-year-old son and tortured him for two years. He also regularly sent horrifying photos of the boy to his father, demanding him to withdraw his testimony. In the end, the boy was strangled and his body was dissolved in acid to destroy evidence.
Brusca was sentenced to life imprisonment, but managed to escape and continued to be active in organized crime. However, authorities did manage to get to him and he was arrested in a small house in a Sicilian village.
The officers who took part in the arrest wore ski masks to hide their faces from the criminals, because otherwise they would face imminent reprisals. He was convicted of multiple murders and is currently in prison, where he will remain for the rest of his life.
7. John Scalise
John Scalis was one of the Al Capone clan's chief assassins during the ban period in the 1930s and 1940s. When he was twenty years old, he lost his right eye during a knife fight, which was later replaced by a glass eye. After that, to consolidate his reputation, he began taking assassination orders from the Gennas brothers. He later secretly began collaborating with Al Capone. John also spent 14 years in prison for manslaughter and was brutally beaten by his cellmates.
He is perhaps most popular for his participation in the St. Valentine's Day massacre, when seven people were lined up along a wall and brutally shot by bandits disguised as police officers. Scalis was arrested and charged with the murders, but was soon released because he was not found guilty.
Al-Capone later learns that Scalis and two other assassins were involved in a plot to overthrow his leadership. He invited all three to the banquet, beat everyone almost to death, and the final chord was bullets fired at the cheaters in the forehead.
6. Tommy De Simone (Tommy DeSimone)
This man's family is recognizable, as actor Joe Pesci played Tommy in the 1990 movie The Nice Guys. However, despite the fact that he is portrayed in the film as a small and short man, in real life he was a big, shoulder killer, almost 2 meters tall and weighing more than 100 kilograms. It was proved that he personally killed 6 people, although, according to some reports, this number is more than 11. Henry Hill, an informant, described him as a “pure psychopath.”
De Simone committed his first murder in 1968. While walking with Henry Hill in the park, he saw an unknown man walking towards them. He turned to Henry and said, “Hey, look!” Then he shouted an obscene word to a stranger and shot him point-blank range. This won't be his last impulsive assassination.
In one of the bars, he broke out due to what he thought was the wrong drink bill. He grabbed his gun and demanded that the bartender splash for him. When the latter refused, he shot him in one leg. A week later, when he was back in the same bar, he began to taunt the bartender who had been shot in the leg, to which he unpleasantly sent him far away. Tommy reacted very quickly: he took out his gun and killed the bartender by shooting him three times.
After his involvement in the famous Lufthansa robbery case, Tommy became an assassin for Jimmy Burke, a friend and thief inspirer. He eliminated possible informants and thereby increased his share of the loot. One of those killed was Tommy's very close friend Stacks Edwards, whom he was very reluctant to kill. Burke told Tommy that he could become a full member of the mafia group by killing Edwards, and De Simone agreed.
In the end, Tommy's temper led to his death. In another fit of blind rage, he killed two close friends of boss John Gotti, who felt it was his duty to get even with Tommy personally. According to Henry Hill, the murder process was a long one, as Gotti wanted De Simone to suffer greatly. He was killed in 1979 and his remains have never been found.
5. Salvatore Testa
Salvatore was a Philadelphia gangster who served as an assassin for the Scarfo crime group from 1981 until his death in 1984. His father, a highly influential criminal figure, was shot in the head in 1981, leaving Salvatore with several of his legal and illegal businesses. As a result, at age 25, Testa was very wealthy.
Testa was an extremely aggressive person, and he personally killed 15 people during his “activism”. One of his victims was the man who planned his father's murder, gangster and bodyguard Rocco Marinucci. His body was found exactly one year after Salvatore's father died. He was completely covered in bullet wounds and had three unexploded bombs in his mouth.
Salvatore was assassinated in a huge number of times, but he always managed to survive them. The first assassination took place on the terrace of an Italian restaurant, when a Ford sedan slowed down as it passed Testa's table, and a shotgun appeared in the window shot him in the stomach and left arm. However, he survived, and the assassins were forced to go underground after he found out who they were.
Testa met his death after being ambushed by his ex-friend. He was shot in the back of the head at close range. The motive for the murder was the fear of crime boss Scarfo that Testa was plotting against him.
4. Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano (Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano)
Sammy Bull was a member of the Gambino crime family. But he most likely became very popular after he became an informant against former boss John Gotti. His testimony helped keep Gotti behind bars for the rest of his life. Throughout his criminal career, Gravano committed a huge number of murders and contract killings. He got the nickname “bull” because of his size, height, and his habit of fighting fist fights with other mobsters.
He began his mafia activities in the late 1960s with the Colombo criminal clan. He participated in armed robberies and other petty crimes, although he quickly moved to the rather lucrative area of usury. He committed his first murder in 1970, which helped Ox earn respect among the underworld.
By the early 1970s, Gravano was a member of the Gambino crime group. He was arrested on suspicion of murder, but was soon released. After that, he started a series of serious robberies, which he did for a year and a half. At the end of this period, he had significant influence in the Gambino group. He “signed” his first contract for contract murder in 1980.
A man named John Simon was the leader of a plot to kill Philadelphia crime boss Angelo Bruno without obtaining permission from a special mafia Commission, for which he was sentenced to death. Simon was killed in a wooded area and his body was disposed of.
Ox committed his third murder in the early 1980s after being insulted by a wealthy tycoon. He was caught on the street, and while Gravano's friends held him, the Ox first shot him twice in the eye, followed by a test shot in the forehead. After the tycoon fell, Gravano spit on him.
Gravano later became the right-hand man of Gambino crime boss John Gotti, who was Gotti's favorite hitman during the period. However, after facing numerous charges against him for various crimes, he offered to provide information on Gotti in exchange for a reduction in his sentence. He confessed to 19 murders but received only 5 years in prison. After his release, he went underground, but soon became involved with organized crime in Arizona again. He is currently in custody.
3. Giuseppe Greco
Giuseppe was an Italian gangster who worked as a hitman in Palermo, Italy in the late 1970s. Unlike other killers, Greco has been on the run from the law throughout his career. He rarely worked alone, hiring a “death squadron”, bandits with Kalashnikov rifles who ambushed and then imprisoned the victim. He was found guilty of 58 murders, although the total number of victims, according to some reports, reached 80. He once killed a teenager and his father by dissolving both bodies in acid.
By 1979, Greco was a high-ranking and respected member of the mafia commission. He committed most of his murders between 1980 and 1983, during the Second Mafia War. In 1982, Palermo boss Rosaria Riccobono was invited to a barbecue at Greco's estate. After Rosaria and his associates arrived, they were all killed by Greco and his death squad. Greco received the order to kill him from his boss Salvatore Riina. No bodies were found, and according to available information, they were fed to hungry pigs.
Greco was killed at his home in 1985 by two former members of his death squad. Ironically, the customer was Salvatore Riina, who believed Greco had become too ambitious and too independent to stay alive. He was 33 years old when he was killed.
2. Abraham “Kid Twist” Reles
This man was the most notorious hit man involved with Murder Inc, a secret group of assassins that worked for the mafia in the 1920s and 1950s. He was most active in the 1930s, which was the period when he was killing members of various New York crime groups. His favorite weapon was an ice ax, which he skillfully used to pierce the victim's head and pierce his brain.
Reles was prone to blind rage and often killed in a fit. He once killed a parking attendant because he thought he had been parking his car for too long. On another occasion, he invited a friend to dinner at his mother's house. After the meal, he pierced his head with an ice ax and quickly disposed of his body.
As a teenager, Reles was regularly involved in criminal cases, and soon became quite a popular figure in the organized crime world. His first victim was Meyer Shapiro's ex-friend. Reles and some of his friends were ambushed by Shapiro's gang, but no one was hurt that time.
Shapiro later kidnapped Reles's girlfriend and raped her in a cornfield, of course Reles decided to take revenge by killing the offender and his two brothers. After several failed attempts, Abraham managed to get even with one of his brothers and two months later with Shapiro himself. A little later, the rapist's second brother was buried alive.
By 1940, Reles had been charged with a myriad of crimes and would likely have been executed if convicted. To save his life, he surrendered all former friends and members of Murder Inc, six of whom were executed.
He was later due to testify against mafia boss Albert Anastasia, and was under constant security in his hotel room the night before the trial. He was found dead on the sidewalk the next morning. It is still unknown whether he was pushed or whether he tried to escape himself.
1. Richard “Ice Man” Kuklinski
Perhaps the most notorious assassin in history is Richard Kuklinski, who is believed to have killed more than 200 people (including neither women nor children). He worked in New York and New Jersey from 1950 to 1988 and was an assassin for the Decavalcante crime group, among others.
At age 14, he committed his first murder by beating a bully to death with a piece of wooden stick. To avoid identifying his body, Kuklinski cut off the boy's fingers and pulled out his teeth before throwing his remains off the bridge.
During his teenage years, Kuklinski became a notorious serial killer in Manhattan, brutally murdering homeless people just for the thrill of it. Most of his victims were shot or stabbed to death. Anyone who opposed him lost his life within a year at most. His tough reputation soon drew the attention of various criminal gangs who sought to use “his talent to their advantage” by making him an assassin.
He became a full member of the Gambino criminal group, actively participating in robberies and supplying pirated pornographic videotapes. Once, a respected member of the Gambino gang was driving with Kuklinski. After they parked, the man chose a random target and ordered Kuklinski to kill him. Richard promptly carried out the order, shooting an innocent man at point-blank range. This was the start of his career as a hit man.
Over the next 30 years, Kuklinski worked successfully as an assassin. He got his nickname “Ice Man” because of his method of freezing the bodies of his victims, which helped to hide the time of death from the authorities. Kuklinski was also famous for using various methods of killing, the most unusual of which was the use of a crossbow aimed at the victim's forehead, although he most often used cyanide.
When authorities finally found out who Kuklinski was, they found no evidence to convict him for premeditated murder. As a result, they carried out a special operation, after which Kuklinski was arrested and accused of trying to poison a person with cyanide. He received five life sentences after confessing to multiple murders. He died in prison of old age when he was 70 years old.