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The Cool Cunning of Lucky Luciano
How he used assassins dressed as federal tax agents to wipe out a rival
Born Salvatore Lucania in Sicily in November 1897, the future brains of the New York City mafia took the name Charles Luciano after he was arrested for dealing heroin and his parents disowned him. By the 1930s he was known as “Lucky” Luciano, although no one can say with certainty what prompted the nickname.
The leading theory for his winning a nickname celebrating luck was his surviving a savage beating in October 1929. Luciano was not only beaten but stabbed by a group of men who then dumped him on a beach on Staten Island, assuming he was dead. A police officer discovered him, and Luciano was taken to the hospital. As a result of the attack, he exhibited a deep scar on one side of his face and a permanently drooping eyelid.
His attackers’ identity was murky. Sometimes Luciano said it was three police officers who beat him, other times it was thugs sent by mafia boss Salvatore Maranzano because Luciano worked for a boss that Maranzano was at war with. Whatever the reason for the attack, within two years, Maranzano was dead and out of Luciano’s way in his meteoric rise to the top.
The 1920s were in many ways flush times for the underworld, thanks to Prohibition, which handed the Italian, Irish, and Jewish gangs lots of opportunities to…
