Word: gambino
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...chief competitors were the pushy and aggressive Galante, who in 1974 shot his way into control of the criminal clan once run by Joseph ("Joe Bananas") Bonnano, and Aniello Dellacroce, 65, the treacherous head of the Gambino family...
According to law enforcement officials, the murder was the latest round in a gangland struggle to succeed Carlo Gambino, who died in 1976, as the top boss of New York's five Mafia families...
Soon after Gambino's death, Galante seemed destined for the mantle of capo di tutti capi (boss of bosses). By 1977, however, it was apparent that Galante, who was back in prison for parole violation, had failed to unite the other New York dons behind him. While Gambino had shied away from drugs because of the heavy penalties involved, Galante pushed for increased Mafia trafficking in heroin and moved in on black and Hispanic cocaine rings...
...Bonanno's scorn for his colleagues on the commission got him in trouble. He invaded their territories and ignored their calls for conciliatory meetings. And finally, the other dons believed, he schemed to kill three of his rivals, Stefano Magaddino, Carlo Gambino and Thomas Lucchese. In his memoirs, however, Bonanno is all innocence. He was merely trying to talk to them. "Carl [Gambino] and Tom [Lucchese] ... [were] told that I was going to kill three -a dirty and desperate conspiracy...
...Mafia underestimated the American appetite for drugs and has been unable to dominate the lucrative cocaine and marijuana market. This fits the pattern established at the 1957 Apalachin, N.Y., meeting of Mafia dons, where Carlo Gambino counseled that the drug trade was bringing too much heat. A number of old-line families moved out of the business then and have stayed out. But there is so much money involved, police report, that four families ? the old Lucchese, Colombo, Bonanno and Genovese clans ? are starting to move in after all. One group of Italians was discussing the cocaine trade...