Capone and the Krays

Salvatore Luciano was born Salvatore Lucania in the village of Lercara Friddi, located approximately 16 miles (26 km) east of Corleone, in Sicily. At the age of ten, his family moved to the United States. Luciano, also known as David Rawcliffe, had a child named Chris Rawcliffe, later renamed Chris Luciano. He earned money in his younger years by getting kids to pay for his "protection", and, in true Mafia style, whoever wouldn't pay him one or two cents a day for his service would get beaten up. One kid refused to pay, and when Luciano tried to beat him up, the kid gave him a good fight: The kid's name was Meyer Lansky, another legendary mobster in the making. It was through Lansky that he met Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, an aspiring youthful hit man. Both Siegel and Lansky were Jewish, causing Luciano's alliance with them to be frowned upon by other members of the Sicilian community.

By 1916, Luciano joined the "Five Points Gang", who were suspected by the police of being involved in many murders. New York City crime bosses started taking notice of him, and by 1920, when the Prohibition was passed, Luciano was working for various gangsters as a bootlegger and meeting future legendary mafiosi such as Frank Costello and Vito Genovese.

Many old time mafiosi recommended Luciano stay away from Costello. Luciano ignored the advice and maintained his friendship with Costello, who introduced him to mobsters, politicians and powerbrokers of other nationalities, such as William O'Dwyer, Dutch Schultz and Arnold Rothstein.

By the 1920s, Luciano became one of the leaders of another mafia family, that of Joe "The Boss" Masseria, while disagreeing with Masseria's bigoted mistrust of everyone who wasn't Sicilian. Luciano knew from his own experience the Sicilians were wasting an opportunity to make more profit by shunning associations with other ethnic groups.

In 1930, the Castellammarese War broke out, putting Masseria and his men against fellow Sicilian Salvatore Maranzano. When Maranzano gained the upper hand, Luciano, along with Vito Genovese, betrayed Masseria and threw their support behind Maranzano while also secretly plotting to turn against him. Luciano reasoned that he would become boss after both Masseria and Maranzano had been eliminated.

By 1931, Luciano was so eager to gain power and become a boss that he, along with Lansky, planned the assassination of Masseria at a Coney Island restaurant while Luciano washed his hands in the bathroom.

Maranzano, having won the Castellammarese War thanks to Luciano and his friends, made Luciano his second in command, but this was just part of a Maranzano plot to have Luciano, Genovese and Chicago, Illinois's boss Al Capone eliminated. When Luciano and Lansky learned of this, they arranged to have four of Lansky's associates, disguised as government agents, go to Maranzano's office and murder him. Afterwards, the gang reportedly met the Irishman Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll, who had been hired by Maranzano to kill Luciano and Genovese, coming up the stairs. Not knowing Coll was the intended assassin, they told him the police were raiding the place, and Coll fled too

With the killings of Masseria and Maranzano completed, Luciano was able to achieve his vision by joining the major organized crime groups of different ethnicities in New York in what eventually became a national crime syndicate. Unlike Maranzano, who had tried to impose himself as the "Emperor" (technically, capo di tutti capi, "boss of bosses") in an organization modeled after the Roman Empire, Luciano organized a decentralized structure in which the major crime families divided up territories and spheres of activities and met, when necessary, to mediate differences between the various famiglias. This governing body was dubbed, "The Commission" (La Commissione). This structure served to prevent the all-out wars that had wracked the Mafia in the 1930s while allowing organized crime to grow even richer and more entrenched.

In 1936, prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey managed to obtain Luciano's conviction for pandering, on evidence that was almost certainly perjured to some extent. Luciano was sentenced to 30 to 50 years (being sent to the Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate Dannemora) and served 10 years. Even while Dewey was prosecuting him, Luciano took steps to prevent Dutch Schultz from going through with his plan to assassinate Dewey, arranging for Schultz to be murdered when it became clear he could not be deterred.

During WWII the U.S. government is reported to have covertly made a deal with Luciano, who was by then imprisoned. U.S. military intelligence was aware Luciano had maintained good connections in the Sicilian and Italian Mafia, which had been severely persecuted under Mussolini in Italy. Luciano was an American devoted to Sicily, the Mafia, and the USA alike. His help was sought in providing Mafia assistance to counter possible Axis infiltration on U.S. waterfronts, and his connections in Italy and Sicily were tapped to furnish intelligence and ensure an easy passage for U.S. forces as they moved up through the Italian peninsula. Both during and after the war, the U.S. military and intelligence agencies reputedly also used Luciano's Mafia connections to root out Communist influence in resistance groups and local governments.

In return for his cooperation, it is claimed that Luciano was permitted to run his crime empire unhindered from his jail cell, and that during the 1940s, he used to meet US military men during train trips throughout Italy, and he enjoyed being recognized by his countrymen, several times taking photos and even signing autographs for them.

In 1946, as part of the payoff for his cooperation, he was paroled on the condition that he leave the United States and return to Italy. He accepted the deal, although he had maintained during his trial that he was a native of New York City and was therefore not subject to deportation, but was deeply hurt about having to leave the USA, a country he had considered his own ever since his arrival at age ten. Later that year, he flew to Cuba for the Havana Conference, where he retook control of the American syndicate. At the meeting, Luciano ordered the execution of Siegel, who had cost the Mafia millions by opening money-losing casinos in Las Vegas. When the US government learned of Luciano's presence in the Caribbean he was forced to fly back to Italy.

According to drug trade expert Dr Alfred W. McCoy, during the 1950s Luciano forged a crucial alliance with the Corsican Mafia, who were reputed to be even tougher and more dangerous than the Sicilians–the so-called "French Connection". This new super-syndicate oversaw a massive increase in the production, refining and distribution of heroin, which had been all but eliminated as an addiction problem during World War II. Using opium sourced mainly from Turkey, heroin was refined and distributed via an elaborate network based in the Corsican Mafia stronghold of Marseilles in France.

Heroin soon began flooding into America and Europe, making notable inroads into vulnerable areas such as the American jazz scene, thanks to the Mafia's increasing takeover of music venues and other facets of the entertainment industry. The influence of heroin on American institutions continued well beyond Luciano's death.

Later in life Luciano came into conflict with Lansky over the amount of money he was receiving from Mafia operations in the early 1960s, but his failing health prevented him from putting up a fight on the matter. In 1962, Luciano died of a heart attack at the age of 64 at Naples Internationa Airport. He was buried in St. John's Cemetery in the borough of Queens in New York City, after a federal court ruled his burial on United States soil could not be blocked on the grounds that a corpse is not a citizen of any country and is therefore not subject to immigration control or deportation laws.

On the day of his fatal heart attack, Luciano had plans to sell the rights of his life's story to a movie maker. The Mob disliked the idea and had tried unsuccessfully to change his mind. It has been hypothesized that Luciano's heart attack was a result of poisoning by the Mafia.