Lucky Luciano and the Night of the Sicilian Vespers

Gary interviews well known true crime author Nate Hendley about Charles “Lucky” Luciano and how he recruited other young gangsters to kill the old Mustache Petes and created the modern National Crime Syndicate. Francis Ford Coppola used this scenario in his fictional recounting of these events in The Godfather.  Many people have mythologized these events and distilled them down to a single night where teams of young mafia assassins spread across New York and New Jersey murdering all the Black Hand Mustache Petes to seize control of organized crime organizations. We learn that this was actually a two-part operation in that Lucky Luciano first made a secret deal with a rival boss named Sal Maranzano, to kill his boss, “Joe the Boss” Masseria. In return, he would become Maranzano’s second-in-command. On April 15, 1931, Luciano met Joe the Boss Masseria at a restaurant called Nuova Villa Tammaro on Coney Island. After dinner, the men played cards and Luciano excused himself to the bathroom. Several gunmen entered the joint and murdered Joe the Boss. Supposedly the killers were Albert Anastasia, Vito Genovese, Joe Adonis, and Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. After a short time as the second in command, Luciano realized the younger mobsters needed to kill off the final ruling Mustache Pete who was still an old Black Hand member, his new boss Sal Maranzano.   On September 10, 1931, several Jewish gangsters disguised as government agents entered Maranzano’s office. They stabbed the old boss multiple times before administering a coup de grace with a gun. In an often-repeated fable, they moved on to other Sicilian bosses that same night, and this would become known as the “Night of the Sicilian Vespers” Gary and Nate discuss the origins and sources for this often-repeated story. They agree that Maranzano created the first Five Families in New York and after Lucky Luciano murdered him and took over, he created the National Crime Commission and the modern-day mafia organization in the United States.

Nate Hendley True Crime Author

Books

Nate Hendley has written over a dozen books, primarily in the true-crime genre.

 

The Boy on the Bicycle: A Forgotten Case of Wrongful Conviction in Toronto.

This book is about 14-year old Ron Moffatt of Toronto, who was wrongly convicted of murdering a child in 1956. The real offender was notorious serial killer Peter Woodcock.

The Boy on the Bicycle was released in August 2018 by Five Rivers Publishing, a Canadian company that has published several of my other true-crime books.

“Hendley tells this important and disturbing story with objectivity and restraint, letting the facts speak for themselves as the reader’s sense of outrage builds. Moffatt has never received an apology for his mistreatment, let alone monetary compensation for an ordeal that derailed his life for years. Worst of all, his arrest meant Peter Woodcock remained at large long enough to kill again.”—Dean Jobb, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, April 2020

“The Boy on the Bicycle is an exceptional read and serves as a unique time capsule of the times and mores of post-WWII Toronto when murders were rare and sexual predators were practically unheard of … It was Mr. Hendley’s wish to finally tell Ron’s story after these many years, which he has done in a direct, yet compassionate manner. Five stars!” —The Miramichi Reader

“The amazing story of a 62-year-old wrongful conviction is revealed in a riveting new book, The Boy on the Bicycle, by Nate Hendley, a seasoned true-crime writer and former Ontario regional director with the Professional Writers Association of Canada.” —Sootoday.com

“Hendley’s telling of the tale is crisp and clear with compassion for all of the victims, both the murdered children and the man who spent a year of his youth behind bars, blemished for life by another man’s crimes … I highly recommend this book to all lovers of the true-crime genre.” —Donna Carrick, Host,