The Five Families: A Guide to the New York Mafia
At their peak in the mid-20th century, New York's Five Families — the Gambino, Lucchese, Genovese, Colombo, and Bonanno organizations — constituted the most powerful criminal enterprise in American history. They controlled labor unions across industries from construction to garbage collection to the garment trade, operated gambling and loan-sharking networks across the northeastern United States, and wielded political influence in major cities. This is their story.
The Origin: The Castellammarese War and the Commission
The modern American Mafia was organized in its current form in 1931, following the Castellammarese War — a conflict between two factions of Sicilian and Italian-American criminal organizations that ended with the murder of Joe Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano. Lucky Luciano, who orchestrated both murders, reorganized what had been a loosely affiliated series of gangs into a structured organization modeled partly on corporate hierarchy and partly on the Sicilian Mafia he and his colleagues had grown up with.
The Commission — a governing body composed of the bosses of the five New York families plus representatives from Chicago and other major cities — was Luciano's most significant organizational innovation. It provided a mechanism for resolving disputes between families without open warfare, establishing territories, and coordinating major criminal enterprises that crossed family jurisdictions.
The Gambino Family
The Gambino family was the most powerful of the Five Families at its peak — primarily because of Carlo Gambino, who led the organization from 1957 until his death in 1976 and used his position on the Commission to accumulate power and influence beyond what any previous boss had achieved. Paul Castellano succeeded him, a more corporate figure who was murdered on the orders of John Gotti in December 1985 outside Sparks Steak House in Manhattan.
John Gotti — the "Dapper Don," so called for his expensive suits and extravagant public persona — led the Gambino family from 1985 until his conviction in 1992 on racketeering and murder charges. He died in federal prison in 2002. His public visibility and refusal to conduct himself with the discretion that had characterized the previous generation of bosses is widely credited as a major factor in the FBI's successful prosecution of the family's leadership.
The Lucchese Family
The Lucchese family is the one depicted in Goodfellas. Named for Gaetano Lucchese (known as "Three-Finger Brown"), the family's power base was in the garment district, the trucking industry, and the JFK Airport cargo operations — the last of which provided the infrastructure for the 1978 Lufthansa heist depicted in the film. Paul Vario — the model for Paulie Cicero in Goodfellas — ran the family's Queens operations for decades before his conviction on charges stemming from Henry Hill's testimony.
The Genovese Family
The Genovese family is the oldest and, in the view of many law enforcement analysts, the most organizationally sophisticated of the Five Families. Named for Vito Genovese, who ran it from the late 1950s until his imprisonment in 1959, the family's subsequent leadership — particularly Vincent "the Chin" Gigante, who feigned mental illness for decades to avoid prosecution — demonstrated a capacity for institutional self-preservation that the other families did not match. The Genovese family's waterfront and labor union operations remained active long after the other families had been substantially dismantled by federal prosecution.
The RICO Cases and the Decline
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), passed in 1970 and used aggressively against organized crime beginning in the early 1980s, fundamentally changed the legal landscape. Where previous prosecution required proving individual crimes, RICO allowed prosecutors to charge the enterprise itself — meaning that participation in the organization could be prosecuted regardless of whether a specific individual could be directly tied to a specific crime. The Mafia Commission Trial of 1985-1987 resulted in convictions of the bosses of four of the Five Families on RICO charges. The era of organized crime as a dominant criminal force in American life effectively ended with that prosecution.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are the Five Families still active?
All five New York families continue to exist in diminished form. The combination of aggressive RICO prosecution, FBI informants, and changing immigration patterns that reduced the recruitment pool has substantially reduced their power and membership from the mid-20th century peak. They remain active primarily in construction, garbage collection, and traditional street-level operations.
Which family was the most powerful?
The Gambino family under Carlo Gambino (1957-1976) is generally considered the most powerful of the Five Families during the organization's peak influence. The Genovese family is considered to have maintained the most organizational discipline and longevity through the prosecutorial pressure of the 1980s and 1990s.