The First Family: Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder, and the Birth of the American Mafia
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Before the notorious Five Families who dominated U.S. organized crime for a bloody half century, there was the one-fingered criminal genius Giuseppe Morello - known as "The Clutch Hand" - and his lethal coterie of associates. In The First Family, Mike Dash brings to life this little-known story, following the rise of the Mafia in America from the 1890s to the 1920s, from the lawless villages of Sicily to the streets of Little Italy. Using an impressive array of primary sources - hitherto untapped Secret Service archives, prison records, trial transcripts, and interviews with surviving family members - this is the first Mafia history that applies scholarly rigor to the story of the Morello syndicate and the birth of organized crime on these shores. The Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley Morello—not Vito Genovese, not Al Capone, not Lucky Luciano, not any of those creeps who paraded before the Senate's Kefauver Committee which investigated organized crime in the early 1950s—was the true father of the American Mafia. Dash leaves no doubt about that. A British historian and journalist whose capacity for research appears to be limitless, Dash has dug into tons of material and emerged with a work of popular history—written in lively, lucid prose, with a strong narrative line and a wealth of anecdote, much of it gory—that seems likely to be the definitive work on its subject for years to come.
MapsMorello Family TreeRogues' GalleryCh. 1 The Barrel Mystery 3Ch. 2 Men of Respect 31Ch. 3 Little Italy 54Ch. 4 "The Most Secret and Terrible Organization in the World" 70Ch. 5 The Clutch Hand 88Ch. 6 Vengeance 109Ch. 7 Family Business 133Ch. 8 Green Goods 158Ch. 9 "See the Fine Parsley" 178Ch. 10 Sheep and Wolves 197Ch. 11 Mob 225Ch. 12 Artichoke Kings 245Ch. 13 The Eighteenth Amendment 263Epilogue 289Acknowledgments 313Notes 315Bibliography 350Index 359
