The World's Most Evil Gangs Read Online Free Page A

Lansky under their wing … and all three went on to become Mob magnates.
    Well, it’s a nice story. (And even as an author of crime books, I also once believed it.) But like so many myths about the Mafia, it paints a glamorised picture of what is, in stark truth, a grimy, grubby, barbaric criminal subculture. There are no ‘Robin Hoods’ in the ongoing history of the Mafia, only hoodlums and their manipulative masters, the Mob bosses.
    Take ‘Lucky’ Luciano, who liked to think of himself as a heroic wartime agent for the US government. In fact, his real name was Salvatore Lucania, Sicilian-born pimp and drug pusher who was a bully and cheat almost from birth. ‘Bugsy’ Siegel – so nicknamed because he was ‘as crazy as a bedbug’ – presented himself as a handsome playboy, who mixed with Hollywood’s rich and famous. But Benjamin Siegel was really a nasty thug and cheap chiseller who, when entrusted with millions of dollars to run his own business, stole from his friends. Seemingly self-effacing Meyer Lansky was, to all appearances, a polite, mild-mannered businessman. But the bent accountant, born Maier Suchowjansky, was as guilty as any of the murderous mobsters who worked for him – a cynical mover of money earned from the vilest criminal undertakings that cost untold lives.
    The story is true, however, that Luciano and Lansky met early in life. Born in Sicily in 1897, Luciano arrived in the United States in 1906 and got into trouble within hours of disembarking from his migrant ship – for stealing fruit from a handcart. The following year the ten-year-old was charged with his first crime, shoplifting. He also launched his first racket, charging Jewish kids a penny or two for his ‘protection’ to and from school. If they refused to pay, he would beat them up. In 1915 his life of petty crime led him to a custodial sentence for the first time for drug peddling but his year in reform school left him a hardened criminal. Luciano became a leader of Manhattan’s Five Points Gang and police named him as a suspect in several local murders although he was never indicted. Fellow members of the gang at various times were Johnny Torrio and Al Capone.
    Meyer Lansky, born in 1902 to a Russian family, arrived inthe US in 1911 and was one of the Jewish kids that Luciano targeted, offering him protection at a price. Lansky refused to pay, and after Luciano failed to beat him up they became friends. Like his Italian pal, Lansky formed his own small gang while still in his teens, mainly involved in gambling and car theft. Luciano was at first Lansky’s mentor and later his associate. They controlled a number of New York gangs, mainly Italian and Irish, involved in robbing homes, shops and warehouses. But there was an area of crime in which Luciano specialised and which Lansky abhorred: prostitution. The Jew would have no part in the vice trade because, while a teenager, he had fallen desperately in love with a young prostitute, then found her one night in an alley with her throat cut, probably by her pimp.
    Between 1918 and 1932, Lansky was arrested seven times on charges ranging from disorderly conduct to murder but he had to be released on each one because of lack of witnesses. Luciano was more successful in keeping out of police custody. He and Lansky had both become affiliated to the gang of Jacob ‘Little Augie’ Orgen, who made a fortune from union and organised labour rackets. On Orgen’s behalf, Luciano became New York’s most feared hitman, whose favoured weapon was an ice pick. His reward was a string of Manhattan brothels that, by the Twenties, were estimated to be earning him more than $1 million a year.
    While Luciano was the epitome of a brutal gangster, Lansky took the softly-softly approach. Seeing how fellow Jews were intimidated by their Irish and Italian neighbours, he began offering their businesses ‘protection’ – at a price. But he needed ‘muscle’ to make his racket work, and the first