Buffalo Crime Family - Magaddino Era

Magaddino Era

Stefano Magaddino was born on October 10, 1891, and emigrated to the United States from Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, sometime in the early- to mid-1910s. He settled in the Sicilian enclave of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York. Magaddino came from a well-known and powerful Mafia family and already had the reputation of a hardened killer upon his arrival in the States.

Magaddino quickly established himself in New York's underworld and became a group leader in his Mafia clan, extorting, stealing and cheating his way to success and wealth. He quickly established his group of Castellammarese mafiosi known as "The Good Killers" as a powerful presence in the underworld. In 1921 he was arrested in New York, along with a close associate and fellow Castellammarese named Gaspar Milazzo, for their alleged involvement in a murder of a man in Avon, New Jersey. The victim was a member of the Buccellato family of Castellammare, a rival Mafia clan that Magaddino, his relatives and associates had warred with in Sicily for years.

After being released by New York law enforcement, Milazzo moved to another large Castellammarese community in Detroit, while Magaddino moved his base of operations to western New York, settling first in the city of Buffalo, then moving north to the city of Niagara Falls by 1922.

Magaddino was a close associate of Angelo Palmeri, and upon the death of his underboss Joseph Peter DiCarlo, Palmeri urged the respected and feared Magaddino to take over as boss. Magaddino accepted the position and named Palmeri his senior adviser. Under Magaddino the Buffalo crime family became an influential crime group during the Prohibition era, benefiting from its proximity to the Canadian border and from the many underworld connections Magaddino possessed nationwide. Throughout Prohibition the Buffalo crime family had strong ties to Canadian Mafia groups in southern Ontario, which supplied liquor to many American underworld groups to smuggle into the United States. The most well-known association was with Hamilton Mafia boss Rocco Perri, (see King of the Mob by James Dubro for more details) who led a large group of Calabrian mafiosi and was called "Canada's Al Capone" and "King of the Bootleggers" by the media.

Magaddino and his crime family became extremely wealthy during Prohibition, and throughout the 1920s Magaddino made sure that his criminal interests and territory were protected from rivals. There were a large number of underworld deaths labeled "gang hits" in the western New York and southern Ontario regions during Prohibition. Some were tied to the "Bootleg Wars" between American and Canadian bootleggers, while others were the result of the "Sugar Wars" between the Magaddino crime family and the Porrello crime family of Cleveland, Ohio. The Sugar Wars erupted when the Porellos tried to expand their corn sugar business into eastern Pennsylvania and western New York at the expense of Magaddino and his group, but Magaddino's forces quickly put an end to the grand ambitions of the Cleveland mafiosi.

The Buffalo crime family grew in power and influence throughout the 1920s and began to establish itself on a national level through the many influential criminal association Magaddino had forged with other Mafia bosses in New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Detroit and Chicago.