The "Good Killers" case , and Bartolo Fontana. Center, rear: Giuseppe Lombardi. Magaddino orchestrated the murder of Detroit gangster Felice Buccellato in March 1917. In August 1921, a barber named Bartolo Fontana turned himself into the New York police, confessing to murdering Camillo Caiozzo a couple of weeks earlier in
Avon, New Jersey. Fontana claimed he murdered Caiozzo at the behest of the "Good Killers", a group of mafiosi who hailed from Castellammare del Golfo, in retaliation for Caiozzo's involvement in the 1916 murder of Magaddino's brother, Pietro, back in Sicily. Fearing he might be murdered, Fontana agreed to help police set up a
sting operation. Stefano Magaddino met Fontana at
Grand Central Station to give Fontana $30 to help him flee the city. After the exchange, Magaddino was arrested by a group of undercover police.
Vito Bonventre and four other gangsters were subsequently arrested for their involvement in the murder. Fontana revealed that the "Good Killers" were also responsible for a string of other murders.
Buffalo crime family boss Joseph DiCarlo died in 1922, and Magaddino succeeded him as boss. According to Bonanno, upon arriving at a train station in
Jacksonville, Bonanno was detained by immigration officers and was later released under $1,000 bail. He was welcomed by
Willie Moretti and an unidentified man, it was later revealed that Magaddino was responsible for bailing him out as a favour for
Giovanni Bonventre, Bonanno's uncle. In 1924, Magaddino became a naturalized U.S. citizen. with
Prohibition in effect in the United States, Maggadino made his real money running a profitable
bootlegging business by smuggling wine and spirits across the
Niagara River into
New York State, thereby supplying the needs of
speakeasies located in
Buffalo and the very "
Honky-tonk" Niagara Falls. After Prohibition ended, Magaddino and his crime family made their money by means of
loan sharking,
illegal gambling,
extortion,
carjacking and labor
racketeering, as well as other legitimate lucrative businesses such as linen service businesses that served the needs of most of the hotels located throughout the region, taxicab companies, and other service-oriented businesses. Magaddino's crime family held power in the underworld territories of Upstate and Western New York, namely, Buffalo, New York, bordering Canada and situated on Lake Erie,
Rochester and
Utica, along the
Mohawk River as far east as
Amsterdam, New York; from Eastern Pennsylvania as far west as
Youngstown, Ohio, and in Canada from
Fort Erie (opposite Buffalo) to
Toronto, Ontario and as far east as
Montreal,
Quebec. By the 1960s, it was reported that Magaddino's crime syndicate supplied drugs to the Canadian cities of
Hamilton and
Guelph, which in turn supplied drugs to Toronto. Magaddino led his Buffalo family through its most active and profitable era. He preferred to stay in the background and avoid attention to himself or his criminal activities. Due to his territory's remoteness and size, he was sometimes called upon to arbitrate territorial disputes between New York City-based crime families.
National crime figure For fifty years, Magaddino was a dominant presence in the
Buffalo underworld. He was the longest tenured boss in the history of the American Mafia. Magaddino was also involved in national
La Cosa Nostra affairs. Magaddino was a charter member of
Charles "Lucky" Luciano's
Mafia Commission and attended important underworld summits such as the 1946
Havana Conference and the 1957
Apalachin Conference. It is believed Magaddino, along with Antonio and
Johnny Papalia, played a role in notorious
Hamilton bootlegger
Rocco Perri's disappearance in 1944 in order to gain more Canadian market control. After Perri's disappearance, three of his former lieutenants, in addition to Papalia and
Giacomo Luppino, began answering to Magaddino in Buffalo: Tony Sylvestro, Calogero Bordonaro and Santo Scibetta, known as the "three dons". Magaddino had survived several
assassination attempts. In 1936, rival gangsters attempted to kill Magaddino with a bomb, killing his sister instead. In 1958, an assassin tossed a
hand grenade through his kitchen window; the grenade failed to explode. In 1963,
Joseph Bonanno made plans to assassinate Magaddino and several rivals on the
Mafia Commission, bosses
Tommy Lucchese,
Carlo Gambino, as well as
Frank DeSimone. Bonanno sought
Profaci crime family boss
Joseph Magliocco's support, and Magliocco readily agreed due to his bitterness from being denied a seat on the Commission previously. Bonanno's audacious goal was to take over the Commission and make Magliocco his right hand man. The Commission summoned Bonanno and Magliocco to explain themselves. Fearing for his life, Bonanno fled to Canada, leaving Magliocco to deal with the Commission, but was deported back to the United States. In October 1964, Bonanno returned to
Manhattan, but on October 20, 1964, the day before Bonanno was scheduled to testify to a grand jury inquiry, his lawyers said that after having dinner with them, Bonanno was kidnapped, allegedly by Magaddino's men, as he entered the apartment house where one of his lawyers lived on Park Avenue and East 36th Street. Magaddino's empire began to crumble in 1968, when police found $500,000 stashed away in Magaddino's funeral home and his son's attic. Retired FBI agent Donald Hartnett said, "At that time, Magaddino had been telling his underlings that money was tight, and he could not afford to pay them Christmas bonuses... People began to stop trusting him when we found all that money." ==Death==