Vito Genovese (born November 27, 1897, Rosiglino, Italy—died February 14, 1969, Springfield, Missouri, U.S.) was one of the most powerful of American crime syndicate and Mafia bosses from the 1930s to the 1950s and a major influence even from prison, 1959–69.
Genovese immigrated from a Neapolitan village to New York City in 1913, joined local gangs, and in the 1920s and ’30s was Lucky Luciano’s second-in-command in narcotics and other rackets. In 1937 he escaped to Italy to avoid prosecution on a murder charge and became a friend of Benito Mussolini, financing several Fascist operations while engaged in narcotics smuggling to the United States.
At war’s end he befriended U.S. military occupation authorities and bossed the black market operations in Italy until federal agents returned him to the United States to face trial on the earlier murder charge. A key witness, Peter La Tempa, however, was murdered (poisoned) in 1945 while in protective custody, and Genovese was set free on June 11, 1946. He gradually reestablished his power in New York City, arranging the murder of several rivals (such as Willie Moretti in 1951 and Albert Anastasia in 1957 and allegedly the attempt on Frank Costello in 1957), and commanded the gunmen-racketeers in the narcotics trade. Costello’s influence waned after the attempt on his life, and Genovese rose to become effectively the “boss of all the bosses” in the New York area in 1957; Luciano’s operation became known as the Genovese crime family, one of the Five Families of the Italian American Mafia.
Finally, in 1958, the federal government indicted him for smuggling and distributing narcotics, and in 1959 he was convicted and sentenced to federal prison for 15 years. From prison (first at Atlanta, then at Leavenworth) he continued to rule and to order the killing of rivals. He died of a heart attack at the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners, Springfield, Missouri, in 1969.