The Mafia doesn’t mess around when it comes to taking care of their enemies.
If you cross them, you might wind up in the crosshairs.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a rival mob boss, an informant from the Family, a politician
who’s getting a little too close to nailing the Don, or even a controversial world leader
- you’ve got a target with your name on it.
Here are some of the strangest and most memorable mafia assassination attempts of all time,
with one key factor - all of these targets lived to tell the tale.
The year was 1929, and prohibition was in full swing.
That meant organized crime was reaping the benefits - running the country’s speakeasies
and illegal liquor trade.
An up-and-coming group of young mafiosos called the Young Turks was looking to make a name
for themselves at the time, and they were smart enough to know they couldn’t go it
alone.
They frequently worked for other, higher-ranking mobsters as enforcers.
And the most feared of the lot was Charles Luciano, a notorious Italy-born gangster who
worked for boss Joe Masseria and had tight relations with local Jewish gangsters like
Meyer Lansky.
He was highly influential and knew how to manipulate his way into the halls of power.
By 1925, he was bringing in millions a year in illegal gambling and bootlegging, and was
becoming one of the city’s most powerful gangsters.
Too powerful, for some.
Masseria was one of the most powerful gangsters in the city - and the other was Salvatore
Maranzano.
A ruthless man known for targeting Masseria’s men for assassination, he saw a chance to
cut the legs out from under his rival - by targeting his newest powerful associate.
So Luciano wound up in the crosshairs, and one day they approached him and threw him
in the back of a limousine.
If they had simply shot him from the car, he probably would have been a goner - but
they apparently wanted to send a message.
They beat him and stabbed him in the face - but that left him alive, and he was able
to scramble away.
He was scarred for life and left with a distinct drooping eye, but it did not deter him.
He was about to show the mob scene just how vicious he was.
After surviving his first assassination attempt, Luciano picked up a new nickname - Lucky.
It stuck, and from there on out, he was unstoppable.
Within three years of his survival, he had taken out Maranzano in revenge for trying
to kill him - and Masseria for standing in his way.
He soon took over the network, and created the Mafia Commission to negotiate disputes
between the families.
That way people were less likely to get thrown into the back of limousines and stabbed.
Uncle Sam soon came looking for the notorious gangster, and he was charged with serious
crimes - but he never served time in prison, instead negotiating a deal to be returned
to his native Italy thanks to providing vital intelligence during World War II.
Even against the government, Lucky Luciano lived up to his name.
And sometimes, it can help to have friends in high places.
Greg “The Grim Reaper” Scarpa was no slouch when it came to the Mafia.
One of the most notorious hitmen in the history of the Colombo crime family, he also had a
major secret - he was a longtime FBI informant, and had been working with them since the 1960s
when he helped them recover the bodies of three murdered civil rights workers.
Scarpa, an Italian immigrant, may have been a ruthless gangster - but he hated the Ku
Klux Klan, and later helped them solve an arson murder.
But he wasn’t satisfied with his payment - a good deed well done didn’t cut it for
an aspiring mob boss - so the two parties broke ranks for a while, and Scarpa quickly
became a fast-rising figure in the New York mob scene.
Not only was he a trusted advisor to Boss Carmine Persico, but he was his top enforcer
and an infamous hitman.
And that put a target on his back.
While Scarpa had become deeply enmeshed with the mob, he had also reconnected with the
FBI in 1980 and taken a six-figure payday for his services.
He had a tight relationship with FBI Agent Lindsay DeVecchiom, exchanging gifts with
him - including a hard-to-find Cabbage Patch doll.
He was also a sickly man, having contracted HIV from a tainted blood donation.
As he got sicker, he told people in the Family he was battling cancer.
But other enemies didn’t want to see him live to die from that - the acting Boss Victor
Orena saw Scarpa as a wild card loyal to Persico, who was currently in prison.
So he made his move - targeting not just Scarpa, but his daughter and baby grandson.
Cars full of hitmen chased them, and Scarpa’s instincts kicked in.
He drove away as the gunmen approached, led them on a chaotic car chase, and even crashed
into some bystanders along the way.
He got away - but it would be a pyrrhic victory.
This kicked off a full-on war between loyalists to Persico and Orena, and Scarpa led Persico’s
forces.
But while taking out his rivals - and suing the hospital that accidentally gave him HIV
- he was arrested for gun crimes and placed on house arrest.
He would soon be charged with many of the murders he committed as a hitman, and would
even be targeted at his home - losing an eye in a shootout.
By the time he saw the courtroom, he was a very sick man and pled guilty.
He would be sentenced to life in federal prison, but the sentence was reduced due to his poor
health and he would die less than a year later in the prison’s medical ward.
And it wouldn’t be until after his death that the full extent of his FBI cooperation
would be revealed.
Sometimes, it’s all about who you hire.
Anthony Indelicato went into the family business - and the family business was killing.
The son of Bonanno mob boss Alphonse Indelicato was a fast-rising hitman in his father’s
organization, and by 1979 he was a key player in assassinating rival boss Carmine Galante.
But his father’s ambition was rubbing many rival gangsters the wrong way, and a power
struggle soon erupted.
The Indelicato clan was closely aligned with two other bosses, and they wanted to knock
off the rival heads and take command of the whole organization.
But when the rival Massino faction got a hold of the plot, they got the jump on them and
put out their own hit - and it was about to make Anthony Indelicato one of the most wanted
men in the mafia.
But sometimes, one little piece of missing information can screw up a whole operation.
Massino and his ally Dominic Napolitano kept things local for the main targets - and they
successfully engineered a hit that took out Alphonse Indelicato and his two closest allies.
But they also wanted the son dead, to ensure that he wouldn’t be able to avenge his father.
Napolitano had an associate he was looking to promote, and he felt it was time the recruit
made his bones as a Made Man.
That meant killing someone, and Indelicato - who had barely avoided being at his father’s
fatal meeting - was the perfect target.
So he gave his friend Donnie the information, and waited for word that the last major player
of the Indelicato family would be snuffed out.
But “Donnie” had other plans.
He was actually Donnie Brasco, aka Joseph Dominick Pistone - an undercover FBI agent
who pulled off one of the most in-depth infiltrations of the Mafia in history.
Shortly after the hit was ordered, Pistone’s infiltration ended and he was withdrawn.
The boss was informed that his hitman was gone, and Indelicato had the chance to escape
and head to Florida where he laid low - until Uncle Sam came calling.
He was eventually indicted for the Galante murder and sentenced to forty years in prison
- the inevitable outcome of the life he led.
But thanks to the hiring choices of a rival boss, he lived to tell the tale.
He even got married in prison, was paroled in 1998, and soon went back to his old activities
- and was arrested for another murder in 2006!
Some guys never learn.
But those who get targeted and survive don’t always escape unscathed.
In 1991, Peter “Fat Pete” Chiodo was a union fixer in the Lucchese crime family - and
he was notorious for being a brutal enforcer despite his girth.
But his luck ran out, and he was arrested on RICO charges.
Facing a lengthy sentence, he decided to cut his losses and take a deal with the feds.
His bosses, Vic Amuso and Anthony Casso, were enraged.
They expected their enforcer to take the hit for them, no matter how long he went to prison
for - and their long friendship with him didn’t matter anymore.
They decided to silence him for good, and make sure that he took all of their secrets
to the grave with him.
They deputized a team of hitmen to make sure he never saw trial - and they almost succeeded.
But Chiodo’s saving grace would be an unexpected one.
On May 8th, 1991, gunmen ambushed Fat Pete and shot him a shocking 21 times - but he
was still alive!
The critically wounded criminal was rushed to the hospital, and doctors successfully
saved his life and removed the bullets.
He was one of the most severely wounded Mafia hit victims to ever survive - and the doctors
said it wouldn’t have happened if he was a smaller man!
Chiodo was a whopping four hundred pounds and the heavy layers of fat around his body
absorbed the impact and slowed the bullets enough for him to survive - but the men targeting
him wouldn’t go quietly.
Casso and Amuso broke one of the cardinal rules of the mob - they went after their enemy’s
family and told him that if he testified, they would wipe out Chiodo’s whole line.
It would be their biggest mistake - and one of the darkest chapters in the Mafia’s history.
Chiodo was enraged and likely realized that he couldn’t trust his Mafia buddies as far
as he could throw them.
He was taken into court in a wheelchair only months after being shot, and his statements
brought down hell on Amuso and Casso.
The evidence piled up - and in retaliation, the mob targeted Chiodo’s sister and killed
her husband, and three more of his relatives would be assassinated in the coming year.
But it wouldn’t help the bosses - Chiodo’s testimony was the key evidence against them,
and they were both ultimately convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
As for Chiodo, he did the only thing a man with powerful enemies could do - and disappeared
into the witness protection program, where he might have used his impressive build to
intimidate the head of the Homeowner’s Association.
But not all targets of the Mafia are their fellow dons.
He might be associated more with…other things now, but there was a time when people didn’t
know Rudy Giuliani as a singing Jack-in-the-Box, or a failed presidential candidate - or even
a Mayor.
They knew him as the hard-nosed state prosecutor from New York, a proud Italian-American who
had no problem taking on his own community and fighting the Mafia’s influence in the
city.
Under the new RICO Act, the government had many more tools to go after the Mafia - and
it wasn’t long before the heads of the Five Families were under arrest and facing serious
charges.
It was the biggest move against the Mafia since Elliot Ness took down Al Capone, and
it got the attention of people around the world.
And some of them were less than happy.
The heads of the Mafia families met to vote on whether to take out Giuliani, and several
voted against it due to how much heat it would bring down on them.
There’s no better way to get the attention of the Government than to kill one of their
men.
But while the Lucchese, Bonanno, and Genovese families voted no, the infamous Gambino boss
John Gotti was ready to go to war.
The Five Families weren’t going to be the ones to do it, but that didn’t mean Giuliani
was safe.
Because the seats of power in the Mafia aren’t all in America - and word got abroad to the
Sicilian Mafia about this prosecutor taking down their top men.
The “Boss of all Bosses”, Salvatore Riina, apparently not only wanted Giuliani taken
out - he was willing to send a hitman to the United States to pull it off.
So what saved the future Mayor’s life?
The reported price on Giuliani’s head was a whopping $800,000 - one of the biggest contracts
ever placed on a politician.
But no attempt on Giuliani’s life was ever made - at least, not that we know of.
Giuliani only revealed the plot years later on the Oprah Winfrey Show, and commented that
a later contract on him - by a Boss sent to jail for a century - was only half the value
of the original contract.
He had gone down in value as a target!
Maybe the hitman thought the risk was a little too high, but while Giuliani emerged unscathed,
not everyone he was close to was so lucky - famously anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone,
a close friend of Giuliani, was taken out Riina’s men not long before Giuliani was
elected Mayor.
And he wasn’t even the highest-profile New York politician to wind up in the Mafia’s
crosshairs.
Maurizio Avola isn’t exactly a trustworthy source - the notorious Cosa Nostra hitman
went to prison for life for dozens of murders and armed robberies.
But when The Guardian interviewed him in 2016, he had a story that the whole world paid attention
to.
The Sicilian Mafia usually kept to the island, maintaining an iron grip on its crime scene.
So what would possess the criminal organization to try to kill a sitting New York state Governor?
Especially when it was a proud Italian-American like Mario Cuomo?
The popular Governor was anti-Mafia - good luck finding a pro-Mafia governor in the modern
era - but he hadn’t picked as many fights with them as Giuliani did.
That made a high-profile assassination attempt on him a little puzzling.
It turned out that the reason had very little to do with Cuomo himself.
By 1992, the war between the Mafia and the state in Italy was full speed ahead.
Two prominent anti-Mafia judges had been killed, and the Cosa Nostra wanted to make a statement.
They wanted everyone to know that the country was theirs to run - and what better way to
do that than to target prominent politicians and members of organizations to make clear
to the whole world that no one was safe from their reach?
This was around the time that the three-term Governor decided to make his return to the
ancestral soil, and Avola got the idea to target him from…his godfather?
Maybe read up on the spiritual guidance part of that job description.
The idea was that targeting a high-profile American politician would warn the Americans
off interfering in Mafia business.
This may not have been the smartest move.
Usually, a high-profile assassination will bring down more heat against the organization,
not less.
It’s entirely possible that a targeted killing of Mario Cuomo would have led to a joint US-Italian
operation to root out and eliminate the Mafia’s leadership by any means necessary.
But it wasn’t to be - as Cuomo arrived in Rome for a week of meetings and exploring,
he brought a hefty security detail with him.
Was this his standard international detail, or had someone gotten a tip that he was in
danger?
It’s not clear, but as soon as the Mafia hit squad - a dozen men with assault rifles
and explosives - saw what they were up against, the boss called off the attack.
And it became one of the biggest Mafia attacks that never was - only revealed over two decades
later by the infamous killer.
And it really doesn’t take that much to wind up on the Mafia’s radar - sometimes
you just need to be a celebrity.
Fats Waller was one of the most acclaimed Jazz pianists of the 1930s, and word soon
got around that he was a man who could liven up a party.
As an African-American celebrity, he had a target on his back - but he wasn’t expecting
to be a target.
That made it all the more shocking when he was held at gunpoint and shoved into a car.
He was taken to an undisclosed location - where he was presented with a piano and told to
play or be shot.
He complied - and gave birthday boy Al Capone the show of a lifetime!
He would eventually be released unharmed, but not before a three-day marathon that was
probably the scariest concert of his life.
And he wasn’t the only Black star to run into the Mafia.
Sammy Davis Jr. wasn’t just a star - he was one of the Rat Pack, and that opened doors
quickly.
He soon found himself in a relationship with the bombshell movie star Kim Novak, and their
torrid relationship became tabloid fodder.
An interracial romance was controversial back then, but no one was angrier than Novak’s
manager Harry Cohn - an infamous fixer with mob ties.
He didn’t want his prize client to receive any bad press, and he went so far as to send
a mobster to threaten Davis’ father - and let him know that his son had a contract on
his head.
That was enough to scare Davis enough to end the relationship, casting a pall over the
two stars’ careers.
And one movie star may not have even known who he was in bed with.
When people think of Steven Seagal, they probably don’t think of his business savvy.
The martial-arts bruiser was one of the most popular action stars of the 1990s, but he
wanted to go a different way.
A convert to Buddhism, he started to hate violence and was ready to close the book on
his action movie career.
The problem was…he had trusted the wrong person.
His business partner, Julian Nasso, had been cutting deals with the mob for years, and
they had been taking kickbacks from his movies.
They weren’t willing to see their income stream dry up, so the Mafia tried to intimidate
him into sticking with the status quo.
And Seagal did the only thing an action star could do - he worked with the FBI and testified,
which we suppose is the legal equivalent of delivering a falcon kick.
And even one of the most wholesome stars around faced off against the mob.
Tony Bennett is best known for his silky-smooth singing voice, but during the earlier days
of his career, he was a notorious ladies’ man.
The singer had a passionate affair with a woman in the 70s - but she just happened to
be the girlfriend of notorious mob hitman Tony Spilotro, one of the Chicago Outfit’s
most ruthless agents.
He went and confronted Bennett, and most people who angered him might wind up buried in the
desert.
But maybe Bennett was too high-profile, because Spilotro decided to use a less-lethal weapon
- a phone book - to beat some fear into Bennett.
Having escaped a close call with death, Bennett reportedly decided to get away from the mob
scene for good - something that seems to have served him well, as he made it to 95 years
old.
But no Mafia assassination attempt was more bizarre than this one.
The Mafia was mentioned frequently around the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Many people think the “lone gunman” theory doesn’t hold up, and a common suspect was
the Mafia bosses who Kennedy and his brother Robert frequently went to war with as President
and Attorney General.
But after files were declassified related to the assassination, those conspiracy theorists
came up empty.
But there was a consolation prize - crazy reveals about how the CIA may have been cutting
deals with the Mafia to kill one of their most famous enemies - the Cuban dictator Fidel
Castro, who had been a thorn in the government’s side since he took office and played a role
in bringing the Kennedy administration to the brink of nuclear war.
And it centered around two notorious gangsters.
Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli were two mid-level mobsters who were looking for a get-out-of-jail-free
card.
The CIA was looking for some dirtbags who could do their dirty work without the government
being implicated.
And the two mobsters had a personal grudge against Castro too - he had closed down their
lucrative casinos in Havana when he nationalized the economy, and they were looking for revenge.
After the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, the government couldn’t risk being caught directly
attempting to take out Castro, so they outsourced.
But while the CIA thought they were getting the best gangsters around, in fact they were
actually recruiting the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.
Because every time Giancana and Roselli made an attempt on Castro’s life, it went horribly
wrong.
The arrangement was nearly derailed from the start, when it came out that the mobsters
had recruited CIA operatives to bug the hotel room of a love rival of Giancana’s.
The government decided not to prosecute the goons to not derail the operation, but it
was enough to make Robert Kennedy swear off working with the Mafia in the future.
But things didn’t get any better from there.
Attempted assassins got cold feet, many of their business connections seemed more interested
in spying on rivals, and the plans largely went nowhere.
When JFK was assassinated, the new administration wanted the CIA to get out of the cloak-and-dagger
business.
Giancana fled to Mexico, Roselli wound up managing casinos for Harold Hughes, and as
for Fidel Castro, he outlived seven Presidential administrations.
Want to learn more about the secrets of the Italian Mafia?
Check out “FBI Reveals Secret Mafia Initiation Ceremony”, or watch “The Killing Methods
In Sicilian Mafia Families” for the grim and gritty details.