The Licata brothers were a well known family in Brooklyn and Queens for many years, especially in the Ridgewood, Maspeth, Middle Village and Glendale sections.
Originating from the Trapani Province of Northwestern Sicily, in the fall of 1948 Andrea and Maria (nee’ Simonte) Licata boarded the ship Marine Carp with their two young sons, Vito and Giuseppe, sailing from the Port of Palermo to the United States to start their new life.
At the time of their immigration, Andrea, the family patriarch, was 37. His wife was 33 and their sons Vito and Giuseppe were 12 and 10, respectively.
The Licatas arrived at New York’s Ellis Island on September 21, 1948. Andrew rented a small apartment for his family in Brooklyn’s Ridgewood section, at 102 Troutman Street, centrally located in a neighborhood heavily populated with fellow Sicilian immigrants and the Licatas had many blood relatives and close amici.
Andrea soon found work as a presser in a nearby clothing factory, while Maria took care of the children and did the household duties.
This is the neighborhood where the Licata boys would grow up and where Vito and Giuseppe, now more commonly called Joe, would later base their criminal rackets from.
Born 1936 and 1937, respectively, by the early 1950s, Vito and Joe had already started establishing themselves as up-and-coming young hoodlums running numbers and helping out with the floating dice games operated by the older and more established mafiosi of the neighborhood.
In the years following their immigration, Vito and Giuseppe would slowly start to carve out a nice little niche for themselves in north Brooklyn and northwestern Queens where their family’s surname was well known and held sway.
After all, their uncle, Pietro (Pete) Licata, was a longstanding mafioso of some rank who controlled a good portion of territory in North Brooklyn on behalf of the Joe Bonanno borgata, long the preeminent Cosa Nostra faction in that section of New York City. Born on December 6, 1906, Pete Licata was considered an “original” from the old country who was held in reverence by neighborhood denizens and his fellow mafiosi.
Local and Federal law enforcement sources described Licata as the Bonanno Family’s longtime “capo di decina” in charge of the immediate neighborhood.
By the time the early 1960s rolled around, Vito, already in his mid-twenties and seemingly more aggressive than his brother, reportedly started expanding his activities and was now also dabbling in loansharking and serving as a strong-arm man and enforcer for members of the Bonanno Family.
Pay or Die!
In a scene straight out of a B-grade gangster movie, and one that reveals his mindset and brash operating style, on October 9, 1967 Vito was arrested by Brooklyn detectives on charges of assault, extortion, robbery and criminal usury after authorities say he terrorized a man who made the mistake of borrowing money from the young hood two years earlier, back in November, 1965.
Often Imitated. Never Duplicated. Button Guys of The New York Mafia...There's Only One!
