The second installment of our Homes & Lifestyles of the Underworld: Staten Island series focuses on the Joseph Colombo Family. With 49 members living and operating there, ranging from top bosses to associates, the Colombo Family has always enjoyed a dominant presence on the Island.
Arguably, dating back to at least the early 1950s, the Joseph Colombo Family was one of the first and largest Mafia clans to ever plant their flag on Staten island. And to this very day, this particular Cosa Nostra network continues to maintain a large group of new generation members and associates who both reside and operate there.
The Background
More than any other section of New York, and quite possibly, more than anywhere else in the entire country, over the years, Staten Island, located in Richmond County, has become the largest bedroom community as well as the epicenter of Cosa Nostra activity in the city and the United States.
With a total population just shy of 500,000 residents, Staten Island has the distinction of being New York City’s least populated and most suburban borough.
By the late 1970s, it had also gained the dubious distinction of playing host to more Cosa Nostra members and their blood families — pound for pound — than any other place in the entire United States.
That assessment hasn’t changed much over the last fifty years.
In fact, today, a strong argument could be made that The Big Apple’s fifth borough, sitting smack dab in the middle of the largest and most most vibrant city in the world has become ground zero and the absolute unofficial headquarters for what law enforcement officials like to refer to as “traditional” organized crime, or LCN — the Italian Mafia.
Hosting Six Families
It has been well documented by police and the local media that residing within Richmond County’s many little towns and neighborhoods is a wide swathe of hoods and racketeers of every shape and size, in both formal rank and importance, ranging from associates and soldiers right up to the top leadership of New York’s notorious “Five Family” structure, and for that matter even a few hoodlums from the Garden State too.
Over the course of several months, Button Guys has researched and compiled an exhausting list of mafiosi and their allies who have called Staten Island home through the years.
That said, although the list you are about to view is extremely in-depth and concise, try as we might, Button Guys recognizes we’ve still only scratched the surface of all the hoods and organized crime types who have resided there at one time or another.
And similar to other parts of the city where they resided, many of these hoods weren’t content to just live there, some of them them operated criminal rackets and legitimate businesses there too. In fact, over the years, local and federal law enforcement authorities have identified hundreds of mob-controlled businesses ranging from bars and restaurants to labor union, trucking firms and more.
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