This is the third installment in a brand new Button Guys series called Homes & Lifestyles of the Underworld.
We thought it would be interesting to delve a bit into the personal lives of some of the gangsters and racketeers we’ve all heard and read about over the years, many of whom were notorious fellows back in their day.
Where did these men live? What types of neighborhoods were they drawn to? What types of homes could they afford and did they choose for themselves and their loved ones? Who lived in mansions? Who lived in hovels? Who was wealthy? Who was broke? Who displayed ostentatious shows of wealth? Who lived quietly and conservatively?
Let’s take a good look, shall we?
This particular edition of Homes & Lifestyles of the Underworld focuses on one of the oldest Cosa Nostra networks to ever operate in the southern portion of the United States.
Headquartered in Tampa, Florida, the Santo Trafficante Family is considered to have been one of the earliest Mafia clans ever established in America, with a formal structure thought to date back to at least the 1910s-1920s — possibly even earlier.
Although this criminal network was first established by several Sicilian-born mafiosi, arguably, this Family’s most iconic and dynamic leader is widely considered to have been Santo Trafficante Jr., whose father was the Family’s previous boss.
Florida’s Homegrown Clan
Although thousands of racketeers and gangsters from all across the country — Italian and otherwise — have visited, resided, and operated within The Sunshine State through the years there was only one true “homegrown” Mafia clan who can lay claim to being the state’s “resident” Mafia Family, and that was the
Dating back as early as the 1940s many other mafiosi from cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and elsewhere started to migrate and operate down in Miami Beach, Hallandale, Fort Lauderdale, and other cities in South Florida which Cosa Nostra had long named as “open territory” for the underworld. Similar to the City of Las Vegas in this way, this designation allowed any card-carrying mafioso in good standing to operate and conduct their criminal activities in the southern portion of The Sunshine State.
But the northern part of the state, especially the cities of Tampa-St.Petersburg and its surrounding territories was always recognized as the exclusive domain and playground of Santo Trafficante and his family’s membership.
Thats not to say that certain Trafficante Family members didn’t also live and operate down in South Florida as well, because they did. But “out of town” mafiosi didn’t have the privilege of operating reciprocally up north.
For that matter, Santo Trafficante was also known to operate in such off-shore destinations as Cuba, The Bahamas, Haiti and other island nations. The FBI and FBN say he was even suspected of dealing in the Far East regarding the importation and trafficking of narcotics.
With a good majority of the Tampa Family’s early membership having immigrated from the towns of Alessandria della Rocca and Cianciana, in Sicily, they were a close-knit bunch.
