One of the first and only Cosa Nostra figures to ever plant a flag on Arizona soil was New York boss Joseph Bonanno.
Joe was also one of the most important and powerful bosses in Cosa Nostra’s history.
With a seemingly unbridled ambition and vision for the future, during his many years at the helm of what was one of the largest and most powerful Mafia borgatas, Bonanno was always looking to expand his reach and influence. And oftentimes, it was at the expense of others as he elbowed his way into the underworld territory of his fellow mafiosi.
Through wise business investments and partnerships with various individuals — be they legitimate businessmen or fellow underworld figures — operating from his New York headquarters — Bonanno also established toeholds in cities like Schenectady and Rochester in upstate New York. But his reach was not limited to only New York State.
Joe Bonanno’s influence and that of the borgata he led were also felt in northern New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, and as far away as Wisconsin, Colorado, California, and Arizona. And his vision did not end there.
Canada, Sicily, and Beyond
A good example of this expansion was during the early 1950s when Bonanno’s notorious underboss, the deadly Carmine (Lilo) Galante, traveled up to Canada with a small contingent of family soldiers and over the course of the next year or so — through sheer terror tactics and strong-arm methods — elbowed way into control over a good portion of Montreal’s local underworld.
The steely-eyed Lilo Galante literally — not figuratively, but literally — terrorized otherwise terrifying hoodlums into capitulating to the demands made on them by the Bonanno Family, summarily subjugating them from that point forward and placing them under the thumb of his boss, Joe Bonanno.
Through the years, Joe Bonanno and key members of his borgata were also known to maintain very close ties to the Mafia clan headquartered back home, in the Bonanno Family’s ancestral birthplace of Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily.
In this way, the Bonanno clan was able to maintain a steady source of aspiring picciotti — new young Mafia recruits for their family — as well as operate a multimillion-dollar-a-year narcotics smuggling and illegal alien importation network into Canada and, ultimately, over the border crossing into the United States.
The Grand Canyon State
By at least the early 1940s, Joe was already looking toward the Southwest and West Coast for new opportunities. In 1943, he chose Tucson, Arizona, to establish a third residence (the other two being on Long Island and upstate Marlboro, New York.)
