The Santo Trafficante Family of Tampa, FL

One of the oldest Italian crime groups to ever operate in the United States was the Santo Trafficante Family of Florida. This Family first came to the attention of federal law enforcement in the early 1950s, while under the leadership of “Capo” Santo Trafficante Sr.

A Sicilian immigrant, Trafficante assumed the mantle of power from the previous Representante, Ignazio Antinori, who was the leader from approximately 1920, until his gangland-style execution in October, of 1940.

Santo Trafficante then became the Capo-Famiglia who would truly put the Tampa Family on the underworld map, so to speak.

This borgata was expanded and grew powerful under his rule. It became one of the most respected borgatas in Cosa Nostra history. With his death from a sudden heart attack in the summer of 1954, the Family was inherited by his son and namesake, Santo Jr.

Ignazio Antinori

Early boss - Santo Trafficante Sr.

Almost from birth, Santo Trafficante Jr. had been well “groomed” for mafia life under his father's tutelage.

His eventual ascension to the leadership was almost immediately acceptable to the national Cosa Nostra Commission sitting in New York. Composed of all the bosses throughout the United States, the Commission’s main purpose was to oversee the Families, maintain peace, dictate policy as well as name new bosses or ratify those already voted into leadership by the rank and file.

Santo Trafficante Jr. was to become the longest-tenured boss the Tampa Family had ever seen. He led his borgata from 1954, through 1987. A thirty-three-year run at the top.

Casual photo of Santo Sr.

Santo Jr. as a young buck posing for a photograph

But unfortunately, his tenure would coincide with the Brotherhood’s national, and for that matter, international exposure, by both local and federal law enforcement, which led to unprecedented media coverage and a never before public exposure that would rankle Cosa Nostra for decades to come.

Within three years of his ascension to the boss seat, Cosa Nostra would come under a microscope because of Fidel Castro’s revolt in Cuba, which lead to a debacle in the mob’s multimillion-dollar Havana Casino operations, as well as the infamous November 1957, raid and arrests by State Troopers of nearly the entire national Mafia leadership at Apalachin, Upstate New York.

Digressing a bit to this Family’s origins, and the first seeds that would help grow this borgata into one of the underworld powerhouses along the southeastern seaboard.

The Tampa “Family” was arguably one of the very first mafia groups to ever form in America. Along with members of the New Orleans-based Family led by future leader Carlos Marcello, those early mafiosi who immigrated to the southern ports of Tampa and New Orleans are thought to have become the first Sicilian racketeers and Black-handers.

In fact, mob historians credit the New Orleans faction of actually being the very first “borgata” or mafia “clan” to operate in this country. Because of this recognition, New Orleans always enjoyed a lofty status in Cosa Nostra. The Tampa clan was right behind them.

Many of the first mafiosi who settled in Tampa were thought to have been long-established mafiosi back in their hometown of Sicily. By the late 1800s, and early 1900s, a good-sized community of Sicilian immigrants had settled into the Tampa.

An youthful looking, up and coming “Don”

Among these hard-working immigrants was a small but significant number of mafiosi who hailed primarily from the villages of Alessandro della Rocca, Cianciana, San Stefano, Belmonte, and Casteltermini. There was also a smaller contingent from several towns located in the Calabria region.

Similar to other mafia clans that formed around this time, these early hoodlums drew much of their illicit incomes from extortion-type activities, narcotics, and various robberies and thefts.

They also integrated themselves into the community by starting up small businesses such as groceries, food imports, taverns, pool halls, and the like. With the advent of Prohibition in 1920, they added alcohol bootlegging to their repertoire of underworld activities.

Operating homemade alky-stills that manufactured various whiskeys, “bathtub gins” and beers, as well as homemade red wine and Italian cordials, which was a practice the Italians had always engaged in as an ethnic tradition from their homeland.

They soon became the dominant players among a southern population well known for the “red neck” tradition of making homemade moonshine.

The Tampa underworld clan also coupled the above bootleg activities with the international smuggling of branded liquors such as rum and gin from nearby nations where liquor consumption and sales were legal.

Brought in under the cloak of darkness by speedboats, these higher quality-labeled liquor brands would bring top dollar into the borgata for over a decade until The Volstead Act was repealed in 1933.

Another key racket they engaged in, one that would define nearly every future member of the Trafficante Family was their deep penetration and domination over illicit gambling in the area.

The primary games of chance they engaged in were a bit different than their mafia brethren in other cities. Because Tampa and its surrounding territories and towns always had a very large Cuban population, Bolita games became the most popular and lucrative gambling racket in nearly all of Florida.

Bolita was a lottery game very similar to other type numbers games in New York and elsewhere. It originated in Cuba and was brought to America’s shore along with early Cuban immigrants.

Along with horse and sports bookmaking which also became hugely popular among Tampa’s racketeers, Bolita ranked as the most lucrative and widely played lottery in the state.

Tampa’s mafiosi were also at the forefront of narcotics importation into Florida.

In fact, in later years as the FBI and FBN more deeply investigated further and became more familiar with their rackets and the way they operated, federal law enforcement came to realize that if not the most important traffickers, then the Tampa mafia was at least among the most important importers and wholesale distributors of multi-kilogram loads of heroin and cocaine into the United States.

This activity was greatly helped by Florida’s close geographic proximity to Cuba, Puerto Rico, and other Caribbean and South American nations, utilizing the many waterfront ports of entry into the state.

Upon reviewing early criminal records for many of Tampa’s first documented mafia members, many boasted arrests for narcotics possession and sale. The names of those arrested ranked among the most important future leaders of the Trafficante Family.

They included the uncle of Santo Trafficante Jr., Joseph (Jojo) Cacciatore, who’s rap sheet listed two early narcotics convictions, and one of the former original “Dons” of the clan itself, “Representante” Salvatore (Red) Italiano, who had a felony conviction for violation of federal narcotics laws.

Soldier - Giuseppe (Jojo) Cacciatore

The small Sicilian-based clan that would eventually morph into what later became known as the Trafficante Family of Cosa Nostra, started out as a loose amalgamation of early immigrant mafia members and Sicilian hoodlum associates imported directly from several key towns and villages, or “paese” as they are called, from that Mediterranean island nation.

For instance, Santo Trafficante Sr. and his brothers hailed from Allessandro della Rocca. So did the Bedami brothers.

Longtime underboss - Frank Diecidue

Soldier - Antonio (Tony) Diecidue

Soldier - Giuseppe (Joe) Bedami

Soldier - Angelo Bedami

Other early leaders such as Jimmy Lumia, Antonio Diecidue, and his brothers were born in the village of Cianciana. Red Italiano hailed from Belmonte. Many of the early rank and file were composed of families from these same paese and provinces.

With their arrival to the city of Tampa and its surrounding areas such as St. Petersburg, the Sicilians quickly found Tampa’s existing criminals already operating the area.

But little by little they would slowly eliminate all competition, by either driving them from the area or the bloody extermination of their enemies. By the late 1920s, the Sicilians were largely in control of the local underworld.

But Tampa’s unique ethnic makeup would never allow for total domination. Because of this, through the years their small borgata would always work in tandem, hand-in-hand, with the many varied ethnicities they found in the city.

In those early decades, as in later years as well, their primary illicit rackets consisted of unlicensed alcohol sales, narcotics, bolita, and bookmaking. And the mob associates they allied themselves with ranged from a large contingent of native-born “redneck” southerners, other Italian nationals, Cubans, and other varied Hispanic hoodlums, as well as the large black population residing there.

Side Note: The ethnicities of their various associates mentioned above become clearly evident as the reader scrolls down to the membership chart that reflects “associates” first and last names. It shows names common of many Hispanics, blacks, and white southerners. There were of course Italian associates as well. But the vast majority of these affiliates were as stated.

Allegedly starting out under the auspices of Ignazio Antinori in the mid-1920s, this small clan of Sicilians soon came into direct conflict with the top independent racketeer who operated the territory. He was a native-born southern hoodlum by the name of Charlie Wall, and he was widely acknowledged as the strongest force in Tampa’s underworld at that point in time.

Charlie Wall was in firm control of most forms of illegal gambling in the area.

Charlie Wall

As a homegrown southern gentleman, his strong lifelong ties to other local-born, corrupt government officials largely indemnified him and his associates from arrests and prosecutions, making Wall and his gang a major force to contend with.

At first, Antinori and his Sicilian-born “compare” such as the Scaglione brothers, the Trafficantes, Diecidues, Bedamis, and their Sicilian associates worked alongside Wall and his mob the best they could….But it was only a matter of time.

Soldier - Joe Scaglione

Consigliere - Salvatore Scaglione

Wall controlled way too much of Ybor City’s underworld for him to ever amicably coexist with the ambitious and fast-growing Sicilians.

Another major bone of contention became his prejudicial outlook and attitude toward the swarthy-looking foreigners as outsiders, “spaghetti snappers” and “Wops,” who had invaded his territory.

As the Antinori clan grew larger, expanding their bolita lottery businesses by either opening up new betting shops, absorbing smaller existing independent Cuban operators, or by wooing those previously turning in their “work” to Wall’s gambling network, these two gangs would inevitably butt heads.

They soon viewed one another as major competitors and became deadly enemies.

By the late 1920s, through the entire decade of the 1930s, a violent gang war took place between opposing factions. It started out as a tit-for-tat type conflict, but the bad blood between Wall and Antinori soon escalated into open warfare.

The massacred bodies of hoodlums left in the gutter became commonplace in their Ybor City neighborhood.

It became a protracted conflict that spanned many years. One of the more pivotal murders was the killing of Wall’s closest lieutenant and aide, Evaristo (Tito) Rubio, who was shotgunned on his front porch on March 8, 1938.

But Charlie Wall gave as good as he got, and the bodies continued to drop on the streets until Antinori himself was gunned down by several blasts from a sawed-off shotgun in the early 1940s.

With Antinori’s elimination, Charlie Wall emerged as the victor of this long gangland conflict. Now especially, he continued to rule his underworld fiefdom as a seemingly untouchable kingpin. A racketeer potentate with unlimited power and resources…. and for a while at least he must have felt very superior to those ignorant, inferior Sicilian upstarts.

The small Sicilian clan licked their wounds and then went about consolidating their power and racket operations the best they could. And for the next decade or so things in Tampa quieted down.

By 1950, an ambitious young Senator named Estes Kefauver became pivotal in the formation of a wide-ranging, federal probe into organized crime operations in America.

1950s FBI chart - Tampa membership

Soon, the Congressional Senate Select Committee on Investigations started what would become widely known as the Kefauver Hearings. This committee traveled from city to city throughout the United States subpoenaing televised testimony from known racketeers, hoodlums, mafia figures, and corrupt police officials, in an attempt to uncover the extent of underworld control over criminal operations in this country.

When they got to Tampa, the committee quickly commanded various racketeers before their Senate panel for testimony. Among those who were subpoenaed were local law enforcement officials, various racket figures, and top gangster Charlie Wall.

For his part, having seen the televised hearings conducted in other cities, and hearing firsthand from mafia associates, Santo Trafficante Sr. fled the area before they reached Florida.

And just as he had predicted, before long the name Trafficante was brought up and exposed to the general public.

In fact, his arch-enemy Charlie Wall even openly testified as to Tampa gambling operations, and the role that Trafficante played in them as well….Wall was playing both sides against the middle. Operating openly as a gambling kingpin, while using his connections to half-rat out his competitors.

Trafficante and his son Santo Jr. had allegedly flown to Cuba where they had close connections and personal ties to local businessmen, Cuban hoodlums, and government officials.

'The Trafficantes comfortably settled in for the next several years, letting the venerable, veteran mafioso Salvatore Italiano maintain the fort while they were away. But it became too daunting a task for the aging Don Italiano.

Underboss - Salvatore (Red) Italiano

By 1948 or so, he would himself flee the city for the relative tranquility of Mexico City, where a small group of exiled fellow mafiosi had formed a clan. In his wake, Italiano had allowed fellow Tampa member Jimmy Lumia to assume the reins of power.

Father and son would patiently sit it out on the sidelines for several years until the Kefauver Hearings finally ended.

But during their absence, several pivotal events would shape up in the Tampa underworld. While away, Santo Sr. had maintained steady contact with his troops. And by 1950, he didn’t like what he was hearing.

It seems that Lumia was becoming a bit too comfortable with his new post as the “acting underboss” of the Family. It is said that he started to talk “subversive” as the underworld expression goes. Badmouthing both Trafficante’s, and their brothers.

That year Jimmy Lumia met his maker when he was accosted and shot-gunned to death by two unknown gunmen.

The simultaneous finish of those pesky Senate hearings, as well as Lumia’s demise, proceeded the quiet return of Trafficante and his son back home to Tampa. With their arrival, they quickly set about re-establishing control over their Ybor City headquarters.

It is thought that it was about at this point in time when Santo Sr. ceded power to his beloved namesake son, Santo Jr.

The proud Sicilian-born father had painstakingly trained and meticulously “groomed” his boy over several decades until now stood before him an extremely shrewd and capable “man of honor” - a savvy mafioso, who was more than ready and willing to finally assume the mantle of power from his dad as the new “Representante” of the entire Tampa-St. Petersburg Family of Cosa Nostra.

With Santo Sr. serving as his savviest consigliere and wisest advisor, over the next several years Santo Jr. would go about consolidating his power base by eliminating perceived enemies and forging alliances with those he deemed friends.

This would lead to pinpointed bloodletting within the borgata. It would also lead to an attempt on Santo Jr’s. life in 1953, and the eventual murder of the clan’s longtime adversary, Charlie Wall.

What followed were several surgical strikes Santo would take against those whom he suspected of having plotted against him and his father, while they were in self-imposed exile in Cuba.

Starting with high-ranked mob figure Jimmy Velasco’s slaying that December, between the year 1948 and 1955, the following key members, top associates, and competitors, would be permanently eliminated to consolidate power:

1948 - competing mobster Jimmy Velasco is shot to death as he steps into his automobile in front of his wife and child.

1950 - Trafficante acting boss/underboss Jimmy Lumia is shotgunned and killed that June to eliminate him from power.

1952 - 42-year old Family soldier Angelo Giglio was murdered (he is the nephew of Santo Trafficante Sr) during an internal struggle.

1953 - Santo Jr. himself is hit and wounded in the arm and shoulder by pellets after getting shotgunned while at the wheel of his automobile.

1953 - Joseph Antinori, top soldier, and Antinori clan brother is slain at 44 years of age. The influential Antinori is also removed for attempting a coup.

1954 - former slain leader Ignazio Italiano’s own son, Antonio, a 54-year old clan soldier is killed. It was suspected that Italiano had allied with others to dethrone Trafficante.

1955 - independent hoodlum competitor, 75-year old Charlie Wall finally gets his. The underworld kingpin is found that April repeatedly bludgeoned and stabbed to death in his home.

Soldier - Salvatore (Toto) Ferrara

Afterward, the Trafficante Family stabilized a bit for the next half-decade or so, until Santo figured another house cleaning was required in order to maintain his power:

1960 - born in 1908, veteran soldier Salvatore (Sam) Ferrara gets clipped after falling out of favor with Santo.

1963 - mafia soldier Louis (Lou Brady) Cottichia is slain, he was partnered in the narcotics trade with Trafficante, and his killing was viewed as related to drug trafficking.

1967 - top soldier and enforcer Joe Bedami, the son of Angelo and brother of Ciro, is shot and killed in what was perceived to be a quelling of a dissident.

Santo Trafficante, both father and son, were considered no-nonsense disciplinarians of mafia doctrine and demanded total loyalty from their disciples.

Yet, despite those varied killings over the years, in general, the rank and file membership was largely left alone to run and operate as they wished. So long as they adhered to the rules of the road as set down by the Trafficante’s.

In truth, for much of his career, similar to his father Santo Sr. before him, Santo Jr. held a wider vision for himself, and the larger world outside of his Tampa-St. Petersburg base was his oyster so to speak. For that matter, the entire state of Florida was not nearly enough to quench his insatiable thirst for power.

Although technically raised and based in northern Florida where he owned a private residence, Santo also always maintained a second home down along Miami Beach where the heavy action was.

This is where he would interact with fellow mafiosi and allied racketeers from other Families throughout the United States over the years. He also used Miami as a springboard to hop to Havana, Cuba, where he also owned a home and lived for several years, and other Island nations, as well as other points worldwide.

In fact, the FBI and Interpol, as well as the CIA, had documented his steady travels over the years to such far-off destinations as Europe, Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Vietnam. The FBI and International law enforcement strongly suspected that at least some of these trips were in furtherance of his extensive narcotics smuggling activities.

As a top boss and the son of a founding member of the Mafia, Santo became an intimate of nearly every important mafia member in the United States.

His list of close associates is breathtaking: Lucky Luciano, Vito Genovese, Joe Profaci, Joe Bonanno, Vincent Mangano, Albert Anastasia, Tommy Lucchese, all of NYC, Tony Accardo, Paul DeLucia, and the Fischetti brothers of Chicago, Joe Massei, Joe Zerilli of Detroit, Jake and Meyer Lansky, the Angersola brothers of Cleveland, etc.

In particular, Trafficante kept the closest of friendships and alliances with fellow southerner Carlos Marcello of New Orleans, Louisiana.

He also dealt closely with Joe Civello, who led the small Family based in nearby Dallas, Texas.

But most importantly, Trafficante became intimately friendly with, and the underworld’s number one point-man in, the infiltration and multimillion-dollar investment and partnership with key Cuban government nationals, including Cuban President Fulgencio Batista and his regime, in the operation of casinos in the city of Havana.

Santo Jr., at the height of his power down in Havana, Cuba

They ran these lucrative gaming casinos and hotels for many years. The mob made untold millions. But with the eventual overthrow of the Batista regime in the late 1950s, Trafficante and the mafia were completely kicked out of Cuba by Fidel Castro and his army.

It would cost the mob many millions in profits. Santo in particular was greatly hurt financially by Castro’s move.

Trafficante would attempt to maintain good relations with Castro at all costs, in order to try and keep his casino interests alive. But when all that failed, he pulled out all stops and eventually allied with elements of the CIA and other rogue top government officials who had approached him, in numerous attempts to overthrow the Castro regime and reassert themselves back into Cuba.

Santo and his mob contemporaries were promised by the highest levels of the United States government that if they could assassinate Fidel Castro and help to overthrow his rogue government, both the U.S.A. and the mafia would benefit from his demise.

The rest is a well documented, sordid, and dark history, which was exposed during semi-public Congressional Hearings held during the mid-1970s, empaneled to uncover what was referred to at the time as the “unholy alliance between the Mafia and the U.S. Government” to unseat Castro by any means necessary, which included many assassination attempts ranging from poisoning his food, shooting him, to even injecting him with poison by a trusted physician.

It became an international scandal of unprecedented proportions. And it showed the measures that our government was willing to go to in order to achieve their goals. Not the least of which was partnering with the Italian Brotherhood in murder.

Among the four most important active underworld players in this “coup” conspiracy was Louisiana boss Carlos Marcello, Chicago boss Sam Giancana, the multi-faceted Johnny Roselli, who was based in Los Angeles and Miami, as well as Santo Trafficante himself.

Together with their CIA contacts, they planned this conspiracy….and several would pay the heaviest of prices for their participation.

Right in the midst of this highly-publicized scandal, Giancana was found on the evening of July 19, 1975, just two days before he was scheduled to testify before the Senate Committee.

His lifeless body was found in the basement of his own home. It seems that someone he trusted had approached him from behind while he was preparing himself a late-night snack of Italian sausage and peppers, and repeatedly shot him in the back of his skull with a .22 caliber “assassins” automatic.

The killer gave him a final “coup de grace” with another bullet fired point-blank under his chin. Giancana was hit a total of seven times.

Approximately one year later, on July 28, 1976, Giancana’s longtime sidekick and confidante Johnny Roselli went missing.

On August 8, 1976, two fishermen found Roselli’s body after they pulled a chain-wrapped, 55-gallon steel drum they found floating in Dumbfoundling Bay, a water extension off Miami’s Biscayne Bay.

Inside the drum authorities found the missing 70-year old Roselli. An autopsy report later confirmed that the aging hood had been strangled. The drum had holes punched in it and heavy motorcycle chains wrapped around it to help it sink. But gasses formed by the decomposition trapped inside his body tissue, and the barrel itself, forced the drum to surface to the top of the water anyway.

Authorities reported that Roselli had provided testimony in 1975 when he went before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities that he and Giancana had been recruited by the CIA in 1961 as part of a plot to poison Fidel Castro.

Roselli claimed that he and Giancana had been paid $100,000 by the United States Government and elements of the CIA. Roselli also admitted that he had served as the liaison man between Sam Giancana, and a group of Cuban dissidents who were commissioned to carry out the actual death mission.

He stated that several other aborted conspiracy plots to assassinate Castro were also considered. These included plans to use a high-powered sniper rifle to “hit” Castro from a hidden perch, high-powered explosives, and poison pellets and capsules….These revelations and testimony are believed to have cost Roselli his life.

I mportant Side Note: All the newspapers and media news outlets were fed information from their law enforcement “sources,” that Giancana and Roselli had in fact been killed gangland-style by their mafia associates.

After all, they were well-known mobsters, so that explanation made perfect sense….But more knowledgeable sources, from both the underworld and law enforcement alike, reported “off the record,” that there was no confirmed mafia involvement. That in fact, it was most probably the CIA, or a “black bag” job by another U.S. government agency, just “cleaning house” and tidying up all loose ends so that the road would not lead back to them.

The only mafioso central to the Castro plot to survive the carnage was Santo Trafficante. To his dying day, he denied all involvement in the plot to kill Castro.

Trafficante was a very mysterious man indeed. An enigma really. For as much as we now know about his life and underworld career, there was just as much, maybe more, that we don’t know about him.

For instance, his name has repeatedly come up numerous times over the years along with his close associate, New Orleans boss Carlos Marcello, in the successful plot to assassinate President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1963. Is there any truth to the mafia playing a part in Kennedy’s death? No one really knows.

But the Senate Select Committee on Assassinations thought it worthwhile enough to open up hearings to investigate the rumors…. Nothing would ever come of it of course. But whispers of those rumors still persist to this day.

Of course, It could also be those same “rogue” politicians and elements of the U.S. Government who create “smoke and mirrors” for the public, so that suspicion would never lead back to them.

International narcotics smuggling from the Far East. Casino ownership in Havana, Cuba, the Bahamas, Haiti, Dominican Republic, and other island nations. International intrigue involving the Fidel Castro murder plot in partnership with CIA agents and rogue politicians. A possible involvement in the assassination of a sitting U.S. President…. The plot seemed to thicken with every year that went by.

Santo Trafficante was without a doubt one of the most important and shadowy mafia figures to ever operate in this country, or anywhere else abroad for that matter. He always operated at the highest levels of Cosa Nostra.

In November of 1957, he was one of sixty of the most important mafia bosses in the country captured at the infamous Apalachin Mafia Summit in Upstate New York. Nine years later in the spring of 1966, he was again captured as one of thirteen top mafia leaders during a police raid on what was referred to as the “Little Apalachin” meeting” at the La Stella Ristorante in Forest Hills, Queens.

It was obviously another Commission meeting. This time, between five varied crime groups: the Genovese, Gambino, Colombo, Marcello, and Trafficante borgatas who met to allegedly settle an internal conflict between members of the Marcello Family as well as settle several issues between Santo and Carlos Marcello personally.

But NYC Police raided the restaurant meeting before they ever got the chance to fully discuss Cosa Nostra business.

Santo would go on to continually operate successfully for many years to come. And he weathered all storms brought against him, whether they were internal assaults from within Cosa Nostra itself, or those brought on by law enforcement.

Mugshot of Santo Trafficante Jr.

He died suddenly at the age of 72 years old, on March 17, 1987. He had long suffered from advanced heart disease for years and had gone to the Texas Heart Institute in Houston for open-heart surgery. He died right on the operating table.

At the time of his death, Santo was still facing an open indictment in Miami for his participation in a large labor racketeering scheme to accept kickbacks from companies doing business with a health and welfare fund set up by the Laborers International Union of North America….he obviously beat the case, but it was an awfully tough way to do it.

As recently as the early 2000s, it was reported that there was still some low-level mob activity in the city. But even if that’s not the fallacy that I believe it to be, if they do still exist at this point in time which is extremely debatable, they are but a shell of their former selves. The heady days of the Trafficante’s are long gone. They were from a bygone era, never to resurrect their power again!

The Family chart that follows represents nearly 90 years of membership. Each man listed below is reputed to have served in the Tampa borgata at one point or another.

This chart is thought to represent the formal “inducted” membership from approximately 1910, through the year 2000.

Many were the early founding members of the Family. Some joined in the 1940s-1960s era. Others were absorbed during the 1970s, through the 1990s. Most were FBI documented members.

There are a few listed below that may be educated guesses of law enforcement. But even if a few were not formally initiated, each was close enough to the Trafficante Family to be considered as such.

Note: An asterisk * connotes having later been elevated higher within the hierarchy.

THE SANTO TRAFFICANTE FAMILY OF TAMPA, FLORIDA

F OUNDING REPRESENTANTE Ignazio Antinori Santo Trafficante Sr.

REPRESENTANTE Santo (Louis Santos) Trafficante Jr.

SUCCEEDING REPRESENTANTE Vincent Lo Scalzo

CONSIGLIERI Salvatore Scaglione Gaetano Mistretta

SOTTO CAPO Frank Diecidue

ELDER STATESMEN/LEADERS Salvatore (Red) Italiano James Lumia Alfonso Diecidue

CAPO DI DECINA

Augustine Prima Lazzara James Costa Longo

Salvatore Cacciatore John S. DeSalvo

Enrico Trafficante Stefano Randazzo

SOLDIERS

Frank Albano * Ciro Bedami Angelo Bedami Dominick Furci Antonio Amorelli Angelo Lo Scalzo Frank Scibilia Giuseppe Belitto Salvatore J. Lorenzo James Cacciatore * Samuel Cacciatore Giuseppe Mistretta Vincent Mistretta Salvatore Ferlita Antonio Diecidue * Gaetano Diecidue Alfonso Diecidue * Frank Zambito Samuel Glorioso Philip La Cata Joseph Vaccaro James Fraterrigo Gaetano Guastella Augustine Friscia Joseph Camero Julius Chiusano Philip Lo Cicero Joseph Ciccarello Henry Ciccarello Joseph Di Gerlando Salvatore Pullara Ignazio Lazzara Nelson Lazzara Benedetto Maniscalco Antonio Italiano Ignazio Italiano * Stefano Italiano Vincenzo Riggio Augusto Paniello Mario Perla Arthur Perla Joseph Giglio Anthony Giglio Salvatore Giglio Ignazio Maurici Gerardo J. Orza

Philip Alessi Joseph Bedami Samuel Pupello Philip Piazza Alfonso Scaglione Stefano Scaglione Antonio Scaglione Giuseppe Scaglione James G. Bruno Salvatore Cagnina Joseph Spicola Gaetano Spicola Paul Antinori Joseph Antinori Frank Trafficante Epifanio Trafficante* Salvatore Trafficante Louis La Barbera Joseph Cacciatore Michael La Cata Frank Lumia Salvatore Mondello Samuel Lumia Giuseppe Provenzano Salvatore Carollo Louis Cottichia Nicholas Scaglione Salvatore Candiliere Anthony Randazzo Frank Ippolito Joseph Le Cose Michele Messina John Maimone Michael Napoli Giuseppe Vaglica * Frank Leto Gaetano Zummo James Valenti * Joseph Perrone Rudolph Giglia Filippo Giglio Paul Giglio John Giglio Angelo Guida Domenico Romanello Stefano Raffa *

ASSOCIATES

Salvatore Amarena Frank Ferrera Michael Ferrara Jose Trafficante * Salvatore Ferrara * Anthony Di Lorenzo Alexander Tramontana Ciro Bellucia * Paul Ferraro Frederick Scarola Charles Cumbo Harlan Blackburn Samuel Lawrence Russell George Max Reid Philip Riffe Julio Ciphon Ralph Strawder Cesar Vega Evaristo Garcia Vidal Rafael Reina Angelo Greco Joseph Spitaleri Frank Di Carlo Evaristo Garcia Vidal Jr. Kat Bradshaw Clayton Thomas Antonio Suenco Floyd Lee Cullins Clarence Hall Salem Zaig Robert Cecil Ray Lonnie Wallace Eddie Blanco Rudy Mach Don Mach George Solomon William Harrell Glen Brechen Clifford Bell Clyde P. Lee Matthew Smith

Basile Scaglione Biagio Savarino Angelo Giglio * Michael De Vito John Lazzara * Angelo Lazzara * Giuseppe Urga Louis Caggiano Salvatore Pupello John Silvestri Ruddy L. Heiny Smitty Melvin Francis Haddock Floyd Luther Boatwright Mary Cardan Macon Tribue Hoy Anderson Elvin Carroll Eduardo Rivas Dr. Perez Pita Eugenio Leal Armando Rios D.C. Land Jack Ferrara Jose Rodriguez Cecil Merritt Sonny Brown Edward Valdes Charles King Jr. Horace Fallen Michael Bateh Santiago Rodriguez Frank J. Del Prete Joseph Castellano Daniel Fussel Buddy Parron Benny White Joe Carlon Thomas Berry Joseph Wheeler Jesse Joyner Vasco Joyner

The Santo Trafficante Family of Tampa, FL

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The Santo Trafficante Family of Tampa, FL

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