Joseph Charles Bonanno Sr. was an Italian-American mobster, businessman, and racketeer who served as the boss of the Bonanno crime family for three decades following the Castellamarese War. He was also involved in the Commission since the beginning. A native of Sicily, Bonanno emigrated to the United States with his family when he was three years old. They spent the next decade in Brooklyn before going back to Italy. In 1924, Bonanno sneaked back into US. He had become a member of the mafia when he was still in Italy but was forced to flee the country when Benito Mussolini began a crackdown. In US, he started his criminal activities as part of a bootlegging operation. Later, he became an associate of Salvatore Maranzano and fought in the Castellamarese War on his side. Following Maranzano’s murder, Bonanno became the head of the family. Although he had been arrested multiple times over the course of his career, he was never found guilty of a serious crime. In 1983, he published the book ‘A Man of Honor: The Autobiography of Joseph Bonanno’.
