What American Mafia Mobsters Looked Like In Real Life

An interview with a mobster’s adult child explains what Hollywood gets wrong every time

“As burns this saint, so will burn my soul.
I enter alive and I will have to get out dead.”

That’s the oath said by an inductee of the Cosa Nostra, said over the burning photograph of St. Francis of Assisi or the Virgin Mary. The induction starts with a phone call telling him to get dressed. Someone takes him to an undisclosed location, where they cut his trigger finger and let it bleed on the photo of a saint. Then they light the photo on fire. In his hand. When the photo has burned, he’s earned his bones. He’s a made man.

One of the family. Until death do they part.

The mafia is as American as apple pie!

We whisper that they’re Sicilian or Italian. Their roots are, for sure. But they arrived in America before the turn of the century.

In the 1890s, Giuseppe “the Clutch Hand” Morello arrived in America and formed the 107th Street Mob, rising to power by killing anyone that disagreed with them. His main enforcer alone whacked 60 people in a decade.