Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonanno

Bonanno became a boss at twenty-six, held the position for more than thirty years, lost it in a war he started, and died in Arizona at ninety-seven having outlived every man who took it from him.

He was born in Castellammare del Golfo in 1905 and came to the United States without papers in 1924. He was on the winning side of the Castellammarese War, and when the New York families were reorganised in 1931 he took one of the five seats and a place on the Commission.

The war he lost

By the early 1960s Bonanno was reported to be planning against other members of the Commission. Whether the plan was real in the form alleged is not settled; that the Commission believed it was is not in doubt.

He was summoned, refused to appear, and in October 1964 disappeared from a Manhattan street. He resurfaced nineteen months later. His own account is that he was held by relatives; the alternative is that he removed himself while the question was decided. Neither version has been established, and this archive is not going to choose between a man's memoir and an inference.

The book

Bonanno retired to Tucson and in 1983 published a memoir describing the structure of Cosa Nostra, the workings of the Commission and the traditions of membership.

It was the first such account from a boss, and prosecutors used it. The Commission case of 1986 had to establish that the Commission existed as an enterprise; a former member had published a book saying so, at length, under his own name. He was subpoenaed, refused to testify, and served fourteen months for contempt.

He died on 11 May 2002, the last man alive who had sat on the Commission at its founding.