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remaining leaders' roles and gave mobsters new assignments as he saw fit, with never a word of objection from the admiring ranks. He continued to administer control right up till his death of natural causes in 1992.
He never served a night in jail.
Ace of Diamonds: Mafioso "bad luck" card
Newspaper photos captured the macabre scene of Joe the Boss Masseria slumped over the table, six bullet holes in his body streaming blood onto the white tableclothand the ace of diamonds dangling from his right hand. Assassinated in April 1931 in a Coney Island, Brooklyn, restaurant, he had been playing cards with his top aide, Lucky Luciano, who had set him up for death. Luciano excused himself from the table and went to the men's room. In the ensuing moments, four armed gunmen rushed in and shot Masseria to death. Since that time the ace of diamonds has been dubbed the Mafia's hard-luck card.
The legend is strictly manufactured. As newsman Leonard Katz revealed in his book, Uncle Frank, The Biography of Frank Costello , "Irving Lieberman, a veteran reporter for the New York Post , covered the murder of Joe the Boss and was at the scene. An imaginative

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reporter from a rival newspaper, he said, decided to make the story even better. He surveyed things and then picked up the ace of diamonds from the floor and stuck it in Joe's hand. He reported the extra-added ingredient to his newspaper."
Adonis, Joe (19021972): Syndicate leader
One of the most powerful members of the national crime syndicate, Joe Adonis had been a longtime associate of such stalwart racket bosses as Lucky Luciano, Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky. He headed up the Broadway Mob, the most powerful Prohibition bootleg gang in Manhattan.
While Adonis always claimed to have been born in the United States, he was, as the law finally determined in deportation hearings, actually born in Montemarano, Italy, on November 22, 1902. He had entered the country illegally and taken the name of Adonis (his real name was Doto) to pay himself proper homage for what he regarded as his handsome looks.
Like many of his youthful associatesLuciano, Vito Genovese and Albert Anastasiahe soared up the criminal ladder of success during the get-rich-quick days of Prohibition. By the late 1920s Adonis had moved the center of his operations to Brooklyn. He became the virtual boss of much of that borough's criminal activities, taking over the Frankie Yale interests after that leading gangster was assassinated in 1928. The key to Adonis's success appears to have been his loyalty and modest ambitions. He was one of the gunners who killed Joe the Boss Masseria, the murder that put Luciano only one killing away from becoming the foremost Italian-American syndicate leader in the nation.
In Brooklyn, Adonis moved on two fronts. He was a trusted member of the board of the syndicate, settling disputes between various criminal factions and issuing murder contracts. While Albert Anastasia, Lord High Executioner of Murder, Inc., carried out tasks assigned by Louis Lepke, Adonis was also Anastasia's superior and kept a tight rein on him. Otherwise the mad-hatter murder boss could well have run amok, ordering too many hits. Abe Reles, the informer in the Murder, Inc., case, told authorities: "Cross Joey Adonis and you cross the national combination."
While Adonis was active in purely criminal matters, he was also becoming a very influential figure in Brooklyn's political life. A restaurant he owned in downtown Brooklyn, Joe's Italian Kitchen, became a rendezvous point for the most eminent political figures in Brooklynas well as members of the underworld. Among those he courted was a county judge, William O'Dwyer, later district attorney and mayor of New York. Adonis was often seen conferring with O'Dwyer and James J. Moran, a venal assistant, later regarded as O'Dwyer's bagman.

Joe Adonis, longtime power in
organized crime and sidekind of Lucky
Luciano and Meyer Lansky, takes
"voluntary deportation" to Italy