Lucky Luciano FBI Files, Newspapers, and Books

Lucky Luciano FBI Files, Newspapers, and Books

This collection contains a total of 2,804 pages

Contents include:

FBI Files

1,239 pages of files copied from FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C., covering Charles "Lucky" Luciano. 

Files contain memos written by FBI agents, informant accounts, miscellany, and newspaper articles. Most of the material covers the late 1940's and early 1950's. The infamous gangster, Charles Luciano was nicknamed "Lucky" after surviving a gangland "ride" in 1929, in which he was beaten, stabbed repeatedly with an ice pick, had his throat slashed, was thrown from a car, and left for dead. 

In 1931 he became head of the Unione Siciliana in New York and in alliance with other big gangsters established a sway over the underworld in cities throughout the nation. He had an extensive arrest record and in June 1936, Luciano was convicted on 62 of 90 counts of compulsory prostitution and was sentenced to 30 to 50 years imprisonment. He was paroled in 1946 on the condition that he would be deported to his native Italy. During the remainder of his life, the FBI received allegations from time to time that Luciano continued to direct criminal activities in the United States from his place of exile. He suffered a fatal heart attack in Italy in 1962.
 

FBI Files Cross References

316 pages of mentions of Luciano from the FBI files of Albert Anastasia, Bugsy Siegel, Carlo Gambino, Carmine Galante, Frank Sinatra, Frank Wortman, Fred G. Randaccio, Interpol, Joseph Bonanno, Louis Lepke Buchalter, Meyer Lansky and Walter Winchell.


JFK Assassination Records Review Board Collected Files - Luciano Cross-References

81 pages of FBI files collected by the JFK Assassination Records Review Board with mention of Luciano.

 
Newspapers 

77 full-sheet newspaper pages dating from October 24, 1935, to February 13, 1962, with coverage of Lucky Luciano.

 
Books

Ninety Times Guilty by Hickman Powell (1939)

A 350-page book, published in 1939, written by newspaper journalist Hickman Powell who followed Luciano's trial from its inception to the jury verdict. Powell was a close friend of District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey, who gave him a front seat at the trial.

In the June 15, 1939 issue of Kirkus Reviews, of this book it writes, "Book on the dope-vice racket, which ties in with Cooper's Designs in Scarlet. Where Cooper covers the whole field of narcotics and prostitution, this book is the story of one criminal and his mob and might have greater reader appeal."       

 
I Worked for Lucky Luciano by Anonymous (1954)

Abstract: "This novel is based on certain experiences I had while working as a newspaperman in New York, back in the days when Tom Dewey was smashing the Luciano mob. Names and dates have been changed to protect the innocent, but the essential facts are all here.

The anonymous call-girl in this story is actually a composite figure. The incidents in her life are founded on facts related to me by principals in the Luciano trial and include inside details not brought out in the courtroom. Certain scenes result from my own eyewitness observations.

I came to know the circumstances which lead girls into the grip of the Vice Syndicate, the upbringing, the family situation, the psychological problems, the economic factors. All the things that cry out for sympathetic assistance.

It is my firm belief that an understanding of why certain girls ‘go wrong’ can help to eliminate these evil conditions from our society. It is my great hope, in telling this story, to further that understanding."

 
The Luciano Story by Sid Feder (1954)
The Luciano Story by Sid Feder and Joachim Joesten (1960)

The 1954 and 1960 versions of The Luciano Story a book often called, "the definitive biography of this legendary gangster." The Christian Science Monitor described it as, "Two veteran crime reporters reveal the operations of organized crime, narcotics, and prostitution in a careful and precise manner."

Sid Feder was an authority on American organized crime, he also co-authored the book Murder, Inc.  Joachim Joesten was an expert on drug traffic and the European underworld.  For this book he interviewed Lucky Luciano, narcotics agents, and police officials in Italy.

Abstract: The authors of this book spent more than a year, both in the United States and in Italy, piecing together bits of information on Lucky Luciano. Mob men, those on the fringe of the underworld, law-enforcement officials, even some of Lucky's old pals were sought out and questioned, in a plain job of newspaperman's leg work. Lucky, himself, was thoroughly interviewed. A scrap was unearthed here, an incident there. We feel the completed picture to be the most thorough and factual roundup to date on the fabulous felon, member of the board of Crime International.