Gaetano Gagliano: The Quiet Don

Gaetano "Thomas" Gagliano
If the ingredients for being a successful mob boss are keeping a low profile, avoiding arrest, shunning media publicity, and above all else longevity, then no Mafia leader can match the ghost-like performance of Gaetano "Thomas" Gagliano.

by Allan May

As patriarch of what has evolved into the current-day Lucchese Family, Gagliano headed one of the original five New York crime families from September 1931 until his death in February 1951, a reign conducted in an unequaled and almost complete anonymity. In all my research into the history of the American Mafia, I have never seen a picture of Gagliano, nor come across a single obituary. No don before or after him ever slipped so unobtrusively through the cracks.