Born in Corleone, Sicily, on March 19, 1877, Lupo fled to the United States in 1889 (he was just 12) after killing a man named Salvatore Morello. By the age of 20, he directly controlled much of the underworld activity in New York's Little Italy and had close ties with the Morello-Terranova Mob which ruled in Italian Harlem.
In Harlem, Lupo reportedly owned a property known as the Murder Stables. There numerous rivals for power were said to have been killed, allowing Lupo to sieze control of the New York branch of the Unione Siciliana and designate himself the new world's Mafia boss of bosses. Much of this appears to be legend. The story of the Murder Stables cannot be confirmed. Lupo worked as a management partner (with Giuseppe Morello) in New York rackets and not as supreme boss. And it is difficult to detect a Unione presence in early 20th Century New York.
Lupo's criminal group was active in Black Hand extortion and protection rackets. It also worked with Sicily's boss of bosses Vito Cascio Ferro, who reportedly spent some of his childhood years in New York before returning to the old country, on a trans-Atlantic operation circulating counterfeit American currency.
Lupo, who sometimes used his mother's maiden name "Saietta" as an alias, married into the Morello-Terranova clan, taking Ciro Terranova's sister Salvatrese as his wife. Their son Rocco was born in 1900, and the family lived in an upscale home at 261 Avenue P in Brooklyn, which was purchased for them by Terranova.
Lupo had run-ins with New York supercop Joseph Petrosino and is believed to have had a part in Petrosino's 1909 murder in Sicily.
Lupo and Giuseppe Morello, leader of the Morello Mob and The Wolf's right-hand man, were arrested for counterfeiting in 1909 and began lengthy prison sentences in 1910. Lupo was sentenced to 30 years and Morello to 25 years.
Nicholas Morello and Ciro Terranova looked after Mafia business in the Harlem and Bronx areas after Lupo and Giuseppe Morello were locked away, but the Italian/Sicilian communities in Brooklyn and on the Lower East Side began generating their own Mafia leaders. Perhaps due to the power vacuum, the Morello Mob found itself at war with Neapolitan Camorrists in Brooklyn.
In 1920, President Harding's attorney general, Harry Daugherty, arranged for the conditional commutation of the remainder of Lupo's counterfeiting sentence. He was released from Atlanta Federal Prison after serving 10 years. Lupo announced that he was returning to Sicily, which suited both the U.S. government and the Mafia leadership of the time.
The Wolf was looking to return to the United States in 1922. Claiming to be a wine merchant (an odd claim for a known criminal to make during Prohibition), he was detained several weeks at Ellis Island beginning in May of that year as the authorities prepared to deport him. Surprisingly, the government ordered that Lupo be allowed to enter the country on June 12. But the underworld was a far more complicated and more populous place in 1922 than it had been when he dropped out of the scene in 1910.
Mob bosses agreed to let Lupo work some minor bakery extortion rackets as a sort of pension, but The Wolf was excluded from Mafia leadership and from bootlegging operations. Law enforcement agencies discovered that he was meeting with mob enforcer Anthony Forti to create an Italian bakers' "union" in December 1923. Lupo's son Rocco also appeared to be involved.
Lupo made several visits to Sicily around that time, and authorities believed, probably correctly, he was stockpiling money for an early retirement.
Though his previous partners Giuseppe Morello and Ciro Terranova figured prominently in the Castellamarese War of 1930-1931, Lupo kept a relatively low profile. He was arrested in 1931 for allegedly killing a man named Roger Consiglio a year earlier, but nothing came of the charge.
Lupo was nabbed again in July 1935 when his bakery extortion racket was exposed. A year later, July 15, 1936, FDR's Administration decided that Lupo had violated the conditions of his "keep-yer-nose-clean" sentence commutation and threw him back behind bars to finish the remaining years of his original 30-year sentence.
While in prison, Lupo learned of the death of his brother-in-law, Terranova. Shortly thereafter (1938), Lupo was released from Atlanta in poor health, but he clung to life for another nine years. Upon his death of natural causes on Jan. 13, 1947, he was buried in the in the Terranova family plot in Brooklyn's Calvary Cemetery beside Ciro.
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