Infamous America - LUCKY LUCIANO Ep. 6 | "Exile”

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

Luciano is forced to leave the United States and return to Sicily. But, he immediately makes plans to set up a base of operations near the U.S. With the help of Meyer Lansky, Luciano organizes a meeting in Havana, Cuba to discuss the mafia’s future and deal with troublesome associates. Luciano discovers that controlling his criminal family from afar is difficult, and ambitious underlings seize the opportunity to take power. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join   Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial.   On YouTube, subscribe to INFAMOUS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage.   For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My relentless sleep problems have always come from an overactive mind. I lay in bed at night with my mind racing from one thing to another, and then, of course, I have a brainstorm about something new. That lights the fire, and then I'm in real trouble. To calm my mind, the only things that have ever worked with any consistency are sleep gummies. Sleepy Time Advanced Gummies from Mood.com come in various combinations of THC, CBD, and CBN, so you can get something that's very low in THC, but higher in CBD, which helps turn off the stress,

and CBN, which is the thing that makes you sleepy. The brain shuts up, the racing thoughts stop, and it's off to sleep. Mood is federally compliant. The gummies are legal and delivered right to your door. At Mood.com, get 20% off your first order with our promo code, Infamous. Go to Mood.com and use the code infamous to get 20% off your first order. your first order, and they have a 100-day satisfaction guarantee. Mood.com promo code infamous. On February 3rd, 1946, 48-year-old Charles Lucky Luciano sat in a prison cell on Ellis Island and waited

to be deported to Sicily. He had arrived at Ellis Island as a boy 40 years earlier when his family moved from Sicily to America. Now, after spending 10 years in prison on charges related to running a prostitution business, he was being shipped back to Sicily. As sad as he was to leave, the punishment was a blessing compared to finishing his prison sentence, which would have kept him confined for another 20 to 40 years. While he was in prison, World War II had started, and the American military had made a secret deal with Luciano to ensure that the ports of New York remains safe from Nazi spies and saboteurs. When the war was over, Luciano used the deal with deal to negotiate his release. He successfully gained his freedom, but only on the condition that he had

to leave the U.S. forever. Now, as he sat in his cell and waited for deportation, some old friends arrived to see him off. Meyer Lansky, Luciano's best and oldest friend, showed up with acting boss Frank Costello. Luciano had chosen Costello over Vito Genovese to run the crime family while Luciano was in prison. Costello had done a good job, but now that Luciano was a free man, it was time to talk business, even in a somber situation like the one they were in now. Luciano said he was still the head of the family, but since he was going to have to rule from afar, Costello would remain in charge of the day-to-day operations. Meyer-Lansky would oversee the bulk of Luciano's business investments, and Luciano wanted them to spread the word to the other

bosses. Just because he wasn't in America, that didn't mean it was open season on his territory. Much of Luciano's firmness was to avoid power-hungry individuals within the Luciano family, especially Vito Genevese. Genevise was Luciano's ambitious underboss, who had fled the U.S. right before World War II to avoid a murder indictment. Now, Genevese was back in New York, and Luciano feared that Genevese would want to take control of the family. On February 7, 1946, Charlie Luciano and Meyer Lansky had their final visit. During the meeting, Luciano informed his friend that he had a rough plan for the future. Luciano knew that Cicely was too far away to truly control business in New York.

He needed to be as close to the U.S. as possible. He revealed to Lansky that he had started making inquiries about setting up shop in South America. At least he could be in the same hemisphere. Then a new idea formed. Throughout the 1930s and 40s, Lansky had become friendly with the Cuban government that was run by a corrupt official named Fulgencio Batista.

Lansky had already invested in a hotel in Cuba's capital city of Havana. Luciano believed that Lansky could help sway the Cuban government to allow them to quietly work from the island. Luciano said he would keep a low-profile in Sicily and let the dust settle from his deportation. Then in about six months, he would travel to Cuba. Lansky liked the idea and was happy to help his friend get back to work. Two days later, Luciano walked onto a cargo ship called the Lorah Keene. The following morning, the Laura Keen

left Brooklyn Harbor and headed east toward the Atlantic Ocean. As Luciano watched New York recede in the distance, he dreamed of returning to his empire. All he needed to do was survive in Sicily, and then he would thrive in Cuba. From Black Barrow Media, this is infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling the story of Charles Lucky Luciano. He was a notorious bootleger, a gunman, a key player in a mob war, and the father of the American mafia. This is episode six, exile. The voyage to Italy took 17 days, and Luciano arrived in Naples before Trinidad.

traveling down to Palermo, Sicily. From there, he visited his hometown of La Carra Fridi, a village outside of Palermo. During Luciano's homecoming, he was treated like a hero. He showered the people with gifts and money. He reunited with family members, and he savored the kingly reception. But now that he was no longer confined to a prison cell, he desperately wanted to get back to business. He told a reporter, Italy's dead. Nice but dead. I like movement. Business opportunities here are no good. I need New York. But New York was off limits. He would have to settle for Havana, Cuba. In mid-October, 1946, seven months after he arrived in Italy, Luciano began the journey to Cuba. He knew he needed to confuse any possible agents who

might be following him, so he took a zig-zag route through Latin America. He took a ship to Caracas, Venezuela. Then he flew to Rio de Janeiro, then to Mexico City, then back to Caracas, and then finally to Cuba. In Cuba, Luciano was greeted by a couple government officials on the tarmac, and the first thing he said was, where's Meyer? Moments later, a car pulled onto the tarmac and outstepped Meyer Lansky. Luciano couldn't be happier. For the first time in a decade, he was seeing his closest friend and confidant without prison guards keeping watch. After a quick lunch, they drove to Havana. Luciano checked into the Hotel Nacional, the finest hotel in Cuba.

Then Lansky told his friend that he wouldn't be able to stay for dinner. He had to fly back to the United States on an important mission, to inform all of the bosses that Luciano was back and ready to meet. It had been more than 10 years since Luciano met with the commission he created, and there was a lot to discuss in the new post-war world. The Havana conference kicked off on December 20, 1946, and it was the largest gathering of bosses in a single location since the Chicago Conference of 1931. Some of New York's representatives included Vito Genevese, Frank Costello, Joe Bonano,

Tommy Lucchese, and Albert Anastasia. From Chicago, there were Anthony Aikardo and Sam Giancano. From Tampa, there was Santo Traficante. Also in attendance were bosses from New Orleans, Buffalo, and Cleveland, plus Meyer Lansky and members of the Jewish syndicate. When everyone was gathered, Luciano and Lansky took charge of the conference. The top two items on the agenda were Cuba and narcotics. For more than a decade, Lansky had laid the groundwork for organized crimes entrance into Cuba. When Lansky saw the end of prohibition in sight, he started cozying up to influential people in Cuba in the hope of establishing business near the Florida coast.

Luciano had joined Lansky in providing money which Lansky invested in early Cuban casinos. Lansky's vision for Cuba and the surrounding islands was to turn them into a Caribbean Monte Carlo. The other bosses liked the idea and agreed to help invest in Cuba. Next came narcotics trafficking. Ironically, Luciano wanted the mafia to back off of the drug business. Luciano had been at the forefront of selling drugs in the 1920s, while most other gangsters shunned the idea. But when Prohibition ended, other criminal families started investing in drugs. The profits were incredible, better than alcohol.

But so was the risk. Now, Luciano believed the American government was going to take a much tougher stance against cocaine and heroin than it had against whiskey and beer. But the other bosses refused to listen to Luciano's advice and request. By 1946, long before the real explosion and popularity of marijuana, cocaine and heroin, mafia families across the country were making so much money from drugs that there was no way they were going to quit the business. With a heavy sigh, Luciano agreed to abide by the consensus.

He was going to distance himself as much as possible. but, of course, he was still going to accept a cut of the profits. With that, the future was set. Cuba would be a new gambling hub, and the mafia would remain in the drug trafficking business. Now, there was one other major topic that needed to be addressed. Unfortunately, it concerned one of Luciano and Lanski's oldest friends, Benjamin Bugsy Siegel. Luciano and Lansky had known Bugsy Siegel since their adolescent days on the Lower East Side of Manning. Manhattan. Bugsy, the son of Jewish immigrants, started working with Lansky, and the two rose

to become dominant Jewish gangsters after prohibition. But Bugsy was by no means the brains of the operation. Though he helped Lansky with bootlegging and gambling rackets, Bugsy was muscle. He had a quick temper, which was how he earned his nickname. People said he was, quote, crazy as a bedbug. In the early 1930s, Bugsy closely aligned himself with murals. Murder Incorporated, the mafia's enforcement arm, but he didn't limit his criminal activities to contract killings. As somewhat of a loose cannon, Bugsie had a flare for cargo hijackings. Unfortunately, his antics brought unwanted attention. As the heat grew on Bugsie, Luciano and Lansky suggested that Bugsie head west to avoid the police. Bugsie readily accepted

the new change of scenery. Bugsie arrived in Los Angeles in 1936 and quickly took control of organized crime in Southern California. He built up offshore gambling rackets and extorted movie studios through labor unions. At the same time, he ingratiated himself into the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, and he became friends with actors and actresses. And then, a few years into his time in L.A., he received word from Meyer Lansky of a new assignment, one that would change organized crime forever. In the early 1940s, Lansky and Boe, Lansky and Boe Bugsy took a trip to a tiny desert town in Nevada called Las Vegas. The place was ripe with opportunity, and Lansky wanted to turn it into the gambling capital

of the West. In 1931, Nevada became the first state to legalize commercial gambling. Overnight, the thing that had made mountains of illegal money for the mob was now legal. It was like a new, bottomless gold mine had just been discovered in the West. At first, Bugsy wasn't thrilled about trying to build a gambling mecca in the Nevada desert, but he eventually understood Lansky's vision. Lansky put Bugsy in charge of building the mob's first major casino hotel in Las Vegas, the Flamingo.

The Flamingo project was a disaster from the jump. Construction began in mid-1946 and the budget skyrocketed. Using investments from New York, Bugsy had been given a budget of a little more than a million dollars. Within months, Bugsie was asking for more, and by the fall, the budget exploded to $6 million. Some of the problems with the project had nothing to do with Bugsy, like a spat of bad weather, which put construction behind schedule. But, rumors quickly floated that Bugsy had fallen under the spell of his latest lover, an actress named Virginia Hill. Word around town was that Bugsie and Virginia were skimming investor money and keeping it for themselves.

The rumors made their way back to New York and quickly became one of the major topics of discussion at Lucky Luciano's mobster conference in Havana in December, 1946. The Flamingo was finally set to open a few days later, but for the men at the conference, it was too little, too late. Bugsy had become a menace. He was stealing money, and he needed to be dealt with. Exactly who proposed that Bugsy should be whacked has been a topic of debate for decades. Luciano claimed it was Lansky.

Others have said Lansky tried to defend his old friend and argued that once the casino opened, everyone would be making millions in profit. In that version of events, Luciano took Lansky aside and said Bugsy had lost control and had broken the rules. Whatever the real version, mob leaders voted on whether or not to kill Bugsy Seagal.

Charlie Luciano voted yes, as did everyone else at the conference. The Flamingo Hotel opened at the same time as the Havana conference ended at the end of December, 1946, and the grand opening was a disaster. The casino actually lost money. Just as embarrassing, the hotel still wasn't fully constructed. After a few weeks, Bugsie closed it down and tried to solve the problems. He reopened the Flamingo in March, 1947, but it continued to flounder. Bugsy lived on borrowed time as he tried to fix his Las Vegas boondoggle. The Flamingo eventually flourished, but Bugsy didn't live to see it. On the night of June 20, 1947, Bugsy was reading a newspaper at a house in Beverly Hills that he rented for his girlfriend, Virginia Hill. An assassin fired rounds from a 30-caliber rifle through the living room window and killed

Bugsy Siegel. The Havana conference ended on December 26. Many of the mobsters, including Lucky Luciano, stayed and celebrated. At one point during the conference, Luciano was unofficially declared Capo de Tudti copy, the boss of all bosses. He wasn't going to be like Salvatore Maranzano, but his word carried more weight than the others. More importantly, it firmly placed him above his rival Vito Genevese. It had become increasingly apparent that Geneviz wanted to take the family away from Luciano and Frank Costello. But Genevese would have to wait. Over the next few weeks in Cuba, Luciano gambled on horses, cozied up to local politicians, and partied the night away. And some of those parties featured one of the mafia's most celebrated friends, Frank Sinatra. Allegedly, Luciano and Sinatra were close friends. In an incredible coincidence, Sinatra's family and Luciano's family were from the same village in Sicily. Supposedly, Luciano was among the mobsters who financially supported

Sinatra's early career. In return, Sinatra allegedly ran cash for the mafia. The depth of Sinatra's connection to the mob has been the subject of endless speculation, and it's impossible to know the truth. But he definitely partied with the bosses in Cuba in February 1947. Sinatra arrived in Cuba in mid-February, and he and Luciano gambled and partied and caused a ruckus at the National Hotel. Before long, a reporter heard that one of the most popular entertainers in America was down in Cuba, and the reporter wrote an article that questioned why Sinatra associated with known gangsters. When the article was published, Sinatra denied his friendship with Luciano and the others, and he quickly left Havana. Unfortunately for Luciano, the article did more

then reveal a celebrity's ties to the underworld. Thanks to the article, the U.S. government learned that Luciano was in Cuba when he was supposed to be in Italy. The U.S. demanded that Cuba arrest Luciano and deport him to Italy. Cuban officials politely asked Luciano to leave, and Luciano refused. On February 23rd, Havana police officers found Luciano at a restaurant eating lunch and they arrested him. For the next month, Luciano's lawyers tried to convince the Cuban government to let Luciano remain on the island. Meyer-Lansky called his contacts about freeing Luciano, but the threat of American economic pressure was too much for Cuba to ignore. On March 29th, Luciano was escorted to a Turkish cargo ship and forced to leave Havana. Luciano was furious,

but he hoped his second deportation would be just another obstacle. His thoughts returned to his original plan of setting up a base in South America, maybe in Brazil or Venezuela. Somehow, the FBI discovered Luciano's scheming, and Jay Edgar Hoover personally warned all of the South American embassies that Luciano might try to enter their countries. Authorities also notified Italian officials that they needed to do a better job of watching the infamous

gangster. When Luciano arrived in Genoa in April, he was immediately arrested. After spending more than a week in jail, he was escorted by armed guards to Palermo Sicily. He eventually headed north to Rome, and made Rome one of his bases of operations. From Rome, he attempted to organize a drug trafficking business while maintaining his power over his crime family. Unfortunately, that was easier said than done. Over the next few years, he was under constant surveillance. Throughout the 1950s, he was consistently arrested in connection with low-level drug busts. America was convinced that Luciano operated a global heroin racket and demanded that Italy helped find the connections.

But evidence was always flimsy, and Luciano was never charged. The harassment drove Luciano crazy. He told the press one time, quote, if somebody slips on a banana peel, the cops call me in to find out if I'm selling bananas. But as hard as it was to do business, Luciano was still able to forge connections with the Sicilian mafia, and he considered the possibilities of the American mafia and the Sicilian mafia joining forces in the heroin trade. Luciano may have been restricted from directly controlling the flow of drugs, but he could at least facilitate a lucrative arrangement. In 1957, Luciano quietly organized a

meeting between members of the American Mafia and the Sicilian Mafia in Palermo Sicily. The so-called heroin summit began in the middle of October, and it reportedly featured important American mob boss Joseph Bonanno, among others. There are very few accounts of what was said, and there are lots of people who dispute that it happened at all. If it did, the The story generally says that mob leaders held a four-day meeting to discuss the heroin trade. The U.S. had intensified punishments against heroin dealers and smugglers, which made many mafia families nervous about large-scale trafficking. So, to combat that, everyone agreed that the Sicilian mafia would be the boots on the ground in the U.S. In return, the Sicilian

mafia would pay a kind of franchise fee to the American mafia to operate on American soil. The heroin would come from Corsicans in France, which meant the mafia was now firmly involved in the infamous French connection heroin ring. The result was one of the largest heroin trafficking operations in the world. Luciano couldn't be directly involved in the operation, but if it's true that he organized the summit, he proved he was still one of the most influential gangsters in the world. But at the same time, he was about to learn that his power was limited. Luciano's longtime comrade and underboss, Vito Geneviz, was now a rival, and he had decided to make his move for control of the family. Vito Genevese always wanted to replace Luciano as head of the family.

When Luciano went to prison in the late 1930s, Genevese thought he would become acting boss. Within the U.S. government forced Genevese into exile, and Luciano made Frank Costello acting boss. When Genevese returned from exile after World War II, he waited for his chance to strike. Throughout the 1950s, Genevies amassed one of the most ruthless and powerful crews in the entire mafia. By the start of 1957, he knew that Luciano was never going to return to America. It was as good a time as any to take his shot at becoming boss, and that meant he needed to take out Luciano's key allies. On May 2, 1957, Frank Costello exited a cab after dining with one of the family's capos. As he stepped out, a man approached him with a gun and shouted,

This is for you, Frank. Costello instinctively raised his hands to shield himself as bullets started flying. A bullet grazed Costello's head, but only did minor damage. The brush with death scared Costello, and he seriously considered handing power to Genevese. Then in late October, Genevese sent assassins to take out Albert Anastasia while Anastasia was getting a shave at a barbershop. Anastasia had been close to Luciano and Costello, and now he was dead. Costello realized he was too vulnerable, and he officially gave control of the Luciano crime family to veto Genevese. The coup took just five months.

In Italy, Charlie Luciano fumed, but he wasn't going to go down quietly, and he started to started looking for ways to exact his revenge. A few weeks after Anastasia's death, Vito Genovese called a meeting with all the major mob bosses. The main goal of the summit was for Genevese to celebrate his new status as boss. Other business items were going to be discussed, but the gathering was more about Genevese's coronation than anything else. The summit was held in a sleepy New York town called Appalachan. On November 14, 1957, more than 60 mobsters rolled up to the house of Joe Barbara in black

sedans and limousines. Barbara was a buffalo-based mobster, and the parade of black cars driving through a nondescript town drew attention. Local authorities feared a conspiracy of some sort was afoot, and they called the New York State troopers for help. That afternoon, a mobster inside the house spotted law enforcement outside and shouted, It's the Stades. Everyone panicked.

Old men in suits scrambled out of the house and ran into the woods. Most of them were caught and brought in for questioning. All the men claimed they were just there for a friendly visit with their old friend Joe because Joe had recently suffered a heart attack. The state troopers didn't buy it, but they also didn't have any evidence of crimes, so they were forced to release the mob bosses. From Luciano's home in Italy, he read about the Appalachian Raid, and couldn't help but laugh.

It didn't necessarily hurt Vito Genevise, but Luciano was tickled at the thought of Genevise slogging through the mud when he was supposed to be basking in the glory of his new role as boss. Even better, Luciano likely knew about the raid in advance. According to Gangland lore, Meyer Lansky had been invited to the Appalachan meeting,

but he refused to go. Maybe as an effort to help his old friend Luciano, Lansky allegedly tipped off the local sheriff that a meeting full of mobsters was taking place. And there was still more to come. The raid was humiliating, but Vito Genovese was still free to run the family. Luciano couldn't have that. He needed Genevese to pay for the coup. Not long after the Appalachan raid,

Lansky reached out to one of his former drug couriers, a man who had recently been busted and was in Sing Sing Prison. Lansky was furious at the courier for getting caught, but then Lansky thought of a way for the courier to make it up to him. If the courier gave information against Vito Genovese, the courier would receive $100,000. The money would come from Luciano, Lansky, and Costello, and the courier agreed.

Luciano provided details that connected Genovese to drug trafficking in the U.S. in Europe. The courier forwarded the information to law enforcement, enforcement in exchange for his freedom. In July 1958, Vito Genovese was indicted on drug trafficking charges, and in April 1959, he was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Vito Genevise may still be the boss of the family, but he would have to run it from behind bars. It was the best outcome Luciano could have hoped for, and while Luciano must have enjoyed watching Genevese suffer in prison, his own situation didn't fare much better. He was still in Italy, and it didn't look like he was ever going to leave.

Worse, the money he was making from his casino investments in Havana was starting to dry up, thanks to the new dictator Fidel Castro. Throughout the 1950s, Castro's revolutionaries waged guerrilla warfare on Fulgencia Batista's soldiers. Slowly but surely, Castro inched closer to Havana. Finally, on January 1st, 1959, Castro overthrew the Batista. a dictatorship and seized control of Cuba. Very quickly, Castro broke the mafia's hold over business in Havana. Over the next couple years, Luciano considered other ways to make money. Realizing his options were limited, he decided the easiest and best option was if he sold

his own story. For decades, stories about true life gangsters had made a lot of money in Hollywood. Fictionalized takes on Al Capone, Jack Legs Diamond, and Lever, Murder Incorporated were huge successes, and non-biographical crime films were just as popular. The American public loved sordid tales of gangsters rising to the top through a hail of bullets. Luciano was always hesitant about talking to anyone about his life. The less people knew about his affairs, the better. But by the start of the 1960s, his attitude had changed. At some point, Luciano was introduced to an up-and-coming producer named Martin Goss. For months, Goss visited Luciano in Italy, and Luciano slowly opened up about his life.

From there, Goss wrote a script about Luciano. But the ruling bosses discovered Luciano was talking. Allegedly, they were willing to assassinate Luciano if he revealed too much about the mafia's inner workings. Meyer Lansky sent word that Luciano should stop working with Gosh if he wanted to continue living. And Luciano took their advice. At the end of January 1962, Luciano met Goss to discuss the project's future, either to change the deal or to shut it down altogether. On January 26, Luciano and Goss were at the Naples airport while Luciano was on his way to Rome. As Luciano walked toward the airport's entrance, he suddenly felt a pain in his chest, and he stumbled.

Goss caught Luciano before he fell and asked if Luciano was okay. But Luciano went limp and fell to the ground. An airport doctor rushed over and examined Luciano. When the doctor put his finger to Luciano's neck, he didn't feel a pulse. He turned to Gosch and said Luciano was dead. Charles Lucky Luciano had suffered a heart attack and died at 64 years old. By the time Luciano died, the grasp of his power was mostly non-existent. In the immediate years that followed, American and Italian authorities continued to claim that Luciano

was the head of a global narcotics trafficking ring and that he had been running it for years. But the truth was probably less glamorous. He was under such heavy surveillance that it would have been exceedingly difficult to run a drug trafficking empire. The lore surrounding Luciano was exacerbated when Martin Gosh's work was finally released as a book, called The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano. Published in the mid-1970s, the book caused controversy because many of Luciano's anecdotes

were quickly and easily discredited. The book appeared more myth-making and legend-building than actual fact. And the year after Luciano died, more legends were created when the five families of the American Mafia became widespread public knowledge for the first time.

The U.S. Senate had held hearings in the early 1950s in its first real attempt to fight organized crime, but the hearings produced limited results. In 1963, a new round of hearings were blockbuster events. A mob soldier named Joe Volachi agreed to testify before a Senate committee led by Senator John McClellan. In the hearings, Valachi revealed the five-family structure and provided some history. Those hearings called the Valachi hearings or the McClellan hearings provided the modern names for the five families. The families were referred to by the last names of the men who were the bosses at the time, each of whom was a true godfather who traced his time with the mafia back to the Castell

of Marizadez War of the early 1930s or beyond. The Maranzano family had always really been run by Maranzano's lieutenant, Joe Bonano, and he was still the boss in 1963. That was the old origin of the Bonano family name. The Prafachi family, originally run by Joe Prafachi, was renamed the Colombo for its boss at the time of the hearings, Joseph Colombo. The Mangano family, originally run by Vincent Mangano, was renamed the Gambino family after its boss, Carlo Gambino. The Gagliano family, originally run by Thomas Gagliano, was renamed the Lucchese family after its boss Tommy Lucchese. And the Luciano family was renamed the Genevese family after Vito Genovese.

It's hard to know which element Luciano would have hated more, the loss of the family named to his rival Vito Genovese or the public spectacle that led to it. It was probably lucky for Luciano that he wasn't around to see either one. He will still go down in history as the architect of the modern American mafia. He ruthlessly put an end to the old generation of gangsters. and he added innovations to help avoid unnecessary violence and bloodshed to the degree that that was possible in the mob. Over the years, Salvatore Lucania, better known as Charlie Lucky Luciano,

has become a cultural icon. He may have been a criminal, but he was also one of the most influential people in 20th century America. Next time on Infamous America, we're going to start the stories of two of the most infamous arsonists in American history, John Orr and Paul Keller. The crazy story of John Orr is up first. He was a fire inspector for the Glendale Fire Department in the Los Angeles metro area, and he was also one of the most prolific arsonists in U.S. history. That's next time on Infamous America.

Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week for new episodes. They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials, and they also receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships are just $5 per month. This series was researched, written, and produced by Joe Gera. Original music by Rob Valier. Early research and writing by Michael Byrne.

I'm Chris Wimmer. Thanks for listening.