Albert Anastasia

Albert Anastasia, a.k.a. "The Mad Hatter", "Lord High Executioner". (1903-1957)
Years as Boss: 1951-1957

He Succeeded Vincent Mangano as one of the most high-profile bosses of the Gambino Family. Anastasia's climb up organized crime's slippery ladder left the ground littered with dead bodies, as he and fellow enforcers Louis Lepke Buchalter, and Abe Reles killed for profit under the underworld banner "Murder Inc." At least, that's what they say... According to research, there never was a Murder Inc., and Anastasia's reputation was greatly exaggerated. Nonetheless, Anastasia established order through mayhem, solving any problem he had through violence rather than reasoning. Perhaps one of the earliest signs of his ruthlessness came when he, Bugsy Siegel, and Lucky Luciano conspired and killed his former boss Joe Masseria. When Anastasia became boss, he became even more ruthless, even going as far as murdering a newsstand clerk he had seen on TV bragging about being a witness to a bank robbery; Anastasia had him killed simply because he disliked "squealers", and thus broke an unwritten rule of the Mafia, which is, "only kill your own". Albert Anastasia's own reign of terror ended, as it had begun, with murder; he was gunned down by two men in a barber shop. No one was ever arrested for the crime.