On this day, Sept. 4, in 1921, Italian immigrant Joseph Profaci first set foot in New York, where he would rise quickly in the Mafia and become the founder of the last of the Five Families.
Most of Profaci’s mob operation was in Brooklyn, where he ruled with an iron fist from 1930 to 1962. People who expressed discontent were murdered. Profaci was one of the smarter Mafia dons, parlaying his illegal enterprises into a legitimate olive oil business to protect himself from the Internal Revenue Service. At one time he was the country’s largest importer of olive oil, leading to his nickname as “Olive Oil King.”
Profaci lived a life of luxury and professed to be a devout Catholic. When two thieves stole a relic from a New York church, mobsters recovered the relic and strangled the thieves with rosaries. New York Catholics petitioned the pope to confer a knighthood on Profaci, but the Vatican denied the petition when prosecutors complained.
On June 6, 1962, Profaci died of liver cancer. Today his operation is known as the Colombo crime family.
— Scott McCabe
