On this day, Oct. 21, in 1964, notorious Mafia leader Joseph Bonanno was supposedly kidnapped off the street in front of his Manhattan apartment. Bonanno was there at the creation of the American Mafia in the 1920s, and established the Bonanno crime family in Brooklyn.
Bonanno, who despised his nickname Joe Bananas, had fallen from grace in the 1960s for trying to become the boss of bosses in what became known as “the Banana War.”
He claimed other families grabbed him in a move to force him out of the mob.
He was released after being held in a farmhouse for six weeks.
Authorities suggested Bonanno staged his own kidnapping to prevent him from having to testify.
He retired to Arizona. He died in 2002 at age 97.
— Scott McCabe
