Carlo Gambino: Boss of Bosses

He was one of the four Mafia leaders who inspired Mario Puzo's The Godfather-and perhaps, next to Lucky Luciano, the most powerful Mob boss of them all. Born into a mafioso family in Sicily, Carlo Gambino came to America illegally as a stowaway in 1921. Jumping ship in Virginia, he joined his cousins in Brooklyn, and the Sicilian gangs that ruled the streets. By 1931, he was a soldier in Joe "The Boss" Masseria's war with the Castellammarese clan, a bloody rivalry between Old World crime fa...