Born Umberto Anastasio on February 26, 1902 in Tropea, Calabria, Italy, he later changed his name to Albert Anastasia. He was often referred to as "Mad Hatter" and "Lord High Executioner." Around the age of 15, Anastasia jumped ship and illegally entered the United States. Anastasia became a naturalized citizen in 1943 while serving in the United States Army. In 1920, Anastasia was working as a longshoreman in New York. He got into an argument over ship assignments with a fellow longshoreman named Joe Torino. Anastasia stabbed and strangled Torino to death. Anastasia was convicted and sentenced to death. After spending 18 months in the death house at Sing Sing prison, his conviction was overturned and he was set to receive a new trial. The four most important witnesses against him for his re-trial all ended up missing. Other witness changed their testimony. Anastasia succeeded Vincent Mangano as one of the most high-profile bosses of the Gambino Family. Anastasia's climb up organized crime's 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." 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. On October 25, 1957, Anastasia was killed by masked gunmen while sitting in a barber's chair at the Hotel Park Sheraton located at 7th Avenue and 55th Street in New York City. No one was ever arrested for the crime.
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