On this day in 1877 Ignazio Lupo was born. Lupo the Wolf was born in Corleone before moving to New York in 1898 at the age of 21.

He became a part of the newly formed Morello crime family and was responsible for at least 60 mob hits from the age of 21 through to the age of 33.

He was then slung into prison on a 30 year sentence but came out after only 10.

During this period the National Crime Syndicate had been established by Lucky Luciano and Lupo was forced into early retirement.

Born on this day in 1877 in Corleone, Sicily, Ignazio Lupo would go on to become one of the most feared and ruthless figures in the early history of American organised crime. Known throughout the underworld as "Lupo the Wolf," his name alone was enough to send a chill through the streets of New York's Italian immigrant communities. He arrived in America in 1898 at the age of 21, fleeing Sicily under the shadow of a murder charge, and wasted little time in establishing himself as a man of extraordinary violence and criminal ambition.

Upon settling in New York, Lupo aligned himself with Giuseppe Morello, helping to build what would become the Morello crime family — widely regarded as the forerunner of the modern Genovese crime family and one of the earliest organised Mafia structures on American soil. It was a pivotal moment in the formation of Italian-American organised crime, predating the famous Five Families by several decades. During this period, Lupo is believed to have been personally responsible for at least 60 murders, cementing his reputation as the Morello family's most terrifying enforcer. His particular brand of brutality was legendary, and he operated with a near-total disregard for consequences.

His criminal empire, however, extended well beyond murder. Lupo was deeply involved in counterfeiting operations, and it was this activity that ultimately proved his undoing. In 1909, federal authorities caught up with him, and he was handed a crushing 30-year sentence. Yet he served only a decade before receiving a presidential commutation, walking free in 1920 — a free man stepping back into a world that had shifted dramatically beneath his feet.

The New York underworld Lupo returned to was almost unrecognisable. The Prohibition era had transformed organised crime into a vast, enormously profitable enterprise, and a new generation of sharp, ruthless operators had risen to the top. Chief among them was Lucky Luciano, whose vision for a structured, businesslike National Crime Syndicate had reshaped the entire landscape of American organised crime. There was little room for the old-world brutality that Lupo represented, and he found himself effectively pushed into retirement, a relic of a more primitive era watching from the sidelines as the modern mob took shape around him.

Lupo the Wolf died in 1947, but his legacy endures as a stark reminder of the savage foundations upon which American organised crime was built, his career bridging the raw, violent origins of the Mafia in America and the slick, corporate underworld that followed.