On this day in 2002, Joe Bonanno who ran the Bonanno Crime Family for nearly 40 years from 1931 – 1968, died of heart failure at the impressive age of 97. He had an illustrious career that spanned many decades and was the last Mustache Pete.

In 2004, Joe’s daughter-in-law began putting Joe’s personal items up for auction on eBay, this continued until 2008 and we managed to get a few pieces of Joe Bonanno Memorabilia here.

He took control of the Bonanno Crime Family soon after the end of the Castellammarese War, when Lucky Luciano and his associates restructured how the mob would work. He continued to lead the family until the late 1960’s when he was forced into retirement. Back in 1963 he had made plans with Joe Magliocco to assassinate several members who were on the Mafia Commission, including Carlo Gambino and Tommy Lucchese. The contract was handed down to hitman and future mob leader, Joe Colombo, who went to the Commission to tell them of their plans.

The Commission spared Magliocco’s life but forced him into retirement. His health was failing and he would end up dying at the end of 1963 anyway.

Bonanno fled to Canada, but in 1964 he briefly returned to New York before disappearing until 1966, allegedly kidnapped. From 1966 until 1968 there was discontent within the family and a war ensued for leadership, known as the “Banana War” between Commission appointed leader Gaspar DiGregorio and Bill Bonanno (Joe’s son). The family soon separated into two factions and in the end, the Commission, dissatisfied with DiGregorio’s attempt to unite the family, dropped him in favor of Paul Sciacca.

Bonanno officially gave up family leadership in 1968 and retired to Arizona.

Later in life, he became a writer, publishing the book A Man of Honor: The Autobiography of Joseph Bonanno in 1983.

On this day in 2002, Joseph Charles Bonanno — better known as Joe Bonanno, or simply "Joe Bananas" — passed away from heart failure in Tucson, Arizona, at the remarkable age of 97. Born in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, in 1905, Bonanno had lived long enough to witness the entire arc of organised crime in America, from its chaotic, blood-soaked beginnings to its slow, generational decline. Few figures in mob history could claim as long or as consequential a career.

Bonanno rose to power in the aftermath of the brutal Castellammarese War of 1930 to 1931, a conflict that pitted Sicilian factions against one another for control of the New York underworld. When Lucky Luciano emerged victorious and restructured American organised crime into the now-legendary Commission system, Bonanno — still only in his mid-twenties — was handed leadership of what would become one of New York's Five Families. He was, at the time, the youngest boss in the country, yet he ran his family with a discipline and shrewdness that kept him at the top for nearly four decades.

His reign was not without controversy. In 1963, Bonanno conspired with Joseph Magliocco to assassinate several Commission members, including Carlo Gambino and Tommy Lucchese. The contract was passed to an ambitious young mobster named Joe Colombo, who instead betrayed the plot to the Commission. Magliocco was forced into retirement — his failing health rendering further punishment unnecessary, as he died before the year was out. Bonanno himself fled to Canada, briefly resurfaced in New York in 1964, and then vanished for nearly two years, with many believing he had been kidnapped. The truth has never been entirely settled.

His disappearance triggered the so-called Banana War, an internal power struggle between the Commission-backed Gaspar DiGregorio and Bonanno's son, Bill. The family fractured into two factions, and the conflict dragged on until DiGregorio was replaced by Paul Sciacca. Bonanno formally relinquished control in 1968 and retreated to Arizona, effectively closing the chapter on one of the most turbulent leaderships in mob history.

In retirement, Bonanno turned to writing, publishing his autobiography, A Man of Honour, in 1983 — a book that caused considerable unease among his former associates for its candid tone. In 2004, his daughter-in-law began auctioning off his personal effects on eBay, a final, somewhat poignant dispersal of a life lived entirely outside the ordinary.

Joe Bonanno remains one of the most complex and enduring figures in the history of American organised crime, a founding architect of a criminal empire that bore his name long after he had gone. His story is inseparable from the story of the mob itself.