# Joseph Masseria

Canonical: https://mobfiles.org/people/joseph-masseria/

Head of one side in the 1930–31 New York gang war, as the 1963 Senate hearings describe it. Joseph Valachi called him "the boss we were fighting" and testified, from hearsay, that his own people killed him in a Coney Island restaurant. A police record read into the same hearing dates the killing April 15, 1931, at 2715 West 15th Street.

The date of death and the street are those of the New York police record that Sergeant Ralph Salerno read into the 1963 hearing; the record itself is not printed. It gives the address of the restaurant, 2715 West 15th Street, but not its name, and Valachi said he had forgotten it. No opened record gives Masseria's birth date. Valachi's account of who set him up is what he was told. The aliases are the police record's, as printed. The record also prints a residence, which is not repeated here.

The family line is Valachi's name for the other side in the 1930–31 war. Duffy's description of the "Joseph Masseria group" is the staff reading its own chart and is not used for it. The role line is Valachi's phrase. The 1963 hearing record mixes kinds of statement. Valachi's and Shanley's answers are sworn testimony; counsel's questions are not, though a witness's "yes" makes them part of the testimony; LaVern Duffy's description of Exhibit 8 is the committee staff reading its own chart. A chart entry never fills a role on this archive.

## Sources

- Organized Crime and Illicit Traffic in Narcotics, Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Hearings, Part 1 (1963): https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/119303NCJRS.pdf