Thanks to the millions of dollars he invested there, Tucson, Ariz., was most fond of Joseph Bonanno. Joe, in turn, was crazy about Tucson. A resident since 1943, he once declared: "Tucson is my town, a beautiful and wonderful community." Lately, however, the relationship has gone bad—with a bang.
Bonanno is better known as "Joe Bananas," the gangster overlord of a New York Cosa Nostra "family." A Sicilian-born Mafioso who entered the U.S. illegally in 1924, Bonanno rose to a seat on the twelve-man "Grand Council" of organized crime. Though he has been semiretired as an active hoodlum since 1964, he is now embroiled in what has come to be known as "the Bananas war" —a death struggle between rival gangs that reaches from Joe's Brooklyn turf to Tucson's tree-lined pleasances. Open hostilities in the battle to succeed Joe as head of the Bonanno family began with an ambush in January 1966 outside the home of Joe's uncle in Brooklyn, and mob-style executions have accounted for at least seven since then. During the past four months, Tucson has echoed to the blasts of eight bombings or shootings outside the homes of Mafia members and acquaintances.
On July 20, somebody fired a shotgun at the Tucson home of Anthony Tisci, a son-in-law of Sam ("Momo") Giancana, commander of the 300-man Cosa Nostra army in Chicago. Then dynamite destroyed a shed at the Grace Ranch, the property of Pete Licavoli, aging chieftain of Detroit's Mafia. On the night of July 22, a bomb thrown onto Joe Bananas' patio blew out part of a wall. All the buildings that have been attacked belong to Bonanno henchmen and acquaintances.
Nobody has been killed or injured in Tucson by the bombs; they have apparently been set to detonate so as not to harm the occupants. Tucson's police force has so far made no arrests for the bombings. New York lawmen believe, however, that the fuses for the bombs were set four years ago when Joe Bananas was apparently ordered to retire by his underworld peers. Instead, he has attempted to retain control of his narcotics, numbers and loan-sharking rackets by transforming his Brooklyn-based fief into a hereditary barony and installing his son Salvatore ("Bill") Bonanno, 35. In retaliation, the four other Cosa Nostra families in the New York area, according to the theory, have been letting Joe Bananas know of their displeasure.