With the sanction of his cousin Stefano Maggadino, the mob boss of Buffalo, Bonanno started rackets in Canada. He claimed Arizona for himself, starting a realty and insurance company in Tucson and buying into a nearby cotton ranch. He edged into California where the local mob families (mockingly known as the "Mickey Mouse Mafia") were hardly making a dent. Bonanno also bought into a cheese factory in Wisconsin and owned a 280-acre dairy farm in upstate New York. Bonanno invested in Cuban casinos with Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky and explored Haiti as another possible gambling destination.
By the early 1960's Bonanno's wildly ambitious ventures caused grumbling within the ranks of the family. Many of his soldiers complained that he was neglecting the New York operations in favor of his other holdings. Some of the other New York bosses disapproved of the way he conducted business, but Bonanno considered himself a cut above his peers and the only true "man of honor" among them. Fortunately for him, his most outrageous impulses were kept in check by his closest ally, Joe Profaci, boss of what would later become known as the Colombo Family. But when Profaci died of cancer in 1962, Bonanno's ambitions got the better of him, and he decided to install himself as the rightful boss of all bosses. He enlisted Profaci's successor, Joe Magliocco, into a plot to assassinate those he felt stood in his way, including prominent New York bosses Carlo Gambino and Tommy Lucchese, Los Angeles boss Frank DeSimone, and Bonanno's own cousin, Buffalo boss Stephano Maggadino.
Bonanno and Magliocco agreed to split the killings with Magliocco taking care of the New York bosses. He gave the assignment to a trusted hitman, Joe Colombo. But when Colombo weighed the odds, he came to the conclusion that Bonanno and Magliocco were the wrong horses to bet on, so instead of carrying out the hits, he informed Lucchese and Gambino of the plot against them. They in turn notified the Mafia Commission.
The Commission ordered Bonanno and Magliocco to appear before them and account for themselves. Magliocco obeyed their order and confessed to taking part in the plot. As punishment, the Commission forced him to retire and installed hitman Joe Colombo as his replacement. The Commission could have meted out a harsher sentence, but Magliocco was in poor health and in fact died the next year. The Commission was saving the real retribution for the mastermind of the plot, Bonanno. But instead of facing the music, Bonanno defied them and refused to appear. Furious with his insolence, the Commission dethroned him and declared a disaffected Bonanno Family capo, Gaspar DiGregorio, as the new boss.
With the family now divided into two factions, tensions on the street ran high. The long knives were out for Joe Bonanno, and it was his cousin Stephano Maggadino who got to him first, having him kidnapped. Maggadino held him at an upstate New York farmhouse for six weeks, then had him driven to El Paso, Texas, where Bonanno called a friend in Tucson to come pick him up. Mob expert Jerry Capeci postulates in The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Mafia that the entire kidnapping episode was actually an ill-conceived hoax orchestrated by Bonanno himself to avoid testifying before the grand jury in Manhattan. But whether it was real or fabricated, Bonanno's disappearance was the spark that ignited what the newspapers would call the "Banana War."
With Joe Bonanno missing, the Commission soon lost its patience, probably figuring that they were being played by the elusive boss. They ruled that Bonanno would no longer be considered the head of his family and appointed capo Gaspar DiGregorio the new boss. (DiGregorio had his own beef with Bonanno for earlier denying him the position of family consigliere, which he felt he deserved. Instead Bonanno had appointed his own son Bill.) Family members took sides, splitting into two camps, the Bonanno loyalists led by Bill Bonanno and the Commission-backed faction led by DiGregorio.
Harsh words soon led to armed skirmishes on the streets of New York. The other families frowned down on these public outbursts. The Banana War drew unwanted attention to the mob and was ultimately bad for everybody's business. They wanted it stopped. DiGregorio called for a sit-down to put together a peace treaty. Representatives from both sides agreed to meet at a house on Troutman Street in Brooklyn after dark. DiGregorio and his men arrived first, but compromise was not on their minds. As soon as Bill Bonanno showed up, DiGregorio's men opened fire with shotguns and rifles. Bonanno and his men retaliated, shooting into the dark at their unseen assailants. Over 100 rounds were fired, and by some miracle no one died.
Joe Bonanno then offered the Commission a deal to end the violence. He would give up his claim to the family and retire to Arizona if the Commission would accept his son Bill and brother-in-law Frank Labruzzo as boss and underboss. The Commission saw right through his offer, knowing that Joe Bonanno would remain in control even if he didn't have the title. They came back with a counter offer: Bonanno could retire with his life, but the Commission would name the next boss-DiGregorio.
The war continued. Joe Bonanno resurfaced in May 1966 - 19 months after his alleged kidnapping - then quickly dropped out of sight again. The Commission grew impatient with DiGregorio's ineffective efforts to squelch the Bonanno loyalists, so they replaced him with someone they felt could do the job, Paul Sciacca. But Bonanno's men fought like guerillas. Three of Sciacca's men were mowed down by machine-gun fire inside a Queens restaurant. The fighting escalated, and each side lost five more men.
Finally in 1968 Joe Bonanno suffered a major heart attack. He flew to Arizona and informed the Commission that he was retiring, this time for good. The Commission was naturally wary of anything Bonanno did or said, but as time passed, the shootings diminished, and the torn family eventually accepted Sciacca as their leader. He was later succeeded by Natale Evola who was succeeded by Philip "Rusty" Rastelli.
Both Joe and Bill Bonanno wrote books about their Mafia experiences. Such public disclosures were serious violations of omerta, the Mafia code of silence and especially surprising coming from these self-proclaimed "men of honor." It's generally agreed that these tomes paint a picture of the way father and son wished things had been as opposed to way they actually were. The Bonannos also cooperated with author Gay Talese for his book about the crime family, Honor Thy Father.
Jerry Capeci in The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Mafia quotes FBI agent Bill Roemer who had many dealings with Bonanno in Arizona. Roemer called Bonanno "a constant whiner" who "did not live up to the 'tradition' he speaks about so much in his book.'"
In 2002 Joe Bonanno died of natural causes in Tucson. He was 97 years old.
Carmine "Lilo" Galante's image of himself might have surpassed even Joe Bonanno's. Of course, Galante was Bonanno's driver and later his underboss, so he probably heard a lot of self-aggrandizement from the boss, and the attitude apparently rubbed off. But while Bonanno at least publicly tried to take the high road, claiming to be the last "man of honor" in La Cosa Nostra in America, Galante had no problem getting down and dirty, and he seldom lost a fight.
Galante started his criminal career with a bang as a shooter for Vito Genovese, having murdered, among others, Italian journalist and Mussolini critic Carlo Tresca in 1943 on orders from Genovese as a favor to "Il Duce." Galante eventually found a place within the ranks of the Bonanno family. He was the kind of aggressive gangster Joe Bonanno needed to break into new rackets in new territories. In 1953 Bonanno put Galante in charge of his Montreal operations where Galante became a top earner for the family, extorting money from other criminals. According to journalist Jerry Capeci, being in Montreal at this time put Galante "right in the center of a main transit point for the so-called French Connection." Galante, who earned the nickname "the Cigar" because he was rarely seen without one in his mouth, got involved in heroin trafficking in a big way despite Joe Bonanno's proclamations that his family had nothing to do with narcotics. In 1962, Galante, now the underboss of the family, was convicted on narcotics charges and sentenced to 20 years in prison.