Victor Stracci (1890-1955) was the don of the Stracci crime family of New Jersey and Staten Island. Stracci led the second-weakest of the Five Families (behind the Tattaglia crime family), and his family was nearly destroyed in the "Five Families War", during which he was assassinated by the Corleone crime family.
Biography[]
Victor Stracci was born in Sicily in 1890, and he immigrated to the United States at a young age. Stracci was involved with crime in New York City during the 1920s and 1930s, and he soon built a criminal organization of his own, the Stracci crime family. His family evolved out of the hauling company that his family had established, and his family's main focus was on legitimate businesses in New Jersey and Staten Island. He held traditionalist Catholic views, seeing prostitution as immoral; his family was also known to attack rival families without provocation.
Stracci lived in a compound on the Garden Parkway Viaduct, near Hoboken, New Jersey, and the majority of his family's businesses were in North Jersey. By the 1940s, the Straccis were slightly stronger than the Tattaglia crime family, but weaker than the Cuneos and the Barzinis. In 1945, he embraced Don Emilio Barzini's scheme to unite against the Corleone crime family and force them into the heroin trade, which would lead to the Corleones losing their political support. During the "Five Families War" of 1946-1955, the Straccis were heavily weakened by the actions of the Corleone crime family, whose enforcer Aldo Trapani took out the majority of their fronts and rackets and murdered their top made men. Stracci was present at the sitdown at the Hotel Alioto, where the Five Families ended their fighting, and he was dormant while the Barzinis and Tattaglias continued to chip away at the Corleone territories.
Assassination[]
Clemenza shooting Stracci
Following the death of Don Vito Corleone in 1955, his son and successor, Michael Corleone, plotted to end the Five Families War by assassinating the heads of the rival families. Stracci headed to a meeting at a hotel with a bodyguard, and Corleone caporegime Peter Clemenza was sent to assassinate him there. Stracci and his bodyguard took an elevator to the meeting, and Clemenza waited to enter the elevator wih a flower case. When the doors opened, Clemenza revealed a shotgun concealed in the flower case and blasted both Stracci and his bodyguard, killing them both.