#50: History of the Pittsburgh Mob (Part Five): The Monastero-Pangallo War

In this episode, we continue our History of the Pittsburgh Mob series with the Monastero-Pangallo War—a bloody struggle that begins with Stefano and Sam Monastero at the height of their power and ends with nearly every major figure at the center of Pittsburgh’s underworld dead.

By the mid-1920s, the Monastero brothers have built one of the most powerful criminal organizations in western Pennsylvania. Behind the legitimate Pittsburgh Fruit Exchange stands a sprawling bootlegging operation supported by associates, gunmen, and Mafia members. Among the most important are two very different racketeers: flamboyant Sicilian bootlegger Luigi “The Big Gorilla” Lamendola and the quieter Calabrian Giuseppe “Joe” Pangallo.

Exactly how these men fit together remains one of the mysteries at the heart of the story. Some accounts describe Lamendola and Pangallo as Monastero lieutenants; others suggest Pangallo was an independent power increasingly at odds with both men. When Lamendola is murdered outside his Chatham Street headquarters in 1927, an even larger question emerges: does his death cause the break between Pangallo and the Monasteros—or is Lamendola himself a casualty of a feud already underway?

Whatever the answer, Pangallo soon becomes one of Pittsburgh’s most hunted gangsters.

Someone plants dynamite beneath his automobile. Gunmen apparently hunt for him at his shoe-repair shop. Four men ambush him in the Hill District with shotguns and a rifle, hitting Pangallo multiple times as he returns fire. Then they try again. Somehow, Joe Pangallo keeps surviving.

Meanwhile, the Monastero organization comes under attack from another direction. The massive federal Pittsburgh Rum Ring investigation sweeps Steve into a conspiracy case involving 167 defendants, more than 1,100 grand-jury witnesses, bootleggers, politicians, and members of the Pittsburgh Police Department.

Then the violence begins cutting into Steve’s organization. His longtime business partner and alleged Mafia underboss Nicasio “Nick” Landolina is murdered outside his Mayflower Street home. Two months later, his relative Tony Landolina is attacked on Penn Avenue. The episode also follows the extraordinary bombing of Pittsburgh attorney Morris Curran as violence surrounds the Rum Ring prosecution.

By 1929, the federal case is beginning to unravel and Steve Monastero returns to Pittsburgh. But outside St. John’s Hospital, armed men are already waiting inside a curtained sedan.

When Steve and Sam arrive, the trap is sprung.

Big Steve Monastero is murdered.

Police immediately focus on Pangallo. The investigation finally brings his feud with Steve into the open. Pangallo admits they had once been allies—but when detectives ask why their friendship ended, he dismisses years of dynamite, gunfire, and murder with an extraordinary answer:

“Oh, for nothing.”

Despite police confidence, they cannot prove Pangallo killed Steve. No witness places him at the scene. No physical evidence connects him to the murder. Pangallo produces an alibi, and once again, Joe “The Ghost” Pangallo walks away.

Then, after surviving dynamite, shotguns, rifles, repeated assassination attempts, and years of gangland warfare, Pangallo meets an ending almost nobody could have predicted:

He dies peacefully at home from pneumonia.

But the story still isn’t over.

Only weeks later, on March 18, 1930, Sam Monastero—now leading what remains of the organization he built with his brother—is murdered.

In less than three years, Lamendola, Pangallo, Nicasio Landolina, Steve Monastero, and Sam Monastero are all dead. Yet the Pittsburgh Mafia survives. Their deaths simply create a vacuum—and Giuseppe Siragusa, John Bazzano, and the Volpe brothers are already waiting to fill it.

This is the story of the Monastero-Pangallo War, the collapse of the Monastero organization, and the end of an era in the history of the Pittsburgh Mafia.