Vito Genovese in the context of "Lucky Luciano"

The Genovese crime family (pronounced [dʒenoˈveːze, -eːse]), also sometimes referred to as the Westside, is an Italian American Mafia crime family and one of the "Five Families" that dominate organized crime activities in New York City and New Jersey as part of the American Mafia. The Genovese family has generally maintained a varying degree of influence over many of the smaller mob families outside New York, including ties with the Philadelphia, Cleveland, Patriarca, and Buffalo crime families.

The modern family was founded by Charles "Lucky" Luciano and was known as the Luciano crime family from 1931 to 1957, when Vito Genovese became boss. Genovese was head of the family during the McClellan hearings in 1963, which gave the Five Families their current names. Originally in control of the waterfront on the West Side of Manhattan as well as the docks and the Fulton Fish Market on the East River waterfront, the family was run between 1981 and 2005 by "The Oddfather", Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, who feigned insanity by shuffling unshaven through New York's Greenwich Village wearing a tattered bath robe and muttering to himself incoherently to avoid prosecution.

Vincent Louis Gigante (/dʒɪˈɡænti/ jig-AN-tee, Italian: [dʒiˈɡante]; March 29, 1928 – December 19, 2005), also known as "Chin", was an American mobster who was boss of the Genovese crime family in New York City from 1981 to 2005. Gigante started out as a professional boxer who fought in 25 matches between 1944 and 1947. He then started working as a Mafia enforcer for what was then the Luciano crime family, forerunner of the Genovese family. Gigante was one of five brothers. Three of them, Mario, Pasquale, and Ralph, followed him into the Mafia. Only one brother, Louis, stayed out of the crime family, instead becoming a Catholic priest. Gigante was the shooter in the failed assassination of longtime Luciano boss Frank Costello in 1957. In 1959, he was sentenced to seven years in prison for drug trafficking, and after sharing a prison cell with Costello's rival, Vito Genovese, Gigante became a caporegime overseeing his own crew of Genovese soldiers and associates based in Greenwich Village.

Gigante quickly rose to power during the 1960s and 1970s. In 1981 he became the family's boss, while Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno served as front boss during the first half of the 1980s. He also ordered the failed murder attempt of Gambino crime family boss John Gotti in 1986. With the arrest and conviction of Gotti and various Gambino family members in 1992, Gigante was recognized as the most powerful crime boss in the United States. For about 30 years, Gigante feigned insanity in an effort to throw law enforcement off his trail.