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On the morning of May 15, 1942, Charles Lucky Luciano was led into an interrogation room at Great Meadow

Prison in upstate New York.

As guards removed his shackles and walked out, he wondered what was going on.

The 45-year-old mafioso had been in jail for six years for running a prostitution ring.

The crime made it seem like Luciano was a common criminal, when in fact, he was an extraordinary one.

He'd moved to America from Sicily as a child.

As a teen, he went to work for New York City's Italian mafia and made his way up the ranks.

But Luciano soon felt the Capos in charge were past their prime.

They were bogged down by infighting and foolishly refused to work with the city's other crime syndicates.

Luciano had a new vision, so after building alliances with other young men in the Jewish and Irish mobs,

he had the mafia's old guard, murdered. By the 1930s, Luciano was running the famed five families

and presided over a gambling, extortion, and drug trafficking empire. But when he was arrested in

1936, he was sent to the maximum

security, Danamora prison, for a sentence of at least 30 years. Luciano still technically ran the

mob from the inside, but visitors were rare. He spent his time in a cold, lonely prison,

reading, writing, and contemplating his new life.

He began to accept his fate and gave up on the hope of parole, until something strange happened.

A few days ago, he was transferred to Great Meadow Prison with no explanation.

He was given a nicer cell with running water.

Now he sat, unshackled, in an interrogation room, listening as footsteps approached the door.

...