Previously on Mafia.

Using bribery and violence, Al Capone had quickly taken control of Chicago's thriving bootlegging industry.

Capone senses that he's in the right place at the right time.

The Chicago is the perfect environment for a gangster on the rise to make a lot of money very quickly through prohibition.

But he's not the only supplier in town.

The North Side gang led by Bugs Moran had been bitter rivals with Capone's outfit for a long time.

Too long.

He thought he had to eliminate the Bugs Moran gang, so he could be, if you want to call it, the Boss of Bosses, no competition in Chicago.

They tried and failed to take out Al Capone himself.

And Capone, lover of the spotlight, had just made national headlines with an all-out massacre.

One that neither the law enforcement nor the other gangsters will stand for.

This is broad daylight. This is not in some secretive, you know, a farm field at midnight in the middle of nowhere.

This is downtown Chicago, middle of the day, and ruthless assassination in a very clever way, by the way.

This is Mafia.

While Capone was busy fighting with Moran for Chicago supremacy, the gangsters in New York had a different idea.

Lucky Luciano, Capone's counterpart, wanted to find a way of having all of the street gangs work together.

Luciano's idea was to put an end to the violent infighting and focus on the money and avoiding the law.

In the wake of the Valentine's Day massacre, Luciano and other New York mobsters planned a conference in Atlantic City.

Lana Guggenheim is an educator at the Museum of the American Gangster in New York.

So the Atlantic City conference of 1929 was essentially a gangster conference and the first

such of its time. It was in part Ross Dean's idea to help reduce cost and conflict among East Coast

gangs to have them sort of work things out. But it was also as much Johnny Torio's idea too.

...