Luca Brasi was a caporegime of the Corleone crime family. Brasi was known for his brutality, killing his abusive father with a two-by-four, throwing his neighbor off the roof, viciously killing two Chicago Outfit enforcers during the Olive Oil War in 1933, forcing the midwife of his girlfriend to throw their baby in a furnace, and killing Don Luciano Alioto in 1939. In 1945 he was assassinated by Virgil Sollozzo when Don Vito Corleone sent him to spy on him.
Biography[]
Luca Brasi was born to an Italian-American family in Rhode Island.the father wasfrom naples His father was abusive, and he frequently beat Luca and his mother. One time, his father forced his wife to have a miscarriage by stabbing her in the chest with a knife, killing the baby. Luca killed his father with a two-by-four after years of abuse, and also threw his neighbor Mr. Lowry off his roof after he found out that he impregnated Luca's mother.
During Prohibition, Luca Brasi became the leader of a gang of stickup artists who stole shipments from Giuseppe Mariposa and stashed them at a warehouse in The Bronx, where they sold their goods. Eventually, Brasi was recruited by Don Vito Corleone of the Corleone crime family and became a fearsome hitman. Although he was theoretically stronger than his boss, he was scared into being loyal, because Vito could have him killed if he ever betrayed him. Brasi had a relationship with prostitute Kelly O'Rourke, and he beat her many times, causing her to have a secret affair with Corleone consigliere Tom Hagen. When she died during childbirth, Luca had the midwife Filomena throw the baby into a furnace, not wanting to have children like himself (or possibly a child of mixed Irish and Italian race). That night he had an overdose of sleeping pills as the NYPD came to arrest him; this overdose left him with permanent brain damage. He tried to kill himself with a broken bottle while in prison, but he survived, and Don Corleone had him released from prison. Unfortunately, Luca's mother killed herself when she heard of his arrest.
In 1933, Brasi killed Benny Amato and Willie Russo, two Chicago Outfit hitmen sent to kill Don Corleone. They arrived at the train station, but Brasi brought them to a warehouse, where he put a towel in one man's mouth as he hacked the other to death with an axe; the other man swallowed the towel out of fear, killing him. In two weeks he killed six men who tried to kill Don Corleone at a festival, and these deaths ended the Olive Oil War between Corleone and Giuseppe Mariposa. During the Pacification of New York between 1934 and 1937, he helped in getting rid of the freelance bookmakers, Black Hand terrorists, some smaller gangs, and all but five or six families too strong to eliminate. He proceeded to kill Don Luciano Alioto when he tried to move into Corleone territory in 1939.
Brasi attended Don Corleone's daughter's wedding in 1945, and it was there that Don Corleone gave him the special task of rescuing Aldo Trapani (the son of the late Corleone associate Johnny Trapani, who had been a close friend of Brasi and Don Corleone before his murder in 1936) from the Bowery Gang, who abused him. Brasi killed one of the gangsters with a lead pipe and taught Trapani how to fight, beating the rest down. He gave Trapani his associate Carlo Lucci and told him to meet him at Grand Apartments. There, he taught him how to shoot, and had him extort Emilio's Butcher Shop. Later, he had Aldo drive him to a meeting with Virgil Sollozzo, whom he had been assigned to spy on. Brasi pretended to be upset with the Corleone family, and that he wanted to join the Tattaglia crime family instead. However, at the meeting with Sollozzo and Bruno Tattaglia, Bruno stabbed him in the hand with a knife and held the knife down as assassin Bartolo Bonetti garroted him to death. Brasi's bulletproof vest was sent with a fish to the Corleone Mall to inform the Corleones of his death.