Albert Anastasia answered the phone.

“Yeah. Clean,” Lucky Luciano said. One word, then Lucky hung up. Albert knew what it meant. So did 40 other men across America who got similar calls that evening. It was September 10th, 1931.

Between 6:00 in the evening and 9:00 at night, phones rang in eight cities: New York, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Boston, New Orleans, Cleveland, Los Angeles. Different men answered, different voices spoke, but every call delivered the same word. Clean. By 6:00 the next morning, 40 Italian mobsters were dead.

These weren’t random killings. They were coordinated executions. The FBI would spend years trying to understand how one word could trigger 40 murders across eight cities in one night. They never figured it out, because they were looking for a complicated conspiracy when the truth was simpler.

Lucky Luciano had given one order, and in his world, one word was all it took. To understand what happened that night, you need to understand who was dying and why. In the summer of 1931, organized crime in America was at war with itself.

Not the kind of war you saw in the streets—the quiet kind, the dangerous kind, the kind where old men in expensive suits decided who lived and who died. The Italian mafia was split into two camps. The old guard, men in their 50s and 60s who’d come from Sicily, believed in the old ways. One boss rules everything. Everyone else bows down.

If you disrespect the boss, you die. If you question the boss, you die. The boss is God. They called themselves “mustache Petes” because they all wore the same old-fashioned Sicilian mustaches their grandfathers wore. They spoke Italian, ate Italian, married Italian, and they looked down on anyone who wasn’t purely Sicilian.

Men like Salvatore Maranzano, Joe Masseria before Lucky killed him, Gaspare Milazzo in Detroit, Stefano Magaddino in Buffalo. These were the dinosaurs. Powerful, yes, but stuck in the past.

And then there was the new generation. Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Frank Costello, Albert Anastasia. These were men in their 20s and 30s who’d grown up in America, who spoke English, who understood that crime was business, not tradition.

Lucky had a vision: organize crime like a corporation. Five families in New York, equal power. Disputes settled by votes, not bullets. Work with Jews, Irish, anyone who could make money. Forget the old Sicilian rules. This was America.

But the old guard hated this idea. To them, Lucky was a traitor, an American-born punk who didn’t respect tradition, who worked with Jews, who thought he could change a system that had worked for centuries. By September 1931, Lucky had already killed two of the biggest old guard bosses—Joe Masseria in April, Salvatore Maranzano just hours earlier on September 10th.

But there were still dozens more men who ran cities across America, who controlled territories, who would never accept Lucky’s commission system. Lucky knew what they’d do if he left them alive. They’d regroup, elect a new boss of all bosses, start the cycle again.

The war would never end. So Lucky made a decision that would change organized crime forever. He was going to kill them all in one night. Every old guard boss in America gone, eliminated, so there’d be no one left to oppose the new system.

It was the most ambitious assassination plan in American history. And Lucky pulled it off with a single word. The day started with murder.

September 10th, 1931, 10:15 in the morning. Four men dressed as police officers walked into Salvatore Maranzano’s office in Manhattan, in the Eagle Building on Park Avenue. Maranzano was the self-proclaimed boss of all bosses.

He’d taken the title after Lucky helped him kill Joe Masseria five months earlier. But Maranzano had made a fatal mistake. He’d started planning to kill Lucky, take total control, bring back the old Sicilian system.

Lucky found out about the plan, and Lucky moved first. When the fake cops arrived, Maranzano’s 15 bodyguards stepped aside. You don’t argue with police. Maranzano went into his office with the four men alone.

Six gunshots, four stab wounds. Salvatore Maranzano was dead before his bodyguards realized the “cops” were actually Lucky’s men. By 10:30 that morning, the most powerful mafia boss in America was gone. And Lucky Luciano was now the most dangerous man in the underworld.

But Lucky knew something nobody else had figured out yet. Maranzano’s death would create a power vacuum. All those old guard bosses in other cities would try to fill it, unless Lucky filled it first.

That afternoon, Lucky locked himself in his apartment with Meyer Lansky. They had a list—40 names—old guard bosses across America who would never accept the commission system, who’d fight, who’d cause problems. “We can’t kill them one by one,” Meyer said. “They’ll see it coming. They’ll go into hiding.”

“We don’t kill them one by one,” Lucky said. “We kill them all at once.” Meyer looked at the list. “Forty men in how many cities?” “Eight.” “That’s impossible. Even with all our people, we can’t coordinate that many hits simultaneously.”

Lucky smiled. “We can if we plan it right—and if we make it simple.” “How simple?” Meyer asked. “One word,” Lucky said. “Everyone gets the same order. Clean house. They know what it means. They know who to hit. We just give them the green light all at the same time.”

Meyer stared at Lucky. “You want to trust 40 different crews to execute 40 different hits in one night based on two words?” “I don’t want to,” Lucky said. “I have to. Because if we don’t do this now, we’ll be fighting this war for the next ten years.”

They spent the next six hours going through the list, assigning targets, making sure every old guard boss had a crew assigned to him, making sure everyone knew exactly who to hit and when. By 6:00 that evening, Lucky was ready.

He picked up the phone. Lucky dialed the first number. Albert Anastasia answered on the second ring. “Yeah. Clean,” Lucky said. He hung up before Albert could respond.

Albert understood. He’d been waiting for this call. He already knew his targets—three old guard bosses in Brooklyn. He’d have them dead before midnight. Lucky waited five minutes, made another call, this time to Chicago.

A different man answered. Lucky said the same word. “Clean.” Another hangup. Another understanding. For the next three hours, Lucky made calls.

Sometimes he made the call himself. Sometimes Meyer made it. Sometimes they had trusted intermediaries make the call. But the message was always the same—one word, clean. And everyone who received that call knew exactly what to do.

In Detroit, a crew leader named Joe Adamo got the call at 7:00 in the evening. He nodded to himself, put down the phone, looked at his three best men sitting across from him in the back room of a butcher shop. “It’s time,” Joe said. “Gaspare Milazzo. Tonight.”

The three men stood up, checked their guns, walked out into the Detroit night. In Philadelphia, the call came at 7:30. A man named Angelo Bruno got the order. He’d been waiting weeks for this.

His target was an old Sicilian boss named Salvatore Sabella, who controlled the South Philly rackets. Angelo already had the plan. Sabella ate dinner at the same restaurant every Thursday night. Same table, same time.

Angelo looked at his watch. Eight o’clock. Sabella would be at the restaurant in an hour. In Detroit, in New Orleans, in Cleveland, in Los Angeles, the same scene played out. Phone calls, one-word orders, men checking guns, men heading out into the night.

Nobody knew they were all moving at the same time. Each crew thought they were executing an independent hit, a local job. That was Lucky’s genius—keep everyone compartmentalized. Nobody knows the full picture except Lucky.

By 9:00 that night, 40 assassination crews across America were moving toward their targets. And the targets had no idea what was coming. The first hit happened at 9:17 in New York, at a restaurant in Little Italy.

An old guard boss named Manfredi Mineo was eating dinner with his underboss. Two men walked in, pulled out revolvers, shot both of them at the table, then walked out. The whole thing took 15 seconds.

Chicago, 9:23. A car pulled up next to another car at a stoplight. The driver rolled down his window, opened fire with a Thompson submachine gun. The target, an old Sicilian enforcer nicknamed Salvatore “Black Sam” Todaro, died before the light turned green.

Detroit, 9:45. Gaspare Milazzo walked out of his social club, got into his car, turned the key. The explosion could be heard for six blocks. The bomb was wired to the ignition. Milazzo’s body was found in three pieces.

Philadelphia, 10:12. Salvatore Sabella was eating veal at his favorite restaurant when two men walked up to his table. Sabella looked up. One of the men shot him twice in the face. Then they sat down at his table and finished his veal.

The hits continued through the night. Different methods, different locations, but perfect timing. Some were shot in their homes, some in restaurants, some in cars, some in alleys, some in brothels, some in churches.

By 6:00 in the morning, 40 old guard mobsters across America were dead. Not a single hit failed. Not a single crew was caught. Not a single target escaped.

It was the most successful coordinated assassination operation in American history. And Lucky Luciano slept through the whole thing.

September 11th, 6:47 in the morning. Police departments across America started getting calls—bodies discovered, murders reported, scenes secured. At first, nobody made the connection.

Each city thought it was a local mob dispute. New York assumed it was fallout from Maranzano’s death. Chicago thought it was Capone settling old scores. Detroit assumed it was a power struggle.

But by 9:00 that morning, the FBI started comparing notes. That’s when they realized what had happened. Forty Italian mobsters dead. All killed within the same nine-hour window. All old guard mafia bosses.

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover held an emergency meeting in Washington. Agents from eight field offices reported in. The numbers were staggering. “How did they coordinate this?” Hoover demanded. “Forty hits across eight cities. That requires planning, communication, organization. We should have intercepted something.”

But there was nothing. No phone records showing suspicious calls between cities. No witnesses seeing anyone meet to plan this. No evidence connecting any of the murders.

The FBI launched a massive investigation. They’d spend the next two years trying to figure out who orchestrated the night of long knives. They never did, because Lucky Luciano had thought of everything.

He’d kept the planning minimal, the communication simple, the execution decentralized. Each crew operated independently. Nobody knew about the other hits. Nobody could testify about the full operation.

And Lucky himself had the perfect alibi. His doorman confirmed Lucky had been home all night asleep, never left his apartment. The phone company records showed no outgoing calls from his apartment after 6:30 that evening.

The FBI suspected Lucky. Of course they did. But suspicion isn’t evidence, and Lucky had made sure there was no evidence to find. Three days after the massacre, Lucky called another meeting.

This time it wasn’t about killing. It was about building. He gathered the most powerful gangsters in America—five Italian bosses from New York, Jewish leaders like Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel, Irish representatives, Polish, Russian, everyone who mattered.

Lucky stood at the head of the table. “The old guard is gone,” he said. “All of them. Every boss who wanted to keep the old Sicilian system. Every man who thought one person should rule everything. They’re dead, and they’re not coming back.”

He looked around the room. “From now on, we operate differently. Five families in New York. Equal power. Disputes get settled by vote. Majority rules. No boss of all bosses. No dictator. We’re a commission—like a corporation, like a government.”

One of the bosses spoke up. “What if someone tries to take power? Declare themselves boss?” Lucky’s face went cold. “Then you’ll have another night like September 10th—and you won’t see it coming.”

The room went silent. Everyone had heard about the 40 deaths. Everyone understood the message. Nobody argued with Lucky. After that, the Commission was born, and it would run organized crime in America for the next 70 years.

All because of one night. Forty deaths and one word: clean. The night of long knives became legend in the underworld. Everyone knew it happened. Everyone knew Lucky was behind it.

But nobody could prove it. The FBI investigated for decades. They interviewed witnesses, followed leads, built theories, but they never cracked the case.

In 1951, Senator Estes Kefauver held televised hearings on organized crime. Lucky Luciano was mentioned repeatedly. They called him the architect of the modern mafia, the man who transformed organized crime from chaos into structure.

But when they asked witnesses about the night of long knives, everyone gave the same answer. “I don’t know nothing about that.” The mob’s code of silence held, even 20 years later.

Lucky himself never confirmed it, never denied it. When reporters asked him about September 10th, 1931, Lucky would just smile. “A lot of people died that night,” he’d say. “But I was home sleeping. Ask my doorman.” And that was all he’d ever say.

The truth is, Lucky Luciano orchestrated one of the greatest mass assassinations in American history with nothing more than a list of names, a series of phone calls, and two words: clean house. Forty men dead, eight cities, one night, perfect coordination.

And the man who made it happen was asleep by 10:00 that evening. That’s not just power. That’s genius. That’s what happens when you’re three steps ahead of everyone.

When you understand that the most effective plans are the simplest ones. When you know you don’t need complicated strategies—you just need the right people, the right order, and the right word.

Lucky proved something that night that every gangster after him would remember. You don’t need to be everywhere. You don’t need to pull every trigger. You don’t need to micromanage.

You just need to give one order—and make sure everyone knows what happens if they don’t follow it.