Joseph Zaluchi
Biographical Information
Gender	Male
Born	ca. 1892
Affiliation	Zaluchi
Title(s)	Don

"I also don't believe in drugs. For years I paid my people extra so they wouldn't do that kind of business. Somebody comes to them and says, "I have powders; if you put up three, four thousand dollar investment -- we can make fifty thousand distributing." So they can't resist. I want to control it as a business, to keep it respectable. I don't want it near schools -- I don't want it sold to children! That's an infamia. In my city, we would keep the traffic in the dark people -- the colored. They're animals anyway, so let them lose their souls."

―Giuseppe Zaluchi^[src]

Giuseppe "Joe Z" Zaluchi was the head of Detroit's Zaluchi family.

BiographyEdit

Growing up poor in Sicily, he and his family went to United States to have a better life. They moved to Detroit in the early 1900s. It was there that Zaluchi made his fortune. He settled there and started a family. He owned a business, and started paying protection to the feared Purple Gang. After he saw the chaos the Gang were causing in Detroit, he took matters into his own hands. He went to New York to negotiate with a rising Vito Corleone. Vito himself pulled some strings to get some people in Detroit to help Zaluchi.

In 1930, after having more political influence, men, and allies, Zaluchi wiped out the Purple Gang. After a year of fighting, in 1931, Zaluchi became the don of Detroit. Corleone sent him alcohol from Canada, and Zaluchi made a big profit. After that, he started extending his power in Detroit. They owned one of the horse-racing tracks in Detroit. He also owned a good part of the gambling in Detroit. Under him, there were rarely any murders in Detroit.

The MediatorEdit

During the Five Families war of the 1940s, he was an ally of the Corleone family, speaking out against the drug trade that was encouraged by Phillip Tattaglia. He served as sort of a mediator in the meeting of the Five Families. In 1955, a satchel was sent to him and he used it to sabotage the flight of Anthony Molinari, Frank Falcone, and Nick Geraci. However he was never connected to this incident.

Zaluchi and the CorleonesEdit

Zaluchi remained a strong ally to the Corleone family through his entire life, even allowing his daughter Susan to marry Ray Clemenza, which furthered the ties between the two families, as well as helping Fredo Corleone escape a set-up by Louie Russo intended to kill Fredo and humiliate his family. At this time, his other daughter married the scion of an automobile company.

He also supported Michael Corleone against Carlo Tramonti, who was attempting to gain the Commission's approval on the killing of President James Shea. Tramonti proceeded anyway, and he was killed by either by the CIA or one of the families.

Zaluchi died of natural causes presumably somewhere in the 1970s.

Personality and traitsEdit

Zaluchi was described as a moon-faced, amiable-looking man who had a booming American voice with only the slightest trace of an accent. He was conservatively dressed, very businessman, and with a hearty goodwill to match. Zaluchi, like Vito Corleone, was sophisticated and traditional and initially disapproved of traffic in drugs. He was however, a man of his time, and had little concern for the lives of negroes, reasoning that drug trafficking could be kept respectable by limiting it to Black neighborhoods only.

Real life sourcesEdit

Joseph Zaluchi could possibly be based on gangster Joseph Zerilli, who was the boss of Detroit and shares a similar name and was also known as "Joe Z".