Philadelphia's Mafia and La Cosa Nostra history has long been buried beneath layers of political corruption, police collusion and an omerta which was practiced by anyone associated, even tangentially, with the underworld. Until now there has never been a history of what lay behind in Philadelphia's unspoken past. Lies-denials-cover-ups-all were used by local and state officials to hide the City of Brotherly Love's dirtiest secret of criminal connections. Before Bruno is the first scholarly study of the history of the Sicilian American Mafia and La Cosa Nostra in Philadelphia before 1959, the year when Angelo Bruno became boss of the local Family. Unlike other histories of true crime, there are many issues scrutinized in this book regarding past law enforcement and academic works which research has satisfactorily answered. Providing the strength to this never-before-told history are the Department of Justice's Federal Bureau of Investigation's reports, corroborated and correlated with the testimonies of Mafiosi, their relatives and associates to render a final truth, the first history of Philadelphia's Mafia.