Thomas “Tommy” Eboli was born in Italy in 1911 and moved to New York City with his parents when he was a child. He became a U.S. citizen in 1960. Eboli grew up in Greenwich Village and knew Vito Genovese — the boss of the crime family that bore his name — from the neighborhood. By the 1930s, Eboli had become a personal bodyguard for Genovese, per “Manhattan Mafia Guide: Hits, Homes & Headquarters.”
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Eboli slowly moved up the ranks in the Genovese organization thanks to his dogged commitment to Vito and his lack of scruples when it came to murdering whomever his boss asked him to — perhaps as many as 20 people, according to “The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes.” By the time Vito Genovese went to federal prison for drug trafficking in 1959, Eboli had become the de facto head of the crime family sharing power with Gerardo Catena. Genovese still made the real decisions from his prison cell until his death from a heart attack a decade later. After Catena went to prison in 1970, Eboli became the top dog.
