Umberto Valenti

Umberto Valenti, aka The Ghost, (August 14th 1891-August 11th 1922) was a Mafia hitman for Salvatore D 'Aquila.

After immigrating to America in 1910, Valenti joined the D'Aquila crime family as an assassin, becoming his chief killer after assassinating his rival Fortunato Lomonte. However, after killing about 20 people, he fled to Sicily after running afoul of D'Aquila.

He returned in 1922, and made amends by murdering D'Aquila' s nemesis Vincenzo Terranova in a drive-by shooting. Soon afterwards, Valenti killed Terranova's underboss Silvia Taliagamba, and plotted to kill his ally Giuseppe Masseria. He first attempted to attack Masseria in the street and gun him down along with his bodyguards, however he and his men only managed to kill six bystanders before fleeing the scene. Valenti then ambushed Masseria when he was on his own and fired at him along with another man. Masseria fled, and was chased by Valenti and his henchman until he hid in a shop, where Valenti and the other man fired at Masseria but ran out of bullets. Valenti and the other man then fled, leaving Masseria unscathed, to a getaway car where they jumped on the running boards just before it drove away, with the others inside firing. The driver ploughed through a crowd of labourers while drying to evacuate Valenti, resulting in several people being killed or injured as Valenti's associates shot into the crowd to disperse them.

Forty-eight hours later, on the 11th of August, Valenti was walking down Second Avenue when he saw several of Masseria' s business affiliates waiting for him. Panicking, Valenti ran away, with Masseria' s men firing at him, wounding a bystander in the process. Valenti managed to leap onto the running boards of a nearby taxi as it departed, only to be shot in the back and killed by Lucky Luciano.