Gangster 'Joe Bananas' dead at 97

Joseph Bonanno, the notorious gangster known as "Joe Bananas", who ran one of the most powerful Mafia groups in the 1950s and 1960s, has died, aged 97.

Bonanno, who retired to Arizona in 1968, died of heart failure. At the height of his power, he directed one of the five original crime families in New York City and was a member of "the Commission," an organised crime board of directors.

Bonanno fell from grace during the 1960s, reputedly for trying to become the boss of bosses in what came to be known as "the Banana War."

His crime family still bears his name, though he maintained in 1983 that "I'm not a Father any more and there is no Bonanno Family any more".