Tulsa King: Revisiting the shocking story of the real mob family that inspired the Paramount crime drama

When Tulsa King arrived on Paramount+, audiences met Dwight “The General” Manfredi, a New York capo, imagined rather than remembered, played by Sylvester Stallone. He stepped out of a twenty-five-year prison sentence and landed in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He is not someone history recorded, yet the bones of his story lean on real events. The echo comes from the Inzerillo clan, once considered Palermo’s mafia aristocracy, whose name carried weight until the early 1980s.

That decade, Salvatore Riina, feared, ruthless, and called “The Beast,” tore through rivals in a violent campaign to seize absolute control of the Sicilian underworld. His war left the Inzerillos nearly erased. What remained of them were offered survival only on the condition that they vanish, never to set foot in Sicily again.

Those exiles found shelter in New York, backed by their allies in the Gambino family. Their power was muted, but their safety was assured while Riina ruled unchecked. The television series reshapes this history: the exile of the Inzerillos becomes the banishment of Dwight, but instead of disappearing, he thrives. By turning forced exile into the foundation of a new empire, Tulsa King threads its fiction directly through the shadow of that real mafia war.

How Tulsa King echoes the exile of Sicily’s Inzerillo Mafia

The heart of Tulsa King’s inspiration comes from the idea of banishment within the mafia world, something rarely shown on screen but deeply rooted in history. In the series, Dwight is not killed or permanently sidelined; instead, he is forced to relocate and run operations in a new territory far from New York.

That mirrors what happened to the Inzerillo family during the violent rise of Salvatore Riina in the 1980s. Riina’s faction, the Corleonesi, carried out a campaign that left thousands dead in Sicily, including high-ranking members of rival families. The Inzerillos lost their leader, and the survivors were told they could escape with their lives only if they left Sicily forever.

This exile was not symbolic. Riina made it clear that returning to Palermo would mean execution. The family scattered, with many ending up in New York under the protection of the Gambino crime family.

Unlike Dwight, they did not build empires in exile. Their role became quiet and secondary, a necessary trade-off to avoid further bloodshed. This contrast highlights how Tulsa King takes the framework of history but flips the outcome. Dwight thrives in Tulsa, quickly establishing himself as a power player, something the Inzerillos never achieved after their forced departure.

Chickie Invernizzi’s role in Tulsa King also draws from these dynamics. He mirrors Riina’s ruthless streak but on a smaller, more personal scale. Chickie banishes Dwight less as a mercy and more as a calculated way to push him aside. Unlike Riina, Chickie does not wield the same uncontested authority, which allows Dwight opportunities that the Inzerillos never had. The show exaggerates this difference, but the echoes of real history give Dwight’s struggle weight.

Over time, the Inzerillos did attempt a return. In the 2000s, figures like Tommaso and Francesco Inzerillo went back to Palermo and tried to reestablish influence. Yet even then, their power was limited, and in 2019, a major joint raid between American and Italian authorities saw 15 members of both the Inzerillo and Gambino families arrested.

That crackdown underscores how different their reality was compared to Dwight’s fictional rise. Where Dwight grows stronger with distance, the Inzerillos faced tighter restrictions and eventual collapse when they resurfaced.

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