Luciano arranged for Bugsy Siegel, Samuel "Red" Levine, and two other Gangsters to go to Maranzano's offices on September 10, 1931, posing as accountants or tax men. Once inside his 9th floor office, in the New York Central Building, they disarmed Maranzano's guards. The four assassins then shot and stabbed Maranzano to death. As they fled down the stairs, they met Coll on his way upstairs for his appointment with Maranzano. They warned him that there had been a raid, and Coll fled, too.

However, Maranzano's scheming, his arrogant treatment of his subordinates, and his fondness for comparing his organization to the Roman Empire (he attempted to model the organization after Caesar's military chain of command) did not sit well with Luciano and his ambitious friends, like Vito Genovese, Frank Costello, and others. Indeed, Luciano came to believe that Maranzano was, in his own way, even more hidebound and power-hungry than Masseria had been. Despite his advocacy for modern methods of organization, including crews of Soldiers doing the bulk of a family's illegal work under the supervision of a caporegime, at heart Maranzano was a "Mustache Pete" — an old-school mafioso too steeped in Old World ways. For instance, he was opposed to Luciano's partnership with Jewish Gangsters such as Meyer Lansky and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel. In fact, Luciano and his colleagues had intended all along to bide their time before getting rid of Maranzano as well.