--- title: Boardwalk Empire Joe Masseria Real Historical Announcement description: TIME had the news before HBO did canonical: https://time.com/3275037/boardwalk-empire/ author: Eric Dodds article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-09-08T15:30:41.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:07:47.523Z article:section: History og:title: The real-life historical announcement of Boardwalk Empire's shocking surprise og:description: TIME had the news before HBO did og:url: https://time.com/3275037/boardwalk-empire/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The real-life historical announcement of Boardwalk Empire's shocking surprise twitter:description: TIME had the news before HBO did twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Read the Real 1931 Announcement of That Shocking Death on _Boardwalk Empire_ by [Eric Dodds](https://time.com/author/eric-dodds/) ## Eric Dodds Sep 8, 2014 3:30 PM UTC by [Eric Dodds](https://time.com/author/eric-dodds/) ## Eric Dodds Sep 8, 2014 3:30 PM UTC **The following post contains spoilers for the Sept. 7 episode of** **_Boardwalk Empire_** **.** If you’re a student of history (or reader of Wikipedia), you likely had an idea of what was in store for Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria when you saw that _Boardwalk Empire_ was skipping forward six years to 1931 for its fifth and final season, which premiered on Sunday. Here’s how TIME announced, on April 27, 1931, what _Boardwalk_ viewers now know:  From the April 27, 1931, issue of TIME The HBO drama wasted no time in arriving at the New York crime boss’s demise, having him clipped by Bugsy Siegel and another assassin under orders from Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky in the season’s very first episode. And because this is _Boardwalk Empire_, it’s a safe bet that this death of a real-world character will be followed by the deaths of fictional characters (and ultimately other real-world ones as well). [**_Read James Poniewozik’s review of the final season of_** **Boardwalk Empire** **_here on TIME.com_**](http://time.com/3270034/review-boardwalk-empire-final-season/) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3275037/boardwalk-empire/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3275037/boardwalk-empire/"},"headline":"Read the Real 1931 Announcement of That Shocking Death on Boardwalk Empire","datePublished":"2014-09-08T15:30:41.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:07:47.523Z","description":"TIME had the news before HBO did","url":"https://time.com/3275037/boardwalk-empire/","keywords":["Television","Death","Mafia"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Eric Dodds","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/eric-dodds/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3275037/boardwalk-empire/","name":"Read the Real 1931 Announcement of That Shocking Death on Boardwalk Empire"}}]}] ```