Showing posts with label Outfit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Outfit. Show all posts

14 June 2021

Spilotro bros killed by underworld colleagues

On this date in 1986...

Michael and Anthony Spilotro
Michael and Anthony Spilotro

Brothers Anthony "the Ant" Spilotro, forty-eight, and Michael Spilotro, forty-one, were murdered by underworld colleagues in the basement of a Bensenville, Illinois, home on Saturday, June 14, 1986. The brothers' remains were discovered buried in an Indiana cornfield nine days later.

Nicholas Calabrese, an Outfit member who later turned informant, told authorities that the Spilotros were called to a June 14 mid-afternoon meeting with Chicago bosses. The brothers left Michael's Oak Park, Illinois, townhouse (1102 S. Maple Avenue) at about two o'clock and traveled in Michael's 1986 Lincoln Continental to their appointment. Reports indicate they were met by James Marcello, who brought them to the basement in Bensenville, a suburban DuPage County village adjacent to O'Hare International Airport.

The pretext for the meeting reportedly was the promotion of Michael Spilotro from Outfit associate to full member. The brothers had schemed against Outfit bosses and were apprehensive about the meeting. Michael told his wife if he wasn't back home by nine o'clock that night, "it was no good." But they went to their appointment unarmed.

Nicholas Calabrese

When the brothers arrived, they were attacked by Nicholas Calabrese and other mobsters. Years later, Calabrese recalled that James LaPietra, John Fecarotta, John "No Nose" DiFronzo, Sam "Wings" Carlisi, Louie "the Mooch" Eboli, James Marcello, Louis Marino, Joseph Ferriola and Ernest "Rocky" Infelise were present at that time. Calabrese asserted that he tackled Michael Spilotro and held his legs, while others beat and strangled him. Anthony Spilotro made a last request: for a moment to say a prayer. No one responded to his plea, and he was mercilessly beaten until he was dead.

Fecarotta and others were responsible for disposing of the brothers' remains. They drove the bodies about seventy-five miles southeast of Bensenville (sixty miles south of Chicago) to the outskirts of Enos, in Newton County, Indiana. There, the brothers' bodies, stripped down to their underwear, were buried on top of each other in a shallow grave in a recently planted corn field.

When Michael did not return home that night, his wife called police to report him missing. On the sixteenth, the Lincoln Continental was located at a Schiller Park motel near O'Hare. There was no indication that any struggle or violence had occurred within the car, and its doors were found locked. The next day, federal agents joined the search, as a fugitive arrest warrant was issued by a U.S. magistrate in Las Vegas for Anthony Spilotro. "The Ant" had been due to appear in a Las Vegas court on the seventeenth in preparation for a retrial on a burglary ring case.

Farmer Michael Kinz discovered a patch of freshly turned earth within his corn field at the Willow Slough wildlife preserve on June 23. He first thought that a poacher had covered up the carcass of a deer killed out of season. Kinz contacted Dick Hudson of the Indiana Division of Fish and Wildlife, and they began digging. They discovered the human remains about three feet down. The Newton County Sheriff's Department was summoned.

Law enforcement reportedly identified the bodies using dental records. Autopsies on June 24 revealed that the Spilotros died of blunt force trauma to head, neck and chest, which the medical examiner attributed to punches and kicks, and asphyxiation due to hemorrhage. (The listing of asphyxiation as a cause of death prompted some in the news media to incorrectly conclude that the brothers had been buried alive. The medical examiner could not precisely relate the time of death to the time of burial but noted that asphyxiation was caused by the lungs filling with blood.) Toxicology reports indicated that they had consumed alcohol shortly before their deaths, giving rise to the speculation that they may have had drinks with the men who killed them.

On June 26, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago determined that the brothers should be denied church funeral services. That decision was made after the Rev. Thomas Paprocki, vice chancellor of the archdiocese, reviewed criminal information supplied by an undisclosed source. Father Paprocki indicated that the church refused to grant funerals to crime figures in order to avoid public scandal. But the denial itself turned into a scandal, as many in Chicago protested it and called attention to the church's willingness in the past to accept large financial contributions from Michael Spilotro. (Father Paprocki argued that cash contributions from known crime figures were sometimes rejected by the church and that donations generally did not result in public scandal as they were made privately.)

A service was conducted the next morning at the non-denominational Salerno Galewood Chapel funeral home on North Harlem Avenue. Numerous floral offerings filled the chapel and surrounded the two bronze coffins. The Rev. John Fearon of St. Bernardine's Roman Catholic Church in Forest Park, of which Michael was a member, delivered a homily. About 300 people attended the service. The chapel was closed to the press, but observers noted the presence of Anthony Spilotro's Vegas lieutenant Herbert Blitzstein and actor Robert Conrad. Following the service, the Spilotro brothers were buried at Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.

Background

The motives for the Spilotro murders were fairly well understood in 1986 and became more clear with the passage of time. As soon as their bodies were found, former FBI Special Agent William Roemer told the press, "[Anthony] Spilotro wasn't doing his job in Las Vegas. He maintained too high a profile there... He was under the glare of the harshest spotlight."

Anthony Spilotro

Anthony Spilotro, a "made" member of the Chicago Outfit since 1963, mismanaged Outfit affairs in Las Vegas and drew excessive attention upon himself, while attempting to enhance his own wealth and power. Rather than focus on quietly maintaining order and ensuring a lucrative and smoothly run skim operation, Spilotro insisted on engaging in more conventional and order-threatening rackets, such as extortion, burglary, loan sharking. His obvious criminal activity got him banned from Vegas casinos. His violent tendencies - he was linked with a number of murders but never convicted - caused some of his Vegas underlings, including Frank Cullotta, to seek protection from federal agents and become witnesses against Spilotro and Chicago underworld bosses. Outfit leader Joseph "Doves" Aiuppa was convicted and sentenced to prison in connection with skim operations, in large part because of scrutiny triggered by Spilotro. Reportedly, "the Ant's" fate was sealed when Aiuppa learned that Spilotro was having an affair with the wife of Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal.

An accomplished and innovative gambler, Rosenthal was responsible for managing Outfit investments in the Stardust and other Las Vegas casinos and maximizing the underworld's illegal "skim" siphoned off pretax casino income. Spilotro endangered important underworld relationships through the affair with Rosenthal's wife, and reportedly went so far as to plot the murder of Rosenthal himself. (Rosenthal also became a government informant, though his role, hidden by the codename "Achilles," was not exposed until after his 2008 death.) Spilotro and Rosenthal had been close friends in Chicago - "Lefty" reportedly once talked Fiore "Fifi" Buccieri out of murdering Spilotro - but their relationship quickly soured after their early 1970s arrival in Las Vegas.

In the 1980s, Spilotro became a favorite target for prosecutors. He faced charges of directing a burglary ring in 1980-1981. Prosecutions relating to his "Hole in the Wall Gang" continued for years. He was due to be retried on the matter in Nevada on the same day his body was discovered in the corn field. A 1986 prosecution for racketeering ended in an April 8, 1986, mistrial, but more charges loomed. He faced federal trial in Kansas City, Missouri, in connection with casino skimming operations and another federal case in Las Vegas, relating to the 1979 murder of a police informant. Before the end of April, a federal grand jury in Chicago indicted Michael Spilotro, owner of Hoagies restaurant in Chicago, for extortion.

Anthony Spilotro

'Family Secrets'

Outfit bosses were brought to trial for the Spilotro killings and many other offenses in the "Family Secrets" case of 2007, which resulted in plea deals and guilty verdicts. Turncoat Nicholas Calabrese testified for five days. While Calabrese listed the mobsters present at the time of the Spilotros' murders, he could not say who specifically was responsible for the fatal beatings given to the brothers. He testified that he, with help from Louie Eboli, was holding down Michael Spilotro and had his back toward Anthony Spilotro.

Though the Calabrese account of the killings included John "No Nose" DiFronzo, DiFronzo was not charged in the case.

Five of the original fourteen Family Secrets defendants remained at the close of the trial. The others had been removed through plea deals. After the ten-week trial, jurors deliberated for four days before finding the defendants - Frank "the Breeze" Calabrese, Sr. (brother of government witness Nicholas Calabrese), Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo, James Marcello, Paul "the Indian" Schiro and Anthony "Twan" Doyle - guilty on all counts on September 10, 2007.

The jury separately considered the issue of whether Marcello, Frank Calabrese, Lombardo and Schiro used murder to advance the interests of their criminal conspiracy. Eighteen murders and one attempted murder had been charged against the defendants. On September 27, the jury reported that Marcello, Calabrese and Lombardo were guilty of racketeering murders. (The panel deadlocked on the charge against Schiro.) Marcello specifically was convicted of participating in the killings of the Spilotro brothers, as well as in the 1981 beating death of Nicholas D'Andrea.

Government witness Nicholas Calabrese was sentenced March 26, 2009, to serve a term of twelve years and four months in prison. He admitted involvement in a number of mob murders, including the killing of the Spilotro brothers.


Sources:

  • "14 defendants indicted for alleged organized crime activities...," press release of the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, U.S. Department of Justice, April 25, 2005.
  • Anthony Spilotro Certificate of Death, Indiana State Board of Health, signed by coroner on July 25, 1985.
  • Cawley, Janet, "Spilotro a 'nice boy' who grew up tough," Chicago Tribune, March 13, 1983, p. B1.
  • Chicago Tribune, "Did reputed mob brothers run or were they killed?" Elyria OH Chronicle-Telegram, June 19, 1986, p. B2.
  • Dwyer, Bill, "Details of Spilotro murders revealed in mob trial," Oak Park Journal, oakpark.com, Aug. 14, 2007, updated Feb. 11, 2021.
  • Goudie, Chuck, "The last family secret: 30 years after the Spilotro hit," ABC-7 Chicago, abc7chicago.com, June 24, 2016.
  • Hidlay, William C., "Mourners weep at funeral for Spilotro brothers," Associated Press (AP), apnews.com, June 27, 1986.
  • Houston, Jack, "Secrets led to Spilotro rites denial," Chicago Tribune, June 27, 1986.
  • Hunt, Thomas, "Family Secrets" coverage, Mob-News, mob-news.blogspot.com, 2007-2009.
  • Hunt, Thomas, "Outfit boss DiFronzo fought the law, and the law lost," The American Mafia, mafiahistory.us, 2018-2021.
  • Koziol, Ronald, and Edward Baumann, "Spilotros found beaten to death," Chicago Tribune, June 25, 1986.
  • Koziol, Ronald, and John O'Brien," "Spilotros may have had drinks with killers," Chicago Tribune, July 25, 1986.
  • Manning, Mary, "Frank 'Lefty' Rosenthal dies at age 79," Las Vegas Sun, lasvegassun.com, Oct. 14, 2008.
  • Michael Spilotro Certificate of Death, Indiana State Board of Health, signed by coroner on July 25, 1985.
  • Schumacker, Geoff, "Tony Spilotro's last act," Nevada Public Radio Desert Companion, May 23, 2016.
  • Valin, Edmond, "'Lefty' Rosenthal was high-level FBI source into activities of Chicago Outfit," The American Mafia, mafiahistory.us, 2018.

 

27 May 2020

Heart, lung ailments take 'Joe Batters'

Longtime Outfit boss started as Capone bodyguard

On this date in 1992...



Longtime Chicago Outfit boss Anthony Accardo succumbed on May 27, 1992, to lung and heart ailments at the age of eighty-six.

The former underworld leader had just returned to the Chicago area (he spent summers in the Barrington Hills home of son-in-law Ernest Kumerow) from his winter home in Palm Springs, California, when on Thursday, May 14, he was admitted to St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital Center. He died there at 7:36 p.m. on Wednesday, the twenty-seventh. A nursing supervisor told the press that the causes of death were congestive heart failure, acute respiratory failure, pneumonia and chronic obstructive pulmorary disease.

Funeral cortege. (Chicago Tribune)

Accardo was given a private funeral service two days later at the Montclair-Lucania Funeral Home, 6901 W. Belmont Avenue in Chicago. A Catholic priest was observed entering the funeral home through a rear entrance. Accardo's send-off was far more modest than the funerals of many of his underworld contemporaries. Police and press noted no gangland leaders in attendance. Just two floral offerings were seen - "two sprays of yellow and pink roses inside a slate gray hearse," reported the Chicago Tribune. Accardo was laid to rest at the Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.

A life in Chicago crime
Accardo c.1930
Accardo was born in Chicago on April 28, 1906. His parents, Francesco and Maria Tillotta Accardo, were Sicilian immigrants, originally from Castelvetrano, who settled around 1904 on Gault Court in Chicago. His birth name was reportedly Anthony Leonardo Accardo, but later he was known as Anthony Joseph Accardo. Over time, he acquired the nicknames, "Joe Batters," "Joe B." and "Big Tuna."

According to the press, he was a full-time hoodlum by the age of sixteen. In the late 1920s, he served as an enforcer and bodyguard for Chicago underworld boss Al Capone. Accardo was largely able to avoid law enforcement notice until the Capone-orchestrated St. Valentine's Day Massacre intensified the scrutiny.

On February 1, 1930, Accardo was arrested along with "Machine Gun Jack" McGurn (Gibaldi) following the murder of informant Julius Rosenheim. Rosenheim was walking near his home after breakfast that morning, when an automobile pulled up to him and two men got out of it. The men drew handguns and fired five bullets into Roseheim's head, then returned to their car and sped away. Shortly after that, police detectives William Drury and John Howe spotted Accardo and McGurn riding in a taxicab at Dearborn and Harrison Streets and stopped them. They found both men illegally carrying firearms. McGurn had a loaded .45-calibre automatic pistol, and Accardo had a .32-calibre revolver.


Just six months later, Accardo and Sam "Golf Bag" Hunt were named as suspects in the murder of Chicago vice racketeer Jack Zuta. Zuta was killed at a Wisconsin resort hotel. The descriptions of two of his killers matched Accardo and Hunt. Authorities speculated that Zuta was murdered because he knew of Capone connections to the June 9 murder of Chicago Tribune reporter Alfred "Jake" Lingle.

Accardo was again arrested in May 2, 1931, police raids that were part of an investigation into the supposed murder of brothel keeper Mike Heitler. Police believed that a charred body found in smoldering ruins near Barrington, Illinois, was Heitler. The raids were conducted at known Capone headquarters and business enterprises. Accardo and three other men were grabbed at the Club Floridian, 674 West Madison Street. Other raids took place at the Lexington Hotel at Michigan Avenue and Twenty-second Street and at the Western Hotel in Cicero.

At the end of July 1931, the Chicago Crime Commission designated Accardo a "public enemy," adding him and twenty-seven other area hoodlums (including Charles Fischetti, Sam Hunt and Claude Maddox), to a list that had grown to fifty-six men. A photo of Accardo, then about twenty-five, was printed in the newspaper, along with photos of dozens of other crime figures.

Despite the increased attention, Accardo was able to avoid criminal conviction.

After Capone
Accardo's mentor, Capone, was sent off to prison for tax violations the following spring. Over the next decade, Accardo moved into positions of increasing importance within the Chicago Outfit. By the 1940s, he was considered one of the Outfit's top bosses, along with Frank Nitti, Paul Ricca (Felice DeLucia), Louis Campagna and Charles Gioe.

In 1943, the Outfit leadership was decimated by exposure of an extortion racket conducted against the Hollywood movie industry. As indictments were returned against those implicated in the racket, Nitti committed suicide. Near the end of the year, a federal jury returned guilty verdicts against Ricca, Campagna, Gioe, Johnny Rosselli (Filippo Sacco), Philip D'Andrea and Francis Maritote. They were sent to prison for ten-year terms.

With other bosses confined to federal prison, Accardo emerged as the single most powerful figure in Chicago organized crime. (Authorities took note of his visits to the imprisoned Ricca.) It appeared that the role weighed heavy on him, and in the 1950s he stepped away from day-to-day management, allowing Sam Giancana to serve as Outfit boss. Accardo continued in an advisory capacity. The FBI learned that Accardo and Giancana were regularly seen together outside of Chicago in the period between 1950 and 1956. They were spotted at meetings in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Miami Beach.

In 1957, the year of the Apalachin, New York, convention, the Bureau learned that Accardo had turned over to Giancana his role as Chicago's representative to the Commission, the U.S. Mafia's supreme arbitration panel.

The following summer, the Senate's McClellan Committee accused Accardo of frivolously invoking the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering its questions. Accardo declined to answer basic questions about his birthplace and employment as well as more probing questions about his underworld associates and alleged involvement in mob murders. On August 18, 1958, the United States Senate unanimously held Accardo and a dozen other witnesses, who appeared before the McClellan Committee, in contempt of Congress. The Senate recommended that the Justice Department prosecute the witnesses. Along with Accardo on the list cited for contempt were Jack Cerone, Sam Battaglia, Marshall Caifano, Joseph Aiuppa and Ross Prio of Chicago and Pete Licavoli of Detroit.

Decline
Accardo was charged with federal tax fraud in April 1960, and that case came closest to putting the crime boss behind bars.

The government accused him of lying about business expense deductions for the years 1956, 1957 and 1958. He was convicted on all three counts in November 1960 and was sentenced to six years in prison. However, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found numerous errors in the case and in January 1962 ordered a new trial. Accardo was then acquitted of the tax charges in October 1962.

Giancana's mid-1960s problems with the law and flight from the U.S., pulled apparently reluctant Accardo and Paul Ricca out of their retirements for a time. The aging Accardo seemed to guide the Outfit through a government investigation of Las Vegas casino skimming operations and the sudden reappearance and 1975 murder of ex-boss Giancana.

Accardo's health became a major issue for him the 1980s. In 1984, he visited the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for treatment of heart and lung conditions. Shortly after returning home to Chicago, he became dizzy and suffered a head injury during a fall. His injury required a hospital stay. Despite his declining health, some believe he continued to advise Outfit bosses until his last days.

Just when his last days occurred seems to be a matter of some disagreement. While contemporary news sources and biographer William F. Roemer, Jr., clearly place his death on Wednesday, May 27, 1992, as of this writing a number of online sources (including Wikipedia and Find A Grave) insist that Accardo's death occurred five days earlier, on May 22 (a Friday). This is made more curious by the fact that a source cited for the Wikipedia death date is a May 29, 1992, Hartford Courant (Associated Press) article that states death occurred the previous Wednesday.
 

Sources:

  • "28 more public enemies named by crime board," Chicago Daily Tribune, Aug. 1, 1931, p. 5.
  • Cohen, Jerry, "U.S. grand jury summons two Mafia chieftains," Los Angeles Times, July 4, 1970, p. 19.
  • Conroy, L.N., "Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly, Committee on the Judiciary, Estes Kefauver Chairman," FBI memorandum to Mr. Rosen, file no. 62-102198-116, NARA no. 124-10347-10011, Nov. 12, 1959.
  • Daniels, Lee A., "Anthony Accardo, long a figure in mob world, dies in bed at 86," New York Times, May 29, 1992.
  • FBI memorandum to Mr. McAndrews, file no. 92-6054-2092, NARA no. 124-10287-10397, July 25, 1967.
  • Hill, Ralph R., "Anthony Joseph Accardo,..." FBI report, file no. 92-3182-79, NARA no. 124-10203-10000, May 26, 1960, p. A-6.
  • Hill, Ralph R. Jr., "Samuel M. Giancana, ..." FBI report, file no. 92-636-3, NARA no. 124-90024-10122, May 5, 1961, p. 10-11.
  • "Illinois shorts," Dixon IL Evening Telegraph, Jan. 6, 1962, p. 4.
  • "Informer is slain by Chicago gunmen," New York Times, Feb. 2, 1930, p. 11.
  • Investigation of Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, Hearings Before the Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, Part 33, 85th Congress, Second Session, Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1958, p. 12782-12797.
  • Kiesling, Mark, "Anthony Accardo's death closes Capone Era," Munster (IN) Times, May 28, 1992, p. 11.
  • Koziol, Ronald, and John O'Brien, "Reputed mob boss Accardo dies," Chicago Tribune, May 28, 1992, p. B1.
  • "McGurn, on trial, claims illegal arrest," Chicago Daily Tribune, June 25, 1930, p. 7.
  • "New names introduced in Zuta killing," Streator IL Daily Times-Press, Aug. 6, 1930, p. 1.
  • O'Brien, John, "Low-key sendoff for Accardo," Chicago Tribune, May 30, 1992, p. 5.
  • Passenger manifest of S.S. Sicilian Prince, departed Palermo, arrived New York on Feb. 25, 1904.
  • "Raid gangdom for 'slayers' of Mike Heitler," Chicago Daily Tribune, May 2, 1931, p. 1.
  • Roberts, John W. Jr., "The Criminal commission; et al Chicago Division," FBI report from Chicago office, file no. 92-6054-131, NARA no. 124-10216-10239, Dec. 21, 1962, p. 2.
  • Roemer, William F. Jr., Accardo: The Genuine Godfather, New York: Donald I. Fine, 1995.
  • "Senate, 87-0, cites 13 for contempt," New York Times, Aug. 19, 1958, p. 16.
  • Smith, Sandy, "Jury acquits Tony Accardo," Chicago Tribune, Oct. 4, 1962, p. 1.
  • Social Security Death Index, SSN 360-14-0886.
  • "Tony Accardo reputedly led Chicago mob," Hartford CT Courant, May 29, 1992, p. C10.
  • "Two more slain by gangs," Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb. 5, 1930, p. 1.
  • "U.S. indicts 23 Capone men," Chicago Daily Tribune, May 2, 1931, p. 1.
  • Wehrwein, Austin C., "Accardo receives 6-year jail term," New York Times, Nov. 19, 1960, p. 11.
  • Yost, Newton E., "La Cosa Nostra," FBI report, file no. 92-6054-683, NARA no. 124-10208-10406, July 22, 1964, p. 18.

24 October 2018

Eleven years and a fine for tax dodger Capone

On this date in 1931...

Federal Judge James H. Wilkerson on October 24, 1931, sentenced Chicago Outfit leader Al Capone to eleven years in prison and a $50,000 fine for evading income taxes. Capone also needed to pay $215,000 in back taxes plus interest.

Chicago Tribune

One week earlier, a jury convicted Capone on five tax counts. Capone was found guilty of the felonies of evading taxes for the years 1925, 1926 and 1927, and of the misdemeanors of failing to file income tax returns for 1928 and 1920. The jury did not convict on counts relating to tax evasion in the years 1924, 1928 and 1929.

At trial
Judge Wilkerson sentenced him to five years in federal prison on each of the felony convictions, with two of those sentences to run concurrently. He added a year in Cook County Jail for the two misdemeanors. Capone had already been locked up in county jail for contempt, after it was shown that he pretended to be ill in order to avoid appearing before a federal grand jury.

As he returned to county jail after sentencing, Capone was in an angry mood and threatened a reporter who tried to photograph him: "I'll knock your block off." Later he pleaded with newsmen to put their cameras away. "Think of my family," he said.

Capone was refused release on bail pending the legal appeals in his tax evasion case. He brought his request for bail to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals but that was denied on October 27. When his appeals were exhausted, with the Circuit Court's affirmation of his sentence in February 1932 and the U.S. Supreme Court's early May 1932 refusal to review his case, Capone was moved from Cook County Jail to Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. His ten-year federal prison sentence would allow his release on good behavior in seven and a half years.

Capone's term in Atlanta was relatively brief. In the summer of 1934, he was transfered to Alcatraz Prison on the West Coast. His health deterioriated at Alcatraz. When he was freed from custody in November 1939, he was immediately placed in a Baltimore hospital for treatment of paresis. His final years were spent in retirement at Palm Island, Miami Beach, Florida. He died January 25, 1947.

Sources:
  • "Capone gets writ; sent back to jail until appeal made," Bloomington IL Pantagraph, Oct. 27, 1931, p. 1.
  • "Capone in jail; prison next," Chicago Daily Tribune, Oct. 25, 1931, p. 1.
  • "Capone loses his last chance to keep out of pen," Ogden UT Standard Examiner, May 2, 1932, p. 1.
  • "FBI History: Famous Cases: Al Capone," Federal Bureau of Investigation, accessed June 27, 2010. https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/al-capone (previously: http://www.fbi.gov/libref/historic/famcases/capone/capone.htm).
  • "Prison tonight for Capone," Chicago Daily Tribune, May 3, 1932, p. 1.
  • Certificate of Death, Florida State Board of Health.
  • Florida State Census of 1945.
  • Kinsley, Philip, "U.S. jury convicts Capone," Chicago Daily Tribune, Oct. 18, 1931, p. 1.
  • Pickard, Edward W., "Chronology of the year 1931," Woodstock IL Daily Sentinel, Dec. 30, 1931, p. 3, and DeKalb IL Daily Chronicle, Dec. 31, 1931, p. 6.
  • Prisoner Index, Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary.
  • United States Census of 1940, Florida, Dade County, Miami Beach, Enumeration District 12-42A.
See also:

31 May 2018

He fought the law, and the law lost

Chicago Outfit boss DiFronzo,
89, dies following illness

John DiFronzo, reputed boss of the Chicago Outfit, died overnight May 27-28, 2018, at his home in River Grove, according to published reports. (Chicago Tribune reports he died early May 28) He was eighty-nine years old.
DiFronzo

Criminal defense attorney Joe Lopez told the media that the crime boss suffered with Alzheimer's disease and had been "extremely ill."

DiFronzo was widely suspected of involvement in the brutal 1986 murders of brothers Anthony and Michael Spilotro (depicted in the film Casino). His role was discussed during the 2007 Family Secrets trial of Outfit leaders. But DiFronzo was not a defendant in Family Secrets, and federal prosecutors were unable to assemble a convincing case against him.

Attorney Lopez told CBS-Chicago that DiFronzo's greatest achievement was "beating the G."

The press frequently referred to DiFronzo as "No Nose." The nickname sprang from an attempted robbery back in 1949, though the details of that story are disputed. Some sources say DiFronzo jumped through a window to escape capture and had a piece of his nose sliced off by the breaking glass. (Actually, he neither jumped through a window nor escaped, but a glass injury cannot be ruled out.) Others say a bullet fired by a police officer tore off the nose...

Read a biography of John "No Nose" DiFronzo
on the American Mafia history website.


See also:

16 May 2017

1929: Capone meets City of Brotherly Love

Arrested with concealed weapon on his way
home from Atlantic City peace conference


May 16, 1929 - Chicago crime lord Al Capone and his lieutenant, Frank Rio, were stopped by police detectives outside the Stanley Theatre, southwest corner of Nineteenth and Market Streets in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Washington Post
May 17, 1929
The notorious gangsters insisted they were in Philadelphia to kill only time, while waiting for the next Chicago-bound train. Detectives found that both men had handguns. Capone and Rio were arrested for carrying concealed deadly weapons.

Capone gave a detailed statement to authorities describing his situation: He and Rio were returning from a Chicago underworld peace conference at Atlantic City, New Jersey. They were driving to the North Philadelphia Station to catch the afternoon Broad Way Limited train back to Chicago. Automobile problems caused them to miss their train. The next train was scheduled to leave North Philadelphia some hours later, and the two gangsters decided to relax in the theater.

Capone's surprising stay in Pennsylvania began with a night in police lockup and would stretch on to a year. Treating the charge dismissively, the next day the Chicago boss and his aide pleaded guilty to weapons possession. They appeared stunned when Judge John E. Walsh sentenced them to one-year sentences in state prison.

The U.S. press immediately began speculating that Capone orchestrated his arrest and conviction in order to escape the vengeance of underworld rivals. Chicago's St. Valentine's Day Massacre occurred only three months earlier. Some claimed that former Chicago underworld leader Johnny Torrio had come out of retirement to order Capone to have himself arrested so things in the Windy City could cool down. No known data or reasonable analysis of available data supports these notions.

Capone certainly was not a willing prisoner. His attorney tried to postpone the trial, to achieve Capone's discharge on a bond that he would never reenter the city and to arrange a suspended sentence. Capone subsequently griped over the speed of his trial and the severity of his punishment, and he actively sought his release on appeal.

 


Atlantic City convention

Other legends sprang up relating to the meeting in Atlantic City. Some books and television programs have suggested that it was an organizational meeting - called by Salvatore "Charlie Luciano" Lucania, Johnny Torrio or Frank Costello - for a nationwide criminal syndicate. Others claim it was a sort of intervention by the nation's gang bosses to break Capone of his murderous habits or a disciplinary hearing against the Chicago gang leader.

The original source of these legends is difficult to pin down, and it seems they have snowballed over time. It was reported in May 1929 that Capone personally told Philadelphia Director of Public Safety Lemuel Schofield: "We stopped at the President Hotel, where I registered under an assumed name. 'Bugs' Moran, the leader of the North Side Gang, seven of whose men were killed on St. Valentine's Day, and three or four other Chicago gang leaders, whose names I don't care to mention, participated. We talked over our troubles for three days. We all agreed at the end of that time to sign on the dotted line, bury the past and forget warfare in the future, for the general good of all concerned." (New York Times, May 18, 1929, p. 1.)

When Herbert Asbury, who had a strong tendency toward sensationalism, published The Gangs of Chicago in 1940, he basically repeated the Capone account, calling the Atlantic City event a peace conference of Chicago bosses. Asbury's sensationalist tendency was satisfied merely by inflating the number of Chicago bosses to thirty.

In the same year (1940), Thompson and Raymond's Gang Rule in New York seems to have been the first book to claim that the meeting involved bosses from outside of Chicago. They placed the convention at the Hotel President and said attendees included "most of the leaders in the national Unione Siciliane." The purpose, according to the authors, was to put a stop to Sicilian and Italian gangland feuds and arrange a system for a panel of bosses to consider and approve of killings before they were performed. The authors claimed that Frank Costello developed those ideas.

Twenty-two years later, Bill Brennan further expanded the conference story and added details for his book, The Frank Costello Story. Brennan, apparently realizing that Costello was not a boss in 1929 and did not have the authority to call a nationwide conference of underworld leaders, portrayed the Hotel President gathering as a bit of an insurrection against old-line Mafia bosses like Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria. Providing no source, Brennan claimed that the attendees included Capone, Jake Guzik, Frankie Yale, Joe Adonis, Frank Erickson, Owen Madden, Max Hoff, George Remus, Solly Weissman, Larry Fay and members of Detroit's Purple Gang. There were problems with Brennan's account - not the least of which was the death of Frankie Yale almost a year earlier - but that did not stop other authors from picking up the ball and running with it.

President Hotel
The Chicago Crime Book of 1967, edited by Albert Halper, tried to return the story to its origins with added importance for former Chicago gang boss Torrio. A chapter written by Francis X. Bush said that the Atlantic City conference involved Capone, Torrio, Joe Aiello and Bugs Moran, along with their chief aides. The conference concluded, he said, with a formal written agreement establishing a crime syndicate in Chicago. Torrio was set up as its supreme arbiter. For some reason, Bush placed the meeting in June 1929, when Capone already was behind bars in Holmesburg County Jail (he was transferred to Eastern State Prison in August).

When Jack McPhaul took a shot at the Torrio life story in 1970's Johnny Torrio: First of the Gang Lords, he combined various elements from previous writers for his account of the convention. There was the Torrio supremacy of the Halper book, the imposed preservation of gangland peace of the Thompson and Raymond volume and the expansive guest list of Brennan. According to McPhaul, Torrio ordered Capone to attend the convention, which McPhaul viewed as a disciplinary hearing, and then ordered Capone to get himself arrested and imprisoned (apparently it did not matter to Torrio where Capone did this).

John Kobler, who handled many other phases of Capone's existence more responsibly in his 1971 book Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone, seems to have found the Atlantic City convention legends irresistible. According to Kobler, the convention lasted three days and featured numerous gang bosses from around the country, all agreeing to combine into a national syndicate run by an executive committee. "Cutting across all the old ethnic and national divisions," Kobler wrote, "there gathered around the table not only Italians and Sicilians, but also Jews, Irish and Slavs, more than thirty gangsters in all." (Big table!) The list of attendees was expanded from previous accounts to include Dutch Schultz, Nucky Johnson, Joe Saltis, Frank McErlane, Sam Lazar and Charles Schwartz.

Fred Cook largely echoed this account for his (emotionally titled) 1973 book, Mafia! But Cook, perhaps benefiting from access to the meeting minutes, said the Atlantic City convention resulted in four major decisions: 1. U.S. was carved into crime districts; 2. No boss could be killed without approval of a leadership commission; 3. Syndicate would gather a bribery fund for police and politicians; 4. A fund would be set up "to groom young gangsters for the Syndicate." The resistance of old Mafia bosses to this new syndicate, Cook wrote, made the Night of Sicilian Vespers (another grossly inflated legend) necessary.

The next year, Frank Costello: Prime Minister of the Underworld by George Wolf with Joseph DiMona stated that the Atlantic City meeting was called by Frank Costello and Johnny Torrio. The book claimed that Costello was then - in 1929 - at the height of his power (allowing him a gradual decline spread out over the next four and a half decades). The conference guest list was dramatically altered so that Chicago's Frank Nitti could be there, along with Lou Rothkopf, Moe Dalitz, Charles "King" Solomon, John Lazia, Joe Bernstein and Louis "Lepke" Buchalter. Wolf's book provided a detailed but sourceless look at the convention, referring at one point to the "crystal chandelier" that "dangled above the rich mahogany table and chairs, which gleamed from recent polishing." (Wolf neglected for some reason to explain that mahogany is an excellent wood choice for furniture at a seaside hotel, as its density makes it extremely resistant to rot.) Wolf said the convention set up a national crime syndicate overseen by a commission of leaders and arranged for Capone to temporarily serve time in prison so things could be smoothed out with his Chicago rivals.

Virgil W. Peterson further increased the 1929 Atlantic City guest list for his 1983 book, The Mob. He had Albert Anastasia, Vincent Mangano, Frank Scalise, Longie Zwillman, Willie Moretti and Meyer Lansky (honeymooning with his new bride) also meeting at the Hotel President. Peterson reported a widespread belief that Capone arranged for his own Philadelphia arrest after the convention, but he left it for the reader to decide between unlikely choices: 1. Capone was ordered to prison by other gang bosses in attendance at the Atlantic City convention; 2. Capone arranged after the convention to go to prison seeking protection from enemies. Apparently unworthy of consideration was the possibility that Capone was an out-of-area gangster caught carrying a concealed weapon and a local judge threw the book at him.

Despite decades of invention and exaggeration, the truth of the May 1929 conference in Atlantic City probably is quite close to the earliest accounts.


"Al Capone's long stay in Philly" 
in this back issue of Informer.

http://www.magcloud.com/browse/Issue/112621