April 19, 1932: Luciano, Lansky nabbed in Chicago

Paul Ricca, Sylvester Agoglia, Salvatore "Charlie Luciano" Lucania,
Meyer Lansky, John Senna, Harry Brown.

On this date in 1932: Police arrested New York racketeers Salvatore "Charlie Luciano" Lucania and Meyer Lansky during their visit to underworld colleagues in Chicago. 

The two men had been under surveillance around the clock since arriving in the Windy City two days earlier. They were picked up by police as they headed out of their hotel to board a train back to New York. Police found them in the company of Chicago Outfit figures Paul Ricca, Sylvester Agoglia, Harry Brown and John Senna.

Chicago Daily Tribune, April 20, 1932.

Chicago Outfit big shot shoots self

On this date in 1943, Chicago Outfit leader Frank Nitti responded to news of a federal indictment by sending his wife to pray a novena, getting himself drunk and then firing a bullet into his brain. 

Chicago Daily Tribune, March 20, 1943.

The indictment was not entirely a surprise. Chicago mob bosses were well aware that their plot to extort millions from the motion picture industry and theater projectionists had been exposed. Willie Bioff - hand-picked by Nitti to oversee the racket - and Bioff's more visible partners had already been convicted in federal court. And it was clear that federal investigators were not done. News from New York suggested that some mob big-shots in Chicago were likely to be indicted. It seemed certain that Bioff was aiding the investigators, but the extent of the damage was not known until March 19, 1943.

Chicago Daily Tribune
Oct. 25, 1941

That's when authorities in New York announced that indictments for racketeering conspiracy and mail fraud had been returned against Frank "the Enforcer" Nitti (real name Nitto), Paul "the Waiter" Ricca (DeLucia), Louis "Little New York" Campagna, Philip D'Andrea, Charles "Cherry Nose" Gioe, Ralph Pierce and Francis "Frank Diamond" Maritote. Bioff's betrayal had been complete.

Nitti had bet his reputation - and, likely, his life - on Bioff's reliability. When the extortion plot first came to light with complaints that mobsters controlled the International Alliance of Theatre and Stage Employees (IATSE), Outfit leaders contemplated severing their most dangerous connection to IATSE by murdering Bioff. Bioff reportedly survived only because Nitti opposed the idea.

On the morning of March 19, attorney A. Bradley Eben (a former assistant U.S. attorney) called the Nitti home at 712 Selborne Road in Riverside, Illinois, and provided his client with news of the indictments. Nitti made arrangements to meet with Eben at his law office that afternoon, but the mob boss actually had other plans.

Nitti told his wife of nine months, Antoinette (known as "Toni") Caravetta Nitto, to begin a prayer novena at Our Lady of Sorrows Church on Chicago's west side. (The Sorrowful Mother Novena was an enormously popular service at the church from the late 1930s into the 1950s.) She left the house at 1:15 that afternoon.

Nitti was next seen by railroad employees at about three o'clock, as he staggered along the Illinois Central tracks near Harlem Avenue and Cermak Road, less than a mile from his Selborne Road home. As the railroad men called out to him, the intoxicated Nitti leaned back against a chain-link fence, drew a handgun and fired it twice, sending bullets through his hat. Positioning the weapon more carefully, he then fired a third shot. The slug entered the right side of his head near his ear and traveled upward, lodging in the top of his skull.

Chicago Daily Tribune, March 20, 1943.

When police arrived, they found Nitti's driver's license and Selective Service draft card - both made out in the name Frank Nitto - in his pockets. The documents gave his birthdate as Jan. 27, 1886. The draft card contained his Selborne Road address. The license, however, showed an address of 1208 Lexington Street in Chicago, which belonged to Lucia Ronga, mother of his first wife, the late Anna Theresa Ronga Nitto.

Toni Nitto returned home about a half hour later. "The first I knew of what had happened was when [the police] came and told me he was dead," she later told the press. "I knew something was wrong. There were always strange men watching our house. He knew something was up, too. Frank wasn't well - it was his stomach, nerves I think. They were always after him. They wouldn't let him alone. They made him do this."

Toni's brother Charles appeared at the coroner's inquest to testify that Nitti had been dealing with a number of issues: "He was suffering with a heart ailment and he had stomach trouble. I think he was temporarily insane." Some sources indicated that Nitti was also suffering with physical pain from a serious gunshot wound suffered back in 1932 and with lingering emotional pain from the death of his first wife in November of 1940.

A federal informant provided a more direct explanation for Nitti's suicide: "It was that or be killed. [The Outfit] held Nitti responsible for the problem. Bioff has been his man and it was Nitti who had persuaded the group to withdraw the original 'hit' order on Bioff. It was felt that if they had killed Bioff earlier in the investigation, his death would have silenced most prospective witnesses."

Nitti's estate was valued at greater than $74,000. That was divided between the widow Toni and Joseph, Nitti's son by his first marriage.

What happened to Willie Bioff? Click here.

Sources:

• World War II draft registration card, serial no. U2138.
• Yost, Newton E., "La Cosa Nostra," FBI report, file no. 92-6054-683, NARA no. 124-10208-10406, July 22, 1964, p. 18.

• Fulton, William, "5 aliases bob up to haunt Bioff at extort trial," Chicago Daily Tribune, Oct. 30, 1941, p. 2.
• "List gangsters who prey on Chicago unions," Chicago Daily Tribune, March 18, 1943, p. 1.
• Wiegman, Carl, "Nitti kills himself!," Chicago Daily Tribune, March 20, 1943, p. 1.
• "Gang leader Nitti kills himself in Chicago after indictment here," New York Times, March 20, 1943, p. 30.
• "Nitti long held business chief of underworld," Chicago Daily Tribune, March 20, 1943, p. 6.
• Geserick, June, "Nitti sent wife to church at hour of suicide," Chicago Daily Tribune, March 20, 1943, p. 6.
• "FBI hunts new clews bearing on Nitti suicide," Chicago Daily Tribune, March 21, 1943, p. 3.
• "Nitti's widow once was secretary for slain Edw. J. O'Hare," Dixon IL Evening Telegraph, March 22, 1943, p. 7.
• Wiegman, Carl, "Schenck bares Bioff threats; cash paid here," Chicago Daily Tribune, May 26, 1943, p. 2.
• "Swears Nitti was treasurer of movie union," Chicago Daily Tribune, July 3, 1943, p. 6.
• "Bioff reveals tributes paid by movie firms," Chicago Daily Tribune, Oct. 8, 1943, p. 15.
• "Frank Nitti leaves $75,000 estate," Bloomington IL Pantagraph, Oct. 12, 1943, p. 1.

Bad day for big shots

Several high-profile U.S. organized crime leaders and one suspected Mafia informant were murdered on this date, November 4. 

New York Daily News

1928 - Underworld chief Arnold Rothstein was shot and mortally wounded in Manhattan's Park Central Hotel. A hotel employee discovered the collapsed Rothstein inside the Park Central's Fifty-Sixth Street service entrance. The renowned gambler / racketeer / narcotics importer was taken to Polyclinic Hospital, where surgeons attempted to repair damage to his lower abdomen caused by a .38-caliber bullet. Rothstein died two days later. The path of the bullet, determined at autopsy, indicated that Rothstein was seated at the time the fatal shot was fired by someone standing to his right. The slug penetrated his bladder and intestines and resulted in death-causing sepsis. Authorities believed that Rothstein cardgame losses, reaching into hundreds of thousands of dollars, were related to his murder. Rothstein also was said to have been planning a divorce and had recently been rewriting his will.

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Evidence of lingering hostility: Bioff's garage, Nov. 4, 1955.

1955 - Willie Bioff became well known across the U.S. in the 1940s, as a Chicago Outfit scheme to control motion picture industry unions and extort vast sums from movie companies came to light. Bioff, a Chicago native who relocated to southern California, was a central figure in the scheme. Following Bioff's arrest, he betrayed his underworld colleagues and provided investigators with sufficient evidence to cause the apparent suicide of Outfit leader Frank Nitti (formerly a Bioff friend and defender) and the successful prosecutions of other Chicago bosses. A decade later, all the unpleasantness seemed forgotten. Bioff and his wife were living under assumed names (Mr. and Mrs. William Nelson) in Phoenix, Arizona, and Chicago bosses had served their prison and probation terms. Evidence of some lingering hostility was seen on the morning of Nov. 4, 1955: Bioff climbed into his pickup truck inside his home garage. As he stepped on the starter, an explosion suddenly shook the neighborhood. The New York Times wrote: "The blast threw Bioff twenty-five feet and scattered wreckage over a radius of several hundred. It left only the twisted frame, the motor and the truck wheels. The garage door was blown out, the roof shattered and windows in the Bioff home and several neighboring houses were broken. Jagged chunks of metals tore holes in the wall of a home 100 feet away. The blast rattled windows a mile away." Bioff's body, minus both legs and a right hand, were found 25 feet from the explosion.

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Brooklyn Daily Eagle

1959 - Frank Abbatemarco, who ran a lucrative numbers racket for the Profaci Crime Family of Brooklyn, stopped in at a tavern run by friend Anthony Cardello. Near eight o'clock in the evening, Abbatemarco stepped outside of the tavern and was greeted by two gunmen, whose identities were masked by fedoras pulled down low on their heads and scarves covering their faces. Abbatemarco shouted, "No, no!" but the gunmen opened fire anyway. Wounded, Abbatemarco rushed back into the tavern. The gunmen pursued and methodically pumped bullets into the underworld big shot. They then turned casually and walked out. It became widely accepted that Abbatemarco was killed by his own underlings - members of the Gallo Gang - under orders from Profaci. In the wake of the murder, the Gallos, perhaps unsatisfied with the way Abbatemarco racket assets were divided, broke away from Profaci.

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NY Daily News

Also on this date: In 1922, Francesco Puma, a member of the Stefano Magaddino-run Castellammarese criminal organization known as The Good Killers, was murdered during a walk around his East Twelfth Street, Manhattan, neighborhood. A number of shots were fired at and into Puma from behind. He drew a handgun and spun around, only to meet the knife-blade of a closer assassin. With a stab wound in his abdomen and gunshot wounds to his chest, stomach and right wrist, Puma fell to the sidewalk. He succumbed to his wounds later at Bellevue Hospital. Press accounts of his death revealed suspicion that Puma had been providing authorities with information about the U.S. Mafia.

See also:

• Evidence of some lingering hostility (Writers of Wrongs)
• Frank Abbatemarco biography (mafiahistory.us)
• The Good Killers: 1921's Glimpse of the Mafia (mafiahistory.us) 
• DiCarlo: Buffalo's First Family of Crime, Vol I.