by PolackTony » Fri Aug 23, 2024 1:53 pm
PolackTony wrote: ↑Wed Aug 21, 2024 7:28 pm
NorthBuffalo wrote: ↑Wed Aug 21, 2024 6:20 pm
Anyone know if this guy 'Mario Agate' is legitimate? My friends in Chicago say he used to be a collector for John Monteleone's juice operation. He is a former 12th street player along with his brother 'Renzo' per this guy but older than the Carparelli generation. I found one indictment online for cocaine where he is fighting deportation back to Italy but not much else - he seems completely fried from drugs and somewhat high during this episode. No idea if he's real or full of shit - the Tony Accardo bodyguard story (Abe?) leads me to believe the latter, but these guys also exaggerate other stories all the time to make themselves more relevant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdPkFJQu0C8
Mariano “Mario” Agate Jr. I believe that him and his older brother Lorenzo were Players but I’m not sure about anything more. Sicilian immigrant family that settled in Cicero.
What’s really interesting is that I believe these Agates are from Mazara del Vallo. Another Mariano Agate, who *could* well have been a cousin of Mario’s father, was the notorious boss of Mazara del Vallo and capomandamento of the Mazara district.
To follow-up. While there were other Agates in Chicago from Mazara and Campobello (including *another* Mariano Agate), I can confirm that these Agates were in fact from Marsala. Mario Agate was born there in 1963 and came to Chicago as a kid with his parents and brother Lorenzo. Several of father Mariano's siblings also immigrated to Chicago in the '60s, including brother Stefano Agate, who, like Mariano, operated a restaurant in Chicago for many years before retiring to CA. Interesting to note that Stefano Agate and their sister Antonina both married siblings, Maria Marino and her brother Vincenzo Marino. The Marinos immigrated to Chicago in the 1960s along with several of their relatives from Marsala. Worth noting here that the mother of Mario and Maria Marino was named Caterina Genna. The surname is not uncommon in Marsala, so I can't say if they were related to the Taylor St Gennas, but all of these Marsalesi in Chicago were plugged in with their paesani from Taylor St who had settled in Chicago during the "first wave" of Italian immigration to the US. Also brings to mind that when Mike Genna was killed in a shootout with CPD in 1925, the car he was riding in at the time was registered under the name "Frank Marino".
I did listen to the podcast interview with Mario Agate. I will say that to his credit, he didn't seem to overhype his own role at all. Said that he was a HS football player (true, at Morton East HS) and tough guy as a kid who got recruited to do collections for his dad and some of his dad's buddies (unnamed) in the early 1980s. He did not say that he was a Player, though I'm pretty certain that he and his brother in fact were. Still, he did at one point note that he used to wear an earring in his left ear only, which if you know what's up you will catch what that means (a signifier for members of the People alliance). I have no idea who the hosts are, but they kept trying to steer him to talk about mob stuff while Agate was mainly interested in telling kids to stay away from gangs, drugs, and prison. The interviewers were bringing up stuff to him from Gravano and at one point even asked him "So are you getting involved in this beef between New York and Philly guys?". I have no idea what universe someone would have to inhabit to even consider asking a guy like this something like that (or, anyone, really). The hosts were calling him an "associate" of the Chicago outfit, but Agate himself was like "I was never *really* one of the guys in that, I just grew up around them" (something to that effect), as his descent into drug addiction caused guys in that world to stay away from him.
Unlike a grifter like Chuckie Miceli, (where every other word out of the guy's mouth is Giancana, Trafficante, or Gotti), Agate didn't really name-drop or try to fake flex IMO. He did say that he met Accardo when he was a kid and that Accardo was a friend of his father who used to come and eat at their restaurant and hang out with his dad (he also said something about Accardo's "bodyguard" being some guy named "Abe"; not sure what to make of that. Could be making that part up, or mixing someone's name up, or using some guy's nickname). This is totally plausible to me. Mariano Agate Sr was exactly the kind of guy who I would expect to have been friendly with Accardo. Accardo's inner circle of personal friends/associates included a number of successful Sicilian-born businessmen. The Agates were fellow paesani from Trapani who were restauranteurs, in an era when we know that Chicago LCN members had close relationships with a number of other Sicilian restaurant owners, to the extent that their businesses were used for formal mafia affairs (e.g., the 1976 "Last Supper" meeting, the 1983 ceremony; likely there are many other relationships that we don't know about). It wouldn't at all surprise me either if Mariano Agate was himself involved, as the son insinuates; e.g., as an associate with money on street or something. NB says that Mario was allegedly collecting for Johny Apes and his guys at one point. Monteleone was himself born in Sicily, so I don't have a hard time seeing him as having potentially been a guy with ties to the Agates (maybe one of Mariano's "friends" that Mario did not name). Monteleone's hometown of Sambuca, of course, also has strong and longstanding connections to nearby Trapani province (as witnessed in a recent iteration with Messina DeNaro's ties to Sambuca).
Yeah, Agate is obviously a fucked up drug addict, which he does not attempt to downplay. A lot of street guys end up this way though. He's just like a lot of older gangbangers I knew in Chicago, many of whom also fell hard into drugs after being around it so much for so much of their lives. Even if Agate wasn't 100% honest here, there are plenty of guys just like him (or, the fictive him that he paints) on the periphery of LCN. Washed-up gangbangers, multiple felony ex-cons scrounging for scratch, aging tough guys from connected families long past their glory years, dope fiends and busted-down drunks. The names that we all know are the guys who *succeeded* in that world, the ones who wound up becoming a "somebody", who made a name for themselves in that life. For every one of them, there is a whole circle of failures, wannabees, has-beens, and nobodies.
[quote=PolackTony post_id=282247 time=1724293685 user_id=6658]
[quote=NorthBuffalo post_id=282238 time=1724289626 user_id=8087]
Anyone know if this guy 'Mario Agate' is legitimate? My friends in Chicago say he used to be a collector for John Monteleone's juice operation. He is a former 12th street player along with his brother 'Renzo' per this guy but older than the Carparelli generation. I found one indictment online for cocaine where he is fighting deportation back to Italy but not much else - he seems completely fried from drugs and somewhat high during this episode. No idea if he's real or full of shit - the Tony Accardo bodyguard story (Abe?) leads me to believe the latter, but these guys also exaggerate other stories all the time to make themselves more relevant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdPkFJQu0C8
[/quote]
Mariano “Mario” Agate Jr. I believe that him and his older brother Lorenzo were Players but I’m not sure about anything more. Sicilian immigrant family that settled in Cicero.
What’s really interesting is that I believe these Agates are from Mazara del Vallo. Another Mariano Agate, who *could* well have been a cousin of Mario’s father, was the notorious boss of Mazara del Vallo and capomandamento of the Mazara district.
[/quote]
To follow-up. While there were other Agates in Chicago from Mazara and Campobello (including *another* Mariano Agate), I can confirm that these Agates were in fact from Marsala. Mario Agate was born there in 1963 and came to Chicago as a kid with his parents and brother Lorenzo. Several of father Mariano's siblings also immigrated to Chicago in the '60s, including brother Stefano Agate, who, like Mariano, operated a restaurant in Chicago for many years before retiring to CA. Interesting to note that Stefano Agate and their sister Antonina both married siblings, Maria Marino and her brother Vincenzo Marino. The Marinos immigrated to Chicago in the 1960s along with several of their relatives from Marsala. Worth noting here that the mother of Mario and Maria Marino was named Caterina Genna. The surname is not uncommon in Marsala, so I can't say if they were related to the Taylor St Gennas, but all of these Marsalesi in Chicago were plugged in with their paesani from Taylor St who had settled in Chicago during the "first wave" of Italian immigration to the US. Also brings to mind that when Mike Genna was killed in a shootout with CPD in 1925, the car he was riding in at the time was registered under the name "Frank Marino".
[img]https://theblackhand.club/forum/ext/dmzx/imageupload/files/644b309d20668c6a97ec9b776c94046b.jpg[/img]
I did listen to the podcast interview with Mario Agate. I will say that to his credit, he didn't seem to overhype his own role at all. Said that he was a HS football player (true, at Morton East HS) and tough guy as a kid who got recruited to do collections for his dad and some of his dad's buddies (unnamed) in the early 1980s. He did not say that he was a Player, though I'm pretty certain that he and his brother in fact were. Still, he did at one point note that he used to wear an earring in his left ear only, which if you know what's up you will catch what that means (a signifier for members of the People alliance). I have no idea who the hosts are, but they kept trying to steer him to talk about mob stuff while Agate was mainly interested in telling kids to stay away from gangs, drugs, and prison. The interviewers were bringing up stuff to him from Gravano and at one point even asked him "So are you getting involved in this beef between New York and Philly guys?". I have no idea what universe someone would have to inhabit to even consider asking a guy like this something like that (or, anyone, really). The hosts were calling him an "associate" of the Chicago outfit, but Agate himself was like "I was never *really* one of the guys in that, I just grew up around them" (something to that effect), as his descent into drug addiction caused guys in that world to stay away from him.
Unlike a grifter like Chuckie Miceli, (where every other word out of the guy's mouth is Giancana, Trafficante, or Gotti), Agate didn't really name-drop or try to fake flex IMO. He did say that he met Accardo when he was a kid and that Accardo was a friend of his father who used to come and eat at their restaurant and hang out with his dad (he also said something about Accardo's "bodyguard" being some guy named "Abe"; not sure what to make of that. Could be making that part up, or mixing someone's name up, or using some guy's nickname). This is totally plausible to me. Mariano Agate Sr was exactly the kind of guy who I would expect to have been friendly with Accardo. Accardo's inner circle of personal friends/associates included a number of successful Sicilian-born businessmen. The Agates were fellow paesani from Trapani who were restauranteurs, in an era when we know that Chicago LCN members had close relationships with a number of other Sicilian restaurant owners, to the extent that their businesses were used for formal mafia affairs (e.g., the 1976 "Last Supper" meeting, the 1983 ceremony; likely there are many other relationships that we don't know about). It wouldn't at all surprise me either if Mariano Agate was himself involved, as the son insinuates; e.g., as an associate with money on street or something. NB says that Mario was allegedly collecting for Johny Apes and his guys at one point. Monteleone was himself born in Sicily, so I don't have a hard time seeing him as having potentially been a guy with ties to the Agates (maybe one of Mariano's "friends" that Mario did not name). Monteleone's hometown of Sambuca, of course, also has strong and longstanding connections to nearby Trapani province (as witnessed in a recent iteration with Messina DeNaro's ties to Sambuca).
Yeah, Agate is obviously a fucked up drug addict, which he does not attempt to downplay. A lot of street guys end up this way though. He's just like a lot of older gangbangers I knew in Chicago, many of whom also fell hard into drugs after being around it so much for so much of their lives. Even if Agate wasn't 100% honest here, there are plenty of guys just like him (or, the fictive him that he paints) on the periphery of LCN. Washed-up gangbangers, multiple felony ex-cons scrounging for scratch, aging tough guys from connected families long past their glory years, dope fiends and busted-down drunks. The names that we all know are the guys who *succeeded* in that world, the ones who wound up becoming a "somebody", who made a name for themselves in that life. For every one of them, there is a whole circle of failures, wannabees, has-beens, and nobodies.