THE BLACK HAND FORUM

[quote=pat_marcy post_id=283880 time=1726780877 user_id=8498]
If I want to ask any further questions what forum is the best to do it in? Or best forum to go through for its history and making ceremonies etc
[/quote]

At the risk of groans from the regulars, and because it's Friday, I have the time, and I love talking about the outfit, I'm going to lay out a general understanding that may help you wrap your head around some history and membership numbers.

Warning: If you already have a lot of outfit knowledge, this post isn't really for you :)

We know from first hand intel that even at it's peak in the 50's/60's, the Outfit likely never had more than 100 fully initiated, made members. At first glance that could be surprising given the organization's "stature" and storied history. However, the key words here are [i]fully initiated[/i] members. Thanks to many of the very folks you see commenting on these forums (not me), , we have a much better, although still tenuous, understanding of how the outfit was actually structured.

The criminal organization known as the Chicago Oufit, at it's peak, was likely a network of something like 800-1500 people. Before everyone gets all worked up, I'm referring to the extended criminal enterprise that was overseen by the Chicago family. (this could include independent criminals who were paying street tax, or people who did work for the outfit on a contract type basis). At the core of this vast network, was the element which truly ran the organization and set it's rules and culture. This element was the no more than 100 guys mentioned before, or the actual LCN "Mafia" family at the heart of things. While this was debated for a long time, but it has become clear that the outfit was more traditional in some of these mafia elements than had been previously thought, and at various times (or perhaps for most of it's existence), employed things like formal making ceremonies and inductions, and participated extensively in the national commission.

Historically, the Outfit, and many of of other midwestern LCN families, were much more stringent about inducting members. It seemingly came after years of networking/knowing the right people, earning for the family, and building trust. Many researchers would say that the NYC structure of membership is actually the exception and not the rule, and that the more restrictive, closed network type setup that the outfit used, was actually the more common practice employed by the majority of the 26 or so FBI identified mafia families around the country. That's all to say that while the outfit might have only had 100 members or less, the actual organization it oversaw was much larger.

(On this note, and this is pure speculation, but when today's guesses are thrown around of somewhere between 15-30 made members, my opinion is that this constitutes an organization in 2024 that likely has somewhere around 50-75 guys actually working for or "around" it, if that makes sense.)

While crew structures have continually shifted, during the peak era we know the most about (1960's-1980's), it appears there were about 7 distinct "crews", or groups within the outfit, each overseen by a capo, or "area boss", as it has been referred to. It appears these capos had a lot of autonomy, and were generally free to run their crews as they saw fit. Many have discussed that the crews in the outfit at it's peak were much more akin to mini mafia families, and could comprise an extended network of criminals of perhaps up to 100 people on their own.

The 7 capos reported up to a central administration, the constitution of which has been debated ad nauseum, so I'm not going to get into detail on that. The general sense is that there was typically an underboss, a boss, some type of "top boss/consigliere/senior advisor" type role, and other specialty roles such as political operatives (Gus Alex, Jake Guzik, Murray Humphries), who although they were not initiated members, enjoyed a high stature and worked with/reported directly to the bosses/administration.

That is all to say that the smaller nature of the outfit, particularly at it's peak, was primarily by design. Even in the more modern era, we have a made member (Frank Calabrese Sr.) in a taped conversation, talking about how the outfit was going to endeavor to be more like a "christmas tree" in it's structure...... I.E fewer members, more money for everyone, and tighter controls.

Hope that helps.

[quote=NorthBuffalo post_id=283967 time=1726864330 user_id=8087]
My personal view is that Chicago already had its own thing in motion well prior to Luciano - and they continued doing things their way throughout the rest of the century until modern day. Guys like Murray Humphreys and Ralph Pierce appear to have been literal overseers of multiple italians who were 'made.' It always seems the ceremony came and went based on the boss and each crew acted similar to an independent family. I highly doubt any of the 'only a made guy can introduce another made guy' stuff ever existed there.

My two cents and from what I hear from people in Chicago I consider informed is that the Outfit is dead - the remnants are largely independent crews. There is no formal boss and while there are working relationships between crews with sporadic old school busts here and there, its largely a thing of the past. However, the guys who do exist today in Chicago are quite interesting.
[/quote]

I think a lot of what you mentioned in the first paragraph has been disproven in this thread and in the Chicago eps of the Mob Archeologists. I'd highly recommend the latter if you haven't seen them. We've even come to the conclusion that Chicago was more bound by LCN-traditions than some of the other east-coast families. Additional, early informants make it very explicit that non-Italians cannot hold leadership positions but are still consulted on specialized or important matters.

My personal view is that Chicago already had its own thing in motion well prior to Luciano - and they continued doing things their way throughout the rest of the century until modern day. Guys like Murray Humphreys and Ralph Pierce appear to have been literal overseers of multiple italians who were 'made.' It always seems the ceremony came and went based on the boss and each crew acted similar to an independent family. I highly doubt any of the 'only a made guy can introduce another made guy' stuff ever existed there.

My two cents and from what I hear from people in Chicago I consider informed is that the Outfit is dead - the remnants are largely independent crews. There is no formal boss and while there are working relationships between crews with sporadic old school busts here and there, its largely a thing of the past. However, the guys who do exist today in Chicago are quite interesting.

pat_marcy- as a fellow new(er) member of this forum, I would highly recommend starting this thread from page 1 and reading every single post. It's a fascinating read and these guys have spent countless hours researching this stuff to death. Tons of information and highly enjoyable.

You wont be disappointed and it will probably answer most of the questions you may have.

[quote=Snakes post_id=283958 time=1726855073 user_id=66]
[quote=PolackTony post_id=283956 time=1726853657 user_id=6658]
[quote=pat_marcy post_id=283936 time=1726836531 user_id=8498]
So when you say members this is just Italians yes? Cause over the years they’ve had people like gus Alex, humphries etc who are not Italian obviously but you’d say they were members of the outfit
[/quote]
“The outfit” is just a synonym for “Cosa Nostra”/mafia (used all over the country also, not at all unique or particular to Chicago). Alex, Humphreys, et al., were *not* members, they were valuable and highly respected associates, as every Family had. *Members* doesn’t mean “Italians” — it means “made guys”, i.e., inducted members of the mafia. There were always Italian guys who were associates and not made guys (all members are Italian, or at least half-Italian in a couple of cases, but not all Italians are members).
[/quote]

I do get what he is saying, as I think guys like Schweihs were considered part of the Outfit from a certain point of view. I don't want to get too much into previously (well) trod territory, but I think it was slightly different in Chicago as they were rarely referred to (internally or externally) as a "family," so I think it was easier for a non-made member to be considered "part" of the Outfit than it would be for a non-made member to be considered "part" of the Gambino Family (as opposed to "with" the Gambino Family). The Outfit is certainly an LCN organization, but I think the terminology does kind of blur the line at times.
[/quote]
As you know, we only have one made guy in Chicago to testify about the organization, Nick C, and he certainly understood “member” to mean an inducted member of the mafia.

Given that we don’t even know what DeLaurentis actually said, I’m not going to get too far into speculating as to what *he* may have meant by whatever he actually said. Some earlier FBI informant sources seem to have used “member” the loose way that you indicate here, but then typically these sources were not LCN members themselves. To outsiders or low-level affiliates, they might have mis/understood any guy with clout to have been a “member”, with little to no understanding of what the actual mafia organization consisted of or what membership in this organization really meant and entailed. As is very often the case with these questions, we also have the ever-present issue of the problem of “attributed speech” — in most cases, we don’t know what these sources actually said verbatim, rather than the way that an FBI agent parsed or summarized their statements, which were almost never reproduced in full (we also don’t know the context of how the agent interviewing them phrased the question and this can also be a vital element of contextualizing someone’s statements and making sense of them).

What we mainly get is “The Blind Men and the Elephant”/“The Outsider Looking In”, so I am very hesitant to make any strong claims as to how nomenclature and local organizational culture may or may not have differed between Chicago and other Families. But when we do get these little peeks from behind the curtain from members or highly trusted associates (by which I mean guys like Frank Schweihs or Teddy DeRose, and not some guy who ran a wire room or whatever that the FBI may have talked to in 1959 etc., of course), we see that they absolutely used terms like “Family”, “capodecina”, “the Life”, “wiseguy”, “made guy”, “avvocato”, “sottocapo”, “Consiglio”. We just have so few/fragmented accounts from sources of this level of quality and validity, as opposed to the Blind Men that the FBI relied so heavily on. Obviously, DeLaurentis does not fall into this category.

To go back to my post above, it wasn’t in response to the DeLaurentis thing, as we still don’t actually know what he even said anyway. It was to “Pat_Marcy”, who was asking about what “you” would say. I can’t answer for anyone else, but when the “you” is *me*, then no, I would not say that any of these associates were “members of the outfit” and I have little doubt that made guys in Chicago saw things any differently (again, going back to Nick C who was made before DeLaurentis and who was specifically queried about this matter on the stand and denied that non-Italian associates had any particular organizational status equivalent to being a made member).

EDIT:

[quote=Snakes]
I think guys like Schweihs were considered part of the Outfit from a certain point of view. [/quote]

Just to respond to this part in more detail. Guys like Schweihs absolutely *are* “part of the organization”. And this is the same with the mafia anywhere, of course. Associates are formally affiliated to the mafia organization, they just aren’t inducted members of it. As we all know, “associate” covers a lot of territory in terms of stature, respect, clout — it can mean anything from a relative of a member who is under his protection to a low-level “employee” of a mafia-affiliated racket operation, to guys like Lansky and Alex, with a lot of middle ground in between. In Sicily, one of the terms used is “affiliati”, which denotes those who are formally affiliated to a Family but not made members. Some of them may be proposed for membership and just not inducted yet, while others are men like LE officers who cannot be inducted. This category of “affiliati” (who are often included in Italian LE reports and not disaggregated from made members when reporting on the total number of affiliates of a given Family in Sicily) denotes the same relationship to the organization that we use “associates” to denote. In the American mafia, however, things became a bit more complicated given that there were many men over the years who became formally affiliated with the mafia but who could not qualify for membership because of non-Italian ancestry, but this isn’t really any different in any meaningful way from Sicilian affiliati who can’t be made due to LE ties. Sicilian “affiliati”, like American “associates”, are thus composed of those formally affiliated to the mafia, with some proposed for membership (or at least theoretically qualifying for membership, as with Italian associates in the American mafia), and others who are barred from membership. Sicilian “affiliati” are also not low level flunkies — they are either being groomed for membership themselves, or are vital assets to the organization in areas like LE, politics, and legitimate business. In this, they are very much like highly respected associates with American Families.

[quote=PolackTony post_id=283956 time=1726853657 user_id=6658]
[quote=pat_marcy post_id=283936 time=1726836531 user_id=8498]
So when you say members this is just Italians yes? Cause over the years they’ve had people like gus Alex, humphries etc who are not Italian obviously but you’d say they were members of the outfit
[/quote]
“The outfit” is just a synonym for “Cosa Nostra”/mafia (used all over the country also, not at all unique or particular to Chicago). Alex, Humphreys, et al., were *not* members, they were valuable and highly respected associates, as every Family had. *Members* doesn’t mean “Italians” — it means “made guys”, i.e., inducted members of the mafia. There were always Italian guys who were associates and not made guys (all members are Italian, or at least half-Italian in a couple of cases, but not all Italians are members).
[/quote]

I do get what he is saying, as I think guys like Schweihs were considered part of the Outfit from a certain point of view. I don't want to get too much into previously (well) trod territory, but I think it was slightly different in Chicago as they were rarely referred to (internally or externally) as a "family," so I think it was easier for a non-made member to be considered "part" of the Outfit than it would be for a non-made member to be considered "part" of the Gambino Family (as opposed to "with" the Gambino Family). The Outfit is certainly an LCN organization, but I think the terminology does kind of blur the line at times.

[quote=7digits post_id=283920 time=1726804022 user_id=8600]
He literally says members. I will post it
[/quote]
Please do, as the trial transcripts are not on PACER and I don’t recall having seen a verbatim quote of what he actually said. Before everyone starts to snowball speculate as to what DeLaurentis could have or might have *meant*, we don’t even actually know what he even *said* — we know what the Tribune said about what he said, which is not the same thing.

[quote=pat_marcy post_id=283936 time=1726836531 user_id=8498]
So when you say members this is just Italians yes? Cause over the years they’ve had people like gus Alex, humphries etc who are not Italian obviously but you’d say they were members of the outfit
[/quote]
“The outfit” is just a synonym for “Cosa Nostra”/mafia (used all over the country also, not at all unique or particular to Chicago). Alex, Humphreys, et al., were *not* members, they were valuable and highly respected associates, as every Family had. *Members* doesn’t mean “Italians” — it means “made guys”, i.e., inducted members of the mafia. There were always Italian guys who were associates and not made guys (all members are Italian, or at least half-Italian in a couple of cases, but not all Italians are members).

[quote=Wiseguy post_id=283949 time=1726847060 user_id=51]
That quote regarding DeLaurentis is suspect too being as the New York families never had 300 members [i]each[/i].
[/quote]

I guarantee you like 97% of mobsters do not nerd out over this stuff in accurate detail the way we do and believe all kinds of debunked myths etc.

There are probably[i] bosses[/i] who don't know how precisely how many made guys are in their families and all their names.

[quote=Wiseguy post_id=283949 time=1726847060 user_id=51]
That quote regarding DeLaurentis is suspect too being as the New York families never had 300 members [i]each[/i].

If you look at the figures from the FBI from 1984 to 1999, they only ranged from 41-51 members. Though to be fair, I tried to make a list a while back of members who were alive since 1999 and there were 58 names.
[/quote]

I estimated 50-60 was their "peak" max up to the 1990s indictments. It was a pretty significant decline after that.

That quote regarding DeLaurentis is suspect too being as the New York families never had 300 members [i]each[/i].

If you look at the figures from the FBI from 1984 to 1999, they only ranged from 41-51 members. Though to be fair, I tried to make a list a while back of members who were alive since 1999 and there were 58 names.

It's tough for me to imagine 30+ made members flying under the radar between the 46 listed by the FBI in 1985 and the 48 listed in 1993 (which also included Rockford members -- who were not part of Chicago). Even if we add the members we know were made at the time, we'd still only be in the 50s. The 1982 FBI chart which had members and "significant" associates only had 70. I think his expression is open to interpretation, though.

So when you say members this is just Italians yes? Cause over the years they’ve had people like gus Alex, humphries etc who are not Italian obviously but you’d say they were members of the outfit

He literally says members. I will post it

Given what we know of Chicago and Nick Calabrese's account, it's also unlikely a newly-made member like DeLaurentis knew the exact number of members and was simply communicating the point that Chicago was smaller than the NYC Families. DeLaurentis may have understood there were more than a few dozen but fewer than 100 and threw an estimate out there to make his basic point.