General Chicago Outfit Info Dumping Ground

[Antiliar]

Off topic but based on the recommendations as well as the very interesting episode we did this week, I purchased Family Secrets on kindle and giving it a read.

I'm 35 or so pages in and what strikes me is the network of contacts and connections that soldier Frank Calabrese maintained. From crooked cops visiting him in prison to provide him info to his having people ready to provide an alibi that he was with on the night of the Feccorata(?) Murder.

First mob book I've purchased since Mob Prince w Leonetti and Burnstein. I'm really enjoying it. Thank you for the recommendation.

Edit/Question:

Is there a place for me to read Nick Calabrese's testimony as well as the wiretapped conversations between the Calabrese father and son? I remember reading snippits of it in the papers back when this case was going on. It was almost 20 years ago but I remember Frank saying they had about 90 members? #1 and #2. That Joe Lombardo was out? It's all a blur at this point.

Right here for Nick's testimony: https://theblackhand.club/forum/viewtop ... =44&t=9471

[Angelo Santino]

Thanks guys.

I've avoided chicago for far too long and I've got some (no, alot of) catching up to do.

Between reading this book and my private talks w Tony to the last episode we did, the Chicago Mafia is a very efficient and deadly group. No other way to put it.

When DiLeonardo was made he was told the rules and can and cannots. He later joked "so what can we do?" The way Nick described his entry into Chicago was very dark and no laughing matter. He got made and was told something along the lines of "you now have some protection, but just a little."

It's very scary family and more traditional to Sicilian Mafia standards than NY was, is what I'm seeing.

[PolackTony]

Thanks guys.

I've avoided chicago for far too long and I've got some (no, alot of) catching up to do.

Between reading this book and my private talks w Tony to the last episode we did, the Chicago Mafia is a very efficient and deadly group. No other way to put it.

When DiLeonardo was made he was told the rules and can and cannots. He later joked "so what can we do?" The way Nick described his entry into Chicago was very dark and no laughing matter. He got made and was told something along the lines of "you now have some protection, but just a little."

It's very scary family and more traditional to Sicilian Mafia standards than NY was, is what I'm seeing.

Coen’s book is excellent and the FS trial and Nick’s testimony were what initially made it clear to me that the old narrative that Chicago wasn’t a “real” LCN Family was false and based on decades of coverage that had little to no insight into the organization itself, and its structure and protocols.

We’ve discussed the uses and misuses of the concept of “Americanization” before. In Chicago, this consisted of the deep embedding of the mafia in the networks of socialization and interaction through which cohorts of immigrants from Italy became incorporated into new, Italian American communities in the city and suburbs, same as any other US Family. In places like Madison, Milwaukee, or Detroit, where the majority of Italian arrivals were Sicilian, the membership of the mafia reflected this fact. In Chicago, as in NYC, New England, Philly, and Pittsburgh, the mafia evolved in a crucible of intense and close interactions between Sicilians and Mainlanders. Over the course of the first three decades of the 20th Century, Mainland Italians in Chicago were progressively drawn in and incorporated into the mafia, via dynamics of interaction (both criminal and broadly social) with Sicilians in Chicagoland’s multiple Italian communities. Maranzano’s recognition of Capone as boss of Chicago in 1931 was the formal capstone completing a process that had been playing out for years, forged through the strife and bloodshed of the preceding decades.

I use the metaphor of a house here. Mainlanders like Capone, Ricca, and Nitto moved into a house that had been built by the Siciliani, likely standing by then for ~50 years. They didn’t burn it down and build something new over its ashes, and no strong evidence even suggests that they even did any significant remodeling. They moved into the house and maintained it.

And they didn’t kick out the original occupants by any means either, but occupied and maintained the house together. Chicago was under a Mainlander-dominated admin for 15 years, but always had many Sicilian members and under the new leadership retained guys like DeGeorge, DiGiovanni, Bacino, Sam Aiello, Little Joe Aiello, Phil D’Andrea, etc., underscoring the continuities between the existing inhabitants of the house and the new additions.

After this 15 year period, Chicago wouldn’t have another Mainlander boss until DiFronzo in the 90s. Commentators are sometimes keen to point out that Capone and Ricca were Napolitan’, but for whatever reason have not made it the same point to underscore that Accardo, Giancana, Battaglia, Aiuppa, Carlisi, Monteleone, and Tornabene were Sicilian (we can throw Marcello in as a half-Sicilian and Campagna was of course Messinese-American). No one seemed to have been aware that Johnny Apes, the boss into the early 2000s, was himself born in Sambuca.

And yes, the evidence from FS — which finally pulled the curtains back a bit on something that had largely existed in the shadows for over 100 years — paints a picture of a grim and dark organization. Highly secretive, disciplined, with a comparatively small and tightly controlled membership belied by the Family’s major criminal and social power and influence. This was a Family that left one with very little room for error, hardly any second chances for guys that fucked up (they didn’t tell you a “third time”), that placed a heavy priority on the capacity to kill and terrorize, and had myriad, deeply-rooted connections into local government, LE, organized labor, legitimate business, and social institutions.

Several things that came out in FS have long stood out to me as particularly evocative. Nick’s recounting of the 1983 ceremony, held in a restaurant owned by a family from Sicily (Cìnisi, no less), on a grey fall Chicago day, across the street from Mt Carmel Cemetery, where the graves of dozens, hundreds, of members, associates, and their brutally murdered victims lay buried. Where Capone’s world-famous story ended with an almost anonymous grave, the tiny tombstone decorated only with a sad epitaph begging absolution for a life of violence and suffering: “My Jesus Mercy”. The new inductees wait in the shuttered restaurant to be brought in one-by-one to stand before the capidecine and Aiuppa, a stone cold killer with the face and heart of a bird of prey, who officiated over a ceremony brought from Sicily many decades before and practiced in such secrecy that Nick testified that prior to his induction he didn’t even know what it entailed. As you note, Angelo, afterwards the new inductees are take to a diner with their captain. No neighborhood party, no festive celebration. Just a warning that “now you have some protection. Some”.

Nick’s flat affect during his testimony itself was striking. The first, and still only, member of his old brotherhood who ever exposed its existence and inner workings to the public, looking and sounding like a broken man; an animal from the darkness of the jungle backed into a corner and brought under the bright lights of the courtroom. Nick claimed on the stand that he had often wondered since the day he had been proposed for membership what would’ve happened had he turned the offer down, with the unstated implication that he had been haunted by the possibility that he might’ve been dropped right there on the floor of Angelo LaPietra’s basement. The only way out was “feet first”.

A ceremony where one’s worth as a “man” was scrutinized by a panel of brutal killers, who had the inductee let the card of a Saint burn down to the flesh of the palm as they silently watched to see if he’d flinch. Frank Sr, a man who strangled men he knew and felt the life leave their bodies, telling his son that the thing that really messed with his head was having to “burn a Holy Card”, and how “they” watched you to judge your reaction. Reminds one of Antiliar’s info that Jack Cerone was made in the basement of a church. Of all the places in vast Chicagoland controlled by the “outfit”, why a church? And then I think of the old “fratuzzi” in Bagheria, where inductees were reported to have been sacrilegiously required to fire a pistol at an image of Jesus, and the sister organization in Corleone, where it was reported that an image of a skull was burned. From a deep historical perspective, Chicago was very much a “cousin” Family of the infamous “Triangle of Death”.

Even little things, like Nick adopting a puppy from the City animal shelter to decapitate it and leave its severed head as a threat to an extortion victim. Without a doubt, the least of their multitude of crimes, but one that has stayed with me over the years, as I have very fond memories of going to the same facility, on Western Ave by the South Branch of the Chicago River, as a small kid to adopt pets. I can picture Nick there and the terrified and abandoned puppy wagging its tail when Nick selected it, still wagging its tail as he knelt to kill it.

[Ivan]

All of the "Americanization" and "modernization" narratives about the mob are dumb. They usually seem to reflect a weird enthusiasm for that sort of "out with the old, in with the new" thing on the part of the authors, perhaps rooted in Modernism as their personal aesthetic and "ideology" of sorts. They're pretty gung-ho about the concept when they bring it up. It's all very 20th century. I read stuff written by some dude born in 1947 about how the mob was a bunch of Neanderthals or something until the KIDS took over and I'm like "OK boomer".

[Angelo Santino]

All of the "Americanization" and "modernization" narratives about the mob are dumb. They usually seem to reflect a weird enthusiasm for that sort of "out with the old, in with the new" thing on the part of the authors, perhaps rooted in Modernism as their personal aesthetic and "ideology" of sorts. They're pretty gung-ho about the concept when they bring it up. It's all very 20th century. I read stuff written by some dude born in 1947 about how the mob was a bunch of Neanderthals or something until the KIDS took over and I'm like "OK boomer".

It's the Ethnic Succession Theory, both New York and Chicago narratives have been told and retold in that fashion. Even Family Secrets, in the beginning, wasn't absolved from this. This idea that the "American Mob" was formed by Italian hoods in the 30's out of the ashes of feuding Italian gangs.

[Angelo Santino]

Thanks guys.

I've avoided chicago for far too long and I've got some (no, alot of) catching up to do.

Between reading this book and my private talks w Tony to the last episode we did, the Chicago Mafia is a very efficient and deadly group. No other way to put it.

When DiLeonardo was made he was told the rules and can and cannots. He later joked "so what can we do?" The way Nick described his entry into Chicago was very dark and no laughing matter. He got made and was told something along the lines of "you now have some protection, but just a little."

It's very scary family and more traditional to Sicilian Mafia standards than NY was, is what I'm seeing.

Coen’s book is excellent and the FS trial and Nick’s testimony were what initially made it clear to me that the old narrative that Chicago wasn’t a “real” LCN Family was false and based on decades of coverage that had little to no insight into the organization itself, and its structure and protocols.

We’ve discussed the uses and misuses of the concept of “Americanization” before. In Chicago, this consisted of the deep embedding of the mafia in the networks of socialization and interaction through which cohorts of immigrants from Italy became incorporated into new, Italian American communities in the city and suburbs, same as any other US Family. In places like Madison, Milwaukee, or Detroit, where the majority of Italian arrivals were Sicilian, the membership of the mafia reflected this fact. In Chicago, as in NYC, New England, Philly, and Pittsburgh, the mafia evolved in a crucible of intense and close interactions between Sicilians and Mainlanders. Over the course of the first three decades of the 20th Century, Mainland Italians in Chicago were progressively drawn in and incorporated into the mafia, via dynamics of interaction (both criminal and broadly social) with Sicilians in Chicagoland’s multiple Italian communities. Maranzano’s recognition of Capone as boss of Chicago in 1931 was the formal capstone completing a process that had been playing out for years, forged through the strife and bloodshed of the preceding decades.

I use the metaphor of a house here. Mainlanders like Capone, Ricca, and Nitto moved into a house that had been built by the Siciliani, likely standing by then for ~50 years. They didn’t burn it down and build something new over its ashes, and no strong evidence even suggests that they even did any significant remodeling. They moved into the house and maintained it.

And they didn’t kick out the original occupants by any means either, but occupied and maintained the house together. Chicago was under a Mainlander-dominated admin for 15 years, but always had many Sicilian members and under the new leadership retained guys like DeGeorge, DiGiovanni, Bacino, Sam Aiello, Little Joe Aiello, Phil D’Andrea, etc., underscoring the continuities between the existing inhabitants of the house and the new additions.

After this 15 year period, Chicago wouldn’t have another Mainlander boss until DiFronzo in the 90s. Commentators are sometimes keen to point out that Capone and Ricca were Napolitan’, but for whatever reason have not made it the same point to underscore that Accardo, Giancana, Battaglia, Aiuppa, Carlisi, Monteleone, and Tornabene were Sicilian (we can throw Marcello in as a half-Sicilian and Campagna was of course Messinese-American). No one seemed to have been aware that Johnny Apes, the boss into the early 2000s, was himself born in Sambuca.

And yes, the evidence from FS — which finally pulled the curtains back a bit on something that had largely existed in the shadows for over 100 years — paints a picture of a grim and dark organization. Highly secretive, disciplined, with a comparatively small and tightly controlled membership belied by the Family’s major criminal and social power and influence. This was a Family that left one with very little room for error, hardly any second chances for guys that fucked up (they didn’t tell you a “third time”), that placed a heavy priority on the capacity to kill and terrorize, and had myriad, deeply-rooted connections into local government, LE, organized labor, legitimate business, and social institutions.

Several things that came out in FS have long stood out to me as particularly evocative. Nick’s recounting of the 1983 ceremony, held in a restaurant owned by a family from Sicily (Cìnisi, no less), on a grey fall Chicago day, across the street from Mt Carmel Cemetery, where the graves of dozens, hundreds, of members, associates, and their brutally murdered victims lay buried. Where Capone’s world-famous story ended with an almost anonymous grave, the tiny tombstone decorated only with a sad epitaph begging absolution for a life of violence and suffering: “My Jesus Mercy”. The new inductees wait in the shuttered restaurant to be brought in one-by-one to stand before the capidecine and Aiuppa, a stone cold killer with the face and heart of a bird of prey, who officiated over a ceremony brought from Sicily many decades before and practiced in such secrecy that Nick testified that prior to his induction he didn’t even know what it entailed. As you note, Angelo, afterwards the new inductees are take to a diner with their captain. No neighborhood party, no festive celebration. Just a warning that “now you have some protection. Some”.

Nick’s flat affect during his testimony itself was striking. The first, and still only, member of his old brotherhood who ever exposed its existence and inner workings to the public, looking and sounding like a broken man; an animal from the darkness of the jungle backed into a corner and brought under the bright lights of the courtroom. Nick claimed on the stand that he had often wondered since the day he had been proposed for membership what would’ve happened had he turned the offer down, with the unstated implication that he had been haunted by the possibility that he might’ve been dropped right there on the floor of Angelo LaPietra’s basement. The only way out was “feet first”.

A ceremony where one’s worth as a “man” was scrutinized by a panel of brutal killers, who had the inductee let the card of a Saint burn down to the flesh of the palm as they silently watched to see if he’d flinch. Frank Sr, a man who strangled men he knew and felt the life leave their bodies, telling his son that the thing that really messed with his head was having to “burn a Holy Card”, and how “they” watched you to judge your reaction. Reminds one of Antiliar’s info that Jack Cerone was made in the basement of a church. Of all the places in vast Chicagoland controlled by the “outfit”, why a church? And then I think of the old “fratuzzi” in Bagheria, where inductees were reported to have been sacrilegiously required to fire a pistol at an image of Jesus, and the sister organization in Corleone, where it was reported that an image of a skull was burned. From a deep historical perspective, Chicago was very much a “cousin” Family of the infamous “Triangle of Death”.

Even little things, like Nick adopting a puppy from the City animal shelter to decapitate it and leave its severed head as a threat to an extortion victim. Without a doubt, the least of their multitude of crimes, but one that has stayed with me over the years, as I have very fond memories of going to the same facility, on Western Ave by the South Branch of the Chicago River, as a small kid to adopt pets. I can picture Nick there and the terrified and abandoned puppy wagging its tail when Nick selected it, still wagging its tail as he knelt to kill it.

I think "Capone's Outfit" is Chicago's version of "Luciano's 1931 American Mafia." It's not surprising that people today ascribe to this. I reckon 90% of the books out there portray it through the Ethnic Succession Theory. The books that do clarify that the American Mafia is the same as the Sicilian Mafia just avoid the 1931 "formation" stuff entirely.

Haven't gotten to the puppy part yet but jesus. I can handle The Hook sticking people on meathooks but when you kill animals, that's too much for me.

[Ivan]

Haven't gotten to the puppy part yet but jesus. I can handle The Hook sticking people on meathooks but when you kill animals, that's too much for me.

I talked Ben Sixsmith, a British conservative writer, into reading Murder Machine and he offered the following feedback after finishing it: "Freddie (DiNome) was the only one in the gang I felt any sympathy for until he killed the dog. After that, fuck him."

[PolackTony]

Haven't gotten to the puppy part yet but jesus. I can handle The Hook sticking people on meathooks but when you kill animals, that's too much for me.

I talked Ben Sixsmith, a British conservative writer, into reading Murder Machine and he offered the following feedback after finishing it: "Freddie (DiNome) was the only one in the gang I felt any sympathy for until he killed the dog. After that, fuck him."

Guys like Vinny Asaro and Jimmy Burke were noted animal rights advocates, so the mafia has a mixed record on this.

[Ivan]

Haven't gotten to the puppy part yet but jesus. I can handle The Hook sticking people on meathooks but when you kill animals, that's too much for me.

I talked Ben Sixsmith, a British conservative writer, into reading Murder Machine and he offered the following feedback after finishing it: "Freddie (DiNome) was the only one in the gang I felt any sympathy for until he killed the dog. After that, fuck him."

Guys like Vinny Asaro and Jimmy Burke were noted animal rights advocates, so the mafia has a mixed record on this.

Hahaha OK I know you're kidding but... I didn't know this about Burke and Asaro. Elaborate, please. Burke, the guy who would kill you so he could make 6 million from a robbery you set up instead of "just" 5.5 million was an animal lover, no kidding?

[PolackTony]

Haven't gotten to the puppy part yet but jesus. I can handle The Hook sticking people on meathooks but when you kill animals, that's too much for me.

I talked Ben Sixsmith, a British conservative writer, into reading Murder Machine and he offered the following feedback after finishing it: "Freddie (DiNome) was the only one in the gang I felt any sympathy for until he killed the dog. After that, fuck him."

Guys like Vinny Asaro and Jimmy Burke were noted animal rights advocates, so the mafia has a mixed record on this.

Hahaha OK I know you're kidding but... I didn't know this about Burke and Asaro. Elaborate, please. Burke, the guy who would kill you so he could make 6 million from a robbery you set up instead of "just" 5.5 million was an animal lover, no kidding?

https://www.silive.com/news/2015/10/sni ... uspec.html

The dog was a made man and Pete wasn’t. And he had to sit still and take it. It was among the Italians and Irish, it was real junkyard shit.

[Hired_Goonz]

Yea some real haunting passages in that Family Secrets book. "You do it", as he hands his brother the knife. "Go ahead. Both of them" over the walkie-talkie as an innocent Polack is sentenced to die for the crime of riding in a car with the wrong guy. Yea adopting that puppy and cutting its head off was some real Son of Sam cult shit. But the most disturbing part: if that parked car with the transmitter was on the route to those kids' school, they and their mother would have been blown to pieces. Horrific to think about.

[Angelo Santino]

I watched an entire podcast (not naming names) where this Wild Bunch was discussed and how so and so was the "capo" of this crew and Nick cleared it right up here:

Q. Mr. Calabrese, you mentioned the Wild Bunch not too
long ago and I believe you mentioned them yesterday. Who
was, I guess for a lack of a better term, the boss of the
Wild Bunch?
A. Joe Ferriola.
Q. And I think you may have said that he wasn't exactly a
capo?
A. No.
Q. What was his role in the Outfit structure?
A. He had these guys, the Wild Bunch, under him, and he
used to -- when Turk was the capo, he used to go deal
directly with Turk, he would turn in to Turk.

Q. You also mentioned the Wild Bunch.
You mentioned the Wild Bunch, Mr. Calabrese, can you
tell us whether the Wild Bunch had a leader, a capo or a
captain?
A. The guy that was in charge of them but wasn't a capo was
Joe Ferriola.

I don't understand what's so hard about this. I don't even know what the Wild Bunch is but I can read transcripts. Do they think Nick Calabrese is lying or is it that the structure is boring so lets describe things differently than what it is? This "family-building" stuff is a detriment to understanding this topic, especially in the case of Chicago.

[PolackTony]

I watched an entire podcast (not naming names) where this Wild Bunch was discussed and how so and so was the "capo" of this crew and Nick cleared it right up here:

Q. Mr. Calabrese, you mentioned the Wild Bunch not too
long ago and I believe you mentioned them yesterday. Who
was, I guess for a lack of a better term, the boss of the
Wild Bunch?
A. Joe Ferriola.
Q. And I think you may have said that he wasn't exactly a
capo?
A. No.
Q. What was his role in the Outfit structure?
A. He had these guys, the Wild Bunch, under him, and he
used to -- when Turk was the capo, he used to go deal
directly with Turk, he would turn in to Turk.

Q. You also mentioned the Wild Bunch.
You mentioned the Wild Bunch, Mr. Calabrese, can you
tell us whether the Wild Bunch had a leader, a capo or a
captain?
A. The guy that was in charge of them but wasn't a capo was
Joe Ferriola.

I don't understand what's so hard about this. I don't even know what the Wild Bunch is but I can read transcripts. Do they think Nick Calabrese is lying or is it that the structure is boring so lets describe things differently than what it is? This "family-building" stuff is a detriment to understanding this topic, especially in the case of Chicago.

The problem is that any group of guys can be a "crew". A group of burglars is a "crew", a group of guys running a juice loan operation is a "crew", and an LCN decina is a "crew". Guys on the street will call any group of guys a "crew", which is why the government typically referred to decine in Chicago as "street crews" in their cases, in that they answered to a "street boss", which is how the G usually referred to a captain. But then, even this was applied inconsistently, for example when Frank Calabrese's juice loan operation got pinched in the 90s, it was referred to as the "Calabrese street crew", even though Frank was originally just an associate running that operation and then later a soldier (the only guys apart from Frank who wound up getting made were Nick, and probably Cheech Furio).

An issue with Nick's testimony is that he unequivocally states that Ferriola was not a captain, but this of course isn't accounting for changes over time. We know from other sources like Gerry Scarpelli that Ferriola almost certainly took over as captain of the Buccieri crew (Taylor St/Cicero crew) when capo Turk Torello died in 1979. Prior to this, Ferriola was a solider under Buccieri and then Torello, and had a "crew" of associates who answered to him -- ie.e., the "Wild Bunch". Most likely, Nick was never introduced as a member to Ferriola as a capo, so he may just never have been appraised of Ferriola having been bumped up. In the 70s, Nick had worked on hits with some of Ferriola's guys and Frank Sr was close to Tony Borsellino. By the time that Nick was made in '83, that Wild Bunch thing was over and Ferriola was pretty clearly the capo of Cicero. If Ferriola had attended the Calabrese's making ceremony, then presumably at that point Nick would've been informed that Ferriola was a captain. Ferriola of course did not attend the ceremony and Rocky Infelise, who succeeded Feriola as capo, was made then and sponsored by Angelo LaPietra, the 26th St capo, along with the Calabreses. This could be read as Ferriola not having been a captain, but I think it's more likely that Ferriola simply wasn't able to attend (Ferriola had very serious health problems and we know from Scarpelli that by '88 his health had basically made Ferriola inactive) and thus LaPietra -- who had originally been made as a soldier into the Buccieri crew -- stood in as Rocky's sponsor.

Despite Nick's testimony, the narratives around guys in Chicago often draw on older accounts from long before we had a made guy testifying about these things. Thus, commentators may have issues being clear about what the structure actually was, as from the outside-looking-in, it really could've seemed like Ferriola was already a captain in the '70s and that the "Wild Bunch" were his soldiers. When in reality, those guys were all associates and the only ones who got made were Scarpelli in '88 and Jimmy I, who wasn't made until at least '88, at the earliest.

[PolackTony]

Yea some real haunting passages in that Family Secrets book. "You do it", as he hands his brother the knife. "Go ahead. Both of them" over the walkie-talkie as an innocent Polack is sentenced to die for the crime of riding in a car with the wrong guy. Yea adopting that puppy and cutting its head off was some real Son of Sam cult shit. But the most disturbing part: if that parked car with the transmitter was on the route to those kids' school, they and their mother would have been blown to pieces. Horrific to think about.

It's some real Chicago shit, man.

The Cagnoni bombing was wild. As you noted, if the Cagnoni family's morning had played out a little differently, the wife and kids would've been chunks of brisket. But even the way it went down was bananas -- a trucking firm executive blown up in his Benz on the on-ramp to the Tri-State Tollway during the morning rush. These guys would kill you any which way -- shoot you, stab you, garrote you, leave you as "trunk music", or blow you the fuck up on the way to work. You can see why the Feds thought Bob Cooley was suicidal or dying when he offered to wear a wire on Pat Marcy lol.

I suspect that what could've happened to Cagnoni's wife and kids haunted Nick over the years. Even with all the nasty shit this guy did, to have realized how close he came to blowing up a woman and kids... Nick has always struck me as being a relatively decent guy in comparison to most of the other Chicago guys, many of whom were absolute animals. Even in the few pics we have of him, he's a quiet, unassuming-looking guy, none of the snarling contempt we see with other guys (or in Lombardo's case, smirking glee). It was Frank who was the hoodlum as a kid, who started a major juice operation years before he was made, who -- according to Nick at least -- pulled Nick in as an associate and set him on a path where he either had to kill or get dropped himself. Yeah, that could just be the way that Nick portrayed it to distance himself from the awful reality of who he was and the things that he had done, but I do really believe that if not for Frankie, Nick would probably just have been a normal guy. Until he flipped, no one outside of the organization would've had any idea that he was made and had that kind of blood on his hands. When Frank's juice operation was busted in the 90s, everyone just thought that Nick was an associate who worked for his brother. while Frank was so well-known that he was already listed by the Feds as made in 1973, ten years before he was, based on claims from 3 sources (one of many issues that force us to seriously question the validity of the FBI's "member" sources for Chicago).

[funkster]

I watched an entire podcast (not naming names) where this Wild Bunch was discussed and how so and so was the "capo" of this crew and Nick cleared it right up here:

Q. Mr. Calabrese, you mentioned the Wild Bunch not too
long ago and I believe you mentioned them yesterday. Who
was, I guess for a lack of a better term, the boss of the
Wild Bunch?
A. Joe Ferriola.
Q. And I think you may have said that he wasn't exactly a
capo?
A. No.
Q. What was his role in the Outfit structure?
A. He had these guys, the Wild Bunch, under him, and he
used to -- when Turk was the capo, he used to go deal
directly with Turk, he would turn in to Turk.

Q. You also mentioned the Wild Bunch.
You mentioned the Wild Bunch, Mr. Calabrese, can you
tell us whether the Wild Bunch had a leader, a capo or a
captain?
A. The guy that was in charge of them but wasn't a capo was
Joe Ferriola.

I don't understand what's so hard about this. I don't even know what the Wild Bunch is but I can read transcripts. Do they think Nick Calabrese is lying or is it that the structure is boring so lets describe things differently than what it is? This "family-building" stuff is a detriment to understanding this topic, especially in the case of Chicago.

The problem is that any group of guys can be a "crew". A group of burglars is a "crew", a group of guys running a juice loan operation is a "crew", and an LCN decina is a "crew". Guys on the street will call any group of guys a "crew", which is why the government typically referred to decine in Chicago as "street crews" in their cases, in that they answered to a "street boss", which is how the G usually referred to a captain. But then, even this was applied inconsistently, for example when Frank Calabrese's juice loan operation got pinched in the 90s, it was referred to as the "Calabrese street crew", even though Frank was originally just an associate running that operation and then later a soldier (the only guys apart from Frank who wound up getting made were Nick, and probably Cheech Furio).

An issue with Nick's testimony is that he unequivocally states that Ferriola was not a captain, but this of course isn't accounting for changes over time. We know from other sources like Gerry Scarpelli that Ferriola almost certainly took over as captain of the Buccieri crew (Taylor St/Cicero crew) when capo Turk Torello died in 1979. Prior to this, Ferriola was a solider under Buccieri and then Torello, and had a "crew" of associates who answered to him -- ie.e., the "Wild Bunch". Most likely, Nick was never introduced as a member to Ferriola as a capo, so he may just never have been appraised of Ferriola having been bumped up. In the 70s, Nick had worked on hits with some of Ferriola's guys and Frank Sr was close to Tony Borsellino. By the time that Nick was made in '83, that Wild Bunch thing was over and Ferriola was pretty clearly the capo of Cicero. If Ferriola had attended the Calabrese's making ceremony, then presumably at that point Nick would've been informed that Ferriola was a captain. Ferriola of course did not attend the ceremony and Rocky Infelise, who succeeded Feriola as capo, was made then and sponsored by Angelo LaPietra, the 26th St capo, along with the Calabreses. This could be read as Ferriola not having been a captain, but I think it's more likely that Ferriola simply wasn't able to attend (Ferriola had very serious health problems and we know from Scarpelli that by '88 his health had basically made Ferriola inactive) and thus LaPietra -- who had originally been made as a soldier into the Buccieri crew -- stood in as Rocky's sponsor.

Despite Nick's testimony, the narratives around guys in Chicago often draw on older accounts from long before we had a made guy testifying about these things. Thus, commentators may have issues being clear about what the structure actually was, as from the outside-looking-in, it really could've seemed like Ferriola was already a captain in the '70s and that the "Wild Bunch" were his soldiers. When in reality, those guys were all associates and the only ones who got made were Scarpelli in '88 and Jimmy I, who wasn't made until at least '88, at the earliest.

yeah i think this pretty much sums it up. It's always kind of a lazy generalized mistake to act like the wild bunch was a separate crew of made guys. It happens a lot.