It should be no surprise that the Nuova Famiglia (an LE term; the insider term was "Nuova Fratellanza Napoletana") had ties to Chicago, as Chicago was likely intimately tied to the founding of the NF.
As reported above, Chicago restaurateur Giuseppe Spavone -- father of Tony Spavone -- was a Cammorrista from Naples. Giuseppe was also the brother of Antonio Spavone, a famed Camorrista who was instrumental in the founding of the NF and reputed liaison between the Camorra and the American mafia.
Giuseppe (born 1919) and Antonio (born 1926) were in a Camorra clan headed by their elder brother Carmine, aka
'o Malomm' ("the bad man"), in the years following WW2. Carmine's nickname was reportedly inherited from their grandfather, Ciro Spavone, aka
'o Malomm', said to have also been a feared Camorra boss in the Spavone's home turf in the Arenaccia slum in Naples. The Spavone clan was heavily engaged in the important smuggling rackets in Naples during the post-war Allied forces occupation. In 1945, Carmine was murdered by rival Camorrista Giovanni Mormone; when Antonio Spavone then exacted revenge by stabbing Mormone to death in front of a party of Mormone's relatives, he reportedly inherited the moniker
Totonno 'o Malomm', having upheld his family's tradition of honor and violence. In Italian accounts, Giuseppe Spavone was tortured by the police while Antonio was on the run from the Mormone murder, and subsequently fled to the US. Giuseppe's official legal entry to the US, per his naturalization records at least, was in 1960 at Miami. He then established a popular Italian restaurant, Seven Hills (as in ancient Rome) at Peterson and Lincoln on the Northside of Chicago (Chicago newspaper accounts of Giuseppe stated that he worked as a chef on an Italian cruiseliner in the '50s, and there is a marriage record for him in Vegas in 1955). Antonio was apprehended for the Mormone murder and incarcerated in the infamous Poggioreale prison, where Italian accounts describe him as being treated like a "king". After being transferred to the Murate prison in Florence, Antonio received a pardon from the Italian President in 1967 for heroic acts during a flood of the prison in 1966.
The release of
'o Malomm' in 1967 followed on the heels of the Italian Parliament's 1965 Law 575, which targeted Sicilian mafiosi with forced resettlement in mainland Italy. While this plan was implemented under the assumption that mafiosi would no longer engage in criminality if settled in areas of Italy "uncontaminated" by the mafia, we know that it wound up simply spreading Cosa Nostra influence further across Italy. To compound the stunning foolishness of this plan, Italian authorities also resettled Sicilian mafiosi in Campania, of all places, including important mafia figures such as the Bontades of the Santa Maria di Gesù family. The presence of Sicilian mafiosi in Naples greatly ramped up Cosa Nostra-Camorra cooperation in the cigarette smuggling racket, and directly led to the "mafia-ization" of the Camorra, as Sicilian mafiosi inducted important Napolitan' allies such as Michele Zaza in Cosa Nostra. These smuggling connections also gave rise to large-scale narcotics trafficking networks in the coming years, initially laid by Camorra-Mafia connections to Marseillaise traffickers residing in Naples.
After his release from prison, Antonio Spavone entered this new Camorra dynamic, engaging in smuggling and narcotics trafficking, along with allies such as Zaza and Umberto Ammatura. Italian sources also state that Spavone had himself forged close ties with Sicilian mafiosi. In the 1970s, tensions were ratcheting up between this group of Camorristi, allied to Cosa Nostra, and the followers of Raffaele Cutolo. Cutolo was in the process of establishing the Nuova Camorra Organizzata, which began essentially as Cutolo's personal "cult of personality" enacted through overtures to reconstitute the old Neapolitan "Onorata Società" by borrowing heavily from the rituals and structures of the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta, into which Cutolo was initiated in prison. Now, there was already apparently bad blood between Cutolo and Spavone, as they had been incarcerated together in Poggioreale in the '60s after Cutolo was convicted for the senseless murder of a fireman. After Spavone was arrested again in the 1970s, he was again incarcerated in Poggioreale with Cutolo, who, as a rising star, apparently took aim at Spavone as a respected older statesman of the Camorra. From John Dickie's "Blood Brotherhoods" (p. 455):
Whether real or fabricated by Cutolo, Spavone was released from prison after this incident. In 1976, Spavone was attacked by two assailants on a scooter on the street in Naples and hit in the face with a shotgun blast. Spavone survived the hit attempt, but was horribly disfigured, and fled to the US for reconstructive surgery (he reportedly underwent a series of dozens of surgeries). While a couple of Italian accounts claim that the Spavone hit attempt was carried out by rival Sicilian mafiosi, so far as I know his assailants were never apprehended or identified, and there may be nothing more to the Sicilian angle than the apparent MO of a shotgun blast. Other Italian accounts state that the attempt was carried out by Cutolo's men, which I find much more plausible, given both the personal angle and the broader organizational tensions between Cutolo and the Camorra network that Spavone was part of.
While several accounts simply state that Spavone fled to NYC, others note that he stayed with his brother, Giuseppe. Giuseppe was, of course, in Chicago, and in later trial testimony, Antonio stated that his time in the US was spent "between New York and Chicago". A Chicago record proves that Antonio Spavone (same birthdate) in fact had a Chicago address at 3001 W Peterson. This was a commercial restaurant address, which had been the location of Chef Alberto's (which subsequently moved to Belmont and LSD), owned by Alberto Papia, a Bagherese-Chicago restauranteur (his mother's maiden name was Greco, the same as the men who were running the Bagheria mafia family during this period, of course). It was also in the immediate vicinity of Giuseppe Spavone's Seven Hills restaurant and Giuseppe's home on N Troy.
Now, here's where things get even more interesting. Several Italian sources (including "Gomorrah" author Roberto Savaiano) have stated that Antonio Spavone was the "compare" of Genovese boss Funzi Tieri, himself born in Naples (erroneously described by these sources as the "capo dei capi" of the US mafia following Carlo Gambino's death). These sources state that Tieri was himself active in the Napolitan' underworld and that Spavone's sojourn in the US was under Tieri's protection, who was alleged to have had longstanding ties to Spavone. While staying in the US,
'o Malomm' was tried in absentia in Italy for the 1971 murder of his erstwhile friend and partner, narcotics trafficker Giovanni Ferrigno, who had been responsible for operating a cocaine pipeline from Peru. While prosecutors alleged that Spavone killed Ferrigno over control of narcotics operations, Spavone's lawyers succesfully won his acquittal by arguing that Spavone had killed Ferrigno in self-defense, as Spavone had been sleeping with Ferrigno's wife. The claim of cuckoldry, at least, was probably true, as after being acquitted, Spavone returned from the US to Italy in '79 and took up residence at a compound on the Neapolitan island of Ischia with Ferrigno's widow. Italian sources state that after his return, Spavone held summits of leading Camorra figures in Ischia (
'o Malomm', beloved and gregarious man that he was, later stated that his friends simply wanted to come and see him after his journey to NYC and Chicago). According to an article on the history of the Camorra in the paper "Napoli Today":
By now the war [with Cutolo] has broken out even though it has not been officially declared. The latest attempt at mediation to try to stop the escalation brings to the field the main bosses of the Sicilian and Italian-American mafia, as well as the Campanians.
A summit was convened in Rome in a hotel on September 30, 1980. It is chaired by Antonio Spavone, alias "o' malammo'", a Camorra historian who found refuge in the United States under the protection of the boss Frank Tieri. He is a sort of "noble father" of the Camorra and also acts as a guarantor with the Italian-American mafia. The summit is attended by Zaza, Bardellino, Giuliano, Sicilian mafia families, the Lucchese of New York, the Priziola of Detroit and other mafia of New Jersey and Las Vegas. A proposal is made to Cutolo who, however, refuses the agreement and in fact war is declared."
Info on this summit, and the attendance of both Sicilian and US mafia figures, was first reported in a 1981 article in "Il Tempo". We know that there was no "Las Vegas mafia"; given Spavone's close ties to Chicago, I think it's likely that this was a reference to Chicago. Italian sources credit the Rome summit chaired by Antonio Spavone as the official founding of the Nuova Fratellanza Napoletana, referred to as the "Nuova Famiglia" by Italian LE and the press. In the early 1980s, the Italian and US press referred to Spavone as the capo of the "Nuova Famiglia", and stated that the bloody war between the NCO and NF was a struggle between Spavone, Zaza, and their allies, and Cutolo and his men over the control of narcotics trafficking and tobacco smuggling operations.
In 1984, Spavone, along with ~100 other Camorristi in Naples and Northern Italy, was arrested for "criminal association" based on intel provided by Camorra pentiti. Described by pentiti as "'a judge without a toga' and 'a boss above rivals'", Spavone was convicted in 1985 and sentenced to 9 years (Gaetano Spavone, Antonio's nephew and son of the long-deceased Carmine Spavone, was sentenced to 7 years). Apparently,
`o Malomm' got his conviction overturned somehow, and was released after serving two years. He was tried and acquitted again in '93, before succumbing to cancer that same year. His brother Giuseppe Spavone died of natural causes in Chicago in 2010.
Given his documented residence in Chicago and close ties to NYC as well (and likely to BK specifically, given his reputed personal association with Funzi Tieri), it's possible that the NF capo cited in the '93 FBI report, with ties to Jackie Cerone, Jr, may have been Antonio Spavone. I don't know what he was doing between his release from prison in '87 and his re-arrest and death in '93; the info in the '93 report was dated from 1990, and it wouldn't at all surprise me if Spavone was still traveling to the US in that period or retained business interests in Chicago. The report itself was dated March 1993, and Antonio Spavone died in May of '93.
To conclude, a couple of things to consider. In 1973, Accardo (with a party that included his friend and Napolitan'-Chicago restaurateur Al Meo) was confirmed by Italian LE to have visited Naples; in '74, Al Pilotto told Frank Bompensiero that he had been instructed by Accardo to deliver messages to Accardo's "friends" in Italy during an upcoming trip. At this time, Accardo's personal associate, Sicilian-Chicago wine import magnate Antonino Paternò, was actively being investigated by LE in Italy for reputed ties to the mafia; specifically, Italian LE told the FBI that they believed that Paternò was linked to Sicilian mafiosi who had been resettled in mainland Italy. Giuseppe Spavone's son, and nephew of Antonio Spavone, Chicago singer and restaurateur Tony Spavone, has long been alleged to have close ties to the Chicago mob. For years, rumors have floated that Tony Spavone's Ristorante in suburban Bloomingdale (part of what I call "
zip central", along with Addison, Elmwood Park, Wood Dale, and Itasca) was used by the Outfit for making ceremonies in the 1990s. In more recent years, the Italian Parliament's Antimafia Commission has released information stating that the Alleanza di Secondigliano Camorra group has operations and business investments in Chicago. In this light, it's worth noting that a Ciro Spavone (same name as the Spavone brothers' infamous grandfather) has been named repeatedly in the last several years as a capo of the Camorra in Secondigliano by the Italian press. A Gaetano Spavone (same name as Tony Spavone's cousin, who was convicted in the 80s for Camorra association) was named in 2016 as linked to an Italian-Albanian narcotics trafficking ring operating in Naples and Bari.
A clip of Tony Spavone's restaurant from 'Wild Chicago", a goofy local show produced by Chicago PBS-affiliate WTTW. Giuseppe Spavone appears briefly at 1:28, singing the classic canzon' napolitan' "torna a Surriento":
