Murder in Canaryville

[Patrickgold]

Article about a book that was recently released. Author is Jeff Coen, the author of family secrets. Book talks a lot about the Chinatown crew bc the suspect of the murder was Rocky LaMantia, son of Shorty LaMantia.

The night murder came to Canaryville: A cop and Tribune reporter Jeff Coen tackle a cold case
RICK KOGAN
February 2 at 7:00 AM CT
What should have been such an easy murder case to solve has instead become a puzzle, and an exciting book which takes us compellingly back in time and into some of darkest corners of Chicago.
“Murder in Canaryville: The True Story Behind a Cold Case and a Chicago Cover-Up” (Chicago Review Press) by Chicago Tribune reporter and editor Jeff Coen travels to a warm spring night many years ago. There is a dust-up between Italian and Irish teens at a party. Nothing unusual about that, in these neighborhoods of ancient feuds. “The Italians and the Irish. Bridgeport and Canaryville. Oil and water. It went back as far as anyone could recall,” Coen writes. “It was the same with their fathers and in prior generations.”
These feuds usually erupted in the form of fisticuffs but not on this night, as some from a house party gathered in a neighborhood park to cool off. A green car cruised by and a shot was fired. It hit a 17-year-old named John Hughes, the “tall, good-looking football player and member of the student council. … He had college on his mind. He was going places.”
The place he went that night, the last place he would ever go, was Mercy Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. It was 1:20 a.m. on May 15, 1976.

Who killed him?
The complicated answer to that question is at the heart of Coen’s book. It is a book with many good guys, most of them cops, and many bad guys, a few of them cops too, abetted by crooked judges, politicians exercising clout, mobsters and their families, and many other nefarious types who have long operated in the sordid shadows of the city.
The towering hero of the book is a lifelong member of law enforcement named Jim Sherlock. In 1976 he was a sixth grader at the former St. Adrian Elementary School near Marquette Park and so didn’t learn of Hughes’ murder for decades.
But he was, if such a genetic occurrence is even possible, born to be a cop. Both his great-grandfather and grandfather had been police officers. (His father was somehow detoured into another profession though Sherlock’s two sons would join the Chicago Police Department.)

He came to this case near the end of what had been a distinguished career during which, Coen writes, he “would prove to have a knack for being in the orbit of major events in the department’s history, including some of its great tragedies.”
Many of those are powerfully recounted by Coen as Sherlock rose to became a detective in 1997 and was later on loan from the CPD to the FBI, worked various chores including investigating cold cases. (There was also a time he was moonlighting for the “Jerry Springer Show,” once traveling to Missouri to interview a man who claimed to have married and slept with his horse.)
Sherlock had heard whispers about the Hughes case for years on the force but it was not until 2018 that he took the suggestion of a retired police commander who thought he might want to look into it, but warning that if he did so, he had better “buckle up.”
And he did, first going to explore the files from the case. “What should have been a massive file with notes and transcripts from dozens of interviews had been reduced to a few seemingly random sheets of paper and a couple of photographs,” Coen writes. “He could have left the records center without the folder and cruised into retirement without taking on the case at all, no one would have noticed.”

“Instead, he tucked the envelope under his arm and carried it outside.”
And then, as Coen writes, “The secrets would not come easily. Jim Sherlock knew it and that was fine. … Whatever truth was buried here, whatever the streets of Bridgeport and Canaryville would dish out, he would take.”

"Murder in Canaryville: The True Story Behind a Cold Case and a Chicago Cover-Up" by Jeff Coen is published Jan. 12, 2021 ( Chicago Review Press).
CHICAGO REVIEW PRESS 
But these two distinctive Chicago neighborhoods were unaccustomed to dishing out secrets or deep feelings. What Sherlock and Coen, who did many follow up interviews with the principals in the case (at least with those still breathing), encountered was this sentence from those they interviewed: “I don’t want this to be about me.” Others did not talk at all.
The cast of characters is vividly captured. You will remember many of them and not like more than a few. And, even though he died of a heart attack late in 1976, Mayor Richard J. Daley casts a large shadow on Bridgeport and members of the CPD.
This is Coen’s third book. In 2009 he published “Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob” (Chicago Review Press) and in 2012, in collaboration with former Tribune reporter John Chase, “Golden: How Rod Blagojevich Talked Himself Out of the Governor’s Office and into Prison” (Chicago Review Press).
He is aware of the ways of the city, covering for years its crimes and punishments. Coen is not a flashy writer and that’s a benefit for this story and for readers. He is a forceful writer and a master at structure and detail. On one level, this story must have presented him with an organizational nightmare, a dusty decades-old tale filled with dozens of twists and turns. (Added to that was he and his wife, Tribune reporter Tracy Swartz, had just welcomed a new baby girl named Sloan.)
But Coen was more than intrigued when Sherlock first approached him with this story. The two had not known one another before. They know each other now and they have delivered a potent story.
There was a time in this business when half the reporters’ desks held the pages of a possible book. The city has always intrigued those of us who get paid to write about it. It ever fascinates. It ever frustrates.
So, who killed John Hughes?
I am sure I know, thanks to Coen, though the answer, which I won’t give away here, is unlikely to result in a trial. As Coen writes, “In many ways, Sherlock gave the family Hughes family a gift. … He cared. He recognized what they had gone through and the vacancy in their lives and tried to give them answers. … He was not the first — nor will he be the last — to end his effort without getting absolute fairness and true justice.”
But Coen and Sherlock have done right by John Hughes, this young man long gone.

[SolarSolano]

Coen's writing style is excellent. I am definitely ordering this and thank you for sharing - Rocky sounds like quite the loose cannon. I had a mutual friend with Aldo who most called 'Little Shorty' and was basically raised with the family and was part of that crew. He came out of prison and lived in Crystal Lake and was told he was an exceptionally nice guy.

[Patrickgold]

Coen's writing style is excellent. I am definitely ordering this and thank you for sharing - Rocky sounds like quite the loose cannon. I had a mutual friend with Aldo who most called 'Little Shorty' and was basically raised with the family and was part of that crew. He came out of prison and lived in Crystal Lake and was told he was an exceptionally nice guy.

It talks about Aldo in the book. He seemed like the son that shorty wish was his own blood. I wonder how close Aldo and Rocky were. Rocky seemed like a degenerate. Not only was he suspected in the Hughes murder in Canaryville, he also allegedly murdered his girlfriend a couple of years after that. Rocky died a couple of years ago and Aldo I believe died about 5 years ago??

[PolackTony]

Yes Rocky killed his girlfriend Martha Dicaro. The story that emerges in Coen's book (which is a quick and excellent read btw) is that she was leaving him and may have threatened to go to the police about his role in the Hughes kid killing, so he shot her in the head in the Lamantia family house. I believe that Shorty disposed of the weapon before investigators could recover it. It may very well have been the same gun used on Hughes. Rocky was later acquitted by the infamously corrupt judge Thomas Maloney, who of course was subsequently indicted and convicted for fixing murder trials as part of Operation Greylord.

Coen's book isn't really about the Outfit so much as police corruption in Chicago and the local culture and social fabric of Bridgeport and Canaryville. None of us here are going to learn anything new about the Chinatown crew from it, but it's still well worth the read.

[Snakes]

Piscitelli died in 2013. He was relatively young; only 59.

[SolarSolano]

Martha DiCaro was his girlfriend and also the niece of Specs DiCaro who was in Shorty's crew. That was a terrible story. Aldo was very sick and died a few years ago. I think him, Tony Doyle and Ronnie Jarrett were all the same age and very close.

[Patrickgold]

Where these DiCaros related to the burglar Paulie DiCaro?

[Patrickgold]

Yes Rocky killed his girlfriend Martha Dicaro. The story that emerges in Coen's book (which is a quick and excellent read btw) is that she was leaving him and may have threatened to go to the police about his role in the Hughes kid killing, so he shot her in the head in the Lamantia family house. I believe that Shorty disposed of the weapon before investigators could recover it. It may very well have been the same gun used on Hughes. Rocky was later acquitted by the infamously corrupt judge Thomas Maloney, who of course was subsequently indicted and convicted for fixing murder trials as part of Operation Greylord.

Coen's book isn't really about the Outfit so much as police corruption in Chicago and the local culture and social fabric of Bridgeport and Canaryville. None of us here are going to learn anything new about the Chinatown crew from it, but it's still well worth the read.

I agree it was a quick read. The only thing I didn’t like about the book was the changing of names, especially on the character Nick Costello. All roads led back to him. I think he should of used his real name. The guy was involved in the coverup and didn’t want to cooperate so screw him. Let him sue

[Snakes]

Where these DiCaros related to the burglar Paulie DiCaro?

Paul was Specs' son, I believe. If I remember correctly, Paul operated out of Arizona in the eighties. Specs was ancient when he died; almost 100. Here is a photo of him:

[Villain]

Specs started as chauffeur for Ralph Pierce.

There was also one Joe DiCaro who was involved with the Heights crew?? but allegedly had no relation to Specs and his brother Joe i think.

[Patrickgold]

The Paul DiCaro I’m talking about is in the article that I attached below

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.chicag ... y,amp.html