Rockford LCN Associate Angelo "Dingo" Pro 1930-2021

[PolackTony]

Detroit, Kansas City, St. Louis, Milwaukee, San Francisco, Tampa, New Orleans, and Pittston are others that seem to have stayed almost entirely Sicilian with just a couple exceptions that we know of.

Colorado was mostly Sicilian but the Denver (and apparently Wyoming) group was mostly non-Sicilian. We have so few confirmed Colorado members it's hard to say.

San Jose was heavily Sicilian as well but had some important Calabrian members who transferred to SJ.

Dallas is interesting because they were small and had longstanding Sicilian roots but had Calabrian representation across the state.

Kind of interesting how aside from Cleveland and Chicago, most of the midwest families were heavily if not entirely Sicilian.

Thanks, the families that you cited are of course all ones that I’ve always thought of as mostly if not all Sicilian. I didn’t know about the non-Sicilians in CO and Dallas, however.

Chicago and Cleveland have/had the largest Italian communities in the Midwest (Detroit also, but they might just be an outlier here), so I wonder if part of it is simply that there was a much larger community within which LCN took root, leading to different recruitment dynamics and social networks. Chicago was of course more like NYC, Boston, or Philly in terms of the scale of Italian settlement and community formation than the cities where these smaller Sicilian “colony” type families emerged. I suspect that Cleveland was similar, but I don’t know enough about the patterns of settlement and community development there.

Cleveland more than Detroit?

My impression is that the Detroit metro area and Northeast Ohio have pretty much equal Ital-American populations (~300k), assuming of course that this is an appropriate apples-to-apples comparison. Detroit metro has a larger population so, while roughly equal in absolute numbers, Northeast OH is bigger in relative terms. So it’s appropriate to say Chicago, then Detroit/Cleveland in number 2.

[B.]

Detroit is more like Rockford in terms of organization, it's just Detroit was in a larger city/territory with more power and operations. Detroit had the option of becoming more like Chicago or NYC in terms of recruitment... they had massive influence in their community and also had "criminal syndicate" credibility, so they could have built up a more diverse group of Italians but they operated their organization more like the smaller US families even though they were a bit larger.

Small families had influence over the local Italian community but few of them saw it as a recruitment pool like the bigger families/cities did. I think the smaller families were deliberate in how they recruited, but some of the smaller ones didn't have much of an option anyway. The Dallas family had very few people to recruit from and stayed small, split between Sicilians and some Calabrians, but the New Orleans family had a larger Italian population and was the first US mafia family yet maintained a small family with almost entirely Sicilians. Many of the smaller families were also less involved in street crime, so it wasn't as easy to build a farm team of up-and-coming Italian hoods of all types and there's not much evidence they wanted that.

Detroit had the bonus of having many new immigrants from Terrasini/Cinisi for decades. Some of the families who died out earlier had initial momentum when a colony of paesani was formed but didn't have ongoing immigration. As Cavita has shared, Rockford did maintain strong Sicilian ties and was importing them as late as the 1970/1980s like we see in NYC/NJ. Even if that Sicilian connection wasn't enough to keep Rockford together indefinitely, it's incredible a tiny family like them was importing compaesani just like they had done 50+ years earlier. Imagine if we heard Madison attempted to keep itself alive in the 1970s by bringing in zips from Bagheria? Just interesting that Rockford was in a position to do that at a time when similar small families had given up.

[SolarSolano]

Gotta say these Rockford threads are some of the best on this forum. Really incredible finds - one question I would pose to you guys is Rockford's involvement in bootlegging given their proximity to the river and wisconsin border. Were they ever in the liqour business with some of the earlier sicilians in Chicago Detroit and other areas too?

[cavita]

Gotta say these Rockford threads are some of the best on this forum. Really incredible finds - one question I would pose to you guys is Rockford's involvement in bootlegging given their proximity to the river and wisconsin border. Were they ever in the liqour business with some of the earlier sicilians in Chicago Detroit and other areas too?

Bootlegging was very heavy there starting with the onset of Prohibition. The early Italians involved were from the mainland but the Sicilians quickly became the dominant force. By the late 1920s and early 1930s there were two factions competing with one group supplying Al Capone's groups and the other supplying Capone's rivals. The former group led by Tony Musso won out and it was documented they also had their stills into southern Wisconsin, east into McHenry County, west to the Mississippi River and south into the LaSalle-Peru, Illinois area. They were running alcohol into WIsconsin, Iowa, Nebraska and even out to Colorado. There were cases where they teamed up with Chicago and WIsconsin guys but to my knowledge not Detroit.
The illegal liquor business was so plentiful there were almost nightly raids barely putting a dent into the operations and so dangerous after one incident in 1930 when federal liquor investigators were fired on while raiding a liquor still- this incident caused the feds to state that the Rockford liquor business was more hazardous at the time for them than the Cicero, Illinois raids they'd been on.

[Patrickgold]

Cavita, what about the Saladinos. Where in Sicily where they from?

[cavita]

Cavita, what about the Saladinos. Where in Sicily where they from?

There were two different Saladino families in the Rockford area. One came from Roccamena, Sicily and the other from Marsala, Sicily. Gumba's family was the Roccamena one while the family of Joe W. came from Marsala. The newspapers always listed them as cousins, which they were not, but they were as close as cousins growing up.

[SolarSolano]

Cavita, what about the Saladinos. Where in Sicily where they from?

There were two different Saladino families in the Rockford area. One came from Roccamena, Sicily and the other from Marsala, Sicily. Gumba's family was the Roccamena one while the family of Joe W. came from Marsala. The newspapers always listed them as cousins, which they were not, but they were as close as cousins growing up.

Is Joe still alive? He was a very rough individual if I remember correctly. That's also what surprised me about Rockford - its not necessarily a rough place its more of a large suburb that has pockets of shitty areas but those neighborhoods those guys grew up in were not like Grand Avenue and Taylor Street that were infested with vice and poverty - it was more or less small town people - so its interesting how rough and serious those guys were all the same. If Gumba was working for Angelo LaPietra - and I'd love to know how that came to be - he was clearly as capable as these other guys from these rough neighborhoods.

[cavita]

Cavita, what about the Saladinos. Where in Sicily where they from?

There were two different Saladino families in the Rockford area. One came from Roccamena, Sicily and the other from Marsala, Sicily. Gumba's family was the Roccamena one while the family of Joe W. came from Marsala. The newspapers always listed them as cousins, which they were not, but they were as close as cousins growing up.

Is Joe still alive? He was a very rough individual if I remember correctly. That's also what surprised me about Rockford - its not necessarily a rough place its more of a large suburb that has pockets of shitty areas but those neighborhoods those guys grew up in were not like Grand Avenue and Taylor Street that were infested with vice and poverty - it was more or less small town people - so its interesting how rough and serious those guys were all the same. If Gumba was working for Angelo LaPietra - and I'd love to know how that came to be - he was clearly as capable as these other guys from these rough neighborhoods.

Joe is still alive. He's 75 and I wouldn't fuck with the guy- he's always had that cold stare. He's another guy that never had any property or possessions put in his name so there was nothing for the government to seize especially when he did federal time a few years back. The only guess I have as to how Gumba connected to LaPietra was through Rockford underboss Frank Buscemi, though when Buscemi was living in Chicago he was a Northside guy. I'd love to know the genesis of all that as well.

[PolackTony]

Cavita, what about the Saladinos. Where in Sicily where they from?

There were two different Saladino families in the Rockford area. One came from Roccamena, Sicily and the other from Marsala, Sicily. Gumba's family was the Roccamena one while the family of Joe W. came from Marsala. The newspapers always listed them as cousins, which they were not, but they were as close as cousins growing up.

Is Joe still alive? He was a very rough individual if I remember correctly. That's also what surprised me about Rockford - its not necessarily a rough place its more of a large suburb that has pockets of shitty areas but those neighborhoods those guys grew up in were not like Grand Avenue and Taylor Street that were infested with vice and poverty - it was more or less small town people - so its interesting how rough and serious those guys were all the same. If Gumba was working for Angelo LaPietra - and I'd love to know how that came to be - he was clearly as capable as these other guys from these rough neighborhoods.

Joe is still alive. He's 75 and I wouldn't fuck with the guy- he's always had that cold stare. He's another guy that never had any property or possessions put in his name so there was nothing for the government to seize especially when he did federal time a few years back. The only guess I have as to how Gumba connected to LaPietra was through Rockford underboss Frank Buscemi, though when Buscemi was living in Chicago he was a Northside guy. I'd love to know the genesis of all that as well.

I’ve wondered this also for some time, and was actually hoping you’d be able to shed light on it lol (as goes without saying, your the man). Caruso, LaPietra, LaMantia, Monteleone of course were all Sicilians, so a compaesani connection could even be part of it, but offhand I don’t recall if I ever saw any connections to Roccamena among these guys. Also possible that Saladino had some family or something living around Bridgeport/Chinatown. I always wondered exactly how Frank Calabrese, a Grand Ave/EP kid, got hooked up with Chinatown, but then Twan Doyle said that Calabrese used to play handball in Chinatown as a youth, so he knew somebody there I’m sure. Maybe something similar with Saladino?

[cavita]

Hard to say. Gumba was a Rockford boy all the way until the mid 1970s. My feeling is, Rockford or Buscemi lent him out to Chicago or something like that. All his relatives were from here. Now, his father who was an old time member may have known Chicago guys but he died in 1963 when Frank was only 18.

[SolarSolano]

Bobby Panozzo was alleged to have a loansharking operation in Rockford when he was indicted a few years ago. I always wonder what is going on there now.

[cavita]

Bobby Panozzo was alleged to have a loansharking operation in Rockford when he was indicted a few years ago. I always wonder what is going on there now.

When I get back to Rockford I'll ask around about Panozzo. As far as what's going on there now, nothing ever stopped. Gambling is still huge- plenty of bookmakers taking bets and the floating card and dice games are still prevalent.

[Philly d]

Detroit, Kansas City, St. Louis, Milwaukee, San Francisco, Tampa, New Orleans, and Pittston are others that seem to have stayed almost entirely Sicilian with just a couple exceptions that we know of.

Colorado was mostly Sicilian but the Denver (and apparently Wyoming) group was mostly non-Sicilian. We have so few confirmed Colorado members it's hard to say.

San Jose was heavily Sicilian as well but had some important Calabrian members who transferred to SJ.

Dallas is interesting because they were small and had longstanding Sicilian roots but had Calabrian representation across the state.

Kind of interesting how aside from Cleveland and Chicago, most of the midwest families were heavily if not entirely Sicilian.

Thanks, the families that you cited are of course all ones that I’ve always thought of as mostly if not all Sicilian. I didn’t know about the non-Sicilians in CO and Dallas, however.

Chicago and Cleveland have/had the largest Italian communities in the Midwest (Detroit also, but they might just be an outlier here), so I wonder if part of it is simply that there was a much larger community within which LCN took root, leading to different recruitment dynamics and social networks. Chicago was of course more like NYC, Boston, or Philly in terms of the scale of Italian settlement and community formation than the cities where these smaller Sicilian “colony” type families emerged. I suspect that Cleveland was similar, but I don’t know enough about the patterns of settlement and community development there.

Cleveland more than Detroit?

My impression is that the Detroit metro area and Northeast Ohio have pretty much equal Ital-American populations (~300k), assuming of course that this is an appropriate apples-to-apples comparison. Detroit metro has a larger population so, while roughly equal in absolute numbers, Northeast OH is bigger in relative terms. So it’s appropriate to say Chicago, then Detroit/Cleveland in number 2.

got it

[Patrickgold]

Bobby Panozzo was alleged to have a loansharking operation in Rockford when he was indicted a few years ago. I always wonder what is going on there now.

Where did this info come from? I never heard this. I know Marco D’Amico had some operations up there but never heard of Panozzo having anything to do up there. He was a jack of all trades type of guy when it came to the Outfit. Robberies, extortion, loansharking, gambling, money laundering and prostitution

[Patrickgold]

Bobby Panozzo was alleged to have a loansharking operation in Rockford when he was indicted a few years ago. I always wonder what is going on there now.

When I get back to Rockford I'll ask around about Panozzo. As far as what's going on there now, nothing ever stopped. Gambling is still huge- plenty of bookmakers taking bets and the floating card and dice games are still prevalent.

How do you think the casino will effect these operations when it is finally opened up?