General Chicago Outfit Info Dumping Ground

[Antiliar]

From testimony presented to a Congressional Hearing in 1953. Frank Pasqua was supplying the Cordovano-Di Caro-Annerino, et al, heroin ring in 1952:

Chinatown guys while Bruno Roti was the capo. Will have to look into Pasqua, Genovese is a good bet.

[PolackTony]

From testimony presented to a Congressional Hearing in 1953. Frank Pasqua was supplying the Cordovano-Di Caro-Annerino, et al, heroin ring in 1952:

Chinatown guys while Bruno Roti was the capo. Will have to look into Pasqua, Genovese is a good bet.

From the info I have, Pasqua was a Gambino soldier, based in the Bx. Not sure which capo he would’ve been under at that time?

[PolackTony]

From an FBI “Chronological History of La Cosa Nostra”, presented at the 1988 “25 Years After Valachi” Senate hearings:





To summarize, the Feds asserted that Colosimo, Torrio, and Capone were bosses of the Chicago Camorra, and that Tony Lombardo’s death finalized the merger of the Chicago Mafia family and Camorra (the latter apparently based off their reading of Nick Gentile’s account). Recall that Chicago associate CI Teddy DeRose (who himself claimed to have known Lombardo), designated both Capone and Lombardo as “Camorra men”, and Augie Maniaci also described Capone as a Camorrista prior to being inducted into the mafia.

[Antiliar]

Does anyone recall the source for the claim that Paul Ricca ordered a ban on narcotics because his son was an addict? At this time I can't find a source earlier than Roemer's 1990 book Man Against the Mob.

[PolackTony]

From the "Associates" thread:

In terms of personal “associates” who are friends/partners with a high-ranking member, we can look at the example of Tony Accardo’s trip to Italy in 1973. Accardo was accompanied by personal friends who were also successful businessmen in Chicago: Nick Nitti (who owned the travel agency, along with Accardo’s son, that presumably booked the arrangements for this trip), restauranteur Al Meo, and wealthy grocery store owner Rosario Marino (originally from Cefalu). Their wives all came along, we can assume that a major element here was purely social. They may have also did some business in Italy, but it’s not like these guys went there to set up narcotics or contraband trafficking rings or something; most likely, they may have met with some people who were interested in having some Ital-American business people invest in local ventures or the like. The FBI seemed to think so, as following the trip, they interviewed wealthy Chicago wine importer Antonino Paternò (from Vizzini, Catania) afterwards concerning his connections to Accardo and allegations from Italian police that Paternò’s wine suppliers in Tuscany and Sicily were controlled by the mafia (the Feds stated that Paternò at the time was the largest wine importer in the US); Italian LE had informed the FBI that Accardo’s itinerary had included Tuscany, so maybe he visited one of those suppliers.

Antonino Paternò's wine and liquor store (the retail end of his major wine import and wholesaling business) was located at Grand and Western (which is also where fellow Accardo buddy Rosario Marino's grocery business was located); after Paternò left the business to his partner, Michele Di Carlo, it was renamed DiCarlo's Armanetti Wine and Liquors (we used to use their parking lot for our basketball court when I was a kid). Michele Di Carlo was born in 1920 in Santa Ninfa, Trapani. After earning a degree at the University of Naples, Di Carlo emigrated to Chicago in 1947, where Di Carlo began working for Paternò. DiCarlo wound up opening 3 other Armanetti locations in the suburbs.

Interesting to note that the partner and successor of one of Accardo's personal associates was an immigrant from Santa Ninfa, given Accardo's ancestry from Castelvetrano. In 1945, before emigrating to the US, Di Carlo married his wife Caroline Funai in Barga, Lucca, Toscana, a major wine-producing area. She was born in Chicago to parents from Tuscany, so Di Carlo clearly already had some ties to Chicago; his 1947 passenger manifest states that his uncle Vincenzo Di Carlo was already living in Chicago. An FBI file called Paternò the largest wine importer in the US in the early 70s, and he specifically had close links to wine producers in Tuscany and Sicily which Italian police had informed the FBI had ties to the mafia (Paternò was the sole US importer of a brand called "Sicilian Gold"). This intel, as noted above, was relayed to the FBI in the context of Accardo's 1973 trip to Italy, which included a visit to Tuscany. Apparently, one of the facilities that Paternò himself owned in Tuscany was raided several months afterward by Italian police, who believed that Paternò was linked to Sicilian "mafia members" who had been exiled from Sicily to the mainland by the authorities (we all know how that genius plan of internal exile for mafiosi turned out).

Following the raid on Tony Paternò's wine facility in Tuscany, for suspected links to Sicilian Cosa Nostra members operating in Mainland Italy, the FBI had intel that Accardo allegedly sent Al Pilotto to Italy:

[Snakes]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Fp5MIr8wSo

[Snakes]

Randomly reading some old ANP posts and Fosco said Larry Petitt "might" be made but was nonetheless well-known and well-liked. He also said that Larry's brother Joe was "definitely" made. Interesting.

[PolackTony]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Fp5MIr8wSo

Anyone who watches this clip is officially an honorary Chicagoan.

BTW, Tony's father, singing "Torna a Surriento"at 1:28, was Camorrista Giuseppe Spavone. Giuseppe's brother, Antonio Spavone, was the capo of their clan before he was hit in the face with a lupara blast from rival Sicilian mafiosi operating in Naples and forced to flee to Chicago for reconstructive surgery in the '70s. They also misspell George Randazzo's name at 2:01. I believe it's his kid, Tony Randazzo, that's currently on the NIASHF Board of Directors with Jackie Cerone, Jr and Eddie Greco.

[B.]

That 1988 timeline is great.

Saying the Chicago Family's lineage is formally a continuation of Colosimo and Torrio is to suggest Chicago post-1931 is a Camorra organization rather than a Cosa Nostra Family, which it absolutely isn't. Like other mainlanders, they joined Cosa Nostra (under its many names) and brought certain mentalities, backgrounds, and relationships with them. That's true for everyone, even people from Bagheria vs. Agrigento have their own qualities the only difference being the latter were formally part of the same tradition.

We know Camorra bosses can be inducted into Cosa Nostra even in Italy and not give up their Camorra affiliation, continuing to run their Camorra organizations, so I wouldn't rule out that Camorristi had dual membership in Chicago before the so-called "merger". Joe Esposito could have been a Camorrista originally and he was brought in by the early 1920s, possibly earlier like we see in other cities.

I don't see why Chicago would be any different politically from Pittsburgh or NYC/NJ where this process also took place.

[PolackTony]

That 1988 timeline is great.

Saying the Chicago Family's lineage is formally a continuation of Colosimo and Torrio is to suggest Chicago post-1931 is a Camorra organization rather than a Cosa Nostra Family, which it absolutely isn't. Like other mainlanders, they joined Cosa Nostra (under its many names) and brought certain mentalities, backgrounds, and relationships with them. That's true for everyone, even people from Bagheria vs. Agrigento have their own qualities the only difference being the latter were formally part of the same tradition.

We know Camorra bosses can be inducted into Cosa Nostra even in Italy and not give up their Camorra affiliation, continuing to run their Camorra organizations, so I wouldn't rule out that Camorristi had dual membership in Chicago before the so-called "merger". Joe Esposito could have been a Camorrista originally and he was brought in by the early 1920s, possibly earlier like we see in other cities.

I don't see why Chicago would be any different politically from Pittsburgh or NYC/NJ where this process also took place.

Agreed, of course. This was likely the influence of Chicago SAC Ed Hegarty here, who claimed that he had "studied the Italian and Sicilian languages" and clearly made the effort to contextualize Chicago fully within the broader framework of Cosa Nostra. I'd have a hard time imagining that the current FBI has anything approaching this sort of sophistication of understanding the American mafia.

Funny enough, but nearly 40 years ago the Feds seem to have hit upon the same model for understanding the history of Chicago as we at the BHF have, independently, through our own research and debates.

[Coloboy]

Randomly reading some old ANP posts and Fosco said Larry Petitt "might" be made but was nonetheless well-known and well-liked. He also said that Larry's brother Joe was "definitely" made. Interesting.

ANP back in like 2010 was of the things that started piquing my interest in the outfit. Over the years as I learned more through research, it was always interesting to go back and re-visit those forums with a deeper understanding of the organization. . It helped me weed through some of what was BS but also backed up other things I had learned that carried more truth.

You have to take everything with a huge grain of salt, but those old ANP forums can be a very valuable thing to re-visit as long as you have your BS filter on. It’s unlikely that we will see a point of view like that from someone who was so “outfit adjacent” again discussed in such detail.

[Antiliar]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Fp5MIr8wSo

That Elvis impersonator was something else. Great voice. Spavone's vocals weren't bad either.

[PolackTony]

In September of 1981, Chicago Heights associate Nick D'Andrea was found beaten to death in the trunk of a burning car in South suburban Will County. At the time, investigators told the press that they believed that the murder was due to fallout from the failed hit attempt on Heights capodecina Al Pilotto in July at a country club in the town of Crete. Over 20 years later, this was confirmed by Nick Calabrese, who testified that he was present when D'Andrea was taken for a ride and accidentally beaten to death by Sam Carlisi while being interrogated regarding his conspirators in the Pilotto attack. Just 18 days after Nick D'Andrea's body was found, his brother Mario D'Andrea was killed in a shootout with an undercover DEA agent at his gas station in Chicago Heights. The Tribune reported that the D'Andrea brothers (for the record, their family was from Pizzone, Isernia, Molise -- as were the Foscos, Ioriis, and Volpes -- and thus unrelated to the Sicilian D'Andreas) had been the target of a DEA investigation of "crime syndicate cocaine dealings", and both had sold coke to undercover agents. Nick D'Andrea's 19-year-old son Richard was arrested as part of their drug ring. The D'Andrea brothers had been associates of Al Tocco, until the hit attempt on Pilotto went down. In 1988, the ATF stated that the D'Andreas were associates of Marvin Steinberg, a major cocaine wholesaler with property in FL, based out of suburban Elk Grove Village. In 1981, Steinberg was busted for selling a stockpile of high explosives and blasting caps to an ATF agent and then busted again in 1983 for possessing 2.5 lbs of coke and 45,000 Quaalude tablets. The Tribune reported in 1983 that Steinberg was a large-scale dealer who solely supplied major distribution rings in the Chicago area.

The D'Andrea brothers' story took a dramatic twist in 1984, when it was revealed that convicted cocaine trafficker Robert Hardin (who had established himself as a credible Federal informant by providing reliable info on several underworld murders in the South suburbs) had tipped off the Feds assigned to "Operation Skyline" (an undercover investigation of drug trafficking in the South suburbs) to an Outfit-directed plot to assassinate then Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne in 1981. Hardin had begun cooperating in 1980 after he was busted at O'Hare for transporting coke (the Heights police told the Tribune that they believed that Hardin was the informant that tipped the Feds off to Mario D'Andrea). The Feds took Hardin's assassination claim seriously and immediately alerted Mayor Byrne's security detail of a credible plot on her life. Security had her wear a bulletproof vest, redesigned her office to seal it off from the public, and installed metal detectors around the city council chambers. In a statement to the Tribune on the matter, Byrne acceded that she had made enemies in the world of OC:

"I did come down very hard on drugs," she said of illegal trafficking. "I put out the word that if it didn't stop, Rush Street would become a continuation of Holy Name Cathedral. They [mob figures] understood what I meant by that".

In front of a grand jury in 1983, Hardin testified that Outfit figures put out a contract on Byrne due to her failure to push legislation legalizing casino gambling in Chicago, to wit they had funneled campaign funds to her via intermediaries (Byrne had floated the idea of a Chicago casino in 1979, but was, predictably, pilloried for this in Chicago, as this was rightly seen as a cash cow gift to the mob). Hardin stated that he was present at two meetings in Chicago Heights in 1979-1980, when Outfit figures including Nick D'Andrea and Joe Ferriola discussed plans to kill Byrne in an elevator. Hardin claimed that he was subsequently offered the assignment to kill Byrne by Nick D'Andrea, but declined, and was then later urged by Al Pilotto to reconsider; Hardin stated that Pilotto told him that carrying out the contract "would open a lot of doors" for him. Hardin claimed that the contract was instead farmed out to "a man who he said was suspected of peddling drugs to motorcycle gangs". Hardin also stated that he had worked for the D'Andreas for 16 years. The Byrne administration had previously aroused considerable suspicion of Outfit influence when then acting police superintendent Joseph "Joe D" DiLeonardi accused two mayoral aides of pressuring him to replace the head of the Organized Crime division in 1979, with DiLeonardo claiming that one of the aides told him that they were acting on the orders of John D'Arco, Sr. DiLeonardi (who had formerly been head of homicide and the gang crimes unit )resigned as acting superintendent in 1980 and was replaced by Richard Brzeczek, widely seen as an Outfit-controlled stooge (in what reads like a scene straight out of "The Wire", Brzeczek then demoted DiLeonardi and put him in as midnight shift commander in an extremely high-crime district on the Westside).

Mario and Nick D'Andrea weren't the only Outfit-associated cocaine dealers to die in 1981. FBI agents in 1985 testified that Joey DiVarco had ordered the 1981 murder of cocaine dealer Johnny DeJohn, eldest son of the infamous Nick DeJohn. The FBI testified that -- based on statements from their witness, Timothy Joyce (aka Tim O'Malley), an associate of the Northside crew -- DeJohn was shot in Joyce's car by Vic Arrigo, with the assistance of Ronnie Ignoffo, and that DiVarco had ordered the murder as he was concerned that DeJohn "had become emotionally unstable and was no longer to be trusted". Joyce told the Feds that Arrigo had borrowed his car for ~6 months, and when Arrigo returned it, he told Joyce about the murder and that "Caesar" had ordered it.

It's possible that the Northside crew had a long history of involvement in narcotics. In 1959, the Tribune reported that Frank Borelli, East Harlem Lucchese member and alleged "narcotics racket kingpin" then fighting extradition from Chicago to NJ, was brought to testify before a federal grand jury that was attempting to link Tony Accardo to "narcotics operations". The Trib reported at this time that Borelli had previously been arrested by CPD in Chicago, along with Dom "Libby" Nuccio and Joe "New York" LaBarbera (who may have later become a Buffalo member after leaving Chicago in the 1960s), in 1948; Borelli was found with a key in his possession to a Chicago safe deposit box that contained a stash of narcotics. At the 1964 Congressional Hearings on Organized Crime and Illicit Traffic in Narcotics, Borelli was described as a "wholesale trafficker in heroin to associates in New York, Chicago, and Cleveland". It was also reported at the hearings that in 1955, Borelli's associate Charles Curcio and Borelli's uncle, Joe and Ben Licchi, were busted for operating a heroin lab in Hackensack. Borelli went on the lam, and was found and arrested hiding out in Chicago in 1956. This heroin operation was linked to Carmine LoCascio and was stated to have "supplied heroin to Chicago and the Eastern seaboard".

The hearings also noted that Chicago, since the early 1930s, was the principal narcotics hub for the Midwest and Southwest, with a large part of the traffic controlled by "Italian organizations" supplied by NYC, who sold heroin to local Italian and black distributors, and also supplied the bulk of the heroin consumed in cities such as St Louis, KC, Omaha, Tulsa, Dallas, and Houston.

[Coloboy]

Fascinating stuff as usual. “Outfit didn’t deal in drugs” narrative gets brought down another peg.

Although I didn’t understand Bryne’s joke about “rush street becoming a continuation of holy name?”

[PolackTony]

Fascinating stuff as usual. “Outfit didn’t deal in drugs” narrative gets brought down another peg.

Although I didn’t understand Bryne’s joke about “rush street becoming a continuation of holy name?”

Holy Name Cathedral is the seat of the Archdiocese of Chicago and located immediately south of the Rush St nightlife district (tangentially, Holy Name was also the site of the Hymie Weiss hit in 1926; the facade still shows the bullet marks). Byrne was stating that, if the Outfit didn’t shut down drug trafficking, she would shut down Rush St, effectively making it as sanitized and devoid of vice, etc, as Holy Name itself (the antithesis of everything that Rush St symbolized about Chicago). A load of horseshit on Byrne’s part, of course, in light of what DiLeonardi claimed about the direct influence of the Outfit over her administration.