The Italian-American Republican Club, composed of members from the Toscana region in Central Italy, would certainly seem to be an unlikely place for LoVerde to be killed by Irishmen. But, without witnesses or any real leads, investigators were left to spin hypotheticals about a looming war between Capone and the Irish. LoVerde himself was something of an enigma. A representative of Roma Macaroni confirmed that LoVerde had briefly worked as a salesman there but claimed that he was no longer in active employ. An auto license for his wife Mary LoVerde found on his person gave an address at 2100 N Laramie, in the Northwest Side Belmont Cragin neighborhood, but the couple had apparently left that address the prior year. After canvassing the area around the club, police discovered the car on Mary's license parked in a nearby garage. The garage owner stated that the vehicle had been left there by a man that he only knew as "Mr. Dondodo", an obvious reference to the honorific "Don Totò" (Totò being a traditional Sicilian diminutive for Salvatore).
Later accounts given by longtime mafioso Nicola Gentile identified Salvatore "Totò" LoVerde as the rappresentante (representative, boss, capofamiglia) of the Chicago mafia in 1930-31, who had personally accompanied Gentile at the time of NYC boss Joe Masseria's 1931 killing and had sat on a peace commission in 1930 with several other national rappresentanti. According to Gentile, LoVerde -- who presumably had been elected boss of the Chicago family at some point following the 1929 murder of prior rappresentante Pasquale "Patsy" LoLordo (from Ribera, Agrigento), allegedly at the hands of the Aiello/"Northside gang" alliance -- was the official rappresentante of Chicago, while Al Capone -- then still formally a Chicago-based capodecina in the Masseria family -- was the "real capo or power". Gentile added that LoVerde, as a native of Palermo, had been thought a more palatable emissary to represent Chicago during the heated politicking in the national mafia during the Castellammarese War than the Salernitano-American Capone. Additionally, Gentile stated that LoVerde was murdered as retribution for having supported Masseria's rival Salvatore Maranzano. We know from Gentile and Joe Bonanno that Capone and Maranzano negotiated peace talks to resolve the Castellammarese War in May of 1931 in Chicago; Bonanno reported that the two struck a deal whereby Capone recognized Maranzano's bid for "boss of bosses" of the national mafia, while Maranzano officially recognized Capone's claim to rappresentante of Chicago. Presumably, by the time of his slaying in November, LoVerde had been demoted from his position in Chicago. Further, his killing followed that of Maranzano in September. Perhaps the crafty Maranzano, having secured his position in the national organization, made a deal with LoVerde to double-cross Capone and regain his position as boss of Chicago. Or perhaps LoVerde had simply run out his usefulness to Chicago's new boss or committed some unrelated transgression. Notably, Gentile identified Pittsburgh rappresentante Giuseppe Siragusa, who had served on the 1930 peace commission with LoVerde and was slain days after Maranzano, as another Maranzano loyalist killed following Maranzano's murder.
His 1931 Cook County death record stated that Salvatore LoVerde was born in 1894 in Palermo to Joseph LoVerde and Mary Sacconi. This matches a Salvatore Lo Verde born in 1894/03/12 in the Brancaccio neighborhood of Palermo Città to Giuseppe Lo Verde of Brancaccio and Maria Saccone of the nearby Falsomiele district of Palermo. Brancaccio, a traditionally working-class district, has long been known as an important stronghold of the mafia in Palermo. In 1911, a 17-year-old Salvatore Lo Verde, born in Palermo, arrived in NYC bound for Chicago. He have his relative in Italy as his brother Antonino, residing on "Via Comeli"[sic] in Palermo (possible Via Corso dei Mille, a main thoroughfare in Brancaccio) and stated that he was headed for his brother Lorenzo, living at 804 W Ohio St in Chicago. Located at Halsted Ave in a bourgeoning enclave of Sicilians and Southern mainland Italians that was rapidly expanding west along Grand Ave, this address was near the tavern and headquarters of Giuseppe Morici, a mafioso from Tèrmini Imerese, Palermo province, who may have been a Chicago mafia leader around 1900. In 1910, a child named Lorenzo LoVerde lived at this address with his parents, Giuseppe Lo Verde and Rosalia Lo Iacono, both of Brancaccio, and several siblings. This Giuseppe was not, however, Salvatore's father; rather, Salvatore and Giuseppe were first cousins, as Salvatore's father Giuseppe was the brother of Chicago-Giuseppe's father Michelangelo Lo Verde. Another Lorenzo LoVerde, born about 1885 in Brancaccio, was living in a different building on the same block of Ohio, so it is likely that this man was Salvatore's brother. Both Giuseppe and 1885-Lorenzo worked in a box factory at this time, so it's possible that Salvatore was initially employed in the same concern after arriving in Chicago. Salvatore seems to have first appeared in the papers in 1923, when a taxi driver was killed in a shootout between police and Loverde and two associates. That the other LoVerdes were likely "connected“ is suggested by the fact that later in the 1920s, three of Salvatore's cousins (sons of his cousin Giuseppe) were alleged to have killed a CPD officer on the Northwest Side. Initially thought to have been a robbery that resulted in a shootout, investigators later stated that they believed the officer was assassinated, as he was found shot 11 times and had been allegedly cracking down on "syndicate" activities in his district. After moving from their old address on Ohio St, these LoVerdes lived at the corner of Grand and May, immediately across the street from where a young Tony Accardo lived with his family.
I have not been successful in verifying an address for Salvatore LoVerde in the 1920 or 1930 censuses, nor a WW1 draft card. Though the papers reported at the time of his death that he was married to a woman named Mary, I haven't been able to verify a marriage record for him. As noted above, Salvatore was using the name "Augustus LoVerde", among other aliases, at the time of his death. In October 1930, an Agostino LoVerde, working as a produce merchant and living at 1418 S 51st Ct in Cicero, filed his naturalization in Chicago. He stated that he was born 1894/03/01 in Napoli and had entered the US in NYC on 1923/08/25 on the S.S. Pesaro. "Agostino" stated that his wife, Maria, was born in Palermo and that they had married in Italy in 1918. "Agostino's" arrival corresponds to the 1323/08/23 arrival on the S.S. Pesaro of a 27-year-old Agostino LaVerde from Apice, Benevento, Campania who was bound for a relative in Yonkers. So far as I can tell, this LaVerde remained in Yonkers for the rest of his life; clearly, Salvatore LoVerde had used Agostino's identity to falsify his own naturalization as a US citizen (much the same as Chicago mafioso Felice De Lucia did with the identity of a guy named "Paolo Ricca"). I'm still unsure as to who his wife Maria/Mary was; either Salvatore had married her on a trip back to Palermo, or in the US under a false name.
The address that LoVerde gave in Cicero in 1930 should raise some eyebrows as well. This was in the section of Cicero known as "The Island", a historically Italian neighborhood along the border with Chicago which has remained an "outfit" stronghold even up to the present day. In 1930, Nicola Diana, a likely mafioso from Ribera closely connected to fellow paesani in the Chicago mafia, including capodecina Vincenzo "Jim DeGeorge" DiGiorgio, member Filippo "Phil" Bacino, and slain Chicago rappresentante LoLordo, lived immediately nearby on the 1200 block of S 51st Ct. In light of that, it may be relevant that Salvatore LoVerde was very likely the same "Sam Loverde" ("Sam" being the typical Anglicization of Salvatore) who was considered a suspect in 1929 of having been involved in the planning and execution of the famous St Valentine's Day Massacre, a brutal attack by the Capone group against the rival Bugs Moran/Northside gang, close allies of Joe Aiello. A persuasive theory for the Massacre was that it was retaliation for the slaying of LoLordo in January 1929 in his home on the Near northwest Side at North Ave and Wolcott, reputedly by the "Northsiders". In February, Loverde was arrested with Michele Favia (from Carbonara di Bari) in the notorious "Circus Cafe", a hoodlum hangout run by mafia member Tony Capezio and St Louis gangster Claude Maddox, aka Johnny Moore. The Circus Cafe was on the same block of North Ave as LoLordo's home and social club (likely a paesani society for Riberesi). LoVerde and Favia were charged with 7 counts of accessory to murder, though it would seem that the charges were subsequently dropped; witnesses had placed both men as visiting the garage on nearby Wood St where a Cadillac thought to have been used in the Massacre was stashed and then torched after the incident. An address book that Favia carried apparently further supported that he and LoVerde were connected to a wider group of suspects that included men such as Johnny Barcia, Rocco Belcastro, Rocco Fanelli, Vincenzo "Jack McGurn" Gibardi, Danny Vallo, Capezio, and Maddox, among others; investigators believed that the Massacre was planned and coordinated from the Circus Cafe, with McGurn and Patsy's brother Giuseppe LoLordo (who subsequently transferred to the DeCavalcante family) reputed to have been ringleaders. Years later, Nicola Diana was arrested with Profaci family member and cousin of Giuseppe Profaci Emanuelle "Nello" Cammarata at the old LoLordo social club on North and Wolcott as a suspect in the Southside murder of a police officer. Another interesting potential connection between LoVerde and the LoLordo group is that LoVerde's cousin Rose LoVerde and her husband Giuseppe Inzerillo Faraone (also born in Palermo City) lived in the 1920s on the 2300 block of W Ohio, the same block that Phil Bacino first lived after arriving in Chicago in the 1920s (tangentially to this story, later Chicago members Joey Lombardo and Joey Andriacchi lived on the 2200 block). That LoVerde was associated with the men who congregated around LoLordo's club and the Circus Cafe on North Ave is underscored by the fact that "Samuel LoVerde" was identified as a suspect along with Maddox/Moore and Belcastro in a bank robbery and double homicide in Lake County, IN in 1928. When arrested in 1929, LoVerde stated that he lived at 1550 N Kedzie Ave, at North Ave in the Humboldt Park neighborhood, just west of the Wicker Park area where LoLordo and the Circus Cafe were located. Several years later, Nicola Diana moved to Kedzie Ave, and in 1927 his brother Giovanni Diana lived a block away from LoVerde on Spaulding and Lemoyne.
The LoLordo men and McGurn were not the only Agrigentini that we can place LoVerde with. In May of 1930, LoVerde was busted under the alias "Frank LaCort" as a ringleader of a massive illegal alcohol operation said to answer to Capone, with stills operating in Racine, WI; Chicago; and Cicero; investigators charged the ring with producing ~1,000,000 gallons of alcohol. "LaCort" was identified as a leader of what the papers termed a "national society", along with Cipriano "Charlie" Argento and Giuseppe Almanza (from the island of Pantelleria by way of Castelvetrano and Campobello di Mazara, Trapani), with Sam Tornabene as their top "lieutenant". Other men in the ring included Chicago/Cicero-based Roy Drago and Cipriano's brother Giuseppe Argento, along with a large group of men based in Racine. Roy Drago was almost certainly Roy Carlisi, later a capodecina in the Buffalo family and elder brother of Chicago capodecina and rappresentante Salvatore "Black Sam" Carlisi. Sam Tornabene was likely Salvatore, Carlisi's first cousin and elder brother of later Chicago rappresentante Alfonso "Pizza Al" Tornabene. The Carlisis, Tornabenes, and Argentos were all from Canicattì, Agrigento. Argento was said to have been based out of a "lodge" or meeting hall (likely either a paesani society or union hall) on Wentworth Ave in the heavily mobbed up Italian Bridgeport/Chinatown neighborhood on the Near Southside, and the ring was reported to have been using the trappings of a Communist political group as a "mask" for their bootlegging activities (also suggestive of close ties to organized labor; see below). Notably, when Charlie Argento was naturalized in 1919, he gave his address as 2105 N Latrobe, immediately around the corner from the address that LoVerde was apparently using in 1930, while in 1930 Argento – like Loverde and Nicola Diana -- was residing on S 51St Ct in Cicero. While Cipriano Argento has not been otherwise identified as a member of the mafia, it seems very likely that he was, clearly linked to both rappresentante LoVerde as well as his fellow paesani -- the Carlisis/Tornabenes -- who later provided powerful leaders in both the Chicago and Buffalo families. It's possible that when LoVerde fell from power and was later killed, Argento lost his "rabbi" in the mafia. In September of 1932, Cipriano Argento, then identified as a business agent for the Italian Master Bakers Association, was shot to death at a hotel in the Southside Hyde Park neighborhood. Riberese mafioso Jim DeGeorge was sought for the shooting; DeGeorge owned a bakery at this time at 1124 W Grand Ave, which happened to have been the same block that Michele Favia, arrested with LoVerde at the Circus Cafe in 1929, was living. When the 1930 ring was busted, the papers noted that Argento was using checks from the same Cicero bank that Ralph Capone was stated to have been using to hide his income in his tax evasion case; recall that LoVerde wound up getting killed the same day that Ralph Capone was sentenced in that case, which makes one wonder if Ralph's tax issues could've had some connection to the LoVerde and Argento hits. It may be significant in this light that LoVerde’s killing also came less than two weeks after Al Capone himself was sentenced to 11 years in Federal prison for tax evasion.
As noted, Loverde gave his name as "Frank LaCort" to the authorities when he was busted in 1930; he also stated that he lived at 46 Elizabeth St, near Canal St in lower Manhattan's Little Italy. We know from Gentile that LoVerde, as Chicago rappresentante, was intimately involved in the political affairs of the national mafia in 1930 and early 1931, so he would plausibly have been spending a lot of time in NYC. In June of 1930, while awaiting trial on the bootlegging bust, "Agostino LoVerde" was arrested on a train entering NYC with Paul Ricca, Jake Guzik, Teddy Newberry (a former Northside gang member who defected to the Capone group), Pete Fusco, Dennis Cooney, and Cicero gangster Eddie "Bighead" Vogel; all were important Capone supporters or associates. The men were detained and questioned as suspect in the recent murder of Jack Lingle, a crime reporter for the Chicago Tribune and alleged friend of Capone who had been found shot to death at a train station in the Chicago Loop. The group had been carrying $60k in a suitcase, which they said was intended for betting on an upcoming prizefight. We know more than the detectives did, however, and given the time period we can assume that the group was travelling to NYC to deal with something related to the ongoing conflict in the national mafia, perhaps meeting with Joe Masseria and other leaders.
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In 1965, Buffalo rappresentante Stefano Maggadino was picked up on an illegal FBI wiretap reminiscing about the old days. Maggadino, apparently recalling the formal election of Maranzano as "boss of bosses" in Chicago in April 1931, recalled that the Chicago "borgata" was composed of "Americanized" and a "Greaseball" factions, and that "Toto Loverti" [sic] was the "representative of the Greaseballs". While born and raised in the mafia stronghold of Brancaccio in Palermo City, we can also see from the above that Salvatore LoVerde did not seem to be a dyed-in-the-wool, Old World, conservative "moustache", but rather a man who apparently worked closely with Mainlanders and non-Italians allied with the "Americanized" faction under Capone and Ricca. It's plausible that, as Gentile claimed, LoVerde was elected to represent Chicago by dint of his Palermitano origin. If so, perhaps by 1931 he had outlived his usefulness, with Maranzano willing to deal with Capone directly and agree to mutual recognition. That Capone and Ricca did not fully trust LoVerde is suggested by what Gentile reported about his 1930 personal meeting with Ricca (where Ricca allegedly threatened to "employ airplanes" against Maranzano if the latter refused to back down). Gentile claimed that Ricca stated that "[w]e of Chicago, carefully follow the developments of the situation and are sure that all the components of the commission [apart from Gentile] work in favor of Maranzano". As LoVerde had just been appointed to this same peace commission, presumably Ricca was including LoVerde among the men that he and Capone saw as working for Maranzano's interests, which could support Gentile's other claim that LoVerde and fellow peace commission member Siragusa were killed for having been Maranzano loyalists. While Gentile also named LoVerde as one of Masseria's primary supporters, the world of the mafia is rife with double-crossings and shifting allegiances; LoVerde may have been angling to play multiple sides for his own goals, a dangerous game with fatal consequences that caught up to him in the darkened meeting hall of a Toscano social club in late 1931.
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Addresses associated with Salvatore Loverde 1929-30, clockwise from bottom left: 1550 N Kedzie (Chicago), 1418 S 51st Ct (Cicero), 2100 N Laramie (Chicago).
