General Chicago Outfit Info Dumping Ground

[Coloboy]

Interesting info from Greg Scarpa's file. In 1965 Joe Colombo said that the Outfit had a guy who wasn't a made member who was responsible for more killings than the entire Profaci Family.

FBI File Scarpa - 1965 Colombo - Chicago killer.jpg

Thanks for posting, interesting tidbit. Obviously further reinforces the small made man count in the outfit and the way they operated. My first instinct was to think of Charles Nicoletti, but he was obviously a made guy. There’s also the possibility that there’s somebody we have never known or heard of, which is even crazier to think about.

In his jail house interview in 2005 I believe, Harry Aleman talks about how there were people walking free around Chicago that had killed many more than he had. Wild to think about possible outfit hitman that never made it on anyone’s radar. I’m sure there are more than we think.

[Patrickgold]

Interesting info from Greg Scarpa's file. In 1965 Joe Colombo said that the Outfit had a guy who wasn't a made member who was responsible for more killings than the entire Profaci Family.

FBI File Scarpa - 1965 Colombo - Chicago killer.jpg

Thanks for posting, interesting tidbit. Obviously further reinforces the small made man count in the outfit and the way they operated. My first instinct was to think of Charles Nicoletti, but he was obviously a made guy. There’s also the possibility that there’s somebody we have never known or heard of, which is even crazier to think about.

In his jail house interview in 2005 I believe, Harry Aleman talks about how there were people walking free around Chicago that had killed many more than he had. Wild to think about possible outfit hitman that never made it on anyone’s radar. I’m sure there are more than we think.

If they had 40-50 in the 1960s then they are doing to bad now considering it’s 60 years later. Totally agree there are definitely sleepers out there that nobody knows of. Im So many candidates for the hitter he was talking about but I would say a good candidate for this hitter that Colombo is talking about is possible Tony Panzica. I heard he was a big hitter and was not very well known. Mad Sam probably could also be up there. Schweihs would have been a candidate if this was said ten years later. He had definitely did some hits by 66 but I don’t think he was the go to hitter at that point.

[Snakes]

Davey Yaras, maybe

[Villain]

Davey Yaras, maybe

Nice guess

[PolackTony]

Sam Alex, Davey Yaras, Lenny Patrick, Sam DeStefano all obvious possibilities. Maybe Frank Schweihs and Panzica, though with Schweihs I’m not sure that he had put in more than the entire Colombo Family by the 60s.

[B.]

That's two high-level NYC-NJ sources who place the Chicago Family around that size in that period. On the DeCarlo tapes they also referred to Chicago having around 50 members.

[PolackTony]

That's two high-level NYC-NJ sources who place the Chicago Family around that size in that period. On the DeCarlo tapes they also referred to Chicago having around 50 members.

Yup. While this isn’t definitive, it’s important. Before, it was hard to know if DeCarlo was being precise and speaking literally, or just speaking in generalizations (ie, Chicago having a smaller membership than the NY Families). But with two sources like this placing the number around 50, this is looking to be the best indicator for a rough estimate of the actual membership.

Now, we have further indication I think that ~50 wasn’t a random number. As Snakes has noted before, the combination of the 1985 FBI list and guys that we know were made by then, give or take a couple of errors and allowing for a few sleepers, gives us 50-60 members, while the FBI estimate in ‘93 was 49. So this seems like the most likely historic membership range, based on what we know at this point. We have no indication that Chicago had a cap like the NYC Families, and presumably wouldn’t have had any reason to (there was no issue of balance of power between multiple Families that would necessitate an explicit cap), but if the membership was the same from the 60s through the 90s, this may well have been the number that they choose to maintain. While it’s always possible that there had been a larger number at some point in the further past and they just never replaced a bunch of guys when they were lost to attrition, I don’t think there’s any strong reason to assume that it would’ve ever been much larger. 50-60 is already a relatively large number in comparison to most Families in both Sicily and the US, and there never would’ve been a local “arms race” dynamic in Chicago, as there was in 1920s NYC, where Families were incentivized to increase their memberships in order to shore up power.

[B.]

DeCarlo also indicated it is difficult to get made in Chicago and just like Colombo told Scarpa small membership size was desirable, we know DeCarlo complained about NYC-NJ being too liberal with inductions (a recurring complaint in NYC after the 1950s). Another example of how the NYC mafia was less traditional given highly exclusive, small membership is how the Sicilian mafia operates.

[PolackTony]

DeCarlo also indicated it is difficult to get made in Chicago and just like Colombo told Scarpa small membership size was desirable, we know DeCarlo complained about NYC-NJ being too liberal with inductions (a recurring complaint in NYC after the 1950s). Another example of how the NYC mafia was less traditional given highly exclusive, small membership is how the Sicilian mafia operates.

Yes, DeCarlo was favorably comparing “Chicago and Detroit” to the Genovese, stating that his Family should be the same way as fewer members meant “splitting the pie” fewer ways.

[Snakes]

Some crews also seemed to be less proactive about making people than others, with the obvious example in "recent" years being Elmwood Park. Kind of akin to smaller families like Cleveland that almost let themselves die out.

[PolackTony]

Some crews also seemed to be less proactive about making people than others, with the obvious example in "recent" years being Elmwood Park. Kind of akin to smaller families like Cleveland that almost let themselves die out.

True. We don’t know how much variability there was across crews like that in the past. All that we have that I’m aware of about crew membership is from Nick C, who stated that a crew had about “4 or 5 made guys”. I can’t imagine that any crew in Chicago had anything like the numbers of some of the bigger NYC crews (who has many soldiers as some other Families had members). I honestly wonder if Chicago had any crews with more than 10 members, which is the traditional number anyway.

I don’t have the file at hand right now, but I recall that Bompensiero (IIRC) reported that LaPorte had like 20 or something guys under him, but there was nothing specifying how many of those were made.

[KCMOb]

The Mob Archeologists recent pod with Buccellato brought up some interesting points that I had never really thought about in regards to the smaller families. One was the idea that inducted members were frequently working stiffs, working in factories, manual labor, etc. It was not necessarily about being a full time, money making gangsters and for them being made was a cultural and familial distinction and it was most likely a point of honor and pride and brought them status as an arbiter or influence peddler in their community.

Could this still hold true today in these smaller families? Is there or was there any kind of edict within the Sicilian mafia that a member had to live a life of crime? Serious question.

Take Kansas City for example. It is obviously not a priority for law enforcement. There have been no real cases, headlines, busts, etc. for what seems like decades now. But why would there be? They all appear to be legit businessmen. Why racketeer when you don't really need to? Which leads to the more philosophical question of what the mafia means and why it exists in the first place. I think a lot of East Coast style gangsterism that we've become accustomed to has probably bled into the discussion and warped the conversation surrounding these smaller families.

The counter to this would be that these smaller families, KC, St. Louis, Cleveland, etc did in fact at one time have many more members and engaged in extensive racketeering for decades. But was it simply because they could? It seems to me that the market was ripe and they were there to fill the void and it just took decades for LE to play catch up after prohibition. They appear to operate like any other organization, they adapt, they streamline and they move on.

[PolackTony]

Interesting moment of personal introspection between Accardo and Gus Alex in ‘59, caught on wiretap.

Alex’s nerves were shot and he was suffering from serious anxiety (a long term issue for him, including periods of psychiatric hospitalization). Accardo advised him to get out of the city and go to the country, chop wood and fish (“even if you don’t catch nothing”) until his head clears.

Alex tells JB that he “tried to hog everything” during his time as boss. Accardo doesn’t dispute this, and then relates the stress he had from being boss, noting that he was “at the top” for ten years but it felt like thirty. Accardo also seems to recognize that he messed up and received a “slap in the face”. This exchange would suggest that the idea that Accardo was forced to step down as boss is not unfounded. We know that Accardo had a lot of heat circling around him in the 50s with the Joe Iacullo drug ring, the horsemeat scandal, and the Joe Siciliano cigarette operation bust (which presumably caused a lot of guys to lose money). But Alex also makes it seem like Accardo got greedy, so perhaps he caused some tensions within the Family or wore out his welcome as boss for that reason as well.

[B.]

The Mob Archeologists recent pod with Buccellato brought up some interesting points that I had never really thought about in regards to the smaller families. One was the idea that inducted members were frequently working stiffs, working in factories, manual labor, etc. It was not necessarily about being a full time, money making gangsters and for them being made was a cultural and familial distinction and it was most likely a point of honor and pride and brought them status as an arbiter or influence peddler in their community.

Could this still hold true today in these smaller families? Is there or was there any kind of edict within the Sicilian mafia that a member had to live a life of crime? Serious question.

Take Kansas City for example. It is obviously not a priority for law enforcement. There have been no real cases, headlines, busts, etc. for what seems like decades now. But why would there be? They all appear to be legit businessmen. Why racketeer when you don't really need to? Which leads to the more philosophical question of what the mafia means and why it exists in the first place. I think a lot of East Coast style gangsterism that we've become accustomed to has probably bled into the discussion and warped the conversation surrounding these smaller families.

The counter to this would be that these smaller families, KC, St. Louis, Cleveland, etc did in fact at one time have many more members and engaged in extensive racketeering for decades. But was it simply because they could? It seems to me that the market was ripe and they were there to fill the void and it just took decades for LE to play catch up after prohibition. They appear to operate like any other organization, they adapt, they streamline and they move on.

Thanks for checking out the show.

The Sicilian mafia was and to some degree still is diverse in terms of recruitment. Guys who worked full-time in all trades and professions as well as bandits, etc. The mafia was intended is to control all resources in their community from politics to industry to social life. Not uncommon for the membership in a Sicilian Family to be the size of a "crew" or two, at least outside Palermo.

I don't think most of the Midwest Families ever had what we'd consider a lot of members. 70 or so might have been the peak for some of them and others could have been much smaller. When there's a single Family in a city there's less reason to make a bunch of members because the pecking order would be well-understood and not many members would be needed to represent the Family locally.

[Villain]

Thanks a lot to Anti for the Palermo files and sorry if this was discussed before but can some please explain this report to me?