General Chicago Outfit Info Dumping Ground

[NorthBuffalo]

I've been in touch with a guy who was quite close to Little Tony Zizzo for a number of years and was sharing some details on his early life. Interesting tidbit you guys would enjoy - Zizzo's grandmother was the sister of Capone gangster Nick DeJohn.

[PolackTony]

I've been in touch with a guy who was quite close to Little Tony Zizzo for a number of years and was sharing some details on his early life. Interesting tidbit you guys would enjoy - Zizzo's grandmother was the sister of Capone gangster Nick DeJohn.

While Frank Zizzo’s mother’s maiden name was Di Giovanni, she was unrelated to Nick DeJohn. She was from Marsala, while the “DeJohns” were from Palazzo Adriano. As I note below, however, Tony Zizzo was, in fact, related to Rocco Fanelli on his mother’s side.

Frank Nick Zizzo (his nickname was given in FBI files as "Frank Cease", clearly an FBI interpretation of the pronunciation of his surname Zizzo) was born Francesco Zizzo 1913/10/6 in Chicago to Antonino Zizzo and Grazia Di Giovanni, both of Marsala, Trapani. Antonino Zizzo was born in 1888 in Marsala to Francesco Zizzo and Anna Sciacca and emigrated to Chicago in 1906, where his "uncle", Francesco Signorelli, was living (as is often the case for relatives listed on arrival manifests, I could not find an actual familial relation to Signorelli, who I believe was from Castelvetrano). Several of Antonino's siblings joined him in Chicago, along with many cousins from Marsala, mainly settling in the Taylor St Patch, which had a significant colony of immigrants from Trapani province (father Francesco Zizzo later joined his children in Chicago, arriving on a ship with a large contingent of Marsalesi bound for Chicago and Beloit, WI). Grazia DiGiovanni was born about 1894 in Marsala, and arrived in Chicago in 1910, with her siblings and mother Maria Di Pietra (they were bound for her paternal grandfather, Francesco DiGiovanni, already living in Chicago). In 1922, Antonino married Grazia at San Filippo Benizi Parish in Little Sicily, where they lived at 1006 N Larrabee. By 1920, they had relocated to the Taylor St neighborhood, at Polk and DeKalbd (today Bowler St); this was in the immediate vicinity of where the Frattos and Alderisios also lived, and we can presume that Frank Zizzo knew them well. Antonino worked in a factory at this time, though by the 1940s he operated his own fuel oil company and was naturalized in 1935. One of Antonino's naturalization witnesses was fellow Marsalese Giovanni Giammicchia, whose grandson Salvatore Giammicchia was convicted in 2006 for his role in the City of Chicago's Hired Truck scandal (Gammicchia was a political aide to City Clerk James Laski and was accused of facilitating bribes from mob-linked trucking companies; Gammicchia was represented in that case by Alex Salerno, son of Bobby Salerno). Antonino Zizzo died in 1963 in Chicago.

Taylor St in the 1920s was, of course, marked by the activity of the Gennas and other Trapanese mafiosi. Antonino's brother, Tomasso Zizzo, was married to Vita Genna in Chicago, while sister Antonina Zizzo married a Vito Genna and settled near Vineland, NJ. The Genna surname is common in Marsala, so it's unclear to me whether these Gennas were closely related to the infamous Gennas, though it is certainly possible, as the Gennas were reputed to have brought many of their relatives to Chicago, including men involved with the mafia.

In 1934, Frank Zizzo married Margherita "Margie" Mancione in Chicago; she was born in Chicago to Francesco Mancione, of Controne, Salerno, and Rose Falotico, born in Chicago to Rocco Falotico and Carmela Fanelli, of Laurenzana, Potenza, (Carmela Fanelli was an older sister of the infamous Rocco Fanelli, making Rocco Fanelli the great-great-uncle of Little Tony Zizzo). In 1942, Frank Zizzo and his family lived at 2416 W taylor, near Western, and Frank worked with his father Antonino in their family fuel oil business.

In 1942, LE brought down a huge bootlegging operation on the South and West sides of Chicago, alleged to have been supplying numerous customers across the Midwest with illegal, untaxed alcohol. The Southside network of the group was said to have been headed by Giuseppe "Joe" Tarallo, of Sant' Angelo Muxaro, Agrigento, living at 26th and Wallace in the Chinatown/Bridgeport neighborhood. Joe Tarallo was the younger brother of Angelo Tarallo, shot to death in Oregon, IL, in 1932. The Tarallos were cousins of Jimmy Catuara and had been connected earlier to bootlegging operations in Rockford and Kenosha (discussed in other threads previously). The Westside leaders of the group appeared to have been Giuseppe "Joe" Carlisi, father of Sam Carlisi, and a Frank Rocca, who lived by the Zizzos at Flournoy and Western (I believe he was Francesco Rocca, born 1885 in Marsala, who earlier lived at Blue Island and Taylor in the Heart of the Gennas' base of operations). Also arrested with this group was John Zizzo, a cousin of Frank, who lived on the 2300 block of W Taylor (another one arrested in this network was William Skally, later notorious as a heroin trafficker who was murdered in 1962 after flipping on Carl Fiorito and Teddy DeRose). Given that Little Tony Zizzo was later a member of the Aiuppa/Carlisi crew, we can already place one of his relatives apparently working with Giuseppe Carlisi back in the early 1940s.

Frank Zizzo's first appearance in the papers came with his 1948 indictment for a $68k armed robbery of a jeweler in Birmingham, AL, along with Andrew Carioscia (a cousin of the other Carioscias, who were involved with heroin trafficking and various other crimes over the decades) and George Dicks. Dicks was a longtime outfit associate of Irish-Canadian ancestry, who grew up near Adams and Morgan on the Near Westside; he would later be linked to both Frank Zizzo and Chuckie Nicoletti in operations both in the Western Suburbs and NW IN. Zizzo was sentenced to two years probation for the robbery charges. In 1951, Zizzo was one of 18 men arrested ina raid on a Melrose Park basement with $20k in stolen clothing; others arrested with Zizzo included Dicks, Rocco and Albert Pranno, and Max Inserro (again, we can place Zizzo in connection to someone linked to the Aiuppa/Carlisi crew).

Later in the 1950s, Frank Zizzo relocated to an apartment on the corner of Ruth St and State Line Ave in Hammond, IN, (literally across the street from Calumet City, IL, and a short distance from Phil Bacino's home in Cal City) and gained notoriety as one of the primary outfit players in the Calumet border region spanning Lake County, IN, and SE Cook County. Zizzo was the first LCN member that the FBI was able to identify as residing in IN in the 1960s, operated a major gambling book and policy wheel (numbers operation) out of Hammond, was tied to other Chicago LCN members operating in the area, including Tony Pinelli, Gaetano Morgano, and Johnny Formusa, and convicted in 1963 on Federal interstate racketeering charges for his state border-spanning gambling operations, for which he received a 5-year sentence. The Feds believed that Nino Gruttadauro, Pinelli's nephew and a suspected LCN member, took over Zizzo's gambling territory at this time. Paroled in 1966, Zizzo was arrested again in 1970 on VOSR for consorting with outfit affiliates Gruttadauro, Nick Guzzino, Ralph Tuccillio, Michael Salerno, and Abe Kushner.

Zizzo mainly kept a low profile publicly in the years after this. Nick Calabrese later testified that Frank Zizzo took part in the 1981 murder of Nick D'Andrea. Documents that Snakes has reviewed show that the FBI believed that Zizzo was a captain in the Chicago Family until his death in 1986 in Melrose Park. His crew affiliation is unknown; though there is the possibility that he was capo of an IN-based crew, this remains unconfirmed by quality sources of evidence (Nick Calabrese testified in 2007 that Dom Palermo was capo of the Chicago Heights crew as of 1983, while at the time the FBI thought Zizzo held that position, again underscoring the lack of insight the Feds often had in the past with Chicago's formal structure).

Confirming Frank Zizzo's Marsalese ancestry and the possibility of familial ties to the Gennas might also shed light on his move in the 1950s from Taylor St to Hammond. After Angelo, Tony, and Mike Genna were killed in the Chicago wars of the 1920s, brothers Sam and Vincenzo "Jim" Genna remained active in bootlegging operations, according to LE sources reported by the Chicago press. Jim Genna relocated to Calumet City, where he was reputed to have been "head of an alcohol cooking clan" until his death from natural causes in 1931. Jim Genna lived at 587 Freeland Ave in Calumet City, not far from where Zizzo would later live. While two decades had elapsed, we don't know who Genna was connected to in that area (or if Zizzo was also connected to anyone in Genna's circle later), and we have seen above that Marsalesi, including one of the Zizzos, were involved in major bootlegging networks into the 1940s.

[NorthBuffalo]

He is fairly adamant Tony about the DeJohn connection - said that's what Tony told him personally so no idea. He did share this photograph however - guy in the middle is 'Beansie Bargo' who was a major bookmaker in Sam Carlisi's crew.



Apparently Tony hooked up with a Melrose Park crew (he thinks he was working for Lou Eboli) following a prison stint in the early 70s. He spent half his youth there and half in the far south suburbs.

[funkster]

I love that his nickname was Beansie

[PolackTony]

He is fairly adamant Tony about the DeJohn connection - said that's what Tony told him personally so no idea. He did share this photograph however - guy in the middle is 'Beansie Bargo' who was a major bookmaker in Sam Carlisi's crew.



Apparently Tony hooked up with a Melrose Park crew (he thinks he was working for Lou Eboli) following a prison stint in the early 70s. He spent half his youth there and half in the far south suburbs.

Nice photo. I don't doubt that your friend believes the DeJohn relation thing, but just to be clear, it is false.

[NorthBuffalo]

He is fairly adamant Tony about the DeJohn connection - said that's what Tony told him personally so no idea. He did share this photograph however - guy in the middle is 'Beansie Bargo' who was a major bookmaker in Sam Carlisi's crew.



Apparently Tony hooked up with a Melrose Park crew (he thinks he was working for Lou Eboli) following a prison stint in the early 70s. He spent half his youth there and half in the far south suburbs.

Nice photo. I don't doubt that your friend believes the DeJohn relation thing, but just to be clear, it is false.

Tony I appreciate your posts but no offense - I'm going to go with 'maybe' personally because this guy wouldn't make something like that up - its far too random. My family does the MyHeritage sites myself and am also Italian - not everything can be traced so accurately and when records and family stories contradict, I don't always side with the records personally. If he told me Tony was related to Al Capone, I would be rolling my eyes - but this guy didn't even know Nick DeJohn he just said 'A Capone gangster named DeJohn who was killed in the 40s.' It's obviously Nick DeJohn and the family name is halfway there - maybe the immigration records are just off.

[PolackTony]

I mean, you can believe whatever you like. Even if Tony Zizzo himself believed this (which we don't even know that he actually did, just that some guy told you that he said it), it wouldn't make it true, as many people believe erroneous things about their genealogy.

If anyone else is interested in this, here is just one of many documents that I have for Frank Zizzo's family. This one was for his parents' marriage in 1912 at San Filippo Benizi Parish. Note, as I have previously posted, Grazia Di Giovanni's parents were Vincenzo Di Giovanni and Maria Di Pietra, both natives of Marsala, Trapani province:



When I say that Grazia Di Giovanni was unequivocally *not* the sister of Nick DeJohn, I am not saying this because of some random typo or clerical error in a document. Di Giovanni is a common Sicilian/Italian surname and in no way, in and of itself, indicates any relation between two families that happen to share the surname.

Here is her birth record from Marsala, 1894/02/18 (parents Vincenzo Di Giovanni and Maria Di Pietra of Marsala, in case anyone has difficulty making out the handwriting here):



Here is her arrival in the port of NYC in 1910, from Marsala via the port of Palermo, accompanying her siblings and mother Maria Di Pietra. The family was bound for Chicago, where they were joining father Vincenzo Di Giovanni, then living at Oak and Larrabee in the Little Sicily neighborhood:

[NorthBuffalo]

Tony - I'll show him these receipts - but I want more photos and old stories so I'll leave it up to him. You got me convinced its probably a coincidence. FWIW you do know a ton of Italian immigrants lied about their regions of origin for various reasons right? I think its less black and white than you make it out to be - quite a bit of grey area here in terms of record keeping for illiterate immigrants entering the United States in the early 1900s...many of these families as you've proven yourself had mafia ties going well back to the old countries. Criminal records and family names that were unsavory. Many southern Italians chose northern italian regions to hide their various identifies - look how many in the Outfit alone came over on fake names (Paul DeLucia, Dominic Roberto, etc.) You need to attribute some semblance of 'this could be wrong...' There are a lot of historical details missed by looking through your evidence alone.

[Ivan]

many people believe erroneous things about their genealogy

True dat. I can attest to this based on my experience.

I have a German surname and my father always told us we were German-American, so I went with what he said because why wouldn't Dad know his own ethnicity? And hey it's all there in the surname, right?

Finally got into serious genealogy in my 30s. Turns out the surname comes from one dude in like 1830 who moved to Ohio from Germany to set up a farm, I'm actually 1/128th German, and dad's family is pretty ordinary old-stock American Appalachian settler hillbilly types, not "German" (well except for that one guy).

I imagine pretty much everyone who doesn't look into it in detail has some misconceptions about their own genealogy, bases their "ethnicity" on their surname alone, etc. etc.

[Ivan]

This is bullshit, right?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Mafia/comments ... xpert_and/

[Aunt+Baby]

This is bullshit, right?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Mafia/comments ... xpert_and/

That witcomb guy is one of the biggest douchebag weirdo hanger-on pieces of shit that participates in the mafia genre. He’s a historian of his own jerk off sessions, and that is about it. No one has any idea how that fool got himself a platform, but it was clearly bought/paid for because he doesn’t know anything about anything (his biggest claim is that he sat in on the iconic Carlisi Crew trial), and now he’s deemed himself the ultimate Chicago Mafia expert. He’s the one that hosts that show with seiferts clown of a kid, who also has nothing to offer

Nothing any of those morons say is rooted in truth

[Ivan]

This is bullshit, right?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Mafia/comments ... xpert_and/

That witcomb guy is one of the biggest douchebag weirdo hanger-on pieces of shit that participates in the mafia genre. He’s a historian of his own jerk off sessions, and that is about it. No one has any idea how that fool got himself a platform, but it was clearly bought/paid for because he doesn’t know anything about anything (his biggest claim is that he sat in on the iconic Carlisi Crew trial), and now he’s deemed himself the ultimate Chicago Mafia expert. He’s the one that hosts that show with seiferts clown of a kid, who also has nothing to offer

Nothing any of those morons say is rooted in truth

Thanks for the info.

I thought it was suspect as it doesn't even sound like something he would say. Marcello seems way too stoic to have some kind of outburst like that. The judge even praised him for his proper court demeanor while lowering the boom on him at sentencing, noting that while Lombardo and Calabrese were too psycho and dysfunctional to behave appropriately, Marcello wasn't.

[Antiliar]

This is bullshit, right?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Mafia/comments ... xpert_and/

If he said something like that it would have been reported by the Tribune and the Sun-Times, and Chuck Goudie would have had a field day. The only thing he said that was memorable was in 1995 when he told the judge, "If my name wasn't James Marcello, I wouldn't be standing in front of you. That's all I have to say."

[Snakes]

Frank Calabrese was (allegedly) the one that cursed in court when he (again, allegedly) muttered "fucking kill you" to the prosecutor after the verdict was read.

[Ivan]

Frank Calabrese was (allegedly) the one that cursed in court when he (again, allegedly) muttered "fucking kill you" to the prosecutor after the verdict was read.

Yeah I think it was "You're a fucking dead man", directed at Markus Funk.