General Chicago Outfit Info Dumping Ground

[PolackTony]

In a 1996 response to a motion to dismiss evidence filed by counsel for Shorty LaMantia, the office of the US Attorney for the Northern District of IL cited a number of sources used to justify the wiretapping of the Chinatown crew's operation in the 1980s. One of these sources was identified as Tony Gallas, a Greek hoodlum from the Southside with a long history as a burglar and personal associate of Gus Alex and Nicky Kokenes. Gallas had also long served as an important informant for the FBI and is presumably one of the various Chicago CIs whose intel we have discussed in the past.

Note here that Gallas had told the FBI in 1968 that Spilotro was an affiliate of the "Cicero crew". Also worth noting that Gallas's account of Angelo LaPietra in 1979 is consistent with LaPietra having been elevated to captain of Chinatown around this time. Snakes and I have previously discussed whether LaPietra might have formally received this position following the death of Turk Torello in April 1979, with Ferriola getting the bulk of the Taylor St/Cicero crew and LaPietra taking over the Caruso crew while bringing a couple of guys with him (his brother, Fecarotta, the Calabrese bros). Gallas's claim as to LaPietra seemingly having asserted a more aggressive presence on the street came just a few months after Torello's death, which is consistent with the above hypothesis (CW Ritchie Mara had also informed the Feds that LaPietra had succeeded Caruso as "boss" of the "Southside crew" at some point "in the 1970s").

[funkster]

Polack Tony and others…..

Does anyone think there were any making ceromonies during the 70s and early 80s prior to 83??
IMO I say no because otherwise people like Infelice, Marcello and the Calabrese brothers would have been made already.

We know there was one in ‘76. This one may have been large as it was presumably the first ceremony held following the elevation of Aiuppa to boss (and typically a new boss will hold a ceremony following his installation; hence a large ceremony having been held in ‘56 when Giancana was elevated and one being held in 1988, following Carlisi’s ascent; we would thus expect a significant ceremony to have been held sometime in the mid-70s). Vic “Popeye” Arrigo, who was a CI, told the FBI that he had been proposed for membership at an upcoming ceremony by Caesar DiVarco at this time, and further noted that DiVarco told him that Chicago was opening its books after having been closed “for many years” (Snakes and I have discussed this previously on the board; Arrigo doesn’t seem to have actually wound up getting inducted and it’s quite possible that this was due to the fact that he testified at this time in a FL case against some Tampa guys he was working with).

Obviously, this aligned with NYC reopening their books, though we don’t know if this was a coincidence, in that after Giancana fled the country and Battaglia was imprisoned, Chicago was in leadership crisis for several years, with Accardo and Ricca forced to step up and serve as acting bosses in the interim. For this reason, it’s likely that there had been no new members brought in for at least 10 years by ‘76.

A Milwaukee member informant confirmed that Chicago held a ceremony in ‘76 and also reported that Frank Balistrieri went down to Chicago to be introduced to the inductees (this informant *may* have been Vincent Maniaci, though we don’t know this for a fact). Unfortunately, the names of the members inducted at this time are not known. There are known members where we really don’t know when they were made who *could* well have been made at this time (Joe Andriacchi is one who comes to mind at the moment, another is Toots Caruso).

Based on the ages of guys made in '83, some of the following may have been part of 1976 ceremony. Some of them may have already been made (Cortina, Angelini, Jimmy LaPietra). but you could have said the same about Infelise and Tocco, re: 1983. Guys like Turk Torello, Joe Lombardo, and John DiFronzo can probably be ruled out due to them already have some type of leadership role by 1976. Spilotro is another guy that was almost certainly made before then based on existing evidence.

Andriacchi (possibly already made)
Angelini (probably already made)
Bastones
Mike Castaldo
Tony Centracchio
Tony Ciriginani (see below)
Cortina (probably already made)
Jimmy Cozzo (probably too early, if Cozzo was ever made at all)
James D'Antonio (possibly never made)
Ron DeAngeles
Louie Eboli
Fecarotta
Joe Grieco
Jimmy LaPietra (possibly already made)
Rocco Lombardo (see below)
Lou Marino
John Monteleone (possibly already made)
Larry Petitt (Magnafichi[?] says not made]
Joe Spa

Buonaguidi (Larry the Hood) was a possible member and Cirignani is the redacted name in the image below. If this happened as the informant suggests, Cirignani could have been made in '76.


I've talked with Tony concerning this and I feel that the individual listed below almost has to be Rocco Lombardo, other than the "formerly in law enforcement." This could have been a mistaken allusion to Rocco's time training law enforcement officers in martial arts. The year is incorrect, but this information isn't always an exact science.

Nice discussion here. I was writing off the top of my head last night, so it's good to have more names to consider (you and I have discussed some of this around the '76 ceremony, but I don't know that we really ever got into it on the board here).

I don't believe that Andriacchi was likely to have been made in the period between 1956-66 (and he was not listed by the FBI as such in the 1968 and 1973 lists, though this doesn't rule out that he was made and they just didn't know), so I strongly suspect that he was made in '76, as Nick C did not note him as one of the guys made in the 1980s ceremonies (speculative on my part).

My *guess* is that Angelini, Cortina, Spadavecchio, and at least one of the Bastones may have been made earlier, but this is again totally speculative. I will say that as of 1968, the FBI carried Angelini, Cortina, and Joe Spa as members based solely on intel from Louie Bombacino, who was almost certainly not a member himself. As of 1973, the Feds did not have additional sources for these three, and thus it is clear that none of their other sources had ID'd Angelini and Cortina as made; this was also the case for Ferriola, though, and I don't think there's any real doubt that Ferriola was made by this time. As is often the case, the FBI's rather poor Chicago intel doesn't give us enough to adequately confirm or rule these two out as made by then. None of the Bastones were ID'd as made in either '68 or '73, though this still doesn't rule them out, of course.

Thanks for the reminder on the intel for Rocky Lombardo. Nick C was not totally clear in his testimony on this, but seemed to have believed that D'Antonio was made (he was the only guy that Nick was apparently even aware of in the Lombardo crew apart from Lombardo himself and Eboli). I would personally be surprised if D'Antonio was not made, and assuming that he was, I would very much bet that him and Rocky were sponsored by Joe Lombardo around '76. The earliest that we can 100% confirm that Lombardo had been formally elevated to capo was around 1975, and it makes sense that at some point in the years after assuming that title, he would have proposed a few guys close to him. Eboli is another good candidate, though whether he would have necessarily been sponsored by Lombardo is a question for me (he was said to have personally been a favorite of Aiuppa and obviously from MP, so I have wondered if Eboli was initially made by the Carlisi crew and transferred later).

Nick C did not identify Marino as a made guy in his testimony. He did, of course, identify Marino as having been in attendance at the mock ceremony in '86, however, which for me at least strongly suggests that Marino was made by then. Given that he was not ID'd by Calabrese as having been made in '83, I have also speculated that he was a strong candidate for having been made in '76.

As of 1973, Castaldo and Jimmy Lap had not been ID'd as member by the FBI, which, again, doesn't necessarily rule them out. D'Angeles was ID'd, but only based on Lou Fratto's intel, which included a number of questionable member identifications. Grieco was ID'd by both Fratto and CG-6968, an as-yet-unknown (presumed) Chicago member source who ID'd a number of Chicago guys.

Nick C never mentioned when Fecarotta was made in his testimony, but he was evidently made before the Calabrese bros. In the '73 list, the FBI listed him as made based on the intel of 4 sources, so I I think he was *probably* already made by this time (worth noting that these were the same 4 sources that ID'd Tony Spilotro; we also know, however, that the Feds listed Frank Calabrese as made already by '73 based on 3 sources. Given the unreliability of the FBI's intel on Chicago, just as a guy not being ID'd doesn't necessarily rule him out, identifications can't always be 100% ruled in [high false positive and false negative rate]). If so, his membership predated Nick C's affiliation as an associate circa 1970.

Thanks for the reminder also on Cirignani. We know that his membership was later confirmed. The way that report is worded, however, it is unclear to me if he was actually proposed and made following Buonaguidi's death in 1975, or if he was already made with another crew and transferred to DiBella at that time. Bunoaguidi, BTW, is another guy who was only ID'd by Bombacino as of 1973, though I believe he was in fact made and this report serves to at least further support that (though, as is so often the case, we don't know for sure who the source was here). Related to this, Cirignani was closely tied to Campise. While Campise was later absolutely a soldier with the Solano crew, as we've discussed in the past, there was a bug of Prio and DiBella discussing Campise back in the 1960s and from this conversation it seems pretty clear to me that he was *not* part of their crew at this time. DiBella informed Prio that Campise had become an "avugad' with a group of guys under him; given that we otherwise have no reason to believe that Campise was ever a captain, my reading of this is that Campise was a made guy in another (unknown) crew who had a crew of associates under him. If so, I would bet that Cirignani had been one of these associates, and Campise *may have* gotten Cirignani proposed. Both men were suspects in the 1966 murder of Hunk Galiano, which I would bet had qualified Cirignani for membership (Battaglia may well have had a ceremony around this time, which would make sense, and if so, may have been the last time new members were brought in prior to ~'76). Worth noting here that in 1966, a source told the FBI that both Galiano and Campise were "underlings" of Battaglia, which could have been an indication that they were in his crew.

Monteleone was not listed on the '68 and '73 lists. And he wasn't a "sleeper" by any means. But, again, this doesn't necessarily rule out that he was already made.

Pettit and Centracchio I have no strong opinions about, really. I do believe that Pettit was made, but I have questions about both of these guys given that we have little in the way of strong intel for their earlier trajectories with the organization.

As I noted above, I also suspect that Caruso may have been made in '76. Nick C didn't specify when he was made, and it's clear that he wasn't made in the 1980s. He was in his early 30s in '76, but given his pedigree I would not be surprised if he was made at a relatively young age.

This is a great post Tony.

I have a hard time believing Turk wasn't made until the 70s, I think you're probably right..Fosco is mistaken and he was likely made earlier than that.

[PPPP]

New podcast called crookcounty. It’s supposedly about a Chicago hit man nobody knew about. His name is Kenny “the kid” Tekiela. Anybody hear of him?

Anybody listen to this yet? Listened to the first 3 episodes so far. After consulting with an attorney they use aliases for all the Outfit members. So it makes it even harder to verify. The podcast is heavy handed and just okay, IMO. But they lay it on pretty thick that this Ken Tekiela was a hitter for The Outfit and he ran whorehouses.

They mention, IIRC, he started working in the early 80's for a made guy who was the son of Chicago's Chop Shop king. Who would that be? Whose son? Al Pilotto's? Jimmy Catura's? Later he goes on to say he then worked for another made guy who was a crew boss who was a well kept gangster. And who ran all the whorehouses for the outfit in the unincorporated parts of cook, dupage and kane counties.

Starting in episode 3 they are start to get into more of the day to day mafia/outfit stuff. The first 2 eps are more about the family and personal lives.

[Tonyd621]

New podcast called crookcounty. It’s supposedly about a Chicago hit man nobody knew about. His name is Kenny “the kid” Tekiela. Anybody hear of him?

Anybody listen to this yet? Listened to the first 3 episodes so far. After consulting with an attorney they use aliases for all the Outfit members. So it makes it even harder to verify. The podcast is heavy handed and just okay, IMO. But they lay it on pretty thick that this Ken Tekiela was a hitter for The Outfit and he ran whorehouses.

They mention, IIRC, he started working in the early 80's for a made guy who was the son of Chicago's Chop Shop king. Who would that be? Whose son? Al Pilotto's? Jimmy Catura's? Later he goes on to say he then worked for another made guy who was a crew boss who was a well kept gangster. And who ran all the whorehouses for the outfit in the unincorporated parts of cook, dupage and kane counties.

Starting in episode 3 they are start to get into more of the day to day mafia/outfit stuff. The first 2 eps are more about the family and personal lives.

I am skeptical. I am not nearly as well -versed as others in Chicago but I tried to look up court cases on him. I found two, and both were him responding to an emergency as a paramedic in '89' and '91.' There has to be some documentation linking him to being associated with the Outfit. If he can't even produce it... I think he's lying, imo

[PolackTony]

New podcast called crookcounty. It’s supposedly about a Chicago hit man nobody knew about. His name is Kenny “the kid” Tekiela. Anybody hear of him?

Anybody listen to this yet? Listened to the first 3 episodes so far. After consulting with an attorney they use aliases for all the Outfit members. So it makes it even harder to verify. The podcast is heavy handed and just okay, IMO. But they lay it on pretty thick that this Ken Tekiela was a hitter for The Outfit and he ran whorehouses.

They mention, IIRC, he started working in the early 80's for a made guy who was the son of Chicago's Chop Shop king. Who would that be? Whose son? Al Pilotto's? Jimmy Catura's? Later he goes on to say he then worked for another made guy who was a crew boss who was a well kept gangster. And who ran all the whorehouses for the outfit in the unincorporated parts of cook, dupage and kane counties.

Starting in episode 3 they are start to get into more of the day to day mafia/outfit stuff. The first 2 eps are more about the family and personal lives.

I am skeptical. I am not nearly as well -versed as others in Chicago but I tried to look up court cases on him. I found two, and both were him responding to an emergency as a paramedic in '89' and '91.' There has to be some documentation linking him to being associated with the Outfit. If he can't even produce it... I think he's lying, imo

Yeah, the guy was in fact a firefighter in suburban DuPage County. For the rest of the various claims being made about him now… who knows. There were certainly guys, both members and associates, whose LCN affiliation was never known publicly. There were also of course many more guys who were not formally affiliated in any meaningful way but were on the periphery of it (various hoodlums and crooks, some of whom may at times have worked for or with guys who were connected, others who paid street tax to connected guys, etc).

There are also a bunch of people online who say all sorts of stuff, some of it intentionally false and some of it just honestly mistaken or erroneous (true for any area with this subject, but there’s a whole universe of mythology and a sort of cottage industry of stuff particular to Chicago).

Given the scope of the internet today, there are just going to be way more people talking stuff (again, whether outright bullshit or just confused/mistaken) than there were actual, affiliated outfit guys about whom we otherwise have no clue (the ratio, we can presume, is some order of magnitude).

I haven’t listened to all of this podcast but many of the claims sound, if not outright false, at least exaggerated.

As always, with any claim regarding an object of inquiry that by its nature is opaque to outsiders, the question is: according to whom? Any claim is contingent on the quality of source (can we say with any certainty that the claim even originated with someone who would be the position to know such things? Is there any objective documentation process through which the claim was produced or transmitted, or is it just “some guy said”?). Without being able to at least establish these things, we just have a bunch of claims that could be true, could be total horseshit, or could be some unknown mix of both (along with exaggeration, lack of context, etc etc).

[PolackTony]

New podcast called crookcounty. It’s supposedly about a Chicago hit man nobody knew about. His name is Kenny “the kid” Tekiela. Anybody hear of him?

They mention, IIRC, he started working in the early 80's for a made guy who was the son of Chicago's Chop Shop king. Who would that be? Whose son? Al Pilotto's? Jimmy Catura's? Later he goes on to say he then worked for another made guy who was a crew boss who was a well kept gangster. And who ran all the whorehouses for the outfit in the unincorporated parts of cook, dupage and kane counties.

My guess is that they were referring to Catuara. He had one son, Carmelo “Carl” Catuara. Carl Catuara was not at all unknown to Federal investigators, but I’ve never seen anything that would suggest that he was a made guy (not that this necessarily means that he was not made, of course).

Carl Catuara was a longtime employee of the IL Secretary of State’s office, under which he managed a drivers license facility on the Westside of Chicago. In 1989, he was questioned by Federal investigators because of personal and financial ties to an executive of an armored car company that operated an armored vehicle from which over $2mil in coins belonging to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago were stolen. In 1996, it was also revealed that Carl Catuara was a target of Operation Silver Shovel, a major Federal investigation of political corruption in Chicago in the 90s. In 1993, FBI mole John Christopher had purchased two drivers licenses from Carl Catuara under a false name; Catuara was summarily fired from his position with the State of IL, but died soon after.

While the Chicago press reported in coverage of both events that he was the son of Jimmy Catuara, Carl himself was never described as an associate, member, or otherwise affiliated with the outfit.

[Patrickgold]

New podcast called crookcounty. It’s supposedly about a Chicago hit man nobody knew about. His name is Kenny “the kid” Tekiela. Anybody hear of him?

Anybody listen to this yet? Listened to the first 3 episodes so far. After consulting with an attorney they use aliases for all the Outfit members. So it makes it even harder to verify. The podcast is heavy handed and just okay, IMO. But they lay it on pretty thick that this Ken Tekiela was a hitter for The Outfit and he ran whorehouses.

They mention, IIRC, he started working in the early 80's for a made guy who was the son of Chicago's Chop Shop king. Who would that be? Whose son? Al Pilotto's? Jimmy Catura's? Later he goes on to say he then worked for another made guy who was a crew boss who was a well kept gangster. And who ran all the whorehouses for the outfit in the unincorporated parts of cook, dupage and kane counties.

Starting in episode 3 they are start to get into more of the day to day mafia/outfit stuff. The first 2 eps are more about the family and personal lives.

The fact that he is using aliases turned me off. I probably won’t finish watching it. Why is he using aliases if the guys are already dead? If they were real outfit guys like he claims it’s not like he needs to change their names. He’s probably doing it because he knows there will be blow back that he never knew the guys and their families will verify it.

[Tonyd621]

The government uses alias when they publish a book. Not the criminals. I call bullshit

[PolackTony]

Bridgeport Italians are very insular. They often don't even get along with other Italians from different parts of the city. For some reason I always get a Brooklyn vibe when I'm in Bridgeport

100%. Very clannish and suspicious of outsiders. When I’m in Armour Square, on the side streets in particular, I often get this like gut feeling that I’m being watched. Sort of creepy and tense feeling. Funny that you bring up the Brooklyn comparison in that, like Bensonhurst, Armour Square/Bridgeport has had a big influx of Chinese.

Absolutely. It's extremely quiet in these areas.

We had a little exchange about the clannish and insular nature that one sees even today among Italians from the Chinatown/Armour Square/Bridgeport area.

From the same 1996 LaMantia case that I posted from above. In their investigations of the 26th St crew in the 1980s/90s, the FBI justified their use of bugs/wiretaps at ONIAC and Gino's Tavern in light of the fact that they were otherwise unable to get any access into this group: clannishness, suspicion of/hostility to outsiders showing up in the neighborhood, guys who would communicate in Sicilian and/or Calabrese, etc. For decades, this community was basically like a fortified island on the Near Southside, and the Chicago adage of "we don't want nobody dat nobody sent" was turned up to 11 in a world where literally everyone was a known quantity, from families that had all known each other since arriving in the US (and then back in Italy for paesani from the same hometowns). Even by Chicago standards, a very difficult group to penetrate for outsiders. Prior to Nick C flipping, the primary sources that the Feds had for the activities of this group were non-Italians (Mara, Gallas, Sam "Guy" Bills), which I don't think is incidental given the extremely tight knit nature of the Italian community there (and even Nick C was himself not from this community, FWIW).

[PolackTony]

I don't know that the following has been discussed on the board before.

Prior to Nick Calabrese turning CW in 2002, we know that Chicago LCN associate CI Teddy DeRose had told the FBI in the early 1960s that induction of new members "always [involved] a ceremony".

As we all know, in 1989, Lenny Patrick's enforcer Mario Rainone flipped and ran to the Feds after he became convinced that the outfit was trying to kill him in an attempt to muscle Patrick out of his remaining rackets.

In the late 1990s, Chicago LCN member Johnny Matassa was ousted from his position as President of LIUNA Local 2 on the charges of being a "made member" of the Chicago outfit (revealing Matassa's status to the public for the first time).

John J O'Rourke, investigator for the LIUNA Inspector General's Office, was a longtime FBI agent working OC in the Chicago FO. He began working for the Cook County Sheriff's office and LIUNA upon his retirement from the FBI in 1995. In his affidavit presented to the LIUNA hearings to oust Matassa from his position, O'Rourke discussed the evidence used to determine Matassa's status in the outfit, citing multiple CW and CI sources who spoke about Matassa's ties to the organization and his relationships to organized crime activities.

One of them was Rainone, who along with Jimmy LaValley (who flipped the next year, in 1990) and an unnamed LCN associate CI, specifically told the Feds that they understood Matassa to have been a made guy.

Interestingly, Rainone also told the feds that:

"he had been told by Leonard Patrick [...] and by Joseph 'Singing Joe' Vento (also associated with the Outfit) that a made member went through an initiation ceremony and had to be sponsored by another made member. Patrick and Vento also told Rainone that being made gave an individual the right to run his own crew and to share in the profits of the Outfit. He was told to avoid made members and was told by Patrick and Vento that Matassa was a made member".

While it has been noted previously that Patrick was keen to warn his "crew" to avoid made guys (and for good reason, as Patrick worked for the aged Gus Alex, and if their people ran afoul of any made guys they may not have been in much of a position to help them; the is exactly the scenario that Rainone apparently became convinced was occurring when he flipped), I don't know if it has been noted that Rainone was aware of the ceremony (though it's unclear that he would have known exactly what this entailed, of course).

[Coloboy]

I don't know that the following has been discussed on the board before.

Prior to Nick Calabrese turning CW in 2002, we know that Chicago LCN associate CI Teddy DeRose had told the FBI in the early 1960s that induction of new members "always [involved] a ceremony".

As we all know, in 1989, Lenny Patrick's enforcer Mario Rainone flipped and ran to the Feds after he became convinced that the outfit was trying to kill him in an attempt to muscle Patrick out of his remaining rackets.

In the late 1990s, Chicago LCN member Johnny Matassa was ousted from his position as President of LIUNA Local 2 on the charges of being a "made member" of the Chicago outfit (revealing Matassa's status to the public for the first time).

John J O'Rourke, investigator for the LIUNA Inspector General's Office, was a longtime FBI agent working OC in the Chicago FO. He began working for the Cook County Sheriff's office and LIUNA upon his retirement from the FBI in 1995. In his affidavit presented to the LIUNA hearings to oust Matassa from his position, O'Rourke discussed the evidence used to determine Matassa's status in the outfit, citing multiple CW and CI sources who spoke about Matassa's ties to the organization and his relationships to organized crime activities.

One of them was Rainone, who along with Jimmy LaValley (who flipped the next year, in 1990) and an unnamed LCN associate CI, specifically told the Feds that they understood Matassa to have been a made guy.

Interestingly, Rainone also told the feds that:

"he had been told by Leonard Patrick [...] and by Joseph 'Singing Joe' Vento (also associated with the Outfit) that a made member went through an initiation ceremony and had to be sponsored by another made member. Patrick and Vento also told Rainone that being made gave an individual the right to run his own crew and to share in the profits of the Outfit. He was told to avoid made members and was told by Patrick and Vento that Matassa was a made member".

While it has been noted previously that Patrick was keen to warn his "crew" to avoid made guys (and for good reason, as Patrick worked for the aged Gus Alex, and if their people ran afoul of any made guys they may not have been in much of a position to help them; the is exactly the scenario that Rainone apparently became convinced was occurring when he flipped), I don't know if it has been noted that Rainone was aware of the ceremony (though it's unclear that he would have known exactly what this entailed, of course).

It’s interesting, you laid it out here and I’ve seen reference to it before, but it does seem that at least historically, one of the big aspects of becoming made was that you were entitled to some kind of stake of the overall outfit profits in some way. That alone would make that designation a pretty big deal. A “shareholder” if you will.

One of you guys will know, but I recall a made guy in a family outside of Chicago (nyc?) , sometime in the 1960s maybe, talking about how he liked the way that they ran things, even including having older retired members on some type of “pension” plan for lack of a better word.

One has to wonder if any of these types of anrrangements exist to this day.

[7digits]

Polack Tony and others…..

Does anyone think there were any making ceromonies during the 70s and early 80s prior to 83??
IMO I say no because otherwise people like Infelice, Marcello and the Calabrese brothers would have been made already.

We know there was one in ‘76. This one may have been large as it was presumably the first ceremony held following the elevation of Aiuppa to boss (and typically a new boss will hold a ceremony following his installation; hence a large ceremony having been held in ‘56 when Giancana was elevated and one being held in 1988, following Carlisi’s ascent; we would thus expect a significant ceremony to have been held sometime in the mid-70s). Vic “Popeye” Arrigo, who was a CI, told the FBI that he had been proposed for membership at an upcoming ceremony by Caesar DiVarco at this time, and further noted that DiVarco told him that Chicago was opening its books after having been closed “for many years” (Snakes and I have discussed this previously on the board; Arrigo doesn’t seem to have actually wound up getting inducted and it’s quite possible that this was due to the fact that he testified at this time in a FL case against some Tampa guys he was working with).

Obviously, this aligned with NYC reopening their books, though we don’t know if this was a coincidence, in that after Giancana fled the country and Battaglia was imprisoned, Chicago was in leadership crisis for several years, with Accardo and Ricca forced to step up and serve as acting bosses in the interim. For this reason, it’s likely that there had been no new members brought in for at least 10 years by ‘76.

A Milwaukee member informant confirmed that Chicago held a ceremony in ‘76 and also reported that Frank Balistrieri went down to Chicago to be introduced to the inductees (this informant *may* have been Vincent Maniaci, though we don’t know this for a fact). Unfortunately, the names of the members inducted at this time are not known. There are known members where we really don’t know when they were made who *could* well have been made at this time (Joe Andriacchi is one who comes to mind at the moment, another is Toots Caruso).

Oh wow ok.. I wasn’t aware that there was a ceremony in 1976
Do we know who was made in the ceremony and who sponsored each inductee

[Snakes]

Polack Tony and others…..

Does anyone think there were any making ceromonies during the 70s and early 80s prior to 83??
IMO I say no because otherwise people like Infelice, Marcello and the Calabrese brothers would have been made already.

We know there was one in ‘76. This one may have been large as it was presumably the first ceremony held following the elevation of Aiuppa to boss (and typically a new boss will hold a ceremony following his installation; hence a large ceremony having been held in ‘56 when Giancana was elevated and one being held in 1988, following Carlisi’s ascent; we would thus expect a significant ceremony to have been held sometime in the mid-70s). Vic “Popeye” Arrigo, who was a CI, told the FBI that he had been proposed for membership at an upcoming ceremony by Caesar DiVarco at this time, and further noted that DiVarco told him that Chicago was opening its books after having been closed “for many years” (Snakes and I have discussed this previously on the board; Arrigo doesn’t seem to have actually wound up getting inducted and it’s quite possible that this was due to the fact that he testified at this time in a FL case against some Tampa guys he was working with).

Obviously, this aligned with NYC reopening their books, though we don’t know if this was a coincidence, in that after Giancana fled the country and Battaglia was imprisoned, Chicago was in leadership crisis for several years, with Accardo and Ricca forced to step up and serve as acting bosses in the interim. For this reason, it’s likely that there had been no new members brought in for at least 10 years by ‘76.

A Milwaukee member informant confirmed that Chicago held a ceremony in ‘76 and also reported that Frank Balistrieri went down to Chicago to be introduced to the inductees (this informant *may* have been Vincent Maniaci, though we don’t know this for a fact). Unfortunately, the names of the members inducted at this time are not known. There are known members where we really don’t know when they were made who *could* well have been made at this time (Joe Andriacchi is one who comes to mind at the moment, another is Toots Caruso).

Oh wow ok.. I wasn’t aware that there was a ceremony in 1976
Do we know who was made in the ceremony and who sponsored each inductee

We don't have any details but made some educated guesses a page or two ago.

[PolackTony]

Interestingly, Rainone also told the feds that:

"he had been told by Leonard Patrick [...] and by Joseph 'Singing Joe' Vento (also associated with the Outfit) that a made member went through an initiation ceremony and had to be sponsored by another made member. Patrick and Vento also told Rainone that being made gave an individual the right to run his own crew and to share in the profits of the Outfit. He was told to avoid made members and was told by Patrick and Vento that Matassa was a made member".

It’s interesting, you laid it out here and I’ve seen reference to it before, but it does seem that at least historically, one of the big aspects of becoming made was that you were entitled to some kind of stake of the overall outfit profits in some way. That alone would make that designation a pretty big deal. A “shareholder” if you will.

One of you guys will know, but I recall a made guy in a family outside of Chicago (nyc?) , sometime in the 1960s maybe, talking about how he liked the way that they ran things, even including having older retired members on some type of “pension” plan for lack of a better word.

One has to wonder if any of these types of anrrangements exist to this day.

Not in the position right now to give a fully detailed response, but this is one of those questions that IMO can lend itself to exaggeration or confusion.

A made guy is granted certain rights, privileges, and prerogatives that accrue to members — one of which is access to a type of social capital that has serious value in that world (and this was by no means limited just to the immediate criminal subculture, as we know).

Another benefit that accrued was a general prerogative to make claims on operators of specific black/gray market activities, or to enter into extortionate relationships with legitimate business operators — so long as they hadn’t already been claimed by another made guy (in other words, various “street tax”‘arrangements). And, as Patrick told Rainone, a made guy can have his own “crew” of associates, who engage in various remunerative illegal activities, essentially under his “license”. A made guy in this position is of course expected to hand over a portion of the revenues that he collects through the exercise of these prerogatives to his captain (this could be, say, a flat 10%, though I believe it could also vary depending on specific arrangements or the racket involved, if his captain was bankrolling his operations and thus entitled to a specific ROI, etc).

The latter is what I read “share in the profits of the Outfit” to refer to (also worth attending to the fact that this was itself not a verbatim quote from Rainone, who was himself relaying things told to him by other — more knowledgeable — non-members. We don’t know what Rainone actually said, or what Patrick in turn verbatim told him, just O’Rourke’s summary of Rainone’s statements). And of course this isn’t any different than how things were typically handled in any other Family.

And of course they all share in the benefits that the Family as a whole collectively enjoys (access to specific remunerative opportunities in a partnership with your captain, social capital/prestige which can translate into all sorts of licit and illicit opportunities for you and your friends/relatives, protection/representation under the mafia’s quasi-state like sphere of influence). Rather than, say, the soldiers actually receive some periodic dividend of the net proceeds of a centralized, joint venture in the way that the shareholders of an actual joint stock corporation would. Maybe people online have tried to claim that Chicago did something like this, but as with a lot of these things, there just isn’t good evidence for it, IMO (and of course I’m not talking about some old, possibly apocryphal, claim about how Capone in the 1920s paid his men salaries or whatever).

In this light it’s worth emphasizing that when Nick Calabrese testified, he didn’t attest to any sort of explicit “profit sharing” program or anything of the sort. Just that one was afforded enhanced opportunities to earn (along the lines of what I noted above). And Nick, of course, was talking about the exact same time period as the Rainone statement.





And this is pretty much all Nick said about the subject. You join the mafia, you are now all “brothers”, you are part of this highly selective secret society (“that whatever you want to call it”), this affords you more opportunities to earn money and also an enhanced degree of protection under the mafia’s own legal-juridical system.

The informant you’re thinking of might have been a Lucchese associate who was a CI in the 1960s (his name escapes me at the moment). He said something along the lines of Chicago paying something like a pension to retired members, IIRC, and a few other things that may have reflected what guys in NYC *thought about* Chicago rather than substantive intel (in that I don’t believe there was any reason to think this guy had any personal knowledge or direct ties to Chicago himself; he also wasn’t even a member in NYC either).

Some Chicago CIs made some vague statements to this effect as well, but nothing substantive. Hard to say based on this how common such things, if done, might’ve been (the mafia’s origins are very much along the lines of a mutual aid society, so such things wouldn’t be far from that model). I’m inclined to read it as like when a member’s family gets taken care of when he’s in prison (as Nick C said Marcello made sure to have happen for him). In other words, a lot more ad hoc and personal rather than a systematic entitlement. These guys weren’t running the Social Security Administration by any means.

[funkster]

Funny this is coming up, in a recent live RJ brought this up with DiLeonardo asking if NY had something similar (obvious no), and claims that it was in Valachi's testimony that this was done in Chicago. I haven't studied Valachi's testimony closely, so no idea if he actually said that but find it hard to believe if he did that he was correct.