Chicago Outfit Places of Origin

[B.]

The Arbereshe mafiosi affiliated w/ the early LA Family were apparently even called Albanesi by other Sicilians.

When this has come up before we've wondered whether Arbereshe were seen as suitable for mafia membership from the beginning (regardless of ethnic roots, their geography and temperament lended itself to the mafia) or if their membership came a bit later than other western Sicilians given they were still seen as Albanese. That brings up other Sicilians who trace themselves to other places in Italy, etc. though. Maybe anyone living in Sicily for enough generations was seen as Sicilian enough for the mafia regardless of their older ancestry.

[PolackTony]

The Arbereshe mafiosi affiliated w/ the early LA Family were apparently even called Albanesi by other Sicilians.

When this has come up before we've wondered whether Arbereshe were seen as suitable for mafia membership from the beginning (regardless of ethnic roots, their geography and temperament lended itself to the mafia) or if their membership came a bit later than other western Sicilians given they were still seen as Albanese. That brings up other Sicilians who trace themselves to other places in Italy, etc. though. Maybe anyone living in Sicily for enough generations was seen as Sicilian enough for the mafia regardless of their older ancestry.

We've discussed some of these questions a bit before, both on the board and off.

The Arbëreshë of Sicily are an ethnic/linguistic minority; they were seen as such both by themselves and other Sicilians, and this difference was much more marked and salient in the past than it is today. But, by the late 19th century at least, they were not viewed as *foreign* to Sicily in any meaningful way, as they had, of course, been there for 4 centuries by this point. From what I know, the Arbëreshë were seen by other Sicilians as somewhat exotic, curious, and strange. And until the late 19th century, endogamy was the norm among them, as they strongly preferred to remain among their own people and traditions. But they weren't excluded socially in any way by other Sicilians, so far as I am aware. Rather than a foreign population on Sicilian soil, they were seen by the broader society as an *internal other*.

As I've noted before, we also know that understandings of the Arbëreshë as ethno-cultural "others" within the broader Sicilian immigrant population did carry on into the early 20th-century US diaspora, as should be expected. It was documented that other Sicilians in CHicago's Little Sicily, for example, referred to the Arbëreshë of Mezzojuso as "Gai Gai", a term which may not have carried any pejorative or hostile connotations, but certainly served to mark the Arbëreshë as distinct from the broader Sicilian community, with their language as the salient marker of ethnic difference (the etymology is unclear; while "Gai Gai" may have been nonsensical vocables meant to underscore the incomprehensibility of the Arbëreshë language, I suspect that it was actually derived from gjuha Arbëreshë/jonë, Arbëreshë terms for "Arbëreshë language/our language"). I've also noted oral history accounts from the Sicilian community in Madison, WI, that demonstrate that even into the 2nd generation, it was still somewhat controversial or noteworthy for a "Sicilian" to marry an "Albanian". Not like people were getting disowned or killed over this, but more just a cause for a small bit of scandal among the older members of the community, clearly an echo of longstanding though rapidly eroding taboos/anxiety around exogamy of Arbëreshë.

The assimilation of the Arbëreshë into the dominant Sicilian culture began to accelerate a bit in the decades after the Risorgimento, as, obviously, the unification of Italy -- and the reactions against domination by the Italian North in the years afterwards -- had profound impacts on Sicilian identiyy and society. Mixed marriages, while still quite rare, became a bit more common in the late 19th century. But it's important I think to view this from the POV of the Arbëreshë themselves, as intermarriage with outsiders was an existential threat to the viability of their communities as such.

Important to underscore here that -- apart from actual kinship networks and the structures of community in their settlements -- the axes of ethnic difference and identity for the Arbëreshë vis-à-vis other Sicilians are the church and language. Until the 20th century, Arbëreshë was the common tongue of the Arbëreshë people among themselves; this was a totally oral, vernacular, language, not taught in schools and not a literary language. Hence, in interacting with the outside world, Arbëreshë would adopt Sicilian (for colloquial use) and Italian (for more formal uses, as in interacting with the state, schools). Thus, by the early 20th century, the decline of the Arbëreshë language in Sicily was already well underway. The church was much more resistant to dissolution, of course. Not only were the Arbëreshë adherents of a church that used the Greek language Byzantine rite liturgy -- run by Arbëreshë-speaking clergy -- the calendar of the Byzantine rite structured their community life, serving to mark them off as a world-within-a-world within Sicily. Marrying an outsider would thus entail abandoning an entire interconnected set of traditions and relationships, deeply embedded in the community and familial networks, centered on the church, as essentially no outsiders were going to be converting over to the Byzantine rite church. So if an Arbëreshë married a non-Arbëreshë, the marriage would be officiated by a Latin rite priest, their kids baptized under the Latin rite; holidays and saint festivals according to the Latin rite. It would essentially entail a real severance and alienation from their ancestral communities and assimilation to the dominant Sicilian society. For these reasons, I would presume that taboos around outmarriage were likely much more intense on the Arbëreshë side of the equation, serving to preserve the integrity and viability of their socio-cultural microworld, rather than mainly a question of hostility or suspicion from non-Arbëreshë.

In diaspora, while cultural understandings of Arbëreshë ethnic distinction were of course carried over to the US, the axes through which these were reproduced were rapidly eroded. The decline of the Arbëreshë language would have been greatly accelerated, as obviously, outside of the home and some compaesani societies and such, Arbëreshë migrants and their children were immersed in a world where Italian and English were the dominant languages (with Arbëreshë playing 4th fiddle to these and Sicilian "dialect"). Perhaps even more critically, there were no Arbëreshë Byzantine rite churches in the US. Thus, the Arbëreshë had to attend Latin rite churches alongside other Sicilians/Italians. In so doing, the primary barrier demarcating Arbëreshë ethnic difference was removed, and one can see how this would have greatly facilitated intermarriage, despite any residual cultural misgivings carried over from back home. Within a generation or two, for the most part, the Arbëreshë in diaspora went from a distinct and insular ethnic minority to being subsumed as "Sicilians", and subsequently "Italian-Americans". Later "second wave" migrants of Arbëreshë descent arriving in the US would also have done little to re-Albanianize their Americanized paesani either, as these people were by then arriving from a greatly changed Sicily, where mass education, advances in literacy, and mass media had made Italian the increasingly dominant language across communities anyway.

Regarding the question of Arbëreshë in the early mafia, while I don't know that we have any sources in either the US or Sicily who specifically discussed the salience, or lack thereof, of their status as an ethnic minority with respect to mafia membership, I don't think there was ever any barrier to them joining the mafia. Worth noting here that Arbëreshë mafiosi back in Sicily would primarily have been members of Families based in their communities and composed of their co-ethnics anyway. I personally doubt that their membership in the early US mafia would have been seen as in any way problematic or controversial, as I think they were well-established in the mafia already back home since the late 19th century, at least. In that 1900 Cuntrera map that I referenced above, Arbëreshë communities such as PDG, Contessa Entellina, and Santa Cristina Gela were all recorded as having a known presence of mafia activity, while Mezzojuso, Palazzo Adriano, and Bronte were denoted as having a "high density" of mafia activity (unclear what the criteria were for this exactly, but Cutrera clearly saw these comuni as having a scale or intensity of mafia activity similar to places like Corleone, Bagheria, etc.). The clannish and insular nature of traditional Arbëreshë communities -- and their tendency towards communal self-government historically -- even as compared to Sicilians in general, leads me to suspect that their communities may well, in fact, have been some of the early nuclei of the mafia phenomenon in the 19th century.

[cavita]

Yes... Gai Gai. I forgot all about that. I remember growing up and hearing that the Arbereshe in Rockford had their own language and that they spoke "Gai Gai." My nonna was not from there but she learned enough of it that she could speak with them easily and it added to the mystique of people from there. I also believe that the Matranga family in Rockford was from there but haven't been able to trace it because they had come from Garyville, Louisiana after immigrating from Sicily.

[PolackTony]

Yes... Gai Gai. I forgot all about that. I remember growing up and hearing that the Arbereshe in Rockford had their own language and that they spoke "Gai Gai." My nonna was not from there but she learned enough of it that she could speak with them easily and it added to the mystique of people from there. I also believe that the Matranga family in Rockford was from there but haven't been able to trace it because they had come from Garyville, Louisiana after immigrating from Sicily.

Excellent post. So we know that the Arbëreshë were called "Gai Gai" by other Sicilians in both Chicago and Rockford (unsurprising given the close ties between Sicilians in both cities and the presence of some of the same compaesani groups). I wonder if this term only came into use in the diaspora or if it was already used in this way back in Sicily (if so, it presumably has long since become archaic).

Matranga is absolutely an ethnic Arbëreshë surname, so we can presume that they were in fact of Arbëreshë ancestry and likely from PDG, as that is where the surname originated and is mainly found (it is also found a bit today in neighboring comuni such as SGJ, but this may be due to 20th century assimilation and intermarriage of Arbëreshë).

[B.]

Agreed if it was a barrier it would have been short-term and very early on in the development of the mafia if a barrier existed at all. As you said, Arbereshe areas of Sicily were hotbeds of early mafia activity and by the time we have substantial mafia intel in the US there are Arbereshe with membership and even leader status.

I imagine comments that Arbereshe were Albanesi who spoke "Gai Gai" was a more pronounced version of remarks someone might make even about someone from a neighboring town that's otherwise virtually identical, i.e. a Castellammarese remarking "Oh the Alcamesi are different from us because they do XYZ." By the time the mafia is in full swing these distinctions may have been acknowledged but didn't have true significance, not unlike the eventual induction of mainlanders where a Sicilian might remark "Oh he's a Calabrese, he's stubborn and cooks his pasta different from us" but that's not the same as truly "othering" them.

[NorthBuffalo]

Special Request on a very underwritten but serious Outfit player named John Christopher, who was the central FBI mole within the infamous Operation Silver Shovel in the 1990s. I'll gouge my eyes out if I missed someone already writing him up, but curious to know about his beginning, background, anything that can be found.

John Christopher operated multiple trucking companies in Chicago and was paying multiple alderman and union bosses bribes (nealy $5K a month) to dump trash from various job sites into empty lots in west side and south side Chicago neighborhoods that were predominantly black. I would arrive to meet alderman while chauffeured in limos.

Christopher is Italian and from Taylor Street. I was told he was a leader of the 'Jousters' street gang in his youth.

His in law was Anthony Centracchio. Allegedly, Centacchio gave Christopher permission to ensnare Jim Hoff, who was President of Local 782, which was at that point under the thumb of Local 703 leader Joseph Senese. This was related to Senese's attempted murder (shotgun to the face) around this time, which was because of a result from Outfit power shifts.

Interesting background on the wonder 'The City' podcast below - I copied the portions with Centracchio as well.

https://revealnews.org/podcast/the-city-revealed-2/

But John Christopher did not hold up his end of the bargain. While the investigation was going on, while he was cooperating with the FBI, he was still committing other crimes. And he went behind the bureau’s back in other ways. So for example, at the same time, Operation Silver Shovel was going on, the FBI was also looking into this illegal gambling operation run by an alleged mob boss named Tony Centracchio.
Jim: John referred to him as his Uncle Tony. And that was a problem for me because we had a wire on Uncle Tony.

The wire was a video camera hidden in the ceiling of Tony Centracchio’s office.
Jim: And every time John went in to see him, we were recording John in primarily criminal conversations, which was adding to the mounting evidence that we were going to have to present against him at the end of this case.

It’s not totally clear what John Christopher was doing there, because he was never charged in this illegal gambling case. But him showing up on another investigation’s wire made things really complicated for Jim Davis and his fellow agents.

I would’ve liked to have said, “John, stay away from Uncle Tony’s office.” But I can’t tell John that we have a wire in Uncle Tony’s office.

John Christopher also neglected to file his federal income tax returns in 1992 and ’93. I know it seems so mundane, but ultimately, this is why he went to prison. John Christopher was sentenced to 39 months in prison, but he was never forced to clean up the dumps or provide restitution to anyone in North Lawndale. And then after he got out of prison, he disappeared again. Maybe for good this time.

Al Letson: You mean he’s been going for 20 years and nobody knows where he is? Did you try and track him down?

Yeah, I’ve been looking for John Christopher for almost three years, trying to figure out what happened to him after he got out of prison. Because he cooperated with the FBI, he could not safely return to his old life or even be in Chicago without FBI protection. So I looked for him everywhere I could think of and Al, I found nothing. Eventually, I learned the FBI had set him up with a new name and a new social security number and a new life, and that there was this FBI agent in St. Louis who might have all that information. So I asked if he would talk to me, and if not, if he would pass John Christopher a message for me. And this was the response I got from the FBI’s public information Officer.

[NorthBuffalo]

I'll add there are excellent wiretapped conversations in that podcast between Christopher and several alderman - Christopher's voice is nearly verbatim to what Inendino and others in Chicago sound like - a very unique Italian quip with that thick accent 'put dat in yer pocket dere' 'I want the sausage link burnt...the polish...'

Really good stuff PolackTony - B - Snakes Patrick and others if you haven't checked it out I would give it a listen.

Also curious if anyone can find background on John Christopher prior to Silver Shovel.

[PolackTony]

I'll add there are excellent wiretapped conversations in that podcast between Christopher and several alderman - Christopher's voice is nearly verbatim to what Inendino and others in Chicago sound like - a very unique Italian quip with that thick accent 'put dat in yer pocket dere' 'I want the sausage link burnt...the polish...'

Really good stuff PolackTony - B - Snakes Patrick and others if you haven't checked it out I would give it a listen.

Also curious if anyone can find background on John Christopher prior to Silver Shovel.

Thanks for posting. Operation Silver Shovel was one of a series of critical Federal investigations that really broke the back of mob influence in Chicago politics. Hard to overstate how important Silver Shovel, Greylord, and GambAt were, along with Strawman and the Carlisi and Infelise crew cases, in severely eroding the power of the Chicago LCN.

Sounds right in character for John Christopher, who was described by several acquaintances as a flashy spaccone and mafia "wannabe" who dressed, spoke, and comported himself like a Hollywood depiction of a mafioso, while flashing Uzis and giving cryptic remarks about how witnesses needed to be eliminated, etc. In spite of the fact that he himself, of course, wound up being a CW, naturally lol.

I've mentioned this before, but at the time that Silver Shovel was made public in 1996, the papers described John Christopher as a nephew of Fiore Buccieri, hence his ability to gain clout as a crooked construction contractor in Chicago. I believe that he was, in fact, Buccieri's grand-nephew.

Note below the 1979 obituary for Angelo Christopher, aka Angelo DiVito, a minor hoodlum figure from Taylor St questioned by police in 1957 for connections to the slaying of suburban Lyons tavern operator Willard Bates. Bates -- who investigators said had been the target of an assassination ordered by the "crime syndicate" -- was riddled with carbine and shotgun fire in front of his home by gunmen after having survived a previous hit attempt, in which he fatally wounded Taylor St hoodlum Frank Mustari, a known associate of Angelo DiVito. In Operation Silver, it was noted that John Christopher often used the name John DiVito (there are public records for him under both names), and I believe that Angelo Christopher/DiVito, who did the same, was his father.



Angelo Leo Christopher/DiVito was born in 1921 in Chicago to Antonio "Tony Christopher" Di Cristoforo and Rose Mary DiVito; both parents were born in Chicago to families from Pizzone (today in the region of Molise; this was the hometown of the Foscos and related families, as I've discussed a number of times previously). After Tony Christopher died in 1925, his widow Rose remarried fellow Pizzonese compaesano Pasquale "Scully" DiVito (they were probably extended cousins; Pasquale's godfather was also named Antonio Di Cristoforo and was presumably a relative of his wife's deceased first husband. Further, Pasquale's mother was an Anna Maria Fosco, presumably related to the other Fosco branches from Pizzone, who are all extended relatives). Scully DiVito, who also died in 1979, was a longtime gambling operator for the Buccieri crew. When he was busted in 1969 for operating a wireroom near Chicago Ave and Trumbull in Humboldt park, he reportedly boasted to CPD Intelligence Division investigators "I'm Fifi's guy, my son is married to his niece. I'll be out in 5 minutes" (he wound up waiting 7 hours to be bailed out, in fact).

Angelo Christopher's wife was, in fact, Dolores Sprovieri, daughter of Fiore Buccieri's eldest sister, Rose, and Ippolito "Paul" Sprovieri, a native of the Buccieris' hometown of Rovito, Cosenza, Calabria. Note also that the above obituary lists George Buccieri, Marie Tarsitano, Anna Tarsitano, and "T Buccieri" (clearly Frank "The Horse Buccieri, whose wife at this time was Milwaukee-based nightclub operator Serena "Sally" Papia), who were all siblings of the decased Rose and Fiore Buccieri, though these were actually in-laws and not blood relatives of Angelo Christopher. Also note that Angelo and Dolores named one of their other sons Fiore. Hence, John Christopher I believe was the grandson of Rose Buccieri, and the surname DiVito that he often used as an alias was both his grandmother's maiden name and the name of his father's stepfather. Further, he was almost certainly a distant cousin of the Foscos, not insignificant given the extremely tight knit nature of the compaesano network of families from Pizzone in Chicago.

Another of John's brothers, Angelo Christopher Jr, is married to Denise Centracchio, daughter of Henry Centracchio and niece of Tony Centracchio. Thus, the note that you found claiming that John Christopher was an in-law of Tony Centracchio was correct.

John Christopher was born in 1950, and his first arrest came as a teenager, when he was busted for stealing construction equipment from a site in DuPage County. He was already operating his own company and securing contracts with the City of Chicago while he was in his 20s. In 1979, he was named as one of a number of contractors who bilked the City of Chicago for snow removal services not rendered during the famous Blizzard of '79, which wound up bringing down the administration of Daley Sr successor Mayor Mike Bilandic (we've discussed this a bit before on the board, as a number of companies connected to both Chicago and Buffalo LCN were involved in bilking or inflating invoices for snow removal services during that event). Around the same time, Christopher was under investigation by the Feds for check fraud after unsuccessfully attempting to bribe a Chicago bank official, and subsequently busted in 1980 for purchasing an illegal handgun equipped with a silencer from a Federal CW. When the CW asked him what he wanted the weapon for, Christopher was alleged to have responded with cryptic remarks about how "loose lips sink ships", and investigators believed that he intended to use the weapon to murder a former partner, a logging company operator from Wisconsin, who had begun cooperating with the Feds. Despite his legal woes, Christopher's construction and cartage business became very successful in the 1980s due to close connections and favors that Christopher secured with the City of Chicago and a number of crooked aldermen, allowing him to move from blue collar Berwyn to affluent Darien. After being investigated for lying to Federal investigators looking into tax fraud allegations for his company later in the 1980s, Christopher agreed to flip and wear a wire on his crooked partners in the City of Chicago political apparatus, thereby setting the stage for the landmark Operation Silver Shovel.

Despite his utility as a CW for the Feds, Christopher's ongoing and blatant criminal activity even while serving as a mole for the G wound up catching up to him. In 2000, a Federal judge sentenced him to 39 months in the can for various crimes that he committed while working as a CW, including $500k in tax evasion and large scale illegal dumping of toxic construction waste on Chicago's Westside (the waste site, located near Roosevelt and Kostner in the North Lawndale neighborhood, was dubbed "Mount Henry" by community residents, after Alderman Bill Henry, who took bribes from Christopher for years to look the other way during the illegal dumping). After Christopher was released from Federal prison, he was living in the Orlando, FL, area, under the name John C Christopher Jr.

John Christopher:



A section of "Mount Henry", John Christopher's toxic monument of construction rubble in North Lawndale:

[NorthBuffalo]

Polack if I can send you a cigar or buy you a drink I would - literally answered half my questions. Quite an interesting Chicago story and a guy who literally did it all. For those saying he was a 'wannabe' I gotta say he really seemed to be a mover and shaker.

What was interesting is that he's meeting with Tony Centracchio and continuing to do crimes as a CI - the Feds then put him in Witness Protection and he never pays a dime in restitution.

Chicago really never ceases to amaze me.

[PolackTony]

Polack if I can send you a cigar or buy you a drink I would - literally answered half my questions. Quite an interesting Chicago story and a guy who literally did it all. For those saying he was a 'wannabe' I gotta say he really seemed to be a mover and shaker.

What was interesting is that he's meeting with Tony Centracchio and continuing to do crimes as a CI - the Feds then put him in Witness Protection and he never pays a dime in restitution.

Chicago really never ceases to amaze me.

I like Camachos and My Father if you're buying.

Agreed that Christopher was an interesting guy -- a very Chicago sort of story, at the intersection of the mafia, familial nepotism, sleazeball politicians, sweetheart-deal City contracting, and the construction and carting industries. Descriptions of him as a "wannabe" I read as him having overplayed the part, acting far more like a stereotypical mafioso than the actual made guys do (and in Chicago, it's more often than not the case that the more a guys looks and acts like a flashy gangster in public, the less likely he is to be a made guy, of course). He was obviously not a wannabe when it came to having clout and access with people who mattered in the City political apparatus.

While it's true that he was never ordered to pay any restitution, he didn't exactly get away with his criminal conduct while working as a CW, as I noted above. The judge in his 2000 case sort of threw the book at him, given the charges he was convicted on. While the FBI actually argued that he should have been given less than the minimum sentencing there of 33 months, due to his value as a cooperating witness, the judge disagreed and gave him 39 months. While that didn't do anything to clean up the piles of construction waste that he dumped in residential communities, it's also another example of how even serving as a star CW for a major Federal operation doesn't automatically give someone a carte blanche, Get Out of Jail Free card, by any means.

[NorthBuffalo]

Polack if I can send you a cigar or buy you a drink I would - literally answered half my questions. Quite an interesting Chicago story and a guy who literally did it all. For those saying he was a 'wannabe' I gotta say he really seemed to be a mover and shaker.

What was interesting is that he's meeting with Tony Centracchio and continuing to do crimes as a CI - the Feds then put him in Witness Protection and he never pays a dime in restitution.

Chicago really never ceases to amaze me.

I like Camachos and My Father if you're buying.

Agreed that Christopher was an interesting guy -- a very Chicago sort of story, at the intersection of the mafia, familial nepotism, sleazeball politicians, sweetheart-deal City contracting, and the construction and carting industries. Descriptions of him as a "wannabe" I read as him having overplayed the part, acting far more like a stereotypical mafioso than the actual made guys do (and in Chicago, it's more often than not the case that the more a guys looks and acts like a flashy gangster in public, the less likely he is to be a made guy, of course). He was obviously not a wannabe when it came to having clout and access with people who mattered in the City political apparatus.

While it's true that he was never ordered to pay any restitution, he didn't exactly get away with his criminal conduct while working as a CW, as I noted above. The judge in his 2000 case sort of threw the book at him, given the charges he was convicted on. While the FBI actually argued that he should have been given less than the minimum sentencing there of 33 months, due to his value as a cooperating witness, the judge disagreed and gave him 39 months. While that didn't do anything to clean up the piles of construction waste that he dumped in residential communities, it's also another example of how even serving as a star CW for a major Federal operation doesn't automatically give someone a carte blanche, Get Out of Jail Free card, by any means.

Ha - I'm a Camacho guy too - My Father is a new one I'll look into that. I think Christopher's sentencing was impacted by him continuing to pull scams as a CW and I think he was operating some of them under Centracchio - I think the Feds really fucked over the city and Lawndale by walking away after the convictions and not pushing for any restitution. It's really incredible that happened in the 1990s honestly when you think about it.

Chicago story indeed.

[PolackTony]

A little-known Chicago LCN affiliate was Joseph "Joe D" DelMonico. He was carried on the FBI's 1968 list as a Chicago member, but was ID'd only by Lou Fratto, who was otherwise sourced by the FBI for a number of other questionable Chicago member designations. DelMonico almost certainly appears on the 1973 Chicago list as well, though his name is redacted there, still identified as such only by Fratto. Presumably, he was at the least an associate and at most, a *possible* member, though there is very little info on him to flesh out a more detailed picture.

Joseph DelMonico was born in 1915 in Chicago to Pietro Antonio Del Monaco and Giovanna Mazzocchi. I believe that Pietro was a native of Scontrone, L'Aquila, Abruzzo (the hometown of the Scalzitti and DiDomenico families and also near Pizzone, hometown of the Foscos; there were other Del Monacos in Chicago intermarried with Scalzittis), while Giovanna's family was from the nearby comune of Castel di Sangro. The family settled in the Taylor St Patch, where most Chicago Abruzzesi concentrated. Joe DelMonico grew up near Taylor and Winchester, while father Pietro worked as a laborer for the City of Chicago's Streets Department (the precursor to Streets and Sanitation).

As an adult, Joe DelMonico lived near Grenshaw and Pulaski in the Homan Square neighborhood, west of the Taylor St community. In 1950, he reported his occupation as manager of a liquor store. In subsequent years, he owned a beauty salon in Cicero, living at 37th and Austin in the same town until his death from natural causes in 1976.

Apart from having been listed as a Chicago member, very little information appears on DelMonico in FBI reports. He was arrested several times on gambling charges in the 1960s-70s. In 1964, he was busted for operating a wire room in Berwyn with Nick Gugliemo, as part of a series of raids conducted by FBI and IRS agents on mob-controlled gambling operations in Elmwood Park and Berwyn. It can be presumed that DelMonico's operation was under the Buccieri crew. In 1971, DelMonico was arrested by the FBI and indicted on Federal charges for lying about his income to a Cicero bank in order to secure a loan. In 1974, two years prior to his death, DelMonico was again busted for running a gambling operation during a raid conducted by CPD and IBI agents on a Berwyn apartment building. DelMonico -- described by the papers at the time as a "reputed crime syndicate gambling figure" -- was found in possession of water-soluble betting slips and other gambling paraphernalia.

Given the apparent lack of FBI intel on him, where seemingly no one but Fratto even mentioned him, and the relatively low-level nature of the crimes that he was arrested for, I don't believe that its likely that Joe DelMonico was a made guy. Most likely, he was an associate with the Buccieri crew tasked with operating gambling businesses in Berwyn.

[PolackTony]

From a previous post on 1st Ward gambling boss Lou Briatta (identified as a Chicago LCN member in the 1960s by the FBI based on intel from Louie Bombacino, who was himself not a member):

Briatta was born in 1908 in Chicago and baptized Luigi Briatta in 1909. His parents were Giovanni Braiotta (worth noting that his mother's maiden name was Spizziri) and Maria Teresa Amelio of Malvito, Cosenza, Calabria. As a kid, Briatta lived on Aberdeen near Polk in the Taylor St Patch. In 1948, Briatta married Concetta "Tina" Guzaldo. Her father Cosimo Guzaldo was born in NOLA in 1901, while her mother Christina Lupo was born in Chicago to parents from Caccamo. Given the Guzaldo surname, it's a good bet that Cosimo's parents were also Caccamesi. In the 1940s, the Guzaldos lived near Ohio and Homan in Humboldt Park (incidentally, the Latin Kings originated on this corner a short time later in the 1950s), very near to Cerone. There were several Guzaldo brothers (Phil, Peter, Tony) who lived in the immediate area and ran bookmaking and gambling operations under Joe Gags (who also lived in this neighborhood). Their father was a Michele Guzaldo from Caccamo. Interestingly, Phil Guzaldo married Cecilia Lupo, whose family was also from Caccamo.

Anthony Guzaldo was identified as a Chicago LCN member by the FBI on their 1973 list, based on intel from two, as yet unknown, sources (this list was released under FOIA and thus the informant codes are redacted here; while both sources identified a number of other men at this time as Chicago members, the two sources -- so far as I recall -- do not match any of the sources cited by the FBI in the 1968 list whose identities are known to us).

Anthony Michael Guzaldo was born in Chicago in 1912 and baptized Cosimo Anthony Guzzardo (the original spelling of the surname) at San Filippo Benizi Parish in Chicago's Little Sicily. His father was Mariano "Michael" Guzzardo, a native of Caccamo -- Mariano was in fact the older brother of Lou Briatta's father-in-law, Cosimo Guzaldo. Mariano married Francesa "Frances" Dattilo, Anthony's biological mother, in 1909 at San Filippo Benizi. Francesca was born in 1988 in Chicago to Giovanni D'Attilo and Vinvenza Scalia, both natives of Termini Imerese. The Guzaldos lived initially at Grand and Ogden, where Mariano owned and operated a barber shop. Wife Francesca died in 1916, and in 1918 Mariano remarried Geraldine Serritella, who was born in Brooklyn before her family relocated to the Grand Ave "patch" in Chicago. Her parents, Pietrantonio Serritella and Maria Benedetta Zarriello, were both natives of Muro Lucano, Potenza, also the hometown of the Cerone, Capezio, and Aloisio families (Geraldine's maternal grandmother was a Cerone). In the 1920s, the family relocated to the west at Huron and St Louis in Humboldt Park, in the immediate vicinity of where Jack Cerone (who lived for years at Huron and Homan before relocating to Elmwood Park) and Joe Gagliano, among other mafiosi, would subsequently live.

Anthony and eldest brother Filippo "Phil" Guzaldo married sisters, Concetta "Jennie" and Cecilia Lupo. These two were born in Chicago to parents from Caccamo and were almost certainly cousins of Anthony and Phil's aunt Christine Lupo, wife of uncle Cosimo Guzaldo and MIL of Lou Briatta (the mothers of both Lupo sets were also named Marfisi, so they may well have been cousins X 2).

Guzaldo and several of his brothers made the papers a number of times for criminal activity. In 1953, youngest half-brother, Peter Guzaldo, was arrested on armed robbery charges for holding up a tavern in suburban Stickney, along with his maternal uncle Antonio "Anthony" Serritella, a native of Muro Lucano, and fellow Humboldt park resident Thomas DiMaggio (the charges were dismissed when a witness later declined to identify the men, shockingly). In 1955, Anthony and brother Salvatore "George" Guzaldo were busted for operating an illegal casino out of the basement of the family barbershop at 3510 W Chicago Ave (btwn St Louis and Drake), along with co-conspirator and fellow Humboldt park resident Salvatore Tassione (likely a relative of Joe Andriacchi's family) and 29 gambling patrons. Later that same year, Phil Guzaldo was busted in for operating a large dice game enterprise out of a building that he owned two blocks west, at 3614 W Chicago Ave (btwn Central Park and Monticello); 33 patrons were also nabbed, including a CPD officer, while mutliple other patrons escaped by jumping from the roof of the building to a neighboring building.

In 1959, George Guzaldo's daughter Frances, named after his mother, Francesca Dattilo, was one of the 91 kids who died in the tragic fire at Our Lady of the Angels Parish, a horrific incident that devastated the Italian community in Humboldt Park, greatly accelerating outmigration to the suburbs and the rapid decline of the neighborhood into a slum.

In 1963, Anthony Guzaldo was arrested for keeping a gambling house in a CPD raid on a building at Pulaski and Augusta, along with Raphael Chiero and Anthony Musso, and 26 gambling patrons. Investigators linked the operation to another located at Grand and Western that had been targeted in a prior raid.

As I've noted before, in 1966, Phil Guzaldo was described as a "lieutenant" operating dice and card games for Joe Gagliano when he was busted along with suspected/possible Chicago LCN members Giovanni "Big John" Cimitile and John Lardino at Cimitile's home at Augusta and Parkside in the Austin neighborhood in a raid on what CPD claimed was a meeting of gambling and juice loan operators on the Westside (the latter two were presumably affiliated with the Buccieri crew). Several months later, Anthony Guzaldo was busted by CPD Intelligence Unit Detectives for operating a wireroom along with brother Phil out of a "social and athletic club" at 3608 W Chicago Ave (same block as the 1955 dice game raid). At this time, Anthony Guzaldo was living in Austin at Parkside and Hirsch, a few blocks north of Cimitile's home.

The Guzaldos seem to have dropped out of the public eye after this last raid. Phil and George both died of natural causes soon after, in 1971 and 1974, respectively. Anthony Guzaldo was living in Schaumburg when he died in 2000.



As with guys like Guzaldo in-law Briatta, along with Lardino and Cimitile, mentioned here also, the evidence for Anthony Guzaldo's LCN membership is weak. While he was cited as a member on the 1973 list, multiple sources were also used on that list to identify men such as Frank Calabrese Sr and Rocky Infelise as LCN members, though we know that they were not, in fact, inducted into the mafia until 1983. Guzaldo was also not subsequently identified as an LCN member in the 1980s/90s, after the FBI revamped their protocols for member identifications, leading me to believe that the FBI themselves recognized that their 1973 identification of Guzaldo as an LCN member was insufficient. Most likely, as with his brothers, Anthony Guzaldo was an associate with the Cerone/Gagliano crew tasked with managing gambling operations on the Westside of the City, a sector that itself had largely fallen into oblivion for the outfit by the 1970s, with the near total outflux of Italians from neighborhoods such as Humboldt Park and Austin.

[JoelTurner]

NJ-Colombo member John D’Amico’s son Dominick (named for G-father Domenico - Killed in 1937 during the Newark Family’s dissolution) married a Francesca Alfano from Rockford.

Her parents were Domenico Alfano (1889-1971) from Sambuca di Sicilia & Vita Bordonaro (1898-1983) from Roccamena. In addition to being involved in an arson in Jan 1922; he and his wife were arrested in July 1926 for liquor with a mobbed up crowd:



-Philip Vella was a Rockford member and was arrested with Vincenzo Troia in 1930

-Pietro SanFilippo is listed on the Rockford chart as a member who retired to San Diego

———-

Additionally, two of Francesca’s brothers, Barney & Frank Alfano, were mentioned in the ‪1993 South Beloit/Roscoe, Illinois LCN‬ post:

connected people that lived in the Beloit, Wisconsin and South Beloit/Roscoe/Rockton, Illinois areas and these are a few I could think of:

Barney and Frank Alfano owned a tavern in South Beloit many years 1950s/1960s and were from Sambuca

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Domenico Alfano looks like he could have been an early member between his activities and his daughter marrying into an important mafia family across the country.

Dominick D’Amico’s connections to the Midwest, Illinois specifically, would have come from his mother. As discussed earlier in this thread, she was from Chicago and her uncle married Nick DeJohn’s aunt.

[cavita]

NJ-Colombo member John D’Amico’s son Dominick (named for G-father Domenico - Killed in 1937 during the Newark Family’s dissolution) married a Francesca Alfano from Rockford.

Her parents were Domenico Alfano (1889-1971) from Sambuca di Sicilia & Vita Bordonaro (1898-1983) from Roccamena. In addition to being involved in an arson in Jan 1922; he and his wife were arrested in July 1926 for liquor with a mobbed up crowd:



-Philip Vella was a Rockford member and was arrested with Vincenzo Troia in 1930

-Pietro SanFilippo is listed on the Rockford chart as a member who retired to San Diego

———-

Additionally, two of Francesca’s brothers, Barney & Frank Alfano, were mentioned in the ‪1993 South Beloit/Roscoe, Illinois LCN‬ post:

connected people that lived in the Beloit, Wisconsin and South Beloit/Roscoe/Rockton, Illinois areas and these are a few I could think of:

Barney and Frank Alfano owned a tavern in South Beloit many years 1950s/1960s and were from Sambuca

—————————

Domenico Alfano looks like he could have been an early member between his activities and his daughter marrying into an important mafia family across the country.

Dominick D’Amico’s connections to the Midwest, Illinois specifically, would have come from his mother. As discussed earlier in this thread, she was from Chicago and her uncle married Nick DeJohn’s aunt.

Yes, Domenico Alfano is an early connected guy that's been in the back of my mind to research fully but haven't had the time. I have to wonder how his daughter and D'Amico met. Where in Italy was D'Amico from? I do know there were some D'Amico/Domico people in Rockford at one time. This is just another good strong tie between NJ and the Rockford boys!