Mangano's Downfall-Chicago

[Villain]

Cavita's previous DeGeorge thread got me thinking regarding the confusing situation of Lawrence Mangano and his demise during the first half of the 1940s and so I'll try to clear thing up...

You see, in 1943 when the Outfits top echelon was sent to prison, Mangano together with DeGeorge were the most powerful bosses left on the streets. That same year the strong Kelly-Nash political alliance was also gone which represented a huge loss for the Jewish syndicate in the Lawndale area. And since by that time Mangano was the boss of Taylor St and was known as the "King of the West Side", but his "kingdom" wasnt complete without the Lawndale area. So he reached out to Lenny Patrick, Dave Yaras and William Block, and allegedly he promised them the whole Jewish area for a percentage from all of the proceedings but first they had to get rid of the main gambling boss who went by the name of Benjamin Zuckerman. So in January, 1944, Zuckerman was shot to death by the trio, and on top of that, his second in command Ben Glazer died of a heart attack regarding the bad news, thus giving Mangano the complete power over their territory.

By now three of DeGeorges members were killed which means that his crew was being hunted down and left Mangano at the top of the most powerful list, judging by seniority and also strenght and income, but still, according to few reports, he wasnt considered the boss by his peers in the Mob but instead Charles Fischetti was the so-called acting boss. Now, the main problem was that Fischetti was closer to the Grand Avenue crew at the time, which included Tony Capezio and Accardo, who in turn was groomed by Fischetti for the chief executive position. But I dont know how true is this since during that same year, the imprisoned top bosses Ricca and Campagna were far away from Chicago all the way in Atlanta and so I believe that they were still unable to give orders. On top of that, Tony Accardo and Murray Humphreys began with their visits the next year when the bosses were transfered to Leavenworth.

So my point is that during the year of 1944, all of the actions in the Outfit got the green light only from Fischetti. So something obviously made Mangano and possibly some other guys quite envious and mad thus creating a dangerous situation for the acting top leadership. There was a lot of disatisfaction since the Fischettis were already taking space on DeGeorges territory, also they allegedly disrespected Mangano because he was a very talkative person and too much ambitious. And now all of the old and acting capos had to pay tribute to the Fischetti through Accardo, but the biggest problem was that since the bosses were in jail and needed payoff money so they can get out early, thus creating the desire for bigger tribute cash and even donations. So the up and comming Accardo regularly waited or collected cash from the already established oldtimers such as Mangano.

In other words, there were possibly a dozen of reasons in Manganos mind for making this next wrong and quite dumb move. On July 9, 1944 a truck that transported cigarettes valued at $15,000 was hijacked by unknown criminals, which in fact was Accardo’s truck and the main problem was that the hijack occurred on Mangano’s territory. Later three men were arrested in connection with the theft and all three reported that the theft was engineered by Mangano himself. Now at first you would think that this was probably a setup but the reality was different. It was Mangano, and the traitors in the shadows who allegedly gave info to Accardo regarding the loss of his other operation which was gambling, were allegedly Patrick and Yaras. I imagine that it wasnt hard for them since they gave away their previous boss. In August that same year, Mangano was shot to death by three guys in an automobile.

So my final point is that maybe we should exclude Mangano from the DeGeorge story since he possibly made the moves on his own and ended up dead. After his murder, Patrick, Yaras and Block were absorbed into the organization by giving them the 22nd, 23rd and 24th Ward and releasing few of their closest friends from prison and also the trio became Accardos main hit team until the end of the decade.

[Frank]

Interesting info about Mangano's demise Villain. Read about him but never knew exactly why he was killed. I just assumed he was part of the same plot as DeGeorge. Also interesting about Fischetti the being acting boss. Had read a report about him being acting boss before. So is this confirmed that he was or was it Accardo after the Bioff case.

[Snakes]

Villain, I may have asked you this before, but I know you get a lot of your info from newspapers but do you get much from FBI files? A lot of what you post about is prior to regular FBI investigations of the Outfit so I was just curious.

[Villain]

Villain, I may have asked you this before, but I know you get a lot of your info from newspapers but do you get much from FBI files? A lot of what you post about is prior to regular FBI investigations of the Outfit so I was just curious.

Its true i get part of my infos from old newspaper articles, which I used them mostly about details regarding some particular crime operation but never regarding hirearchy os structure because most of the newspaper men, same as the gov investigators at the time, did not know what the hell they were looking at. But the good thing is that when the federal investigations began, you can find many reports from various kind of informants regarding the old days. The problem is that some of them gave wrong infos regarding the exact year or sometimes regarding the hirearchy, but the interesting thing is that some of them gave the same infos which cannot be found in the newspapers. Some of the "informants" regarding the old days are often aldermen. Theres another situation in which one has to find more than two or three informants claiming the same stuff or the whole story might turn out wrong but sometimes theres only one report claiming something rare which should be taken quite seriously. Also thanks to the many individuals who visited the national archives or talked to some people and wrote stories on their blogs regarding the old days. In the end, one has to gather all of these infos, situations and details and form his own opinion. After all isnt this researching activity of ours all about?!

@Frank I believe that from 1944 until 1947 or 48, the Outfit was headed by a ruling panel in which Fischetti was the top guy followed by Capezio and Accardo. In other words Fischetti and Capezio groomed Accardo for the top position. The same thing occurred almost 30 years later when Accardo and Alex groomed Auippa...Battaglia did the same thing by previously going on fishing trips with Ricca and Accardo...

[Frank]

Ok thanks Villain. Besides this period of leadership I'm interested in your opinion on the Ricca Nitti debate as to who was boss and was Campagna ever the top guy. Nitti I would assume was definitely boss when Al was locked up in Philadelphia. Another theory I had was maybe Capone made Nitti his acting boss,then when they knew of Capone's illness and that he would not return as boss, Ricca was voted official boss

[Snakes]

Thanks, I was mainly asking because I wanted to be able to disseminate between what your opinions or theories were and what could be sourced, in case I wanted to find out more about a certain topic.

[Confederate]

Ok thanks Villain. Besides this period of leadership I'm interested in your opinion on the Ricca Nitti debate as to who was boss and was Campagna ever the top guy. Nitti I would assume was definitely boss when Al was locked up in Philadelphia. Another theory I had was maybe Capone made Nitti his acting boss,then when they knew of Capone's illness and that he would not return as boss, Ricca was voted official boss

Villian or Antiliar,
I have read in more than one place that Frank Nitti was Capone's first cousin. Is this true?
Are there any OFFICIAL documents bearing this fact?

[Villain]

Thanks, I was mainly asking because I wanted to be able to disseminate between what your opinions or theories were and what could be sourced, in case I wanted to find out more about a certain topic.

Youre welcome and if you need anything regarding the old days, ill try to find the sources.

@Confederate I believe that Antiliar was the one who proved the myth regarding the Fischettis being Capones cousins which according to him its not true so I believe that he'll have the right answer for this one too

[Antiliar]

Ok thanks Villain. Besides this period of leadership I'm interested in your opinion on the Ricca Nitti debate as to who was boss and was Campagna ever the top guy. Nitti I would assume was definitely boss when Al was locked up in Philadelphia. Another theory I had was maybe Capone made Nitti his acting boss,then when they knew of Capone's illness and that he would not return as boss, Ricca was voted official boss

Villian or Antiliar,
I have read in more than one place that Frank Nitti was Capone's first cousin. Is this true?
Are there any OFFICIAL documents bearing this fact?

What kind of OFFICIAL documents? FBI records? Court records? Not sure what you're looking for here. The FBI did not investigate organized crime with a significant level of detail until 1957. By then, Nitto was long dead and there was no reason to investigate his connection to the Capones. So no, there aren't any official documents (at least none in English) that have anything to say about Nitto and Capone being cousins. They were not first cousins, but according to different sources they were cousins of some kind. No one has gone through all of the genealogical details to see exactly how they were related since the Angri records have not been microfilmed.

[Villain]

Ok thanks Villain. Besides this period of leadership I'm interested in your opinion on the Ricca Nitti debate as to who was boss and was Campagna ever the top guy. Nitti I would assume was definitely boss when Al was locked up in Philadelphia. Another theory I had was maybe Capone made Nitti his acting boss,then when they knew of Capone's illness and that he would not return as boss, Ricca was voted official boss

Heres one doc which states that Ricca was the boss during the extortion case...

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.htm ... arch=nitti

Im not quite sure since i have to do a lot more digging but Campagna mightve replaced Accardo after the huge meat scandal but since Campagna unexpectedly died in 1955, it is possible that Accardo was brought back on the chief executive position until 1957 when Giancana took over. After that Accardo took Campagnas position by constantly being next to Ricca. So in other words it seems to me that it was always like Ricca/Campagna or Ricca/Accardo and the whole hirearchy beneath them such as boss, underboss etc.

[Frank]

I read the Black Hand article Father of the Chicago Outfit and in it states that Campagna replaced Accardo as Boss, Chief operating Officer to groom Giancana for the job. Accardo was demoted because the Feds caught on to the horsemeat and cigarette scams. What happened immediately after Campagna died is unclear, but Accardo eventually took Campagna's spot under Ricca. Joe Fosco had mentioned Campagna as being the Godfather of the Outfit after Capone. And I read one other mention of Campagna being boss after Nitti, but can't remember what I read it from.

[Frank]

Also that Blackhand article about Ricca is a great read. I wasn't sure if they meant Nitti was the top boss or not, but most of the evidence points to Ricca being top boss and definitely from the death of Nitti till the day retired or died.

[Villain]

Also that Blackhand article about Ricca is a great read. I wasn't sure if they meant Nitti was the top boss or not, but most of the evidence points to Ricca being top boss and definitely from the death of Nitti till the day retired or died.

Im the author of that article but I have to be honest that most of my work is old and there are a lot of new conclusions and informations, which means that I have to do a lot editing.

Regarding the Nitto/Ricca debate you should check out Gentiles testimony in which he explains Riccas contacts with other national mob bosses during the Capone era. The old guys even had a special name for him. Theres no mention of Nitto or any other Capone member. Also if you look at the pictures from that period you can find Al Ralph and Ricca together or Ricca Rio and D'Andrea and after Capone theres even one famous photo of Ricca Fischetti and Agoglia together with Luciano and Lansky and again no Nitto.

Nitto was the boss of the most lucrative crew at the time and on top of that his headquarters was the Near North Side which is the heart of the old Mafia. So when he and Capone hit the national headlines in 1932, Nitto took a lower sentence, 18 months i think, and when he got out, tge newspaper men "regarded" him as Als successor. On top of that, Mayor Cermak additionaly polluted the newspapers with stories regardibg the Outfit and Nitto. In fact one day Cermak sent two of his henchmen to kill Nitto but they failed. So all of these situations were just additional fuel to the fire.

Bioff once said that during the meetings with the top bosses, Nitto allegedly had the last word but that dont mean anything since years later Humpgreys had the last word on anything which was connected to the union racket and the Bioff-Nitto conbection was regarding the same thing

As for Campagna, I have to be honest that sonetimes hes one of tge most mysterious individuals regarding the Outfits hirearchy but we know that he was the guy who sponsored Giancana

[Villain]

Something regarding Ricca and the old days..

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.htm ... ca_gentile

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.htm ... a_genovese

[Frank]

Dated material or not it all sounds very possible. Very, very good article. It's very possible with all your evidence that Ricca was the boss after Al. And that Nitto was a Capo only, being misidentified as boss. The Chicago Outfit, Genovese's post Vito's inprisonmant and the Gambino's of the post John Gotti are hard to figure out. The Outfit since Al. I think I have the Outfit leadership since Giancana figured out, but not 100 percent certain lol.