“The Skokie Swift to the Howard ‘L’”. That’s how you know this guy is old school, none of that color shit.
Murges seems to be a good example of a guy who was an associate of an associate, as opposed to an “on record” associate under a made guy or LCN crew. This guy was working with guys like LaValley and Nick Gio, who were under Lenny Patrick, who was himself an associate. I’m not sure who was running the warehouse book operation Murges was working at on Fulton St, I’d wonder if those guys answered to Angelini and Cortina. Murges said that he knew who Joe Spa was via his father, but his story was about bumping into him in a bar the night before he was going to prison, so it doesn’t seem like the book operation was answering to him (if so, either Murges wasn’t aware or he decided not to mention it). No other made guys enter into his account.
Gotta love when Murges recommends the fantasy-fiction novel “War of The Godfathers” as shedding light on the differences between New York and Chicago.
"Hey, hey, hey — this is America, baby! Survival of the fittest.”
In terms of personal “associates” who are friends/partners with a high-ranking member, we can look at the example of Tony Accardo’s trip to Italy in 1973. Accardo was accompanied by personal friends who were also successful businessmen in Chicago: Nick Nitti (who owned the travel agency, along with Accardo’s son, that presumably booked the arrangements for this trip), restauranteur Al Meo, and wealthy grocery store owner Rosario Marino (originally from Cefalu). Their wives all came along, we can assume that a major element here was purely social. They may have also did some business in Italy, but it’s not like these guys went there to set up narcotics or contraband trafficking rings or something; most likely, they may have met with some people who were interested in having some Ital-American business people invest in local ventures or the like. The FBI seemed to think so, as following the trip, they interviewed wealthy Chicago wine importer Antonino Paternò (from Vizzini, Catania) afterwards concerning his connections to Accardo and allegations from Italian police that Paternò’s wine suppliers in Tuscany and Sicily were controlled by the mafia (the Feds stated that Paternò at the time was the largest wine importer in the US); Italian LE had informed the FBI that Accardo’s itinerary had included Tuscany, so maybe he visited one of those suppliers.
Now, apart from Nitti (who was basically the “family” travel agent for the Outfit), these other guys are personal friends, associates, and business partners of Accardo. They presumably don’t belong anywhere near a chart of formal “LCN associates”, but these guys were most certainly “with” Accardo. As such, they would’ve received significant benefits in terms of protection and clout (if someone needed to grease the wheels of power at the city, county, state level, they would’ve had access to those channels. This sort of thing was not a minor benefit at all). In turn, sure, they were useful to Accardo, but not like these guys were being forced to stash guns in their house or run a wire room in their basement or something. It wouldn’t have been anything like Tony Soprano and his guys coming in like a horde of locusts. If Accardo needed these guys to perform a favor, in a situation where they could be helpful, I’m sure they’d be asked to do so and expected to comply, when reasonable. But I doubt that they were being bullied or strong armed. If they were involved in any criminal/grey area activity with Accardo, presumably it was business racketeering stuff, and maybe investing or partnering with Accardo on some import stuff in Italy with shady mafia-connected companies. You know, classy shit.
"Hey, hey, hey — this is America, baby! Survival of the fittest.”
B. wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 12:02 am
In Chicago there were for sure cops / ex-cops who could be considered top associates.
In most cases I'd consider corrupt cops fringe players at best unless they're relatives. Kind of their own special category, ranging from guys with no connections who just accept payoffs to guys who are full-on associates. That NJ cop Policastro was so close to the Bonannos he was misidentified as a member.
With the mafia cops, Eppolito was from an entire family of Gambino members so he was raised in it long before he was a cop. Hard to place guys like them though because they were obviously associated with the mob and what they did with Casso was huge but they did it for money and weren't really affiliated, at least not with the Luccheses.
Question though -- how do you sit down for a cop? Even if he's trusted it's wild to imagine a made guy sitting down to settle an issue and saying "on behalf of my cop friend...". They're not allowed to make cops, so I wonder if they can officially put them on record or if it's just general association.
