General Chicago Outfit Info Dumping Ground

[NorthBuffalo]

He testified, Talarico, right?

Yes, in Family Secrets, but he didn't reveal anything particularly damning about any of the defendants, if I recall -- just general sportsbook stuff. He did relate the story about Nick and the puppy's head, though. I think he later also did an interview for the Sun-Times.

And yes, he was married to Nora Schweihs but they are divorced.

I remember that there was talk that he was the acting boss of Chinatown after Jimmy LaPietra died. He was only in his early 30s at the time. Correct me if I’m wrong but I think that was proven to be false. I doubt he is made considering his testimony at family secrets. He is related to Lapietras which gave him some status. Being married to Nora Schweihs also helped but she turned out to be an embarrassment. Drug addict, stripper at Crazy Horse and finally the mob wives show.

I think it was an early theory in the papers that he was helping run Chinatown after Jimmy died, but yeah, I don't think that ended up being the case.

Is Mike Talarico the son of Mike Talarico who was a Teamster and caught with Phil Phonto delivering the skim?

[NorthBuffalo]

Joe Talerico* - or is it different family?

[Snakes]

Joe Talerico* - or is it different family?

Not related, I'm pretty sure. Names were spelled differently, but Tony would know for certain.

[PolackTony]

Joe Talerico* - or is it different family?

Not related, I'm pretty sure. Names were spelled differently, but Tony would know for certain.

Unrelated so far as I know. If there was any relation at all, it would have been distant and back in Calabria. Talarico is a common surname, however, in the provinces of Catanzaro and Cosenza.

Joseph Talerico was ousted from his position as business agent for Teamsters Local 727 in 1990 after being accused in the early '80s of acting as a courier for Chicago LCN member Phil Ponto for skimming operations at the Stardust Casino in Vegas, of which Ponto had been working for years as a senior executive. I've discussed Ponto before, but he was a longtime "sleeper" member not outed by the Feds as a made guy until he was in his 70s. Identified as an LCN member by Jimmy Fratianno, Ponto was forced out of the Stardust in 1979, with Federal investigators now on his trail, when NV refused to renew his license to work in casinos. Relevant to this discussion also, Ponto grew up in Chinatown at 24th and Wentworth and was a paesano of both Talarico families (his parents were from Sambiase, Catanzaro, hometown of the Liparato/Rubertos, and Simbario, Vibo Valentia, hometown of the vast Roti/Spina/Andriacchi/Bertucci/Nardi, etc. web of interrelated families).

Joseph Talerico was born in 1916 in Chicago to Francesco Talarico (original spelling) and Maria Carmela Florio, both natives of Carlopoli, Catanzaro (this is near to both Jim Colosimo's hometown of Colosimi as well as the section of Catanzaro province where the families of Southsiders like Mike Talarico, as well as the Catezones and Scalises, were from). Joe Talerico grew up in the Taylor, on Taylor between Racine and May. His older brother, Carlo Talerico, was a young hoodlum who was shot to death in 1933 during a hold-up of a liquor store at 43rd and Ashland during a string of armed robberies that he pulled with a crew of other thugs from Taylor St.

Later in life, he lived in Berwyn, where he died in 2014 at the age of 98.

Also interesting to note that in 1913, language teacher Filippo Antonio Talarico (mistakenly referred to in the Chicago press by his father's name, Rosario Talarico), was shot to death near Cermak and Clark in the Chinatown neighborhood. Funny enough, soon-to-be Chicago boss Tony D'Andrea was living in this immediate area and also employed as a language teacher. Filippo Talarico was a native of Joe Talerico's hometown of Carlopoli,, and may well have been a relative of Joe's father Francesco Talarico. Before he died, Filippo Talarico told CPD that he had been shot by a "Joe Charlands". This was a Taylor St guy and brother of notorious gangster Anthony "Tony Charlando" Chiarolanzo. Tony Charlando was himself shot to death by Taylor St in 1922. Decades later, in the 1960s, LA outfit member CI Sal Piscopo told the FBI that Johnny Roselli and his buddy Tancredi Tortora had murdered Tony Charlando. The Chiarolanzos happened to have been from Baragiano, Potenza, which was also the hometown of Joe Talerico's wife. As always with Chicago guys, once you dig into their familial history, all sorts of interesting things pop up.

As a reminder, here was what I had previously posed in the Chicago Origins thread about Mike Talarico's ancestry:

Mike Talarico came up recently on the other Chicago thread. It has been stated that Angelo LaPietra was his uncle and this is true, through marriage. Michael Talarico's parents were Saverio Talarico and Mathilda Imparato. Saverio was born in Chicago to Alfonso Talarico and Santa Gesuida of San Pietro Magisano, one of a cluster of villages in Catanzaro province, including Taverna and Sorbo San Basile, that have had a significant presence in the Bridgeport area. Mathilda was born in Chicago to Angelo Imparato of Campagna, Salerno province and Isabella D'Onofrio of Pisticci, Matera, Basilicata (the Caifanos' mother was also from Pisticci). Both families lived in Armour Square. Mathilda's older sister Mildred "Millie" Talarico married Angelo LaPietra. Their daughter Joann LaPietra married Salvatore LaScola. The LaScolas were from Termini Imerese and also intermarried with the Catuaras. I believe that Salvatore's brother was the Outfit associate Joseph LaScola who owned Joey's Beef Stand in Armour Square and told police in the 1980s that he acted as a courier between Louie Eboli and Frank Schweihs. Joann and Salvatore's daughter Nancy LaScola married Kurt Calabrese. Their other daughter JoAnn LaScola married Rosario Munizza. The Munizzas were among a contingent of immigrants from Sorbo San Basile, Catanzaro, who settled in the Bridgeport area from the 1960s-80s. Calabrese zips Aldo Fratto and the Infelise brothers, who were operating in Bridgeport in the 1980s, were also arrivals from Sorbo San Basile.

Mike Talarico was, of course, the owner of Punchinello, well-known restaurant and "Sinatra Bar" (motto: "All Frank, All the Time") on 31st St in Armour Square. Mike Talarico's brother Alphonse "Al" Talarico is a well-known lawyer in Chicago. He represented Frank Calabrese during some real estate deals in the 1980s. In 2007, Talarico was banned from the FS trial courtroom after being caught passing Frank contraband soppressat' (can't expect a guy like Calabrese to be eating bologna sandwiches and shit). Al Talarico also represented CPD cop James "Jimmy Bags" Bagnola when he was fired by CPD for drug possession. James Bagnola's mother was another Imparato sister, so he was Talarico's cousin and Angelo's nephew by marriage as well. His father Anthony Bagnola was a brother of the Joseph James Bagnola who was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list in the 1950s as a co-suspect with Tony Maenza in the slaying of a car dealer in New Orleans.

[funkster]

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.

[funkster]

Late to the conversation but toots is big into rodeo and
I know there’s a YouTube video of him out there somewhere riding a horse as I recall.

[Ivan]

Bridgeport sounds... interesting, lol.

I really need to take like a month, get an Air B&B and seriously experience Chicago. I lived there for 3 months in 2013~2014 but lived in Old Town the whole time and never really left Yuppie Land (one thing that really struck me at the time is that no one in that area seemed to speak with a Chciago accent, and when they did they actually lived in the suburbs). Visited a friend in Logan's Square for a week but it was already all hipster then. Some of the yuppie and hipster broads were hot though.

Late to the conversation but toots is big into rodeo and
I know there’s a YouTube video of him out there somewhere riding a horse as I recall.

Did you catch this? Posted it a couple days ago. This is purportedly him in cowboy mode.

[PolackTony]

Bridgeport sounds... interesting, lol.

I really need to take like a month, get an Air B&B and seriously experience Chicago. I lived there for 3 months in 2013~2014 but lived in Old Town the whole time and never really left Yuppie Land (one thing that really struck me at the time is that no one in that area seemed to speak with a Chciago accent, and when they did they actually lived in the suburbs). Visited a friend in Logan's Square for a week but it was already all hipster then. Some of the yuppie and hipster broads were hot though.

Late to the conversation but toots is big into rodeo and
I know there’s a YouTube video of him out there somewhere riding a horse as I recall.

Did you catch this? Posted it a couple days ago. This is purportedly him in cowboy mode.

Logan Square is a *very* different place today than what I knew lol. I lived at Diversey and Spaulding in 1984. My earliest memories were in Logan Square, and I still vividly remember being a little kid and seeing all of the OAs (Insane Orchestra Albany, a '70s salsa band-turned-notorious-street-gang) out on the block with their brown/yellow sweaters and big walls up. Logan Square was never quite as bad as Humboldt Park but it still had a very serious gang problem. Some subsections were much rougher, too. The stretch along Logan Blvd was never that bad, and those buildings (some of which were built by Sicilian artisans, actually) never got super run down. But Palmer Square was a different story, as were the weird little diagonal streets off Milwaukee. I used to know some YLO Cobras from Francis and Stave. Absolute savages. They used to roll through the Henry Horner PJs and stick up black gangbangers in the middle of the PJs at night lol. Wild jibaros (Puerto Rican "hillbillies', basically). As bad as Chicago was back in the day, the PR neighborhoods were among the most absolutely off the hook (any Chicagoan can tell you this), but are all now heavily gentrified and nowhere near what they were like.

And if you go to Bridgeport/Armour Square today you'll still find plenty of people with a Shucawgo accent lol. Except for the Chinese. And the transplant/hipsters. The latter though are in Bridgeport proper and not Armour Square.

[Ivan]

As bad as Chicago was back in the day, the PR neighborhoods were among the most absolutely off the hook (any Chicagoan can tell you this), but are all now heavily gentrified and nowhere near what they were like.

And if you go to Bridgeport/Armour Square today you'll still find plenty of people with a Shucawgo accent lol. Except for the Chinese. And the transplant/hipsters. The latter though are in Bridgeport proper and not Armour Square.

My friend's place was southeast of Diversey and California, I think. She moved out in 2020 and bought a house in Elgin after getting sick of urban mayhem in general, which was starting to affect her personally a lot more often even in post-gentrification Logan Square. (I sent her the infamous Inendino phone call a while back as she has a dark sense of humor and she loved it, was fun to hear her quoting things like "believe me when I tell you dis I'll break every fucking bone in your body" back at me.)

I've heard about the hipsters moving into Bridgeport. Wonder how the old locals are reacting to that influx. I imagine it's quite a culture clash, with the hipsters probably having an archly ironic "wow this is just like the Sopranos!" view of the natives that doesn't quite do justice to the seriousness of what they are talking about. Hipsters do that about a lot of things, it's like one of their cultural trademarks. Can be annoying if they do it WRT to something you were involved in that, to you, was no laughing matter.

My friend the writer Thomas Frank wrote a nice essay about Chicago gentrification that was published right when I moved there, you might find it interesting: https://harpers.org/archive/2013/12/chi ... he-future/

[funkster]

Bridgeport sounds... interesting, lol.

I really need to take like a month, get an Air B&B and seriously experience Chicago. I lived there for 3 months in 2013~2014 but lived in Old Town the whole time and never really left Yuppie Land (one thing that really struck me at the time is that no one in that area seemed to speak with a Chciago accent, and when they did they actually lived in the suburbs). Visited a friend in Logan's Square for a week but it was already all hipster then. Some of the yuppie and hipster broads were hot though.

Late to the conversation but toots is big into rodeo and
I know there’s a YouTube video of him out there somewhere riding a horse as I recall.

Did you catch this? Posted it a couple days ago. This is purportedly him in cowboy mode.

Yep that’s what made me think of it.

You will always know the old time people because they say Chi Caw go instead of chi cah go. My uncle grew up and lived much of his adult life on the NW side including Jeff park and hiawatha park. He moved outside of Atlanta in the 90s but still retains the DEEP Chicago accent lol.

[NorthBuffalo]

Dave 'Red' O'Malley was an enforcer for Robert Salerno and the Cicero Crew who was the prime suspect in the murder of Lenny Yaras in the late 1980s. A good source says he is live today is in his 70s residing in southern Illinois and walked away from the Outfit after being released from prison in the late 90s.

[Ivan]

You will always know the old time people because they say Chi Caw go instead of chi cah go. My uncle grew up and lived much of his adult life on the NW side including Jeff park and hiawatha park. He moved outside of Atlanta in the 90s but still retains the DEEP Chicago accent lol.

Everyone from Chicago who moved to Las Vegas I met when I lived there has it. And if you ask them they actually moved there from an outer suburb. They're in the final stage of "geographical upward mobility" that PolackTony talked about a while back where as families become more prosperous etc. they move one layer out, roughly once every generation, until in the final stage they break from the concentric circles entirely. By the time they get to the outer circle and then the "final escape from the horrible winters and taxes to Las Vegas/Arizona/etc." their family had already been in Chicago for several generations and therefore they have the accent.

[Patrickgold]

Dave 'Red' O'Malley was an enforcer for Robert Salerno and the Cicero Crew who was the prime suspect in the murder of Lenny Yaras in the late 1980s. A good source says he is live today is in his 70s residing in southern Illinois and walked away from the Outfit after being released from prison in the late 90s.

Really? All the sources I have said he died in the 1990s. Curious if what you say is true. Anyone else have any info on him?

[PolackTony]

Dave 'Red' O'Malley was an enforcer for Robert Salerno and the Cicero Crew who was the prime suspect in the murder of Lenny Yaras in the late 1980s. A good source says he is live today is in his 70s residing in southern Illinois and walked away from the Outfit after being released from prison in the late 90s.

Really? All the sources I have said he died in the 1990s. Curious if what you say is true. Anyone else have any info on him?

I could be wrong, but I thought that he died in 1997. The guy from this obituary was David Michael O’Malley, born 1948. Same age and had the same address in Burbank given by the Tribune in the 80s when O’Malley was pinched on burglary, extortion, and murder charges.

[funkster]

Tony, did you ever get a chance to look into the Gironda connection from that bust a few weeks ago?