The Chicago Syndicate: Al Capone
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Showing posts with label Al Capone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Al Capone. Show all posts

Monday, March 13, 2017

Top 10 Most Wanted True-Crime Movies

We've called in some of the usual suspects and a few ringers to put together a lineup of the top 10 true-crime movies (although the names may have been changed to protect the innocent).

10. "St. Valentines Day Massacre" (1967)

Perhaps no criminal has ever been featured in more pop culture than Al Capone. From 1932's "Scarface" to Brian DePalma's 1987 adaptation of "The Untouchables," the prohibition-era Chicago gangster has become a pop icon. While those two movies are mostly apocryphal, "The St. Valentine's Day Massacre" is based on an actual February 14, 1929, strike by Capone against rival gangster Bugs Moran's crew. The tall, thin Jason Robards may not look like Capone the way Robert De Niro does in "The Untouchables," and George Segal (playing a mob enforcer) couldn't be menacing in any context, but B-movie auteur Roger Corman's stylish direction makes this one of the more memorable mob movies (look for a cameo by the young Jack Nicholson).


9. "Monster" (2003)

Arguments will rage forever as to whether the Florida prostitute-turned-serial killer Aileen Wuornos was a victimized vigilante or a pure psychopath, but few can deny the power of Charlize Theron's Oscar-winning portrayal in this 2003 film. Yes, Theron gained 30 pounds and wore hideous false teeth to obscure her natural beauty, but to reduce her transformation to mere physicality is unfair. Theron manages to make Wuornos simultaneously sympathetic and terrifying. You find yourself hoping she'll get her life together even though the film's tragic end is a foregone conclusion.


8. "Reversal of Fortune" (1990)

Our tabloid culture's perverse fascination with crime takes on an air of Schadenfreude when it occurs in high society. "Reversal of Fortune" tells the true story of socialite Claus Von Bülow's attempt to overturn a conviction for attempted murder of his wife Sunny by insulin overdose. Glenn Close plays Sunny, both in flashbacks and in a voiceover narration from her vegetative comatose state. Jeremy Irons is at his icy best as the vindicated (but perhaps guilty?) Claus in a role that won him a Best Actor Oscar.


7. "The French Connection" (1971)

Gene Hackman plays "Popeye" Doyle, a New York City police detective obsessed with capturing a French heroin smuggler in this thriller, based on an actual Turkey-France-United States drug-trafficking scheme that exploded in the 1960s. William Friedkin directed this nail-biter, one of those great, gritty '70s flicks that's painted in a dozen shades of gray. The film won Oscars for Best Picture, Actor, Screenplay and Editing and contains what many still consider the greatest car-chase scene in film history (as well as an achingly ambiguous ending that would never fly today).


6. "Heavenly Creatures" (1994)

Years before he brought to life orcs and giant apes, director Peter Jackson tackled another kind of monster in the real-life story of two 1950s New Zealand girls who murder the mother who forbids them to see each other when their close friendship becomes too obsessive. In her first film role, Kate Winslet plays the daughter who takes a brick to her mother's head — 45 times. Jackson, following up his gore-fest horror film "Braindead," crafts a movie that's part Merchant Ivory, part Martin Scorsese.



5. "Dog Day Afternoon" (1975)

Sidney Lumet directs Al Pacino in arguably his best role as Sonny Wortzik, a man who attempts to rob a bank to pay for his lover's sex-change operation, only to have everything go wrong on a sweltering New York summer day. As a police standoff drags on for 14 hours, the throng of onlookers begins to root for Sonny as a champion of the oppressed. While it sounds like this is one of those "based on a true story" flicks that plays fast and loose with the details for dramatic impact, it actually hews very closely to the actual events of the robbery.




4. "Rope" (1948) and "Compulsion" (1959)

The Leopold & Loeb murder case was one of the most notorious crimes of the early 20th century. In 1924, two wealthy law students kidnapped and killed a 14-year-old neighbor merely to prove their professed Nietzschean superiority. Their subsequent trial (during which it was revealed they were lovers) caused a media frenzy, and the story inspired dozens of works of fiction. While Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope" is merely inspired by the events (turning the killers into two Manhattan students who strangle a friend right before a dinner party), it's a riveting portrait of narcissism. Hitch (no stranger to sublimated urges) paints almost every character (not just the killers) with black swaths of self-absorption, forcing the audience to consider the ease with which we all say we'd like to kill someone for the mildest infraction. "Compulsion" (which changes the names of the actual parties while mostly sticking to the details) is concerned more with the trial, with Orson Welles playing the stand-in for defense attorney Clarence Darrow. The movie has an oddly anachronistic style, never quite evoking the time period, but it is buoyed by some fine performances. More permissive times would allow 1992's "Swoon," which was more about the relationship between the two killers.

3. "All the President's Men" (1976All the President's Men)

It had been not quite two years since Richard Nixon resigned as president of the United States in the wake of the Watergate scandal when the film version of the book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward hit theaters, so the wounds on the nation were still fresh. Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford play the fledgling Washington Post reporters who uncover the connection between the White House and the break-in at the Democratic National Committee. As intricate as the story itself, the film still manages to be the most exciting "talking head" thriller you've ever seen.



2. "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" (1986)

At least in films, it used to be easy to spot the bad guys: They wore black, sported furrowed brow and sinister moustache, perhaps scarred by some past altercation. But "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" presented a new kind of terror — an otherwise normal guy who just liked to murder. Based on the confessions of Henry Lee Lucas, this brutally visceral film (directed by John McNaughton) has earned cult status over the years. Michael Rooker plays Henry alongside Tom Towles as his white-trash killin' partner Otis. The movie is made only slightly less disturbing by the revelation that the majority of the hundreds of murders to which Lucas confessed never occurred.



1. "In Cold Blood" (1967)

Truman Capote's groundbreaking 1965 book about the brutal slaying of a rural Kansas family was adapted into this chilling film two years later by Richard Brooks. The film opens by showing the parallel lives of the simple, God-fearing Clutters and Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock (Robert Blake and Scott Wilson), two hard-luck drifters who hear that there's a small fortune hidden on the Clutters' farm. The movie then cuts to the day after the murders — following the search for the killers, their capture, trial and execution — with the sad, maddening details of the pointless massacre told via flashback near the end of the film. The semi-documentary style of the movie combined with the stark black-and-white cinematography and understated performances by the cast add a harrowing air of authenticity to the film (and of course, recent events in the life of Blake have given "In Cold Blood" an ironic undercurrent that only adds to its true-crime résumé).

Of course, the term "true-crime movie" is usually an oxymoron. Dramatic license or studio legal departments almost always force alterations of the facts. Arthur Penn's "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967) may be one of film's most celebrated crime dramas, but it's hardly an accurate depiction of the notorious Depression-era, bank-robbing duo.

So please don't track us down and shoot us if some of the films on this list fall slightly short of documentary. Although that would make a great movie ...

Thanks to Karl Heitmueller.

Sunday, February 12, 2017

Son of Scarface: A Memoir by the Grandson of Al Capone

Thirteen is a difficult age for anyone. But imagine if your beloved dad drops dead in your arms, leaving you at the mercy of your abusive mother. Then, a few months later, you learn from a phone conversation with your father's best friend that Dad was the son of Al Capone.

Not exactly a "Happy Days" childhood for Chris W. Knight. News that he was a generation removed from the most notorious crime boss in the annals of American history hit him like a St. Valentine's Day special delivery from his grandpa. But he was able to overcome all the trauma and unhappiness to earn an MBA and find success in real estate.

For two decades, the lifelong New Jersey resident wondered whether the tale of his lineage was true -- essentially that Capone had fathered Bill Knight with a woman other than his wife, then somehow hid his identity and had others bring him up. Then Chris Knight decided to find out. Son of Scarface: A Memoir by the Grandson of Al Capone recounts his efforts to trace his roots to the criminal mastermind who in the Roaring Twenties was the uncrowned king of Cicero, then Chicago.

Q. How sure are you at this point that it's true that you are Scarface Al's grandson?

A. One hundred percent, without a doubt. This kind of thing you just don't make up. For me, my dad died in my arms and told me before he died that he had another identity as a child, that he couldn't talk about it but if he did it would make my head spin. He told me about the house in Florida where he spent some of his childhood.

Q. Would you be disappointed if you were somehow presented with proof positive that you were not related?

A. I would have to seriously take into consideration how they came to that conclusion, and I would only believe it if they took the DNA straight from his body right out of the ground and spliced the DNA right in front of me. Anybody can swipe anything when it comes to DNA.

Q. Are there any developments since the book was published concerning the Capone lineage?

A. The book's been out a month and a half. I just finished doing the launch in Florida [at Al's vacation home]. The word is out. I've had two conversations with a grandson of my father's brother, Albert Francis, a k a Sonny. His family's been supportive. He said he saw a lot in my story and in me, that there is a strong connection. He's deciding whether to submit to a DNA test. He told me that as long as I didn't reveal his real identity or where he lived, he wouldn't shoot me [laughs].

Q. Do you see any irony in the fact that your father was the son of such a notorious man, yet your mother was the parent who was emotionally and physically abusive toward you and your sister?

A. That's something that I was thinking, that my mom is probably on the same level as Al Capone. Sometimes I wonder if she has syphilis [the disease that killed Al and may have been passed on to both Sonny and Bill] because she's very irrational. I can see why it's said that people marry someone who reminds them of their parents. it is ironic to see my mother's behavior is a mirror image of Al's.

Q. Is it difficult to admit the Capone heritage?

A. He's definitely a legend in American history. The bad side of Capone was that he was one of America's most notorious mob bosses. But I think my grandfather was also a kind and generous person to a lot of families. He ran soup kitchens during the Depression. People say that if you knew him, he would try to help you.

Q. Has your relationship with your mother been affected by your quest?

A. This past Christmas I forced myself to go and visit my mom, and even though she has her moments of irrationalness, she can be serious. She hasn't read the book, but she thought it would be good if I could put a positive twist on it and develop the theme of telling people to use courage and use the pain of my childhood to move forward to continue the search to reconnect with my father.

Q. You mention a "gay chromosome" and speculate that Al himself may have been gay, as you are. How has that theory been received?

A. In speaking with a few historians and reading up on Al and looking at myself, I realized that I am very similar to Al, not only in looks but in attitude and friendliness and the generous side of me. A few historians have said there were rumors that he was bisexual or gay. I heard he had a very soft voice like me. He always surrounded himself with 20 very handsome bodyguards. He never lived with his wife, so the thought had crossed my mind that there could have been a gay gene there.

Thanks to Jeff Johnson

Friday, January 27, 2017

Gangsters & Grifters: Classic Crime Photos from the @ChicagoTribune

Created from the Chicago Tribune's vast archives, Gangsters & Grifters: Classic Crime Photos from the Chicago Tribune, is a collection of photographs featuring infamous criminals, small-time bandits, hoodlums, and more at shocking crime scenes. These vintage glass-plate and acetate negatives were taken from the early 1900s through the 1950s, and they have been largely unseen for generations. That is because most have never been published, only having been witnessed by the photographers and police in the moments after an arrest, crime, or even murder. Included are graphic crime scenes, raw evidence, and depictions of searing emotions, captured on film during a time when photographers were given unprecedented access alongside police. Some photographs resemble film noir movie stills. Some are cartoonish. All feature real people, real drama, and real crimes. Accompanying information about each is included wherever possible, often with archived news stories.

Gangsters & Grifters: Classic Crime Photos from the Chicago Tribune, is a powerful, visually stunning look back into the dark story of Chicago's nefarious crime underworld. These fascinating, surprising, and entrancing photos reveal still-unsolved murder mysteries and portraits of notorious gang overlords like John Dillinger and Al Capone. This is a must-have for photography buffs, history lovers, and anyone curious about the seedy underbelly of early 20th-century Chicago.

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Flashback: Prison Release of Betty Loren-Maltese Awakens Organized Crime Mystique of Cicero

Prohibition was the law of the land when Al Capone took over Cicero in 1924, muscling his way in with gun-toting hoodlums on Election Day. And many residents were happy to hear his beer wagons rumbling through the streets en route to speakeasies.

More than 80 years later, this sleepy-looking suburb of blue-collar bungalows and strip malls a few miles west of Chicago still hasn't shaken its reputation for mob influence, political scandal and corruption, even as leaders insist they've put it behind them.

"The organized crime mystique _ that's the reason for our image," says town spokesman Ray Hanania, insisting President Larry Dominick has "taken politics out of town government" since taking office in 2005. The story of Cicero and the mob, he said, is "a great story and it's easy to write but it's unfair."

Critics, though, say corruption still hangs thick in the air.

About a week ago, former town President Betty Loren-Maltese returned to Chicago after 6 1/2 years in prison for fleecing taxpayers of more than $12 million in a mob-related insurance scam. The money paid for an island golf course in Wisconsin, a horse farm and a summer home for reputed mob boss Mike Spano, who went to prison along with Loren-Maltese.

Loren-Maltese was boosted into politics by her late husband, former Cicero town assessor Frank "Baldy" Maltese, who was indicted on corruption charges in the early 1990s along with Rocco Infelice, reputed one-time boss of the Cicero mob. Maltese pleaded guilty to conspiracy in 1993 but died of cancer before going to prison. Infelice died behind bars.

No sooner had the once-jovial Loren-Maltese _ sporting her trademark flamboyant hairdo but grim and silent behind large dark glasses _ arrived Monday to start a four-month term in a halfway house, than news surfaced that she and her elderly mother were receiving health insurance benefits from the very town fund that Loren-Maltese was convicted of looting.

Hanania said Loren-Maltese received the benefits under a law she "rammed through" while still in office that provides coverage to all Cicero elected officials for life, and her mother got insurance for serving on the police and fire commission for 10 years.

By Tuesday, officials in the town of about 85,000 decided her mother wasn't entitled to the coverage because she never held elective office, and terminated it. But that wasn't the only problem, critics say. Dominick, a hefty ex-cop who served on the Cicero force for years, also has found jobs for a number of his relatives on the town payroll, including a son who works as the human resources director.

"I think they haven't really changed since the Al Capone era in their approach to government and politics and civic decency," says Andy Shaw, head of Chicago's Better Government Association. "This is the town that time forgot."

Not that some things haven't changed.

Scantily clad prostitutes no longer saunter in the neon haze outside the mob-connected strip joints that flourished along Cicero Avenue in the 1950s and 1960s. Gone are the no-name prize fighters who once slugged it out in a little arena in a cloud of colored smoke and flickering strobe lights.

"The place was crawling with vice and gambling," said John Binder, author of "The Chicago Outfit," a history of the city's organized crime family. "It was the same story in some other little suburbs where the mob could get its hooks in, but Cicero was sort of the crown jewel, maybe because of its location close to Chicago and because Capone pushed his way in there."

Now it all seems comparatively tame. Almost.

In February 2003, a massive pipe bomb erupted on a quiet street in Berwyn, a neighboring suburb. The explosion blew away the front of a company that distributed the video poker machines that federal prosecutors say were used for illegal gambling throughout Chicago and its suburbs.

Prosecutors said it was organized crime's way of delivering the message that horning in on its monopoly on video poker machines was dangerous _ and at the time, the biggest distributor of the machines in the western suburbs was based in Cicero.

It was owned by Michael Marcello, whose brother, James Marcello, went to prison for life following the 2007 Operation Family Secrets trial, the biggest mob case in Chicago in decades. Michael Marcello also went to prison after pleading guilty to racketeering and other offenses for running a gambling business and paying the government's star witness in the Family Secrets case, Nicholas Calabrese, to keep mum.

Then in 2008, Cicero jewelry store owner Mark Polchan and Samuel Volpendesto, a tiny, white-bearded, 86-year-old former manager of a Cicero strip joint, were indicted on charges of blowing up the Berwyn video poker company.

Last year, the charges against the two men became part of a larger, racketeering indictment that added five other defendants, including a Cicero police officer. All have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial in September.

Originally reported by Mike Robinson on 2/21/10.

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Al Capone: Chicago's King of Crime

Al Capone: Chicago's King of Crime.

Crime writer Nate Hendley examines the life and crimes of Al Capone, the world’s most famous gangster, during his brief reign over corrupt, Prohibition-era Chicago.

A fresh, personal look at this iconic figure.

Saturday, October 15, 2016

Jerry Brown Alleged to have Mob Ties

A book revives decades-old charges that California attorney general candidate and Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown had close ties with individuals related to organized crime during Brown’s tenure in the 1970s as governor of California.

Written by respected investigative journalist Gus Russo and published by the American division of British publishers Bloomsbury, the book, Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America's Hidden Power Brokers, charges in part that during the 1970s, Brown took campaign contributions from mob figures and, in return, granted them political favors.

Russo has written several books on organized crime, including The Outfit: The Role of Chicago’s Underworld in the Shaping of Modern America, Live By The Sword: The Secret War Against Castro and the Death ofJFK, and Gangsters and Goodfellas: Wiseguys, Witness Protection, and Life on the Run.

Ace Smith, a campaign consultant for the Brown campaign, called the allegations “wacky and nutty” and “laughably idiotic.” When the Daily Planet offered to fax the Brown campaign copies of the passages from Russo’s book that make reference to Brown, Smith said, “I don’t need to see any passages from the book to make a comment. This is like talking about Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster. These allegations have about as much credibility as Al Capone’s vault.”

In his book, Russo repeats allegations that Brown ran for governor in 1974 with the help of several figures with alleged organized crime ties, including the powerful Hollywood attorney Sidney Korshak, whom the Bloomsbury book describes as “the underworld’s primary link to the corporate upperworld” and “according to the FBI, [the] player behind countless 20th century power mergers, political deals, and organized crime chicaneries.”

Korshak, who died in 1996 and is described by Russo as a “pal” of Brown’s father, Governor Pat Brown, has a thick online file on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s website that alleges extensive ties to organized crime. Russo writes that a 1978 report on California’s Organized Crime Control Commission issued by then-California Attorney General Evelle Younger called Korshak “the key link between organized crime and big business … A U.S. Justice Department official has described Korshak as a ‘senior advisor’ to organized crime groups” in several states, including California.

“When Brown enlisted electronics mogul Richard Silberman … as his chief fund-raiser [for the 1974 campaign],” Russo writes in Supermob, “it quickly became apparent that the same Chicago money that had transformed California in the forties would continue to play a key role in the seventies. (Silberman would be convicted in a 1991 FBI drug-ring money-laundering scheme.) Thus, with a brilliant media campaign, massive contributions from the likes of Lew Wasserman, Jake ‘the Barber’ Factor, and later Sidney Korshak, Brown defeated [Republican State Controller Houston] Flournoy by 175,000 votes.”

In return, Russo alleges in his book that Brown gave favors back to alleged mob figures, including appointing the brother-in-law of Teamsters union leader and Korshak associate Edward Hanley as one of the directors of the California Agricultural Association, which Russo says “named the concessionaires at all the state’s racetracks and county fairs.”

Russo alleges that profits from these concessions were later “skimmed” off and sent to reported mob figures. In addition, Russo alleges that Brown once tried to close down the Hollywood Park racetrack as a favor to Korshak, who Russo says “was … trying to pave the way for an organized crime takeover of the facility.”

The racetrack allegations were so widely reported in California at the time that they later became the subject of a series of Doonesbury cartoons by Gary Trudeau. In one Doonesbury strip reprinted in Supermob, Trudeau depicts a reporter talking on the telephone to a Brown associate only named “Gray,” a reference to then-Jerry Brown Chief of Staff Gray Davis. “Let me get this straight, Gray—who exactly did Jerry solicit the contribution from?” the reporter asks. “A guy named Sidney Korshak,” ‘Gray’ answers. “He’s the local low-life, an alumnus from the Capone mob.”

Brown was quoted in Time Magazine in July of 1979 that he thought the Doonesbury cartoons were “false and libelous, but I’m flattered by the attention.”

When Gray Davis ran for governor in 1998, the San Francisco Chronicle made reference to the old allegations, with political reporter Robert Gunnison writing that “Brown … appointed [Davis] to the California Horse Racing Board in 1979. It was a particularly volatile time for the panel. Critics said he was appointed to help Service Employees International Union clerks during a strike at Golden Gate Fields. The union’s lawyer, Sidney Korshak, was alleged by the state attorney general to be an organized crime figure.”

Russo alleges that Korshak’s influence on California governors was not limited to Brown and his father, but also included Ronald Reagan. Russo also alleges that Korshak sought to help Brown achieve higher office past the California governship, writing that “Korshak’s Service Employees Union … dispatched workers and cars” to New Hamphsire in 1979 “to assist Brown’s effort” in the primary against Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter.

Some of Russo’s information concerning the allegations of the Brown-organized crime connection came from the Berkeley Daily Planet reporter Richard Brenneman, who wrote news articles on the issue in the 1970s while a reporter with the Santa Monica Evening Outlook. Brenneman is listed in the book as a source.

Thanks to J. Douglas Allen-Tayler

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

The Democrat National Convention was almost Fixed by the Mafia

After a dramatic Republican National Convention in Cleveland which saw Donald Trump finally become the party’s official nominee, Hillary Clinton will this week accept the formal nomination of the Democratic Party.

U.S. national conventions have always been big business opportunities. As one long-time ally of the Bush family reportedly said, “For people who operate in and around government, you can’t not be here.” Although some of the usual donors to the Republican National Convention, like Ford and UPS, stayed home this year, the host committee was able to raise nearly US $60 million from American businesses. Yet historically the “people who operate in and around government” are not only legitimate businesses but also, sometimes, less-than-legitimate ones.

Take the 1932 Democratic National Convention. As I explain in my book Hidden Power: The Strategic Logic of Organized Crime, from which this article is adapted, the nomination that year had come down to a contest between two New York politicians. Al Smith was a reform-minded former governor aligned with Tammany Hall, the Manhattan-based Democratic political machine. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the sitting governor, was running against him, and he was not aligned with Tammany.

If Roosevelt was to win the nomination at the Democratic National Convention, he needed to neutralize the Tammany threat. That meant figuring out what to do about the Mob.

Through their control of liquor and vice-markets in southern Manhattan, Tammany’s stronghold, the Italian-American Mafias and Jewish-heritage gangs that made up the New York Mob had developed growing power in Tammany affairs over the preceding years.

The Mob leadership now saw a huge strategic opportunity at the Democratic National Convention to leverage that power into something even bigger: influence over the next occupant of the White House.

Mob leaders Lucky Luciano, Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky all accompanied the Tammany Hall delegation to the convention in Chicago. Their Mafia associate Al Capone provided much of the alcohol, banned under prohibition, and entertainment.

Costello shared a hotel suite with Jimmy Hines, the Tammany “Grand Sachem,” who announced support for Roosevelt. But another Tammany politician, Albert Marinelli, announced that he and a small bloc were defecting and would not support Roosevelt.

Marinelli was Tammany’s leader in the Second Assembly District, its heartland below Manhattan’s 14th Street. During Prohibition he had owned a trucking company – run by none other than Lucky Luciano. Luciano had helped Marinelli become the first Italian-American district leader in Tammany, and in 1931 forced the resignation of the city clerk, whom Marinelli then replaced. This gave Luciano and Marinelli control over selection of grand jurors and the tabulation of votes during city elections.

Now, the two were sharing a Chicago hotel suite.

Why were Costello and Luciano backing rival horses, and through them, rival candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination? Was this a disagreement over political strategy?

On the contrary, the evidence suggests that the Mob was playing both sides, to place themselves as brokers in the Democratic nomination process.

Roosevelt needed the full New York state delegation’s support – and thus Tammany’s – if he was going to win the floor vote at the convention. But he also needed to avoid being tainted by the whiff of scandal that hung stubbornly around Tammany – and the Mafia.

Roosevelt responded to the split by issuing a statement denouncing civic corruption, while carefully noting that he had not seen adequate evidence to date to warrant the prosecution of sitting Tammany leaders, despite an ongoing investigation run by an independent-minded prosecutor, Sam Seabury. Picking up his signal, Marinelli threw his support behind Roosevelt, giving him the full delegate slate and helping him gain the momentum needed to claim the nomination.

The Mob’s role may not have been decisive. Roosevelt’s nomination had numerous fathers, not least John “Cactus Jack” Garner, a rival presidential candidate to whom Roosevelt offered the vice presidency in return for the votes of the Texas and California delegations. But it was a factor.

If the Mob leaders were not quite kingmakers as they had hoped, they were certainly players. As Luciano reportedly put it, “I don’t say we elected Roosevelt, but we gave him a pretty good push.”

Luciano was nonetheless a newcomer to national politics, and seems to have been quickly outsmarted by his candidate. Having secured the nomination, Roosevelt loosened the reins on Seabury’s corruption investigation, making clear that if it developed new evidence, he might be prepared to back prosecutions after all.

Seabury quickly exposed significant Tammany graft in the New York administration. The city sheriff had amassed $400,000 in savings from a job that paid $12,000 a year. The mayor had awarded a bus contract to a company that owned no buses – but was happy to give him a personal line of credit. A judge with half a million dollars in savings had been granted a loan to support 34 “relatives” found to be in his care. Against the backdrop of Depression New York, with a collapsing private sector, 25 percent unemployment and imploding tax revenues, this was shocking profligacy and nepotism.

By September 1932, the mayor had resigned and fled to Paris with his showgirl girlfriend. In early 1933, Roosevelt moved into the White House and broke off the formal connection between Tammany Hall and the national Democratic Party for the first time in 105 years. He even tacitly supported the election of the reformist Republican Fiorello La Guardia as New York mayor.

Luciano was pragmatic about having been outsmarted. “He done exactly what I would’ve done in the same position,” he reportedly said. “He was no different than me … we was both s—ass double-crossers, no matter how you look at it.”

Thanks to James Cockayne.

Monday, June 27, 2016

Chicago's Summer of Bloodshed 2016 Grows as Politicans Ignore Threat of Gangs

2016 is turning out to be Chicago's Summer of Bloodshed.

272-278 people were murdered during the first six months of this year. Over 1300 people were shot and wounded.

Going into summer, 16 people were killed and 87 wounded this month alone. This week, six people were shot and killed and 87 wounded. It appears the numbers will not abate as the weather heats up.

Most of these murders are directly related to the gang and drug business. Retaliations, competition, and other factors of violence that go hand in hand with organized criminal enterprises.

The gangs are fomenting a guerrilla war on our city. It is a war of violence. murder, and mayhem. The politicians are not concerned about or ignore the scope and power the gangs hold in this city. This war is costing scores of lives, many of them innocent people. It is a war that terrorizes whole neighborhoods.

For too many years, well over a decade, the politicians kept convincing the people of Chicago the gangs are fractured, their leadership either in prison or retired, and there is no real gang structure. The killings are by small "factions" or independents.

Chicago should know better. Chicago politicians are not known for honesty or integrity.

The major gangs are highly organized and structured. Why else would gang members young and old, show up at a murder trial of fellow Latin Kings wearing their colors?

"The courtroom was full of Latin Kings wearing gold jerseys, and family members and other friends, old Kings, young Kings, future Kings. They were angry. They smirked. First they murmured, then they got louder." (John Kass/Chicago Tribune)

It appears the Latin Kings are telling Chicago, the police, courts, and public, "We are here, we are here to stay, there is nothing you can do about it."

This is in your face public relations.

Need further proof? The Outlaws, one of the most notorious criminal motorcycle gangs, boldly put their South Side headquarters on the corner of 25th and Rockwell. There is what appears to be a bullet proof barrier protecting the entryway and a steel clad door behind it. Federal authorities claim the Outlaws are major meth manufacturers and distributors. They are also known for violence, mayhem, and murder.

Make no mistake. Chicago gangs are organized, structured, and are responsible for the murderous chaos in various neighborhoods. The politicians refuse to acknowledge it or let the police crack down.

The violence problem is not going to get solved by treating gangs as if they do not exist. It is not going to abate by believing the gangs are fractured and the violence is caused by independents and wannabes.

Gangs are criminal organizations. They are not social clubs or neighborhood protection organizations. They are not a social science phenomena, as academics would have us believe. Gangs are organized crime groups. Their only purpose and reason for existence is crime. Crime is their business. In some areas, crime is the only economy.

All members of gangs are criminals. Gang members have no positive social redeeming values. They are a detriment to society. They are the enemy within, a cancer on our city.

Traditional organized crime, which ruled this city for decades, is a mere shadow of its former self. Yet, they are still monitored for criminal activity. Over one thousand murders are attributed to the Outfit, from the Capone era to the present. Few, if any, were innocent victims.

We do not know if anyone is closely monitoring Chicago's street gangs. We only know what the politicians want us to know. Next to nothing.

For some inexplicable reason, the gangs are not considered to be as dangerous to society as the Chicago Outfit. They are not treated as organized criminal enterprises to be destroyed. Yet, day after day, week after week, month after month, the death toll rises.

Politics plays an important role in crime. The gang organizations have been left alone for way too long. The "reasons" are too many to list. They all boil down to the same things, cowardice and corruption.

City Hall and the County Building are dens of cowards. The politicians fear being labeled racist. Many enable the gangs and benefit by their existence. They are associates of organized crime.

If the politicians will not allow law enforcement to expose the gang leadership, structure, and membership, then it is time for some other organization to do it.

The Chicago Crime Commission is toothless. They tout the same lame excuses as the politicians. Former Mayor Daley pulled out their teeth and claws when they were about to expose organized crime's incestuous relationship with Chicago politicians. From then on, the CCC has been an unreliable and sometimes laughable source on organized criminal enterprises in Chicago. They, like the politicians, refuse to fight the good fight. They keep trying to justify deserving their grant money and other donations.

Something new and courageous is needed to get information to the people. To expose the gangs, their associates and enablers, and their structure and leadership. Make no mistake. All the illicit money generated is going to the top. There needs to be a structure for that.

A new organization is needed to investigate, expose, and report on these organized criminal enterprises, their associates, and enablers. It needs to be funded properly and privately. No government grants. Those are controlled by the very politicians whose heads are in the sand.

There are enough well meaning, civic minded, wealthy people in Chicago who could fund an intelligence, organized crime research, and reporting organization. It would need to be a hybrid group of former law enforcement, prosecutors, and journalists. A Better Government Association on steroids. A group that would be fearless, dauntless, and bold. As bold as the Outlaws, whose club is proudly festooned in one of Chicago's gang infested areas.

Chicago's millionaires, billionaires, major businesses, and financial sectors finance a host of organizations. The arts, architectural preservation, parks and recreation, programs for youth, museums, and other civic and cultural groups. It is time they focused on law and order.

All the great things about Chicago are tarnished by the daily murder, mayhem, and bloodshed on the streets. If the politicians will not do their jobs or let the police do theirs, then it is time for others to take up the mantle. With enough publicity and exposure of organized criminal enterprises, the politicians will have no choice. They will have to act. Swiftly and harshly.

Chicago is becoming the laughing stock of the nation. There is no reason for this.

It is time for good people to do something. If it means embarrassing the politicians, so be it.

The next innocent victim could be your child.

Thanks to Peter Bella.

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

How Al Capone's Successors Built a National Syndicate & Controlled America

He was dubbed with one of the all-time greatest gangland nicknames, The Fixer. The tag fit Sidney Korshak like a calfskin glove.

Born to immigrant parents, Korshak beamed his bright light on a law career and - with the connections of several underworld mentors - got his start representing wiseguys against criminal charges. But his real value to the Chicago Outfit, as the inheritors of Al Capone's criminal empire came to be called, was as a labor consultant and negotiator.

With Korshak in the foreground, Gus Russo's "Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America's Hidden Power Brokers" tells the story of how a tightknit claque of mostly Russian Ashkenazi Jews rose from the rough-and-tumble rackets to seats of influence and power in some Fortune 500 companies.

In their heyday, around 1960, the gang had long tentacles in Hollywood, controlled an interest in the Hilton hotel chain and held sway over ally Jimmy Hoffa's Teamster's union. That's to say nothing of their outright, if well-hidden, ownership of several Las Vegas casinos, including the Desert Inn - the high roller's haunt where Frank Sinatra made his Sin City debut.

Organized crime's ultimate objective is to make the lucre go in filthy and come out clean, through investments in legitimate businesses. In this, the Supermob had no equal.

Their most sophisticated scheme involved buying property that Japanese-Americans were forced to sell during World War II. Korshak, his cronies and their man inside the Roosevelt administration's Office of Alien Property, turned this land grab into a dandy cash-washing machine. Their exertions were so diabolically intertwined with legal maneuvers that the exact details have eluded two generations of investigators.

The complete story, the author admits, is still unknown. This complex trail is also difficult to follow, and though germane to the work, makes for some glacially paced reading.

When he wasn't perverting a union or arranging a sweetheart loan, Sidney's activities were far more entertaining. The Fixer hustled Dean Martin out of Chicago in one piece after Dino's roving eye locked on the moll of one of the Outfit's boys. Korshak also hot-wired a hooker-filled hotel room with an infrared camera, blackmailing a Senate investigator into going easy on his Chi-town pals.

"Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America's Hidden Power Brokers" is chocked with anecdotes like this. The gangland gossip and Hollywood scuttlebutt ultimately outweigh Russo's dissection of Byzantine financial chicanery, and in the end, the book adds up to an exhaustive Who's Who of the dark power players of 20th century America.

Thanks to Peter Pavia

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Sidney Korshak and The Mafia's Shadow Men

In their quest to assemble fragments of the past into a coherent explanation for why things happened as they did, historians tend to take one of two paths.

Some stick to the deeds of kings, presidents and famous military commandersSupermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America's Hidden Power Brokers, agreeing with Thomas Carlyle that "the history of the world is but the biography of great men." Others contend that the engines of history are really to be found in the anonymous multitudes, whose collective needs and capabilities determine the overarching economic, technological and social realities that shape the world and its future. And then there is a third notion, usually discredited but always seductive, that history is the product of a different breed of great men: the kind who plot their schemes in dark shadows and keep their identities secret. Such a man was Sidney Korshak.

For someone who never got convicted of so much as jaywalking and evaded public notice for nearly his whole life, Korshak had serious clout with powerful men. Having launched his legal career by representing the heirs to the Capone mob in Chicago, he was the kind of man who could come to Las Vegas during a Teamsters conference and have Jimmy Hoffa tossed out of the presidential suite so he could occupy it himself. His occasional mistress, Jill St. John, the 1960s Hollywood "It" girl, would reportedly turn down Henry Kissinger's invitations to the White House by saying, "Sorry, I have an invitation from someone more important." His preternatural abilities as a Hollywood fixer have been credited with enabling the production of "The Godfather," in which the non-Italian consigliere character played by Robert Duvall is thought by some to be based on Korshak. Together with men such as entertainment mogul Lew Wasserman, tax lawyer Abe Pritzker and real estate speculator Paul Ziffren, Korshak represented the clean face of a dirty business, according to "Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America's Hidden Power Brokers," Gus Russo's book. He was the bridge between Mafia hoodlums and the white-collar world.

Russo, an investigate reporter who has written about the Chicago Outfit in depth before, sets out here to tell the story of the mostly Jewish lawyers who were recruited by Italian mobsters and eventually came to surpass their original paymasters in money and power. He begins in Chicago's West Side, home to Russian Ashkenazic Jews who had fled the late 19th century pogroms and were determined to protect themselves from becoming victims again. "They were always aware that their wealth and position in society could be noticed and another pogrom would ensue. Thus they worked surreptitiously, choosing to focus on the substrata of a business or event." In an era when Jews were barred from the white-shoe firms, where they might otherwise have made lucrative careers, these often brilliant men became integral parts of the Mafia's attempts to extend their westward reach into legitimate enterprises, ranging from casinos to hotel chains to real estate to the Hollywood studios. In the process, Russo contends, the underworld laid its tentacles on many great men of the more famous variety -- especially in California, where the Chicago Outfit's front men played significant roles in the careers of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, among others.

Drawing heavily from FBI case files and countless interviews, Russo opts for thoroughness rather than a breezy prose style to make his case. The weight of evidence can make the book slow going at times, but it adds up to a compelling picture of the exercise of power in the 20th century. As a labor negotiator who eschewed written notes and mysteriously solved seemingly intractable problems with one or two phone calls from the table of his favorite Los Angeles bistro -- often reaping sweetheart deals for management from unions that had been infiltrated by hoods -- Korshak sat at the center of a wide, corrupt and stupendously profitable web. And while it can be hard to work up much outrage over the details of labor racketeering, stock swindles and real estate fraud, the human costs of such things can be heartbreaking. Russo's chapter on the shameless plundering of the assets of imprisoned Japanese Americans during World War II, presided over by a bevy of Korshak's associates, is particularly stirring.

As an exercise in history, "Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America's Hidden Power Brokers" is a worthwhile contribution to our understanding of the "American century." Holding back from wild-eyed conspiracy theories, Russo documents unsettling connections between yesterday's underworld and a corporate oligarchy that has never been more ascendant than it is today, partly because it has adopted some of the same schemes with a still greater degree of sophistication. The conditions that spawned Korshak and his ilk have changed considerably, but only to be replaced by the likes of Enron and WorldCom. How many new Korshaks are thriving among us now, taking care to leave behind no paper trail? People like to say that history is written by the victors. What happens when the real winners have burned all their notes?

Thanks to Trey Popp

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Ditch the Al Capone Shirt and take The Chicago Corruption Walking Tour

Paul Dailing was fed up with the folksy and unaffected way people talk about Chicago corruption—think Al Capone T-shirts and the bemused smirk as people shrug and say, “That’s the Chicago way.”

The reality is corruption in Chicago has ruined untold numbers of lives and led to the untimely end of many of them. To remind people of this reality, albeit in an enlightening and entertaining way, Dailing combined his experience as a newspaper reporter, a journalism professor, and a riverboat tour guide to create a unique walking tour about political corruption in Chicago and Illinois.

“People don’t realize the actual cost of all of this,” Dailing says. “I want them to know that even though people love Richard J. Daley, if you were black, he wasn’t a great mayor. If you were gay, or a woman, or poor, or a hippie, or just not his friend, he was terrible. This stuff gets romanticized for some lousy reason.”

The Chicago Corruption Walking Tour begins aptly outside the Metropolitan Correctional Center, moving north with stops at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse, the Marquette Building, Thompson Center, one of our excessively expensive parking meters, a ritzy strip of River North that’s somehow in a tax increment finance, or TIF, district, and other downtown places to highlight key moments of unscrupulous power moves. Even people who’ve lived in Chicago their whole lives will learn something, Dailing promises.

“Capone’s men chased Octavius Granady [a black aldermanic candidate] through two wards before shooting him to death,” he says. “That was among the more disturbing stories I found while researching for the tour.”

Dailing’s topics range from seemingly outrageous (former mayor William Hale “Big Bill” Thompson threatening the king of England, the Chicago Outfit gangsters who also were aldermen) to all-too-familiar stories, like which four of our governors went to prison and which others were just criminally charged. He even uses maps to illustrate the most egregious examples of gerrymandering—like in the 4th district, where a stretch of highway where no one lives somehow connects two distinct areas.

Tours start Sunday, May 1, and spots can be reserved online. A mile-long tour is available for $15 and the full 2.25-mile tour costs $25. Half of the tour revenue goes to City Bureau, an organization that trains young journalists covering the south and west sides to create meaningful journalism that is published in local and national outlets (including this one).

One of the running themes throughout the tour is that it’s not always clear who’s bad and who’s good—"It’s a fluid issue,” Dailing says. Former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, for example, may have sent disgraced former governors George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich to prison, but he also threw reporters in jail during the Scooter Libby/Valerie Plame affair.

“I think Otto Kerner was a great governor, except for the fact that he took bribes,” Dailing adds. “The Kerner Commission report delved into the race riots, and it was the first time the U.S. government admitted social inequality is a real thing.”

It gets even murkier at the turn of the century when 1st ward aldermen Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna and John “Bathhouse John” Coughlin came to power. While they helped poor citizens find better jobs and services, they also gave people free drinks at a bar in exchange for votes and used their influence to line their own pockets.

“They were basically scumbags for the people,” Dailing says. “But guys like Hinky Dink and Bathhouse also made things difficult for people who didn’t fall in line and vote the way they were told. Buying beers for votes is cute, but I try to show this in terms of a larger picture where things get worse, and suddenly these people aren’t so cute.”

Dailing says he hopes people leave the tour a little angry, a little more skeptical, but ultimately more aware of the extent to which corruption shaped Chicago and Illinois. “I don’t want people to leave this thinking it’s a hopeless situation,” Dailing says. “We know these stories because these people failed. The patronage system has been whittled down from the height of where it was, same with the Chicago Outfit. People are wising up that TIFs are bad politics.”

Political satire shows like The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee are popular even though they point out sad-but-true aspects of the way the world works. With that in mind, Dailing hopes people enjoy the tour but also are upset enough to get more involved with local political processes.

“I do want people to be pissed off and to want to do something about it,” he says. “I also want people to have a different Chicago experience. It’s OK to marvel at how tall the Sears Tower is, but we have more to talk about here.

“And screw all the romanticizing of Al Capone. We don’t need an unhinged gangster killer on T-shirts.”

Thanks to Benjamin Feldheim.

Saturday, April 02, 2016

"Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires"

Face it--there seemingly will always be a market for certain books. Just choose to chronicle some facet of the Kennedys, the Nazis or, as Selwyn Raab has opted, the Mafia, and a certain sales threshold is guaranteed. Quality seldom seems an issue. Just serve it up and the buyers will come.

Happily, "Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires" is worth every cent, and for those who haven't gotten into Mafia reading on either the fictional -- as in Mario Puzo-- level or other documentary accounts, this may well be the only book you need to read.

So well written and encompassing is Raab's effort that even at 763 pages, many readers will pine for more. And of course there could be more at some point. As the title suggests, a Mafia resurgence is more than quite possible after the John Gotti era unraveling of the more traditional operations in the 1980s and '90s. The next time, it just might not be so Italian based.

Raab serves up a history of the underworld that is long on coherency and understanding and short on the kind of mind-numbing detail other Mafia historians wander into. He gets right into the notoriously efficient work of Charles (Lucky) Luciano, whose rules of engagement ended a lot of shoot-'em-ups and kept the Mafia pointed at one goal -- ever increasing the amount of money pouring into the organization and individual coffers by corrupting American government and business, not necessarily in that order.

It was Luciano who advocated the organization adopt secretive, low-profile standards for thievery, extortion and other crimes as opposed to the over-the-top "I'm just giving the people what they want" personna that Chicago boss Al Capone advocated. And Raab pulls the thread by luring the reader to all that came after. With a reporter's love of fact and disdain for much of the fictional crap about these dark knights, we follow the organization's operations through its real birth during Prohibition, its World War II profiteering, its '50s heyday as a union corrupter and Las Vegas force and its '80s and '90s stumbling largely attributed to a name now very familiar -- Rudy Giuliani. It was Giuliani's use of RICO (the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act) that did great damage to the Mafia's traditional legal defenses in the 1980s.

While he devotes a few pages to the oft-told stories like the Louis (Lepke) Buchalter case from the '30s and '40s, Raab scores big points for telling modern Mafia tales that are less often told but are just as magnetic as the '30s-era classics. And Raab is a constant critic of the law enforcement and justice system weaknesses for not prosecuting crimes that seemed all too obvious. And back in the beginning of this review, did we mention the Kennedys?

That would propel the reader to the book's Chapter 15, titled "The Ring of Truth." The title comes from the mouth of G. Robert Blakey, an expert on both the John F. Kennedy assassination and the underworld, about utterances from Frank Ragano, a lawyer who had the opportunity to defend Mafia operators Santos Trafficante, Carlos Marcello and Detroit's own labor racketeer, the still missing Jimmy Hoffa.

Trafficante, Ragano said, confirmed that the Mafia had a hand in the drama of Nov. 22, 1963. The simple theory: Robert Kennedy's vigorous prosecution of racketeering had to be stopped and the best way to do that was by icing the man who appointed him to his job. Yes, there was plenty of bad feeling toward JFK himself, but Raab concludes, "Whether or not they had a part in it, the Mafia had triumphed as a big winner after the assassination."

One other reason to admire Raab's work: He does quite a bit of damage to the fictional image of the Mafia that is the result of Puzo's fiction and movies like "Good Fellas," "Casino" and the most current manifestation, "The Sopranos." Raab quotes organized crime boss Howard Abadinsky as saying, "They are displayed having a twisted sense of honor, 'taking no crap from anyone,' with easy access to women and money. Such displays romanticize organized crime and, as an unintended consequence, serve to perpetuate the phenomenon and create alluring myths about the Mafia."

That's something Raab could never be convicted of.

Reviewed by JOHN SMYNTEK

Friday, April 01, 2016

In Capone's Shadow: Former Teacher Writes Book on Frank Nitti

Book Review of "After Capone: The Life and World of Chicago Mob Boss Frank The Enforcer"" Nitti""" by Mars Eghigian reviewed by Wally Spiers

Even the title of Mars Eghigian Jr.'s new book reflects the fact that Frank Nitti has always been in the shadow of the flamboyant Al Capone.

"After Capone. The Life and World of Chicago Mob Boss Frank (the Enforcer) Nitti," (437 pages, 75 pages of notes, Cumberland House Publishing Inc.) tells the story of the quieter Nitti who ran the Chicago Mob for more than a decade after Capone built the organization from bootlegging liquor.

The book offers insight to gangland events of the time in Chicago and other connected cities -- not just what happened but also why it happened. It tells of the transformation of the mob from Prohibition busters to gambling and protection racketeering.

Nitti actually was named Francesco Raffele Nitto when he was born in Italy. He Anglicized it to Frank Nitto but even then his last name was constantly misspelled.

Eghigian, of Belleville, is a former horticulture teacher at Southwestern Illinois College and now is a financial planner.

Why, then, a book on a Chicago crime boss? Eghigian said his grandfather came to the metro-east about the time of World War I and established a dry cleaning business on 13th Street in East St. Louis. "When I was a kid I would hear stories at dinner," he said. "My family knew of the local mobsters and protection rackets, like the Master Cleaners and Dyers Association.

"They told stories like the exploding suits."

Exploding suits?

Apparently, to make their points about the need for protection, mobsters would have agents drop off suits or coats in which flammable material had been sewn in the lining. When the heat of the presses hit the material, it would explode, scaring the wits out of everyone.

Eghigian said he found that there really was not much published information on Nitti. "Nobody wrote abut him, at least not accurately," he said.

Eghigian asked a friend who also was an author, former FBI agent Bill Roemer, about the gangster. "He said, 'Nitti was just one of those guys who fell through the cracks. Why don't you write a book?'" Eghigian said. Then Roemer provided Eghigian with a lot of leads.

Eghigian said he has really worked on the book since 1991. Instead of vacations at the beach, he would be in libraries and microfilm files, digging out information.

He found that Nitti ran Chicago after the imprisonment of Capone, even during Nitti's own 18-month prison sentence. In fact, Nitti was in charge for much longer than Capone, until Nitti committed suicide in 1943.

"My goal was to put out a professional project, to do the work. I thought I had time. Nobody had touched Nitti for more than 40 years. Luckily I was right," Eghigian said.

Eghigian is working on other projects now in relation to crime and gangs. He said it is nice to see the results of all his work. "It was a fun project," he said. "It's really fun to see it finished."

Thanks to Wally Spiers

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

My Kiddo, Joe Batters

Tony Accardo, is, without a doubt, the most successful, the most powerful, most respected and the longest lived Boss the Chicago syndicate, or probably any criminal syndicate for that matter, has ever had. During his long tenure, Accardo's power was long reaching and frightfully vast.

He was so respected and feared in the national Mafia that in 1948 when he declared himself as the arbitrator for any mob problems west of Chicago, in effect proclaiming all of that territory as his, no one in the syndicate argued.

He was the boss pure and simple. Unlike Johnny Torrio, Frank Nitti or Paul Ricca, Tony Accardo looked exactly like what he was, a mob thug who could and did dispatch men and women to their death over money or the slightest insult. He was a peasant, even he said that. But he was a reserved man and a thinker, unlike Big Jim Colosimo or Al Capone or Sam Giancana and all those who came after Giancana.

Unlike the other bosses, Accardo knew his limitations. He consulted often with Ricca, Murray Humpreys and Short Pants Campagna because he recognized their intelligence and wisdom and he used it.

He admitted to not having the outward intelligence of Ricca or Nitti or Torrio or even the flare and occasional self-depicting wit of Capone or Giancana. Yet it was Accardo who expanded the outfit's activities into new rackets. It was Accardo who, recognizing the dangers of the white slave trade, streamlined the old prostitution racket during the war years into the new call girl service, which was copied by New York families even though they laughed at the idea at first.

Two decades after prohibition was repealed Accardo introduced bootlegging to the dry states of Kansas and Oklahoma, flooding them with illegal whiskey. He moved the outfit into slot and vending machines, counterfeiting cigarette and liquor tax stamps and expanded narcotics smuggling to a worldwide basis. He had the good sense to invest, with Eddie Vogel as his agent, into manufacturing slot machines and then placed them everywhere, gas stations, restaurants and bars. When Las Vegas exploded, Accardo made sure the casinos used his slots and only his slots.

Watching someone as clever as Paul Ricca and as smart as Frank Nitti go to jail over the Bioff scandal, Accardo pulled the organization away from labor racketeering and extortion. Under Accardo's reign the Chicago mob exploded in growth and grew wealthy as a result.

The outfit grew because, outside of the Kefauver committee, there wasn't a focused attempt on the part of any law enforcement agency to bust up the Chicago syndicate. The FBI was busy catching cold war spies and they didn't acknowledge that the Mafia or even organized crime existed anyway.

Under Accardo's leadership, the gang set its flag in Des Moines Iowa, down state Illinois and, Southern California and deep into Kentucky, Las Vegas, Indiana, Arizona, St. Louis Missouri, Mexico, Central and South America. Accardo's long reign highlighted a golden era for Chicago's syndicate. But it also ushered in the near collapse of the outfit as well. In 1947, as Tony Accardo took the reins of power from Paul Ricca, the outfit produced $3,000,000 in criminal business per year with Accardo, Humpreys, Ricca and Giancana taking in an estimated $40 to $50 million each per year.

Accardo pensioned off the older members of the mob and gave more authority to the younger members of the mob, mostly former 42 gang members like Sam Giancana, the Battaglias and Marshal Caifano.

The money poured in, in hundreds of thousands of dollars every day from all points where Chicago ruled. The hoods who had survived the shoot-outs, gang wars, intergang wars, purges, cop shootings, the national exposés and the federal and state investigations now saw what they had hustled so hard for.

They had more money then they knew what to do with. Like any set of super rich men they hired the best crooked investors money could buy, not the Jake Guzak-Meyer Lansky types either, real investment experts with law and accounting degrees from Harvard and Yale who taught them all sorts of legal tax loopholes to get their cash out of the rackets and into legitimate businesses.

By the time he died in 1992, Tony Accardo, the son of illegal immigrant parents from an Italian ghetto in a Chicago slum, had legal investments in transportation as diverse as commercial office buildings, strip centers, lumber farms, paper factories, hotels and car dealerships, trucking, newspapers, hotels, restaurants and travel agencies.

He dictated to his men that "when things are in order at home, it's easier to concentrate on business" so although he allowed them their mistresses and girlfriends, it was his rule that his men spend times with their wives and children. Accardo himself was said never to have cheated on his wife of many years, Clarice.

He declared that no one in the organization could ever threaten or harm a cop or member of the media, no matter how annoying they were. In so long as they were honest and doing their job, they were to be left alone. Yet when an honest Chicago beat cop named Jack Muller ticketed Accardo car for double parking outside the Tradewinds, a mob salon on Rush Street, Accardo made sure that officer Muller was made an example of by his superiors. From that day on, it became commonplace to see hoods park their cars whereever they pleased along Rush street and other places.

Like his mentor Paul Ricca, it was Accardo's firm belief that in order to avoid the tax men, that the outfit should conduct itself as meekly as possible to avoid public attention. Accardo decided that he would keep the lowest profile a mob boss could have and he directed his underbosses to follow the same route. They did, except for Sam Giancana.

Like Ricca, Accardo preached moderation, low profile and patience in all things but unlike Ricca, Accardo seldom practiced what he preached. His estate in exclusive River Forrest, outside of Chicago was extravagant. Far more extravagant then he would allow for any of his men.

Accardo bought the place in 1943 when he started to roll in wartime profits. It had twenty-one rooms, a built in pool...in the house...a black onyx bathtub that cost $10,000 to install in the fifties, and a bowling alley.

The baths were fitted with gold inlaid fixtures, the basement had a large gun and trophy room that sometimes doubled as a mob meeting hall. It had vaulted ceilings, polished wood spiral staircase, a library full of hundreds of volumes of books, pipe organ and a second bowling alley. In the rear of the house stood a guest house.

His backyard barbecue pit, a status symbol in gangdom, was the largest in the outfit only because nobody was stupid enough to build a larger one than the bosses. The half-acre lawn was surrounded by a seven foot high fence and two electrically controlled gates. "It was," wrote Sam Giancana's daughter Annette, "almost obscene the way he flaunted his wealth."

His penchant for showing the world his wealth was in contradiction to his self-effacing ways. In fact, Tony Accardo lacked any real personal flamboyance at all.

A powerfully built man, Accardo was taken with loud clothes, expensive white on white dress shirts, and conservative suits that cost $250, four and half times the average amount for the price of a good wool suit in 1959.

An ardent fisherman, he often spent long weekends fishing the waters off Florida or Bimini or Mexico, most of the time taking Sam Giancana along as his bodyguard.

Over time, he made real efforts to improve himself. He traveled with his wife, or Frank Nitti's son or sometimes alone to tour the great museums and churches of Europe. When Clarice joined a group of educators and traveled around the world to study the living customs of other societies, Accardo sometimes joined her.

Otherwise, Accardo's attempts at respectability were often bumbling. Once, friends managed to have him brought into a private and very exclusive golf club. Everything was fine until Accardo called his thugs to a general meeting on the links. The boys brought no clubs and instead sped across the course in golf carts, ramming into each other and had a picnic on the sixth fairway. The membership was appalled and requested that Accardo resign, which humiliated him no end.

Accardo was a compulsive gambler and was one of his own best customers at his club in Calumet city; the Owl Club. Even towards the end of his life, when he wasn't able to get around as freely, Accardo phoned in his bets. He once said that if he died at the crap tables, he would die a happy man.

He enjoyed his role as the big boss, he liked having his men gossip about him, having them bow and fall all over themselves trying to keep him happy. Accardo made no secret of the fact that he looked down on them and made sure they understood that they were subordinate to him. However he was careful not to act superior around Paul Ricca, the man who had trained him for his position.

Unlike any that came before him or after him, Tony Accardo was totally in charge of his organization, from top to bottom, in large measure due to the fact that Accardo was a feared man and he ruled by fear, and he delighted in his reputation for brutality. But his ruthlessness was probably unneeded, since he was seldom challenged in his position, in large part, because Chicago is ruled by one family, unlike New York, which is ruled by five families. As a result, the control of the organization was easier.

He could be extremely moody and sullen and took offense easily and seldom overlooked even the most delicate of slights against his powerful, and he was powerful, position. "Tony," said one of his acqaintances, "could have the disposition of a rattlesnake, it depended on his mood."

When he snapped, the most accurate way to describe his temper tantrums, the stone cold facade of a businessman, and the thin veneer of respectability dropped away and the world got a peek at the real Tony Accardo.

He could be charming when he had to be, in so long as it wasn't for long periods of time, but otherwise he was surly, rude, crude, and foul-mouthed. "Basically," an FBI report read, "Accardo is a rather simple and often crude and surprisingly cheap individual."

Once, when a teenage waiter was too slow to serve him his hamburger in a restaurant, Accardo sat and fumed. When the teenager arrived with the hamburger, Accardo grabbed a knife off the table and slashed the child's arm open.

On another occasion, Accardo ordered the death of a lawyer for the Chicago Restaurant Association to be killed when the two had an argument over disclosing to the IRS Accardo's $125,000 retainer.

Only the pleading of the always level headed Murray Humpreys saved the lawyer from Accardo's gunners.

Accardo was born to Francisco and Maria Accardo, Sicilian immigrants, on April 28, 1906. He was baptized at the infamous Holy Name Cathedral, seven blocks away from his home on 1353 West Grand Avenue, near Ogden, on the West side.

However, there is some evidence that he may have been born in Italy, in or near Palermo, Sicily. His mother would later file a delayed birth affidavit with the federal government stating that Tony was born in 1904 in Chicago, a full year before she arrived in the United States.

One of six children, Accardo dropped out of the Holy Name Cathedral School in the fifth, or possibly the sixth grade, and took to petty street crime, working mostly in the loop.

While still only a child, he came to the attention of Vincenzo de Mora, AKA Machine Gun Jack McGurn, who was then the leader of the Circus gang, which was run out of the Circus Café at 1857 North Avenue. Both operations, the gang and the café, were owned by Claude Maddox. Maddox would later play a pivotal role in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

Among the tens of thousands of young and impressionable poor Italian boys who survived in the teaming slums of Chicago, Jack McGurn had an almost godlike stature, so, when McGurn chose Accardo to act as his Gofer, it was an honor.

On March 22, 1922, a young Tony Accardo was arrested for the first time, just six weeks before he turned sixteen, for a motor violation. Several months later, in 1923, Accardo was arrested for disorderly conduct inside a pool hall. He was fined $200 plus court costs. According to court records, Accardo said that he was still living with his parents, which is doubtful, and that he was employed as a delivery boy for a grocery store in Little Italy and later as a truck driver which apparently was true.

Most professional crooks kept a full time job, if in name only, to appease any judge that they might stand before. At that point in his very long criminal career, Accardo was restricted to muggings and pickpocketing inside the loop during the day and stalking on drunks and old people at night.

Like so many other Chicago mobsters who came up through the ranks, Accardo drove a Capone beer truck part time. He graduated to look-out status and then burglaries in the west side.

In 1923, when McGurn left the circus gang to join the Capone operation, Accardo was 17 years old and already an experienced and reliable full time criminal and a big time member of the Circus gang.

By 1925, Tony Accardo had been promoted from daylight muggings to driving for Jack McGurn around town. It signaled to everyone that Accardo was on the way up.

In the summer of 1926, when Al Capone was locked in yet another beer war, he told McGurn the operation needed new gunmen and to "go out and find somebody." The somebody that McGurn got was Tony Accardo who now had a first rate reputation as an enforcer due to a bloody incident that had happened at the start of the year.

In January of 1926 that year the Circus gang, almost exclusively Italian in its makeup, was having a problem with an equally tough Irish street gang called the Hanlon Hellcats, which made its headquarters at the Shamrock Inn. The Hellcats were creeping in on the Circus gang's territory and Accardo was dispatched to take care of the problem any way he saw fit.

At midnight on January 20, Accardo and at least three others blasted the hellcats to kingdom come with shotguns as they left the Shamrock. A police squad from the Austin district was nearby and gave chase but Accardo was shrewd enough to know the law, he ordered the guns to be tossed away just a few minutes before the cops collared him. They were released on bail and eventually the case was dropped, due to lack of evidence.

Now McGurn rushed Accardo over to Capone's office at the Lexington Hotel. Capone, still in his fire-engine-red pajamas at five in the afternoon looked Accardo over and said, "McGurn likes you, so I make you. So you are now one of us, if you fuck up, we take it out on McGurn. He is your sponsor. Fuck up, it's his ass. You work in his crew, he is your capo."

Accardo was assigned to be a hall guard for Capone, spending most of his time in the Lobby at the Lexington, a shotgun on his lap covered by a newspaper.

Capone took a liking to Accardo. Once, the story goes, after Accardo beat a Capone enemy senseless with a baseball bat, Capone saw him in the lobby of the Lexington and yelled, "There's my kiddo, Joe Batters!"

Joe Batters. The name stuck and Accardo loved it. Even years later when he was running the mob, Accardo, who insisted on being called "Mr. Accardo" by his people and their families, allowed a select few to always refer to him as Joe Batters.

Accardo was eventually assigned, with his partner Tough Tony Capezio, whom Accardo had brought into the organization, to kill Hymie Weiss of the Moran gang. Accardo knew Weiss from his childhood. They had attended the same schools and were both regular parishioners of the Holy Name Cathedral and that was where, on October 11, 1926, Accardo and Capezio killed Weiss as he entered his headquarters at 740 North State street near the Holy Name Cathedral.

Right after that Capone decided that it was time for Mike the Pike Hietler, a pimp from the old days of the Levy, to go too, after Capone learned that Hietler had been talking to the authorities.

On April 29th 1931, Heitler was found in the town of Barrington, his car still on fire and the only way they identified Mike the Pike was by his dental remains. He had been strangled and shot before he was set afire. Tony Accardo on has long been considered one of Mike the Pike's killers.

Accardo is also strongly suspected of having been the trigger man behind the Jake Zuta murder as well. It was Accardo who killed gangster Teddy Newberry after Newberry made an attempt to corner organized crime in Chicago.

Accardo may also have been assigned to the St. Valentines Day hit squad. Authorities believe that Accardo was the killer dressed as a Chicago policeman and armed with a double-barreled shotgun.

It was Accardo who set up and supervised the hit on union hustler Tommy Maloy. When Frankie Yale, Al Capone's old boss from back in his days as a Brooklyn thug, tried to take over the powerful Sicilian Union, it was again Accardo who was called in for his firepower.

By early 1940, Accardo was a power in Chicago and in the national Mafia.

Tony Accardo managed to have a 1944 arrest for gambling withdrawn, when he told the court that he intended to join the army. Accardo's lawyer, the legendary mob mouthpiece, George Bieber, told the court: "This young man is eager to get into the fight, don't deny him that right."

The judge released Accardo on the agreement that Accardo would report to his draft board, which he did. But, by then, Accardo was running the Chicago outfit since Paul Ricca was in jail. He already had a 21-room mansion, and an estimated income of $2,000,000 a year, and he wasn't about to give it up for the $21 a week paid to an army private.

Two days later Accardo appeared before the draft board, explained his background in crime, his position in the organization and was summarily rejected by the Army as morally unfit.

The gambling charges were dropped because Accardo had done as he was ordered by the court. In 1945, after he was instrumental in the release of his boss, Paul Ricca, from federal charges for his role in the Willie Bioff scandal, Ricca resigned as the outfit's leader, and promoted Accardo to the top spot.

Accardo held the position, off and on, for the next forty years but in 1958, Big Tony called the boys together at the Tam O'Shanter restaurant and introduced Sam Giancana as the new boss with the simple sentence: "This is Sam, he's a friend of ours."

Thanks to John William Touhy

Monday, December 07, 2015

The Untouchables in Blu-Ray

They don't make movies like The Untouchables, any more. Brian De Palma's gripping tale of a Chicago police team trying to take on Al Capone is one of the best crime movies ever made. With stellar writing, superb directing, and an all-star cast, The Untouchables feels both modern and timeless.

Kevin Costner stars as Elliott Ness, a Treasury Department agent tasked with cutting down on alcohol bootlegging (this was during Prohibition, mind you). And Robert De Niro is Al Capone, the man behind the illegal alcohol trade, as well as many other things besides. Ness tries and fails to rally local law enforcement to his cause. It's only when he teams with veteran cop Malone (Sean Connery, in an Oscar-winning role) and forms a small squad of his own, dubbed "the Untouchables" because they are the only people in the city who cannot be bribed by the mob.

The Untouchables is fantastic on many different levels. It all starts with the script, written by famous playwright David Mamet. Mamet is known for his fast-paced, overlapping dialogue and his sharp, memorable lines. Here he eases up on the rat-a-tat rhythm of the dialogue, instead allowing each character to showcase a set of very memorable lines.

Brian De Palma adds another level. De Palma's career jumps from confident and assured (Sisters, Carrie, Mission: Impossible) to downright embarrassing (Snake Eyes, Mission To Mars), but here he knocks the ball right out of the park. He lets the material speak for itself, and then adds a cinematic touch to make the whole piece move. And, of course, he's responsible for the famous Battleship Potemkin homage during the climax that still provides edge of your seat tension to this day.

The cast bring it all to life. Kevin Costner is eager and sincere in this role, playing Ness with his heart on his sleeve. It's a reminder of how good of an actor he used to be. Sean Connery is an incredible presence, world-weary but not without hope. It's one of his most nuanced and brilliant performances. Andy Garcia and Patricia Clarkson are memorable, but don't get enough screen time to really show how talented they are. And then, of course, there's De Niro, playing Capone to the hilt, making himself felt throughout, even when he's not on the screen.

And the final piece of the puzzle is the haunting score by Ennio Morriconne. Morricone, most famous for penning the scores for A Fistful Of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, is one of the world's most versatile composers and provides a tense, lingering soundtrack that perfectly complements the image on the screen.

The Blu-ray Disc:

The Image: Paramount Pictures presents The Untouchables in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 in an AVC/MPEG-4 encoded 1080p transfer. I was quite literally shocked to see how good this movie looked in high definition. The film came out in 1988, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone told me it had come out in 2007. The colors are rich, bright, and solid. Shadow delineation is excellent. Detail level is off the charts. This is not only the best The Untouchables has ever looked, but it also better-looking than a good majority of HD discs of movies from any time period. The image quality alone demands that this Blu-ray be purchased and enjoyed over and over.

The Audio: Nothing's perfect, and in the case of The Untouchables, it's the Dolby Digital-EX 5.1 and DTS 6.1 mixes. Morricone's score sounds great in the high end, but the bass is lacking. Gunshots are often muted and lacking power, and for a surround mix, there's not much directionality. This is the one aspect of the disc that could use a serious overhaul.

The Supplements: Paramount has ported over all of the special features found on the latest special edition DVD. All but the theatrical trailer are in high definition.

The Script, The Cast: Brian De Palma discusses the origin of the film, mentioning that he took the job to get in good with a studio so he could finance his preferred projects. There was a lot of talk of moving away from the television series and making the movie its own beast. There are also some vintage interviews with the cast.

Production Stories: A look at the film's sets, vehicles, costumes, and designs.

Reinventing The Genre: A discussion of how Brian De Palma's cinematic techniques shaped the film.

The Classic: A wrap-up look at the post-production process and release. Morriconne's score, the film's release, success, and legacy are all highlighted here.

The Men: A short vintage featurette.

Theatrical Trailer: In HD, but not very good-looking.

The Conclusion: The Untouchables is an undeniable classic, and this Blu-ray disc does it justice with reference picture. The sound and extras aren't as good, but still far from bad. This is a must-see movie on a must-own disc. Highly Recommended.

Thanks to Daniel Hirshleifer

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