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Two decades after prohibition was repealed Accardo introduced bootlegging to the dry states of Kansas and Oklahoma, flooding them with illegal whiskey.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
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Showing posts with label Murray Humpreys. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Murray Humpreys. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Will Chicago's Mob History and Clout Mentality Follow Obama to the White House?
The city of Chicago is one of the few major metropolitan areas that runs away from its past at every opportunity. Yet, indeed, the very construction of the city led to the term “underworld.” And with rampant corruption controlled by infamous individuals like “Big Jim” Colosimo, Al Capone, Paul “The Waiter” Ricca, Murray “The Camel” Humphrey and Tony “Joe Batters” Accardo, Chicago can hardly bury its past — no pun intended.
Since the turn of the 20th century, what Carl Sandburg referred to as the “City of Big Shoulders” was perhaps the center of organized crime in the United States. Though New York had its Syndicate and Detroit had the Purple Gang, many believe true power in America’s underworld was concentrated in something called the Outfit.
With the election of Barack Obama will come a great deal of history-laden baggage, which will make the movie “The Godfather” seem like a Walt Disney cartoon.
From David Axelrod, who was nurtured on the Daley Machine, to the political organizing, which Barack Obama so proudly claims a lineage, Chicago’s brand of one Party politics may be a model for the Obama administration in Washington, D.C.
It is no mistake the president-elect joined Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s South Side Chicago church. Obama wanted to learn the ropes of power politics and how it was played in the Windy City. There were no better teachers than Mayor Daley and his cadre of obliging aldermen who responded to the cracking of the political whip. A failure to do so would quickly leave them on the outside looking in — without protection from the media, the law and any other threat which loomed on the horizon.
The question is not whether Obama will use the lessons he learned in Chicago as president. The question is: How much of that lesson will become the modus operandi for the Obama adminstration? Some say it might become Chicago on the Potomac, when referring to the political mechanism Obama may surround himself with. If so, it will be our nation’s darkest nightmare come true. And combined with the Clinton-brand of Arkansas politics, there may truly be a new day in our nation’s Capitol.
But how did the Daley Machine take root in Chicago? A book titled, The Outfit: The Role of Chicago’s Underworld in the Shaping of Modern Americawritten by Gus Russo and published in 2001 gave Americans a frigthening glimpse into the Daley Machine and how it got its start.
After Capone left power, due to his conviction on tax evasion charges in the early 1930s, it was Ricca, Humphrey and Accardo who truly called the shots in what many refer to as the Mafia. Even “Lucky” Luciano and Meyer Lansky, originators of organized crime in New York, would not make a move without consulting the Chicago Triumvirate whose innovation and power criminologists say was matched by none.
Since the hay-days of mob activity in Chicago, the city has done everything possible to shed its dark past. But its reputation lives on — despite the efforts of the current mayor, Richard M. Daley. In the early century, individuals like “Big Jim” Colismo controlled gambling and prostitution in the city. With the advent of Prohibition, organized crime found its true calling through the sale of bootleg alcohol, combined with the pandering trade. Added profits were topped off by a very lucrative illegal gambling racket.
After Capone’s departure, the mob moved into the numbers game — which had made millions for underworld entrepreneurs in the African-American community. Union corruption — which was master-minded by Murray “The Camel” Humphrey — brought great fortune to the Outfit as well. Eventually, the mob moved into the illicit drug trade. Until the early 1960s, the Chicago Outfit was ruled with an iron hand by Ricca, Humphrey and Accardo.
Though in later years, more flamboyant underworld figures, such as Sam “Mooney” Giancano and lesser players, including Joseph “Joey Doves” Aiuppa, and the Spilotro Brothers of the movie “Casino” fame, controlled organized crime in Chicago, the FBI virtually wiped out mob activity in the city — although remnants of the Outfit still exist today.
Chop shops and vending machines (poker, cigarettes, etc.) are still reported to be controlled by criminal entities. But the glory days of the Chicago Outfit are said to be long gone. Yet, the public doesn’t have to look far to find reminders of those wild times gone by.
Indeed, Chicago’s current mayor may not hold that office if not for the influence the Outfit had when it came to the election of his father, Richard J. Daley. Perhaps the Daley link with organized crime is one of the reasons why the city does all it can to obscure Chicago’s dark and corrupt history. You will not find city-sponsored tours of famous gangland hang-outs. Even historical landmarks, like the site of the St. Valentine’s Day massacre at 2122 N. Clark St., though an empty lot, are nagging reminders of a bygone era which City Fathers would rather forget.
The Outfit played a significant role in Richard J. Daley’s coming to power. Hizzoner "The Boss" was the protégé of 11th Ward Committeeman, Hugh “Babe” Connelly whose ties to the mob go way back to the days of the “Moustache Pete’s” who included prominent underworld figures like Johnny Torrio who first brought Capone to Chicago. Daley took over Connelly’s 11th Ward seat in 1947. In league with people like 11th Ward Ald. “Big Joe” McDonough, by 1955 the Mob was grooming Daley to be Mayor and, with the help of the Outfit, his election became a reality.
For example, in the very mobbed-up 1st Ward, Daley won a plurality of votes by a staggering margin of 13,275 to 1,961. After his election, Daley moved to solidify the Outfit’s power in the city. In 1956, Daley disbanded “Scotland Yard” an intelligence unit which had compiled reams of detailed records about Chicago crime figures. All this was to the grief of the Chicago Crime Commission who believed Daley’s election had set the city back a decade -- as far as the prosecution of organized crime.
Perhaps Richard M. Daley received much of his education from his father whose political coffers were stuffed with mob cash, according to the FBI. And perhaps the free rein given to organized crime by the Father implanted ideas in the mind of the son regarding possible revenue expansion through alternative sources. It’s possible today’s Chicago mayor learned a very important lesson from Tony “Joe Batters” Accardo, who secretly financed the Rivera Hotel in Las Vegas in 1955, the same year Richard J. Daley was elected mayor. For nearly a quarter of a century afterward, the Chicago mob skimmed literally hundreds of millions of dollars out of Las Vegas casinos while operating with near impunity in Chicago, their home base.
Richie Daley had to see the unlimited amounts of cash that could be directed into city coffers through the expansion of gambling in Chicago. And though most of what used to be underworld crime has been incorporated into white collar America, gambling becomes even more seductive, no matter what memories of Chicago’s past may be dredged up in the process.
Forensic Psychology programs can give you a great insight into the minds of the mob and also lead to a great career.
Thanks to Daniel T. Zanoza
Since the turn of the 20th century, what Carl Sandburg referred to as the “City of Big Shoulders” was perhaps the center of organized crime in the United States. Though New York had its Syndicate and Detroit had the Purple Gang, many believe true power in America’s underworld was concentrated in something called the Outfit.
With the election of Barack Obama will come a great deal of history-laden baggage, which will make the movie “The Godfather” seem like a Walt Disney cartoon.
From David Axelrod, who was nurtured on the Daley Machine, to the political organizing, which Barack Obama so proudly claims a lineage, Chicago’s brand of one Party politics may be a model for the Obama administration in Washington, D.C.
It is no mistake the president-elect joined Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s South Side Chicago church. Obama wanted to learn the ropes of power politics and how it was played in the Windy City. There were no better teachers than Mayor Daley and his cadre of obliging aldermen who responded to the cracking of the political whip. A failure to do so would quickly leave them on the outside looking in — without protection from the media, the law and any other threat which loomed on the horizon.
The question is not whether Obama will use the lessons he learned in Chicago as president. The question is: How much of that lesson will become the modus operandi for the Obama adminstration? Some say it might become Chicago on the Potomac, when referring to the political mechanism Obama may surround himself with. If so, it will be our nation’s darkest nightmare come true. And combined with the Clinton-brand of Arkansas politics, there may truly be a new day in our nation’s Capitol.
But how did the Daley Machine take root in Chicago? A book titled, The Outfit: The Role of Chicago’s Underworld in the Shaping of Modern Americawritten by Gus Russo and published in 2001 gave Americans a frigthening glimpse into the Daley Machine and how it got its start.
After Capone left power, due to his conviction on tax evasion charges in the early 1930s, it was Ricca, Humphrey and Accardo who truly called the shots in what many refer to as the Mafia. Even “Lucky” Luciano and Meyer Lansky, originators of organized crime in New York, would not make a move without consulting the Chicago Triumvirate whose innovation and power criminologists say was matched by none.
Since the hay-days of mob activity in Chicago, the city has done everything possible to shed its dark past. But its reputation lives on — despite the efforts of the current mayor, Richard M. Daley. In the early century, individuals like “Big Jim” Colismo controlled gambling and prostitution in the city. With the advent of Prohibition, organized crime found its true calling through the sale of bootleg alcohol, combined with the pandering trade. Added profits were topped off by a very lucrative illegal gambling racket.
After Capone’s departure, the mob moved into the numbers game — which had made millions for underworld entrepreneurs in the African-American community. Union corruption — which was master-minded by Murray “The Camel” Humphrey — brought great fortune to the Outfit as well. Eventually, the mob moved into the illicit drug trade. Until the early 1960s, the Chicago Outfit was ruled with an iron hand by Ricca, Humphrey and Accardo.
Though in later years, more flamboyant underworld figures, such as Sam “Mooney” Giancano and lesser players, including Joseph “Joey Doves” Aiuppa, and the Spilotro Brothers of the movie “Casino” fame, controlled organized crime in Chicago, the FBI virtually wiped out mob activity in the city — although remnants of the Outfit still exist today.
Chop shops and vending machines (poker, cigarettes, etc.) are still reported to be controlled by criminal entities. But the glory days of the Chicago Outfit are said to be long gone. Yet, the public doesn’t have to look far to find reminders of those wild times gone by.
Indeed, Chicago’s current mayor may not hold that office if not for the influence the Outfit had when it came to the election of his father, Richard J. Daley. Perhaps the Daley link with organized crime is one of the reasons why the city does all it can to obscure Chicago’s dark and corrupt history. You will not find city-sponsored tours of famous gangland hang-outs. Even historical landmarks, like the site of the St. Valentine’s Day massacre at 2122 N. Clark St., though an empty lot, are nagging reminders of a bygone era which City Fathers would rather forget.
The Outfit played a significant role in Richard J. Daley’s coming to power. Hizzoner "The Boss" was the protégé of 11th Ward Committeeman, Hugh “Babe” Connelly whose ties to the mob go way back to the days of the “Moustache Pete’s” who included prominent underworld figures like Johnny Torrio who first brought Capone to Chicago. Daley took over Connelly’s 11th Ward seat in 1947. In league with people like 11th Ward Ald. “Big Joe” McDonough, by 1955 the Mob was grooming Daley to be Mayor and, with the help of the Outfit, his election became a reality.
For example, in the very mobbed-up 1st Ward, Daley won a plurality of votes by a staggering margin of 13,275 to 1,961. After his election, Daley moved to solidify the Outfit’s power in the city. In 1956, Daley disbanded “Scotland Yard” an intelligence unit which had compiled reams of detailed records about Chicago crime figures. All this was to the grief of the Chicago Crime Commission who believed Daley’s election had set the city back a decade -- as far as the prosecution of organized crime.
Perhaps Richard M. Daley received much of his education from his father whose political coffers were stuffed with mob cash, according to the FBI. And perhaps the free rein given to organized crime by the Father implanted ideas in the mind of the son regarding possible revenue expansion through alternative sources. It’s possible today’s Chicago mayor learned a very important lesson from Tony “Joe Batters” Accardo, who secretly financed the Rivera Hotel in Las Vegas in 1955, the same year Richard J. Daley was elected mayor. For nearly a quarter of a century afterward, the Chicago mob skimmed literally hundreds of millions of dollars out of Las Vegas casinos while operating with near impunity in Chicago, their home base.
Richie Daley had to see the unlimited amounts of cash that could be directed into city coffers through the expansion of gambling in Chicago. And though most of what used to be underworld crime has been incorporated into white collar America, gambling becomes even more seductive, no matter what memories of Chicago’s past may be dredged up in the process.
Forensic Psychology programs can give you a great insight into the minds of the mob and also lead to a great career.
Thanks to Daniel T. Zanoza
Related Headlines
Al Capone,
Big Jim Colosimo,
Joey Aiuppa,
Johnny Torrio,
Lucky Luciano,
Meyer Lansky,
Michael Spilotro,
Murray Humpreys,
Paul Ricca,
Sam Giancana,
Tony Accardo,
Tony Spilotro
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Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Cop Stories About The Chicago Outfit
Jim Jack and I are watching the world's biggest mob trial from a back bench, where he can whisper to me while pointing to this thug and that one.
All these decaying Chicago Outfit guys, they look like uncles and grandpas now. But Jack knew a few of them when they just looked mean. They hide it better now.
Jack, 79, was a Chicago cop. He got on the force in 1955, made detective a year later, and worked the old Gale Street District on the Northwest Side -- last stop before the suburbs. He and his longtime partner, Frank Czech, knew all the hinky joints and liked to poke their heads in.
Jack points across the courtroom to a balding fellow slumped in a chair. That's Frank Calabrese Sr., alleged hit man in love with his work.
Jack tells me about the first time he met Calabrese. It was 1958 and he and Czech were cruising around, looking for a suspect in a shooting. They stopped at a mob-connected joint called The Nest, in the 3800 block of North Central.
"It was like 2 o'clockish in the morning, a swinging place, Tony Smith playing on stage," Jack says. "And me and my partner walk in and it was jammed. I was lucky I had my feet on the floor. I take two steps to the bar and there's a space between two guys. I'm bothering nobody, just sticking my head in there to look down at the end of the bar."
One of the two guys swiveled on his stool, as Jack recalls, and offered a traditional Chicago greeting: "What the f--- you lookin' at?" Jack replied, "Nothing much."
"Evidently he took offense to that, because first thing I know he whacked me right in the mouth," Jack tells me now. "Later on, when he's under arrest, he says he's sorry -- he didn't know we were cops. Like if I were a regular patron, it's OK to do a tattoo on my face."
I look across the courtroom again at Calabrese. He still looks like somebody's uncle. But I wonder if he's wondering what the f--- I'm looking at.
James A. Jack has been attending the Family Secrets mob trial at the Dirksen Federal Building since it began June 21. He's thinking of writing a book about his cop days, and the trial fits in.
Jack already has written one award-winning book, Three Boys Missing: The Tragedy That Exposed the Pedophilia Underworld, just published by HPH Publishing. The book is Jack's account of his dogged police work in the days immediately after one of Chicago's most notorious crimes, the 1955 Peterson-Schuessler triple murders.
Jack didn't solve that crime. Decades would pass, in fact, before an aging pedophile would be convicted of the murders and tossed in prison. But in the course of working on the case, Jack and his partner rooted out two or three other sex offenders, and they discovered something that was almost like a secret in the more innocent 1950s -- pedophilia is frightfully common.
That's what happens when you're a cop: You learn the world is a darker place than most people know.
I ask Jack for another story, another tale from those jolly formative years. He tells me about his first partner as a detective, a cop who dressed in Gucci on a Florsheim salary.
"Phil Tolomeo -- the Outfit put him in there," Jack tells me. "The first month I was working with him, I didn't even know. I was new and just married.
"We're working midnights and he's driving, and he stops at a place on Harlem called Meo's," Jack continues. "He says, 'Wait here, I'll be right back,' and he goes in and it's like 45 minutes, then an hour. He comes out and I say, 'Jesus, where the hell you been?' He says, 'Oh, I just went to see a few guys.'"
Jack didn't like Tolomeo's Gucci shoes. He didn't like that Meo was the last three letters in Tolomeo. He didn't like what he had heard when he started asking around -- that Meo's was a favorite mob hangout.
"They're all in there, every day and every night -- Tony Accardo, Aiuppa, Cerone, Murray the Camel," Jack says. "I'm not Charlie Chan, but I'm beginning to figure it out."
The last straw came the third or fourth night Tolomeo left Jack waiting outside Meo's. All of a sudden, as Jack sat there in the dark, flashbulbs began popping in the weeds from a vacant lot across the street. Somebody was taking pictures.
Back at the police station, Jack finally had a talk with Sgt. George Murphy, the supervisor of detectives. "Sarg, what's going on?" he said. "I'm gonna get myself fired."
Murphy nodded and clued Jack in. Yeah, he said, that was probably the FBI taking surveillance pictures from the weeds. And he already knew all about Tolomeo.
"Somebody had to be his partner, Jim," Murphy said, "and you're new and we didn't think you'd get in trouble with him."
"Get me off," Jack said.
The next month, Jack had a new partner, Frank Czech. And 35 years after that, long after leaving the police force, Phil "Philly Beans" Tolomeo -- who was, indeed, related to the owner of Meo's -- entered the federal witness protection program. He explained to the FBI exactly how Frank Calabrese's extortion racket worked.
Jack wasn't a Chicago cop for long. He left the police force in 1968 and became head of national security for Toys R Us. He had a family to support, and he was tired of moonlighting to make ends meet. One good-paying job made more sense than two or three poor paying jobs. Not bad for an ex-boxer from the West Side who grew up in an orphanage. But before turning in his badge, Jack gathered enough great cop stories for a lifetime.
Like the story about getting into a huge bar fight with Tony Spilotro, the vicious mob boss of Las Vegas who wound up dead in an Indiana cornfield.
Jack's story about Spilotro is a long one, starting in 1961 and ending in 1963. It's also a good one, involving a nightclub singer, a pretty girl and a grudge that wouldn't go away. But in the space I've got left here, I could never do it justice.
"You really should write that book," I tell Jack, whispering to him at the Family Secrets trial.
Up on the witness stand, a forensic pathologist is describing how Tony Spilotro and his brother Michael were beaten to death with nothing but fists, knees and feet.
"I just might," Jack says. "It was something."
Thanks to Tom McNamee
All these decaying Chicago Outfit guys, they look like uncles and grandpas now. But Jack knew a few of them when they just looked mean. They hide it better now.
Jack, 79, was a Chicago cop. He got on the force in 1955, made detective a year later, and worked the old Gale Street District on the Northwest Side -- last stop before the suburbs. He and his longtime partner, Frank Czech, knew all the hinky joints and liked to poke their heads in.
Jack points across the courtroom to a balding fellow slumped in a chair. That's Frank Calabrese Sr., alleged hit man in love with his work.
Jack tells me about the first time he met Calabrese. It was 1958 and he and Czech were cruising around, looking for a suspect in a shooting. They stopped at a mob-connected joint called The Nest, in the 3800 block of North Central.
"It was like 2 o'clockish in the morning, a swinging place, Tony Smith playing on stage," Jack says. "And me and my partner walk in and it was jammed. I was lucky I had my feet on the floor. I take two steps to the bar and there's a space between two guys. I'm bothering nobody, just sticking my head in there to look down at the end of the bar."
One of the two guys swiveled on his stool, as Jack recalls, and offered a traditional Chicago greeting: "What the f--- you lookin' at?" Jack replied, "Nothing much."
"Evidently he took offense to that, because first thing I know he whacked me right in the mouth," Jack tells me now. "Later on, when he's under arrest, he says he's sorry -- he didn't know we were cops. Like if I were a regular patron, it's OK to do a tattoo on my face."
I look across the courtroom again at Calabrese. He still looks like somebody's uncle. But I wonder if he's wondering what the f--- I'm looking at.
James A. Jack has been attending the Family Secrets mob trial at the Dirksen Federal Building since it began June 21. He's thinking of writing a book about his cop days, and the trial fits in.
Jack already has written one award-winning book, Three Boys Missing: The Tragedy That Exposed the Pedophilia Underworld, just published by HPH Publishing. The book is Jack's account of his dogged police work in the days immediately after one of Chicago's most notorious crimes, the 1955 Peterson-Schuessler triple murders.
Jack didn't solve that crime. Decades would pass, in fact, before an aging pedophile would be convicted of the murders and tossed in prison. But in the course of working on the case, Jack and his partner rooted out two or three other sex offenders, and they discovered something that was almost like a secret in the more innocent 1950s -- pedophilia is frightfully common.
That's what happens when you're a cop: You learn the world is a darker place than most people know.
I ask Jack for another story, another tale from those jolly formative years. He tells me about his first partner as a detective, a cop who dressed in Gucci on a Florsheim salary.
"Phil Tolomeo -- the Outfit put him in there," Jack tells me. "The first month I was working with him, I didn't even know. I was new and just married.
"We're working midnights and he's driving, and he stops at a place on Harlem called Meo's," Jack continues. "He says, 'Wait here, I'll be right back,' and he goes in and it's like 45 minutes, then an hour. He comes out and I say, 'Jesus, where the hell you been?' He says, 'Oh, I just went to see a few guys.'"
Jack didn't like Tolomeo's Gucci shoes. He didn't like that Meo was the last three letters in Tolomeo. He didn't like what he had heard when he started asking around -- that Meo's was a favorite mob hangout.
"They're all in there, every day and every night -- Tony Accardo, Aiuppa, Cerone, Murray the Camel," Jack says. "I'm not Charlie Chan, but I'm beginning to figure it out."
The last straw came the third or fourth night Tolomeo left Jack waiting outside Meo's. All of a sudden, as Jack sat there in the dark, flashbulbs began popping in the weeds from a vacant lot across the street. Somebody was taking pictures.
Back at the police station, Jack finally had a talk with Sgt. George Murphy, the supervisor of detectives. "Sarg, what's going on?" he said. "I'm gonna get myself fired."
Murphy nodded and clued Jack in. Yeah, he said, that was probably the FBI taking surveillance pictures from the weeds. And he already knew all about Tolomeo.
"Somebody had to be his partner, Jim," Murphy said, "and you're new and we didn't think you'd get in trouble with him."
"Get me off," Jack said.
The next month, Jack had a new partner, Frank Czech. And 35 years after that, long after leaving the police force, Phil "Philly Beans" Tolomeo -- who was, indeed, related to the owner of Meo's -- entered the federal witness protection program. He explained to the FBI exactly how Frank Calabrese's extortion racket worked.
Jack wasn't a Chicago cop for long. He left the police force in 1968 and became head of national security for Toys R Us. He had a family to support, and he was tired of moonlighting to make ends meet. One good-paying job made more sense than two or three poor paying jobs. Not bad for an ex-boxer from the West Side who grew up in an orphanage. But before turning in his badge, Jack gathered enough great cop stories for a lifetime.
Like the story about getting into a huge bar fight with Tony Spilotro, the vicious mob boss of Las Vegas who wound up dead in an Indiana cornfield.
Jack's story about Spilotro is a long one, starting in 1961 and ending in 1963. It's also a good one, involving a nightclub singer, a pretty girl and a grudge that wouldn't go away. But in the space I've got left here, I could never do it justice.
"You really should write that book," I tell Jack, whispering to him at the Family Secrets trial.
Up on the witness stand, a forensic pathologist is describing how Tony Spilotro and his brother Michael were beaten to death with nothing but fists, knees and feet.
"I just might," Jack says. "It was something."
Thanks to Tom McNamee
Related Headlines
Family Secrets,
Jackie Cerone,
Joey Aiuppa,
Murray Humpreys,
Philip Tolomeo
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