Monday, September 03, 2007
Origin of the term "The Outfit"
Virtually every story about the Family Secrets trial now winding down in Federal Court refers to the local organized crime network as "The Outfit."
At some point recently the name started sounding odd to me -- how did a term normally associated with clothing come to refer to a vicious conglomerate of thugs and killers? Is it a media creation, or something mob guys use in referring to their enterprise?
I put the question to John J. Binder, a professor of finance at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of "The Chicago Outfit" (Arcadia Publishing, 2003). It was a topic he had researched, he said:
"`Outfit' shows up frequently in the literature of the old west to describe groups of men on a ranch or on a cattle drive," he said.
The idea being that, ideally, such a group works together in a coordinated way, much like a full outfit of clothing works together when one is well dressed, Binder said.
The word was used in a similar way in the military at least as early as World War I, Binder said: "Your squad, your unit, your outfit...same difference," he said. And the same idea: "Not a disorganized gaggle of people, but a coordinated outfit," Binder said.
Early bootleggers ran in what the media commonly referred to as "gangs," Binder said. But in Chicago after the end of prohibition, these gangs consolidated and began referring informally to their enterprise as "`our outfit,' lower case o," Binder said.
This evolved into "`The Outfit,' upper-case o," Binder said, and became as something of a code word. It was and remains a distinctly Chicago term for what elsewhere goes by "the mob," "the syndicate," "the arm" (in Buffalo) and various Italianate names.
Yet Binder said his research leads him to suspect that Outfit guys stopped saying "Outfit" in around the early 1960s when the media started using it so much it lost any value it might have had as a code word.
"I you ever hear someone claim to be `in the Outfit' or `close to the Outfit,' he's a wanna-be," Binder said.
Try that on for size.
Thanks to Eric Zorn
At some point recently the name started sounding odd to me -- how did a term normally associated with clothing come to refer to a vicious conglomerate of thugs and killers? Is it a media creation, or something mob guys use in referring to their enterprise?
I put the question to John J. Binder, a professor of finance at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of "The Chicago Outfit" (Arcadia Publishing, 2003). It was a topic he had researched, he said:
"`Outfit' shows up frequently in the literature of the old west to describe groups of men on a ranch or on a cattle drive," he said.
The idea being that, ideally, such a group works together in a coordinated way, much like a full outfit of clothing works together when one is well dressed, Binder said.
The word was used in a similar way in the military at least as early as World War I, Binder said: "Your squad, your unit, your outfit...same difference," he said. And the same idea: "Not a disorganized gaggle of people, but a coordinated outfit," Binder said.
Early bootleggers ran in what the media commonly referred to as "gangs," Binder said. But in Chicago after the end of prohibition, these gangs consolidated and began referring informally to their enterprise as "`our outfit,' lower case o," Binder said.
This evolved into "`The Outfit,' upper-case o," Binder said, and became as something of a code word. It was and remains a distinctly Chicago term for what elsewhere goes by "the mob," "the syndicate," "the arm" (in Buffalo) and various Italianate names.
Yet Binder said his research leads him to suspect that Outfit guys stopped saying "Outfit" in around the early 1960s when the media started using it so much it lost any value it might have had as a code word.
"I you ever hear someone claim to be `in the Outfit' or `close to the Outfit,' he's a wanna-be," Binder said.
Try that on for size.
Thanks to Eric Zorn
Do you believe "The Clown" or an admitted hit man?
Jurors will have to decide when they begin deliberations Tuesday in Chicago's biggest mob trial in years. They got the case Thursday night after prosecutors made a last pitch to sway them to believe the testimony of their star witness, admitted hit man Nicholas Calabrese.
Defense lawyers have pegged Calabrese as "a walking piece of deception" whose testimony shouldn't be believed, even suggesting that if Calabrese says it's raining, someone ought to go outside to check. But prosecutors say it's the five men on trial who can't be believed, including reputed mobster Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo, whose lawyers have claimed he turned his back on the mob long ago and therefore isn't part of the illegal activity prosecutors allege.
"Lombardo's word is no good," prosecutor Mitchell Mars told jurors. Mars tossed off Lombardo's so-called withdrawal defense saying, "he withdrew from nothing."
Lombardo, 78, and the others are accused in a racketeering conspiracy that allegedly includes 18 long-unsolved murders, illegal gambling, loan sharking and extortion tied to the Outfit, as Chicago's organized crime family is known.
The other defendants are reputed mob boss James Marcello, 65; convicted jewel thief Paul Schiro, 70; retired Chicago policeman Anthony Doyle, 62; and convicted loan shark Frank Calabrese Sr., 70, who is Nicholas Calabrese's brother.
The trial started in June and prosecutors wrapped up the final two hours of the rebuttal portion of their closing arguments on Thursday.
Prosecutors have used Nicholas Calabrese's testimony to link all but Doyle to the scene of at least one murder. Save up to 60% in the Geek Outlet Today!
Calabrese agreed to blab mob secrets to avoid the death penalty after his DNA was matched to blood on a glove at a 1986 murder scene, defense attorneys say. During the trial, he has admitted to taking part in about a dozen of the killings laid out in the indictment.
Marcello's attorney Marc Martin has accused Calabrese of inventing a tale about the most high-profile homicide in the case "because he felt he had to solve the crime to get his deal to save his life."
That's the killing of Tony "The Ant" Spilotro, who was beaten to death along with his brother, Michael, in 1986 and buried in an Indiana cornfield. Tony Spilotro, known as the mob's man in Las Vegas, was the inspiration for the Joe Pesci character in the 1995 movie "Casino." In the film, Pesci's character was beaten with bats and buried alive.
Calabrese testified that Michael Spilotro was strangled and died quickly, leaving behind only a spot of blood.
Mars told jurors Calabrese doesn't have to account for any lack of blood at the scene, but he explained that the fatal injuries were internal and didn't break the skin.
Mars also told jurors Calabrese didn't immediately give up Marcello when he began cooperating with federal officials because Marcello was paying him $4,000 a month to keep his mouth shut. "That's what he was paid to do," Mars said.
Thanks to Deanna Bellandi
Defense lawyers have pegged Calabrese as "a walking piece of deception" whose testimony shouldn't be believed, even suggesting that if Calabrese says it's raining, someone ought to go outside to check. But prosecutors say it's the five men on trial who can't be believed, including reputed mobster Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo, whose lawyers have claimed he turned his back on the mob long ago and therefore isn't part of the illegal activity prosecutors allege.
"Lombardo's word is no good," prosecutor Mitchell Mars told jurors. Mars tossed off Lombardo's so-called withdrawal defense saying, "he withdrew from nothing."
Lombardo, 78, and the others are accused in a racketeering conspiracy that allegedly includes 18 long-unsolved murders, illegal gambling, loan sharking and extortion tied to the Outfit, as Chicago's organized crime family is known.
The other defendants are reputed mob boss James Marcello, 65; convicted jewel thief Paul Schiro, 70; retired Chicago policeman Anthony Doyle, 62; and convicted loan shark Frank Calabrese Sr., 70, who is Nicholas Calabrese's brother.
The trial started in June and prosecutors wrapped up the final two hours of the rebuttal portion of their closing arguments on Thursday.
Prosecutors have used Nicholas Calabrese's testimony to link all but Doyle to the scene of at least one murder. Save up to 60% in the Geek Outlet Today!
Calabrese agreed to blab mob secrets to avoid the death penalty after his DNA was matched to blood on a glove at a 1986 murder scene, defense attorneys say. During the trial, he has admitted to taking part in about a dozen of the killings laid out in the indictment.
Marcello's attorney Marc Martin has accused Calabrese of inventing a tale about the most high-profile homicide in the case "because he felt he had to solve the crime to get his deal to save his life."
That's the killing of Tony "The Ant" Spilotro, who was beaten to death along with his brother, Michael, in 1986 and buried in an Indiana cornfield. Tony Spilotro, known as the mob's man in Las Vegas, was the inspiration for the Joe Pesci character in the 1995 movie "Casino." In the film, Pesci's character was beaten with bats and buried alive.
Calabrese testified that Michael Spilotro was strangled and died quickly, leaving behind only a spot of blood.
Mars told jurors Calabrese doesn't have to account for any lack of blood at the scene, but he explained that the fatal injuries were internal and didn't break the skin.
Mars also told jurors Calabrese didn't immediately give up Marcello when he began cooperating with federal officials because Marcello was paying him $4,000 a month to keep his mouth shut. "That's what he was paid to do," Mars said.
Thanks to Deanna Bellandi
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