Al Capone Reputed Hideout Purchased by Wisconsin Bank

The reputed hideout of infamous mobster Al Capone sold to Chippewa Valley Bank of Wisconsin for $2.6 million, according to CNN affiliate KBJR affiliate in Duluth, Minnesota.

Locals say mobster Al Capone used his family's Wisconsin property as a hideout.

The bank was the only bidder at the auction Thursday at the Sawyer County Courthouse in Wisconsin. The previous owners, Guy and Jean Houston, purchased it for $4.25 million in 1959, KBJR said.

The two-story stone lodge, tucked away on 407 acres in Couderay, Wisconsin, was owned by the Capone family in the 1920s.

The Houston family purchased the property in the 1950s and transformed it into a tourist spot. Visitors paid a few dollars for a walking tour of Capone's reputed hideout.

The property includes a 37-acre lake and eight-car garage.

There is no indication of what will happen to the property.

It holds enormous nostalgic value, bank Vice President Joe Kinnear said. After all, he noted, Al Capone's name is closely associated with Chicago, Illinois.

"This guy really has incredible fame power," said John Russick, senior curator at the Chicago History Museum. "He became this icon for a whole profession of underworld figures, and people are fascinated with that."

With his expensive suits, wide-brimmed fedora and cigar, the gangster who relished the media spotlight became the face of lawlessness during the Prohibition era.

From 1925 to 1931, Capone was Chicago's most notorious organized-crime boss. He ruthlessly relied on intimidation, bribes and violence, according to gangster lore.

Even some state and local law enforcement officers turned a blind eye when Capone's gang committed crimes, leaving the feds to chase him, historians say. But life as a crime kingpin brought a growing list of enemies, said Arthur J. Lurigio, a professor of criminology at Loyola University Chicago, who is also working on a documentary and book about organized crime in Chicago.

"He wanted to get away from his enemies," Lurigio explained. "He had already escaped death several times."

No one can say for certain whether Capone ever stayed in the Wisconsin lodge. Because he operated an illegal business, there are few written documents with clues on where he spent his time, historians say.

State University of New York at Oswego professor emeritus Luciano Iorizzo, who wrote "Al Capone: A Biography (Greenwood Biographies)" in 2003, said he has never come across evidence that Capone visited the Wisconsin hideout

Henry Binford, a professor of history at Northwestern University, theorizes that the hideout was a stopover in the transportation of liquor to Chicago during Prohibition. It's rumored among locals that planes from Canada that were filled with alcohol docked on the small lake on the property.

"Being an ostensible businessman, he had a lot of channels of supply," Binford said, pointing out that the lodge is located close to the Canadian border.

Capone's illegal activities caught up with him in the 1930s. His most infamous mob war, the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago that killed seven rivals, further enticed federal agents to catch him. In 1931, he was convicted of tax evasion and sent to Alcatraz prison in California.

This summer, when the hideout tours were shut down, Leslie Strapon, assistant executive director of the Hayward Chamber of Commerce, said her office received hundreds of calls from disappointed tourists.

"Everyone is patiently waiting to see what's going to happen with the place," she said. "It would be nice if it fell into the hands of someone who was wiling to reopen and carry on the tradition."

Thanks to Stephanie Chen

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Betty Loren-Maltese is Ready to Spill the Beans

After being released from prison and living in Las Vegas, former Illinois politician Betty Loren-Maltese is ready to spill the beans.

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Reputed Mobster Joseph Merlino Ran Construction Firm Says Witness

Far from being the self-made man he says he is, Joseph N. Merlino was set up in the construction business by his father, a convicted Mafia killer, a retired federal corruption investigator testified yesterday.

Merlino and his mother are seeking a license that would permit their company, Bayshore Rebar of Pleasantville, to work in the Atlantic City casino industry.

Merlino admits that his father, Lawrence "Yogi," and his cousin Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino were mobsters. But he says Bayshore is free of mob influence and is unrelated to his father, who died in 2001 while in the witness protection program.

Ronald Chance, who investigated mob ties to the construction industry in the 1980s for the U.S. Department of Labor, said Bayshore was founded and run by the elder Merlino.

"Larry Merlino created Bayshore," Chance said. "Bayshore was the minority company of Larry Merlino."

Chance said Merlino listed his wife as the owner to get around requirements that a portion of some contracts be awarded to companies owned by women or minorities, and had his son on the payroll as well.

He testified during a hearing of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission that Phyllis Merlino and Joseph N. Merlino were listed as company officers, but Lawrence Merlino was the real boss in the mid-1980s.

"Not one single person ever had any dealings with Joseph or Phyllis Merlino," Chance testified. "Their dealings were with Larry Merlino."

That testimony contradicted the Merlinos' claim of how Bayshore was founded - as a legitimate company free of any mob taint or influence from Lawrence Merlino.

The Merlinos' lawyer, John Donnelly, denied the truth of Chance's testimony.

"He's absolutely, unequivocally, dead wrong," Donnelly said. "It's already found to have been untrue by the Casino Control Commission."

Chance testified that his agency began investigating Lawrence Merlino in the 1980s after an ironworker whose wife had just given birth was hit with a $4,300 hospital bill. The worker went to his union to ask why the hospital said he had no insurance coverage, and was told to see a higher-up in the union, who in turn referred him to "the boss," Lawrence Merlino, Chance testified.

Confronting him at a work site in Atlantic City, Lawrence Merlino grabbed the worker by the throat, told him to open his mouth, stuck a gun inside it, and promised that he would kill the worker if he saw him again, Chance testified.

An investigation determined that Merlino's main company, Nat-Nat, had not been making required payments to a union benefits fund, Chance testified.

"That was the way Nat-Nat got all the jobs: because it wasn't making health and welfare payments," Chance said. Skipping the payments saved the company money and enabled it to underbid other competitors, he added.

The hearing is due to resume Friday.

Thanks to Wayne Parry

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Facebook Being Used to Recruit Teens into The Mafia

A new Facebook site inviting children into a Naples, Italy, crime syndicate allegedly could be linked to a recent wave of juvenile vandalism, officials said.

The site, which promises "plenty of work," claims to represent a new "Camorra gang made up of teenagers" in the Naples suburb of Pomigliano d'Arco, the Italian news agency ANSA reported Tuesday.

Police have yet to determine whether the site is real or a prank, while local officials fear the group may be behind recent vandalism, including the destruction of a playground, ANSA reported.

The site is one of hundreds on Facebook championing the mafia.

Earlier this year, Facebook removed some mafia-related content, including a page dedicated to Toto "The Beast" Riina, once known as the Cosa Nostra "boss of bosses," ANSA said. Riina's page had nearly 2,000 subscribers.

The thousands of people who join mafia Internet sites are "potential gangsters" who should be investigated, said Carlos Vizzini, an Italian crime envoy to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Thanks to The Post Chronicle

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Victoria Gotti Speaks Out on Her Father, John Gotti, and Her New Book "This Family of Mine"

Try as she might to be a typical working mother, Victoria Gotti will always be known as the mob boss's daughter.

So, when her family approached her about writing a memoir about life as a Gotti, she initially balked, worried about adding to more tabloid stories and untruths.

"I think, at some point around the holidays, my family came to me and said, 'Enough. When are you going to set the record straight?'" Gotti said on "Good Morning America" today. "They won out at the end, and I did it."

Gotti's new book, "This Family of Mine," details her life in the family led by John Gotti, head of the Gambino crime family, who, after several government attempts to nab him, was sentenced to life in prison in 1992 on a multitude of charges, including murder and racketeering.

Getting the blessing of her family members, Gotti said, she told them she wanted to tell the full story. "If we're going to do this, it's not going to be halfway," Gotti said she told her family.

In the book, Gotti, 46, wrote that she did not know of her father's deep involvement with the mob in the beginning. John Gotti never brought his business into the family home. "I was 8 years old. I was 10 years old. You believe what you want to believe," Gotti said. "Later in life, things start to come together."

Only in the mid- to late-1980s did Gotti, her sister and her mother finally realize what John Gotti was doing and how powerful he was within the Gambino crime family. "People think that was bizarre, but it's not," Gotti said, adding that her family always believed the tabloid stories were embellished.

The late John Gotti was finally sent to prison after several previous prosecutions had failed to stick. Initially known as "Dapper Don" for his fancy suits, the tabloids christened him "Teflon Don" for his ability to beat the charges repeatedly. But as her father nabbed more and more headlines and her brother, John "Junior" Gotti, faced scrutiny for his position as the acting head of the Gambino crime family, the entire family was subjected to tabloid reports.

"It just got to the point where there were no boundaries anymore," she said. "Everyone was fair game."

The younger Gotti is now facing another trial -- his fourth in five years -- for murder and racketeering.

Victoria Gotti said that while her brother had admitted to past indiscretions, "Junior" Gotti told her he'd sworn off the mob life 10 years ago and simply wanted to enjoy the pleasures of life with his family.

The back cover of "This Family of Mine" shows Victoria Gotti posing with her father at her 1984 wedding to Carmine Agnello, himself now serving prison time.

Gotti had 1,500 guests at her New York wedding, many of them involved in the mob. The picture shows her in tears.

Gotti told "Good Morning America" that she had initially seen the wedding as a way to break free of her father, who had become extremely overprotective, watching over her every move. "I was ambivalent, I think, even about getting married, anyway," she said. "I basically wanted to get out from under dad's rule, under dad's thumb."

The tears, she said, came after realizing she didn't know her husband very well and the realization that, even after wanting more freedom, the marriage would mean leaving the protective cocoon of her family home.

Now a mother to three sons, Carmine, John and Frank, Gotti said she instilled in her sons from an early age that mob life is not for them. "This is the way to break mom's heart," she said she told them. "This is not what I want."

And Gotti said she believes they understand why. "I think they've seen the trial and error," she said. This is not something for them."

Thanks to GMA

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