Gangsters Up North: Mobsters, Mafia, and Racketeers in Michigan's Vacationlands

Gangsters Up North: Mobsters, Mafia, and Racketeers in Michigan's Vacationlands.

Gangsters play an important and colorful role in Michigan history. But what were they doing in Michigan's vacationlands?

Gangsters Up North: Mobsters, Mafia, and Racketeers in Michigan's Vacationlands, provides the fascinating account of truth and myth. Al Capone, the Purple Gang, Fred "Killer" Burke, additional Public Enemies and many other hoodlums found their way Up North in fact or fiction. Some came for gambling, bootlegging, kidnapping, and murder. Others just wanted some rest and relaxation.

For the first time, the whole colorful story can be told. Gangsters Up North draws on newspaper accounts, numerous interviews, and much unpublished material to paint the real picture of mobsters and their associates in Michigan's northlands.

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Al Capone's Childhood Home Goes Up for Sale

Al Capone's Childhood Home

The Brooklyn, NY, home where Chicago mob boss Al Capone grew up has hit the market for $2.9 million.

However, buyers looking for relics from the infamous bootlegger's childhood will be sorely disappointed. The 20-foot-wide townhouse in now-tony Park Slope bears little resemblance to the home where Capone grew up more than a century ago.

The residence in the heart of brownstone Brooklyn has been renovated and turned into a gorgeous, modern triplex with a separate unit on each floor.

"The exterior is similar [to the original home] at the front of the facade, but everything else has been gut-renovated," says Nadia Bartolucci, the Douglas Elliman real estate agent representing the property. Even the roof has been replaced. "There are no original components to the house."

Today, the home has been divided into a main unit with three bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, and a garden. The new kitchen features stainless-steel appliances and a subway tile backsplash, and the stylish bathrooms have chevron tile and chrome fixtures. There are two one-bedroom apartments above, one with a newly tiled, private roof deck and the other with a terrace. The electrical system has been upgraded, and all three residences are equipped with new split Mitsubishi Hyper heat units and vented washers and dryers.

"What's really special is, each apartment has generously proportioned outdoor space," says Bartolucci. "It's so important right now because we have a lot of people pivoting to working from home. It's nice to have ... during these uncertain times."

Capone was born in Brooklyn in 1899. Chicago's one-time "Public Enemy No. 1" moved into the house at 21 Garfield Place with his family sometime in the early 1900s. He'd live there until he decamped to the Windy City in 1919, where he became known for running bootleg, prostitution, and gambling rings in the 1920s. Capone was eventually convicted of tax evasion in 1931 and served eight years in prison. He died in 1947 at age 48.

The home's last owner purchased the property for $2.42 million in 2018.

"It is really nice to be able to hold on to a piece of Brooklyn history," says Bartolucci.

Thanks to Clare Trapasso.

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Jimmy "The Man" Marcello, Imprisoned Chicago Mob Boss, Claims Sentence is Unconstitutional Based on #SCOTUS Decision

The highest ranking Chicago mob boss now in prison, Jimmy "The Man" Marcello, filed a petition in federal court to have his sentence tossed out.

Marcello, 76, is now challenging his sentence based on the U.S. Supreme Court Davis ruling one year ago today. In that Davis decision, the court narrowly held that enhancements for crimes of violence committed with guns are unconstitutionally vague.

Marcello was one of five top hoodlums convicted in the 2007 Family Secrets racketeering case. Authorities said Marcello delivered Tony "Ant" Spilotro to his death -- found with his brother Michael Spilotro in an Indiana cornfield in June 1986.


James Marcello was sentenced to life in 2009 and is imprisoned at the fed's Supermax facility in Colorado.

"It's one of the least appealing cases and sets of facts for a court to consider in giving somebody a break but the analysis is going to be a legal one. Was he convicted under the statute that Davis was talking about, the Supreme Court was talking about, and can it be applied retroactively, and would it make any difference to him anyway because the crimes were so serious they could have easily have yielded a life in prison sentence even without this," said former federal prosecutor and ABC 7 Legal Analyst Gil Soffer.

Thanks to Chuck Goudie, Barb Markoff, Christine Tressel and Ross Weidner.

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Released Today: The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir by Donald Trump's National Security Advisor, John Bolton

The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.

As President Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton spent many of his 453 days in the room where it happened, and the facts speak for themselves.

The result is a White House memoir that is the most comprehensive and substantial account of the Trump Administration, and one of the few to date by a top-level official. With almost daily access to the President, John Bolton has produced a precise rendering of his days in and around the Oval Office. What Bolton saw astonished him: a President for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation. “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” he writes. In fact, he argues that the House committed impeachment malpractice by keeping their prosecution focused narrowly on Ukraine when Trump’s Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy—and Bolton documents exactly what those were, and attempts by him and others in the Administration to raise alarms about them.

He shows a President addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government. In Bolton’s telling, all this helped put Trump on the bizarre road to impeachment. “The differences between this presidency and previous ones I had served were stunning,” writes Bolton, who worked for Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43. He discovered a President who thought foreign policy is like closing a real estate deal—about personal relationships, made-for-TV showmanship, and advancing his own interests. As a result, the US lost an opportunity to confront its deepening threats, and in cases like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea ended up in a more vulnerable place.

Bolton’s account starts with his long march to the West Wing as Trump and others woo him for the National Security job. The minute he lands, he has to deal with Syria’s chemical attack on the city of Douma, and the crises after that never stop. As he writes in the opening pages, “If you don’t like turmoil, uncertainty, and risk—all the while being constantly overwhelmed with information, decisions to be made, and sheer amount of work—and enlivened by international and domestic personality and ego conflicts beyond description, try something else.”

The turmoil, conflicts, and egos are all there—from the upheaval in Venezuela, to the erratic and manipulative moves of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, to the showdowns at the G7 summits, the calculated warmongering by Iran, the crazy plan to bring the Taliban to Camp David, and the placating of an authoritarian China that ultimately exposed the world to its lethal lies. But this seasoned public servant also has a great eye for the Washington inside game, and his story is full of wit and wry humor about how he saw it played.

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Operation Blue Heat Results in MS-13 Members Sentenced to Prison for Violent 2018 Attack

Two MS-13 members were sentenced to over a combined 28 years in prison for their roles in a December 2018 shooting and stabbing that occurred in Four Mile Run Park.

“Yes, Northern Virginia has a gang problem,” said G. Zachary Terwilliger, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. “I have personally handled the prosecution of MS-13 members in Alexandria for over a decade. By burying their heads in the sand and lacking courage to address a problem because they mistakenly deem it to be politically incorrect, various community leaders in Northern Virginia simply refuse to acknowledge the gang problem to the detriment of the same Hispanic community they claim to be defending. No one suffers more at the hands of MS-13 than other individuals of Central American birth or ancestry. MS-13 gang members extort minority owned businesses in their own communities, sexually traffic first generation American juveniles, and brutally assault and even murder Hispanic boys and girls who they believe have disrespected the gang. This case is proof positive of the need for community leaders in Northern Virginia to acknowledge this reality and work to be part of the solution. We cannot prosecute MS-13 out of existence. The community must play a significant role to protect our youth from joining the gang in the first place. I believe that together we can eliminate the gang problem in Northern Virginia.”

According to court documents, Juan Francisco Rivera-Pineda, 25, and Jefferson Noe Amaya, 25, both of Alexandria, are members of the Pinos Locos Salvatrucha (PLS) clique of MS-13, which operates in Chirilagua, an area in Alexandria near the border of Arlington.

On Dec. 30, 2018, Rivera-Pineda and Amaya shot and stabbed a 40-year-old victim while the victim and his two friends were in Four Mile Run Park. The victim’s nephew had been warned by PLS not to sell drugs in PLS territory without paying rent. On the night of the shooting, Rivera-Pineda, Amaya, and a third unidentified suspect confronted the victim in the park, shooting him in the throat and arm, and stabbing him in the torso. The victim was transported to the hospital where he underwent surgery and survived.

“Today's sentencings send a clear message that the FBI and the Safe Streets Task Force remain aggressive in investigating and dismantling gang activity that brings violence and fear into our communities,” said James A. Dawson, Special Agent in Charge of the Criminal Division, FBI Washington Field Office. “The FBI will continue steadfastly in its goal to take these violent offenders off the street and ultimately bring justice to the victims of these brutal acts.”

Rivera-Pineda and Amaya each pleaded guilty to assault with a dangerous weapon in aid of racketeering activity, and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. Rivera-Pineda was sentenced to 161 months in prison, and Amaya was sentenced to 177 months. Each sentence included a mandatory minimum penalty of 10 years.

The case was investigated as part of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF), Operation Blue Heat. The OCDETF program is a federal multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional task force that supplies supplemental federal funding to federal and state agencies involved in the identification, investigation, and prosecution of major drug trafficking organizations. The principal mission of the OCDETF program is to identify, disrupt and dismantle the most serious drug trafficking, weapons trafficking and money laundering organizations, and those primarily responsible for the nation’s illegal drug supply.

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