I personally agree, although most of the stories about him are regarding the murder attempt and the Northsiders who were under Solano at the time. Meaning most of the info on Eto out there is regarding his activities starting from the mid 70s until he became informant. What about the 50s and 60s?

You see, by the late 1950s two major capos who controlled the bolita racket were Ross Prio and Fiore Buccieri with Eto being their main rep, operator and contact to the Latin community. Eto was originally a member of Prio's north side crew, but whenever Eto had problems with some Latin operators, it was for Buccieri's guys like the LaPietras and Torello to solve the problem in the most brutal way.

For example one Eugene Lopez was a tavern owner and a very close associate of Eto in the bolita business and so one day Lopez decided not report all of the cash from his bolita perations. In no time the Oitfit decided to make an example of Lopez and it was up to Eto to lure the victim to an alleged meeting. In 1957, 42 year old Lopez walked into a trap and so he was beaten and later strangled to death. His battered body was found the next day jammed in the back seat of a 1957 convertible near Antioch Lake County.

Another bolita operator met the most gruesome faith. Santiago Gonzalez was a big man among his peers in the Latin community and was also a big time operator in the bolita racket. Gonzalez allegedly decided to remain independent and didn’t want anything to do with the Chicago mob. Again the boys sent for Eto to talk to the guy. But Eto was chased out by Gonzalez and few other Puerto Rican hoodlums with metal pipes and baseball bats. So again the mob issued a contract on Gonzalez’s life and so Eto was ordered to set up Gonzalez, along with another Outfit associate known as John Fecarotta. In 1958 Gonzales was lured to a meeting in an industrial area when Outfit henchmen grabbed him and tortured him for few days. Later his body was found on a parking lot and Gonzalez was brutally beaten, slashed, stabbed, and gutted so severely that his intestines spilled out of his body.

Besides the bolita racket, Eto was also involed in loan sharking or juice activities around the Rush Street area. His headquarters was the Golden 8 Ball Pool and Billiard Hall. In 1962 Eto and another Northsider Aaron “Obie” Oberlander travelled to San Juan, Puerto Rico to establish multimillion dollar hotel for gambling operations and to be utilized by Ross Prio and others.

During the 60s Eto began connecting with prominent hoodlums of the Chicago area such as Armando “Mondo” Fosco, a notorious figure who back in the late 1930’s at the age of 14 drew a gun at few police officers. Policy number operator and club owner William Belmonte was also involved in the bolita racket with Eto and the North Side crew. Belmonte was a long time associate of policy numbers king and infamous Capone hitman Sam “Golf Bag” Hunt. Another prominent associate of Eto was James “Kid Riviera” Williams, a 300-pound African-American gambling overseer, mob muscleman and big time narcotics peddler from the West Side. According to FBI reports also during this period Williams had several meetings with Eto and Prio.

Eto was also involved in another racket which was known as the Cadillac numbers. In this operation Eto was connected with another syndicate hoodlum known as Joseph “Cappy” Capizzi who in turn worked for Outfit big shot Phil Alderisio and was constantly seen in the company of other hoodlums such as Prio, Jimmy Allegretti and Joey DiVarco from the North Side. The Cadillac operation was the largest ever to operate on Chicago’s South Side and it employed over 100 runners.

In 1970 the bolita racket was on the downfall because of the constant raids from the FBI. During one lunch the Outfits top boss Paul Ricca told Prio to deliver the word down on the streets and to tighten up the operating procedures in the bolita racket. According to FBI surveillance, at the lunch Ricca and Tony Accardo had been visibly upset by the arrests of two top bolita overseers with evidence of their operations in hand.

After the lunch with Ricca and Accardo, 70 year old Prio jumped in his car and drove to the Lake Forest Oasis on the Tri-State Tollway to make a phone call and arranged a half-hour meeting with Eto and Dominick DiBella. Prio pressured Eto and DiBella to make everything in their own power to bring back the bolita operations on higher level.

The truth is that Eto wasn’t able to bring back the bolita racket to its previous level, because the second generation of Latin-Americans got wise and recognized the failings of their elders who were constantly cheated and terrorised for too many years by their own people who in turn worked for the Italian Mafia. So some sources say that Eto had no choice and allegedly started dealing in narcotics just so he can satisfy the financial needs of his Outfit bosses.

It is interesting to note when Eto became informant, the feds were interested only in the current situation meaning they were interested only about the Solano, Campise and Gattuso situation. Other informants like Lenny Patrick confessed to murders since the early 50s in which he was involved, but we cant say the same thing about Eto.