As I previously stated that Nolan Mack was gangster who made fast action and in return received “fast reaction” or I other words, he was shot like a dog on the streets by the cops. But the Outfit’s problem did not end up, as the usual, with one of the “middle man’s” death but instead it continued with the arrests of the rest of the crew’s members. The thing was that during the agents’ surveillance over the late Nolan Mack that faithful day, before the speed chase occurred, they observed Mack buying dope from Battiato and from that point on, the agents realized that behind this whole drug peddling operation stood the Chicago syndicate. In fact, from this point on the main individual who “took care” of the narcotics business on the West, North and South sides for Outfit, was Americo DePietto. This guy entered in the dope trade somewhere around the mid 1950’s, or to be exact in 1956, allegedly when one African-American dope peddler known as William Wright decided to go to Brooklyn, New York and spread his dope peddling operations in that area. The problem was that a year later, Wright got arrested and so DePietto allegedly took over his operations and became somewhat of an “overseer” of the dope peddling ring in certain territories. And since Wright dope dealing territory spread across the South and West sides, as high level associate of the organization, DePietto managed to break the “deal”.
Story goes that DePietto was connected to some individuals from the Gambino and Genovese crime families in New York, mostly through the fur stealing racket, and allegedly they were the ones who supplied DePietto with heroin but also other reports show that some of the heroin came straight from Canada. According to some government reports, DePietto’s crew of dope peddlers allegedly handled 10 million dollar a year dope ring that controlled over 80% of the drug trafficking in Chicago. The crew used the already made dope connections to drug traffickers from St. Louis, Detroit, Kansas City and Los Angeles but the feds also reported that during this period, one of the drug routes which came from New York, first passed through Pittsburgh and Cleveland, which were cities with their own Italian crime families, and then to Chicago. By now DePietto’s so-called bosses were Phil Alderisio and Charles Nicoletti, “gang-stars” of the so-called Melrose Park faction under Sam Battaglia. During this period, all three were suspected by Chicago’s bureau of narcotics, for secretly controlling the heroin traffic for the Outfit, but the thing is that there were no hard evidences for Alderisio’s or Nicoletti’s involvement since they were probably so well isolated.
As for DePietto, he kept his trusted friends from the old crew such as Battiato, Carioscia, Passinni and DeMaro, since by now every one of them proved to be a stand up guy. In fact, that was the only thing which DePietto needed so far since the next few years were about to be quite complicated. As I previously stated, the government’s surveillance of the late Nolan Mack and picturing Battiato as the supplier, was the “key” moment for the beginning of the end for DePietto’s crew. In a matter of one month, the government managed to collect a dozen of witnesses, who in fact most of them were addicts, ready to testify against the crew in return for their freedom. The first individuals who got arrested were Opal Cole and LaFauncie Johnson and incidental to their arrest, during search if the apartment, many notebooks were seized with names and phone numbers of many of the suspects. Quickly after that, Charles Johnson was also arrested and few days later, in a record time, he was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison on narcotics charges. Also, the agents managed to gather evidence which supported the theory that DePietto, DeMaro, DeRose, Battiato and Passini were suppliers of heroin who made available to their distributors such as Cole or Johnson or even Jesse Cowan and Charles Sparkman. The government also indicated that some of the suspects were connected to the Italian Mafia which was based in the Chicago area and was known as the Outfit. The government knew that suppliers such as DePietto and DeRose allocated territories, consigned quantities of the drug, packaged wholesale amounts, collected money from the distributors and shared the proceedings with higher level criminals from the organization in which they belonged to.
In October, 1963, some 50 government agents arrested 19 persons in Chicago on charges for peddling narcotics and 6 more individuals from other cities such as Cleveland and St. Louis. The newspapers called it a massive crackdown on a $30-million Cosa Nostra narcotics operation and DePietto received the title as the "narcotics officer" for the Chicago chapter of the U.S. Mafia and that he allegedly answered only to” Momo Salvatore “Moe” Giancana”. Now I don’t know if the newspaper men only wanted to bring the attention of their readers by making up stories or maybe they received word from some of the federal agents, but “with the speed of light” they somehow managed to connect DePietto to Sam Giancana, the current “star” of America’s “gangster show”. In fact, the real connection was established through DePietto’s operations at the North Avenue Steak House, in Melrose Park, where he and Ernest Infelice were meeting with and supplying heroin to three of their main runners such as Armando and Ben Pennachio and Frank Carioscia. The problem was that the steak house was actually owned by Giancana, which was later burned to the ground. Also another government informant, and former runner for the crew, gave the same info regarding DePietto’s and Giancana’s dope dealings.
Americo DePietto (left)
So even though Giancana really cared about publicity, and since he obviously loved it, still he became quite nervous when his name was linked to narcotics. He knew that once his name was publicly linked to the “dirty” business, from that point on he could never wash the “dirt” away. As I previously stated that even though Giancana agreed to keep his West Side members away from the dope business, many researchers believe that he mostly ignored the advices from the First Ward faction of the Outfit and Tony Accardo, and because of that there are many wiretapped conversations where they continued to trash his name because of the DePietto scandal and because of not keeping his word. On top of all things, the government also declared that they had one witness known as Andrew Snyder who was ready to testify regarding Giancana’s and DePietto’s dope dealings. This guy used to work in one of Giancana’s burglary crews and was a close friend of DePietto, and to tell you the truth, I made a little research regarding Snyder’s knowledge about the syndicate and the reports show that he knew enough, especially regarding the Outfit’s hierarchy and who was going to succeed Giancana as boss if something ever happened to him.
One of Giancana’s “right-hand man” Charles Inglesia a.k.a. English was the one who constantly defended his boss by going from member to member and trying to convince them that DePietto had no dope dealings whatsoever with Giancana and that the boss had no knowledge of his underling’s “secret” activities. I also have to admit that this statement was also given by many alleged high level and confidential informants, who probably believed Giancana on his agreement to stay away from the dope business. But I’ll stick mostly to English since there was this problem, which was that English was a known “loudmouth” among his fellow Outfit members, and in fact he was much hated by Murray Humphreys because of the many incidents where he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. In other words, even if English was telling the truth, nobody really believed him because of his and his boss’ personalities. Proof for that is one interesting conversation between English and Martin Accardo, Tony Accardo’s brother, where Giancana’s liaison constantly tried to convince the other boss’ brother that in fact nobody from the Outfit was involved in narcotics, especially Giancana, but by the end of the “monologue”, Martin calmly reminded English that his brother Tony was 100% against drugs. It was not a coincidence that Giancana’s guy brought that particular conversation with Accardo’s guy, obviously because Giancana knew Accardo’s attitude towards the subject and possibly wanted to check if there were any problems. This means that there were obviously politics even within the Chicago Outfit. I also consider English as possible associate in Giancana’s national dope ring, since he was related to a big time narcotics peddler and on top of that, he and his brother Sam English controlled their own crew in Arizona but that’s something which I’ll talk about later.
Charles English
So problems or no, in June, 1964, after a nine-week trial De Pietto was sentenced to a 20-year prison term on charges for conspiring to sell narcotics and the other 20-year prison terms were given out to Mike De Maro and Charles Cole. Other members from the crew who received jail sentences were Opal Cole 10 years, Jesse Cowan also 10 years, Johnson received 10 years and Passini received 5 years in jail. After the sentence was pronounced, DePietto allegedly proclaimed his innocence be saying "I never had anything to do with narcotics in my life." He was out on $40,000 bond and like any other mindless drug dealer, DePietto managed to make a mistake in the most unpleasant time. While he was out, the feds received info that DePietto allegedly was planning to flee the country for Central America or Europe. So in July, 1964, the feds again arrested DePietto but this time, two agents got the “best” of him. It was reported that during the arrest he has knocked down two federal agents in his motel hotel room in the Cross Roads motel, at 4201 Mannheim rd. in Schiller Park. In a matter of seconds, he was quickly subdued by five other agents. Even though his main job was peddling dope, DePietto also used to work as enforcer for Alderisio and Nicoletti, who in turn were ruthless killers themselves, and so he knew how to handle himself in a tough situation. After that the Federal District Court quickly cancelled DePietto’s bond and was ordered to immediately begin to serve his prison sentence.
The reality was that DePietto had a real problem and it wasn’t the feds or the prison sentence but instead it was the alleged murder “contract” which was placed on his head. Yes, Giancana allegedly has placed a “contract” on DePietto obviously just to “wash away” his hands from the whole situation. When the feds informed DePietto about the alleged planned “hit”, in true gangster style he replied “Well you can’t live forever.” The thing was that one newspaper declared at the time, that DePietto was giving away information to the feds while being free and in the eyes of the bosses DePietto immediately became a “walking dead man”. And that is why, when the feds searched DePietto’s motel room, they found two big suitcases filled with clothes and 20 suits in the closet. In fact, DePietto was hiding at the motel for nearly two months and lived under the name “Americo Peters”. Story goes that DePietto tried to avoid harassment by some Outfit people who constantly drove past his home, bothered his children, and left death notes in his mailbox. True or not, DePietto continued to fight against his narcotics conviction but there were too many other cases in which he was again prosecuted and so his whole situation became very complicated. In 1965, obviously because of the DePietto incident, the government subpoenaed Giancana, Battaglia, English, Nicoletti, and two of DePietto associates James Mirro and Ernest Infelice, including DePietto, regarding the narcotics racket. During their testimonies, all of them took the fifth, again including DePietto, but the damage has already been done. Giancana was sentenced to a year in jail for contempt and from that point on, the newspapermen constantly wrote about the situation since the whole story was so spectacular and that really bothered the Outfit, meaning Ricca, Accardo and the rest of the gang. Since Giancana’s head was filled with problems and he was constantly absent from the every day operations, the so-called “new” criminal administration took over, which according to many reports started to disrespect Giancana, and so the “contract” on DePietto’s life was removed.
By that time, even though he didn’t want it, Sam Battaglia climbed at the number one spot and when Giancana wasn’t around, which happened a lot, “unofficially” Battaglia took the position as acting boss of the Chicago Outfit, or in other words, if the First Ward bosses thought that with Giancana out of the way the drug racket was going to be finished, well they thought wrong. Previously, we saw that Battaglia came through the ranks under a narcotics vice lord and later, he worked on the top administration while the narcotics racket was on its highest level, and now he’s next to the boss and it was expected from him to continue and support the racket. In other words, even though there was an alleged “pack” for members from the West Side faction to not get involved in the “junk” business, still Giancana’s administration functioned by the “old rules”, meaning “You get caught, you might get hurt. You start talking about it, you die for sure”. So during this period, one of Battaglia’s prime operators in the dope peddling business was again another corrupt cop, who went by the name of Tommy Durso. As we previously saw in one of the cases with detective Sheldon Teller, a situation in which some government officials moonlighted for the crime syndicate as protectors, procurers, collectors and even dope peddlers, but in Durso’s case you will see all of the previously mentioned activities, including murder.
Believe it or not, Thomas Durso was one of Battaglia’s main compatriots, who played a vital role in the making of his criminal “machine”. First of all, he was a cop and second, he peddled narcotics. In fact, Durso was the same individual as any other corrupt cop, who didn’t care about a human’s life and was hypnotized by the old mighty dollar. In plane words, he was a gangster who was associated to many West Side hoodlums, especially dope peddlers. One of Durso’s main partners was Mike Gargano, a known Outfit enforcer, who in turn re-sold large quantities of heroin which were previously acquired from Durso. This fella was a hardcore criminal with a quite large history of arrests and convictions, including a sentence to Joliet state prison in July 22, 1949, to two four-year terms for armed robbery. After that he was paroled on June 6, 1951, and again on June 13, 1957, he was sentenced to serve 10 years in the state prison at Fort Madison, for breaking and entering but he was again paroled in 1959.
Now, the main Outfit member who was placed between Battaglia and Durso’s drug peddling ring was one quite demented and notorious individual known as Sam DeStefano. This guy was one quite lucrative syndicate member from the West Side and personal friend of both Battaglia and Giancana, who was mostly involved in loan sharking and counterfeiting activities, two business which by that time were on the lowest scale of the FBI’s list. Also, DeStefano was known for having whole crews of corrupt policemen on his payroll for doing his dirty work. According to some reports, DeStefano largely financed Durso’s drug peddling operations and they were seen many times together in some of the city’s locals. But the “funny” thing was that back in 1955 Sam DeStefano killed his younger brother Michael on the orders from his boss Sam Giancana, allegedly because the younger criminal became a heroin addict and the problem was that he knew too much regarding some illegal operations and became unrealible.
Michael DeStefano found shot to death in the trunk of his car
So Durso repeatedly purchased narcotics finacied by higher ups in the racket such as DeStefano, and then sold the dope at a profit to addicts through his large network of pushers. So after receiving the dope Durso usually informed Gargano regarding the arrival of the shipment, who in turn called some of his runners to come and collect the product. The actual runners for the operation were Tony Moschiano, John Generella, Pete Fabbri and Leonard Fiorenzo, all from the West Side area. The crew usually operated by renting a hotel room, in which they kept the stash of drugs which was previously packed in numerous little packages, ready for sale. After making the transaction, the crew visited Green’s Tavern which was located on the West Side and was owned by one of Durso’s associates known as James Green, where they would leave the money for a pick up, usually by Moschiano since he was one of Durso’s main runners. In fact, Green had a long history of narcotics trafficking, first with the late Nolan Mack and later with Nathaniel Spurlark and then with the imprisoned DePietto.
Everything went smooth, until some kind of a “bad blood” occurred between Durso and his prime runner Tony Moschiano. Story goes that Durso developed a huge paranoia and started blaming his runners for being possible informers and always threatened them with death. The cause for Durso’s alleged paranoia were the profiles of his runners, meaning most of them were petty criminals and rapists and top of that, they were heroin addicts. In fact, these guys were the main proof for the presence of narcotics on Chicago’s city streets for such a long period. So it was natural for Durso to be constantly worried since some of these guys were not quite reliable. According to some reports, there were three incidents between Durso and Moschiano, like for example the first one occurred when the duo went on sale which in turn was never realized. The problem was that the purchaser of heroin, which was one of Moschiano’s associates, did not have the money and on top of that, he became quite suspicious of Durso's car, since it contained a plaque which indicated some connection with the Chicago Police Department. Suddenly a heated argument occurred between Durso and Moschiano, in which Durso has threatened his younger associate that if he, meaning Moschiano, did not get rid of the stash in two weeks, he might end up dead. I believe that Moschiano quickly got the picture because he realized that with people such as Durso there was no “this” or “that”, but instead it was expected from him to just nod with his head and get the job done or else.
Durso and Moschiano
The second incident occurred after a month, when Durso became quite angry at Moschiano for not appearing with the money from the sale or with the product. Thereafter, Durso called for Lenny Fiorenzo and advised him that he knew that he, meaning Fiorenzo and Moschiano had been together for the last several days, and that Fiorenzo was in trouble and his life depended on finding Moschiano. This was a classic Outfit move by pushing one of the victim’s friends against his fellow associate. All cornered, Fiorenzo told Durso that the only place that he knew of, regarding Moschiano’s whereabouts, was his home. After failing to find him there, Durso lost his nerves and drove to a restaurant where they were joined by Gargano. This time Fiorenzo was cornered by Gargano who in turn gave him another chance to think about where Mochiano might’ve been, and if not, he was going to kill the poor guy. Suddenly Fiorenzo told Durso and Gargano another possible place, which was the apartment of one of Moschiano’s girlfriends Lupe Costabile.
The three of them then proceeded to Lupe's rooming house, where they were greeted by Lupe's landlady Nancy Bourne. They entered violently, and Gargano remained downstairs holding a pistol on Fiorenzo head and also a man who roomed in the building, while Durso and Mrs. Bourne went upstairs to Lupe's room. When Durso saw that the room was empty, he knocked Mrs. Bourne down, whereupon he drew a pistol and screamed at her to get up. The poor woman said that she had recently broken her back and couldn't get up, whereupon Durso swore that he would break her back again and would blow her head off if she didn't get up. He then forced Mrs. Bourne downstairs and forced her to phone Moschiano and when someone answered the call, Durso grabbed the phone from Mrs. Bourne and told whoever was on the other side to have Moschiano on the street within ten minutes or someone would be hurt. The person on the other side arranged for them to meet and so Durso sent for Gargano to get Moschiano. After their arrival, Moschiano and Fiorenzo were handcuffed together and taken from the Bourne home. After a dozen of kicks, cuts and cigarette burnings, both were released with the understanding that Moschiano was given a second chance to sell the remaining heroin within two weeks and deliver the proceeds to Durso. Now, don’t get fooled by Durso’s “forgiveness” because he really cared about the money, instead of his relationship with Moschiano. The reality was that if he killed Moschiano right there on the spot, he was never going to see his money ever again.
But the situation got worse when few days later both Fiorenzo and Moschiano were arrested by narcotics agents and were taken into custody. They were kept for six days until both of them broke and spilled the beans. Both runners started talking regarding their illegal activities and their association with Durso and during that same period, Moschiano led officers to the hotel room where the narcotics were seized. So now, the two informants, together with the feds, devised a plan to get Durso into a trap. So on January 21, 1964, shortly after Mochiano’s and Fiorenzo's release from custody, they contacted Durso and arranged a meeting at some local restaurant. An hour later, Durso only met with Fiorenzo, who in turn explained to him that he and Moschiano were arrested for some alleged petty theft and were confined for six days. Suddenly the temperature in the joint went very high when Fiorenzo also informed Durso about the alleged robbery of the hotel room where the narcotics were kept, while they were in custody. Strangely, Durso looked very calmed and told Fiorenzo to go and pick up Moschiano and later to stop by at Durso’s suburban home.
When the duo arrived at the place, they parked their car in the garage where they were greeted both by Durso and Gargano. During their conversation, Moschiano assured Durso that he still had the money, along with other money from sales of narcotics, which he would’ve deliver to him but the thing was that he, meaning Mosciano had the opportunity to make a kilogram sale of heroin and that he would make up for the missing money and missing narcotics from the proceeds of the previous sale. Durso stated that he was not going to fall for that and suddenly, fuelled by murderous rage, he pulled out a hunting knife and started stabbing Moschiano to death right there in the garage. With his hands covered in blood, Durso turned to Fiorenzo, who by now was peeing in his pants, and told him "I want you to look at this. This is what happens to stool pigeons and people that short me." In other words, Durso was imposing his brand of punishment as a deterrent to future potential informers. It was not a crime of passion spawned by hot and angry blood, but instead it was a crime for profit with the help of the cold, deliberate execution of a human being just to protect the investment which was represented by a crime syndicate narcotics ring. He then told Fiorenzo that he would give him the break of his life and let him go, and if any one in the neighbourhood asked him about his having picked up Moschiano he was to say that he did pick him up but that he dropped him off two or three blocks from the point where he had picked him up. Gargano then drove Fiorenzo to an elevated train station and the latter took a train back to Chicago's West Side. In a state of panic, Fiorenzo quickly reported the incident to the police.
On February 2, 1964, both Durso and Gargano were arrested on charges for transporting and selling narcotics, but not for the murder of Moschiano since there was no body or any other evidence regarding the slaying. But more than two months later, Moschiano’s dead body popped up in the Des Plaines River, with his hand handcuffed, rags stuffed in his mouth, his throat cut from ear to ear, and with numerous stabbings in the stomach. Besides that, it was then when the feds caught a real break. In no time, both Durso and Gargano were taken to trial, and during the “show”, the defence was destroyed by the testimonies of Fiorenzo and the rest of the runners, including Mrs. Bourne and Miss. Costabile. In the end, in November, 1964, both defendants were sentenced from 100 to 150 years in prison. One police captain who attended the trial, told the newsmen that this was the first syndicate-related murder conviction in Chicago in his memory. According to some of the attendees at the trial, both Durso and Gargano have shown no remorse after hearing their sentences and were calmly escorted to their prison cells. Justice is so sweet but in the city of Chicago it lasts very shortly, meaning five years later broth convicts were paroled and released from prison.
Durso and Gargano
