Chicago, a city that has never been legit, even since its beginnings. From the moment of its incorporation as a city in 1837, Chicago has been systematically seduced by a villainous army of corrupt politicians, mercenary businessmen, and sadistic gangsters. There is no city in America that has been as maligned as Chicago when it comes to the city’s politics, corruption and organized crime. Nothing has changed in more than 150 years. Many people think that organized crime was born when the Italians came to Chicago but that’s not true. Many years before the rattle of the tommy guns and Al Capone, there were other criminal barons who ruled the streets of Chicago and invented organized crime. The story of the Capone gang and the Prohibition era is not the beginning of organized crime and the powerful criminal underworld, but there was something much bigger before those periods which was the result of the history of Chicago itself and placed the foundation for future criminals and schemes. This article is going to be about the bloody criminal roots of Chicago’s underworld that exists even today.

The Beginning

During the early 1800’s, Chicago was a perfect city for the development of large-scale organized criminal activity. Chicago’s geographical position was the gateway to the unsettled lands of the West which is also said to have contributed to the city’s involvement in crime. Many European travelers spent their days in Chicago before heading out to make their new fortunes on the west side of the country. Some of these travelers, because of various reasons, decided to stay in Chicago as their final chance for making money, obtaining foodstuffs and other needs. Most numbered of these Europeans were the Irish people and they settled in Chicago somewhere around the late 1830’s.Later they were joined by many Germans, Slovaks, Russians, Italians, the English and Jewish people. All of these groups brought their own cultures and also their criminal activities. Saloons and bars quickly spread around the city and later the same bars and saloons became homes of many criminal activites such as gambling and prostitution. One of the most famous Chicagoans from the early days, Dwight Moody, founder of Chicago’s Moody Bible Institute, once remarked that, "If the Angel Gabriel came to Chicago, he would surely lose his character within a week".

At the beginning of the 1850’s two of the first rackets in Chicago were prostitution, which was one of the oldest criminal activities in the world, and also gambling.The history of these criminal activities in Chicago is a mix of gang warfare, murder, racketeering and political corruption. Chicago's illegal business has always been in the hands of the alliance of criminals and corrupt politicians .This means that the alliance between the criminals and the powerful political figures resulted in corruption of the law enforcement agencies upon which society necessarily must depend for its protection. Before the birth of the many vice areas in Chicago, many of the early crime operators had previously plied their trade on the Mississippi River boats.In the year of 1850 one of the most vice areas was known as the "Sands." It was located north of the Chicago River and extended to Lake Michigan. The area was filled with gambling dens, brothels, and rooming houses which first were operated by independent criminal gangs. On April 20, 1857 Chicago Mayor "Long John" Wentworth led an army of police officers and firefighters in a raid on the Sands. This was one of the first crackdowns on crime in Chicago which resulted with the eviction of numerous criminal operators, gamblers and prostitutes and also the demolition of more than ten buildings.

The Father of Chicago’s Organized Crime

During the same period there was another vice district which was named the “Willows." One of Chicago’s first organized crime czars was an English immigrant from Yorkshire, Roger Plant who was the boss on that district. Plant, had been convicted of a felony in England and was scheduled to be exiled to Australia when he escaped and made his way to Chicago in 1857.Roger was a small ruthless guy who was very skillful with guns and knives and also had street smarts. He’s headquarters was a saloon at Monroe and Wells known as the Barracks or Roger’s Barracks. Later the resort changed its name to “Under the Willow”, due to a willow tree that stood next to the joint. The local was a big gambling den and a whorehouse.Also the whole area was controlled by Plant and became home to the many thieves, pickpockets, and muggers who constantly frequented his saloon. Two of Rogers best associates were Mary Hodges and Mary Brennan who were very talented thieves and also were trainers of other younger thieves and pickpockets. Roger’s local was built near the Chicago River’s entrance into Lake Michigan and as a result, the streets that surrounded the local, were in muddy conditions. Because of that, Roger Plant “talked” to some of the City’s officials and they decided to raise the foundations of the buildings along the newly upgraded roadways. The end resulted with the creation of underground passages, streets, and underground rooms. Legend goes that the many underground passages and rooms that existed beneath the joint gave the birth to the term "underworld" as a description of the society that engaged in criminal activity. This situation also gave the first sign and birth of organized crime in Chicago. In the early 1860’s,with the start of the Civil War, the economy of the South was on a very low level so many people, including criminals and gamblers started moving to cities like New York and Chicago. The rich criminals and gamblers were known as “southern gentlemen” who poured money into Chicago to furnish the needs of the army forces and in return they stayed and operated their own lucrative schemes. So during the war, Roger’s joint was full of soldiers and gamblers at any time. Many of these costumers often found themselves robbed, beaten, knifed or thrown in the alleys. Roger was also known for paying off the police to keep away from Under the Willow and his other criminal activities and later the increasingly wealthy Roger Plant bought all of the police force in that area. After the civil war, Roger had stashed so much cash that allowed him to depart from his criminal life and by 1870 he allegedly retired in a country estate outside of Chicago. Roger also had many children who later continued his criminal empire.

The King

Michael Cassius McDonald was an Irishman born in 1839 in Niagara Falls, between Canada and the United States. He lived together with his good mannered father Ed McDonald and mother Mary, two brothers and one sister. As a teenager Michael was a very naughty boy. He used to smack his father around whenever he felt like and used to steal around the shops and do pickpocketing. The train yards in Niagara Falls were located near Michaels home so as a youngster he started to run on the trains and practiced in all kinds of dishonest tricks. So with the help of these trains young Michael saw the opportunity to getaway from the poor conditions in the small town that he lived in. So in 1854 he moved to Chicago where he worked as a candy vendor on railroad cars and trains. He sold half-filled boxes of candy and fake jewelry to unsuspecting passengers.Guys like McDonald were known as “train butchers” and it is believed that McDonald was the inventor of the “prize package” swindle. He guaranteed the naïve passengers that they would be rewarded with cash prizes that can be found in every box of candy if they purchased from him. The prize was 5 cents and the box of candy costed less than 2 cents. He would tell the victim to draw a box of candy from his bag in which most of the boxes contained no prizes. Just to lure more victims, at the first grab he will let some passengers to win few times.

Since young age McDonald was a pure criminal with a total criminal mind. He knew how to play cards or poker and managed to empty the pockets of many men. He also sold hand made souvenirs to the passengers and was involved in many other gambling games. McDonald made his first small fortune and in 1860 he decided to abort his train butchering operations and left south to New Orleans. In those days New Orleans was a very corrupt city and McDonald got involved in many card games, horse race bettings and even operated many cockfights. He watched and learned new schemes and observed the underworlds structure and government corruption of the city. With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1961 a lot of human lives were destroyed in the country but that wasn’t the deal for the criminal minded McDonald. During the first year of the Civil War, at the age of 22 McDonald was involved in a bounty jumping business. Bounty jumpers were men who enlisted in the Civil War only to collect a bounty and then leave.They enlisted numerous times in the army, collecting many bounties in the process. The United State Congress passed a law allowing for bounties up to $300 and than the bounty jumper would desert his unit before arriving on the front lines and after that he travelled to a new area to gain another bounty. Some bounty jumpers collected over 40 bounties in that period. So McDonald organized the jumpers in to a “ring” that became a big time war racket and provided him with a lot of money. During the war conflict McDonald remained as a war profiteer, trading paid deserters with the help of many corrupt army and government officials. In 1963 he decided to get back to Chicago as a very wealthy guy. He was only 24 years old. He bought a residence in Bridgeport, in an Irish neighborhood. In thouse days Birdgeport was named as the “Terror District”. His war time racket continued untill the end of the war in 1865 and by that time McDonald established himself as the principal supplier for dice and card games and also police connections in Chicago. With the help of his big financial earnings he also established many strong underworld and political connections. For example, one of his connections was a whiskey dealer and gambling operator Calvin Paige. Together they opened many bars and one of the most famous was the bar at the Richmond House. This local had the reputation as the real place for many gamblers, confidence men, bookies and many criminals who decided to keep a low profile at the Richmond House.

Bad luck struck when on October 8, 1871, a small fire broke out in the barn of the O’Leary family. Because of the dry wooden construction of most Chicago buildings, the fire quickly spread throughout the city.This was known as the “Great Chicago Fire” which lasted 24 hours or one day. The fire killed over 300 people, destroyed almost 18,000 homes and left 100,000 people homeless. McDonald’s Richmond house was also consumed in the flames during the fire. By now McDonald already formed a criminal syndicate that made over $800,000 a year and among his henchmen he became known as “King Mike”. He had an army of ruthless criminals such as “Appetite Bill” Langdon, Kid Miller, the Wallace brothers, poolroom owner, gambling operator and also sports manager Pat Sheedy, Chicago billiards entrepreneur Tom Foley, gambler and army recruiter "Prince" Hal Varnell and prizefight promoter, ex-con and murderer from New York, Jere Dunn.”King Mike” was involved in all kinds of criminal activities such as political corruption, gambling, booze and tons of various crminal rackets but story goes that he also lived by a strict code of honor. The split from his criminal empire was divided in three ways.40 % went to his “boys”, 20% went to the police and other government officals,and 40% went to Mike himslef. Mike’s men started to collect protection money from every bar, hotel or brothel in Chicago. Mike also had his hands in every gambling or criminal scheme in Chicago. He was arrested many times and was brought to trail but every time he got out free of charge.

After the big fire and during the rise of King Mikes criminal empire, the city of Chicago became so demoralized that public drunkenness became a major social problem. Conditions were so bad that a group of leading citizens and city officials formed the Committee of Seventy to battle crime and the liquor and gambling industry. All of these efforts were supported by Mayor Joseph Medill who won the office on November 7,1871.He pledged to rebuilt Chicago and also worked on closing the gambling houses and brothels. Meanwhile, King Mike and his gang prepared for a fight. Many historians claim that these efforts set the stage for the development of the real organized crime in Chicago and that’s because many criminals like McDonald realized that they had to corrupt the top government officials or elect their own puppet mayors so they can operate freely. By this time King Mike contributed cash to many political opponents of Mayor Medill. King Mike became so much active in politics that in an effort to overcome the reform activities of Mayor Medill, in 1873 he created the first real corrupted political machine of Chicago."Mike McDonald’s Democrats," as they were called, with the help of the many gambling and saloon operators, corrupt police and government officals, later they elected their own candidate, Harvey Colvin, as Mayor of Chicago in the elections of 1873. With Colvin in office, McDonald organized the first big time criminal syndicate in Chicago composed of gamblers, criminal thugs and corrupt politicians. In other words McDonald had Chicago in his back pocket and became one of the founding fathers of the Irish organized crime and underworld.


The Great Chicago Fire

By now Chicago became the most important gambling center north of New Orleans and west of the Allegheny Mountains. King Mike expanded his gambling operations in Chicago that there was a stretch of two blocks on Randolph between Clark and State Streets and was known as "Hair Trigger Block". It was named because of the large number of shootings and murders that occurred from the disagreements in the gambling joints. This area was also known as the "Gamblers Row." By the mid 1870s, there were many other vice districts in Chicago and most notorious were the Little Cheyenne, Satan’s Mile, Whiskey Row, and the Levee. At one time on some of streets the gambling establishments were so numerous that all other forms of business were crowded out. After suffering a temporary setback at the polls in 1876, when the people of Chicago elected reform Mayor Monroe Heath, three years later King Mike’s Democrats elected Carter Harrison as Mayor in 1879.The alliance between the gambling interests and politicians in Chicago proved to be very powerful. Harrison, with the help of King Mike, served four consecutive terms as Mayor from 1879 to 1887.

Now bookmaking was introduced to the public and also the business of handling wagers on horse races.In 1885, King Mike formed a bookmaking syndicate which controlled gambling at the Chicago and Indiana race tracks. There are reports that in just one season Mike’s syndicate alone profited to the extent of $900,000,which was a lot of money in those days. King Mike was also very interested in sports, especially in boxing. It was Mike who, with the help of his associate and fight promoter Jere Dunn, gave the famous boxer John L. Sullivan the backing that enabled him to make his bid for the world’s heavyweight boxing championship in 1892.Later Mike’s associate Pat Sheedy became Sullivans manager. Also with help of Sheedy and Dunn, King Mike always placed the right bets on boxing matches and made a lot of money. Both of em provided Mike with a lot of tips for an upcoming fights.

In 1882 Mike was indicted for keeping a small gaming house, but everything was easily fixed by bribing the witnesses, who during the trial they suddenly had failed memories. This was one of the first examples of the infamous “Chicago amnesia”. Two years later, in 1884 King Mike built a four-story building which was placed next to Chicago’s City Hall. It was a big gambling parlor at Clark and Monroe known as the Store which reportedly was the largest liquor and gambling house in Chicago. Sotry goes that every game in it was fixed and soon became the gambling center and one of the biggest attractions in Chicago. On the first floor he had a legitimate liquor store and a bar, the gambling rooms were placed on the 2nd floor, on the 3rd floor Mike had its own private residence and on the 4th floor were rooms filled with prostitutes. Mike also had to take care of his friends in politics to look good in the eyes of the people in Chicago by arranging once in a while a police raid on the Store. The same tactics are used even by todays politicians and criminals. With all of his power over the police force, Mike like every “normal” criminal hated the cops. According to a legend, once a man came by asking for a small donation. Mike asked him ``What’s for?``, ``Well, we`re burying a policeman,`` said the man. ``Good!`` said Mike, ``Here`s 10 dollars, bury five of `em!``

By the mid 1890’s King Mike already had an army of younger and more powerful notorious thieves, forgers, gambling operators, smugglers, corrupt aldermen and other associates of every nature. The most prominent of those were big time gamblers James”Big Jim”O’Leary(member of the O’Leary family that were allegedly responsible for the Great Chicago Fire) , Jacob ”Mont” Tennes and two very powerful corrupt aldermen Michael Kenna and John Coughlin.They became Mike’s legacy and also became Chicagos most high profile criminal legends at the beginning of the 20th century.


King Mike

Back in those days every big shot criminal had a desire to win respect also as a legitimate businessman. So one day Mike purchased the Chicago Globe newspaper and also took over as manager of Chicago`s first elevated rail system, the Lake Street Line, which became known in gambling circles as ``Mike`s Upstairs Railroad``. During the late 1880’s,at the height of his prime time, King Mike controlled every form of politician, from ward committeemen and aldermen to mayors, senators and governors. If you wanted anything done, you had to go and see Mike. Every criminal gang and the entire police department were in his back pocket. Tons of cash flowed directly into his coffers and he also took his cut from every shady business deal. Almost every criminal asked for Mike’s services. He supplied them with bail bonds, fixing juries and paying off the authorities. Also during this period a lot of notorious corrupt politicians, saloon owners, gambling operators and prostitutes paid protection money to King Mike. King Mike’s criminal empire was mostly formed by the profits of an unholy trinity, and that was gambling, extortion and politics.

Slip a Mickey

For example, in 1896 one of the most notorious and infamous saloon-keeper in the First Ward was Mickey Finn, an Irishman who paid his protection money to King Mike and the Aldermen/Vice lords Michael Kenna and John Coughlin. Finn operated two saloons, the Lone Star and the Palm Garden, at the southern end of Whiskey Row. His bars, especially The Lone Star, were populated by resident prostitutes or as they called them in those days, "house girls".These girls jobs were to encourage the costumers to drink Mickey’s booze as much as possible, and to offer any other services that might be requested of them for a price. Finn always served the strongest and most expensive drinks. He was famous for one of the drinks that he offered in his saloon, the "Mickey Finn Special." Finn was one of the first criminals involved in narcotics but not for distribution…he used the narcotics for other purposes. His drinks were allegedly mixed with a “secret powder” that Finn had obtained from a "voodoo witch doctor" named Dr. Hall. Hall provided Finn with all kinds of “love potions” and also opium and cocaine. A “Mickey Finn Special” would put the drinker in a unconscious state thus giving Finn’s house girls the opportunity to empty the costumers pockets. As a result of his activities, Mickey Finn’s tactics can today be found in some books stating that "any of several powerful drugs, especially chloral hydrate, that are secretly put into alcoholic drinks to produce unconsciousness". When the victims awoke the next day, they usually had little memory of what had happened and how they ended up in a dirty levee alley. But not all of Finn’s victims ended up like this…once Finn drugged a trainman and later robbed him. When the trainman recovered he demanded his money back, but Finn had been gone. Later the trainman was found along the railroad tracks with his head cut off. But in 1903, the deal was off. There were persistent reports of dopings at the Lone Star which led the police to investigate the saloon more closely. King Mike did not tolerate drugs because it was a dirty business and it was also bad for his public image. Also many of the house girls began to fear that one day, Finn would take their hard-earned savings so one of Finn’s house girls later decided to testify before an aldermanic committee about the effects of his drinks. So on December 16, 1903, Mayor Carter Harrison ordered the closure of the Lone Star Saloon, and Mickey Finn wisely left town shortly thereafter. But not before he sold the formula for his famous drink to a number of other Southside saloons, who marketed it as a "Mickey Finn," or even just a "Mickey". The name eventually came into use as a generic term for any knockout drink, and to "slip a mickey" into someone's drink now means to secretly drug an unsuspecting victim.

Political Crime Bosses

Corruption had run rampant through Chicago politics, being traced back as far as the city remembers. Chicago’s mayors have always been men of importance, capable of causing riots and firing the entire police force. Occasionally, good men would be elected to office and each would try valiantly to clean up the town. They would start reform movements to purge the city of corrupt officials, to close down saloons on Sunday and brothels on weeknights and to raid all of the gambling dens within spitting distance of City Hall. But in most cases, these good men were not supported by an honest administration and soon, the people of Chicago would be drawn to another man, who spoke louder and made more promises than the rest. So it has never been the mayors of Chicago who have had the most power in the city. You see, the real control over politics in the city of Chicago is held by those who control the jobs. He who controls the jobs has the loyalty of the people and the votes on election day. It’s no wonder that such men are so well remembered in the city today, for better or for worse.

Back in the mid 1890’s King Mike’s army recruiter "Prince" Hal Varnell placed John Coughlin as alderman of the 1st Ward and in turn recruited Michael Kenna to fill the second aldermanic seat. In those days there were two aldermen in each Chicago Ward. Michael "Hinky Dink" Kenna and "Bathhouse" John Coughlin, as they were called, controlled politics and vice in Chicago’s downtown area and Near South Side, which was commonly referred to as the Levee. The first ward was the most strategic, containing the Loop, named for the encirclement of elevated railway tracks of the Chicago Transit Authority, the Near West Side, and the Near South Side. Not only were there brothels, and gambling houses, but also fine department stores, restaurants, skyscrapers, the best hotels, and the largest banks. These CTA trains brought thousands of workers and shoppers downtown, contributing to the large financial and economic growth of the city. This was Hinky Dink and Bathhouse John's empire.

Kenna and Coughlin were born in the same shack at Polk and Sholto Sts. at the western edge of Connelly’s Patch. Kenna was born in 1858 and Coughlin was born in 1860. Both grew up in the same Irish Slum District .They went to the first Jones School at Harrison and Plymouth Court and to get to school they would have passed the Custom House Place Levee in the " Cheyenne " District every day, in those times perhaps the wickedest place in America. South Clark St. or " The Chute " was comprised of Concert Saloons, Panel Houses, Gambling Joints and Dives. They also witnessed many scenes of shootings and murders in this area. John Coughlin at the age of 15 left school and began working in a Turkish bathhouse at Clark street, rubbing down politicians and underworld figures. It was here he made some of the connections that would later propel him upward in First Ward Politics. The bathhouse was often visited by " Prince Hal " Varnell and King Mike McDonald. They would usually came over to his side as he was so likeable, easy going, and somewhat naive character. These two men became his mentors. Later Coughlin opened a bathhouse himself, where he gained the nickname ‘Bathhouse” John.

Kenna left school at the age of ten and became a gopher for many saloon keepers at the district. As a teenager he became a very quiet boy but very aggressive in his business sense, thus making connections with many madams, prostitutes and anyone who might come in handy. In his late teens he also owned his own newsstand but later decided to leave Chicago and went to Colorado. Over there he worked as a circulation manager at Lake County Reville in Leadville. After few years Kenna came back to Chicago and opened his own saloon, which was visited by many politicians and with that Kenna got mixed in the world of politics. The hooking up with Coughlin made them the most infamous duo in Chicago’s politics. Coughlin was the more colourful one of the duo. He used to wear silk bowlers and colourful frock coats and was a real loud mouth. Kenna was the quiet one who took his job very seriously and was also a deep thinker and could say a lot in a few words. In other words he was " The Brain ". They hang around at a saloon at 120 East Van Buren which was called the "Workingman’s Exchange" .It was a sort of a home to many Chicago criminals who formed a well disciplined army of voters on every election day. Kenna and Coughlin allegedly spent their campaign money on feeding their hungry army and satisfying their thirst. When asked “Why?” by a French writer, Hinky Dink replied that politics is business and that is how he made votes. Kenna and Couglin formed an organization by selling protection to gambling house and brothel operators in the First Ward. There was also a defense fund by two lawyers who were always placed on retainer to immediately appear in court anytime if some of Kenna’s and Coughlin’s associates were arrested.


Michael Kenna

In the late 1890’s Kenna and Coughlin associated with another corrupt alderman from the 19th Ward named Johnny Powers. The trio had an idea to form an organization of many other corrupt aldermen that controlled Chicagos politics and they were named by the public as “The Grey Wolves”. These Chicago officials were not only skilled in trading votes for favors, but they also made profits from many criminal enterprises and other financial schemes. For example if a businessmen wanted to build a public service such as electricity, gas and telephones he simply had to bribe the aldermen and take the franchise award.The group also invented many other criminal schemes like awarding a non-existent companies and forcing the existing franchise holders to buy the rights of the non-existent companies. With that the profits from the purchase found their way into the pockets of the various aldermen.Such actions led the outraged Chicagos business men to form the Municipal Voters League which had small success, but it did help to elect a number of more honest aldermen.


John Coughlin

Their territory, the Levee, occupied the blocks between Harrison and Polk, from Dearborn to Clark street. This area was also referred to as the "Customs House Levee." Kenna’s and Coughlin’s most lucrative businesses at the Levee were prostitution and the protection rackets. The growth of the Levee or the “Red Light District” as it was called, and their business in particular , can be attributed to the fact that four of Chicago’s six railroad depots were centered in the area. The area was named "Red Light District" because of the red lanterns that were customarily hung in front of each brothel. The Levee became so much of a notorious area that a lot of christian Chicagoans started to feel revolt over the whole situation.Because of that revolt and the growth of Chicago’s downtown business district, the pressure came over Kenna, Coughlin and also Mayor Carter Harrison. Carter ordered the Levee to be relocated to the area between 19th and 22nd Streets. The fashionable Prairie Avenue district was bound by 16th Street, Calumet, Indiana, and Michigan Avenues, which immediately adjected the Levee. The Prairie Avenue was permanently destroyed by the coming of the vice district and after years of resistance, most of its residents eventually abandoned their community. In the early 1900’s the Levee was now in the Second Ward and this troubled the two crooked aldermen and in order to regain control of the Levee, Kenna and Coughlin, with the help of their supporters and the resistance from the unsatisfied residents, they proposed a redistricting ordinance that would return the Levee to the First Ward. Kenna and Coughlin also reached for help from the other aldermen or as they were called ‘The Grey Wolves”. They won the support of the Second Ward Alderman William Hale “Big Bill” Thompson. With Thompson’s help the area was relocated to the First Ward but also contained a part of the Second Ward. This alliance was the beginning of a long relationship between Kenna, Coughlin, and Thompson. The "New Levee," as it was called, now consisted over two hundred houses of prostitution or brothels. Most famous were The House of All Nations, The Little Green House, Bed Bug Row, the Bucket of Blood, Ed Weiss’ Capitol, Freidberg’s Dance Hall, and the Everleigh Club. Kenna’s and Coughlin’s headquarters was the Frieberg’s Dance Hall which was a big prostitution house.

The Gambling Combination

Gambling is an example of a business that was run and regulated by gangsters and often appeared in the forms of roulette, poker, craps, various card games and also the betting on horse races. The mobsters managed their gambling operations, which were often disguised as pool halls, because many of the poor and rich people, had the feeling of being released from their everyday troubles by beating the odds and winning a big bet. These pool rooms or gambling joints were very successful because the gangsters united in a very powerful crime groups and they relied on the influence from the government and corrupt police forces. The big gambling business could not exist without the bribery of many government officials. The gangsters also made influence over elections through contributions to campaign funds, collecting votes or doing any kind of dirty work for the government, including robbery, hijacking, and contract killing. In return many of the high profile criminals oversaw their gambling joints with out any problems. During the old days there was nothing more profitable than gambling, everything else was a “side product”.

James “Big Jim” O’Leary and Jacob ”Mont” Tennes literally inherited all of King Mike’s gambling operations and with the protection of the two crooked aldermen Michael Kenna and John Coughlin, they took King Mike’s illegal gambling operations on a higher level.

James “Big Jim” O'Leary was an Irishman born in 1869 in Chicago. His childhood was filled with shame because of the blame that his family carried over the Great Chicago Fire. Since young age O’Leary was a troubled young hood that was constantly involved in fights and petty crimes.He grew up on the among the South Sides slaughterhouses. With the curse of his surname, he had a ruff time in finding any legitimate work but he managed to work at the Union Stock Yards, where he acquired the nickname "Big Jim." He was a decent worker but the money was no good so he decided to try his luck in Chicago’s South Side underworld. He began working for many gambling and saloon operators and made many connections. He also learned how to gamble and became very good at it. With the help of new connection he caught the eye of one of King Mike’s associates "Prince" Hal Varnell. Varnell saw that O’Leary had a thing for gambling and also had the brains for business. The only problem was that since young age he became a degenerate gambler. He bet on everything and I really mean on everything. If he saw two ants on the ground he would bet which ant would arrive at its nest first. During the mid 1880’s because of the threat of reforms, King Mike decided to expand his gambling operations in Indiana and so he instructed Varnell to send O’Leary to act as their scout.

During his stay in Indiana O’Leary made a lot of underworld connections and with King Mike’s financial backup he opened a off-track betting resort. Indiana’s government officials tried to shut down his gambling joint so O’Leary decided to surround the local with a stockade of logs and recruited armed men and ordered them to shoot anyone who will try to forcibly enter his property. Either way, because of the pressure the resort later closed due to bankruptcy. By the early 1890s O’Leary decided to go back to Chicago and to try his luck again. In 1892 O’Leary bet everything he had on “Gentleman” James Corbett in his fight with John L. Sullivan, and in the end James O'Leary won big. Also with the money that he made in Indiana he had an idea to open his own saloon in Chicago. He opened his own saloon on Halsted Street, which he designed to include a Turkish bath, a restaurant, billiard room and a bowling alley and later he also added a handbook parlor with a detailed race track results and other betting informations. O’Leary really hated the government “spies” so his bookie joint was protected with spiked fences and few packs of watchdogs. O’Leary was the first one that recognized the important changes that were taking place in the gambling world. The traditional games like poker, faro or craps, had been replaced by betting on horse races. The thing was that betting at the horse tracks was legal and in addition, new advances in communications, such as the telegraphs and wire services allowed bettors to place bets from local saloons, bars and pool rooms. The wire services were connected to all of the major race tracks around the country so the bettors easily placed their bets at the gambling parlors that contained central switchboards, usually placed in some “secretive” back rooms.

In 1899 O’Leary was connected to the Western Union wire service because it offered more competitive rates for providing the hookup to his gambling parlor. By this time there were few racing tracks in Chicago and they were mostly owned by King Mike. With Mike’s connections to City Hall the race tracks were protected from the hand of the law. The presence of bookmakers was encouraged by King Mike because they were his only source for his illegal income. So gambling operators like O’Leary depended on their alliance with King Mike and the local ward organization and also their connections with corrupt police officials.


Big Jim O'Leary

The big cash started falling in to O’Leary’s hands when he made a connection with the Santa Fe Railway which ran three “Gamblers Special” trains out to O’Leary’s gambling joint while the Western Union provided the wire services and with the protection of police officials like Nicholas Hunt, O’Leary became the rising star of illegal gambling in Chicago. In the early 1900’s Big Jim O’Leary became the most prominent gambling boss in Chicago so the government started to take notice. But in 1904 a furious attorney general an future Mayor Carter Harrison, Jr, together with Helen Gould one of Westerns Union biggest stock holders. demanded that the Santa Fe Railway and the Western Union had cut their ties with O’Leary on moral grounds and they did. The loss of business caused O’Leary to close his gambling joint.

With the profits from his previous enterprise, O’Leary opened another joint which became Chicago’s most prominent two-story gambling local at 4183 S. Halsted, which included a billiards room, several bowling alleys, a saloon, a barbershop, and a sauna. The name "O'Leary" was written in giant electric letters on the front door as a sign of Big Jim's pride. But now his joint also had false partitions, tunnels, hidden passageways and reinforced doors. Thanks to the tips that he received from corrupt police officials, O’Leary was always able to clear the joint before the raids were conducted. But soon every gambler in the city knew that he(I say “he” because by this time women did not gamble) could get down a bet at Big Jim’s place. Finally O’Leary prospered. He also opened a branch of suburban shopping malls in Du Page County.Big Jim was making millions and he also had his hands in many illegal operations and also made a lot of new contacts. During his prime time O’Leary made partnership with another of King Mike’s underlings and gambling boss of Chicago’s North Side Jacob “Mont” Tennes.

Jacob “Mont” Tennes was born in 1873 on Chicago’s North Side to a poor German family with five brothers and two sisters. Even as a youngster, he was known to be an expert at dice and other games. In his late teenage years he began running his first handbook operation. In the early 1890’s he and his two brothers William and Edward ran many handbook operations in King Mike’s locals around Chicago and became very good. At his 20th birthday Tennes, together with his two brothers and with the bless of King Mike, provided the start-up capital to open their first Billiard Hall on Lincoln Ave., near Wrightwood Ave. At the gambling joint Tennes also sponsored pool tournaments, in which he himself was frequently the victor. Tennes started stashing his big amounts of cash and by the late 1890’s slowly became the most prominent gambling operator on Chicago’s North Side.


Mont Tennes

By this period Tennes also gained interest in many handbook operating locals on the Northside, and in 1900 he began opening a big number of saloons, cigar stores and many other gambling parlors. He controlled all of the saloons on N. Clark St. in River North. The residents of the neighbour hood said that the district was slowly becoming similar to Kenna’s and Couhglins Levee, the city's biggest red light district. But the thing was that Tennes wasn’t so much involved in prostitution as the two corrupt aldermen, but instead he loved gambling so by 1901 Tennes' name was already well known among anti-gambling advocates. At his gambling locals there was usually a cigar stands in front of the main rooms were they posted a racing form, which was studied by those who enter. The ticker was behind a thin partition and the bookmaker got information of track and odds over the telephone. The results were announced at the bar where many men used to gather. One of the most remarkable things was that, many women were among the major clients of Tennes' gambling houses, because by now they rarely entered the saloons or cigar shops that fronted the gambling operations. Most prominent gambling local for women was a poolroom named Lang’s Saloon at 4522 State Street. By now Tennes became big in betting at the horse tracks and made a partnership with Big Jim O’Leary and in 1904, together began operating bookie joint which was a little cottage in Dunning at Irving Park Rd. and Narragansett, just outside Chicago city limits. They used to take wagers in the morning at homes and stores on the races that took place in the afternoon, and also settled accounts from the previous day's races.

The Black Belt

Chicago’s African-Americans were involved and organized in syndicated vice even before the arrival of traditional Italian organized crime groups. These sophisticated African-American organized crime groups operated independently and also played an important role in the activities of the future Chicago mobs. African-American criminal syndicates ran speakeasies and nightclubs, and participated in illegal policy gambling and prostitution even before the 20th century. African-American organized crime differed from other criminal groups only in the fact that they continued to run things independently. Chicago’s South Side was a “black metropolis” that had its own elected officials, business community and underworld that had little interaction with “white” Chicago. In 1840 a large number of runaway slaves began arriving in the “Windy City.” By the end of the Civil War in the mid 1860s, there were approximately 2,000 African-Americans living in Chicago. The first blacks to settle in Chicago were concentrated in the center of the city along the banks of the Chicago River. The majority of Chicago’s black population moved south where rents were cheapest, near the railroad terminals and Chicago’s vice districts.

Chicago’s South Side “Black Belt” grew to be the second largest Negro city in the world; only New York’s Harlem exceeded it in size. This black metropolis was a city within a city, seven miles in length and one and one-half miles wide, where more than 300,000 African-Americans lived. Here were colored policemen, firemen, aldermen and precinct captains, state representatives, doctors, lawyers and teachers. Chicago’s highly organized “machine” politicians were willing to work with anyone who could deliver the vote and contribute financially to their political organization. Chicago probably boasted a greater degree of black participation in politics than any other city in the nation. In the early days of machine politics, the reward for supporting a successful candidate was jobs and graft. During the 1880’s Chicago blacks were incorporated into both the First Ward political machine of “Bathhouse” John Coughlin and “Hinky Dink” Mike Kenna and the Second Ward organization of Republican Alderman William Hale Thompson. Later, the expanding African-American community on Chicago’s South Side developed into an independent political force whose endorsement was sought by Republicans and Democrats alike. Chicago blacks learned early that the political life of the community was powerfully allied with the world of the saloon and the gambling house.

Most Black Criminals in Chicago were brothel owners, gambling operators, pimps, burglars, and policy runners. The policy gambling was a homegrown and very simple game which was played exclusively in the black neighborhoods. The white people reffered to it as the “N*gger game”. The policy game, besides providing millions of dollars for its operators, but it also provided jobs and expectations for many poor people. Policy was illegal, but it was played freely on the streets, storefronts, private homes and social establishments. One of the games main attractions for the low income and working class bettors was the small amount of money which was required to play. Even the poorest bettors could win $50 with just a nickel or dime. In fact Policy Wheels originated in Chicago and 40 years before it arrived in New York or Philadelphia. Black gangsters in New York didn't have the legit business fronts, police cooperation, and political influence as the black gangsters of Chicago.

The black community’s earliest vice lord was John “Mushmouth” Johnson and was born in St. Louis to a woman who had been a nurse for Mary Todd Lincoln. At the age of 30, Johnson migrated to Chicago in 1875 and started working as a waiter in the Palmer House Hotel and as a “floor man” in a downtown gambling hall. In 1882, he got his first taste of vice as a employee in one of the gambling houses on Gamblers' Row. Johnson enforced the rules physically when gamblers who lost money demanded it back or tried to take it back by force. So besides being a tuff guy he also learned how to operate many various card games and other gambling games, although Johnson never gambled. By 1890 Johnson operated many gambling games on South Clark Street together with many white people, such as Andy Scott, a known vice operator.


Mushmouth Johnson

At the same time, another white Mississippi riverboat gambling operator known as Patsy King came to Chicago. Even though the policy game was a black mans racket, legend goes that King was the one that devised the game. Story goes that he devised a game of chance were the bettor would pick three numbers out of 100. Than the bettor would place a nickel to a dollar with a payout of 10 to 1, but the odds against winning were 1 in 1000. Than the bettor would handpick three numbers out of King’s hat which was filled with 100 paper clips that contained the numbers from 1-100. If the bettor’s three numbers were drawn, he won. But the truth was that rarely happened so King became very rich with his game. King met a black man on one of the riverboats, named Sam Young that worked as a porter. Allegedly King has taught Sam on how the game works and they started operating together. Policy Sam, as he was known, came to Chicago’s South Side in 1885 and explained the rules to the black people and used the same tactics as Patsy King, by taking bets and pulling numbers out of his hat. With the financial backing of Patsy King, Sam Young took the policy game on a higher level.

They also caught the eye of Mushmouth Johnson and the trio made a partnership by opening their own saloon in 1890, which was located in the heart of “Whiskey Row”. Their gambling place was said to be unique because the players did not gamble against the house. They gambled against one another, with the gamekeeper taking a part of every “pot.” In the late 1890’s their saloon, which was named the “Mushmouth Saloon”, became very popular among waiters, railroad men, porters and also professional gamblers who were served by very attractive barmaids. Than in 1900 Johnson renamed the saloon into “The Emporium” and besides craps, poker and billiards, the main game was "policy". There was a roper on the street who called out, "Come on gents, any game you like upstairs" until the early hours of the morning. As Mushmouth, Policy Sam and King grew rich in gaming, they also grew politically powerful. Johnson as the head of this small gambling syndicate, was referred as the "head henchman" or "lieutenant" of first ward alderman "Hinky Dink" Kenna and “Bathhouse” Coughlin. Johnson could consistently garner the vote of the ward's black population for the two aldermen, and in return, the corrupt aldermen put Mushmouth in charge of collecting protection money from the gambling dens in the city's growing Chinatown district on Clark Street . Johnson also held control of the chinese community with the help of a oriental criminal named “King Foo”. They collected graft from more than 20 chinese opium dens and gambling halls where Fan Tan and Bung Loo card games were played very often. Johnson also contributed money donations to blacks in need, setup soup kitchens for the homeless, helped black immigrants from the south and also provided jobs. Also Johnson’s mother reportedly contributed money on his behalf to the Baptist Church.

In 1903 Mushmouth Johnson, King Patsy, Sam Young, King Foo and one of Mike Kenna’s underlings and gambling operator, Tom McGinnis, they all controlled the policy wheel companies called the ''The Union and the Phoenix'', which were headquartered at The Emporium.

The year of 1903 was a bad year for Mushmouth Johnson. First Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison revoked the license of Johnson’s Saloon in Whiskey Row. Evidence collected by the city council’s “graft committee” described Johnson as a “card cheat” who robbed patrons “stone blind” at his craps, hand faro and draw poker tables. Witnesses told the committee that it was impossible to win at Johnson’s gambling hall. Even when a patron did win a pot, every effort was made to “skin” him of his winnings at another game before he left the resort. Next, the city of Chicago had declared an all-out war on the old Custom House Place vice district, and all of the major brothels and gambling houses were shut down. Johnson, with his substantial political influence, was one of the last to go. It didn't help that in that year, Ernest Naoroji, a Ceylonese bank teller, embezzled $3,000 from his employer and gambled it all away at the Emporium before committing suicide. Publicity got even worse when Johnson was sued by the mother of a boy who had reportedly gambled away $60 of the family's subsistence, and when an angry gambler, who had physically attacked Johnson in front of the Emporium, turned up dead a few days later, shot by the bartender at the club. Also citizens' graft investigation indicated Johnson on gambling charges and on top of that Reverend Reverdy Cassias Ransom, pastor of Chicago’s Institutional AME Church and Settlement House, which was located at 3825 South Dearborn Street began to attack what he called “The evils of policy gambling”. But in very short time “someone” bombed his church. The following year, Johnson was again sued by another gambler for $15,000 supposedly lost on rigged games. Later in 1905 Johnson earned the disfavour of a notorious gambler Bob Motts by refusing to cut Motts in the policy operations. In retaliation Motts used his connections with Illinois congressman Edward Green to press anti-policy legislation.

Back in 1890, Bob Motts had been a porter in Mushmouth’s saloon and later opened a tavern and gambling hall further south on State Street in the Second Ward. Bob Motts not only became known as a good “pay-off” for the police, but also worked to organize the black vote. Motts reportedly paid saloon patrons and local women $5.00 a day to assist in political canvassing.In return for his political activities, Motts was able to obtain jobs for Chicago blacks and helped elect his protégé Edward Green to the Illinois legislature.

So the anti-policy legislation law became very drastic that targeted all person involved in the racket, including the caretaker of the building in which the gambling was conducted. This big time pressure on the policy racket forced the policy syndicate to temporarily withdraw from the game and went underground.

Finally, in 1906, tired of the continuing assaults from the press, police and unhappy gamblers, Mushmouth Johnson closed The Emporium and went down to the new Levee centered around 22nd and Dearborn. Over there he opened the Frontenac Club together with Tom McGinnis and Bill Lewis. This gambling hall catered only white men and there was no policy wheels. The stress may have been too much for old Mushmouth Johnson, and so he died on Friday, September 13, 1907. A huge crowd attended his funeral at the Institutional AME Church, including many police inspectors. Some accounts indicate that Johnson’s money may have helped establish Binga State Bank, the nation’s first black-owned bank, in 1908. Later one of his daughters, Eudora Johnson had married Jesse Binga, the bank’s founder.

The Pimping Vultures

Organized gambling and extortion as practiced by people like King Mike did not keep pace with other criminal activities such as prostitution and narcotics usage. Irish underworld figures like King Mike were mostly interested in their public image and gaining social acceptance. The criminals from other ethnics such as Italian, Jewish and Eastern European descent were less concerned about making their image and they usually maintained more of a extravagant lifestyles. During the rise of the gambling lords and the gambling business in general in Chicago, the prostitution business was also booming. Among the gambling parlors and saloons there were also many massage parlors, saunas, spas and similar establishments which sometimes served as illegal fronts for prostitution. Many of the criminal underlings that used to work for some of the crime bosses, started operating their own independent white slavery businesses, which later many of the so called pimps would join forces with the gambling operators thus making them the biggest money makers in Chicago’s criminal organizations and later to become crime lords in their own right.

Prostitution was never legal in Chicago but the notorious Levee district was a place where brothels filled with prostitutes were publicly allowed to exist, tolerated or ignored by corrupt police and government officials. In Chicago it was usually managed on the street level, with Michael Kenna and John Coughlin receiving a cut from the local pimps and prostitutes. The two of them were connected to many Chicago underworld figures and were the main players in the prostitution rings. Gangster lieutenants around Chicago made collections every week and the ones that owned the brothels paid their protection money to the two aldermen. One of them was Max Guzik, who was a Levee saloon-owner and political affiliate of Alderman Michael "Hinky Dink" Kenna.

Max Guzik was born in 1855 and came to Chicago’s South Side somewhere around the early 1890’s or to be exact in 1892. Back than the South Side was overwhelmed mostly with Jewish population and by this time in Chicago in general there were over 200,000 jews . He settled together with wife and his eight children and started working as a cigar maker. Max became very well known among his fellow Jewish people but the thing was the cigar business wasn’t enough to feed his big family because when in Chicago he and his wife Mamie had three more children. Four of his sons Harry, Jake, Sam and Charles used to help their father in managing the cigar store but later they got involved in petty crimes. Because of the bad conditions, in the early 1900’s Max Guzik started working as a political “enforcer” for Michael Kenna and John Coughlin. He started gathering votes from his fellow jewish people and delivered it to the Democratic machine and became very successful. He collected big payoffs for his work and made a lot of important contacts in the vice business.


Harry Guzik

As I said before Kenna’s and Coughlin’s main racket was collecting street tax from prostitution so with their help Max Guzik later developed a very lucrative scheme as a precinct captain for Chicago’s most infamous politician-pimps. His sons Harry, Jake, Sam and Charles joined forces with their father and started working as pimps and became very successful. They started gathering and kidnapping teenage girls around Chicago and became real animals. They used to beat and rape the girls and at the same time gave them booze and narcotics and later placed them in the brothels. By than the Levee used to have over 400 brothels so business was booming. Harry Guzik had once been convicted of kidnapping several young girls and forcing them in to lives of prostitution. Later he opened his own brothel in 1904 which was named “The Blue Goose” at 119th and Paulina Street. Harry managed his brothel together with his wife Alma and his younger brother Jake. In short time Harry’s brothel became very famous that also made a lot of “noise” around Chicago’s government officials. One righteous assistant state attorney named Clifford Roe started to investigate the situation and asked for help even from Washington D.C. so he can make a move on the vice trade. So in 1907 Harry Guzik was convicted for white slavery and was sentenced to the Illinois State Penitentiary while achieving national publicity. Young Jake Guzik remained on the streets of Chicago and continued with the vice operations for his brother and took it on a higher level. While Harry was in prison, Jake together with his older brother Sam, would also entice many farm girls to come to the big city for a promising "career." When the girls arrived, the Guziks usually raped them, got them hooked on narcotics and booze, then sold them to the whore masters in Chicago's infamous Levee district. Jake was noticed by the gambling syndicate of Mont Tennes and soon after pursued gambling and the policy rackets at first in the suburbs and then in the Loop, showing his affinity with manipulating number and finances.


Young Jake Guzik

During the late 1890’s the Italians began arriving in great numbers on the South Side of Chicago. One of the most prominent Italians on the Levee was Giacomo “Big Jim” Colosimo. Colosimo was born in 1875 in Cosenza, Calabria, Italy. He left his home land in 1895 at the age of 15 and sailed towards Chicago. First he started working as a street cleaner,shoe shiner, newspaper boy and also as a water carrier for the railroads. Jim as he became known, grew up in Chicago's First Ward, and scrape for a living. He was a very tuff, intelligent and charismatic boy and as a teenager he also became a good fist fighter and was involved in many street fights. People started betting on Jim and he won a lot of fights, thus making his first big money. By than he earned the nickname ‘Big Jim”. Above all he had the talent of making new friends in Chicago’s underworld and became very popular among his fellow Italians who by that time represented the majority of the population on Chicago’s South Side. Colosimo also began supplementing his income with pickpocketing, stick ups and robberies. By the age of 18 Jim was connected to many Italian hoodlums known as the Black Hand.

The Black Hand or “La Mano Nera” was not an organization, but a practice by which businessmen and other wealthy or poor Italians were extorted for money by independent gangsters. They would sent a letter stating that they would perform violence if the victim did not pay a particular sum. These extortion letters usually contained a drawing of a black hand and other evil symbols such as the daggers, skulls and crossbones. During this time there was a big number of Black Hand gangs( http://www.gangsterbb.net/threads/ubbthr...1882#Post771882). Colosimo took up the Black Hand practice of sending letters to wealthy citizens of Chicago and started making the big buck. In 1900, Colosimo got noticed by Kenna’s and Coughlin’s underlings and was offered a job as a street tax collector for the local political gangster bosses. Colosimo accepted his new job and became very good at it. He visited almost every saloon and brothel on the Levee, and while collecting the cash from the pimps and prostitutes he started to learn about the white slavery racket and also gambling. Mushmouth Johnson’s Emporium saloon was often visited by Colosimo, who collected a monthly fee from the joint.

While engaging prostitutes to work for him he was also involved in many gambling operations. He also began collecting votes from his fellow Italians. Later he personally met First Ward aldermen Michael Kenna and John Coughlin, for whom he started to work as a precinct captain and also as their personal bagman. These positions provided Colosimo with the political connections which would allow him to advance in his career as a big time gangster, pimp and extortionist and also brought his big income. Colosimo acquired a “stable” of girls and made the prostitution racket his main business.


Big Jim Colosimo

In 1902, while making his rounds to the brothels, Colosimo met Victoria Moresco, a fat, unattractive, middle-aged Madam who operated four second-rate brothel on Armour Avenue. Victoria fell in love with him and Colosimo, seeing the potential in taking over Victoria’s operations, married her a week later. Colosimo quickly took over the management of his wife's brothel, renaming it "The New Brighton". Big Jim also took over operations in another brothel named “The Victoria” and in 1903, joined forces with another prominent pimp with a funny name, Maurice Van Bever. Big Jim and Van Bever took the white slavery business on a higer level, thus making the popular term for sex trafficking.Van Bever, was a big time pimp who drove around the Levee in a red carriage which was driven by top hatted coachmen. Van Bever and his wife Julia ran two brothels on Armour Avenue and with Colosimos help, they set about the business of making contact stations in New York, St. Louis and Milwaukee. Over the next years, they imported more than 600 young women for sale into the Levee and other fleshpots across the country. Colosimo also began forming his own street gangs and also started working together with Italian political power Tony D'Andrea and "Dago Mike" Carrozzo. By now Colosimo extorted over 200 prostitution houses and he also got involved in the union business by engaging control over the Street Sweeper’s Union.

In 1904 Big Jim founded his first big establishment, the Colosimo Billiard and Pool Room. Colosimo also made connections with Mont Tennes by connecting his parlor with a telephone wire, a sure sign in those days that a horse racing handbook was operating within, as race information needed to be distributed quickly to bookmakers. Big Jim hired two of his brothers-in-law, Joseph and John Moresco, to work at the gambling parlor.

By the mid 1900’s Colosimo became a big shot in Chicagos underworld and acquired another nickname, which was "Diamond Jim". He got the nickname because he frequently dressed in a white suit and wore diamond pins, rings, and other jewelry. This jewelry combined with his charm and money helped him establish relationships with women. He had a “strong love” for them, which fueled his enthusiasm for the business of prostitution. Colosimo also added at least thirty more brothels to his wives brothel chain, and the most prominent ones were the Saratoga and the Victoria, named after his wife. For every two-dollar the prostitutes earned, he took $1.20 plus something off of each drink purchased.The ongoing problem for Coloismo was that there were never enough women to meet the demand. To keep the stock up, Colosimo connected with the Guzik family, which mostly supplied the girls for Big Jims brothels. The greedy Colosimo didn’t care about the kidnappings and the rappings of the young girls, he was only interested in the profits. When some of the vice lords like Mushmouth Johnson, Tom McGinnis and dice-man Bill Lewis opened their Frontenac Club, Colosimo also took protection money and placed some of his prostitutes at the joint. So by 1907 Colosimo made at least $600,000 a year from the slave trade, the extortion and gambling rackets, which was an incredible amount of money in thouse days.

The Guzik family and Colosimo were the biggest money makers and prostitution lords for Kenna and Coughlin in the Loop. Mont Tennes on the other hand had his own prostitution rings also. While spreading his own gambling operations on Chicago’s West Side and by the simple nature of things he got involved in white slavery also. One of his connections in this business was a Jewish German mob boss,Michael "The Pike" Heitler who began operating brothels in Chicago since the late 1890s. He’s empire was stretched on West Madison Street and by the early 1900’s he had become one of the leading crime figures in the prostitution business. Heitler also made business deals with the Guzik’s and Colosimo but worked independently and Tennes wasn’t his boss also, but they worked very closely. One of the things which was the reason for working independently was that Heitler was a ruthless, illiterate and backstabbing criminal. He used to have many enemies but as I said before he had a high profile connections in the underworld and upper world. Heitler used to collect street tax from many brothels and gambling parlors. Sometimes he collected by himself and sometimes with the help of other criminal associates and also corrupt police officals. Two of thouse officals were chief inspector Edward McCann and Detective Sergt. Jeremiah Griffin of the Desplaines street district and they wouldn't let any one live in the district without first paying tribute to this small criminal syndicate. A lot of bad women and men., even went to the police station and settled their debts with McCann and Griffin in person. Heitlers other criminal associates who also collected street taxes from the prostitutes and gamblers were Peter Cohen,Louis Marks and Louis Frank,who was a saloon owner and a politican. This small “collecting syndicate” accumulated over $100,000 a year from the brothels and saloons on the West Side. Since Heitler was involved in prostitution he was also involved in narcotics, especially opium and cocaine.


Mike Heitler

The Trust

When King Mike became semi-retired in the early 1900’s he gathered all of Chicago’s crime lords and chaired a secret “commission meeting”, which was the first big time meeting of underworld figures in Chicago’s criminal history. He divided his new gambling syndicate into four groups. Mont Tennes and his two brothers ran the North Side with their headquarters at Center Street and Sheffield Avenue which were fronted by Joseph Moore and John Newton, James O’Leary ruled the Southwest Side around the Union Stockyards, alderman Johnny Rogers had the West Side with the help of his underlings John Gazzola and Michael "The Pike" Heitler. The Loop district and downtown Chicago was ruled by Michael Kenna and John Coughlin with the help of their vice operators John Condon, Tom McGinnis, Patsy King, Sam Young and Big Jim Colosimo. There was also another smaller but powerful gambling faction overseen by O’Leary and Tennes, which was formed by former policy men Charles “Social” Smith, Harry Perry and “Bud” White the owner of a big gambling steamer boat named “The City of Traverse”. The syndicates main bondsman was George Murray, a close associate of King Mike, who often paid the bonds if a police raid occurred on any of the syndicates territories. The group struck a deal that no one would not gain an attempt to take over each others territories and to upper hand the racetracks, since by now it was the biggest gambling business in Chicago. They called this deal “The Trust”.

But the deal did not last long. Big Jim O’Leary first violated the agreement by moving his operations in other territories and now all hell broke loose and it was also the beginning of the infamous racetrack wars. O’Leary together with Tennes stood against two crime groups, including Smith and Perry’s group. Big Jim stroke first by sending his own arsonists to torch the grandstand of the Hawthrone Park racetrack which was operated by the Smith and Perry group. He also sent one of his men to place a can filled with oil and set it on fire underneath the stands at Washington Park’s racetrack. Many of the Smith and Perry group’s joints were burned and smashed during the war so the group decided to ask for help from a private policy agency named the Chicago Constabulary which was headed by John Ryan and Dickie Dean, both ruthless con men and former enforcers for King Mike. They used axes and shotguns to batter down the gambling joints of O’Leary and Tennes. During the war O’Leary and Tennes made a pact with Kenna and Coughlin and also had protection from Nicholas Hunt’s police office and Captain William Clency, commander of the Hyde Park station.

By 1906 the Smith and Perry organization was loosing the war. Many of their gambling operations were overtaken by the new alliance and also the Chicago Constabulary was legislated out of existence. In a final effort to gain back their control over their gambling rackets, the combine hired many lawless detectives and agents as their enforcers. They tossed over 30 dynamite bombs at the brothels and private gambling joints of Tennes , O’Leary, Kenna, Coughlin and Rogers. One of the most honourable thing during the wars was that the bombs were planted usually during the evening hours or when the joints were deserted. In those days murder was not always the solution of the problem.

Lords of Gambling

The war eventually ceased when in 1907 the Republican candidate for Mayor Fred Busse struck a deal with King Mike’s Democratic First Ward,which was formed by Kenna and Coughlin and the gambling syndicate of Tennes and O’Leary.The deal was that aldermen Kenna and Coughlin would remain as dominant force in Chicago’s First Ward with out the interference of the Republicans, “Bud” White’s steamer boat “The City of Traverse” will belong to Tennes and O’Leary and Fred Busse would get the backup for becoming a Mayor and also would take his own share from the illegal operations. Busse got elected, O’Leary and Tennes got their gambling boat and the two corrupt aldermen remained as dominant force in the First Ward and the Levee. The Smith and Perry group and the whole West Side joined with Tennes and O’Leary, thus making them the biggest players in the gambling business in Chicago.

When the Western Union was closed in 1904, two years later John Payne a telegraph operator of Cincinnati established a telegraph service that again provided results from race tracks around the country formed the Payne Telegraph Service. Tennes and O’Leary wanted in and by 1907 Tennes purchased and took a part in the Payne Telegraph by taking the daily returns on races from tracks throughout the country. The Payne System was paid three hundred dollars per day by Tennes and Payne granted him the exclusive right to this service in the Chicagoland area. No gambling operator could secure race returns by telephone or telegraph unless it paid Tennes for the service. All bookies were required to turn over to Tennes' syndicate fifty per cent of the net daily receipts. The income from these illegal activities was split up among the members of the gambling ring which was controlled by Tennes and O’Leary. The duo had an army of agents who made the rounds of the subscribers frequently, checking up the sheets and also collecting the bosses shares of the gambling operations. They also had dozens of cars that were equipped with calliope whistles and whenever a collector neared a gambling parlor he signaled his approach with the whistle and if there was any reason why the collector should not enter the gambling joint he would be side-tracked until the danger passed. There were also certain detectives who were grafting by placing bets on horses with the bookies without actually putting up the money. So if the horse won, the detective collected the amount of the bet, and if the horse lost, the detective said nothing and neither the bookie. One of their best detectives was Horace Argo who was also a go between the two bosses and other gambling operators.

The Kings Death and The Beginning of The Gambling Wars

By the mid 1900’s King Mike and most of his old associates were retired and so he was slowly moving away from his criminal kingdom and leaving it to the new crime syndicates. But in the end, it was not the law that brought Mike to his knees but his own love life.

Back in 1882 his wife Mary Noonan allegedly by accident shot and killed a police officer who was lurking around their 3d-floor living quarters. She was arrested but later aquited, ofcourse with the help of her husbands contacts. Later she ran off to San Francisco with an actor and later she escaped to Europe with another lover. Mike traced Mary but didn’t bring her back. Story goes that King Mike in a state of rage, broke her altar and said that he was betrayed by the Catholic religion. In 1898 disappointed King Mike replaced Mary with a new beautiful young saloon dancer, Dora Feldman. She was the daughter of a rabbi and theres a rumor that King Mike, out of love for his new girlfriend, converted to Judaism. It was reported that the couple chose to be married in a Jewish ceremony. But the thing was that his second wife was no better. She had an affair with a teenager named Webster Guerin, who was 15 years younger than her and still in high school. In February 1907 their love affair ended in tragedy when she accused him of blackmailing her and then shot him to death during a heated argument at Mike’s downtown office. The shock was too much for old man Mike so he suddenly lost his will to live. And on Aug. 9 1907 King Mike died of heart failure at the Saint Anthony de Padua hospital with his old wife Mary and their two sons besides his bed. Some say that it was e nervous breakdown, others say that he died of a broken heart. Before his death, Mike has established a defense fund for his wife, by which Dora was eventually found not guilty.

Mike wielded the kind of power over Chicago that would not be held again by any one person until the arrival of Italian mob and Al Capone. Legend goes that it was King Mike who delivered the phrase, "There is a sucker born every minute". Mike’s massive mausoleum dominates the entrance to Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery on 111th street, situated between the railroad tracks that once served the Chicago Stockyards and the ones that connected to the steel mills of Indiana. Chicago’s Michael Cassius McDonald was remembered in time as the architect of the Chicago Democratic Machine and organized crime in general. With swagger and bravado, "King" Mike elected mayors, consulted with presidents, amassed a personal fortune and suffered mightily at the hands of two feckless wives who "done 'em wrong."

With the King dead and gone, the battle for the throne began.

Jim O'Leary's success attracted unwanted attention, both from rival gambling operations and the police. The Mayor briefly revoked O'Leary's saloon license, but before long, O'Leary "sold" his gambling house to an employee, who reapplied for, and was granted, a new license, putting Big Jim back in business for good. But his bigger problem was the rival gamblers, especially Mont Tennes. The two fell out over the ownership in operating the City of Traverse. Story goes that O’Leary dumped Tennes from the business and in retaliation, Tennes threatened to start his own gambling cruise operation, the City of Midland, unless O’Leary cut him back in on the deal. When O’Leary refused, Tennes has sent a smaller boat out to shadow the Traverse, and when it turned on its wireless service to begin receiving racing news for the sports aboard, Tennes' boat blasted hits fog horn, thinking this could disrupt the transmissions. Instead, the trick only caused those on shore to believe the City of Traverse was on fire, sending panic throughout the city. Later most of the gambling bosses started to quarrel over territories and the division of spoils.

By the end of 1907 O’Leary sold the gambling boat to Graham and Morton Line for $40,000 , which was later used for Lake Michigan excursions. Tennes got really mad and threatened to interfere in O’Leary’s gambling territory. The war started when Mont Tennes was physically attacked on the street near his home. Tennes, was convinced that O'Leary was behind the attack in retaliation for Tennes' efforts to have O'Leary's Dearborn Park poolroom in Northwest Indiana,which was raided by the police many times. Now the Smith-Perry-White group joined with O’Leary against Tennes. Alderman Rogers ,Gazzola and Heitler from the West Side together with John Condon, Tom McGinnis and another big time gambler from the Loop John O’Malley joined Tennes. This situation was the beginning of the infamous “Gamblers War” between the two groups.

After short time O’Leary allegedly bombed John Condon’s home at South Michigan Avenue. And after few months Big Jim’s place was bombed with a dynamite. Later on July 25, Tennes' home on Belden Ave. was also bombed and a month later, O'Leary's resort on S. Halsted was bombed. On August 19, the Tennes home was again victimized by a bomb which landed in the front yard. In 1908 Big Jim’s gambling place was bombed twice and each time he rebuilt. During the bombing war a lot of independent gambling operators would suffer the consiquences also. The bombings were the result of a blackmailing scheme. One of the blackmailing scheme was run by a “mysterious gang” called “Smith & Jones”. When they wanted a gambler to put them in the payroll the gambler would receive a mysterious telephone call telling him to see Smith & Jones. The gamblers all knew what that meant and that they would be dynamited if they did not see Smith & Jones. Nobody ever knew who controlled this mysterious gang, but the biggest suspect was Mont Tennes because his plan was to monopolize the flow of race information into the city. So during the war over 30 bombs exploded at the business joints and homes of Chicago’s most prominent gamblers.


Mont Tennes residence before it was blown up by a bomb


The Visitor From Out of Town

During the mid 1900’s, while the old bosses were fighting for control over the gambling operations, a lot of Italian and Jewish criminal gangs started to rise in Chicago’s underworld. They started to gather from different and smaller cities thus forming their own little crime syndicates. They were more ruthless and bloodthirsty. Everything started when a lot of Italian extortionists, smugglers, kidnappers and killers began arriving in great numbers on the South Side of Chicago from other cities or from Europe. For example the Black Hand gangs were the most notorious ones because they were mostly disorganized, similar to the old Irish gangs. Also they didn’t care for a human life especially children. In Chicago Black Hand operations were mostly seen in the Italian neighbour hoods along Taylor Street and Grand Avenue on the West Side, Wentworth Avenue and Wabash Street on the South Side and Chicago’s Little Italy on the North Side. But not all Italian gangs were so disorganized like the Black Hand. Some were allied together or with other criminal gangs or organizations from different nationalities. A very shrewd criminals that made the new order and later took over Chicago’s underworld.

In the mid 1900’s, flush with cash from the dozens of prostituties he pimped for, Chicago mob boss Big Jim Colosimo resembled an important Italian businessmen. But Big Jim was getting noticed by other low level and hungry gangsters. The problem came from jelaousy and envyness from rival gangsters and so one thing led to another and Big Jim started receiving threatening letters from the Black Handers. The thing was that Colosimo was not a killer, instead he was a extortionist and a pimp. Or in other words, a underworld business man. He asked for support from Kenna and Coughlin and the police officals that he corrupted, but the truth was that they couldn’t help him out because they didn’t have the force to deal with these “unknown” ruthless gangs. Also his business partner Mont Tennes was already in war and could not interfere. Later Tennes will realize that this was his biggest mistake.

So Colosimo became the frequent target of Black Hand gangs and some historians believe that a big portion of Colosimo's fortune went in the hands of these gangs. Colosimo knew what was coming next, more demands would come and the price would go up with each demand. So one day Colosimo realized that he and his wife had a lot of “connected” relatives around the country, especially in New York, a city which already had its own Italian mob by now. Colosimo didn’t have the stomach for a fight anymore, so he sent someone to New York to look for his wife’s nephew, Giovanni ”Johnny “ Torrio. In New York young Torrio was becoming a rising star in a gang called the James Street Outfit which was tied with the City’s political machine, Tammany Hall. Torrio grew up among the endless violence that his associates created. He hang around many killers and brutal extortionist so he knew how to deal with them. At first Torrio didn’t want to go to Chicago because he knew by then Chicago was overtaken by other ethnicities. But later he was promised by his uncle a good portion of his business enterprise so Torrio agreed. You see Torrio was not just a killer and a muscle, but he was also a business man.

So in 1909 Johnny Torrio arrived in Chicago and worked as Colosimo’s bodyguard and also a hitman. So now instead of paying up, Colosimo dispatched his right-hand man, to "bump off" any would-be extortioners. The extreme methods of Torrio and his two other gunmen Roxie Vanilli and Mac Fitzpatrick, in which many Black Hand extortionists were riddled with bullets, have been a warning to other hoodlums that Big Jim was not the guy to be reckon with . Black handers, who had been tormenting Colosimo, were found shot to death under the Rock Island Railroad overpass on Archer Avenue. Torrio also started supervising Colosimo’s business as well. He started extorting all of the gambling dens and saloons that Colosimo and Van Beaver controlled.


Young Johnny Torrio

By now the Levee was growing stronger than ever. It was at least two miles long and had over 150 brothels with over 1000 prostitutes. But its opponents, the reformers refused to give up in their efforts to shut the Levee down. The flashy well dressed Big Jim Colosimo opened his famous Colosimo's Cafe in 1910, with the flair that would soon make him one of the crime bosses in Chicago. Located at 2126 S. Wabash Ave., Colosimo's Cafe had become the hot spot of Chicago nightlife and was visited by many different types of people. While enjoying national renown, it was a nightly occurrence to see Al Jolson seated next to vice lord Mike Heitler, or suave whore master Dennis “The Duke” Cooney tabled with John Barrymore and Sophie Tucker. Other notables who frequented Colosimo's Cafe were Marshall Field, Mike Merlo, Mont Tennes, Vincenzo Cosmano, the chieftain of Chicago's most powerful strong-arm gang together with members of the Chicago Civic Opera, Mary Garden, Louisa Tetrazzini, Amelita Galli-Curci, Titta Ruffo, John McCormick, and the conductor Maestro Cleofonte Campanini.

Colosimo’s massive prostitution ring inspired the passage of the Mann Act in 1910. The act was introduced by Representative James Robert Mann of Illinois and it made it illegal to transport women across state lines for immoral purposes. It was believed that during that time operators in the Levee had imported more than 20,000 young women into the United States to work in their brothels. The same year Mayor Fred Busse was forced to appoint a vice commission that resulted in shutting down the gambling parlors and brothels. You see,Busse was not so much of an rightcheous politican but he had too much pressure from the people around him,so he had to take some messures.Also a lot of religious leaders and civic reformers would no longer tolerate the wide-open criminal operations of the Levee. Many reformers led marches through out the district and demanded the closing of brothels and gambling halls. On April 5, 1911, the commission presented its report, 399 pages, to the mayor’s office. The report used information gathered by detectives about the Levee and three smaller red-light districts and stated that the vice business in Chicago produced an amazing 15,699,499 dollars a year in vice or about 158,000,000 dollars by today’s standards.

The pressures were put on white slavers and guys like Colosimo and the Guziks became prime targets. The government pressed charges against Colosimo because one of his prostitutes that he had transported on his Chicago, Kansas City-St. Louis circuit went to the police in New York and turned evidence against him. So Torrio used his New York contacts and found out where the woman was in hiding and several days later she was found shot to death with 12 bullets at a gravesite in Bridgeport. Without a witness, the case against Colosimo was dropped. But still, the pressure was on.

Soon Torrio will realize that it was time for the old bosses to step down and the face of organized crime in Chicago should be changed with the help of murder and violence.The “respectable gangsters” in Chicago’s underworld like Mont Tennes and James O’Leary will later learn that this is the beginning of the end of their criminal carriers.

Overtaking The Throne

In 1911 the bombings between the gambling kings went on a lower level and it was the beginning of the few quiet years for Chicago’s underworld. When the smoke cleared , MontTennes rose as the dominant force in the underworld. Tennes opened his own wire service which was named the “Tennes General News Bureau” and immideatly started a process of eliminating the “Payne News Service” from national control of the racing news service. A reign of terror prevailed over the Payne Service Agency which resulted in a legal, as well as illegal, war which eventually drove the Payne Agency out of business. In a very short time Tennes had reportedly risen from the King of Chicago gamblers to the Czar of all race track gambling in the United States and Canada. From 90 poolrooms in Chicago and 70 in New York City, he received tremendous profits. Tennes was servicing cities all over the country including San Francisco, New Orleans, Baltimore and many more. He maintained control over the handbooks through violence, and those who opposed him could expect police raids, sluggings and bombings. Charges of bribery of high police officials by Tennes and his gambling syndicate were frequently made but seldom pressed. Gambling in Chicago ran wide open and Tennes ruled supreme, same as his previous master and idol King Mike McDonald.

Tennes also made an alliance with Big Jim Colosimo. The Levee flourished under Tennes and Colosimo and their penchant for vice, while being protected by the First Ward who now had almost every powerful member of Chicago law enforcement on the payroll. Fifty wide open gambling joints operated in the loop alone. Following an investigation in 1911, the Civil Service Commission revealed police raids were made only under the instruction of Tennes or his top associate Mike Heitler, and then only against those who competed against the Tennes, Colosimo syndicate. Chicago became so wide-open and over run by corruption like never before.

During the waning years of the Harrison administration 1913-14 the massive gambling operations and conflicts stabilized because Mont Tennes consolidated his holdings at the expense of his rivals and allies. John Condon passed away in 1915 and James O’Leary kept his old gambling parlor but also turned to other more legit businesses, and the Smith-Perry combination faded away from the view. Everyone from the West Side and South Side,from Colosimo to Guziks worked together with Tennes. And by everyone I mean from extortionists and pimps to politicans and law officals.The number of Tennes handbooks significantly increased when Bill Schubert was as the head of the police gambling squad. Schubert had good connection with Mayor Harrison after raiding the gambling strongholds of some of City Halls opponents.

Gambling would never be alleviated until the time when it came under the rule of a new more ruthless crime syndicate which was less concerned about a human life than the old gang.

The Beginning of The End

On Wednesday, September 25, 1912, on evidence gathered by the Morals squad, five Levee brothel owners were indicted, including A.E. Harris, the Democratic precinct committeeman of the first ward. Then, on Friday, October 4, 1912, the first blow to wipe out the Levee came when warrants were issued for 135 brothel owners, largely because the crusaders wouldn’t let up on the police. The police was largely on the payrolls of the brothel owners and warned them about the pending mass raids and so the Levee broke into a panic. The warrants were issued near midnight when the Levee usually came to life. The situation became worst in the Levee when in April of 1914 a policeman with the Morals squad was stabbed to death while investigating a murder. A few days later, on July 16, 1914 the front line officer in charge of the Morals squad, Inspector W.C. Dannenberg, led a raid on the Turf, a huge brothels on the corner of Twenty-Second Street in the Levee.

So City Hall finally was forced to “capitulate” and the new Mayor Carter Harrison, Jr. almost shut down the whole Red Light District. Kenna and Coughlin moaned in despair but it wasn’t the end of their power and illegal incomes. In 1915 their old friend William Hale ”Big Bill” Thompson was elected as Mayor of Chicago and this brought new hope for the Levee and Chucago’s underworld in general. "Big Bill" quckly curtailed the power of the police department and enforced his vice and gambling operations. However the problem was that the reform movement had gained enough influence to prevent the reopening of the Levee.So Big Bill corrupted The Committee of Fifteen,that was previously created by Mayor Bussee and formed a more of a low profile illegal operations. For example, many Levee brothels did in reopen, but they were camouflaged as hotels, saloons, and cabarets so the illegal operations can still be in full effect. This was the first example in Chicagos criminal history of a low profile illegal activities.

The Levee’s death was stopped, temporarily, and Chicago again became a wide open. The politicians downtown were getting a share of everything because Thompson had invented an organization called the Sportsman club in which every big time gambler and Procurer, police captain and council member belonged to by paying annual “lifetime membership” dues of $100. Thompson also stripped the Morals squad of most of its power.

But even with the help from Mayor Thompson the owners and the pimps could read the writing on the wall, the days of the Levee were ending. So they decided to replace their locals with apartments, “call flats” and by the late 1910’s there were at least 30,000 call flats operating across the city. Also by now most of the criminals were moving their operations out of the city, like in Indiana, Wisconsin or Burnham, which was about 18 miles from the heart of the Levee.

By now Mont Tennes continued to monopolize racing information in Chicago and throughout the country. He never served a day in prison and represented himself as a newspaper man, conveying sports information around the country.

In 1916, Federal appeals court judge and future baseball commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis even launched a personal investigation of Tennes' operations, in which it was revealed that his operations netted $100,000 each year. Tennes hired superstar attorney Clarence Darrow (of "Scopes Monkey Trial" fame), and eventually Landis' inquiry ended with the conclusion that interstate transmission of gambling information wasn't illegal under federal statues, and actual gambling was a local phenomenon and so not under a federal court's jurisdiction.However, on January 16, 1917, indictments were returned based on official corruption growing out of gambling. Many raids on the gambling parlors were accomplished by the government, including Mont Tennes gambling joint on 743 N. Clark Street, Mike The Pike Heitler’s joints on 28 N. Halsted Street and 1807 West Madison Street. But the thing was that only patrons and alleged keepers were arrested, not the real owners. The same year one of Tennes news agency in Room 51, 303 West Chicago Avenue was raided by the cops and also many warrants against Tennes were obtained on charges about distributing gambling literature and conducting gambling houses.

In 1918, with the end of World War I, government attention was diverted from gambling. After the war there seemed to be less opposition to handbook gambling and so 1919 was a quiet year for the gambling bosses, especially Tennes. Also the same year Thompson was re-elected as Mayor of Chicago and again he immidietly started making changes in the police force by placing his own people. Story goes that now Tennes and the rest of the gambling bosses were forced to surrender a large interests in the Bureau to the politicians and the raids also continued. So now Tennes saw that he was slowly loosing his political protections by which with out he could not exist. Also he and his associates lost thousands of dollars because of the betrayal of their cipher code. In 1920 Robert E. Crowe was elected as state’s attorney and declared war on the gambling business and its bosses. A “big haul” was made at 17 South Clark Street, handbook of Mont Tennes, and 100 associates were arrested. The raid was sensational with axes and breaking doors and furniture. O’Leary’s ancient stronghold was also raided and closed for good. Crowe was now after Mont Tennes himself, James O’ Leary and the rest of the gambling brotherhood. His campaign shook the foundations of the handbook empire in Chicago and spread panic through Chicago’s underworld. Tennes fled the city and went to Florida.

[/b]The Return of The Policy Racket[/b]

African-Americans at this time were staunch supporters of the Republican Party and the newly elected Mayor William Thompson. With the help of Mayor Thompson, the most corrupted government official in Chicago’s history, the black criminals saw the opportunity of bringing back their criminal operations on the streets of Chicago. Mayor Thompson depended on the black vote so he placed Oscar De Priest as a Second Ward Alderman, who became the first black Alderman. In 1916, De Priest organized a “colored voters club” that demanded contributions from local gamblers in order to support upcoming elections. “King Oscar,” as the Chicago Tribune referred to De Priest, ran what was described as his “Tammany Club” from a real estate office at 35th and State. De Priest received a monthly tribute of thousands of dollars from gambling houses that he protected in the “Black Belt.” The Mayor and De Priest swamped in corruption, which allowed the policy racket to reinvent and flourish free without police interference.

By the mid 1910’s a lot of Blacks moved westward along Lake Street and into the Near North Side’s “Little Hell” Sicilian community. The majority of the population moved there because the rents were cheapest. By 1917 Sam Young re-entered the policy racket along South State Street in the black community. His betting slips bore the name “policy” and he was his own “runner” or in other words, he collected the bets by himself. Later he opened his policy wheel at the Pullman Restaurant at Thirty-First State Street and named it the Frankfort, Henry and Kentucky policy wheel. Young also met a lot of influential Italians and made alliances that will help in spreading his policy racket big time. One of his best Italian connections was a tavern owner Julius Benvenuti, who was a Sicilian millionaire and well known among the black community. Benvenuti was also well connected with the upper world and one of his best friends was First District congressman Arthur Wergs Mitchell. He also walked freely through the black neighbourhoods and everyone was glad to have his acquaintance. Benvenuti and Young formed Chicago’s first well regulated policy wheel called The Blue Racer. Benvenuti placed Young as the headman for his policy wheel and supervised the game at many carnivals or picnics that were organized by Benvenuti himself. By the end of the 1910’s Benvenuti and Young operated another policy wheel called The Interstate Springfield Policy Company, which became the largest policy operations in Chicago. They generated more than one million of dollars a month. The Interstate Springfield Company employed almost 300 policy runners who collected bets from 10 cents to one hundred dollars throughout the South and West Sides of Chicago. Benvenuti was a close friend of John Torrio and Big Jim Colosimo, but during this period the Torrio/ Colosimo syndicate ignored his policy operations, which was a good thing for Benvenuti. Young and Benvenuti payed for police protection and conducted the campaigns for many government officals and they were definitely big deals.

The Policy Kings became the most important members of Chicago’s underworld from the point of view of their numbers, their wealth and their power. White people like Benvenuti made honest deals with the black criminal community and made millions. That’s because he was a good business and not a bloodthirsty criminal like some of his fellow Italians who two decades later will take over the black policy racket by force.

The New Big Business and The Changing of The Guard

In 1919, Johnny Torrio got word that one of his own bodyguards had been paid by rival gangsters to kill him off so Torrio killed him first instead. Torrio realized that by now he made a lot of enemies around him so he needed protection. Like his boss Colosimo, Torrio asked for help from his old gang in New York. One of his close friends over there was Frankie Yale. He sent one of his underlings, a ruthless gangster and enforcer named Al Capone. In 1920 Capone arrived in Chicago with his wife and newborn child with two guns beneath his suit coat. Capone began as a $35 a week bouncer at one of Colosimo’s brothels. Capone also had to come to Chicago because the government in New York was looking for him for murder. Another important thing was that the same year the Prohibition of alcohol was ratified and became enforced by the law. Before Prohibition became national law, there were previous attempts at imposing "dryness" upon Americans. A national political party, aptly named the Prohibition Party, was formed on the basis of its "dry" stance in the 1869. From 1873 to 1874, a large coalition of women led the "Woman's Crusade," a movement which sought the destruction of liquor and the closure of saloons through direct actions, primarily petition campaigns and demonstrations.


Al Capone

Through the criminal experience that the old bosses like Tennes gained and the political connections established in gambling and prostitution rackets in the early 1900s, now they had to face the exploitation of Prohibition and to battle the new breed of greedy gangsters. Chicago changed for the worse - or to the worst - was exactly coincidental with the beginning of prohibition. Organized crime rose on a higher level, bootleggers and speakeasies became popular, serving up cocktails, beer, moonshine and bathtub gin. The speakeasies took over the gambling parlors and brothels by providing illegal alcohol, food and good music. Chicago, interestingly enough, became a major center of Prohibition, complete with notorious gangsters and speakeasies. Over 200 gang killings occurred in Chicago during the first few years of Prohibition. Illegalizing the production, distribution, and consumption of alcoholic beverages - all of which were corollaries to the amendment - did not curb the desire of Chicagoans for liquor or beer. This great demand for and simultaneous illegalization of alcohol opened up a new illegal market for the gangster to develop and monopolize.

The profits from this new illegal enterprise were much higher than the profits from gambling and prostitution. The bootlegging funds also led to both political and violent physical power. These massive profits, which enabled the payoff of even the highest state governmental officials, revolutionized organized crime with respect to the number of individuals involved, the level of complexity of political alliances, and intertwinement with normal, everyday life. This power enabled the younger gangs to take over territories from the old bosses, as well as new ways to run the old types businesses and also getting in new ventures, like labor racketeering. So rivers of blood started to flow on the streets of Chicago…

Now everybody wanted in but most of the old bosses didn’t approve this kind of business, because in their minds this was another dirty business same as narcotics. But in the minds of younger criminal generations this was the chance for making the real big buck and so the old bosses had to go.

For example, John Torrio was growing impatient with his boss Big Jim Colosimo. Colosimo couldn’t see the opportunity ahead with prohibition, he was too cautious and wanted to stick to the basics: women and gambling. Prohibition would come and go, he lectured, but women and numbers would last forever. Torrio was rich too but he was also greedy. Before prohibition started he was already making $ 500,000 a year from prostitutes and gambling and he wanted more and so Big Jim had to go. In May 1920 Colosimo walked out to the half darkened lobby of his restaurant where his killer or killers were hiding in the telephone booth. The murderer fired two shots through the glass when Colosimo passed him, the first shot hit Colosimo in the head behind the right ear, and the second missed and hit the wall. Colosimo hit the tile floor face first. The killers rushed out from they’re hiding place, ripped open Colosimo’s shirtfront, withdrew his long leather wallet and fled. The killer left a message on the check: “So long vampire, so long lefty.”

Colosimo’s death was the beginning of the end for the old bosses and the old world crime in general. The old bosses who confined their activities to the boundaries of their neighborhoods, was drawing to a close.

One of the old bosses, James O’Leary joined Torrio’s gang in the bootlegging ventures. O'Leary, who had been delivering whiskey to Colosimo's Cafe under arrangement with Torrio, was suspected of being involved in the murder of Colosimo. Despite his connection, there were no charges brought against him. But a few weeks after Prohibition went into effect, federal agents discovered a large supply of liquor in O’Leary’s basement. O’Leary innocently insisted he was no longer in the business. ``I sell milk,`` he said. As for the liquor, he produced a pharmacist`s license that, he claimed, allowed him to sell whiskey. But a not-too-sympathetic judge revoked that license and ordered the saloon shut down as a public nuisance. In any case, O`Leary`s headstrong days of power were over because with Prohibition came the generation of Torrio and Capone, vicious types who had no patience for the ways of a gambler from a less violent era.

In 1920 Johnny Torrio, who was now the head of the Italian mob on the South Side, together with his second in command Al Capone, met with all the Chicago bootleggers to divide the city into a system of territories because it was beneficial to everyone to avoid the bloody turf battles. Now Chicago was divided into few crime syndicates. Joseph "Polack Joe" Saltis and Frank McErlane, ruled on the Southwest Side, Ralph Sheldon and his gang ruled a part of the South Side, William "Klondike" O'Donnell ruled the West Side, the Touhy gang ruled the Northwest side, the Dean O’Banion gang shared the North Side with the Aiello crime family, the Genna Brothers controlled Little Italy west of The Loop and Torrio’s syndicate had the Loop. In addition, the gangsters were able to pool their political power and their soldiers in the streets. By now the North Siders ruled the biggest part of Chicago. Mont Tennes was selling his service in all of the territories and still he was making the big buck.

But the deal between the gangs lasted for only three years. The Torrio/Capone syndicate was slowly overtaking the whole South Side and they were also moving some of their operations in Cicero. Cicero had become a gold mine for the South Siders and Dean O'Banion wanted a cut of it. This move made the potential for the start of one of the most infamous bootlegging wars in Chicago.

In 1923 the Mayor of Chicago William E. Dever decided to make a rule to allow just one alderman per ward, probably on the grounds that fewer aldermen would mean fewer guys on the take. So instead of serving together, Hinky Dink Kenna and Bathhouse John served separately. Prohibition and the " War On The White Slave Trade " both pushed Hinky Dink and Bath House John out of the limelight in the First Ward. These factors and the rise of a newcomers and old age caught up with them. Their gathering place The Workingmans Exchange was also closed so Kenna opened up a Cigar Store on South Clark in the early 1920s. A lot of old and future gangsters visited him almost every day seeking his advice.

Also in 1923 the chief of police Morgan Collins closed more than 200 handbook joints in Chicago that were estimated to produce more than $400.000 per year for Mont Tennes. By this time most of the gambling operations were centralized in the Loop district and after a year the gambling business was almost dead in that area. Now most of the gambling bosses established their operations in the West suburban area and also branched into many other gambling operations in Cicero and Berwyn. Despite the pressure in the Loop, Mont Tennes himself was never arrested and his headquarters were still in the heart of the Loop.

On November 10, 1924, Dean O'Banion was shot to death at his flower shop because he allegedly double crossed John Torrio. Three months later on January 24, 1925 there was an assassination attempt on Torrio but he managed to survive. General opinion is that the North Side gang, now headed by Bugs Moran was behind the hit but the mob around the country thought differently. Either way in March 1925 a meeting was called so that Torrio could resign from the organization. Torrio had his lawyers draw up the papers so that everything he had stolen from Big Jim Colosimo to be handed over to Al Capone . Torrio didn't ask for, not did Capone offer, a penny for the hundreds of gambling joints, beer halls, speakeasies and whorehouses that Johnny owned. The estimated revenue that Torrio walked away from was in the tens of millions of dollars. Johnny Torrio packed up his millions of dollars and wife and left Chicago and went to Italy and never looked back.

James “Big Jim” O`Leary died of a heart attack in January 23, 1925, just 56 years old without a will. His entire estate of $10,000 went to his widow. He was the most ruthless one from all of the old gambling bosses in Chicago. One of the leading gambler barons in Chicago, O'Leary was known for taking bets on everything from presidential candidates to the weather. Despite numerous raids by the police, he was only found guilty of gambling once during his thirty year career when he was 53. When asked how much money he had made, Jim O’Leary insisted, “I’ve got enough to take a trip around the world when I sell my shop.” It would be nice to say that the O’Leary’s had gone from paupers to millionaires in one generation, achieving the American dream through hard work and stubborn perserverence. O'Leary left behind his wife Annie and five children, two sons and three daughters.

The same year, William Tennes died of natural causes. He was highly involved in his brothers gambling operations. This was a hard thing for MontTennes and felt very sad because they were very close.

The Rise of The New Crime Syndicates

With a careful study of the members of organized crime in Chicago during the mid 1920s it was found that 31 percent were of Italian background, 29 percent of Irish background, 20 percent Jewish, and 12 percent were black. So during the years that followed Prohibition, it became increasingly clear that organized crime in Chicago was now dominated by the Italians. The other ethnic gangsters like Mont Tennes didn’t stand a chance. What remained was called the Capone gang and the only other ethnic gang that wasn’t Italian was the Bugs Moran gang that still ruled the North Side.

During this period Chicago was divided into two powerful syndicates. Big George “Bugs” Moran, Frankie Frost, Barney Bertsche and the Aiello crime family were on one side and Al Capone, James Mondi, the Guzik brothers, Mike Heitler, La Cava brothers, Jim “Three Fingered” Murphy, Hymie Levin and Frankie Pope on the other side. The two groups were involved in conflicts over gambling territories and also in the infamous ‘Beer Wars”. Beer was easier to produce, because it could be brewed and ready to drink after only a few days. Since hard liquors required aging, gangsters and bootleggers acquired it from outside the country, like from Canada, through Detroit.

Again Mont Tennes enjoyed his long immunity in the underworld and he continued to sell his services to both groups and also outsiders who tried to the same type of services found themselves bucking the syndicates. Back when reformer "Decent" William Dever was elected Mayor of Chicago in 1924, a 51 year-old Tennes decided to get out of the business of operating handbooks and focus exclusively on his news service. By now the 52 year old king resided at his summer home on Eagle River in Wisconsin and still held the position of the most wealthiest mobster in town. He transferred a very large block of real estate to his son Ray Tennes. One deal alone amounted to over $150.000. Tennes also bought the Northeast corner of Sheridan Road, Broadway and Devon for $390.000.

Politicians Under Siege

In 1927 Mont Tennes started having problems with an outsider named The Empire News Company. The company suffered many police raids that were arranged by Tennes himself and also its equipment and telephone wires were often destroyed. So on July 15 the company obtained a temporary injunction from Judge James Wilkerson, restraining the police from interfering with the company’s business. This move gave Tennes a big concern and it was known that this conditions in the earlier days brought war with numerous bombings and terror on the streets. The new company was selling its services from $25 to $30 per week, as for Tennes he was selling his services by $75 per week. At least 200 gambling joints around Chicago purchased the services from the new Empire News Company. By August 1927 the start of a new gambling war was imminent. It was known that many influential politicians helped guide a gambling syndicate composed of powerful underworld figures. The profits of the politicians from protection to the gambling establishments ran over a half million of dollars a month. Now some of the gambling operators were in rebellion against these politicians, because they fronted for the big crime syndicates.

On January 26, 1928 the houses of Charles Fitzmorris, the city’s comptroller and former chief of police, and of Dr. W.H. Reid were bombed. The two of them were big stars in the Thompson administration which was on Al Capone’s payroll. Later in February the home of Lawrence Cuneo, secretary to States Attorney Crowe, and the undertaking establishment of Municipal Judge John Sbarbaro were bombed. The Mayor of Chicago and his cabinet,as well as the prosecutor Crowe, went into seclusion with armed guards infront of their homes. Now the leading city and county officials were in a state of siege, fearing for their own lives. The same year Al Capone has returned to Cicero, because previously he left the city and went to Miami because of the war with the North Siders, and now he took matters in his own hands. He sent his spokesman on the gambling matters, Jimmie Mondi who became a very wealthy man from the gambling racket during the last few years, to conduct a conference with the gambling operators and told them that they could operate freely with out any police or political interference for a smaller percentage than the previous one. They did the same in the colored district on the South Side with the help of Republican Committeeman Dan Jackson of the so-called “Black Belt”. Jackson was a close associate of Mondi and also Tennes. But since the gamblers made a deal with the devil, it was expected later they would pay the price.

The King’s Fall

The Capone gang was often known as a powerful gang who would terrorize other inferior gangs in order to steal a certain percentage of their profits. The inferior gangs found themselves faced with the proposition of either being killed and having their businesses destroyed by means such as bombing, or 'donating' some of their proceeds to the superior gangs. Again, as in racketeering in legitimate businesses, these types of threats were validated through the power granted by financial success and a high degree of organization resulting from income gained from bootlegging alcohol.

Capone's gang extorted every gambling house keeper, handbook owner, vice resort keeper, and beer runner who had to contribute a percentage of the income derived from their enterprises, or risk being blown up or “taken for a ride”. These violent acts and threats usually could be carried out without any legal consequences, for the mob was practically immune to the law as a result of the bribery of police and politicians alike. Capone’s empire was not innovating new schemes and businesses, but instead it was mostly formed by complete takeovers of the business of rival gangs such as the stripping of the gambling business away from Mont Tennes. First Capone made a “clean up” on Tennes race books of $500.000. Than Capone began to muscle in on Tennes operations. Several handbook joints were bombed or robbed and Jimmy Mondi was demanding 25 percent of Tennes’ profits for protection. During this period the gambling business was slowly overtaken by the Capone gang.

With the enormous profits from his bootlegging activities, the Capone gang was able to bribe many government officials and also order its competitors breweries, gambling joints, and other illegal establishments to be raided and destroyed by crooked law enforcement agents. Capone was rarely troubled by police raids of his gambling establishments and no boss from the old days dared to retaliate. Tennes succeeded in the making of Chicago as the center of race track gambling in the nation but Capone took it over. Capone's gambling business was so closely affiliated with the law, which also benefited financially from his business, that police 'overlooked' his slot machines which were found in places as blatant and public as drug stores. Between the competition from the Empire News Service and the Capone gang, Tennes decided it was time to retire for good. His retirement was not due to the fact that he has suffered losses in his business, but rather to the ascendancy of gunmen, kidnapper, hijacker, bootlegger and racketeer in the world of gambling and as well as in politics.

In 1927, ownership of the General News Bureau was split into 100 shares. Newspaper magnate, Moses Annenberg purchased 48 shares, current partner

Great stuff Toodoped, thanks

In 1927, ownership of the General News Bureau was split into 100 shares. Newspaper magnate, Moses Annenberg purchased 48 shares, current partner Jack Lynch bought 40 shares, and the remainder ended up in the hands of Tennes’ three nephews; Edward, Lionel and Mont.Annenberg later took control of the business and installed James M. Regan as his general manager. Afterwards, the Bureau was reorganized and rechristened as the Continental Press Service, and eventually passed into the control of Moe's son Walter Annenberg.

In 1929 Tennes withdrew from the racing wire service altogther devoted himself to his progeny, his golf, and his charity work. He also established a $1,000,000 trust fund, which donated to Roman Catholic, Jewish, and Masonic charities, and ordered $10,000 annually to support a new "character home" for wayward boys, Camp Honor.

By the early 1930’s, most of the underlings that used to work for the old guard were incorporated by the newly formed Chicago Outfit or in some cases, they went missing or got whacked.

Bathhouse John Coughlin died on November 8, 1938, as an old and fading politician and a veteran of 46 years on the city council. After all of the money that had had made over the years, he died more than $50,000 in debt, thanks to bad gambling debts.

Jacob “Mont” Tennes died on August 6, 1941 and his heirs received a $5 million estate which provided for a $2,000 monthly lifetime income for his wife, Ida, $700 monthly to each of his four children, and $200 monthly for each grandchild. His son Ray, later ran a Ford dealership, while another, Horace, became a champion motorboat racer.Throughout his long period of gambling supremacy and retirement, Mont Tennes received from the authorities the usual absolute immunity which could’ve been afforded only by the "big shot" Chicago racketeers and gangsters.

Hinky Dink Kenna passed in 1946. After more than 50 years as boss of the First Ward, there were only three cars with flowers at the graveside and the mayor didn’t even attend. Unlike Coughlin though, Hinky Dink died a millionaire, leaving behind piles of cash, two pints of vintage 1917 bourbon, 11 suits of woolen long underwear and a 1930 Pierce Arrow Limousine.


This article is completed from various infos that can be found on the internet.Cheers

NICE ONE TOODOPED can you cover 1930s till the present As well Plus Any detail info on Jackie Cerone and Gus Alex or any other Members from back in the Day Thanks TOODOPED

Thanks rickydelta and NNY78,im glad y'all liked it. Rickydelta if you are interested i got some good stories on Paul Ricca,Hy Larner,Rocco Pranno and others and also stories about many Outfit operations

TooDoped!!!! This was amazing!

Thanks Jimmy!Hey long time no see

toodoped, ill be one of the first to buy your book when you get it published.

This was original content or was it cut and pasted? If it's original then this is awesome. I don't give chicago much thought but I read this whole thing thru. Nice job

Thanks Toodoped. Good reading.

Thanks a lot for the compliments guys! cheers

Your Welcome Toodoped yeah please tell any info and stories you got of all of them love to know more on the Chicago Outfit and Its Members Thanks Again Toodoped Top Man

Next week ill post some stories that i havent posted here before

Ok nice one

Thanks man, good to be back, and good to see you're still posting quality info!

Excellent post..

One hell of a post.

Thanks again guys

Thanks for posting this extensive overview on early Chicago organized crime activity. Interesting reading.

Its my pleasure and thanks

Testimony of Joseph F. Morris, Deputy Superintendent of Police(1960's)

When I speak of Chicago, where I was born and reared, and where I have been a police officer for the past 31 years, I like to boast that our city Is one of the Nation's leading centers of business and culture. The virtues of Chicago are evident for all to see; however, there is another side to this picture which I do not enjoy recounting but which must be faced. The Al Capone gang was spawned in Chicago and its successors are still with us. Al Capone was brought to Chicago In 1919 by John Torrio who inherited the mantle as vice lord of the city from Big Jim Colosimo. Colosimo was murdered when he kept an appointment made for him by Torrio. Capone was a member of the Five Points gang in New York and a prime suspect in a number of murders there before coming to Chicago. He lined up gambling and prostitution for Torrio who became the undisputed vice czar of Chicago and some southern and western suburbs. By 1924, Torrio was one of the most powerful hoodlums In the Nation. He owned and operated three breweries and had an interest in others. Gambling and illegal beer operations brought him tremendous wealth.

Torrio's downfall began in May 1924 when he and others were arrested in a raid on a brewery by Chicago police. The defendants were prosecuted by the Federal Government. John Torrio's immunity was over; he was sentenced to 9 months in jail. Early in January, before he began serving his sentence, an attempt was made on his life. He was wounded but recovered. His conviction, coupled with the attempted assassination was enough for Torrio. After serving his time he returned to the protection of Frank Costello and Lucky Luciano in New York. His abdication left AI Capone as head of the Chicago crime syndicate. The value of the illicit empire inherited by Capone was established by records confiscated by police in a raid on the gang's headquarters in April 1925. Arrested at this time were Tony Arasso, John Patton, Joe Fusco and Frank Nitti. The records seized indicated that Capone and his henchmen were receiving millions of dollars from their illegal activities in beer, gambling, and prostitution. Also uncovered were customers names and the names of Federal and local officials who were being paid off. When Dever was elected mayor of Chicago in 1923 Capone moved his headquarters to Cicero and business continued to improve. He made strong political alliances in Chicago and the suburbs and with his imported killers ruled with an iron and bloody hand. During the first third of 1926 there were 29 gang killings in Chicago. The victims were, for the most part rival gangsters or henchmen guilty of the doublecross. But the killing of William McSwiggin, an assistant State's attorney, and two companions, showed their utter contempt for established government.

With the reelection of "Big Bill" Thompson as mayor of Chicago in 1927, Capone, who had more or less confined his activities to the county outside of Chicago during Dever's administration, became more powerful than ever. Thompson had run on a "wide open town" pledge and when he became mayor all restraints were lifted. Capone's prestige was such that he was included among those in the greeting party to welcome Commander Francesco De Pinedo, "round the world flyers," representing Italy's Premier Mussolini. Officials explained that they believed Capone's presence would prevent possible anti-Fascist demonstrations, implying that Capone could maintain order where the responsible authorities could not. Legitimate enterprises were forced to pay gangsters for the privilege of staying in business. In less than 6 months in 1928, 62 bombings occurred in Chicago. Gambling was running wide open. The press alleged that policy, racketeers were taking millions of dollars from poor people. When newspapermen asked the police official of the district where policy flourished to explain the presence of such wide scale gambling he said in effect "Thompson was elected on a wide open platform. I am not going to Interfere with policy unless I get orders from downtown. I am not going to be sent to the sticks." A few months later this police official became commissioner of police. '

Other incidents occurred during the prohibition era which further reflects the attitude of the Capone syndicate toward government and law enforcement: A newspaper reporter was murdered by gangsters. A hoodlum leaving police headquarters in protective custody of a police lieutenant was attacked by gunmen. A bullet meant for the hoodlum killed the motorman of a passing streetcar. The homes of Senator Deneen and John Swanton, a candidate for State's attorney, were bombed.
Armed thugs invaded polling places, kidnapped election officials and stole ballot boxes. Seven men were lined up against the wall of a garage and men in police uniforms mowed them down with machine guns. This became known as the Saint Valentine Day's massacre. In the fall of 1931 Al Capone was tried in Federal court for evasion of income taxes. He was convicted and sentenced to Alcatraz. Capone went to jail and never again returned to Chicago in an active capacity but his organization remained intact. Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti became the leader of the Capone forces. The repeal of the 18th amendment left the syndicate with a much depleted income and it focused its attention on gambling; in 1933 there were 35 murders over the control of gambling in Chicago. But in spite of the attention that these murders attracted in the press, gambling continued to flourish. Kidnapping became another source of revenue for the mobsters.

It was at this time that the Capone mob became affiliated with Frank Costello. Joe Adonis, one of Costello's lieutenants had an interest in a big Chicago brewery. Following prohibition, Capone gangsters continued to operate the brewery through a front. Chicago's syndicate, in union with New York underworld leaders continued to branch out. They met in Chicago to develop plans to take over labor unions. At these meetings were Paul Ricca, Frank Nitti, and Louis Campagna. Among the first to come under their influence was the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, and Motion Picture Operators. The head of the local motion picture operators, Tom Maloy, who opposed the hoodlums, was murdered. A few days later a Capone henchman took over Maloy's union. The mob extorted thousands of dollars from Chicago theater owners in 1935. Operators from coast to coast were victimized in this manner. In 1935, despite all the other avenues of revenue, gambling remained the principal source of the outfit's wealth. The syndicate still had strong political alliances, the protection afforded mob bosses Nitti, Ricca, Jack Guzik, Campagna, Charles Fischetti, Dago Lawrence Mangano, and others, was total. They operated with no interference. The syndicate dominated the policy racket which was primarily a Negro operation. Negro policy figures either went to work for the outfit, were frightened out, or murdered. During this period there were indications of official collusion. The police morals squad which was supposed to control gambling was accused of protecting gamblers. Civil service charges were filed against the commander of the squad and three of his subordinates, for neglect of duty.
They were cleared by the civil service board but there was such a public outcry that Mayor Kelly appointed a committee of outstanding citizens to review the case. This committee was very critical of the civil service hearings and stated that the four officers should have been discharged. While all this was going on, two of the officers were promoted.

Chicago, of course, felt the impact of the events happening in Europe in 1939. The depression was definitely over, there were more jobs than workers, money was plentiful. The racketeers were prospering as never before even though we were on the verge of war. Gambling arrests were made but strictly for the record in most cases. If the police did make a good case the courts threw it out on some trumped-up technicality. The mob killings continued. One of the killings that of Edward J. O'Hare, president of Sportsman's Park racetrack, was very embarrassing to a judge who was criticized severely by the press for throwing out gambling cases as fast as the police brought them in. The Investigation into O'Hare's murder revealed that the judge owned stock in one of O'Hare's dog tracks and that he was a partner in a business venture with O'Hare and a bookmaker. The syndicate gambling bosses did not have to worry about local law enforcement. However, some of them-Guzik, Skidmore, and Johnson, to name a few-neglected to share their loot with the Government and went to jail for their carelessness. Testimony in Skidmore's trial disclosed that, when he wanted to put the heat on a gambler he arranged to meet him in the office of the chief of the Cook County Highway Police who was a Chicago police captain on leave of absence. The trials of Johnson and Skidmore involved other public officials. Frank Nitti committed suicide in 1943 after he was indicted with other prominent Capone gangsters, including Frank Maritote (alias Frank Diamond), Paul DeLucia (alias Paul the Waiter Ricca), Louis "Little New York" Campagna, Phil D'Andrea, ,Ralph Pierce, and Charles "Cherry Nose" Gioe, for extorting millions from the moving picture industry .
Ricca took over the leadership of the Chicago syndicate until he went to prison. Tony Accardo, alias Joe Batters, then assumed leadership. A grand jury investigation, which was started in September 1943, conducted a searching investigation into Cook County gambling. Many syndicate figures were indicted along with police and public officials. As a result, most gambling in Chicago and Cook County closed down. Even though most of those indicted were discharged on legal technicalities, the grand jury investigation had far-reaching effects. Some law enforcement officials were removed, protection was withdrawn, and many gamblers moved elsewhere.

In 1944 a series of gang killings occurred, apparently over control of gambling, which had resumed. It was not long before the Capone syndicate established itself again as the dominant factor in this field. The Capone gang went further. They obtained control of the racing information service which is essential in the operation of illegal handbooks. When James M. Ragen, who controlled Continental Press, which had a monopoly over this business, refused to sell out to the syndicate they started a rival service and threatened gamblers who continued to use Ragen's service. Two who did not heed their warnings were slain. Ragen, even though protected by bodyguards, was shot while riding in his car by killers riding in a truck. He died of his wounds 2 months later. Needless to say, the syndicate's wire service expanded throughout the Nation.
Under Mayor Kennelly, wide open gambling all but disappeared-gambling continued but on a "sneak basis." But the syndicate was not dead. In August 1947, Ricca, Gioe, Campagna, and D'Andrea were released on parole after serving but a bare minimum of their 10-year sentences. A congressional committee inquiring into this unusual release heard testimony which revealed the tremendous power of the Capone syndicate nationally. In the late summer of 1950, investigators for the Kefauver Committee arrived in Chicago to lay the groundwork for hearings scheduled for a later date. As soon as the investigation began most of the syndicate, members left town.
Testimony produced at the hearings disclosed that a vicious and powerful criminal syndicate had operated practically unmolested for more than a quarter of a century in the Chicago area. The arrogance of the Capone gang was evident when William Drury, a former police captain, was shotgunned to death while putting his car in his garage on the night before he was scheduled to give information to a committee investigator. The committee did not concentrate its investigation on the Chicago Police Department, although two of Chicago's police captains were involved. One of them who was considered a shoo-in candidate for sheriff in the election just a few weeks away, astounded the committee members with his explanation of how he acquired his vast wealth. Apparently his explanation of how he became the world's richest policeman did not convince the voters of Cook County because he lost the election decisively to an unknown opponent a few days after his testimony was published.
The other captain admitted being the recipient of a $32,500 cash gift from a notorious gambler. To build a home, he also borrowed $10,000 from William Skidmore, who was the man who arranged protection for syndicate gamblers.

Tony Accardo, who became the syndicate boss in 1943, came up through the ranks of the outfit. He was one of a group suspected In the St. Valentine Day murders. He was an intimate of such terrorists as Al Capone, "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn, Claude Maddox, Tough Tony Capezio, "Dago" Lawrence Mangano, "Cherry Nose" Gioe, Frank Liparoto (alias LaPorte), Mooney Giancana, Marshall Caifano, and others. He had the dubious distinction of being named on Chicago's public enemy list published by the Chicago Crime Commission. Virgil W. Peterson, the operating director of the Chicago Crime Commission, and the country's outstanding authority on organized crime and the Capone syndicate, describes these gangsters very aptly as "barbarians." Accardo operated gambling joints that repaid him handsomely. He engineered the mob's efforts to take over the racing information service. He muscled his way into the policy racket in Chicago and into a lucrative gambling setup in Florida. His influence is also felt in the labor field. Until recently, he lived in a luxurious mansion in River Forest, a Chicago suburb. His most serious brush with the law was his conviction for income tax evasion which was reversed by the U.S. circuit court of appeals' in a 2-to- 1 decision because of newspaper publicity during the trial. Accardo boasts that he has never spent a night in jail. He came close to it one night but was saved when a municipal court judge got out of bed and appeared at the police station and released him on his own personal recognizance. Tony is supposed to have stepped aside and Gilormo Giangono, alias Momo Salvatore Giangono, alias Sam Mooney Giancana, replaced him. Giancana has the same general background as most of the syndicate hoods. He was a member of the infamous 42 gang which in the early 1950's were known as the young bloods. Moe can't boast of never having spent any nights behind bars, since he served a sentence in Joliet penitentiary for burglary.

The young bloods, consisting of such characters as Sam Battaglia, Marshall Caifano, Phil Alderisio, Sam DeStefano, Charles Nicoletti, Albert Frabotta, the English brothers, Jackie Cerone, and others were the "soldiers" used by Accardo to take over the South Side policy racket. The disclosures by Valachi concerning what he refers to as Cosa Nostra come as no real surprise to those who have had any contact with the syndicate. There are indications that the Capone mob was in close contact with mobsters from all over the country. It is also apparent that there is some sort of glue such as the Mafia, the Commission, the Cosa Nostra, or whatever it is called, that held them together. I have barely touched on the highlights of Chicago's crime syndicate history. While through the years there have been numerous civic improvements In Chicago, the destruction of the Capone mob is not one of them. With this background, it is no wonder that we find it difficult to deal with the crime syndicate. However until recently there has never been an all-out effort made to eradicate organized crime. It is true that sporadic attacks were made in the past, but the problem has never been attacked in Chicago and Cook County as it is now. The Cook County sheriff's police have been reorganized and revitalized; the State's attorney of Cook County has declared an all-out war on the syndicate; cooperation between all local law-enforcement agencies and those of the Federal Government is excellent. As I mentioned earlier, the Chicago Police Department Is in better shape now than ever before to subdue organized crime. Along With a general reorganization of the department, we are now developing an efficient intelligence unit. More important is the support received from the present city administration. I agree with the proposals made to this committee by Superintendent Wilson.
Restrictions that cripple the police must be removed. We have the huge task of restoring public confidence in local law enforcement. It is only in the last few years that the department has begun to overcome the effects of a long standing public attitude that encouraged syndicated crime. We must educate the public. .

The basis of organized crime's success is the lack of public knowledge concerning it. The tolerant and indifferent attitude which shrugs off gangland murders, wide-open gambling, and other forms of vice and the corruption of public officials is the same attitude which deprives us of key legislation, keeps corrupt officials in office, and withholds from law enforcement the testimony and support it needs to combat organized crime.
No one can remain aloof from this task. The syndicate has become such a powerful force in our society that its tentacles are reaching into all facets of our life and economy. Each level of government must play the part for which it is best suited in eradicating this evil, cancerous growth, and, in my opinion, the Federal Government must assume the leadership in this all-out war on syndicated crime. We have done this to combat the internal threat of communism; we must make the same kind of a coordinated attack on organized crime.

great post n.j. great read. thank you.