Whats up guys?! Im back with another story regarding the Outfit's history and its illegal operations. Two years ago i wrote down a small article regarding the Outfit's few greatest heists but later i though to myself, why not do the whole story regarding the activity. So all you readers out there, get your drinks ready, light up your splifs or cigs and enjoy the story 'cuz its a long one


“I don’t let thieves come around me, I don’t care what kind of scumbags they are. Once they are in the can, let the fucker stay in. They’re not like us guys. They’re just not like us guys. These fuckers that steal, they’re just not like us guys. You just can’t let them get close to you. You can let ‘em come with a bumper between you.” - Murray “Curly” Humphreys, high level and influential member of the Chicago Outfit


What is a theft? A theft is something which you take that doesn’t belong to you right?! So as I previously stated in one of my stories that the criminal activity such as theft is the main base of all criminal activities and also criminals from around the world. Sometimes people do it out of poor conditions and sometimes they do it because it is simply in their blood. For one to be a successful criminal, he or she should know how to steal. By “steal” I certainly do not mean just stealing apples from the fruit stand, even though many of the big time criminals usually start that way, but instead creating multi-million dollar schemes, which usually steals the food right out of the honest man’s mouth, or stealing something quite precious right under the nose of the police. You see, every possible thief is quite optimistic, meaning if they get caught 50 percent of the time, they think they got away with it. In other words, with thieves the glass is never half empty, but instead it’s always half full. For the thieves there’s always another day and another score. Sometimes these types of criminals spend their money so fast that they place the pressure upon themselves and so they have to go out and steal again and again.


Now, the activity such as theft or stealing can be divided in two main crime activities such as robbing and burglary. When somebody mentions “robbing”, the first few things which come on my mind are activities such as robbing banks in a violent style or robbing people right on the street or in other words doing “stick ups”. Also purse snatching can be a good example or robbing vehicles out of their stereos or tires. But the thing is that these examples of stealing can be quite noisy because some cars have alarm systems, or while robbing a bank, a shootout might occur with the police and the same goes for the stick ups. For example, some of the robbers might be “John Dillinger” type of guys, meaning people might get shot during the process by some random deranged and destructive persons or even violent juveniles. The potential for violence is present in every theft since it is very important for the criminal to stay undiscovered by the police and if discovered, he or she will not hesitate to use a weapon when apprehended. As for burglary, well this activity can be quite different rather than the previous ones.


The act of burglary has been around also for a very long time and it has always been called the “silent crime" mostly because the burglars often use stealth techniques to enter homes, business offices or safe rooms. Stealth crimes usually occur under the cover of darkness and in the absence of any witnesses or recording devices. Burglary is generally defined as the breaking and entering with intent to commit a felony or in other words, every person who enters any kind of structure, with four walls and a roof, with the intention to commit theft, is guilty of burglary. Being burglarized is like being raped, because you’re being violated and your home or business has been surreptitiously entered and your valuables have been stolen and in the end, you feel both rage and insecurity and believe me it is a quite frightening and nauseating experience because I personally have been through it. And the worst thing is that you just somehow know that the police won’t do anything special about it. But even with that sometimes I honestly admire the skills of these individuals because it is not very easy to get in a protected building and then get out unnoticed with tons of cash.


According to some theories there are three types of burglars on this world, such as the professional burglars, the ordinary thieves and the opportunists. An “opportunist” is often a drug addict or a misled teenager, who goes out looking for a business or home that he thinks he can break into easily and get away quickly. There’s almost no kind of planning prior to this fast crime and that is why the perpetrators usually are easily caught by the police. But these individuals can be also quite dangerous. Narcotic addicts that are taking on daily basis stuff like heroin, cocaine especially crack cocaine, speed or meth, will usually resort to burglary with the possibility of assault just to obtain the necessary cash so they can sustain their dirty habit.


The so-called ordinary “cat burglars” are usually half specialized thieves, who often commit crimes like small burglary and any other type of small crime. They use simple tools such as picklock, crow or key bit and they usually target business offices, drug stores and homes that have less protection than high-end establishments. Something like small retail stores and homes known to contain valuable stuff such as cash, jewellery, clothes and electronic equipment. The chances of catching these criminals are 50/50 because with a little bit of luck, they can easily get away with your stuff.


As for the professional burglars, they usually target big mansions, major businesses, banks and other high-end targets. Prior to becoming an expert in the job there is much experience, which can only be absorbed by first going through the previous stages. After gathering all the experience, the burglar becomes more sophisticated like for example, prior to committing the burglary, the professional burglar performs surveillance on the target. Although most of the targets have the best alarm systems in place, the professionals use their knowledge and specialized tools to disable these systems. They also have the skills to open any vault, safe or other secure objects or places with the help of tools such as acetylene torch or electric arc, burning bar, thermal lance, oxygen lance, or any other similar device capable of burning through steel, concrete, or any other substance, or by use of nitro-glycerine, dynamite or gunpowder or any other explosive.


Since they can be very lucrative, sometimes these professional burglars are “backed” by other high profile criminals such as corrupt officials or mobsters. For example in Chicago, the city where crime always thrives, for many decades existed a close fraternity between professional burglars and racketeers who used the city as a central location to pull jobs all over the country. One of the most powerful organized crime groups, known as the Chicago Outfit, ruled the underground for almost a century and most of its members started their professional criminal careers as burglars. Members from high profile organized crime groups such as this one, usually have contacts to people such as security guards or ordinary staff workers, who for a certain price deliver info’s to the gangsters regarding certain targets. In most cases these corrupt “inside” individuals don’t have connections to professional burglars, and so instead they lurk around the neighbourhood and start asking questions and before you know, they get connected to higher level criminal, who already had connections to various burglars.


Back in time, during the 1920’s and 30’s in Chicago, the “silent crime” such as burglary was on a very low and almost unprofessional level, since it was the time period of the lucrative bootlegging racket and so the act of burglary was mostly done by youthful criminals. For example, one of the Outfit’s widely known crime bosses Sam Giancana started his long and infamous criminal career as a quite unprofessional burglar on the city’s streets. At this point, Giancana hung around with the infamous 42 gang and terrorized the streets in the company of other young criminals such as Dominick Caruso, Tony Orlando, Tommy Russo and Joey Sypher. One day, on the morning of July 3, 1926, Giancana, Caruso and Sypher burglarized a dress shop at 2663 North Clark Street and managed to steal 50 dresses valued at $35 each. When they drove off with their car, a police patrol followed them right behind and then the expected occurred which was the everyday car chase. Suddenly the young criminals crashed their car in a nearby sidewalk, Giancana managed to run away but Caruso and Sypher were apprehended by the police. Few hours later Giancana was also arrested and at the police station, he and Caruso kept their mouths shut while Sypher decided to plead guilty and admitted that he was the one who planned the burglary, thus saving his two companions. Two years later, on November 17, 1928, Giancana, Orlando and Russo started using the infamous “hole in the wall” burglary method, by burglarizing a store at 3947 West Madison Street, with the help of cutting the bricks out of the wall of the building. Obviously someone reported all the noise and the burglars were apprehended right there on the scene. The cops found the hole in the wall and the three burglars near by with all kinds of burglary tools in their hands and one revolver on the ground close to where Giancana was standing. Four hundred feet from the scene, the cops also found the “getaway” car which later was traced directly to Giancana, who in turn was covered in mortar dust. On March 12, 1929, all three defendants were sentenced from 1 to 5 years in the penitentiary.


As you can see, because of the high unprofessionalism in the way of burglarizing, by now the style of robbing was on first place by doing stick ups and “cleaning out” stores, restaurants and parties with high clientele, jewellery stores, banks and social clubs. For example, a bank robbery in those days was the same as horrifying as the ones in the movies, with a band of pro-criminals, just loving their job, with bullets flying all around and hostages jumping from cars during high speed chases. For example, one of the Outfit’s most infamous non-Italian crime bosses Lenny Patrick, during his youthful days, participated in one chaotic bank robbery. In 1933, 20-year old Patrick together with his brother and few other robbers, “cleaned out” the State Exchange Bank of Culver, Indiana. When the fearsome gang entered the small town, all of the citizens stood up on their feet and in just few moments, all hell broke loose. While few of the robbers entered the bank, one member remained outside and exchanged bullets with a group of local vigilantes. When the rest of the gang heard the shots, they immediately took one hostage each, got out, entered their car, and while shooting at everyone, they quickly fled the scene. This wasn’t the end of it, but instead two cars filled with vigilantes went after the robbers. During the chase, the robbers ordered for their hostages to jump from the car, and they all proceeded into the combined woods and swamp which was located near the little town. In the end, all of the robbers, including Patrick, were caught, convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison. In fact, all of this chaos occurred for lousy $12,000.


The problem was that during those days the banks did not held more than $15,000, which was a quite small amount for such a risky operation. I mean don’t get me wrong, even ten grand was considered a lot of money in those day, enough to buy a good house, but it wasn’t something to risk your neck for. Later, some of the so-called stick-up men got “lucky” and ended up in jail instead of being shot dead by the cops and prison is always considered as “college“ for the up and coming criminals, or at least that’s how things went back then. During their stay in jail, the smarter ones decided to get mixed with more sophisticated criminals, like members of the infamous Chicago Outfit, who in turn took these guys under their wings by providing them with financial support in finding “jobs” and such. Now, some of the robbers remained independent, which was a rare occasion, some elevated to other criminal activities, thus leaving the stick-up business behind but some remained in similar activities or switched to burglaries.


For example, during World War II many of the criminals were presented with many new opportunities such stealing ration stamps. Upon the American entry into the conflict, the government released coupons for sugar, gas, and many other items which were in a short supply at the time and many Americans were forced to conserve on everything which meant sacrifices for all. Since the federal government needed to control the supply and demand, in the spring of 1942, the Food Rationing Program was set into motion and later coupons for coffee were introduced in November, and by March of 1943, meat, cheese, fats, canned fish, canned milk and other processed foods were added to the list of rationed provisions. In no time, this deeply affected the American way of life for most, including the gangsters but in a different way. Now many of the high profile mobsters devised highly lucrative schemes by stealing the stamps and later re-selling them on the black market and with the help of this so-called stealing scheme, many of the most infamous mobsters jumpstarted their criminal careers and made a fortune, from Carlo Gambino in New York to Sam Giancana in Chicago.


One of Giancana’s guys in the ration stamp stealing business was William Daddano, a young criminal who also managed to introduce himself to the Chicago Outfit by burglarizing federal safes and stealing millions of stamps in the process. This criminal activity was mostly practised by the West Side faction of the syndicate, particularly the younger generation. At the time, many young hoodlums from that area, names such as Giancana, Battaglia or Fratto were already brought into the criminal brotherhood in the city of Chicago, and so other and also younger hoodlums reached for the same “success” such as Daddano, or guys like Sam DeStefano and Marshall Caifano. In those days if you stole a huge amount of sugar ration stamps, for example, and somehow you managed to get four or five tons of sugar, the price of that amount on the black market was approximately $500,000 or almost 7 million dollars in today’s money. According to some reports, Daddano stole 4 million ration stamps which worth over $100,000 on the black market but too bad for him since shortly afterwards he was caught and was sent to jail. Even though he went to prison for only a year, Daddano stood proud in his jail cell because he never said a word to the investigators and took his punishment like a real gangster. Because of that, Daddano quickly became recognized as a stand-up guy among some of the top level guys of the Outfit. It was because of guys like Daddano, the government was forced to double its security and control over the ration stamps and so many of Daddano’s associates such DeStefano changed their tactic by making fake ration stamps. By the end of the war, restrictions on processed foods and other goods like gasoline and fuel oil were lifted, but the rationing of sugar remained in effect until 1947 and so that same year, DeStefano also joined his buddy in prison after the cops caught him for creating and trying to pass off fake sugar ration coupons.



William Daddano


While some burglars went to jail for stealing or making fake ration stamps, times slowly has changed and so many of the free burglars returned to the old ways by stealing cash, gold or precious jewels. During the early 1950’s, in Chicago, the most prominent burglar and fencer at the same time, was Carl Fiorito, a notorious criminal with long police record of more than 40 arrests. I believe that this guy was the real so-called “King of Thieves” because he knew and worked with almost every possible thief around the country and he was also the prime so-called “job receiver” since he knew every possible Outfit member in his own city. He was the city’s first and real professional burglar, same as the ones that you see in the movies, who in those days gave the word “burglary” a special meaning.


Fiorito started his infamous criminal career during the early 1940’s, with two Outfit-connected individuals and former burglars from the Northwest area, known as Paul Labriola and Jimmy Weinberg. Besides extortion, these fellas were deeply involved in the robbery and burglary businesses and later in reselling all of the stolen property but above all, they sold stolen truck parts, an operation in which Fiorito found his true qualities. By 1950, Fiorito made another quite profitable connection, which went by the name of Dave Yaras, a known Outfit killer and extortionist from the West Side or to be precise, from the Lawndale area. During this period, Yaras left his crew to his long time partner Lenny Patrick and started spending more and more time in Florida where he expended the Outfit’s rackets. And since Florida was considered by the American Mob as an “open territory”, everybody operated freely as long as they all stayed in their spots.


For example in January, 1952, at St. Petersburg in Florida, Yaras, Fiorito and one James McCarthy managed to steal four cases filled with expensive jewellery which were valued at $40,000. In March that same year, Yaras and McCarthy were arrested during the investigation but were later released since the cops had no hard evidence to put them in prison. In fact, McCarthy was one of the biggest jewel fences in the city of Chicago, and so with the help of Yaras, he managed to get stash from thieves all the way from Florida. Sometimes they received more than a million of dollars in jewellery from wealthy couples at the Florida resorts, usually during the winter months. According to some FBI reports, during this period much of the stolen loot around the Miami area was later disposed in Chicago and so according to this, I personally believe that Yaras was the prime connection for Fiorito in making new criminal relationships with professional thieves from around the country.



Carl Fiorito


But the thing was that Fiorito’s prime territory was way back home in Chicago where all the chaos was thriving within the underworld. So after the slayings of his two close friends and partners in crime Labriola and Weinberg in 1954, Fiorito still operated in Chicago but this time, his new “sponsor” became obviously the West Side faction of the Outfit since they were on the up and up within the organization or to be precise, his bosses became Fiore Buccieri and Sam Giancana, one was the “capo” of the infamous Taylor Street crew and the other was the current under boss of the whole organization. Buccieri was one of the most sadistic and greedy individuals which the Outfit has ever witnessed and Giancana was no different, and even though Fiorito wasn’t considered by law enforcement as official member of the Chicago Outfit, still he had direct contact with these two individuals. As I previously said, he was also connected to many high profile burglars and criminals from Chicago and also from around the country such as Joe Merola from Pittsburgh, or some other infamous “faces” such as the Priorello brothers, George Grisby, Theodore DeRose, George Peara, and Wilson Williams.


Also one of Fiorito’s partners such as William Dentamaro, often travelled to Florida where he spent most of his time and together they managed to orchestrate many “fine jobs”. Dentamaro also worked with some of the New York crime families but he was also closely associated with Santo Trafficante Jr., the top crime boss from Tampa and according to some reports, Dentamaro was considered a member of that same family. Since Florida became the place of business, by 1957, Fiorito received “jobs” directly from Dave Yaras, who by now also spent most of his time down there. There are numerous government reports on meetings between Fiorito, Yaras and Dentamaro in various locations between Chicago and Miami and they became prime suspects in numerous burglaries and heists. For example, in February, 1957, the trio made a theft of $60,000 worth of jewellery in Miami and later the stolen loot was quickly transferred to Chicago by one Peter Arnstein, where it had been exhibited to Ken Gordon, who was a known Chicago fencer for stolen jewellery. Later the usual practice was for Gordon to call the victim and to offer him the loot back for a certain price and in case if the victim refused, then Gordon had a very easy way of quickly disposing the stolen stash.


Now, the whole so-called “procedure” of disposing the stolen loot, went something like this: after the arrival of the stolen merchandise in Chicago, the first guys for contact were Giancana’s people on the street such as James Torello, Steve Tomaras, or Donald O’Brien, who constantly received information about the arrivals of expensive stolen loot. After that, one of these guys usually contacted one of Giancana’s personal bodyguards known as John Mattassa, who in turn would arrange a meeting at a bar which was known as the Stop Light Lounge at the corner of Cicero Avenue and Roosevelt Road. Besides secretly owning the whole place, Giancana also had a big safe in one of the back rooms, which was actually a safe within a safe. Inside Giancana kept all of the stolen loot and the only two individuals who had the combination to the safe were him and Mattassa. Many buyers or “fences” were brought out to that location almost on daily basis and were shown the stolen merchandise by the thieves, such as Fiorito, usually in Mattassa’s presence. Also from time to time if some of thieves brought something nice or quite expensive, Giancana would’ve just taken it for himself and never bothered to pay for the damn thing. Story goes that sometimes Giancana’s safe was so full of stolen merchandise, and so his people needed to take some of the stuff to their own houses for the night and then return it the other day.

None of this would’ve been real if it wasn’t for stealth criminals like Fiorito with a greatest heist, such as the theft of a $400,000 worth of diamonds or 3 million dollars in 2016 money. On August 21, 1958, Raymond Sunshine, who was the Chicago representative of Harry Winston, Inc., a diamond broker of New York City, with offices on the fifth floor of the building located at 55 E. Washington Street, had a very bad day because that same day, Fiorito together with Ted DeRose entered the offices and very violently slugged and kicked Sunshine more than few times, forced him to open the safe under the point of a gun, took the stash, left the scene and that was that. They made it look so easy like “Hello, thank you and goodbye”. To go further into details, Sunshine was alone in the offices at about 10:30 A.M. when a bell sounded indicating that someone had entered the reception room. He went to the outer office and saw a man clad in a blue uniform and cap who held a large package which almost completely covered his face. The man announced that he was a "mail man" and Sunshine opened a door to the inner office to admit him. Thereupon the burglar struck Sunshine over the head with a gun and proceeded to truss and to bind him and in the end he placed a small ball in Sunshine's mouth and used one inch adhesive tape to cover his face and head. The man then forcibly removed Sunshine's diamond ring in such manner that his finger bled. While these events were transpiring, Sunshine could hear noises and muffled conversation in the inner room where the vault was located. After the robbers had gone, Sunshine was released by his wife who had been in a nearby beauty shop. It was then discovered that all of the diamonds and wallets as well as the cash had been taken. In fact, the bandits got away with six leather wallets containing diamonds of a value of more than $300,000, which were individually wrapped in paper, and on top of that certain currency was also stolen from the cash box.


From there, the duo headed for Berwyn where about 3 p.m. Fiorito entered the Commercial National Bank and under a false name “Carl Perri”, he inquired for renting a safety deposit box for a short period of time. He gave a Gary, Indiana, address and telephone number, both of which were fictitious. But the problem was that two FBI agents were already assigned to follow Fiorito regarding some previous robbery and so the agents received an order to arrest the suspect. The next day, Fiorito was seized by FBI agents in a Near North Side hotel and they managed to find a $1,500 diamond ring hidden in one of Fiorito’s socks. Later the ring was identified by the owner and at the same time robbery victim, as the one taken from his finger by the robbers but he was unable to identify Fiorito as one of the two bandits. When the cops asked him on where did he find the ring, Fiorito asserted he got the ring as security on a $200 loan he made to a man he did not know at Arlington Park race track, the previous day. But the problem was that the investigators received positive results during the examination by the FBI laboratory in Washington of a suitcase and a portion of a metal adhesive tape container found in Fiorito's hotel room. Also on August 23, 1958, a warrant to search the safety deposit box at the Berwyn bank was issued by a justice of the peace of Cook County on a complaint signed by Sunshine and two employees of the bank. The warrant was executed by a constable who caused the lock on the box to be drilled and the contents, as expected, were identified as the property of Harry Winston, Inc. After that Fiorito was charged with armed robbery and receiving stolen property but was later released on a $25,000 bond which was posted by a professional bondsman, probably Outfit related, and the trial was postponed.


Now, while being free on the streets, one of the most “unusual” things occurred on December 1, 1958, when a $1,500,000 fortune, in rubies, sapphires, diamonds, and emeralds, was stolen from the hotel lock box of Charles Staiger, the vice president of the same firm which was previously burglarized by Fiorito, meaning the Harry Winston, Inc., from New York. Staiger came to Chicago on November 28, to display the gems to clients and friends of Albert Pick, the owner of the hotel where the loot was kept. The stolen gems included a sapphire ring valued at $100,000, six diamond studded necklaces worth $60,000 each, and eight bracelets with price tags ranging from to $80,000. Some of the pieces even contained more than 40 matched stones in platinum settings. Even though the vault was under the watchful eyes of dozen clerks and cashiers 24 hours a day, the investigators also decided to question more than 200 hotel guests and employees in the hope of finding the thief that entered the vault. But the only clew which was found by the investigators was the marks of a wedge and a jimmy on the door of lock box 124, which had been used only by Staiger for more than three years. The investigators believed that the jewels were removed from the lock box in less than two minutes by a burglar who used a wedge to hold open one corner of the door, half an inch thick, while he popped the lock with a jimmy. The door apparently was forced shut after the jewels were removed. In the end, the stolen gems were never found.


Obviously we cannot blame Fiorito for the burglary just because he was free on the streets, but the problem is that the situation was very suspicious. The first suspicious thing was the fact that Staiger was known for his frequent travels around the country with expensive jewels and had never been robbed before. He owed that to the constant police protection which he requested it in every city that he visited. But during his visit in Chicago, Staiger did not request a guard from the Chicago police when he arrived at O'Hare International airport with the gems in a black leather case. The second suspicious thing was that the robbery which happened to the same firm twice in the same year and same location which was the city of Chicago. That is why I personally believe that the two robberies were connected, or in other words, Outfit-connected. You see, to make a theft such as this one, you need to have connections, information and quite good stealing skills and obviously Fiorito was the guy with such characteristics but he never got blamed for the robbery because he had a good alibi, which was the waiting for his trial. Fiorito was facing from four to five years in jail if convicted for the burglary but that was not the case, because according to one wiretapped conversation between the Outfit’s main corruptor and extortionist Murray Humphreys and attorney Mike Brodkin, the case was already “fixed”. The real problem was that there was something darker within Fiorito which made him very vulnerable.


Now, working under guys like Buccieri or Giancana meant that burglary wasn’t the only thing that was going to fill up Fiorito’s day but instead, soon he was asked to do other and more “dirty” jobs such as killing people and dealing drugs. In other words, working for those two gangsters, was the same as working for Lucifer and Satan. You see, guys like Buccieri, Giancana or Sam Battaglia had their fingers in every pot, including the narcotics trade and so they always kept few crews of small time criminals or “runners” as they were called who were directly under their rule. These so-called “junk crews” from the city’s West Side area, were the main distributors of heroin for the Mob around the Midwest, including Milwaukee, Indiana, Kansas City, and Los Angeles. The heroin mainly came from New York or Tampa and…well that’s another story which I will perfectly describe in my next project. So my point is that one day, one Fiorito’s “runners” in the drug trade, William Skally managed to sell $15,000 worth of pure heroin to a government undercover agent. When I say “runners” it doesn’t mean that some of these guys were simple street dealers, but instead some of them like Skally were professional criminals. For example, this old timer lived through the bootlegging days, worked as a professional burglar and also controlled a multi-million dollar counterfeit ring. So now lets get back to the point, in other words Skally was working both ends towards the middle, meaning he unknowingly informed for the government by constantly meeting with the under cover agent and at same time doing chores for Fiorito as a “runner”. So Skally had no other choice but to keep his mouth shut…a decision which was quite unreal for the defendant, and so he decided to spill the beans on Fiorito’s narcotics dealings.


Now I believe that Fiorito was not aware of what came next, but he was quite aware that he was about to be summoned to meet the boss himself, but this time in one quite unpleasant situation. So Fiorito was called by one of the Outfit’s, almost member-like, attorneys known as Mike Brodkin who in turn took Fiorito to have a chat with Sam Giancana regarding the problem. According to one wiretapped conversation between Brodkin and Murray Humphreys, during the meeting Giancana authorized Fiorito to take care of the Skally problem, or in other words, Fiorito received the “murder contract”. So on January 5, 1960, 50-year old Skally was called by Fiorito, who in turn assured him that he, meaning Fiorito, already had the case “fixed” and so they decided to have a chat regarding the problem. Skally came to Fiorito’s house, picked him up and drove off to River Forest, where they parked their car at some parking lot to have the alleged chat. As he sat on the passenger seat, Fiorito started acting a little bit nervous and got noticed by Skally, who in turn immediately felt suspicious. Suddenly, Fiorito pulled out a revolver and the two men started struggling in the car, but somehow Fiorito managed to place the gun over the top of Skally’s head and pulled the trigger, thus instantly killing his victim.


The next day, the cops found Skally’s lifeless body and they immediately informed and question his wife Jane regarding her husband’s latest criminal connections and activities. The widow told the cops that the night before her late husband disappeared, he allegedly told her, that he was going to meet Fiorito. From this point the investigators already knew that Fiorito was a part of a huge narcotics ring, but now they also knew that he was guilty for the murder of Skally. So now the investigators played it safe by not playing ball on the burglary or the murder case for that matter, but instead they waited for him to “slip”, meaning to arrest him while dealing heroin. So while being out on bond, Fiorito managed to sell $6,000 worth of heroin to undercover agents and to successfully screw up all of his chances for staying out of prison. Here’s what three of the Outfit’s best “fixers”, Frank Ferraro, Mike Brodkin and Murray Humphreys, had to say about the whole situation:

HUMPHREYS: You said you were gonna have the kid (possibly Fiorito) raise some money.

BRODKIN: I told him to raise some. That’s right.

HUMPHREYS: Well, he better have some, because I don’t know yet, Ill find out in a day or so.

FERRARO: Yeah, but he got caught again now.

HUMPHREYS: But I can’t help that…I said to the guy I’m not interested in the guy (Fiorito), this is a bad guy. He’s been in trouble a lot of times. But that doesn’t make any difference. I saw the guy last week and asked him what happened with it. He said it was a bad kid and all that. I said I’m not interested in the kid…the other case was beaten.

BRODKIN: The other lawyer, the young lawyer, that argued the case before the Supreme Court, argued it the other day.

HUMPHREYS: Well, that’s what I said I’m not interested in the kid, I’m interested in…

BRODKIN: They revoked his bond. They were looking for him and I told him to duck until after Christmas. I had to bring him in.

HUMPHREYS: He must be a dumb shit, getting caught right away.


From the above conversation we can see that Brodkin at least tried to convince Humphreys to give his help again to Fiorito regarding his second charge, but the old Welshman refused to even talk about the subject because as I previously said that he already managed to “fix” the first case but “washed his hands” from the second because nobody from the old timers wanted to screw around with narcotics. Brodkin on the other hand, still wanted to help because he was a sort of a talent scout for the Outfit who always mingled with these so-called low level criminals. So now the prosecutors even had strong evidences regarding Fiorito’s involvement in the burglary and in no time, both Fiorito and his partner in crime Ted DeRose were convicted for the burglary and each received 10 years in prison. But on top of that, Fiorito received additional 10 years for the narcotics charges, which in no time became a 20 years prison term. Obviously, his corrupt connections within the Outfit have abandoned him even on the burglary case because he was caught dealing “junk” which was a big “no-no” in the higher circles of society.


During the same time period, there was another robbery crew which worked directly under the auspices of Fiore Buccieri but they were a little bit different rather then Fiorito’s gang. This was a so-called “torture-robbery” crew which was perfect for the likes of Buccieri and company. These guys were not professionals and were less sophisticated, but instead they were sort of unrestrained animals who plundered countless homes of the wealthy, while maiming and molesting helpless women and children just to extract a fortune in stolen cash, furs, and jewels, often by utilizing lighted cigarette butts to persuade victims to open safes on which ordinarily a stick of dynamite would have failed. They also robbed banks “John Dillinger” style, by which they were very often compared to in the newspapers. The leader of the ruthless “pack” was Nick Guido, a fearsome thief and a killer, who grew up around Taylor Street and ended up with many underworld connections all around the West Side. This guy had an evil looking face and was a real lunatic, and I mean real nutcase. In 1924, when he was just a three year old boy, his father Nick Sr., while committing a home invasion, strangled to death a wealthy house owner and was sentenced to life in prison. So I believe that this deeply affected the younger Nick Guido, who when he was only 14 years old, in 1935 he was committed to the Illinois Training Schoo1 for Boys in Kane county for two years after his arrest on a robbery charge. Like father, like son, in 1938, Nick Guido was sent to Pontiac reformatory for five years, and in 1944 to Joliet penitentiary for 10 years, both terms also for robbery. During those years, every time when Guido entered into a court building, he would act insane and tear apart all of his clothes, including his socks, and would scream like there was no tomorrow. There were many cases were he sat in the courtroom all naked.


Even though he was considered a “loon” by law enforcement, in reality Guido was a savage and cunning stickup artist, who mapped some of the Outfit’s proposed robberies of the banks or wealthy individuals. Since he was known around his territory, the gang mostly operated on the city’s North Side. He would select half-dozen banks and dozens of rich individuals in the area as targets of his gang, and after Buccieri’s permission, the bandits would execute their jobs. In some cases, they would reportedly visit and "cease" the banks to learn the routine of the cashiers and to determine the most vulnerable points of assault or they would follow many rich individuals and try to talk and bribe their so-called “house help” so they can receive info on where the safes were and how much stash was in it. Guido also prepared masks and hoods for the crew, which were used in home raids. The so-called masks were fashioned from women’s stockings which were dyed in bright red. The gang also used house keys which were usually obtained from the auto key rings of wealthy women patrons. In some homes, Guido ordered his men to smash windows to make it appear that the gang did not have duplicate keys that enabled them to enter residences without a sound. Under Guido's direction, the gang looted more than a score of homes, terrorizing families and torturing women and sometimes even children. But as I previously said, by now Guido mostly targeted banks all around the state of Illinois, which gave him the image of the violent bank robbers during the days of Prohibition or the Depression Era.


On November 4, 1955, Nick Guido and two of his associates managed to rob the Maywood-Proviso State Bank in Maywood, Illinois, of approximately $23,056. They were masked and continuously flashed their machine guns during the course of the robbery, while screaming and kicking the employees and customers. In the end, they were believed to have escaped in a Cadillac driven by a fourth man. When the robbers finished their job at the bank, after that the place looked like a tornado just went through. Sam as in the previous story, after the robbery Guido took a safety deposit box in the Pioneer Trust and Savings Bank in Chicago, which was rented under the name “Don Schiavone”. Less than two weeks, Guido was arrested by the cops because they received info that he was very fond of Cadillacs and he drove a 1955 model which was found parked near his apartment. It was the getaway car. Guido was quickly arrested and when the cops searched his apartment they managed to find a 25 round magazine for a machine gun, two magazines, one of them loaded, for a 9 mm. automatic pistol, an empty magazine for a .45 caliber pistol, a belt of .38 caliber cartridges , and an assortment of loose .32, .38, and .45 caliber cartridges. Two days after the arrest of Guiso, the feds obtained a search warrant from the trial judge and searched the safety deposit box in the Pioneer Trust and Savings Bank. Inside, the feds found more than $5,000 but the thing was that inside the money stack, the feds also found four $2 bills which were in fact marked. At first, during the trial, things were looking good for Guido since he managed to establish an alibi by testifying on the trial that he was in the Roxy Movie Theatre across the street from his apartment on the evening of the robbery, somewhere between 6:00 P.M. and 8:30 or 9:30 P.M and he even specified the movie which was ironically entitled “To Catch a Thief”. Also the government was disappointed in the testimony from one of its eyewitnesses by whom it attempted, but failed, to make positive identification. But even with that, the evidences such as the getaway car, the marked bills and a footprint at the scene of the crime which perfectly fitted Guido, were too overwhelming and he was sentenced to 6 years in prison.



Nick Guido


When Guido got out of jail in 1961, he wasn’t changed a bit, meaning, he quickly gathered his gang and started planning new jobs, obviously because he needed the money. So when you need fast money, you need a fast “job” and planning a bank robbery wasn’t something that you can do it that fast. Guido also had two younger brothers, Louis and Don, who in turn were his main so-called “logisticians” in plotting all kinds of “jobs”, including murder. But besides being burglars and killers at the same time, the brothers were also heavily involved in the narcotics business which I personally believe was financed by Buccieri and the Outfit. They would receive a kilo or two of pure heroin and later, some of their younger associates would distribute it all around the area. Other prominent members of the so-called “junk crew” were Al Sacko, James McGarry, Louis Vasselli, Joseph Gaynor, Stanley Miller, John Pellegrini and Alex Micele. Many of these fellas were previously arrested or convicted on narcotics and some on murder charges. They had a quite lucrative operation going on because first of all they had the number of men on the streets and they also had protection, which was the Outfit.


So besides being involved in the narcotics racket, from this point on Nick Guido mainly focused on his new and greatest passion which was the home invasions of wealthy “targets”. One of Guido’s most prominent partners in this kind of crime was a young criminal know as Frank Yonder and this young fella was a real walking terror and a “mad-dog” since he was known as the gang’s torturer. Usually when the gang entered the home of some rich and helpless lady, Yonder was the one who would tie the victim up, then he would burn her body with lighted matches and cigarettes, or cut her with a razor and in the end, he would kick, beat, and punch her in the face and drag her across the room by her hair until she speaks about her alleged hidden stash. In other words, this guy was a monster but “strangely”, his ruthless techniques always worked. According to some police reports, Guido reportedly instructed Yonder to torture women and children in some robberies, but not to molest them in others, hoping that police would be deceived and not suspect that one gang was responsible for all of the invasions of homes. The funny thing was that Yonder worked as a women’s hairdresser in a North Side beauty parlor known as the Key-Den Beauty Shop, and from there the gang selected their targets. One of Yonder’s associates Leo Johnson, who also worked at the beauty parlor but as car hiker, allegedly supplied the gang with copies from car keys or home keys of wealthy women. In fact, this was a whole separate key-theft ring, which operated strictly at the beauty salon and besides Johnson also included were William Collins and Herbert Kwate. This gang of young thieves sold duplicate keys to Guido and Yonder at prices up to $50 a piece.


For example, on May 28, 1962, the gang decided to break into the home of the Botthof family. They lived in a $200,000, fortress and were considered quite wealthy, which was the main reason for being targeted by the gang. That day the Botthof family found the answer on how safe and secure was any home owner in Cook County from the law of the jungle? The individuals responsible for the robbery were Guido, Yonder and few of their associates such as Duane Pinkowski, Louis Vasselli and Guido’s wife Patricia. Few days before the robbery occurred, Yonder and Vasselli met in a tavern where Guido informed them of the planned robbery and asked them if they wanted to take part in it. The two agreed. Guido told Vasselli that Yonder would be the main player on the job and that Vasselli’s role was only to bring the guns. On Saturday, May 26, 1962, Nick and Patricia Guido went shopping for the necessary articles to carry out the robbery. They first visited a discount store where Guido purchased a flashlight and stocking cap, and from there went to a nearby dime store where he purchased a rope and flashlights, two pairs of large white nylons which were later cut and made into masks and also two large rolls of wide adhesive tape. On Sunday, May 27, 1962, Yonder and Vasselli, under Guido's supervision, managed to steal a getaway car from a used car lot. The plan was for Patricia and Nick Guido to wait in the car, near some restaurant, while the robbery was in progress.


On that faithful day, with the help of the copy keys, the gang entered the Botthof residence without any trouble. First, Vasselli and Pinkowski tied up Mr. Botthof, his eleven year old son and their three maids. Then, Yonder grabbed Mrs. Botthof by her neck and started burning her face, breasts and whole body with cigarettes, while her husband and son were watching. While torturing her, Yonder asked Mrs. Botthof about their hidden safe and the alleged $100,000 stash of family jewellery. But the poor woman told him that most of their cash was spent on the expensive education of their five children. This made Yonder even more mad, and so he pulled her by her hair, stomped on her neck several times, and later on he forced her to watch as Vasselli and Pinkowski beat her husband without any mercy. Vasselli poked his thumb as hard as he could into Mr. Botthof's eye and pounded his chest with his fists, kicked him several times in the ribs, thus breaking two of them, and in the end, he slammed the heel of his shoe into Botthof's face. Next on Yonder’s “menu” were the maids. He struck matches and lighted the pubic hairs of the women, while all three of them were being stripped off their clothes and laid naked on the floor. Later Vasselli proposed that they rape his wife in front of their son if he doesn’t give up his family’s treasure. As a result of the violent beating, Mr. Botthof lost site on one of his eyes. In the end, Vasselli took the situation in his own hands by threatening the bloodstained couple that if they don’t give up something, they would watch as their child suffers. The family’s agony lasted for nearly two and a half hours and in the end, the poor victims prayed for mercy down on their knees. So, the animal-like and notorious robbers took whatever the Botthof family “coughed up” and left the poor people in a horrible psychological and physical trauma. When they exited the house, Yonder's suit was all splattered with blood, and his face looked excited like never before. He told Guido the bad news, that he had left the Botthof family almost dead and that they were only able to get $130, two pairs of pearls and a ring. When they returned to Guido’s apartment, they gave Patricia the pearls and their guns and told her to drive Yonder to her house in Joliet.


Some of their other “jobs” were the looting of the home of Jack Delott on June 5, 1962. More than $10,000 in furs and jewellery was taken in the robbery, in which Delott was slugged and his wife and children were threatened with torture. The gang also managed to steal $21,150 from the home of Mr. and Mrs. Schamberg at 6525 Kilbourn Av., in Lincolnwood. On June 29, 1962, once again the gang managed to obtain more $10,000 in furs and jewellery in a burglary which occurred at the home of S. L. Widran, at 5060 Marine drive. With this particular job, Nick Guido made the burglary business look so easy, that it just might take you under temptation. First he called the Widran apartment and since there was no answer, Guido quickly called for Yonder to burglarize the apartment that same moment. They put on their gloves, took their flashlights and walked to the apartment building side entrance. In less than 10 minutes, they came out with Yonder carrying a white pillow case, filled with two mink stoles, a woman’s diamond ring, costume jewellery, a couple of wallets and cash. Guido took everything which he did not consider of any value and told Yonder to bury them. And that was that. Another robbery occurred but this time the target was the Bank of Lincolnwood in which more than $15,000 were stolen. The day after the Lincolnwood job, Guido allegedly said to his wife "There was a cute little boy in the bank at the time of the robbery. I was nice to him [the boy] and said: 'Don't worry, we won t hurt you.”

Even though the gang was responsible for at least 17 home invasions and few bank robberies in just two months, still the main problem was the fear which they managed to spread along the North Shore, through their violent methods and animalistic behaviour. They were the street guys or “runners” who were the constantly on the streets, hustling and giving a percentage of their proceedings to the Chicago Outfit. But besides their evilness, they were still considered the “first line of defence” against the government’s attacks, meaning if some of the young criminals got “pinched” by the feds, old or young, that was the end of him. And that’s what really happened. Two of Yonder’s associates in the key-stealing business at the beauty parlor, were nabbed by the feds. The two unlucky fellas were Leo Johnson and Herbert Kwate and these two young criminals got scared for only walking in the police station. Later their bonds were paid and so Guido and Yonder looked at them as expendable and with Buccieri’s permission, they went for the kill. Guido gave the “contract” to his brothers Louis and Don, who in turn plotted the murder and later gave it to Gary D'Allessandro and Alex Wallace, two of the gang’s best “hitters”. On June 1, 1962, the bullet-riddled body of Johnson popped up in a West Side alley and also more than two weeks later, on June 17, the lifeless body of Kwate was found near Carpentersville in Kane County. Right after the Kwate murder, the feds realised that another car hiker was gone and this time it was William Collins. In fact, Collins disappeared the next day, after the cops found Johnson’s body. Collins’ body was never found.


The killings of the two young car hikers, was the last straw in the eyes of the federal government and so they decided to take the situation under control. The government quickly issued warrants for the arrest of Guido, Yonder and the rest of the gang and so on June 18, 1962, the cops visited Guido’s home in search of Guido and Yonder. The problem was that neither was present, but Guido’s wife Patricia was home. She told the cops almost nothing but right after the police visit, she received three telephone calls from her husband, who in turn managed to make a huge mistake. You see, Guido was a real scumbag who had no respect for his wife and three kids, and so during their telephone conversation, he threatened his own wife to keep her mouth shut or else. Now, how stupid can a guy get in a situation such as this one? I mean his wife already has proven herself by not telling anything to the policemen and on top of that, Guido had to put additional pressure over her. Well, after receiving the last call, on June 20, Patricia Guido made a decision to contact the Joliet police and, in the presence of the State's Attorney's police, sheriff's police and Joliet police, unearthed the hidden canisters which contained some of the stolen property from the Botthof job. After turning the canisters over to the police, Patricia was arrested and charged with taking part in the Botthof robbery but after that, she was subsequently released on bond.


Even though she still kept her mouth shut regarding Guido and the rest of the gang, her husband’s senseless threats did not end up there. While being hunted all around the Midwest by the police, Nick Guido again somehow managed to send word down to his wife that if she opened up her mouth ever again, he was going to kidnap their own kids and that he was going to hurt them. Immediately, at Patricia’s request, she was placed in protective custody by the State's Attorney's office to remain like that until the trial, of course, in return for every information that she possessed regarding the Guido gang. So from this point on, started the so-called “domino effect” of the gang’s fall. Next to “spill the beans” was Duane Pinkowski who got also indicted for armed robbery, decided to testify against his former colleagues as a state witness. He detailed for the feds on how he was allegedly forced into going on the Botthof robbery under the threats to harm his wife and child by Guido. Pinkowski said that Guido first offered him to forget about a $1,000 loan which he had made to Pinkowski, if he would take part in the robbery. Also, the feds raided a drug store at 43d street and Drexel Boulevard, which was used by the gang to keep some of their stolen loot until it was sold. In fact, Guido reported to the parole agents that he was working as a purchasing agent for the drug store. Owners of the place were Mrs. Grace Pine and her daughter Mrs. Delite and both were charged with possession of stolen property, which forced them to open their mouths. Meanwhile, one of the gang’s “hitters” Alex Wallace also opened his mouth, and had signed a confession in which he said he fired the first shot into his accomplice’s body and charged D'Allessandro, who allegedly fired four more shots. The slayings, according to Wallace, were ordered by Guido himself. In the end, even though he helped the government, Wallace was again sentenced to no less than 33 year in prison regarding the Kwate murder. After this there was a national hunt for Guido and Yonder with a “shoot on site” warrant.


Luckily for them, in November 1962, the two fugitives were caught and arrested by the police in Michigan State and after proving their sanity, by early January, 1963, they were taken to trial. Now, the whole thing was a huge spectacle. First, the defence was destroyed by all of the witnesses that took the stand such as Patricia Guido, Mr. and Mrs. Botthof, Pinkowski, Wallace etc. For example, Mrs Botthof was on the verge of insanity, while in tears she told of the agony she endured as the bandits tried to extract information from her and her husband. "Then he stood on my neck three times," she said, "he kicked, beat, and punched me. He dragged me across the room by my hair so that I could watch him beat my husband." Pinkowski also detailed for the jury how he was forced under threats into going on the Botthof robbery and also about Guido’s future plans and selection of a half-dozen banks in the Chicago suburbs as alleged targets of his gang. In the end, Guido was completely destroyed by the testimony of his wife Patricia. Here’s a part of her testimony regarding the Schamberg robbery: “Nick was told by some female who plays cards with Mrs. Schamberg, that she had seen Mrs. Schamberg with a five carat square cut diamond ring, and a black onyx watch with diamonds, plus other expensive jewellery. A few days later, Nick sent me to the women’s apparel store owned by the Schambergs at Devon and Western avenues. I saw Mrs. Schamberg and she was wearing a large diamond ring. Nick then made plans for the robbery. A few nights later I drove our T-bird [sports car] with Nick and Frank [Yonder] with me. Nick got out of the car and told me to drive Louie [Vasselli] and Frank to the Schamberg home. Nick told Frank, before we left, that Nick or I would call the Schamberg home, and that one of them should answer the phone. Nick also told them to try and disguise themselves with Mr. Schamberg's clothes and to take scarfs or something to hide their faces. That was it. So I drove Frank and Louie [to the vicinity of the Schamberg home] and dropped them off. I saw them go thru the woods toward the Schamberg house. I left and picked up Nick again. I stopped at a drug store and called the Schamberg house about 9:45 p. m. Frank answered the phone and I told him it’s me, and he said, “Hi, honey, call back in 10 minutes because I have company.” So I waited 10 more minutes and called again. Louie answered the phone and said that he and Frank would be leaving in five minutes. I told this to Nick and we drove over to pick them up. When Nick and I got to where Louie had his car parked, Louie was gone and Frank was standing there holding a pillow case with the furs and the costume jewellery. Nick told Frank to put everything except the good jewellery and the money in the alley behind the houses. Nick sent me home with the good jewellery to my home in Joliet. Nick counted out $1,100 in cash in front of me."


And so, on January 16, 1963, the jury found Guido and Yonder guilty regarding the Botthof robbery and were sentenced each from 60 to 100 years in prison. According to some reports, Guido received his sentence without any emotion and as for Yonder, he maintained a wry smile, which was the only expression he has shown throughout the trial. Minutes after the notorious duo had been sentenced to prison, as they left the courtroom, Yonder attacked and threatened to kill a police lieutenant, who stood nearby. Yonder lunged toward Lt. Edward King and slammed his head against the cell bars after spitting into his face. Later Yonder threw his arm around King's neck, and said "Now I'm going to kill you!" and attempted to grab King's .38 caliber pistol. In the end, Yonder was subdued by the court bailiffs, who handcuffed him to the cell bars. Later, Patricia Guido testified in another trial, against Louis Guido and again, against her husband Nick, regarding the dope peddling business, in which bother brothers received additional sentences.


Now, you would ask yourself on what was a highly organized criminal group such as the Chicago Outfit doing with psychotic criminals such as the Guido gang? Now criminals such as Carl Fiorito were one thing, and these guys were completely the opposite. They made a lot of noise and brought a lot of unwanted attention and we know that in those days the Outfit did not have a lot of respect for groups such as this one. There are many examples were the Outfit executed the killings of dozens of unlucky individuals in less than a year, so my point is, if somebody from the higher ups wanted these reckless fellas dead, they were going to end up dead, with no questions asked. But I believe that people like Buccieri, Battaglia or Giancana had a “thing” for psychotic gangsters, since they were quite easily talked into a murder. And on top of that, they peddled narcotics and stole whatever they found, so according to some terms, they might’ve been a quite lucrative crew. But as you can see, the violent bank robbing styles of the 1930’s were also back, out of various reasons, after 30 years. My personal belief is that during this period the feds declared war against the Chicago Mob, thus closing many of their illegal operations and so many of the “capos” or territorial bosses, pressured their underlings for more money, since they were already pressured by the top boss. So my point is that for one to plan a high score burglary, he or she needed some time for the whole planning, but since the bosses needed fast cash, robbery was always the fastest way of getting some fast money.


Now, while some Outfit-connected thieves were sent to jail, others were still out “running wild” on the streets of Chicago. By the late 1950’s, William Daddano became one of the area crime bosses for the Outfit who controlled various rackets, from gambling to extortion but still he answered to one area boss known as Sam Battaglia who in turn was the boss of all western suburbs. Because of his past activities, Daddano also became the main Outfit guy who had connections to almost every burglar or thief around the Chicago area and because of that, his main job was to collect street tax. You see, almost every criminal who operated on some of Daddano’s territories had to pay street tax to their so-called area boss or else. The thing was some of those “victims” were also bank robbers or jewel thieves and that is why Daddano spent the last part of his criminal career, which was the early 1960’s, while running a crew of independent thieves out of a suburban bowling alley in Melrose Park which he allegedly owned. It was named the Riviera Bowling Lanes and served as his headquarters and it was there where most of Chicago’s thieves dropped by to pay their “debts” to Daddano and the Outfit and everyone who was anyone knew that Daddano was extracting street tax from professional burglars throughout the Chicago area for many years and story goes that the street tax was non-negotiable and those who failed to pay usually ended up six feet under the ground. Daddano didn’t only extort the burglars, but he also recruited promising guys for other dirty operations because some of these guys were daring men with pure criminal minds, which made them perfect Outfit guys. In time they became the Outfit’s “property” and even carried out enforcement work, for example accomplishing syndicate-sanctioned killings. But Dadddano had a way of “buying” his associates by being very loyal to them and story goes that once he reportedly bought a new Corvette for a burglar and mob associate who did time in prison, as a reward for not ratting on his boss.


I believe that the old chief wanted to bring back the old days of entering a bank or a jewellery store in a quite violent style with people jumping down on the floor and woman screams filling the air. Now don’t get me wrong, after the war and by the early 1950’s Daddano became one of main players in the rising faction of the Outfit, and with all of that dirty cash, for some reason, he still loved orchestrating a good old bank robbery. Daddano’s contacts with robbing banks were obviously renewed by the people who paid him street tax. So Daddano and his crew of burglars operated mostly “old school” style, meaning they were robbing banks and hijacked trucks like John Dillinger’s gang back in the old days, but with ski masks. This crew of robbers was formed by guys like Johnny “The Bug” Varelli, Guy “Lover Boy” Mendola, John ”Joey D” D’Argento, Frank Sr. and Frank Jr. DeLegge, Mike LaJoy, James “Legs” D’Antonio, Jim Martin, Angelo Boscarino, Steve Tomaris, Larry Fletcher, Mike Swiatek, Donny O'Brien, Jimmy Caporusso, Eugene Cacciatore, Tony Legato, Garry Tomaszek and Patrick Schang. The thing was that these guys were not just your ordinary burglars but instead some of them worked as enforcers or loan sharking collectors with long arrest records.


For example, James D’Antonio was a criminal with a record of almost 70 arrests or John Varelli, true name Schiverelli, who previously worked under the auspices of Elmwood Park Outfit member William Messino, as loan sharking or “juice” collector and jewel thief. Varelli had a quite dark history which fitted his nickname “The Bug” since he was born in an insane asylum where his mother was patient and that is why, through the years Varelli spent lots of time in foster homes and showed signs of schizophrenia all of his life. Story goes that Varelli once had a guy on “juice” but the problem was that the so-called “victim” couldn’t pay his debt and fled to California. In less than six months, Varelli found the guy, brought him back to Chicago and slashed him with a knife quite badly but didn’t kill him. Instead, Varelli told the guy that he, the victim, was going to take care of the payments for Varelli’s new car and the individual had no choice but to agree. In 1961, Varelli was caught in the act of stealing 24 barrels of scrap metal which was valued over $5,000 but instead of going to jail, he received five year probation.


Mike LaJoy was also one cruel individual and was known for setting up his own family members just to save his own skin. Once, LaJoy forced his father to take the blame and get pinched for stolen goods which were found in his store and were obviously placed there by his son. LaJoy was also related to the DeLegges who were also individuals with long arrest records. Together with D’Argento and Fletcher, they operated a very lucrative car theft ring which many of the cars ended up in the Detroit and other Midwest cities. These guys’ connection to the syndicate was also Outfit lawyer Mike Brodkin but there was also another connection and that was Richard Cain, real name Scalzetti, corrupt chief investigator for the Cook County sheriff's office and member of the Chicago Outfit. One day, D’Argento and one Paul Panczko were arrested by the police regarding the ownership of burglary tools which they planned to use for stealing a car which in turn was planned to be used in a robbery. So the boys decided to call for Cain who in turn gave the case to one of his corrupt colleagues James Donnelly and eventually the boys were released.


Frank DeLegge Sr. had a quite rough start in his criminal career since he was imprisoned for a long time period but later his son DeLegge Jr. introduced his old man to many Outfit-connected people. DeLegge Sr. started working together with one other prominent burglar known as Jerry Scalise, and they managed to pull few jobs here and there but the problem was that DeLegge Sr. was a degenerate gambler and always was in debt to someone. That’s why, in some way he was forced to do all kinds of robberies so he can payback his debts. Also the older DeLegge wasn’t some guy who would go on robberies with a gun but instead he always took the role as a lookout or a driver.


So to understand the origins of this burglary crew I have to say that most of these guys previously belonged to the so-called Panczko gang from the Elmwood Park area, which was a huge group of professional burglars who operated independently but sometimes they did jobs for the Outfit also, especially the Elmwood Park crew. Now, before we proceed about the Daddano’s and everything, first I want to explain the Panczko’s, since they were the so-called “roots’ of the gang and they also left a huge mark in Chicago’s history of the burglary business. The legendary Chicago burglary gang was in fact started by the three Panczko brothers who came from six children of Polish immigrants. They were Joseph a.k.a. “Pops”, Edward a.k.a. “Butch” and Paul a.k.a. “Peanuts” and they all grew up on the city’s West Side and they knew all of the Italian or non-Italian criminals from that particular area. As young kids, they stole peanut butter and cement mixers to help feed their huge family during the Depression era and then “graduated” on stealing fur coats, or chickens from the Fulton Street market, typewriters, and also jewels and cash later on. They were sort of a quite “interesting” family, and they all lived together with their sisters and their husbands, which one of them was a drug addict.



The Panczko brothers: Paul, Joseph and Edward


As I previously stated that the brothers knew and associated with huge number of other professional burglars, and besides LaJoy, the DeLegges, and D’Argento, others were Richard Kay, Edward Cook and Chester Zochowski. These guys did not operate only in the Chicago area, but they also operated around the country. For example, Richard Kay was a guy who very often operated on the east coast. He had a very interesting style of robbing big stores, by previously sending one of his associates to hide inside the store until closing. Then the guy would come out, take all of the jewellery and furs, and in the end he would break out and was greeted by Kay, who in turn was waiting outside with the getaway car. The crew just loved to steal and they managed to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars around the country but they were also caught by the cops many times.


For example, back in 1951, Edward Panczko and four other guys managed to steal two heavy safes from the national currency exchange office in Cicero, and after that they tried to place the two safes into their sedan. Suddenly, out of nowhere, two cops showed up and all five burglars raced to save their skins but one of the cops started shooting and managed to hit Panczko in the chest. Somehow he survived and on top of that, he even managed to “survive” the trial because his lawyers successfully argued that there was no chance for the police officers to know for sure on who was who that night because of the heavy fog, and so Panczko was free. Also, his older brother Joseph was no different. Once, he and few of his partners in crime planned to rob a jewellery store in suburban Wilmette but the problem was that one of their “friends”, who knew about the planned heist, tipped the cops and told them about everything. So on the night of the crime, one policeman armed with a shotgun was hidden at the back of the store and waited for the thieves. Suddenly, he heard someone breaking in, stood up and shouted at the burglars to stop and rise their hands up in the air. Quickly, one of the burglars threw something at the policeman and they all started running away from the scene. The cop took after them and as he ran, he managed to fire his shotgun, thus hitting one of the burglars right in the head. The wounded burglar staggered on the ground and screamed for help. When the cop arrived, he quickly realized that it was “Pops” Panczko. After that, the doctors pulled out two shotgun pellets from the back of his skull and another one from his brain. Later, during the trial, “Pops” was assisted by one Outfit-connected lawyer known as George Bieber and right across them, there were 17 witnesses against the defendant. But somehow, Bieber managed to convince the jury that “Pops” was in fact minding his own business when suddenly somebody shot him in the head. Believe it or not, in the end “Pops” Panczko was acquitted from all charges. The cop who arrested him allegedly said “I am at loss for words. It sort of hits you low, you do your best, then this.”


Another quite interesting example occurred during the winter season when the Panczko gang was known for visiting the Miami Beach area and gloriously added to the number of thefts on that territory. On February 10, 1962, one of the brothers Paul Panczko and three of his associates managed to attract a nationwide publicity by robbing the Leonard Taylor jewellery store at Pompano Beach, Florida. The four robbers entered the store and at gunpoint, they ordered for the employees to fill their bags with jewellery which worth approximately $1,800,000. Later in the evening, with the help of reports from eyewitnesses, the Miami police managed to arrest Paul Panczko and two of his associates Eddie Cook and Richard Kay. The precious jewellery was found the next day, in a trunk of a car which was parked on a public parking lot in Miami Beach and the keys of the car were in fact found in the pockets of Panczko. This time the defendants were convicted and sentenced from 3 to 4 years in jail.


Now, the main connections to the Chicago crime syndicate were Paul Panczko, Mendola and DeLegge Sr and one of their first connections was Chicago Mob lawyer Mike Brodkin, who was almost like a member of the crime organization and represented all of these fellas and even knew some of their fathers. For example, Mendola was the toughest one in the group with an arrest record since 1943, and that is why his father very often visited Brodkin and begged him to help his son and force him take a different path in his life but the Mob lawyer did quite the opposite by introducing the young criminal to other criminals or in other words, he showed him the lucrative way of the streets. Mendola started his criminal career with his close friend Paul Panczko and together they served a 7 year prison term in a Tennessee jail for $100,000 jewel robbery. After he ended up working for Outfit crime boss of the Stone Park and Franklyn Park areas Rocco Pranno and during his career Mendola was arrested more than 40 times and served two jail terms in Birdwell and even though he was considered a low level criminal, Mendola still managed to mingle with many actual members of the Outfit and also knew a lot about their inner workings. According to one story, Mendola once told a friend of his that the Outfit managed to corrupt a high level FBI agent and that he knew the names of two Outfit informants. But sometimes the hot blooded Italian forgot about the limits in that kind of life which almost cost his life. For example, in 1962, Mendola had an argument with the crime boss Rocco Pranno. The duo had a violent argument at one of Pranno’s clubs, and that’s when the boss gave more than few cracks to Mendola’s mouth and after that Pranno administered a heavy beating over Mendola in the basement of the joint, while in the presence of a police officer. In the end, Mendola got out with a warning never to come back to Pranno’s place ever again.


The group’s so-called headquarters was a club known as the Twist which was located on Grand Avenue in Elmwood Park and was owned by one of their “dearest friends” John DiFronzo who worked under the auspices of the crime boss of that area Jack Cerone. In fact, DiFronzo acted as the group’s fencer, meaning he resold the stolen property and also collected street tax for his superiors. For example, one of the group’s most sensational robberies occurred during Christmas Eve in 1962 and their target was a truck which belonged to the Brink’s Inc. U.S. Services. With the help of their armoured trucks, the company made cash in transit, coin processing, cash handling, safes, check imaging, secure transportation, and atm services. The main participants in the robbery were Panczko, Tomaszek and Martin and together they followed the truck’s route for more than three weeks while watching every movement and expertly timing the absence from the truck by a guard. On December 24, the truck, loaded with money picked up from 35 firms near the close of the Christmas buying season, was held up by three men in front of the River Rand Bowl, a bowling alley at 191 N. River rd., north of Des Plaines. The three robbers wore hoods and black zipper jackets, and with the help of their guns, they forced their way into the truck, handcuffed the security guards, and drove the vehicle to a nearby brickyard. In fact they used special keys to open doors of the truck which indicated that they may had access to the armoured truck at night, when it normally was previously parked in some public garage. There they transferred the money bags in bushel baskets to a waiting auto and sped away, driven by a fourth man. With the speed of light, they drove to the Twist where the gang was met by DiFronzo in the joint’s basement. When they opened the bags, Christmas was right there in front of them because the boys managed to steal more than $250,000.



From Left to right: Americo DePietto, Chester Zochowski, Edward Rawa, James D'Antonio, Angelo Piscopo, Chester Majewski, John DiFronzo, Steve Tomaras, Frank Bono


But before Paul Panczko went to jail, there was some misunderstanding between him and some of the crew members such as Mendola, LaJoy, Schang and DeLegge Sr. The reason for that was Panczko’s alleged big mouth, meaning when he staged some big job, after that he usually bragged about his work so everybody can know that it was his “masterpiece”. But the problem wasn’t Panczko’s babbling about his jobs, but instead the main problem was if Mendola and some of the other guys staged a job, Panczko again bragged about the work, and took the credit for it. So it was all about egoistical emotions and that’s why the sponsorship of the group has changed and went from the Elmwood Park faction, to the Melrose Park group, under Daddano and Battaglia.

I believe that the main reason for the change was “family connections”, meaning DeLegge Sr. became brother-in-law to Daddano, and DeLegge Jr became the son-in-law of another Outfit member from that area known as Nick Palermo, and also DeLegge Sr. was employed at Palermo’s Melrose Park Plumbing Company. Also, DeLegge Sr.’s daughter was the wife of William Fiorito, son of Carl Fiorito. Even Outfit enforcer John Varelli transferred his loyalties from the Elmwood Park group to the Melrose Park crew or to be exact, to Nick Palermo. On the other hand LaJoy was Daddano’s nephew and Donny O'Brien was very closely connected to Phil Alderisio, another high profile Outfit member from the same area. And so with these connections, the Melrose Park crew had easy access to some of the most professional burglars at the time. This was one of the most deadly mixes of burglars, which became a band of "good fellas" who terrorized the entire metropolitan area during the early sixties. By this time there was no other and more lucrative burglary crew than this one in the city of Chicago but the problem was that some of these guys weren’t too smart and too honest with each other, which became the main reason for the destruction of the group during the next few years.


At beginning of September, 1963, the crew decided to go on a stealing rampage all over the country. On September 13, 1963, Pat Schang, Garry Tomaszek and John Cook went to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where they executed a robbery at the Leonard Taylor Jewellery Store and managed to get away approximately with $100,000. That’s same month, or one week later, four members of the crew including LaJoy, DeLegge Sr, D’Argento and Fletcher were in Michigan to commit a bank robbery and the target was located in the Livonia area and this bank was in fact one at which checks were cashed by winners from the trotting race track in that same area. They went to motel and made a plan which was to hit the guard and then jump the counter and obtain the money, simple as that. They drove to the airport near the area and managed to steal an Oldsmobile to be used as a getaway car and another 1963 Ford to be used as a second getaway car. The trick was to leave the first getaway car, and use the second one for their travel to Chicago. But they also had another plan which was for DeLegge Sr. to be placed on a bus to Chicago together with the loot, in case the boys get caught by the cops. However none of the plans did not go through, because the moment the group stepped foot on the parking lot, a security truck came on the scene and took all the cash away from the bank.


After that the group returned to Chicago, and while driving through the Franklyn Park area, DeLegge Sr. spotted the Franklyn Park Bank and developed an idea to simply rob the establishment. Some of these guys were quite desperate, meaning they were in debts to dangerous underworld individuals and so they badly needed to obtain funds. So the other day, the boys met at Sansonetti’s Restaurant which was located at Grand Avenue and Mannheim Road, but this time they also included Varelli on the meeting. One week prior to September 23, 1963, DeLegge Sr, D’Argento, Varelli and Fletcher were waiting in a car right across the Franklyn Park Bank and prepared for to go on the job. While getting ready, two police cars stopped by their car and questioned the boys on what was the reason for being on this location and their answer was the obvious “waiting for a friend”. But during the questioning, the boys noticed Mendola passing by with his car and in their minds they immediately concluded that he might be the one who informed the cops to arrive at the exact location. Later, the boys called on Mendola to question him regarding his unusual appearance during the police questioning and in his defence he said that he was taking his daughter to the doctor and that he had no knowledge regarding the cops. The boys believed him but since he was still a suspect, they forced him to come with them on their next job, which was again the Franklyn Park Bank, now planned for September 23. The boys also decided that few more people should join the heist, including DeLegge Jr., Tomaszek and Patrick Schang. From this point on, the only guy who decided to back off was John Varelli. You see, he worked directly under Outfit member Nick Palermo, who in turn has forbidden for his son-in-law DeLegge Jr. to be involved in any criminal activity and Varelli thought that he might end up responsible if anything happens to Jr. The other issue was Fletcher, who on the same date as the planned robbery, he had to appear in court on some non-related charges. Plus, he was known as a very nervous guy with more than few chances to screw the whole situation. So regarding the two issues the rest of the participants agreed and went on with their plan.


First, Mendola and D’Argento stole a car, a Chevy Impala SS, and also they have stolen different licence plates. Later, the boys went to DeLegge Sr.’s garage and there they removed the back seat from the stolen car, so three guys can crouch down and be out of sight while two are driving in front. Second, DeLegge Jr.’s job was to make a prank call to the police station before the robbery and to tell them that there’s a bomb in some school, away from the bank. His father’s job was to the drive the so-called crash car, meaning he was to follow the getaway car and if a chase with cops occurred, he was to try and crash with the police patrol and later claim that he was in panic and was confused because of all the noise and excitement. Plans previously made also included the determination of a train which passed through Franklyn Park on daily basis at regularly scheduled time. So the plan was for the train to cross the main street and to assist the boys in keeping the police in one place, at least for a while.


On the exact planned date, the stage was set for the Franklyn Park Bank job and so on that same day, D’Argento, Tomaszek and Mendola met at Daddano’s bowling alley and informed the boss about their plan, besides in the end they still had to give him his share from the stolen loot, or in other words, they had to pay the Outfit’s so-called street tax. They received Daddano’s “blessing” and later were picked up by Pat Schang with the stolen getaway car. D’Argento, LaJoy and Tomaszek lied down in the back, while Schang remained on the wheel and Mendola sat right next to him. Most of the robbers were armed, like for example Tomaszek had a .38, Medola had a .25 automatic, D’Argento had a carbine and LaJoy also had a .38. When the group arrived at the bank, first they circled with their car at least twice and Schang drove into the parking lot and pulled by the front entrance of the bank and in a matter of seconds, D’Argento, Mendola, LaJoy and Tomaszek jumped out of the car with ski masks over their heads and raincoats and headed into the bank. Mendola also carried small buckets of lead weights and used them to prop open the doors. When they entered inside, Tomaszek and D’Argento started shouting at the people and workers in the bank to hit the floor and then the two of them, together with Mendola went for the loot. LaJoy took a position near the entrance of the bank and at the same time kept order among the hostages while waving his .38. He also kept count of the time during the robbery, and after two minutes, he announced that time was up and it was time for them to go and so the four burglars rushed out of the bank and went straight to the getaway car and got off.


As expected, a Franklin Park police patrol car saw them and quickly headed directly towards them. DeLegge Jr. made the prank call to the police station and claimed that there was a bomb placed in the local high school but the good, and at the same time, rare thing was that the patrol men ignored the call because they suspected it might be a hoax and so they continued with the high speed chase. Now it was the old man’s turn, meaning DeLegge Sr. went for the police car and tried to crash into it but there was one “small” and maybe at the same time funny problem. The problem was that DeLegge’s so-called crash car was too slow for the police patrol car and obviously was unable to crash into it. But the good thing was that Schang was one helluva driver and so he made few quick turns and tried to loose his tail but the patrol car was still on to them. Then D’Argento got out from the rear window of the car and fired few rounds at the cops, thus forcing them to hit the breaks and lost control of their vehicle. In a state of panic, D’Argento fell against the seat, while discharging the carbine he was carrying, almost hitting one of his cohorts. Glass from the rear window flew all over the car.


Suddenly another police car passed them by and while making the turn, Schang hit the gas and headed for Rose Street to Chestnut, then quickly north to Scott Street and then west on Minneapolis to the alley between Sarah and Dora Streets, straight into the garage of DeLegge Sr.’s residence. While entering the garage, in a state of panic, Schang opened his door while the car was still moving thus completely breaking it. D’Argento, LaJoy and Schang remained in the residence but Mendola and Tomaszek fled the area through nearby yards and alleys. While running and jumping over fences, luckily the two robbers ran into Ralph Sansonetti, owner of a restaurant and one of their close friends, as he was driving around the neighbourhood. They got into his car and drove of to Mendola’s residence. The robbers who remained in DeLegge Sr.’s house collected all of the coveralls, hoods and other items which were used in the robbery and destroyed them. But as they exited the residence, they were observed by an older woman from a nearby house, which made particularly LaJoy quite nervous. Few hours later, LaJoy called the old woman on the phone and threatened her in some manner, to keep her from identifying them. Sansonetti also received a threat through his daughter, who was friendly with LaJoy, to remain silent regarding the activities of the robbers and his transportation of Mendola and Tomaszek. And so with that they managed to escape the law, at least for awhile.


That night, all of the participants in the robbery gathered at DeLege Sr.’s new residence with the loot from the robbery but there was a problem. The boys managed to steal only $20,000, which was obviously quite small amount for such a risky operation. They were seven people involved in the robbery and top of that, they have to give Daddano’s share of the loot. The first individual that went crazy over the situation was Mendola. He swore that there was more money obtained during the robbery and that someone wasn’t telling the truth. Suddenly a very violent and noisy quarrel occurred between the boys and in the end, Mendola commented that a lie test should be given to all of them so they can determine on who was lying and stole the cash. The next day, they took the problem to Daddano, who first doubted about the whole situation but when later some of the newspapers declared that $40,000 were missing from the bank, he made up his mind. In fact, the right amount was $43,097 and so more than $20,000 were missing, an amount which would get you easily killed by gangsters. And so Daddano was crazy enough to consider a lie test to every participant in the robbery because he was known as sadistic individual. Even with that, Daddano still had doubts about making such a move but later, one event occurred which made the situation quite scary. In the end, DeLegge Sr. and Jr. took $4,000, D’Argento, Tomaszek and LaJoy took also $2,000 each, as for Mendola and Schang, they didn’t took a penny because they felt disgusted about the whole situation. The rest of the stolen loot went in the hands of Daddano and the Chicago Outfit, who usually took from 30 to 40 percent of the net profits.


Four days later on September 27, out of nowhere, almost all of the participants in the robbery were arrested on bank robbing charges, including D’Argento, Tomaszcek, LaJoy and Schang. I said “almost” all of the participants because the only guy who got spared from the arrest was Mendola. In no time Daddano arranged for Rocco Montagna to bail everyone out of jail. “Schnibble Nose” as he was called was a known bondsman and very close associate of Daddano and Chicago Outfit boss at the time, Sam Giancana. Each got out on a $50,000 bond and the arguments continued right after their release. The first two guys, who asked the questions on whether somebody in the crew was an informer or not were John Varelli and one of Daddano’s underlings known as Emil Crovedi. The two enforcers went to see Daddano regarding the problem because if the rumour was true then everybody was in danger. During the conversation, Varelli gave his “bet” on Mendola and Crovedi blamed LaJoy. So now all of the participants on that meeting agreed to call on the boys and investigate them. When they all gathered, Daddano asked them on how it was possible that the cops found out about the bank job and their whereabouts and in the end he finished his question with an answer by saying that there was no way the cops could have found them so quickly unless there was an informant in the crew. The last statement has frozen the blood of everybody present in that room and like small children, all of the crew members started blaming each other. For example, D’Argento said that it was LaJoy because he was known for having very heavy gambling debts. Also Schang said that it was D’Argento and LaJoy thought it was Schang, which meant that the crew was slowly breaking up.


In the end, Daddano had the last word by saying that he would make arrangements for a lie detector test, and even if it was his nephew, he would take care of the problem. In no time, Daddano called his Outfit “colleague” Richard Cain and asked him if he could bring a lie detector and check the boys to see if he can detect on who was lying. Cain, still a Cook County chief investigator at the time, contacted one of his co-workers at the Sheriff office known as William Witsman to bring one lie detector. Witsman and Cain were operating a company knows as Accurate Laboratories, which performed polygraph tests for the Sheriff’s office. So one day Witsman took one of the polygraph machines and headed for the Leyden Hotel in Melrose Park where he was requested to give lie tests to every crew member who participated in the heist. The boys were located just across the street at the Riviera Bowling Alley, waiting to join Witsman for the test. In a matter of minutes, all of the men were escorted by Rocco Montagna to the hotel room where Witsman was waiting and while walking towards the hotel, LaJoy allegedly told D’Argento that “If I don’t pass this test, Uncle Willie is going to hit me in the head.” When they finally all gathered, before the interrogation started, Montagna placed a loaded .38 revolver over the top of the machine, just to remind the members on what was going to happen to the ones who would fail the test. It was unnecessary pressure over the crew members, because no matter who was on that chair, with just one look at the pistol and the needle on that polygraph would start jumping for sure. The test itself consisted of the ten questions to determine reaction. For example, the first two questions were something like “What is your first name?” or “What is your second name?” and after that the questions changed to “Have you ever talked to any FBI agent or police officer?”, “Were you an informer on the Franklyn Park bank robbery and did you informed the feds about it?”, or “Where’s the rest of the cash which was missing from the heist loot?”.


The first guy who took the test was LaJoy, then D’Argento and then the rest of the guys. All had past the test except for Mendola because he didn’t show up at the meeting and because of that, Daddano had a visit from LaJoy and D’Argento regarding the problem. They asked their boss to call on Mendola and to make the test, who in return assured them that this would occur. A week later Daddano made an arrangements for Mendola to show up at Montagna’s house. Witsman was again waiting in the house basement with the lie detector and story goes that at first Mendola had few problems on the test but took a second one and it was all clear. Allegedly they even made a third test, and again it was clear. But the cloud of suspicion was already over Mendola because his partner in crime LaJoy couldn’t stop creating problems. Later, LaJoy again went to see his uncle and told him that Mendola and Montagna were allegedly together in the bail bond business and that Mendola allegedly gave $10,000 to Montagna to make sure that he passed the test. Now, in Daddano’s mind this was a huge problem because first he might’ve been swindled and Mendola got away with it and second, one of his underlings, which was again Mendola, was doing business behind his boss’ back, which was a big “no, no” in the Outfit. But Daddano missed two very important things. At first, Mendola did look guilty but he wasn’t the “rat” in the group, and he did not steal half of the stolen loot. Proof for that was the investigation which developed from the woman witness who saw the robbers at DeLegge Sr’s residence and later received a threatening phone call. Even with that that, she still had the courage and called on the cops and informed them about the situation. That is why I strongly believe that Mendola had nothing to do with the arrests. Second, Mendola did not have a private contact with the stolen loot but somebody else had. When the boys scattered after the robbery, the stolen loot remained in DeLegge Sr’s house for a while and then DeLegge Jr. took it to his girlfriend’s house, which was safer location. But my opinion is that a young criminal pair with big amount of cash before their eyes, could not remain calm, meaning they couldn’t get their hands of the money. My point is that DeLegge Jr. and his girlfriend Jeanette Fitzpatrick took half of the loot.


But the saddest thing was that eventually, guilty or not, Daddano asked for permission from his bosses to take care of the Mendola problem and they gladly gave thumbs down. On August 31, 1964, Guy Mendola parked his car alongside his wife’s auto in his home garage behind a three-flat building in which he resided at 1554 N. 43 rd. Stone Park. When he got out of a car, unexpectedly an unknown man with a ski mask blew away Mendola with five shotgun blasts. Now, since he was the known crime boss of that area, Rocco Pranno became the main suspect in Mendola’s killing. The next day he was arrested at his headquarters which was the Robert’s Lounge at 1800 Manheim Road in Stone Park. Now the funny thing was that Richard Cain took over the Mendola and the Franklin bank job cases, meaning he was the one to question Pranno. One Outfit member questioned another Outfit member, a situation which was similar to a funny TV show. Cain was forced to bring in Pranno, because three months before Mendola’s demise, the crime boss again gave a beating to the victim in a dispute over money from pin ball routes in Kane County. When Chief Investigator Cain asked Pranno on why he administered the beating over Mendola, the suspect simply replied “I didn’t want those kind of people hanging around in my joint” and Cain gladly accepted the answer. He also did some tests which revealed that Pranno had not fired any guns recently and so he was free to go. Rumours were that Outfit hitman Tony “The Ant” Spilotro was the actual “contractor” on Mendola’s life but he was never arrested nor questioned regarding the case. Thanks to Cain, both cases were “on hold”, meaning the Franklyn Park job and the Mendola thing.


Cain acted as an honest cop but in reality he was a devious ruthless criminal. He reported directly to Sam Giancana, and if not available, then he reported to 1st Ward secretary and also member of the Outfit, Pat Marcy. At the time, Cain was quite powerful member of the organization with shady government connections and electronic surveillance skills but he also took a cut from gambling profits and the narcotics trade. But one day, Cain was also the part of a masterminding a burglary scheme. Since he was a high profile member of the Chicago crime syndicate, he also had connections to another burglary crew, including guys like Eugene Marino, John Monteleone, Angelo Pettit, Frank Rago and Robert Vaughn. In fact, these guys belonged to the boss of the Northlake area, which was again Rocco Pranno. Just so you won’t get confused, Pranno operated in the Stone Park, Franklyn Park and Northlake areas and answered to Sam Battaglia the boss of the Melrose Park crew and all Western suburbs. So Pranno had a quite lucrative idea on his mind by previously receiving an inside info, with the help of Cain, that the famous Zahn Drug Company which was located in Melrose Park, was about to receive a big and quite expensive shipment of drugs, or in other words, half a million worth of medical merchandise. And obviously Pranno’s idea was to steal the shipment.


Robert Brown was an employee of the Louis Zahn Drug Company. He was in charge of storing merchandise in the Zahn warehouse located in Melrose Park. On Friday, October 4, 1963, he received a trailer of Mead Johnson pharmaceuticals, but because of the lateness of the hour, unloading the trailer was delayed until Saturday. On Saturday, Brown started the unloading process. The top cartons of each stack were marked either "E-24" or "E-25" with a brush type pen. This was so the other employees would know where to place the boxes in the warehouse. Everything was unloaded and stacked on an enclosed loading platform when Brown left the warehouse on Saturday night. He checked and locked all the doors and activated the alarm system. On Monday morning, October 7, Brown reported back to work only to find that the merchandise which had been on the loading platform was missing, as well as the Mead Johnson trailer. The missing merchandise included large quantity of sleeping pills, tranquilizers, amphetamines, vitamins, and a small quantity of aspirins. The police suspected that the robbers must’ve been connected with someone from the inside because the burglar alarm did not set off and on top of that, the thieves used their own tractor to pull the trailer out from the warehouse and after that, the trailer was found in an alley west of the Loop. Later the robbers stashed that stolen goods somewhere in a garage which was located at the North end of Northlake and waited for the “heat” to pass.


After a month or so, 90% of the drug stores in the Chicago area were flooded with the stolen merchandise and that’s when Richard Cain stepped on the scene. Since he knew which drug store bought some of the stolen merchandise, obviously because he knew the guys who stole and re-sold them, Cain arrested many “innocent” owners and pharmacists and sent them to jail. He arrested people who bought from $200 to $400 worth of stolen merchandise and the sad thing was that one of the biggest so-called “busts” made by Cain regarding the case was in March, 1964, when he managed to recover only $5,000 merchandise back to the Zahn Warehouse. But “the ground started shaking” when the cops arrested Marino, Monteleone and the rest of the crew in a garage in Northlake. Previous of the arrest, one of Marino’s neighbours called the police and told them that he saw Marino and few other guys taking out medical boxes from their garage and placed them on a truck. At about 10:00 A.M. on April 13, 1964, Sgt. Henry Prokop and Sgt. Ralph McLean of the Northlake police department where in the office of Paul Heggaton, the Northlake chief of police. Chief Heggaton was the one who took the phone call, after which he directed Prokop and McLean to travel to 208 Major Drive, the home of Marino, as there was "something suspicious" going on there. As they drove onto the premises, they observed a large truck in the driveway backed up to the front of a garage.


After the squad car came to a halt in the driveway, Sgt. Prokop noticed a person peer around the rear of the truck. He drew his revolver, as did Sgt. McLean. Sgt. McLean fired two shots, as persons were running away from the scene. Suddenly the police started chasing the men who in turn had jumped over the fences but most of them were easily caught. About one block away one of the cops managed to arrest Pettit and Monteleone. Marino emerged from the garage and ran into his house and then came back out, only this time his shoes were untied and his hair messed up, like he just got out of his bed. When he walked outside, he was arrested. Police officer Joseph Hermann patrolled the area around Mannheim and Grand in Franklin Park when at about 10:00 A.M. he received a radio message broadcast by the Northlake police and about 15 minutes later he received another message, whereupon he proceeded in the direction of the Roy School. He and his co-officer went to a nearby tool shed, opened its door, and observed a man sitting with his pants pulled down to his knees and were ripped. In response to a question of one of the officers, the man stated that he was only resting in the shed. The man was in fact Frank Rago.


At the station, the warehouse manager of the Louis Zahn Drug Company was called to identify the cartons discovered at Marino's property, which he really did. He further reported that in his opinion the fair cash market value of all the goods found in Marino's garage was about $50,000, and that the merchandise contained 25 cartons which the manager had marked before they were taken from the warehouse. For now, the burglars were only charged with the crime but they were not indicted, and that’s when Richard Cain came up with an idea, obviously to clean his own image. Since he was the chief investigator in the case, Cain tried to negotiate with the insurance firm and tried to act as a go-between guy in selling just a part of the stolen drugs worth $40,000 back to the drug factory. But the problem was that later this information was furnished to the Cook County State’s attorney office, which led to an investigation on Cain’s possible involvement in the burglary. So Cain got wind of the situation and made up a story in which he allegedly received a phone call from some anonymous individual, who previously gave true information more than few times, but this time he allegedly told Cain about a huge stash from the stolen merchandise from the Zahn firm. In reality, Cain’s plan was to make a phoney recovery and so on January 6, 1965, Cain led a police raid on the Caravelle Hotel in Rosemont, Illinois, and in one of the hotel rooms he recovered what purported to be exactly $40,000 worth of stolen drugs. I personally believe that even the rats down in the sewers knew that it was a pure set up or at least everybody in Chicago knew that the hotel was personally owned by Sam Giancana and since the place was already Mob-owned, no arrests were made and no examination was made for fingerprints or any kind of evidence, in or out of the hotel room which makes it clear that Cain set everything up.


The reporters took photos of Cain all day long while he stood over the pile of stolen drugs with his machine gun like the hero of the day. But one of the reporters, known as Jack Mabley, who was personally called by Cain to get a scoop on the story, later returned to the hotel and asked to see the registration card for the hotel room that had been raided. Mabley found out that that the registration card was registered to someone only known as “Mathews” and so the reporter copied down the signature on several paper clips. He knew that the name was obviously fake but the signature was sent by the reporter to special investigators to see if they can find out whos handwriting was on the card. Mabley obviously gave the handwritings of few of his prime suspects like members of the Sheriff’s Office, such as Richard Cain, John Chaconas and James Donnelly and one came back positive. The investigators recognized the handwriting style and it belonged to Sergeant John Chaconas of the Cook County sheriff’s office, who reported directly to Cain. From this point on, the tower of cards started to fall down. Not long after the reporter published his story, Cain, Sergeant Chaconas and Lieutenant James Donnelly were indicted on charges for conspiracy to commit perjury. Since he was the main investigator in the case, in September, 1964, all of the previously indicted in the Zahn robbery case were sentenced to jail from 2 to 5 years prison terms. Also on December 15, 1964 Cain was discharged from the Sheriff’s office, personally by his close associate Sheriff Richard Ogilvie, which was a painful thing for him to do. Cain and his co-defendants were sentenced to prison terms from one to three years, but the sentences were subsequently overturned by the Illinois Supreme Court and Cain walked free, but not for long.



Richard Cain

During the mid 1960’s, the so-called Melrose Park “burglary crew” still ran wild all over Chicago and since most of the members were out on bond and some kept low profile, other prominent Outfit members from the same area decided to enter the robbing venture. One of those members was Rocco Salvatore who also controlled a burglary crew which was involved in numerous burglaries such as the robbery of the National Tea Store on West Madison Street and the Armoured Express job at North Riverside. This crew was mainly formed by six individuals, including Joseph Lombardo, Mario DeAngelis, Frank DeRosa, Guy Cervone, John DeMaria and Tony Scudiero. This crew was very active during this period and was also loaded with cash that kicked it up straight to the bosses. Story goes that with the help of a police contact, Salvatore frequently checked just to see if any government heat was placed on his burglary crew. But the guy on the top of the robbing business was still Daddano who took his operations on another level.


Daddano and Varelli and another member from the Melrose Park Crew, Rocco Infelice gathered a new crew of hijackers and robbers, including John Borsellino, Albert Cardenas, Max Heckmyer, Angelo Boscarino and Thomas Bambulas. Again, some of these guys worked as enforcers or collectors for the Outfit, such as Cardenas who was a long time collector in the coin machine and loan sharking businesses for Daddano around Kane County. Also, Heckmyer and Varelli together operated a very lucrative semi-legal operation known as the Newport Construction Company. So even though some of them had the money and robbing should’ve been the last thing on their minds, they still went to business, mainly hijacking trucks and trains, or doing it old school style. It was the time when the Chicago crime syndicate was on the downfall because of the many government attacks and indictments and so there was no time for fooling around, meaning no more moves such as the Franklyn Park job. Daddano, Pranno and Infelice owed to their bosses more than few fat envelopes and to make those envelopes fat, now the boys picked more lucrative targets such as the Brink's Incorporated U.S. or the Spector Freight System Inc. and Interstate Motor Inc.


One of the crew’s key individuals in the operation was Borsellino who in fact was usually the “inside guy” at the security service companies such as the Spector Freight System Inc. where he spotted the valuable loads for the gang. The rest of the gang such as Cardenas, Boscarino and Bambulas acted as getaway drivers, hijackers and kidnappers. Also other criminals from nearby territories which included in the operation were Emil Crovedi who headed the old Franklyn Park group which by now was formed by Tony Legato, Frank Gallo, John Ziad and Joe Rossi. Other criminals of higher stature involved in the operation included Morris Saletko who was a known loan shark around the First Ward area, or Roy Nielsen from the South Side, who controlled a multi-million dollar counterfeit ring or even Kenneth Bratko, close associate of Outfit member from the Melrose Park crew Marshall Caifano in the insurance fraud business. In just one year the crew managed to rob almost a dozen armoured trucks and stole almost $3,000,000 worth of merchandise.


For example, one of the thefts occurred on June 17, 1964, when the boys intercepted a quite lucrative intestate shipment from various consignors in the New York area which was filled with very expensive Peruvian art objects. Since many of the objects were very unique, the robbers such as DeLegge Sr. and D’Argento decided to keep them for themselves. But the boys really hit the spot on August 24, 1964, when they managed to intercept a $350,000 shipment of 500 boxes of cameras, photographic material and film, which belonged to the Polaroid corporation. But I want to share some information on another particular heist which occurred on December 28, 1964, when a Brink’s truck was making its last pickup at a Catholic Church rectory in Norridge, Illinois. While the guards from the truck were greeted by two priests, suddenly three masked men with guns tied up everyone, including the guard who was driving the truck after being tricked in opening the door. There was more than $150,000 stolen in this robbery and the main participants were D’Agento, LaJoy, Tomaszek and DeLegge Jr. From the scene of the crime, the robbers fled straight to the house of one Frank Cullotta, who in turn helped the boys in counting the money in his basement and later providing them with a getaway car. But like any other “normal” criminals, some of the boys such as Cullotta and DeLegge Jr. started buying new and quite expensive cars obviously with the help of the stolen loot, which brought some attention from the cops. So one day, some members of the local police department decided to play dirty by “inventing” a witness against D’Argento regarding the heist. So D’Argento decided to call one Outfit lawyer and fixer known as George Bieber, who in turn realised that this was pure shakedown made by law enforcement officials. Bieber decided to contact the crooked cops and made a deal in which they had to make the main witness fail to identify D’Argento who in turn had to pay the cops $10,000 for their “favour”. Obviously D’Argento didn’t have the money right away so Bieber helped him out by lending him the whole amount, thus making him a loan shark victim because that’s how things go in the underworld.


Another quite lucrative robbery occurred on April 19, 1965, when a truckload of 23,000 pounds of silver and silver alloy which was valued over $250,000 and belonged to the Handy and Harmon company, was taken from an Interstate Motor Freight depot in Cicero. Also on May 7, 1965, the boys intercepted a Spector Freight truck on Eisenhower expressway in Hillside, and managed to getaway with 646 bars of dore bullion, valued over $350,000. This lucrative shipment belonged to the International Smelting and Refining Company in New Jersey. Also, on October 7, 1965, another truckload of 20,000 pounds of silver bars which was valued almost $400,000; was again taken from the Spector Freight Company when few of the boys, kidnapped the driver of the truck, while he made a stop at a plaza on the Indiana toll road near La Grange. The robbers took the driver along for a ride and released him somewhere around Shabbona in De Kalb County. This also quite lucrative shipment belonged to the Kennecott Copper Corporation from Utah but who also had offices in Newark, New Jersey. Now, since many of the robberies occurred so often, some of the damaged firms decided to sue the security companies who failed to deliver the goods, who in turn constantly complained to the FBI which made the whole situation quite disorderly.


So the gang managed to form a huge so-called “burglary net” around the Chicago area which was involved in stealing and re-selling valuable merchandise and Daddano was on top of it. But the thing was that this so-called “net” didn’t end up in Illinois but it went all the way to the east coast. You see, it was sometimes hard for Daddano and the rest of the gang to get rid of the quite expensive stolen merchandise in no time, so the crime boss asked for some help from one of his cohorts in the New York Mafia from the Staten Island area, known as Michael D'Alessio a.k.a. Mickey Dee, member of the Gambino crime family. During this period the Gambinos, Genoveses and the Luccheses were closely allied with the Chicago Outfit and Sam Giancana and so D'Alessio gladly helped Daddano in disposing most of the stolen merchandise around the east coast with the help of his underworld contacts. Another of Daddano’s Gambino contacts was John “Scootch” Indelicato, a guy who was mostly based in the Florida area and was in constant contact with the Outfit. So in other words, none of the stolen loot has ever been recovered. This so-called Gambino-Outfit connection might indicate that Daddano was not only a high level member of the Chicago Outfit but he was also a “made” member of La Cosa Nostra, which was an organization on national level. This also means that sometime during this period, Daddano might be one of the capos or so-called area bosses for the Outfit.


But usually when most things in life go on the up and up, trouble always lurks from around the corner. On October 25, 1965, out of nowhere, the feds arrested Patrick Schang, who still awaited trial for the Franklyn Park job, Dan Bambulas and one Richard Frederick, for their alleged involvement in the silver hijackings, especially for the one which occurred back on October 7th. From this point on, the situation became quite paranoid and above all, quite deadly. Now the obvious thing was that someone was talking to the feds and was feeding them information regarding the robberies but the main question was on whether that particular informant was outside the group or within the group. Because of questions such as this one, many criminals, innocent or not, lost their lives under the clouds of suspicion.


All of the arrested were placed in custody at the county jail where few quite “interesting” situations occurred. While Schang sat in his prison cell, right across sat the boss himself, meaning Sam Giancana. He was in custody on another charge and his cell companion was none other than Paul Panczko, the gang’s former leader. Panczko fed Giancana’s mind that the informer they are looking for, might be right across them, meaning Schang. So Giancana with the help of his contacts with the prison guards was able to obtain Schang’s personal letters and was reading them on weekly basis. Schang was very upset for being locked in jail because he was no fool and had the ability to feel the pressure from across. He constantly wrote letters to his wife in which he stated that he was very sorry for being in jail, and that he felt responsible for the whole situation, but he also stated that the guy who ratted him of might’ve been Angelo Boscarino.


When Giancana’s eyes came across the sentences in the letter, his face went red and immediately called one of the guards and told him to call one of his lackeys known as Dominick Blasi. When Blasi came into the prison cell, Panczko was asked to leave but everybody knew on what was the point behind Blasi’s urgent visit. Giancana had a reason to be mad because he had previous info that Boscarino mingled with some people who knew things about the organization, which presented a danger. And so, on November 24, 1965, Angelo Boscarino was found slain in gutter on the city’s Southwest Side. He was stabbed in the throat multiple times with an icepick and had fractured skull, followed by a quite deep cut on his chin. There were also marks on his wrists and ankles which indicated that he had been trussed with rope before he was killed. In the end the killer carefully took everything from Boscarino’s pockets as he was looking for something, except for the victim’s driver licence which he left intentionally. When Schang heard about the bad news over the radio the next day, he went almost white, but the problem was that the radio was in some other prison cell far away and so he wasn’t sure on what he really heard. So instead, he asked Panczko and Giancana if they could throw him the newspaper so he can read it and see if the information was true. But Giancana acted as he never heard anything, and the same act was made by Panczko also. That’s when Schang realized that Giancana gave the order on Boscarino. Later, the cops received info that another crew member and also Outfit enforcer, John Borsellino was in fact the one who executed Boscarino but one way or another, in the end Borsellino was free to go since the cops acted on an “anonymous” phone call. I personally believe that Borsellino might’ve been the killer since during that period the FBI listed him as one of Giancana’s personal enforcers.


In Giancana’s mind, he thought or in other words, he hoped that he solved the problem because if not, the situation might get even more unstable. And that’s what really happened. So to make things worse, the next month Schang, LaJoy, D'Argento, and Tomaszek stood trial for the bank robbery in Franklyn Park which occurred back in 1963, and they all got convicted and each of them was sentenced from 10 to 15 years in jail. After this, Giancana’s paranoia was greater than ever because he did not trust any of the convicted burglars since all of them received long prison terms. And just like that, Giancana gave the “contract” on Schang to the “newcomer” D’Argento who in turn had to prove his loyalty towards the crime syndicate. Now to tell you the truth, this was one of the most, if not the only humorous move ever made in the Outfit’s criminal history because first of all, D’Argento was no killer and on top of that, he was one Schang’s best friends. I mean, I understand the theory by which you get killed in the Mafia by the one you trust the most but this was different, obviously because, as I previously stated, D’Argento wasn’t a murderer and he wasn’t planning to become one either. But the thing was that he had to take the “contract” on Schang because he was forced under the threat of death. Members of the Outfit threatened him that they would kill him and his family if he doesn’t take the job. So one day during lunch time, D’Argento told Schang that they should meet in the Cook County jail chapel to talk some urgent business. But the thing was that Schang was no fool and after finishing his meal, he went straight to his cell and never got out, which obviously made D’Argento unable to finish his task. Story goes that after the failure, D’Argento’s fellow inmates, acting on Outfit orders, had attempted three times to take his life and so he was quickly whisked from the prison in Kansas to Chicago over the weekend under heavy guard and lodged temporarily in the lockup of the Federal building.


Now this is the point where most of the big time criminals make their fatal mistakes, meaning sometimes they push people to the point where they no longer care about anything. Like for example, with the help of Giancana’s paranoia, the Outfit has created two unnecessary problems, meaning they created two potential informers. Both Schang and D’Argento were forced to make their final decisions by running straight into the arms of the feds. Schang was the first to “sing” and that is why, suddenly in April, 1966, the feds arrested all 18 men who were allegedly involved in the silver burglary ring, including Daddano, Infelice, Varelli, and the rest of the Chicago crew, and also Mike D’Alessio who was arrested in a Staten Island restaurant. Most of the men were rounded up in a series of pre-dawn raids by federal agents who acted on warrants who were secretly issued. I say “secretly” because at the time, the Chicago Outfit was still deeply involved in the city’s everyday politics. This attack which was made by the feds was regarded as one of the largest moves against members of the Outfit who masterminded operations of professional bands of hijackers and burglars. Also, in the indictment Daddano was named as the key figure behind the whole operation, who was arrested in front of his home as he returned from an exciting night with his mistress. Daddano was on trail for conspiracy and masterminding the hijackings and burglaries but in the end, all of the defendants were found guilty and got convicted except for the “untouchable” Daddano and D’Alessio. They were acquitted on all charges by the jury that involved the theft of the silver because the prosecutors couldn’t connect them directly to the crime and so the crime bosses walked free.



Willie Daddano


But the battle was far from over since the FBI had one more ace up its sleeve. On October 15, 1967, D’Argento decided to spill the beans also in order to save his family’s lives and also his own. The Outfit continued to send deadly messages to D’Argento’s family but when he decided to cooperate, the feds immediately relocated his wife and kids to a safer place. So now the government had two good reasons to place Daddano in jail but that wasn’t the end. Later that year, with the help of Schang and D’Argento, the feds again indicted Daddano, but this time they charged him for the Franklin Park bank job. Since the trial went under a review, which occurred in September, 1968, one other crew member decided to cooperate just to save his own skin. I don’t know if you noticed but Mike LaJoy is missing from the indicated list but that’s because he was the one who decided to cooperate with the feds against his own uncle, who didn’t gave two bits about his own nephew and so in a record time, all of Daddano’s top Outfit brass including Richard Cain, Rocco Montagna, John Varelli, Frank Sr. and Frank Jr. DeLegge were indicted on the same charges.


By the end of the year, during the preliminary court hearing regarding the bank robbery, word got out that Varelli tried to hang himself in his prison cell but luckily he failed. So when he entered the court room he was all stressed up, with his eyes wide open, while whispering nonsense. Suddenly, Varelli pulled out a razor blade and tried to cut his neck. I’m not sure if Varelli only made an act just to fool everybody in the courtroom, but if he did than his trick really worked because the judge declared him incompetent to stand trial and sent him to medical prison in Springfield. After that, during the trial another quite funny moment occurred and that was Cain’s act as his own lawyer. Story goes that Cain couldn’t afford a good lawyer because one year before the trial, Cain had problems with his stature within the Chicago Outfit and his profits from the illegal schemes became limited. But even with his act as man of the law, Cain still failed to accomplish his plan because he and the rest of the defendants were destroyed by the prosecutors and their star witnesses such as Schang, D’Argento and LaJoy and one Mrs. Dorothy Sampson. She was the last witness during the trail, by being Frank DeLegge’s neighbour, and she said that at the day when the bank job occurred, she heard squealing of auto tires and she went out and saw three men run from DeLegge’s house. When she asked DeLegge Sr. who were those men, he told her that they were real estate agents, an answer she hardly believed in. So after her testimony and the jury’s decision, the judge asked for the defendants to rise. Daddano on purpose came to court dressed as a bum, which was in his way showing disregard towards the law, and stood proudly in front of the judge with his hands in his pockets, while waited for his sentencing.


The judge sentenced William Daddano to 15 years in prison and a fine of $13,000. The old mobster took his sentencing like a real man and while leaving the court room, he waved and smiled at the present people. Richard Cain received 4 years and a fine of $15,000, Rocco Montagna received 3 years, DeLegge Sr. also received 15 years and Junior received 7 years in prison and a $5,000 fine. Now I personally have one remark regarding the prison sentences of the DeLegges. I mean common, DeLegge Sr. was the guy who supposedly was planning to crash into the speeding police vehicle but failed the job and for that he received 15 years in jail?! Also DeLegge Jr. made one unsuccessful prank phone call and he received 7 years?! Obviously the government thought that their participation was equally meaningful and important, thus making the DeLegges punishable same as the rest of defendants. In return for such a flawless victory, the government introduced their witnesses to the witness protection program and on top of that, the government has given money to the families of LaJoy, Schang and D'Argento in return for the information received.


Thanks to their testimonies, the government managed to re-open many old cases and also to deny many appeals. Like for example, in March, 1969, five members of the gang, who had been convicted as being members of the silver hijacking ring and who won new trials from the United States court of appeals were re-indicted and convicted. All of the men were top echelon criminals such as John Varelli, John Borsellino, Thomas Bambulas, Max Heckmnyer and Albert Cardenas. The government managed to convict all of the defendants on one conspiracy charge rather than several. Also on July 8, 1969, Richard Cain again returned to court to face perjury charges in the Zahn Drug Company robbery in Melrose Park. Cain has discovered that his former colleague Bill Witsman was talking to the feds and that he testified against his former chief, which was Cain, who had given him a list of the questions, told him to go to a motel, then give the polygraph tests to men who would be produced by another man who he would meet there, not to interpret the charts, but to give them to that same man. Witsman also testified that he telephoned Cain and he told him not to worry about the charts because he had flushed them down the toilet. In the end, with no other choice, Cain decided to plead guilty and was sentenced to additional six months in prison.


In December, 1969, the feds decided to place the whole gang in prison, down to the last member including Varelli. Besides being charged for the Franklyn Park job again, this time the feds also charged him of conspiring to fraudulently obtain 1 million dollars in federal insured home improvement loans. As I previously stated, “The Bug” as he was known, was declared incompetent to stand trail and was placed in a medical prison. I don’t know if the government had anything to do with it, but later Varelli’s psychiatrist Dr. Glotfelty suddenly changed his story and reported that his patient was quite competent to stand trial and was capable of understanding the charges against him. During the hearing on January 2, 1970, Varelli again made an appearance by showing up with a long beard, while continuously shaking. And he again pulled out a razor blade but this time he managed to slice his wrists and spray blood all over the courtroom. He decided to pull the stunt when the chief psychiatrist testified that the defendant was capable of understand everything. Two deputy marshals leaped up and wrestled the blade from Varelli and after that they took him to the marshal’s lockup where his wrists were treated and bandaged. Later, Varelli was sentenced to serve his 15 years in prison.


While in jail, most of the Outfit members easily adjusted in that kind of ambient because most of them already spent some time during their criminal careers. But the situation was different for Cain since he previously worked for Sheriff’s office and to keep his job or his image as an honest cop, he had to place more than few guys, guilty or not, in jail. So now Cain also had more than few enemies at the Cook County prison but the good thing was that some of his Outfit peers were also imprisoned and so he had the backup. Story goes that Cain had a problem with one African-American inmate, and while in the prison yard, the inmate approached Cain and tried to provoke him but suddenly Daddano showed up and the inmate backed off and never tried to bother Cain ever again. Even though they did not have much respect for their boss, which was Giancana, both Daddano and Cain or every member who was direct to Giancana, were very loyal but the problem was that many of the members were also quite egoistic, meaning they couldn’t accept the fact that their days as the top echelon of the Chicago Outfit were long gone.


Following the imprisonments of Daddano, Cain and the rest of the crew members, the so-called burglary group was totally destroyed. But the thing is, by “destroyed” I don’t mean disbanded, but instead I mean some of them died in jail and the others were killed. For example, Richard Cain was released from prison on October 20, 1971, but two years later he was shot in the head by two shotgun blasts. Story goes that Cain wanted to be brought back in the game but the bosses obviously said “no” and that was that. Also, while serving his prison term at the Marion, Illinois, federal penitentiary, on September 9, 1975, Willie Daddano died of heart failure in his prison cell. Story goes that he couldn’t take the killing of his boss Sam Giancana which occurred 3 months before his death. On January 20, 1976, only a year as he was paroled from prison, Frank DeLegge Jr. vanished from the face of the earth. Two days later, his frozen throat-slashed body was found in a ditch in Elmhurst. Story goes that he was killed because of the money that he allegedly stole from the Franklyn Park job because the Outfit never forgets. There’s also another version of the story and that is DeLegge Sr.’s huge gambling debts. Story goes that Junior vouched for his father but the problem was that Sr. never managed to payback and so in the world of the Mafia, the one who vouch for another individual is responsible for the actions of that same individual. There’s even a third version regarding the reason for DeLegge Jr.’s slaying, and that was his violent style towards his wife who, as I previously stated, was in fact Nick Palermo’s daughter. After the murder of DeLegge Jr., Palermo immediately sold the DeLegge house and bought his daughter a new apartment.

So by the late 1970’s, most of the members of the Melrose Park burglary crew were gone and as you can see, these guys were not some high level professional burglars and very intellectual criminals, and they mostly did sloppy jobs but from time to time they managed to hit the score. After the era of the crew, or should I say after the 1960’s, stories and legends spread all around the “Windy City” about the group’s alleged hidden treasures. For example, one legend goes that Willie Daddano liked to keep several locations in Cook County as hiding spots for the stolen merchandise that he collected during his career and he was known to rent barns from farmers where he kept some of his stolen goods. You see, Daddano also represented as a “fence” for the crew and that is why he always had to keep a large empty space to stash the stolen merchandise. I don’t know if you noticed but I previously mentioned the word “fence” more than few times, which means a person who buys and sells stolen property and the word is an underworld term and legend goes that it originated in the 18th century in England. The term evolved from the practice of selling over the stolen goods and it also refers to a person who takes from one side and than sells to another. The professional burglars, who are mostly involved in stolen property such as expensive jewelry, stamps, silver, gold or expensive art work, use a network of professional fences and the illegal distribution of stolen property is a crime commonly known as “fencing”.


There are many different kinds of fences that usually work in jewellery stores, antique shops, pawn shops, discount stores and even auto part shops. They portray themselves as honest businessmen since a larger part of their business is legitimate. This people maintain close business relationships with any kind of thieves or people who work at warehouse docks, work as truck drivers and persons who can provide them on daily basis with the goods that these fences need. The fences usually pay between 20 to 30% of the retail market value. Also if the stolen property has a lot of “heat” on it for example, the fence will pay less. Than the fence will sell the stolen property at any price which suits his purpose.


Most of the Outfit members, such as Daddano or Infelice, also worked as fences but they also had associates who specialized in the field. For example, Jewish gangster Maurice Friedman was a known Outfit associate and close partner with Daddano in several Chicago liquor stores but the most important thing was that Friedman was the main guy for Daddano’s burglary operations, meaning he ran the biggest fence-handling stolen merchandise operation for the whole Chicago Outfit. Back in 1968, during his trial in which he was charged with possession of more than $1,000,000 worth of stolen drugs, Friedman was described as the city’s biggest fencer and after that he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. So with the help of individuals such as Friedman, fencing has become a huge problem around the country because its one of those crimes which receives smaller attention and the public is only too willing to tolerate. The main thing is that the fence’s role in the stolen property business is very important because without the fence the burglar cannot sell his goods easily. That’s why most of the professional thieves are involved in stealing only cash because they don’t need to get involved and selling their merchandise. Since most of these so-called fences are mostly associated with organized crime figures, during the mid 70’s one of these guys would provide information for one of the biggest heists in Chicago’s underworld history.


By the early 1970’s the Outfit’s hierarchy was completely changed and most of the old guard was no longer around but that didn’t mean the new criminal administration gave the burglars a pass. The street tax law was still in full effect and the mobsters still got their cut from the burglars and on top of that, during that time the Outfit’s presence on the streets was as strong as ever, especially within Chicago’s fraternity of professional burglars. By now there were new crews which were more capable of doing the heavy work but one crew, in particular, stood out from the rest.


This next story starts with one fencer known as Martin Pollakov, who was the owner of four large discount stores around the Chicago area. But Pollakov was also known as “big shot” in the fencing business because he learned the operation from the ground up. All of his discount stores relied heavily on stolen merchandise in order to realize additional profits and in time, he gradually became well-acquainted with a huge network of boosters, dock workers, truck drivers and all kinds of other individuals who were involved in the same racket. Pollakov understood the fact that it was a world where the main rule is “cash on delivery and no receipts”. In reality, he was quite a “dirty guy”, meaning he was known for obtaining credits necessary to stock an entire store with merchandise from various legitimate distributors and later to delay and avoid paying the goods. But the most important thing was that he had many underworld connections and with the help of those connections, Pollakov was obviously quite a busy man.


The guy had hundreds of burglars, peddlers, white collar people etc. going in and out of his stores. Everyday people went in and out with stolen goods such as toys, tires, beer, cosmetics or even pharmaceuticals, and Pollakov bought it all. That is why he always had an enormous stock of stolen merchandise and according to one story, once Pollakov had in stock one item known as “Jet Dry” which was used in dishwashers and according to him, he had so much of the item that “If everybody had three dishwashers, I had enough to supply to whole country.” And so according to some records, all of Pollakov’s four stores grossed almost half million dollars a month, an amount which was quite enough to retire in just few years but the problem was that Pollakov was a ”wheeler-dealer” type of a guy, meaning he spent his money lavishly and on top of that, he loved to gamble. So like any other degenerate gambler, by the end of 1973, Pollakov was almost one million dollars in debts and quickly closed most of his stores and declared bankruptcy.


So one thin led to another and one day, he was arrested by federal authorities for possession of stolen property and his chances for getting out of this one were quite low. So Pollakov in no time made up his mind and made a deal with the agents to become a confidential informant for the government. He worked side-by-side with the agents and helped them in setting up their own undercover suburban warehouse which was known as Ross Discount. The deal made both sides happy and from that point on Pollakov informed the feds about every stolen shipment that he received, from who he received it and to whom did he re-sold it to. So the feds decided to make a “deeper penetration” by placing one of their agents as Pollakov’s friend from the old days who was employed at the alleged discount store. The agent’s code-name was “Eddie Doyle” who accompanied Pollakov on daily basis and always successfully played the act of a sloppy persona. The undercover agent mostly mopped the floors around the store, dusted the shelves, and quickly became known among the shady individuals, who visited Pollakov’s sore on daily basis, as “Eddie the Mope”. But the problem was that the feds were in a hurry and were waiting for something big because they didn’t want to blow their cover for something almost worthless and that is why they pressured Pollakov to look for something more lucrative so the government can have something to show for in front of the public.


So Pollakov came to the point where he picked up his phone and started calling people but one day everything happened almost accidentally. On July 20, 1974, Martin Pollakov made a phone call to Jamie’s Discount Store, where he had once worked for owner James Moccio. Now, this guy also worked as a fence and while working as government informant, Pollakov was hoping to learn something about Moccio’s illegal activities but the problem was that several times previously, Moccio didn’t answer the phone, but that same day, somebody answered the phone and that somebody was an individual named Allen Wainer. This guy was one of Moccio’s partners in the store and fence business who had a criminal history and also quite large arrest record which began way back in 1935 which was mostly for conspiracy to transport stolen property and for counterfeiting postage stamps. So Pollakov complained to Wainer that he was going low in the fencing business and that he needed some push. So the duo met more than several occasions but during one particular conversation, Pollakov came to a great discovery. Wainer told Pollakov that an individual named “Pete” was going to open a discount store and that Wainer is going to back the store with his own financials. Wainer also said that Pete can use Pollakov’s help on setting up the store and in the end he also told him that Pete was knee deep in the fencing business and so he suggested to Pollakov to give Pete a call.


Now, “Pete” was in fact bad news and at the same time, quite a catch for Pollakov because he was Peter Gushi, a known Chicago criminal from the West Side. Gushi was born in 1927 and was a long time resident of the Oak Lawn area which made him a close neighbour to many old time mobsters and was also connected for many decades to many Outfit associates such as Gus Rubino and Billy Dauber. Gushi also had a lengthy and quite interesting arrest record like for example, in 1954, he was arrested for heroin trafficking and was sentenced to two years in prison. Later, he allegedly made a vow to God never to deal in dope again as long as he lived or as he put it “Right now I hate dope so much.” After that, on April 20, 1957, he was arrested for burglary but during the trial he was found not guilty. On September 5, 1961, Gushi was convicted for truck hijacking of a $75,000 worth of merchandise and later he was sentenced to ten years in Leavenworth Penitentiary, where he tried unsuccessfully to hang himself since the bed sheet broke. He was released in 1965, and three years later he was again arrested for trying to defraud the National Bank of Hyde Park. The feds later received information that this was an alleged scheme to get money for the Outfit’s loan sharking racket. Why to invest their own money when first they can steal it and later “loan it”. But during the trial, since the prosecutors didn’t have any strong evidences against Gushi regarding the crime, he was acquitted on all charges.



Peter Gushi


So Pollakov decided to call Gushi and arranged a meeting. During their conversation, Pollakov told Gushi that he was recommended by Wainer, and explained him in details about the business he was involved in. When Gushi heard about Pollakov’s connections and alleged plans, he quickly agreed to do business together. One of their plans was to open a discount store which was to be filled with stolen goods. And in no time, the boys started their operation by placing one John Valentino as the front/owner of the store and also employed Pollakov as the manager. Almost on daily basis, Pollakov brought to Gushi dozens of cases of allegedly stolen merchandise, including hair spray and other hair products which previously were purchased by the FBI. But until Gushi believed that everything was stolen, Pollakov’s credibility remained stable. In time, Gushi started trusting Pollakov by using him as negotiator in buys from other fences and boosters. Also, when Gushi had a load of merchandise which he wanted to sell, Pollakov would allegedly arrange a deal to dispose of the goods. The best thing was when one day Gushi called on Pollakov and asked him about his alleged problem with another fencer known as Aldo Mazzone. Pollakov apologized and explained to Gushi that right now he doesn’t have the time to work for him because he has to work on his debt to Mazzone. Suddenly Gushi blew up and told Pollakov “From now on, if anyone asks you, you’re working for Pete Gushi and you’re working for the family!” Now, the interesting word here is “family” which obviously means the Chicago Outfit. This was a great deal for Gushi and Pollakov but in reality, the so-called “deal” went right into the hands of Pollakov’s “friends”, the FBI agents.


Since he proved himself as a stand up guy or should a say, a quite lucrative individual, through Gushi, Pollakov has met many other syndicate-connected individuals such as “Jimmy the Greek”. This guy’s real name was James Maniatis who in fact was an old timer and knew almost every possible burglar or criminal around the Chicago area. Maniatis was born in 1916 and grew up on Chicago’s Near South Side, a territory known as the heart of the Chicago Outfit, and all oh life worked as a prowler of flea markets and bargain auctions. So Pollakov quickly went in business with Maniatis by trying to sell him a $70,000 worth of stolen merchandise such as Cordura wrist watches. Pollakov previously received the stolen watches from Gushi but later it became a little bit of a complicated situation because the feds also got involved. They gave Pollakov instructions to buy the stolen watches by any means, but he had a problem since Maniatis wanted to buy the merchandise for a source of his own. The feds played the situation smart by instructing Pollakov to invent a name such as “Mr. Ross” who in turn allegedly gave a better proposition. Maniatis negotiated to buy the watches for $5 each but “Mr.Ross” in turn negotiated to buy the watches at a $9 price. So Pollakov had an idea and told the feds that it would be better for the whole operation if they let Maniatis buy a part of the stolen merchandise so they can keep him as source for further information regarding other criminal activities. So on September 23, 1973, Maniatis and Pollakov went together to meet one Charles Soteras who in fact was Maniatis’ costumer for the stolen watches. The rest of the watches which were bought by Pollakov were brought to the FBI offices.



James Maniatis


So the good relationship continued between Pollakov and Maniatis but the best thing for Pollakov and the feds was that Maniatis, who looked like a white-haired misfit, was a guy who loved to tell stories. So one day, he told Pollakov that Gushi in fact worked for few high ranking mobsters, including James Catuara, Frank Caruso and Joey Lombardo. These guys controlled few different territories, meaning Catuara operated in Chinatown, Calumet City and Chicago Heights, Caruso was the boss of Chinatown and Near South Side and as for Lombardo he was the boss of the so-called Grand Avenue crew and that particularly he and Gushi went way back. Maniatis also explained to Pollakov that Gushi had his own burglary crew which worked directly under the auspices of the Outfit or mainly under Catuara.


“Jimmy the Bomber” as he was known, was an old time member of the Chicago Outfit who controlled various rackets from gambling and loan sharking, to various thefts and narcotics. Gushi and Catuara met back in the days through Gus Rubino so they went long way back and together they made a lot of money and hurt a lot of people. Like for example, one day Catuara and Gushi visited the owner of the Box X Tavern in Calumet City, a gambling joint which was owned by the Chicago Heights mob. So the guy started sending thinner and thinner envelopes and so Catuara decided to pay him a visit. According to some reports, the guy received one of the most brutal public beatings. Story goes that Catuara allegedly stood over the victim with a shotgun while Gushi administered the beating with fists and a baseball bat. In the end, Gushi spread the victim’s legs and Catuara gave one hard kick in between. Also, Catuara and Frank Caruso used Gushi’s “services” by orchestrating a robbery of $180,000 worth of cigarettes, a business which was highly regarded by the top boss himself at the time, Tony Accardo. In other words, Gushi was a notorious and hardened criminal who had been arrested for all kinds of criminal activities, including murder but the problem was that Pollakov couldn’t get to Catuara so easily because they did not have anything in common until Pollakov realized that Gushi was also Catuara’s main guy for recruiting professional burglars, each expert in his own field, to pull off big time cash heists and then move the money out of the country.



Jimmy Catuara


Since Gushi became Pollakov’s prime target, in time the “undercover informant” became sort of Gushi’s driver and constant accomplice. For example, each morning around 7:30, Pollakov would go the FBI offices for debriefing, and then he would pick up Gushi and drive to the store and do some work. Later, he would take Gushi out for breakfast and upon returning to the store, he would listen to Gushi for the next two or three hours telling stories or talking on the phone. And before long he would suggest to Gushi to go out for lunch, a “ritual” which lasted for several hours. The thing was that Gushi was a quite lazy individual who always wanted to act like he was the boss and also loved to eat and endlessly talk. That is why Pollakov did most of his work, which was obviously a good thing for the feds or in other words, Gushi’s habits turned out to be very unfortunate for him, and very fortunate for the government.


At the beginning of September, 1974, Gushi had a dinner with Pollakov and after few bottles of wine, the mobster opened up to Pollakov about his past crimes, including the information that he managed to pull a score of $130,000 back in 1971 and that two months later he went broke. Later Gushi told him also that he was about to be a part of one of the biggest cash heists in the city’s history, an information which was quite valuable for Pollakov and the feds. Gushi ended the conversation by saying “I’m sick and tired of being poor all my life, and now I’m either gonna be a rich man or a dead man.” So immediately after hearing this, Pollakov alarmed the FBI about Gushi’s boast on the huge score and so the agents agreed to increase their surveillance on the mobster. Pollakov told the agents that Gushi was about to meet an associate of his known as Patsy Marzano but he wasn’t informed on what was the meeting all about. So on September 12, 1974, Pollakov gave the feds the location of the alleged meeting and so they got the place surrounded but there was a problem. As I previously said that these guys were not some amateurs but instead they were highly professional criminals and proof for that was when the meeting was suddenly called off by Gushi who said that “The place is all steamed up!”, meaning the cops were watching. The day was in fact saved by Marzano, who usually kept a police radio monitor in his car and quickly alarmed Gushi about the FBI stakeout.


Pasquale Marzano was born in 1932, in Chicago’s Patch, which was a very tough neighbourhood at the time which provided many high profile criminal figures. While growing up, Marzano managed to receive five bullets wounds in various street shoot outs. He grew up as a tough guy but he was also a very educated individual. He kept a huge library of books and was a big fan of classical music. He even worked as a Little League baseball coach in Cicero and was also a devoted family man. So obviously his toughness wasn’t his specialty but instead he was also very good with electronics, meaning he became a self-taught expert in circumventing security and electronics alarm systems. He was good with electronics, he was good with alarms, he was good with acetylene torches, meaning he has done it all. Marzano’s criminal ego was so big that once, a manager of a Chicago suburban bank in Evaston boasted on television about their new security vault. He claimed the door was impregnable, which featured the most hi-tech heat, sound, and motion sensors known to man at the time. So Marzano and his cousin Ralph Marrera decided to rob this bank as a challenge to the bank manager’s boast. In 1973, Marzano and Marrera had been suspects in the $800,000 robbery in Evanston. When the FBI caught up with Marzano, they discovered a comprehensive electronics library in the den of his home but in the end he and his cousin were never convicted for the crime. Marzano also had a cousin known as William “Tony” Marzano, who was a former truck driver and fruit stand owner, but he was also twice indicted for theft of interstate shipments and had a criminal record for armed robbery and passing phoney money orders.



Pasquale Marzano


William Marzano


So this means that Marzano was one of the main individuals in the group by having these so-called special skills. On September 16, 1974, Gushi, Wainer and Pollakov had a meeting in one of their discount stores. The subject on the meeting was mostly complaining about the constant FBI surveillance and they agreed to constantly change their meeting places. But Pollakov knew that there was something else and that the rest of the attendants weren’t telling the whole story. Then Pollakov somehow overheard Gushi telling Wainer that “I saw Patsy (Marzano) last night. Something’s wrong with the mileage on the map and we may have to rent a plane. We got to go around Cuba. We got to take Patsy’s pilot, the guy from Boston.” Then Wainer said “Yeah, Louie DiFonzo.” On September 20, Gushi had a sit down with Jimmy Catuara at a restaurant in Calumet City, who in turn told his underling to contact a man known as Luigi DiFonzo and gave him a telephone number. Catuara also told Gushi that DiFonzo will give him further instructions regarding their next meeting.


Now you probably wonder who the heck was Luigi DiFonzo and why did Catuara trust this guy so much?! Well he was one of Catuara’s blood relatives and was also a fast talking and fleet-footed slickster who was considered by law enforcement as a “boy wonder” for committing burglaries. DiFonzo was born in 1947, in Boston and later in 1972 he moved to Chicago on the South Side, while leaving behind his wife, children and a huge pile of debts. This slick criminal also had a specialty by always having the knowledge about international banking operations, skills which were quite necessary to help make large sums of cash be difficult to trace. DiFonzo also had an office in Des Plaines for selling and buying contracts for silver bullion from where he pulled off a real get-rich-quick scheme. Records show that previously DiFonzo incorporated his two companies, the North American Trade Co. and North American Investment Co., and after that he rented some space in a Des Plaines office building. With the help of his good looks and snake tongue, he managed to recruit many successful salesmen by luring them with empty promises of large commissions. DiFonzo moved around in flashy cars which were rented, not owned, always wore fancy clothes and talked like he owned the world. In reality it was all a false image to show his allegedly “successful” career. So in no time word spread around that DiFonzo controlled a 100 million dollar business with offices all around the world, a rumour which was obviously not true. Story goes that in the end right before filling for bankruptcy, as angry investors fought for their money, DiFonzo was able to fork $190,000 in cash and quickly invested it in a huge home in Oak Brook.



Luigi DiFonzo


These guys represented the so-called “evolution” of the professional burglar, meaning in using new techniques and also new tools in committing the burglary. As you saw in some of the previous stories, most of the burglars, such as Fiorito, used simple tools and techniques, but during the late 1960’s and early 70’s all that has changed. From this point on most of the fellas were well equipped with all kinds of new electronic devices for disabling alarm systems, always having in their disposal two way radios, also expensive acetylene cutting torches, drills that cut thru hardened steel, high powered cars, devices for moving heavy weights such as safes, and an arsenal of weapons with which to fight if cornered. There are examples where some burglars used high powered rifles to shoot out the radiators of pursuing police cars. Some have even been found to carry gas masks as a safe- guard against the type of anti-burglary devices that emit tear gas when activated. It’s not an easy job to work with dangerous tools such as acetylene torches and you have to be skilled in the use of burning and drilling equipment. In the past some inexperienced burglars have so overheated the safes with their cutting torches that the all of the cash and other valuable contents were charred or destroyed even before the steel box was even opened. There have been also situations where some burglars accidentally set serious fires thru the careless use of acetylene torches or they have sometimes suffered fatal burns or caused explosions by carelessly turning their own flaming torches. But this wasn’t the case with the new “breed” since they started carrying large metal hoods with which to surround a safe to shield the glare of the cutting torches. These new breed of burglars were dangerous, experienced, quite clever and most difficult to catch. They always knew the right amount of cash that will be at the location and they always had the number of people who were in constant communication via walkie-talkie radios, and with look- outs stationed outside the target. They even used a so-called “guinea pig”, a small time thief whom they sent at the location, first to make sure they aren't walking into a trap, and If he doesn't set off an alarm or walk into a trap, his “buddies” will soon follow.

So let’s get back to the main story… on September 23, 1974, Catuara called upon his two top guys, Gushi and DiFonzo, and they met at Oak Lawn motel to finally discuss their next “master piece”. They told Catuara that they made the final plans for robbing the Purolator Security Inc. vault at 127 West Huron Street. In fact the idea came from Marzano but the problem was he was a low level criminal and wasn’t allowed to contact directly with Catuara so he had to go through Gushi. The idea was developed from Marzano’s cousin Ralph Marrera who managed to obtain a security job at the Purolator Company as a night guard. Marrera told his cousin that the Purolator armoured trucks picked up the receipts from all of the local race tracks, in the form of plenty of small bills that couldn’t be traced. The thing was that they knew the building was rigged with a silent alarm, which sounded to another security company, located just one block down the street. So this is the part where Marrera came in and played the main role.


For several weeks prior to the crime, Marrera made a very smart move by acting polite and suggesting to the security staff, almost on daily basis, that they should leave early, only if they wanted to, so they can be with their families. Like any other ordinary people, every time the guards accepted his offer. Marrera even managed to obtain the combination to the main vault which was not very difficult to obtain since many of the guards already knew it. But the problem was that the vault cannot be opened without setting off the alarm on the switchboard at the Wells Fargo Alarm Service, which was a firm hired by the Purolator Company. So the trick was once a week, Marrera opened the vault door and than closed it. In a matter of few seconds, the people from the alarm service called to check out if everything was ok. Then Marrera assured them that everything was “ok” but even with that, the service usually sent someone to check things out anyway. When the security patrol arrived, they usually checked the premises, and obviously they found that there was nothing wrong and than left. So the plan was for Marrera to trip the alarm at 8 PM every Saturday night until the alarm company would think that the Purolator alarm system had a glitch in the system, which it caused a malfunction every Saturday night exactly at 8 o’clock. It turned out that it was quite a good plan because after a while, nobody came to double check.


So the whole thing was a huge deal for the boys and so they received Catuara’s blessing for the job and in the end he also reminded them about the Outfit’s cut or 20 percent from the stolen loot. Marzano asked for 45% from the planned loot because he had to give a part from his share to his cousin, Maniatis and Marrera and so the boys fairly agreed. On September 27, Gushi gave Pollakov a call and told him to come by down to his house, collect $4,000 and to purchase a van. Gushi did not inform Pollakov on what was the purpose of the van but instead he told him to get Maniatis with him. So Pollakov, together with Maniatis, went to the Hawkison Ford and purchased a mint green Ford Econoline van. During the purchase Maniatis recited the information on his driver’s licence and refused to show it to the salesman. The next day, Marzano came to inspect the van by checking the engine oil and the interior and also scratched the identifying mark under the front wheel. When Gushi came to the scene, he allegedly told Pollakov that “This van is gonna bring us more than two million”. On October 8, 1974, Marzano sent Pollakov again to the Hawkison Ford to pick up licence plates for the van. On his way back, Pollakov was also instructed to buy black clothes, gloves, boots and ski masks for the crew. Also, on his way home, Pollakov informed the feds that something big was about to happened but the problem was that he was mostly kept in the dark.


On Sunday, October 20, 1974, Marrera again played the “old trick” on his fellow Purolator employee named Angela by telling her to leave early so she can be together with her family. Angela left somewhere around 7:30 P.M. and by 8:00 PM, Gushi and the Marzanos, Patsy and William, walked into the garage through the overhead door way, which Marrera previously left it unlocked, while DiFonzo remained outside in the van. The thieves took “used” money stacks that were dropped off that day from the Hawthorne Park Race Track and after that they tried to burn the rest of the millions in the vault with gasoline bombs. Clearly, the robbers hoped if the police found only ashes in the vault they would have no way of knowing that a robbery occurred or they would’ve think an accident occurred. Or at least the cops would have no idea how much money were missing. But the problem was that the burglars made one mistake, meaning they forgot that after the vault door was closed the fired died from lack of oxygen and the millions of dollars were barely damaged. In the end, they took everything that they could carry and walked away clean with tons of cash.


When the smoke from the fire hit the alarm, the security company immediately notified the Chicago Fire Department which quickly sent one of their units to the location. The responding firemen arrived in front of the building, in a matter of few minutes, where they were met at the door by Marrera, who was armed with a shotgun. At first Marerra initially refused them entrance, insisting he had no indication of trouble and he was not authorized to admit anyone to the building, but the problem was quickly resolved with the arrival of the Purolator executive. When they opened the vault, the firemen saw the smoke and quickly sprayed with their fire-fighting foam. The sight of thousands of shiny coins scattered on the floor outside the vault, as the fireman slogged ankle-deep in piles of cash left behind by the thieves, was astonishing. When they entered inside, they witnessed a disaster. Quite large part of the money were gone, one third was destroyed from the unsuccessful attempt by the burglars to burn the rest, and the remaining cash was all wet and damaged from the fire-fighting foam. According to some reports, more than 30 million dollars were recovered.



Purolator truck blocks drive while the police process the crime scene


Now, the burglars planned on getting a large part of the money out of the country but first Gushi and his friends had to pay tribute to Catuara and the Chicago Outfit. He received a phone call and the individual on the other side demanded “Put the money in a suitcase and leave it behind your house. We will pick it up.” No questions asked, Gushi packed $500,000 (some reports say $300,000 or $400,000) in a black bag and left it in an alley behind his house for a pick up, and that was that. Then he returned to his house and watched as the suitcase was whisked away by two dark and menacing figures in two black sedans. But Gushi and the boys had one “small problem” and that was the amount of cash, meaning the weight of the untraceable money. At the time, some banking officials estimated that $4.3 million would weigh about 800 pounds, measured roughly at two pounds for each $1,000 in bills and so the boys had a quite difficult time in transporting the loot. So Gushi decided to phone Catuara, his friend and neighbour, to intervene and help in transporting the money, but in a very “friendly” style, Catuara refused to help by simply telling Gushi "You are on your own, bud." Later, he called two other so-called “Outfit friends” and asked them for a boat so he can tae it to Florida and transfer the cash to the British West Indies. But again he botched both because the boat of one skipper Gushi contacted was in dry dock and other refused to put out in rough seas.


So with no other choice, the Marzanos, Gushi and DiFonzo had to bury a part from the cash at none other than Marrera’s grandmother’s home. Marzano explained to the boys that this was a house from a relative of his and it’s the safest place that they can find. The boys dug about 10 feet in the ground, packed the loot and buried it under a layer of concrete. From there they took their van and drove straight to Columbus, Ohio and over there they rented a small airplane and took a flight to Miami, Florida. In Miami they were wining and dining extravagantly, while paying for everything with $100 bills and also gave quite large tips to the strippers. The other day, DiFonzo took a plane to the Grand Cayman Island in the British West Indies, where banking transactions are kept in secret. On the arrival, DiFonzo allegedly tipped the pilot $300 and on his way out of the airport, he was carrying three big bags full of U.S. currency which were so heavy that DiFonzo needed four porters to help him carry them. And so, DiFonzo successfully deposited somewhere between $1,400,000 and $2,000,000 in five of the Grand Cayman Island’s 178 banks.


Like the speed of light, the crime became a sensational news story all around the country. The first reports had put the robbery at only $1,000,000 and after few days it became $2,000,000, then $3,000,000 and every new day the public awakened to see new and higher estimate bannered across the morning headlines but in the end, the vault loss was set at $4,300,000. Every newsman around the country was looking for answers and so did the lawmen. The story was quite big because this was one of the greatest heists committed on American soil at the time, meaning this was 4 years before the infamous Lufthansa heist which occurred in New York.


Because of the popularity of the case, there was a lot of pressure over the law enforcement agencies and so they needed to start from somewhere. Three FBI agents who were assigned on the case, decided to investigate the guards from that night and when they realized that the female guard was asked by Marrera to leave early, they felt suspicious. So the feds decided to give Marrera a polygraph test and during the testing, the needle of the polygraph machine jumped up and down because Marrera was quite nervous, obviously because he was guilty. Since he failed the test, the next day he was arrested at his mother-in-law’s home in Oak Park both by Chicago PD and the FBI. During the arrest, Marrera allegedly told the cops “What are you trying to do, get me killed?” Obviously he was in panic and during hard times, people are able to do almost everything just to save their own skin. Marrera knew that somebody was going to post his bond and before you know, he might end up six feet deep under the ground. So his paranoia forced him to make one fatal mistake by trying to kill himself. So in no time, the guy started to talk but the problem was that he didn’t know too much but at least he mentioned four names, including Gushi, DiFonzo and the two Marzanos. He told the feds that some of the suspects fled the country so they can transfer the cash to foreign banks and in the end he added that all of the suspects were “connected guys”. From this point on, Marrera was considered to be at large risk and would be a prime target for people who would want to silence him as well as those who might want to squeeze him for information on the location of the loot. Immediately the feds spread the word that Marrera was placed under heavy security at a military installation near Chicago, but in reality Marrera was being held at the Winnebago County Jail in Rockford.


The first guy on which the feds laid their hands on was Jimmy Maniatis, who was arrested on October 19, 1974, for purchasing the van which was used during the heist and later in transporting the cash. He was taken for questioning but the problem was that Maniatis was a stand up guy and plus, he knew almost nothing about the heist. The next day, without knowing on what was going on, Gushi made a wrong move by appearing at the police station with a bag of cash for Maniatis’ bond and that’s when the cops arrested Gushi and placed him in custody. Now, both suspects were confused regarding the situation since they knew that everybody was safe, including the stolen loot. But they were wrong because they were not informed about all of the individuals that were involved in the heist. The problem was that Patsy Marzano previously did not reveal Marrera or his so-called “inside guy” to Gushi and the rest of the crew, which explains all of the confusion. But Marzano’s main mistake was that he informed Marrera about the rest of the guys, which in this situation made them “sitting ducks”.


So on October 30, 1974, Luigi DiFonzo, Patsy and William Marzano were arrested by British authorities at the airport on the Grand Cayman Island. During the arrest, the suspects were at the Holiday Inn where they ate steaks, while swilling a red wine known as St. Emilion and wearing silk pyjamas. Also both DiFonzo and Marzano were carrying $26,000 in $100 bills; a lot less than custom officials said DiFonzo had when he checked on the island. While the suspects were escorted by the local police, Marzano made all kinds of hysterical “parade” before getting in the police van. By early November all of the suspects had been apprehended and that same month an indictment was returned against Pasquale Marzano, William Marzano, Ralph Marrera, Luigi DiFonzo, Peter Gushi, and James Maniatis. The indictment charged these persons with conspiracy to commit theft of money from Purolator Security, Inc., including other various offences, and on top of that, all of the charged were held on very high bonds.


Now, the government was ready to attack with three key witnesses including undercover agents Martin Pollakov and Eddie Doyle and of course their “inside guy” Ralph Marrera. As the trial was closing up, so did the paranoia in Marrera’s head and that’s when he decided to inform the feds also about the hidden cash at his grandmother’s house. At first he was threatened by the feds for holding back such valuable information from them but in no time, the investigators managed to recover $1.5 million from under the basement at a house which was located at 2045 N. Natchez Av. But even with that, Marrera was still in big trouble because from this point on, the feds felt that Marrera wasn’t telling them everything and so they cancelled their deal and increased the pressure over their prime witness. The problem was that the pressure already deeply penetrated Marrera’s mind and so on November 29, 1974, Marerra attempted a suicide by hanging in his prison cell at the Winnebago County jail. He was quickly saved by the prison guards and although he was not seriously injured in the attempt, he was still transferred to the Cermak Memorial Hospital at the Cook County jail. When he recovered from the suicidal attempt, Marrera again tried to kill himself by drowning himself in the pool at the medical facility. He was saved again, but this time he was strapped to his bed. Now this is the point where more than few strange things occurred regarding Marrera’s situation.


Two days later, Marerra has been relocated at the intensive care unit at the Cook County Hospital, because suddenly out of nowhere, he was in a coma and in a very critical condition. Everybody was confused and many stories started circulating around Chicago. For example, some speculated that Marrera was in fact poisoned, but by who? The Outfit couldn’t reach him because he was under very strong protection by the feds and was relocated more than several times. So my point is that the only individuals who had the access to Marrera were strictly government people. Story goes that 29-year old Marerra was being medicated with large doses of Thorazine, a tranquilizer with a sedating effect but what was the point of all of that and who and why would do this? If somebody wanted to poison Marrera, he could’ve done it in various other ways. Rumours were that some people from the government wanted to know on where was the rest of the hidden cash, and they thought that Marrera was still lying and so they shot him up with the tranquilizer so they can extract the needed information. But it looked like that those so-called government people were more interested in finding the money not for publicity but instead, to take the cash for themselves. It was a lot of cash and so it is not very strange to attract the likes of some of the more “dirty” government people. So maybe the first doze of the tranquilizer wasn’t quite working and so they decided to give him another one thus making him a “human vegetable” or in other words, they paralyzed him. So this became a huge problem for the government, because first they almost killed a human being and second, they lost their prime witness.


But in the “last minute”, the government was saved by another suspect who also decided to “spill the beans” and that was Pete Gushi. I believe that he also decided to talk in order to save his skin from Catuara and the Outfit and obviously because to avoid any long prison term such as life sentence. Gushi told the agents that two weeks before he got arrested, he received a mysterious note which was scribbled on a matchbook cover with a telephone number to call. He said he made the call and was told by an unknown individual to turn over whatever money he was holding, or, the voice at the other end said, "There is going to be a lot of blood shed yours, too." In the end Gushi added that the individual refused to identify himself but said enough to convince him that he was in fact an Outfit guy. So in June, 1975, Pollakov and Gushi were called to testify against their former partners in crime, or should I say in the Purolator heist. But before the trial started, the prosecution gave a psychiatric report that Marrera was unfit to stand trial. The report said that all intellectual functions were grossly impaired, and that the patient couldn’t read, nor recite the alphabet and he also couldn’t walk or do any physical function on his own. I believe that the report was true and that Marrera was really damaged, but somebody didn’t want for him to testify in front of the public because there were small, but still real chances that he might’ve reveal something.



1975 press photo of Ralph Marrera getting seated into a wheelchair before getting into the courtroom


Marrera


Anyway, during the trial government informant Martin Pollakov testified and explained in details all of the conversations that he overheard at Gushi’s store or attended on and also he informed about the purchase of the van. Next, Peter Gushi became the “special guest star of the show” against Maniatis, the Marzanos and DiFonzo. He reportedly has publicly confessed his part in the bizarre theft and has said he received a lot of money for his role in the heist. He gave details about the whole operation and about the members who was involved with. Most of the defendants pleaded guilty and refused to testify or otherwise cooperate with the government. Here’s the point where another so-called strange situation occurred and that was no one really implicated Lou DiFonzo in the case. During Gushi’s testimony, he confirmed that DiFonzo was actually one of the individuals directly involved in the heist and that he was one of the alleged masterminds behind the whole operation but the problem was the rest of the government witnesses such as Pollakov and agent Doyle, couldn’t confirm that DiFonzo was directly involved since they only heard his name. In his own defence, DiFonzo claimed that he was only hired to deposit a large sum of cash in the Grand Cayman banks and he also claimed that he never new that the cash was stolen and who really were the people with whom he was involved with. Miraculously in the end, he was found innocent by the jury, got acquitted and walked free to continue with his skills to prey on society.


As for the rest of the gang, Jimmy Maniatis pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and for possession of stolen property and was sentenced to 3 years in prison but served only one. William Marzano refused to cooperate with the government and received maximum sentence of 7 years in prison but served only 28 months. When he got out, he collaborated on a book and made the talk-show rounds, talking freely about the whole affair. Patsy Marzano pleaded innocent, was found guilty and was sentenced to maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. When the judge asked him if he had something add regarding his sentencing, Marzano just mutely shook his head. Six years later, Marzano sued his jailers because a female guard allegedly attacked him. Ralph Marrera, who was found “mysteriously” unstable to stand trial, was declared mentally unfit and was taken to protective custody. Government “rat” Peter Gushi was sentenced to 4 years in prison but was put in custody of the U.S. Marshal. In jail, he was placed in a special department under a constant guard where he was segregated from other prisoners. After serving his sentence, Gushi , together with his family, was taken to the Witness Protection Program in which he was given a whole new identity. Martin Pollakov was also given a protective custody and a whole new identity and was also rewarded $40,000 for his undercover cooperation. Except for DiFonzo, the other guy who got away completely clean was Jimmy Catuara. Even with Guhsi’s testimony Catuara was never arrested nor charged regarding the case but three years later, on July 28, 1978, he was gunned down by Outfit assassins.


The poor Ralph Marrera, later recovered from his medical ordeal but was left with permanent disabilities both to his speech and his ability to walk. He was still placed in a nursing home but the problem was that his psychiatrist started to fell that Marrera was ready or in other words, mentally stable to stand in front of a judge. When Marrera got wind of the situation, he suddenly disappeared from the nursing home without a trace. But one day, January 29, 1982, Police officers James McNally and James Mandock, midway through their overnight shift in west suburban Forest Park, to a respond to a burglar alarm that has been triggered at the Blough-Miner Television Co. on West Madison Street. Little do they know that the investigation of this seemingly routine burglary attempt will set in motion a final, determined attempt by the FBI to close the book on the biggest cash theft in U.S. history at the time. Inside of the store, the cops found several so-called "alligator clips" and other devices which can be used to bypass burglar alarms, and they also found one walkie-talkie radio, and a radio scanner tuned to police calls. At the parking lot behind the store sat a 1982 brown Ford van and a 1974 brown Ford station wagon. No one was in the van, but as McNally and Mandock poke the beams of their flashlights into the station wagon, they discover a man, dressed entirely in black, cowering on the floor next to the front seat. When the police officers pulled him out of the car and frisked him, the individual protested by saying "Hey! I just fell asleep!" On the floor of the auto, where the suspect has been huddled, the cops found one walkie-talkie. It was a mate to the one inside the store at the burglary scene and was tuned to the same frequency.


After a 14-month search, which started somewhere around the end of 1980, one of the police officers suddenly recognized Marrera but he was not quite positive regarding the individual’s identity. So the suspect was placed under arrest and was taken to the Forest Park police station. When they saw his identity card, the name was different which read “Albert Santangeli” but still the agents felt suspicious and decided to fingerprint the individual. They also found for the individual to be carrying four sets of identification papers and some in the name of Santangeli and others in the name of Anthony DeMore. The papers also listed four separate addresses, all fictitious, such as one in Cicero or Stone Park, Melrose Park, and Northlake. The cops knew that something just wasn’t right because they had a guy who obviously has been around, but his police record only went back several months. He was just too cool, too calm and too professional and is why the cops did not buy his story that he just happened to fall asleep next to a burglary scene. So when the results from the fingerprint-check returned, it was positive that the individual was in fact Ralph Marrera.


So in March of 1983, he was the last of the group to be convicted for his part in the Purolator heist. The agents testified that when arrested in Forest Park, Marrera allegedly conversed freely and openly with them and that he was quite lucid and didn’t show any signs of serious brain damage. Later, when he realized that he was uncovered, Marrera allegedly began babbling and claimed to be unaware of what was going on. So no matter if he did or did not played the crazy act, in the end Marrera still managed to delay his sentencing by being again hospitalized because of a drug overdose. According to some reports, it was the fourth time since his arrest. Now the really awkward situation was that every time he suffered from an overdose of Valium and one unidentified drug. How the hell did he managed to get his hands on those drugs…no one knew. In the end, Marrera sat motionless with his hands folded as the verdict was read thus sentencing him to 20 years in federal prison. Minutes later after his sentencing, Marrera attacked a television crew in the lobby of the Dirksen Federal Building as dozens watched, slack-jawed in horrified surprise. The TV crew ignored his pleas to leave him alone, but still the crew advanced on him and so Marrera grabbed a metal sign and threw it, narrowly missing a cameraman and a technician. In a matter of seconds, in all of the confusion, Marrera somehow managed to disappear. So with credit for the time which he previously spent in custody, Marrera was later paroled in 1989. In December, 1990, in connection with the so-called “brain damage” incident, Marrera was awarded with $650,000 in a medical malpractice suit against Cook County.

Now if we do the math regarding the stolen cash, $1.5 million was restored by the feds, according to Gushi $500,000 was given to Jimmy Catuara and the Chicago Outfit and something around 1.5 million dollars were stashed away in the Grand Cayman banks. So according to my accounts almost one million dollars were still missing and nobody knew where the hell it disappeared. For example, I personally have more than few questions to ask regarding all of the mysteries which occurred in the story. First, I have a question regarding the FBI surveillance before the robbery occurred. I mean, they already received info from their undercover informant Martin Pollakov that something big was going to happened in the next few weeks. So my question is on why the hell the FBI didn’t continue with their surveillance over their main suspects when they already had the information? Here’s their statement regarding the situation “The Illinois Bureau of Investigation maintained careful surveillance of the group for several weeks, but when no major burglary occurred until Sunday, October 13, 1974, the Bureau informed the Commission that it did not have sufficient manpower to continue such an extensive surveillance any longer.” So who you are going to blame, the Bureau or the Commission? Next question is on why DiFonzo got away so easily? Did he transfer the missing cash to someone from the higher circles in society or the Mob? Or maybe he simply transferred the cash to himself? Obviously, we will never know.


And my last question is regarding the Marrera case. Did someone from the Outfit, which I seriously doubt, tried to poison Marrera and fry his brain, or maybe someone from the government was too stubborn and got carried away in finding out where the rest of the stolen loot was? A lot of so-called mysterious situations occurred for one “lousy” million dollars which might mean that a lot more cash was involved in the game. And if someone loves to read about conspiracy theories, well according to some reports there’s also another side of this case. According to court reformer and criminal sleuth Sherman Skolnick, his investigation of the Purolator robbery showed different results from the official government version. Skolnick reported that the stolen $4.3 million were in fact $25 million dollars and that a massive government corruption took place in the Purolator case…but that’s another story. So as I previously stated that the Purolator heist has been eclipsed as the largest heist and still retains the record in Chicago but I also think that it was one quite “unclear” case, since many awkward situations occurred during the so-called “crime saga”.


Now, I want to show you one, quite different example or should I say opposite example. By “opposite” I mean when the professional burglars turn against their mobster “friends”. During the late 1970’s, the top and undisputed boss and also elder statesman for the Chicago Outfit, was still Mr. Anthony Accardo. When the Outfit’s so-called “father” Paul Ricca died back in 1972, Accardo became the last old time “Mafia Don” who continued to rule supreme over his underworld organization. He was not the official boss of the Outfit but still, he commanded huge respect over his underlings, who in turn were the group’s top criminal administration at the time. The old Mob boss still took his cut from every highly lucrative scheme, including the street tax, and for the ones who opposed the old rules, they were obviously killed. But by the late 1970’s, one particular burglary group from the West Side area decided to test the Outfit’s power by simply targeting Accardo who by this time was considered as the oldest and most respectable member. When I first read about the story I always wondered on what was the reason for someone to commit that kind of dangerous foolishness but I later found out that it was pure “blindness” which was caused by simple vengeance. So from this point, we have to go back in time for almost 20 years so we can understand the core of the problem.


Back in the early 1950’s, the so-called West Side faction of the Chicago Outfit was in full effect, with quite bloodthirsty and at the same time very lucrative leadership which was established by criminal faces such as Tony Accardo, Sam Giancana and Sam Battaglia, all backed up by Paul Ricca and Louis Campagna. Accardo was considered the official crime boss at the time but he still held a lot of influence in the Elmwood Park area through Tony Capezio and Jack Cerone, as for Giancana, he was considered the number two guy within the organization but still held a lot of influence over the so-called Taylor Street crew and Battaglia was the boss of the Melrose Park area and all Western suburbs. They represented the “younger” generation of the Outfit which also brought many new criminal individuals within the organization. For example, one of Giancana’s most notorious crime pals was a guy known as Salvatore Moretti, who worked as Melrose Park policeman. According to some reports, Moretti was one of the most devious individuals around Giancana with a quite scary look, who with just one sight, he was able to create chills up your spine. There was something about the way he looked at you because he didn’t quite look right into your eyes as a normal individual usually do, but instead somehow he looked through you, which I believe is the real so-called “killer look” according to the looks of numerous profiles of various killers and gangsters.


Salvatore Moretti was one of six children who had grown up on Chicago’s West Side, including his identical twin brother Vincent who by 1951 also worked as Melrose Park policeman, the oldest one Lawrence, a deputy bailiff, Michael who worked as a state’s attorney policeman, and Thomas, a simple restaurant owner. Since the beginning, all of the brothers were considered quite notorious and in reality, some of them represented killers with a badge, meaning if Giancana had a problem with someone, sometimes he called for William Daddano, who in turn called Salvatore Moretti to take care of the problem. You see, even though Moretti was sometimes direct with Giancana, still he was placed to work under Daddano. Since Moretti was fired from the park police force in 1952, later he worked as a "bird dog" in selling autos, meaning he worked as a broker who puts buyers in touch with auto dealers and collects a commission but his “second job” was being Outfit enforcer.



Sal Moretti


Some of the Moretti brothers, such as Michael or Thomas, were so notorious that they though anybody can be beaten or killed at any time. The main “fuel” for the so-called Moretti “killer machine” was hard liquor and that was that. For example, Thomas was fined $150 after a jury found him guilty of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, meaning he violently fought with the policemen before they arrested him on the complaint of a woman that he harassed her as she passed one of his hamburger stands at 2002 Lincoln Park West. As for Michael Moretti, one night on August 24, 1951, with no particular reason, he shot three people, while being heavily under the influence of alcohol. Witnesses said that Moretti was walking down the street with a gun in one hand and his other hand concealed behind his back and allegedly captured three young people who according to him, allegedly were involved in a narcotics ring. Five or six of his policeman colleagues tried to stop him since they were with Moretti in the lot after the three young men were captured and they knew that there was going to be trouble. So Mike Moretti decided to fire one shot in the air, just to scare away his policemen buddies, took the three alleged suspects in a car and took them to the police station.



Mike Moretti


Next thing you know, it turned out that two of the alleged suspects were dead and one was wounded. But the worst thing was that the two dead individuals were in fact quite young, such as 21 year old Edward Salvi and 15 year old Arthur Gambino. Even though the third wounded individual and also survivor Leonard Monaco testified on trial that Mike Moretti was drunk as hell and started shooting at them on purpose, it turned out that the other policemen, who were at the scene when Moretti arrested his victims, have never been identified. Also it was enough to place him in jail by just looking at his three statements which were taken three days after the shooting. The first one stated "I don't remember a thing and I don't remember what happened," the second one "At this time I don't remember. My mind is hurting me" and during the third statement, Mike Moretti gave the investigators 34 pages report describing his activities fully on the night of the shooting. I mean what do you expect, this was the 1950’s and the Outfit was the real government of the city of Chicago at the time but by the end of the day, the prosecutors provided too many witnesses who saw the violent behaviour of Moretti and testified before the jury, which in the end, found Moretti guilty and sentenced him to life in prison.


As for Salvatore’s twin brother Vince Moretti, he was a little bit different than the rest of his violent brothers, because he was a man of a different action. You see, even though later he was also suspended from the police force because he falsely testified during Michael’s trial, he once managed to make a citizen s arrest of a man carrying a loaded .44 caliber pistol. One Waldo Gibson was waving his gun and shouting as the pedestrians scattered but out of nowhere, Moretti jumped out of his car and approached the man. A few feet away Moretti shouted "No, no, don't hit him" to a mythical assailant behind Gibson. When Gibson whirled, Moretti made a flying tackle and grabbed the gun from Gibson's hand and kicked him to the floor. So this shows that he had qualities to be an honest man but life sometimes can be quite the opposite. As additional info, by the early 1960’s, all of the brothers were dismissed from their public duties.



Lawrence (left) and Vince (right) Moretti


So with these previous examples I wanted to show you separately the mentality of some of the brothers so we can easily understand the point of the story. In March, 1957, Daddano received an order from Giancana to find Salvatore Moretti and to give him the “murder contract” on one banker and land developer known as Leon Marcus. This guy was knee-deep in shit because he was under federal indictment for misapplication of bank funds and making false entries in bank records, which became a huge scandal and Giancana was behind it. Marcus’ trial was scheduled for September 23, 1957, and there was a huge possibility that he might talk and so on March 31, 1957, Marcus was met by few guys including Moretti, at 2135 West 51st Street, and they told him to get in their car. Marcus allegedly said “Leave me alone and I’ll give you anything I got” and struggled with the attackers but in the end they managed to bring him in their dark collared Chevrolet. In a short time, Marcus’ dead body was found six blocks away from the kidnapping scene in the vacant lot at 4198 Campbell Avenue. He laid on the ground face up with a bullet hole in the back of his head.


The murder was perfectly completed by Moretti but he made one fatal mistake since he forgot to check Moretti’s pockets for any implicating records, such as the name of the boss himself, Sam Giancana. And that’s what happened. When the cops found some small papers with Giancana’s name on it, Moretti’s fate was sealed. On April 12, 1957, Salvatore Moretti’s strangled and bullet riddled body was found in a car trunk on a country road south of Plainfield, Will County. The coroner report said that Moretti had cuts and bruises all over his face which indicated that he was pistol whipped before being strangled and then shot twice in the chest and twice in the head. One bullet went through the lower lip and then angled up in the cranium, while the other bullet went through the right cheek, up between the eyes, and out the left front of the skull. The news fell hard over his twin brother Vincent, who in turn never forgot the death of his brother, nor the hatred towards Daddano, Giancana, Battaglia and Accardo. He knew that his brother visited the residences of those individuals on daily basis, and he also knew that they were the ones behind his murder plot. But according to some “unwritten” underworld rules, no matter who you are related to, because if the individual next to you is killed, you are expected to say not even a word about it. And that’s what Vince Moretti did, he kept it to himself but deep inside of him, I believe that he grieved for revenge. There are many examples in the Mob where members are ordered to kill their brothers or to keep silent about it but in Moretti’s case, my personal belief is that the feelings between twins and ordinary brothers are a little bit different, but that’s just me.


As the years passed by, Vince Moretti didn’t have to lift a finger since many of the mobsters, which he personally hated, fell into the hands of the government and by the mid 1970’s, Giancana, Daddano and Battaglia were all dead. Also, by now Moretti belonged to a burglary crew which was previously controlled by one former burglar and fearsome Outfit member known as Anthony Spilotro. In reality, after the imprisonment and death of William Daddano, the one who took his “job” as the extortionist of all burglary crews around the Chicago area, was Tony Spilotro. You see, Spilotro used to belong to the Melrose Park crew but by now, many of the members of that Outfit group, transferred to the “newly” formed Grand Avenue crew which was controlled by one former burglar known as Joey Lombardo. As I previously stated, back in the old days Lombardo used to work for one Outfit member from the Melrose Park area known as Rocco Salvatore. So when Spilotro was sent to Vegas, Moretti became one of the most important members within the burglary crew since his family shared common history with the Outfit for such a long time.


This group was leaderless, meaning they didn’t have any leading member but instead they received “jobs” through Moretti or through one of his closest friends known as Gerald Carusiello. Now this guy really brought the 1970’s to a style, since he was known as a very, very flashy dresser with different kinds of women around him, all fuelled up with high quality dope and booze. He committed all kinds of robberies and burglaries all around the country especially in Florida, where he controlled a different burglary gang. In fact, there was another reason for Carusiello’s expensive lifestyle and that was his involvement as a substitute driver for some of the Outfit’s top bosses such as Joey Aiuppa. Obviously, being a driver for the bosses is not a small thing, or to prove my point again that almost every member in the crew was almost equally important. For example, John Mendell was another quite important member who was qualified in using sophisticated electronic devices such as “black box”, usually to bypass expensive alarm systems, which were connected to monitoring security services. But Mendell’s so-called “specialty” wasn’t only his electronic device knowledge, but he was also a high profile jewel thief who brought a trio of burglars or should I say “old-timers” with him, such as John McDonald, Bernard Ryan and John Borsellino. But Moretti’s oldest and most loyal associate was Steve Garcia, another very flashy dresser who loved women, booze, coke and burglarizing.



John Mendell


In November, 1977, before leaving to Las Vegas, Nevada, Spilotro called for Moretti and informed him about a possible job, like for example a monster of a diamond known as “Idol’s Eye,” which arrived in Chicago, and was kept at Levinson’s Jewelers Inc., a jewelry store located at 739 North Clark Street. In the end, Spilotro also informed Moretti that if the job gets done, he expected a cut. During Spilotro’s flight to Vegas, Moretti already set the plan in motion. He knew that the Levinson’s store was equipped with up to date alarm systems, which were probably plugged into a monitoring security service, and so he decided to call Mendell and get some advice regarding the alarm security problem. Later on, Mendell also brought Ryan, who in turn was the guy with the equipment such as acetylene torches, and so the trio went to work. On a very, very cold night of December 17, 1977, Mendell managed to bypass the alarm system of jewelry store, with the same, maybe a little bit more sophisticated, “toys” which were previously used in the Purolator case and after that Ryan climbed up onto the roof and cut through the security bars with torches and they continued with the same activity inside the store, through four wall safes. The burglary started on Saturday and continued throughout Sunday and ended somewhere around the early morning hours on Monday. In the end, the burglars left the “Idol’s Eye” but got away with more than one million dollars of jewels.


When the owner Harry Levinson came to the store, he was stunned and quickly ran to check if his precious diamond was still in place. When he saw that the diamond was untouched, Levinson felt quite relieved but later realized that the stolen jewels cost much more rather than his precious stone. The strange thing was that Levinson did not report the burglary to the police, but instead it was the monitoring security company which did it, a couple of hours after the discovery. According to the police report, Levinson was one of the most uncooperative victims in the city’s history, by refusing to answer almost every simple question regarding the damage which was done to his establishment. The problem was that Levinson had one small “dark secret” which was the main reason for his disrespectful character towards the law. In reality, Levinson was a so-called old friend of the Outfit. Back in the old days, Levinson used to work together with one Outfit member known as Hymie Levine, prime lieutenant for Jewish mob boss Jake Guzik on the city’s Near South Side and Loop. You see, until World War II, Levinson’s one and only Mob connection was Levine but by that time, Tony Accardo became the acting boss for the crime syndicate and during one New Year’s Eve, Levin had the pleasure to introduce Levinson to the Outfit’s boss. From that point on, Accardo and Levinson became close friends. So I personally believe that this was the main reason for which Levinson decided to keep his mouth shut and take the problem to the city’s “other government”. You see, even by that time the Chicago Outfit, or should I say the old Mob, used to keep certain order on the streets, by knowing and extorting every possible criminal in their area. In plain words, that’s how they controlled crime.



Chicago Outfit boss Tony Accardo


Thirty years later, Levinson decided to call his old friend and to ask him for a favour and so Accardo agreed, and the duo met at a restaurant which was located on the city’s North Side. During their meal, Levinson explained his problem to Accardo and told him that if he doesn’t get the million dollar loot back, he’ll be ruined. The old boss tried to calm down Levinson and told him not worry and that he’s going to get his jewels back. After the lunch, Accardo immediately sent a message to Tony Spilotro, who by now was overseeing the Outfit’s rackets in Nevada, if he had the information on who might’ve been involved in the Levinson robbery. I really don’t know if Accardo already knew but he certainly managed to pick the right guy, which was Spilotro, who in reality somehow ordered the burglary. Spilotro told Accardo’s people to contact Moretti regarding the stolen loot, who in turn became pressured to return the stolen jewels.


When a criminal such as Moretti was pressured by the Outfit to return something that didn’t belong to him, it meant that somebody might get hurt. Obviously, Moretti was furious regarding the requirement and at first he reportedly said that he had sold the loot but later he was reminded to stop lying and to tell truth, or else. With no other choice, Moretti met with Mendell and Ryan and told them about the bad news and they all agreed to return the jewels. Since by now the Outfit had a structure of a more traditional La Cosa Nostra organization, Moretti was forbidden to contact directly with the bosses of the Outfit but instead he had to give the loot to Carusiello who in turn gave it to Accardo. Now the old man returned the million dollar jewels to Levinson, just in time before the Christmas holidays. I really can’t tell if Accardo kept some of the jewels for himself but I seriously doubt that he didn’t or at least Levinson probably gave him as “reward”, no questions asked.


Now this the point from where the drums of rebellion started bumping, meaning Moretti became quite angry because of many reasons. First of all they killed his twin brother, second they made him pay street tax and third, they made him return the stolen loot. On top of that, Moretti’s twin brother was killed during Accardo’s position as semi-retired boss or one of the top advisors of the Chicago Outfit. Obviously Mendell felt almost the same rage because being a professional burglar is not an easy job. There’s a lot of pressure and danger involved, and for some one to take his “hard earned” loot just like that, was quite unacceptable. You see, Mendell was in his early 30’s and so he didn’t fully understood the respect towards the older mobsters such as Accardo, and so, fuelled with hatred by Moretti, he made one quite foolish decision which will bring the deaths of many Chicago burglars. The so-called dangerous decision was to retaliate directly, or in other words, they targeted Accardo’s "modest" 18 room ranch house at 1407 N. Ashland Avenue. There was nothing really special about Accardo’s house, except for the “small” detail which was a safe that was located in the home of one the country’s most dangerous crime bosses. Or in other words, it was a place no one dared to touch even if the loot was placed on the grass in the front yard.


I believe that first of all, the boys needed for someone to inform them regarding the location of the safe, meaning Accardo’s basement, and also regarding the safety systems in and around the residence. Also they obviously needed an inside info on when will the house be empty and for how long. And so the boys finally received an info regarding Accardo’s travel to Palm Springs, California, on January 5, 1978, and that same evening, the boys managed to disable the house alarm, got in, found the wall safe in the basement, they opened it, took the stash and fled the scene. We really don’t know how much money was gone from Accardo’s safe but the next day, Accardo’s long time caretaker and friend Mike Volpe came to check on the house and when he saw that the safe was blown up and all of loot was gone, he immediately called his boss and told him about the bad news. Story goes at first Accardo looked quite calmed and told his wife to pack their stuff, took the first plane to Chicago and quickly arrived at the scene. When the old crime boss saw that everything was gone, he went crazy. And I mean murderous crazy because the old man went so much red that he almost blew smoke out of his ears.


Obviously this was a huge slap in the face for the Outfit and La Cosa Nostra in general since one of the oldest and most ruthless boss of that same organization got robbed by few burglars. Accardo was very well respected by his peers not only because he stood by Al Capone or that he was at the top of a very long time, but instead they respected him mostly because he was smart. And I mean gangster smart. The so-called rebels succeeded in their mission and managed to prove a point but regardless of that, now it was the Outfit’s turn. First of all, Accardo has forbidden to everyone from his family or the house keepers, to report the robbery to the police because the old Mafioso never really trusted his government. Second, Accardo was a gangster’s gangster and so he didn’t need much time to figure it out on who might’ve been responsible for the burglary, and so he called for his protégé known as Jackie Cerone, the number two guy in the whole organization, to take some advice. At first sight, Cerone was a quite polite individual with a huge smile on his face but behind closed doors, he was a bloodthirsty killer who was almost every minute of the day under the influence of hard liquor. So perhaps when Cerone met with Accardo, obviously the old man was thirsty for blood, and instead of calming him down, I believe that Cerone pushed his boss to release the “contracts” or in other words to retaliate. But the thing was that Accardo already had another direct source for this kind of information, and that source was Tony Spilotro. “The Ant”, as he was known, advised the old boss that the only guy who was well informed on how to disable high-tech security systems was John Mendell.


Story goes that the two bosses, meaning Accardo and Cerone, made a decision to exterminate the whole burglary gang and on top of that, they also planned to make few examples of “innocent bystanders”, from various ethnicities, just to prove a point so no burglar in near future would think of the same idea as Moretti and Mendell. In end, Accardo added one small “warm” detail to the whole plan like cutting the throat from ear to ear of every possible target, which in many cases is the sign of many organized crime groups especially the Mafia. Cerone personally took the order to his capos in the organization, such as Joey Lombardo and Frank Caruso, who in turn picked the right men for the dirty work, such as Frank and Nick Calabrese, John DiFronzo, Frank Saladino, Ronnie Jarrett and possibly John Monteleone. In fact, most of these guys belonged to the membership of the Outfit's 26th Street or Chinatown crew. The so-called “hit team” was precisely combined since DiFronzo, Monteleone and Jarrett were former burglars themselves and personally knew and worked with the targets, and so with was easy for them to lure their victims into a trap. As for the Calabreses and Saladino, they were also former burglars but they were professional torturers and executioners always ready to kill or squeeze out any required information and afterwards to bury their victims, usually six feet under the ground or in some rare cases, chop them up to pieces. As additional info, by that same time period Frank Caruso might’ve been already replaced by another high ranking Outfit member Angelo LaPietra.

The so-called “hit list” probably went by the same order as Accardo gave the questions to his younger protégé Tony Spilotro. For example, the first question probably went something like on, who the hell “hacked” the alarm system and obviously Spilotro’s answer was Johnny Mendell and so he was the first one destined to “step to the other side”. On January 16, 1978, Mendell received a phone call from Ronnie Jarrett and told him that he, meaning Jarrett, had something good for him. Story goes that Jarrett brought Mendell to a garage where he was greeted by the Calabrese brothers and Frank Saladino, who in turn wore plastic gloves on their hands. Mendell probably was tortured for awhile and then his dead corpse appeared almost a month later on February 20, 1978, in a trunk of car on the city’s South Side. He had countless cigarette burns all over his body and multiple stab wounds and in the end his throat was cut from ear to ear. Obviously being viciously tortured is not a pleasant thing and so I believe that Mendell probably “sang” a little bit regarding the question on who planned the burglary and so next in line on the Outfit’s “hit list” became Moretti and later the whole burglary crew, meaning from that point on, the so-called domino effect of Accardo’s throat-slashing campaign began. The second unlucky guy, who crossed the paths with the Outfit’s hit-team, was Bernard Ryan. He fell on the same trick by receiving a phone call from John DiFronzo who in turn told him that he had some job which involved golden coins. Later, Ryan’s corpse appeared four days after Mendell was kidnapped, in the trunk of his 1976 Lincoln, which was parked in Stone Park. Ryan’s throat was cut multiple times and on top of that he was shot four times in the head, quite violent death signs which indicate that “somebody” was quite mad at the victim regarding “something”.


On January 31, 1978, Moretti together with his long time associate Donald Renno were driving around the Cicero area, when suddenly a black van crossed their path, three guys with ski-masks and guns pulled them out of their car, placed them in the back of the van, and sped off into a unknown direction. Later the two dead bodies of Moretti and Renno appeared on February 4, 1978, in the trunk of Renno’s Cadillac which was parked in the lot of Esther’s Place at 5009 South Central Avenue, Stickney. According to the gruesome death and wounds which were found all over Moretti’s body, obviously the Outfit knew that he was the one who planned the burglary on Accardo’s home. The victim’s face was all burned out with an acetylene torch, the torso was all cut open and some of the internal organs were removed, and he was also castrated. As for Renno, he was found wedged next to his friend “only” with his throat cut from ear to ear, obviously because he was only a so-called “collateral damage” in this whole situation. Two days before the two bodies were discovered, on February 2, 1978, the well-dressed body of Moretti’s close associate Steve Garcia also popped up in the trunk of a rental car which was parked at the Sheraton O’Hare Hotel on Manheim Road. Same as Ryan, Garcia’s throat was also cut multiple times which indicates that the killers knew that he was close to Moretti and gave him a violent and painful death.


Immediately after the discovery of Moretti’s dead corpse, the feds decided to raid his home and search for some clues. When the cops entered the victim’s home, they found almost nothing except for one “weird” detail which was a load of boxes filled with silver and golden cufflinks. Now, the so-called wired detail regarding the cufflinks was that these gifts were usually given by high profile members from the Mob to their lower level associates as some sort of gratitude or as Christmas gifts. But also for those who were not members of the Outfit, they rarely knew that the “generous” act sometimes might’ve represented a farewell gift, meaning somebody was going to get clipped. For example, Vince Moretti’s brother Salvatore, before he was killed, allegedly Giancana gave him a pair of diamond cufflinks in a fake appreciation of a job well done, which in reality was a disaster and became Salvatore’s demise. Obviously the point of the gift was to relax their targets before they made the attack. But I’m quite confused on who could’ve relaxed Vince Moretti that much after robbing the house of one of the most dangerous individuals in the country. I mean, I’m also confused on why the hell Moretti and the rest of the guys involved didn’t skip the country or least the state of Illinois. All of the suspected burglars wondered freely around the city of Chicago like nothing ever happened. I cannot believe that they were so stupid to think that Accardo wouldn’t guess on who really burglarized him. That is the most mysterious thing for me regarding the coolness of the alleged burglars after they allegedly pulled off one of the most dangerous “jobs” of the century.


One of craziest things which occurred during the murder spree was the using of the same situation by another gang for their own purposes. You see, a drug dealer named Bobby Hertogs disappeared on March 30, and on April 6, 1978, his body was found in the trunk of a stolen car which was left on a parking lot at 3552 West Grand Avenue on the city’s Near West Side. He was shot several times and his throat was cut from ear to ear. In reality, Hertogs was killed on the orders of Chicago drug kingpin Jack Farmer, who in turn copied the same method of Accardo’s hit team and so many investigators were manipulated and at the same time confused regarding Hertog’s killing. Another similar situation occurred when one random Outfit connected burglar without any evidence that he was involved in the burglary of Accardo’s home but same as everyone, he only knew and sometimes worked with these individuals. That guy went by the name of John McDonald who was found shot in the head and neck on April 14, 1978, in an alley behind 446 North Racine Avenue on the city’s Northwest Side. I believe that there are two reasons on why McDonald was killed. One was for just being made an example regarding the burglary of Accardo’s home and two he was actually killed because of some internal Outfit “politics”. I also believe that McDonald was lured or killed by his long time companions John Borsellino and Gerry Carusiello, which also makes me think that McDonald was killed regarding some conflict rather than the burglary. Some Mob authors stated in their projects, regarding the same subject, that McDonald’s throat was also cut as the rest of the previous victims. Well that’s not true because his throat was shot instead of cut which indicates that the killers were not from Accardo’s hit team. I also think that this might’ve not been a sanctioned murder by the Outfit but instead “somebody” decided to use the situation and to act on his own and to make things look like it was just another dead body in the “mysterious” killing spree. Right after the McDonald murder, the killings went on pause but now it was the government’s turn.


The sudden increase of Mob-related homicides apparently fanned the normally suspicious attitudes of the various law enforcement agencies to a fevered pitch and eventually, with the help of the FBI’s facts and reports, the government decided to bring Chicago’s “Mafia Don” Tony Accardo before a grand jury regarding the case. In September, 1978, during the federal investigation, besides Accardo, certain people were also brought before the grand jury to shed some light on the events, including members of the Accardo family such as his wife Clarice and his daughter Linda, and also his long time handyman Mike Volpe. Regarding the burglary in their home, the members of the Accardo family all denied that there was a break-in and later they all took the Fifth Amendment. So Accardo had a good reason to sit relaxed in his chair and wondered around with his innocent look like he wasn’t aware of what was going on. But Accardo’s chances of getting out of this one started decreasing, when his caretaker and friend, 75 year old Volpe took the stand and told the jury in fact that there was a break-in and that he reported it to his landlord and that was that. Now, even the birds on the trees and the rats in the sewers couldn’t believe what they’ve just heard? The whole Planet Earth stopped turning at least for a second. Everybody was stunned and even the judge and the prosecutors couldn’t believe their ears. I mean this guy was with Accardo for more than 30 years and heard and saw only God knows what, and all of a sudden he decided to spill the beans?! Even though all of the witnesses testified separately, when the hearings ended, Accardo jumped from his chair, took his family straight out of the building, jumped in the front seat of their car and sped off. As for Volpe, he had to take a cab into a certain death trip. Accardo received info from his lawyer Carl Walsh that Volpe opened his mouth since both Accardo and Volpe had the same attorney which was Walsh. When he arrived at the Accardo mansion, allegedly Volpe was greeted with a smile by the old gangster and was allegedly told not to worry and that he did the right thing. Who knows, maybe Volpe also received a box of cufflinks?!


Story goes that Volpe was indeed very loyal to Accardo because obviously, in such a long time period he might’ve heard or saw anything, but the problem for Accardo was that Volpe was clean, meaning he didn’t want to get involved or hear about murder. So maybe there was sort of a line between the two long time companions and the deal was that same line never to be crossed. But now they both crossed the line. Obviously, Accardo expected from Volpe to lie in front of the jury regarding the robbery since his whole family was implicated by the government. Accardo knew that if the feds had a proof that there was break-in, the possibility of implicating him in the murders was much higher. But now, his companion implicated him and his family. So one thing led to another and five days after the hearings, Mike Volpe left Accardo’s home and was never seen or heard from ever again. Some say he was dismembered and then thrown into a barrel filled with acid, some say he a crashed in some car and then thrown in a junk yard, and some even say that he was banished by Accardo in some foreign country, which I hardly believe is the truth. My personal pick is the second opinion, that Volpe was gone all together with his own car. No matter the deal, in Accardo’s mind Volpe talked and he had to go. That’s it.


But now the government was also mad and there was a good reason for them to be because they were the guilty ones for not protecting Volpe after his testimony. Even if he refused any government protection, they should’ve arrested him and at least place him in custody since the whole universe knew that by telling the truth, it was the end of him. And because of mistakes such as this one, sometimes the government looses its trust among the people. So the feds picked up a search warrant and showed up in front of Accardo’s home. In fact this time the feds secured a search warrant for the premises of the house for the purpose of locating personal effects including keys, wallet, credit cards, jewellery, clothing or any kind of belongings of Volpe. No one from the family was inside because Accardo and his wife were again vacationing in California, and his kids were with their families. So somebody called for Accardo’s daughter Linda, who in turn quickly arrived at the scene while throwing threats and bad words at the agents. When inside, the agents ransacked the whole place and they managed to find Accardo’s walk-in safe in his basement and inside they discovered somewhere around $275,000, two revolvers and a pair of diamond cufflinks. The cash was stashed in 55 stacks of $5,000 each and so the feds immediately “packed” everything up and took it to their “lab” for further investigation.


Again, the aging crime boss’ vacation was ruined since he was again forced to come back home to Chicago. When Accardo heard about the bad news, story goes that he again went “nuts” and immediately called for his lawyer Carl Walsh and filed for an appeal. During the hearings, the prosecutors suggested that the money had evidentiary value because it might’ve been possible evidence of a motive for the alleged burglary of Accardo's home. But Walsh said that even if the rumour was true, the government still had no right to maintain custody of the money because the property seized was taken from the alleged victim, instead of the alleged burglar. After that the government also suggested that the cash might be used as the evidence of "perjury" against the Accardo family during the hearings regarding the robbery. Again, even if this was true also, there was no sign of any kind of perjury since the Accardos decided to keep their mouths shut which was far from lying about any event. So one thing led to another and Accardo got his stash back, which was not something unusual since his whole criminal career he always somehow managed to beat the law.


The last chance the government had against Accardo, regarding the missing Mike Volpe, was taking his long time friend Nick Palermo before a grand jury under a grant of immunity from prosecution. It was the same tactic that got Sam Giancana in jail years ago and so the same happened to Palermo. On January 3, 1979, he refused to testify allegedly because he feared the emotional stress would further damage his already weak heart. But after hearing from a psychiatrist who examined Palermo that in fact he was quite stable individual, the jury found him in contempt of court for continuing to refuse to testify. Palermo was present in court, but did not testify during the three-hour hearing and so in the end he was sentenced to one year in jail. Palermo knew that the long time friendship with Accardo might’ve easily been gone down the toilet if he had said one word about the whole situation and that’s why he played it smart by keeping his mouth shut and taking the rep.


Also, during the investigations, the feds somehow realized that Accardo’s attorney and personal friend Carl Walsh, as lawyer for both Volpe and Accardo, was in a position to keep Accardo informed of what Volpe have told the grand jurors as well as what he may have been prepared to tell them. So the grand jury then subpoenaed Walsh, who they believed to be one of the last persons to have seen Volpe. Usually individuals like Walsh who are constantly associated with people like Accardo, they start to known more and more Mob secrets which gives them the nickname “Mob-lawyers”. But my point is that Walsh wasn’t some ordinary criminal but instead he was an attorney for some of the top level Outfit criminals in the city of Chicago, meaning he knew his way around the law. First of all he somehow managed to refuse from accepting the subpoena but again he was ordered to appear before the grand jury on July 11, 1979. Walsh came to the grand jury room on that date but refused to enter the room and so government filed a motion for a rule for Walsh to be held in contempt. But Walsh asserted that the attorney-client relationship will be endangered if he was compelled to testify and so the district court ruled that the government could not question Walsh unless it established that the materials and information sought were not covered by the attorney-client privilege which automatically made Accardo invincible.


Many situations remained unclear regarding the whole thing, until two decades later when Outfit hitman, turned informer, Nick Calabrese decided to shed some light over some of the murders. But the main problem for the government was that by that time Tony Accardo was long gone. He passed away from natural causes in 1992, untouched by the law his whole life. His legendary viciousness gave him the image of the “Boogeyman” among Chicago’s criminal brotherhood, which out of fear, most of them kneeled in front of their long time top boss. If you stood in front of the old man, you would’ve witnessed a mean old guy, who by this time was a nothing of a man but as we can see with the previous examples that he still commanded huge and deadly respect. The whole underworld was taught a lesson, which meant that the Chicago Outfit was still in full effect and was deadly as ever. Years later, few “geriatric” burglars decided to make the same “mistake”, meaning they planned to broke in the house of another fearsome Outfit “captain” but this time the burglars played it safe because the criminal big shot was already deceased.



Nick Calabrese


But before we step forward to the last chapter, first I want to tell you a short story of another, completely different and also Outfit-connected burglary group which was formed by street criminals and corrupt men from the law. This was a quite lucrative crew which operated from the mid 1980’s up until the late 1990’s and on top of that, they had their operations all around the country. They used very sophisticated methods of stealing, thus making millions of dollars in the process. So again, to understand the origins of this particular group we have to go back in time, for at least two decades, and witness the life of one corrupt Chicago cop who managed to split his life in two ways.


William “Bill” Hanhardt became a Chicago police officer back in 1953, and through years he constantly made headlines by arresting criminals all over town. By the early 1960’s, he and one of his partners John Hinchy led the so-called “burglary squad” for the Chicago department. Like for example in 1962, while staking out a North Side home, Hanhardt encountered three robbers with a submachine gun and ended up in a shootout in which two of the suspects were killed. After that, the man became a legend and was well respected all over the country. But the thing was that his honest image was false, because in reality he received bribes from top Chicago criminals, such as Angelo Volpe. During those days, almost every cop was “on the take”, just like days of Prohibition. Volpe was a guy who mostly operated as the overseer of the policy racket for the Outfit on the city’s South Side but during this period he also worked for the top boss of the Melrose Park area and all western suburbs, Sam Battaglia. So by being one of the syndicate’s payoff men, Volpe regularly gave Hanhardt his “cut” in all forms of bribes, from $1,000 a month to a new car almost every year. From this point on, by being constantly in direct contacts with all kinds of burglars and mobsters, I personally believe that Hanhardt became so corrupt and started making and planning his own schemes, obviously with the help of the same criminals.



William “Bill” Hanhardt


By the late 1960’s, most of the upper echelon of the so-called Melrose Park crew ended up in jail and so later many of the members stepped to the so-called Grand Avenue mob and Hanhardt’s new “sponsor” became one ruthless member of that crew, known as Tony Spilotro. Now this guy was also a former burglar, current hitman and extortionist and was also one of the Outfit’s so-called “representatives” in Arizona but later during the mid 1970’s, he became the Outfit’s representative in Las Vegas, Nevada. Besides being a killer, loan shark and extortionist, Spilotro also controlled two burglary crews, one in Chicago, which later transferred to Las Vegas and became known as the “Hole in the Wall Gang”, and another one in Arizona. Spilotro’s crew in Arizona was overseen by another Outfit member known as Paul Schiro, who in turn later succeeded Spilotro as the new representative down there.



Schiro was also a killer for Outfit and was a suspect in more than few murders. For example, he was the key suspect in the “Godfather” style murders of four businessmen on July 22, 1977, in an elevator of a Park Ridge office building. He was also suspect in the 1983 murder of the Outfit’s main union extortionist Allen Dorfman. This information came from form burglar-mobster-turned-informant known as Frank Cullotta, the same guy who often associated the Daddanos back in the 1960’s. Later he transferred to Las Vegas where he worked for Spilotro as a hitman and also as professional burglar in the “Hole in the Wall” gang. Cullotta told the investigators that he had overheard some of his mob associates discussing the Park Ridge murders and saying something like "Paulie does things in bunches." In plane words, Schiro was no joke. Everybody called him the “Indian” because of his similar looks of a Native American. It was all “feathers and drums” for Schiro since Arizona was considered by the National Crime Syndicate as “open territory” and everybody had their own operations. For example, Schiro was big in the prostitution business by controlling an extensive network of massage parlors in Phoenix, Tucson and Scottsdale, which were often visited by all kinds of lawyers, politicians, businessmen and judges, who were availing themselves with prostitutes and orgies. But “pimping” prostitutes to high clientele wasn’t Schiro’s main business, but instead it was burglarising.



Paul Schiro


One of his main, and at the same time, quite lucrative schemes was stealing systematic diversion of gold and other precious metals from Motorola plants in the metropolitan Phoenix area. The whole thing started during the late 1960’s, when the Motorola Company managed to build a new plant in Tucson. But before building the first plant, story goes that they allegedly asked a favour from Sam Nanini for the land purchase. This guy was a former Chicagoan who later became a prominent Tucson businessman, who always spoke proudly of his Italian ancestry, his formation of Rock Road Construction Co. in Chicago, his Arizona property purchases which started way back in 1939, his Casas Adobes shopping center, Nanini cotton farm and plush Tucson National Golf Club. The thing was that Nanini had a quite long history of mob ties to ex-Capone gangsters from the past such as Mike Carrozzo and Louis Campagna and so with his help, the Outfit managed to place its claws into the Motorola firm. According to some reports, during the 1970’s, many millions of dollars in gold per year were being used as plating on circuit boards and in other electronic components. In turn, Schiro worked, or posed, as a cook at the Cappy’s Sandwiches bar at 51st Street, right across the Motorola factory and from that particular plant, most of the gold was being stolen. Later, the Outfit made sales of reprocessed gold bars on the international billion dollar market. Having the power over the executives at the company, the Outfit had a remarkable scheme, which was followed by silence, meaning the Motorola executives never called the cops on the sizable organized crime diversion of gold that went straight out the back door. The Outfit allegedly profited somewhere between $500,000 and $700,000 a year from the scheme but by the late 1970’s the Treasury Department had become aware of the bad situation within the Motorola section in Arizona and by the early 1980’s the government really got interested in the case and many people, or so-called “sacrificial lambs”, were placed behind bars, but the Outfit remained untouched.


By the mid 1980’s, Schiro’s second main scheme is where police officer Bill Hanhardt comes in. Now this was a very sophisticated operation which included stalking jewellery salesmen around the country and later robbing from their precious stash. The trick was that Schiro and the Outfit needed an inside information on these lucrative travellers such as their travel routes, resting places like hotels and apartments, and also private dealings. And how they planned to get that kind of information? Obviously the answer was, through Hanhardt, since he had quite an easy access to the police database and he also had the authority and people for surveillance over the targets. Most of this help came from Hanhardt’s old colleagues on the police force, since he had them all in his pocket because he was the one, who previously skyrocketed their careers. So after receiving the needed information, Schiro would send few of his specialized goons to make duplicate keys of the target’s car or home and also to collect private information from close sources. Sometimes they would send a prostitute to some rich businessman, who after a few hours usually remained only with his shorts on.


The crew was formed by a bunch of Outfit operatives, such as Sam DeStefano, William Brown, Joe Basinski, Sal Romano, Jimmy D’Antonio, Robert Paul and Guy Altobello, and all of these guys were professionals and they also knew an army of small time thieves. Some of these fellas came from a long bloodline of criminals, like for example DeStefano who in turn was the nephew of the late “Mad Sam” DeStefano, one of the Outfit’s most gruesome former members. The so-called “masterminds” of the group obviously were Schiro and Hanhardt, but the “leader of the pack”, meaning the burglary crew, was Basinski. He was a long time partner in crime with Hanhardt and he was the one who gathered the men and later directed the activities. Basinski’s job was to identify the potential targets by doing physical surveillance and running database searches, and later through telephone calls he informed his people regarding the target. If it was needed, he even recruited additional members for big time jobs and also fenced the stolen loot. Altobello’s job was to provide the other members of the crew with information regarding jewellery salespersons who conducted business with Altobello Jewelers, Inc., which was his personal jewellery store, and in addition to identifying salespersons, Altobello also provided information about the type and quality of merchandise they carried and how it was transported, their schedules, the vehicle license plates, and the type of vehicles they drove. In fact, he provided crucial information about the targets, thus making him an important and a significant contributor to the operations.


D’Antonio’s job was to provide the gang with all the needed tools and instrumentalities for the operation in order to assist in gaining access to vehicles, hotel rooms, safety deposit boxes and other locations, also tools to avoid detection or to escape law enforcement, including locksmith tools, key-making machines, related publications, automobile instruction books, automobile keys, hotel keys, key blanks, lock picks, "slim jims," smoke grenades, fake mustaches and fake beard, key cutting dies, wrenches and other hand tools, evasion devices, taser, cam set, key cutters, bullet proof vests, cameras, listening devices, and key code books. In other words, the guy had everything. Robert Paul was the guy with the mobile phones, walkie-talkies and all kinds of electronic communicators and Sal Romano knew how to handle alarms and he often travelled to Las Vegas where he operated with the “Hole in the Wall” gang, which in turn were betrayed by Romano since he wore a wire for the feds since 1979, but we’ll come to that later in the story. Now, usually the guys which did the street stuff or “dirty work” were Billy Brown, Basinski, DeStefano and Schiro or sometimes, only Schiro managed to finish the job all by himself. Schiro used simple techniques such as kicking the victim in the head, tying his hands and feet, and in the end, taking and walking away with his stash. Information from confidential informants identified Basinski and Brown, along with Schiro and D’Antonio, as members of Joseph Lombardo’s Grand Avenue Crew of the Chicago Outfit and described that group as an organized crime jewellery theft crew that worked closely with Hanhardt.

By being the real mastermind behind everything, Hanhardt has taught some of the boys on sophisticated stealing techniques, which he learned during his days as commander of the police burglary squad. He even sometimes devised the plans himself and later gave them to Schiro, who in turn would be released like a “pit-bull” after the target. If people from the Outfit were not available, Hanhardt immediately hired some of his close friends within the police force or private detectives for surveillance of their potential targets. There was also this “trick” which the thieves often used and that was the swapping of the salesman’s bag with another identical bag. With the help of this kind of trick, the gang once netted over $1,000,000 worth of diamonds in Dallas from a representative of the J. Schliff and Son Company. According to one jewellery industry official at the time “I’ve not seen anything as detailed and as lengthy as the dossiers they put together on the travelling salesmen,” thus calling the gang’s work “unprecedented.” In other words, this particular Outfit group took the burglary business on another level.


The business relationship between Hanhardt and Spilotro was quite profitable and since in the underworld money is everything, the boys had a good reason to have a lot of respect for each other. Proof for that is when in 1986, Hanhardt managed to discredit Frank Cullotta as a witness against Spilotro during a trial. Hanhardt appeared as a so-called surprise defence witnesses for Spilotro and undercut the testimony of Cullotta, which was expected to be the government's “star witness” but instead it came out to be the government’s failure, thanks to Hanhardt. In reality, Hanhardt publicly or right in front of the eyes of the public and justice system, defended the bad guys. In the end there was a mistrial and Spilotro went home. But the main problem was that short time later Spilotro and his kid brother Michael were brutally murdered and later buried in the ground in an Indiana cornfield. After the murder of the Spilotro brothers, Hanhardt’s main connection became Schiro and to tell you the truth, nothing really changed, meaning the burglary operations were always on the up and up. For example, two of their most prominent and lucrative operations included the October 8, 1984 theft of one hundred eighty Baume & Mercer watches valued at approximately $310,000 from Paul Lachterman in Glendale, Wisconsin; and also $500,000 worth of Rolex watches in Monterrey, California in 1986.


Back in 1986, right after the Spilotro murders, Hanhardt retired from the police force and left to be remembered only as an honest cop who perfectly accomplished his duty. And so, even after retiring from the Chicago Police Department, Hanhardt still continued to wield huge influence there, given how many people he had helped to find jobs and at the same time to upgrade their careers. The thing was he never retired from his other business, which was the burglary “racket”. For example, a theft of jewellery worth approximately $125,000 from a Gordon Brothers Corporation salesperson in Englewood, Ohio, which occurred in August 1989, a theft from a Gem Platinum salesperson of jewellery worth approximately $1,300,000, in Dallas, Texas, in June 1992, a theft from another Gen Platinum salesperson of jewellery worth approximately $1,000,000 in Flat Rock, Michigan, in June 1993; a theft from a H.K. Mallak, Inc. salesperson of jewellery worth approximately $240,000 in Mankato, Minnesota, on August 3, 1993; a theft from jewellery company representatives of jewels worth approximately $170,000 in Phoenix, Arizona, on May 7, 1994; and a theft from safety deposit boxes at a Columbus, Ohio hotel of jewellery and United States currency worth approximately $1,500,000, on August 27, 1994. Hanhardt was also responsible for the August 23, 1995, Esagh Kashimallak robbery, which occurred in a hotel room in Brookfield, Wisconsin, where two individuals struck the salesperson in the head, displayed a gun, tied his ankles and wrists with tape, and took his jewellery case, which contained over $500,000 gems. I mean, what can I say more?! Story goes that the time period between 1984 and 1996, the crew managed to accomplish more than 100 robberies on jewellery salespersons in at least seven states, and at least nine burglaries, which all were valued in excess of $40 million.


But as I said countless times before, every glorious story has its own end and Hanhardt's end became quite “glorious” because it started with his biggest burglary score in his whole criminal career, which occurred in 1994. That same year, during the summer, a precious jewellery show was organized at Hyatt Regency Hotel in Columbus, Ohio, which was near the Greater Columbus Convention Center, thus providing accommodations to travellers, or in this case jewellery salesmen. Two months before the happening, one of the crew members checked in the hotel under the name “Sol Gold” and asked to store valuables in the hotel's safe-deposit boxes, which were in a secure room behind the front desk. He systematically copied the keys and later gave the copy to Hanhardt who in turn was able to create a master passkey. Then the plan was for one of their female companions to enter the safe-deposit room under the name of "Mrs. Sol Gold" and to take only the most valuable gems. In the end, the safe-deposit boxes of eight gem dealers were relieved of some $2 million in valuables. It was the prefect “party” for the gang. So few days later, somebody made the female companion quite angry over something, and my life experience says that you don’t make a woman mad especially if you’re involved with her in something illegal. The same problem occurred in the Guido situation back in the 1960’s, which was described in the previous story. And as expected, she decided to inform on the gang to the FBI.


Although Hanhardt and the boys managed to hit the biggest score in their criminal lives, still a lot of damage has already been done and the worst part was that nobody was aware about it. So the feds had no problems regarding their surveillance over Hanhardt and his associates, who in turn had no problem in doing their job because as I previously said, they did not have a clue on what was really going on. But there was one huge problem for the federal squad which was assigned to catch Hanhardt and his gang, and that was the so-called “shield” which protected the suspects. The “shield” was formed by loyal colleagues of Hanhardt who worked on the police force on vital positions and blocked almost every move of the so-called “Get Hanhardt-squad”. This guy’s connections went so far that those agents even faced some initial institutional resistance within the FBI when they even first proposed for an investigation. But the good thing was that those same agents did not hesitate to explain to the public on how Hanhardt managed to prosper at the same time as a cop and a crook.


Nothing happened for almost a year, or at least that’s what the feds thought, and then in the fall of 1996, Hanhardt’s crew managed to hit the radar. In October that same year, Hanhardt, Basinski, Brown and Schiro joined on a scheme to steal watches which were valued at $500,000 from one Illinois jewellery salesman known as Paul Lachterman. They planned to steal the watches while Lachterman travelled through Wisconsin and Indiana and after that, to transport the stolen watches back to Chicago. Hanhardt and Basinski had already stolen from Lachterman back in 1984, and just for the fun of it, they decided to target him again. Between April and September of 1996, they stalked Lachterman, gathered more information on him and even managed to make a duplicate key to the trunk of his car. Basinski contacted Schiro in Phoenix, who immediately drove to Chicago, thus bringing Brown with him so he can assist in the theft. On October 1, 1996, the four conspirators followed Lachterman in two cars as he drove to Wisconsin and met with customers. On October 2, 1996, they followed him as he drove to Indiana and there, while Lachterman was in a restaurant, Basinski and the others used the duplicate key and stole a case of watches valued at $58,000, which had been provided by the FBI. Realizing that the case contained only a fraction of the value they expected, the burglars quickly returned the case to the trunk. They obviously received false info regarding the loot, which in reality unknowingly saved them from being arrested by the feds.


But the problem was that they weren’t quite saved because the whole thing was in fact a trap, since the feds had it all on a video tape and Lachterman knowingly was the bait. Surveillance showed the burglary crew operating while right across them, several FBI agents sat in a van and were videotaping the whole scene. The agents became happy the most when they successfully filmed one of the look outs in the robbery which was Hanhardt himself. The feds continued with their surveillance and by the beginning of 1998, all of the suspects were arrested, including Hanhardt and Schiro, and they all were shown videos and played tape-recording of an intercepted conversations which was a quite bad thing for all of them.


According to some reports, the government went really hard against Hanhardt by ordering his trial on October 16, 2001, only two weeks after he had undergone a testicular cancer surgery. On that morning, his counsel asked for a continuance because of his client's inability to be in court but later it came to light that Hanhardt had allegedly attempted a suicide by drug overdose and was in the hospital. Based on that information, the court found that Hanhardt was responsible for his failure to appear in court and so the court issued an arrest warrant, staying it until October 20, 2001, when the defendant was due in court and if Hanhardt did not show up on the 20th then the warrant was to have been executed. On October 25, 2001, nine days after the case was scheduled to begin trial, he entered a blind plea to the indictment and was the last of all defendants then before the court to enter a guilty plea. His lawyer read a one and a half page statement to the court that admitted to the elements of the offence. After the government detailed the evidence that would have been presented against him, Hanhardt responded, "I don't agree with everything he (Assistant United States Attorney Scully) said." When the court asked Hanhardt whether he was pleading guilty to Count One as alleged in the indictment, Hanhardt responded, "In its entirety, no, sir." During his sentencing hearing in May 2002, then-Assistant U.S. Attorney John Scully said “His greed and loyalty was to the mob and to his mob-associated jewellery theft crew, which were more important to him than his family, the Chicago Police Department or the citizens that he was sworn to protect.” In the end, Hanhardt pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering conspiracy and one count of conspiring to transport stolen property across state lines in eight heists in seven states over more than a decade. He agreed to pay $4,845,000 in restitution for stolen jewellery, gems and watches and was eventually sentenced to 12 years behind bars. As for Paulie Schiro, on May 12, 2002, he was sentenced to nearly 5 1/2 years in prison on charges for aiding a sophisticated theft ring. Schiro's lawyer, Paul Wagner, said his client admitted joining in the thefts in late 1992, well after the ring had begun stalking and stealing from jewellers but nobody believed in the story. In the end, Schiro apologized to the court and the victims of the thefts, saying, "I'm sorry I got involved in this."



Hanhardt in later years


During his stay in prison, Hanhardt dealt with a series of health problems, including cancer and heart disease, but according to some reports, he remained strong and focused on getting back home to his family. Hanhardt was very close connected to his family, since he and his wife Angeline had been a couple for 72 years in total, and on top of that they had 18 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren. Many people said that Hanhardt had a presence and sometimes was larger than life but after the conviction, only few people remained to say some positive things regarding Hanhardt and the truth was that they were all overshadowed by the case. Story goes that there was this tremendous physical toughness about him, but an even more powerful mental toughness, especially in the part of the brain where criminal thoughts thrive. As additional info, Hanhardt survived jail and defeated cancer but on December 30, 2016, he died from complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at the Highland Park Hospital. As for his buddy Paul Schiro, was again convicted for racketeering and involvement in murder in the infamous Family Secrets trial and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.


And finally, the last story of this long burglary saga is about the theft of an egg sized diamond from a fancy London jewellery store, known as the Marlborough Diamond, which became the target of two Chicago Outfit associates and at the same time professional burglars and hijackers, known as Joseph "Witherhand" Scalise and Arthur “The Brain” Rachel. Since, they both grew up in tough criminal environments and around “connected” criminals, these two fellas pulled off one of the greatest robberies in which the Chicago Outfit had its claws in, thus leaving their mark in the history of the burglary business.


Joseph Scalise, or Jerry as he was known, was born in December, 1937, and grew up in very hard conditions and on top of that, he was born minus four fingers on his left hand, thus receiving the nickname "Witherhand". So I believe that one just cannot imagine the toughness of Scalise’s childhood and there’s no question on why he choose to become a criminal. His criminal, and quite “colourful” record states that until 1970, he was arrested almost 20 times and also convicted for offences such as robbery, burglary, damaging property, numerous weapons offences, assaults, larceny and also obstruction of justice. Like in June, 1961, Scalise was sentenced to 5 years probation after he was convicted for burglary and later that same year, in November, Scalise was again convicted for a theft and this time he was sentenced to 75 days in jail. By the late 1960’s, Scalise enjoyed to company of up and coming criminals in the so-called Mob-business world, such as Joe Ferriola and Albert Tocco. By this time the Outfit was heavily involved in the car theft and “chop-shop” businesses and that’s when Scalise’s first big fall occurred in December, 1971, when he got convicted for possession of stolen car parts from an interstate shipment and was sentenced to 8 years in prison. When he got out, Scalise became connected with two Outfit terrorists such as Jimmy Inendino, Butch Petrocelli, Harry Aleman and Gerry Scarpelli. In such company, Scalise became involved in murder, like driving the van with a hit team which was unleashed to find one William Dauber, a known Outfit hitman, who was shot to death along with his wife Charlotte on July 2, 1980.


His buddy, Arthur Rachel was no saint either because he spent a big part of his life in prison. He was born on May 27, 1938, and grew up around Taylor Street and he was also a Mob connected guy who loved to steal, while doing loads of drugs and drinking tons of booze. Rachel’s quite “colourful” criminal record started when he was just 16 years old and in September, 1956, when he was convicted and sentenced to 3 years in jail for an assault with the intent to kill, larceny and armed robbery, but after year he was paroled. On January 9, 1958, Rachel was again convicted and sentenced to prison, but this time up to 15 years for counterfeiting. He and few other individuals printed phoney government bonds and travellers checks with the total values of $300,000. After 12 years of battle with the law, Rachel was released but again in 1972, he also pleaded guilty to the robbery of a savings and loan association office on the city’s South Side, in which $14,333 was taken. He was sentenced to 6 years imprisonment and during this prison term, Rachel learned how to operate on these new electronic things which were known as “computers”. According to the intelligence tests which were administered to him in prison, Rachel was considered a genius thus receiving the nickname “The Brain”. I also believe that during that same prison term, he also had the pleasure to meet his future buddy in crime, Jerry Scalise. They got out of prison around the same time, and while being thirsty for the old mighty dollar, they immediately went to “work”.



Scalise and Rachel


As I previously pointed out that by this time Scalise hung around one quite murderous Outfit faction which was controlled by one “capo” known as Joe Ferriola. So being in the company of names such as Petrocelli or Aleman, soon Scalise found himself being involved in at least six murders but the thing was that he wasn’t the everyday natural born killer. I mean don’t get me wrong, Scalise could’ve killed you in a matter of seconds but I personally believe that his prime passion was being a burglar. According to one wiretapped conversation between Scalise and one other individual, Scalise advised that being a burglar is the only criminal profession in which you don’t have to worry about being destroyed by competition because usually there’s none.


So right after the sensational and double murder of Billy Dauber and his wife, and since the situation became too hot, Scalise decided to take some time off with his buddy Rachel. The duo then decided to take a “vacation trip” to London, England, where they planned to drink warm beer and taste the famous fish and chips, but first they planned to satisfy their needs, which was not gambling or narcotics, but instead it was burglarizing. By the end of August, 1980, the newspapers in Chicago announced that the famous Marlborough Diamond was going to be placed for sale at one famous jewellery store in London. Graff Diamonds, as it was known, was a store which was located at the very fashionable Knightsbridge section of London and the owner Laurence Graff, publicly announced that the highly expensive diamond was finally for sale. Previously, the 45 carat diamond belonged to Gladys Marie, the Dowager Duchess who was married with the ninth Duke of Marlborough, who in turn was Winston Churchill’s cousin. But when Gladys Marie died in 1977, her family decided to sell the jewel, which was valued at $900,000. So when Scalise and Rachel saw this, they knew that their trip was going to be quite profitable. As we can see in this and also in some of the previous examples, that most of these burglars had quite crazy ideas which any normal person would at least first consider them, but these guys went “straight for the kill”, no questions asked. And while this being said, in September, 1980, Scalise and Rachel took the first plane from O’Hare Airport straight to London.


When they arrived, both gave the image of well dressed businessmen who were there on a business trip and pleasure at the same time. They checked into a hotel and went straight to the “place of business” which they planned to investigate thoroughly. First, they noticed that there was only one security guard at the store and second, they also noticed that the cops, who patrolled the street, were “armed” only with rubber sticks and nothing else. Also, I really don’t know if they smuggled it or bought it, but somehow the duo planned to use a hand grenade, instead of a gun to scare the people and possible security at the jewellery store, where the diamond was located. So on September 11, 1980, Scalise dressed up like he was about to buy the Big Ben Tower, and entered the Graff Diamonds store shortly after the opening. The idea was for the robbery to occur in the morning hours, just to elude any big number of possible customers in the store. So when he entered, Scalise was graciously greeted by the security guard who in turn showed him the way into the premises. Scalise started viewing some of the jewels which were placed around the store while at the same time eyeballing and counting the number of customers which was about two or three the most. Suddenly, he was asked by the manager of the store if he needed any help, and Scalise asked for the Marlborough Diamond because he allegedly was interested in buying it. Thinking he was a customer, one of the employees took out the diamond and the moment Scalise laid his eyes on it, he pulled out a gun and in a very calmed tone, he ordered the staff and customers to lie down on the floor. In a matter of few seconds, Rachel walked in with a fake beard, while waving a hand grenade and with his point finger over his nose, thus giving everybody in the store the sign for silence. Scalise ordered for one of the employees to pack the diamond into a briefcase, and on top of that he also ordered another employee to pack another briefcase with all of the most expensive jewels in the store, including a diamond ring worth $482,000 and African ruby worth $72,300. In a matter of few minutes, the two robbers fled the store and got into a getaway car, which was a Fiat Mirafiori parked about 50 yards away from the crime scene. While driving, somewhere along the way Scalise allegedly arranged for a London cabby to drop the stolen loot in a mailbox and then to be sent to unknown location.


The whole “operation” looked like taking a candy from a baby, since the robbers quickly got what they wanted by picking out all the very special pieces and on top of that, no one was hurt and everybody around was unaware of what just took place. But there was one “small” problem which proved that the robbers were less efficient in covering their tracks rather than they were with the robbery. The problem was that one of the store employees ran out and followed the robbers and during the process, he somehow managed to note the registration number of the getaway car they used to escape. Now I’m going to show you an example where you can see the low level of intelligence of these gangsters, like the “unthinkable” thing which they did by using their real names when they rented the getaway car. So while the British investigators figured it out on who were the robbers, by now both men went straight to the airport and managed to board their Chicago-bound flight without any incident. But while they were up in the air, the British police found out about where the criminals came from, and so they quickly notified the Chicago FBI office about the whole situation. So when Scalise and Rachel stepped off the British Airways plane at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, they were immediately arrested by the feds and both have been held at Chicago's Metropolitan Correctional Center.



Scalise (second from left) and Rachel (first from right) being arrested by the feds


Now the main problem was that the British government and police force wanted the two criminals back to England to stand trail and so from this point on, the Chicago agents gave all kinds of deals and tried to convince Scalise and Rachel to become informants in return for shorter sentences or the chance to serve their remaining years in the U.S. But Scalise and Rachel have shown that they were true loyalists because they’ve decided not to violate the Outfit’s code of silence, because they knew what the real consequences were if someone decided to talk. So the two robbers fought an ongoing battle against their extradition to Europe for almost four years and Scalise always said to the feds that “You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.” In 1983, Rachel filed up a $6 million lawsuit while seeking $2 million each from Scotland Yard, Chicago police and the U.S. Secret Service, contending that his constitutional rights were violated when the agencies “conspired” to search his West Side home for the stolen gems after his arrest. But soon his lawsuit was denied since the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean realized that Rachel's suit was in fact a delaying tactic to keep him from being sent back to Britain for trial. So one thing led to another and in 1984, they were extradited to England, where they were immediately convicted and sent to 15 years in jai on the Isle of White prison, which was one of the worst prisons at the time. As for the Marlborough Diamond and the rest of the jewels, well they were never recovered since neither Scalise nor Rachel ever talked about them. Some reports say that Scalise has mailed the stones to New York, where they were allegedly “welcomed” by Scalise’s sister. Now, my personal belief is that the robbery was an Outfit-sanctioned job, and that the precious stones have ended up in their hands but I also believe that both Scalise and Rachel never saw a dime from the stolen loot.


There’s an old saying which I really don’t remember clearly, but it went something like “there’s always something lucky even in the unluckiest situation”, meaning while Scalise and Rachel sat in some dark UK prison cells, back home the FBI has declared war against the Outfit and many top bosses and their underlings were sent to quite long prison terms and on top of that many of their syndicate “friends” were being murdered along the way. I mean yes, the two burglars stayed in one of toughest prisons in the world but still they managed to avoid the long bloodshed and the government’s so-called mobster hunt, which by now has spread all around U.S. While in prison, the two Chicagoans had the pleasure to meet a different breed of criminals such as terrorists. In those days, the English prisons were filled with members and associates of the Irish Republican Army or the IRA, which was considered by British authorities as terrorist organization, considering all of shooting and bombings which occurred during that period. But this rebellious organization was mostly financed by illegal operations, and one being burglary. So my point is that both Rachel and Scalise had the time in their hands to meet a lot of these so-called Irish hoodlums who taught the two Chicagoans on many new stealing techniques. For example, drilling holes in the walls of houses, then removing the whole windows, and then using toothpaste to disguise the holes, a technique which was often used by the Irish Republican Army men.

Slowly time passed by and after 9 years the notorious duo, both in their mid 50’s, was released from prison and they returned to Chicago, never to be seen in England, ever again. Home at last, but things were quite changed, meaning the long time Outfit leader Tony Accardo was no longer among the living, many other top guys such as Gus Alex were recently sent to jail and the syndicate’s hierarchy was completely changed, which by now allegedly was led by one former burglar and individual from one of the previous stories, known as John DiFronzo. Story goes that during the 1990’s, the Chicago Outfit was no longer taxing the burglars on everything they stole, meaning only on the big jobs, so this meant that the lower level associates sometimes had the chance to take care for themselves. As for the two “fresh-out of prison” burglars, one of them took a different path in his life, at least for a while, and the other, well he sticked to the old ways and top of that, he even “improved” his criminal activities. Story goes that after his prison term in Europe, Rachel has taken a softer life style by spending most of his days alone, reading books, painting, and from time to time, he would go out and hang out with some of remaining old criminals. But old man Scalise, he continued with his criminal activities, mostly because he belonged to the Outfit. So now, besides burglaries, he was also involved in the selling of narcotics. In 1998, Scalise was arrested and later pleaded guilty to intent to distribute cocaine and for that crime he served six and a half years and got out of prison in 2006, at the age of 69.


Even though he spent all of his life time as a high profile criminal, still Scalise did not have any extra cash on the side, or in other words, he was always broke. The same story goes for his old partner in crime Rachel, who by now did not manage to “survive” the ordinary and everyday lifestyle but instead he decided to join his old buddy in new criminal ventures. As you can see, both of them were in their late 60’s and they were not getting any younger, but still their criminal blood boiled like never before. Many of the criminals at their age, who survived the 1970’s and 80’s, at least had 20 or 30 thousands of dollars hidden somewhere in case of “rainy days”, but not these guys. These fellas were pure criminals who planned to live like that for the rest of their lives and all of the money they made through the years mostly went to their poor families or to the individuals they were in debt to. The thing was that they obviously lived for the moment of breaking and entering and getting away with something precious. According to Scalise, he once said that “You feel like a king when you’re involved in a robbery, there’s no high like it. The whole thing is like a thrill. You want it again and again.” So to make things even more interesting, Scalise brought another “friend of his” into the “gang” known as Robert Pullia. Now this guy was another old timer who spent all of his life time as a criminal, by constantly going in and out of prison. He was arrested more than 20 times for offences such as assault, invasion of private property, burglary, narcotics and even murder. For example, back in the 1960’s, Pullia served one year in jail for burglary and almost 20 years later, in 1986 he was convicted for possession of a large quantity of cocaine and was sentenced to 10 years incarceration. In few simple words, Pullia was the same “lowlife” as Scalise and Rachel. So now, the three s-called geriatric criminals were back with another criminal plan and this time, the main point was, after the job was done, to walk free.


At the beginning of 2007, the newly formed crime trio conducted extensive surveillance over the Harris Bank branch, which was located in La Grange, Illinois. They carefully learned the time periods on when the cash was brought in or taken out of the bank by United Armour Truck Services and they always looked at the form of bags in which the cash was placed in. For example, if one of the guards carried the bag only with one hand, this meant that the bag was too light, meaning there was small amount of cash in it. But if the guard carried the bag with two hands or the bag was placed on a dollie, well obviously this meant that the bag was quite full with money. They even counted the number of customers who went in and out of the bank on daily basis. According to Scalise himself “You never know when the guy is going to come out with the big bag. You know, he could come here next week and comes with the wheeler, you gotta go, if everything’s right.” Also, few months before the robbery, the “boys” managed to steal a so-called “working-van”, which was specially modified by adding a gun port. The gun port permitted them to shoot out of the van if some armed guards or law enforcement officials approach them or attempt to apprehend them. The main plan was for Pullia and Rachel to enter the bank and for Scalise to act as the getaway driver. This wasn’t some coincidence but instead it was on purpose since Scalise had one deformed hand which can be very easily identified. So this is just another proof of what I talked about at the beginning of the whole story, regarding the three types of burglars, well these fellas belonged to the group of professionals. Once again, the stage was set.


On July 5, 2007, about 10 a.m., the criminal trio sat in their grey van and watched the Harris Bank branch, located in La Grange, Illinois. Suddenly, Scalise started up the engine and drove off right in front of the bank’s entrance. Then, Rachel and Pullia got out of the van, with plastic masks over their faces and revolvers in their hands and as they entered the building, they ordered everyone inside the bank to get down on the floor. Scalise placed himself in the center of the lobby and with the help of his gun, he controlled all of the employees and costumers, while Pullia used one the plastic containers as a stepping stool to climb over the teller counter and went directly to the back area of the bank where he picked up two plastic bags filled with cash, which in turn waited to be picked up by the United Armour Services between 11a.m. and 12 a.m. Once he had the cash in his hands, Pullia quickly threw the bags over the teller counter, climbed back over to the side of the lobby, placed the two bags in the plastic container, picked it up and fled the scene altogether with Scalise. Outside they were greeted by Scalise, who in turn drove off like a driving maniac. As a result of this carefully planned robbery, in just few minutes the “boys” managed to getaway with $119,000.


At first the investigators were obviously unaware on who might’ve been responsible for the robbery but later, after they watched the surveillance tapes from the bank and also found the abandoned working-van, they came to few conclusions. For example, the tapes from the robbery clearly showed that one of the robbers wore a distinctive watch on his wrist, with large face, as well as a dark band. Later, after viewing some previous photos, the investigators came to conclusion that the same type of watch belonged to Rachel. Also, the physical approximate height and weight descriptions which were provided by eye witnesses and camera recordings, matched the approximate physical appearance of Rachel and Pullia. And on top of that, from the working-van, which was later recovered by the police, DNA samples were taken from the steering wheel and gear shift area and it was later determined that it matched to Scalise. So from this point on, the feds were quite positive on who was responsible for the robbery but this time they decided to play smart.


At first the feds did not arrest the three suspects, but instead they’ve decided to place them under intensive surveillance methods, such as wire tapping their phones and above all, wire tapping their everyday cargo van, and just wait for the right moment for the “boys” to slip. The point of all of this was for Scalise and company to think that they got away unnoticed by the feds and also let them have the illusion of being forgotten by the government. The feds managed to hear all kinds of stuff, from how to kill someone, to some of their future criminal plans. For example, Scalise one said “You want to flatten [kill] someone, put on a black sweatshirt with the hood up and baggy pants and blast. Then run out the block and have your work car. They'll think it's a kid because they all run. Put on a black sweatshirt with the hood up and baggy pants and blast. Then run up the block. They’ll think it’s a kid.” Then the elderly men then shifted the conversation to possible plans for robbing warehouses filled with illegal marijuana. According to Scalise, there was this dish guy, who was in the “grass business”, and that this man has visited with Scalise and told him about some Mexicans who were bringing in big loads of marijuana. But during the conversation, Scalise laughed and said that he did not want to help the man locate a so-called “marijuana warehouse”. Later, Scalise explained to his two companions in the van “You know what, we gotta stick to our own racket. ‘Cause we don’t have too much competition. That’s right, nobody’s doing nothin’. They never did, they never did this stuff anyway. That’s what I say, you go around the corner, guy’s jump out. They’re fucked. Yeah, they’re looking for kids like this, with their hoods on.” And after awhile the “not getting them arrested” tactic which was made by the feds really worked because Scalise truly believed that he and the gang got away with it by claming that “There’s no coppers that know us today. . . what we do they don’t know” and as we can see, Scalise highly underestimated the abilities of the federal government.


After listening for more than few days, the feds managed to hit the so-called “jackpot”. After awhile, Scalise and the boys started talking about a bank heist in the LaGrange area and their intentions of robbing it. Their planned target was the First National Bank of LaGrange and the trio immediately started their surveillance techniques over the bank, while being followed by the feds. From approximately December, 2009, until April, 2010, federal agents observed the trio on at least 10 occasions conducting their regular Thursday morning surveillances of the armoured car picking up bulk cash from the bank. The feds listened to their intentions to use three loaded pistols, including a Mac 11, three black ski masks, mace and goggles, as well as stolen “switch vehicles”. Usually during surveillances of potential targets, the criminals use their private cars, but at the day of the planned crime, they use so-called “work” or “switch” cars, which in most cases are in fact stolen and were stored in rented garages. During their drive the three men, among other things, also discussed the use of scanners to intercept law enforcement communications.


But during the recording of their conversations, the feds stumbled upon another more controversial subject or a bizarre twist, on which the boys planned to execute in near future. The conversation started between Scalise and Pullia and was mostly regarding the recent seizure of huge amounts of cash, jewellery and firearms at the residence of Chicago Outfit big shot Frank Calabrese Sr. They also talked about some previous cases in which some of deceased crime bosses, such as Tony Accardo and Joe Ferriola, had safes in their residences because they did not trust banks. In the end, Scalise mentioned deceased crime boss known as Angelo LaPietra, who built his own house and allegedly had a safe somewhere in it, and that’s when the feds realized that the boys were planning to rob the house of the late Outfit “capo”. In fact, Scalise unknowingly explained to the feds the whole plan. Here’s what he said: “From day one, the upstairs windows. 'Cause I remember when he (LaPietra) built that house. The upstairs windows have never been opened. If you can get up there, it will not be alarmed. Art (Rachel) checked out Maggie's (LaPietra’s wife) daughter's house, and there are no alarms on the second floor.” Then Pullia added: “She spots you over there, fuck 'em. She, she walks in while we are there we will grab it, fuck it, because we'll be masked up anyways. Fuck her. Put the arm on her and walk her back, any alarm goes off we will kill ya.” During the conversation, Scalise also showed a small dosage of personal hatred against the late LaPietra by stating: “He was a miserable person…who after his release from prison would sit in a chair in a corner and stare at people. Every little thing made him nuts.” So in plain words, they hoped to find a secret stash of jewels and valuables at the residence, which were allegedly stashed by the late LaPietra who died back in 1999, and if they were caught by his daughter, their plan was to scare and threaten her at the same time or maybe even kill her. And so instead of chasing them for planning a bank robbery, the feds immediately changed their plans.


On April 5, 2010, somewhere around the morning hours Scalise met with another “friend of his” from the Outfit known as James Inendino a.k.a. “Jimmy I” and Scalise asked his buddy to find out on who was usually house sitting at the LaPietra residence. Later, Inendino talked to the some people and received information that there was nobody there however in the end Scalise agreed that “there’s gotta be somebody there.” On April 8, 2010, at approximately 8:00 p.m., the trio appeared near the LaPietra residence and engaged in what was believed to be a counter-surveillance driving, like rounding the residence etc. They were equipped with almost everything. For example, Scalise had a flashlight and black gloves and was wearing a black baseball cap, a black windbreaker, a black fishing vest with pockets, and a bandana, which he could pull up around his mouth or around his neck. Pullia and Rachel both were wearing black pants, black shirts, black knit hats, and black gloves. In their van they had a police scanner, which was constantly playing police transmission and they also had some glass cleaner, as well as three battery-powered drills, various other tools, saw blades, a six foot ladder, one large tool bag, three small tool bags, black tape, flashlights, various sets of black gloves, a cellular telephone, and a tool box. Again, the stage was set.


Scalise was behind the wheel and he parked the van on the south side of the house and they all just watched. Scalise said that he could see right in and that the blinds were open on one of the windows. So Scalise and Pullia quickly got out and went straight to the window which was located on the southwestern corner of the residence and started drilling holes so they could take down the whole window and easily enter. As for Rachel, he stayed in the van and acted as a lookout. As the burglars worked on their “task”, suddenly dozens of FBI agents and police patrol cars appeared out of nowhere and quickly arrested them. In a matter of few seconds, Scalise has realized that he has been followed and bugged by the feds all this time but obviously it was too late. When another group of federal agents arrested Rachel while sitting in the van, he tried to act like he did not know what was going on. He said: “What is this all about?” and one of the agents replied “It’s about the house over there”, while pointing with his finger in direction of the LaPietra residence. The trio was quickly taken into custody and the day was saved, thanks to the feds.





LaPietra’s residence


Now I know at first the whole situation sounds funny, meaning the feds spending quite a lot of time and money for three old gangsters who planned a bank robbery and home invasion, while other gangs ran wild all across the city. But the reality was that these old fellas were equally dangerous as any other young and violent “gang banger”. During the electronic surveillance, the feds heard plans about possible murders of informants and methods of disposing the body and also, dealings in narcotics. So my point is that the looks, age and behaviour did not make any difference. In the end, all three suspects were convicted and sentenced to 9 years in prison, which was sort of a life sentence, given their age. They nonetheless remained closemouthed about everything they stole or were involved in, because according to Scalise’s long time defence lawyer Edward Genson “They’re old school, the last of a dying breed. It’s just the way they are.” Even though most of their lives they spent in prison, both Scalise and Rachel managed to survive the bloody era of the 1970’s, the government’s hunt during the 1980’s and early 90’s, and again they missed the whole Family Secrets trial during the 2000’s. Under a lot of pressure, they never opened their mouths and remained loyal but don’t get fooled by their so-called honour. They were one rare example, compared to some of the previous examples, but the problem was that they weren’t some conservative thieves but instead they didn’t know when to stop.



From left to right: Pullia, Scalise and Rachel


In reality, there’s no honour among thieves and it’s been like that forever. Sometimes they lie to each other, sometimes they steal from each other, and if things get too hot, sometimes they even kill each other, just to save their own skin. In plane words, forget the honour. So now I’m going to remind you regarding the first quote at beginning of this whole story, which is taken from a wiretapped conversation between one of the syndicate’s smartest individuals known as Murray Humphreys and one other Outfit individual, and in it we can see Humphrey’s dislike and disrespect towards the thieves. During the conversation, he even makes a distinction between members of the Outfit and Chicago’s brotherhood of thieves. According to Humphreys, his cohorts within Chicago’s crime syndicate were different, meaning they had more loyalty and respect, rather than the thieves and robbers which they cooperated with on daily basis. And to tell you the truth, Humphrey’s might’ve been right since many of the informants were mostly burglars, robbers and all kinds of thieves. But deep inside I personally admire the thieves on one thing and that is their confidence and courage, or in one word, their boldness, and also using the style of “the most conspicuous is the least obvious”.


Today, the activity of burglarizing or robbing is on a lower level but it’s certainly far from finished. It’s a “racket” which will never go away, meaning it will be always present for the world’s wrongdoers. If ever a town’s mystique was founded on cops and robbers, it is Chicago. As we can see, in the past there were more examples of high profile jewel heists or stealing expensive art, and even crazy examples of burglarizing the homes of Mafia bosses. It was a time when master thieves, who were the best in the business, lurked the streets of Chicago and mingled with big time crime lords. It is not a coincidence that during the 1970’s and 80’s, many film studios made movies about thieves with funky music in the background, thus creating a glorious image, and also it was not a coincidence that guys like Bill Hanhardt and Jerry Scalise, all were taken in some of the most famous crime movies as technical advisors, such as “Thief” and “Public Enemies”. The old movie scenes, with the “heart-warming” sight of an old-fashioned burglar penetrating a bank vault or few robbers with masks and machineguns entering a bank, are slowly swept away by a rising tide of movies about boring online and computer frauds.

The End

Some great info, TooDoped. One thing you can count on is that Accardo would be very "insulated" when it came to handing down orders. I bet Aiuppa was involved with Cerone when the word came to eliminate the burglars. Accardo was always 2 or 3 steps out from issuing orders. As you said, he was one smart gangster.

I would agree about Volpe and his Honda......never found and long gone.

Carl Walsh was also one smart lawyer. His son represented Accardo after Sr. Passed. Actually, Carl senior prosecuted Accardo durning the Hollywood Ext Trial. I believe the case took place in N.Y. Accardo was detained and probably spent a night in jail (opinion), but as always, he wasn't prosecuted. Walsh was an Asst. D.A. at the time.

Very cool TooDoped. Maybe after we have more info from the PK street crew trial, you can add that. If a trial ever happens. Koroluk already took a plea to save his wife from being prosecuted, and I haven't heard anything more about when Panozzo's trial will start.

@GaryMartin thanks a lot. By the way how are you?Long time no see. Regarding Accardo...as you said he was a quite smart guy who always removed himself from a dangerous situation more than few times. But he wasnt always like that. Maybe he larned his lesson after the meat scandal and later the tax trial but even during that period some of the top guys such as Ricca and Giancana made the same mistake, meaning, having contacts with low level associates. Ricca paid the price by going to trial and so he had to tell on Cerone, who in turn took the rep so the old boss can walk away free. No wonder Cerone's nickname was "lackey". As for Walsh and company such as Brodkin or Bieber, these guys sometimes also acted as recruiting team for the syndicate.

@Slick also thank you for the additional info. I totally forgot about that case.

This is FANTASTIC TooDoped!!! Great stuff!

Even small towns had big bank robbers :-)

1972 United California Bank Robbery, Laguna Niguel | Orange ...
www.octhen.com/.../1972-united-california-bank-rob...Cached

Nice Work Toodoped

Thanks guys I really appreaciate it

Toodoped: You are the Outfit virtuoso man. This is great stuff

Thank you for the kind words goldhawk and also thanks for the support

Totally agree. Even though I'm a "Small Family" guy, I certainly respect your "Big City" knowledge.

Thanks a lot FOH, i really appreciate it since its comming from an knowledgeable poster such as yourself.

Im not sure if you know but some time ago i wrote a story, which is also Outfit related, regarding the villiage of Burnham and its not about a crime family but still its a "small town" story

I swear, you compile these and put em all in one book, and u might make a true crime best sellers list.

I am so serious, GREAT WORK MAN!!!! This is like the bypass crew on steroids, so the Casino robbery stuff was even more of a widespread thing? Like an actual organized racket! Ima have to read this one again. I think you could sell these articles online lol!!!

Thanks Cabrini and thank you for the support. This is the second time you're telling me to start selling my articles, and maybe ill take your advice and ill start charging you 50 bucks a piece

50 might be a little steep, lol

Hate to be an impatient fanboy, but how long you think before you drop your Outfit drug article?

Two weeks tops

I finally had some peace and quiet to read this. I appreciate you talking the time to research and write these mini-novels. So much information is provided and it all flows so nice. That fucking Accardo. Thank you again Toodoped.

You're welcome blueracing347 and thanks for the constant support.cheers

How did you know that Peanuts and Giancana shared a cell across from Schang? I haven't read that. Have read and heard d'argento went to kill Schang.

bump

Very interesting read