Here is an interesting old link about pittsburgh:
http://old.post-gazette.com/regionstate/20001106mobhistory2.aspSept. 13, 1931. Joseph Siragusa, 49, a bootlegger known as the "Yeast Baron" of Allegheny County, is preparing for his morning shave in the basement bathroom of his Squirrel Hill mansion.
His face covered with lather, he walks into the main room of the basement and finds himself facing three men with guns.
He wheels and runs for the staircase.
Too late.
Five bullets rip into his chest and face.
He falls, grasping a stairway post, as two holy pictures tacked to the post fall onto his body.
When police arrive, they find a bizarre scene.
As Siragusa lies lifeless beneath a string of rosary beads, his prized parrot, Polly, shrieks from a cage nearby.
"Poor Joe! Poor Joe!"
"Two hours later she was still repeating her lament," read the account in The Pittsburgh Press, "while two canaries in a second basement chorused funeral tones."
Such was the death of one of Pittsburgh's earliest mob bosses.
It wasn't the first spectacular killing, or the last.
Chicago has its Scarface Al Capone and New York its Lucky Luciano, but Pittsburgh is not without its own bloody mob history.
The Western Pennsylvania mob is one of 24 traditional Mafia families in the United States, and its rise and decline has mirrored that of families in other cities.
The mob grew from the bootlegging years of the 1920s as immigrants seized economic opportunity. It became entrenched by alternately intimidating and protecting urban communities. It flourished for five decades despite internal power struggles.
And in the end, it was crippled by a combination of its own greed and relentless law enforcement.
Origins
Organized crime, in Pittsburgh and elsewhere, is largely a story of immigrants and alcohol.
rest of the article is behind the link
