Take your time fellas, mix yourself a drink, grab a snack or light a cigarette, kick back and enjoy the story…
Cosa Nostra, also known as the Italian Mafia around the world, is made mostly of Sicilian criminals, or at least members of Italian descent, who make their vows to the crime syndicate in a secret initiation ceremonies. Cosa Nostra imbues its members with a collective mentality and requires unquestioned commitment and dedication, a value underscored by calling each clan a “Family.” Most people think that the word Mafia in general is a Sicilian body of organized crime that arrived in different parts of the world during the great wave of southern Italian immigration at the beginning of the 20th century. Well things were different, both in Italy and the United States for example. There are also other crime groups, such as the Camorra in the region of Campania and this criminal group is also very old as the Sicilian Mafia and in the old days many members of its ranks also migrated around the world and formed their own criminal enterprises. For example in the U.S. these two crime groups sometimes fought each other for profits and territories and sometimes they made alliances and became the most profitable and fearful crime syndicates. During the early 1930’s in New York the Italian mob was dominated by five crime families who formed a national crime commission of all the Italian crime bosses around the country and operated under a single rule which was the making of the all mighty dollar. The members of these so-called newly formed secret societies were mostly from Sicilian descent but they also had members from the Southern region in Italy such as Calabria and Campania.
But not all crime syndicates from around the country operated in the same form. For example, the mob in Chicago during the same era operated under one organization or crime family with only one boss. If you look at it like this, the Chicago mob was very similar to the New York crime families because they also had different crime chieftains from different territories such as the West Side, the Loop and South Side, Chicago Heights and the North Side, but all of these crime bosses answered to only one boss, who was considered as the city’s “boss of bosses.” The boss of Chicago also sat on the national crime commission table and had his own vote. Often the Italian crime families made business with crime lords from other ethnicities, such as Irish, Greek and Jewish. These crime lords never sat on the national Mafia commission and were never considered as members but they only made business together with the Italians or in other words, they were considered as associates of the crime families. But the difference in Chicago was that these non-Italian crime lords operated on high positions within the organization since the beginning and they also had their votes and the power to issue “contracts” on another man’s life. The big shots of this so-called non-Italian faction of the Chicago mob mostly stayed in the background, meaning that their criminal activities were less visible to the public and government. Some of them started their criminal careers as hitmen or did the “dirty work” but later their main role was financial backing, making connections in labor managements and politics, and also maintaining contacts with members of the judiciary and local law enforcement officials. Among the members of the Chicago mob, these men were known as the “connection guys” or “fixers”. The corrupt people within the government became merely tools of these mysterious and shadowy puppet masters who came from the corridors of Chicago’s underworld. Most of these guys were smooth talkers and mild mannered, polite and innocent looking, but as Shakespeare once said ‘The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman.” They disguised themselves as gentlemen and managed to infiltrate and corrupt the highest places of society which was their main goal. “The perfect gentleman is going to whoo you and seduce you into the mindset that he is the perfect gentleman.”- Unknown person.
This is a story about a mobster from Greek descent who went by the name of Gus Alex. Alex was the protégé of few of the most infamous Chicago mob bosses and was very intelligent person who worked as a liaison between the crime bosses and respectable individuals from the political and business world. Because of these connections he became a very valuable Outfit member and also a real “Teflon” gangster for his ability to elude the law for many years. He even shared the top position within the Italian Chicago mob and made his mark as one of the most shrewd and profitable members of that organization. In fact, he was to all that was dark and his legend beguiled the legendary. He was the mystery man who to some was evil incarnate, and to others, the nicest guy in the world. But in the end, like any other mob boss, he was undone by his own underlings.
The first connection between the Greek and Italian people began almost 3000 years ago, or 800 BC, when the Greeks began the first mass colonization of Sicily and southern peninsular Italy. The Romans called the area of Sicily and the foot of the boot of Italy, Magna Graecia (Latin, "Greater Greece"), since it was so densely inhabited by Greeks. Through the centuries, most of the Greek inhabitants of Southern Italy became entirely Italianized during the Roman Empire and later during the Middle Ages. This is due to the fact that the "traffic" between southern Italy and the Greek mainland never entirely stopped. The Greek immigration continued in the 1890s and early 20th century, due largely to economic opportunity in the U.S. This time the immigration was caused by the hardships of Ottoman rule and the Balkan Wars. Most of these immigrants that came from southern Greece, especially from the Peloponnesian provinces of Laconia and Arcadia, settled in New Jersey, New York, Florida, Louisiana and Illinois.
In this case in Chicago, by the late 1900’s many Greek immigrants settled on the city’s Near West Side, South Side, South Shore and the Loop which was on the Near South Side. Despite coming from predominantly agrarian backgrounds, Greek immigrants moved quickly into mercantile activities. During this period the Greeks were among the foremost restaurant owners, ice cream manufacturers, florists, and fruit/vegetable merchants in Chicago and operated more than 10,000 stores, 500 of them in the Loop, with aggregate sales of $2 million per day. One-third of the wholesale business in Chicago markets in South Water and Randolph Streets was conducted with Greek merchants. Also some of the shops and stores appeared in the Woodlawn district, mainly along 63rd Street between Wentworth and Cottage Grove.
Cottage Groove near 63rd Street at the beginning of the 20th century
Nikolaos “Nick” Alex (born 1874?) and his wife Christina Cipra Alex (born 1877) arrived from the Island of Crete and settled on 2050 Cottage Grove Avenue on Chicago’s Near South Side. They had seven children, including four girls and four sons, all born in the U.S. The oldest one of the four sons was James, then Sam born 1907, the third George born in 1908, and Gust “Gus” Alex born on April Fools or April 1, 1916 (according to Alex’s personal claims, he was born in 1914). Their father Nick worked as a cook in a local restaurant and their mother stayed at home and took care of her children. The Alex family we're not kings or princes. Nick and Christina came with few dollars in their pockets so they saved their hard earned money so they can educate their children. They realized that the streets of Chicago were not paved with gold and saw the every day crime that was committed by the younger hoodlums, so they decided that their children should at least receive a proper education. Their youngest son Gus attended the Ward Public School from 1920 to 1923 and then he left to a Greek School and later again returned to Ward which he attended until 1928. Gus was a quiet kid and excellent learner who managed to stay away from trouble for at least some time, but his older brother Sam was a different story.
By the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, during Prohibition and the era of Al Capone, story goes that Sam “RIP” Alex obtained his start in Chicago’s underworld under Willie Heeney, who was a chief of staff for Capone’s security and also one of his main guys in the Cicero area. It wasn’t an easy job to work for a guy like Heeney, because besides gambling, this guy was also involved in narcotics and many murders. But Heeney was also a guy who was well known through out Chicago’s underworld, which means that he had a lot of connections. So besides bootlegging, Heeney and the boys also controlled many gambling dens and were also involved in the labor rackets. In fact the term “racketeering” was invented by these hoodlums, who eventually began to assert a role in these kinds of collusive business environments. So the honest union officials began receiving threats of violence and demands for cash. These victims had no protection because they knew that the cops regularly colluded with the criminal gangs and so in such settings some union officials began making arrangements with the racketeers. One of the most often arrangement was the appointing gang members or high level mob associates on high level union jobs.
Alex’s territory, which was Chicago’s South Side and the Loop, was mostly dominated by various non-Italian crime lords who were in alliance with the Italian mob. In general these gangs were known as the Capone mob. Criminal barons such as Jake Guzik, Sam Hunt and Bruno Roti Sr. were the bosses of those areas who controlled all vice rackets. Roti was the boss of the Near South Side, Hunt was the boss of the South Side and Guzik oversaw the Loop. Some sources say that during that period the main mob boss of the whole area was Phil D’Andrea, a powerful Capone mobster. So in 1932, the South Side faction of the Capone mob was attempting to dominate the unions. The main lieutenants that were involved in the labor rackets were Murray Humphreys and Sam Alex from the South Side, William White and William O’Donnell from the West Side, Willie Heeney and Claude Maddox from Cicero, and other union racketeers such as William Maloney, Marcus Looney and Charles Fischetti. The crew had an idea of organizing an “outlaw” union known as the Trucking and Transportation exchange or commonly called TNT. Their purpose was to force the truck owners to pay tribute and obtain membership and then through the control of union members as well as truck owners set out to dominate the coal industry and other industries. They controlled the racket by placing their own people within the union. For example, William Maloney worked as the union’s secretary and Sam Alex and Marcus Looney worked as business agents. Alex and Looney were involved in another labor racket with the help of Michael J. Galvin, a long time leader of “outlaw” labor unions with strong political connections. Galvin controlled three unions, including the ice wagon drivers, the bag and baggage drivers, and the truck drivers. Together the three unions had over 2,000 members who paid from $3 to $5 a month dues. But the thing was that only a small part of this huge monthly income went to Galvin. Most of the cash went into the hands of Alex and Looney who were receiving regular monthly remittances. Sam Alex also became the general business manager of the Excavator Drivers Union, Local 731. Alex and the rest of the crew took over $200.000 (or 3 million dollars in today’s money) yearly tribute from the honest union men. By just controlling one third of the truck drivers around Chicago, the crew managed to control one third of the whole industry in the city which meant more and more money for the gangsters.
In November 1932, Alex, Looney, Humphreys, White, Fischetti and three other racketeers were arrested in a Loop office building before the elections that year. Unfortunately in those days, in some U.S. cities such as Chicago voter fraud has been so common and so pervasive for so long that it was more likely to be a punch line than a felony. It's safe to say that when it came to elections, Chicago had a reputation, a history, or, if we're honest about it – a problem. The gangsters had been charged with conspiracy to collect campaign funds to influence an election unlawfully. Also during the arrest, the cops found two guns in the possession of White and Fischetti. Then the wheels of mob justice began turning when on December 19, all of the defendants were freed of conspiracy charges in Felony court when Assistant State's Attorney Russell W. Root said proof of the charges was lacking. But the charges of carrying concealed weapons, however, remained against White and Fischetti and they were ordered to trial on January 3, 1933, and as usual later they were also released on the “lack of evidences.”
As Sam Alex was rising up in the underworld, his younger brothers George and Gus started to follow their older brother’s footsteps. By now George Alex worked as a city employee in the hoisting engineers union which was secretly controlled by his brother Sam. George worked with two other hoodlums known as James Cuba and James Clark. Cuba, who had a very long police record, worked as a president of the hoisting engineers, and Clark was the vice president. In May, 1933, 300 hundred truckers and members of the outlaw Trucking and Transportation union decided to join the legitimate International Brotherhood of Teamsters. So the leaders of the outlaw union Marcus Looney and Sam Alex, in order to prevent the rebels, ordered George Alex, James Cuba and James Clark to make more than few telephone calls as an attempt to intimidate the rebels into staying with the outlaw unit. So they were calling the men and demanded that they should report at the union’s headquarters at 637 South Ashland Avenue “if they wanted to stay alive." This information came to the chief of the states attorney’s police force Captain Daniel Gilbert so he decided to inform the Chief of Detectives William Schoemaker. Together they issued an arrest warrant for 10 individuals who were involved in the shakedown, including the Alex brothers, Looney, William White, William O’Donnell and also John Sheridan and Milton Booth Jr. who were the front men for the hoodlums in the outlaw teamster organization. The first men that got arrested were George Alex, James Cuba and James Clark and together they were locked up at Pekin Inn station. They were held until their attorney Joseph Harrington went before the Acting Chief Justice and asked for their release on writs of habeas corpus. The application for the writs was dismissed and the police released the prisoners after questioning.
Back in 1930, the youngest brother Gus dropped out of high school after finishing two years and with the help of his family’s reputation he had no problem getting himself involved with street gangs. But unlike his older brothers, Gus was mostly involved with younger criminals from Italian descent since the Near South Side was controlled by the Italians. One of Bruno Roti’s headquarters was a tavern known as Phil’s Liquors which was located at 26th Street and Wentworth Avenue. Also by this time Gus’ father Nick Alex became a close friend of Roti and together they opened a restaurant at 2604 South Wentworth. The place quickly transformed into a mob hangout. Nick was a great cook so a lot of gangsters like Jake Guzik and Sam Hunt visited the place so they can taste Nick’s specialities. Nick became so close with these individuals and he even received a mob nickname “Little Nick” and that’s why he was considered by government agents as mob associate. So now, young Gus entered the world of crime which was headed by the finest criminals in Chicago. One of Roti’s best “soldiers” was James Catuara, who made terror on Chicago’s Near South Side. Catuara was a specialist in making bombs, same as his mentor Bruno, who was known as the “Bomber”. At the time Catuara lived in the same neighbourhood as the Alex brothers and belonged to a gang which was formed mostly by young Italian hoodlums such as Frank Passaro, Joe Controtno, Frank Caruso, Louis Paletto, Nick Biondi, Frank Locascio, Rocco DeStefano, Frank Sortino a.k.a. Frank Ferraro and his older brother John, so Gus joined this criminal group and became its youngest member. By this time the gang was mostly involved in numerous robberies and they were also used as “muscle for hire” in numerous labor disputes. One of Alex’s closest friends was Frank Ferraro who worked as a truck driver for a florist shop which was owned by the Alex family.
Chicago’s South Side during the 1920’s
Besides his education, which was a rare thing in those days, and his gracefully thin body form, Gus Alex was known as a very aggressive individual. On September 24, 1933, 19 year old Alex together with Ferraro, Biondi and Paletto were having a party in a saloon at 132 West 31st street, when suddenly one of the hoodlums got into an argument with another guest in the saloon who went by the name of Matthew Gorman. Gorman also had a few guys around him so the argument quickly turned into a brawl in which more than a score of men participated. When the “smoke cleared” Alex and the rest of the gang left the place but returned several hours later armed with three shotguns and one revolver. But again Gorman and the rest of his crew returned with the same force by pulling out their guns. It was a very tough situation for the innocent people who stood around while shaking in their boots. Suddenly a police squad emerged in the place while dozen men and women started out of three exits of the tavern with their hands raised. Police Sergeant Chris Callahan ran to a side entrance and announced himself as a policeman. When Gorman saw the cop, he raised his gun and started shooting at him. So the policeman quickly returned fire and managed to kill Gorman instantly. After the shooting the police then arrested twenty men and women who had been in the place and took them to the Cottage Grove station for questioning. The police seized Alex and his crew as they entered their car which was parked in front of the saloon. In the car they found three sawed off shotguns. This is the first arrest of Gus Alex and the first information for the cops about Alex being a part of Chicago’s underworld. Eventually they were released because during this period, the mob had infiltrated the police force and judicial system to its highest levels and Gus was the baby boy brother of Capone member Sam Alex.
While Gus was slowly entering the world of organized crime, his older brother Sam continued hitting the newspaper headlines. In 1934 the government and the State's Attorney Thomas J. Courtney declared war against the crooked labor leaders, racketeers and extortionists in Chicago, so 17 defendants were named in the indictment which grew out of the investigation of the activities of the Trucking and Transportation exchange, including Sam Alex, William White, Murray Humphreys, Marcus Looney and Charles Fischetti. The trial lasted for more then two months and in the end, as expected, all 17 men won an acquittal. The prosecution knew that it was very hard for these men to be sent to prison but it was determined to keep up the warfare on these so-called menaces to honest labor unions and managed to bring them before the eyes of the public.
From left to right: Murray “Curley” Humphries, William “Jack Three-fingered” White, Sam “Rip” Alex, Charles Ficchetti, William O'Donnell, Joseph Marino, Marcus Looney and Tom Cullen.
But the problem was that the government pressure didn’t bother the racketeers so they continued with their violent tactics over the truckers that refused to join their outlaw unions. On February 27, 1935, two men were wounded during the disputes. One was George Segall who was fired upon as he was driving his truck at 18th street and Western Avenue. He was struck in the left thigh. The second victim was Fred Hoffenkamp who was shot in front of 1325 West 47th street. In each instance the assailants, with fast automobiles, drove away after the shooting. The attackers were professionals because they have always successfully aimed at the legs of the drivers and none of whom has been struck in the body or the head. At least six men were shot during the disputes on the orders of racketeers such as Sam Alex and so the government managed to gather all the forces of the detective bureau and the states attorney’s police force against the reign of terrorism. Following the prosecutor’s command, the police raided two headquarters of the outlaw union and seized 20 men, all of whom were taken to the detective bureau and questioned by Assistant State's Attorney Charles S. Dougherty and Chief of Detectives John L. Sullivan. Among those arrested were Looney’s and Alex’ front men Milton Booth Jr., the president of the union, John Evans, secretary-treasurer, and Edward McDermott, business agent. As usual, they all declared firmly that they knew nothing about the shootings. Booth even said that the organization was poorly off and that there was no money available even to pay his own salary. He also added that his sole reward for heading the union was $10 a week paid him by the mob’s associate Michael Galvin, who by now was the chief of all the teamsters and unions in Chicago, outside the American Federation of Labor fold. The prosecutors knew that Galvin’s headquarters was at West Madison Street and that he shared his office together with Sam Alex and Marcus Looney, so they raided the place and managed to arrest 8 men but Galvin, Alex and Looney were nowhere to be found. Records of the Galvin group were seized, but these were found to be of a routine nature. So this meant that the gangsters managed to cover their tracks pretty well and the cops left empty handed. The cops gave another shot by raiding one more headquarters of the Chicago Truck Drivers union at 034 West Madison Street. The police had received information that an automobile from which coal drivers were fired on had been seen to stop there earlier in the day but as usual they found nothing. Even though the gangsters managed to escape the prosecutions, the simple pressure from the government had proved to be a big problem for the Galvin-Looney-Alex line up and that many of their once faithful members had been alienated by its seeming lack of success. The group once controlled eighteen prosperous unions and by now it had only four, none of which functioned smoothly.
Now the government’s main target became Michael Galvin and slowly became "too big a load to carry." Galvin’s biggest problem was the State's Attorney Thomas Courtney who felt huge personal hate towards Galvin because he believed that Galvin may have inspired the attack on his life on March 24, 1935, when eight gunmen fired at Courtney as he rode in an automobile, but miraculously he escaped unharmed. As additional info, according to some reports that in fact Galvin together with Sam Alex was behind the attempt and also young Gus Alex was one of the shooters. A few hours later, Courtney attended services at the Holy Name cathedral and noticed Galvin sitting in a pew near him. As the two men left the church, Courtney seized Galvin and said: "If you want to fight, I'll give you a fight.” Also in April 1935, Galvin was elected as Republican committeeman of the 27th ward, a river ward, and became a factional rival of State Representative James J. Adduci, who was a member of the newly formed Paul Ricca–Frank Nitti crime syndicate, also known as the Chicago Outfit. To make things worse, in 1936 Galvin reportedly stopped sending cash to his close associates and bosses Sam Alex and Marcus Looney. So now Alex and Looney realized that they had to get rid of their front man in order to take the heat of their backs and also to make an example. Previously Alex and Looney left Chicago but managed to send word to their underlings that Galvin had to go. On November 23, 1936, 54 years old Michael Galvin was assassinated by four men in an auto mobile, two of whom fired shotgun blasts at him as he was walking in front of 552 West Madison Street. In a “fast, nice, neat and clean procedure” the problem was solved. With this example we can see that during this period Sam Alex was one of the big shots in the newly formed Chicago crime organization, who had the power to issue a “contract” on another man’s life and at the same time, remained immune to the pressure from the law. But even with that Sam Alex decided to leave Chicago and bought himself a big farm in Cassopolis, Michigan. There also some reports saying that Sam Alex in fact was ordered by the mob bosses to get out of Chicago and stay out of the limelight which was formed by the press and the government, regarding the shooting of the states attorney and the killing of Galvin. In fact, the Chicago Crime Commission revealed information about Sam being very “nutty and unmanageable” and so he was exiled from Chicago. Anyways, his younger brothers George and Gus became his eyes and ears in Chicago’s underworld. This was the first big push for 22 year old Gus Alex because he inherited all of his brother’s contacts and shady business deals.
