Who ever the organization decided to be the boss, Alex was right next to him and he became more of an advisor then money maker because his prime illegal operations were long gone, so he slowly started taking over Accardo’s role as top elder statesman for the mob. By the late 1970’s, Accardo and Alex continued to meet and made important decisions around Chicago’s joints. For example, the duo was once seen at the La Festival Restaurant at 28 West Elm Street in the company of Chicago attorneys Carl Walsh and Arthur Masser. Alex took Accardo’s advices very seriously and also always took care of his one time boss and mentor. For example, when old man Accardo was brought to the St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital in Chicago for a series of tests related to a possible stomach aliment, Alex was the one who accompanied his boss all the time. As for Aiuppa, they usually met at the Rodity’s Restaurant at 222 South Halsted. Alex avoided any contacts through telephones, because he believed that all of his telephones were tapped by the feds and was on constant surveillance. So he usually sent word to one of Aiuppa’s underlings Larry Rassano, to inform his boss about Alex’s presence at a certain establishment and at certain time period. Even Alex’s underlings had to watch out for what they were saying and at the same time, what they were asking. As a result of that nobody was asking Alex too many questions and avoided any further curiosity.
This was the last generation of mobsters that really witnessed and tasted the old golden era of the mob. This was the trio or “Tripe A-Team,” who after numerous government vital attacks, they still managed to hold the Outfit as a whole, almost for free, because they spent all of their lives as criminals so what’s the point of changing their style now, right?! Wrong! Alex and Aiuppa should’ve changed their “styles” long time ago because now they were about to enter a new era filled with new drugs, new gangs, new laws, new surveillance technology and young and very ambitious government prosecutors.
During the late 1970’s and early 80’s, one of the most profitable racket for the Chicago Outfit was the video poker machines. Overseers of this new racket were Larner’s guys the Bastone brothers, Carmine and Sal. Carmine went to Spain to supervise the video poker machine factory that they owned and Larner and Alex had their own shares in it. Alex’s guy in Chicago was Nick Gio, a Greek-American enforcer for the Chicago Outfit, who also was involved in these operations. This was a beautiful racket that flooded Chicago. Every bar and restaurant also had to pay tribute for the machines and if the places were raided and the cops took the machines, in a matter of hours, new machines were placed back. That’s how easy it was.
During the early 1980’s, the Chicago Outfit was still flourishing, still held most of the illegal enterprises on the streets of Chicago, such as gambling, loan sharking, prostitution and extortion, still had high connections in the judicial system and the police force, and still owned Las Vegas. By now some of the FBI agents thought that old guys like Alex and his last companion from the old days Lenny Patrick, were retired from the rackets long time ago but they were wrong because by now Patrick controlled a crew which was involved in loan sharking and extortion and Alex took his cut from every big operation. Lenny Patrick’s crew was composed of Lenny Yaras, the son of the late Dave Yaras, and also James LaValley, Raymond Spencer, Nick Gio and Mario Rainone.
I mostly wrote about this specific crew in one of my previous articles based on Lenny Patrick’s criminal career, named “The Jewish Arm of the Chicago Outfit”, so I’m going to explain the crew’s nature in few short sentences. Now, Lenny Yaras and Raymond Spencer were the gang’s go-between guys for mob bookies and were also the street tax collectors, and the rest of the guys like LaValley, Rainone, and Gio were loan sharks and extortionists. The crew's gambling business alone involved an extensive network of offices, one of which cost $500,000 to open, served 800 betting customers, had a weekly payroll of $20,000 to $30,000, and accepted $80,000 in wagers in a single week. And in addition to paying its employees' salaries, the crew had to shell out for rent, phone service, utilities, pagers, and sports journals printed out of state. By the mid 1980s, Patrick’s crew also extorted nearly half a million dollars year from legitimate businessmen and bookies and another half a million from loan sharking. In the end, Alex as boss of that crew, took 20% from the gambling proceeds and 25% from the loan sharking activities. Since there was talk that the Outfit’s top hierarchy was going to be indicted for skimming millions from the Las Vegas casinos, the street taxes paid by bookmakers to operate in the Chicago area were increased from 15 to 20 or 25% to make up for the loss of income to the Chicago Outfit by the Las Vegas losses. Mob's extortionists raised the "fear fees," or money paid for protection, and loan sharks were levied with a surtax of sorts by the Outfit. Not everyone was satisfied by the increase which resulted with the violent deaths of many bookmakers, including the killing of Lenny Yaras, which was also sanctioned by Patrick and Alex.
In 1984, the “shield” of the Chicago mob was destroyed by the government with the beginning of Operation: “Greylord.” The three-and-a-half-year investigation has started with the indictments against 18 men, including three sitting judges and a former judge. This was a breakout for many people and now fear spread within the judicial system and many officials stopped fixing cases for the gangsters or the Chicago mob in general. This meant that now the Outfit had hard times in getting away with crime. Also in 1986, Outfit bosses Joey Auippa, Jackie Cerone, Joey Lombardo, and Alex’s long time friend Angelo LaPietra and mobsters from Kansas City were indicted, convicted and sent to jail for skimming millions from the Las Vegas casinos and again after 40 years the top administration of the organization was removed. Again, Alex managed to avoid any possible jail term. Alex was always near the top of the organization since the mid 1950’s and always avoided any serious prosecutions. By 1987, the top guys in the organization and the ones who decided the Outfit’s faith were Sam Carlisi, Jimmy Marcello and Gus Alex. Now Lenny Patrick’s whole crew had come under Carlisi's thumb because his main activity, which was loan sharking, was financed by the Carlisi/Marcello faction. Patrick was still a money maker because he tripled their investments but from everything that he made for himself, he had to take out 25% and gave it to his boss which was Alex.
Old man Alex
The same year, Alex’s older brother Sam, who by now was living in a $100,000 house located in a mob neighbourhood in Oak Brook, was diagnosed for cancer of the larynx. This was devastating news for the Alex family and so Gus found the best surgeons in the country and submitted Sam for a surgery. They cleared Sam from every possible cancerogenous part on his larynx but it was too late because the cancer already started spreading. So on February 11, 1987, Gus phoned his older brother just to ask him if he was alright or if he needed something, but no one was answering the phone. So Gus jumped in his car and went to his brother’s apartment in Oak Brook. When he entered the apartment at 10 a.m. Gus found the lifeless body of his 78 year old brother Sam in the bedroom were a .38-caliber revolver laid nearby and a note that said simply, "I am Sam Alex." The police and the Du Page County coroner reported that the death apparently was caused by self- gunshot wound to the head. Sources close to police investigation reported that the detectives also found 600 in cash in a shopping bag.
Now if Alex still had his emotional problems, which I believe he had, then this was one of the most emotionally heaviest moments a brother can ever experience. Alex still had relatives around Chicago from his other brothers and sisters but besides being brother, Sam was also Alex’s mentor, associate and friend. Both brothers had no children so they only had themselves and because of that, this was a breaking point for Alex. Sam Alex was a “mystery man” in the eyes of the government and the people around him. He was a mob legend in his early days but retired from his criminal career also at early age and still by the end of his life, he lived lavishly which was the main reason for the mystery that surrounded him and on top of that he knew almost every big time gangster from across the country. I believe that he was always financially supported by his baby brother, and in return I also believe that Sam always guided Gus in his criminal career. As additional info, there are many documented wiretapped conversations between top echelon gangsters and individual only known as “RIP”, which of course it’s the identity of Sam Alex.
The biggest problem for Alex started on September 29, 1989, when two Grand Avenue crew members Anthony Daddino and Frank Schweihs were found guilty and convicted on many charges. One thing was that Schweihs was a killer and a stand up guy, so the Outfit wasn’t afraid of him, but Daddino was another thing and so the bosses had other plans for the guy. They paid Daddino’s bond and he was released. But there was another problem. Through his contacts, Gus Alex received information that an extortion case was under way and that Mario Rainone was the “main star”. Alex feared that Rainone knew and might talk about the fact that Alex took a cut from every extortion that Rainone previously committed, so the old man ordered the other old man Lenny Patrick to take care of the job. So Patrick took the problem to James Marcello who in turn orchestrated an old Outfit “trick” when one man was ordered to kill another and then both were slain at the same time by another hit team. But during the hit, Rainone, the second target, who came to kill Daddino, suddenly spotted the other hit team and fled the scene in panic. This was a disaster. So one thing led to another and Rainone, fearing for his life, decided to call the FBI and told them that he was ready to cooperate. Rainone had cooperated with the government briefly by joining the witness protection program because he feared a hit had been put out on him. But when the Outfit got wind of the situation, they bombed and blew to bits the front porch of his mother’s home. The bomb was placed by Nick Calabrese on the orders of Jimmy Marcello. Rainone got the message and eventually stopped cooperating and pled guilty to extortion charges and was sentenced to 17½ years in prison.
So now everything seemed to be back in normal and Alex felt safe again and in the end Daddino never spoke about anything to anyone or in other words he was a stand up guy at the time so this was a big misunderstanding. The paranoia still clouded the thoughts of old man Alex and made him do stupid actions which later will cost him highly. One day Lenny Patrick called Alex and arranged a meeting. Alex told Patrick to meet him on the upper floor in a hallway at the Northwestern Hospital on Chicago’s Near North Side. It was just like in the Sopranos series. Patrick allegedly had an issue with some union official and needed Alex’s advice on the payments and extortion methods. On top of that, they also discussed the set up in the Daddino conspiracy.
But in 1990, the feds prepared for hunting because it was “old mobster’s season.” First, the previous government Operation “Greylord” evolved into Operation “Gambat” and indicted the First Ward administration, including Alderman Fred Roti, State Senator John D'Arco Jr., son of the late D’Arco Sr., Pat Marcy, Circuit Court Judge David Shields, and Pasquale DeLeo, a lawyer with close ties to the Chicago Outfit. The government charged Roti and Marcy for taking bribes to fix murder trials in 1977, 1981 and 1989, to fix a zoning case and to arrange a judicial appointment, as for D'Arco Jr., he promised to have state legislation passed in exchange for a bribe in 1988, and Shields and DeLeo conspired to fix a civil case on behalf of one of the plaintiffs' attorneys.
Since the government completely removed the Outfit’s protection, a year later and out of nowhere, the feds also indicted Gus Alex and Lenny Patrick on extortion charges and both were held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago. Due to his constant illness, Alex was granted house arrest at his apartment at Lake Shore Drive and wore an ankle bracelet or a monitoring device and was only allowed his doctor or lawyer. He also gave his passport and the deeds of his two homes and in the end he posted a $25,000 bond. It was clear that the government was thirsty to see Alex behind bars. Since Rainone wasn’t talking anymore, Alex and Patrick had good chances to beat the case, but there was a “small” problem. When Alex was chattering previously about union schemes, profits and murder plots at the hospital, Patrick managed to tape a hidden recorder on his back and secretly recorded their conversation for the FBI. Yes, Patrick was an informer for the government and Alex was f*cked. All of his life time he managed to avoid the law and always trusted his peers from the old days and couldn’t have guessed in a million years that Patrick was going to be the one to bring his demise.
FBI informer Lenny “Blinky” Patrick
As I previously stated that I already wrote in details about Patrick’s “relations” with Alex in their final years, so again ill try to explain this next situation in shorter version. From this point on everything was a disaster. First the feds realized that while Patrick was working as a “under cover agent” for the government and took $7,200 a month, he still pocketed cash from illegal activities. So the indictment was handed down in 1991, which charged Patrick, Nicholas Gio, Mario Rainone and Gus Alex with various offences. Then Patrick decided to plead guilty and agreed to testify against Alex. This was a devastating news for Alex because deep inside of him he knew that there was no escape out of this one. To make things worse, James LaValley was later also mentioned in the indictment but he also decided to cooperate with the feds and few months later another member of Patrick’s crew, Gary Edwards, also began cooperating. It was a “rat infestation” and Alex was in the middle of it. So now the feds caught a real break and they went after the big guy. Because of the many bad news, old man Alex allegedly fell from some stairs and broke a bone in his back, thus delaying his trial for four months. Also Alex’s lawyers argued that their client was mentally incompetent to stand trial and simply cannot recall pertinent events because of the memory loss and cannot help in preparing his defence.
Alex leaving the court hearings
But before Patrick and Alex went to trial, on May 19, 1992, Alex has sent his “regards” to Patrick by blowing to pieces his daughter’s 1987 BMW in the driveway of her home in Rogers Park. No one was hurt but everyone got the message. So in September, 1992, Lenny Patrick took the witness stand against his boss Gus Alex. Old man Patrick was acting like a clown during the trial and turned the whole thing into a circus. Alex couldn’t believe his eyes. While everybody was laughing in the court room, Alex sat in his chair and was deadly serious. Patrick said that Carlisi and John DiFronzo, another reputed top mob figure, muscled him out of street taxes he had collected for 15 years from one gambler, personally giving him the word at the funeral of Carlisi`s brother. So Alex’s lawyer said that it was Carlisi and DiFronzo who gave him his orders, not Alex. Patrick defended himself by saying “Come on, come on, you`re getting out of the tune there. Now you`re trying to tell me I didn`t give Alex any profits from extortions. That`s out, that`s out.”
Alex carefully listening to Patrick’s testimony
When Carlisi and DiFronzo muscled him out of the street tax operations, Patrick said he even went to Alex to complain, but Alex didn’t do anything about it. Patrick also said that Alex never once rejected a proposed extortion and always told him the same thing “Be careful.” Alex wanted the jury to infer, with the aid of the go-betweens excluded testimony, his inability to form the required intent from the evidence of early Alzheimer's that he had presented at the competency hearing. This was an exercise in futility. He was trying to make time run backwards. For senile dementia is a progressive disease. If Alex was competent to stand trial, he must have been competent to conspire with Patrick and the others earlier. The prosecutors also played a tape recording of a conversation that Alex had with Patrick during the period of the conspiracy reveals no mental incapacity. So this time the “health card” didn’t play out. Alex’s lawyers spent three days cross-examining Patrick and were at such pains to convince the jury that Patrick was a liar but they didn’t make any significant results. In the end, Alex, Gio, and Rainone received prison sentences of 188, 137, and 210 months, respectively. Alex was also fined $ 250,000, and both he and Rainone were subjected to heavy forfeitures. Alex even had to pay $1,400 a month for the cost to the taxpayers for his prison cell. And that was that. Old man Alex cried and couldn’t stand up so they took him away in a wheelchair accompanied by U.S. marshals to serve his 15 year prison term with no chance of parole.
In the end, I don’t know much what to say about Alex except that one time he was the “James Bond” of the mob, and although he wasn’t Italian, he still had Mafia blood floating through his veins. Regarding this, Carl Sifakis, the author of The Mafia Encyclopedia wrote “…there was pressure on Alex to take the reins…Had Gussie accepted, it would certainly have been rather disconcerting to those writers and professional informers who insist the Mafia is strictly Italian. Perhaps they would’ve been forced to observe that, after all, it was the Greeks who first settled in Sicily.” After all of that lavish and turbulent life style, in the end he ended up in jail during the most terrible period of his life and that was the old age. The guy was 78 years old so the prison term was like a death sentence to him. I mean really, by now he was an old guy so my opinion is that the government should’ve have given him 3 years tops and after that the guy would’ve been straight till death, which probably would’ve come in a very short time. I’m saying this because the government failed to catch this arch criminal for many decades while he was young and because of that he accomplished every evil scheme that ever fell on his mind. And now he was in world filled with African-American and Latin gangs who provided billions of dollars from the narcotics trade and he was just an old fool who was still involved in $100,000 or $200,000 extortions and foolishly ordered a murder over those amounts. I mean don’t get me wrong, those amounts aren’t small a bit but Alex used to stash even bigger cash then that on daily basis for many years in the past so I don’t believe that he needed more. He used to be the real “Golden Greek.”
To the ordinary every day men, Alex was always polite and was also a nice man. He wasn’t the gangster with tattoos and golden teeth threatening you with a gun in your face. For the people that didn’t know him at all, Alex had the image of an angel, but if someone knew him and if they crossed him, they were brought on the level of survival. Alex was like a leech, he punished his underlings by destroying their finances and in the end took over their rackets. He rarely killed, but he heavily insulted the people who made mistakes and rarely ever worked with them again. Those who opposed him, in the end learned to regret it. As evil and shrewd as he was, in the end, he was undone by more sinister soul then himself. It was a matter of survival, and Lenny Patrick won the battle. Patrick’s only explanation for his actions was “I didn`t feel good about the whole thing. I had to do it. Otherwise, what are they going to do? Give me the 20 years.” His whole life, Alex acted as a protector for his peers in the underworld, but in the end he was destroyed by those who he once protected.
Alex excelled at corrupting public officials because he wasn`t some loud and violent, guy, but instead he was smart, charismatic and articulate and with that he also impressed people outside the mob. So don’t be deceived when the “prince of darkness” comes across as a gentleman. It seems to be his best disguise. As for the prince of darkness himself, Gus Alex, his sin was like a jail cell except it was nice and comfy and there wasn’t any need to leave although the door was always wide open, until one day when it slammed shut, forever. On July 24, 1998, Gus Alex died of a heart attack at the age of 82, while confined to a federal prison medical center in Lexington, Kentucky.
This article is completed from various infos, mostly collected from FBI reports and other criminal records, crime related books and articles, and personal opinions.
