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.”
