During the mid 1920’s, the real “star” of Chicago’s underworld was Alphonse “Scarface” Capone and as I previously stated that some of these guys felt they were larger than life, well this was the guy who was the real definition for that statement. It is generally known that this guy made a lot of cash mainly from bootlegging and I mean a lot of cash. Millions of dollars were kicked up through the ranks of his organization and we all know that with money like that comes a lot of responsibilities, meaning everyday pressure such as running away from the government and hiding from enemies. He was a constant target of the Tommy guns which were fired by his rivals and on top of that, he was constantly running away in the last moment during police raids. His boys were in the same situation because they were the ones protecting him and they were the ones who did the dirty work, meaning killing people and getting rid of dead bodies and such. During those days, these guys were like soldiers, constantly fighting around Chicago’s “jungle”. So the point is that these “poor” boys needed something, obviously not only booze, which was going to calm their nerves. And the answer was narcotics. Story goes that Capone snorted cocaine like a vacuum cleaner which was the main “fuel” for his often bizarre behaviour and proof for that is his medical records, from his first few months in prison during 1932. He was suffering from withdrawal symptoms from cocaine addiction, including paranoia, depression, exhaustion, anxiety, itching, mood swings, irritability, fatigue, insomnia, an intense craving for more cocaine, and in some cases nausea and vomiting. Some of his reports say that he even had similar symptoms to schizophrenia such as a feeling of a crawling sensation on the skin also known as "coke bugs". According to some medical researchers, these symptoms can last for weeks or, in some cases, even months. So I really don’t know what really scrambled Capone’s mind, meaning was it the syphilis infection or was it the cocaine addiction.
Cocaine
As I previously stated that some of his guys were also on the same “treatment”, faces such as Vincenzo Gibaldi a.k.a. Jack McGurn or William Heeney. Both guys worked as Capone’s chief enforcers and main logisticians and story goes that they killed a lot of people. Even though he mainly worked as a hitman, McGurn also controlled a huge prostitution ring for his boss in the Cicero area and constantly supplied his girls with heroin and cocaine, but the problem was that McGurn sometimes also gave himself few “hits” in the nose. Besides that, story goes that he was also a heavy drinker and degenerate gambler or in other words, he was a real disaster. So when Capone went to jail, McGurn slowly lost his stature in the newly formed organization and was placed to work under Willie Heeney who in turn became one of the new crime bosses from the Cicero area. Now this guy was a real so-called “junkie” because he was known for injecting heroin and at the same time smoking opium. Back in the old days, while he was still working for Capone, Heeney was known for throwing cans filled with opium out of the windows from his apartment, during police raids. Once, when the agents arrived at his hotel apartment, they found a slight, shrewd-looking, sallow coloured little man in the company of a hot and beautiful blond girl, and so the agents couldn’t believe their eyes because it was the infamous Willie Heeney. During the search of his room, the cops found a dozen of cans filled with opium and when they took him to the station, one of the cops pulled up Heeney's sleeve and trouser leg, thus revealing his skin which was marked by dozens of scars made by the dope addict’s hypodermic needle. One of the G-man asked Heeney "Willie, were you under dope when you killed your first man?" In a flat voice Heeney allegedly replied "Why else would you kill somebody you never saw before?" Than the agent said "You gotta be full of dope. How about the next one?" and then Heeney again replied "After the first one it ain't so hard."
Even though Heeney was a killer and a junkie at the same time, he was also heavily involved in the rackets, especially dope peddling. You see, when McGurn lost his stature, Capone’s brother, Ralph together with one Claude Maddox and Heeney took over his rackets and divided everything between them. So after McGurn, Heeney was one of the first Outfit members, who took the dope peddling business across the South Side, especially around the African-American neighbourhoods. Previously McGurn had a crew of “Negro runners” who later transferred their loyalties to Heeney and so he decided to take McGurn under his wing and gave him another “chance”. Since Prohibition was already finished, McGurn started running the numbers racket for the syndicate and sold dope on the side but still his main problem was his addictions. And we all know how things go in the Mafia when a situation gets too complicated and things go out of control, like for example in 1936, when McGurn was gunned down by his former cohorts Claude Maddox and William White. The Outfit’s top boss Paul Ricca, allegedly once commented regarding the McGurn situation “High and dry, that’s why we left him…sellin’ junk to the moolies”. Ricca was a gangster from the “old country”, who supported almost every racket but hated being in the company of “dirty” people or people with addictions, because obviously they had a weakness which could’ve brought a lot of problems for the organization.
Now you would ask yourself who supplied these fellas with dope and how did they bring it? One story goes that Al Capone and some of his cohorts were supplied with cocaine by their personal dentist who was known as Dr. Frank Brady. But the thing was that Dr. Brady provided the gangsters with limited supply of cocaine, meaning it was mostly for their own use, and on top of that, in 1929 the doctor was shot to death by two assassins in his own office. So I had to do some extensive research regarding the subject and found out that one of their main suppliers was a racketeer, who later became a member of the Capone mob known as Dennis “The Duke” Cooney. He was the one who ran all of the brothels on the city’s South Side and also had high connections in the First Ward. Cooney’s headquarters was a hotel known as “The Rex” which was one of the worst joints in town. His office was constantly visited by all kinds of people, from corrupt policemen to countless dope peddlers. And how did Cooney had himself involved in narcotics? Well the answer is simple and that is the prostitution business, or a female person, who was known as Madam Victoria “Vic” Shaw. She was Chicago’s most fabulous parlor-house madam and vice queen who worked strictly for the Capone Mob. In fact, Shaw inherited everything from her late husband Roy Jones, who in turn previously worked for one of Chicago’s first “big time” Italian crime bosses, known as Jim Colosimo, back in the 1890’s. So when she partnered up with Cooney, she was protected from the law and also rivals and so she easily managed to increase collections from prostitutes, established new bawdy houses, and produced rich profits for the Capone organization. But the thing was that Shaw was also a heavy narcotics user and she often made “company” to her workers in getting “stoned” together. Story goes that she was introduced to the “racket” since young age. And on top of that, many of her costumers were simple pharmacists or doctors, who in turn instead of paying her with cash for the services of her girls, sometimes they simply supplied her with the needed products such as heroin and cocaine, and like everything else, slowly the activity turned into a lucrative racket.
But since the demand was huge, in time, Shaw started ordering larger quantities of narcotics from other cities, thus transforming her establishments into something between an opium den and a brothel, meaning people were having sex while also paying for narcotics just to make the feeling even better. In 1926, she was charged for running a “rooming house” as a gathering place for criminals and also a “clearing house” for a dope peddling ring. Slowly the profits were getting bigger and bigger and Cooney’s pockets were getting tighter and tighter. Besides selling dope in their brothels, Cooney and Shaw decided to use the already existing bootlegging routes to smuggle some of the dope like for example from Canada, through Detroit and then to Chicago. Back in 1927, Shaw was arrested for selling morphine and one year later she was again arrested but this time in Canada on charges for bootlegging and smuggling narcotics and she was quickly deported by the local authorities. Back home, with Cooney’s help, all charges against her were dismissed. I really can’t tell about the individuals that sold the dope to Shaw, but I believe they were the same guys who already had established the whiskey routes. After that, Shaw flew successfully under the government’s radar for more than a decade until 1941, when she was again arrested for selling $10,000 worth of narcotics and was sentenced to 5 years in prison and in 1951, Shaw died at the age of 89.
Now, if we compare guys like Heeney and McGurn with Madam Shaw, they really looked like amateurs in regarding of the narcotics business. In fact, individuals like Shaw were the main “ingredients” for “spicing” one of the most lucrative businesses which was the bootlegging of alcohol. In other words, the smuggling business and routes of the Capone gang became a major selling point for old and new drug traffickers. This so-called “improvement” built a stable future for a faster and more influential crime organization, such as the newly formed Chicago Outfit. When Capone went to jail in 1932, the new top administration which was headed by Paul Ricca and Frank Nitti had a tough job in front of them and that was to maintain the cash flow for the organization. I mentioned “tough” because the lucrative days of Prohibition were gone and now the boys concentrated mostly on gambling, the unions and everything else which brought the big buck, including narcotics.
During the mid 1930s, there was a real concerted effort by the government to get all of the pharmacies and pharmacists actually licensed, because until then, there wasn’t really any accreditation process and pharmacists were selling almost anything and also kept large stash of narcotics such as opium and cocaine. Then in 1939, World War II began and so there was almost a complete ban on the importation of heroin, because everything was military shipping, and the ships were not going to those places, such as the Far East, where the heroin was produced. So during this period of time the addiction rate gradually went down. But the thing was that the fighting also managed to cut off the Allies from other legal sources of drug supplies, which were quite needed for the conflict, and so Mexico became the main source of morphine for the legal market and years later, also for the illegal market. On top of that, the war also created a need for hemp fiber for rope, which led to large-scale cultivation of marijuana in both Mexico and the United States. So until the arrival of the national crime syndicates, by this time there was a very huge drop of the dope peddling business, since the only products available during the war period were the drugs diverted from legal channels. In addition, during this period some members of Jewish criminal element managed to establish some dope peddling operations on Mexican territory for the U.S. syndicates but the thing was that none of those operations ever reached the point of making large profits for the organization.
So some of the more “thoughtful” gangsters quickly realized, why bother to smuggle the product when they can simply take it from next door. I mean, if they managed to rob or extort a dozen of pharmacies, the “spoils” would’ve been huge. Few of those gangsters involved in such a racket were the DeGrazia “crime family”, ex-Capone members, which later one of them became a “capo” for the Chicago Outfit, who in turn largely contributed into the dope business. The group was formed by four brothers, including Rocco, Nick, Joseph and Andrew and they mostly operated around the Melrose Park area and western suburbs. When Rocco DeGrazia got out of prison in 1936 for tax evasion, he quickly took the top spot of the area since the previous crime boss died from natural causes a year earlier. Previously, during the Capone days, he was the leader of the Northwest faction of the organization. Now, the DeGrazia brothers were not the brightest members in the organization but still they knew on how to make fast money. According to some government documents, they were operating more than 20 handbook operations, mainly in Melrose Park, and also placed their slot machines around the western suburbs and allegedly kicked up around $10,000 per month to their bosses.
So as I previously stated, the DeGrazia brothers knew how to make money but they also knew how to be scary and also how to kill. For example, Nick DeGrazia was a known rapist who was charged numerous times for the crime and his brother Andrew was a dope addict and was heavily involved in the business. Once, a doorman to a road house located on Lake Street west of Mannheim Road was killed because the owner of this place would not allow Nick to place his slot machines in the joint. As for Andrew, he was so notorious that once, he was a suspect in the “suicide” of his mistress, 23 year old Miss Lora Stackowicz and years later, his wife allegedly also committed suicide with a gun. Because of his dark background, he was suspected of being somehow involved in the so-called “suicides” of his female partners but he was never charged nor convicted. As for Rocco he was the real “brain” behind the operations by making money almost out of everything. Once, he managed to obtain almost $80,000 fund from church people to complete construction of his infamous gambling palace and legendary mobster hangout known as the Casa Madrid. Of course, the people never saw the money ever again and obviously they never visited his “devilish” establishment. On top of that, all of the brothers were known for visiting Chinatown’s opium dens on daily basis, thus becoming heavy users. Besides that, they managed to create few of their own schemes. Since Rocco was a huge handbook operator, sometimes he rigged the horse races by giving all kinds of narcotics to the poor animals. After World War II, the drugs started arriving from various major pharmaceutical companies and were constantly being used to improve a horse’s performance, and on top of that, they were remarkably effective. Orders from veterinarians poured in and the DeGrazia brothers were there to extort them. The brothers already knew that even though a horse is five or seven times larger than humans, the amount of dope needed to have an effect is so small and quickly gives a spectacular result, which in turn brought them thousands of dollars.
Rocco DeGrazia
The second “scheme” was forcing pharmacy owners to give up their opium stashes. The “deal” was simple, meaning instead of paying for protection, under the threat of death the owner would simply give up a part from his narcotics stash and so the brothers maybe wouldn’t bother him for the next one or two months. So the brothers began extorting thousands of ounces of opium, morphine and cocaine, thus forming a huge narcotics ring which lasted for almost a decade. Rocco DeGrazia had a bunch of enforcers and operators under his rule who collected and later sold the narcotics on daily basis, guys like Mike Stacey and Carmen Taglia. But one day, one Maywood druggist had enough and decided to take his problem to the government and so in March, 1946, the narcotics bureau in Chicago issued so-called secret warrants against Rocco DeGrazia and Mike Stacey, thus charging them with extortion, illegal transportation and concealing of narcotics. The two gangsters were quickly arrested after the druggist charged that he supplied a large opium ring with thousands of ounces of opium and morphine under the fear of death. Rocco’s brother Andrew was also arrested since he was named by the druggist as a member of the ring and later both brothers, including Stacey, were released on $5,000 bond each. When the police searched Andrew’s house, they managed to find 200 grains of opium and few smoking pipes.
So everything about the case went slow but a year later, in his own brother’s style, Rocco again managed to get himself in trouble by getting caught with few ounces of opium and smoking paraphernalia and so he was quickly convicted and sentenced to one year and one day in prison. After that, things were never the same for the old “capo” because when he got out, somehow he started loosing his stature within the criminal organization and according to his brother Joseph, possibly the only “normal” brother, he, meaning Rocco, became penniless. Slowly his criminal empire was taken over by the younger generation within his Outfit, which in turn impatiently waited to get their hands over his territory. And so by the early 1950’s, Sam Battaglia became the “unofficial” boss of the Melrose Park area, who with the help of his cohorts would bring the dope business to another level.
Sam Battaglia
In the old days wars used to destroy drug routes, but now things were different since the mobsters began using the conflicts for creating new routes. According to one confidential informant, during the late 1940’s or after the DeGrazia incident, the Outfit’s top administration, which by now was led by “chief executive” Mr. Tony Accardo, has forbidden to its members to get directly involved in narcotics. Now the keyword here is “directly”, meaning they were still allowed to make money from the racket but from this point on, they should use so-called “middle men” so they can distance themselves from the product and the customers. Guys like Accardo, Ricca or Sam Giancana were quite smart because they devised a plan which would make a lot of money for the next decade. The plan was to form so-called “junk crews” which were going to be controlled by the “middle men”, and the bosses preferred for these individuals to be from Italian descent or at least people who can be trusted. Now, the “middle men” were going to be the only ones with personal contact with the so-called “runners”, who in fact were criminals from all races and statures who sold the product directly on the street, or in other words, they had direct contact with the customers. They formed their own crews with their own leaders but in the eyes of the Outfit, they were considered as ordinary low level workers. And where did the Outfit found all these people? The answer is the everyday minor criminals, mostly non-Italians such as African-American or Latinos, who worked in the policy or prostitution rackets. It was not a coincidence that those two rackets were the “chosen ones” because those two operations acquired a lot of people. And so did the narcotics business. In those days, the average addict in Chicago purchased heroin for $5 a "bag." A "bag” contained one-twentieth of a gram and the number of bags used per day depended upon the tolerance which was built up by the individual user. The next breakdown on heroin was the 16th of an ounce, which was sold for around $15. Any amount over 16th was usually purchased by a person who intended to dilute and resell the product at a profit. The other prices for heroin were for example a "Spoon," which was roughly one fifth of an ounce and was sold from $65 to $125 depending upon the percentage of heroin, and also an ounce of heroin which was sold between $400 and $800, again depending upon the quality of the product.
So literally, hundreds of “runners” were working full time soliciting the narcotics business. The “job” has become an automatic refuge for lower class criminals and ex-convicts, who in turn were often unable to find legitimate work. So as I previously stated, these “junk troops” were in fact counterparts from the various rackets, such as the policy operation, people involved in the auto-theft racket and also people involved in prostitution. The policy operators and pimps, with the help of their runners and hookers, sold the product and the car thieves transported it around the country, since they were known for constantly transporting stolen cars. No matter what they did, by the end of the day they all had the same assignment and that was to “hook” victims. Some of the “middle men” were so progressively ruthless in promoting their ghoulish product that they gave instructions to their “runners” to give several "free samples" of dope to their prospective victims, because they knew that once the “prey” was " hooked ", their investment was soon going to be repaid in a hundredfold in extortionate profits. In fact, just to sustain almost $20-a-day habit, an addict must steal property worth four or five times that amount, thus the narcotic problem effected the entire community in losses through crimes committed by addicts and increased costs in law enforcement. On top of that, many of those criminal addicts were used by the local crime syndicate for doing small time jobs. It was a beautiful scheme but there was one “small secret” which only the Outfit’s bosses and members knew of, and that was “if caught, you die”, meaning if somebody got pinched by the cops for selling drugs, he or she was going to get killed. In other words, the “middle men” and the “runners” were considered expendable because in the bosses’ minds that was the only solution to get disconnected from the operation.
Now, before I proceed I want to state that many Mob historians still believe that these “middle men” or “runners” were in fact a separate organization from the Chicago Outfit and allegedly they acted on their own. I believe that this opinion mainly comes from the many slayings on dope peddlers, which occurred during the next decade but the thing is that the evidences which I’m about to show you, deliver a quite different picture. For me, and for few other researchers and authors, the main proof for the connection between the Outfit and the dope peddling rings, is in fact the involvement of the dope traffickers in other illegal activities which were 100 percent backed by the Outfit, such as loan sharking, burglary and auto-thefts. For example, besides being involved in gambling, counterfeiting and loan sharking, these individuals also killed on the orders of the Outfit. So my point is that the connection was quite real. There’s also another so-called disagreement and that is the general opinion that these individuals were peddling dope without the knowledge of the Outfit’s higher ups. Again, the next evidences will also show you that there was in fact deep involvement by some of the crime bosses in the operation, but I personally believe that the confusion comes mainly because of the disagreement by the opposing factions within the Chicago crime syndicate, which I previously explained at the beginning of this story.
So some of the Outfit bosses, with the help of their crew members, controlled their own “junk crews” and stayed in their own territories. Also, some of the Outfit members already had histories of drug convictions, meaning they were already experienced in the job. For example, Charles Nicoletti, who was a long time friend of Giancana and current member of Battaglia’s Melrose Park crew, was once arrested for peddling heroin. Back during the early 1940’s, Nicoletti was considered an associate of the syndicate and worked with one ex-Capone member known as Ernest Sansone, who in turn was a former bootlegger and ex-convict and together they ran bookmaking operations, car theft operations and placed vending machines around the West Side. Now this guy was a dope peddler since the days of Prohibition and so in May 10, 1943, Nicoletti and Sansone were arrested by the Chicago police for peddling $15,000 worth of narcotics or in other words heroin. In fact, Nicoletti and Sansone tried to import the heroin from Canada in the U.S. So on May 13, Nicoletti was sent to Midland, Michigan to serve 18 months in custody of the Attorney General. My point is that by the early 1950’s Nicoletti was considered a heavy hitter for the Outfit and I believe that he did not have any problems with somebody who sold narcotics. As for Sansone, after his release he became one of the Outfit’s main players in the bookmaking business. Both gangsters, allegedly continued to support the narcotics trade but from different positions, for which I’ll explain it later during the story.
Charles Nicoletti
Also, all of this re-grouping and formations were not a coincidence at all because during the early 1950’s big things were happening both in the world of narcotics and within the Chicago Outfit. By now the U.S. government, with the help of its new laws and legislations, forced the semi-licit suppliers out of the trade, mainly the wholesalers and pharmacists who had been supplying the illegal trade through legal channels, but somehow managed to create a vacuum that the crime syndicate quickly filled in. In others words, the government unknowingly helped the Mob in taking over the racket, completely. When something is declared illegal, by “simple law of physics” usually the price of the illegal product goes up and the competition goes down. But the problem is that the few competitors who are still on the streets are usually gangsters, who also are trying to control the racket, and that’s how conflicts are born or in some cases, that is how national crime syndicates are born. It is a quite interesting “phenomenon” to see that by creating new laws of prohibiting certain synthetic or natural products and making them illegal, we are instantly creating chances for the formation of illegal enterprises. People who don’t have much or who are greedy can quickly turn the whole situation into a lucrative racket. But if you look at the situation from “across the street”, making almost everything legal might create problems with epidemic proportions. So it’s a “two-way street” situation. For example, back in the 1920’s, in America the law of Prohibition somehow proved that even though booze was illegal, alcoholism among the citizens was statistically higher than ever. So I don’t believe that it was the bootlegger’s complete fault but instead the problem was among the citizens. We are the ones who spend our money on vices and so we are the ones who are constantly looking for it, meaning, we’re the ones who “feed” the “Beast”. So no matter if some product was legal or not, if the ordinary individual liked it and was ready to pay for it, there always be someone to provide it.
My personal belief is that one of the biggest mistakes that U.S. government ever did was the deportation of mobsters in their home countries, which made quite large contribution to the narcotics trade. Some of these fellas were few of the biggest criminal minds such as New York’s Charles Luciano, or Detroit’s Frank Coppola or even Chicago’s Dominic Roberto. I’m not pointing out that these fellas formed the world’s biggest drug trade, but I believe that they largely contributed for the establishment of the network. With their help, large quantities of heroin took a secret voyage from the Middle East, like for example Beirut, Lebanon, or Aleppo, Syria, which were the main production points and from there, opium was smuggled to intermediate transhipment points, usually Turkey where the “product” was further developed. For example, few of the most prominent Mafia contacts in Lebanon were Antoine Araman, Muthar Berk and the so-called “prince of darkness” Mounir Alaouie. Now, Araman was the one who purchased raw opium or morphine base from Aleppo, Syria, and with the protection of Alaouie’s political and international connections, Berk easily transported the shipment to Turkey. Over there, the shipment was welcomed by the Ahmet Soysal narcotics smuggling organization which was capable of converting large quantities of opium to morphine base and then to heroin.
The next stop was Marseille, France, and from there to Naples, Genoa and Palermo, Italy. After that, with the help of Corsican and Sicilian criminals, heroin was shipped to three points, including Canada, Cuba or New York. From those points, the drugs usually ended up in the hands of the New York, Detroit or Florida crime families who in turn transported the product across the country with the help of their “colleagues’ from the Midwest crime groups which by that time were mostly under the thumb of the Chicago criminal syndicate. From this point on, the geography of the Chicago drug trade began to take form in street-corner deals among the crumbling housing stock of the south and west sides. This particular drug route was known as the “French Connection”.
