BOOK PROSPECTUS

A Century of Domination: The History of the Chicago Outfit

Arthur J. Lurigio, Ph.D.

Loyola University Chicago 

Intellectual Contribution

America’s Fascination with Organized Crime 

Americans have had a love affair with gangsters since the 1920s. Romanticized in novels, movies, and television programs, they have been portrayed as outlaws, entrepreneurs, men of honor, and benevolent godfathers. Stereotypes of organized crime figures are an enduring feature of popular culture in the United States. Our country’s fascination with organized crime and mobsters is expressed in every medium and shows no signs of dissipating. Highly popular and critically acclaimed films, including Scarface (1932), the Godfather Trilogy (1972, 1974, and 1990),  Mean Streets (1973), Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Bronx Tale (1993), Casino (1995), and Donnie Brasco (1997), have featured the exploits of gangsters. Having spent a remarkable 67 weeks on the bestsellers list, Mario Puzo’s classic novel, the Godfather, has amassed sales of more than 21 million copies worldwide. The true crime sections of bookstores are saturated with books about organized crime; many of these were written by turncoats, prosecutors, journalists, retired mobsters, and former spouses of mobsters.   

Cable television, the Internet, and video games provide the public with boundless opportunities to satisfy its appetite for organized crime. Called "the television landmark that leaves other landmarks in the dust," by the Washington Post, and winner of numerous Emmy Awards, the Sopranos drew high ratings during its six seasons, and the series is now in successful syndication. The show has spawned a full spectrum of products including T-shirts, hoodies, beach towels, flip-flops, books, posters, board games, tote bags, aprons, refrigerator magnets, and tourist packages (http://www.hbo.com/sopranos).  The History, Discovery, and Court TV channels also regularly air documentaries and docu-dramas that showcase organized crime. A recent Google search for “mobsters” produced more than 5 million results. In addition, the video game industry invites people to live the life of a gangster through highly realistic and violent interactive games, such as Mobsters: An Amoral Role-Playing and Strategy Game by Burger Games of Finland in which “America is at the feet of gangster kings and law enforcement is so corrupt that it has all but broken down” (http://www.burgergames.com/G1.PDF). 

Chicago’s Criminal Empire 

Despite the country’s obvious obsession with gangsters, Americans know little about the operations of organized crime and its insidious impact on their everyday lives. The bulk of media coverage has concentrated on New York City’s crime families. Long in the shadow of New York’s La Costa Nostra, Chicago’s gangsters have been quietly running a highly successful and ruthless criminal empire since the 1920s, surpassing every other organized crime family with respect to its control of local law enforcement, politics, and government.              

Throughout the world, Chicago is recognized as the home of America’s quintessential gangster, Al Capone, the former, pervasively iconic kingpin of one of the most powerful, cohesive, and resilient criminal organizations in the country, referred to variously as the Mob, Outfit, or Crime Syndicate. Al Capone’s relatively short tenure as Chicago’s crime boss, which ended abruptly with his well-publicized conviction for income tax evasion, was just the beginning of the Syndicate’s monopolization of organized criminal activity in the city, which included gambling, prostitution, pornography, money laundering, racketeering, loan sharking, and drug distributing.        

 Starting out in the 1890s as a modest enterprise that consisted mainly of prostitution and gambling, the Outfit rose to become a political and economic powerhouse that controlled local, regional, and national labor unions as it exerted tight political control over both political parties at the city, county, and state levels. The Outfit’s political muscle was felt at the federal level and actually extended into the capitol building in Springfield, Illinois and the White House. For example, the West Side Bloc of syndicate-anointed legislators stymied the passage of anti-crime legislation in lawmaking sessions of the state’s General Assembly. The West Side Bloc controlled the political destiny of the "River Wards" for nearly 40 years—from the end of Prohibition through the early 1970s. 

  For more than half of the 20th century, members of the Outfit were immune from arrests and prosecution. Even New York’s most powerful major crime figures were unable to elude the sharp eyes and long arms of law enforcement. For example, Charles “Lucky” Luciano, New York City’s “boss of bosses,” was convicted on prostitution charges and sentenced to prison in 1936.  In Chicago, such a conviction was virtually impossible because of the Outfit’s corruption of most of the city’s criminal justice apparatus (Binder, 2003).

Although they were suspected in more than 1,200 murders, not a single member of the Outfit was convicted of a homicide until 1997. In fact, this conviction took place during the retrial of Harry Aleman, a prolific Mob hit man of the 1970s. The state’s attorney in the case proved that Aleman’s initial acquittal—in a clear-cut case of homicide—had been the result of judicial corruption. For the first time in history, the Constitution’s double jeopardy protection was bypassed. More than a decade later, in a less unusual but equally sensational case, three Mob defendants were convicted of 18 unsolved Outfit “hits” dating back to 1970: Frank “Frankie Breeze” Calabrese, Sr., Joey “The Clown” Lombardo, and James “Jimmy the Man” Marcello. 

The Outfit’s reach was significantly longer than that of any other crime family in the United States. The Chicago Syndicate controlled all organized crime activities in Cook and the Collar Counties, including DuPage and Kane Counties, and it influenced the operations of crime families in Rockford and Springfield, Illinois, Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin, and Kansas City, Kansas. For decades, the Chicago Mob’s autority over Las Vegas and Los Angeles was unquestioned. As a founding member of the National Crime Commission, the Outfit’s bosses often spoke for other crime families west of the Mississippi River, acting as emissaries between the East and West Coast families and settling disputes among other crime families. 

Unlike its roughly 25 counterparts across the United States, Chicago’s Crime Family has been multiethnic. This diversity is reflected not only in its rank-and-file membership but also within its leadership strata. While dominated by Italian-Americans, the members and leaders of the Outfit have included people of Jewish, Greek, Welsh, Dutch, and Bohemian descent. Among the other traditional organized crime families, pure Italian (often Sicilian) decent was a prerequisite for membership. In Chicago, the ability to generate income and peddle influence trumped nationality as a qualification for belonging to the Outfit.  As long-time Mob lieutenant   Joey “the Clown” Lombardo succinctly stated, “[The Outfit] is a group of people. They conspire and they go into deals…. [their purpose] is to make money” (Chicago Crime Commission, 1990, p. 3).

Also different from other crime families, the Outfit required no induction ceremonies, engaged in no jurisdictional disputes with other families (since the early 1930s), or experienced the internecine warfare that often occurred elsewhere among different factions of the same family. New York City, with five powerful organized crime families (Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, and Lucchese), has a long history of warfare within and between the crime families. In the 1980s, Philadelphia’s streets were strewn with casualties from the city’s crime family’s internal power struggles. In contrast, such warfare has been conspicuously absent in Chicago since Al Capone and his immediate successors systematically crushed all opposition to the group’s dominance over the liquor rackets during the Prohibition Era. Another difference between Chicago’s and the other organized crime families is in the relatively few members of the Outfit who have served as government witnesses or “stool pigeons.” 

In the Mob’s more than 100-year history, only one major crime boss, James “Big Jim” Colosimo was removed from leadership through assassination. Since then, the transition to power has been smooth, orderly, and civil. While not a dynasty, the Outfit has been run by direct descendants of Al Capone’s Criminal Enterprise or members of the notorious “42 Gang” and “Circus Café Gang,” which operated in two of Chicago’s Italian neighborhoods. For nearly 50 years, in fact, the Outfit was overseen by just one man, Anthony “Big Tuna” Accardo, who had been a young thug in the Torrio-Capone Criminal Organization of the 1920s. The Outfit’s more than 70 years of control over organized crime in Chicago allowed it to garner unparalleled wealth and political power and enabled it to insinuate itself into legitimate businesses and labor unions. 

The Outfit has been considered one of the most opportunistic, violent, and dangerous crime families in America, even by members of other crime families, who never completely trusted, but always respected and feared, the Outfit’s leadership. When former Al Capone mentor and New York gangster Frankie Yale sent assassins to Chicago to murder Capone, they were greeted at the train station, summarily executed, and sent back to New York City stuffed in a trunk along with a note that read, “Don’t send boys to do a man’s job.” Shortly thereafter, Al Capone had Frankie Yale murdered; he was killed in his car while driving home, becoming the first individual in New York to be killed by a Thompson Machine Gun. New York gangsters engaged in no known acts of retaliation for Yale’s murder. By then, the Outfit had already become a formidable and dreaded criminal entity of prodigious proportions.     

Current Text

Overview and Audience

The History of the Outfit will be the first volume to provide a comprehensive analysis of the rise and decline of the Syndicate. The book will appeal to a broad audience of academics including, criminologists, urban historians, political scientists, and sociologists, and it can be adopted as a companion text to organized crime and deviance courses for graduate and undergraduate students. The volume will explore the confluence of cultural and social forces that created the circumstances for organized crime to flourish in the United States. Furthermore, the volume will examine the Mob’s unique character, following its ascendency through various mechanisms, including political machinations, the brutal torture and murder of its rivals, and its iron-fisted control of vice and other criminal activities. The History of the Outfit also will attract a wide popular audience of educated readers. Neither pedantic nor sensationalistic, the book will be well-documented and scholarly, yet remain highly engaging and free of ponderous footnoting and over-referencing.  

Competition 

A number of textbooks have been written about organized crime. Examples of five contemporary volumes are Jay Albanese (2007) Organized Crime in Our Times (5th Edition), Anderson; Michael Lyman and Gary Potter’s (2006) Organized Crime (4th Edition), Prentice Hall; Howard Abadinsky’s (2006) Organized Crime (8th Edition), Wadsworth; and Dennis Kenney and David Finckenauer’s (1994) Organized Crime in America (1st Edition), Wadsworth. The History of the Outfit will draw extensively from these five texts, along with others, for general information about traditional organized crime in the United States, and it will serve as an excellent complement to each in the classroom. Unlike the proposed volume, however, these books have no real marketability to a general audience and contain a paucity of information about the post-Capone Era, which constitutes more than 75 years of Outfit lore. Specifically, Lyman and Potter devote a scant 6 pages to the Chicago’s crime family; Kenney and Finckenauer devote 30 pages, but only 2 of them focus on the post-Al Capone Era; Abadinsky devotes 25 pages but only 4 address the “Outfit today;” and Albanese devotes a few indiscriminate pages to organized crime in Chicago. 

The most important resources for the History of the Outfit will be original newspaper accounts from the Chicago Historical Society, the archives of the Chicago Crime Commission, and three classic books: John Landesco’s (1929/1968) Organized Crime in Chicago, Ovid Demaris’s (1969) Captive City, and Humbert Nelli’s (1976) The Business of Organized Crime.  In many respects, the proposed volume will pay homage to these treatises, especially Landesco’s groundbreaking and unparalleled study of organized crime in Chicago. The completion of the History of the Outfit will coincide with the 80th anniversary of Landesco’s disquisition.  

Several books also have been written about the Outfit; however, all of them are limited in several respects. Most offer superficial coverage of the Crime Syndicate and lack any substantive analysis of organized crime or its underpinnings. Another shortcoming of these books is that most cover only the Al Capone/Prohibition Era—certainly a crucial, albeit short, period in the Outfit’s history—and none cover the Mob into the 2000s. As the proposed book argues, the vice peddling of the fin de siècle and the alcohol selling of the bootlegging years merely laid the groundwork for the Outfit. In reality, the heart of the Syndicate’s story begins when Prohibition ends.

Other books concentrate on specific members of the Mob. By far, the most voluminous biographies have been written about Al Capone, but they suffer from the same limitation as the aforementioned volumes. The History of the Outfit is not about personages; rather, it tells the Mob’s definitive story by describing the social, political, and sociological matrices that produced and sustained the Outfit in Chicago for more than a century. The brief, annotated bibliography contained in Appendix A demonstrates the shortcomings of the most prominent Outfit-related books on the market, which will be used sparingly as sources for the proposed book. 

The Contents

This book traces the history of the Outfit, which dominated the social, political, and economic life of Chicago for most of the 20th century and became inextricably linked with the   city’s identify. Appendix B contains a rough chronology of the major events that will be discussed in the volume. The book is divided into six chapters. 

Chapter 1

Chapter 1 examines the Outfit’s roots, which originated in Sicily and Southern Italy. The Syndicate drew many of its earliest members from the vast number of Italian immigrants and their children who were seeking better lives in America but who instead were forced to lead hardscrabble lives in Chicago’s Italian ghettos, eventually falling prey to greedy landlords and labor contractors, as well as and the threats of Black Hand extortionists. Most of the residents of the Italian ghetto rose out of impoverishment through honest labor; but others adopted a criminal lifestyle, which began with petty street crime and blossomed into large-scale, concerted criminal activities that capitalized on the public’s insatiable taste for vice and the hidebound venality of politicians.            

Chapter 2

Chapter 2 explores the Outfit’s formative years, which were shaped by the political apparatus that managed the city’s thriving vice district, known as the Levee, which was notorious for its debauchery. Home to rows of taverns, gambling houses, shooting galleries, and brothels, many contemporary commentators and visitors to the city characterized the strip as one of the most vice-ridden, corrupt, and dissipated places anywhere. Referring to the Levee at the peak of its operations, one of the district’s madams mused, “I think Rome at its worst had nothing on Chicago during those lurid days” (Lindberg, 1985, p. 120). A politically savvy street sweeper from the Levee District became the founding father of the Outfit with the assistance of two corrupt Irish politicians and two Italian gangsters from New York—all of whom worked to catapult the Syndicate into national prominence as a major organized crime family.        

Chapter 3

Chapter 3 focuses on the Mob’s victory in the city’s Beer Wars, which were fiercely fought during the Prohibition Era—the period from 1920 to 1933, during which the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol for consumption was banned nationally as mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. As bloody as any modern-day turf battle over the street sales of illicit drugs, the Beer Wars involved gangs of various ethnic backgrounds fighting to assume control over the illicit and highly lucrative alcohol market. As the 1920s ended, the Outfit emerged triumphant and created a monopoly that encompassed all of the major criminal activities in Chicago. Chapter 3 also discusses the Chicago Crime Commission’s efforts to combat organized crime, beginning in 1919 and continuing to date.       Chapter 4

Chapter 4 discusses the Syndicate’s steady expansion, which was fostered by the city’s corrupt political machine and police department and the Mob’s intimidation and control of other criminals through threats of violence and the imposition of street taxes. Operating with impunity during the immediate post-Capone era and beyond, and under the leadership of the “genuine godfather,” Anthony Accardo, the Mob saw its heyday from the 1930s until the 1980s (Roemer, 1995). For decades, the Syndicate steadily accumulated wealth, political power, and control over labor unions and legitimate businesses. Befitting of the culture and character of the city, the Mob was decidedly blue collar, workman-like, steady, and methodical in its criminal pursuits. After Al Capone’s flamboyancy contributed to his downfall, its leaders stayed prudently out of the public eye—with only one exception. (Notably, the current boss of the Outfit is unknown to law enforcement.)     

Chapter 5

Chapter 5 examines on the Outfit’s connection to the city’s Italian neighborhoods and investigates the sociological underpinnings of organized crime in the city, including social disorganization theory and the concept of the defended neighborhood, as well as the psychopathic nature of most mobsters, which led them to engage in violent and criminal activity throughout their lives. The chapter also chronicles the tumultuous years in which the Syndicate experienced federal law enforcement pressure and a rapid turnover in leadership. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the federal government convicted high-ranking Chicago mobsters of labor racketeering and skimming millions of dollars from Las Vegas casinos. During the 1980s, federal investigations also uncovered rampant corruption in Chicago’s courts and political system, illuminating the Syndicate’s entrenchment in the city’s major institutions. Chapter 5 details these cases and reveals information about the intimate relationship that existed between Democratic politics and organized crime in Chicago.  

Chapter 6

Chapter 6 tracks the steady decline of the Syndicate, culminating in the 2007 conviction of three of its current bosses for eighteen unsolved Mob-related “hits,” and speculates about the future of the Outfit whose ranks and influence continue to dwindle because of the death or imprisonment of its members. The book concludes with general observations about the causes and consequences of the demise of traditional organized crime in the United States. 

Technical Specifications

The manuscript will be approximately 220 to 240 double-spaced pages typed in Word 2007 (Times New Roman 12 Font).  References will be cited in the text and formatted in accordance with the stylistic guidelines of the American Psychological Association Publication Manual 5th Edition. No footnotes will be included in the text. However, the text likely will contain interesting sidebars, which are listed in Appendix C. The final draft of the manuscript will be available within 18 months of the issuance of the contract.    

Author’s Qualifications

             Dr. Lurigio, a psychologist, is Associate Dean for Faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Psychology and Criminal Justice at Loyola University Chicago, where he received tenure in 1993. In recognition of his achievements, Dr. Lurigio was named a Faculty Scholar in 2003, the university’s highest honor for excellence in research and grantsmanship. He also received the prestigious Hans Mattick Award for Outstanding Contributions to Research in Criminology in 2003, and the University of Cincinnati Award for Corrections. A prolific scholar, Dr. Lurigio has more than 300 publications to his credit and is an internationally recognized expert in several fields of psychology and criminal justice. A product of Chicago’s Italian American community, Dr. Lurigio has been a student of organized crime for decades and has published a highly regarded chapter on the Syndicate’s entrenchment in Chicago’s neighborhoods and politics. 

Appendix A

Annotated Bibliography 

Laurence Bergreen. (1994). Capone: The man and the era. New York: Simon & Schuster. This book is the best-written and most well–researched biography of Al Capone to date. It provides a detailed account of all aspects of his life, many of which are not covered in previous biographies. The book also describes the lives of Capone’s family members. 

John Binder. (2003). The Chicago Outfit. Chicago: Arcadia. Binder provides a brief (only 20 pages of text) but accurate synopsis of the Syndicate from 1890 to 2000. The book contains an outstanding collection of photographs of Outfit notables.  

Robert Cooley and Hillel Levin. (2004). When corruption was king: How I helped the mob rule Chicago then brought the Outfit down. New York: Carroll & Graf. Written by a former Chicago mob attorney, this book is the gritty tale of an undercover probe, known as Operation Gambat, which uncovered the close ties between organized crime and politics in Chicago. 

John Kobler. (1992). Capone: The life and world of Al Capone. New York: Da Capo. The book presents details of Capone’s childhood in Brooklyn, his takeover of Cicero, Illinois in the 1920s, and his battles against other gangs during Prohibition, as well as his years in the penitentiary. 

Richard Lindberg, (1998). To serve and collect: Chicago politics and police corruption from the Lager beer riots to the Summerdale scandal 1855-1960. Carbondale: Sothern Illinois University. Lindberg presents an excellent, snappy review of the systemic corruption that fostered the Syndicate’s rise to power in Chicago and its surrounding suburbs. 

  Maurice Possley and Rick Kogan. (2007). Everybody pays: Two men, one murder, and the price of truth. New York: Putnam. This book tells the story of Harry Aleman, a notorious mob hit man during the 1970s, who was acquitted for the murder of Billy Logan in a mob-corrupted trial. Aleman was later retried for the murder and found guilty. 

William Roemer. (1989). Roemer: Man against the mob. New York: Ivy. Roemer is a highly readable, semi-autobiographical account about FBI Agent Roemer’s activities in the “Top Hoodlum’s Program” in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The volume offers a fascinating insider’s view of the FBI’s first surveillance and enforcement efforts against organized crime. 

Gus Russo. (2001). The Outfit: The role of Chicago’s underworld in the shaping of modern America. New York: Bloomsbury. This book tells the story of the Mob by focusing on the career of upper-echelon gangster, Murray “the Camel” Humphreys. The book ends with the death of Humphreys’s compatriot and former Outfit boss, Paul “the Waiter” Ricca in 1972. Russo writes a few pages of more recent Mob history in the book’s epilogue.

Robert Schoenberg. (1992). Mr. Capone: The real—and complete—story of Al Capone. New York: William Morrow. Mr. Capone is a crisp tale of the business of bootlegging and Capone’s rise to power during Prohibition.        

  

Appendix B

Sample Timeline of Major Events

1905 – James “Big Jim” Colosimo consolidates his power by forming a loosely knit group of Italian and Sicilian thugs and thieves. They help Big Jim eliminate his competition, usurping the extortionate activities of the Black Hand and protecting his interest in gambling and prostitution throughout the city. 

1909 – Johnny “Papa” Torrio, a career criminal and gang member from New York City, and allegedly Big Jim’s nephew, arrives in Chicago to join forces with Big Jim. 

1919 – William Hale Thomson is elected mayor of Chicago with the strong and able political support of the Colosimo-Torrio organization. Mayor Thomson runs a “wide-open” city, allowing the flourishing of vice and shielding gangsters from arrest and prosecution. He colludes with them in their many criminal endeavors. In homage and an expression of their allegiance, Al Capone hangs a large picture of Mayor Thomson in his office. 

1919 – The Volstead Act is signed into law, making the manufacturing, distribution, and consumption of alcohol illegal. 

1920 – Big Jim Colosimo is assassinated at the behest of Johnny Torrio. Al Capone is widely believed (never proven) to have been the trigger man. In response to Colosimo’s hesitancy to become involved in the illegal liquor business, he is eliminated so that Torrio can become the new boss of the Mob in Chicago and concentrate the organization’s activities on the proliferating illicit alcohol business. 

1924 – North Side gang leader Dion O’Banion is killed by Capone assassins in his florist shop, across from Holy Name Cathedral, in a territorial dispute over the sale of illegal alcohol, igniting the “beer wars.”

1925 – Rivals attempt to assassinate Johnny Torrio but fail. He is badly injured and distraught following the attack. (Information suggests that Al Capone’s henchman were involved in the shooting in an attempt to grab power from Torrio. This claim has never been substantiated.) Torrio decides to return to New York City where he becomes a senior advisor and elder statesman to the New York and other crime families. Al Capone, his former bodyguard and enforcer, assumes control of the Outfit. 

1929 – In a garage on Chicago’s North Side, seven men, most of them members of George “Bugs” Moran’s Gang of bootleggers, are brutally executed in the ongoing beer wars. The men are reputed to have been murdered under the direction of Capone henchman “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn. The press dubs this event the “The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.” The public is outraged at this unprecedented act of wanton violence.

1931 – The National Commission of Organized Crime Families is established to mediate disputes and encourage cooperation among the nation’s crime families. The major crime families, which form the core leadership of the commission, include New York’s Five Families in addition to the organized crime families of Philadelphia, Cleveland, Boston, Detroit, and Chicago. 

1932 – Al Capone is incarcerated in Atlanta Federal Penitentiary for income tax evasion after it was proved that his vast illegal income—which at the apex of his power was reported to be in excess of 100 million dollars annually—was never reported to the federal government. He was moved to Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary after the authorities learn that he was still running the Outfit from his Atlanta cell. Frank “The Enforcer” Nitti becomes Capone’s successor. 

1933 – The Volstead Act is repealed, ending Prohibition and making the manufacture and sale of alcohol legal again in the United States.

1933 – Chicago’s Mayor Anton Cermak is assassinated in what is widely believed to be a botched attempt on the life of President Franklin Roosevelt who had been standing beside Mayor Cermak at a political rally. However, according to credible sources, Mayor Cermak was actually the intended target. The hit had allegedly been ordered by the Mob in retaliation for Mayor Cermak’s recent probes into organized crime activities and his attempted murder of Frank Nitti. In any case, law enforcement scrutiny of the Outfit is curtailed for more than a decade as the corrupt Kelly-Nash political machine assumes political control over the city. 

1934 – Frank Nitti defeats his remaining rivals and takes charge of illegal enterprises in the Chicagoland Area. He directs his organization into extortion and gambling to compensate for the income lost from the illegal alcohol business. 

1943 – Frank Nitti and other Chicago gangsters, including his underboss Paul “the Waiter” Ricca are indicted in the notorious Brown–Bioff case, in which the Mob used its control of local unions and the threat of arson against the nation’s movie theaters to extort millions of dollars from the motion picture industry. 

1943 – Facing a lengthy prison sentence for the Brown-Bioff case and under investigation for tax evasion, Frank Nitti commits suicide by shooting himself on the railroad tracks outside his suburban Chicago home. Recent evidence suggests that he might have been a homicide victim. 

1943 – Paul Ricca assumes the role of Chicago boss after Nitti’s suicide. His stint as boss is short-lived; he is sentenced to ten years in federal prison for the Hollywood extortion case. He is released after serving only three years, which was his earliest parole date, at the special request of United States Attorney General Tom Clark. President Truman later nominates Clark to the United States Supreme Court.  

1943- Anthony Accardo becomes boss and remains in prominent leadership roles until his death nearly 50 years later. 

1946- Through intimidation and murder, the outfit wrests control of the national wire service, which was used to report the results of horse races to illegal gambling locations (wire rooms) across the country. The monopolization of the service fills the mob’s coffers with a steady stream of substantial income. 

1950 – Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee introduces Senate Resolution 202 to investigate gambling and racketeering activities, including crime syndicate involvement in interstate commerce. The Kefauver Committee hearings, which are televised, elicit testimony from 600 witnesses who were interviewed in cities such as Miami, Tampa, New Orleans, Kansas City, Cleveland, St. Louis, Detroit, Los Angles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York. Among the Committee’s conclusions was that “there is a sinister criminal organization known as the Mafia operating across the country” and that the crime syndicate is led by the crime families of New York and Chicago.

1951 – The Mob begins to expand its gambling empire nationally and internationally. The Outfit bribes Cuban President Batista and opens the first casinos in Cuba. Soon thereafter, the Mob begins to establish a strong presence in Las Vegas alongside the New York crime families. 

1956 – The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations opens its inquiry into the Teamsters Unions by establishing the Select Committee on Interstate Activities in the Labor and Management Field.  

1957 – On November 14, a police officer in Apalachin, New York stumbles on a gathering of more than fifty of the country’s crime leaders from cities such as New York, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Cleveland. Representing the Outfit at the meeting was Sam Giancana, who eludes arrest by escaping into the woods. The serendipitous discovery confirmed the existence of a national crime syndicate and forced the FBI to take definitive action against organized crime. 

1957 – Anthony Accardo steps down as the Outfit’s boss to avoid law enforcement scrutiny and to lead a quieter life. He hands over the reins to Sam “Mooney” Giancana, his underboss. Accardo and Ricca are the Outfit’s primary advisors or consigliores.

1959 – Partly as a result of the Apalachin incident, the FBI installs a hidden (illegal) microphone in the Mob’s headquarters, a tailor shop on the Magnificent Mile, which had no storefront entrance. The microphone is called “Little Al,” after Al Capone. The microphone netted a wealth of intelligence for the FBI. However, because the microphone was illegal, the evidence was inadmissible.

1960 – With the help of the powerful Democratic machine and the strong support of Mob-controlled wards in the city under the leadership of Sam Giancana, John Fitzgerald Kennedy wins a narrow and highly crucial victory in Illinois to become the 35th President of the United States.    

1962 – Joe Valachi was the first “made” member of the American Mafia (La Cosa Nostra) to testify before the Senate against his compatriots. He “flips” to avoid a death sentence for murdering a fellow inmate who he erroneously believed was being dispatched by crime boss Vito Genovese to assassinate Valachi in prison. A convicted drug trafficker and member of the Genovese crime family, Valachi reveals the innermost secrets of crime syndicate families’ organizational and operational structures, including the details of its induction ceremony. 

1963 – The Chicago Branch of the FBI, lead by Special Agent William Roemer, places Sam Giancana on “lock-step” surveillance, following him 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week. Agents even follow Giancana into the restroom and on the golf course. Giancana takes legal action against the FBI, claiming his civil rights had been violated. Giancana wins the case against the federal government. The FBI is ordered to scale back its surveillance.

1965 – Sam Giancana refuses to testify before a grand jury about organized crime activities after being granted immunity from prosecution. He is sentenced to one year in jail for contempt of court.  

1965- A grand jury investigating organized crime subpoenas several Chicago politicians. First Ward Alderman John D'Arco Sr. and Pat Marcy, an officer of the First Ward Democratic Organization, refuse to testify. Both men are made members of the Outfit.    

1966 – Sam Giancana is replaced as Mob boss by Sam “Teets” Battaglia. Giancana is pressured to step down because of the unwanted publicity he has attracted to the crime syndicate in Chicago. Giancana flees to Mexico to avoid being found in contempt of court again. He launches a large-scale gambling operation in Mexico financed by the $2 million in cash which he carried into the country.

1967 – Sam Battaglia is convicted of racketeering and extortion and is given a lengthy prison sentence. 

1967 – Former Mob hit man, Felix “Milwaukee Phil” Alderisio becomes the new boss of the Outfit.

1968 – The Outfit begins operating highly profitable “chop shops.” Stolen automobiles are disassembled and their constituent parts are sold individually, making the original vehicles impossible to trace. 

1969 – Felix Alderisio is convicted of racketeering and sentenced to prison.                 

1969 – Jackie “The Lackey” Cerone succeeds Alderisio as boss.  

1970 – Jackie Cerone is found guilty of gambling charges and remains in prison for the next 15 years. 

1971 – With three of Mob’s recent bosses sentenced to prison in rapid succession, Anthony Accardo—consigliore to all the bosses since stepping down as the Outfit’s leader and continuing as the supreme advisor until his death in 1992—decides that the Outfit should be run by a triumvirate, which would deflect law enforcement attention away from any one of the leaders. The three are Joey “Doves” Aiuppa (a criminal from the Capone gang), Gus “Slim” Alex (a consummate political fixer) and Accardo himself. 

1972- Paul Ricca dies of natural causes.

1972 – Car theft rates steadily climb as the syndicate consolidates all the chop shops in Chicagoland and the Collar Counties. 

1973 – Sam Battaglia is paroled because of ill health and dies shortly after his release. 

1974 – Sam Giancana returns from Mexico to his home in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb adjacent to the city. 

1975 – Sam Giancana is assassinated in the basement of his Oak Park home while frying peppers and sausage. Allegedly, his final visitors are close friends and confidents, Dominick “Butch” Blasi (also his former bodyguard, secretary, and driver), and Charles “Chuckie” English. 

1980 – The Mob expands into the video poker industry, installing machines across an expansive area in Cook County and Northwest Indiana and netting millions of dollars into the 21st century. 

1983 - The botched execution of Mob associate Ken Eto propels him into the Federal Witness Protection Program. His would-be assassins are tortured to death for their failure.

1986 - In “Operation Strawman,” Joey “Doves” Aiuppa, Joey “The Clown” Lombardo, Carl "Corky" Civella, Carl "Tuffy" DeLuna, and newly paroled Jackie “The Lackey” Cerone are convicted in the so-called “Las Vegas Skimming Case.” The “skim” was untaxed proceeds that were secretly removed from the casino’s weekly revenues and into the Mob’s coffers. Joseph Agosto, Kansas City crime family member and Las Vegas casino worker, turned state’s evidence and testified against the bosses.

1986 – Joseph “Joe Negal” Ferriola, the Mob’s West Side Gambling Boss, steps in as the Outfit’s leader. 

1986 – Tony “The Ant” Spilotro, in charge of the Outfit’s crew in Las Vegas, and his brother Michael are beaten and buried alive in an Indiana cornfield. He is murdered, in part, for engaging in high-profile thefts in the city—in violation of Outfit directives. 

1989 – With the cooperation and testimony of corrupt attorney Robert Cooley, the federal investigation dubbed “Operation Gambat” reveals the rampant corruption in Chicago's Democratic Party and criminal court system. The tremendous power of the notorious “First Ward,” long recognized behind-the-scenes, is finally exposed. Cooley’s testimony is critical in leading to the convictions or guilty pleas of 24 defendants in the case.

1989 – Joseph Ferriola dies of natural causes. Anthony Accardo appoints Sam “Wings” Carlisi and John “No Nose” DiFronzo as the chief executive and chief operating officers of the Outfit, respectively. 

1992 – After being a major player in the Mob for more than five decades, Anthony Accardo dies of natural causes, never spending a single night in jail during his long criminal career.

1993 – John DiFronzo and Sam Carlisi as well as several Mob associates are charged with “skimming” the proceeds of a Native American gambling casino in California. DiFronzo is convicted; Carlisi is acquitted.

1993 – Sam Carlisi is again indicted on gambling charges. He is convicted and sentenced to prison where he dies in 1997. 

1997 – Harry “The Hit Man” Aleman is retried for a murder for which he had been acquitted 20 years prior. After it was proven that his initial acquittal was the result of judicial bribery, attorneys argued successfully that double jeopardy did not apply to the case. Aleman is sentenced to life imprisonment. 

1999 – Ronald Jarrett, a Mob associate in the 26th Street (Chinatown Crew) is gunned down in broad daylight on a residential street while under FBI surveillance. Sources report that his murder was the result of over-ambition after the death of the crew’s capo, Angelo “The Hook” LaPietra. 

2001–Major Donald Stephens of Rosemont, Illinois applies for a gaming license to open a casino in his city, a few miles west of Chicago. At the license board’s meeting, Wayne Johnson, a retired Chicago Police Officer and chief (and only field) investigator of the Chicago Crime Commission, testifies about Major Stephens’s longtime association with Outfit members such as Peter Di Fronzo, brother of former Mob boss John Di Fronzo. Peter had made substantial contributions to Stephens’s mayoral campaigns. Wayne Johnson’s testimony is instrumental in the board’s decision to deny the license. 

2003 – James “Jimmy the Man” becomes the Outfit’s street boss.   

2005 – The United States Department of Justice’s prosecutorial initiative, “Operation Family Secrets,” indicts 15 top members and associates of the Outfit under the RICO statute. Five Mobsters are indicted for 18 murders dating back to 1980: James “Jimmy the Man” Marcello, Joey “The Clown” Lombardo, Frank “The German” Schweihs, Paul “The Indian” Schiro, and Frank “Frankie Breeze” Calabrese, Sr. Calabrese’s brother Nick and son Frankie Jr. are star government witnesses in the case. Frankie Jr. secretly tapes conversations with his father while Frankie Sr. is awaiting trial in the Metropolitan Correctional Center. 

2006 – Joey Lombardo and Frank Schweihs became fugitives. Lombardo is apprehended while consorting with another Mob figure in the longtime, mobbed-up suburb of Elmwood Park. Schweihs hides out in Berea, Kentucky and eventually turns himself in to the authorities. 

2007 – In the Family Secrets Case, an anonymous jury finds all men guilty of racketeering, conspiracy, bribery, tax fraud, and gambling. James Marcello, Joey Lombardo, and Frank Calabrese, Sr. are found guilty of murder. 

2008 – Law enforcement speculates that the Mob’s new leadership consists of John Di Fronzo (boss), Joseph “Joey the Builder” Andriacchi (underboss), and Joey Lombardo (consigliore). 

 

Appendix C

Sample Sidebars

  • During the Depression, Al Capone funds hundreds of soup kitchens to feed the hungry across the city.  
  • On March 24, 1930, Al Capone appears on the cover of Time Magazine and is the feature story of the issue, which depicts his life and lifestyle in neutral or favorable terms.   
  • The CIA enlists the help of Sam Giancana to assassinate former Cuban leader Fidel Castro. John F. Kennedy and Sam Giancana share the same lover in the early 1960s, Judith Campbell Exner. She carries messages between the president and the Chicago mob boss, including details of plots to assassinate Castro. 
  • Joe Kennedy, who had made part of his fortune in the illegal alcohol trade and had developed mob connections over the years, asks Sam Giancana to help his son win Illinois by fixing the election in Chicago. Giancana allegedly uses his considerable influence to do so.
  • Expecting special favors for their handiwork in the 1960 presidential election, the Outfit instead becomes the focus of even more intense FBI scrutiny after Kennedy’s election. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy makes the Chicago Outfit his prime target. One conspiracy theory speculates that the Mob helped mastermind John Kennedy’s assassination in retaliation for his perceived betrayal.   
  • In 1963, the Outfit murders Benjamin F. Lewis, African American Alderman and committeeman of the West Side’s 24th Ward for his refusal to relinquish his control over the gambling rackets in his ward.  Mr. Lewis’s is murdered on the night he had won a primary election; his body is found under his desk in the ward office.
  • Operation Greylord is launched in the early 1980s after a young prosecutor named Terry Hake, disillusioned with the rampant corruption of the Cook County Criminal Courts, tells the FBI that he was willing to pose as a corrupt attorney to expose the underworld’s control of the Cook County justice system. As a result, 15 judges, 50 attorneys, and numerous police officers are convicted of various crimes.   
  • Several burglars and their known associates are tortured and executed after breaking into Accardo’s home to reclaim stolen jewelry.   

For decades, Chicago Police Deputy Superintendent William Hanhardt oversees an Outfit-sanctioned jewelry heist crew.