Death of Jake Lingle

During the 1920s, a series of increasingly spectacular acts of violence enraged the public and each led to at least a short-term increase in police enforcement against criminals. But none was so prominent and far-reaching as that which followed the murder of Jake Lingle, Chicago Tribune reporter, close to here in the tunnel under Michigan Ave. at Randolph St., on June 9, 1930.

By raising the price of alcohol, while doing little to reduce the public’s demand for it, Prohibition had served to enrich those who were still willing to produce and sell. It also put the industry in the shadow of the law, and so created the incentives and opportunities for violence. Thus, the 1920s were the era of big-spending, flashy gangsters and headline-splashing murders, epitomized by the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929. By 1930, that epoch was coming to a close. The stock market crash of the previous October and the rapidly worsening economy dampened the demand for booze, and the shrinking government revenues from income and sales taxes produced a political demand for new sources of tax revenue – and liquor was high on the list of potentially lucrative targets, if only it was legalized. Within three years, Prohibition was repealed, and its personification, Al Capone, was rotting away in prison. The .38 caliber revolver shot that killed Lingle symbolized the end of the golden age of the Chicago gangster.

Alfred J. Lingle was born of modest means on Chicago’s west side in July, 1891, the son of a small business owner. Lingle’s great talent lay in his personality: he was a “character” not easily forgotten, a warm, self-possessed fellow, and an easy confidant. Born a Jew, his family converted to Roman Catholicism when he was eight years old, meaning he could easily fit in with a variety of ethnic groups. Lingle was also fascinated with police work from a young age, and he would frequently haunt police stations and crime scenes, peppering detectives with questions.

After attending the John Calhoun North school at Adams and California streets (the school still operates today), Lingle first took a job as a stocker at the Schoelling Company, a surgical supply house. He also played semi-pro baseball for a short time. But it was not long before his talents and interests found him in a job as a crime beat reporter at the Chicago Tribune, where he first started work in 1912.

In those days, men like Lingle, who had progressed no farther than 8th grade in school, were paid to gather news on the street and feed it back to specialist writers who organized the facts and wrote the purple prose. Hence, Lingle typically had no byline, but his reporting laid the foundation for most of the big crime stories at the paper during the 1910s and 1920s (except during WWI, during which Lingle served as a Navy intelligence officer). One of his first assignments was to cover the closure of the south side “Levee” (open vice) district during 1912-13.

Lingle was successful in his work because of his ability to mix with the criminal element, and he was on familiar terms with all of the top racketeers of his period. Mossy Enright, Tommy Maloy, James Colosimo, Johnny Torrio, and Al Capone all counted Lingle as a friend. After his death, Lingle’s relationship with Capone would come under particular scrutiny. Lingle had, on several occasions, procured exclusive interviews with Capone, and “Big Al” had even gifted him with a $300 diamond-encrusted belt buckle, which he wore proudly.

(Pictured: Jake Lingle)

Lingle was also close to many political figures and top police brass in the city. A childhood friend was William F. Russell, who became police commissioner in 1928 after scandals erupted surrounding the previous office-holder, Michael Hughes (described in this post). Some say that Lingle, through his various power connections, actually had a hand in lobbying for, and promoting Russell to the position. Lingle even had a joint stock investment fund he ran with Russell. Lingle’s close relationship with Russell (and his propensity for braggadocio) caused others to only half-jokingly refer to him as the “unofficial chief of police.” Many other key city officials, bureaucrats, and patrolmen were also among his friends.

But it’s possible to have too many friends. Lingle’s social network made him an ideal “fixer,” someone who could make deals between the underworld and those who were tasked with eliminating it. In time, the opportunities to put in a good word in City Hall for this or that gambling joint, to pass along a tip about an upcoming raid to some brothel proprietor, and to broker deals between speakeasies and the patrolmen on their beat, became too great for the $65-per-week newspaper stringer.

Like a great many others in the 1920s, Lingle also participated in the bull stock market of that decade. His bank records indicate he amassed over $85,000 in capital gains at the height of the frenzy. But, also like many others, he took a bath on Black Tuesday in October, 1929, losing most of his fortune and diving deeply into debt. But is was hard for Lingle to relinquish the lifestyle his underworld earnings and investment riches had brought him. It wasn’t easy to give up the vacations in Cuba, the high-rolling afternoons at the race track, and his luxurious suite at the city’s top hotel, the Stevens on Michigan Ave. (now the Chicago Hilton). Then there was his wife, Helen Sullivan, and their two young children, Alfred Jr. (born 1924) and Dolores (born 1925), who Lingle worshipped. He had recently put down $18,000 on a family vacation home in Indiana.

Thus it was that Jake Lingle increased his involvement with the criminal element. Where there was money to be made, he made it. To supplement that income, he even began double- and triple-crossing his acquaintances, working simultaneously as an agent for the police, politicians, and rival gang syndicates. Friends became enemies and enemies friends.

On the morning of June 9, 1930, Lingle left his in-town suite at the Stevens Hotel and, after stopping in at Tribune Tower to chat with his editor, he set out for the nexus of politics and crime in Chicago at Clark and Randolph streets, to see what choice tidbits he could pick up from the gamblers and sharpies who made that corner their headquarters. Next, it was a round of gladhanding and small talk with other power brokers in the lobby of the Sherman House hotel. Satisfied that he’d completed his work there, he walked east to Michigan Ave. At the corner of Randolph St., he purchased a newspaper and a horseracing publication and entered the underground tunnel leading to the train station on the other side of Michigan Ave.

The 1:30 train to Homewood was leaving in a few minutes and Lingle expected to spend the afternoon at the Washington Park Race Track. He was a big-spending gambler on the ponies, sometimes placing up to $1,000 on a single sprint. He was close with many horse owners and jockeys, and sometimes had inside information he used to turn the odds in his favor. The turf was also a great place to chat up those in the know in gangland, picking up tips he could pass on at the Tribune. So the afternoon gambling junket wasn’t purely a matter of pleasure.

As he walked through the tunnel, he lit a cigar, unaware of two men who trailed him in from the street. As he approached the far east end of the tunnel, one of them, a thin man with dark eyes and blond, wavy hair, pulled up behind Lingle and fired a single bullet into the back of his head. Lingle’s jaw clamped shut on the cigar and he fell face-forward to the ground, instantly dead.

His shooter and accomplice took off back through the tunnel, then suddenly, the man with blond hair who had fired the gun turned back and ran past Lingle’s body, leapt a railing at the train station entrance, and climbed up to the east side of Michigan Ave. Hot on his tail at this point were several by-standers who had watched in terror as the scene unfolded. Reaching the surface, they called out to a police patrolman, Anthony L. Ruthy, “Stop that man!” Officer Ruthy chased the killer across Randolph, then westward on the north side of the street across Michigan and into an alley which made a left turn and emptied onto Wabash St. At the corner of Wabash and Randolph, the shooter disappeared into the crowd and made a getaway from his pursuers. Later it was learned he entered the Taylor Trunk Company at 23 E. Randolph, nervously purchased a $5 hat, asked to use the restroom, and then left the store without his hat.

The gangland-style shooting of a humble and presumably honest news reporter with a wife and two children shocked the city. Here was a man who, to the public, appeared to have no gang affiliations, and killed in cold blood. If it could happen to him, it could happen to anyone. Public pressure to find Lingle’s killer and to rid the city of criminal gangs once and for all was intense.

Within 24 hours, the police rounded up 664 “wise guys” into the city bridewell, and an unsurpassed manhunt blanketed the Chicago area. One enterprising judge, John Lyle, used the opportunity of public outrage to issue largely unconstitutional, but ingenious, arrest warrants for “vagrancy” to top gang leaders, including Al Capone, on the theory that if they paid their bail, then they could be questioned on the source of their income and either imprisoned or investigated for tax evasion. Almost all of these efforts ended in little more than a waste of police and court resources, though a few notable criminals did fall into the dragnet, including labor racketeer George “Red” Barker, and Joseph Traum, an Indiana desperado. Another fallout from the killing was the resignation, under intense political pressure, of Lingle’s friend in the police force, Commissioner Russell, as well as several other top police brass.

Immediately after the killing, partially out of sympathy and partially for headline-grabbing purposes, Lingle’s employer, the Tribune, posted a $25,000 reward for information leading to the capture of his shooter, and other city papers added an additional $30,000 on top of it. When, a few days, later, however, competing papers began learning – and printing – the details of Lingle’s close associations with mobsters, his political “fixing” activities, and his lavish lifestyle and gambling habit, the Tribune maintained that no one at the company was aware of any of Jake Lingle’s darker side. In fact, Lingle had frequently bragged about his friendships with gangsters, although he also told friends that he had inherited hundreds of thousands of dollars from wealthy relatives.

Frank Wilson, an IRS agent investigating the Capone case, claimed in his autobiography that Col. Robert McCormick, proprietor of the Tribune, had personally arranged a meeting between Lingle and Wilson, scheduled for the day after the murder. If true, this implies that McCormick was well aware of Lingle’s underworld connections; however, McCormick always denied the accusation, and other sources claim that Wilson only contacted McCormick after the murder.

In any case, Lingle’s death created a scandal for the paper. Mayor William Hale Thompson, a long-time target of the paper’s editorials, took the opportunity for a pot shot at the Tribune, referring to it jokingly as the “Lingle Evangelistic Institute.” The Tribune tried to quash the furor by separating themselves from Lingle; they even published Lingle’s entire checking account register in a full two-page spread in an attempt at openness – while at the same time covering up what anyone at the paper might have known about the large and frequent sums entering and exiting the account. In an exculpatory editorial, the paper wrote,

Alfred Lingle now takes a different character, one in which he was unknown to the management of the Tribune when he was alive. He is dead and cannot defend himself, but many facts now revealed must be accepted as eloquent against him.

He was not, and he could not have been, a great reporter. His ability did not contain these possibilities. He did not write stories, but he could get information in police circles. He was not and he could not be influential in the acts of his newspaper, but he could be useful and honest, and that is what the Tribune management took him to be. His salary was commensurate with his work.

The reasonable appearance against Lingle now is that he was accepted in the world of politics and crime for something undreamed of in his office and that he used this in undertakings which made him money and brought him to his death. He has paid the penalty of it if he was enticed into this pool and the Tribune regrets it for the boy’s sake and for the sake of the profession.

The occurrence, although not unusual, is always tragic.

The Tribune also helped fund the investigation into the killing by the State’s Attorney’s office, contributing office space and the services of their corporate counsel, Charles F. Rathbun. Rathbun’s presence on the investigative team also helped insure that evidence unfavorable to the paper never saw the light of day. Pat Roche, lead detective in the State’s Attorney’s office, and Rathbun, lead a year-long focused manhunt for Lingle’s killer, which took them on investigative journeys as far as Havana and Los Angeles.

So who killed Jake Lingle, and why? The answer remains shrouded in mystery after 70 years, but here are the known facts. Lingle’s killer dropped his revolver at the scene of the crime. The serial number on the weapon had been filed down, but careful forensics were able to recover it, and the gun was traced to a sale at the sporting goods dealership of Peter Von Frantzius at 608 W. Diversey Pkwy. Frantzius was a popular arms dealer to the underworld, and his shop had also supplied the weapons used in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

Von Frantzius’s records showed the firearm had been sold to Frank Foster (born Frank Citro), known to police as a member of the Northside Gang, although there were indications Foster had recently switched sides, becoming a gunner for the rival south side Capone syndicate. Foster was arrested in Los Angeles on July 1, and extradited to Illinois.

Upon seeing Foster, several witnesses, including Officer Ruthy, who chased the shooter through the Loop, declared he was the killer. However, other witnesses disagreed, and Foster had a reasonably plausible alibi. The State’s Attorney’s office suspected he was not their man, but kept him in legal limbo while they continued their frantic search.

Finally, based on underworld gossip and a close resemblance to the witness descriptions, police arrested one Leo V. Brothers, a member of the St. Louis-based Egan’s Rats gang, which was a Capone affiliate in that city. Brothers was a labor union slugger, and was wanted in connection with a murder that took place during struggles between rival factions of a taxi drivers’ union. He had escaped to Chicago with a recommendation to one of this city’s top labor racketeers, Thomas Maloy, and had found work as a bouncer at the mob-controlled Green Mill saloon on Broadway and Lawrence Aves. (the bar still exists today). At his arraignment, Brothers curiously refused to plead either guilty or innocent, instead only saying “On the advice of my attorneys, I stand mute”. Many found it suspicious that Brothers, who was ostensibly destitute, was supported by a “dream team” of five top defense attorneys, led by the inveterately corrupt Louis Piquett, who would go on to greater fame as John Dillinger’s attorney and sometimes partner-in-crime.

(Pictured: Leo V. Brothers)

Brothers went on trial in the spring of 1931. The prosecution produced seven eye witnesses who fingered Brothers as the shooter. The defense pointed out that a number of these witnesses were on the payroll of the State’s Attorney, and that their descriptions to police at the time of the murder differed in several important details. The defense also produced eight witnesses of their own, including Officer Ruthy, who had chased Lingle’s killer through the Loop, who claimed Brothers was not the man they saw.

In the end, however, the prosecution’s witnesses were more believable to most jurors, and Brothers’ checkered past in St. Louis made him a plausible assassin. One lone juror held out from the other eleven in returning a life sentence in the trial, however. Other jurors later claimed his man stubbornly refused to even discuss the matter, and so ultimately, the jury found Brothers guilty and sentenced him to only 14 years. At sentencing, Brothers proudly told reporters, “I can do that standing on my head!” Some intimated that Piquett or some wealthy supporters of Brothers behind the scenes had paid off the dissenting juror.

Regardless of whether Lingle was shot by Foster, Brothers, or someone else, it does little to answer the more important question of why Lingle was killed. One prominent theory, promoted by Roche and Rathbun, and supported by a former Northside Gang associate, Julian “Potatoes” Kaufman, is that Lingle was killed in a dispute over a ritzy gambling resort, the Sheridan Wave Club, located at Sheridan Rd. and Waveland Ave. According to Kaufman, he managed the Sheridan Wave for four years in the late 1920s. During that time, the club catered to an exclusive clientele, high-rollers whose large bets brought in boffo profits for the gang. So lavish was the Club, it is said that all drinks and other amenities were provided to customers gratis and at will while they placed bets.

In June, 1929, under public pressure to fight organized crime after the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, police Commissioner Russell ordered the Sheridan Wave’s closure. Jack Zuta and other higher-ups in the Northside Gang itched to reopen it, and pressured Kaufman to get Lingle to talk with Russell about the possibility. Some sources claim that Lingle demanded a cut of the Club’s revenue. According to Kaufman, during one meeting with Lingle, Zuta showed up, and Lingle turned to him and said “Don’t speak to me, you lousy pimp.” Zuta was, in fact, a slimy pander, the Northsiders’ equivalent to the Capone syndicate’s Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik. In any case, Zuta began to see Lingle as uncooperative.

One ambitious gang underling, Grover Dullard, had run the craps table at the Sheridan Wave, and he had heard Lingle was the sticking point in keeping the Club closed. In Kaufman’s account, Dullard was looking to prove his worth to the gang, and saw Lingle’s murder as a way to impress Zuta. He told everyone he would “take care of” Jake Lingle.

Did Grover Dullard – either on his own, or at the request of Jack Zuta – hire someone to kill Lingle (or do the job himself)? It was well-known and substantiated that a deep mutual dislike existed between Lingle and Zuta, as well as Zuta’s partners, the Aiello brothers. In fact, within a half hour of Lingle’s death, police raided the Aiello bake shop and headquarters on Division street, arresting Carl and Dominick Aiello for questioning (the most prominent Aiello, Joe, was nowhere to be found). Zuta himself was brought in a few weeks later.

Since police headquarters were on the south side at Michigan and 11th St., in the middle of Capone syndicate territory, when Zuta’s questioning was completed, he pleaded for a police escort to the north side. The officers obliged, but during the drive through the Loop, the car was attacked by gunmen, who after firing indiscriminately into a crowd and killing a street car driver, sped away Hollywood-style, blowing a smoke screen behind them along State street.

Jack Zuta survived the hit, but met his end only a month later while on vacation at a resort near Delafield, Wisconsin. He was plopping nickels into a jukebox on the dance floor when he turned around and was met by a barrage of bullets from five men who had infiltrated the hall. Some theorize the killers were Capone’s men, and their purpose was to avenge Lingle’s death. Others believe Zuta was killed by his fellow gang members, who believed he was talking to police.

An alternative theory of Lingle’s death claims he was offed at the order of a relatively minor, but interesting, hoodlum, John J. “Boss” McLaughlin. A former state legislator, McLaughlin had moved easily across the blurry line between politics and crime, and was at the time building a series of gambling enterprises. Supposedly, he had threatened Lingle just days before his death after a police raid at his headquarters at 606 W. Madison, “I’ll catch up with you, and it won’t be long either”. McLaughlin believed Lingle was going to keep police Commissioner Russell off his gaming centers.

A third theory is that Lingle was actually a victim of Capone. Though Lingle and Capone were known to be friends, some sources claim Lingle had been paid a large sum of money to help Capone win political support and police protection for a number of dog tracks the syndicate planned to open in Illinois. Lingle had failed, the theory goes, and had lost the money gambling or in stocks. Then there is IRS agent Frank Wilson’s statement, alluded to earlier, that he was planning to meet with Lingle to discuss Capone’s tax issues. In addition, a number of witnesses at the scene of the crime identified Sam “Golf Bag” Hunt, a noted Capone gunman, as being present.

Alternatively, some claim Foster, who had recently begun working with Capone, was the killer, and that Capone’s gang arranged for Brothers to take the fall in order to help him escape his murder charge in St. Louis (which he eventually did). Hence Brother’s odd non-plea at his arraignment, and irrational exuberance at having been sentenced to 14 years after his conviction. However, the truth is that Jake Lingle’s tracks in the underworld were simply too complex to trace precisely, and the reason for his death is likely lost completely to history.

Leo Brothers served eight years and three months of his 14 year sentence at Joliet penitentiary, after being released early for good behavior. He was immediately re-arrested for the taxi murder in St. Louis, but the evidence had grown cold and he couldn’t be convicted. He went back to work in the tax racket in St. Louis, working his way up to a position of authority in the industry, until he was shot at his home in a gang hit in September, 1950. He died shortly after.

Frank Citro (Foster) also continued working in organized crime, returning to Los Angeles, where he died of a heart attack in April, 1967. A few months after Brothers was sentenced in 1931, Officer Anthony Ruthy was shot and killed in the line of duty by a fleeing bank robber. Coincidentally, Ruthy was killed less than 100 ft from where Lingle met his end, near the corner of Michigan and Randolph. Grover Dullard was a prominent Chicagoland bookie, and ran with a violent gang of gamblers into the 1940s. Julius “Potatoes” Kaufman moved to New York City, and then to Miami, where he continued running casinos. Peter Von Frantzius was charged with accessory to murder before the fact in the Lingle killing, but the charges were eventually dropped. He continued operating his sporting goods business until his death in 1968.

Lingle was shot at the east side of the tunnel under Michigan Ave., where it rose out of the ground and fed into the old Illinois Central railway tracks. That spot no longer exists today, since the train station has been moved underground. The tunnel under Michigan Ave. has long since been renovated and rerouted slightly, although it still passes close to where it lay in 1930 (see photo at the top of this post). Where the IC station once stood, today is the beautiful Millenium Park, built largely at taxpayer expense and only $130 million over budget and four years late for the millenium (it opened in 2004). Nevertheless, the park boasts a Frank Gehry-designed band shell, a fountain with a constantly-changing electronic image of a man or woman spitting, and "the bean". The spot pictured below at the southeast corner of Michigan and Randolph is Wrigley Square, featuring the "Millenium Monument", a set of greek columns that is a replica of a similar monument that stood on the spot in 1930.

Jeff Fort Family Tree

As discussed in previous posts (here, here, here, and here), Jeff Fort was one of the most notorious gangsters in Chicago history. Like better-known Italian mob leaders such as Colosimo, Torrio, and Capone, he perceived arbitrage profits from government policy (primarily drug prohibition in Fort's case), then developed and managed a huge criminal distribution and marketing enterprise to exploit them. Also like other top gang leaders, he used ingenious methods to distract law enforcement and to massage political and community perceptions, and became a controversial community leader.

Fort was critical in establishing several important gang entities, including the Blackstone Rangers, the Black P. Stone Nation (a collection of local affiliated "stone" gangs), the People Nation (a national cartel of gangs including the BPSN as well as other lage organizations including the Vice Lords), and the El Rukns (a religiously-motivated gang). While the Italian mob in Chicago is today a mere shell of its former self, Fort's gangs, with the possible exception of the Rukns -- whose influence is nevertheless still felt -- are going strong.

It is not uncommon for gang members to draw their family into a criminal organization. Without the ability to enforce employment contracts through the court system the way legal businesses do, trust becomes a next-best substitute for formal contracts in underground industries. Ethnicity and common background engender some level of trust -- hence the fact that most gangs are composed of members of the same race or ethnicity -- but family ties are even stronger. Shirking and disloyalty to the gang in such cases thus means turning one's back on loved ones. In addition, family members of prominent criminals may face discrimination in the labor market (would you think twice before hiring someone named "Gotti"?), so non-gang opportunities become relatively scarce.

The Fort family exemplifies the role relatives play within a gang. Jeff Fort had seven brothers and three sisters, most of which are known to have been active in his criminal enterprise. He is believed to have fathered at least seven children, and two of these rose to leadership positions in the gang. In addition, nephews and even grandchildren have also been connected with criminal activity.


Brothers

• Andrew Fort (born c. 1959)

Active in developing the drug sales operations of the El Rukns in the 1970s and 1980s after Jeff Fort's release from prison in 1976. In 1986, convicted of the April 1985 murder of Robert "Dog" Johnson on Stony Island and 67th Place. Johnson, a former Rukn, had left the gang to deal drugs independently and was allegedly killed by Andrew Fort in a territorial dispute.

(Pictured: Andrew Fort, being arrested for marijuana possession in 1979 at the El Rukn Temple)

• Bennie Fort (born c. 1949)

Active in the Blackstone Rangers and BPSN during the 1960s and 1970s. Served two years in prison between 1968 and 1970 for aggravated battery. After release, rejoined gang and was among top leadership during Jeff Fort's first prison sentence, 1972-76. He apparently continued to be active in the El Rukns during the 1980s, and in 1982 was involved in a physical altercation with a woman in a dispute over ownership of a television set. The woman called police, and while accusing Bennie Fort of aggravated battery, also fingered him as the killer in a murder a few months before, a bar fight that ended in the death of Darryl Poindexter. Fort went on trial for the slaying, but after some witness intimidation by his brothers Eugene and Johnny Lee (see below), was acquitted. He did serve two years in prison for the woman's battery, however.

Televisions were bad news for Bennie Fort. In June 1988, a fellow El Rukn, Perry Squire, sold a broken TV to Fort for $40. Fort managed to repair it, and when Squire saw his broken set working again, he insisted it be returned to him. Fort refused, but a few days later, the television was stolen, and Fort confronted Squire about it. An altercation ensued, during which Squire stabbed Bennie Fort to death.

• Eugene Fort (born c. 1951)

A low-level enforcer in the Rukns. Along with Johnny Lee Fort, he was involved in intimidating witnesses during Bennie Fort's 1983 murder trial. On July 14, 1983, the day after police arrested Bennie Fort, Eugene and Johnny Lee Fort allegedly broke into the home of the woman who had accused him of the killing and threatened to kill her.

• James Fort (born c. 1962)

Drug dealer in the Rukns. Convicted of crack cocaine distribution and imprisoned in 1994.

• Johnny Lee Fort (born c. 1947)

The oldest of the brothers and the namesake of his father. Despite age, does not appear to have held high office in the gang, though together with Eugene Fort, was involved in intimidation of witnesses in Bennie Fort's 1983 murder trial (see above).

• Lawrence Fort (born c. 1960)

Ran one of the El Rukns' ancillary businesses in the 1980s, a security firm known as Security Maintenance Services, Ltd. The firm was unlicensed, and Fort was arrested as part of a police sting operation at McCormick Place. Pled guilty in the case to operating a security firm without a license, and carrying an illegal firearm.

Sisters

• Pee Wee Fort (born ?)

Active in El Ruks during 1980s. In 1985, Yonava Eason and two girlfriends were walking down a street when they saw Andrew Fort (above) and David Carter, both El Rukns, open fire on Robert "Dog" Johnson. Eason picked Carter's photo from a lineup, but when asked to testify in court, recanted her identification. Andrew Fort was convicted, but without Eason's testimony, Carter went free. Later, in 1991, Eason admitted she had changed her testimony after being threatened out of court by Pee Wee Fort, who told her she "better not testify". "My family was more important to me than telling the truth in that courtroom that day," she said.

Carter was convicted of murder, but eventually had his sentence reduced to 8-1/2 years on narcotics distribution charges, based on prosecutorial misbehavior. Prosecutors in the case had allowed gang snitches to use drugs, liquor, and to have sex with their wives and girlfriends while under state guard.

• Merriam Rice (neé Fort) (born ?)

No known gang activities in Chicago. Today is an anti-gang activist, working alongside former Gangster Disciples leader K.G. Wilson in inner-city Minneapolis, who is involved in street preaching and anti-violence community organizing. See this article for details. The Disciples are the chief Chicago rivals of the BPSN, and form the core of the "Folk Nation", a gang cartel organization rival to Fort's "People Nation"; hence, Rice's work with Wilson is significant. Wilson said,

I heard Jeff Fort had a sister here. I introduced myself and told her to come out with me. She did, and she's been with me ever since. Here I am, an ex-chief of the Black Gangster Disciples, and God gave me the sister of Jeff Fort. I think that allows us to show people that this gang thing is garbage.

[Thanks to Otto Sotnak for the tip about Merriam Rice, which inspired this post.]


Children

• Antonio Fort (born c. 1966) (also known as "Prince Akeem")

Believed to have been among top Chicago-based leadership of the El Rukns during the 1980s (Jeff Fort commanded the gang from prison in Beaumont, Texas, for most of the period), Antonio Fort was the target of the arrest warrant police used to infiltrate and eventually demolish the El Rukn Grand Major Temple and mosque headquarters on 39th and Drexel in 1989. Antonio Fort was apparently not fully loyal to the gang (possibly under the influence of a substance abuse problem), leading Jeff Fort to direct "drummings" [beatings] of his own son by fellow gang members as punishment on at least two occasions.

In the early 1990s, Antonio Fort is believed to have led a large Stones set the South Shore neighborhood (colloquially known as "Terror Town" during the gang's reign). Between 1992 and 1996, he served a prison sentence for conspiracy to purchase cocaine in Evanston. His release may have created a power struggle in the gang; in any case, his body washed up on the shore of Wolf Lake, separating Illinois and Indiana, in March, 1997.

• Watkeeta Valenzuela Fort (born c. 1970) (also known as "Prince Watkeeta")

In the power vacuum left after the government takedown of the Rukns in the late 1980s, Valenzuela came to power, leading one of the major Stones sets which controlled the Englewood neighborhood, with headquarters at 54th St. and Bishop St. (pictured at the top of this post). Valenzuela led the Stones in violent clashes with the Gangster Disciples gang, which also tried to move in on Rukn territory on the South Side during the early 1990s. In March, 1997, he pled guilty to running a cocaine trafficking operation, telling the court "I was born into this. I had no other choice."

Valenzuela is believed to have remained the closest of his siblings to father Jeff Fort, and to have incorporated much of the quasi-Islamic religious aspects of the Rukns in the 1990s Stones sets. His followers called themselves "Moes", a reference to the "Moorish Science" tenants of the Rukns. That name is still common among some factions.


Others

• Eugene Fort, nephew and son of Eugene Fort, brother (born c. 1972)

Active in Minneapolis crack trade during the early 1990s. Was chief suspect in 1990 murder of 11-year old boy Marcus Potts, who was at home alone while his house was being burglarized. A trail of footprints in the snow from the boy's home led police back to Eugene Fort's house, where traces of the boy's blood were found. However, the evidence was not strong enough to convict in court, and so the case was not brought to trial for 15 years, when DNA testing technology had advanced to the point where the blood could be more authoritatively matched. Eugene Fort was convicted of murder in 2007, though a new trial was briefly considered in 2007 based on the apparent jailhouse confession of his cousin Paul Rice. However, Fort's conviction was upheld.

• Paul Rice, nephew and son of Merriam Rice, sister (born ?)

After the conviction of his cousin Eugene Fort in the murder of an 11-year old boy, Rice supposedly bragged to jail inmates that he had "killed a little boy" on at least two occasions. On this basis, Eugene Fort received a hearing to determine whether a new trial was warranted, though Fort's conviction was subsequently upheld.

• Antonio Fort, grandson and son of Antonio Fort, son (born c. 1987) (also known as "Peanut")

Allegedly involved in 2002 mob beating that made national news. Jack Moore and Anthony Stuckey were driving drunk and high through the Oakland neighborhood, and crashed their van into a house on Lake Park Ave., where three young women were sitting. The crash injured the women, killing one. A crowd of men who were nearby at the time of the wreck dragged Moore and Stuckey out of the van and beat them to death on the street. A police officer who arrived on the scene to break up the violence claimed that Antonio was a leader of the vigilante mob, and had personally attacked Moore and Stuckey.

At trial in 2003, Antonio Fort testified that he arrived on the scene after the violence had already begun, and that he left quickly when he heard his mother calling him. Fort was acquitted. Reports indicate he is not closely associated with the Stones.

Tony D'Andrea Assassinated

Tony D’Andrea got his start in the dark corners and alleys of the Levee. Through hard work, muscle, and not a little violence, he rose to become Chicago’s leading Italian politician. He met his end in the bloodiest political feud in the city’s history, shot to death on the front steps of his home here at 902 S. Ashland Ave.

Born in Sicily in 1872, D’Andrea showed an early gift for languages, and graduated at the University of Palermo before making his way to the United States in 1896. He disembarked at Buffalo, New York, then found his way down to Baltimore, where he entered St. Mary’s Academy, a seminary where he trained for the priesthood. After three years at St. Mary’s, and with additional training at St. Bonaventura’s Academy in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, D’Andrea was appointed to a pastorship at St. Anthony’s Italian Catholic Church on the far south side of Chicago in June, 1899.

The clerical collar fit poorly. Six weeks after his appointment, D’Andrea fell in love with a woman, Lena Wagner, who he met in the barbershop of a friend on W. Grand Ave. The two eloped to Milwaukee and married there. D’Andrea was subsequently excommunicated from the church, and maintained a distant relationship to Roman Catholicism throughout the rest of his life. At his death, he was refused a church funeral.

(Pictured: Antonio D'Andrea, dressed in clerical uniform in 1899)

After leaving the priesthood, D’Andrea became a private language tutor, and also held part ownership in a macaroni factory in a warehouse district on the South side. To be close to the factory, he settled with his new wife in an apartment at 2125 S. Archer Ave., in what is today Chinatown. At the time, Mayor Carter Harrison was leading a political attack on the old Custom House Place red light district, and so this formerly-quiet neighborhood where the D’Andreas lived was quickly growing into the city’s premier red light district, soon to be known throughout the world as “the Levee”.

Around the same time, another couple, future mob-founder Jim Colosimo and his young wife Victoria Moresco, opened the New Brighton brothel just a block north on Archer Ave., and the Everleigh Sisters opened their famed house of ill-repute a block north of that. Criminal enterprise surrounded the D’Andreas, and the underworld opportunities were endless.

While vice was the preferred get-rich-quick scheme for those around him, D’Andrea’s religious leanings may have disinclined him from such pursuits. Instead, he took up counterfeiting.

Around 1900, D’Andrea traveled to New York, and there purchased a large quantity of phony dimes. It’s a testament to subsequent inflation that counterfeiting such small currency could have been profitable, but at the time, a dime could buy two “tubs” of beer at Michael Kenna’s Workingmen’s Exchange saloon.

The Secret Service, today best known for their work protecting the President, was originally established as an agency of the Treasury Department, tasked with investigating counterfeiters. In 1902, Capt. Thomas I. Porter of the Secret Service literally “followed the money” directly to a macaroni factory on the south side of Chicago, where he went undercover as a state tax agent to gain D’Andrea’s confidence. After he had collected sufficient evidence to prosecute, a squad of Secret Service agents and Chicago police arrived at the D’Andrea home on Archer with arrest warrants. While Mr. D’Andrea was being taken into custody, Mrs. D’Andrea, looking a little fuller-figured than usual, attempted to leave the house through the back exit. Captain Porter commanded an officer to stop her, at which point a bag full of counterfeit specie fell out from under her dress and scattered across the floor. The jig was up.

D’Andrea had little choice but to plead guilty, and federal prosecutors offered a deal by which he could avoid jail in return for turning state’s witness against the men who sold him the counterfeits. D’Andrea was taken to New York state to testify at their trial, but upon arrival, he refused to testify. Likely word had gotten to him that his life was in danger if he opened his mouth on the stand. Without D’Andrea’s testimony, that case failed, and the deal to save him from prison was off. In April, 1903, Antonio D’Andrea entered Joliet prison (the federal government at the time frequently placed criminals in state facilities), where he served 13 months.

It is an indication that D’Andrea already had powerful friends in the Chicago Italian community that, at the end of his prison sentence, he received a “civil pardon” from President Theodore Roosevelt, which restored his civil rights, though it did not clear his record or spare him from serving any of his time.

There is some evidence that, after release, D’Andrea continued activity in the counterfeit money racket for some time, but he certainly continued building his language tutor and macaroni-production businesses, both of which were successful. He was also able to help his Sicilian family come to Chicago, and several of his brothers and nephews also became successful. His brother Joseph D’Andrea became involved in organized labor, and rose to become president of Sewer and Tunnel Miners’ Union Local #4. In those days, as today, there were severe battles between unions, frequently organized along ethnic lines, for major work contracts. Joseph D’Andrea was involved in just such a struggle over the West Side site where Union Station was then under construction, and he was shot and killed there under mysterious circumstances in the fall of 1914.

He may have been the victim of some agent of a rival union, or his death may have been from a disgruntled member of his own union. Joseph D’Andrea had organized a system by which laborers had to pay $5 in dues to the union every time they took a new job; given the level of turnover in the construction industry, this was a frequent occurrence, and a source of some bitterness among the rank-and-file. In any case, upon his death, his brother, now going by the Americanized name “Anthony” to distinguish himself from his former life as “Antonio”, took over the presidency of the largely Italian union, a position he used to propel himself into politics. Through his work with the union, he also became close friends with “Diamond Joe” Esposito, who was working as a business agent for the sewer and tunnel miners, and who would one day also become an important political and underworld figure in Chicago.

By this time, Tony D’Andrea and his wife had moved from the Levee district into the Little Italy neighborhood, located in the 19th ward, taking up residence at 745 S. Halsted St. In 1914, he first dipped his toe into Chicago politics, running for county commissioner as a Democrat. Though he lost the race, his was clearly a political star on the rise. The following year, he was appointed the ward leader for Democrat Robert Sweitzer's 1915 mayoral campaign. In a bruising primary against the incumbent, Carter Harrison, Sweitzer emerged victorious, with a large margin of victory among Italian voters in the 19th ward. Sweitzer was ultimately defeated in the general election by Republican William Hale Thompson (the last Republican mayor of Chicago), but 19th ward alderman John “Johnny De Pow” Powers, who had led the Harrison campaign in the ward, began to see D’Andrea as an important political rival.

Powers, an Irishman representing an increasingly Italian constituency, was an astute tactician, and offered his support to D’Andrea for various political offices (other than alderman), including county commissioner. But the ex-priest had his eyes on a bigger prize, and in 1916, he ran for alderman from the 19th ward. In those days, each ward had two aldermen, with staggered terms. In 1916, Powers’ acolyte in the 19th, James Bowler, was up for re-election, and the Democratic primary battle between Bowler and D’Andrea promised to be fierce. Bowler had Ald. Powers on his side, and D’Andrea was supported by Rocco de Stefano, a close confidant of vice-magnate and Levee heavyweight “Big Jim” Colosimo.

February, 1916 found D’Andrea courting votes among the ward’s residents. In one case, he volunteered to be a character witness in court for a fellow Sicilian who was seeking naturalization. When the Superior Court clerk sought to verify D’Andrea’s own citizenship, however, he looked under “D” instead of “A”, and when he found nothing in the state’s records, suspicions began to circulate that the aldermanic candidate was not a U.S. citizen. This led others to dig into D’Andrea’s past, where they uncovered the case of a very similar-looking man, also named D’Andrea, an defrocked priest who had served 13 months at Joliet for counterfeiting.

The news hit the papers, and Ald. Bowler hired Pinkerton detectives to investigate D’Andrea’s past. They quickly surmised that Anthony D’Andrea, the labor leader and pillar of the Italian community, and Antonio D’Andrea, the passer of phony dimes, were one and the same man. Speaking to reporters the next day, D’Andrea admitted as much, but offered a stirring – if not quite believable – defense:

The facts were that when a counterfeiter was trailed by the government official to my house and placed some counterfeit money in our pantry during my absence, Mrs. D’Andrea, a most lovable and charitable woman, in order to remove the stain of suspicion from the sacredness of her own home and family, discovered that in some inconceivable manner the money was hidden in her pantry, took it out for the purpose of reporting her findings to me, and to remove the odium of guilt from my happy and cheerful home.

In the meantime, as she was about to leave the house, the government officials arrested her and kept her in custody for many hours, before I was allowed to see my wife, who had already become a human wreck from anguish, sorrow, and disgrace. With the most profound love for her and with the hope that not a stain should be placed against her character nor the character of our little girl, and with the promise that if I took the blame, my wife would be liberated, under the most inscrutable circumstances that could be imagined, and with the promise that if I gave to the government officials information regarding the gang of counterfeiters and plotters that I would be released, I remained silent, so as to shield them who had already threatened my life and that of my family if I spoke.

As a result of which I was forced to keep within my bosom the secret which, if exposed, would mean my immediate death, and I became a victim of the most unparalleled conviction that was ever had in the federal court.

At the time, it was pointed out that an Illinois statute forbade anyone convicted of a felony of holding public office, but D’Andrea’s civil pardon from Pres. Roosevelt apparently allowed him to remain in the race, though he was now scandal-ridden. Essentially the only quality that recommended D’Andrea to the office was the fact that he was an Italian, running in a ward that was, by this time, almost 80% Italian residents.

Thus, D’Andrea and his supporters took it personally when some of their fellow countrymen failed to support him. And some of D’Andrea’s supporters were rather violent men, including the Genna family, who in a few years would spill innumerable gallons of blood while running the city’s bootleg distillery business. On the evening of February 21, 1916, Frank Lombardi, an Italian immigrant and a major supporter of Ald. Bowler, was in the saloon he ran on Taylor street when two friends arrived. The three men raised their glasses in a toast, and at that moment, one of Lombardi’s “friends” pulled a revolver and shot him in the gut, an injury he eventually died from.

Lombardi’s death further cast the pallor of the underworld over D’Andrea’s candidacy, and on March 1, with the votes counted, James Bowler defeated Anthony D’Andrea, 4,163 votes to 1,753. D’Andrea was disappointed, but he had only just begun to fight. There would be many more opportunities to come.

D’Andrea focused on continuing to build support among the ward’s Italian residents, making his headquarters on Taylor Street the “Italian-American Educational Club”. He also became president of the Unione Siciliana, the chief social and political organization of Sicilians in Chicago; future leaders of the organization include such criminal luminaries as Angelo Genna, Sam “Samoots” Amatuna, Antonio Lombardo, and Joe Aiello. D’Andrea’s business and political success is reflected in the fact that he was able to purchase a large home at 902 S. Ashland Ave., where he lived with his wife on the second floor, and rented out the first floor.

In 1919, D’Andrea ran to be a delegate to a constitutional convention in Illinois to be held in 1920. When the votes were counted, the official record on the night of the election showed D’Andrea had lost by 82 votes; however, a later recount showed D’Andrea the victor. A court inquiry into the election turned up substantial evidence of fraud, with many of the additional so-called “voters” having not actually voted, or in the great Chicago tradition, having died years earlier. The extra votes were thrown out, and D’Andrea was again the loser.

Nevertheless, D’Andrea was still considered an important political figure in the district. So much so, in fact, that in order to dissuade him from running for alderman against him in 1921, Ald. Powers supported D’Andrea for the position of ward committeeman, a position that held at least as much, if not more, power than the aldermanship itself. In April, 1920, with Powers’ help, D’Andrea was elected to the position; however, voter irregularities again sandbagged the count, and a court threw out the results.

At this point, as described in this post, Ald. Powers dramatically recanted his support for D’Andrea, and chose to fill the ward committeeman position himself. Soon after, Powers’ home was the target of a bombing. As the incident suggests, D’Andrea and his supporters were increasingly turning from away from the ballot and towards violence. In 1921 D’Andrea announced he would run against Powers in the next aldermanic election, and the campaign between the two was the bloodiest in Chicago history, with dirty tricks and intimidation on both sides.

In February, a bomb exploded outside a D’Andrea rally near Blue Island and Taylor. When reporters approached D’Andrea, he practically admitted a role in the earlier bombing of Powers’ home:

I wouldn’t care if they threw a bomb at my house. That’s all in the game, and it wouldn’t hurt any one else but me. But to throw one into a meeting where there are a lot of workingmen, that’s another thing.

In retaliation for the bombing, D’Andrea’s supporters, which likely included the wildest of the Genna clan, Angelo Genna, and Sam Amatuna, organized a violent hit on two Italian precinct captains for Powers, as described in this post. Election day was a complete fiasco, with kidnappings of election workers, and widespread violence and intimidation of voters, but at the end of the day, the old “gray wolf,” John Powers had defeated his rival by the narrow margin of 381 votes.

With another lost election, D’Andrea declared “I’m through with Nineteenth Ward politics for good.” Asked for comment, Ald. Powers sarcastically replied, “Very magnanimous of him, I’m sure.”

But D’Andrea’s word was accurate. His political life was at an end – if only because the rest of his life was, too. D’Andrea had taken to carrying a pistol with him everywhere, and had been arrested for carrying a concealed weapon on several occasions; the violence associated with the election had likely warned him he was a marked man.

On the evening of May 10, 1921, he was out late, enjoying dinner with his old friend and political compatriot, “Diamond Joe” Esposito, at a local Italian restaurant. At 2:00 a.m., his bodyguard and driver, Joseph Laspisa, dropped him off in front of his home at 902 S. Ashland, and sped off, while D’Andrea climbed the stairs to his second-floor apartment. The first floor apartment was empty at the time, though the D’Andreas had hired decorators to paint and refurnish the flat for rental. The previous residents of the first floor had left at the beginning of the month, after receiving a threatening note, indicating that D’Andrea’s rivals were planning to dynamite the building.

In any case, the first floor apartment was unoccupied, but there had been some activity there all afternoon, which the neighbors attributed to the decorators. But no decorators had been on the site that day. As D’Andrea climbed the steps of his building, a sawed-off shotgun peaked through the window from the first floor, and fired off seven shots, five of which hit their mark. D’Andrea reached for his pistol and fired back, but quickly collapsed on the steps as his assassin escaped out the back and into a waiting car in the alley. Hearing the shots, Mrs. D’Andrea arose from bed and hurried down to where her wounded husband lay. “Lena, Lena, I’m dying, I’m dying,” he cried out to the woman he had left the church for.

(Pictured: Illustration of D'Andrea's home on S. Ashland Ave., where he was shot)

When police arrived, they found two clues in the first-floor apartment assassins’ nest: a soft brown hat, size 7, with the initials “S.P.” inscribed inside, and a $20 bill in the hat band, along with a card reading “For Flowers”. Police also found a handprint in some freshly laid paint, presumably left by the killer.

Suspicions immediately turned to Ald. Powers and his supporters, although Powers disowned the killing: “I do not believe it was politics. D’Andrea has had a good deal of trouble and it hasn’t been all political. He has been mixed up in labor matters and there may be some race feud back of it.”

Asked for comment, “Diamond Joe” Esposito, D’Andrea’s dinner companion that night and also a political figure in the ward simply responded, “So they shot him, eh?” Political violence had made killings in the 19th a fact of life.

D’Andrea hung on to life for a few days in the hospital, but finally succumbed on May 12. Refused a church burial due to his excommunication in 1899, a service was held on the steps of his home on Ashland Ave., right where he was shot, and 8,000 attended, flooding the street with people for three blocks around.

The bloodletting in the 19th did not, however, end with D’Andrea’s death. Ten days later, Michael Licari, a D’Andrea partisan, was murdered, and the following month, Joseph Laspisa, D’Andrea’s bodyguard and his driver on the night of his death, was killed while driving down Oak St. in Little Sicily, near "Death Corner", shot by a back seat passenger. Eventually, over 30 murders were attributed to the Powers/D’Andrea fight, most of them, including D'Andrea's, never solved.

The dream of an Italian alderman to represent Little Italy also died with D’Andrea that night. In July, 1921, with pressure from Ald. Powers, the 19th ward was redrawn and broken up into parts of the 20th, 25th, 26th, and 27th wards, none of which had an Italian majority.

After his death, the Genna brothers took over D’Andrea’s political headquarters and turned his political bailiwick into the massively dispersed distilling organization that supplied a large portion of the illegal liquor in Chicago during Prohibition. Several of D’Andrea’s relatives were closely involved with the Gennas and their partners in bootlegging, the Torrio-Capone organization. One nephew, also named Anthony D’Andrea, was Capone’s manager for his Depression-era soup kitchen on S. State st. Later, he became the president of the powerful hod-carriers union, and was a defendant in a federal antitrust case in the 1940s, accused of restraining the use of ready-mix concrete in Chicago, which would have eliminated a large number of union jobs.

Another nephew, Philip D’Andrea, got his start as a bodyguard for Al Capone, and was later a key member of The Outfit, the mob organization constituted of Capone’s men, after Capone went to prison in 1931. Philip D’Andrea served three years in prison in the 1940s on charges of extortion, along with Outfit luminaries Paul “The Waiter” Ricca, Louis “Little New York” Campagna, and Charles “Cherry Nose” Gioe.

D’Andrea’s home at 902 S. Ashland stood into the 1980s, when it was demolished to make way for the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Molecular Biology Research Building, completed in 1995. The building is notable for a large staircase inside that mirrors the shape of a double helix.

Death in the Barber's Chair: The Rise and Fall of Sam Amatuna

Unione Siciliana president Mike Merlo had kept the peace between rival alcohol-production organizations in Prohibition-era Chicago through his death in 1924. Over the next year, the violent war between the “Bloody” Genna brothers, operators of a gigantic dispersed distilling operation in Little Italy, and the Northside Gang headed by Dion O’Banion, heated up, and news of assassinations filled the city’s newspapers. Into this tinderbox stepped the dapper Don of the Maxwell Street district, Salvatore Samuzzo Amatuna (frequently known as Sam or even “Samoots”). As head of the powerful Unione, the young Amatuna struck a pose as a political kingmaker and gadabout in the Sicilian community, but he couldn’t bring peace to the underworld, and the bloody beer wars escalated until they claimed Amatuna himself as a victim, as he sat in a barbershop here, at 804 W. Roosevelt Rd.

Amatuna was born in the seafaring town of Pozzallo, Sicily, at the far south end of that island, in 1899. As a teenager, he found his way to Chicago, settling in the “Little Italy” district along Maxwell Street in the early 1910s. Like many young Sicilians in the neighborhood at the time, he found his calling in politics, providing the street-level muscle in the increasingly violent war over the aldermanic seat in the 19th ward, which included Little Italy. John Powers had held the seat since 1888, when the 19th was predominantly populated by Irish, but by the 1910s, Powers was presiding over an increasingly-Italian ward, and the new immigrants had their own rising political stars, including “Diamond Joe” Esposito and former Roman Catholic priest and convicted counterfeiter, Anthony D’Andrea.

D’Andrea ran against Powers’ right-hand man, James Bowler in the aldermanic election of 1916 (in those days, each ward had two aldermen), and the race was close, despite pre-election revelations about D’Andrea’s criminal past. Not all Italians in the 19th supported D’Andrea, however; Powers had made a career out of incorporating potential Italian rivals into his organization over the years. In fact, one of Bowler’s chief political advisors was a Sicilian, Frank Lombardi.

Nothing irked D’Andrea’s supporters more than the defection of Lombardi and other fellow countrymen – Italians constituted a substantial majority in the ward by that time, and easily could have elected one of their own, had they united behind D’Andrea. Just days before the election, Lombardi met two friends in a saloon on Taylor street. As the trio raised their glasses in a traditional Sicilian toast, one of the “friends” drew a .38 caliber revolver from his hip pocket and shot Lombardi dead.

The police advanced the theory that Lombardi was the victim of a “Black Hand” extortion scheme, a common occurrence among well-heeled Italians of the era, but Lombardi’s wife and just about everyone else blamed supporters of D’Andrea. The accusations among those in the know in Little Italy led directly to a hot-headed 17-year old from Sicily, Sam Amatuna.
Amatuna was questioned in Lombardi’s death, but with little evidence and most eyewitnesses unable to “remember” the scene accurately, no charges were ever filed. The murder may even have been counterproductive, as it revived voters’ recollections of D’Andrea’s sordid past, and
James Bowler won the election of 1916.

Regardless of his real guilt or innocence, Amatuna’s reputation as a man to be feared on Maxwell Street was established. Through his connections in D’Andrea’s organization, he also became a close ally of the Genna brothers, especially the toughest and most violent of that clan, Angelo. Both Angelo Genna and Sam Amatuna were fearsome characters in the district, but unlike Genna, Amatuna was able to separate business from social concerns, and when not cracking skulls for D’Andrea, he was widely known for his generosity and sunny personality, even gaining the moniker of “Smilin’ Sammy Samoots” in some quarters.

But behind the smile remained a man talented with a gun, and one fearless in using it for his own advancement. As one friend told reporters later, "Sure, if he wanted a guy knocked off, he'd have him knocked off, 'what the hell?' But he was a good guy just the same."

(Pictured: Sam "Samoots" Amatuna)

In 1921, D’Andrea again ran for alderman, this time directly challenging the incumbent Powers. Once again, D’Andrea relied on the force and violence doled out by toughs like Amatuna to help get out the vote, and once again, Italians supporting Powers were a major target (for his part, Powers was never afraid of dirty political tricks either). During May of that year, Paul Labriola and Harry Raimondi, lieutenants in the Powers organization, both met their ends at the hands of a five-man assassin crew, widely believed to have been headed by Angelo Genna and Sam Amatuna. Genna was arrested and put on trial, but walked when the prosecution’s lead witness changed his story on the last day before the jury convened.

Again, D’Andrea was unable to capture a seat on the city council, losing the election by 435 votes. Shortly after the election, D’Andrea was murdered, and the Genna brothers took over his organization, turning it from a political enterprise to a criminal one. With their base of Sicilian supporters, they produced massive quantities of (rot-gut) liquor in small stills in basement apartments throughout Little Italy, in the process becoming the key part in the supply chain that ended in the blind pigs and speakeasies run by Johnny Torrio and Al Capone. The Gennas employed Amatuna as the enforcer for their network of family-run microbreweries. It was “Smilin’ Sammy” who visited those who failed to meet their promised quotas of booze, and few suppliers fell behind the production schedule twice.

Violent and superstitious, the Gennas began butting heads with rival booze gangs, especially the Northside gang, run by the equally-superstitious singing-waiter-turned-florist, Dion O’Banion. O’Banion’s reckless hijacking of Genna deliveries, plus his general disrespect for his Italian competitors, made the blood of Angelo Genna and Sam Amatuna boil. The only factor keeping O’Banion from meeting the same fate as Lombardi, Labriola, and Raimondi, was the word of Mike Merlo, chief of the most powerful Sicilian social and political organization in the city, the Unione Siciliana.

But Merlo’s days were numbered. In 1924, he died of natural causes, and a few days later, O’Banion was dead in his floral shop, shot dead by three men, believed to include the Gennas' masterful assassins Scalisi and Anselmi, plus a third man, who the police believed to be either Angelo Genna or New York-based Unione president, Frankie Yale. When the police brought Yale in for questioning, it was Sam Amatuna who provided an alibi – Amatuna and Yale had been dining at the Palmer House hotel at the time, he claimed. No one was ever charged with the crime.

With the mediating influence of Merlo gone, the bullets flew in Chicago, and in the coming months, three Genna brothers met the same fate as O’Banion. Johnny Torrio was nearly assassinated as well, and he and the remaining Gennas fled the city.

Into the consequent void of power in Little Italy stepped Sam Amatuna. After Angelo’s death, he took two bodyguards and walked into the headquarters of the Unione Siciliana, informing everyone that he was now president. In his attempt at changing from a mere street tough to a powerful political force, he began acting the part of neighborhood Don, dressing in snappy clothes (it was said he owned 200 embroidered silk shirts – the newspapers repeatedly referred to him as the “Beau Brummel of Little Italy”) and buying haircuts and shaves for the teenagers hanging around the barbershop whenever he went in for a trim.

But make no mistake – under the silk shirt beat the cold heart of a killer. A story frequently passed around about Amatuna said that when a certain dry cleaners damaged his clothes, the enraged dandy retaliated by ripping out the stairs connecting the laundry from the street, and put a bullet through the head of the proprietor’s horse.

With the wealth he had amassed from his work with the Gennas, Sam Amatnua purchased a jazz club, the Bluebird Cafe, at Halsted and Taylor, for $40,0000, where he himself often performed, gaining a reputation as an excellent singer and violinist. He also acquired a beautiful home on Lexington Ave., near Damen Ave. (the street has since been vacated in that block). And most important of all, he was engaged to wed Miss Rose Pecaroro, sister to Mike Merlo’s widow. The marriage would make Amatuna peerless as a Sicilian community leader.

It was on a visit to the barber that Sam Amatuna met his end. On the evening of November 11, 1925, Amatuna walked into his favorite local barbershop at 804 W. Roosevelt Rd. He and Pecaroro were to see the opera Aida at 8:00 that evening at the Auditorium building on S. Michigan Ave. Isidor Paul, who had owned and operated the barbershop since 1918, threw a hot towel over Amatuna’s face and sharpened his razor. By coincidence, Amatuna was without his usual bodyguards that evening, and as a show of power, he never carried a gun personally any more.

At that moment, two olive-skinned men, one short and one tall, walked into the shop and drew guns. Paul screamed, and Amatuna jumped out of the barber’s chair, hiding behind it. The Tribune describes what happened next:

Two men walked in as he left the chair in which he had been shaved and massaged in preparation for an evening at the opera, and without waiting opened fire. Eight times their weapons cracked. One bullet took effect and Amatuna dropped: the others went wild as barbers and customers fell to the floor or ran for cover. Then the attackers backed out, ran to a car parked at the curb and escaped.

Two friends helped the bleeding Amatuna into a taxicab. Their first destination was not the hospital, but a cigar shop owned by Amatuna, around the corner at Taylor and Halsted Streets. There, Amatuna briefly met with his brother, Luigi, who had recently arrived from Sicily, likely informing him of the names of his attackers. From there, the trio left for the hospital.

For two days, doctors at Jefferson Park Hospital tried to revive Amatuna, but to no avail. With her planned elaborate wedding just weeks away, his bride was doubly stricken, and Amatuna agreed to a bedside ceremony in case he was unable to recover. With the physicians’ negative prognoses in mind, a priest was called and the arrangements made for just such an event. But before the ceremony could take place, Amatuna fell unconscious, and died at 2:00 a.m. on November 13.

As was customary for gangsters in his time, Amatuna’s funeral was lavish. At his fiancée, Rose Pecaroro’s home on the North side, $20,000 in flowers filled the home, the yard, and several neighbor’s yards. The casket was made of silver and cost a reputed $10,000. The funeral procession to Mt. Carmel cemetery, where Amatuna’s body was held in a vault for several days before being shipped back to Sicily, stretched for over a mile, snaking through the city past his home, his businesses, and stopping at the barbershop where he died – a visible indication of future retribution. At the gravesite, Luigi Amatuna threw himself on the coffin, beating his fists on it and swearing an oath of revenge in his native tongue.

(Pictured: The scene outside Amatuna fiancee, Rose Pecaroro's home, where Amatuna's funeral procession began)

Indeed, the bloodshed was far from over. Within a week, both of Amatuna’s absent bodyguards were killed – one of them on the way home from the funeral ceremony. Next in line for the presidency of the Unione Siciliana was Tony Lombardo, Al Capone’s personal friend. Lombardo was assassinated in the middle of the day at Madison and Dearborn Streets in the loop. The three succeeding Unione presidents, Pasqualino Lolordo, Joseph Giunta, and Joe Aiello met similar fates. The bloodshed of the 1920s sealed Chicago’s worldwide reputation as the country’s crime capital.

Who killed “Samoots”? The chief theory is that his death was merely another part of the spiraling bloodshed between the Genna-Torrio-Capone organization and the Northside gang. Most historians believe that Amatuna’s assassins were Vincent “Schemer” Drucci, one of the leaders of the Northside group, and Jim Doherty, a key member of the allied Westside O’Donnell gang. It appears Al Capone blamed Drucci and Doherty. A few months later, when Doherty and Assistant State’s Attorney William McSwiggin were seen drinking and gambling in Cicero at the Pony Inn, Capone ordered a hit on crew, in which McSwiggin died, a major factor in turning public opinion against Capone and raising his profile with Chicago police.

An plausibly, though less likely alternative theory is that Amatuna had fallen out with the Gennas in the months before his death, and that Capone ordered his murder in order to make way for his friend, Lombardo, to control the Unione and the Genna distillery network. In Chicago’s gangland, today’s allies frequently became tomorrow’s enemies, and vice-versa.

The barbershop where Amatuna met his fate continued in operation, run by Isidor Paul, until his retirement in 1956. Today, like much of the old Little Italy neighborhood, the building is gone, razed to make way for the facilities of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Until recently, the site was a baseball field for the UIC team, but is currently marked for the construction of a new condominium complex, Roosevelt Square.

138 Years of Murder in Chicago

Unlike other posts on this site, this one focuses not on a single crime scene or an historical account of one or two individuals, but instead summarizes the facts on over a century of murder in Chicago. One of the main purposes of this blog is to understand Chicago's historic and modern reputation for crime, and comparisons over time can be illuminating.

The figure above shows the city's murder rate, expressed as murders per 100,000 residents, between 1870 and 2008. This gives a long-run summary view of homicide in Chicago over the last 138 years. I focus here on murder because, unlike rape, larceny, and other crimes, the likelihood of unreported victims is less severe with murder. The cops will eventually notice every corpse lying in the street, although it is true that some "accidental" deaths may actually have been murders, and some bodies are never found.

Data from 1931 to the present is drawn from the FBI's annual Crime in the United States, and is based on reports from local police agencies. Figures from 1870 - 1930 are based on Chicago police department data processed by Homicide in Chicago, a project hosted at Northwestern University School of Law. All figures include both murders and non-negligent manslaughter.

Between 1870 and 1920, Chicago's crime rate grew at an essentially steady pace, reaching a peak of 10 per 100,000 in 1919. During this period, Chicago was growing in population and density. High population density is typically associated with greater crime rates for several reasons. First, in small towns, every face is familiar, but in large cities, criminals are less likely to be recognized by witnesses. Realizing a lower likelihood of being caught, criminals commit more crimes. Second, crime pays better in cities, because there are more people to rob -- there's no point in becoming a robber in the first place if you can't hit lots of targets. Finally, and especially relevant to Chicago during this period, big cities attract large communities of poor immigrants with few prospects for legal employment. Criminal, on the other hand, is a profession open to all.

With the onset of national Prohibition in 1919, many of these immigrants gained lucrative employment in the bootlegging field, and for the first few years of the 1920s, at least, murder rates fell by nearly 50%. But as the various parts of Johnny Torrio's syndicate began falling apart in 1924, culminating in the murder of Torrio's north side associate Dion O'Banion, likely at the hand of his south side associates, the Genna brothers, Chicago's "Beer Wars" began, and the murder rate skyrocketed by 250% between 1923 and 1928. Also around the same time, the notoriously-violent Al Capone took over full control of Torrio's organization in 1925.

Even as Prohibition ended in 1931, murder rates remained high throughout the early 1930s, the worst years of the Great Depression, before falling below 5 per 100,000 in 1943. No doubt the massive mobilization of American men out of Chicago and into military companies in army barracks and overseas locations played no small role in the low murder rates of the early 1940s -- men have traditionally constituted the vast majority of both murderers and murder victims.

After WWII, Chicago's murder rate again began to climb as the city continued growing in size until around 1950. The city's demographics also changed during this period, as increasing automobile ownership and better highways allowed families seeking larger homes to commute from the suburbs, while younger cohorts without children remained in the city (most murderers are drawn from the ranks of 17-24 year olds).

Between 1943 and 1965, Chicago's murder rate rose at a roughly constant rate, increasing by 1 per 100,000 about every three years. However, between 1965 and 1970, the murder rate rose much more dramatically, increasing from 11 per 100,000 in 1965 to 24 per 100,000 in 1970.

Why did the murder rate rise so quickly in the late 1960s? Some point to stricter standards for policing and stronger rights for accused criminals during this period, symbolized by the Miranda case in 1966, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the police must inform arrested persons of their rights before interrogating them. Criminals facing a lower probability of punishment rationally commit more crimes.

There is also some evidence that the generation born after World War II had substantially poorer family formation rates, with an increasing share of children growing up in single-parent households. As I've written elsewhere, as these children reached their late teens and early adulthood -- when offense rates are highest -- in the late 1960s, the quantity of violent crime rose proportionately.

Another potential factor in the growth of crime during this era was the changing consumption patterns and legal status of drugs. The use of heroin and psychodelic drugs increased during the 1960s as production and transportation costs fell, and these drugs also become especially popular among enlisted men and counterculture communities. The pharmacological effects of increased drug consumption -- at least among the class of drugs popular during this period -- on violence are debatable. However, increased usage also led to substantially greater levels of enforcement. Federal prohibition on heroin stretches back to the 1910s, but LSD only became illegal in 1966. Arrests for drug crimes, which were exceptionally rare before 1965, skyrocketed afterwards. With prohibition comes incentives for violence between customers, dealers, and suppliers, who can no longer depend on the courts and police to enforce contracts and mitigate violence.

The war on drugs continued through the 1970s and 1980s. Especially prominent as a source of crime is the arrival of crack cocaine in the mid-1980s. Crack was an immediately and immensely popular drug, and its arrival in Chicago kicked off massive and bloody turf wars among rival drug-selling organizations (primarily street gangs) for control of retailing markets in the city.

While crack consumption has not waned much since the 1980s, boundaries between rival sellers have largely been settled. Thus, the end of the "crack epidemic" coincided with big declines in Chicago's murder rate. In the mid-1990s, the murder rate in Chicago (and nationwide) fell dramatically, declining below 50% of its 1992 peak by 2004. Besides the end of the crack epidemic, there are potentially several causes for this remarkable turnaround.

In other cities, such as New York, declines in crime have been attributed to substantial increases in the number of police on the street and to creative policing strategies. Chicago, however, saw little change in the size of its police force, and "broken windows" and other techniques were slow in gaining acceptance at the CPD, although greater efforts towards community engagement, such as the CAPS program, did begin in the early 1990s.

Imprisonment rates also increased during this period, with Illinois holding 27,516 prisoners in 1990 and 45,281 in 2000. With more criminals behind bars, there are fewer on the street committing crime. In addition, an increased likelihood of a lengthy prison sentence likely deters some would-be criminals.

Finally, and most controversially, some researchers have recently pointed to the role of legalized abortion in the evident decline in crime during the 1990s. While some states legalized abortion procedures before 1973, Illinois and most other states saw legalization after the Supreme Court's famous Roe v. Wade decision that year. A large share of women seeking abortions do so because they feel unprepared to raise a child -- and no doubt many of them in fact are poorly prepared for motherhood. After the legalization of abortion, this theory argues, many children, who would have been raised in high-risk environments, were never born. This "missing cohort" would have reached their late teens and early 20s during the early 1990s; thus, the decline in murder rates in the 1990s may be partially due to the fact that many would-be murderers were never born.

The statistical evidence regarding this theory is controversial and, in many places, contradictory. Nevertheless, it is difficult to doubt that at least some of the decline in Chicago's murder rate during the 1990s is due to legalized abortion.

By 2008, Chicago's murder rate was 18.03 per 100,000, roughly the same as it was in 1967. Nevertheless, the city's rate is substantially higher than some other large cities, including New York City (6.3 per 100,000) and Los Angeles (10.0 per 100,000). On the other hand, Chicago is relatively safe compared with Philadelphia (23.0 per 100,000), Detroit (33.8 per 100,000), and Gary, Indiana (73.2 per 100,000).

Angelo Genna's Violent Life and Death

Angelo Genna was the toughest, meanest, and most violent of the Genna brothers. Hot-headed superstitious, and quick with a trigger, the Chicago police were so afraid of him, they refused to serve warrants for his arrest. But Angelo Genna got his on May 27, 1925, when he was driving south on Ogden Ave., at the intersection of Hudson Ave. and Menomenee St.

Angelo, who was born in Sicily, came to Chicago with six of his brothers about 1910. The family became involved in running "Black Hand" style extortion plots, in which prominent businessmen, especially Italians, were forced to pay ransom or be killed, and Angelo was the muscle that made certain the payments came in. His ability to make others do his bidding through force made him especially fit for politics, and Angelo and the other Gennas became street-level recruiters for Tony D'Andrea in his ongoing political battle with long-time incumbent 19th ward alderman John "Johnny De Pow" Powers. As discussed in greater detail in this post, the 19th was primarily an Irish neighborhood in the 1880s when Powers was elected, but by the 1910s, was occupied primarily by Italians (especially Sicilians).

While Powers was largely successful in maintaining his hold on power, Tony D'Andrea sought to use the demographic shift in the ward to build a winning coalition of Italian voters. In 1921, he very nearly defeated Powers, but lost by the slimmest of margins. The election was a bloody one, with bombs exploded at Powers' home and at a mass meeting of D'Andrea supporters. The Gennas, who supported D'Andrea, were upset by his loss. They blamed Powers for the election violence, but more so, they hated their fellow Italian countrymen who had voted for him.

A few weeks after the election, on May 6, 1921, one of Ald. Powers' precinct captains and a long-time municipal court bailiff, Paul Labriola, who was Sicilian, left his home on W. Congress St., and walked west towards Halsted St. Labriola had been receiving disturbing telephone and mail threats ever since the election, but considered it all part of electoral politics in Chicago. He had dined with the victorious Ald. Powers just a few days before, and looked forward to enjoying further political spoils.

Before Labriola had walked more than fifty feet from his home, he was greeted by two men coming around the corner. Labriola recognized the men and words were exchanged. Suddenly, three more men came up from behind Labriola, and pistol shots rang out as all five began firing heavy-caliber lead at him. As Labriola fell to the ground, one of the men stood above him and fired three more gratuitous bullets into the bailiff's body, then the assailants dropped their weapons and fled down an alley.

Initially, the police believed Sam "Samoots" Amatuna and Frank Gambina, two prominent D'Andrea supporters, were among the shooters. They could find no solid evidence against the two, however. But then they found an eyewitness who fingered Angelo Genna, the wild gunman of Taylor Street.

The police arrested Angelo, and brought him to trial in October of 1921. The prosecution brought their eyewitness, Peter Eliopulas, to the stand:

"He killed him; Genna killed him!," Eliopulas exclaimed, jumping to his feet. "I was standing near the corner of Halsted and Congress streets when I heard a shot. Running to Congress street, I saw Labriola lying on the ground. A man, Genna, was standing over him. He shot him three times as he lay on the ground."

Eliopulas, who was neither Sicilian nor involved in 19th ward politics, seemed a believable witness, and whispers went around that Genna would be spending the 1920s behind bars. Until, that is, a teenager named Nick Ginopvolous, took the stand for the defense. Ginopvulos explained to a patient jury that Alderman Powers had offered a $2,500 reward for information leading to the capture and conviction of Labriola's killer. Eliopulas had approached Ginopvulos, he claimed, and offered him a share of the reward if he could provide a second eyewitness account of Genna's presence at the murder scene.

The court was in an uproar. Was Eliopulas just an opportunist, or were the Gennas behind Ginopvulos' testimony? The prosecution tried to staunch the hemmorage in their case by bringing other witnesses to the stand who could testify that Angelo had been in the neighborhood that day, but the damage was done. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty, and Angelo walked out of court a free man.

(Pictured: Angelo Genna, who stood 5'6" and 195 lbs.)

The death of Labriola, however, set off a blood vendetta between warring Italian political factions in the 19th, which eventually claimed 30 lives over the following three years. One of the earlier victims of this war of attrition was a close friend of the Genna family, Nicola Maggio. Again, Angelo Genna was very upset.

On March, 16, 1922, Paul Notte, a stockyards saloon-keeper who was believed to be close to Maggio's killer, left his home and began walking the half-block to his workplace. In front of his new bride, who was expecting, his wife, and his sister-in-law, Notte was approached by a short, stout man, and a few words were exchanged. Then the stranger drew his revolver and fired five shots and Notte, dropping him to the street before running off.

Notte was rushed to the hospital, where Chicago detective Edward Murphy questioned him.

"You know who shot me," croaked the dying Notte.

"No, I don't, Paul. Who was it?"

"The youngest one of those three brothers who run a poolroom in Taylor street."

"Genna?"

"I don't know the name."

Lieut. Murphy rushed to Angelo Genna's home on Blue Island Ave., and not finding him there, went to the Genna headquarters on Taylor street, where he found his suspect. Murphy arrested Angelo and brought him to Notte's bedside, where, in front of his family, doctors, and police, Notte identified Angelo Genna as his attacker. A few hours later, Notte was dead.

Angelo's brothers, Anthony and James, were also arrested, but only Notte's death-bed testimony was considered strong enough to prosecute, so again, Angelo Genna alone stood for trial on murder charges. This time, Genna's attorney cross-examined the attending physicians at the hospital where Notte had died. Were any drugs given to the patient before he died? Yes, of course. Could any of those drugs have clouded his judgment, or made it difficult for him to remember the facts of his case? I suppose, under the right circumstances.

With the dead man's testimony in question, prosecutors decided to nolle prosse the case. Again, Angelo Genna was a free man. After two murder indictments and no convictions, Angelo's legend grew in the Sicilian community. "Angelo the Immune" replaced "Bloody Angelo" as his street nickname. But Angelo's luck, in court and in life, would run out soon enough.

In August of 1922, two Genna family friends, Henry Penna and Philip Maltese stood accused in the sexual attack of a 15-year old girl, Genevieve Court. When it became clear that Court would testify against the two, they kidnapped her and took her to Milwaukee, where they raped her ("mistreated her," in the language of the newspapers of the day) and left her alone in a boarding house with no way to get home. Eventually, a search party conducted by Court's parents located her, and she returned to Chicago.

Again, she was more than willing to testify against her attackers in open court. In criminal court, she fingered Maltese and Penna as her attackers, and each was sentenced to one year in the state penitentiary, plus a $1,000 fine, a relatively minor punishment for a horrific crime. Maltese and Penna considered themselves lucky.

But then, the two were unexpectedly dragged into federal court to be charged with violations of the Mann Act, the 1910 "white slavery" law inspired by the Chicago case of Mona Marshall, which enforced heavy sentences on those convicted of transporting women across state lines for sexual purposes. If convicted, Maltese and Penna would face serious hard time in federal penitentiary.

Again, young Genevieve Court was willing to testify in court. Having done so already, Maltese and Penna realized she would certainly do so again. Two days before her date in court, Maltese, who was out on bail while awaiting the federal trial, and his close family friend, Angelo Genna, paid a visit to Miss Court, threatening her and her family with death if she should testify in the Mann Act case.

On the day of her hearing, Genevieve Court showed up before U.S. Commissioner Lews F. Mason, and walked to the stand. She opened her mouth, but then she looked out over the audience. In the first row, staring directly at her, was Angelo Genna. One look into his dark, terrifying eyes, and a wave of visible fear ripped through Miss Court. She began to sob. It was all a lie, she said: There was no attack, no rape, no kidnapping; Penna and Maltese were completely innocent.

A dumbstruck prosecutor quickly wised up to what had happened. After the hearing, he grilled Genevieve. Had anyone threatened her if she testified against her attackers in this case? With the redoubtable Genna out of sight, Genevieve's courage slowly returned. She admitted that Genna and Maltese had intimidated her.

When the prosecutor brought this fact to the attention of the judge in this case, he signed a federal arrest warrant for Angelo Genna's capture. First, he tasked the Chicago police with serving the warrant, but they knew how dangerous Angelo was, and they "didn't want to take any foolhardy chances" with a police invasion and manhunt in the 19th. With local police officers unable to serve the warrant, a team of U.S. deputy marshals was tasked with instructions to "go into the Nineteenth ward and bring him in."

Within a few days, they did, and in November of 1922, Angelo Genna suffered his first conviction in court, for intimidating a witness (the Mann Act case against Penna and Maltese was not prosecuted further, however). With the "Terror of the 19th Ward" soon to be behind bars, Chicago police chief Fitzmorris held a celebratory dinner, with the marshals who had served Genna's warrant as the guests of honor.

Angelo Genna, free on bail before sentencing, began an attempt to flee the country and return to Italy to avoid prison, but when word of his plans leaked, each witness in the trial was given a personal bodyguard until the sentencing hearing, and the federal judge in the case issued a writ of attachment for "Angelo Genna or his body." Again, a squad of fearless U.S. marshals, armed to the teeth, invaded the 19th ward and captured Genna. A few days later, "Angelo the Immune" was sentenced to one year plus one day at Leavenworth prison.

Prison appears to have slightly cooled the temper of the young Genna, and when he emerged from the penitentiary, he returned to Chicago in a mood to make money and mostly avoid trouble. Helping his brothers operate the massive dispersed Sicilian distilling network throughout Little Italy, which supplied the Torrio-Capone syndicate with a major share of the booze they retailed, Angelo Genna was able to move out of the poverty-stricken 19th ward and up to a cozy $400/month hotel condo overlooking the Lake at Belmont Ave.

In January, 1924, the young vice entrepreneur married into one of the city's wealthiest and most prominent Italian families when he wed Lucille Spignola, sister to Henry Spignola, a top attorney of the time, who was a long-time Genna family friend. The wedding was one of the largest in Chicago history, with 3,000 guests, and offered the biggest cake anyone could remember, tipping the scales at just over 1 ton.

(Pictured: Lucille Spignola, Mrs. Angelo Genna)

In May, 1925, Angelo Genna and his wife were making plans to move to ritzy new home in suburban Oak Park. Genna left his Belmont harbor home, drove south on Sheridan Rd. in his roadster coupe, and turned southwest on Ogden Ave., which at that time extended all the way to Lincoln Park.

As he approached Hudson Ave., a large black touring car carrying four "characteristically 'unknown' assailants," as the Tribune described them, sped up next to Genna's car. The passengers fired a dozen shotgun bullets into Angelo Genna's car, causing him to lose control and crash into a lamppost. As his attackers gunned the engine and escaped, Angelo began to lose consciousness.

Rushed to the hospital, the life was draining out of Angelo's eyes. Police Sgt. Roy Hessler came to his deathbed.

"You're going to die, Angelo. Tell us who bumped you off," he pleaded noirishly.

But Angelo just shrugged his shoulders, and closed his eyes. In his last moments, he continued to adhere to the gangsters' code of silence, the same one that had shielded him from prison throughout his life. The Tribune noted,

...the folks who seem to be in the know about Taylor and Halsted streets, reiterate, quite simply, the formula that has worked in so many of the recent murders since the days of bootlegging.

"You'll know who murdered Angelo when the next big guy in the neighborhood is murdered."

But the next "big guys" murdered were all of Angelo's family members. Brother Mike was killed in a shootout with police just three weeks later. A month after that, brother Tony was gunned down on a West side street corner. Brother-in-law Henry Spignoli was killed the following year, and the Genna reign of terror was over as the remaining brothers wisely fled back to Sicily.

Who was killing the Gennas? The most likely theory is that Angelo Genna's death was one of vengeance for the death of Dion O'Banion in November, 1924. Angelo was considered one of the prime suspects in that case, in which the Northside mobster and bootlegger O'Banion, who had famously feuded with the Gennas, was gunned down inside his N. State Street flower shop and headquarters. In this theory, the shooters in the touring car were O'Banion's followers, most likely including Vincent "Schemer" Drucci, Frank Gusenberg, George "Bugs" Moran, and Earl "Hymie" Weiss.

A more speculative theory, but one that has a certain ring of believability to it, was that Johnny Torrio and Al Capone, putatively partners in crime with the Gennas, were afraid of their growing power, and wanted their own man, Tony Lombardo, to hold political control over the city's Sicilian population and their basement stills. Consistent with this theory, Lombardo appears to have taken over the presidency of the main Sicilian political organization, the Unione Siciliana, in 1925 after the death of its previous president, Angelo Genna. Also, the car used in the attack turned out to have been stolen from a resident at 5742 W. 22nd Street in Cicero, just a few blocks from Ralph Capone's Cotton Club, in the town where Al Capone was practically mayor.

Nevertheless, Angelo Genna's funeral, like his wedding, was one of the grandest in Chicago history. Refused a church burial by Roman Catholic Cardinal Mundelein, he was buried at Mt. Carmel cemetary in Hillside in a vault said to cost $10,000, encased in a $6,000 casket which weighed 1,200 lbs and nearly broke through the back porch of the funeral parlor. The flowers for the funeral were believed to have cost upwards of $75,000, including a grand 8-foot tall piece, heavy on lilies, sent by Al Capone, and a huge vase full of pink and white carnations, courtesy of Johnny Torrio, who was incarcerated in Lake County at the time (this proves little regarding the two's potential culpability, since it was common for gangsters to send flowers to the funerals of both their friends and their enemies). At the funeral, which was attended by thosands, a quartet of police officers from the Gennas' local Maxwell Street station frisked everyone for weapons before they could near the gravesite.

(Pictured: Angelo Genna's 1,200 lb. casket at his funeral)

The Tribune, for its part, used the opportunity of Angelo Genna's death to opine on the inferior traditions and weak-mindedness of southern Europeans, in relation to northern Europeans and "native" Americans (probably not a reference to Navajos).

The funeral of Angelo Genna provides an interesting commentary on our city. This crude yet costly glorification of a man of blood is a straight transplantation from Sicily or Sardinia, where to a simple folk the bandit leader is the prince of heroes. The American of native or northern European tradition must observe such a pageant with a new realization of the gulf which lies betwen his mind and moral system and those of Genna's colony.

That is, in fact, what the gathering at Genna's obsequies represents, not America but a foreign colony imported virtually intact and representing a stage of old world history centuries gone save among the mountain peoples of southern and eastern Europe. Considered as a graphic illustration in the argument for our new immigration policy, the Genna funeral is admirable.

For some reason, the Trib editors seemed to have forgotten the equally-if-not-more-ostentatious funeral thrown for mobster Dion O'Banion, an Irishman, just a few months before Angelo Genna's.

Ogden Ave., where Angelo Genna was driving when he was killed, has been completely vacated on the north side. At the corner of Hudson and Menomenee, where Ogden would have cut through, the diagonal sidewalk through the park (pictured below), harkens back to the road that was once there. For more on the history of Ogden Ave., see here.

At the corner where the most violent of the "Terrible" Gennas was shot, today stands a beautiful and peaceful Buddhist temple.