Fratto

There is one small part of Los Angeles where people still walk around, on Beverly Boulevard south of Wilshire. On any given day, you will see actors and models walking up and down the street, sitting outside a nice restaurant or at the newsstand.  If you walked around that area, you would also inevitably see a tan, white-haired man dressed in designer jeans and a t-shirt. That was Johnny Fratto.  He passed away this week from lung cancer.  

Johnny Fratto was the son of Luigi Tommaso Giuseppe Fratto, aka Louis Thomas Fratto, aka “Lew Farrell” or “Cock-eye.”  Louis was the boss of the Iowa family from the 1930’s until his death in 1967.  He handled everything, from trucking to beer distribution, for the Chicago Outfit.

Johnny was great at telling stories about life with his father.  Johnny and his brothers were crazy about the space program.  So their father and some of his men “borrowed” a space capsule for a few days and brought it home.  The kids played in it, and then they took it back to wherever it came.  

Johnny knew I liked boxing, so he told me a story about Rocky Marciano.

“Kenji you know why I don't like steak?” he asked me. “No, I have no idea,” was my response.  

“Well, Rocky used to come over to our house all the time for dinner.  He loved my mom's cooking.  I always sat next to him.  This one time, my mom cooked steak. So Rocky cuts it up into pieces and chews them up, then spits out the meat when the flavor is gone.  So he has this big pile of chewed up steak. I couldn't look at it, and now I don't like steak.”

I take it Rocky was cutting weight at the time.

Rocky would be killed in a plane crash in 1969 along with Johnny’s brother Frank.

Uncle Frank Fratto took over in Iowa, according to Johnny, after the plane crash that killed his brother.  Johnny had a great picture in his house of Frank with a pistol to Sammy Davis Jr.'s head.  Sammy is laughing in the picture and so is Frank.  He spent a lot of time with the celebrities of the day, like the Gabor sisters and the Rat Pack.  

Johnny still had family inside the Mafia.  Rudy Fratto, a top guy in the Chicago Outfit, was his cousin.  He was upset when Rudy was hit with legal problems in the last few years. Rudy was inducted into the Outfit in a ceremony which was overseen by John “Johnny No Nose” DiFronzo, who had been the boss at the time.  Rudy had a charmed life until a tax evasion charge, and then was picked up on a bid-rigging scheme.  During the time he was being watched by the FBI, they picked him up on wiretap saying, “I’m the boss of this area around here, no one else.”

Johnny would ask me for favors from time to time.  I had a feud with a Bonanno guy in Los Angeles.  Johnny was close to him.  I disliked the guy, so I would make fun of him and call him names.  Johnny asked me as a favor to him, to let it go.  I did.  He was a peacemaker.  I was speaking to him one day and he told me, “I have to go to the airport today to pick up Joey Merlino.”  For anyone who does not know Joey Merlino, he was the boss of the Philadelphia Family.  

The next thing I knew, Johnny was on TMZ with Joey Merlino at the airport!

I was on the show the Deadliest Warrior one time, and when I was in the office, I noticed they were doing an Al Capone show.  They had this kid who pretends he is a Capone, and I knew that Johnny Fratto was actually related.  I told the producers about Johnny, and we made the call.  He told me this:  “Capone?  Capone in my grandmother's house was like a Saint.  She wanted to buy a building, and Al Capone gave her the money.  After that, Capone could do no wrong in her eyes.”  After he spoke to the producer, he called me back later and asked me if he had to get on the freeway to get to their offices.

That was the Johnny Fratto I knew.  One night he called me and asked me to come over and take a ride with him. He was waiting for me downstairs in his car.  He dropped the top before we pulled out and we drove a few miles away to Book Soup where Gary Dell’Abote from the Howard Stern Show was doing a radio show and signing books.  I soon found myself with Baba Booey, Jillian and Mark McGrath.

When Johnny passed away this week, a piece of mob history died with him.  He was around so many of the legendary Outfit guys.  He had stories for days about Capone and the rest of them.  I wish for our sake, that he would have published his book.  

Rest in Peace Johnny Fratto.

Where are the Happy Endings?

I get interesting emails all the time from blog readers.  Some just like to call me names or others like to make threats from behind their keyboard. Some readers ask good questions. One that has been asked a few times is, “Why do you say that the life is bad? That it is a dead end?”  One guy said that it is only after a guy in the life gets caught or needs revenge that they say the life is no good.  He is right. That does not take away from the fact that these guys are not dying millionaires in their beds with extended family by their side. They think I am lying when I say there are no happy endings.  I myself do not know of any happy endings in the mafia. If you just consider having some money but no quality of life a success, then I question your idea of what life is all about.

Lets look at the man who started what today is the American Cosa Nostra as we know it. Charlie “Lucky” Luciano. To be fair, it was already around, but he did a major reconstruction on the whole organization.  He was sentenced on July 18, 1936 to 30-50 years of prison time for his part in a prostitution ring.  He sat in lock up until he made a deal with the United States Government to work for them.  Let's be clear on this.  He broke the rules of Cosa Nostra by working for and cooperating with the government.  I know a lot of people will say he did it for the war effort, but the bottom line is that he did it for Charlie Lucky.  He was a cooperator. He was deported to Italy where he continued to deal in heroin. He married, cheated many times on his wife and never had kids. He was basically broke when he died at the Naples airport where he was selling his story to a movie producer.  

Al Capone was sent away for tax evasion and spent his last years drooling on himself in his Florida mansion.  

The point I am trying to make is that none of these stories end well.  If money is what drives you and all you want is the flash, then yes, the life will most probably give you that.  You will go through some tough times, you will have to rob and steal.  You may have to kill a friend or two, but you will get some good years.  If you are lucky, you will get five years and then its RICO.  You will lose everything and so will your family.  They got Joey Massino to flip after they took his mother’s and wife’s homes away.  He could have done his time, but knowing the two women who stuck by him would suffer was too much for him. So he did what any smart guy would do.  He made a deal. They let his wife and mother keep their homes.

RICO is the hammer the Feds use to smash the life out of guys.  In the old days, if it was not in your name you would be able to keep it.  Today, guys go away and their families live in poverty. When they come home they have nothing and their crews don't help much at all.

A young guy with flash and money, okay I can see that happen. An old guy with cash and assets after a lifetime in the Mafia that might be like a white Buffalo, very rare.

Let's say you beat the odds and you live to be an old man.  You did a few years and had the law watching you for years.  What kind of life is that?  What about your kids and family.  A lot of the kids not in the life have substance abuse problems.  They have issues and that is brought on by the father.  

What about those that bring their kids into the life?  I guess the father did not love their child very much.  How could any reasonable thinking man think anything good would come out of having your son be a thief and murderer?

So here is my last example.  Nicodemo Scarfo Jr., or Nicky Jr, is the son of the man who became the boss of the Philadelphia family.  After his father Nicky Scarfo Sr. went away for life, Nicky Jr. was targeted for assassination.  He was shot up, but he lived, so Nicky Sr. asked his friend Vic Amuso, the boss of the Lucchese family, to take him into his family.  Vic agreed and Nicky Jr. was made into the Lucchese Family.  Nicky Jr was smarter than most street guys and he started ahead because his father was boss.  He used computers and other sophisticated means to make cash.

He and a few other guys took over a Texas based mortgage company and stole millions without using weapons.  Firstplus Financial Group was ripe for them to take over and they did by using a few well placed threats.  They also created some dummy corporations and they started bleeding the company dry.  They stole over 12 million dollars from the company while the scam was going on.

All that money and Nicky Scarfo Jr was just sentenced to 30 years behind bars at age 50.  He could make it because his father is 86 now and still locked up.  Nicky Scarfo Sr. has a release date in 2033 which I doubt he will make.

The guys who worked with Nicky Jr. to loot the mortgage company were given 20 and 10 year sentences.  Oh yeah and the Government seized all their assets.  It may have seemed that age 50 he was a success in terms of money, but the story ended otherwise.  As all that I know of do.

Johnny Roselli

Johnny Roselli

In late 1947 fifty men were gathered inside a winery on South Figueroa Street in Los Angeles.  They were all standing in a circle around a long table.  There was a revolver and a dagger crossed at the head of the table.  Johnny Roselli then led in five men.  Three of the five will go on to become the Boss of the family one day. On this day in 1947 they were initiated into the Los Angeles family of La Cosa Nostra or the Mafia. The Boss at that table was Jack Dragna, but he respected Roselli, and even though he was part of the Outfit, on that particular day he was in LA.

Johnny Roselli had just gotten out of prison for his role in the extortion of Hollywood Studios.  He only served 4 years of a 10 year sentence (thanks to the high level Chicago bribery scandal covered in last week’s post).  He was working at Eagle Lion Studios but in reality he was doing much more.  The men in that room owned and controlled Trucking, Garment Center Businesses, Produce and Fruit delivery, Vast tracks of land in Rancho Cucomonga.  Roselli would soon be splitting his time between Los Angeles and Las Vegas because The Outfit was about to step it up.  They needed somebody who could mix in both the underworld and the business world, and Roselli fit the bill.  

The story of the Flamingo and Bugsy Siegal is well known to most people but I’ll go over it here.  Bugsy oversaw the planning and building of the Flamingo for the New York Families. They would recruit those that ran casinos for Meyer Lansky and the Mafia in other places like Kentucky and Havana to help run it. Dave Berman and Gus Greenbaum were heavily involved in the casino.  Gus was close to the Outfit but most of these guys were closer to Lansky.  The Hotel cost over 6 million dollars and lost money when it first opened.  It was a well-known fact that Bugsy was skimming money the whole time.  When Bugsy was killed in Beverly Hills, Gus Greenbaum took over.  

Sam Giancana became the boss of the Outfit in the mid 1950's and he was very close to Roselli.  Chicago had a huge bank of cash via the Teamsters so they would move to buying and building Casinos.  Roselli  would soon start a number of side businesses some that controlled the parking lots of Casinos, others that brought Broadway shows and other shows to Las Vegas.  He also started a production company, a company that sold ice machines to casinos and a company that was building a marina at Lake Mead.

Roselli was a huge earner and very important to The Outfit in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, so its amazing that Hollywood continues to churn out tall tales.  Roselli had been directly under Capone when he was boss and in Los Angeles he worked closely with Jack Dragna but after Jack died he would stay with The Outfit and the new boss Sam Giancana who he had known way back when Sam was a driver for Jack McGurn aka Machine Gun Jack.

The Mafia was riding high.  They had casinos in Cuba and Las Vegas and they had even branched out to Great Britain.  But there was trouble brewing.  

The trouble was Fidel Castro and his revolutionary army which would soon take over Cuba.   They closed the casinos and took over the hotels.  They imprisoned mafia men like Santo Trafficante and kept his cash.  The Mafia saw this happen and they were furious.  It seemed the US Government was on the same page and wanted to take down Castro.

This would not be the first or the last time the US Government would work with the Mafia.  They worked with Lucky Luciano during World War Two to secure the docks from sabotage and then again when the Allies landed in Sicily.  They would use Greg Scarpa to find the dead Civil Rights workers bodies in Mississippi during the civil rights movement.

Sam Giancana

The CIA regularly uses "cut outs" or a go between they trust to take on assignments that they cannot or do not want to be involved.  Robert Maheu, a former FBI Counter Espionage Agent who was then in private practice knew Johnny Roselli, so when the CIA approached him to find people to assassinate Fidel Castro, he thought of Roselli.  He approached Roselli and they met at the Brown Derby in Los Angeles where Maheu was claiming to represent a number of US Corporations that wanted Castro out. Roselli saw the value in the plan so he went to his boss Sam Giancana who reached out for Santo Traficante Jr in Florida and they agreed to meet with Maheu in Florida.

They would meet at the Fontainebleau in Miami with Roselli useing the name John Rawlsten when he first met with Maheu and CIA Colonel Sheffield Edwards Director of security.  Roselli then introduced two men to the two CIA agents. Sam Gold (Sam Giancana) and Joe (Santo Trificante).  They worked out a deal where the CIA would provide cash and poison pills to Cuban Exiles and other contacts to assassinate Castro.  They may have tried or they may have just kept the cash, but they would meet again at the Plaza Hotel in New York.  The Bay of Pigs disaster made the CIA step up their operations but nothing would ever come of this plan.  Roselli would later talk about Santo Traficante possibly being a double agent for Castro and sabotaging their efforts.

I have about 8,000 FBI papers on Roselli but they really pick up in 1961 and they are all marked with the San Diego FBI Office on them. This is probably because they had turned Frank Bomp in San Diego who had a grudge against Roselli.  Bomp thought that he should have gotten something from the Frontier Hotel in las Vegas because he did some work way back but it was instead Roselli who got the gift shop and some skim.  Frank Bomp knew about Roselli's secret birth name and the FBI was soon onto Roselli.  By the end of the 60's Roselli was headed for a downfall.

Roselli had been sponsored by Frank Sinatra for membership in the Friars Club.  Once there, he discovered a cheating scam going on.  They held card games in an upstairs room and these were high stakes games with some very wealthy men playing.  Some other members had drilled holes in the ceiling and they could see the hands played and they would send signals to their players to hold or fold.  It was very lucrative and soon Roselli was getting a cut.  They even had a Palm Springs Town Home that they also rigged with peepholes.  The FBI found out about this and served search warrants.  They found the peepholes and arrested everyone including Roselli. They then decided they wanted to turn Roselli so they approached him on the street in Beverly Hills on Dayton and Rodeo.  The Agents had a picture of a 4 year old Roseli and his mother which they showed him along with a paper showing his real name, Fillipo Sacco, on it. I am sure they unnerved him and the Agents told him they wanted to meet him in the valley in a week which he agreed to before they left. Rosselli went right to his lawyer's office who called the FBI Office and told them Roselli would only talk to the Agents with his lawyer in his office.  Then Rosselli made a couple of calls and made a trip to New York to meet with Colonel Sheffield Edwards about his name.

 

The FBI was watching this because they had Roselli cold because now he was an illegal Alien and could be deported.  Roselli told the FBI to kick rocks and they charged him for failing to register as an alien on top of the cheating scandal. The CIA sent a memo to the FBI asking them to take it easy on Roselli, because they would be in a bad position if the truth about the plot to kill Castro.  He would get four years for the Friars Club and another year for the Immigration charges.  Tony Accardo had now taken over again as the boss because Sam Giancana was on the lam so he demoted Roselli from his Las Vegas position until he was finished with his cases.  

Santo Trafficante

Roselli served his time and moved to Plantation, Florida where he lived in his sister’s guest house.  He made trips to LA where he met with Jimmy Frattiano and told him about the Senate Select Committee that had called him as a witness for the Castro plot.  Santo Trafficante was afraid his name would come up but it already had so he was delusional.

Jimmy had heard that Johnny was a marked man and told him in no uncertain terms, which Roselli blew off.  

July 28, 1976 Roselli left his sisters home to run errands around town and never came back.  They knew something was wrong right away.  Twelve days prior he had lunch with Santo Traficante.  He was to meet again but nobody ever called for him again.  

On August 9, 1976 some fisherman in Dumfoundling Bay saw a strange 55 gallon oil drum with holes punched in it floating on the surface.  They pulled it in and saw what they thought was a human arm through the holes, so they called the police.  It would prove to be JohnnyRoselli.

Johnny Roselli was without a doubt one of the biggest Mafioso in Los Angeles for decades but his name is never brought up.  

Rest In Peace Johnny.    

The Original Gangsters of Los Angeles

Frank Desimone and Roselli

If all anyone knew about Organized Crime in Los Angeles was from television or the movies, they would think that two men ran the Mafia: Bugsy Siegel & Mickey Cohen.  The truth is that Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen were never in the Mafia and could never order any Mafia guys around.  Long before Bugsy or Mickey started getting press in Los Angeles, there was a man born in a small town near Rome Italy, and his name was Filippo Sacco.  You may never have heard the name, but this was a man who worked alongside Al Capone and at the highest levels of the Mafia for over 5 decades. Filippo had a secret he hid from the world for most of the 5 decades, until a man named Frank Bompenserio told the FBI what his real name was in the early 1960's. Frank was jealous of Filippo for many years, going back to when he controlled part of Nationwide racing wire.  You may know Filippo by another name: Johnny Roselli.  Filippo Sacco grew up in Sommerville, Massachusetts, where he became involved in crime at an early age.  He took part in a murder and left Sommerville for Chicago where he changed his name to Johnny Roselli.  He went to great lengths to conceal his identity by inventing a mother and father who both died early on and filing a fake birth certificate that was signed by a fake cousin.  Once in Chicago he started working with Al Capone in the Outfit, and they realized that he was slicker than most of their men.  So by the mid 1920's he was sent out to Los Angeles to help Chicago oversee their criminal business.  Rosselli soon became close with Jack Dragna, the boss of the Los Angeles Family.  He would then be arrested  on bootlegging charges and charged with carrying a concealed pistol on a number of occasions, but the charges would be dismissed.  Rosselli would also work in the movie industry, not only behind the cameras, but also in the movies.  He can be seen in a number of old movies from that time period.  Rosselli would also open a popular nightclub on Hollywood Blvd called Club New Yorker that would become the go-to place for those in the underworld.  Al Capone and his political fixer cousin Charlie Fischetti made a trip to Los Angeles in 1927 to take in the town and meet with some of the men who worked with them.  They picked the Biltmore Hotel downtown as their base and Johnny Rosselli was soon there to bring them up to speed and take them around town.  He gave them tours of the movie studios and Al Capone saw the potential for making money in the movie business.  The LAPD did not like having such a high profile gangster in their town, so they dispachted a few men to inform "Al Brown" that the weather was better in Chicago he left; but the seeds were planted.

Rosselli started working with Eugene Normille, who besides being Boxing Champion Jack Dempsey’s manager, was also the front guy for Moe Annenberg's racing wire Nationwide in Los Angeles. They ran the service out of the Bank Of America Building on 6th and Spring Street in downtown.  Moe was based in Chicago and he was the one who ran Nationwide, but the wire service depended on Bookies for its business.  The wire service needed Bookies to subscribe to the service but Bookies needed the service for instant results on races and other events.  The service was an easy sell to Bookies, but Rosselli was there to make sure The Outfit got its share and that Bootleggers of the service paid up. It was easy for Bookies to tap into the wire but it could be costly. Rosselli would take home between 10-15% per month from the service personally, but how much he sent back to Chicago is anyones guess. One Gambler, Les Brunemann, in Los Angeles, didn’t feel that he should pay for the service, so he bootlegged it, and Rosselli stepped in to fix the problem. Les did not understand the forces against him, because he had no idea how the Mafia worked.  Rosselli was with the Chicago Outfit, but Los Angeles had its own Family run by Jack Dragna who was given a piece of the service.  Dragna gave the order to kill Les Brunemen for threatening Roselli and stealing their service to Frank Bompensiro.  Frank Bompensiro took the first run at Brunemann but only wounded him so he was laid up in the hospital for awhile.  The LA Family found out that he was taking passes from the hospital with a beautiful blonde nurse without his bodyguards so they set up a hit.  This time, Frank Bompensiero was the backup shooter and Leo "Lips" Moceri the primary shooter.  Another LA Family guy, Biaggio, was the driver.  The Roost Cafe was busy when Leo walked right up to Brunemann and fired a shot into his eye and then emptied the 45 auto into his body.  He then reloaded and head out the door where Bompensiero was supposed to be watching his back.  A football player named Frank Greuzard ran towards Leo, so he shot him 3 times and then hopped into the getaway car. Another man was convicted of the crime and sent to prison.

One last note for those that like Los Angeles History :the Roost Cafe former location is now the Rampart Police Station.

Nationwide would take on a number of names, like LA Journal, and was run by several including Russell Brophy.  Rosselli was still getting his cut.  It was then that the Commission, along with the Outfit, decided to set up its own service, Trans America, and cut out the new boss, James Regan,  of the other service that was now called Continental. It was simply a business decision.  Why take a percentage when you can take it all.  They would end up killing James Regan and that was end Continental.

This is where most of these sham shows and movies get it wrong in how things work.  Bugsy Siegel was part of a Prohibition Era gang called the Bugs and Meyer Mob where he was partners with Meyer Lansky.  The other Jewish Gangsters in New York and elsewhere knew that prohibition would not last forever so they started to diversify their activities into other rackets.  Meyer and other Jews went into Gambling.  Others, like Louis Lepke, went into Labor Racketeering and a new racket as the go-to guys for Murder.  Murder Incorporated would handle "Contracts" for the Mafia and others all over the US.  Bugsy was a founding member.

Things were getting too hot for Bugsy, so he was sent out west to look after some interests that New York had in California.  Chicago had the Wire Service but New York got a piece, and they also had ties to the garment center. It was still Jack Dragna's town and he was a Commission member.

All the stuff written about Bugsy coming to Los Angeles and taking over and making Mickey Cohen his underboss are fictional accounts, written by those who have no idea what they are talking about.  Mickey Cohen worked in Chicago with Jake Guzik but only as a low level street collector and he was chased out of town after a problem.  

Rosselli

Rosselli soon set his sights on another venture and he soon took over the race track Caliente in Tijuana Mexico with Eugene Normille as his partner. Johnny Rosselli was heavily involved in with the Movie Studios and with the IATSE the Union the handled the Studios workers.  George Brown was elected the President of the Union and  Willie Bioff was made his special Representative but they were just pawns of the Chicago Outfit. Rosselli was their go to guy in Los Angeles but every family including New Yorks got a piece of the action with Chicago getting the lions share.  This would fill the Mafia Coffers with millions of dollars in the next few years until it blew in 1941.  It was during World War Two and Johnny Rosselli was drafted into the Army before he was indicted for his involvement in the Movie Studio Extortions.  Rosselli, Paul Ricca, Louis Campagna, Charlie Gioe, Phil D'Andrea, Ralph Pierce were all indicted for their part of the extortions and all were convicted and given 10 years sentences in Federal Prison.  This is where the power of the Mafia becomes apparent, because they would all be paroled after just over 3 years inside.  Murray Humpreys, the Outfit’s political fixer and a close friend of Rosselli, used a corrupt Lawyer in Missouri named Paul Dillon.  Paul Dillon had defended others in the Union for Chicago before so they knew he could be trusted but they wanted him because he had close ties to President Harry Truman. Paul Dillon had been Truman’s campaign manager for his Senate race so he was well liked by the White House.  

Boxer Jack Dempsey, a Chicaog Police Sargent,
and NationwideRacetrack Partner Eugene Normille

It worked like this: first, all the Outfit guys were moved from Atlanta Federal Prison to other federal prisons closer to Chicago, then they all started securing jobs and parole sponsors, aka upstanding citizens who would watch out for the hoods when they were released.  Johnny Rosselli first had a doctor and then a priest as his sponsor, and he had a job at Eagle Lion Studios working with Bryan Foy, the King of the B movies. Murray Humpreys delivered $250,000 to Paul Dillion who had connections with Muray Hughs, a Dallas Lawyer, who headed to Washington where he met with the Attorney General Tom Clarke.  Soon, all the men were paroled and the country was in an uproar over their treatment.  The FBI spent years investigating the bribes, but they never got anyplace.  I’ve read a couple thousand articles and papers from the investigation.

So why do all these people keep writing this crap about Mickey Cohen and Bugsy Siegel being the bosses of LA?  I think it is because all these talking heads get their information from other movies and books.  Next week Johnny Rosselli Las Vegas and the CIA's Operation Mongoose.

Milwaukee Phil

3600 Fluer Drive, Des Moines, Iowa

To the kids who lived at 3600 Fluer in Des Moines, Iowa the smiling man was known as Phil, but to the outside world he was known as Milwaukee Phil.

Milwaukee Phil was not a person to take lightly.  He had worked for Al Capone, but it would be his cousin Lou Fratto who brought him into the Outfit.  Soon he was working with two other old friends of Lou Fratto, Sam "Teets" Battaglia and John Marshal Caifano as an enforcer, mainly in Milwaukee and Chicago.  They saw that he was very good at taking care of whatever task he was given.  Many jobs required him to take trips to 3600 Fluer in Iowa which was a good meeting place because there was no surveillance there at all, and no heat.  This was the home of Lou Fratto, who was his cousin and the boss of the Iowa Mafia.

Phil was much more than an enforcer because he could think on his feet.  He soon started working for Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik who ran the "Corruption Squad" for the Outfit.  This was probably the most important Crew in the Outfit because they handed out the cash to law enforcement and politicians to keep the wheels greased.

The grease or payoff was what kept the Outfit on top for so many years and this is the real reason they kept away from drugs.  It was easy for a Judge to give a guy a slap on the wrist for gambling or Shylocking but selling hard drugs would never work the same.  These were important times in Phil’s life because he learned how the administration kept the Outfit on top.  When Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik died he was replaced  by another fixer, Llewelyn Morris Humphreys or Murray Humphreys aka The Hump.  Once again, the Outfit chose a non-Italian to handle their payoffs.     

The Hump

Phil would learn two important things from The Hump.  One was Union takeover and the other was the art of staying in the shadows, because the Mafia was intended to be a secret organization.  The Hump also had a favorite quote, "The difference between guilt and innocence in any court is who gets to the judge first with the most".

Phil must have taken the Hump’s advice to heart because he was quietly building an empire of vice in Milwaukee where he controlled a large gambling and shylock territory and it has been said that he was in control of a lot of the high end prostitution.  He worked with the leaders of the Milwaukee family but he was always an Outfit man.

It was at this time that he started working with Charles "Chuckie" Nicoletti dealing with The Outfits headaches that they could not payoff.  In May of 1962 Phil and Chuckie were taken in and questioned by police when they were caught sitting in a car.  The car turned out to be a "Hitmobile"  The car was designed with hidden gun racks, secret compartments, controls to turn off and on headlights and tail lights basically everything you needed to carry out a hit.  They told police that they were waiting for a friend.  The terrible twosome must have been good at their job because in nearly two decades of "Work"  they were brought in numerous times and questioned about murders but they were never charged.  Phil was said to have carried out up to 14 hits for the Outfit.

Phil soon found himself working with another non-Italian, this time a Greek named Gus Alex who was tough and carried out many hits and was very good at corrupting the people he needed.  Gus took over being in charge of Chicago’s non-Italian connected guys when The Hump died of a sudden heart attack caused by some overzealous FBI Agents who pushed him too far and his heart could not take the stress.

Gus Alex

Gus Alex’s most famous hit was probably when he and Lenny Patrick shotgunned James Ragen, the owner of the racewire in the street which he would not sell to the Outfit.

Milwaukee Phil learned a lot from Alex that would serve him during his rise in the Outfit.  In 1967 Lou Fratto was indicted along with the Milwaukee Mafia Boss Frank Balistrieri and Kansas City Boss Nick Civella on ITAR Charges because of a 300lb con man named Allen Rosenberg.  

It has been said that Phil helped put an end to the Conman who was found in March of 1967 riddled with bullets and handcuffed to a car.  Lou would pass away in November of that same year.  Milwaukee Phil had left a trail of murder and mayhem in the 1960's, one of the most famous was the M&M where he and Tony Spilatro used a vice on the head of a Chicago hood to get him to tell them who his partner was in murdering an Outfit guy.  The hood gave up his friend and they were both found with their throats cut.  

At the end of the decade Phil had moved into the top spot of the Outfit but his reign would be short lived. Despite controlling restaurants, nightclubs and stripjoints, Phil was convicted of extortion and sent to prison.  He would die while locked up in 1971.

Ken Eto

T

his week’s story begins when Executive Order 9066 was signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942.  This order gave US Military Commanders the right to order people of Japanese descent out of the so called exclusion zones. The zones included the whole West Coast from Mexico to Canada.  The US Justice Department opened 27 Concentration camps.  Japanese were not the only ones held in these camps there were Chinese, Eskimo's and other Asians also held against their will.  The US also had other countries deport its Japanese residents to these camps from places like Mexico and Peru.

My Father and my family were some of these held in the camps.  My Father was held in the Minidoka War Concentration Center in Idaho along with another Japanese American named Ken Eto.   What does this have to do with the Mafia?  Stay with me and you will find out. Ken Eto was born in Livingston, California on October 19th 1919 and his father had become a minister because he had witnessed the toll that Gambling had taken on the Japanese Railroad workers.  

I’ve read in the past where people have cited a couple of early arrest as proof that Ken was a criminal. The arrests were for being Japanese or breaking Curfew for a Japanese in Tacoma, Washington. He was soon sent to Minidoka until the US decided that the Japanese Americans were not a threat.

Ken Eto was very intelligent and high school bored him, so he dropped out.  He would never attend another day in school and the ministry was not for him.  It was not until the US decided to make criminals out of all the Japanese Americans that Ken learned how to Gamble.  It has been said that he learned how to play craps on a train to the camp and once there he became a skilled poker player.  After he was released from the Camp he drifted to Montana where he was involved in games of chance and he was referred to as Montana Joe.  He soon made his way to Chicago where a lot of relocated Japanese including my father made their new home.  Once in Chicago his gambling skill attracted the attention of the only people who matter in Chicago gambling and that is the Outfit. Chicago has always been on the cutting edge of racial equality, meaning they worked with a number of ethnic groups and leaders.  Murray Humphreys, known as Einstein was Welsh but he was the Outfits Corruption specialist.  Gus Alex, a Greek, help run the Outfit when Joey Doves was away.  Jake Guzik a Jew was the man who could move money. The outfit list of non Italians is huge and that is why they controlled the rackets in Chicago for so long.  Ross Prio the Outfits North Side Boss took an interest in Ken Eto. Ken Eto began to run some small card games and he was bringing in cash.  It would not be until the mid fifties that he would hit his stride.  He began to work with the Outfit to take over the Bolita from Puerto Rican operators.  Bolita is a Spanish game that refers to 100 little balls with numbers placed in a bag and then picking 3 balls at random.  The three numbers are the winning numbers.  In later years the winning number was the handle or amount of money taken in by horse parlors. Bolita is a poor mans lottery, so It is like Numbers in New York or Bolito in Tampa that the Cubans played.  It was a huge money maker for the Mafia that DutchShultz first realised in New York when he took it over from Black Policy Banks.  In 1958 Ken set up a Puerto Rican operator who refused an offer by Fifi Buccieri to join his Outfit run game.  The operator was soon chopped up the Angelo "The Hook" LaPietra and his brother Jimmy "the Lapper"

Ken then began to work with Black Policy Bosses so he could consolidate their numbers games for the Outfit.  He was bringing in so much cash that he was paying the police over 3,000 a week in payoffs to protect his game.  

He also started working with Black Street gang leaders to expand his business, this would prove very lucrative.  During the 1960's he set up three more rivals to the Outfits Bolita games for execution.  That was it and the Outfit would enjoy years of monopoly in the gambling game. Ken was able to bring in between 150 and 200k a week from his numbers game.  He also ran a number of floating games but he did not stop there.  He muscled his way into the food purveying business by taking over a company named Caliendo which had a meat plant. He used threats and intimidation to run the business and when that would not work he used cash to payoff people.  He would be on site in the plant with a white butchers smock but he was no butcher he was the boss or just Joe as he was called by the workers.  The FBI began to target the business because it was illegal for anyone with a felony conviction to run a Federally licensed meat plant. Caliendo also lost money on the books but purchased beef from all over far exceeding its sales.

Ken moved the business and changed its name to Taco Si to keep it going after the FBI investigated.  

Ken had his hands in many criminal enterprises by the 1980's and the FBI had its eyes on him.  He was soon busted on a gambling charge but he kept his mouth shut and reported to his new Boss Vince Solano who took over after Ross Prio passed away.  Ross believed in Ken but Vince did not have much faith in Ken and he knew Ken was there when he strangled a Bolita rival to death in the 50.s.  Vince sought and was given permission to kill Ken after he pled guilty to gambling charges. Vince set up a meeting with Ken at their usual meeting place IHOP.  When Ken parked Vince was already in the parking lot and he asked to take a walk talk.  Vince asked about his plea and then told Ken to appeal it.  He then told Ken that Rush Street crew member Johnny Gattuso wanted to buy a Pizzeria and that he knew Ken's wife had a shuttered cocktail lounge for sale. He told him to charge between 50 and 60 thousand for the lounge and that Jay Campise would be Johnny's partner.  Vince then said something that put Ken on edge he told him not to worry about getting the cash because he would handle it.  Vince had burned him on a nightclub deal in the past by having him sign over a lease and then never paying him.

On February 10 1983 Ken was instructed to meet two members his crew to be taken to a meeting with Vince Solano.  This came after 30 plus years of loyal service to the Outfit and after he had brought in millions from street gambling.    They called him and asked him to meet them at his closed lounge at 8pm, when he arrived he was with a friend so they told him he was late and they would arrange another meeting.  Ken was told to meet Jay Campise and Johnny Gattuso to be taken to dinner with Vince Solano.  Ken smelled a rat right away because in the 30 years of knowing Vince he had never been asked to dinner.  He showered and put on his best suit, he told his wife where his life insurance was located and then he told her this maybe the last dinner I have.  Ken had to go because to not go when sent for was automatic death.  He arrived at the American Legion hall parking lot and he spotted Jay and Johnny waiting for him.  They walked over and got into his car and instructed him to drive to a nearby Italian restaurant near the train tracks.  When they arrived at the place they told him to park near the side of the building and right after he parked, he heard a loud bang followed by a massive blow to the back of his head.  He would hear a couple more and then lose consciousness when he awoke he was a bloody mess when he stumbled into a nearby pharmacy and asked for help.

The two men had made a huge mistake by using sub loads in the 22.cal plus a silencer,  A sub load is a shell with some of the powder taken out so it is not as load.  The problem is that combined with a silencer which slows the bullet down as gasses escape so the sound is much lower the bullets did have enough velocity to pierce the skull.

Ken would now become a government witness against the Outfit and the two hitters would pay with their lives. They became trunk music and Ken Eto would live a long life with a new name in Georgia.

Special Holiday Edition Post! St. Valentine's Day Massacre

"Only Capone kills like that," Bugs Moran 1929

The Saint Valentines Day Massacre

This is the name given to the murder of seven men from Chicago’s North Side Irish gang.

THE BEEF.

Throughout the 1920's, The Irish Gang - headed by leader Dion O’Bannion and Bugs Moran, battled with Al Capone for control of Chicago’s illegal businesses.  Dion was killed in his flower shop by Capone’s men on  November 10, 1924. Bugs assumed control of the gang after his murder.  Bugs continued to hijack Capone’s liquor shipments and shoot his men.

One of the most spectacular attempts on Al Capone came when Moran and his associates drove six cars past a hotel in Cicero, Illinois, where Capone and his associates were having lunch, and showered the building with more than 1,000 bullets.  Al Capone had enough, so he had one of his top killers "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn aka Vincenzo Antonio Gibaldi devise a plan.  Vincenzo took the name Jack Mcgurn when he was younger because he was a boxer, and an Irish boxer was given better fights than an Italian boxer.

THE PLAN.

Capone and his family left for their home in Florida weeks before the planned hit so that he would have a rock solid alibi.  Jack McGurn had two brothers, Harry and Phil Keywell (from Detroit's Purple Gang), rent a room at a boarding house conveniently located across the street from Bugs Moran’s gang's headquarters.  The headquarters were in a large garage behind the offices of S.M.C. Cartage Company at 2122 North Clark Street. The two brothers would keep watch, and get word to the hit team when they saw Bugs Moran enter the building.  They had a bootlegger that was known to Bugs offer a shipment of good whiskey to him on Valentine’s day. The plan worked well.  Five men from Bugs’ gang were waiting for the shipment and their boss to arrive.  There was a mechanic and an optician who considered himself a doctor.  Also there along with the men was a German Shepherd named Highball.   The brothers called the hit team and sent the message: Bugs had arrived.


THE HIT.

This is what is known.  A car parked in the rear.  Two men wearing trench coats came out of the car.  A police car pulled in front of the garage, and two “officers” (who were actually hoods dressed up like officers)  made their way inside the garage.  The two “policemen” lined up the seven men inside the headquarters.  They were all forced to stand facing a brick wall. The other two men from the car parked in the rear now joined the two “policemen”.  They each drew a Thompson Sub Machine Gun from under their coats.  One had a twenty round "stick" magazine and the other a fifty round "drum" magazine.  They used the stick because the drums were prone to jamming.  The police hoods -one armed with a shotgun and the other with a colt 45 automatic pistol - began to fire at the same time as the machine guns.  Seventy shots were fired in seconds.  At least two shotgun shells were found at the scene and the rest were 45 caliber cases.  When the shooting stopped, the seven men were down in a huge pool of blood.  Highball was howling in a high pitched cry.  The men in the trench coats hid the Tommy Guns under their coats and held up their hands.  They were marched out by the “police” to the waiting police car, and the four men drove away never to be seen again.

THE AFTERMATH.

Six men died on the spot.  One man, Frank Gusenberg, was still alive and was found crawling toward the door. He had been shot fourteen times.  He was taken to a hospital where he died without naming the men who shot him.  The dead were Frank Gusenberg, Pete Gusenberg, John May, Albert Weinshank, James Clark, Adam Heyer, and “Dr.” Reinhart Schwimmer (a gangster groupie) .  The problem was that Bugs Moran was not there!  He had pulled up just as the Police were getting out of their car.  Bugs figured that it was just another raid, so he left with two men. This was the end of Bugs Moran as an effective gang leader because he had lost his best men.  He would go on to live out the rest of his life as a petty criminal.  He would die with less than a hundred dollars to his name, and be buried in a potter’s field, beside other men who died penniless.

Al Capone would suffer greatly from the bad press. The public outcry was so great against Capone, that he was under too much heat to do business as usual.  He would be sent away for tax evasion and died later in Florida giving up his position as Boss to Frank Nitti.


Jack McGurn had an alibi, known as the Blonde Alibi because he was with his blonde girlfriend in a hotel all day.  He would be killed years later at a bowling alley by three men with machine guns.  It took place February 15th, 1936.

There has been much speculation about the shooters.  Two of them were almost certainly John Scalise and Albert Anselmi, two of Capones top killers.  They would be killed by him with a baseball bat three months
after the massacre.

Tony Arccado, the long time boss of The Chicago Outfit, was caught on an FBI wiretap talking about being part of the hit.  He did have  a role in the disposal of the car used in the hit.

Fred "Killer" Burke would later kill a policeman in St. Joseph, Michigan. When they went to the house Burke was using as a hideout he was gone but they found his girlfriend and an arsenal of weapons including two Thompson sub machine guns. They were used to kill Frankie Yale and were the same machine guns used in the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.

A friend of mine was able to fire these two Thompson's recently for a TV show.  He gave me a 45 caliber  casing shot from the gun.  The guns are still in a police evidence lockers today because the crimes are still open.