Part IV of Chicago's Unione
Siciliana:
1920 - A Decade of Slaughter
by Allan
May
While the Aiello-Capone war over control of the
local Unione Siciliana was raging in Chicago, the ''Big Fellow'' himself
was taking in the sunshine of southern Florida. Capone had taken his wife and
son to Miami in early 1928. Once the sensation of his presence in the Sunshine
State had passed, Capone set about finding a suitable home for himself and his
family. He chose a 14-room, two-story, white-stucco, Spanish-style home that
was, ironically, built for beer brewing magnate Clarence M. Busch of St. Louis.
The home was located on what was called Palm Island, a part of Miami Beach.
Capone spent an additional $100,000 on home improvements, including the
construction of a swimming pool that was said to be the largest private pool in
the state.
Capone left the warmth and comfort of Florida to
return to Chicago to oversee the mayhem that became part of the April 1928
primary election. Dubbed the ''Pineapple Primary,'' due to the number of
bombs that exploded during it, one of the more important battles in the election
was for a seat on the Board of Review. Said to be a ''tax-setting
plum,'' the Capone forces were backing Unione Siciliana figurehead Bernard
Barasa. Despite the number of explosions connected with his campaign, Barasa
lost to the incumbent by over 100,000 votes.
After the primary, Capone headed back to Miami Beach to direct the renovation
efforts at his Palm Island estate, leaving his Chicago rackets in the hands of
his chief lieutenant Frank Nitti. In late June 1928, Jake Guzik, Dan Serritella
and Charley Fischetti traveled to Florida to meet with the boss. They were soon
joined by ''Machine Gun Jack'' McGurn and the killing twins, Anselmi and
Scalise, who had recently been acquitted of killing two Chicago police officers.
At this meeting the treachery of Frank Uale, the national president of the
Unione Siciliana in New York, was discussed and his fate decided.
Capone's next visit to Chicago was for the
funeral of Anthony Lombardo, the Capone-sponsored president of Chicago's
Unione Siciliana who had been murdered by the Aiello forces in September 1928.
After seeing to the ascension of Pasqualino Lolordo to the presidency of the
Unione Siciliana, now the Italo-American National Union, Capone again headed
south.
Pasqualino Lolordo
While Capone was on his way out of Chicago, Joe
Aiello was headed back in. Meeting with his new allies on the North Side, Aiello
still had fatalistic aspirations of climbing into the president's role of the
Unione. The first obstacle in his way was Lolordo.
Less than a month after returning from the
Statler Hotel debacle in Cleveland, Lolordo was overseeing Unione business. On
Tuesday, Jan. 8, 1929, Lolordo and his wife Aleina returned from a trip
downtown. When they arrived home they were met by two men outside their
apartment that Mrs. Lolordo ''had seen many times, but whose names she didn't
know.'' The four climbed the stairs to the Lolordos' opulent third-floor
suite where Aleina prepared a meal.
After lunch the two guests departed and five
minutes later there was knock at the Lolordo door. Three men entered and were
cordially welcomed by Lolordo. While Aleina ironed clothes in the kitchen and a
black maid scrubbed the floors, the four men talked business and laughed in the
living room. As she worked, Aleina could hear the tinkle of glasses as the men
toasted each other during the conversation.
At approximately 4 p.m. she heard the men push
back their chairs as they stood up. While delivering one more toast, two of the
men pulled out .38 caliber guns and without any warning shot Lolordo 11 times,
the bullets piercing his face, neck and chest. Aleina rushed into the living
room to see her husband lying on the floor covered with blood.
The three men then exited the apartment, leaving
one .38 on the living-room floor and the other on the second-floor landing. Just
minutes after the murder, Anna Lolordo, the wife of Joseph Lolordo, the former
bodyguard of Anthony Lombardo, arrived. Anna pulled Aleina away from her
deceased husband and they called a local mortuary. The drivers walked in, saw
the bullet-riddled remains, and called the police.
When police arrived they discovered three
half-filled wineglasses on a table; the fourth glass was smashed, its fragments
still in Lolordo's hand. Police tired to contact the victim's brother
Joseph, but were told by his wife that he was out of town. One of the early
rumors was that Joseph was present at the time his brother was murdered and
wounded in the attack.
In searching the apartment the police found a
sawed-off shotgun and a draft of a new constitution for the North West
Italian-American club. Included in the draft was a goal to ''improve the
education of its members, morally, economically and socially by means of
conferences and discussion and by any other means at hand.'' The police,
within an hour of the murder, raided three pool halls on West Grand Avenue that
were alleged hangouts for Aiello gunmen. Aleina was taken to the police station
where she viewed the 18 men who were brought in, but was unable to identify any
of them.
The Chicago Daily Tribune reported that on
the evening of the murder that Dan Serritella spoke with Aleina at the detective
bureau after which she identified Joe Aiello from a photograph as one of the men
present at her husband's murder. The following day the newspaper ran a
follow-up story reporting several inaccuracies about recent Unione Siciliana
activities and printing a few assumptions made by the police. Included in this
article, in which the leadership of the Unione Siciliana was referred to as a
''dictatorship over the Sicilians in Chicago,'' were the following
statements:
''Once Aiello had shared Lombardo's
offices and, with Al Capone as a silent member, they ruled as a triumvirate.
Aiello rebelled and sought to set up a dictatorship of his own, his domain
being principally the north side. Lombardo had the followers of Capone do
his violence; Aiello allied himself with Capone's enemies, the George
Moran gang.
''Capone, it appears, wasn't interested
in the small pickings from the Sicilians and Italians, but in the larger
field of booze and vice domination. But when Aiello deserted he joined the
vice interests of Jack Zuta and other west siders.
''Then Lombardo was killed. Two months
ago twenty-three Italians and Sicilians of Chicago were arrested in a hotel
in Cleveland, O., all of them armed. Just recently police have learned that
the meeting was called for the purpose of selecting a successor to Lombardo.
Aiello wasn't there, the police version continues, but he had agreed to be
present. It developed that it was Aiello who notified the police of
Cleveland that a gang of Chicago gunmen could be found in the hotel. Aiello,
police declare, had hoped thereby to settle the question of Chicago
leadership.'''
The article went on to claim that the police were
told that Aiello had recently returned to Chicago and had suggested a truce
whereby Lolordo had invited him to discuss the terms.
In his book, Mr. Capone, author Robert J.
Schoenberg wrote: ''Early reports said that Aleina had identified a picture
of Joe Aiello as one of the three visitors. ‘She didn't identify anyone,'
said John Stege, by now deputy police chief. ‘I don't know how that report
got started. It was the same in this case as in other cases – no
identification, no aid.'''
Many crime historians still maintain that Aiello
was one of the three men present at the time of the murder and that the two
shooters were Frank and Peter Gusenberg. Schoenberg suggests the third man was
North Sider James Clark. What is interesting is that whether it was Aiello or
Clark with the Gusenbergs that day, why was Lolordo so cordial toward them? By
this time it was believed Aiello was behind the murder of Lombardo and that the
Gusenberg brothers were the killers. Was Lolordo acting out of fear? Is it
possible that the Lolordo brothers were in on the plot to murder Lombardo and
were playing both sides of the fence? The men who preceded the killers into
Lolordo's apartment for lunch that day were never identified. Had they gone
there to set Lolordo up? These questions remain unanswered.
Joseph ''Hop Toad'' Guinta
The murders of Anthony Lombardo and Pasqualino
Lolordo and the belief by Capone that Aiello had orchestrated the killings with
the backing of George ''Bugs'' Moran and his North Side gang incited
Capone to drastic action. From his Florida home, working with chief gunman Jack
McGurn, Capone plotted the infamous retaliation that would become known around
the world as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. On the morning of Feb. 14,
1929, six of Moran's men, including the Gusenberg brothers and James Clark,
and one gang hanger-on were slaughtered in a garage on North Clark Street. Moran
was believed to be on his way to the garage when he spotted the executioners,
disguised as police officers, entering the garage. Moran was never again a
factor in the Chicago underworld.
Joseph Guinta, who had accompanied Pasqualino
Lolordo to the Cleveland meeting, assumed leadership of the Unione Siciliana.
Robert Schoenberg describes Guinta: ''A dandified hyperactive, Guinta loved
power and dancing, his gyrations in aid of both pursuits so frequent and
frenzied many called him ‘Hop Toad.' His elaborate dress, his cocky demeanor
and exhibitionism all spoke of a vanity that could make a twenty-six-year-old
listen to whisperings of unlikely ambition.''
In John Kobler's Capone, the author
states that after Anselmi and Scalise were acquitted in June 1927 of murdering
the police officers, Capone threw a party to celebrate. Kobler claims, ''The
life of the party was a flip, strutting, bandboxical Sicilian gunman, a crony of
Scalise and Anselmi, Giuseppe Giunta (sic), called Hop Toad because of his
nimbleness on a dance floor.''
Capone biographers tell conflicting accounts of
what transpired next. There is some confusion as to who was leading whom into a
deceitful plot against Capone that would eventually cost all the primary
participants their lives.
Kenneth Allsop, in his 1961 classic The
Bootleggers, discusses Aiello's continuing efforts to kill Capone:
''These included the wooing of Scalise and Anselmi. Promising them positions
of command once Capone was liquidated and the regional Mafia was under his
authority, Aiello persuaded them to urge upon Capone that Guinta would be an
admirable replacement for Lolordo in the Unione throne.''
This would seem to indicate that Aiello and
Guinta were already in cahoots. Lawrence Bergreen, in his somewhat slanted
biography, Capone: The Man and the Era, bolstered this claim: ''What
brought Capone back (from Florida) against his better judgment was an appalling
rumor that Scalise and Anselmi, the Sicilian gunmen who helped carry out the St.
Valentine's Day Massacre, had suddenly shifted their loyalty away from Capone
and toward the new head of the Unione Siciliana, Joseph ''Hop Toad''
Guinta, who had formed an alliance with another enemy of Capone, Joseph
Aiello.''
The turn of events that brought Aiello, Anselmi,
Guinta and Scalise together to initiate a murder plot against Capone has never
been made clear. What is known is that Guinta, as president of the Unione
Siciliana, did align himself with Anselmi and Scalise. Some reports have it that
Scalise was named vice president of the organization. Shortly after the massacre
there was a marked change in Scalise. Rumors began to abound about him. One was
that he was heard to brag that he was the ''most powerful'' man in
Chicago. Some believe that he now ran the Unione Siciliana and that Guinta was
his puppet. If this were true, it would account for his ''most
powerful'' image of himself. While this alone would not mark him for death,
what transpired next certainly did.
Scalise had been spotted in a Waukegan restaurant
meeting with Joe Aiello. A waiter at the restaurant reportedly revealed this
clandestine meeting to a Capone gang member. It was alleged that Anselmi and
Scalise would kill Capone for the $50,000 bounty that Aiello was offering. Them
Anselmi and Scalise would control Capone's empire, Guinta would oversee the
Unione, and Aiello would have the North Side.
The story goes that when Capone was informed of
this plot he was still not convinced of Anselmi and Scalise's treachery.
Capone, the man who had once saved the two killer's lives at the sake of peace
with Hymie Weiss, demanded more proof. He returned from Florida to get it.
Sometime in late April or early May 1929, Capone invited Anselmi and Scalise to
join him for dinner along Capone's bodyguard, Frank Rio. During the meal
Capone and Rio faked a falling out. After a fabricated argument, Rio slapped
Capone across the face and stormed out of the restaurant. Taken in by the
charade, Anselmi and Scalise met with Rio the following day and let him in on
their plot with Aiello and Guinta to murder Capone. Over the next three days
Anselmi and Scalise met with Rio to discuss the plan.
Capone now had his confirmation of Anselmi and
Scalise's treachery. Schoenberg describes what followed:
''…Capone's hurt fury demanded more
than instant vengeance. ‘It was Nitti's idea,' says George Meyer (a
onetime Capone driver). ‘I was in an office and Capone came in with
Nitti and Joe Fischetti.' They started to talk and Meyer got up to
leave, thinking the big shots wanted privacy. ‘Stick around,' Capone
told Meyer. ‘You're gonna know about it anyway.' Nitti suggested a
banquet for the outfit's top people, the three plotters guests of honor.
The preceding gaiety and sense of camaraderie and security would make the
subsequent terror all the more exquisite.
''Invitations were issued for Tuesday
night, May 7, at The Plantation, a roadhouse and casino that dripped Old
South magnolia charm near Hammond, Ind., just over the line from Burnham,
Johnny Torrio's first suburban colony. The banquet would be in a private
back room. ''We frisked everyone going in as usual,' says
Meyer''
It was a routine night for Hammond police
officers Louis Tebodo and Charles Plant. They were returning a couple of
prisoners to the station when two large automobiles sped past them headed
towards Chicago at the corner of Sheffield Avenue and Hohman Street. After
depositing their prisoners at the Hammond jail they returned to the area where
the cars had passed them. As they drove around the vicinity they came across an
abandoned automobile. The officers looked inside. Under a brown blanket they
found the bodies of Anselmi and Guinta. A short distance away lay the body of
Scalise.
The death car had been stolen on April 17. The
license plate came from another car stolen the last week of March. Police and
the newspapers immediately surmised that ''Bugs'' Moran and Joe Aiello
committed the murders in retaliation for the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
However, on May 9, the Chicago Daily Tribune was already reporting that
from ''Sicilian'' sources the police had been told:
''The three Chicago Sicilians slain
near Hammond Tuesday night were the victims of a quartet of their
countrymen who, according to police theory last night, aimed in that way
to secure peace in the control of rich booze and vice profits.
''According to this report, the triple
slaying was not in reprisal for the St. Valentine day massacre (sic) of
seven Moran gangsters. The three were killed because they were reaching
out with extortionate hands for the rum running profits and levying
tribute on tradesmen in legitimate lines of business. The authorities were
further informed that the slayings were done in Indiana as an evidence of
good will toward the Chicago police.''
The article went on to say that the three were
lured to the Indiana roadhouse to be slain by four other men. Just who furnished
this information to the police is of some interest. It is amazing that in less
than 24 hours after the murders they had such an accurate account of not only
what happened – but why. With no by-line on the Tribune story, one has
to wonder if reporter Jake Lingle was involved based on his close relationship
to Capone and the Chicago underworld. The mystery is how the motive for the
murders was discovered so quickly.
What is not clear is the number of people who
were present at the time of the murders. The movies always show the banquet room
filled with tuxedoed mobsters just before the Capone character produces a
baseball bat and begins swinging.
The murders themselves must have been terrifying
as well as brutal for the three traitors. The legend has Capone savagely beating
each of them with a baseball bat. That Capone did the actual beating was never
proven, just assumed. Dr. Eli S. Jones, the coroner of Lake County, Ind., in his
examination surmised that after the men were clobbered their assailants shot
them to finish them off: ''Scalise threw up his hand to cover his face and a
bullet cut off his little finger, before crashing into his eye. Another bullet
crashed into his jaw and he fell from his chair. Meanwhile, the other killers
– there must have been three or four – had fired on Guinta and Anselmi,
disabling them. A bullet broke Anselmi's right arm. When their victims fell to
the floor, their assailants stood over them and fired several shots in their
backs.''
After the autopsies the bodies of the three men
were returned to Chicago. The remains of Anselmi and Scalise were returned to
their families in Sicily for burial – Anselmi in Marsala and Scalise in
Castelvertrano. Guinta was taken to the funeral parlor of famed mortician and
politician John Sbarbaro.
A side note to the Tribune reporting of
the murders. In two consecutive articles following the killings the newspaper
refers to two meetings of the national Unione Siciliana taking place in
Cleveland, Ohio. It is know that one took place in December 1928. But the paper
claims that, ''A meeting of Sicilian rulers of various cities was said to
have been held in Cleveland last week,'' which would have meant the first
week of May 1929. No other information regarding this second meeting has ever
surfaced.
Joseph Aiello
Capone historian Kenneth Allsop gives us an early
look at Joe Aiello and his brothers in The Bootleggers: ''The Aiello's
gang was a family business. There were nine of them – Joe, Dominick, Antonio
and Andrew ruled the roustabouts – and also numerous cousins of the same name.
Their entry into bootlegging was via supplying wholesale sugar for the Genna
brothers' alky-cooking syndicate. After the Gennas had been cut to pieces and
disbanded in 1925, Joe Aiello pieced the organization together to keep Chicago's
worst and cheapest rotgut liquor flowing, and the brothers ruled the illiterate
peasant families who were their scab labor force with the same kind of harsh
paternalism that the Gennas had practiced. But an obstacle to their complete
domination of the Little Italy community was the nomination of Antonio Lombardo,
by Capone, to the presidency of the Unione Siciliana following the deaths of
Angelo Genna and Sam Samoots Amatuna.''
Following the death of Lolordo, there was
confusion in the minds of organized crime historians about the leadership of the
Unione Siciliana. In Capone, John Kobler mistakenly claims that after the
murder of Lolordo, ''Joe Aiello finally won the presidency of the Unione
Siciliana. He held it almost a year.''
Right after the murders of Anselmi, Guinta and
Scalise, Capone headed to Atlantic City for a crime conference that was in part
organized by his former boss, Johnny Torrio. Lawrence Bergreen in Capone: The
Man and the Era, states that Capone was dictated to that Aiello would head
the Chicago branch of the Unione Siciliana. The author claims that this was part
of a 14-point peace initiative that only Bergreen seems to know about.
After the conference, Capone went to Philadelphia
where he allowed himself and his bodyguard, Frank Rio, to be arrested for
carrying concealed weapons. It was never clear if this idea was Capone's or if
it was done at the suggestion of Torrio, Frank Costello, or Lucky Luciano.
(Their respective biographers give the credit for the idea to their own
subject.) The general feeling was that the slaughter in Chicago had brought too
much heat and unwanted publicity down on the underworld and perhaps if Capone
were to take a ''short vacation'' it would blow over.
Robert Schoenberg states that while Capone was
serving his one-year sentence in Pennsylvania, ''Joe Aiello had returned to
follow Guinta as head of the Unione, which automatically gave him a renewed
power base, inspiring him to resurrect dreams of getting Capone. Gossip put him
again plotting with Moran – who wisely stayed clear of Chicago…''
There is virtually no information on the
activities of Joe Aiello from his attempts to conspire with Anselmi, Guinta and
Scalise in April 1929, until his death in September 1930. If Aiello did anything
with his ''renewed power base'' or ''resurrected dreams,''
Schoenberg did not say what, nor did any other writer or historian.
Around Sept. 10, 1930 Aiello secreted himself at
the rooming house of Pasquale Prestogiacomo. Nicknamed ''Patsy Presto,''
Prestogiacomo was the treasurer and manager of the Italio-American Importing
Company of which Aiello was the reputed president. The young daughter of
Prestogiacomo, Frances, would later testify that ''Mr. Joe,'' as she
called him, ''never went out of the house,'' during his two-week stay.
Aiello remained at the Prestogiacomo rooming
house at 205 Kolmar Avenue until Thursday evening, Sept. 23. Reported to have a
ticket to Mexico City in his pocket, he asked Frances to call a taxicab to the
rooming house. When the cab arrived the driver, James Ruane, went into the
rooming house, but could not find a doorbell for the name Presto. Returning to
his cab, Ruane turned his spotlight on the building and noticed ''four or
five shadowy figures'' near a front window. When Ruane returned to the
rooming house and ''kicked'' on the door Aiello appeared.
Aiello followed a few steps behind Ruane on the
way to the cab. The driver opened the door for Aiello. As Ruane waited he
noticed a window being raised across the street in a second-floor apartment. A
dark figure then raised a machinegun and opened fire. Ruane heard Aiello groan
after being hit with a burst of fire. He ''saw the figure of Aiello rolling,
pitching, and staggering south a few feet toward a possible haven.''
Reaching for his gun Aiello cried out, but his
words were unintelligible. He made it around the corner of the rooming house,
only to be greeted by another hail of bullets coming from a second machinegun
nest that had been set up on the third floor of another apartment building.
These shooters were firing almost straight down on their helpless victim. A
police officer later said Aiello was filled ''with a ton of lead.'' As
it turned out, it was only a pound. The coroner removed 59 slugs from his body.
After the guns silenced, Ruane ran to Aiello.
With the help of a motorcycle patrolman they carried Aiello to the cab and sped
off to Garfield Park Hospital. Aiello was dead on arrival.
An investigation discovered that a ''Morris
Friend'' and a ''Henry Jacobs'' had rented the two apartments right
after Aiello had taken refuge at the Prestogiacomo rooming house, and had been
waiting for him to appear the whole time. A search of the Kolmar Avenue
apartment shooting nest, the one facing the rooming house, disclosed ''at
least 1,000 cigarette stubs,'' a half-eaten box of candy, a pair of rubber
gloves and a silk glove. Also found was a copy of Rudyard Kipling's book, Soldiers
Three opened to the chapter, ''His Chance in Life.''
Across the street in the Prestogiacomo home, the
walls and the front door were perforated with bullets. A basement flat was also
peppered; the occupants had missed the lead downpour by just two minutes.
Following the shooting, Prestogiacomo disappeared and went into hiding. Police
believed he might have tipped off the killers to Aiello's whereabouts, or to
his plans to flee. During the coroner's inquest, Prestogiacomo's lawyer
promised he would surrender his client.
Joe Aiello was the eighth person to hold the
title of president of the Unione Siciliana since May 1921 – and the eighth to
die. Of these dead presidents only Mike Merlo died of natural causes. In John
Kobler's Capone, he claims that ''Aiello's Capone-supported
successor, a macaroni manufacturer named Agostino Loverdo, also reigned for a
year before he was killed in a Cicero dive.''
The prestige, power and mystique that the
presidency of the Chicago Unione Siciliana held seemed to dissipate after the
murder of Joe Aiello. Perhaps control of the alky cookers who made up a large
percentage of the membership held less significance to Capone's overall liquor
income with the real product pouring into Chicago almost unheeded from Canada,
Detroit, and the East Coast. After all, even going back to the Genna brothers
days, this locally produced alcohol was always considered an inferior ''rot
gut'' liquor product.
As a political entity, the Unione Siciliana
continued until at least the mid-1940s. Virgil W. Peterson, head of the Chicago
Crime Commission, in his 1952 gem, Barbarians in Our Midst, wrote the
final chapter of this society that caused so much death and destruction during
the Roaring Twenties:
''The Italo-American National Union,
frequently called the Unione Siciliana, was utilized to advance the cause
of Capone candidates for political office. Phil D'Andrea testified that
from 1934 to 1941 he was president of the Unione Siciliana and was
responsible for bringing his friends, Tony Accardo, Charles Fischetti,
Paul Ricca, John Capone and Nick Circella (alias Nick Dean), into this
organization as members. D'Andrea, who was very influential in First
Ward politics, brought before the Unione Siciliana as speakers those
political candidates who apparently had the blessing of the Capone
syndicate.
''Paul Ricca testified that he
continued to pay his membership dues in the Unione Siciliana until he was
committed to the Federal penitentiary in December 1943. During part of the
time that Ricca was active in the Unione Siciliana, Joseph Bulger, an
attorney, was its president.
''The exploitation of the Unione
Siciliana, a benevolent association, for the advancement of the Capone
organization was not peculiar to Chicago. In New York, Frank Costello,
Lucky Luciano and other gangsters became powerful in Unione Siciliana
activities, as did gangsters in many of the other large American
municipalities.''
Allan May's e-mail address is: AllanMay@worldnet.att.net
