Organized Crime

Mike Merlo

As president of Unione Siciliana, Mike Merlo was able to keep the peace among Chicago's various underworld factions during the early years of Prohibition. When he died of cancer in 1924, Al Capone set his sights on taking over control of the Unione and its fabulously profitable "alky" stills. First Angelo Genna and then Samoots Amatuna were murdered -- each within six months of taking over the Unione – paving the way for Capone's man to become president.

by Allan May

'In Chicago, the 'Unione' was in the early period of Prohibition engaged in a kind of piecework, sweatshop, alcohol-distilling enterprise. Hundreds of Sicilian immigrants were equipped with stills, and they sold their alcohol to the central organization.'

--Theft of the Nation, by Donald R. Cressey:

When Mike Merlo, the president of the Unione Siciliana died of cancer in late 1924, Chicago's Little Italy turned into a battlefield of competing bootleggers. At stake were the immense profits Prohibition had unleashed. His death would trigger a series of events that would change the face of Chicago's underworld, paving the way for Al Capone to gain control of the coveted Unione.

Ironically, Merlo's death did not create front-page headlines. In fact, below is the entire article from the back pages of the Chicago Daily Tribune covering his death:

MICHAEL MERLO, LEADER OF CHICAGO ITALIANS, IS DEAD
Michael Merlo, 44, 433 Diversy Parkway, president of the Union Sicilian society and a leader of Chicago Italians in the Democratic party, died yesterday at his home of a complication of diseases. Mr. Merlo is survived by his wife and six children.

This was hardly a fitting accolade to Merlo's prestige in the community, especially in view of the $100,000 in floral tributes spent on his funeral.

Antonio "Tony" Lombardo

Being the president of Chicago's Unione Siciliana was a ticket to the morgue, but that didn't stop Tony Lombardo, Capone's man, and Joe Aiello from wanting that job more than any other.
by Allan May 

With the death of Samoots Amatuna in November, 1925, Al Capone was finally able to place his own man, Tony Lombardo, into the leadership of the Unione Siciliana. It was not an easy task. Opposing the Capone interests was Joseph Aiello, one of nine brothers active in the Unione. Aiello desired the throne himself. He bided his time…and plotted.

Antonio "Anthony, Tony" Lombardo

By his own account he came by boat to America, arriving in Chicago by train with just $12 in his pockets. Lombardo got into the commission business. Some accounts describe him as a wholesale grocer and a cheese merchant in partnership with the Aiello family. Another source claims he was a sugar broker and became rich by supplying the Genna brother's alky cookers.

Although not much else is known about Lombardo's earlier years, two things are certain. He was the man Capone wanted as president of the Unione Siciliano, and second, when he became president, his friendship with the Aiellos deteriorated into what some historians called the "War of Sicilian Succession."

Author Alson J. Smith, in his 1954 classic Syndicate City: The Chicago Crime Cartel and What To Do About It, wrote that Chicago Municipal Court Judge Bernard Barasa was the "top dog" in the Unione Siciliana in the wake of Amatuna's murder, but only in a figure-head position. Smith provided this description of the Unione Siciliano:

"Up until 1920 or thereabouts it had been a reasonably law-abiding organization. It provided insurance and burial benefits for its members and functioned as a go-between for Sicilian immigrants and American politicians, police authorities, labor leaders, etc. On the side it acted as an intermediary in the settlement of personal feuds between various members of the Sicilian community who did not wish to take their dispute before the legal authorities. Quite often these private matters involved extortion, kidnapping, etc., which in the Old World had been the province of the Sicilian Mafia, the old Black Hand. The Unione was also the custodian of a set of weird medieval customs by means of which the Sicilian community in America was bound to that back in Sicily, such things as 'blood brotherhood' and 'omerta,' the law of silence."

Joseph Aiello

Joseph Aiello was Al Capone's most bitter rival. Each wanted control of Chicago's Unione Siciliana and the enormous profits its "alky cookers" generated during Prohibition. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, plus the rise and fall of Aiello play out in this final segment of Chicago's 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.

Charles "Vannie" Higgins and William Bailey

Prohibition spawned greed, and greed in turn spawned mayhem and murder throughout the underworld. Bootlegger Vannie Higgins ran booze by seaplane, speedboat, a fleet of trucks and by taxi to his Brooklyn customers. When he muscled his way into Manhattan, he paid the price for his greed.

by Allan May

Charles "Vannie" Higgins had all the right connections and built a thriving bootleg empire in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn during the 1920s. However, like most successful gangsters of that era, he wanted more. It was this greed that would cause him, and many like him, to perish before Prohibition had run its course.

Higgins was born in 1897 in the Bay Ridge neighborhood where he would enjoy his greatest success. Never looked upon as a mob big shot, Higgins was considered a "cut above the average gangster," and he had a knack of escaping imprisonment despite his many arrests.

His criminal career began in 1915 when he was arrested for assault and placed on one year's probation. The following year, ditto: assault and another year on probation. It would be another 10 years though before Higgins was arrested again.

Between 1920 and 1927, Higgins built a profitable rum-running and bootlegging business in Bay Ridge. He served at times as a lieutenant to fellow Irishman, Big Bill Dwyer, New York's most notorious rumrunner, who was in partnership with Frank Costello. Higgins owned the Cigarette, a speed boat described as "the fleetest rum-runner in New York waters." He also owned a seaplane and a fleet of trucks and taxicabs to help him move the liquor to his club in Brooklyn as well as to other customers.

Herbert Blitzstein

At 300 pounds, Chicago mobster Herbert Blitzstein looked like a heart attack waiting to happen. Instead it was three bullets to his head that stopped his heart. As his profits from loan sharking and auto insurance fraud were piling up in Las Vegas, crime families in Los Angeles and Buffalo asserted their claim.

by Allan May

When Chicago mobster Anthony "Tony the Ant" Spilotro was sent to Las Vegas to oversee the Chicago Outfit's interests, he brought along some people from Chicago to provide muscle for him. One of them was Herbert Blitzstein. At six foot, 300 pounds, he was known as "Fat Herbie," or the "Fat Hebe."

William Roemer, in his book The Enforcer, states that Blitzstein was one of the mobsters the FBI tested during the early days of the FBI's Top Hoodlum Program. At the time Blitzstein lived on the far northwest side of Chicago with his third wife. He was a flamboyant dresser and drove a 1973 white Cadillac Eldorado.

Blitzstein's early rise in Chicago came at the expense of others. In 1967, Arthur "Boodie" Cowan, a bookmaker, and an associate of Blitzstein was found in the trunk of his car with a bullet in his head. It was believed Spilotro had put it there because Cowan had been withholding "street tax." When Henry Kushner, another bookie, was sent to prison by the FBI, Blitzstein took over his customers, as well as Cowan's.

Raymond Salvatore Loreda Patriarca

The 1984 death of Raymond Salvatore Loreda Patriarca – who had ruled the well-oiled New England Crime Family from Providence for the last 30 years – sent Mafia operations in Boston into a bloody and prolonged free fall.

by Allan May

Boston's Italian underworld has never approached the organizational level of its counterparts in other cities in the United States. When it did have its heyday it was actually ruled from Providence, R.I., and became known as the New England Crime Family. By the time the leadership switched back to Boston, the underworld members there not only rejected their new mob boss, but also showed their ineptness while trying to oust him.

Raymond Salvatore Loreda Patriarca, one of the most respected Mafia bosses in the United States, ran the New England Crime Family from 1954 to 1984, operating out of the Federal Hill section of Providence. His death in July 1984 would cause turmoil to a family that had once run like a well-oiled machine and would bring it to its knees.

Frank McErlane

From 1923 through 1930 the beer wars raged in Chicago. Frank McErlane – the gangster the Illinois Crime Survey called "the most brutal gunman who ever pulled a trigger in Chicago" – stood at the center of this bloody Prohibition Era turf battle.

by Allan May

Frank McErlane – the gangster credited with introducing the Thompson sub-machine gun to Chicago's bloody Beer War during Prohibition – was called "the most brutal gunman who ever pulled a trigger in Chicago" by the Illinois Crime Survey. He was alleged to have murdered at least nine men, a woman and two dogs.

McErlane's rap sheet begins in 1911. In June 1913, he was sent to Pontiac Prison after he was convicted of being part of an automobile theft ring. Paroled in March 1916, he would be arrested eight months later for accessory to murder in the death of an Oak Park police officer. He served just one year in Joliet for this. Several newspaper articles refer to McErlane taking part in an escape from the county jail in 1918. Other than calling it "sensational," no details are given except that McErlane spent another two years in Joliet for it.

Robert J. Schoenberg, author of Mr. Capone, gives us this description of the killer:

"Frank McErlane, despite his habitual glower, looked to one reporter like a 'butter and egg man,' a portly five-foot-eight and 190 pounds, with blue eyes, a rosary ever-present in his pocket. But his face habitually glowed a choleric red, and when drunk (also habitual) his eyes would glaze over, at which sign his closest friends edged for the door."