Chicago Outfit

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The Chicago Outfit is a crime syndicate that has a long and storied history dating back to long before Prohibition.

The Outfit's control reportedly reaches throughout the central US to places as far away as Las Vegas and parts of Florida.

Mobsters James Marcello, Nicholas Ferriola, Joseph "The Clown" Lombardo, Michael "Mickey" Marcello, Frank "The German" Schweihs, Frank "Gumba" Saladino, Frank Calabrese, Sr., Paul "the Indian" Schiro, former CPD officers Anthony "Twan" Doyle, and Michael Ricci, Thomas Johnson, Joseph Venezia, and Dennis Johnson are under indictment as of April 25, 2005 in connection with eighteen murders stretching back four decades.

Pre Capone years

The Pre Capone years were marked by the division of Chicago into gangs controlling the South Side and North Side. James Colosimo centralized control in the early 20th century.

"Big Jim", as he would later be nicknamed, was born in Calabria, Italy in 1877, emigrating to Chicago in 1895, where he became a criminal. By 1909 he was successful enough that he was encroaching on the criminal activity of the Black Hand.

This required the procurement of extra muscle, which came in the form of Colosimo's nephew Johnny Torrio from New York. In 1919, Torrio brought in Al Capone, thus providing Capone's entrance to Chicago. In time Colosimo and Torrio had a falling out over Torrio's insistence that that they expand into bootlegging, which Colosimo staunchly opposed. Torrio arranged for Frankie Yale to kill Colosimo, ending the argument.

Colosimo's mark on Chicago in general and on the criminal element specifically is quite indelible in that it was "Big Jim" who brought together differing parts of Chicago criminal activity.

Capone years

Capone's reign came to an end when Eliot Ness of the Bureau of Prohibition devised a strategy of using the Supreme Court's 1927 decision on the bootlegger Manny Sullivan (Sullivan had argued that the Fifth Amendment prevented him from reporting how much income tax evasion he had engaged in). Ralph Capone and a number of the other Outfit members were soon indicted, but Capone went unscathed until June 1931, when he was indicted for concealing more than $165,000 from the IRS. After Capone was jailed, Frank Nitti moved the Outfit into labor racketeering, gambling, and other things like exploitative loan sharking. Geographically-wise, this was the period when the Outfit extended its tendrils to Milwaukee and Madison, and Kansas City, and especially in Hollywood and other Californian cities, where the Outfit's control of labor unions gave it leverage over movie production.

In the 1960s, the Outfit reached it apogee under Tony Accardo. With the aid of Meyer Lansky (and copying him) used the Teamster's pension fund to engage in massive money laundering for its casinos, aided by the likes of Sidney Korshak and Jimmy Hoffa. The '70s and '80s would be a bad time for the Outfit, as law enforcement continued to penetrate the organization (spurred by poll-watching politicians), off-track betting reduced bookmaking profits, and illicit casinos withered under competition from legitimate casinos. Replacement activities like auto theft and professional sport betting did not replace the lost profits.

Crews

The Outfit is made up of five groups: the Rush Street crew, the West Side crew, the Cicero crew, the South Side crew, and the Chinatown Crew. The major highways divide up the territory. However, since 1997, the number of crews have reduced from five to three: the South Side, the West Side, and North Side.

Chronological Order of Outfit Leadership

  1. Jim Colosimo 1910-1920
  2. Johnny Torrio 1920-1925
  3. Al Capone 1925-1932
  4. Frank Nitti 1932-1943
  5. Paul Ricca 1943-1950
  6. Anthony Accardo 1950-1957
  7. Sam Giancana 1957-1966
  8. Sam Battaglia 1966
  9. John Cerone 1966-1969
  10. Felix Alderisio 1969-1971
  11. Joseph Aiuppa 1971-1986
  12. Joseph Ferriola 1986-1989
  13. Sam Carlisi 1989-1993
  14. John DiFronzo 1997-

Members

Associates

Trivia

In The Simpsons episode Viva Ned Flanders the wedding-chapel priest cites the Chicago Outfit for vesting the power in him to marry.

See also

References

  • Binder, John J. The Chicago Outfit, Arcadia Publishing, 2003
  • Russo, Gus. The Outfit: The Role of Chicago's Underworld in the Shaping of Modern America, Bloomsbury USA, 2002
  • Mark Lombardi: Global Networks. Mark Lombardi, Robert Carleton Hobbs, Judith Richards; Independent Curators, 2003 (published for the travelling exhibition of his work, "Mark Lombardi Global Networks"). ISBN 0-916-36567-0

External links