Chicago Outfit
The Chicago Outfit, also known as the Outfit, the Chicago Mafia, the Chicago Mob, the Chicago crime family, the South Side Gang or the Organization, is an Italian American Mafia crime family based in Chicago, Illinois, and throughout the Greater Chicago area, originating in the city's South Side in the early 1910s.
The Outfit rose to power in the 1920s under the control of Johnny Torrio and Al Capone, and the period was marked by bloody gang wars for control of the distribution of illegal alcohol during Prohibition. The Outfit's power was solidified by Capone's leadership, consolidating the family into the larger American Mafia. Since then, the Outfit has been involved in a wide range of criminal activities, including loansharking, illegal gambling, prostitution, extortion, political corruption and murder. Capone was convicted of income tax evasion in 1931 and the Outfit was next run by Paul Ricca. Ricca and Tony Accardo shared power from 1943 until Ricca's death in 1972; Accardo became the sole power in the Outfit upon Ricca's death and was one of the longest-sitting bosses of all time upon his death in 1992. The family’s longest-serving boss was Joey Aiuppa, serving from 1971 until 1986.
Although it has never had a complete monopoly on organized crime in Chicago, the Outfit has long been the largest, most powerful and most violent criminal organization in Chicago and the Midwest in general. The organization is considered one of the most violent Mafia families in the United States, having committed over 1,000 murders since the 1920s. Unlike other Mafia factions such as the Five Families of New York City, the Outfit has been a unified faction since its conception. Its influence at its peak stretched as far as California, Florida and Nevada and it continues to operate throughout the Midwestern United States and South Florida, as well as Las Vegas and other parts of the Southwestern United States. Heightened law enforcement attention and general attrition have led to its gradual decline since the late 20th century, though it continues to be one of the major and most active organized crime groups in the Chicago metropolitan area and the Midwest.
History
Origins
The early years of organized crime in Chicago, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, were marked by the division of various street gangs controlling the South Side and North Side, as well as the Black Hand organizations of Little Italy. In later years, the Outfit consisted of various street crews controlling different territories around Chicago including Elmwood Park, Melrose Park, Chicago Heights, Rush Street, Grand Avenue and Chinatown.Vincenzo "Big Jim" Colosimo centralized control in the early 20th century. Colosimo was born in Calabria, Italy, in 1878, and immigrated to Chicago in 1895, where he established himself as a criminal. By 1909, with the help of bringing Johnny Torrio from New York to Chicago, he was successful enough that he was encroaching on the criminal activity of the Black Hand organization. Colosimo also "cultivated deep political connections" after "serving as a precinct captain in the organization of First Ward Alderman Couglin and Kenna, and later the bagman in the vice-laden Levee District, which afforded him with blanket political protection".
Prohibition and Johnny Torrio
When Prohibition went into effect in 1920, Torrio pushed for the gang to enter into bootlegging, but Colosimo stubbornly refused. In March 1920, Colosimo secured an uncontested divorce from his wife, Victoria Moresco. A month later, he and singer Dale Winter eloped to West Baden Springs, Indiana. Upon their return, he bought a home on the South Side. On May 11, 1920, Colosimo was killed by a gunman waiting in the coat room of his restaurant, Colosimo's cafe. The killer was most likely Frankie Yale, fulfilling a contract commissioned by Johnny Torrio.Torrio's organization was made up predominantly of ethnic Italians but had a large contingent of members from other immigrant backgrounds. Torrio's gang also differed from the other Chicago gangs by recruiting from New York's underworld, regularly welcoming that city's ambitious criminals into his organization's ranks. Alphonse "Scarface Al" Capone had left New York for Chicago in 1919, likely under orders from mob boss Frankie Yale to leave town to avoid retaliation for previous violence they had committed in New York. Capone began in Chicago as a doorman at the Four Deuces club. By 1924, Capone's business acumen and shrewd intelligence had gained him a place as Torrio's right-hand man. Many rivals saw Capone as responsible for the proliferation of brothels in the city.
In 1923, William Dever was elected mayor of Chicago, and he began to crack down on Torrio's underworld activities within the city. Losing their political cover, the gang looked to the suburbs for a new base of operations. Torrio ordered Capone to lead a takeover of the town of Cicero, where he was able to corrupt city manager Joseph Z. Klenha. The gang set up dozens of brothels, speakeasies, gambling dens, and other businesses within the town. On April 1, 1924, Cicero municipal elections were threatening Kenha's leadership. Kenha appealed to Torrio and Capone for their support, which they responded to by terrorizing the opposition and voting public on election day. The gang guarded polling places, ensuring people knew the right way to vote and violently preventing entry to those who did not. They ransacked the local Democratic party campaign headquarters, forcibly detaining the election workers for hours. By that afternoon, the Chicago Police Department was ordered to step in to halt the violence by Cook County Judge Edmund J. Jareki. Seventy plainclothes officers, newly deputized as county sheriffs, descended on Cicero. Frank Capone, Al's brother, was killed that evening by detective sergeant William Cusack during an altercation on 22nd Street and Cicero Avenue. Charles Fischetti was also arrested at the scene. Kenha won the election, ensuring the Torrio-Capone gang's local immunity into the 1930s.
Torrio was wary of being drawn into gang wars and tried to negotiate agreements over territory between rival crime groups. The smaller North Side Gang led by Dean O'Banion was of mixed ethnicity, and it came under pressure from the Genna brothers who were allied with Torrio. O'Banion found that Torrio was unhelpful with the encroachment of the Gennas into the North Side, despite his pretensions to be a settler of disputes. The "Terrible" Genna brothers, as they were known, consisted of Peter, James, Angelo, Tony, Sam and Mike "The Devil" Genna. They were known for their ruthlessness and intemperate disposition. In a fateful step, Torrio either arranged for or acquiesced to the murder of O'Banion at his flower shop on November 10, 1924. This placed Hymie Weiss at the head of the gang, backed by Vincent Drucci and Bugs Moran. Weiss had been a close friend of O'Banion and the North Siders made it a priority to get revenge on his killers.
At the end of 1924, the Torrio-Capone gang had between 300–400 members, while the North Side gang could count on around 200 soldiers.
Beer Wars and Al Capone
In early 1925, the North Side began a string of retaliations for O'Banion's murder. First, in January 1925, Capone's car was shot up without him in it. Twelve days later, on January 24, Torrio was returning from a shopping trip with his wife Anna, when he was shot several times by North Side gunmen. After recovering, he effectively resigned and handed control to Capone, age 26 at the time. Torrio retired to New York and acted as an advisor to the New York Mafia in helping form the "Commission".During the beer wars, the Capone gang's enforcement group was led by "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn, and included Tony Capezio, Claude "Screwy" Maddox, Sam "Golf Bag" Hunt, Frank Rio, and others. 1925–1926 were the most violent years of Chicago's "Beer Wars" in which 133 gangsters were murdered. On September 20, 1926, the North Side gang attacked Capone's headquarters at Cicero's Hawthorne Hotel, shooting hundreds of rounds and only narrowly missing Capone. Less than a month later, on October 11, North Side gang leader Hymie Weiss was gunned down with a Thompson in front of Holy Name Cathedral, allegedly by Jack McGurn. Weiss was succeeded by Vincent Drucci, a WW1 veteran and close friend of Weiss.
In 1928, the Capone gang was active in the violent Pineapple Primary election. Capone had previously donated $200,000 to Big Bill Thompson's corrupt mayoral campaign, and then used his gangsters to intimidate, assault, and bomb Thompson's political rivals in an attempt to keep the Republican party in power.
Capone was widely assumed to have been responsible for ordering the 1929 Saint Valentine's Day Massacre in an attempt to eliminate Bugs Moran, head of the North Side Gang. On that fateful and cold February morning, four Capone henchmen entered the S.M.C Cartage Company garage located at 2122 N. Clark St. Chicago, Illinois, to find seven men, which included five of Moran's soldiers, an auto mechanic, and a friend of the gangsters, awaiting a shipment of hijacked booze. All seven men were lined up against the wall in a mock police raid and shot to death. Moran escaped narrowly by accidentally arriving late to the meeting. Moran was the last survivor of the North Side gunmen; his succession had come about because his similarly aggressive predecessors Vincent Drucci and Hymie Weiss had been killed in the violence that followed the murder of original leader Dean O'Banion.
Capone was convicted on three counts of income tax evasion on October 17, 1931, and was sentenced a week later to 11 years in federal prison, fined $50,000 plus $7,692 for court costs, and was held liable for $215,000 plus interest due on his back taxes. Capone later died of heart failure as a result of apoplexy on January 25, 1947.