Organized Crime in Chicago: Beyond the Mafia

6. The Outfit

6 the outfit The 1950s brought new leadership to the Capone syndicate. Things were changing. The old-timers who had known Al Capone were dead, in prison, or living in lavish suburban homes, and a new group of younger men was taking their place. These new gangsters weren’t born in Sicily, nor did they grow up running beer during Prohibition.They were former delinquents who had terrorized the streets of Chicago’s river wards.Among them were many members of the Forty-two Gang. The entrance of the Forty-two Gang had marked a turning point in organized crime in Chicago. Until this time the Capone syndicate was controlled by Levee gangsters.With the advent of the Forty-two Gang, however, control of organized crime moved to the West Side of Chicago. Former Forty-two Gang members such as Sam “Teets” Battaglia , Marshal “Joe Russo” Caifano, William “Potatoes” Daddano, “Mad Sam” DeStefano, Charles “Chuckie” English, and Albert “Obie” Frabotta attained prominence during the 1950s. In 1958 Sam “Mooney” Giancana, another Forty-two Gang member, rose through the ranks to head organized crime in Chicago.1 The 1950s also brought the accelerated use of the term Outfit. Capone biographer Robert Schoenberg traces the use of the term to the days of Johnny Torrio. It was a less lurid name than the term Syndicate used by crime reporters and novelists. A former gangster told this author that the word Outfit was a casual name used by gang members when they were talking among themselves and about their group.They would say,“I joined the Outfit two years ago.” It was supposed to be a secret—“the Outfit.” Nobody was supposed to know what it meant except the guys involved, but it eventually grew out of hand and became the name of the group.2 The Outfit also differed from the Capone syndicate in another significant way: the ethnicity of its members. Most of Capone’s gangsters were not Italian; most of the members of the Outfit are. By the 1950s 78 percent of the members of the Outfit had Italian surnames, and that trend continues today.As late as 2003, 77 percent of the members of the Chicago Outfit had Italian names. The decision to limit membership to those of Italian descent is attributed to Paul Ricca, who allegedly decreed during his reign as the Outfit’s leader that only Italians would be permitted to hold top positions.3 The Takeover of Policy Gambling One of the factors that helped bring members of the Forty-two Gang to power in the Chicago Outfit was the takeover of policy gambling. As the successor to the Capone syndicate, the Outfit worked tirelessly after Prohibition to control all vice activities in Chicago. By 1950 the one remaining racket they did not control was policy gambling. Despite the economic and political importance of policy to Chicago’s African American community, blacks would lose control of the policy racket. Although Mayor Kelly was on good terms with Chicago blacks, the Kelly-Nash political machine that ran Chicago had relinquished control of all gambling to the Syndicate. The reason for the complicity of the Chicago Democratic Party was the estimated $12 million collected annually from illegal gambling and vice activities.This association between the Kelly-Nash machine and organized crime set the stage for the Outfit’s attack on policy.4 After Al Capone succeeded Big Jim Colosimo as the vice lord of Chicago’s Near South Side, he declared his intention of moving into the Second Ward and taking over all the illegal rackets operating there. Capone henchmen made plans to swoop down on policy, dice, and off-track betting. The “Spigoosh ,” as Chicago blacks called the Italian crime syndicate, first moved against a policy wheel operated by a man named Roberletto in the Entertainers Building on Thirty-fifth Street near Indiana Avenue. Sam Ettleson, a power in the Illinois state senate from the second congressional district, and Senator Adolph Marks, of the first district, brought pressure on Capone to give up the idea. As a result, Capone warned his men that the entire South Side black area and the policy racket were to be left to African Americans in exchange for their staying out of the beer racket. The deal made by Capone with the black underworld lasted until after World War II, when the Outfit began to take over policy gambling.5 Was Capone’s agreement with South Side blacks simply good business, or...