Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set (68 page)

The election was extremely close, but in the end Powers prevailed by a tiny margin of 435 votes.

However, D'Andrea turned out to be a sore loser, and as a result, the body count began to pile up in the Chicago streets.

Paul Labriola was one of the Italians who had backed Powers. On March 9, 1921, Angelo Genna, of the terrible Genna brothers and an ally of D'Andrea, shot Labriola full of holes on the corner of Halstead and Congress streets. On that same day, cigar store owner Harry Raimondi, who had switched sides from D'Andrea to Powers,
was shot five times in the back behind the counter of his cigar store.

In quick succession, D'Andrea had his men eliminate Powers' loyalists Gaetano Esposito, Nicolo
Adamo, and Paul Notte. Powers's faction countered by killing Joe Marino and Johnny Guardino, two of D'Andrea's most capable men.

On May 11, 1921, while D'Andrea was playing cards at a local restaurant, three men drove past the entrance to the apartment building where D'Andrea lived with his wife and two daughters - 902 South Ashland Avenue. After the driver parked the car in a narrow alley on the side of the building, the two other men quietly exited the car. They pried open
an alley window with a chisel and then crept through a coal bin to the basement stairs. Up the stairs they went, until they stopped at a vacant ground floor apartment right across the hall from D'Andrea's apartment; an apartment they knew was vacant because they had told the former occupant, Abraham Wolfson, to move out, or die.

Shortly after, they watched from an open window facing the street as D'Andrea's car, driven by his bodyguard Joe
Laspisa, pulled up to the entrance of the building. D'Andrea got out and walked into the building as Laspisa drove away.

As soon as D'Andrea reached the front door of his apartment, the two men opened fire with two shotguns. D'Andrea took the two blasts full in the chest, but he would not die without a fight. As his two killers exited the building the way they had entered, D'Andrea, lying in a pool of his own blood, fired five times at the fleeing men. But to no avail.

When the police arrived, they found a note pinned to the floor of the vacant apartment, along with a two-dollar bill.

The note said: “This will buy flowers for that
figlio di un cane
.”

Translation: “Son of a bitch.”

D'Andrea died a few hours later in Jefferson Park Hospital, after telling his wife and daughters, “God bless you.”

D'Andrea's demise left a vacancy at the top of the Chicago chapter of the Unione Siciliana, which was filled quickly by Mike Merlo, who was on vacation in Italy when he heard his good friend D'Andrea had run into some bad luck. Merlo was considered a conciliator; someone who felt peaceful negotiations were better than blasting someone with bullets. Still, that did not stop Merlo from immediately ordering the murder of the men involved in D'Andrea's killing.

Irishman Dion O'Banion was the head of the notorious North Side Gang, which was in constant conflict with the Italian mob, led by Johnny Torrio and Al Capone, over who had the right to sell their illegal booze in which bars in Chicago and in the surrounding rural areas. However Merlo, for some unknown reason, liked O'Banion. So, as long as Merlo, who as president of the Unione Siciliana was as powerful in Chicago as Capone and Torrio, kept O'Banion under his wing, O'Banion’s life was secure.

Still, O'Banion, who owned and operated a Chicago flower shop on the side, couldn't wait to stick
it to his supposed Italian friends.

With a broad smile on his handsome Irish face, O'Banion approached Torrio and Capone, and offered to sell them his Sieben Brewery, on the North side of Chicago. The Sieben Brewery,
which was under the protection of the North Side cops, had the reputation of producing the best quality beer in the entire state. O'Banion told the two Italian mob bosses that he had made enough money in the illegal hooch business, and that he was quitting the mob completely and settling with his lovely wife on an obscure ranch in Colorado.

Capone and Torrio were delighted at the prospect of buying the brewery, and they didn't even flinch when O'Banion told them the price was half a million dollars. As a gesture of good will, O'Banion offered to assist in the delivery of one last shipment. Then he said he was out and gone for good.

On May 18, 1924, 13 trucks stood inside the Sieben Brewery, manned by 22 men. Each truck was loading up to their full capacity with cases of beer, which due to the fact the half a million dollars had already changed hands, now belonged to Torrio and Capone. Two policemen on O'Banion's pad stood guard to make sure everything went hunky dory. Also on the premises supervising the operation were Torrio, O'Banion, and O'Banion's right-hand man, Hymie Weiss. Capone was absent because he was on the lam for killing a thug named Joe Howard.

In the blink of an eye, before the first truck had left the brewery, an avalanche of cops descended upon the brewery like roaches swarming a loaf of bread. The cop in charge of the raid was a Chief Collins, and in minutes, the beer trucks had been seized, and Torrio, O'Banion, and Weiss were arrested.

The three men were soon released on bail, but Torrio, who was known as “The Fox,” smelled a rat. He had cops on his payroll too, and one of them informed Torrio that O'Banion was in on the raid and only agreed to be arrested to cast suspicion from himself.

Torrio was further incensed when he was informed that O'Banion was bragging about how he set up the Sieben Brewery raid,
saying,“I guess I rubbed that pimp's nose in the mud alright.”

Torrio immediately set up a meeting with O'Banion nemeses
, Angelo Genna and his brothers Mike and Tony, Al Capone and himself, to discuss what to do about O'Banion. The group unanimously voted to whack O'Banion.

However, Torrio did caution the group that Mike Merlo, the powerful president of the Unione Siciliana, was still in O'Banion's corner. Angelo Genna told Torrio not to worry. Merlo was deathly sick with cancer, and, in fact, Merlo died on Saturday, November 8, 1924, less than a week after the meeting.

Frankie Yale, still the head of the National Unione Siciliana, flew in from New York City, and he appointed Angelo Genna the new head of the Chicago chapter of the Unione Siciliana. Yale also renamed the group the "Italo-American National Union," thereby justifying the fact that he, a Calabrese, could rightfully be the president of the former Sicilian-only organization.

With Merlo out of the way, the Chicago mob, with the blessing of the Italo-American National Union, planned O'Banion's demise.

Merlo's funeral was, up until that time, the biggest funeral in Chicago history. More than $100,000 worth of flowers were ordered, and as a result, O'Banion's flower shop was bombarded with requests for numerous floral displays.

On Sunday, Novem
ber 9, O'Banion and his partner, William Schofield, spent the entire day in their flower shop weaving lilies, roses, orchids, and carnations into wreaths of various sizes. Capone had ordered $8,000 worth of red roses, and Torrio had placed an order for $10,000 worth of various types of flowers and floral displays.

Near closing time on Sunday, Angelo Genna phoned the flower shop and told Schofield that he needed to order another wreath, and that he would come to pick it up the following day. The vast amount of orders necessitated Schofield and several of his employees to stay up almost the
entire night fulfilling their floral obligations.

At around noon on Monday, O'Banion was alone in
the back room of the flower shop clipping the stems off chrysanthemums. The only other person in the flower shop was a black porter named William Crutchfield, who was busy sweeping up the mess from the day before.

Suddenly, three men entered the shop. Two of Torrio's men, John Scalise and Albert Anselmi, were familiar to O'Banion, but the third man was a total stranger.

O'Banion came out of the back room and said, “You boys here for Merlo's flowers?”

The stranger was none other than Frankie Yale, who had been imported to Chicago once before, to eliminate T
orrio's uncle-through-marriage and Chicago mob boss, “Big Jim” Colosimo. Colosimo's sudden demise paved the way for Torrio and Capone to take over the town.

Yale extended his hand to O'Banion, “Yes, we are here for the flowers.”

O'Banion took Yale's hand. Then suddenly, Yale yanked O'Banion's hand toward him, and he pinned both of O'Banion’s arms to O'Banion's sides. Before O'Banion could extricate himself, Scalise and Anselmi fired six bullets into O'Banion. Two blasted into O'Banion's chest, another hit him in the cheek, and two more buried themselves into O'Banion's larynx. The final shot, which was the capper, embedded itself in O'Banion's brain. The guns had been fired at such close range, there were scorch marks on O'Banion's face.

O'Banion's funeral was even bigger than Merlo's funeral. O'Banion's coffin, which was made of solid silver with bronze double walls, cost $10,000 alone; four times more than the average yearly pay of a Chicago wage-earner.

After Merlo's death, being the head of the Chicago chapter of the Italo-American National Union (formerly the Unione Siciliana), was the kiss of death. Within a year, Angelo Genna was murdered by members of O'Banion's North Side mob. Genna's place was taken by Samuzzo "Samoots" Amatuna, who was killed within a few months after he took Genna's place, by another North Side mobster, Vincent "The Schemer" Drucci.

After
Amatuna's demise, Capone, who was now the Chicago boss due to Torrio's retirement, inserted one of his pals, Antonio Lombardo, as boss of the Chicago chapter of the Italo-American National Union. This was done without the blessing of Frankie Yale, who would not be Capone's friend much longer.

It seemed that Yale had wanted to appoint Joe Aiello as the new boss of the Italo-American National Union in Chicago. Aiello was not too friendly with Capone, and in Yale's opinion, was more likely to pay the proper tribute to Yale in New York city rather than Lombardo, who was closely aligned with Capone.

Yale and Capone were now at cross-purposes, and if Capone needed another excuse to whack Yale, it was presented to him in the spring of 1928.

Capone and Yale were partners in the distribution of illegal whiskey, which was s
old in the Chicago speakeasies and in speakeasies in the rural suburbs of Illinois. The booze would arrive from Canada and was transported through New York in trucks on its way to Capone in Chicago. It was Yale's duty to ensure the safety of those shipments. However, Capone was dismayed to discover that some of his trucks were being hijacked on route from New York City to Chicago by none other than Frankie Yale himself.

On Sunday afternoon, July 1, 1928, Frankie Yale was sitting comfortably in his Sunrise Club, located
at 14
th
Avenue and 65
th
Street in Brooklyn. Suddenly, the phone rang and Yale was informed that his new wife, Lucy, was in some sort of predicament concerning their year-old daughter. Yale associate Joe Piraino offered to drive Yale home, but Yale refused the offer. Instead, he jumped into his new light-brown Lincoln and headed down New Utrecht Avenue. The Lincoln’s body had been bulletproofed, but not the windows, which turned out to be a fatal mistake.

At 44
th
Street, while Yale was stopped at a red light, he noticed a black Buick occupied by four men following him. Yale jumped on the gas, turned down 44
th
Street, and a wild chase ensued.

The Buick managed to pull alongside Yale's car
, and the four men opened fire. Yale was hit by a barrage of bullets fired through the window of his car. The weapons used were two .45 caliber revolvers, two sawed-off shotguns, and a new invention called the Tommy Gun, or Thompson Submachine Gun, which fired bullets from a .45 caliber, 20-round magazine. Yale's car swerved out of control and crashed into the stoop of a house located at 923 44
th
Street. When the police arrived minutes later, Yale was indeed very dead.

The death of Frankie Yale greatly reduced the need for
, and the influence of, the Italo-American National Union. In Chicago, Capone ran the town, and he soon eliminated both Lombardo and Aiello with bullets. In 1930, Capone put in Agostino Loverdo as the new president of the Italo-American National Union. Loverdo lasted until 1934, which by this time, Capone had already been sent to prison in 1932 on an income tax evasion charge. In 1934, former Capone bodyguard, Phil D'Andrea, was appointed boss of the Chicago Italo-American National Union by Frank Nitti, who was now running Capone's old crew.

In New York City, after the death of
Frankie Yale, there was no real boss of the Italo-American National Union. After the Castellammarese War eliminated both Joe “The Boss” Masseria and his successor Salvatore Maranzano, Lucky Luciano became the head of the Italian Mafia, and he used the concept of the Italo-American National Union to start a National Crime Syndicate, which included Jewish mobsters Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and Louis Lepke. Irishman Owney Madden was also part of the Syndicate.

So in effect, in New York City, the Italo-American National Union, formerly the Unione Siciliana, ceased to exist.

In Chicago, Phil D'Andrea kept the Italo-American National Union loosely in place until he dissolved it in 1941 due to the lack of interest from its members. However, after the dissolution of the Italo-American National Union, the Mafia continued to remain strong in New York City and in Chicago, as well as in other major cities throughout America.