The Violent Years (3 page)

Giannola was quick to retaliate for the murder of his brother-in-law. On the morning of February 5, 1919, John Vitale’s store in Ford City was shot up by a group of gunmen who drove by the building, but no one was hurt in the attack.

That same night Sheriff Coffin led a force of Wayne County deputies and detectives into Ford City to arrest John Vitale and, hopefully, solve the Tony Giannola and Pasquale Danni murders. As the detachment of police pulled up to Vitale’s store, a group of men that had been standing outside the building opened fire on the lawmen, wounding one of the officers in the leg. Ten men, including John Vitale, were arrested in the raid. Vitale was later booked for the murder of Pasquale Danni and locked up in the Wayne County Jail.

On February 28, 1919, Vito Renda and Sam Evola, both Vitale lieutenants, went to the Wayne County Jail to visit John Vitale. On their way to the jail, they had met Joe Vitale, John’s 17-year-old son, who decided to accompany the two men on the visit.

The Giannola gang had received information that Renda and Evola would be coming to the Wayne County Jail to confer with the boss. Sam Giannola and three of his gunmen went to the jail. Two men waited outside of the building in an automobile with the motor running. The two other gunmen went into the Wayne County Jail and waited patiently in the corridors for John Vitale’s visitors to arrive. A deputy at the Wayne County Jail named Philip Jasnewski later told Detroit police that he had noticed two men loitering in the corridor of the jail shortly before noon. The corridor of the old Wayne County Jail fronts Raynor Street and separated the jail entrance from the property room and cell block area. When Jasnewski inquired of the two men what their business was they said, “Oh, we’re just waiting for some Italian fellows.” Moments later, one of the deputies in a room across the corridor opened the heavy steel door to let Jasnewski know that his lunch was ready. According to the statement later made by Deputy Jasnewski, he had gotten halfway across the corridor when three men walked into the Raynor Street entrance of the jail. As they entered, the two men who had been waiting in the corridor stepped out of the shadows and said hello to Renda. Renda acknowledged the greeting. As Evola pushed the cell block door buzzer to be admitted, the two men pulled pistols and opened fire on the three visitors. Although police would later discover that Renda, Evola, and Vitale were all armed, they never had a chance to use their weapons to defend themselves. Jasnewski, who was unarmed, dove for cover when the shooting started. The two gunmen emptied their pistols, mostly at Renda, and fled out the Raynor Street door of the Wayne County Jail.

Deputy William Parmenter, who had opened the door to the cell block after Evola had rung, dragged Evola and young Vitale into the cell block area, probably saving their lives. Parmenter would later describe the sound of the bullets ricocheting off the cell block door as if someone were trying to effect a jail break by hitting the door with a heavy hammer.

Another man named E.M. Steffe, supposedly the only eyewitness to the shooting incident through its entire duration, had been waiting in the lobby of the Wayne County Jail. Steffe claimed that when the two assassins saw Evola, Renda, and Vitale enter the jail, they stepped up to shake hands with one of the three men, and one of the two yelled, “These are the birds—shoot.”

At approximately the same time that the shootings were taking place inside the Wayne County Jail, Sergeant Forrest Hull and Patrolman Al Transke of the Highland Park Police Department pulled up to the curb in front of the jail in a squad car. As they stopped the vehicle, they could hear the last shots being fired inside the jail. They watched as the two gunmen burst out of the Raynor Street entrance of the jail and ran up the street toward a black Studebaker sedan. There the two accomplices waited in the getaway car that was parked a short distance up the street. Transke yelled for the gunmen to halt and then opened fire on them. As Transke ran after them, he emptied his pistol. Transke later claimed that he thought one of the gunmen may have been hit by his fire, as the man stumbled and fell just as he reached the vehicle. The other men lifted the wounded man into the car, as it screeched off at a high rate of speed, turning onto Gratiot Avenue. Hull and Transke attempted to pursue the gunmen but lost sight of their car upon reaching the next block.

Vito Renda had been shot 20 times and was mortally wounded. Evola had been hit 12 times, and Joe Vitale had been shot through the abdomen and was not expected to live. Both gunmen carried two pistols each.

All three of the wounded men refused to give police any information about their assailants. They also refused to talk to Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Harry Keidan. Renda, however, told Keidan that he would talk with Recorders Court Judge Charles Wilkins, whose court was in session at the time of the shooting incident. Judge Wilkins adjourned the case he was hearing to go to Renda’s bedside. Renda told Wilkins that he had recognized one of his assailants as Sam Giannola. He also identified the other gunman. Later the same day, Joe Vitale would also name Giannola as one of the gunmen but refused to identify the other man.

Realizing that death was imminent, Renda seemed to be in a mood to confess. He requested to speak with Wilkins specifically to inform him that Tony and Sam Giannola had, at one time, plotted to kill him. According to Renda, the reason that the Giannola brothers wanted to eliminate the judge was because Wilkins had given a stiff prison sentence to an auto thief who had been a close friend of theirs and a member of the Giannola Mob.

Shortly after identifying Sam Giannola as one of the assassins, Vito Renda died. Neither the two gunmen nor their confederates in the getaway car were ever brought to trial. Sam Giannola was arrested for the murder of Vito Renda, but Giannola was able to produce witnesses who swore that he had been in the Chamber of Commerce Building located at State and Griswold Streets during the time that the shootings had taken place. Giannola was held without bail for a short time and released for lack of evidence.

The Giannola/Vitale Gang War continued to rage through 1919. Finally, a tentative truce was arranged between the two gangs that fall. Sam Giannola, who had grown weary from almost two years of hostilities, put his faith in the agreement and began going around in public without his bodyguards. On October 2, 1919, he was shot down by three gunmen in front of a crowd of horrified onlookers as he walked out of a bank located at the corner of Russell and Monroe Streets.

After the murder of Sam Giannola, John Vitale dropped out of sight. Leaders in the Giannola Mob decided that to kill John Vitale they would have to bring in an assassin from out of state, someone that nobody in the Vitale Gang would be able to recognize. A gunman named Angelo (Angel Face) Torres was brought in from New York to do the deed.

Sam Russo, a Vitale gangster and reputedly one of the men responsible for the murder of Sam Giannola, was the first gang warfare death of 1920. His body was found at the junction of Miller and Cabot Roads. Russo had been stabbed and shot to death.

Tony Alescio, the slayer of Tony Giannola and his erstwhile bodyguard, was shot to death on January 28, 1920. Five other Vitale gangsters were murdered in rapid succession. Torres had evidently been busy, but he had not succeeded in cornering John Vitale.

On August 17, 1920, at approximately 6:05 a.m., John Vitale and his son Joe were ambushed in front of their home on Russell Street in Detroit, as they were climbing into their car. The shots were fired from a second-story window in a house directly across the street from the Vitale home. The assassins opened fire on Vitale and his son with shotguns. Vitale’s son Joe, the same man who had been severely wounded in the Wayne County Jail shooting incident, was killed instantly in the barrage. At the first sound of gunfire, Vitale’s wife had run screaming out of the house and attempted to drag the body of her dead son to cover. John Vitale instinctively ducked behind the auto and was only slightly wounded in the hand.

As the killers fled from the scene of the attack, some of the people in the neighborhood attempted to chase after them but were scared off when the gunmen stopped and fired several shots in their direction. The four triggermen ran to the home of a Mrs. Louis Burke several blocks away and asked if they could use her telephone to call a cab. They waited in the kitchen of the Burke home at least a half hour, until a taxi arrived and took them downtown. This all occurred during the time that the Detroit police had been scouring the neighborhood looking for the killers. Detectives later found four shotguns at and near the vicinity in which the shootings occurred.

During the Detroit Police Department’s investigation of the murder, detectives would discover that the killers had rented a room across the street from the Vitale home on July 21, 1920, and had been patiently waiting for their opportunity.

Seven men were later arrested as suspects in the case, but the witnesses, who included both Mrs. Burke and the cab driver, failed to make a positive identification. It was rumored in the Detroit underworld that the men who had killed John Vitale’s son in the botched assassination attempt had returned to Buffalo, New York, shortly after the attack. They had been brought to Detroit by the Giannola old guard for the sole purpose of slaying John Vitale.

Joe Vitale was the oldest of John’s two sons. At the time of his death, he had been awaiting trial on a charge of carrying concealed weapons. About five weeks before he was murdered, he had pulled a pistol and fired several shots when a Detroit police officer had tried to search him.

At approximately 3 a.m. on September 28, 1920, the long vendetta finally caught up with John Vitale. He was on his way to the Michigan Central Station, when his driver slowed the car and pulled to a stop at the curb. The driver leaned out of the window and said that he thought that one of the tires was going flat. Suddenly the door flew open, and Vitale was pushed out of the car and made a target for gunmen who had been waiting in the dark. The killers instantly opened fire with sawed-off shotguns. Vitale’s legs, shoulders, chest, and head were perforated with buckshot before his lifeless body hit the ground. Witnesses to the shooting claimed that they saw two vehicles pull away from the scene of the murder, but they could not see the faces of any of the men involved.

Many believe that Vitale’s murder was set up by his own men. His killers had been waiting for him to be driven to the rendezvous point at 241 14th Street in Detroit. According to underworld rumor, it was his own associates that had coaxed him into going to the Michigan Central Station to meet someone to consummate a liquor deal. The theory that John Vitale had been killed by his own Mob was further supported by the fact that his loaded .32 caliber automatic pistol, complete with extra clip, was found in his pocket. He never pulled it because he never suspected a thing. Vitale was approximately 48 years old at the time of his death.

The Giannola/Vitale Gang War ended in late 1920. All of the leaders of both factions had been killed. The final peace agreement was presided over by Sam Catalonotte. Catalonotte was an elder statesman in the Detroit underworld and was mutually respected by all of the competing underworld factions. Part of the peace agreement he worked out was to divide up the Detroit metropolitan area into districts that could be assigned to the various factions of the Giannola and Vitale gangsters. Each group could then operate their rackets within their own sphere of influence without interference from outsiders. It was believed that this would eliminate feuding and promote cooperation between the various groups.

As long as Catalonotte was alive to mediate disputes, there was relative peace in the Italian community. Catalonotte’s death in 1930 touched off another war between the Sicilian and Italian Mobs. The results of this gang war laid the foundation for the present-day Detroit area Mafia or La Cosa Nostra organization.

The various younger men who made up the muscle of the surviving Giannola and Vitale Mobs would eventually form the underworld organization that succeeded the Purple Gang in control of the Detroit underworld. The Giannola/Vitale Gang War broke up the two most powerful Italian underworld organizations in the Detroit area into a number of splinter groups. One of the more powerful and successful of these Mafia gangs was an outfit that came to be known as the River Gang, and they would eventually control all of the rum-running operations on the upper Detroit River.

“They find a guy stiff on Belle Isle the cops said Pete Licavoli did it. A kidnapping Mob gets going in Detroit. They said Pete Licavoli’s a kidnapper. No matter what happens it’s either my brother ‘Yonnie’ [Thomas Licavoli] or myself.”

“I never did nothing. I am just a whiskey hauler that’s all. I get rapped for that Belle Isle killing because I was working around there. Now I’m broke. You can’t pull whiskey with everyone looking for you.”

—Pete Licavoli, 1931

W
hen the bloody Giannola/Vitale Gang War ended in early 1921, the remnants of both groups formed into a number of independent gangs. Each one of these underworld factions was given the right to operate within its own geographic area in the Detroit region. The disputes that would often arise between the various competing groups were arbitrated and resolved by a small council composed of the most widely respected leaders of the local Sicilian underworld. This leadership body was presided over by Samuel Catalanotte, an underworld diplomat of considerable charisma and ability. Catalanotte promoted the peaceful resolution of disputes, which allowed the various underworld groups to devote their attention to working their rackets. Most of the moneymaking operations had been seriously neglected during the long Giannola/Vitale Gang War.

In the first years of national Prohibition, most of the rum-running business on the Detroit River was conducted by small, independent groups of whiskey haulers. This situation rapidly changed during the early ‘20s, as the reorganized factions of the old Giannola and Vitale Mobs and other organized Detroit area underworld groups moved to gain control over the liquor and beer traffic from Canada.