by Sam Giancana
LIKE a chameleon, the organization adapts its outer shell to the changing environment, camouflaging its movements to protect from attack. The ability for The Outfit to continually keep the identity of its leadership veiled in mystery is a perfect example. When the need to downsize its street crews emerged in the 1990s, there was no hesitation. That is what the situation called for and that is what was done. The syndicate’s hierarchy recognized a need for change due to shifting climate conditions—a growing number of members dying and being incarcerated—and they acted quickly and decisively. The adjustment in infrastructure was an immediate success and the transition from seven crews to just four proved seamless.
Coming into the new millennium, the four-crew system has stayed in place. According to FBI documents and the Chicago Crime Commission, Frank “Toots” Caruso Jr. has authority over the South Side Crew, Peter “Greedy Petey” Di Fronzo looks after the Elmwood Park/North Side Crew, John “Pudgy” Matassa, Jr. is responsible for the Cicero/ Melrose Park Crew, and Joseph “Joe Kong” Cullotta oversees the West Side Crew. Under each captain, there are numerous street bosses and subcrews, a staple of leadership in The Outfit for years and one of the things that sets the crime family apart from its mafia counterparts on the East Coast.
Unlike Families from New York, crews in Chicago don’t always have autonomous rule and are oftentimes run in tandem. For example, it’s believed by the Chicago Crime Commission that Toots Caruso’s brother Bruno and cousin Leo Caruso are “street bosses” for the South Side Crew, while Joey Lombardo’s fomer driver, Christopher “Christy the Nose” Spina is said to hold the same position on the West Side. Old Wild Bunch member Jimmy Inendino and Michael “Fat Mikey” Sarno, the crime commission contends, look after the Cicero/Melrose Park Crew on a day-to-day basis on behalf of Pudgy Matassa, and Rudy Fratto and Michael “Good Looking Mike” Magnafichi do the same for Pete Di Fronzo in Elmwood Park.
In terms of No Nose Di Fronzo’s current “mob cabinet”: longtime ally Marco “The Mover” D’Amico is alleged to have replaced Al Tornabene, who died in May of 2009, as the crime family’s new consiglieri and Joe “The Builder” Andriacchi, according to FBI files the Outfit’s number two in charge since 2002, remains a slippery target for law enforcement from his reputed post as the Outfit’s underboss and overall street boss.
Occupying The Outfit throne for the last seventeen years, eighty-year-old John Di Fronzo is one of the more tenured mob dons in the entire country. The respect and admiration he garners from his peers in the nation’s underworld are second to none. His humble and engaging demeanor is quick to endear those he leads and the loyalty he is afforded by them unquestioned. Much like Joey Lombardo, he has made a conscious effort to stay true to his roots, avoiding moving to a secluded estate in some posh suburb as a means of keeping closer tabs on the pulse of his brigade, and the decision has paid dividends in a more stable organization. If anyone wants to see him they always know they can most likely find him each morning sharing coffee and doughnuts with his brother at either JKS Ventures or D&P Construction, the siblings’ Melrose Park-based businesses that officially reside in their wives’ names.
Even though he speaks business only with a select few, Di Fronzo, the consummate mob politician, isn’t afraid to walk among the commoners and schmooze with his troops whenever he can. On several weekday afternoons he can be seen at one of his favorite neighborhood haunts, The Loon Cafe, a diner and pizzeria in River Forest, sharing meals with his men. During a visit to the restaurant in the winter of 2009, Di Fronzo was met by local TV investigative reporter Chuck Goudie, with camera crew in tow, as he exited a lunch with his two brothers, Fratto and D’Amico, and headed to his car. No Nose was cordial and made small talk with the cameras, denying that he was worried about the prospect of ongoing federal investigations into his activities and then leaving the parking lot in his luxury pickup truck.
Contrary to Di Fronzo’s optimistic sentiment regarding the heat he is facing from the government, there are undoubtedly storm clouds on the horizon and with them a good chance that The Outfit’s top banana may soon be caught in the middle of a downpour. These clouds spawned their first raindrops on March 26, 2009, when John Di Fronzo, his brother Pete, Fratto, D’Amico, and John Cerone Jr. were hit with a rare civil RICO complaint, alleging an extortion plot stemming from ownership in a Melrose Park medical clinic and the shaking down of one its patients, the son of a former mob-connected labor union boss. Couple the most recent legal action with the swirling rumors about his inclusion in a pending federal investigation and indictment titled, “Family Secrets Part II,” and no matter what he says publicly, John Di Fronzo has to be wondering how long it will be until the bottom falls out on his run as mob boss.
For one of No Nose’s top lieutenants, Rudy Fratto, the bottom fell out in September of 2009 when he was charged with federal tax evasion for failing to pay taxes on close to two hundred thousand dollars of income from 2001 through 2007. On October 13, 2009, Fratto pled guilty to the charges and will face minor jail time.
Described as a “sleeper” by crook and cop alike, until his death on May 17, 2009, Alphonse “Al the Pizza Man” Tornabene, was a longtime member of Chicago’s mafia elite and someone who, without much fanfare, is alleged to have been pivotal in helping John Di Fronzo and Joey Lombardo transition The Outfit successfully onward past the Accardo era.
Acquiring his nickname because of his ownership of a South Side pizza parlor named Villa Nova, Tornabene was raised on the city’s West Side and got his start as a bookie under Joe Ferriola. Working directly under Outfit chiefs Sam “Wings” Carlisi—his first cousin—and Joey Aiuppa throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, he gained a reputation as an expert handicapper and mob tactician. Throughout much of his career on the street—a time period which he has no arrest record for—he was somewhat of a mob vagabond, based in Cicero but over the years troubleshooting from crew to crew and reporting directly to The Outfit brass instead of a single caporegime.
When Ernest “Rocky” Infelice and his crew, nicknamed “The Good Ship Lollipop,” were convicted of federal racketeering charges in the early 1990s, then don Carlisi is alleged to have named him his underboss. Just a few years later, with Wings himself readying to face a slew of federal charges, he tapped Tornabene to counsel new-don John Di Fronzo on the “ins and outs” of mob leadership.
Hailing from a rich underworld pedigree—his older brother was Outfit soldier Frank “Feech” Tornabene and he is first cousins to Luigi “State Street Louie” Tornabene, a one-time underling of Gus Alex, who ran State Street and most of the prostitution in the downtown Chicago area during the 1950s and 1960s—Tornabene was considered by many as one of the sharpest minds in the entire syndicate, a go-to mediator of any disputes that arose within layers of The Outfit hierarchy.
Stricken with a variety of medical ailments, Al the Pizza Man went into semiretirement in the late 1990s, spending large portions of his time at a vacation property he owned at Lake Geneva in Wisconsin. Upon the Family Secrets bust in 2005, he was called back into active duty, his knowledge and mentorship needed to steady the proverbial ship. In the days and months following the indictment, Tornabene was seen making the rounds around town, being chauffeured by Leo Caruso, a former labor union president and a top lieutenant to his first cousin, South Side captain Frank “Toots” Caruso Jr.
Up until his alleged appointment as a full-time Outfit administrator in the 1990s, Al the Pizza Man had never before held an official leadership position in the crime family. This fact was certainly not due to lack of confidence in his ability as a mob policy maker, because Tornabene had been known to aid in conducting mob initiation ceremonies, like the one he oversaw in 1983 when the Calabrese brothers and Jimmy Marcello were inducted into the ranks of the mafia.
His presence in this recent time of transition for The Outfit was invaluable, everyone around him benefiting from his wisdom and experience. Known to be a key relay man for information from the administration to the
street, the FBI observed him holding meetings with Outfit powers Toots Caruso, Pudgy Matassa, Mickey Marcello, and Joe Andriacchi at a number of local eateries like Horwath’s and Andrea’s, and Cicero Auto Construction in the west suburbs. He was also known to be a frequent dining partner of Little Tony Zizzo’s before his disappearance. By the end of his life, Pudgy Matassa, who got his start under Vince Solano on Rush Street, emerged as Tornabene’s top proxy to the street and is speculated by law enforcement to be the likely successor to all The Pizza Man’s rackets.
“He’s was a wild card who knew how to fly under the radar,” said Jim Wagner of Tornabene. “It’s [the Chicago Crime Commission’s and law enforcement’s] belief that he was deferred to a great deal in Outfit circles in the days after the indictments in Family Secret were announced. He was seen with different guys from different crews in different parts of the city, and in all these recorded observations he’s the one calling the shots and giving the orders. Before the Family Secrets indictment, he was gone from the day to day for a little while. The blow the family took from Family Secrets paved the way for him to be able to assert himself again and take a bigger role in how things are run across the board. I’m not sure he was thrilled about having to do it, but he did it ’cause of the code. He goes back a long way and the Family and its welfare was obviously very important to him. In his mind, it was his duty to come back.”
Tornabene’s death opened the door for Marco D’Amico, a former capo who was forced to give up his regime when he was imprisoned on racketeering charges in the 1990s, to return to the Outfit’s administration. According to the Chicago Crime Commission, in the days after Al the Pizza Man’s death in May 2009, Di Fronzo tapped D’Amico to be his new consiglieri. Some in law enforcement say the appointment was a mere formality and contend D’Amico has been acting as Di Fronzo’s top advisor since being released from a ten-year federal prison sentence in 2005.
D’Amico was born on January 1, 1936, and as a boy lived in the same neighborhood that spawned No Nose, The Clown, and The Builder. Consequently, the kid they came to nickname “The Mover,” as in “Mover and Shaker” due to his fast-living lifestyle, grew up idolizing the triumvirate of neighborhood celebrities and rising mob stars. Di Fronzo and Andriacchi specifically took D’Amico under their wing and their young protégé took his first arrest for running gambling slips for an Outfit-run sports betting operation in June 1958 at the age of 21.
It’s interesting to note that through his rise through the syndicate ranks the reputation that D’Amico developed was in stark contrast to that of his mentors. A fan of the local nightlife, D’Amico was flashy and liked to act like a gangster, as opposed to Di Fronzo and Andriacchi’s more low-key approach to the wiseguy lifestyle. During the swinging sixties and seventies, The Mover, could be found living up to his nickname almost every night down on Rush Street at his favorite spot, Jilly’s, a trendy bar and lounge on the corner of Rush and Oak, the epicenter of high-living in the Windy City.
D’Amico’s cowboy status was further cemented with an arrest for street fighting outside of Jilly’s in the fall of 1980, one for battery and resisting arrest in 1983, and two arrests for drunk driving, one of which occurred in 1983, and the other 1989. FBI informant reports indicate that D’Amico has been known to partake in recreational cocaine use in the past and is possibly one of the Outfit’s top narcotics lieutenants as well.
Despite some of his less than careful behavior, D’Amico is alleged to have been able to wiggle his way into No Nose’s inner circle by being a tremendously gifted street-earner—i.e. he knows how to generate money for his boss. In the late 1980s, he was named capo of Elmwood Park. The Mover’s crew, which dabbled in the usual mob rackets of gambling, extortion, and loan sharking, had some pretty intimidating figures in it. Street collectors like Frank “Frankie the Gunner” Catapano, Frank “Frankie Frankenstein” Maranto, Robert “Bobby the Hippo” Scutkowski, and Robert “Bobby the Truck Driver” Abbinanti, related to D’Amico via marriage, put fear in all who did business with the group. D’Amico, his right hand man, Anthony “Tony Seymour” Dote, and the rest of his entire crew were indicted in 1994 in a major racketeering indictment and convicted a year later in 1995.
THE scene on March 26, 2009 at Nick Calabrese’s sentencing hearing was tense. An emotionally charged mix of Nicky Breeze’s family and the families of his victims dotted the packed courtroom making for a heavy-hearted atmosphere. When Judge Zagel delved out a light twelve years and four months for the admitted murderer of over a dozen individuals, the reaction was obviously split. Supporters of Calabrese hailed joyously the soft sentence, claiming, like the government did in their sentencing recommendation, that the former hit man’s cooperation was so important and ultimately so influential—he helped identify more than sixty made members of The Outfit and provided insight on a staggering thirty-six homicides—that he deserved leniency. Zagel remarked that he felt compelled to keep the sentence light as a means of encouraging others to step forward, repent, and turn against The Outfit. Those who had a loved one killed at his hands were less than sympathetic, extremely hurt by the fact that the judge took it easy on Calabrese and the prospect that he will be a free man in less than five years. Paul Haggerty’s widow was so upset by what transpired, she collapsed in the hallway outside the courtroom and had to be tended to by paramedics.
Having an opportunity to address the court with a statement, Calabrese was introspective. “I let fear control my life and beneath that fear was a coward who didn’t walk away from that life,” he said, wearing a gray sweatshirt and jeans and led into court by a pair of federal marshals. “I can’t go back and undo what I’ve done, it’s there every day. It doesn’t go away and rightfully so.”
In other posttrial news, former U.S. Marshall, John Ambrose, the son of a once-disgraced Chicago cop, imprisoned for his participation in a major department scandal involving shaking down drug dealers, was indicted, put on trial, and eventually in the spring of 2009 convicted of acting as a mole for the mob. Using a one-time associate of his father’s, William Guide—a man who once shared a cell with John Di Fronzo when they were both incarcerated years before—as an intermediary, Ambrose passed sensitive intelligence, primarily concerning where the government was housing star witness Nick Calabrese before his testimony in the Family Secrets trial, to the highest levels of The Outfit’s leadership. Shockingly Mickey Marcello, in the midst of serving his eight-year sentence in the Family Secrets case, agreed to cooperate with the FBI and testify against Ambrose regarding his firsthand knowledge of the former U.S. Marshall’s divulging top secret government information to the upper echelons of the Chicago mafia. According to Marcello, Ambrose passed intelligence regarding Nick Calabrese’s whereabouts from Guide to Pudgy Matassa, who then passed it on to him to deliver to his imprisoned brother.
In 2008, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago, already reeling from the loss of Mitch Mars, was forced to trim its organized crime division—a unit that once housed close to a dozen wiseguy-hungry lawyers—to an all-time low of two attorneys actively pursuing cases against The Outfit. And Chicago is not the only office of federal prosecutors undergoing downsizing and restructuring. Other mob-heavy cities like Detroit, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Philadelphia, and the state of New Jersey, have all had their offices affected by having their resources against organized crime severely diminished. Moves like this show all too clearly that when times are tight everyone, even the government, feels the pinch,
Midwest mega-don Tony Accardo has been dead for almost twenty years and little has changed in the criminal empire he helped build and maintain for well over a half century. The rackets are pretty much the same, and the money still churns in at a consistent and hardy rate. As always, a decade into the new millennium, gambling, loan sharking, and street tax are the meat and potatoes of the operation. The Outfit’s sway in the labor unions has decreased, yet its presence in the local drug, porn, and stolen car market have stayed firm. An ability
to access the highest levels of the government remains an asset and continues to provide a decided advantage to the syndicate, as shown by the 2002 conviction of Cicero Mayor Betty Loren-Maltese for conspiring with Outfit member Michael “Big Mike” Spano and others to illegally funnel cash away from the city and into their collective pockets. Unlike the government that is effected by the changing economic fortunes of our country, the mafia is not. Time has shown that crime, in one of its only true virtues, is recession-proof.
Despite the budget cuts and plundering of its resources, the U.S. Attorney’s Office remains diligent in its effort to combat the mob in Chicago. Down, but certainly not out, the government’s attack against The Outfit scored its first blow of the post-Family Secrets era in August of 2008 when Outfit associates Sam “Sammy the Blaster” Voldepresto and Mark Polchan were indicted on charges of a mafia-related bombing. According to federal prosecutors, Voldepresto, an eighty-three-year-old alleged mob explosives expert, and Polchan, a member of The Outlaws, the leading biker gang in the area, were ordered by Outfit lieutenant Michael “Fat Mikey” Sarno to bomb one of the crime family’s competitors in the local video poker machine business.
“We’re under no illusions that just because the Family Secrets case was a success that it means the mafia is in any way leaving the city of Chicago,” said J.R. Davis, the newly-elected president of the Chicago Crime Commission. “These guys aren’t going anywhere and we know that. But it’s our job to keep active in the pursuit of chipping away at their infrastructure and exposing their collective activities to the public. The public is affected on a daily basis by these individuals’ actions even if they aren’t aware of it. The Outfit remains an overwhelming presence in Chicago and on the national mafia landscape. Those who were convicted in Family Secrets have already had their positions replaced and the government is well on its way to building more cases against those who have filled the void as well as those powerful figures behind the scenes who have yet to be caught. It’s a neverending struggle, to say the least.”