Johnny Torrio

Al Capone

George "Bugs" Moran

Jack Zuta

Fred "Killer" Burke

Bibliography

Johnny Torrio

'Little Johnny' Torrio, sometimes called 'The Brain', was born in Italy in 1882. He came to New York with his family at the age of two and was raised in the ghettoes of the Lower East Side. As a teenager, Johnny became an important member of the Five Points Gang, one of the cities largest and most powerful gangs. He was also the head of an affiliated gang, The James Street Gang. He was known by his peers as Terrible Johnny and lived up to his nickname on various occasions when rival gangs clashed with his own. He was looked upon as cold, cruel and calculated. He was short, but tuff, the 'Little Johnny', but his natural flair as a bruiser managed to net him the job as a bouncer at one of the toughest bars in Manhattan at that time, Nigger Mike's on Pell Street.

1920 heralded the Volstead Act that prohibited the manufacture, distribution and consumption of alcoholic drinks. Gangsters all over the country took advantage of the new constitutional amendment and sold their own brands of bootleg liquor to the thirsty masses. Colosimo and Torrio served booze in &quout;speakeasies" throughout the city, but Colosimo was planning to wind-down his business. He was already a multimillionaire who felt that expanding into new rackets would only increase his workload and attract even more attention from the police and rival gangs. This attitude frustrated Torrio who had to stand by and watch other hoods make a fortune manufacturing cheap booze and smuggling quality produce from Canada.

"The Fox’s" uneasiness quickly turned to anger. In 1920, Torrio’s Aunt Victoria Colosimo was devastated when "Big Jim" left her for another woman. Colosimo took up with Dale Winter, a singer from his Café. He filed for a divorce and received it on March 20 1920. Less than three weeks later, on April 7, he married Ms. Winter and the couple spent their honeymoon in Indiana. Dale had a profound effect on Colosimo’s lifestyle. She convinced him to settle down, dress more conservatively and stay out of the newspapers. While Torrio continued to pressure Colosimo into expansion, the new Mrs. Colosimo was convincing him not to take any risks. Colosimo spent more and more time with his bride, staying away from his whore houses and business associates. These changes did not pass the Chicago underworld unnoticed, and people started saying that he was " going soft&quout; and that he was under his wife’s control. Torrio now had three reasons to hate Colosimo, the man had mistreated Victoria, was an embarrassment to the Outfit and was impeding plans for further development. He called a meeting with Colosimo’s allies the Genna brothers and the Aiello brothers, telling them he wanted to murder Colosimo and take over the Outfit. They all agreed not to oppose the move.

On Tuesday May 11, one month after his wedding, Colosimo was at home when he received a phone call from Torrio. Johnny told him there were two shipments of whisky coming to the Café and Colosimo needed to be there to collect it. Angry at the disruption, Colosimo told him deal with it himself but Torrio insisted that the bootleggers wanted to deal with the boss personally, and told him to be there at 4pm sharp. Colosimo was there one time, but was agitated when he discovered that none of the staff knew anything about the whisky deliveries.

Meanwhile, Frankie Yale, Torrio’s right-hand man from his New York days had been eating at the restaurant. He left shortly after Colosimo arrived, leaving an obscure message on the check, "So long Vampire, so long Lefty". As Colosimo was making his exit, Yale, from his hiding place in the restaurant cloakroom, fired 2 shots with a .38 calibre revolver. A waiter saw him leap out of the booth, snatch his victim’s wallet and run out the door. Colosimo died on the floor of his Café. Later, when lawyers were attending to his estate, they expected to find $500,000 in cash alone, but could only locate $67,500 in cash and bonds and $8,894 in jewellery. According to rumours, Torrio took his boss’ money as well as his life.

The police arrested Joe Moresco thinking that he had murdered Colosimo to avenge the divorce of his sister. But when they interrogated Moresco, they found he had an alibi. More than 30 suspects were interviewed, including Victoria Moresco and her new husband who were both in Los Angeles when the murder took place, Dale Winter Colosimo and Johnny Torrio. According to investigators, Torrio appeared very upset over the violent death of his boss and ex-Uncle, but they were sure that even if he hadn’t been the killer, he was definitely involved in planning the murder.

The police began looking for Frankie Yale after the waiter picked out his mugshot. Yale was arrested while boarding a train to New York and was identified by the waiter from a line up. Police heard rumours that Yale received $10,000 from Torrio after the murder, rumours that were denied by both suspects. Yale avoided trial when the waiter refused to give evidence in court.

Torrio set about uniting the numerous gangs in Chicago. His plan was to have each gang control a certain area with no interference from neighboring gangs. Each gang would pay a percentage of profits to Torrio for the sole rights to their own turf. So all the gangs were called together and Torrio told them of the plan. The alternative to agreement was gang warfare and Torrio was in a commanding position to win any war. Most of the gangs agreed to Torrio's plan, the alternative was none too rosy. However, there were some who agreed initially and then did whatever the hell they wanted anyway. One of these gangs was the North Siders led by Dion O'Banion. The war between the rival gangs lit up Chicago. Torrio sent for Frank Yale and he came from New York with AlbertAnselmi and John Scalise. The three of them shot O'Banion in his flower shop. But O'Banion was only the tip of the iceberg. The gang was taken over by Hymie Weiss and Bugs Moran, a plot was hatched to revenge the murder of O'Banion. Weiss and his boys ambushed Torrio twice and on both occasions he lucked out. On the first attempt, Torrio walked away from the scene with just two bullet holes in his gray Fedora hat. His chauffeur and dog were not so lucky, both were killed. The second attempt had a better result for Weiss and his gang. Torrio was ambushed outside his apartment block on January 24th, 1925. He was hit by shotgun blasts and four slugs. He was wounded in the stomach, arm and chest. Fighting with death for a week and a half, Torrio was guarded day and night by 30 body guards at the hospital. It was after this close encounter with death that John Torrio passed the organization over to Al Capone. Torrio was 43 years old, a millionaire several times over, and he moved back to Brooklyn where he retired. In April, 1957, John Torrio suffered a fatal heart attack at his barbers in Brooklyn. He was 75 years old.

Ambush At Clyde Avenue

By John William Tuohy

On January 23, 1925, Johnny Torrio, undisputed boss of the Chicago Mob, stood trial for violating the prohibition act.

Several months before, Dion O'Bannion of the North Side gangs, had invited Torrio to a meeting at the Sieben brewery, claiming that he was leaving the rackets and retiring to Colorado. He wanted Torrio to buy out his final shipment of booze and the brewery itself. When Torrio arrived at the brewery, federal agents and police staged a raid and Torrio was arrested.

Now O'Bannion was dead, Capone, Torrio's top street general, had the other gangs on the run.

At the trial, Torrio played it smart. He pled guilty, thinking it safer to spend some time in the relative safety of a jail cell, while Capone and his boys settled business with the remaining O'Bannions. Federal Judge Robert Cliffe cooperated with Torrio's wishes by finding the little hood guilty and sentencing him to prison. However, he allowed Torrio five days to get his house in order before he had to begin his sentence.

The next day, Torrio and wife spent the afternoon shopping. Since their own car was in for repairs, they borrowed Jake Guzak's Lincoln and a driver from Capone, Robert Barton. Silvester Barton, Capone's regular driver had been wounded in a driving-by shooting a few weeks before.

At dusk, the couple returned to their expensive third floor apartment at 7011 Clyde Avenue and began to unload packages from the trunk. Anne Torrio walked ahead of Barton and her husband to hold open the apartment house door.

At that second, a black limo slowly drove up out of the dark and unleashed a barrage of bullets, which filled the two men full of holes. Torrio was hit in the jaw and ribs. Barton was hit in both legs.

Seconds later two men leaped out of the car and fired more shots into Torrio, one in the right arm, the other straight in the balls while two other gunners fired from inside the limo, shooting up what was left of Jake Guzak's Lincoln town car.

One of the shooters walked over to Torrio's body and held a .45 to his temple and pulled the trigger but the gun jammed or it was empty. Before he could finish his work, the limo driver blasted his horn and the shooters leaped inside the car and disappeared into the night.

Ann Torrio dragged Johnny into the lobby of the building and an ambulance was called. When the medics arrived Torrio yelled for them to cut off the circulation in the areas where he had been hit because he was convinced that the killers had dipped their bullets into garlic to cause gangrene to set in faster.

Although a teenage boy who had witnessed the shooting later claimed that Bugs Moran was the shooter whose gun jammed over Torrio's temple, the police picked Bugs up for questioning but let him go because he could account for his whereabouts.

No matter what the witnesses may have said, New York's mobster Lucky Luciano and a lot of other people figured that Capone was behind the try on Torrio's life to get him out of the way. "I know Al was behind the try at Torrio," Lucky said. "He tried to eliminate Johnny the same way Johnny done with Colosimo."

In Chicago, the rumor was that Capone's shooter, Leonard "Needles" Gianola, had actually been the hit man.

Torrio recovered from his wounds within three weeks and left the Jackson Park Hospital surrounded by an army of bodyguards. That same day, February 19, 1925, he appeared before the Federal Judge and was sentenced to nine months in the Lake County jail at Waukegan and fined $5,000.

Life in the Lake County jail, for Johnny Torrio anyway, wasn't all that bad. The warden, a man who understood how things worked, fitted Torrio's cell with bulletproof metal and steel mesh and assigned two deputies to stand guard outside the cell twenty-four hours a day. Inside the cell Johnny was allowed to have an easy chair, pictures for the walls, a down mattress and a radio.

Since Torrio was also free to hold business conferences when he chose to have them he called a meeting between his lawyers and Capone's lawyers at the County jail in March of 1925.

The meeting was called so that Torrio could resign from the organization he had built. Never a brave man, he knew that although Capone's gunners had missed the first time, they wouldn't miss the next. It was time to throw in the towel.

Torrio had his lawyers draw up the papers and everything Johnny Torrio owned, that is everything he had stolen from Big Jim Colosimo after he had him killed, was handed over to Al Capone free of charge. Torrio didn't ask for, not did Capone offer, a penny for the hundreds of gambling joints, beer halls, speakeasies and whorehouses that Johnny owned. The estimated revenue that Torrio walked away from was in the tens of millions of dollars.

But Johnny the Fox knew that in order to keep them that he would have to fight for them against the considerable forces of the city's Italian and Irish gangs. It wasn't worth dying for. He had millions salted away anyway. After his sentence was completed, Johnny Torrio packed up his millions of dollars and wife and left Chicago for New York and never looked back.

It was rumored in Chicago that when Torrio left for New York he took $40,000,000 out of the syndicate he had built with him. He took millions certainly, but $40 million seems excessive even by mob standards.

Johnny Torrio was nicknamed "The Brain", because he was the mastermind behind most of the hits in Chicago. He also found ways to expand his bootlegging and prostitution.