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Johnny Torrio

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Johnny Torrio
Torrio in 1939
Born
Donato Torrio

(1882-01-20)January 20, 1882
Montepeloso, Basilicata, Kingdom of Italy
DiedApril 16, 1957(1957-04-16) (aged 75)
New York City, U.S.
Resting placeGreen-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, U.S.
NationalityItalian
Other namesThe Fox
The Brain
Papa Johnny
Terrible Johnny
The Immune
CitizenshipAmerican
OccupationCrime boss
PredecessorBig Jim Colosimo
SuccessorAl Capone
Criminal statusReleased
Spouse
Anna Theodosia Jacobs
​
​
(m. 1912)​
AllegianceChicago Outfit
Conviction(s)Tax evasion (1939)
Criminal penalty2 years' imprisonment (1939)

John Donato Torrio[1] (born Donato Torrio, Italian: [doˈnaːto ˈtɔrrjo]; January 20, 1882 – April 16, 1957) was an Italian-American mobster who helped build the Chicago Outfit in the 1920s. It was later inherited by his protégé Al Capone.[2] Torrio proposed a National Crime Syndicate in the 1930s and later became an adviser to Lucky Luciano and his Luciano crime family.

Torrio had several nicknames, primarily "The Fox" for his cunning and finesse.[3] Considered one of the most influential personalities in American organized crime, Torrio impressed authorities and chroniclers with his business acumen and diplomatic skills.

The US Treasury official Elmer Irey considered him "the biggest gangster in America" and wrote, "He was the smartest and, I dare say, the best of all the hoodlums. 'Best' referring to talent, not morals".[4] Virgil W. Peterson of the Chicago Crime Commission stated that his "talents as an organizational genius were widely respected by the major gang bosses in the New York City area".[5] Crime journalist Herbert Asbury affirmed: "As an organizer and administrator of underworld affairs Johnny Torrio is unsurpassed in the annals of American crime; he was probably the nearest thing to a real mastermind that this country has yet produced".[6]

Early life

Torrio was born in Irsina (then known as Montepeloso), Basilicata, in Southern Italy, to Tommaso Torrio and Maria Carluccio originally from Altamura, Apulia.[7] When he was two his father, a railway employee, died in a work accident; shortly after, Torrio immigrated to James Street on the Lower East Side of New York City with his widowed mother in December 1884.[7] She later remarried.

His first jobs were as a porter and bouncer in Manhattan. While he was a teenager, he joined a street gang together with fellow James Street resident Robert Vanella and became its leader;[8] he eventually managed to save enough money and opened a billiards parlor for the group, and from there grew illegal activities such as gambling and loan sharking. Torrio's business sense caught the eye of Paul Kelly, the leader of the infamous Five Points Gang. Torrio's gang ran legitimate businesses, but its main concern was the numbers game, supplemented by incomes from bookmaking, loan sharking, hijacking, prostitution, and opium trafficking. Al Capone, who worked at Kelly's club, admired Torrio's quick mind and looked to him as his mentor.[9]

Capone had belonged to the Junior Forty Thieves, the Bowery Boys and the Brooklyn Rippers; they soon moved up to the Five Points Gang.[10] Torrio eventually hired Capone to bartend at the Harvard Inn, a bar in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn owned by Torrio's business associate, Frankie Yale.[11]

Move to Chicago

Torrio in 1903

Torrio was the nephew of Victoria Moresco, the wife and business partner of "Big Jim" Colosimo, who had become the owner of more than 100 brothels in Chicago. According to Laurence Bergreen, "Torrio is [also] described as Colosimo’s nephew, but in the absence of any evidence to confirm the relationship, it is more likely their kinship was spiritual rather than familial".[12]

In 1909, Colosimo invited Torrio to Chicago to deal with extortion demands from the Black Hand. Torrio eliminated the extortionists and stayed on; he ran Colosimo's operations and organized the criminal muscle needed to deal with threats to them.[13]

In 1919, Capone also left New York for Chicago at the invitation of Torrio. Capone began in Chicago as a bouncer in a brothel.[14]

Colosimo murder

When Prohibition went into effect in 1920, Torrio pushed for the gang to enter into bootlegging, but Colosimo stubbornly refused. In March 1920, Colosimo secured an uncontested divorce from Moresco.[15] A month later, he and Dale Winter eloped to West Baden Springs, Indiana. Upon their return, he bought a home on the South Side.[15] On May 11, 1920, Torrio called and told Colosimo that a shipment was about to arrive at his restaurant. Colosimo drove there to await it, but instead he was shot in an ambush and killed.[16] Frankie Yale had allegedly traveled from New York to Chicago and personally killed longtime gang boss Colosimo at the behest of Chicago Outfit friends Torrio and Capone.[17] Although suspected by Chicago police, Yale was never officially charged.[18] Colosimo was allegedly murdered because he stood in the way of his gang making bootlegging profits, having "gone soft" after his marriage with Winter.[15] Al Capone has also been suggested as the gunman.[19] Colosimo's ex-wife, unhappy with the financial arrangements of the divorce, is also theorized having arranged the murder.[15]

Rivalry with North Side Gang

Torrio headed an essentially Italian organized crime group that was the biggest in the city, with Capone as his right-hand man. He was wary of being drawn into gang wars and tried to negotiate agreements over territory between rival crime groups. The smaller North Side Gang led by Dean O'Banion (also known as Dion O'Banion) was of mixed ethnicity, and it came under pressure from the Genna brothers who were allied with Torrio. O'Banion found that Torrio was unhelpful with the encroachment of the Gennas into the North Side, despite his pretensions to be a settler of disputes.[20] In a fateful step, Torrio either arranged for or acquiesced to the murder of O'Banion at his flower shop on November 10, 1924. This placed Hymie Weiss at the head of the gang, backed by Vincent Drucci and Bugs Moran. Weiss had been a close friend of O'Banion, and the North Siders made it a priority to get revenge on his killers.[21][22][23]

Assassination attempt and handover to Capone

In January 1925, Capone was ambushed, leaving him shaken but unhurt. Twelve days later, on January 24, Torrio was returning from a shopping trip with his wife Anna, when he was shot several times. After recovering, he effectively resigned and handed control to Capone, age 26, who became the new boss of an organization that took in illegal breweries and a transportation network that reached Canada, with political and law-enforcement protection. In turn, he was able to use more violence to increase revenue. An establishment that refused to purchase liquor from him often got blown up, and as many as 100 people were killed in such bombings during the 1920s. Rivals saw Capone as responsible for the proliferation of brothels in the city.[23][24][25][26]

In late 1925, Torrio moved to Italy, where he no longer dealt directly in mob business, with his wife and mother. He gave total control of the Outfit to Capone and said, "It's all yours, Al. Me? I'm quitting. It's Europe for me".[27] Torrio left a criminal empire which grossed about $70,000,000 a year ($997,500,000 in 2018 dollars) from bootleg booze, gambling and prostitution.[27]

Later years and death

Torrio following his 1936 arrest for tax evasion

In 1928, Torrio returned to the United States, as Benito Mussolini began putting pressure on the Mafia in Italy. He is credited with helping to organize a loose cartel of East Coast bootleggers, the Big Seven, in which a number of prominent gangsters, including Lucky Luciano, Longy Zwillman, Joe Adonis, Frank Costello, and Meyer Lansky played a part. Torrio also supported creation of a national body that would prevent the sort of all-out turf wars between gangs that had broken out in Chicago and New York. His idea was well received,[28] and a conference was hosted in Atlantic City by Torrio, Lansky, Luciano and Costello in May 1929; the National Crime Syndicate was created.[29]

Torrio was charged with income tax evasion in 1936, and after several failed appeals, Torrio was sent to prison in 1939, serving two years. In 1940, property that Torrio co-owned with Vanella, Jack Cusick and Capone was sold at auction to satisfy Capone's tax delinquencies.[30] After his release, he lived quietly until his death.[31]

On April 16, 1957, Torrio had a heart attack in Brooklyn while he was sitting in a barber's chair waiting for a haircut; he died several hours later in a nearby hospital.[32][33]

The media did not learn about his death until three weeks after his burial.[34]

Torrio has been portrayed several times in television and motion pictures:

Further reading

  • McPhaul, Jack (1970). Johnny Torrio: First of the Gang Lords. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House.
  • Russo, Gus (2001). The Outfit: The Role of Chicago's Underworld In the Shaping of Modern America. ISBN 1-58234-279-2.
  • Bergreen, Laurence (1994). Capone: The Man and the Era. New York City: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-684-82447-5.

References

  1. ^ "John D. Torrio's Personal items". My Al Capone Museum. Retrieved March 18, 2020. Always known as John, his real name at birth was Donato Torrio. This fact was found in the registry office at Irsina (Montepeloso) [...] The name John was later added when arriving to America.
  2. ^ "John Torrio Pleads Guilty". Associated Press. April 12, 1939. Retrieved August 6, 2012. Johnny (the Immune) Torrio, deciding he wasn't immune to relentless government prosecution, pleaded guilty yesterday in federal court...
  3. ^ Nelli, Humbert S. (1981). The business of crime. University of Chicago Press. p. 163.
  4. ^ Folsom, Robert G. (2010). The Money Trail. Potomac Books. p. 231.
  5. ^ Peterson, Virgil W. (1983). The mob: 200 years of organized crime in New York. Green Hill Publishers. p. 156.
  6. ^ Johnson, Curt; Sautter, R. Craig (1994). Wicked City Chicago: From Kenna to Capone. December Press. p. 363.
  7. ^ a b De Tullio, Maurizio (May 18, 2015). "Non era orsarese Johnny Torrio, padre putativo di Al Capone" (in Italian). Retrieved June 17, 2016.
  8. ^ Hunt, Thomas (June 2015). "Just how organized was Calabrian organized crime?". The American Mafia - The History of Organized Crime in the United States. Retrieved 2020-06-27.
  9. ^ Sifakis, Carl (2006). The Mafia Encyclopedia. Infobase Publishing. p. 168.
  10. ^ Burch, Brian; Stimpson, Emily (March 21, 2017). The American Catholic Almanac: A Daily Reader of Patriots, Saints, Rogues, and Ordinary People Who Changed the United States. Image Books. p. 17. ISBN 978-0-553-41874-3. Retrieved October 5, 2017.
  11. ^ Bardsley, Marilyn. "Scarface". Al Capone. Crime Library. Archived from the original on November 4, 2013. Retrieved March 29, 2008.
  12. ^ Bergreen, Laurence (1994). Capone: The Man and the Era. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 81. ISBN 978-0-684-82447-5.
  13. ^ Ashley, James R. When the Outfit Ran Chicago, Vol I:The "Big Jim" Colosimo Era (in Turkish). Retrieved December 10, 2018. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  14. ^ Eig, Jonathan (2010). Get Capone: The Secret Plot That Captured America's Most Wanted. p. 17.
  15. ^ a b c d "THE VICE LORD WHO FELL IN LOVE WITH A CHOIR SINGER". Chicago Tribune. July 26, 1987. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
  16. ^ "JAMES COLOSIMO SLAIN AT RESTAURANT DOOR; Chicago Underworld Character Is Shot Dead by an Unknown Person". The New York Times. May 12, 1920. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
  17. ^ Schoenberg, pgs. 62-66
  18. ^ Schoenberg, pgs. 62-65
  19. ^ Kobler, John. Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone.
  20. ^ Bergreen, Laurence (1994). Capone:The Man and the Era. New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks. pp. 131–132. ISBN 978-0-684-82447-5. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
  21. ^ Bergreen, pp 134–135
  22. ^ Bergreen, p. 138
  23. ^ a b "Hymie Weiss". My Al Capone Museum. Retrieved October 2, 2018.
  24. ^ Sifakis, Carl (1999). The Mafia Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. Checkmark Books. p. 362.
  25. ^ Russo, Gus (2001). The Outfit. Bloomsbury. pp. 39, 40.
  26. ^ Newton-Maza, Mitchell (2014). Disasters and Tragic Events. p. 258.
  27. ^ a b Sann, Paul (1957). The Lawless Decade: Bullets, Broads and Bathtub Gin. Courier Corporation. p. 111.
  28. ^ Abadinsky, Howard (2009). Organized Crime. Cengage Learning. p. 115.
  29. ^ "80 years ago, the Mob came to Atlantic City for a little strategic planning". Press of Atlantic City. Retrieved August 6, 2012.
  30. ^ "U.S. Sells Capone Land for Taxes". Daily News. 1940-03-29.
  31. ^ "Johnny Torrio". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
  32. ^ "Johnny Torrio, Ex-Public Enemy 1, Dies; Made Al Capone Boss of the Underworld". The New York Times. May 8, 1957. Retrieved August 6, 2012. The man who put Al Capone into business died unnoticed in a Brooklyn hospital three weeks ago, it was learned yesterday...
  33. ^ "Torrio Dies. Gave Capone Racket Start". Associated Press. May 8, 1957. Retrieved August 6, 2012. Johnny Torrio, first of the bigtime bootleggers, died after a heart attack in a Brooklyn barber's chair April 16. So obscure had he become that his death went....
  34. ^ Nash, Jay Robert (2004). The Great Pictorial History of World Crime, Volume 1. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 503.
  35. ^ Adler, Tim (2011). Hollywood and the Mob: Movies, Mafia, Sex and Death. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 40.
American Mafia
Preceded by
Unknown
 Chicago Outfit
Underboss
1910–1920 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Chicago Outfit
Boss
1920–1925 		Succeeded by
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