So, the Genna Brothers had cleared he way to move into O’Banion’s territory, but they’d also made a LOT of enemies. ALL of the North Siders wanted them dead – and so did Al Capone. One of them became president of the Unione Siciliane, a major organization that gave him a lot of clout. Capone…
Tag: gangsters
A Forgotten Gang: The Genna Brothers (part 1)
I’ve always had a fascination with the Genna Brothers, an early 20s gang that is nearly forgotten today, though they were known as particularly viscous hoods back in their time. Tony, left, was murdered half a block from my apartment. A couple of them were given funerals on my block, as well. The Genna Brothers…
Headlines of the Past
Here are a couple of amusing headlines we’ve run across in our research – the first is from the early 1920s, before the gang war really heated up and the papers still thought of the gangsters as Robin Hood: And another, from a few years later, when the bootleggers still thought of THEMSELVES as Robin…
The Strange Tale of the Cardinella Gang, Part 4
The reason Cardinella had been saying viana’s name was to assure them that he was going to be brought back to life the next day. Apparently, the great revival plan had already been tested on Viana – and it had worked. The story is impossible to confirm; it was told in whispers by prisoners over…
The Strange Tale of the Cardinella Gang: Part 2
Sam Cardinella himself scared the hell out of the guards, who had seen everyone do everything twice. The county physician later said “If I were superstitious, I would say there was something satanic about it.” Others would later describe him as “a human spider, crawling the city, spinning a web of death, and sending boys…
The Strange Tale of the Cardinella Gang: Part 1
Fatal Drop: True Tales from the Chicago Gallows. Click for info! We’re telling short versions of a few of the tales here on the blog this week! In December, 1920, Nicholas “The Choir Singer” Vianna was hanged in the old Cook County jailhouse on Illinois Street. His hanging was a bizarre present for his 19th…
Al Capone’s House for Sale
There’s hardly an old building in the cit that people don’t say was once owned by Al Capone, Chicago’s own real-live version of Jabba the Hutt. Almost all such stories are nonsense; he kept a rather low profile in the city. But there’s one house that we can all agree that he owned down on…
An Al Capone Relic?
One of Capone’s first gigs in Chicago was working at the notorious Four Deuces club, 2222 S. Wabash, which was Johnny Torrio’s headquarters. It was here that Torrio taught Capone what he needed to know before passing the empire on to him. The Four Deuces club is long gone today – there’s a vacant lot…