Back when Franklin D. Roosevelt was in his second term as president, an old pickpocket named George Summers spoke to the Tribune about the old days. “You know what’s the matter with the cannon (pocket picking) racket today?” he asked. “Stickups! These young punks ain’t willing to go through a long apprenticeship anymore, like we…
Tag: Sam Cardinella
The Resurrection of Nicholas Viana
Il Diavolo The guards at the old prison on Dearborn and Illinois weren’t afraid of much, but one prisoner really freaked them out: Sam “Il Diavolo” Cardinella, the head of a high insular, secretive gang that operated out of his pool room on 22nd Place. Their whole story was in a previous post: The Strange…
Hangman’s Death Certificates
My, the things one finds on genealogy sites! More and more records come online all the time. Death certificates have never been THAT hard to get, but you normally have to pay to get them from the state archives, and I’m pretty cheap. In cases of hangings, I already know the cause of death, after…
Carl Wanderer and Sam Cardinella: BFF?
It’s always interesting when two crime stories intersect – and in a real way, not another case of the newspapers making wild stabs at a game of “connect the dots” with criminals (like the attempts to connect Johann Hoch to HH Holmes, Louis Thombs, and every other criminal of the day). In 1920, Carl Wanderer…
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 3
Fatal Drop: True Tales from the Chicago Gallows by William Griffith.In honor of our first spin-off book, it’s Hangin’ Week on the blog! After an hour, the prison officials opened the ambulance and saw a team of doctors trying to revive Sam Cardinella’s corpse. One was injecting stimulants into his chest. Another was pumping…
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…