Free Mafia: The History of the Mob by Nigel Cawthorne Page A

all-American gangsters. From the beginning, however, Torrio’s operation was one of the biggest. Astutely, he went into partnership with Joseph Stenson, the son of Chicago’s leading brewing family. The company had converted its brewery to make ‘near beer’ – that is, beer with the alcohol removed – but Stenson supplied Torrio with the real stuff.
    One of Torrio’s competitors was Dean O’Banion, an Irish-American who had won a fearsome reputation in the newspaper circulation wars, where thugs were hired to beat up news vendors in order to keep rival publications off the news-stands. Together with two Polish Catholics – George ‘Bugs’ Moran and Earl ‘Hymie’ Weiss – O’Banion also imported whiskey from Canada. In order to give his operation a respectable front he bought into a florist’s opposite Holy Name Cathedral, which also did good business at gangsters’ funerals. Under an agreement with Torrio, O’Banion controlled the North Side of Chicago. He also supplied some of the thugs that supported Al Capone’s mayoral candidate in the 1924 Cicero elections.
    Chicago’s Sicilian West Side was dominated by the six Genna brothers, who came from Marsala. After arriving in Chicago in 1910, the ‘terrible Gennas’ quickly established a reputation for violence. In 1920, they bought a licence to produce and sell industrial alcohol but they made whiskey and other spirits instead, paying the inhabitants of Little Italy $15 a day to run home stills. Their cheap liquor was coloured with coal-tar and creosote and fortified with wood alcohol and fuel oil, which sometimes made it lethal.
    As if the Gennas’ reputation were not fearsome enough, they also employed two enforcers, Alberto Anselmi and Giovanni Scalise, who had entered America illegally after a purge of the Sicilian Mafia. It was said that they greased their bullets with garlic, which was thought to give gangrene to anyone who was not killed instantly.
    Few lived long enough to find out, however. Like the other bootleggers, the Gennas depended on the assistance of corrupt officials and police officers, who were among the regular customers of their liquor store.
    The agreement between Torrio and O’Banion held up for three years and then Irish gangs began hijacking Torrio’s trucks and smashing up his speakeasies. In an attempt to placate O’Banion, Torrio offered him some territory in Cicero and a quarter share in a casino called The Ship. O’Banion then persuaded the owners of a number of speakeasies in other parts of Chicago to move to Cicero, thereby altering the balance of power. Meanwhile the Gennas began moving in on O’Banion’s territory on the North Side. In response, O’Banion ordered Angelo Genna to pay off the $30,000 debt he owed at The Ship. When he refused, O’Banion began hijacking the Gennas’ deliveries.
    The Gennas wanted to eliminate O’Banion, but first of all they needed the green light from the Unione Siciliana , a benefit society for Sicilian immigrants that worked as a front for the Mafia. But the president of its Chicago chapter, Mike Merlo, tried to keep the peace. Meanwhile O’Banion killed John Duffy, a Philadelphia hitman who had brought unwelcome attention to the gang by killing his own wife. He then tried to put the blame on Torrio and Capone.
    At the time O’Banion was selling his stake in an illegal brewery to Torrio for $500,000, but while the deal was going through the police raided the brewery and Torrio was arrested. He already had convictions for breaking the Prohibition laws, so he faced a jail sentence. On top of that, he had just paid half a million dollars for a useless brewery and O’Banion refused to compensate him.
    Mike Merlo then died of cancer, which made it easier to go after O’Banion, so Torrio and the Gennas planned a joint hit. Frankie Yale was called in. Pretending to be the president of the New York chapter of the Unione Siciliana , he visited O’Banion’s flower shop to order