John Papa Johnny Torrio John Torrios Contribution to the Arts

Italian-American mob boss

Johnny Torrio
Torrio in 1939
Born	Donato Torrio (1882-01-20)January 20, 1882 Montepeloso, Basilicata, Kingdom of Italian republic
Died	Apr xvi, 1957(1957-04-xvi) (aged 75) New York City, U.S.
Resting identify	Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, U.S.
Nationality	Italian
Other names	The Fox The Brain Papa Johnny Terrible Johnny The Allowed
Citizenship	Italian American
Occupation	Law-breaking boss
Predecessor	Big Jim Colosimo
Successor	Al Capone
Criminal status	Released
Spouse(s)	Anna Theodosia Jacobs ​ ​ (m. 1912)​
Fidelity	Chicago Outfit
Conviction(southward)	Revenue enhancement evasion (1939)
Criminal penalty	ii years' imprisonment (1939)

John Donato Torrio ^[1] (born Donato Torrio, Italian: [doˈnaːto ˈtɔrrjo]; January 20, 1882 – Apr 16, 1957) was an Italian-American mobster who helped build the Chicago Outfit in the 1920s. It was later inherited past 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 Flim-flam" for his cunning and finesse.^[3] The The states 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".^[iv] Virgil W. Peterson of the Chicago Law-breaking Committee stated that his "talents as an organizational genius were widely respected by the major gang bosses in the New York City area".^[five] Crime announcer Herbert Asbury affirmed: "Every bit an organizer and administrator of underworld affairs, Johnny Torrio is unsurpassed in the annals of American crime; he was probably the nearest matter to a real mastermind that this state has withal produced".^[vi]

Early on life [edit]

Torrio was built-in in Irsina (then known as Montepeloso), Basilicata, in Southern Italy, to Tommaso Torrio and Maria Carluccio originally from Altamura, Apulia.^[seven] When he was 2 his father, a railway employee, died in a work accident; soon after, Torrio immigrated to James Street on the Lower Due east Side of New York Metropolis with his widowed female parent in December 1884.^[seven] She later remarried.

His first jobs were every bit a porter and bouncer in Manhattan. While he was a teenager, he joined a street gang together with boyfriend James Street resident Robert Vanella and became its leader;^[8] he eventually managed to save plenty money and opened a billiards parlor for the group, and from there grew illegal activities such as gambling and loan sharking. Torrio's concern sense defenseless the middle of Paul Kelly, the leader of the V 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 guild, admired Torrio's quick mind and looked to him as his mentor.^[nine]

Capone had belonged to the Junior 40 Thieves, the Bowery Boys and the Brooklyn Rippers; they soon moved up to the Five Points Gang.^[ten] Torrio eventually hired Capone to bartend at the Harvard Inn, a bar in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn owned by Torrio's business acquaintance, Frankie Yale.^[11]

Move to Chicago [edit]

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

In 1909, Colosimo invited Torrio to Chicago to deal with extortion demands from the Blackness 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.^[thirteen]

In 1919, Al Capone arrived in Chicago and started working as a bouncer and bartender at one of the Colosimo gang establishments, the Four Deuces at 2222 S. Wabash Street.^[14]

Colosimo murder [edit]

When Prohibition went into result in 1920, Torrio pushed for the gang to enter into bootlegging, simply Colosimo stubbornly refused. In March 1920, Colosimo secured an uncontested divorce from Moresco.^[15] A month later, he and Dale Wintertime eloped to West Baden Springs, Indiana. Upon their return, he bought a habitation on the South Side.^[xv] On May 11, 1920, Torrio chosen and told Colosimo that a shipment was nearly to arrive at his restaurant. Colosimo drove at that place to await it, but instead, he was shot in an deadfall and killed.^[16] Frankie Yale had allegedly traveled from New York to Chicago and personally killed longtime gang dominate Colosimo at the bidding of Chicago Outfit friends Torrio and Capone.^[17] Although suspected by Chicago police force, Yale was never officially charged.^[xviii] Colosimo was allegedly murdered because he stood in the way of his gang making bootlegging profits, having "gone soft" afterwards his marriage with Winter.^[fifteen] Al Capone has also been suggested equally the gunman.^[19] Colosimo'south ex-wife, unhappy with the fiscal arrangements of the divorce, is also theorized to have arranged the murder.^[15]

Rivalry with Due north Side Gang [edit]

Torrio headed an substantially Italian organized crime group that was the biggest in the city, with Capone every bit his right-manus homo. He was wary of being drawn into gang wars and tried to negotiate agreements over territory between rival crime groups. In 1920, Torrio was able to forge together an understanding between most of Chicago's bootlegging gangs into a metropolis-wide cartel. ^[14] The smaller North Side Gang led past Dean O'Banion was of mixed ethnicity, and was a member of the bootlegging cartel. In 1924, the Northward Side gang found out tht the Genna brothers, who were close to Torrio's gang, were selling their booze in North Side gang territory. O'Banion went to Torrio who was unhelpful with the inroad of the Gennas into the N Side, despite his pretensions to exist a settler of disputes.^[20] As a outcome, the North Side gang responded by hijacking Genna beer shipments.

In May, 1924, O'Banion learned that the law were planning to raid the Sieben brewery on a particular dark. Before the raid, O'Banion approached Torrio and told him he wanted to sell his share in the brewery, claiming that he wanted to leave the rackets and retire to Colorado. Torrio agreed to buy O'Banion's share and gave him one-half a million dollars. On the morning of the deal, the police (including the police force principal), raided and shut downwards the brewery. Torrio, O'Banion, and several others were arrested. Torrio was indicted on bootlegging charges, a echo law-breaking for him with mandatory jail time. Torrio realized he had been betrayed and conned out of $500,000 by O'Banion. ^[14]

Torrio would have immediately attempted to retaliate against O'Banion and the North Side gang had information technology non been for Mike Merlo, head of the Unione Siciliana labor system. Merlo had a vested interest in keeping the peace between Chicago's gangs, and he convinced Torrio to foreclose whatever violence confronting the Northward Side Gang. ^[xiv]

Mike Merlo died of cancer on November 08, 1924. On November 10th, 3 men entered O'Banion's Schofield's Flowers store, under the pretense of buying flowers for Merlo's funeral, and shot O'Banion dead. The killers are reputed to have been Frankie Yale, John Scalise, and Albert Anselmi, interim on Torrio's behalf. ^[14]

O'Banion'south death placed Hymie Weiss at the head of the N Side gang, backed past Vincent Drucci and Bugs Moran. Weiss had been a close friend of O'Banion, and the North Siders made information technology a priority to become revenge on his killers.^{[21] [22] [23]}

Assassination attempt and handover to Capone [edit]

In January 1925, Capone was ambushed, leaving him shaken merely unhurt. Twelve days afterward, on January 24, Torrio and his married woman Anna where ambushed outside their home by Weiss, Drucci, and Moran. Torrio was shot several times and most killed. Subsequently recovering, he effectively resigned, handed control of the gang to Capone, and fled to New York. ^{[24] [25] [26] [14]}

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

Later years and expiry [edit]

In 1928, Torrio returned to the United States, as Benito Mussolini began putting pressure on the Mafia in Italian republic. He is credited with helping to organize a loose cartel of E 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 role. Torrio also supported the creation of a national torso that would forbid the sort of all-out turf wars between gangs that had cleaved out in Chicago and New York. His thought was well received,^[28] and a briefing was hosted in Atlantic Urban center by Torrio, Lansky, Luciano and Costello in May 1929; the National Criminal offense Syndicate was created.^[29]

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

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

In pop culture [edit]

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

• by Osgood Perkins in the 1932 film, Scarface (as Johnny Lovo).^[34]
• by Nehemiah Persoff in the 1959 film, Al Capone.
• by Charles McGraw in the 1959 television serial of The Untouchables.
• past Harry Guardino in the 1975 motion picture, Capone.
• by Guy Barile in the 1992 motion picture, The Babe.
• past Frank Vincent in the 1993 The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles episode "Young Indiana Jones and the Mystery of the Blues".
• by Byrne Piven in the airplane pilot episode of the 1993 television series, The Untouchables.
• by Kieron Jecchinis in the 1994 television series, In Suspicious Circumstances.
• by Greg Antonacci in the HBO series, Boardwalk Empire.
• past Paolo Rotondo in the 2016 tv miniseries The Making of the Mob: Chicago.
• by Al Sapienza in the 2017 moving picture Gangster Land.

Further reading [edit]

• McPhaul, Jack (1970). Johnny Torrio: Commencement 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. ISBNane-58234-279-2.
• Bergreen, Laurence (1994). Capone: The Man and the Era. New York City: Simon & Schuster. ISBN978-0-684-82447-5.

References [edit]

1. ^ "John D. Torrio's Personal items". My Al Capone Museum . Retrieved March 18, 2020. Always known as John, his real proper noun at birth was Donato Torrio. This fact was establish in the registry office at Irsina (Montepeloso) [...] The name John was afterwards added when arriving to America.
2. ^ "John Torrio Pleads Guilty". Associated Press. April 12, 1939. Retrieved August 6, 2012. Johnny (the Allowed) Torrio, deciding he wasn't allowed to relentless government prosecution, pleaded guilty yesterday in federal court...
3. ^ Nelli, Humbert S. (1981). The business organization of offense. University of Chicago Press. p. 163.
4. ^ Folsom, Robert G. (2010). The Coin 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, Brusque; Sautter, R. Craig (1994). Wicked Urban center Chicago: From Kenna to Capone. Dec Printing. p. 363.
7. ^ ^{a b} De Tullio, Maurizio (May xviii, 2015). "Not era orsarese Johnny Torrio, padre putativo di Al Capone" (in Italian). Retrieved June 17, 2016.
8. ^ Chase, Thomas (June 2015). "Only how organized was Calabrian organized crime?". The American Mafia – The History of Organized Crime in the United States . Retrieved June 27, 2020.
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 Us. Paradigm Books. p. 17. ISBN978-0-553-41874-3 . 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. ISBN978-0-684-82447-five.
13. ^ Ashley, James R. When the Outfit Ran Chicago, Vol I:The "Big Jim" Colosimo Era. D&R (in Turkish). Retrieved December 10, 2018.
14. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Binder, John J. (2017). Al Capone's Beer Wars: A Consummate History of Organized Crime in Chicago during Prohibition. Prometheus. ISBN978-1633882850.
15. ^ ^{a b c d} "THE VICE LORD WHO Barbarous IN Dearest WITH A CHOIR Vocalizer". 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 xviii, 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. ISBN978-0-684-82447-five . Retrieved March 18, 2020.
21. ^ Bergreen, pp 134–135
22. ^ Bergreen, p. 138
23. ^ "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 agone, the Mob came to Atlantic City for a little strategic planning". Printing of Atlantic City. Retrieved August 6, 2012.
30. ^ "U.South. Sells Capone Land for Taxes". Daily News. March 29, 1940.
31. ^ "Johnny Torrio". Encyclopædia Britannica . Retrieved March 18, 2020.
32. ^ "Johnny Torrio, Ex-Public Enemy one, 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 iii weeks ago, it was learned yesterday...
33. ^ "Torrio Dies. Gave Capone Racket First". Associated Press. May 8, 1957. Retrieved August half dozen, 2012. Johnny Torrio, first of the bigtime bootleggers, died after a heart assault in a Brooklyn barber's chair April 16. So obscure had he become that his death went....
34. ^ Adler, Tim (2011). Hollywood and the Mob: Movies, Mafia, Sex and Death. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 40.

External links [edit]

• "John Torrio". Organized Crime Figure. Find a Grave. January 1, 2001. Retrieved March eighteen, 2020.
• "John D. Torrio". My Al Capone Museum . Retrieved March 18, 2020.

American Mafia
Preceded by Unknown	Chicago Outfit Underboss 1910–1920	Succeeded by Al Capone
Preceded by Big Jim Colosimo	Chicago Outfit Boss 1920–1925	Succeeded past Al Capone

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Torrio

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