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THE  OUTFIT

New York? Fuggedaboudit! The Chicago mob has always had the real clout.

What is the Outfit?

►The descendant, by direct line of succession, of Al Capone’s gang, still making money if not headlines.

What does the Outfit do?

Anything that will make money. Booze made Capone rich during Prohibition; after Repeal his successors diversified into other areas. Traditionally the Outfit engaged in gambling and labor racketeering in addition to “taxing” any large-scale illegal activity such as truck hijacking or burglary. Any form of vice most likely has an Outfit link, though Accardo reputedly kept the organization out of drugs. Now, gambling provides most of the Outfit’s revenue.

The five traditional Outfit street crews and their specialties:

Taylor Street - gambling
Grand Avenue - burglary
26th Street (Chinatown) – truck hijacking
North Side/Rush Street – prostitution, pornography
Chicago Heights – auto theft

Now evolved into three groups:
West Side, South Side,
North Side, each with adjacent suburbs and counties

Is the Outfit exclusively Italian?

No. While the leading lights have generally been, like Capone, of Italian descent, prominent Outfit members have included notably Greeks (Gus Alex, Chris Petti), Jews (Lenny Patrick) and a Welshman (Murray Humphreys). “If you can make money for them, they’ll accept you.”

 		  


Does the Outfit still run Chicago?

Not so’s you’d notice. RICO made it easier to put the bosses in jail; judicial and police reform made Chicago less corrupt. Nowadays, “Outfit guys want their sons to become investment bankers—that’s where the money is.” The big illegal money is in drugs now, and the black and Hispanic gangs dominate that. The Outfit is content to run illegal gambling, quietly. Its influence, however, is deeply rooted in the Chicago power structure and can be detected wherever there is a fishy smell.

 

 
 

Al Capone

Al Capone
The founder of the firm

 

Al Capone

Tony Accardo
Once Capone’s body-guard, long-time boss remained power behind scenes until death in ‘92.

 

The line of succession:
Capone
↓
Nitti
↓
Ricca
↓
Accardo
↓
Giancana
↓
Battaglia
↓
Alderisio
↓
Cerone
↓
Aiuppa
↓
Ferriola
↓
Carlisi
↓
Lombardo? DiFronzo?
Andriacci?

Nowadays, nobody admits to being boss. Who wants to die in jail?

►The most powerful organized crime family in the U.S. from the twenties through the early seventies.
In the Outfit’s golden age, Chicago gangsters controlled Las Vegas and Hollywood. Everyone to the west of Chicago was subservient to the Outfit.

►An enduring source of mythology, shame and maybe a little perverse pride for Chicagoans.

 

A few good books about the Outfit...

Non-fiction

The list is neither claimed to be exhaustive nor ranked in any particular order.

The Chicago Outfit (Images of America)  John J. Binder
A good short history of the Outfit, with lots of interesting photos.

The Outfit: The Role of Chicago's Underworld in the Shaping of Modern America  Gus Russo
Includes a few inaccuracies which any Chicago guy could have set Russo straight on (like how to spell Spilotro) and some tendentious moralizing, but a thorough, semi-scholarly history of the Outfit’s long reign.

When Corruption Was King: How I Helped the Mob Rule Chicago, Then Brought the Outfit Down
Robert Cooley, Hillel Levin
A first-person tale by an Outfit insider who flipped and is, consequently, in hiding. Great stuff on the declining Outfit of recent decades.

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre: The Untold Story of the Gangland Bloodbath That Brought Down Al Capone  William J. Helmer, Arthur J. Bilek
A new slant on the infamous massacre. Bilek is a respected former Chicago law enforcement official who fought the Outfit for years.

Accardo: The Genuine Godfather William E. Roemer, Jr.
Roemer was head of the FBI’s organized crime squad in Chicago in the sixties and seventies. This is the best of his several books. Roemer was no prose stylist, but he knew all the players, up close and personal.

Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas Nicholas Pileggi
The movie changed all the names; this is Pileggi’s non-fiction account of Tony Spilotro’s ill-fated reign in Las Vegas. Excellent book by a fine writer.

 

Fiction

These books are not necessarily about the Outfit, but they involve Chicago organized crime in interesting ways. 

Eugene Izzi
Izzi was a genuine Chicago tough guy who turned his experiences into tough-guy novels before dying mysteriously (probably a suicide) in 1996. The books vary in quality but all show insider knowledge of Outfit territory. The Take, Bad Guys, The Prime Roll, King of the Hustlers are recommended.

Steve Monroe, ’57 Chicago and ’46 Chicago
Stylish, hard-boiled tales of gamblers, cops and other unsavory types in pre-reform Chicago.

Sam Reaves, Dooley’s Back
Cops-and-mobsters morality tale set in contemporary Chicago. The Outfit ain’t what it used to be, but…

 

     

 











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