◆ SpookStack

Declassified Document Archive & Reader
Log In Register
Reader Ad Slot
Reader Ad Slot placeholder
If you would like to support SpookStack without paying out of pocket, please consider allowing advertising cookies. It helps cover hosting costs and keeps the archive free to browse. You can change this choice at any time.

Al Capone — Part 8

70 pages · May 08, 2026 · Broad topic: Organized Crime · Topic: Al Capone · 69 pages OCR'd
← Back to feed
ze 2 en ae ne oe ole ale ie ER oe oe wt ca Penge ee © Benny hasn’t been seen or heard from since the tele- phone rang. On November 17, the body of Johnny “Billiken” Rito, a Newberry bourbon hustler, who had formerly worked for the Gennas, was found floating down the Chi- cago river. The manner in which “Billiken” had been dis- posed of was unusually horri- ble, for he had been thor- oughly chopped up and the pieces bound together with hay-wire. The disappearance of Bennett together with the later absence of another New- berry aid, Harry Higgins who hailed from St. Paul, gave credence to the grim rumor that Gangland killers, seeking to destroy the corpus delicti, had established a crematory somewhere on the Near North Side where business competi- tors and disgruntled gang- sters were incinerated into the ashes of oblivion. Ah, a new spirit in Gangland! Who said that killers have no imagination? At this writing New York friends of Benny Bennett are, running around town with lang farac affaring ra. FUMING SPOund TOW Wii wOnE 1BCES Oring re- wards for word of their missing playmate who would come out west. Newberry eventually stepped into the Capone inner circles, taking with him Signor Frank Citro, he of the motionless eyes and expressionless face, better known as Frankie Foster. “All we ever got from ‘Bugs’ was 4 reputation,” explained Teddy and Frankie. Well, the war was on again. Moran and the Ajellos pressed northward into the grea? road- house and summer resort area in the Northwest suburbs. The first shot in the new war, now going, was fired on May 31, and the victim, Peter Plescia, an Aiello organizer and collector, fell dead in the mouth of an alley. Qn May 31, Phillip Gnolfo, former Genna killer had been a pall-bearer at Angelo’s funeral, was slain in his automobile. A few hours later on the same day two more Aiello boys bit the bricks—Samuel Monistero and Joseph Ferrari. On June 1 came deadiy reprisals in the sensational Fox Lake Massacre. Four men and a woman, Mrs. Vivian Ponic McGinnis, wife of an attorney, sat around a table in a roadhouse. Sud- denly one of the men, turning his head saw a ma- chine gun pointed towards him. He got up and be- gan running. The rattle of the machine gun began and he went down, as did two of his companions. The woman was seriously wounded. One of the victims was Sam Peilar, who, you wil] remember used to work as a chauffeur and handy man for “Little Hymie” Waiss and was walking across the aid ey ee Si taste Seeehasip, See Beek, street with his boss on the famous day that “Little Hymie” fell before machine gun fire. Joseph Bertsche, brother of Barney Bertsche, was another ‘Willie Miemoth and Frankie MacEarlane may have been important cogs in Joe Haltis’ beer ma- chine but they were bank robbers under the skiz. Wiewioth was seized ty Chicago recently anf hor- ried under heavy guard to Baltimore, Maryland, where he was convicted in short order of oom- plicity in & pay Foll robbery three years arc. Hiemoth is helieved to have slain Fobnnuie “Ding- bat” Oberts as a personal favor for McFarlane. [e0} victim as was Michael Quirk. George Druggan, brother of the famous Terry Druggan was terribly wounded and he is at this writing in a hospital fighting for his life. A few hours later in Chicago Thomas Somnerio, Capone leader, was strangled to death and his body flung in an alley on the West Side. One of the mourn- ers for Mr. Somnerio was a Gangland Queen, Margaret Mary Collins, who had been the sweetie for five other gangsters, all departed. Some- bedy put Somneric on the spot, and it was said that a woman had done it. More hor- ror was produced by Gangland four days Jater when a river tug churned up the hay-wired body of Eugene “Red” Mc- Laughlin. Aloysius Kearney, hard-boiled gangster doing a specialty business in labor racketeering, became the cause of another murder mystery when his bullet-ridden body was discovered on the morning of June 9. Kearney had been a friend of “Red” McLaugh- ‘ lin end an unesuesesefnl offart wae made to find 2 BAS) EAALL CHEE WLLL ME lV FF ER AE I BA connection between the murders. From hills in his pocket it was disclosed that he was a collector for the National Garage Owners’ Association. It was this association which, a few weeks before, had inspired criticism from the then Commissioner of Police, William Russell and Col. Robert Isham Randolph, president of the Chicago Association of Commerce, for waging a campaign to have all automobiles found parked at night without lights towed into garages. The cost would be $5.00 to the car owners—a pleasant racket which, strangely enough, didn’t go over. Samuel Maltz, president of the association, questioned by police said: “T’m strictly a business man. There is no racket- eering or hoodlumism connected with my organi- zation. I didn’t know Kearney very well. He had worked for me only for a week. I was paying him $40 a week to collect bills. Don’t give me any hoodlum talk. I’m a business man and don't go for that.” It was becoming warmer and warmer in Chicago’s loop at this time for those gentlemen of the gat. Jail sentences instead of the customary fines were being handed out. As a result of this, hoodiums hit upon a practice of parking their auto- matics in cigar stores, speakeasies and other places just outside the loop while transacting business SSAA, DS IS al at eae aes ‘What the uo loop parking law means to gangsters,
OCR quality for this page
Community corrections
First editor: none yet Last editor: none yet
No user corrections yet.
Comments
Document-wide discussion. Follow the Community Standards.
No comments on this document yet.
Bottom Reader Ad Slot
Bottom Reader Ad Slot placeholder
If you would like to support SpookStack without paying out of pocket, please consider allowing advertising cookies. It helps cover hosting costs and keeps the archive free to browse. You can change this choice at any time.

Continue Exploring

Use the strongest next step for this document: continue reading, jump to the topic hub, or move into the matching agency collection.
Continue Reading at Page 20
Jump straight to page 20 of 70.
Reader
Al Capone — Part 20
Stay inside Al Capone with another closely related document.
Topic
FBI Documents & FOIA Archive
Open the FBI agency landing page for stronger archive context.
FBI
Al Capone Topic Hub
See the topic overview, related documents, and linked subtopics.
Hub

Agency Collection

This document also belongs in the FBI Documents & FOIA Archive landing page, which is the stronger starting point for agency-level browsing and for searches focused on FBI records.
FBI Documents & FOIA Archive
Open the agency landing page for introduction text, topic links, and more FBI documents.
FBI

Explore This Archive Cluster

This document belongs to the Organized Crime archive hub and the more specific Al Capone topic page. Use these hub pages when you want the broader collection context, linked subtopics, and more documents around the same archive thread.
bureau
Related subtopics
Bugsy Siegel
32 documents · 2877 known pages
Subtopic
Carlo Gambino
14 documents · 1532 known pages
Subtopic
Carmine Galante
12 documents · 1245 known pages
Subtopic
Abner Zwillman
7 documents · 600 known pages
Subtopic
Arthur Flegenheimer Dutch Schultz
6 documents · 166 known pages
Subtopic
The Hells Angels
6 documents · 480 known pages
Subtopic