Word: torrio
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Death Revealed. Johnny Torrio, 75, compact (5 ft. 5 in.), button-eyed dean of Chicago's Prohibition-era gang leaders, (e.g., Dion O'Bannion, Hymie Weiss) who brought Al ("Scarface") Capone from Brooklyn as a $75-a-week mug, tutored him, later (1925) bequeathed him his underworld empire and title of Public Enemy No. 1; of a heart attack; on April 16, in Brooklyn. Dapper Torrio, a topnotch organizer, executive and marksman (tagged by colleagues as "Terrible Johnny" long before police got anything on him), joined Big Jim Colosimo in Chicago as chief triggerman in 1910, gathered...
Grimy Cicero, Ill. (pop. 67,000), which huddles close to Chicago's west boundary, has never had a reputation for being exclusive. During the roaring '20s, the Torrio-Capone mob roared through Cicero's streets in armored cars, ruled its wide-open gambling joints, honky-tonks and whorehouses. Cicero is also an industrial town, with tree-lined neighborhoods of workingmen's homes, and friendly corner taverns where jukeboxes play lively polkas and the talk at the bar is in many languages. Though its history is pockmarked with crime and violence, Cicero makes one proud boast...
Share the Loot. It was principally Irey and his men who broke up Huey Long's gang, gave young District Attorney Tom Dewey the evidence with which to convict Beer Baron Waxie Gordon, jailed Johnny Torrio (who proposed a deal: "Leave us cut out the shooting, boys, there's enough here for everybody"), broke the Lindbergh case and busted up the Pendergast machine...
...Brooklyn, rough-tough Johnny Torrio, ex-Chicago bootleg king and Al Capone's sometime mentor, who quit the rackets after he was shot up in 1925, heaved a big sigh of relief. At his solicitation, the FBI had finally rounded up two men accused of sending him a threatening letter last September...
...Banion was rubbed out. His mob half-killed Johnny Torrio with shotgun slugs, broke his nerve and drove him out of town. For a while, the O'Banions were as tough as Al's mob. Its leaders were hard and ambitious-George ("Bugs") Moran, Vincent ("The Schemer") Drucci and Earl (Hymie) Weiss, the rosary-fingering inventor of the one-way ride. One day seven automobile loads of O'Banion men parked in front of Al's GHQ in Cicero and riddled it with Tommy guns. Al escaped. The O'Banions were not really broken until...