Word: torrio
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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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...
...went to work for Johnny Torrio, a First Ward vice and bootleg racketeer, running a saloon and brothel (at $75 a week) on South Wabash Avenue. He did his work well. Soon he became Torrio's field general and drill sergeant, and was cut in on a $100,000-a-year profit. Chicago began to hear the newcomer's name. It was Al Capone...
...Money. With Torrio, he pushed south and west across Chicago and into the saloons, gambling joints and dance halls of suburban Burnham, Stickney and Cicero. He built his own army. By 1924 he commanded 700 men, was making $100,000 a week and lusting for more. But Dion O'Banion, a murderous Irishman with a sweet smile and a passion for flowers, stood...
...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...