Word: torrio
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
That police had finally nailed John Torrio on an ordinary revenue law violation seemed thoroughly in keeping with that gangster's fabulous career. A small-time tough who operated an East Side poolroom in Manhattan before the War, Torrio rose to be a rugged member of Brooklyn's notorious Five Points Gang. His fame spread to James ("Big Jim") Colosimo, then Chicago's No. 1 brothel operator. He hired Torrio as head triggerman shortly after the War. Torrio's marksmanship and disarming personality made him a Colosimo favorite. To help him in his work, Torrio imported...
...Colosimo was shot dead in his Chicago restaurant. Some accused Torrio, others Capone. At any rate Torrio quickly stepped into the dead man's shoes, kept Capone as his right-hand man. When Dion O'Banion's North Side gang hijacked too much of their beer in 1924; O'Banion was neatly drilled in his Chicago flower shop. Torrio attended the $50,000 funeral with Capone, looked at his dead foe, murmured disconsolately: "Poor Dion." But the floral wreath he sent was dumped in an ashcan, and Torrio fled to Hot Springs, Ark., to New Orleans...
Meantime, word came that Johnny ("The Immune") Torrio?who brought Snorkey from New York to Chicago eleven years ago, was later scared out of town by rival guns?would come back from Florida to succeed his onetime protege. Gangster Torrio has been erroneously reported as hiding in Italy. His pretensions to the Chicago gangland throne will probably not go unchallenged. Hardly had the Capone pleas been entered last week before two gunmen were shot down in a reawakened feud between the South Side gangs of Frank McErlane and Edward ("Spike") O'Donnell. Attorney Johnson said that the Government also...
That Scarface Al Capone was "rubbed out" by gangsters two years ago; that his halfbrother, Giacomo Calabrese, was then scarred by a plastic surgeon to resemble the dead chieftain and that Calabrese has since impersonated Capone as a figurehead for Gangster Johnny Torrio who really rules the underworld; that it was Calabrese who was arrested and jailed in Philadelphia in 1929; that not more than five gangsters were aware of the real Capone's death and the subsequent impersonation...
...charges Judge Lyle apparently had in mind were old ones: the murder of Big Jim Colosimo (1920), who brought young Capone and Johnny Torrio to Chicago as his bodyguards; the killing of Joseph Howard, petty hijacker...