Who was the father of the Syndicate, the Mob, Cosa Nostra? No, it wasn't Al Capone. It was Al Capone's boss. A quiet visionary of vice named Johnny J.T. Torrio, a man so mysterious that for 50 years he was unknown to most mobsters, let alone the law.
Johnny Torrio (D. 1957) was an Italian-born American mobster who helped build the Chicago Outfit in the 1920s later inherited by his protégé Al Capone. Torrio proposed a National Crime Syndicate in the 1930s and later became an adviser to Lucky Luciano and his Luciano crime family.
His first jobs were as a porter and bouncer in Manhattan. While he was a teenager, he joined a street gang together with another James Street resident Robert Vanella and became its leader, he eventually managed to save enough money and opened a billiards parlor for the group, and from there grew illegal activities such as gambling and loan sharking. Torrio's business sense caught the eye of Paul Kelly, the leader of the Five Points Gang. Torrio's gang ran legitimate businesses, but its primary concern was the numbers game, supplemented by incomes from bookmaking, loan sharking, hijacking, prostitution, and opium trafficking. Al Capone, who worked at Kelly's club, admired Torrio's quick mind and looked to him as his mentor.
Capone had belonged to the Junior Forty Thieves, the Bowery Boys and the Brooklyn Rippers; they soon moved up to the Five Points Gang. Torrio eventually hired Capone to bartend at the Harvard Inn, a bar in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn owned by Torrio's business associate, Frankie Yale.
Torrio had several nicknames, primarily "The Fox" for his cunning and finesse.The US Treasury official Elmer Irey considered him "the biggest gangster in America" and wrote, "He was the smartest and, I dare say, the best of all the hoodlums. 'Best' referring to talent, not morals".Virgil W. Peterson of the Chicago Crime Commission stated that his "talents as an organizational genius were widely respected by the major gang bosses in the New York City area".Crime journalist Herbert Asbury affirmed: "As an organizer and administrator of underworld affairs, Johnny Torrio is unsurpassed in the annals of American crime; he was probably the nearest thing to a real mastermind that this country has yet produced"
In January 1925, Capone was ambushed, leaving him shaken but unhurt. Twelve days later, on January 24, Torrio and his wife Anna were ambushed outside their home by Weiss, Drucci, and Moran. Torrio was shot several times and nearly killed. After recovering, he effectively resigned, handed control of the gang to Capone, and fled to New York.
In late 1925, Torrio moved to Italy with his wife and mother, where he no longer dealt directly with the mob business. He gave total control of the Outfit to Capone and said, "It's all yours, Al. Me? I'm quitting. It's Europe for me".Torrio left a criminal empire which grossed about $70,000,000 a year ($1,241,304,000 in 2024 dollars) from bootleg liquor, gambling and prostitution
In 1928, Torrio returned to the United States, as Benito Mussolini began putting pressure on the Mafia in Italy. He is credited with helping to organize a loose cartel of East Coast bootleggers, the Big Seven, in which many prominent gangsters, including Lucky Luciano, Longy Zwillman, Joe Adonis, Frank Costello, and Meyer Lansky played a part. Torrio also supported the creation of a national body that would prevent all-out turf wars between gangs that had broken out in Chicago and New York. His idea was well received, and a conference was hosted in Atlantic City by Torrio, Lansky, Luciano and Costello in May 1929; the National Crime Syndicate was created.
Torrio was charged with income tax evasion in 1936 and, after several failed appeals, was sent to prison in 1939, serving two years. In 1940, a property that Torrio co-owned with Vanella, Jack Cusick, and Capone was sold at auction to satisfy Capone's tax delinquencies. After his release, he lived quietly until his death.
On April 16, 1957, Torrio had a heart attack in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, New York while he was sitting in a barber's chair waiting for a haircut; he died several hours later in a nearby hospital.
Offered is a SUPER RARE original TYPE I photo of Torrio from 1939 (stamped on back 4/15/39 with the original ACME News pictures stamp). This 7” x 9” crystal clear image was run in the newspapers when he was sent to prison in 1939.
Item: 13489
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