Notorious Chicago | Massacre Cars | Capone Era, Part 1 | Capone Era, Part 2 | Capone Era, Part 3 | I Was a Capone Juror | Frank Nitti
December 19, 1932, Frank Nitti was seriously wounded, but fully recovered.
Chicago Tribune, January 1, 1933
- Dr. Gaetano Ronga, father-in-law of Frank Nitti, Capone gang chief, who was wounded two weeks ago in an en counter with Detective Harry Lang of the mayor’s office, announced yesterday that the three bullets which were imbedded in Nitti’s body had all been removed. It is expected that the gang leader will recover.
Chicago Tribune March 20, 1943
By Carl Weigman
Frank (The Enforcer) Nitti, successor to Al Capone as the chief of Chicago gangland, shot and killed himself yesterday afternoon.
He ended his life sprawled against a fence beside the Illinois Central tracks near Harlem avenue and Cermak road in North Riverside, less than a mile from pretentious home at 712 Selbourne road in Riverside. A small revolver was in his right hand.
By his suicide, the first such death of a big time Chicago gangster, Nitti cheated the government, which indicted him and six Chicago associates in New York yesterday as members of a ring which extorted more than two million dollars from movie executives and their union employes.
Shortly before his suicide an States marshal’s office and made arrangements to surrender Nitti today on the indictment, which was returned in New York.
Inquest at 11 Today.
Last night Nitti’s body was in the county morgue, where an inquest will be held at 11 a. m. today.
Three men watched Nitti die. A freight train was passing the spot he had chosen as the death scene. Members of the crew saw him fire the fatal shot and heard his dying gasp. Unaware that the dead man was the notorious Frank Nitti, they reported the shooting to police and rode on with their train.
Chief of Police Allen Rose of North Riverside hurried to the place, He found Nitti lying on of his back, his head against the post of a fence. Two bullets had passed thru his brown felt hat. One bullet, which entered behind his right ear, had lodged in the top his skull.
Trainmen Tell Story.
The story of Nitti’s suicide was told by the three members of the freight train crew. They are L. M. Barnett, 1911 South Hamlin avenue, switchman; William F. Seebauer, 3206 48th court, Cicero, conductor, and E. H. Moran, 1329 52d court. Cicero, switchman.
All three of the witnesses said they saw Nitti staggering along the tracks, as if he were drunk, before he shot himself. Coroner’s physicians who examined the body said they would not be able to determine whether Nitti was intoxicated until they completed a chemical analysis.
“It was around 3 o’clock and we were backing the train south, the caboose in front,” said Barnett, “The crossing at Cermak road is unprotected, so we stopped to flag down traffic. Then I got back on the caboose and the train started op.
“I looked out of the caboose window and saw a man staggering down the tracks. He was walking with his back to us. He was about a block away and seemed to be drunk. saw nobody else around. I turned to Seebauer and said:
“‘If that guy don’t get out of the way we’re going to have to stop the train or kill somebody.’
“Then the man stepped off the track and walked over to the fence. When the caboose got even with him. Seebauer yelled. ‘Hi there, buddy.’
“I was in the caboose and I heard two shots. Seebauer ducked down inside the Caboose and said. ‘That guy is shooting at us! Moran, the other switchman, said. ‘No, he’s trying to himself.’ Then I pulled the air (as a signal to stop the train) and the train stopped.
Frank Nitti had a knack for staying out of jail for most of his career and was even said to be claustrophobic. Rather than face trial and possible prison time on extortion charges, Nitti took his own life on March 19, 1943. After his wife left for church, Nitti walked along railroad tracks near Harlem Avenue and shot himself.
Nitti Slumped Against Fence.
“We were about six or eight car lengths past the man. Seebauer and I got out and started walking back toward him. There was nobody around and the fellow was half sitting and half lying against the fence. The gun was in his right hand.
“I asked Seebauer, ‘Where’s the gun?’ and he said. ‘It’s in his hand there.’ Then I saw it.
“We kept on walking slowly until we got within 20 feet. We got so close we could see the man’s eyes rolling. I hollered at him. He looked at me and rolled his eyes. I said, ‘Well, if he tried to kill himself, he didn’t do a good job.’
Seebauer said. ‘Let’s rush him and take the gun away from him.’ I said. ‘If you think I’m going to rush a man that is drunk and with a gun you are crazy. I’ve got a wife and family.’
“We stopped. I stayed where I was and Seebauer crawled thru the cars to get on the side of the train away from the guy and be able to crawl up closer and look at him from under the car.
“Suddenly the fellow raised himself to a sitting position, put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger. There was a shot and the man fell back against the fence.
“He Did It This Time.”
“I said to Seebauer. ‘Well, he did it this time. All you’ve got to do now is cut the engine off and go up and call the So Seebauer cut the engine off and went to call the police. and Moran and I stayed there.
“We stood back away from the body until the engine crew and Seebauer came back. Then we went up and took a look. The gun was still in his right hand. It stayed there until a policeman took it away.
“I said to the policeman. “Why don’t you search him? and he said, ‘No, I’m not supposed to touch him.
“Then we left. I didn’t know who the dead man was till I got on street car on the way home and saw The Tribune headline that Nitti was killed.”
The scene on March 19, 1943, as police gathered around Frank Nitti’s body along a railroad embankment in North Riverside after Nitti committed suicide. This photo was taken looking north along the Illinois Central Railroad tracks, south of Cermak Road.
Nltti’s body was quickly identified by the police. In his pockets the found his draft registration card, giving his home at the Selbourne road address in Riverside, and his automobile driver’s license, giving his address as 1208 Lexington street, Chicago. Both cards gave his birth date as Jan. 27, 1886, and listed his name as Nitto.
Police said the latter address is the home of Mrs. Lucia Ronga, mother of Nitti’s first wife, Anna, who died 18 months ago.
Home Under Surveillance.
Riverside police said they have had the Selbourne road residence under surveillance since Nitti moved there last summer. They noted the license number of every automobile that appeared there—many of them expensive cars with the license plates of other states.
The police reported all information about Nitti and his visitors to the federal bureau of investigation. Several weeks ago, when it was reported that Nitti gang was about to be indicted, there was a gathering of the chieftains at the Riverside home. Until late one night they conferred. while police watched outside.
A. Bradley Eben, former assistant United States attorney, said Nitti walked into his office about a month ago and asked him to represent him in the hearing for his removal to New York. Eben said Nitti knew he was to be indicted.
Learns of Indictment.
“I had several conferences with him,” said Eben, and he always protested he was innocent of the charges. He said he was in a legitimate business, but didn’t say what the business was.
“We had arranged to surrender him as soon as the warrant was issued for his arrest. When news of the indictment reached me this morning I called Nitti at his home and told him about it. He said he would be in my office in the afternoon, I never heard more from him.”
Eben said Nitti did not appear to be distressed when he was given the news of the indictment.
Neighbors of the Nitti family in Riverside said they were quiet people who kept to themselves. Nitti often took walks about the neighborhood, and exchanged greetings pleasantly when he passed a neighbor.
Thru his career, Nitti was known to the police as “a classy little fellow” (he was 5 feet 6 inches tall), who wore expensive clothing. He was well dressed on his last walk, wearing a gray checked suit, brown plaid overcoat, a blue and maroon scarf and a brown fedora hat. Also, he wore rubbers, and long woolen underwear.
Expensive Watch on Wrist.
On his wrist was an expensive waterproof watch. In his vest pocket was a rosary inclosed in a small leather case, and $1.03 in small change. In other pockets were a nail file and comb in a leather case, a key, and a package of 27 cent cigarets. His wallet bore the name “Frank” in gold letters and held a gold pencil in one pocket.
Police veterans said Nitti had been in poor health in recent years, suffering from stomach ulcers. However, they said, he never lost his position as the head man of the old Capone gang, and he was much feared by all the gang’s lesser lights, police said.
Chicago Tribune, March 20, 1943
Frank Nitti, whose real was Nitto, had been regarded for more than a decade and a half as the ablest business man of the Chicago underworld. He was so clever that he evaded death thru the prohibition era and later was able to shift from the outworn liquor racket and cut in on the more lucrative gambling and labor fields. He was generally credited with being the heir to Al Capone’s financial interests.
Nitti was a native of Italy, but was brought to the United States as a child of 3 by his parents. The family settled in Brooklyn, N. Y. Growing up there, Nitti became a member of the Five Points gang, a school for gangsterism that equaled anything of the kind ever developed there.
He followed Capone here shortly after the World war. Capone was at first only the bodyguard of Big Jim Colosimo, the prototype of the alcohol barons of the roaring 1920s. Colosimo was slain in a gang war and his power descended to the underling gangsters.
Nitti Accounting Expert.
Plenty of the successors to Colosimo were tough guys, fitted to protect themselves and muscle out their enemies. If need arose they were perfectly willing to commit murder. But among them Nitti was almost alone in understanding business and accounting. His rise was rapid when the lush alky days came. Capone was the leader, the front for the biggest of all syndicates; Nitti was more nearly than he the directing head of the gang’s interests in liquor and vice.
In 1930, when he was about 44 years old. Nitti was indicted in the federal District court. The charge was that he failed to pay income taxes for the 1925, 1926, and 1927, for a total of $277,000—the income alleged was $743,000. It was reported then that he had gone to Italy to spend some of his gains.
Soon afterward he was trapped in the United States by federal agents and brought to Chicago for trial. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. The term was served, with time off for good behavior, and he returned to Chicago.
Nitti Shot by Policeman.
On Dec. 19, 1932, two Chicago policemen, Harry Lang and Harry Miller, visited Nitti in the latter’s downtown office. Nitti was shot and the detectives alleged that he had resisted arrest. This story was first accepted. Later an investigation was undertaken and Miller reported that he heard Lang, who actually fired the shot, had been offered $15,000 to kill Nitti.
Lang denied this. He was tried for assault with intent to kill and was acquitted. Both policemen, however, were fired from the police force. Nitti, who had been shot in the abdomen, was out of action for some time.
Thereafter he was the too man of the syndicate. The state’s attorney asserted in 1937 that Nitti and three associates controlled all Cook county gambling. In 1940 it was charged that he was the chief figure in a plot to seize a number of unions, including the bartenders, and reputedly he was the real boss of Willie Bioff, the jail bird pander, and George E. Browne, nominal heads of the moving picture operators union.
Huge Profits Revealed.
His connection with gambling in the county areas became clearer in the autumn of 194L Investigations showed that Nitti, Jack Guzik, Murray Humphreys, and Edward Vogel were the bosses of an organization with net profits of $139,000 a month; that they not only had handbooks, but furnished the public with gambling resorts, some of them lavish in their appointments.
Evidence was insufficient to convict and Nitti remained at large. He spent much of his time in Florida, where he had a large home which he later sold to Max Caldwell, head of the Retail Clerks union here, for $45,000.
Chicago Tribune, March 21, 1943
Mrs. Frank Nitti, widow of the gang chieftain who shot and killed himself Friday, is the former confidential secretary to Edward (Easy Eddie) J. O’Hare, reputed front man for the Capone syndicate, who was slain by shotgun assassins on Nov. 8, 1939, persons close to the family disclosed yesterday.
Mrs. Nitti did not attend the inquest into her husband’s death at the county morgue yesterday. Chief of Police Allen Rose of North Riverside said she was at her home, 712 Selbourne road, Riverside, convalescing from shock. She was represented at the inquest by a brother, Charles J. Caravetta of Pullman, who said his sister was 41 years old and was married to Nitti nine months ago.
Reported Knowledge of Danger.
Mrs. Nitti. then Antoinette (Toni) Cavaretta (she spelled the name differently from her brother) told police at the time of the O’Hare killing that her employer knew for three weeks before his death that he was in grave danger and showed it by continual nervous tension.
O’Hare, rated a millionaire when he died, was president of Sportsman’s Park race track, manager of Al Capone’s Hawthorne dog track, regent of Capone dog track holdings in Florida and Massachusetts, and was interested in two advertising agencies and an insurance company in Chicago.
He had a yacht, a penthouse near Taunton, Mass., an oceanside villa near the Miami Kennel club in which he was a stockholder, and an imposing home at 221 Franklin road, Glencoe. In Chicago he usually stayed at the Illinois Athletic club.
O’Hare was a mysterious figure, friendly with prominent men in sports, business, and politics. He was outspoken among his friends against gangsters, and ordered police to keep them away from Sportsman’s Park. Secretary-treasurer of the park, however, was Johnny Patton, known as “the boy mayor of Burnham,” who was Al Capone’s vice overlord for Burnham, Cicero, and Stickney for many years. Patton was questioned about O’Hara’s death.
Manager of Dog Track.
O’Hare attracted the attention of Capone men in 1928 when he was associated with the Madison Kennel club, Madison county, Illinois, and was persuaded to come Chicago to manage Capone’s Hawthorne dog track. O’Hare was slain in his expensive coupe at Ogden avenue and Rockwell street by killers who ambushed him in another car. Apparently he knew his life was in danger, for he raced the killer’s car for some distance, his own car crashing at high speed when two shotgun charges thru the window struck his head and neck.
There were several theories about his death, one of which, that he was cooperating with federal bureau of investigation agents and was killed in reprisal, was supported by a note found on his body signed Toni (his secretary). It read: “Mr. Woltz phoned and wants to know if you or Mr. Beckman know anything about Clyde Nimerick. He said you are to call Mr. Bennett.”
Agents with Those Names.
There were FBI agents in Chicago named Woltz and Bennett at that time, and Henry Beckman formerly was O’Hare’s chauffeur and body guard. Nimerick, an ex-convict, said he knew nothing of O’Hare’s death.
O’Hare left an estate of $437,768 in cash and securities exclusive of real estate in trust to his son, Lt. Edward J. O’Hare Jr, navy flyer decorated by President Roosevelt last April for shooting down six Jap bombers off the Gilbert Islands; and two daughters, Patricia and Marilyn.1
NOTES:
1Chicago’s famous O’Hare International Airport was named after Edward J. O’Hare Jr.
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