Tropea, Orazio (1880-1926)

Born Catania, Sicily, April 29, 1880.
Killed Chicago, IL, Feb. 15, 1926.

Once a feared enforcer and collector for the Chicago Mafia led by the Genna brothers, Tropea became a key figure in an anti-Genna rebellion. He paid the ultimate price for his betrayal.

Born in 1880, Tropea left a wife and children behind in Catania, Sicily, when he traveled to the U.S. in 1909. After some time with relatives in New York City, he moved on to Buffalo, New York. He became romantically involved with Buffalo resident Helen Brown around 1916. A son Lawrence was born to the couple in 1917.

In June 1919, Tropea was among a number of U.S. Mafiosi who sent floral offerings to Buffalo boss Giuseppe DiCarlo following the death of DiCarlo's wife. Also sending flowers were Joseph Aiello of Utica, New York (later of Chicago), John Vitale and Gaspare Milazzo of Detroit and others from across the country.

Tropea became husband to two wives when he married Brown in 1920. A short time after that, he relocated to Chicago and joined the Mafia organization commanded by the "Terrible Gennas." Helen and Lawrence accompanied him to Chicago but later returned to stay with Helen's family in Buffalo.

An application for travel papers was filed by Tropea in summer 1924. At that time, he made a number of false and questionable claims. The application stated he arrived in the U.S. in April 1920 aboard the S.S. Conte Russo. That date was years later than his actual arrival and involved a ship that did not sail its maiden voyage until 1922. He stated that his address was 1022 Taylor Street in Chicago. Such an address was unlikely, as 1022 Taylor was the location of the Italian-American Educational Club that served as Genna headquarters. It also appears that, despite his two wives, Tropea indicated on the application that he was single.

Two wives were not yet enough for Tropea. Around 1923-1924, he began a relationship with a Chicago teenager, Beatrice Gould. He reportedly wished to marry Beatrice, but her parents would not permit it.

There was considerable turmoil following the death of Chicago's highly regarded gangland statesman Michele Merlo in November 1924. The Genna leadership was devastated in the violence that followed. In just two months of 1925, three of the Genna brothers were killed. Angelo Genna was shot to death while at the wheel of his roadster on May 26. Mike met his end on June 13 following a chaotic shootout with other gangsters and police. Tony was fatally shot July 8 at Grand Avenue and Curtis Street, while shaking the hand of a mysterious gangland figure known as "Cavallero."

Cavallero, later identified as Antonio Spano, was a disgruntled former Genna gunman, who joined Samuzzo "Samoots" Amatuna in an anti-Genna rebellion.

As a result of the gunfight in which Mike Genna was killed, Genna gunmen John Scalisi and Albert Anselmi were charged with the murder of a police officer. (There was widespread suspicion that Scalisi and Anselmi were in the process of betraying their Genna bosses to side with the Chicago Heights-based forces of "Cavallero" and intended to kill Mike Genna themselves on the day a police bullet caused his death.) Orazio Tropea was assigned the task of raising money for the Scalisi-Anselmi defense fund.

He went about the job by terrorizing local Italian merchants into making large cash donations. As the case involved several trials and a couple of appeals, Tropea conducted multiple rounds of strong-arm collections for the defense fund. The oppression was so great that Sicilians in Chicago referred to Tropea as "The Scourge."

Being squeezed more than once by Tropea did not sit well with a Genna in-law, Henry Spingola. While Spingola was generous in the opening round of collections, accounts say he made a far smaller contribution later. Spingola was murdered in January 1926 after playing cards with Tropea at Amato's Restaurant on Halsted Street. It quickly became apparent that Tropea had signaled the gunmen who killed the popular and well-connected Spingola.

Making matters worse for Tropea were rumors that he was keeping a good percentage of the defense fund donations for himself (preparing to fight a U.S. government effort to have him deported) and that he was secretly in league with "Cavallero."

Tropea was living comfortably under the assumed identity of "O. Trayers" at the Congress Hotel, apparently paying his bill from Scalisi-Anselmi defense moneys. He had been entertaining his girlfriend Beatrice Gould at that hotel. Press accounts said her last visit there was on February 13, 1926 - two days before Tropea's murder.

At the end, Tropea was left with few friends and numerous enemies. The people who may have wanted him dead included the Gennas and Spingolas, the family of Buffalo's Helen Brown, the family of Chicago's Beatrice Gould, his in-laws in Sicily, Chicago businessmen who had been repeatedly terrorized into providing money for what looked to be Tropea's personal slush fund and, possibly, Cavallero and other allies of Scalisi and Anselmi.

On the evening of February 15, 1926, Tropea stepped off an eastbound streetcar at South Halsted and West Taylor Streets. As he crossed Halsted, an automobile came up and stopped abruptly just before striking him. Tropea shouted at the driver. There was no spoken response. The car pulled alongside Tropea. A man with a double-barreled shotgun emerged from the vehicle, put the end of the weapon to Tropea's head and fired.

Chicago's gangland skipped the usual spectacular funeral in Tropea's case. News of his death was received with relief throughout Chicago's Sicilian communities.

Address book

The murder exposed connections among Mafiosi across the U.S.

In Tropea's possession at the time of his death, police found $975 in cash, a large diamond ring and a book containing addresses and telephone numbers. The Chicago Tribune published the contents of that book. A number of the entries are discussed below:

• Caterina Amara (reported as "Catherina Anara" in the newspaper) was the wife of Joe Aiello. They married in Buffalo in 1917. After spending some years in Utica, New York, Aiello moved into Chicago and eventually became boss of the local Mafia there.
• Tony Lombardo was a local businessman and president of the Mafia-linked Unione Siciliana organization. Lombardo was angry to be connected in the press with Tropea. He said Tropea had his address and phone number merely because Lombardo had once sold a restaurant to him.
• Sam Lovullo was a member of the Mafia of Buffalo, living on Efner (the newspaper reported it as "Epnor") Street in that city.
• Amato Mongelluzzo ran the restaurant on South Halsted Street where Henry Spingola played his last game of cards.
• James Palese of Detroit may have been the same Palese who corresponded with his cousin Nino Sacco during Sacco's 1910s imprisonment for interstate transportation of women for immoral purposes.
• Sam Pollaccia of Brooklyn, the only New York City resident to appear in the book, was a trusted aide and close friend of Mafia boss of bosses Salvatore D'Aquila before giving his support to D'Aquila's rival Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria. Pollaccia was the traveling companion of Brooklyn gang leader Frankie Yale during a 1924 visit to Chicago. Both men were suspected of involvement in the murder of Chicago's Dean O'Banion.
• Giuseppe Siragusa (the newspaper interpreted the scribbled letters of his surname as "Louognino") served as boss of the Mafia in western Pennsylvania.

After death

Helen and Lawrence

The Brown family of Buffalo tried to have Tropea's remains transported to Buffalo, so he could be buried in the community where his (U.S.) wife and child resided. Helen Brown and her nine-year-old son Lawrence visited Chicago and tried in vain to persuade funeral director Michael Iarussi to have Tropea buried in Buffalo. The Browns did not have money to finance the transport and burial.

Chicago Police Captain John Stege spoke with Brown. While she and Tropea were living in separate cities, she told the police captain that Tropea visited her four times in recent months and regularly sent her money.

Stege also interviewed Beatrice Gould. He learned that Tropea and Gould recently had been living together as man and wife, that Tropea's legal wife in Sicily had died several years before (it appears that Stege was unable to confirm this) and that the gangster had a twenty-one-year-old son and an eighteen-year-old daughter in Sicily.

Orazio Tropea was buried February 20 in Chicago without ceremony or flowers. His casket was paid for with $300 of public funds. His only mourners were Beatrice Gould and her brother Donald. Beatrice wore a black veil and a mink coat Tropea gave her.

The Chicago Tribune noted, "What following Orazio had died with him. To have shown either sympathy or loyalty would have marked them for death also, was the word that went around."

Related:

• Chicago Bosses, mafiahistory.us

Sources:

• "Deportation or death seen as gangster fate," Chicago Tribune, Feb. 17, 1926, p. 2.
• "Feudist's death may renew war," Decatur IL Herald, May 27, 1925, p. 1.
• "Feudists slay Sicilian ally of Genna gang," Chicago Tribune, Feb. 16, 1926, p. 1.
• "Fight to free city of thugs given impetus," Belvidere Daily Republican, Feb. 16, 1926, p. 1.
• "One dead in gang fight," DeKalb IL Daily Chronicle, Feb. 16, 1926, p. 1.
• "Orazio the 'Scourge' buried without friends or clergy," Chicago Tribune, Feb. 21, 1926, p. 4.
• "Rival loves weep for Orazio but his real widow is sought," Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb. 18, 1926, p. 3.
• "Say man killed in Chicago son-in-law of Buffalo woman," Buffalo Daily Courier, Feb. 17, 1926, p. 16.
• "Sicilian gang kills again," Chicago Tribune, Feb. 22, 1926, p. 1.
• "Son-in-law is killed by gang in Chicago row," Buffalo Morning Express, Feb. 17, 1926.
• "Trace Sicilian killers in fight for deportation," Chicago Tribune, Feb. 18, 1926, p. 3.
• Herrick, Genevieve Forbes, "New rich rum chief slain by gunmen in car," Chicago Tribune, May 27, 1925, p. 2.
• Hunt, Thomas, and Michael A. Tona, DiCarlo: Buffalo's First Family of Crime, Vol. I - to 1937, 2013.
• Manifest of the S.S. La Gascogne arrived New York City Feb. 1, 1909.

Iamascia, Danny (1902-1931)

Born New York, NY, c. 1902

Killed Manhattan, NY, June 18, 1931.

Daniel J. Iamascia worked for the Bronx organizations of Ciro "The Artichoke King" Terranova and Arthur "Dutch Schultz" Flegenheimer.

Daniel Iamascia was born in New York in 1902 to parents Giuseppe and Rosina Charamia Iamascia. His parents, born in the Province of Campobasso, Italy, crossed the Atlantic in the 1890s and settled in New York. (Giuseppe was born Feb. 10, 1867, in Macchia Valfortore. Rosina was born Nov. 15, 1881, in Pietracatella.)

He had a number of arrests on his record, but always got off the hook. He was arrested as a youth for assault and battery in Queens in 1918 but then released when the victim suddenly disappeared. He was apprehended on a rape charge in the Bronx in 1919 and then released. Police caught him on a burglary charge in the Bronx later that year, but again he was released.
He was finally convicted of unlawful entry in the Bronx in 1920, but his prison sentence was suspended. Two burglary cases in 1920 and 1924 and a robbery charge in 1922 never went to trial.

Iamascia was among several known criminals in attendance at a Dec. 7, 1929, banquet thrown for Magistrate Albert Vitale at the Roman Gardens in the Bronx. That banquet was held up by seven gunmen but all loot - including a police detective's handgun - was returned shortly after Vitale got on the telephone. The event proved a connection between organized crime and the courts and led to state-sponsored investigations of local New York City government. Vitale was booted off the bench, and eventually Mayor Jimmy Walker was forced to resign.

Daniel continued to reside with his family at 2313 Belmont Avenue in the Bronx. In addition to Daniel and his parents, the home also included his sisters Frances, Catherine and Theresa, his brothers Anthony and Andrew, and Anthony's wife Olga. Two other siblings, Nicholas and Maria, lived elsewhere. On April 15, 1930, Iamascia's father Giuseppe died.

When Joseph "the Baker" Catania was shot to death in the Bronx on Feb. 3, 1931, his close friends Iamascia and Daniel DeStefano were picked up by police as material witnesses. That killing, part of the New York Mafia's Castellammarese War, remained unsolved by police.

Serving as Schultz's primary bodyguard during his war with Vince "Mad Dog" Coll (a former member of the Schultz mob), Iamascia met his end on June 18, 1931. He and Schultz stepped out of a Schultz apartment building at Fifth Avenue and 102nd Street to observe two men apparently hiding in the shadows. Believing them to be Coll gunmen, Schultz and Iamascia opened fire. The shadowy figures reportedly turned out to be police detectives who shot Iamascia in front of 1212 Fifth Avenue and apprehended Schultz.
Iamascia was rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital nearby with gunshot wounds to his abdomen and right arm. He quickly succumbed to his wounds.

Iamascia's years of loyal service and his death apparently at the hands of the police earned him one of the most spectacular funerals New York has ever seen. There were 125 cars of mourners and 35 cars of flowers during the procession of his silver coffin (valued by some at as much as $20,000) from his mother Rosina Iamascia's Belmont Avenue home, to Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church (Belmont and 187th Street) and then to St. Raymond's Cemetery. Enormous floral displays were provided by Schultz (a large wreath of lillies) and Terranova (a 15-foot-high floral gate of lillies, roses and carnations). Iamascia was temporarily interred at the private mausoleum of undertaker Daniel Scocozzo, it was reported, while his own $25,000 mausoleum was erected. Ultimately, Iamascia was laid to rest in a fairly ordinary grave in St. Raymond's.

Catania, Joseph "Baker" (1901-1931)

Born Palermo, Sicily, 1901.

Killed Bronx, NY, Feb. 3, 1931.

"Joe the Baker" Catania, a relative of the Terranova family, rose to prominence within the Bronx-East Harlem Mafia of in the 1920s and was a key figure in the Castellammarese War of 1930-31. There appears to be no significant family relationship between Catania and "Joe the Grocer" Catania, who was murdered in Brooklyn in 1902.

Sons of Antonio Catania, who ran a Manhattan bakery, Joseph and his brother James were both known by the "Baker" nickname. The Catania family entered the U.S. gradually between 1900 and 1903. The family initially settled in the Arthur Avenue neighborhood of the Bronx, then moved short distances to Hughes Avenue and then to Bassford Avenue.

Catania was arrested numerous times for assault, burglary and disorderly conduct in the mid-1920s, but the charges were repeatedly dropped. In 1928, Catania was one of seven known criminals in attendance at a Bronx banquet held in honor of Magistrate Vitale. The presence of the hoodlums led to Vitale's downfall and helped bring an end to the Jimmy Walker Administration in New York City.

By the outbreak of the Castellammarese War, around 1930, Catania was a major force in the Bronx-East Harlem underworld. Evidence of his importance: When peace feelers were sent by Catania's superior, Mafia boss of bosses Giuseppe Masseria, to Castellammarese rebel leader Salvatore Maranzano, Maranzano stated that he could not end the war yet because Joe Baker still lived. It is often said that Catania earned Maranzano's hatred by stealing his liquor shipments. However, it seems at least as likely that Catania stood in the way of Maranzano allies in the Bronx.

The 29-year-old Baker was shot six times in the head and body by a Maranzano hit squad at 11:45 a.m. on Feb. 3, 1931, in front of 647 Crescent Avenue in the Bronx. He was rushed to Fordham Hospital, where he died.

With Ciro Terranova and his allies picking up much of the tab, Catania was given perhaps the most elaborate gangland funeral in New York history. The cost was estimated at $40,000, including a $15,000 solid bronze coffin (the cost of the coffin is obviously overstated). Forty cars were needed to carry the floral displays, the largest of which - a 13-foot-high creation bearing the words "Our Pal" - was purchased by Terranova.

Terranova was apparently deeply affected by the loss of Catania (his wife's nephew) as well as a trusted aide and friend. At the funeral home, Terranova reportedly put his hand on Catania's coffin and swore to avenge his death. Maranzano spies learned of this and attempted unsuccessfully to corner and eliminate Terranova at that location.

Catania, Joseph "Grocer" (c1862-1902)

Born Sicily, c1862.

Killed Brooklyn, NY, July 22, 1902.

"Joe the Grocer" Catania of Brooklyn is remembered inaccurately as the father of younger Mafioso "Joe Baker." No documentary evidence proves the two Catanias were at all related.

"Joe the Grocer" Catania, a green grocer by day, was among the earlier Brooklyn members of the Lupo-Morello Mafia. Catania was involved in the Mafia's counterfeiting operations.

The popularly accepted story of his demise: Catania, 40, became drunk one night and began talking too much about the counterfeiting racket. He was eliminated as a Mafia disciplinary measure. Largely unaware of his link to Lupo's gang, police decided that Catania's murder was the result of an old-country feud, ended by imported killers.

Oft-repeated and erroneous legend says his corpse was discovered packed with sawdust inside a barrel at 73rd Street at the bay on July 23, 1902. That legend is the result of the confused memories of some 1900s New York journalists and the mixing of the Catania story with that of Benedetto Madonia (who was found in a barrel). A muddled 1909 news report actually referred to a murder victim named "Benedetto Catania."

News accounts of the discovery of Catania's body by four boys heading to the bay for an early evening swim do not mention a barrel. According to New York Times, New York Tribune, New York Evening World and Brooklyn Eagle articles, Catania was discovered within a potato sack lined with floor mats sewn into the shape of a large bag. His throat had been cut. His right thumb and forefinger were missing, authorities said, apparently the result of an earlier accident.

Police arrested Sicilian immigrant Vincenzo Troia for the killing of Catania, since the two men recently had quarreled over a debt. But Troia was let go when the old-country feud theory emerged.