Louis Campagna

Louis "Little New York" Campagna (* 1900 near Palermo, † May 30, 1955 Biscayne Bay , Florida ) was an American mobster in the La Cosa Nostra and acted as a high-ranking member in the Chicago outfit .

Life

Early years

Campagna was born outside of Palermo and immigrated to the United States as a child . As a teenager he became a member of the Five Points Gang , which proved to be a breeding ground for many later gang bosses such as Al Capone , Lucky Luciano, etc.

In 1919 Campagna was convicted of a bank robbery in Illinois and served his sentence in Pontiac, Illinois at the Pontiac Correctional Center there . In April 1924, he was on probation released but already six months later he had to because he had failed to fulfill its obligations. However, he was released again in November 1924.

Al Capone

In 1919 Al Capone had gone to Chicago and supported John Torrio there , who had requested him from New York. No sooner had Campagna been released than he followed Capone's call and became his bodyguard .

In the long argument between Capone and the North Side Gang , Campagna stood the test of time; during the hot phase of the argument in the Lexington Hotel in Chicago, where Capone was staying, he slept in a cot in front of his suite so that he could intervene at any time.

Campagna was considered ruthless and unpredictable; he shied z. B. not to besiege a police station where Joe Aiello was. After it was discovered that Aiello had tried to poison Capone, Capone put a $ 50,000 bounty on him. The police had also investigated themselves and arrested Aiello to question him. When Campagna found out where Aiello had been arrested on suspicion of murder in November 1927, he and twenty armed gangsters went to the police station to wait for Aiello to be released.

Campagna and two other gang members were noticed and arrested; Faced with Campagna armed with a handgun, he was locked in a cell next to Aiello, where he took the opportunity to threaten his fellow Sicilian in their native language. Aiello offered to sell everything and leave Chicago with his family within 15 days. Campagna did not respond to this. The conversation had been overheard by a civilian police officer in another neighboring cell and Aiello was released outside Campagna.

On October 23, 1930, Aiello was dead; he had been shot in front of his apartment; the later autopsy found 59 bullets in his body. Nobody could be charged with the murder.

Campagna is also a potential (co-) perpetrator in the murder of Frankie Yale on July 1, 1928; Yale, who apparently - like Capone and Campagna - originally a member of the Five Points Gang - had tried to rascal Capone. In a so-called “ drive-by shoot ”, Yale was the target of countless .45 caliber projectiles and a Thompson submachine gun . This murder was the first time in New York City where a Thompson was used for such an act, as in Chicago.

Infiltration of the unions

After Capone had to go to prison for tax evasion in 1931 , the management of the outfit rearranged itself and, under Paul Ricca , Campagna rose further in the ranks of the Mafia family.

In 1934 he invested his own money in two venues in neighboring Cicero , a city that was also dominated by the outfit. His invested US $ 1,500 alone is said to have given him an income of US $ 75,000 per year.

From 1935 Campagna took part in the infiltration of the trade unions; in his case it was particularly the Bartenders and Beverage Dispensers Union . When the case came to court in 1943, however, everything came to nothing because the witness no longer repeated his incriminating testimony. Campagna and Co should z. B. have siphoned about $ 900,000 from the reserves of a branch (Local 1248) of the Retail Clerks International Protective Association .

Associated the outfit as Willie Bioff and Charles Brown were in the film industry of Los Angeles and Hollywood penetrated; They were secured by full members of the outfit such as Johnny Roselli , Charles Gioe and Campagna. By the early 1940s, Campagna was to get around $ 1 million out of the US film industry.

At the end of the 1930s, however, the activities slowly blew up and various charges arose. Apparently Bioff wanted to get out and turned to Campagna. However, he made it clear to him during a visit to prison that he would not get out alive.

On October 18, 1941, Gioe, Bioff, Brown and Louis Campagna were indicted; Bioff and Brown did not stick to the Omertà and testified as Pentiti against mafia giants such as Paul Ricca , Philip D'Andrea , Johnny Roselli , Lou Kaufman, Frank Nitti and Gioe. This enabled Bioff and Brown to reduce their sentences; shortly after Bioff's testimony, the deposed Nitti committed suicide.

When Campagna was indicted in 1943, Bioff was a key witness .

Imprisonment

On March 18, 1943, the trial of Campagna and other mobsters of the Outfit began; on December 22, 1943, Campagna were found guilty and a week later began serving his sentence at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary .

In August 1947 - barely three years in prison - Campagna was released on parole. Apparently Anthony Accardo had bribed someone in the responsible district of the prosecution, who then accelerated the process.

This accelerated probation by Campagna and others sparked a storm of protest in Chicago. The Justice Department went to court to have the decision reversed, but the attempt was unsuccessful.

Campagna returned to Chicago and resumed his work under the new boss Sam Giancana .

Last years

In the early 1950s, Campagna was scheduled to testify before the United States Senate committee on several occasions . Campagna did not provide any useful information.

Campagna usually spent his final years on his two farms in Fowler, Indiana and Berrien Springs, Michigan , or at his home in Berwyn, Illinois .

On 30 May 1955, Campagna was on the fishing boat of his lawyer in the Biscayne Bay from Florida . While bringing a 13-14 kg fish on board, Campagna suffered a heart attack and died.

The Catholic Church refused to allow the family to be buried and the funeral ceremony was held at Campagna's house in Berwyn. The body was interred in Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois .

literature

• John Binder: The Chicago Outfit . Arcadia Publishing, 2003, ISBN 0-7385-2326-7 .
• Sam and Chuck Giancana: Double Cross: The Explosive, Inside Story of the Mobster Who Controlled America . Warner Books, New York 1992, ISBN 0-446-51624-4 .
• John Kobler: Capone: The Life and Times of Al Capone . Da Capo Press, New York 2003, ISBN 0-306-81285-1 .
• Thomas A. Reppetto: American Mafia: A History of Its Rise to Power . Henry Holt & Co., New York 2004, ISBN 0-8050-7798-7 .
• Robert J. Schoenberg: Mr. Capone . HarperCollins Publishers, New York 1992, ISBN 0-688-12838-6 .
• Carl Sifakis: The Mafia Encyclopedia . Da Capo Press, New York 2005, ISBN 0-8160-5694-3 .
• Carl Sifakis: The Encyclopedia of American Crime . Facts on File Inc., New York 2001, ISBN 0-8160-4040-0 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Louis Campagna - Done in by a Grouper by Allan May: The American Mafia (English)
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} "Capone Gangster Dead in Florida."; Associated Press, May 31, 1955
3. ↑ Frankie Yale ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ Part 1 Virgil Peterson statements to the Kefauver Committee on July 6, 1950 The American Mafia (English)
5. ↑ "The Guileless Gangster" ( Memento of the original from January 3, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. by Allan May Crime Magazine 
6. ^ "The Big Pardon" The New Criminologist
7. ↑ Part 1 Kefauver Committee Interim Report # 3 May 1, 1951 ( Memento of the original from May 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. American Mafia 
8. ↑ Corngold, Joe Organized Crime and Criminals
9. ↑ "Mob Leaders Bury Campagna In Lavish Funeral" ( Memento of the original from July 15, 2003 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Midwest Mafia.com