The Career of a Syndicate Boss

Abstract

Tony Accardo, boss of the Capone syndicate, was born of Italian immigrant parents in Chicago in 1906 and was reared in a poor neighborhood. His first conflict with the law occurred before he was sixteen. Before reaching twenty-one, he was an associate of the Circus Café gang members who became affiliated with the Capone syndicate and were suspects in the St. Valen tine's Day Massacre in Chicago in 1929. When only twenty-four years of age, Accardo was arrested with "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn and charged with carrying concealed weapons. The following year his name was on the Public Enemy list. He was married in 1934; he and his bride were accompanied on their honeymoon by a police sergeant who, twenty-five years later, toured Europe with him. In the 1930's and 1940's Accardo operated lucrative gambling joints. He played a leading role in obtaining the early release on parole of the Capone mob leaders who had been convicted in the $7 million moving picture extortion conspiracy case in 1943, and he became the syndicate boss. As leader of the Capone organization, Accardo was in volved in a fierce war over the racing information service. In 1949, he muscled into a $26 million a year gambling syndicate in Florida; in the same year, following violence in Chicago's South Side policy racket, Accardo and Jack Guzik were paid $278,000 by the operators of the Erie-Buffalo policy wheel. Accardo's interests include Nevada gambling, and he has exerted influence in naming, as well as ousting, the labor relations counsel for the Chicago Restaurant Association. From 1940 to 1955, inclusive, Accardo reported, for income tax purposes, a total of $1,155,524.17, an annual average of $72,220; over 43 per cent of it was listed as coming from one gambling establishment and from unidentified miscellaneous sources. When the Internal Revenue Service exerted pressure on Accardo to prepare com plete returns, he suddenly appeared on the payroll of a beer sales firm at a salary of $65,000 a year, although he performed no work. Prosecution was initiated for an income tax violation; he was convicted but on appeal the conviction was reversed. Accardo continues his way of life, enjoying as much as ever the luxury of his twenty-two room mansion in suburban River Forest and his contempt for the government, its officials, and the public.