Accardo thought that Evans was getting too big, siphoning off too much of the gross profits. Accardo at the time was a member of the Executive Council of the Chicago Syndicate. Joey Glimco, as head of this phase of the Syndicate’s legitimate enterprises, was given the task of “finding a solution to Fred Evans.”
In 1959, Evans was picked up by several hoods, tossed into a car, driven to a lonely section of town, yanked out of the car, shoved against a brick wall before three gunmen who pointed sub-machine guns at him.
Evans pleaded for his life. “I’ll get out!” he cried. “I’ll leave town. I’ll never come back. Don’t kill me! Don’t! Please don’t kill me!”
The three men grimaced, pointed their weapons, fired in unison, the heavy slugs tearing Evans’ body and face to shreds. The three men got back into the car in a leisurely way, leaving Evans’ bloody remains on the dirty street, parts of his flesh pasted against the brown bricks of the walls, hurled there from the force of the three machine guns.
Investigators who checked into the killing located a drawer in a desk in Evans’ office in which they found various notations of the financial transactions. One notation read: “Total resources — $11,000,000.” Three safety deposit boxes contained tangible assets in the form of negotiable stocks and bonds valued at more than $500,000! Evans also had holdings out of the state which included two luxury hotels in Los Angeles.
The new owners of Evans’ enterprises were Tony Accardo, Murray Humphreys, and Joey Glimco. A similar takeover occurred when Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel was executed in Los Angeles and the Chicago mob took over the plush Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. And this despite the fact that Siegel was a close associate for many years of Meyer Lansky. At the time, Lansky was the honored dean and counselor to every family in the Mafia Syndicate on financial matters. This emphatically denies the fable of a brotherhood in Mafia circles.
Accardo rose to power immediately after Frank Nitti’s death. When Al Capone was released from a federal prison he was ordered to serve an additional year in the Cook County Jail on an old beef. It was Nitti, through his connections in the city, who arranged that because he wanted Capone out of the way. The mystery man of the underworld, Gaetano Ricci, learned of it.
Ricci, whose home base was New York, was a giant of a man. Six feet six inches tall, weighing over 225 pounds, he made a formidable appearance. Nowhere in any of the many articles and books written by outstanding writers of fact crime is he mentioned. Yet, he was known to the police of New York, Miami, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Las Vegas, and other major cities in the country. He was respected and revered by the underworld.
Ricci came to Chicago, his heart full of anger against Nitti. He talked with Accardo, at the time second in command. He spoke with a great deal of passion.
“It is enough!” Ricci thundered. His voice shook. “Did not Al suffer enough? Why should Nitti have done this to him?” He pounded the desk in front of him. “I leave him in your hands. I am confident, my friend, that you will solve this matter satisfactorily.”
Accardo solved it satisfactorily. How he did it remains unknown to this day except to those who were actually connected with the Nitti episode. However, if Nitti was wily, a schemer, artful, then Accardo was his opposite. Accardo was direct. He moved in a straight line, without deviation toward the objective. If he were rough, completely abysmal and amoral, he was nonetheless possessed of great innate intelligence. His record dates back to 1922. The police department of Chicago lists him under File #D-83436, with more than two score arrests on charges of carrying concealed weapons, extortion, kidnaping, murder, and gambling. He was convicted only once, on a charge of income tax evasion and was sentenced to six years in prison and fined $15,000. He appealed the conviction and was acquitted in a second trial.
He has never spent a single night in a jail cell, and that says a great deal for his shrewdness. It is on record he was a prime suspect in more than a dozen murders, among them the killings of Joe Aiello, Mike Heitler, a notorious brothel keeper, Jack Zuta, ousted police captain William Drury, Attorney Marvin Bas, James Ragen, owner of Continental Press which the Chicago mob took over after Ragen’s death, and as one of the gunmen in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
Even when he was second in command to Nitti he was held in higher esteem by Jake Guzik, the bag man for the Syndicate, and Charlie and Rocco Fischetti, cousins of Capone, than Nitti. Murray Humprheys, it will be recalled, said it succinctly, “Tony is an ignoramus — but a very, very shrewd ignoramus.”
Accardo was cited for contempt of Congress in the Kefauver hearings when he took the Fifth Amendment 144 times before the McClellan Committee rather than reveal any information on mob activities. He escaped a jail term from that contempt charge too.
He is known to be involved in more than a score of enterprises outside the workings of the Syndicate. His interests, in which he has invested heavily, include trucking, coal, lumber, bakery, laundries, restaurants, hotels, travel agencies, currency exchanges, pieces of Las Vegas casinos, Miami hotels and motels. He is known to have considerable amounts invested throughout the states of Florida, Nevada, Arizona, California, and in France, Italy, and South America. It is impossible to estimate his wealth.
From the time he rose to absolute power in 1943, at the time of Nitti’s death, until he turned over the reins to Sam Giancana in 1956, he amassed a fortune, according to the most informed sources, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. At this writing he is chairman of the Syndicate’s board of directors and one of the top men in the nation’s hierarchy of the Mafia.
The rise to the top in the Mafia is not achieved easily. It is too often done by the route of mayhem and murder, but more by a firm loyalty to those above, and by the law of Omerta, the law of silence. Accardo followed all three principles devotedly.
After Capone was convicted and sent to prison, and Nitti was named the number one man by Al, there was a depression in the nation. It was as evident in Chicago as it was elsewhere in the country. World War I veterans were selling apples on practically every corner in Chicago’s Loop, the main business section. Money was as tight as a miser’s fist.
But not with the Syndicate. Gambling joints were all over the city, more than two score of them, ranging from bookie joints that would take any kind of action from a buck to ten thousand dollars. In a place like the Gym Club in the Loop as much as a half million dollars changed hands on a Saturday when baseball, football, or basketball was the game of the season.
Brothels were everywhere. The doxies, street hustlers, call girls, from the fifty-dollar and hundred dollar a trick broads right down to the two-buck whores, all paid tribute to the Syndicate. In many of the houses run by the Syndicate there were as many as fifty girls working around the clock. It brought back the days of the red light district in the First Ward that ran from 17th Street to 22nd Street and from Wabash to Clark Streets known then as the South Side levee. There were 130 whorehouses, by actual count, in the district, all of them running wide open. Someone had to police these places.
The three top men, Paul “The Waiter” Ricca, Cherry Nose Gioe, and Frank Diamond, felt it beneath them. Nitti assigned Accardo, who was the number four man. Accardo took to the duties of keeping the whores and bookies in line like a fish takes to water. He browbeat the pimps, madams, and bookies. When necessary, he used his brute force to demonstrate the necessity for complete cooperation and honesty in the matter of an honest count in the proceeds.