Cosa Nostra News

EXPANDED In 1961, Tony Accardo, the then boss of the Chicago Outfit, likely came close to ordering a hit on longtime Milwaukee boss Frank Balistrieri after Balistrieri sanctioned the murder of a nightclub operator and raised so much heat from law enforcement that "the hoodlum element couldn’t get away with anything and aren’t making any money." Tony Accardo, the "Big Tuna" of the Chicago Outfit. This is according to newly released information from FBI records that are now part of the Chicago Sun-Times’ The FBI Files database, as the newspaper recently reported . Of course Sam (Mooney) Giancana was the front boss of the Outfit in 1961, as Accardo, for decades, used front bosses to shield himself from law enforcement. Balistrieri defused the situation with Chicago -- and continued breathing until natural causes finally ended his life in 1993 at age 74. Accardo died the year before at age 86. Giancana, who rose to  the top in the 1950s, was murdered in 1...

UPDATED Joey (the Clown) Lombardo, the wisecracking jokester who was am ong the Chicago Outfit’s most colorful, and deadly, figures , asserts his innocence and decries repressive prison conditions in a letter written in his supermax cell in Florence, Colo. Joey the Clown Lombardo In the letter, which was released this week, Lombardo, nearly 90, writes that his body and memory are both failing. (He’s withstood treatment for throat cancer and has had his gall bladder removed and stents put in.) Sentenced to life in prison about a decade ago when he was convicted in the landmark Operation Family Secrets trial, Lombardo once again claims he was wrongfully convicted and asks U.S. District Chief Judge Ruben Castillo to appoint him a new lawyer. In the letter, reportedly his first public correspondence since his sentencing in 2009, he notes: “My mind comes and goes. All my teeth are out and waiting for the prison to give me false teeth … over 3 months no false tee...

Chicago's new FBI chief issued a wake-up call to the Chicago Outfit during an interview with an ABC affiliate this week. He vowed that the Chicago FBI office will "refocus on organized crime." "The Chicago Outfit? We haven't forgotten about you," Chicago Special-Agent-in-Charge Jeffrey Sallet, pictured, told ABC. Sallet was previously stationed in New Orleans, New York, and Boston; he is considered an expert in mob investigations. He began his career in New York, where his work included the investigation of the Bonanno crime family as part of the 2011 Mafia Takedown effort coordinated by the FBI in which more than 100 mobsters were nabbed. He also worked on the capture of Boston's notorious crime boss and long-time fugitive James "Whitey" Bulger, also in 2011. "Mob guys or Outfit guys—whatever you want to call them—are resilient," Sallet said in an earlier report. "Where there is an opportunity to make money, t...

Tony Accardo, aka "Joe Batters", was nicknamed by Al Capone for his skill at pummeling people. On September 7, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, who were famously paired in the Michael Mann film Heat , will be reunited, with Mann, for a panel discussion to be hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the Beverly Hills' Samuel Goldwyn Theatre. The discussion will follow a viewing of a new digital restoration of the 1995 film. As was reported earlier this year,  Heat  is due for a prequel by Mann. The acclaimed filmmaker has also stated that he'd approved a true-crime novelization for his new publishing label, Michael Mann Books, to detail the story of Chicago Outfit bosses Tony Accardo and Sam Giancana . For the book, the debut project for Mann's imprint, the director has teamed up with Don Winslow , the bestselling author of The Cartel "to co-create an original novel about the complex relationship between two Organized ...

Christopher Valente, standing on left, plays "The Waiter." With other members of The Making of the Mob: Chicago. The Making of the Mob: Chicago  premiered earlier this month on AMC and airs weekly on Monday evenings at 10/9 p.m. (EDT), including tonight. The show, which this year focuses on Chicago boss Al Capone , among other Outfit bosses and heavyweights , was produced by Stephen David Entertainment, which produced the first installment,  last year's The Making of the Mob: New York . Last year's Making of the Mob  was criticized for featuring actors who played mobsters -- instead of only emphasizing people with expert knowledge, such as former mobsters, authors, reporters and historians. Still, it received high ratings based on Neilson data.

Johnny No Nose.... This has been quite a year for the Chicago Outfit, which saw an historical transition in July in terms of the guy in the big seat.  Johnny “No Nose” DiFronzo , suffering from health problems, was replaced. Meanwhile, Gangland News noted that The Chicago Outfit has been facing a full-court press from law enforcement involving the  FBI  and the Cook County prosecutor's office. Four members of the Outfit's Cicero crew were recently convicted on federal extortion charges. Frank Orlando and Robert McManus  lost at trial on charges of conspiring to extort money for Mark Dziuban, then vice president of sales for American Litho, a printing company in Carol Stream.

Sam Giancana (born Salvatore Giangana; June 15, 1908 – June 19, 1975) had a wealth of nicknames—"Momo," "Mooney," "Sam the Cigar,"—during his decades’ long membership in the Chicago Outfit , of which he was nominally boss from 1957 to 1966. Giancana is widely remembered today for his “connections” to JFK through Judith Campbell Exner, allegedly one of his mistresses. Giancana was murdered under mysterious circumstances after a police detail assigned to protect him was called off. Sam Giancana's murder remains unsolved. This cast a spotlight on many suspects, none more controversially than the CIA, with whom Giancana supposedly had a relationship back in the 1960s. Allegedly, the mobster, and other underworld figures, assisted the CIA in an effort to depose Cuban strongman Fidel Castro, though none of the agency's machinations proved successful. (Castro outlasted just about everyone who'd tried to oust him.) Giancana's death, ...