Born Antonino Leonardo Accardo on April 26, 1906, in Chicago, Illinois, to a shoemaker and
his wife. Accardo dropped out of grade school and
quickly adapted himself to a life a thug and a criminal. Accardo rose through the ranks as a worker for Al Capone
who allegedly played a part in the Valentine's Day Massacre. Prosecuted many times by the government, Accardo, unlike many high-profile mobster, would deny any ties to the mob and avoid all jail completely, completing his life as a free man and dying of natural causes.
Mr. Accardo grew up in an Italian neighborhood on
the West Side of Chicago, the second of six children born to Francesco Accardo, an
immigrant shoemaker, and his wife, Maria, both of whom emigrated from
Sicily, Italy, during the late 1890s.
At the age of five, Tony
began grade school at the James Otis Elementary School, not far from
where he lived. But by 1920, when Accardo was 14 years old, school no
longer held any fascination for the young boy. His parents, Francesco
and Maria, were not impressed with his progress, either. As was a common
practice at the time, Accardo's family filed a delayed birth record
affidavit stating that Tony was born in 1904, which made him the legal
age to drop out of school and begin work. His first job was as a
delivery boy for a florist, and he later worked as a grocery clerk. By most account, those two jobs probably
constituted his only legitimate employment.
After two years of working, on March 22nd, 1922, Tony was arrested for a motor vehicle
violation. This started what would be the first of a long list of
criminal activity for Accardo. In 1923, Accardo was fined $200 for
disorderly conduct at a local pool hall where prominent mob figures were
known to hang out. He was then convicted of disorderly conduct two more
times in the next year. It was then that his violent antics caught the
eye of notorious mobster Al Capone.
At this age in his life, Accardo got involed with the Circus Cafe Gang,
named after the group's local hang out, The Circus Cafe. Other members of
the gang included Claude Maddox, "Tough Tony" Capezio and Vincenzo De
Mora, later known as "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn. This group of thugs would eventually become hooked with Al Capone and the Chicago syndicate.
While still a young man before before his twenty even, Tony used his legitimate job as a truck
driver and delivery boy to tote illegal moonshine for Capone from
family-run stills in Little Sicily to speakeasies around Chicago. With his foot in the criminal door, Accardo progressed to mugging people, pick
pocketing, burglary, steeling cars, armed robbery and assault. In the next
several years, Accardo was in trouble with the authorities more than
eight times,yet avoiding jail time on every account.
Tony's best friend and fellow Circus Gang member, Vincenzo
DeMora, was soon promoted to Capone's syndicate, where he was
employed as a hitman. As Capone's syndicate grew, he enlisted yet more
soldiers, and turned to McGurn for new recruits. McGurn suggested Tony
Accardo who, through his smart thinking and pride in his work and his gang, soon earned a place in the Capone gang as a bodyguard for Capone.
After taking a step up to Capone's group, Accardo was implicated in the 1929 St. Valentine's Day massacre. On February 14 of
that year, Accardo and four other member disguised themselves as
policemen. Then, they allegedly raided the SMC Cartage Company garage on
North Clark Street, killing six of seven rival gang members inside. The
seventh died later in hospital. Although law enforcement officials
could never tie Accardo to the murders, he was seen in the lobby of
Capone's headquarters with a machine gun.
Accardo was no stranger to violence being involved in other violent murders, including
the brutal killing of two traitors to the Outfit that he beat to death
with a baseball bat and then stuffed them in a trunk, earning him the nickname "Joe Batters." He was also part of a hit on a former associate of Capone's named Frankie Yale, Yale
was gunned down in Brooklyn, New York, by machine-gun fire.
After Capone was jailed for income tax evasion in 1931, Accardo
was reputedly put in charge of his own gang, which helped control the Capone family's
gambling operations in Florida and Chicago. That same year, Accardo
made No.7 on the crime commission's Public Enemy list.
In 1943,
Accardo's other close friend, Paul "the Waiter" Ricca, allegedly assumed
control of the entire Capone crime family, and appointed Accardo as
underboss. Watching other bosses go to jail over racketeering and
extortion, Accardo encouraged Ricca to pull the organization away from
these methods of income. Instead, he moved the outfit into slot and
vending machines, counterfeit cigarettes, illegal wire services, and
global narcotics smuggling. When Las Vegas expanded, Accardo made sure
the casinos used only his slot machines and that bookmakers used his
wire service to supply racing information to other bookies. His business
decisions made the Chicago Syndicate millions in profits.
Accardo
allegedly took over as mob chief when Ricca retired in 1968, but he
would always deny it, saying that he was never involved with the mob.
Federal wiretaps and other sources of intelligence, however, revealed
that Accardo was deeply tied to the Chicago Syndicate.
Retirement and Death
After Accardo's retirement, IRS agents began to probe deeply
into his lavish income and its potential sources. He was indicted in
1960 of tax evasion, and was subsequently convicted, sentenced to six
years in prison, and fined $15,000. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in
Chicago later overturned the conviction, however, citing prejudicial
media publicity that occurred during Accardo's trial.
Accardo was also a three-time target of the U.S. Senate's permanent
subcommittee on investigations into the mob, but the boss invoked the
Fifth Amendment guarantee more than 172 times, preventing
self-incrimination. At his last appearance before the committee in 1984,
he denied any role in the Chicago mob. "I have no control over
anybody," Accardo testified. He did acknowledge his friendships with a
number of high-profile organized-crime figures in Chicago, but said he
had "never been a boss."
Before his death, Accardo divided his time between Palm Springs and an
estate in the Chicago suburb of Barrington. He died May 27, 1992, of
heart and lung disease, making him one of only a few mobsters who died
of natural causes. Accardo was entombed in the mausoleum at Queen of
Heaven Cemetery in the suburb of Hillside in Chicago, Illinois.
