Marshall Joseph Caifano
Encyclopedia
John Caifano (July 19, 1911 - September 6, 2003) was a Chicago
mobster who became a high-ranking member of the Chicago Outfit
criminal organization. He changed his name to John Marshall when he moved to Las Vegas.
, and Salvatore "Sam," "Momo" Giancana
. http://www.americanmafia.com/Feature_Articles_150.html. By 1929, Caifano's rap sheet included convictions for burglary
, extortion
, larceny
, and interstate fraud
. As he matured, Caifano followed other 42 Gang members into The Outfit. During this period, Caifano was considered a prime suspect
in the murder of gambler Frank Quotrocci after police
discovered a hat at the crime scene
with the initials "M.C." It was later accepted, however, that Outfit boss Al Capone
committed this murder.
gambling
operations. He was suspect
ed in about ten unsolved homicide
s, including those of disgraced Cook County
sheriff
's investigator
and suspected Outfit informant
, Richard Cain
, oil tycoon Raymond J. Ryan and, cocktail waitress Estelle Carey. In 1941, the Outfit had suspected that Carey, the girlfriend of mobster Nick Circella, was cooperating in the federal investigation of the Outfit's scheme to extort money from the Hollywood movie studio
s. When authorities discovered Carey's body, it appeared that she had been tied to a chair, savagely beaten, then set afire.
Following the death of his brother, Leonard "Fat Lennie" Caifano, in 1951, Caifano was made overseer of mob-controlled casino
s in Las Vegas, Nevada
. Caifano had a lovely wife named Darlene Caifano, who was from outside Louisville
. A "blonde-haired bomb shell," it is said that Caifano traded her off to the Godfather of the Chicago Mob, Sam Giancana, a childhood friend of Caifano's, for the "Don" chair of Las Vegas
. Caifano was a suspect in ten or more Mafia slayings during this time, including the 1953 murder of Louie Strauss.
securities from Illinois to Florida
in 1975. Those 2,000 shares of Westinghouse
stock
, worth $2 million, were stolen from O'Hare Airport in Chicago in 1968. On May 23, 1980, a federal judge in Miami
sentenced Caifano to two concurrent sentences of 20 years at the federal penitentiary in Sandstone, Minnesota
. He was released from prison in 1990. Marshall Caifano died in 2003 of natural causes.
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
mobster who became a high-ranking member of the Chicago Outfit
Chicago Outfit
The Chicago Outfit, also known as the Chicago Syndicate or Chicago Mob and sometimes shortened to simply the Outfit, is a crime syndicate based in Chicago, Illinois, USA...
criminal organization. He changed his name to John Marshall when he moved to Las Vegas.
Early years
During the mid 1920s, Caifano joined the 42 Gang, a Chicago street gang, with future Outfit members such as William Morris "Willie" Bioff, Samuel "Teets" BattagliaSam Battaglia
Samuel "Teets" Battaglia was a Chicago mobster and high-level member of the Chicago Outfit criminal organization.-Early career:...
, and Salvatore "Sam," "Momo" Giancana
Sam Giancana
Salvatore Giancana , better known as Sam Giancana, was a Sicilian-American mobster and boss of the Chicago Outfit from 1957-1966...
. http://www.americanmafia.com/Feature_Articles_150.html. By 1929, Caifano's rap sheet included convictions for burglary
Burglary
Burglary is a crime, the essence of which is illicit entry into a building for the purposes of committing an offense. Usually that offense will be theft, but most jurisdictions specify others which fall within the ambit of burglary...
, extortion
Extortion
Extortion is a criminal offence which occurs when a person unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person, entity, or institution, through coercion. Refraining from doing harm is sometimes euphemistically called protection. Extortion is commonly practiced by organized crime...
, larceny
Larceny
Larceny is a crime involving the wrongful acquisition of the personal property of another person. It was an offence under the common law of England and became an offence in jurisdictions which incorporated the common law of England into their own law. It has been abolished in England and Wales,...
, and interstate fraud
Fraud
In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation...
. As he matured, Caifano followed other 42 Gang members into The Outfit. During this period, Caifano was considered a prime suspect
Prime suspect
A prime suspect is the person who is considered by the law enforcement agency investigating a crime to be the most likely suspect.There are various reasons a person may be considered a prime suspect...
in the murder of gambler Frank Quotrocci after police
Police
The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...
discovered a hat at the crime scene
Crime scene
A crime scene is a location where an illegal act took place, and comprises the area from which most of the physical evidence is retrieved by trained law enforcement personnel, crime scene investigators or in rare circumstances, forensic scientists....
with the initials "M.C." It was later accepted, however, that Outfit boss Al Capone
Al Capone
Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone was an American gangster who led a Prohibition-era crime syndicate. The Chicago Outfit, which subsequently became known as the "Capones", was dedicated to smuggling and bootlegging liquor, and other illegal activities such as prostitution, in Chicago from the early...
committed this murder.
Las Vegas boss
Caifano would eventually establish autonomy from the Outfit for his UptownUptown, Chicago
Uptown is one of Chicago’s 77 community areas. Uptown has well defined boundaries. They are: Foster on the north; Lake Michigan on the east; Montrose , and Irving Park on the south; Ravenswood , and Clark on the west. Uptown borders three community areas and Lake Michigan...
gambling
Gambling
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods...
operations. He was suspect
Suspect
In the parlance of criminal justice, a suspect is a known person suspected of committing a crime.Police and reporters often incorrectly use the word suspect when referring to the...
ed in about ten unsolved homicide
Homicide
Homicide refers to the act of a human killing another human. Murder, for example, is a type of homicide. It can also describe a person who has committed such an act, though this use is rare in modern English...
s, including those of disgraced Cook County
Cook County, Illinois
Cook County is a county in the U.S. state of Illinois, with its county seat in Chicago. It is the second most populous county in the United States after Los Angeles County. The county has 5,194,675 residents, which is 40.5 percent of all Illinois residents. Cook County's population is larger than...
sheriff
Sheriff
A sheriff is in principle a legal official with responsibility for a county. In practice, the specific combination of legal, political, and ceremonial duties of a sheriff varies greatly from country to country....
's investigator
Detective
A detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators or "private eyes"...
and suspected Outfit informant
Informant
An informant is a person who provides privileged information about a person or organization to an agency. The term is usually used within the law enforcement world, where they are officially known as confidential or criminal informants , and can often refer pejoratively to the supply of information...
, Richard Cain
Richard Cain
Richard Cain was a notoriously corrupt Chicago police officer, made man in the Chicago Outfit and a close associate of Mafia boss Sam Giancana. Several conspiracy theorists have claimed that Cain was directly involved in the 1963 assassination of U.S. President John F...
, oil tycoon Raymond J. Ryan and, cocktail waitress Estelle Carey. In 1941, the Outfit had suspected that Carey, the girlfriend of mobster Nick Circella, was cooperating in the federal investigation of the Outfit's scheme to extort money from the Hollywood movie studio
Movie studio
A movie studio is a term used to describe a major entertainment company or production company that has its own privately owned studio facility or facilities that are used to film movies...
s. When authorities discovered Carey's body, it appeared that she had been tied to a chair, savagely beaten, then set afire.
Following the death of his brother, Leonard "Fat Lennie" Caifano, in 1951, Caifano was made overseer of mob-controlled casino
Casino
In modern English, a casino is a facility which houses and accommodates certain types of gambling activities. Casinos are most commonly built near or combined with hotels, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships or other tourist attractions...
s in Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and is also the county seat of Clark County, Nevada. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous...
. Caifano had a lovely wife named Darlene Caifano, who was from outside Louisville
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...
. A "blonde-haired bomb shell," it is said that Caifano traded her off to the Godfather of the Chicago Mob, Sam Giancana, a childhood friend of Caifano's, for the "Don" chair of Las Vegas
Las Vegas metropolitan area
The Las Vegas Valley is the heart of the Las Vegas-Paradise, NV MSA also known as the Las Vegas–Paradise–Henderson MSA which includes all of Clark County, Nevada, and is a metropolitan area in the southern part of the U.S. state of Nevada. The Valley is defined by the Las Vegas Valley landform, a ...
. Caifano was a suspect in ten or more Mafia slayings during this time, including the 1953 murder of Louie Strauss.
Arrest and Imprisonment
In March 1980, Caifano was arrested in West Palm Beach for transporting stolenSteal
Steal may refer to:* Theft, the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's freely-given consent* The gaining of a stolen base in baseball...
securities from Illinois to Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
in 1975. Those 2,000 shares of Westinghouse
Westinghouse Electric (1886)
Westinghouse Electric was an American manufacturing company. It was founded in 1886 as Westinghouse Electric Company and later renamed Westinghouse Electric Corporation by George Westinghouse. The company purchased CBS in 1995 and became CBS Corporation in 1997...
stock
Stock
The capital stock of a business entity represents the original capital paid into or invested in the business by its founders. It serves as a security for the creditors of a business since it cannot be withdrawn to the detriment of the creditors...
, worth $2 million, were stolen from O'Hare Airport in Chicago in 1968. On May 23, 1980, a federal judge in Miami
Miami, Florida
Miami is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625...
sentenced Caifano to two concurrent sentences of 20 years at the federal penitentiary in Sandstone, Minnesota
Sandstone, Minnesota
As of the census of 2000, there were 1,549 people, 580 households, and 359 families residing in the city. The population density was 292.5 people per square mile . There were 634 housing units at an average density of 119.7 per square mile...
. He was released from prison in 1990. Marshall Caifano died in 2003 of natural causes.
Further reading
- Bernstein, Lee. The Greatest Menace: Organized Crime in Cold War America. Boston: UMass Press, 2002. ISBN 1-55849-345-X
- Giancana, Sam and Chuck. Double Cross: The Explosive, Inside Story of the Mobster Who Controlled America. New York: Warner Books, 1992. ISBN 0-446-51624-4
- Ovid, Demaris. Captive City: Chicago in Chains. New York: Lyle Stuart, 1969.
- Reid, Ed. The Grim Reapers, The Anatomy of Organized Crime in America. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1969.
- Reid, Ed and Demaris, Ovid. The Green Felt Jungle. Montreal: Pocket BooksPocket BooksPocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster that primarily publishes paperback books.- History :Pocket produced the first mass-market, pocket-sized paperback books in America in early 1939 and revolutionized the publishing industry...
, 1964. - Zuckerman, Michael J. Vengeance is Mine. New York: Macmillan, 1987.
External links
- The New Criminologist: Mob Watch - Marshal Caifano from Web Archive