10. Family Betrayal: “Big Jim” Colosimo
Vincenzo “Big Jim” Colosimo was an early 20th century Chicago mobster, who specialized in prostitution, running over 100 whorehouses in the Windy City. When his business was plagued by extortionists trying to shake him down, he called in his wife’s nephew, an NYC gangster named Johnny Torrio, to handle it. Torrio took care of the problem, and stayed in Chicago as Colosimo’s right hand man. Torrio was a criminal visionary, and when Prohibition arrived in 1920, he immediately grasped its potential. He sought to buy shuttered breweries for pennies on the dollar, to operate them illegally and supply the thousands of speakeasies, brothels, and nightclubs in Chicago and the surrounding region
Colosimo rejected the idea, reasoning that doing so would drag him into confrontations with other Chicago mobsters that he would sooner avoid, and decreed that nobody in his organization was to participate in bootlegging. Torrio went ahead and brought the breweries behind his boss’ back, and when Colosimo started getting suspicious, his underling struck first. He informed Colosimo that a shipment was due to arrive at his cafe, and when the boss went to collect it, he was shot in ambush by Frankie Yale, an NYC gangster brought to Chicago specially for the task, on May 11th, 1920.
