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20 Significant Mafia Hits

Khalid Elhassan February 19, 2019 23 min

8. The Failed Hit That Made Al Capone Chicago’s Boss

After seeing to the rubbing out of “Big Jim” Colosimo, Johnny Torrio took over his deceased relative’s criminal empire, and built it into what became the Chicago Outfit. Within a few years, Torrio was the city’s biggest mobster, and its most powerful criminal kingpin, with Al Capone as his chief underling. As the Outfit expanded its operations from its base in Chicago’s South Side, it came into conflict with the Irish-American North Side Gang. After initial attempts at peaceful coexistence failed, Torrio ordered the murder of North Side boss Dean O’Banion in November, 1924, sparking a bloody gang war.

North Side gangsters responded by ambushing Torrio outside his apartment with a fusillade of gunfire. He miraculously survived, despite taking bullets to the jaw, lung, abdomen, groin, and legs. Severely wounded, Torrio was spared from a finishing shot to the skull when the killer’s gun jammed. The near death experience frightened Torrio, and convinced him to get out while he still could. In 1925, he handed control of the Chicago Outfit to Al Capone, and moved to Italy.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.