Gangsters in Southwest Michigan

Acknowledgments The author expresses his appreciation to Steve Turner, Jill Rauh, and Lennert van t Riet. Please send queries and corrections to Critchleyd@hotmail.com. This article is reprinted in revised and expanded form from the Spring 2008 issue of the Chronicle, a quarterly magazine of the Historical Society of Michigan. The article was also run in the Summer 2008 issue of the On the Spot Journal. The web formatting of this article was performed by Thomas Hunt, New Milford, CT, USA, Copyright © 2008. No use of the web-formatted article outside of the American Mafia history website ( onewal.com ) is permitted. Photo credits: Domingo Family Photos courtesy of Benton Harbor Public Library; Benton Harbor photo courtesy of Grinnell Library Association. About the Author David Critchley received his doctorate from Liverpool John Moores University, in England. He is the author of a 1984 bibliography on organized crime, a 2006 article on the Castellammare War, and the forth-coming book: The Origin of Organized Crime in America: The New York City Mafia, 1891-1931 (Routledge Advances in American History, 2008).

End Notes

¹ Illustrating the problems confronting the small Berrien County police forces in curbing the locality’s use by Prohibition gangsters, Benton Harbor Police Chief Thure Linde resigned in January 1930 because of the modest pay on offer, and because of “difficulties in the police department.” (News-Palladium, 1.22.30) Fred Alden, his St. Joseph counterpart, was discharged that November due to his failure to modernize the police department, a flaw exposed by the “clean getaway” Fred Burke was allowed to make after murdering Charles Skelly (News-Palladium, 11.17.30)

² News-Palladium, 7.29.31.

³ News-Palladium, 7.18.31.

⁴ New York Times, 7.26.31.

⁵ Chicago Tribune, 9.14.28, News-Palladium, 9.10.28.

⁶ News-Palladium, 9.13.28.

⁷ Laurence Bergreen, Capone: The Man and the Era, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994, p. 293.

⁸ Nick Gentile, Vita di Capomafia, Rome : Editori Riuniti, 1963, p. 96.

⁹ Robert J. Schoenberg, Mr. Capone, New York : HarperCollins, 1992, p. 184.

¹⁰ New York Times, 9.10.28.

¹¹ News-Palladium, 10.16.29.

¹² Daniel Waugh, Egan’s Rats, Nashville, TN.: Cumberland House, 2007, p. 253.

¹³ News-Palladium, 12.16.29.

¹⁴ News-Palladium, 7.11.40.

¹⁵ News-Palladium, 12.16.29.

¹⁶ William Roemer, an experienced FBI agent, named the St. Valentine’s Day killers as Jack McGurn, John Scalise, Albert Anselmi and Tony Accardo - but not Burke. Roemer argued, “These were the four top hitters in the Capone stable in 1929.” (William F. Roemer, Accardo: The Genuine Godfather, New York: Donald I. Fine, 1995, p. 50).

¹⁷ Waugh, Egan’s Rats, p. 259, News-Palladium, 12.17.29.

¹⁸ Waugh, Egan’s Rats, p. 106.

¹⁹ News-Palladium, 3.27.31.

²⁰ News-Palladium, 4.27.31.

²¹ Bergreen, Capone, p. 318.

²² Some of this information has appeared in David Critchley, “Buster, Maranzano and the Castellammare War, 1930-1931,” Global Crime, Volume 7 Number 1 (February 2006) pp. 46-51. Kindly reproduced by permission of Global Crime and Taylor and Francis.

²³ U.S. Senate, Organized Crime and Illicit Traffic in Narcotics: Report, 1965, p. 12. This perspective on the War and its effects is comprehensively refuted in the author’s own book The New York City Mafia, 1891-1931, New York: Routledge, 2008.

²⁴ David Leon Chandler, The Criminal Brotherhoods, London: Constable, 1976, p. 158.

²⁵ Ralph Salerno and John S. Tompkins, The Crime Confederation, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1969, p. 151.

²⁶ In Dorothy Gallagher’s, All the Right Enemies, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988, p. 219; David Evanier, “Buster from Chicago,” Southwest Review, Vol. 91 No. 2, 2006, pp. 195-215; Allan May, “‘Buster from Chicago’ – Revealed?” www.americanmafia.com, 6.10.02; Patrick Downey, Gangster City, New Jersey: Barricade Books, 2004, pp. 159-160.

²⁷ It was said that Buster “came from Chicago and that the mob had killed someone in Buster’s family.” Buster was about 23 years of age. Mob turncoat Joseph Valachi supplied history with another important but until now overlooked clue to Buster’s identity in that he was “Castellammarese and that’s why the old man got him to join in with us.” This tantalizing data turned out as valid, but was useless without a name to attach to it.

²⁸ Bonanno, Joseph with Sergio Lalli, A Man of Honour, London : Andre Deutsch, 1983, p. 119.

²⁹ Bonanno, A Man of Honour, p. 105.

³⁰ His grave’s headstone in New York states that Domingo was born on March 29, 1910, while Domingo’s Castellammare birth certificate gives April 1910.

³¹ Born 1893 in Castellammare.

³² Robert J. Kelly (ed.) Handbook of Organized Crime in the United States, Westport, CT.: Greenwood Press, 1994, p. 181; Chicago Tribune, June 22-25, 1914.

³³ Russell M. Magnaghi, Italians in Michigan,East Lansing: State University Press, 2001, p. 20.

³⁴ Berrien County Historical Association, “Fede, Famiglia, e Amici: The Italian Experience in Berrien County 1900-2004,” pp. 4-5.

³⁵ After Tony Domingo married Marie DiMaria in February 1918 in Benton Harbor.

³⁶ U.S. Congress, Enforcement of the Prohibition Laws of the United States, 1931, p. 29.

³⁷ News-Palladium, 8.9.29.

³⁸ News-Palladium, 1.1.26.

³⁹ News-Palladium, 8.24.26.

⁴⁰ News-Palladium, 2.7.26.

⁴¹ News-Palladium, 4.17.29.

⁴² News-Palladium, 4.29.27.

⁴³ News-Palladium, 10.24.27.

⁴⁴ News-Palladium, 10.22.27.

⁴⁵ News-Palladium, 10.24.27.

⁴⁶ St. Joseph Herald-Press, 10.22.27; News-Palladium,10.22.27; Berrien County death certificate no. 2836.

⁴⁷ News-Palladium, 8.30.29; Cook County death certificate no. 197 (1929).

⁴⁸ Chicago death certificate no. 1296 (1929).

⁴⁹ State of Illinois County of Cook Inquest on the Body of Antonio Domingo (8.31.29) Inquest no. 95 of August.

⁵⁰ News-Palladium, 8.30.29 The place was a hangout for Circus Café Gang members of the high caliber of Claude Maddox, Jack McGurn and Tony Accardo.

⁵¹ 1930 New York State census.

⁵² Maranzano was gunned and stabbed to death on September 10, 1931 in his Park Avenue, Manhattan, office.

⁵³ Joseph Valachi, “The Real Thing” (U.S. National Archives, Record Group 60) pp. 333a, 333e; Organized Crime and the Illicit Traffic in Narcotics: Report, p. 16; Carl Sifakis, The Mafia Encyclopedia, New York: Da Capo Press, 2005; Downey, Gangster City, p. 160; May, “ ‘Buster from Chicago’ – Revealed?”

⁵⁴ New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, 5.31.33; Manhattan death certificate no. 13044 (1931).

⁵⁵ New York Times, 6.4.33.

⁵⁶ New York Times, 8.16.30.

⁵⁷ Joseph Valachi, “The Real Thing” (unpublished autobiographical manuscript in the U.S. National Archives) p. 321.

⁵⁸ New York Herald, 11.6.30, New York Times, 11.6.30.

⁵⁹ Valachi Hearings, 1963, pp. 167-172.

⁶⁰ Valachi Hearings, 1963, p. 192, Valachi, “The Real Thing,” p. 323.

⁶¹ Valachi, “The Real Thing,” p. 327.

⁶² Valachi, “The Real Thing,” p. 333.

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