Charles Carrollo

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Charles "Charley the Wop" Carollo [Carrollo] was a Kansas City mobster and later crime boss.

An enforcer for John Lazia during the 1930s, he was with Lazia when he was murdered after driving him to his hotel at 3 AM on the night of July 10, 1934. Carollo was still in the car when Lazia was ambushed by an unidentified "hit team" which gunned down the crime boss in a hail of machine gun fire. While it is unclear if Carollo was involved in Lazia's death, Carollo would succeed him as boss of the north side on behalf of the "Pendergast Machine". While the murder remained unsolved, Carollo and newly appointed police chief Otto Higgins became involved in criminal activities.

Although later federal investigations were hindered by Carollo's intimidation tactics, which ranged from having service refused to federal agents to being shot at, treasury agents under Sec. of Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. were eventually able to convict Carollo, Higgins and Thomas J. Pendergast on charges of income tax evasion on October 20, 1939 and imprisoned at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas City. He was eventually deported following his release in 1954 and lived in Palermo, Sicily until his death [1].

[edit] Further reading

  • Bernstein, Lee. The Greatest Menace: Organized Crime in Cold War America. Boston: UMass Press, 2002. ISBN 1-55849-345-X
  • Capeci, Jerry. The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Mafia. Indianapolis: Alpha Books, 2002. ISBN 0-02-864225-2
  • United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Governmental Affairs. Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Organized Crime and Use of Violence: hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. 1980. [2]
  • United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Governmental Affairs. Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Organized Crime: 25 Years After Valachi: Hearings Before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. 1988. [3]

[edit] References

  • Kelly, Robert J. Encyclopedia of Organized Crime in the United States. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000. ISBN 0-313-30653-2
  • Sifakis, Carl. The Mafia Encyclopedia. New York: Da Capo Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8160-5694-3
  • Sifakis, Carl. The Encyclopedia of American Crime. New York: Facts on File Inc., 2001. ISBN 0-8160-4040-0
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