Genna (crime family)

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The Genna crime family was one of the major players in the Chicago gangland wars of the 1920s. It consisted of six Sicilian brothers: "Bloody Angelo", Antonio, Mike ("The Devil"), Peter, Sam, and Vincenzo ("Jim"). The six Genna brothers were known to be so violent and hot-tempered that they became known as the Terrible Gennas.

When Prohibition became federal law in 1920, the Gennas, like many other criminals around the country, found that there was plenty of money to be made in bootlegging. They managed to get a federal license to manufacture industrial alcohol, which they would later re-distill and sell illegally. They eventually came to control the area known as Little Italy (situated immediately west of The Loop), with a three-story warehouse on Taylor Street serving as their headquarters.

When demand for the Gennas' cheap rotgut booze outgrew supply, Henry Spignola (a lawyer whose sister Lucille would eventually marry Angelo Genna) devised a plan by which stills would be placed in households throughout Little Italy. The family would hire "still watchers," who would earn $15 a day. The Gennas' power in Little Italy grew; they eventually backed the area's Republican Party boss, "Diamond Joe" Esposito, and had many policemen on their payroll.

Soon, the Gennas had a surplus of booze due to their successful basement distilleries, and began marketing it outside of their designated territory. This produced a clash with the North Side Gang of Dion O'Banion, who resented the Gennas' reduction of the price of their product in order to compete with that of O'Banion. Since both the North Siders and the Gennas were members of a huge Chicagoland bootlegging combine orchestrated by South Side boss Johnny Torrio, O'Banion complained to Torrio about the Gennas' tactics. While Torrio and local Unione Siciliana boss Mike Merlo managed to get the Gennas (Torrio's allies) to back off a bit, Torrio refused any concrete help to O'Banion. Undeterred, "Deanie" hijacked a shipment of Genna whiskey, and later double-crossed Torrio in a North Side brewery acquisition deal. Torrio and the Gennas decided to kill O'Banion; the hit was carried out on November 10, 1924 by Unione Siciliana national director Frankie Yale and assassins John Scalise and Albert Anselmi. The Genna family was represented in the hit by Mike Genna, who drove the getaway car for the three Italian gunsels.

After their deaths, all six of the Genna brothers would be laid to rest at Mount Carmel Cemetery in the Chicago suburb of Hillside, Illinois, joining other organized crime figures such as Al Capone.