Joseph Zerilli
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Joseph Zerilli (December 30, 1897-October 30, 1977), a Prohibition gangster and former founding member of the Purple Gang, would eventually head the Detroit crime syndicate controlling criminal activities from the 1930s to the 1970s.
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[edit] Early life
Born to Anthony and Rosalie Zerilli on December 30, 1897, Zerilli immigrated to the United States from his native Terrasina, Sicily at the age of 17. Working as a laborer with the Detroit Gas Company for a time, Zerilli would help found Joe and Abe Bernstein's Purple Gang with Harry and Louis Fleisher at the onset of Prohibition. During the Detroit gang wars, as the gang began to carve out its violent reputation, Zerilli began working with mobster Gaspar Milazzo. Zerilli began to expand the gangs criminal activities to include loan sharking, extortion, narcotics, labor racketeering and bookmaking which would eventually build up the Purple's criminal empire worth at least $150 million.
[edit] Rise to power
In 1930, following the murder of Milazzo by New York mobsters, members of the Purple Gang became involved in syndicate gambling operations. By the end of Prohibition, Zerilli was left to assume control of Detroit's criminal operations in 1936 (officially succeeding Joe Vitale in 1964). As one of two members outside New York's Five Families who dominated the Mafia Ruling Commission, Zerilli was highly respected in the criminal underworld and, a well known advocate for mobsters rights to control criminal activity within their own territory, Zerilli insisted prior approval for outside criminal activities to take place. Although suspected in numerous gangland slayings, Zerilli was convicted of only two criminal charges in his life, speeding and carrying a concealed weapon.
[edit] Later years
After more then 40 years, Zerilli retired from racketeering in the early 1970s and was allowed to have his son assume his position (one of the few mobsters successful to do so). In 1975 however, Zerilli was forced to return as his son was convicted of conspiring to conceal interests in a Las Vegas syndicate casino.
It was shortly after this that former Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa was released from prison and began campaigning to regain his former position despite warnings from Zerilli, through his lieutenant Tony Giacalone, to cease his activities. When Hoffa disappeared on June 30, shortly before a scheduled meeting with Giacalone outside a Detroit restaurant, although popular theory claims Hoffa was meeting with New York mobster Russell Bufalino and New Jersey mobster Anthony Provenzano, Zerilli was also a suspect in arranging Hoffa's disappearance.
At the time of his death on October 30, 1977, one official was said to have stated Zerilli had "taken more secrets to his grave then even Frank Costello."
In April 2000, grandson and Detroit syndicate soldier Nove Zerilli agreed to testify against his cousin and head of the Detroit crime syndicate Jack Tocco, the first member to turn states evidence since the organizations founding in 1921. [1]
[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
