Marshall Joseph Caifano
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Marshall Joseph Caifano [John Michael Caifano] (July 19, 1911-September 6, 2003) was a Chicago mobster and high ranking member of the Chicago Outfit.
A member of the juvenile 42 Gang with future syndicate members such as Willie Morris Bioff and Sam Battaglia [1], Caifano's criminal career dates back to 1929 including numerous convictions of burglary, extortion, larceny and interstate fraud before he and his brother Leonard "Fat Lennie" Caifano had become prominent members of the Chicago crime syndicate by the 1950s. Following the death of his brother in 1951, Caifano oversaw syndicate controlled casinos in Las Vegas, Nevada. A prime suspect in at least 10 gangland slayings including the 1953 murder of Louie Strauss and, years earlier, the murder of gambler Frank Quotrocci (which, would later be attributed to Matt Capone after police discover a hat with the initials "M.C.").
Caifano would eventually establish autonomy of his Uptown illegal gambling operations from the Chicago Outfit, during which time he would come under suspicion in an additional 10 unsolved homicides including Cook County sheriff's investigator Richard Cain, oil tycoon Raymond J. Ryan and, most known, the 1941 death of cocktail waitress Estelle Carey, the girlfriend of mobster Nick Circella suspected to be in cooperation with federal authorities during the Bioff Hollywood extortion scandal, in which she had been tied to a chair and set on fire.
Caifano had been extorting at least $60,000 from Ryan during the early 1960s, before contacting the FBI and, living under his legally changed name John Marshall, was tried and convicted of extortion in 1964 and sentenced to ten years imprisonment. Released in 1972, Caifano was later suspected in the shooting death of Cain the following year and the car bomb explosion claiming the life of Ryan in 1977.
In 1975, Caifano agreed to help transport 2,000 shares of Westinghouse stock, originally stolen from O'Hare Airport in 1968, and with five other men carried stock certificates worth $4 million from Chicago to Florida. In March 1980, he would be arrested in West Palm Beach for his involvement and, convicted of interstate transportation of stolen securities, was sentenced to two concurrent sentences of twenty years each by a federal judge in Miami on May 23, 1980. Imprisoned in the federal penitentiary in Sandstone, Minnesota. Scheduled to be released in 1991, Caifano later died in 2003. His nephew Carmine Caifano made money like his uncle Marshall in the Gambling buisness. He no longer makes money in the online casino buisness. The Gov. has put a short hault, to the internet gambling in United States.
[edit] Further reading
- Bernstein, Lee. The Greatest Menace: Organized Crime in Cold War America. Boston: UMass Press, 2002. ISBN 1-55849-345-X
- Giancana, Sam and Chuck. Double Cross: The Explosive, Inside Story of the Mobster Who Controlled America. New York: Warner Books, 1992. ISBN 0-446-51624-4
- Ovid, Demaris. Captive City: Chicago in Chains. New York: Lyle Stuart, 1969.
- Reid, Ed. The Grim Reapers, The Anatomy of Organized Crime in America. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1969.
- Reid, Ed and Demaris, Ovid. The Green Felt Jungle. Montreal: Pocket Books, 1964.
- Zuckerman, Michael J. Vengeance is Mine. New York: Macmillan, 1987.
[edit] References
- Fox, Stephen. Blood and Power: Organized Crime in Twentieth-Century America. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1989. ISBN 0-688-04350-X
- 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
