Sam Cardinelli
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Samuele Cardinelli [Salvatore Cardinella] (September 3, 1868 - July 15, 1921) was a Chicago mobster, extortionist, and leader of Cardinelli Gang during the 1910s.
With lieutenants Nicholas "The Choir Boy" Viana, only age 18, and Frank Campione, Cardinelli led one of the most dominant Black Hand gangs in Chicago prior to Prohibition. Robbing hundreds of hotels, speakeasies, and illegal gambling parlors throughout the decade, the Cardinelli's terrorized Chicago's Little Italy through a six-year bombing campaign between 1915 to 1918. This murderous campaign resulted in 20 deaths and hundreds wounded (Viana was suspected in at least 15 murders alone). Cardinelli's organization would remain the leading Italian-American criminal organization in the city, including the Johnny Torrio-Al Capone gang, during the early years of Prohibition.
Cardinelli was arrested by the Chicago police Homicide Squad for the 1919 murder of saloon owner Andrew P. Bowman and sentenced to hang on October 11, 1920. Following a decision by the US Supreme Court on March 4, 1921 supporting the ruling, Cardinelli was executed on July 15, 1921, with Viana and Campione.
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[edit] In popular culture
- The Cardinelli Gang was the subject of author W. R. Burnett's 1929 novel Little Caesar, which was adapted into the famous 1930 film Little Caesar, starring Edward G. Robinson.
- Ernest Hemingway wrote a short story about Cardinelli's execution, entitled "Chapter XV", which was published in 1938 in the First Forty-Nine Stories
[edit] Further reading
- Asbury, Herbert. The Gangs of Chicago: An Informal History of the Chicago Underworld. New York: Alfred A. Knoff, 1940. ISBN 1-56025-454-8
- Flowers, R. Barrie and H. Loraine Flowers. Murders in the United States: Crimes, Killers and Victims of the Twentieth Century. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2001. ISBN 0-7864-2075-8
[edit] References
- 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
- Asbury, Herbert. The Gangs of Chicago: An Informal History of the Chicago Underworld. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1986. ISBN 1-56025-454-8
