Tony Accardo

• 1. Introduction

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  In 1939, Tony Accardo stood for a photograph beside a 400-pound tuna he had caught on a fishing trip to Wedgeport, Nova Scotia. Chicago newspapers promptly christened him "The Big Tuna." Accardo was a mobster in the American Mafia, and that cheerful nickname was the least threatening thing about him.

  His arrest record dated back to 1922. Yet across a long life in organized crime, he spent at most a single night in jail. How does a man with that record climb to the top of the Chicago Outfit and stay there? What did he change about how the Outfit made its money? And what happened to the people who crossed him?

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• 2. Chicago Beginnings

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  Tony Accardo was born Antonino Leonardo Accardo on the 28th of April 1906, on Chicago's Near West Side. He was the second of six children. His father, Francesco, was a shoemaker, and his mother was Maria Tilotta Accardo. The family had emigrated from Castelvetrano, in the Province of Trapani in Sicily, only a year before his birth.

  At age 14, Accardo left school and began hanging around neighborhood pool halls. He soon joined the Circus Cafe Gang, run by Claude Maddox and Tony Capezio. It was one of many street gangs in the city's poorest neighborhoods. Gangs like this worked as farm teams, supplying young talent to the adult criminal organizations.

  Jack "Machine Gun" McGurn, one of the toughest hitmen working for crime boss Al Capone, recruited Accardo into his own crew. Tony Mazlack, of Gary, Indiana, joined at the same time and became a longtime associate. Working beside a Capone hitman would soon earn Accardo a second nickname, one that had nothing to do with fishing.

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• 3. Joe Batters

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  During Prohibition, Accardo picked up the name "Joe Batters." The reason was grim. He used a baseball bat to kill three mobsters who had betrayed the Chicago Outfit.

  In later years, federal wiretaps caught Accardo boasting about even bigger crimes. He said he took part in the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre, in which Capone gunmen allegedly killed seven members of Bugs Moran's North Side Gang. He also claimed to be one of the killers of Brooklyn gang boss Frankie Yale, supposedly on Capone's orders to settle a dispute.

  Most experts do not believe him. They think his link to the massacre was peripheral at best, and that he had no part in the Yale killing at all. That murder was most likely the work of Gus Winkler, Fred Burke and Louis Campagna.

  One killing may be a different story. On the 11th of October 1926, Hymie Weiss, a leader of the Northside gang, was assassinated near Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago. Accardo may have taken part. Within a few years Capone himself would be behind bars, and that would open the way for Accardo's rise.

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• 4. Climbing the Outfit

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  In 1932, Capone was convicted of tax evasion and sent to prison for eleven years. Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti became the new boss after serving eighteen months for the same offense. Accardo had already proved he could make money for the organization, so Nitti let him form his own crew. He also named Accardo the Outfit's head of enforcement.

  Accardo's crew built a range of rackets. These included gambling, loansharking, bookmaking, extortion, and the distribution of untaxed alcohol and cigarettes. Like every captain, or caporegime, he collected five percent of the crew's earnings as a so-called "street tax." In turn, he paid a tax to Nitti. A crew member who refused to pay, or who paid less than half, would be killed. His crew included future Outfit heavyweights Gus "Gussie" Alex and Joseph "Joey Doves" Aiuppa.

  By the 1940s, senior Outfit members were being investigated and charged. Prosecutors said they had used the threat of strikes by the unions they controlled to extort millions of dollars from Hollywood studios. Nitti was claustrophobic and dreaded a second prison term. He killed himself in 1943.

  Paul "The Waiter" Ricca had been the de facto boss since Capone went to prison. He now took the title officially and named Accardo as his underboss. The two ran the Outfit together for thirty years, until Ricca's death in 1972.

  Ricca later received a ten-year prison sentence for his part in the Hollywood scandal, and Accardo became acting boss. Three years afterward, Ricca was barred from contact with mobsters as a condition of parole. Accardo then became boss in name. In practice he shared power with Ricca, who stayed in the background as a senior consultant. Now Accardo could reshape what the Outfit did for a living.

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• 5. A Golden Era

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  Slot machines began appearing in gas stations, restaurants and bars all across the Outfit's territory, placed on Accardo's orders. In the late 1940s the Outfit also moved into vending machines, counterfeit cigarette and liquor tax stamps, and a wider narcotics trade.

  Las Vegas became a prize. The Outfit expanded there and pulled influence over the city's gaming industry away from the Five Families of New York. Accardo made sure that every legal casino used his slot machines. In Kansas and Oklahoma, where alcohol sales were officially banned, he supplied bootlegged liquor. Eventually the Outfit dominated organized crime in most of the western United States.

  He also dropped some of the riskiest work. Accardo phased out labor racketeering and extortion to limit the Outfit's exposure to prosecution. He turned its brothel business into call girl services. The result was a golden era of profit and influence.

  Staying quiet mattered as much as the money. Accardo and Ricca let flashier figures, such as Sam Giancana, draw the attention. In 1961, professional wrestlers Lou Albano and Tony Altomare came to Chicago as a Mafia-inspired tag team called "The Sicilians." Accardo persuaded them to drop the gimmick and avoid any mob-related publicity.

  Tactics like these let Accardo and Ricca run the Outfit far longer than Capone had. Ricca once said, "Accardo had more brains for breakfast than Capone had in a lifetime." The flashy Giancana, left to soak up the spotlight, would eventually become a problem.

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• 6. The Giancana Problem

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  After 1957, Accardo turned down the official title of boss. The reason was "heat" from the Internal Revenue Service. He became the Outfit's consigliere instead, stepping back from daily management while keeping considerable power and demanding ultimate respect. Giancana held the top title, but he still needed approval from Accardo and Ricca for major business, including murders.

  The arrangement eventually broke down. Giancana was a widower who lived ostentatiously, frequenting posh nightclubs and dating the singer Phyllis McGuire. He also refused to share some of the lavish profits from the Outfit's casinos in Iran and Central America with the rank and file. Many in the Outfit felt he was drawing too much attention from the FBI, which often tailed his car around the Chicago area.

  Around 1966, Giancana began a year in jail on federal contempt of court charges. Accardo and Ricca used the moment to replace him with Aiuppa. Giancana spent most of his years in exile in Mexico, until he was unceremoniously booted from that country.

  In June 1975, Giancana was murdered in the basement apartment of his home in Oak Park, Illinois. He was cooking Italian sausages and escarole at the time. Three years later, Accardo's own home would be broken into.

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• 7. Burglary and Retribution

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  In 1978, Accardo was vacationing in California when burglars entered his home in River Forest. Shortly afterward, the three suspected thieves and four people related to them were found strangled, with their throats cut.

  Law enforcement officials believed Accardo had ordered the killings in retaliation. In 2002, that theory was confirmed from the witness stand by Nicholas Calabrese, an Outfit mobster turned informer who had taken part in the murders.

  The surviving assassins were all convicted in the Family Secrets trial and sentenced to long prison terms. The house the burglars had picked was no ordinary home, as its contents show.

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• 8. Life Beyond the Outfit

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  Accardo's house on Franklin Avenue in River Forest had six bedrooms and six baths. It also held two bowling lanes, an indoor swimming pool and a pipe organ. In 1934 he had met Clarice Pordzany, a Polish-American chorus girl. They later married and had two daughters, and they adopted two sons.

  When the IRS began taking an interest in his lifestyle, Accardo bought a ranch house on the 1400 block of North Ashland Avenue and installed a vault. His official job was beer salesman for a Chicago brewery.

  Across the street from the Ashland house, in the Mars Candy Mansion, lived the physician Jim Carto. Because their last names sounded alike, people often confused Carto with Accardo, and he was respected as part of the Accardo family. Rumor held that Carto, his wife Rose, a nurse, and her brother Leon Kolanko served as Accardo's personal physicians. They may have given care off the books.

  In the late 1970s, Accardo bought a house in Palm Springs, California. He flew back to Chicago to preside over Outfit sit-downs and mediate disputes. His holdings by then included legal investments in office buildings, retail centers, lumber farms, paper factories, hotels, car dealerships, trucking companies, newspaper companies, restaurants and travel agencies.

  He spent his last years in Barrington Hills, Illinois, living with his daughter and son-in-law. On the 22nd of May 1992, Anthony Accardo died of respiratory and heart conditions at age 86. His criminal career had lasted nearly eight decades. He is buried in a crypt in the mausoleum at Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.

  Football runs through his descendants. His daughter Marie married Palmer Pyle, who played guard for the Baltimore Colts, Minnesota Vikings and Oakland Raiders. Their son Eric Kumerow played linebacker for the Miami Dolphins. Eric's son Jake was a wide receiver for five teams, most notably the Buffalo Bills.

  Eric's sister Cheryl married John Bosa, a defensive end for the Dolphins. Their sons followed into the sport. Joey played as a linebacker for the Buffalo Bills, and Nick as a defensive end for the San Francisco 49ers.

  Accardo has also appeared on screen. In the 1995 television movie Sugartime, about Giancana and McGuire, Maury Chaykin plays him. In the series Vegas, the mobster Vincent Savino, played by Michael Chiklis, calls him "Tuna" while preparing the monthly casino skim for Chicago. Most recently, Mandy Patinkin plays Accardo in the movie November 1963, dated 2026.

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