Alderman, Israel "Ice Pick Willie": See Ice Pick Murders.
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Alex, Gus (1916 ): Chicago mob leader
The myth of the all-Italian Mafia is soon dispelled when one looks at the Chicago mob founded by Al Capone. Its ability to absorb other ethnics started with Capone, who readily took in and trusted everyone, from WASPs and Jews to Poles, blacks and others. Thus Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik, a Jew, could rise to what could only be described as the number two position in the outfit; and each of Capone's successorsNitti, Ricca, Accardo, Giancanagave Guzik the widest leeway and trust. The same was true of Gus Alex, Guzik's protégé and role successor with the mob. A Greek, Gussie Alex ran the Loop vice rackets for the family for years and worked the liaison between the mob and various supposedly respectable figures in the business and political world. He also has been identified as the man who handled the Las Vegas skim for the Chicago family. The Swiss government came to recognize him as the man who salted away Chicago money in that Alpine banking haven.
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Alex, an avid skier, made annual trips to Switzerland until the mid-1960s, when the Swiss tabbed him as a courier bearing loads of underworld cash and barred him from their country for 10 years. It was clear that the Swiss were being pressured by the U.S. government. However, Alex had his own political artillery. Coming to his aid were Illinois' then senior senator, Republican Everett M. Dirksen, and the state's then senior congressman, Democrat William L. Dawson.
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Both informed the Swiss what a swell guy Gussie really was. Though he had often been arrested, he had never been convicted. (Gussie's record included more than two dozen arrests for bribery, assault, manslaughter and kidnapping. He was identified as a suspect in several murders, two victims contributing deathbed statements; three other individuals, who testified that Alex had threatened them with death, were later killed. Alex also appeared before the McClellan Committee and took the Fifth Amendment 39 times. Dirksen had not been quite as forgiving to "Fifth Amendment communists.")
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Despite Alex's reluctance to talk about himself, Dirksen and Dawson clearly agreed he had "a good reputation."
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Alex's influence with politicians, public officials, members of the judiciary and labor leaders made him extremely valuable to the Chicago Outfit. In fact, as death, retirement, arrest and flight from jurisdiction played hob with much of the Chicago mob's leadership in the 1970s, there was pressure on Alex to take up the reins. Alex begged off, spending more and more time in Florida and insisting he wanted to retire. Instead, he simply kept performing his high-level role. Had Gussie accepted, it would certainly have been rather disconcerting to those writers and professional informers who insist the Mafia is strictly Italian. Perhaps they would have been forced to observe that, after all, it was the Greeks who first settled in Sicily.
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Law enforcement officials had long abandoned any hope of putting Alex away. But they finally convicted him of extortion, thanks to the evidence provided by a longtime Outfit member, Lenny Patrick, who wore a wire in hopes of winning a shorter sentence for himself. In 1994 Alex was sentenced to 15 years and eight months with no chance of parole. At 78, it was likely that Alex, till then a true teflon mobster, was not likely to survive the jail term, which had a special fillip that he had to pay $1,400 a month for the cost to the taxpayers for his prison cell.
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Alibis and the Mafia
On the last day of his life, October 4, 1951, Willie Moretti granted Albert Anastasia a special favor: He let Anastasia borrow his chauffeur, Harry Shepherd, to drive him to a hospital in Passaic, New Jersey, where Anastasia was to have his back x-rayed. While Anastasia was at the hospital, Moretti, conveniently minus his driver, was lured into Joe's Elbow Room in Cliffside Park by several of Anastasia's gunners. There Willie Moretti was shot to death.
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The police most certainly could not blame Anastasia for the murder; he had an iron-clad alibi. Indeed, Anastasia was the kind of careful executioner who always covered his tracks. As a rule of thumb, some experts determined that when Anastasia was absolutely in the clear personally he was almost positively deeply involved.
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Like fedoras and fancy cars, airtight alibis are practically synonymous with the Mafia. Al Capone would almost invariably be in Florida taking the sun whenever a particularly noteworthy hit took place in Chicago. He was there when reporter Jake Lingle was murdered, when Frankie Yale was killed in Brooklyn, and when the St. Valentine's Day Massacre occurred. "I get blamed for everything that goes on here," Capone once moaned, having returned to Chicago to face extensive police grilling.
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Sometimes Capone did his killings personally when he felt particularly affronted by his victims-to-be, but he, like most bosses, usually farmed out the chores. The murder of Big Jim Colosimo allowed Capone's mentor, Johnny Torrio, to seize control of the Colosimo organization and start syndicating Chicago crime. Both Torrio
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