attempted murder of a musicians' union business agent. Also a fop, Samoots was the proud owner of a wardrobe that included 200 monogrammed silk shirts. Once, gun in hand, he chased after a Chinese laundry wagon driver who had returned one of his shirts scorched. Samoots was ready to plug the Asian man but evidently was overwhelmed with an uncharacteristic burst of humanity. He spared the man but shot his delivery horse.
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For a time Samoots functioned as the chief bodyguard for the notorious Terrible Gennas, a mafioso family that controlled much of Little Italy's homemade moonshine production. As the Genna brothers were exterminated or scattered one by one, Samoots moved up in power. In 1925 he seized control of the huge Chicago chapters of the Unione Siciliane. The organization had been a lawful fraternal group at the turn of the century, but from then on, it came more and more under the control of Mafia criminals. Chicago boasted the largest number of branches of the Unione, whose 40,000 members represented a potent force as well as an organization ripe for looting through various rackets, such as the manipulation of pension funds. For years the Unione had been dominated by Mike Merlo, who used his influence to keep peace among the various criminal forces, but after his death in 1924 the Unione presidency became a hot seat. Bloody Angelo Genna took over as president, only to be murdered in May 1925.
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Capone, himself a non-Sicilian and ineligible for membership, sought to put in his consigliere, Tony Lombardo, as president. He made plans for the next election. Samoots didn't see what elections had to do with the matter. Together with two confederates, Eddie Zion and Abe "Bummy" Goldstein, Samoots marched into the Unione's offices and declared himself elected. Capone raged and got even more furious as Samoots proceeded to gouge his booze and other operations.
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Old-fashioned mafiosi, in Capone's view, were greed personified. He realized that old Mafia traditions had to be eradicated, a position that eventually brought him closer to Lucky Luciano in New York.
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Meanwhile, happily, Samoots had many other enemies. The O'Banion Irish gang of the North Side, still mighty despite the murder of their leader, did not care for Samoots's moves against them. On November 13, 1925, Samoots, planning to go to the opera with his fiancee, Rose Pecorara, stopped off at a Cicero barbershop for a shave. He was reclining in the chair with a towel over his face when two gunmen, reputedly Jim Doherty and Schemer Drucci of the North Siders, stormed in. One of the gunners opened up with four shots and, incredibly, missed with each of them. The startled Samoots catapulted out of the barber's chair and tried to dance around the shots of the second gunner. The second assassin hit Samoots with each of his four shots, and the hit men walked out, their victim bleeding profusely. Samoots was rushed to a hospital and lived long enough to request that he marry his fiancee from his hospital bed. He expired before the ceremony could get started.
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Within a short time Samoots's two aides, Zion and Goldstein, were also murdered, and, having preserved democracy, Capone was able to put across his man Lombardo to take charge of the Unione.
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Since Samoots's murder was the second barbershop slaying in a very short time, nervous barbers with a gangster clientele ceased the hot towel treatment and positioned their chair to face the shop entrance. The Chicago custom did not make its way to New York, where a little over three decades later Albert Anastasia fell victim in a barber chair ambush.
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Amberg, Louis "Pretty" (18981935): Independent racketeer and killer
When Pretty Amberg, often said to be the worst Jewish criminal ever raised in America, departed this world, it was hard to tell who had done the grisly chore. One theory holds that the Lucky Luciano-Meyer Lansky combination, realizing there was no way Amberg could fit into a syndicate concept of crime, had him "put to sleep" to allow organized crime to function in some organized fashion.
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If the mob didn't kill Amberg it was only because someone else may have beaten them to it. Surely
everybody
hated Prettywith the possible exception of newspaper columnist and short story writer Damon Runyon. In a number of short stories, a thinly disguised Amberg stuffs victims into laundry bags in an ingeniously trussed-up form that causes them to strangle themselves to death. In reality, Louis Amberg is believed to have murdered at least 100 people; yet, as he deposited corpses all over the streets of Brooklyn, he was never so much as hit with a littering violation.
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Amberg came to America from Russia with his mother and father, a fruit peddler, and settled in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. By the age of 10 little Louis was peddling fruit on his own. He had a unique style of selling, going from door-to-door, kicking until someone opened up. With his hands filled with fruits and vegetables, he'd shove them forward and snarl: "Buy." Somehow, after staring into the wells of madness that were little Louis's eyes, people bought.
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By the age of 20 Pretty was the terror of Brownsville, not only because he was mean, but also because he was very ugly. In fact, a representative from Ringling Brothers offered him a job with the circus as the missing link.
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