procedure whereby they clipped his leadership role within a couple of years. And some years later Giancana ended up murdered.
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Loesch, Frank J. (18531944): Chicago Crime Commission founder
A venerable corporation counsel, a founding member of the Chicago Crime Commission and five times its head, Frank J. Loesch coined the term
public enemy
in the 1920s. Referring to the syndicate gangsters who plagued Chicago, Loesch sought to dispel the romantic aura the yellow press of the city and nation had given gangsters.
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In the 1930s the FBI director recoined the term for such armed stickup men as John Dillinger, the Barker Brothers, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, and Machine Gun Kelly. Experienced crime observers have snickered at Hoover's description of public enemies, which never included the real enemies whose depredations looted the pockets of every person in the countrythe syndicate gangsters like Luciano, Costello, Lansky, Lepke, Schultz, Anastasia and others. Some said Hoover, who in the early 1930s and indeed for decades thereafter denied there was any such thing as organized crime, shifted the emphasis to distract public opinion from syndicate to freelance crimeand in all but a few cases, relatively trivial and overrated gangsters, stumblebums of crime, like Machine Gun Kelly. Machine Gun never fired his weapon at anyone, ever, in his career.
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Loesch saw the syndicate mobsters as the prime opponents of law and order, and combatted them with direct action. He was one of the few citizens Capone, number one on Loesch's list, either feared or respected. It was Loesch who went to Capone following the bombthrowing, April 1928 Republican primary in which professional terrorists on both sides, most Capone mobsters, murdered party workers, bombed the houses of candidates and intimidated voters. The police did nothing and appeared ready to do nothing again in the November elections.
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"Now look here, Capone," Loesch demanded, "will you help me by keeping your damned cutthroats and hoodlums from interfering with the polling booths?"
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"Sure," Capone announced benignly. "I'll give them the word because they're all dagos up there, but what about the Saltis gang of micks on the West Side? They'll have to be handled different. Do you want me to give them the works, too?"
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Loesch, not to be outdone, said he would be delighted.
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"All right," Capone said. "I'll have the cops send over squad cars the night before the election and jug all the hoodlums and keep 'em in the cooler until the polls close.'
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Capone kept his word and the police dutifully followed orders, sweeping the streets in an election day dragnet.
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"It turned out to be the squarest and most successful election day in forty years," Loesch was to say later. "There was not one complaint, not one election fraud and no threat of trouble all day."
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It was of course an awesome display of raw power by the greatest mob leader in Americabut also a tribute to the ability of Frank Loesch to exert a considerable measure of influence.
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See also:
Pineapple Primary; Public Enemies
.
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Lombardo, Antonio "the Scourge" (?1928): Capone consigliere
Nicknamed "the Scourge," Antonio Lombardo concealed a Machiavellian bent behind an urbane exterior as a wholesale grocer.
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While Johnny Torrio is credited with teaching Al Capone everything he knew, Lombardo, after Torrio's departure from Chicago in 1925, took up the role of mentor. In return, Capone made Lombardo his consigliere and utilized him as his prime adviser.
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The Scourge urged Capone to make accommodation with the Irish North Side Gang, even after Capone killers had dispatched their colorfully murderous chief, Dion O'Banion. Since the surviving O'Banions were upset about Dion's passing, Lombardo, with his noted pragmatism, told the North Siders he would arrange to have O'Banion's killers, the hit team of Albert Anselmi and John Scalise, delivered to them. Such double-dealing and treachery was justified on Lombardo's part as being for the greater good of the mob. Capone by his own standards considered himself too honorable to accept such terms. As for handing over the hit men for execution he said, "I wouldn't do that to a yellow dog." It was one case where even a barbarian like Capone would not accept Lombardo's deviousness. Yet the Scourge managed to turn the entire episode into a major underworld public relations coup, declaring it proved that "Big Al's the best buddy any of his boys could ever hope to have."
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Capone got to appreciate Lombardo almost as much as he did Torrio. He adopted court tasters to sample his food before eatinga custom Lombardo himself practiced. Ultimately, Capone installed him as president of Chicago's large branch of the Unione Siciliane, a fraternal organization which during Prohibition became a front for bootlegging and other criminal activities in Chicago. Despite his association with Capone and the fact that he fingered many men for death, Lombardo
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