<Archive Obituaries> Tony Accardo (May 27th 1992)
Bill Schenley
FROM: The Chicago Sun-Times (May 28th 1992) ~
By Larry Weintraub
Photo:
http://www.tusket.com/present2/culture/tuna/famous/tony-acc.jpg
Anthony J. Accardo, 86, a West Side tough who climbed the Chicago
mob's
bloody executive ladder to become its boss of bosses, died peaceably
at
7:36 p.m. Wednesday in a St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital bed.
The causes of death were listed as pneumonia, heart failure,
respiratory failure and chronic obstructive lung disease by nursing
coordinator Carrie Quizadayan, who said those were the ailments that
brought him to the hospital about two weeks ago.
Once Al Capone's bodyguard and a suspect in the infamous St.
Valentine's Day massacre, Mr. Accardo presided over four decades of
Mafia carnage and, even in his declining years, no major mob
initiative
was undertaken without the consent of the Godfather emeritus.
Under his fierce stewardship, the Chicago "outfit" spread its
influence
into legitimate business, labor racketeering, and illicit activities
in
a vast territory that included Chicago's near and far suburbs,
northern
Indiana, southern Wisconsin and Milwaukee, Iowa, Las Vegas, Atlantic
City, parts of Florida and much of California.
Law enforcement officials agreed over the years that Mr. Accardo was
the most powerful gangster in the nation. Even during the 20 years
when
he battled heart trouble and cancer, his cohorts were too dependent on
his counsel to let him retire. He was chairman of the board until he
died.
Despite more than 30 arrests on such charges as murder, extortion,
kidnapping, gambling and contempt of Congress - and one conviction,
later overturned - the elusive Mr. Accardo accurately boasted that
he'd
never spent a night in jail.
He was as ruthless and dangerous in the early days as any hood on the
street, law officers said, but as the years went by, the thoughtful,
compulsively suspicious mobster's reputation was based increasingly on
his acumen.
A Capone pal was quoted in the late 1950s as observing, "Tony Accardo
has more brains before breakfast than Al Capone ever had all day."
Even his most implacable adversaries grudgingly came to admire him for
his intelligence, deep personal loyalties, level-headedness and sense
of honor.
"His passing marks the end of an era," observed Robert Feusel,
executive director of the Chicago Crime Commission, noting that Mr.
Accardo's late colleagues included such legendary gangsters as Paul
"The Waiter" Ricca, Murray "The Camel" Humphreys, "Greasy Thumb" Jake
Guzik, Gus "Slim" Alex and "Machinegun" Jack McGurn.
His own nicknames were "Big Tuna," a media "handle" bestowed as a
salute to his skill with rod and reel, a favorite hobby, and "Joe
Batters," a mob reference to his early preference for baseball bats as
tools of terrorism.
Antonio Leonardo Accardo was the name he received at birth April 28,
1906, in the old Italian neighborhood around Grand and Damen. He was
the second of immigrant Francisco and Maria Accardo's six children.
Mr. Accardo's formal education extended only to the sixth grade. The
training for what became his life's work was acquired in the mean
streets of the old neighborhood.
At 16, the dark-eyed youngster took his first pinch, charged with
carrying a concealed weapon. He did the muscle work of a Mafia
apprentice for a while, moving up to a mid-level soldier in the Capone
organization.
Mr. Accardo's fortunes began to rise in the 1940s after the deaths of
"Scarface" Al and his successor, Frank Nitti. He moved into gambling,
beat a 1943 indictment for running a Loop gaming house, and escaped
prosecution for other alleged violations in 1944 because he faced
induction into the Army.
But he was not inducted.
He was first rated No. 1 in organized crime here in 1950. Virgil
Peterson, then operating director of the Chicago Crime Commission,
said
Mr. Accardo was in charge of mob interests in real estate, liquor
firms
and financial institutions.
Also in 1950, a U.S. Senate crime investigations committee run by the
late Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-Tenn.) described him as the No. 1 boss of
interstate crime.
Federal investigators reported that Mr. Accardo's heart problems first
occurred in 1977.
The grizzled mafioso was fond of boasting that he had never spent a
night in jail. Despite many arrests, several indictments and one
conviction, that record remained technically intact, although in
February, 1945, he was held for more than 24 hours in connection with
a
murder.
Mr. Accardo's sole conviction came on federal charges of income tax
evasion in 1960, but the conviction was overturned by the U.S. Court
of
Appeals. He was acquitted in a 1962 second trial and stayed out of
jail.
After his acquittal, he and his wife, Clarice, moved out of the
limelight into the quiet luxury of a mansion in River Forest.
He later moved to a scaled-down, fortress-like ranch home in the
western suburb. That home was the target of a 1978 break-in and the
mob
blamed a gang of professional burglars, supposedly angry over being
ordered to return the loot from a million-dollar jewelry store job.
Over the next months, the bodies of all five gang members turned up
tortured with ice picks and stuffed into car trunks.
He faced perhaps his toughest test in the mid 1980s, when Congress and
federal law enforcers angled for a couple of years, trying to land the
Big Tuna.
Mr. Accardo was subpoenaed to testify before a U.S. Senate
subcommittee. He tried to duck the appearance and repeatedly claimed
Fifth Amendment protection against incriminating himself. The
committee
responded by immunizing him against criminal prosecution for anything
he might say. If Mr. Accardo had continued to uphold the mob code of
silence by taking the Fifth, he would have been clapped into jail for
contempt. of Congress.
The old fox did appear but deniedany knowledge of outfit activities.
Despite exhaustive efforts to prove otherwise, the government struck
out. All their informants had been executed.
In recent years, the mob chief wintered in Indian Wells, Calif., near
Palm Springs. Summers were spent with family in a Barrington Hills
condo.
Survivors include his wife; two daughters, Marie Judith Kumerow and
Linda Lee, and two adopted sons, Anthony Ross and Louis Accardo. One
of
his grandsons is Eric Kumerow, a Chicago Bears linebacker.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
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Photo: http://www.policygame.net/gallery/Tony_Accardo.JPG
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Tony Accardo; Reputed Chicago Mob Boss
FROM: The Los Angeles Times (May 28th 1992) ~
(Associated Press)
Tony (Big Tuna) Accardo, reputedly the longtime head of the Chicago
mob
and a former associate of gangster Al Capone, died Wednesday night. He
was 86.
Accardo died of heart and lung diseases, said Carrie Quidayan, night
nursing coordinator at St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital Center.
Accardo was arrested many times on allegations ranging from murder to
extortion to kidnaping. But he was adept at avoiding criminal
prosecution and boasted that he never spent a night in jail.
In testimony before Congress in 1984, Accardo acknowledged he had long
been friendly with a number of organized-crime figures in Chicago. But
he said he had "never been a boss."
He was given the nickname Big Tuna by a Chicago newspaper reporter
after having his picture taken with a 400-pound tuna he caught off
Florida. But Accardo was known by his colleagues as Joe Batters,
apparently out of respect for his skills with a baseball bat.
William Roemer, a retired FBI agent who tracked Accardo's career for
years, said recently he could never charge Accardo but believed he was
one of the triggermen in the St. Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago
in
1929. Shortly after the shooting, Accardo was seen in the lobby of
Capone's headquarters, the Lexington Hotel on Michigan Avenue, with a
machine gun.
Accardo, the son of a shoemaker, was born Antonio Leonardo Accardo in
1906 in Chicago's Little Italy. He dropped out of school in the sixth
grade and was arrested for the first time at age 15.
Accardo said he first met Capone at a racetrack, but denied
longstanding stories that he was once Capone's chauffeur-bodyguard and
that he had inherited Capone's criminal empire.
In 1931, shortly after Capone was jailed for income tax evasion,
Accardo reputedly was given control of the Capone family's gambling
operations in Florida and Chicago. In 1943, Accardo's close friend,
Paul (the Waiter) Ricca, allegedly assumed control and appointed
Accardo underboss.
Accardo allegedly took over as mob chief when Ricca retired in 1968,
although he deferred to Ricca until he died in 1972.
Accardo was convicted in 1960 of tax evasion and sentenced to six
years
in prison, but the conviction was overturned.
He was a three-time target of the U.S. Senate's permanent subcommittee
on investigations. He repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment guarantee
against self-incrimination.
At his last appearance before the committee in 1984, he denied any
role
in the Chicago mob. "I have no control over anybody," Accardo
testified.
In recent years, Accardo divided his time between Palm Springs and a
palatial estate in the Chicago suburb of Barrington.
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Photo:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/graphics/photos/gangsters_outlaws/family_epics/genovese1/3-2-Tony-Accardo.jpg
