American Mafia: Chicago by Griffith William;

Author:Griffith, William;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Globe Pequot
Published: 2013-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

Tony the Gentleman

On the morning of July 8, 1925, Tony “The Gentleman” Genna received a call at his residence, supposedly from one Giuseppe Nerone, a man known as Il Cavaliere. Nerone was a part of the Genna gang but was said to be annoyed that the Genna brothers had failed to appreciate him as much as he thought they should. Tony still trusted him (or whoever it was on the phone), though, and arranged to meet him at Cutilla’s grocery store at Grand and Aberdeen.

Whoever met Tony at that store was waiting with two “torpedoes,” a gangland term for a sharpshooter, hiding around the side of the building. The man took Tony’s hand and said, “Mister Genna, my fren’,” and the two torpedoes ran up behind Tony and fired three shots into him. Charles Cutilla Sanphilippi, the grocer, thought he was being robbed and shouted “Don’t shoot me; I’ll pay!”

As Tony was raced to Cook County Hospital, suspicion immediately fell on Moran and Drucci—police had only recently learned about the dust-up between those two and Mike Genna on the morning of Genna’s death. When Assistant State’s Attorney John Sbarbaro came into Tony’s room at the hospital, Tony smiled at him and said hello.

“Who shot you?” Sbarbaro asked.

Tony began with reluctance, and perhaps a lie. “The gang,” he said. “Americans. I’d tell you if I knew, but I don’t.”

But Genna’s brother Sam begged him to give more information.

“Tell the police,” he begged. “It’s the only hope for me and my kids. Otherwise they’ll kill us too.”

Tony considered this as he lay dying. Perhaps he and his brothers had felt that Mike’s death, even so soon after Angelo’s, was just a fluke. But this sealed it—the Genna brothers were clearly marked for death. Tony opened his mouth and with what little breath he had left said, “Cavalerro,” a presumed reference to Giuseppe “Il Cavaliere” Nerone.

Nerone wouldn’t live long, but his death the next year came at the hands of a whole other gang, not the Gennas, who were now living in terror. Of the three surviving brothers, Jim was said to be in Europe, Peter was in hiding, and Sam was begging for a police escort to follow him around wherever he went. By 1926, when Nerone was killed, the Gennas were in no position to kill a man at all.

The tomb of the Genna brothers, within sight of Capone’s grave photo by author

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