From The Archives - August 2014

Antonio Leonardo Accardo, better known as “Joe Batters” and "Big Tuna” became the day to day boss of the Chicago Outfit in 1947 to ultimately become the final Outfit authority in 1972. As a leader, he moved the Outfit into new operations and territories, greatly increasing its power and wealth during his tenure as boss.

A year after Accardo was born his parents emigrated from Castelvetrano, Sicily to The United States. After being expelled from school at fifteen Accardo joined the Circus Café gang run by Claude Maddox and Tony Capezio.  In 1926, Jack “Machine Gun” McGurn, one of the toughest hitmen of Outfit boss Al Capone, recruited Accardo into his crew.

During Prohibition, Al Capone gave Accardo the nickname “Joe Batters” due to his skill at hitting a trio of Outfit traitors with a baseball bat at a dinner Capone held just to kill the three men. Accardo went on to save Capone’s life multiple times, such as when two men attempted to murder Capone while he was eating lunch. Accardo earned the nickname “Big Tuna” after a fishing expedition where he caught a giant tuna.

In later years, Accardo boasted over federal wiretaps he participated in the infamous 1929 St. Valentine’s Day massacre in which, allegedly Capone gunmen murdered seven members of the rival North Side Gang. Accardo claimed that he was one of the gunmen who murdered Brooklyn, NY gang boss Frankie Yale, again by Capone’s orders. However, many experts today believe Accardo had only peripheral connections with the St. Valentine’s Day massacre and none whatsoever with the Yale one. However on October 11, 1926, he may have participated in the assassination of then North Side Gang leader Hymie Weiss near the Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago.

When Capone was convicted on tax evasion and sentenced to prison for 11 years in 1932, Frank “The Enforcer” Nitti became the new outfit boss. By this time Accardo had established a solid record making money for the organization, so Nitti let him establish his own crew. He was also named as the outfit’s head of enforcement. Accardo soon developed a variety of profitable rackets, including gambling, loansharing, bookmaking, extortion, and the distribution of untaxed alcohol and cigarettes.

Under Accardo’s power, in the late 1949’s, the outfit moved into slot machines and vending machines, counterfeiting cigarette and liquor tax stamps and expanded narcotics smuggling. Eventually the Outfit dominated organized crime in most of the western United States.

To reduce the Outfit’s exposure to legal prosecution, Accardo phased out some traditional organized crime activities, such as labor racketeering and extortion. Due to the “heat” from the IRS, Accardo turned over his official position as boss of long-time, money-making associate Giancana in 1957. Because of Giancana’s lavish lifestly Accardo feared he was attracting too much attention from the FBI, who was forever “tailing” his car throughout the greater-Chicago area.

Around 1966, Giancana was replaced with street-crew boss Joseph “Joey Doves” Aiuppa. In June 1975, Giancana was assassinated in the basement of his home on Oak Park, Illinois. In 1978, while Accardo was vacationed in California, burglars entered his River Forest home. Shortly after, the three suspected thieves and four related persons were found strangled and with their throats cut. Prosecutors at the time believed Accardo, furious that his home had been violated, had ordered the killings. In 2002, this theory was confirmed on the witness stand by Outfit turncoat Nicholas Calabrese who had participated in all of the subsequent murders.

Despite an arrest record dating back to 1922, Accardo spent only one night in jail or avoided the inside of a call entirely. Accardo passed away on May 22,1992 due to congestive heart failure at the age of 86.

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