Customer Reviews

Accardo: The Genuine Godfather

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

William F. Roemer, Jr., may have known Chicago mob boss Anthony Accardo better than anyone outside the Outfit. That's because Roemer spent much of his career as an FBI agent trying to put Accardo in prison. He never succeeded, but over the years he developed a grudging respect for the head of Chicago's organized crime family. And in this memoir of the mob during Accardo's reign, Roemer pays just tribute to his old adversary on the strange terms that inevitably govern relationships between career criminals and the cops who try to put them away for good. Roemer acknowledges Accardo's genius, his love for his family and willingness to run the Chicago Outfit with as little bloodshed as necessary (still a veritable river, though). At the same time, Roemer makes sure we know how ruthless and merciless Accardo was and how he never blinked at torture and murder as management tools to keep his organization under control.

Tony Accardo deserves much closer historical scrutiny than he has received heretofore. He started his career in organized crime as a protege of Jack McGurn, one of the Outfit's top enforcers. McGurn is credited both by historians and mob legend as the man who planned and executed the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, a multiple killing that finished off Al Capone's last real challenge to underworld dominance in the Chicago area. Roemer speculates that Accardo may have been one of the gunmen who carried out the hit. If nothing else, Accardo proved to be a very proficient enforcer himself and this, combined with his obvious intelligence, paved the way for his rapid rise through the ranks. By the mid 1940s, Accardo was the head of the former Capone organization, a position of power he would only relinquish upon his death in the 1990s.

Accardo may have been the most dangerous mobster of them all. He had a genius for every aspect of organized crime life and he molded the Outfit in his image. Under "Joe Batters" the Outfit took a much lower public profile than it had during Capone's flamboyant reign. It also diversified its operations and expanded its turf to include most of the U.S. west of the Mississippi River. Accardo constantly shifted strategies and resources to cope with changing conditions in the underworld and, after the mid-1950s, the increasing pressure of federal law enforcement to dismantle the Outfit for good.

Roemer had a front seat to most of this. A good intelligence officer, he came to know Accardo and many of his lieutenants on a personal basis. I think it is a tribute to Roemer's own sense of fairness that he acknowledges the good he found in some of these men at the same time he remorselessly exposes the evil they committed. Roemer also goes out of his way to make sure we understand that many of the Outfit's members made sure their own children never followed them into the life. A man who obviously loves his own family, Roemer recognizes that instinct in the men he hunted and honors it. It may strike us as odd or even perverse, but in the small world of the Outfit and those honest lawmen trying to break it, it's a stand-up behavior.

Roemer has been called onto the carpet by other reviewers of this book for injecting himself too much into the narrative. I understand the limitations this imposes on the book's narrative, limitations which ultimately undermine it as a close account of Accardo's career and the history of the Chicago mob between the end of the Capone era and today. But someone without a vested personal interest in that history will someday provide us with the narrative account we really want.

I say take Roemer's book on its own terms -- an autobiography viewed through the lens of the life of Chicago's greatest criminal ever. You'll come away with a vivid impression of both men and a feel for how the terms of adversarial engagement between mobsters and lawmen create their own strange set of ethics and morals over time. In that sense, Roemer has presented us with a very important sociological source document.

I find it amusing that every gangster biographer wants to elevate his subject to the level of being the most important figure ever in the history or organized crime. But one would expect a certain level of objectivity from a former FBI agent, even one who self-promoted himself for years as Chicago's number one Mob-buster. Roemer's admiration for adversary Tony "Joe Batters" Accardo is understandable in a way. Clearly one of the most untouchable mobsters of all time (though it is not true that he never spent a night in jail), Accardo's seventy year criminal career with no standing convictions shows he was no dumb hood. All the same, Roemer goes out of his way to inject Accardo into everything that ever happened in Chicago. His account of the Prohibition years is so far off the mark it's hilarious. He has Tony Accardo saving Capone from Hymie Weiss in the Hawthorne attack, which contemporary accounts credit to Frank Rio. He places Tony in New York with Jack McGurn, Anselmi and Scalise, and "a guy named Rio Burke" as the hitters of Frankie Yale in that city's first Tommygun killing. Strange, as I met the late Rio Burke and SHE never once mentioned handling a machine gun though she was a friend of Al Capone. Tony, McGurn, Anselmi and Scalise and "possibly Fred Burke" (in whose Michigan hideout the machine guns were found) are claimed to have been the St. Valentine's Day Massacre gunmen, on the basis of some bugged conversations Roemer claims to have heard years later and vaguely alludes to. More credible suspects, such as Gus Winkeler, who later ran Moran's former North Side territory for Capone and was highly publicized in the early Thirties, and Raymond "Crane-Neck" Nugent, who was once arrested at Capone's Miami estate, are dismissed as insignificant nobodies on the bare fringe of the Capone mob. Roemer goes on to have Accardo accompany Capone to the famous Atlantic City Mob convention, again at the expense of number one bodyguard Frank Rio, and conveniently oversteps the Philadelphia arrest and conviction of Capone and RIO by moving the meeting ahead one year to 1930. I find it amazing that a guy like Roemer could spend all that time investigating the Chicago Mob and display such little knowledge of its early years. No wonder the FBI took so long in catching up with organized crime! Roemer should have either stuck with the Fifties/Sixties time-frame he knew firsthand or else done some competent research on the pre-World War II era. As for the claim that Accardo had "more brains before breakfast than Al Capone had all day," well, like I said earlier, Tony's successful life in crime is impressive, and owes much to his low-key style but one doesn't need to distort history to emphasize this. And, when it all comes down to it, Capone was the guy who built the Chicago Mob and the guy who brought Accardo up through the ranks as well. Successful as he was, Tony was only following in Al's footsteps like so many others.

I think the main problem I had with this book was the numerous factual errors in it. I could forgive his overstating Accardo's importance to Chicago organized crime (Its a well known fact among most real crime historians that Accardo spent most of his time as the Waiters front boss) because all biographers tend to do that. But when he states things like Joe Profaci and Joe Columbo being bosses on the commission and showing up at a 1961 wedding when Columbo was an eventual herir to Profaci's family can't be forgiven. Things like that make you wonder if the author knew anything at all.

This book would have rated a 10 if only Roemer would stop patting himself on the back throughout this and all of his books. We know he was a boxer, we know he went to Notre Dame, we know he's one of the best name dropper's of our time and we know what a great FBI agent he claims to have been. Give it a rest Bill and just tell the story! Anyone who grew up in Chicago and paid attention to the comings and goings of the Outfit will be fascinated by the book. It's amazing that Tuna went out from old age and not in the traditional mob exit. If you didn't know Accardo's background you would have thought he was just the guy next door.

After reading roemers bio of "spilotro" i was a little dubious about roemers litera- cey skills.But after a few chapters i couldnt put it down.Roemers research is absolutely phenominal and how he captures the ambience of the old chicago town is quite wonderfull.This book covers nearly a century of chicago organized crime and all the major players from capone right up to the mid nineties are here.His description of Tony Accardo couldnt be more nailed on, and after reading about this unique godfather you realise just how useless some of the modern todays lcn bosses really are when this guy who died at the grand old age of 86 never spent one night in jail as more and more of his people were falling from grace all ove america he continued to stand tall and pul the strings.If you are getting tired of reading about the new york families then read this you will not be dissapointed.r

I grew up in the Chicago area, and I would hear Tony Accardo's name in the news from time to time, so when I found this book I was interested in knowing about the man that I heard about. Roemer a former FBI agent in Chicago , dealt with Accardo and the whole Outfit in Chicago. Roemer has given us a novel that gives us some insight in the the life of Accardo from being a bodyguard for Al Capone to his rise of the boss of the Outfit. It is a good read, but Accardo was a mobster who never spent a night in jail, and avoided the limelight, so how much is really known about him? Accardo wasn't a fool that is why he stayed at the top for so long and watched the others who came after him such as Sam Giancanna, be more flamboyant and go down the tubes. The book shows him to be a fair person, but it also shows us how he could resort to violence and order killings when he thought they were necessary. I feel if you are a fan of organized crime books, this is a must for you to read, and it will be a welcome change of pace than reading another book about some New York family

I have only read 200 pages of this book but I have found it to be an interesting read, not only of Tony Accardo and the Chicago Outfit but of Chicago social/political history, ripe with corruption and criminal intrigue, making the early Colosimo/Torrio/Capone crew possible, paving the way for Accardo. This book also pokes holes in the myth that New York is the most powerful mob stronghold in America. This book shows the Windy City to be a mob all in itself, with the combination of the Outfit and the public officials from cops to judges to elected politicians. A good read. I can only rate it 4 stars now because I've only read about half the book. I do recommend it for those interested in the alliance of organized crime and politics.

This has got to be one of the greatest LCN books ever. This book will give you great detail about the man who who was "the man". You will read about how Tony Accardo grew from a low level associate of the mob when was in the Circus Cafe gang to how he became a soldier under Capone and then a capo and then underboss and then boss and then consigliere. Tony Accardo is the most powerful boss ever. Dont listen to the bad reviews. Roemer did a great job researching this one and writting it. Its very well written. The fact is that if Roemer didnt write this book or his others then nobody would know nothing about the Outfit. Buy this book. If you are a true organized crime fan then you will like this book. If you are just a wannabe fan then you will not like it.

Finally there is a book about the man that was the driving force behind the Chicago Outfit.While Sam Giancana has the fame and if often credited as being the Outfit's boss in the 60's, little is there any mention of the man who put him there.This is a great overall book with plenty of history on the man who the law couldn't lay a hand on.If ever there was a "successful gangster" it was Accardo, and this book explains why.This is also a great book to famialize yourself with Chicago's major organized players from Al Capone down to Joe "The Clown" Lombardo.

Tony Accardo was the most successful mob boss of all time.At the top for 48 years!To put that in perspective Al Capone was boss for 5 years(1925-30)and John Gotti from 1985 to his death in 2002,but more than half of that he was in jail.Accardo did it all,from young apprentice of Capone favorite "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn to shooter in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre(according to Accardo's and Murray Humphrey's secretly recorded conversations in the 1950's and 60's)to Las Vegas kingpin to running the infamous Teamster's union(bet Accardo could tell you what happened to Jimmy Hoffa).This guy was responsible for literally hundreds of deaths,many of them very brutal,but reigned almost completely free from police interference save a few nuisance i.r.s. cases and congressional hearings.As others write,Roemer has a rather scattershot way of writing(it's even worse if you've read his other books as he likes to repeat his stories)but almost all info(except his Notre Dame mentions and his extreme love of God)is mob related and ain't that what you're here for?Some people find that there wasn't enough Accardo personal info but so what.What's there to wonder about?Did Accardo love his wife and kids?Did he kick his dog?Who cares.The guy was the mobster of mobsters and his criminal life is well documented and that's all that matters to me.I guess there is one story in the book that gives you a look into Tony Accardo' soul.His close friend of 40 years(the guy wasn't a mobster,he was the Accardo house caretaker)gave testimony in front of a grand jury and disappeared off the face of the earth days later.How's that for knowing Tony personally?