Frank Nitti, one of Al Capone’s most trusted lieutenants and his eventual successor as boss of the Chicago Outfit, took his own life on March 19, 1943, one day before he was scheduled to appear before a grand jury. The 57-year-old mobster had breakfast with his wife that morning. As she left for church, he told her he was going for a walk. Instead, he drank heavily, loaded a .
32 caliber revolver, placed it in his coat pocket, and walked five blocks to a local railroad yard. There, he fired two shots in a failed attempt to kill himself before a third round ended his life. North Riverside Police Chief Alan Rose, who rushed to the scene with a sergeant and several patrolmen, recognized Nitti immediately. A subsequent autopsy performed by coroner’s toxicologist William McNell found Nitti had a blood alcohol content of 0.
23. A coroner’s jury concluded the next day that Nitti died by suicide while “temporarily insane and in a despondent frame of mind. ”
Nitti was born Francesco Raffaele Nitto on January 27, 1886, in Angri, a small town in southern Italy. He was the second child of Luigi and Rosina Nitto and a first cousin of Al Capone.
His father died when Frank was just two years old, and his mother remarried within a year to Francesco Dendo. When Nitti was seven, the family followed his stepfather’s migration to America in June 1893, settling at 113 Navy Street in Brooklyn, New York City. He attended public school and worked odd jobs after school to help support the family. He quit after the seventh grade and worked as a pen sitter, factory worker, and barber.
At 14, a deteriorating relationship with his stepfather drove him to leave home and seek work in nearby factories. He left Brooklyn at 24, moving to Chicago around 1913, where he worked as a barber. There he met gangsters Dion O’Banion and Alex Louis Greenberg. By 1918, Nitti had become a jewel thief, bootlegger, and fence.
His liquor smuggling brought him to the attention of Chicago crime boss John Torrio and Torrio’s newly arrived and most notorious soldier, Al Capone. Nitti married Rosa Levitt in Dallas in 1917. As a newcomer familiar with the Texas area, he became a partner in 1924 in the Galveston crime syndicate run by Johnny Jack Nouns. Nitti reportedly stole a sizable sum of money from Nouns and fellow gangster Dutch Voit before fleeing back to Chicago.
Years later, the two Galveston mobsters tracked him down at a Houston bar, drove him back to Galveston, and forced him to return the stolen money. Back in Chicago, Nitti oversaw Capone’s network of speakeasies, distributing and smuggling alcohol while importing whiskey from Canada. Known for his business savvy and leadership, he was one of Capone’s most trusted men. He helped Capone break into the Sicilian and Camorra underworlds in ways Capone alone could not.
Capone regarded him so highly that when Capone was sentenced to prison in 1929, he named Nitti to a triumvirate that would take over running the mob. Both Nitti and Capone were found guilty of tax evasion in 1931. Capone received an 11-year sentence, while Nitti received 18 months, which he served at the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth. When Nitti was released on March 25, 1932, he took Capone’s place as the new boss of the Chicago Outfit.
Some historians have contended that Paul “The Waiter” Ricca was the real leader and that Nitti was merely a front. However, both historical and contemporary accounts support Nitti’s role as leader. Ricca served only as interim leader for the six months between Capone’s October 1931 incarceration and Nitti’s March 1932 release. Ricca was serving as Nitti’s representative that same month when he was apprehended alongside Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, and other mobsters by Chicago police and prominently photographed.
Nitti, just released and paranoid about breaking his federal parole, was not in the image. Still, some incorrectly believed Ricca was the new boss as a result. Under Nitti, the Chicago Outfit expanded beyond prostitution and gambling to take over labor unions, among other enterprises. On December 19, 1932, Nitti’s Chicago office was raided by a group of Chicago police officers led by detective sergeants Harry Lang and Harry Miller.
To make the shooting appear to be self-defense, Lang shot Nitti three times in the back and neck before shooting himself. Lang then claimed Nitti had shot him first. It was later revealed that newly elected Chicago mayor Anton Cermak, who wanted to bring down the Outfit, had ordered the raid. He offered Lang $15,000 to finish the hit on Nitti.
Two months later, on February 15, 1933, Giuseppe Zangara shot Cermak while the mayor was conversing with President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt at a Miami rally. Zangara had intended to shoot Roosevelt but missed. Cermak died the following month.
Nitti’s first wife, Anna, died on November 19, 1940, at Mercy Hospital in Chicago due to an unspecified internal ailment. Two years later, Nitti married Annette Carveta on May 14, 1942. In 1943, several Chicago Outfit members were indicted for extorting the Hollywood film industry. Those members included Nitti, Phil D’Andrea, and Louis “Little New York” Campagna.
The Outfit was accused of trying to extort money from some of the largest movie studios, including Columbia Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, RKO Pictures, and 20th Century Fox. These studios cooperated with the Outfit just to avoid trouble with the unions. At a meeting of the Outfit leaders, Paul Ricca blamed Nitti for the indictments, saying it was Nitti’s scheme together with one of his trusted associates, Willie Bioff, who was later revealed to be an FBI informant.
The next day, Nitti was dead by his own hand.