Chicago Mob 1980s Hit List Time Line
Outfit Murders – 1980-1989
Damage Toll: 33 bodies found, 31 slayings in the decade
July 2, 1980 – Chicago mob enforcer and Chicago Heights crew member William (Billy the Chopper) Dauber and his wife Charlotte are gunned down in their car after leaving a court appearance by the Wild Bunch, the Outfit’s top hit team. The heavily-feared and physically-imposing Dauber was one of those tasked with consolidating all the Windy City’s independent car thieves and chop shop owners under the Outfit banner. Facing drug and weapons charges, Dauber, a suspect in a number of gangland homicides himself, had started cooperating with the FBI in the months preceding his slaying.
November 28, 1980 – Greek wiseguy, social club operator and Chicago mob shakedown victim Nick Valentzas is shot to death in an Elmwood Park parking lot. Valentzas had worn a wire and testified in a federal extortion case involving the Outfit after his refusal to pay a street tax led to a vicious beating
March 14, 1981 – Chicago mob enforcer, hit man and Wild Bunch member William (Butch) Petrocelli is found beaten, strangled and tortured to death after getting caught stealing money he was supposed to be filtering to imprisoned wiseguys’ families
May 6, 1981 – Outfit associate and convicted felon Fiore Forestiere is found shot in the head five times in a van in River Grove
May 18, 1981 – Outfit associate and jukebox company owner Sam Farrugia is found stabbed to death, his throat cut in the back of a station wagon in River Forest
August 5, 1981 – Outfit associate, drug dealer and chop-shopper Charles Monday is found dead in the trunk of his car on West Schubert Avenue
August 7, 1981 – Outfit associate, drug dealer, chop shopper Anthony Legato, Monday’s partner, is found in the trunk of his car beaten to death
September 13, 1981 – Chicago mob soldier Nick D’Andrea was found tortured and shot to death in the trunk of his car, accidentally killed while being interrogated by his bosses in the Outfit over the botched hit on Chicago Heights capo Al Pilotto .
October 3, 1981 – Chicago mob soldier and Pilotto’s No. 2 in charge Sam (The Gobber) Guzzino is found shot in the head, his throat slit in a ditch on the side of a suburban road. Guzzino was in charge of the ill-fated Pilotto murder contract.
June 3, 1982 – Outfit associate, bookie and Cicero crew member Bobby Plummer is beaten to death inside his Lake County mansion that doubled as a backdoor high-roller casino and stuffed in the trunk of his car
October 8, 1982 – Outfit associate and indebted gambler John Manfredi is shot in the back of the head in the basement of a Berwyn, Illinois pizza parlor
January 11, 1983 – Outfit associate and chop shopper Bobby Subatich is shot in the back of the head and stuffed in the trunk of his car
January 20, 1983 – Labor-union racketeer, insurance magnate and longtime Outfit front Allen Dorfman is killed in the parking lot of a Lincolnshire, Illinois hotel leaving a lunch meeting with fellow top-tier Outfit associate Irving (Red) Weiner. Dorfman was headed to prison after getting conviction alongside then-Grand Avenue capo Joseph (Joey the Clown) Lombardo in a high-profile racketeering conspiracy case
March 2, 1983 – Outfit associate, car thief and Grand Ave. crew chop-chop specialist Michael (Monk) Chorak is shot to death behind the wheel of his car. The Chorak slaying concluded the so-called “Chop Shop Wars,” on-and-off sprees of violence in the local car-theft industry lasting a dozen years and totaling some two dozen casaulaties
July 14, 1983 – Chicago mobsters and hit men John Gatuso and Jasper (Big Jay) Campisi are found strangled, stabbed and tortured to death in the trunk of Gatuso’s Volvo in suburban Naperville, Illinois. Gatus, a former cop, and Campisi had botched a hit on Northside gambling lieutenant, Ken (Tokyo Joe) Eto earlier in the year, leading to Eto taking refuge as a witness for the federal government
December 16, 1984 – Outfit associate and underworld finance whiz and banking specialist Anthony Crissie is shot to death. Crissie had once worked as the head of a bank and was being pressured by the FBI and IRS to divulge information on his business partners in mob.
January 10, 1985 – Outfit associate and notorious Northside crew enforcer Leonard (Little Lenny) Yaras is gunned down as he walked into work at his Rogers Park uniform factory headquarters. He was suspected of skimming gambling proceeds he was responsible for collecting Yaras’ dad was Davey Yaras, a respected Jewish Chicago mob lieutenant and enforcer who died of a heart attack in the early 1970s in Florida where he watched after Windy City mafia affairs in the Sunshine State.
February 9, 1985 – Chicago mob soldier Charles (Chuckie English) Inglese is gunned down in the parking lot of Horwath’s Restaurant in Elmwood Park shortly after returning to the fold in the Outfit following a near-decade semiretirement spent in Florida. Inglese had been slain former Chicago Godfather Sam Giancana’s right-hand man and gambling boss and began beefing with Outfit brass upon his return
February 12, 1985 – Prolific independent bookie Hal Smith is beaten and tortured to death, stuffed in the trunk of his car after feuding with the Outfit’s Cicero crew’s Lake County faction over street tax
July 26, 1985 – Chicago mob solider, Northside crew member and porno racket boss Patsy Ricciardi was shot to death and stuffed in the trunk of a stolen car following him being suspected of informing for the FBI
January 13, 1986 – Outfit associate Mike Lentini is shot to death behind the wheel of his car
January 27, 1986 – Outfit associate Richie DePrizo is shot to death. DePrizo was on the verge of being indicted for fraud related to city of Chicago construction projects
March 16, 1986 – Outfit associate and indebted gambler Joe Cocozza is shot to death behind the wheel of his car
June 7, 1986 – Outfit associate and west coast crew member Emil (Little Mal) Vaci is kidnapped and shot to death in Phoenix, Arizona after testifying in front of a federal grand jury investigating Chicago mafia activity in Las Vegas. Vaci worked in mob-backed casinos in Vegas and ran travel junkets from Illinois to Nevada in conjunction with the Outfit
June 14, 1986 – Chicago mob Las Vegas crew boss Anthony (Tony the Ant) Spilotro and his younger brother and protégé Michael are beaten and strangled to death in the basement of a Bensenville, Illinois residence, their bodies dumped in a shallow grave dug in a Northwest Indiana cornfield. Spilotro’s rogue behavior and mounting legal problems made him expendable.
September 14, 1986 – Chicago mobster, hit man and Southside crew enforcer Giovanni (Big John) Fecarotta is shot to death in front of a bingo hall on Belmont Avenue after botching the Spilotro brothers burial exactly three months to the day of his own slaying
November 13, 1986 – Outfit associate Tommy McKillip is stabbed and shot to death, found in the back of a Chevy Blazer truck
September 23, 1987 – Outfit associate and salon owner John Castaldo is shot to death, his body left in a River Forest alley not far from the one of two beauty parlors he owned. Castaldo was in heavy debt to Chicago mob figures
August 14, 1988 – Outfit associate John Pronger is shot to death on his porch as he opens the front door of his house for his killers
November 22, 1988 – Outfit associate and bookie Phil Goodman, connected to the former Spilotro crew in Las Vegas, is beaten to death inside a motel room
December 1989 – The remains of slain Chicago mob victims Robert (Broadway Bobby) Hatridge and Mike Oliver are unearthed in DuPage County, more than 20 years after they went missing, in a makeshift Wild Bunch graveyard less than a mile away from where Wild Buncher Joseph (Jerry the Hand) Scalise lived. Oliver was a machinist and small-time hood in the porno racket and killed in an adult bookstore. Hatridge was a thief and drug pusher from Ohio tied to New York’s Bonanno crime family and its’ Pizza Connection heroin smuggling ring who left for a meeting with Scalise and never came home.
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