Frank Nitti: The Enforcer Who Ran Capone's Empire From Behind a Desk

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The nickname suggests a man breaking kneecaps in an alley. The real Frank Nitti delegated violence and watched the numbers. Born in 1886 in the Campania region of Italy, he arrived in Brooklyn at seven, left school after the seventh grade, worked as a barber, and left home at 14. He ran with Al Capone's older brothers in the Navy Street Boys, though the two men were never cousins. An early scheme taught him caution: after he stole from his Galveston partners and fled to Chicago, they caught him in Houston and forced him to hand the money back.

In Chicago, Nitti built the supply chain that moved Canadian whiskey by rail and truck to thousands of speakeasies, and his shared roots with Capone let him negotiate with traditional Italian factions. This episode follows him through the 1931 tax convictions, where Capone drew 11 years and the quieter Nitti only 18 months, into his years as boss, his turn from liquor to labor union extortion, a police attempt on his life, and the Hollywood shakedown that led his own lieutenants to demand he take the fall.

• When Capone went to prison in Philadelphia in 1929, he left a three man committee in charge, with Nitti at the head of operations.
• On December 19, 1932, Detective Sergeant Harry Lang shot an unarmed Nitti three times during a raid, then wounded himself to claim self defense.
• Court testimony pointed to a 15,000 dollar bounty and to Mayor Anton Cermak, who was killed in Miami two months later by a gunman officially aiming at Franklin D. Roosevelt.
• Through Willie Bioff and the stagehands and projectionists union, the Outfit extorted major studios until Bioff turned informant in 1943.
• Claustrophobic and facing prison, Nitti walked to a rail yard on March 19, 1943, the day before his grand jury date, and shot himself at 57.