Jim Colosimo

Notorious Chicago gangster--and one of the last of the "Mustache Petes", a nickname given to the old-line Italian gangsters by the "Young Turks" trying to take over--Giacomo "Big Jim" Colosimo was born in Colosimi, Italy. His family emigrated to Chicago in 1895, where "Big Jim" got an early start in the criminal underworld. He worked as a precinct captain and bagman for a succession of corrupt Chicago politicians, garnering himself some valuable political connections. that came in very handy later in his career. In 1902 he married a woman who was a madam at a long-established Chicago brothel, and he soon opened a second one. Colosimo had a knack for the prostitution business, and it wasn't long before he had expanded his holdings from two brothels to more than 200. This brought him into close contact with the men who ran Chicago's underworld, many of whom patronized Colosimo's houses, which not only offered women but gambling. His success attracted the attention of the dreaded Black Hand extortion gang, and he turned to Johnny Torrio, a New York gangland figure he had befriended, and brought him to Chicago to take care of this problem, which Torrio promptly did--the Black Hand hoods who threatened Colosimo were sound found dead. With the threat of the Black Hand no longer hanging over his head, Colosimo indulged his penchant for the good life--which resulted in his being nicknamed "Diamond Jim"--and opened an exclusive restaurant named after himself. Torrio also helped Colosimo open several new brothels, and in one of them he installed a friend and colleague from his Brooklyn days to be a combination bartender/bouncer/enforcer--a tough cookie named Al Capone. In 1920 the Volstead Act, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcohol, went into effect. Torrio saw that there would be huge amounts of money to be made supplying a thirsty population with booze and advised Colosimo to get in on the ground floor, but he refused. Shortly afterwards Colosimo, who had abandoned his first wife, left Chicago to marry his second wife. He returned to Chicago a week later and was contacted by Torrio, who asked Colosimo to meet him at his restaurant for an important meeting. Colosimo arrived there, sat down at a table to wait for Torrio and was promptly shot and killed by several unknown gunmen. Torrio, Capone and New York gangster Frankie Yale were suspected of being the triggermen, but nothing was ever proved and they were never charged with the murder. Colosimo's funeral was, as was the custom among gangsters at the time, an epic. Huge, expensive floral arrangements surrounded an ornate bronze coffin. There were more than 50 pallbearers, many of them judges and Congressmen. More than 1000 marchers followed the coffin to Oak Woods cemetery. Colosimo was scheduled to be buried in a Catholic cemetery, but the Archbishop of New York forbade Colosimo from being buried in any Catholic cemetery in the city. It wasn't because of the innumerable murders, thefts, beatings, corruption, gambling, prostitution and other crimes he was responsible for--he was banned from burial in a Catholic cemetery because he had divorced his first wife.