Nick DeJohn never knew when he had enough. He’d slipped out of Chicago in the nick of time, so to speak, with a stolen $250K skim in his pocket and a lot of enemies at his back. Safe in Santa Rosa, California, with his wife and children, he could have stayed quiet and counted his money.
But guys like Nick need the action.
He decided he could muscle into the gambling action in Frisco. Old underworld connections were drifting west based on rumors that Northern California was opening up, and not just in Frisco. Nick figured he could make a move. Maybe get into the dope trade as well. He had plenty of friends.
On May 7, 1947, Nick pointed his big maroon Buick south and drove into San Francisco for the day. He looked at a house he planned to buy, met up with his old Cheese Syndicate partner and good friend Leonard Calamia. They had known each other for years. Their families were close. Nick trusted him. What Nick didn’t know was that Leonard had been sent west by Chicago boss James Franzone to take care of the “DeJohn” problem.
By nightfall they were in North Beach, at La Rocca’s Corner, where a handful of familiar faces waited beneath the glow of neon signs and the haze of cigarette smoke. Nick thought he was spending the evening with old friends at La Rocca’s Corner in North Beach. Even top Frisco boss Tony Lima was there that night.
This is Part One of the story of Nick DeJohn and his untimely but unsurprising end, about ambition and betrayal, and the way old debts never disappear.
Nick DeJohn spent the last few hours of his life in a North Beach mafia hangout, surrounded by men he had known for years, smoking, drinking, maybe playing cards.
Two days later, police found him in the trunk of his Buick out in the Marina District, while the men who put him there were busy planning their next moves.
TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome to Frisco: The Secret History. I’m your host, Knox Bronson.
I have a great episode for you today, about the North Beach murder of Nick De John, a notorious gangster from Chicago who had been hiding out in Santa Rosa fifty miles to north of Frisco, on May 7, 1947. Why was Nick hiding out in Santa Rosa under the alias Vincent Rossi with his wife and children? Well, for one, he’d stolen $250,000 back in Chicago in 1946, where he had once operated under Frank Nitti.
Like all gangsters, he couldn’t stay out the action for long and was trying to muscle in on Frisco gambling interests and perhaps some narcotics trade with some of his old Cheese Syndicate friends from back east.
May 7, 1947. That day, Nick de John cruised down the fifty-five mile stretch of highway 101 to San Francisco in his big shiny car, a 1941 maroon Buick Series 90 Limited. Nick was a big shiny gangster. He was a sharp dresser and always carried a huge roll of bills he would flash around, wore a seven-carat diamond, ring, and diamond jeweled gold watch.
He was last seen alive at La Rocca’s Corner in North Beach that evening. His body was found in the trunk of his car out in the Marina District two days later.
This is Part One of the story.
Before we get going, I want say thank you to Walter Hass at Graffeo Coffee Roasters just a block up the street from La Rocca’s Corner at 735 Columbus Avenue. Graffeo was founded in 1935 and has been supplying high quality beans to the public and the best restaurants around to town ever since. I have been drinking Graffeo Coffee since I lived around the corner on Mason Street back in the Seventies. They make the richest and smoothest coffee I have ever tasted. They have a dark, light, and a Swiss-water decaf bean. If you can’t get to North Beach to pick your beans up, you can go to Graffeo.com, that g r a f f e o dot com and order there. They sell whole bean, or will grind to your request. I love starting my day with a huge mug of dark roast. I have been recommending Graffeo friends forever, but I am really happy to say that Graffeo Coffee is the first sponson of the Frisco: The Secret History podcast. I am excited and proud to be associated with that historic and iconic San Francisco brand. Give them a try. You will thank me.
[intermezzo]
May 7, 1947, a cool, partly cloudy Spring day in San Francisco.
Local headlines were:
BLAZING CARGO SHIP DRIFTING OFF ALCATRAZ
18 Crewmen Leap Overboard As Flames Engulf Freighter
Big El Cerrito Bookie Raided, Two Seized
San Francisco’s 2 Pound Baby Thrives In Incubator
SEAMAN HELD IN DOPE RAID
And one that really caught my eye:
CARMEL SHUTS ITS DOORS TO MILLER’S CULT
Artist Community Wants Nothing To Do With Hate Apostles
This was the last of a four-part series about author Henry Miller and his rustic compound in the coastal hills below Carmel. The Examiner was waging a campaign against the author, well known for his free-love philosophy and left-leaning politics. Why? Well, that’s it right there.
I remember reading a magazine interview with Henry Miller back in my youth. He was probably in his eighties at the time. There was a picture of him on the deck of his house in the woods. In the background were two young naked women playing ping pong under the bright California sun. A situation like this remains on my list of life goals.
I imagine I will do an episode about the Examiner campaign to smear Henry Miller at some point.
The most popular movie of the moment was The Egg and I starring Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray. The most popular song in the country for the past three months had been “Heartaches” by Ted Weems and his Orchestra.
[excerpt]
Nick DeJohn came up the in the old-school Capone mob. In the early forties, during the war years, he operated under Capone’s one-time enforcer, Frank Nitti, who had taken over as the titular head of the Chicago Mob after Capone was sent up for tax evasion in 1931. Nick was part of the upper-east side Rush Street gang in Chicago.
He and his uncle, Vincent “The Don” Benevento, along with Capone protégé Dominic “Libby” Nuccio, and Leonard Calamia headed up an inter-linked matrix of rackets, known by wise guys near and far as the Cheese Syndicate.
They began operating during World War II, buying rationed cheese in Wisconsin, without the required ration points and reselling it in Chicago at extortionate prices, the basic strong-arm business model created by earlier gangs for bootlegging booze during Prohibition.
The illegal cheese and olive oil trade, though profitable, was in reality a front for far more nefarious operations like gambling, prostitution, horse racing syndicates, drug smuggling, and even a wartime draft evasion ring.
After federal rationing ended and the cheese racket collapsed, the Cheese Syndicate transitioned into straight dope trafficking. Originally running through mob-owned cheese firms and olive oil factories, the distribution network stretched from Chicago to Tampa, Dallas, St. Louis, Kansas City, and San Francisco.
He had partnered with his old pal Leonard Calamia to run the drugs through the cheese and olive oil fronts.
And while Nick was still connected to his uncle Vincent Benevento, the Cheese King, he had taken over bookmaking operations in Chicago’s North East side and was making moves to further usurp his uncle’s authority. His uncle didn’t like this one bit, but in the post-war era, his power was waning and he and Nick were bound by blood and geography.
Nick was getting too big for his britches. He was stealing money from the Outfit and ordering unauthorized hits.
Things had got lax since Capone took a train ride, and the north side was teeming with newcomers who wanted to make easy money. DeJohn and Nuccio would have to blast their rivals out of the way and blast They did.
DeJohn, Nuccio and their underlings were credited by police with “blasting” at least ten rivals from the competition. But they were a bit too enthusiastic. They made the mistake of killing one or two of the old Capone gang. In the summer of 1946, they got the word from headquarters that henceforth, Chicago should be their former address. And to punctuate the warning, little things started happening.
Like the sudden departure from this world of DeJohn’s pal, James DeAngelo, one of the black market cheese distributors, whose body was found stuffed in an automobile trunk on a North Side parking lot. It was there eight or ten days before somebody discovered it.
Then came the death of Thomas O’Neglia, another of DeJohn’s ambitious circle. Joe Quattrocchi, supposed businessman, another DeJohn associate, got his name in the obituary column a few weeks later. So did Onosrio Vitale, hoodlum and black marketeer. He was found in a sewer.
By this time, it had registered with DeJohn that somebody wasn’t kidding. He and his uncle, the Cheese King, left for the West Coast in late 1946 and stayed there for several months. At some point, they regained their courage and returned to Chicago.
Uncle Vincent didn’t dare go home to see his wife. He sent word to her to meet him secretly at a a tourist camp at Lake Zurich, northwest of Chicago, where a friend owned a cabin. She went to meet him at the instructed time. Perhaps she was followed or word of the meeting had leaked.
Some wise guys came out of the woods and surprised the couple at the cabin. They tied Benevento’s wife to a chair and forced her to watch as they killed him with a machine gun.
It was then that DeJohn decided it might be a good idea to head back to California for good. Besides the over-reaching rub-outs of old Capone guys, the Outfit was clearly not buying Nick’s story that he had given the $250,000 he had skimmed to his uncle, The Don.
Nick bought a house in Santa Rosa fifty miles north of San Francisco under the name Vincent Rossi and moved there with his wife and children. They lived there quietly,
[intermezzo]
This is the way the San Francisco Chronicle told the story:
[typewriter]
“He was the sixth — the last — of Chicago’s Gold Coast boys who tried to gamble in Chicago when Capone’s old gang said “no.” But Nick broke with the boys. Then it came — a one-two-three-four-five finality.
1. Vincenzo De Angelo (one of Nick’s boys) was found beaten to death. Tied hand and foot and left against a Northside apartment house.
2. Onostic Vitale, Calumet cheese maker and black marketeer, disappeared in February, 1944. When a sewer overflowed, Vitale’s beaten body came up.
3. Vincent (“The Don”) Benevento, Nick’s cousin, was warned. He was shot and went to Oklahoma to recover. But he went back to Chicago. He was found shot to death in a lonely cabin outside Chicago. It was The Don who headed the Unione Siciliano, the old black-handed terror organization which once kept the Italians in Chicago in line.
4. Frank Quattrocchio — two bullets in the head.
5. Thomas Oneglia was sitting in a barber chair when it came — three gunmen riddled him.
De John took the hint. He retired to California.
But last November he went back to the old scenes on the Loop. A couple of days later some of the syndicate “eyes” saw him. “Take a hike,” Nick was told. He did. He told his pals he had put $90,000 in a North Beach night spot. Or he might have put money into the Poodle Dog. Or both. No matter what, Nick was set.
[end typewriter]
But is being set is never enough for guys like Nick, is it?
[intermezzo]
Nick needed a house in San Francisco. Was Santa Rosa a little too sleepy for him? Or did he just need a pied-à-terre in town while he muscled his way back into Frisco’s gambling action? No one knows.
Lots of wise guys from back east were swarming Frisco. Advance men for national gambling syndicates had been slipping in and out of SF for a while, visiting nearby communities where open gambling was allowed and then dropping from sight as quietly as they came, apparently to report back to the big bosses in the rackets.
The Tenderloin whisper stream hummed with rumors that northern California would soon be lush wide-open territory for the rackets, especially gambling.
Bugsy Siegel, vice king of Hollywood, had sent some scouts. And then there were the guys who were trying to take over the racing news wire services. A couple of Lucky Luciano’s boys had breezed through town on their way to rub out Tom Buffa in Lodi, California two months earlier. They caught him driving in his car on a country road, pulled alongside, and fired off several well-aimed rolling shotgun blasts through the driver’s side window.
Tom Buffa had come out from St. Louis and he, too, like Nick DeJohn, was hiding. He had testified against the wrong person in St. Louis. He bought a tavern out in the sticks called Joe Lima’s Place from Tony Lima’s cousin, Giuseppe and Tony’s consigliere Sam.
You remember Tony Lima, don’t you? You can learn more about him in the Bones Remmer, Part 1, episode. He was the associate of SF Boss Frank Lanza back in the Twenties and Thirties, who took the credit for Frisco wise guy Joseph Piazza’s mysterious disappearance in 1929. Piazza had been trying to shake down Frank’s partner in Fisherman’s Wharf ventures, Giuseppe Alioto. Giuseppe was the father of Joe Alioto, future mayor of San Francisco.
It’s a small world. They all know each other.
Other recent visitors included Waxey Gordon, onetime New York beer baron ex-con and “Izzy” Bernstein, a member of the Detroit Purple Gang. Police had escorted Waxey to the city limits none too gently when he first tried to move into Frisco in 1941. Now he was in town again, this time with Izzy, and the cops were looking for them.
Bones Remmer was ostensibly the king of the Tenderloin and Emeryville, and other points east and south, so what was going on?
Examiner gossip columnist of the high and low Freddie Francisco ran into Bill Graham, a big-time Nevada gambler and one of Bones’ partners in the Cal-Neva Lodge, at the opening of “La Scala” at the War Memorial Opera House one night and the subject of Bones Remmer came up.
Graham told Freddie, ”Every time he opens his mouth, which he is doing all the time, he makes it tougher for every one. Why don’t he shut up! That and this crazy yen to extend himself, to move in everywhere, to be the big shot. In the first place, he hasn’t got what it takes, and in the second place … well, let’s have another drink.”
In any case, Nick left Santa Rosa for the city in the morning on May 7, 1947, oblivious to any hint of danger. He stopped off in San Rafael to pay a visit to his father-in-law, Vincent Zingarelli, a retired Chicago beer truck driver. He had moved out to California when Nick, his daughter Lena, and their children did.
After his visit, Nick headed south to meet up with a realtor and John Passantino, the son of a neighbor of Nick’s in Chicago. The realtor was showing Nick a house in the Monterey Heights area that Nick was interested in buying.
That morning, Nick’s old pal in the Cheese Syndicate dope trade, Leonard Calamia had called Passantino to make sure Nick was indeed coming into the city that day.
Leonard Calamia was one of the Outfit’s most capable hitmen in Chicago as well as Nick’s one time pop-eyed cheese salesman, as one newspaper put it, and partner in the dope trade. Leonard had moved out west when Nick did. Unbeknownst to Nick, Leonard had been sent to San Francisco by Chicago Outfit boss James Franzone to lure nick to his death.
Nick and Leonard were pals. Their wives were good friends. In fact, they were all such good friends that Nick and Lena’s son John was living at the Calamia residence in San Francisco so that he could attend Balboa High School there.
Such is the twisted strangeness of the world beneath.
Nick drove down to Leonard’s house on Gambier Street in the Portola District and had lunch with Leonard, Leonard’s wife, and his son. Sometime later, Nick, John, and Leonard drove north into the city proper. They dropped John off at a movie theater to see “The Egg and I” and headed over to the Poodle Dog restaurant on Polk Street, which Leonard frequented and, as some reports claim, of which Nick had purchased a sizable interest with some of that $250,000 Chicago skim.
The Poodle Dog had had an illustrious history. It was founded in the Gold Rush Era and had a reputation for excellent French Cuisine at a very good price. As time rolled, it began to cater to a wealthier clientele.
“In the two middle floors the bachelor lords it all,” the San Francisco Call wrote about the Old Poodle Dog in 1898. “That is where he reigns supreme in ‘bachelor apartments’ where none but he may tread and where every allurement is spread to wean him gently from all thought of matrimony.”
The great and, sadly defunct San Francisco-based website, Gastronomista wrote this:
[typewriter]
The Old Poodle Dog, established in 1849, was San Francisco’s first, and most notorious French restaurant. The restaurant, opened by Frenchmen Monsieurs Allarmé and Blanco, was originally called “Le Poulet d’Or,” and later was given the nickname of the Poodle Dog by the 49’ers who couldn’t pronounce the proper French.
Each floor was devoted to different parlors for significantly different epicurean delights.
The first floor dining room, lavishly decorated in the Rococco and Louis XIV styles, provided an elegant environment for a man to properly entertain his wife and daughter in public.
In the small second floor dining rooms, men would entertain their mistresses in private.
The third, fourth and fifth floors provided private sex parlors accessible only by a side door and elevator. Each suite included an elegant bed, rich European Axminster carpets, a bathroom and telephone. With a wink and a nod, the elevator operator became one of the wealthiest service men in town.
The sixth floor housed an opulent banquet room for up to 250 guests to celebrate.
[end typewriter]
I wonder if my great-grandfather ate there after arriving in the city with his family in 1887. I would imagine so.
The original Poodle Dog was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire, putting an unhappy end to its one-time sensory magnificence. It reopened under several different names at different locations over the years and closed during prohibition because the management felt it was not possible to serve food without wine. After prohibition ended, it finally became the Poodle Dog on Polk Street once again.
I cannot ascertain whether or not the companionship of ladies of the night was still available at the restaurant in 1947. There were still dozens if not hundreds of bordellos operating in the city. The Poodle Dog still served excellent French cuisine, in any case.
On the night of May seventh, Nick DeJohn and Leonard Calamia had dinner there. Part-owner Danny Capece later reported that he saw Leonard rushing Nick out of the restaurant after they had finished dinner to a degree that was both unusual and remarkable. In later testimony, he would testify that he had never seen Leonard hurry Nick out of the place before.
Leonard had told Nick that Ciro Gallo wanted to see him. Ciro later testified that he had not asked Leonard to bring Nick to the bar. But Ciro was in the bar when they got there.
The two headed over to La Rocca’s Corner on Columbus Avenue for pinochle and drinks. There were a few guys waiting for them: Sebastian Nani, a drug trafficker from Brooklyn, Ciro Gallo, already mentioned, a San Mateo fish merchant and long time friend of both Nick and Leonard, Tony Lima, now boss of the local Cosa Nostra, Michael Abati, co-owner of the Tropical Grill Tavern on Drumm Street, Frank Scappatura from the Nick’s Cheese Syndicate days, and Frank Tornabene, who had parked Leonard Calamia’s car on Columbus near the bar and had surreptitiously handed Leonard the keys sometime after he showed up with Nick.
Leonard knew that Nick would not be giving him a ride home in his shiny maroon Buick sedan.
Nick considered all these men to be his friends, including the La Rocca brothers and local boss, Tony Lima.
It was just a regular Wednesday night get-together at the Mafia-friendly hangout. The La Rocca brothers were behind the bar, serving drinks. The latest hits, like the number one song of the moment, Ted Weems “Heartaches” were playing on the huge, luminous art-deco Egyptian themed Rock-Ola jukebox in the corner.
I cannot ascertain whether or not they played pinochle that night or not. At some point, Leonard said goodnight and left Nick at the bar. A little later, Nick needed to use the men’s room. Strangely, it was not working and the door was locked.
One of the La Rocca brothers directed him to an apartment building the family owned directly across the street. There was a bathroom in the basement Nick could use.
I’m not sure who accompanied him across the street. Accounts vary. I’m pretty sure Leonard was already in the basement, waiting for him.
Two days later, Nick’s Buick was reported as abandoned or possibly stolen, out in the Marina District on Lombard Street.
When police came to investigate, they found his body in the roomy trunk of the car. It is likely the car was already emitting an unpleasant aroma by then. He had been garroted. His pants were half-way pulled off. The large wad of cash he usually carried in his pocket was gone, as was a seven-carat diamond ring and a diamond-jeweled wristwatch he liked to wear.
That night, May 7, 1847, on a deserted strip of Columbus Avenue, Nick DeJohn had had no friends.
A lone cable car clattered by on its way to the North Point terminus, rounding the corner off Columbus onto Taylor Street, the grip serenading the passengers with the rhythmic staccato of his big brass bell, much to their delight. The clacking of the iron wheels, the hum of the cable under the street, and the ringing of the bell echoed down the foggy avenue.
A perfect Frisco night.