The Campisi family of Dallas, Texas

Is there something to the rumors of their Mafia power?

The men in the Campisi family of Dallas, Texas, famed for their restaurants and mob ties, have usually denied having a role in organized crime, preferring the romance of rumor to self-incrimination. The women have sometimes been less inhibited.

Third-generation patriarch Carlo “Corky” Campisi told this story in 2000 about his mother. She was 72 years old, and the subject of a home invasion. Notice I said “subject” and not “victim.” She sassed one of the two armed robbers, telling him that his jewelry was fake, and physically fought back when they tried to take her cash. The last thing Mrs. C told them as they left was that she was in the Mafia and “we’re gonna get you” (Bowden, 2000). Edith Marie Cole Campisi died in 2007.

The Campisi’s line of restaurants distinguishes itself by telling its story. In the original location on Mockingbird Lane in Dallas, a mural immortalizes Corky’s father, Joe, serving some of the first legal shots of liquor in the Lone Star State at his bar in 1971. 

David Campisi in 2000, sitting in front of the mural in Campisi’s Egyptian Restaurant

Corky Campisi’s daughter, Gina, before her tragic death in 2010, opened her own gangster-themed restaurant with menu items like “concrete-shoestring fries.” She admitted that her “Fedora Restaurant & Lounge” leaned into her family’s well-publicized associations with top organized crime figures, describing it as “staying true” to her family’s roots (Stuertz, 2008).

Carlo “Corky” Campisi’s paternal grandfather and namesake emigrated from Roccamena with his bride, Antonina “Lena” Cammarata, in 1906, joining a brother and brother-in-law in New Orleans. They had their first child, Annie, in Louisiana, then moved to Texas, where they lived near Lena’s brothers in Lufkin. The family moved to Dallas by the time Joseph was born in 1917.

According to the family, a cousin in Dallas sent Carlo a telegram about a grocery store for sale, which prompted the move from Lufkin, where the Miller and Angelo families, to whom the Campisis are related through marriage, were grocers. All three families transplanted to Dallas and continued in the grocery trade. The elder Carlo Campisi ran a successful store and meat market in the 1920s and ‘30s. 

Subscribe and read more: The extended family tree of the Campisi family on Patreon

In 1938, “Papa Carlo” Campisi opened a restaurant with one of Dallas’ first licenses to serve beer and wine. But most articles written about the Campisi family’s legacy in the hospitality business begin with the bar Carlo opened in 1946, the Idle Hour, a few blocks from their home on McKinney Street. It was the first location the Campisis served a distinctive rectangular pizza still available today in their chain of restaurants. In between the two locations, there was another bar near Main and St. Paul, where Joe shot and killed a man who’d been harassing and stealing from his patrons (Stephenson, 1989). 

When Joseph Campisi died in 1990, the Campisi’s restaurant business passed to his children, who ran it jointly for twenty years. Since 2010, grandson David Campisi has been in charge: he is the subject of interviews, and the voice of the restaurant on its “History” page, though it’s his cousin, Kenny Penn Jr, called “Bubsy,” who is the company president.

The family’s restaurant empire has expanded in recent years to include nine locations in Texas, but Campisi’s is still recognizably the business begun 70 years ago by David’s great-grandfather, Carlo. Many of the same vendors, Italian family-owned businesses like Campisi’s, have been providing the restaurant with fresh ingredients since they opened.

Their largest claim to fame revolves around Jack Ruby, who ate dinner in a corner booth at Campisi’s a few nights before he shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald was the chief suspect in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, as he rode in a motorcade on 22 November 1963.

When Ruby was in jail immediately after his arrest, Joseph Campisi was his first visitor. Jack and Joe had known one another since 1948, Campisi testified, though he would later contradict himself. They met for about ten minutes. Corky says Ruby was troubled by the widowhood of Mrs. Kennedy (Joe told Tom Stephenson in 1989 that Ruby was “pissed off”), and thought someone should do something about it. 

Joe Campisi was questioned by a congressional committee investigating the death of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, in which it was revealed that Jack Ruby was a “business friend of Joe Campisi” (Abril, 2016). Ruby was the owner of the Carousel Club, a private burlesque club in Dallas, and a low-level bookmaker in Civello’s Mafia. 

David Campisi has been identified by federal agents as a large illegal sports bookmaker, in partnership with Christopher “Gus” Schrader since 2005, but he has not been charged or arrested. According to the same news item from the Dallas-Fort Worth NBC affiliate, David wishes he’d capitalized more than he has on his restaurant—and family’s—”mafia mystique” (Gordon, 2019). At the same time, “Nothing suggests David Campisi or anyone else currently associated with the restaurant has mafia ties” (Gordon, 2019).

Yet, the Campisis have more than “mystique” to contribute to their reputation. Dallas is notorious for its gambling culture and a history of permissive law enforcement when it comes to vice, making prosecution an impossibly high bar for confirming involvement in organized crime. In 1970, the FBI took a report from an informant who’d known Joe Campisi for years through gambling. He told agents that Joe and his brother, Sam, arranged big dice games, Joe’s son Corky took bets on horse races, and Joe Campisi himself took bets in his Egyptian Restaurant on a dedicated phone line. 

Joseph Campisi saw a queue of visitors daily in his office at the Egyptian, like an old school don. He was friends with Benny Binion, Carlos Marcello, Joseph Civello, and other Dallas criminals. He and his father before him were known to locals as “the godfather.” Without convictions or confessions, we can’t be certain whether any member of the Campisi family has ever been part of the Dallas Mafia, or even whether any such organization has existed for the past 34 years.

Time will tell—it usually does. Until then, we can gather data and analyze it according to my axiom for doing Mafia genealogy: mafiosi do as mafiosi do.

Sources

Abril, D. (2016, October 28). How David Campisi keeps growing the family business. D Magazine. https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-ceo/2016/november/how-david-campisi-keeps-growing-the-family-business/

Bowden, J. (2000, July 1). Living legends my cousin Corky. D Magazine. https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2000/july/living-legends-my-cousin-corky/ 

FBI Record no. 124-90021-10033. (1970, July 20). Subjects: Joe Campisi/Joseph Campisi. https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32323835.pdf

Gordon, S. (2019, November 1). Feds investigate owner of Campisi’s as ‘large bookmaker.’ https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/feds-investigate-owner-of-campisis-as-large-bookmaker/2078301/ 

Jenkins, G. (2023, August 16). The Dallas Mafia Family [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MBpLZbJQwo

Manifest of the SS Il Piemonte. (1907, September 24). Lines 5-6. “Louisiana, New Orleans Passenger Lists, 1820-1945,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-95CC-RM8?cc=1916009&wc=MFVV-LNL%3A1029673701%2C1029676301 : 8 October 2015), 1903-1945 (NARA T905) > 016 – 9 Sep 1907 – 20 Oct 1907 > image 495 of 649; citing NARA microfilm publications M259 and T905 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.). 

Marriage of Carlo Campisi and Antonina Cammarata. (1906, October 27). “Italia, Palermo, Diocesi di Monreale, Registri Parrocchiali, 1531-1998,” images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9Q97-YMXQ-WJM?cc=2046915&wc=MGST-6TP%3A351040501%2C351040502%2C351051301 : 20 May 2014), Roccamena > Santissimo Salvatore > Matrimoni 1876-1911 > image 109 of 253; Archivio di Arcidiocesi di Palermo (Palermo ArchDiocese Archives, Palermo).

North, M. (2013). Betrayal in Dallas: LBJ, the Pearl street mafia, and the murder of President Kennedy. Skyhorse Publishing.

Smith-Ruehle, S. (2020, September 3). Did Campisi’s have ties to organized crime? Curious Texas looks at the history. The Dallas Morning News (Dallas, TX). https://www.dallasnews.com/news/curious-texas/2020/09/04/did-campisis-have-ties-to-organized-crime-curious-texas-looks-at-the-history/ 

Stephenson, T. (1989, December 1). Low profile the godfather of Greenville avenue. D Magazine. https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/1989/december/low-profile-the-godfather-of-greenville-avenue/ 

Stuertz, M. (2008, June 12). Rose names. Dallas Observer. https://www.dallasobserver.com/restaurants/rose-names-6407681 

Swanson, D. J. (2015). Blood aces: the wild ride of Benny Binion, the Texas gangster who created Vegas poker. Penguin Books.

Whitt, R. (2010, March 11). High-profile suicides throw a bucket of ice-cold reality on the NBA’s party week in Dallas. Dallas Observer. https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/high-profile-suicides-throw-a-bucket-of-ice-cold-reality-on-the-nbas-party-week-in-dallas-6419393