Little Sicily, Chicago: The Saloon on Gault Court

Early in the 20th Century, before Prohibition and the Outfit, there were two Sicilian Mafia territories in Chicago: Little Italy and Little Sicily. Little Italy was in the Near West Side of Chicago, close to the heart of the city.

The Mafia that dominated Little Italy were led by the Genna brothers from Marsala, Sicily. North of the Genna stronghold was Goose Island, home to an Irish gang, and on the other side of the island was the Near North Side’s Little Sicily neighborhood. Mariano Zagone, a counterfeiter from Palermo, is the earliest known Mafia boss of Chicago’s Little Sicily. Following Zagone’s murder, the Nicolosi brothers of Corleone ruled Little Sicily. 

Little Sicily no longer exists. Once called “Little Hell” for the gasworks nearby, these streets have been renamed over the years, and the shanty housing occupied by a series of immigrant communities was razed and rebuilt as in the 1940-50s as the Cabrini-Green high-rise public housing apartments. The contrast between the poverty of this neighborhood and the opulence of the Gold Coast immediately to its east, on the shore of Lake Michigan, has been documented for over a hundred years. 

Corleonesi began to move into the neighborhood just before the turn of the 20th century. The most significant extended family to the local Mafia were the Spataforas. Gioachino Spatafora immigrated from Corleone in 1898 with his wife, Biagia “Bessie” Cutrone, and their children. Gioachino’s nephew, Giuseppe Nicolosi, operated a saloon on Gault Court (today called Cambridge Avenue). Mariano Zagone, the Mafia boss, treated the saloon as his own headquarters.

In 1902, Gioachino was dead, and his widow had remarried to Zagone. (Rumor has it Zagone seduced her before Spatafora’s death.) Gioachino and Bessie’s daughter, Leoluchina, who was called Laura Spatafora, married her cousin, Giuseppe Nicolosi. A few years later, Giuseppe’s brother, Carmelo, joined them on Gault Court.

On four different occasions between 1902 and 1909, people tried to kill Mariano Zagone, once shooting Laura’s brother, Vincenzo, by accident. It was another brother, Joseph Spatafora, who succeeded in killing his stepfather by gunning him down at the Nicolosi saloon. After Zagone’s murder, the Nicolosi brothers took over the Mafia in Little Sicily.

The Nicolosi brothers, and the children of Gioachino Spatafora, had another mutual set of first cousins in Little Sicily: the Collettis. In 1906, Carmelo Nicolosi and his wife escorted their cousin Leoluchina Colletti, who was joining her brothers, Giuseppe and Rosario, in Chicago. Traveling with them on the Perugia was Rosaria Maria Varca, the mother-in-law of New York City mafioso Mariano Marsalisi.

There was another significant family from Corleone in Little Sicily. Antonino Marino arrived in the United States in 1894 and moved his family to New York for a few years before arriving in Chicago, when his son Angelo was born in 1906. In 1907, Antonino welcomed two young women, his nieces, who arrived on the Hamburg. There were six passengers from Corleone on this voyage: Marino’s nieces, a Spatafora cousin and her husband destined for Chicago, and my relatives, Lucia Soldano and her brother Tony, going to New York. 

At least one of Antonino Marino’s visiting nieces has family ties to the Mafia. Lucia Canzoneri’s nephew, Leoluca Billeri, was a defendant at the 1969 Mafia trial in Bari, Italy. Her future husband, Carmelo Palazzo, immigrated to the United States in 1906 in the company of the newlywed son-in-law of a Fratuzzi member. Palazzo gave Mariano Marsalisi’s New York address as his destination. 

In Chicago in 1911, Marino’s six-year old son, Angelo, was lured away by neighbors on Gault Court and held for ransom. Among those responsible were the Nicolosi brothers, who later stood trial for the kidnapping, and their wives. Laura Spatafora’s sister-in-law, Paola Pomilla, was the ringleader, who returned the child an hour later, after Marino paid $500 to the brothers (more than $13K in 2021 dollars).

The Spatafora cousin on the Hamburg, Leoluchina Vutera, and her husband Paolo Fucarino were joining Leoluchina’s brother, Giuseppe in Chicago. In 1919, Paolo was a widower, but he remained close to his wife’s family. On his return from a trip to Sicily with his children, Paolo calls Carmelo Nicolosi his cousin and destination contact. Giuseppe Morello and Santo Calamia used a similar sleight of hand to stretch their in-law of an in-law relationship when Calamia visited Morello in prison.

The Marino and Spatafora families appear to have been close enough to travel halfway around the world together in 1907, at serious odds in 1911, and reconciled again by the latter years of Prohibition. In 1928, the Mafia of Little Sicily was allied to Joe Aiello, who had taken over Little Italy and the Unione Siciliane from the Gennas. Together they fought the encroachment of the Outfit into their neighborhood fiefdoms. Two of the last Corleonesi gangsters from this era are second cousins Sam and John Oliveri.

Sam Oliveri was born Salvatore Oliveri to a borgese (middle-class, as distinguished from a contadino or countryman) father and an unknown mother. Oliveri was a representative at the Cleveland Conference and later associated with the Mafia in Rockford, Illinois. Sam’s uncle is Andrea Oliveri of New York: an important early mafioso in East Harlem, and father-in-law of Tommy Reina. When he first immigrated in 1912, Sam went to Andrea’s son in New York City. By World War I, he and his second cousin, Giovanni “John” Oliveri both lived in Chicago’s Little Sicily. 

Sam and John Oliveri married sisters, Jennie and Stella Marino. The Marino sisters nieces of Antonino Marino, whose son was kidnapped by the Nicolosis. Antonino and his brother immigrated together through New Orleans in 1894. Stella was born there around 1895. The family moved north to Chicago, where Jennie (Vincenza) was born, three years later. 

John Oliveri lived on Cambridge Avenue in 1918 when he registered for the draft. When he became a naturalized citizen, Joe Nicolosi—Giuseppe—was one of the witnesses. John was killed by Capone’s men in 1928. 

Sam Oliveri moved to Rockford, Illinois, where he convinced a funeral home operator to make him a co-owner. The Gasparini & Oliveri Funeral Home was Oliveri’s Mafia headquarters in Rockford. Sam died in 1969. Oliveris continue to own and operate the funeral home today.