On March 19, 1943, a man in a fedora and dark overcoat walked along the Illinois Central Railroad tracks in North Riverside, Illinois. He stopped, reached into his coat, and pulled out a . 32 caliber Colt revolver. He fired three shots into his own head.
When police identified the body, Chicago went silent. Frank Nitti, the most powerful mob boss in America, the man who had inherited Al Capone’s empire, had killed himself. The son of poor Italian immigrants, Francesco Raffaele Nitto was born on January 27, 1886, in Angri, a small town near Salerno in southern Italy. His family crossed the ocean when he was a child and settled in Brooklyn’s Navy Yard section, where Italian immigrants crowded into tenements and worked brutal hours for pennies.
His mother died young, his father remarried, and the family never escaped poverty. Frank grew up in the streets, learning to fight, to steal, and to distrust the law. By his early twenties, he had moved to Chicago, reportedly following family or fleeing trouble in New York. By 1913, he was in a city about to become the most wide-open in America.
He started small, opening a barber shop on South Halsted Street that was legitimate on the surface but served as a front for fencing stolen goods. He had a talent for moving merchandise quickly and a head for numbers. In 1917, he was arrested for receiving stolen property, paid a fine, and walked. Two years later, another arrest, another fine.
The police knew who Frank Nitti was. They did not yet know what he would become. Prohibition changed everything. When the 18th Amendment became law in 1919, millions of Americans wanted something the government had outlawed, and whoever supplied that demand would make a fortune.
Frank Nitti was about to meet the man who would change his life forever: Al Capone. By the early 1920s, Chicago was carved up among gangs fighting for control of bootlegging. The most powerful was run by Johnny Torrio and his rising star, Al Capone, who controlled the South Side, running breweries, speakeasies, brothels, and gambling dens. Making millions required managing millions, and that required men who understood both violence and business.
Nitti was both. By the mid-1920s, he was working directly for Capone. Capone recognized Nitti’s rare combination of skills. Most enforcers were muscle men who could break legs and intimidate rivals.
Nitti could do that, but he could also keep books, understand profit margins, and hide money. Capone put him in charge of enforcement and finances. It was a post almost no one else could handle. Nitti reported directly to the boss, and when someone needed to be dealt with, he handled it.
When money needed to be counted or hidden, he handled that too. He became one of the few men Capone trusted completely, and in the outfit, that trust meant protection and power. Nitti’s reputation was built on precision and terror. He did not lose his temper.
He did not make mistakes. When he was sent to handle a problem, the problem disappeared. One story tells of a bootlegger who tried to cut the outfit out of a deal. Nitti calmly explained the situation, and when the man refused, his men beat the bootlegger so badly he spent weeks in the hospital.
The warehouse burned down that night. Another story involves a rival gang that showed up to a negotiation thinking they had leverage; they left in body bags. Unlike some mobsters, Nitti did not enjoy violence or kill for reputation. Violence was a business expense, used exactly as much as the situation required.
That made him more dangerous than the unpredictable ones. Cross the outfit, and it was certain Nitti would come for you. He also understood money. Capone was estimated to be making $100 million a year from bootlegging, and Nitti oversaw much of the operation to hide, launder, and distribute it.
He set up front businesses and moved cash through layers of transactions. By 1930, Nitti was Capone’s right hand. When Capone traveled, Nitti ran Chicago. When Capone was in court, Nitti handled the outfit’s business.
Then everything changed. On October 17, 1931, Capone was convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to 11 years in federal prison. The Chicago outfit suddenly had no boss. Power vacuums in the mob are dangerous, but the outfit did not fracture, because Frank Nitti stepped up.
The underboss was technically Paul Ricca, but Ricca knew the outfit needed a leader who commanded immediate respect, someone Capone had trusted completely. He deferred to Nitti. Not everyone was happy. Some of the older capos thought Nitti was too cautious, too focused on business.
But Nitti understood something they did not: the government had taken down Capone with accountants and tax law, and the outfit had to adapt. He consolidated power quietly. He ran the outfit like a corporation, settling disputes through mediation rather than murder when possible. As Prohibition ended, the outfit diversified into labor unions, gambling, prostitution, and extortion.
Under Nitti, it remained stable, and profits continued. His rise came with a target on his back. On December 19, 1932, two Chicago police detectives and two Treasury agents raided his office in the La Salle–Wacker Building, arresting him on tax evasion charges, the same weapon that had brought down Capone. According to Detective Harry Lang, Nitti reached for a gun, and Lang fired in self-defense, hitting Nitti in the neck and back.
According to Nitti and witnesses, there was no gun; Lang had walked in and shot him in cold blood in an assassination attempt ordered by Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who wanted to eliminate Nitti and install his own mob allies. Nitti survived, rushed to the hospital and undergoing surgery. Then the story grew stranger. Six weeks later, on February 15, 1933, Cermak was in Miami when Giuseppe Zangara, an Italian immigrant and bricklayer, fired into a crowd.
The official story was that Zangara was trying to assassinate President-elect Franklin Roosevelt and hit the mayor by accident. Cermak died 19 days later. But in Chicago, many believed Nitti had ordered the murder in revenge. Zangara was executed less than five weeks after the shooting and never talked.
The truth was never established. Detective Lang was eventually convicted of assault with intent to kill, served a short sentence, and was kicked off the police force. Frank Nitti walked out of the hospital more powerful than ever. He had survived an assassination attempt and, allegedly, ordered the death of a sitting mayor.
The message to Chicago was clear: Frank Nitti was untouchable. From 1932 to 1943, Nitti ran the Chicago outfit like a modern corporation. He divided the city into territories, each controlled by a trusted capo, settled disputes in meetings, and used violence as a last resort. The outfit’s primary rackets were labor unions and gambling.
It controlled unions in the service and entertainment industries, ran illegal lotteries and bookmaking operations, and opened casinos disguised as social clubs. Nitti formed alliances with New York’s Five Families, Kansas City, and Detroit, making the outfit part of a national crime syndicate. He invested in legitimate businesses that laundered money and provided cover. He met with his capos regularly, usually at the Lexington Hotel or safe houses, reviewed financial reports, and settled disputes.
He learned from Capone’s mistakes and kept himself out of the line of fire, too visible and arrogant to be taken down. Or so he thought. In the late 1930s, the outfit found a gold mine in Hollywood, and Nitti approved the operation that would eventually destroy him. The outfit controlled the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the union representing movie projectionists.
If projectionists went on strike, theaters could not show films, and studios would lose millions. Two mobsters, Willie Bioff and George Browne, ran the scheme under Nitti. They would approach a studio, threaten a strike, and offer a solution: pay, and there will be no strike. MGM paid $1 million.
Paramount paid $1 million. Warner Brothers, RKO, and 20th Century Fox all paid. Over several years, the outfit extorted more than $2. 5 million from Hollywood, equivalent to tens of millions today.
The studios did not report it because they were complicit. For years, it worked perfectly. Then Willie Bioff made a mistake. He was flashy, bought expensive cars, threw lavish parties, and drew attention.
In 1941, a labor organizer started asking questions, and the FBI began investigating. Bioff flipped. He laid out the entire extortion scheme, naming George Browne, Paul Ricca, Louis Campagna, Phil D’Andrea, and Frank Nitti. In early 1943, federal prosecutors began building their case.
Indictments were coming, and Nitti knew what that meant: federal prison, likely Alcatraz, perhaps the rest of his life. It was unacceptable. By early 1943, Nitti was 57 years old, a mob veteran of over 20 years. The federal case was solid, and Bioff’s testimony was damning, with receipts, records, and names.
There was no way out. Nitti’s health was failing. The bullets from the 1932 attempt left him with chronic pain, severe headaches, and trouble sleeping. Some accounts say he was claustrophobic, terrified of enclosed spaces.
Prison was unbearable. He had seen what it did to Capone, who entered as the most powerful gangster in America and emerged a broken man. In Nitti’s world, the boss took responsibility, and cooperation was unthinkable. You did not rat, ever.
So he made his decision: he would go out on his terms. In the days before March 19, Nitti settled his affairs. He met with his lawyer and wrote a letter, brief and to the point, explaining he could not face prison. On the morning of March 19, he had breakfast with his wife, Anna, and seemed calm.
After lunch, he told her he needed to take a walk. He walked nearly a mile to the railroad tracks, wearing his best suit under a dark overcoat, his fedora pulled low. He stopped near a crossing, reached into his coat, and pulled out the . 32 caliber Colt he had carried for years.
The first shot grazed his head. The second entered his skull but did not kill him. The third, fired as he fell, struck him in the neck. He collapsed onto the tracks and bled out in the cold March air.
A railroad worker found him around 3:00 p. m. At first, he thought it was a drunk. Then he saw the blood, the gun, and the expensive suit.
Police searched the body and found the note, short and matter of fact, saying essentially that Nitti could not face prison, that he was sick, and that this was his choice. It did not mention the indictment directly. By 5:00, radio stations interrupted programming and newspaper extras hit the streets. Chicago, a city that had seen thousands of mob murders, could not believe it.
Mobsters did not kill themselves. But Frank Nitti did, because death was preferable to prison, to testifying, to losing control. In that final act, he proved he was still in control. They could not arrest him.
They could not break him. The funeral was held at Mount Carmel Cemetery, a quiet affair with no big procession. Within weeks, the federal indictments came down. Paul Ricca, Louis Campagna, Phil D’Andrea, and others were charged in the Hollywood extortion scheme, tried in December 1943, and convicted.
Ricca got ten years. Campagna got ten years. The outfit’s leadership was gutted, but the outfit survived. Ricca, even from prison, continued to wield power, and when released in 1947, he resumed control alongside Tony Accardo, who would become the longest-serving boss in outfit history.
The organization continued through the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, moving into Las Vegas, controlling casinos, and adapting from street crime to corporate crime. In the outfit’s history, Nitti occupied a unique place. He was not as famous as Capone or as ruthless as Sam Giancana, but he was the bridge, the man who took Capone’s empire and transformed it into a modern criminal organization, proving the mob could survive without its founder. And then he proved something else: even at the top, you are never really free.
The life traps you. Prison or death are the only exits. Frank Nitti chose death.