Madison Wisconsin Mob:
During the Prohibition Madison was led by gangsters Paul Corona, Joe Giusto, Joe Geloso and Anthony Musso. Before Geloso was murdered, in 1929, Lorenzo Savatore, a wealthy sugar merchant, fired a shotgun blast aimed at Geloso but killed Geloso’s infant son who Geloso was carrying in his arms.
The city was divided between fractions, with the most prominent fraction led by Giuseppe DiMartino, a cop killer.
He was murdered on April 9, 1928. DiMartino was sitting at home when two assassins, Joe Varesi and Joe Logalbo, fired a shotgun at close range through a window, killing him.
By 1940 the Mafia was a presence in the city led by Benedetto DiSalvo who worked out of grocery store he owned with his sons, the gangs specialty was high dollar armed robbery.
When DiSalvo died in February 1964, Carlo Peter Caputo took over.
Carlo Peter Caputo, who emigrated to the States in 1919 at age 16 from Palermo, Sicily, came to Madison Wisconsin, probably arriving there from Milwaukee in 1940 and began the local Mafia family there.
Caputo originally settled in Chicago and became part of the Aiello mob, rival of Al Capone’s mob. Caputo answered to Joey Aiello but when Aiello was murdered Caputo and several other members of the gang fled to Madison and were made into the mafia in about 1935.
The FBI records showed that Milwaukee mob boss Frank Balistrieri didn’t think much of Caputo and wanted to take over the Madison family but Chicago, which held sway over the city, forbade the move.
Caputo kept a low profile and stayed away from the law. Caputo owned a Stop and Shop grocery store, a place called Carlo’s Restaurant, Giuseppe’s Pizza, a Liquor store and a Steak House.
He leased retail space to the State Street Arcade, an adult amusement center but denied that he owned the business.
Caputo was a large land owned in the city, estimated in 1965 dollars to be worth $265,000. Although he had been in the US since age 16, Caputo could neither read nor write English.
His son, a world war two veteran had married well and was a respected member of the community. A second son was tragically killed in a freak car accident when he was a junior in college.
In 1967, a federal grand jury Caputo, on three counts of tax evasion and three counts of signing a false tax return. sentenced to 30 days in jail sentence and two years probation.
Caputo reported that he had made only $721.56 income in 1961 when he actually earned at least $31,000.
The prosecutor in the case, U.S. attorney Edmund Nix had once worked in a tavern owned by Caputo, while he worked his way through law school as a bartender.
Caputo’s Underboss, Joseph Aiello, died of natural causes on November 7, 1970. Caputo died of natural causes on November 9, 1993 at age 90. It was only after he died that the local media reported that he had been the leader of the local mafia.
Several years later the FBI determined that the mob was no longer active in Madison.
An FBI report from May 21, 1973 detailed a conversation between Milwaukee informant Augie Maniaci and Rockford Illinois mob members Captain Charles Vince, Frank Correnti, Phil Emordeno, Sebastian Gulotta, Joe Maggio and Phil Priola.
Vince told the group that the Madison family had recently disbanded by vote.
In the early years of Prohibition, a number of gangsters left Madison and settled in Rockford, Illinois and formed the Rockford branch of the Mafia.
Tony Musso, who arrived in Rockford in 1926 became the city’s first mafia boss until his death in 1958.
Vincenzo Troia moved to Rockford around the same time and was described as Musso’s lieutenant until he left the city in 1930 and was murdered in 1935 in Newark, New Jersey.
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The Mafia in Madsion
