Luca "Rat Soap" Gurino (10 August 1906 – 6 May 1951) was a caporegime in the Clemente crime family. The main subordinate to Don Alberto Clemente, Gurino handled most of his businesses and operations. He was tortured and killed by Moretti family soldato Antonio Balsamo in 1951 after Gurino kidnapped him.
Biography[]
Luca Gurino was born on August 10th 1906 to an Italian family in Sicily. At a young age, he immigrated to the United States, settling in New York City and soon began working for the Clemente crime family under Alberto Clemente. He helped with Clemente's bootlegging network during Prohibition, being indicted in 1926 and serving a couple of years in prison. A crude man with an air of sophistication, Gurino was suspected in his girlfriend's murder in 1934 shortly after he had been arrested and acquitted of her assault. He earned a capo's position after murdering his predecessor and burying him in the foundation of a dam. Beginning in February 1945, he employed newly recruited mobsters Vito Scaletta and Joe Barbaro for various jobs and heists, including the robbery of a jewelry store the Irish O'Neill Gang were incidentally attempting to rob as well. Then, Gurino was pressured by Clemente to get rid of his former associate Sidney Pen, and Gurino insisted to Scaletta, Barbaro and soldato Henry Tomasino that they deal with Pen immediately; the three shot Pen to death in his distillery. Shortly afterwards, Scaletta was arrested for rationing stamps, and in the process of silencing the main witness against him, Gurino learnt of an even bigger turncoat, Richie Mazzeo, who was set to testify against the entire family hierarchy, so Gurino sent Barbaro to kill him. Ultimately, Scaletta was sentenced to 10 years in prison despite Barbaro's efforts, and he berated Gurino in front of all his men, which irritated him and he ordered Barbaro's death, forcing him to flee down South for five years. When Barbaro returned in 1950, now with the sponsorship of the Moretti crime family and Don Carlo Falcone, Gurino was obligated to let go of his resentment at a sitdown between the families.
Death[]
On 5 May 1951, Clemente ordered Gurino to muscle in on Falcone's newly discovered drug trafficking operation, so Gurino had three of Clemente's men, Antonio Balsamo, Harvey Epstein and Frankie the Mick, kidnapped and held captive at Clemente's slaughterhouse the following day to be tortured. Falcone's underboss Eddie Scarpa sent Scaletta to the slaughterhouse so he could attempt to save them, though by the time he arrived there, Frankie had already been beaten to death. He rescued Balsamo and Epstein, and Scaletta and Balsamo proceeded to have a shootout with Gurino's men, while Gurino locked himself in an office hoping they wouldn't be able to break in. After killing all his thugs, Balsamo drove a car through the wall and gave Gurino a hard beating, hurling him across a room and repeatedly hitting him with the intention to murder him slowly. Scaletta left Balsamo and Epstein to deal with Gurino themselves, and he was apparently tortured with a cattle prod before being put through a meat grinder by Balsamo.