Tommy Angelo (5 April 1900 – 25 September 1951) was an Italian-American mafioso, caporegime in Chicago's Salieri crime family, racecar driver, and former cab driver. He became a Mafia associate in 1930 and rose in the ranks of the family before being forced to turn states in 1938 after incurring the wrath of his boss, Don Ennio Salieri, by refusing to kill his former consigliere Frank Colletti, and making side money with Paulie Lombardo behind the boss' back. He served an eight-year prison sentence and entered the Witness Protection Program with his wife and daughter, relocating to New York City. There, Angelo was murdered by an associate of Salieri, Vito Scaletta, in 1951, having secured his family's safety and lived to see his daughter's wedding.
Biography[]
Thomas Angelo was born in Sicily, Italy on 5 April 1900, the son of plantation supervisor Marco Angelo, Sr. and his wife Maria; he was the younger brother of Marco, Jr. and Isabella. The family immigrated to the United States in 1904 when the plantation was foreclosed by a moneylender, and the family arrived in New York City, New York on 25 December 1904 after a month at sea. The family then moved on to the Midwestern industrial city of Chicago, Illinois, and Angelo's father worked at the harbor there for fifteen years until his death. Tommy had his first job at five years old, and he went on to work on a road crew which built several highways throughout the Northern United States before permanently settling in Chicago in 1926. He then saved up enough money to buy a taxi license, purchasing his first taxi.
Angelo as a cab driver
Angelo went on to drive a taxicab on the streets of Chicago amid Prohibition and the Great Depression, investing long hours in a job which paid him little. However, he initially refused to resort to criminality, as he once believed that it was better to be alive and poor than rich and dead. On the night of 22 September 1930, his smoke break was interrupted when the mafiosi Sam Trapani and Paulie Lombardo - whose car had crashed while being chased by Morello crime family enforcers - held Angelo at gunpoint and forced him to serve as their getaway driver. Angelo succeeded in shaking off several pursuing cars, although his car was shot up in the process. Trapani had Angelo drop them off at Don Ennio Salieri's restaurant, where Trapanii gave Angelo a hefty payment from the Don as gratitude for his help; he also invited him to come by the restaurant if he ever needed anything. Angelo used the cash to repair his cab, and he still had enough left to theoretically buy a whole new one.
Angelo being beaten up
The next morning, Morello enforcers Dino Bonaventura and Lou Lorenzetti ambush Angelo's taxicab, trashing it with baseball bats and also beating Angelo down. When Dino pulled out a pistol to finish the job, Angelo fled through the alleyways and to Salieri's restaurant, where Trapani and Lombardo scared off the Morellos with a lupara shotgun. Trapani and Lombardo then decided to introduce Angelo to Don Salieri, and Angelo - now in urgent need of protection - was now willing to do so. Don Salieri and his consigliere Frank Colletti quickly took a liking to Angelo, and he gave Angelo permission to have his revenge against the Morellos. Angelo and Lombardo went to the Morellos' parking lot and destroyed the cars there with baseball bats and Molotov cocktails, and they also beat down the few Morello guards who tried to stop them. Impressed with Angelo's success, Don Salieri welcomed Angelo to the family as an associate.
Angelo at the motel in 1930
Over the next few weeks, Angelo gradually took on new responsibilities within the family, first accompanying Lombardo and Trapani on debt collections on 29 October 1930. Angelo served as the wheelman for the two more experienced enforcers, and he engaged in his first shootout in the rural outskirts of North Side Chicago, when Lombardo was wounded by a gunshot to the chest and Sam kidnapped and tortured by a gang at a motel they were extorting. Angelo killed several gangsters there and proceeded to chase down their leader, killing him after a car chase and retrieving the protection money meant for the Salieris.
Angelo driving a racecar
Angelo went on to rise in the ranks of the Salieri family over the next few years, getting into a few "dust-ups" with rival criminals trying to muscle in on the family's businesses, running alcohol during Prohibition, offering protection to businesses, and doing rounds to collect protection money. In 1932, he helped to steal and sabotage the racecar of European Grand Prix driver Martin Lichtenberg - the Morello family's favored driver - with the help of the mechanic Ralph Gurner's associate Lucas Bertone, only to be thrust into the race to replace the Salieri family's favored driver, Mikey Dunne, whose legs had been broken by the Morellos. Angelo proceeded to beat the rival racers Davis and Hernandez (Lichtenberg's engine had overheated, destroying his car) in the ensuing 1932 Chicago Grand Prix, making him a celebrity and earning him the admiration of Sarah Marino, the daughter of Don Salieri's bartender Luigi Marino.
The two of them developed feelings for each other, and, one night, Luigi asked Angelo to walk Sarah home, as there was a gang of hooligans who often made unwanted advances at her and posed a threat to her safety. Angelo beat them all down in an alleyway brawl after they attempted to kill him and rape her, and she then decided to invite him into her apartment and make love with him, starting a relationship which would eventually lead to a marriage and the birth of their daughter.