Prohibition: Death On The Streets 1928-1933
Originally published in “Murder And Mayhem In Rockford, Illinois” by Kathi Kresol. Copyright © 2015 Kathi Kresol.
The Police raids continued, and in 1930 a squad of federal agents was sent to the Rockford area. Agents from the United States Secret Service joined them. The Secret Service’s main interest was one of the gang leaders in Rockford, Tony Musso. They later learned that he moved out to California, and they followed Musso there. The leader of the task force, C. Edson Smith, who was a deputy prohibition administrator from Chicago, was kept busy organizing the raids. The gangs were feeling the pressure from the federal squad raids and the regular police. In the beginning of June, one such gang opened fire on the federal agents.
The federal agents were conducting a raid on a house on Sanford Street. It was a suspected distillery, and the agents were dismantling the equipment when they were almost “mowed down by a shower of machine gun bullets.” A car with curtains on the windows drove by, and suddenly there was the sound of machine gun fire. The bullets hit trees and the front of the house. No officers were hurt in this attack, but the act shocked the people of Rockford. “The mystery machine and the machine gunners were swallowed up by the night.” No arrests were ever made for this shooting, though police suspected that Dominick Rossi, who lived at 710 Sanford Street, was involved with the attempt on the officers’ lives.
On August 14, 1930, Joe Giovingo, a Rockford native, was standing on the curb by the corner of Morgan and South Main Streets talking to four men who were sitting in an automobile. One of the men was Tony Abbott. Abbott, whose real name was Abbatini, was reportedly part of Al Capone’s Gang from Chicago. Abbott allegedly killed one of “Bugs” Moran’s men, Jack Zuta, in Wisconsin and was in Rockford hiding out.
As Joe was speaking to Abbott, two detectives standing on the sidewalk near the car called him over to question him. They wanted to talk to him about the recent raid at Giovingo’s home on Harding Street. The officers were Folke Bengsten and Roy Johnson.
They had just started to talk to Joe when a large “high-powered” Dodge sedan appeared on South Main Street. As it passed Abbott’s car, a shotgun was poked through the rear window, and shots were fired toward Abbott’s car and the three men on the sidewalk. The bullets struck the car that Abbott was sitting in. Abbott and the other men in the car scrambled out of the doors and hunched behind the car. Johnson hit the ground, and Bengsten ducked and then drew his gun to return fire. The car continued south on South Main and then turned onto Montague Road. Joe had seventeen wounds from the gunshot blast that had torn into his side. One slug hit his elbow first and then passed into his abdomen. He died a few minutes later.
The Dodge sedan was recovered the next day about a mile and a half from the city on Montague Road. This led the police to believe this was a premeditated hit. Bengsten and Johnson also reported that Abbott appeared nervous as he was sitting in his car prior to the attack. Abbott kept checking the rear view mirror as if looking for someone.
Police officers could not agree whether the bullets were meant for Abbott or Giovingo. Abbott and his bodyguards were taken into custody but later released. Family members of Giovingo would later say that Joe’s murder was a case of mistaken identity. They stated they knew that Abbott was the intended target because Al Capone actually called the Giovingo house to speak to Joe’s mother. Capone apologized that Joe had taken the bullet instead of the intended target.
Paul Giovingo, Joe’s brother, came to the station to speak to police and then left with Abbott. Paul and Abbott were apparently good friends. Paul hosted his brother’s funeral at his house at 1033 Montague Road. Joe’s funeral was one of Rockford’s largest, with over 1,500 people attending. There were 150 cars in the procession from the house to the Catholic cemetery. The scene was mass chaos, as police officers, gang leaders, city officials, police officials, friends and family all wandered around the yard, waiting to leave for the funeral. Joe’s mother and sister were hysterical, and their shrieking could be heard as the casket was loaded into the car. Members of the Italian Athletic Club acted as Joe’s pallbearers.
Paul Giovingo would testify in September at an inquest about his brother’s death, stating that Abbott was the true target of the assassin’s bullets. Giovingo also told the jury that Abbott had recently been killed by the same men who had shot Joe. Paul, suspected to have gang ties himself, would soon become the subject of the police’s interest.
Jack DeMarco was the next man to fall victim to the gang’s retaliation. Jack DeMarco was born in Italy on November 28, 1891. He immigrated to the United States around 1917 when he was twenty-five years old. A suspected bootlegger, Jack DeMarco was in and out of trouble during the early part of the 1930s. He was arrested on suspicion that he was the leader in a stolen car ring and also several times for bootlegging and fighting. In 1928, he and the suspected leader of one of the bootlegging gangs, Tony Musso, were arrested when they were caught fighting in the street in front of the cafe where Joe Giovingo would later be killed.
In June 1930, DeMarco was operating a still from his home on Romona Avenue when he was arrested and sent with other defendants to Freeport to stand before Stanley M. Vance, United States deputy commissioner. The trial would be one of the most “spectacular trials in the history of Northern Illinois.” Eighty men and one woman were charged with “conspiracy to violate the Prohibition Act.” Fifty-nine of those arrested were sent to trial. The trial, conducted in Freeport, Illinois, started on January 12, 1931, and lasted until February 2. Thirty-six men were found guilty, twenty-eight of them were sentenced to prison and the rest were either given short-term sentences or placed on probation. The names of the men sentenced are: John Alto, Joe Baraconi, Joe Bendetto, Joe Fizula, Frank Theodore, Andrew Saladino, Tony Giovingo, Paul Giovingo, Frank Rumore, Theodore LaFranka, Louis Verace, Joe Stassi, Thomas Rumore, Tony Musso, Joe Domino, Alfred Falzone, Lorenzo Buttice, Tony Carleto, Frank Buscemi and Peter Sanfillipo. DeMarco would be sent to Leavenworth to serve twelve months of an eighteen-month sentence. It was while serving his time at Leavenworth that rumors started to spread about one of the twenty-eight men talking to the federal agents.
Rockford woke on January 20, 1932, to headlines that announced that gunfire had once again been heard in the southwest neighborhood. “Gangland guns, still in Rockford for the last year, roared a leaden greeting of death to Jack DeMarco, forty six, a local bootlegger at his home at 7 o’clock last night.”
The story went on to say that DeMarco, who had been released from Leavenworth penitentiary the day before, was killed in his own home on Romona Avenue. Jack’s family and friends were hosting a welcome home party when three well-dressed men knocked on the kitchen door and asked to speak to Jack. They flashed badges and were admitted into the home.
Jack was in the dining room placing another record on the Victrola when the men entered the room. All three pulled guns, stated they were the police and asked to speak to Jack alone. One of the men shepherded the family members into a bedroom while another watched the kitchen door. The third man walked DeMarco into the living room. Jack had just enough time to state, “You’re no sheriff or police” before the man opened fire. Three shots roared from the gun in quick succession followed by two more. The next sounds the family members heard were running feet and a car roaring away.
They crawled out of the bedroom window and ran for safety. Sam Gorrenti, a neighbor and friend of the DeMarco family bravely poked his head into the living room.
The autopsy revealed that Jack had been shot once in the back, once in the back of the head, and then after he fell, he was shot twice through the left ear. One bullet lodged in the floor next to DeMarco’s head. All shots came from a .45-caliber revolver.
Jack had only been home for ten hours. His wife, Fannie, was devastated by the loss of her husband. She was too hysterical to be questioned by police. Coroner Walter Julian and State’s Attorney Karl Williams read the letters that Fannie received from Jack during his time at Leavenworth looking for clues about who might have wanted him dead.
Undertaker F.S. Long conducted the funeral inside DeMarco’s home on January 22, 1932. The little band of mourners made its way to the cemetery, where the coffin was opened for a final goodbye. Fannie DeMarco, who spent most of the funeral moaning, suddenly hurled herself into Jack’s coffin and, for the last time, kissed his lips. Sobbing uncontrollably, she was carried back to the car by her family.
The Register Republic article stated, “A lone sexton silently lowered the casket into the grave. The last tragic chapter had been written to Jack DeMarco’s ‘home-coming’ from Leavenworth, a brief celebration terminated by five bullets from the guns of gangland’s executioners last Tuesday night.” DeMarco’s murderers were never caught.
Paul Giovingo was another of the Rockford bootleggers to be sent to the Leavenworth penitentiary. He was sentenced to two years and was released in the fall of 1932. A lot had changed in Rockford during the time he was away. Since th3 1931 indictment had cleared many of the small dealers out of way in the illegal liquor business, the much larger, better organized and more powerful liquor syndicates from Peoria, Springfield and southern Wisconsin swept in to take control.
Giovingo was using strong-arm “buy your liquor from me or else” tactics and kept running into resistance from the local speakeasies. The tensions were building, and trouble seemed imminent. Things came to a head on February 12, 1933. At around 7:00 p.m., Giovingo went to get his shoes shined at Midway Shoe Shine Parlor on East State Street.
When Giovingo left the parlor, he stopped at his house at 1033 Montague Street to visit with his wife and children. He shaved and changed his suit before he left his house on the way to his “exclusive” speakeasy on South Main Street.
Paul never reached his destination. He must have suspected that something bad was coming because when police found his body, his gun, though unfired, was in his hand. There was supposedly a letter that had been delivered to the house the day before, warning Paul that he should stay home that night. Giovingo was only a block from his home on South Winnebago Street when his time finally ran out. His car had been forced against the curb between Loomis and Montague Streets and was riddled with shotgun and revolver blasts on the driver’s side and back of the car. Paul’s body had eight slugs in his left side and there were four gunshots to his head. His car was found next to the curb with the ignition turned off and the emergency brake set.
The killers must have wanted to ensure Paul’s death because evidence showed they stopped the car and fired several revolver shots to the back of his head. Powder marks indicated that these were contact wounds.
Even though a large crowd of people gathered at the death scene, no one could or would tell the police anything. The police talked of it like coming up against a wall—a wall of silence. The assistant chief of police, Homer Read, and police captain Charles Manson involved themselves in the investigation right from the beginning, but nothing could penetrate the wall. The investigation that started out very slow quickly ground to a complete stop.
The motive for the shooting was very clear. The Morning Star newspaper stated, “Giovingo’s career has been linked closely to the rise and fall of the liquor industry in Rockford. Paul was first known in Rockford as a barber, affable and efficient, and with a large following. Then the easy profits of the liquor business became apparent to him and he abandoned his trade to become a bootlegger.”
This was a decision that he would not live to regret. The regret would be carried by his family, a mother who had already buried one son due to violence and his wife, who was left to raise their two young sons, Sam, seven, and Elmer, five.
Even before Paul Giovingo died, the illegal booze racketeers were feeling the pressure from within and without. The rival gangs had just about killed each other off, and the police were taking advantage of the fact that the people of Rockford were tired of all the violence on their streets. The writing was on the wall.
The Twenty-first Amendment that repealed the Eighteenth Amendment (also known as the Prohibition Act) was submitted to the states on February 20, 1933, and was ratified on November 7, 1933. The illegal liquor business was, for all intents and purposes, finished. The violence in the streets of Rockford, unfortunately, was not.
Sources:
Rockford (IL) Morning Star. “Federal Seize Still and Owner in Beloit,” June 13, 1930.
___________. “Gang Dictator Slain Here.” February 12, 1933.
___________. “Jack DeMarco Shot to Death Here.” January 20, 1932.
Rockford (IL) Register Republic. “Smiles Mingle with Tears as 21 Go to Prison.” February 21, 1931.
Rockford (IL) Republic. “Hunt for Owner of Death Car Here.” August 16, 1930.
___________.”Local Man Slain from Death Auto.” August 15, 1930.
___________.“Murder Marks New Chapter in Old Liquor Feud.” January 20, 1932.
___________.”Paul Giovingo Is Victim of Alky Gunmen.” February 13, 1933.
___________.”Wife of Gangland Killer Victim Collapses at Grave Site.” January 22, 1932.
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