John Donato Torrio (born Donato Torrio, [doˈnaːto ˈtoːrrjo]; January 20, 1882 – April 16, 1957) was an Italian American mobster who helped to build a criminal organization, the Chicago Outfit, in the 1920s; it was later inherited by his protégé, Al Capone. He also put forth the idea of the National Crime Syndicate in the 1930s and later became an unofficial adviser to Lucky Luciano and his Luciano crime family.

He gained several nicknames but was mostly known as “The Fox” for his cunning and finesse. Widely considered one of the most influential personalities in American organized crime, Torrio impressed authorities and chroniclers with his business acumen and diplomatic skills.

The US Treasury official Elmer Irey considered him “the biggest gangster in America” and wrote, “He was the smartest and, I dare say, the best of all the hoodlums. ‘Best’ referring to talent, not morals.” Virgil W. Peterson of the Chicago Crime Commission stated that his “talents as an organizational genius were widely respected by the major gang bosses in the New York City area.” Crime journalist Herbert Asbury affirmed: “As an organizer and administrator of underworld affairs Johnny Torrio is unsurpassed in the annals of American crime; he was probably the nearest thing to a real mastermind that this country has yet produced”.

Early life

Torrio was born in Irsina (then known as Montepeloso), Basilicata, in Southern Italy, to Tommaso Torrio and Maria Carluccio originally from Altamura, Apulia. When he was two his father, a railway employee, died in a work accident; shortly after, Torrio immigrated to New York City with his widowed mother in December 1884. She later remarried.

His first jobs were as a porter and bouncer in Manhattan. While he was a teenager, he joined a street gang and became its leader; he eventually managed to save enough money and opened a billiards parlor for the group, and from there grew illegal activities such as gambling and loan sharking. Torrio’s business sense caught the eye of Paul Kelly, the leader of the infamous Five Points Gang. Torrio’s gang ran legitimate businesses, but its main concern was the numbers game, supplemented by incomes from bookmaking, loan sharking, hijacking, prostitution, and opium trafficking. Al Capone, who worked at Kelly’s club, admired Torrio’s quick mind and looked to him as his mentor.

Capone had belonged to the Junior Forty Thieves, the Bowery Boys and the Brooklyn Rippers; they soon moved up to the Five Points Gang. Torrio eventually hired Capone to bartend at the Harvard Inn, a bar in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn owned by Torrio’s business associate, Frankie Yale.

Move to Chicago

Torrio was the nephew of Victoria Moresco, the wife and business partner of “Big Jim” Colosimo, who had become the owner of more than 100 brothels in Chicago. According to Laurence Bergreen, “Torrio is [also] described as Colosimo’s nephew, but in the absence of any evidence to confirm the relationship, it is more likely their kinship was spiritual rather than familial.”

In 1909, Colosimo invited Torrio to Chicago to deal with extortion demands from the Black Hand. Torrio eliminated the extortionists and stayed on; he ran Colosimo’s operations and organized the criminal muscle needed to deal with threats to them.

In 1919, Capone also left New York for Chicago at the invitation of Torrio. Capone began in Chicago as a bouncer in a brothel, where he contracted syphilis. Timely use of Salvarsan probably could have cured the infection, but he apparently never sought treatment.