Riverview Park, Many a Mobster Grew up Here

This is a pictorial memory of that place we grew up as kids..!!Date Opened: 1904
Date Closed: 1967
Location: Western and Belmont Avenues,
near the Chicago River and Lane Tech High
Remains at site: None

Note: Riverview was one of the greatest of all
amusement parks













This is a pictorial memory of that place we grew up as kids..!!

The 74 acres bordered by Western and Belmont avenues, the Chicago River, and Lane Tech High School were known affectionately as "Riverview" to at least three generations of Chicagoans from as early as 1904 to as recent as 1967. Riverview Amusement Park was (sometimes disputably) billed as "The World’s Largest Amusement Park" throughout its 64-year popularity. For some people a trip to Riverview was a rite of passage; for others, it was a familiar weekend excursion, but for most people who went there, a trip to Riverview was a significant memory not soon forgotten. As Chicago natives, my parents and my grandparents can attest to the significance of Riverview. My grandmother’s eighth grade graduation trip was to Riverview, and she has fond memories of the four summers she spent as a cotton candy vendor there. My parents also have vivid memories of trips to Riverview. The story of Riverview Amusement Park is one remembered by many.

German Sharpshooter Park, as the area that would become Riverview was known as during the late 1800’s, was a shooting range and picnic grounds owned by the wealthy Schmidt family. Wilhelm Schmidt later put in swings and some rides for the ladies and children and Riverview was born. Soon after its opening in 1904, Wilhelm’s son George began to expand the park with ideas he had picked up in Europe from parks such as Tivoli Gardens. One of these ideas was Riverview’s famous 70-horse carousel, commissioned from a group of Swiss-Italian carvers employed by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company and installed in 1908. Riverview’s popularity grew during the early 1900’s as a ballroom and a roller rink were built for entertainment during the winter season. The Riverview Boosters Club, started in 1919, sponsored events such as an Armistice Day Party and membership drives throughout the early twenties.

The "roaring" attitude of the twenties had its effects on Riverview, as well. During Prohibition, the many beer-drinking German patrons of Riverview found the park’s picnic grounds continuing to flow freely with beer, even with some interruptions from federal agents. Chicago political machines also made good use of the popularity of Riverview during the 1920’s. Mayor "Big Bill" Thompson sponsored free childrens’ days at Riverview and paid the Western Ave. streetcar fare during the summer. "The park also became a focal point for the developing rivalry between the O’Bannion and Capone gangs," states Al Griffin in Chicago History. Riverview became even more "roaring" in 1926 with the addition of "The Bobs" roller coaster. "The Bobs" was an 11-car coaster with an 85-foot drop, long billed as the most fearsome roller coaster in the country, as well as the fastest on record. Built at the gargantuan (for the 1920’s) cost of 80,000 dollars, "The Bobs" carried 1,200 passengers per hour and drew some 700,000 riders each season. "The Bobs" remained uncontestedly the most popular ride at Riverview throughout its existence.

The Great Depression of the 1930’s hit Riverview hard, as it did most entertainment industries. During the early 1930’s a devastating fire burned down one of the earlier fun houses, called the Bug House, and sections of the Derby Racing Coaster. Even without excess cash flow, Chicagoans continued to find ways to go to Riverview as is evidenced by George Schmidt’s introduction of the foot-long hot dog during the thirties. Most visitors to Riverview opted to eat at the Bowery rather than in the restaurants during the Depression years, so Schmidt began selling the foot-long as something filling yet inexpensive. It’s easy to see why Riverview’s motto became "Laugh Your Troubles Away."

The years during World War II brought more changes to Riverview. The American National Socialist Party held its annual picnic and rally at Riverview in 1939. Thousands of Nazis postured and marched and hailed Hitler on the amusement park grounds. In contrast to this, Riverview became a popular place for returning servicemen and began to thrive again after the lag during the thirties. The postwar baby boom of the late 1940’s and 1950’s brought greatly increased prosperity to Riverview. "In the old days we’d have families of only one or two children. Now they come with four or five or more," stated G.G. Botts, Riverview vice president, of the baby boom’s effects. During the fifties, one couple that met at Riverview insisted on being married on the Pair-o-Chutes ride, and even found a minister to do it. The downside to this increased popularity was the rise of other amusement parks that presented stiff competition for Riverview. In 1948 there were only 420 amusement parks nationwide; in 1958 the number had grown to over 700.

The movement of more and more African Americans to Chicago heightened racial tension at Riverview during that time period, as well. One of the midway games that started out as a "Dunk the Bozo the Clown" game in which contestants threw balls at a target that would release a man into a tank of water turned into "Dunk the Nig**r" during the 1940’s. African American men were hired to sit in the tanks and taunt white passersby, who often would throw the balls at the African American in the tank rather than at the target. The title of the game was later changed to the more politically correct "African Dip" and was eventually closed by Schmidt in the late 1950’s after much pressure from the NAACP. By the time the game closed, "the men who lost their jobs were reportedly making over three hundred dollars a week in what was considered to be the highest-grossing concession in Riverview’s history." The game left a lasting effect, as well. It allowed ethnically diverse Chicagoans to define themselves as "white" and to develop a sense of racial solidarity that "obscured the particulars of their own ethnic backgrounds." This development served to further segregate the city. Fights sprang up more frequently at Riverview after this, and by the 1960’s Riverview required its own police force.

The closing of Riverview at the end of the 1967 season was a shock to many people. As Riverview was still bringing in 65,000 dollars on a good day, it seemed hard for people to attribute the end to economic reasons. But in truth, the Schmidts were probably offered a deal that they couldn’t pass up. They had installed a Disney-esque Space Ride in 1963 that cost 375,000 dollars and was reportedly losing money. Also, real estate prices in that downtown area were rising rapidly and the union labor and private police and fire departments, not to mention yearly repairs on the aging rides, cost the park more and more money. For whatever reason, the park was purchased by a LaSalle Street investment firm on October 3, 1967 for an estimated 6.5 million dollars and promptly demolished. Only the Merry-go-Round and several smaller souvenirs were saved. After storage in Galena, Illinois, the Merry-go-Round was purchased in 1971 and is now in Atlanta at Six Flags Over Georgia. The distortion mirrors from Aladdin’s Castle fun house are reportedly at a dance club in Palatine. The area that was once Riverview is now home to a DeVry Institute of Technology, a police station, and a shopping center.

There were many inside facts about Riverview that employees learned while working there. My grandmother, who sold cotton candy there as a teenager, remembers a lot about the park that the average visitor never found out. For instance, the park hired plants to walk around the midway with prizes, enticing people to play the games. Employees got to take the pre-opening test rides and enjoyed such thrills as the Bobs and the Chute-the-Chutes for free. Also, Riverview didn’t have a set closing time, but depended on the flow of the crowd to tell them when to close. Vendors on the midway watched for the lights of the Hades fun house to go out to know when to start shutting down.

Riverview Amusement Park had a lasting impact on the city of Chicago. Most importantly, it allowed people of different ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds to interact with each other in an otherwise ethnically segregated city. During its 64 years in existence it was said to entertain over 200,000,000 people. It played important roles during Prohibition, the Depression, World War II, and the baby boom of the fifties and sixties. Helen FitzMaurice says in The Chicago Tribune, "Riverview, like a fading Viennese beauty, held on to her air of old world charm, even when time and the electronic age so ruthlessly forced their way upon her. I am glad that those who were responsible retired her before every vestige of her charm was gone." Even if Riverview and its impact are sorely missed by Chicagoans, its closing was sadly appropriate. In the age of "The Raging Bull" and "The Viper," "The Bobs" and "The Chute-the-Chutes" would seem out of place and belonging to another age. As society looks for more daring risks, technology must follow. Despite being in the shadow of the increasingly technological aspects of today’s amusement park entertainment, Riverview will stand out in many peoples’ memories for the good times they had there and in Chicago’s history for its important social impact on the city.
Date Opened: 1904
Date Closed: 1967

Tony Accardo

Summing up the late Tony Accardo's leadership abilities, a veteran Chicago mob figure once confided to Chicago American columnist George Murray that "...Accardo has more brains before breakfast than Al Capone ever had all day." Possessing a nimble mind and a canny instinct for survival, Accardo boasted of having never spent a night in jail. though he was picked up in Miami Beach in 1929 on vagrancy charges while playing golf with Al Capone and Jack McGurn. But he was released on his own recognizance. Accardo's closest brush with the slammer came on Feb. 24, 1945, when he was forced to suffer the indignity of appearing in a police lineup at the Chicago Detective Bureau during a murder investigation. But that too, was only a mere formality.

Even during his last years when he was consumed with cancer and his body a thin. frail shell, this elder statesman of the rackets was accorded a respect that was never shown other mob cures of his generation who reaped a r more bitter harvest. In death, Tony Accardo still looms as the most powerful mob figure of this era; the boss of bosses who helped shape policy on a national level.


Anthony "Big Tuna" Accardo, a product of the Prohibition era, ruled the rackets in this town for nearly forty years before succumbing to the ravages of old age and cancer on May 17, 1992. He was an early product of the "Circus Gang," a collection of Northwest Side toughs who congregated at John "Screwy" Moore's (a.k.a. Claude Maddox) Circus Cafe on North Avenue. Moore was nominally connected to the Torrio-Capone outfit, and he willingly obliged Scarface with a percentage of his gang's liquor revenue, and the necessary armaments through their gun dealer Peter Von Frantzius.


Accardo, a strapping, flve-nine, 200 pound lad who was the son of an immigrant shoemaker, joined the Circus Gang while he was still in his teens. He was introduced to the mob boys by "Tough" Tony Capezio, a gambling boss and syndicate man, who pulled him off the streets of the Grand and Milwaukee neighborhood, and gave him something more "useful" to do. By the end of the 1920s, Accardo was performing various tasks for the Capone mob while running with another gangster of future importance, his closest friend and confidant, Felice De Lucia, better known as Paul "the Waiter" Ricca.


Mob media writers have always suspected the youthful Accardo of complicity in Chicago's most sensational gangland killing, the 1929 St. Valentine's's Day Massacre. In all probability Accardo acted as one of Capone's lookouts on Clark Street and may have had a small role in the planning the hit, but it is farfetched speculation to place him in the garage at the time of the actual shootings.


It was after the Massacre, however, when Accardo first began to make a name for himself as Al Capone's bodyguard and special enforcer. His fearsome reputation for violence and cunning was no doubt nurtured by one of his immediate superiors: "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn. Accardo's stock and trade was vengeance and he was particularly adept with a baseball bat. In May 1929, Al Capone discovered that he was the target of a murder plot, hatched by Alberto Anselmi and John Scalise, two Sicilian contract killers who had been on the big guy's permanent retainer for five years. At a lavish dinner party given in their honor someone, maybe it was Accardo, maybe it was Capone no one knows for sure--took a baseball bat to their traitorous heads, and afterward dumped the bodies in a ditch in the south suburbs. Accardo's respectful mob associates would later pin a nickname on him that he would carry to his grave: "Joe Batters," or "Joe B." Go figure.

The "Big Tuna" moniker was strictly a press invention. There are those who believe it was given to him in 1949 by the late Ray Brennan of the Chicago Sun Times who marvelled at the 400-pound tunafish Accardo pulled out of the waters of Wedgeport, Nova Scotia. Others will tell you that Accardo actually landed the "big one" at Bimini during a deep-sea fishing expedition in 1955, and he continued to use the nickname as an alias while serving as a 'phantom" salesman for the Premium Beer Sales Company between 1956-58. Accardo pulled down a hefty salary of $179.000, even though he was rarely seen around the offices.. When he would telephone company president Dominick Volpe, Accardo would identify himself as the Big Tuna placing a call to the "little Tuna." Volpe had accompanied Accardo on the Bimini trip, and the fish he landed was a small fry by comparison. Fish stories aside, Tony Accardo had been pegged as one of Chicago's important gangland figures early on in his career.

In 1931, the Chicago Crime Commission named Accardo to its first published list of "Public Enemies," at a time when the power structure of the Chicago outfit was being revamped due to Al Capone's imprisonment for tax evasion in violation of the Federal income tax laws, Accardo expanded Capone's gambling operations across the city and suburbs siphoning portions of this illegal revenue into various legitimate enterprises including trucking firms, lumber and coal companies, labor unions, and restaurants and hotels.

As the "old guard" slowly faded away Ricca and Accardo broadened their responsibilities. When Frank Nitti committed suicide in 1943, Paul "the Waiter Ricca assumed control of the Outfit, even though he was incarcerated in a federal prison at the time. Accardo functioned as his second in command and always managed to defer final action to Ricca during the entire three-year period the "Waiter" spent in confinement at the Leavenworth Penitentiary. Upon his release, Accardo was handed a rich plum for his abiding loyalty: he was put in complete control of wire operations and betting parlors from northwest Indiana to the northern suburbs of Chicago. Evidence of Accardo's propensity for violence, and willingness to employ whatever means necessary to effect an outcome was clearly demonstrated on June 24, 1946, when James M. Ragen was cut down in a fusillade of bullets as he drove south on State Street near Pershing Boulevard. Ragen controlled the Nationwide News Service (the name was later changed to Continental Press), a telephone wire that dispensed race track results to participating poolrooms across the U.S. The stormy history of this operation extends back to the horse and buggy era when gambling czar Mont Tennes seized control of the wire from John Payne. After Tennes was "squeezed. by Capone In the 1920s, he sold his interests to publishing mogul Moses Annenberg.

When Annenberg was forced to divest his gambling interests in 1939, because of tax troubles with the government, James Ragen stepped in and took control. But Ragen was intractable with the syndicate, and refused to share his spoils with Accardo, who allegedly ordered his removal. When the bullets failed to kill the aging Ragen, a mob operative slipped into his hospital room in August. In the autopsy that followed, traces of mercury were found in Ragen's blood system.

Under Accardo's direction, Continental became the outfit's cash cow - so much so that Estes Kefauver's Senate investigating committee called it "the life blood. of the outfit. That same year -1950 - Accardo, acting under Ricca's orders, shoved aside "Big" Jim Martin who controlled an enormous policy racket in the Twenty-eighth ward. Political protection was provided by Alderman George Kells, and with so much revenue and "clout" at stake, Martin and his silent partner in City Hall were understandably perturbed at Ricca for demanding that they relinquish control. On November 15, Martin suffered serious gun shot wounds. The shooter missed the mark, but Accardo achieved his original purpose. Martin fled to Los Angeles, and Kells drove to Florida never to return. The alderman told reporters at the time that he was doing it because his wife was in "poor health."


Accardo now personally controlled more than 10,000 gambling dens in Chicago ranging from corner cigar stands, right up to the lavish Loop pool rooms. He also played a role in establishing Havana, Cuba as a new base of operations for organized crime figures following the repeal of Prohibition. The revenue from these operations netted the Outfit millions, but narcotics trafficking was one area Accardo refused to involve himself with. Aunt on the advice of Jake Guzik and men to deal in drugs. Only in recent years has this dictate been challenged by the "Young Turk" faction, and usually with a corresponding loss of life within the ranks of the interlopers.

Accardo, like others before him, had a penchant for the good life. As his wealth, esteem, and political influence escalated in the early 1950s, he purchased a lavish mansion at 915 Franklin Street in River Forest for the sum of $150,000, this time ignoring the advice and counsel of Humphreys who told him that "the smart money don't go to the suburbs."

"You and your family will stick out like a sore thumb and the Feds will always know exactly where you are." Nevertheless, Accardo stocked his mansion with the most expensive furniture, and a black onyx bathtub that served as his unofficial command post. Later, Accardo added a twenty-room mansion in Miami to his holdings.

Accardo's opulent lifestyle, and a celebrated European vacation he took with his wife Clarice, and a well-known Chicago police lieutenant in 1959, attracted national media attention which compelled the government to sit up and take notice. A year later he was indicted, convicted, and sentenced to six years on charges of income tax evasion. However, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later overturned U.S. Attorney Richard B. Ogilvie's successful prosecution of Accardo due to what they called "prejudicial newspaper coverage." In a second trial convened in 1962, the Chicago mob boss was acquitted.

Tony Accardo bragged that he never spent a night in jail, even though he was indicted no less than four times between 1948 and 1982. Each time the government failed in its mission to put him behind bars. In the celebrated 1982 labor-racketeering trial in Miami, Fla., Accardo and fourteen co-defendants were charged with conspiring to share in $2 million in kickbacks involving the placement of insurance business from the mob-controlled 550,000 member Laborer's International Union into the hands of a convicted swindler named Joseph Hauser of Beverly Hills, Cal. In stirring courtroom testimony, Hauser labeled Accardo as "the number one" power behind the union. He detailed the methods used by the Chicago mob leader to force the removal of secretary treasurer Terrance O'Sullivan in favor of his own man
Angelo Fosco, who ultimately succeeded his father Peter Fosco as union president.

But Accardo's two crack defense attorneys, Carl M. Walsh and Eddie Kay, poked holes through Hauser's testimony and revealed that the government had paid him $105,000 as a protected witness. The Miami jury freed Accardo but sent six of his associates to jail including Al Pilotto, president of Local 5, and James Caporale, an official in the Chicago-based council. While all this was going on, Accardo quietly orchestrated the appointment of his son-in-law Ernest Kumerow as president of the County and Municipal Union Local 1001. Kumerow, a former star baseball player at the University of Illinois took charge took of a Local that represented some 3,000 city street and sanitation workers. The old man's clout in organized labor was extensive and far reaching.

The unfavorable publicity surrounding Accardo, coupled with his continuing l.R.S. woes, compelled the nervous Ricca to make a change in the upper echelon of the outfit. In 1957 or so, Paul Ricca decided that Accardo should shun the limelight for a while, in favor of Sam "Momo" Giancana, an ambitious, but maniacal killer whose modest bungalow in Oak Park was a far cry from the palatial estate the Big Tuna resided in. Giancana was at first considered to be a "low- profile" type, but Ricca had erred badly in this regard. Giancana took up with Phyllis McGuire of the singing McGuire Sisters act, and soon found himself more enchanted with Frank Sinatra and his Hollywood pals than attending to his business in the manner Ricca would have preferred.
Paul Ricca succeeded in diverting the attention away from Accardo, but the publicity surrounding Giancana's own ostentatious life style forced another change in 1966, the year after Momo went into a self-imposed exile following a year-long stretch in prison after he refused to testify before a federal grand jury. Accardo resumed control, with Joey Aiuppa serving as his second in command. This time, Accardo seemed more than willing to avoid the mistakes of the past. He sold his home in River Forest in 1963, in favor of a more "modest" 18 room ranch house at 1407 N. Ashland Avenue. It was there in January 1977, when a gang of burglars foolishly broke into the home in search of cash and jewels. They were stalked, hounded, and ultimately tracked down by syndicate hit men who slashed the throats of the six burglars. One was castrated, and another disemboweled.

Bernard Ryan, the first of the burglary suspects was found shot to death on Jan. 20, 1978 in Stone Park. Steven Garcia, 29, was pulled out of the trunk of a car parked in the garage at O'Hare Airport on February 2. Vincent Moretti and Donald Swanson, two veteran second story men, were stabbed to death on February 4 in an abandoned car in Stickney Township. John Mandell, who was considered somewhat of an electronics expert suffered a similar fate. Police located his remains in an auto trunk on the South Side on February 20.

The sixth man suspected of complicity in the burglary, 43-year-old John McDonald, was shot to death in a North Side alley in April 1978. In the weeks that followed, a number of burglars and sneak thieves prudently decided to skip town though they were not involved in the River Forest heist. No-one was taking any chances with the old man on this one, especially after Accardo's 75-year-old houseman Michael Volpe disappeared. just five days after testifying before a grand fury. Accardo had sent an important message to all those who would question his leadership abilities or willingness to dispense justice as he had years earlier. Since 1979 and up to the time of his death, Tony Accardo alternated his residence between his Indian Wells condominium located twenty miles outside of Palm Springs. Cal., and his other home in Barrington Hills. From his location in the warm California desert, Accardo served as the outfit's "chairman emeritus" while younger men carried out his directives back in Chicago.

In the last years of his life, Accardo was beset with various legal and personal problems. In February 1983 his 40-year-old nephew John Simonelli was indicted by a DuPage County grand jury on auto theft charges.

A few months later, the Big Tuna was dragged before a Senate Subcommittee investigating labor racketeering within the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HEREIU), led by Richie Daley's pal Edward Hanley. Accardo was an uncooperative witness even though he was under an immunity grant from the government. His refusal to answer sensitive questions or provide clarification to the committee members resulted in a contempt of Congress citation which was handed down in February 1984. Ill health prevented him from further testimony, as the committee concluded its hearings with this finding "the committee finds that the mobster dominated locals of the Hotel & Restaurant Employees Union in the Chicago Area served only the purpose of giving a cloak of legitimacy to what was nothing more than a pure extortion racket." Accardo emerged from his Senate ordeal unscathed. as you might expect. But before another year had passed, Tony's niece Sheila Simonelli was busted for allegedly trying to sell $23.5 million in stolen securities. The woman's mother Marie Simonelli, is Accardo's sister.
Then in August 1991, a federal appeals court in Chicago ruled that Accardo could not deduct $60.000 in back taxes and penalties, stemming from his courtroom victory in Miami nine years earlier. While the sum of money was trifling compared to the vast fortune Accardo had amassed over the years, it was indicative of the heat the government had been putting on the ailing gang leader. Accardo's death closes out a significant chapter in Chicago organized crime history. For all practical purposes he was the last link to Al Capone and the fabled Prohibition era which has faded into the abyss of history. Tony was without question the most powerful mob figure of his time, and his passing raises new concerns about the renewal of a gang war in Chicago, as other less circumspect figures seek to reap the harvest of what Anthony Accardo had sewn years ago.
...................And then the wolf blew in the house, Next Fairy tale

1920-1997... Notable Names

1920
Johnny Torrio (1920 to 1925). Reserved boss, eschews violence, retires in 1925 after a fouled-up hit leaves him barely alive.

1925
Al Capone (1925 to 1932). Perhaps the most successful mob boss ever, the subject of countless books and movies, done in by the IRS for tax evasion.

1932
Frank Nitti (1932 to 1943). With help from Jake Guzik, rebuilds the Outfit after Capone's departure. Commits suicide after he's indicted in 1943.

1943
Paul "the Waiter" Ricca (1943 to 1950). Has a son who's a drug addict and decrees no Outfit member can have anything to do with narcotics trafficking.

1950
Tony "Joe Batters" Accardo (1950 to 1957). Considered the most capable Outfit leader ever. Never spends significant time in jail. Always plays key role as adviser, but facing a tax case, he officially hands reins over to ..

1957
Sam "Mooney" Giancana (1957 to 1966). Attends the infamous Apalachin, N.Y., meeting that draws national attention to organized crime, draws even more focus on the Outfit with his flamboyance, flees country for eight years, slain in 1975 at his Oak Park home.

1966
Sam "Teets" Battaglia (1966). Tough leader who is convicted in federal court same year, dies in prison.

1966
John "Jackie" Cerone (1966 to 1969). Considered one of the smartest underworld figures, a strong leader, then the feds pinch him. See U.S. v Cerone

1969
Felix "Milwaukee Phil" Alderisio (1969 to 1971). The mob killer is an unpopular leader, then he's convicted of bank fraud.

1971
Joseph "Joey Doves" Aiuppa (1971 to 1986). A Cicero mobster who ran gambling and strip clubs and grows into the job, with help from Accardo, Gus Alex and, later, Cerone. He is convicted of skimming profits from a Las Vegas casino.

1986
Joseph Ferriola (1986 to 1989). Heads the Outfit for only a few years before succumbing to heart problems.

1989
Sam Carlisi (1989 to 1993). Protege to Aiuppa and mentor to James "Little Jimmy" Marcello. Carlisi and his crew are decimated by federal prosecutions.

1997
John "No Nose" DiFronzo (1997 to present). Called mob boss by Chicago Crime Commission, but other mob watchers disagree. Chicago Crime Commission Chart of Chicago "OUTFIT"

The Mob is not a story of the past

A trial in Chicago reveals old secrets of the mob, but experts says the organization is still thriving

Jurors have heard testimony about a Judas kiss like the one Michael Corleone gave his brother Fredo in "The Godfather."

They've heard about mobsters initiated as "made guys" by getting their fingers cut and having holy pictures burned in their bare hands in secret ceremonies.

And they've heard about how those who crossed the "Chicago Outfit" sometimes ended up in the trunk of a car.

The city's biggest mob trial in years, involving five men in their 60s and 70s accused of crimes ranging from loan sharking to 18 long-unsolved murders, has lifted the curtain on the secrets of the mob — as it was decades ago. Most of the allegations date to the 1970s and '80s.

But what about today? Experts say the mob is alive and well in the town that was Al Capone's.

"People say, 'Look at how old these guys are on trial, it's a geriatric organization,"' said John Binder, author of "The Chicago Outfit."

"What you're seeing is just part of the organization," he said. "They're still doing gambling, they've still got some labor racketeering, they've got their hooks into some unions (and) they're still doing juice lending."

A few years ago, plans for a casino in the suburb of Rosemont were derailed amid concerns about mob ties in the village. And in the late 1990s, one of the nation's largest unions, Laborers International, publicly launched an effort to drive organized crime out of its Chicago District Council.

Jurors in the latest trial heard a secretly recorded tape of one of the defendants, Frank Calabrese Sr., talking about collecting "recipes," code for payoffs, in the late 1990s — while he was behind bars.

"What the trial has made clear is even when they are in prison they continue to exert influence and control," said James Wagner, the head of the Chicago Crime Commission, who investigated the mob for years when he was an FBI agent.

And although the current trial's defendants are aging, others point out that the Outfit still has people ready to step in and take over for the old mobsters, known as "Mustache Petes."

"They're still there, there's still young guys coming up," said Jack O'Rourke, a retired FBI agent who also spent years investigating the Chicago mob. "And they're still powerful enough to kill guys."

Binder compared the mob to a corporation.

"It's important in management to groom people," he said. "The Outfit is good at it; they've shown the ability to bring people up."

Still, the Chicago Outfit is showing its age, say some who have studied it.

"The Chicago mob used to be big time, and now it's just local thugs like Tony Soprano," said Gus Russo, author of a best-selling book about the Chicago mob titled "The Outfit."

"There's no doubt they still have some cops on the take, some lawyers, a judge here and there and labor unions. But now they are just a local mob," he said.

Chicago's mob probably lost some of its power because many of the illegal activities it once made money from are now legal, like casinos and state-run lotteries.

In addition, Russo said: "They had pornography, and now that's big business."

The Outfit has other opportunities, however.

"They've still got the sports betting," O'Rourke said. "They've controlled that forever and it is illegal."

But even that business has changed, O'Rourke said, because they way they collect the money has gotten a bit more genteel than in the old days.

"Now with the gamblers, they don't get tough any more and extort them," he said. "Instead, they're saying, 'You can't play any more.' To the gamblers, that's worse than getting beat up."

Even though some of its influence may be waning, the trial suggests the mob can still pull off the kind of tricks that made it infamous.

After rumors that he would testify at the trial, reputed mobster Anthony Zizzo vanished last year.

Then in January, a deputy U.S. marshal was charged with leaking information to reputed mob boss John "No Nose" DiFronzo about the cooperation and travel plans of Nicholas Calabrese, a key government witness and the brother of defendant Frank Calabrese Sr.

"Now they are more surreptitious than ever before, more cunning and intelligent in the way they operate," Wagner said. "They're not less dangerous or influential."