Milwaukee Mafia

By Gavin Schmitt

Milwaukee is best known for its beer - and rightfully so. But in the days of Prohibition, the big alcohol suppliers were not Miller, Blatz, Schlitz, and Pabst.

The Mafia had control, and it made its money by running alcohol as far away as Canada and Indiana, as well as with counterfeiting, the numbers racket, and two of the biggest heists in American history. From then on, the sky was the limit, as the Mafia indulged in extortion, protection rackets, and skimming from Las Vegas casinos. The Cream City had its crooked lawyers, corrupt cops, and even a mayor on the take. There was the blood of those who dared to stand in the syndicate's way, who were found dead in ditches or as victims of car bombs. The members of the Mafia included doctors, real estate men, restaurateurs, tavern owners, funeral directors, union presidents, and the most famous Milwaukee gangster of all, Frank Balistrieri. While now considered extinct, the Milwaukee Family was once a dominant force in the Midwest.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Oct 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781439641910

Gavin Schmitt

By day, Gavin Schmitt works as a historian for Wisconsin's finest library. After sunset, his research turns to crime, the mafia, unsolved murders and piracy in his home state. Best known as the author of Milwaukee Mafia, this is his ninth nonfiction book of Dairy State history.

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INTRODUCTION

Students of organized crime have seen countless books on the subject of the American mafia. New York’s Five Families have been covered again and again, and the Chicago Outfit has had its share of stories told over the past century. Al Capone, all by himself, has enough biographies to fill a small library. Even relatively minor cities like St. Louis, Kansas City, Detroit, and Cleveland have had a book or two, some of them printed by Arcadia Publishing. Yet Milwaukee has never had a single book published about its criminal underworld—not one.

Sure, Jerry Capeci devotes half of a page to Milwaukee in his Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Mafia, and Carl Sifakis gives Frank Balistrieri about the same amount of print in his Mafia Encyclopedia. Joseph Pistone’s undercover work crippled the Milwaukee crime family, but it is hardly a focal point in his autobiography Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia. The movie version, starring Johnny Depp, never mentions Milwaukee at all. The film Casino has Frank Rosenthal getting caught in a car-bomb explosion. Balistrieri, a suspect in real life, was not portrayed in the film. Milwaukee has been shortchanged again and again.

I hope the reader finds this book informative and entertaining, and I am proud that these stories are starting to be told. Throughout the course of this project, dozens of people contacted me with anecdotes of their grandmother serving FBI surveillance teams lemonade or their great-uncle’s bootlegging tricks. Some were just happy to say that their parents attended high school with the children of known mafia bosses. Whether this is a history that we should embrace or discount, it is a history that demands to be

Reviews for Milwaukee Mafia

[knightlight777 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Very interesting pictorial of the mob history in Milwaukee. Compiled by a former Milwaukee police officer. I was not aware how extensive and influential they were here being over shadowed by the Chicago organization. But not the case as shown here.

[thomas.cannon · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is big on pics and short on info. Interesting facts and pictures (although it got repetitive). If you can identify the areas in Milwaukee, it would be very interesting.