Bruno Ramazini, 20, was arrested in Milwaukee on March 10, 1938 and sent to Chicago where he was wanted as a material witness for a murder. George P. “Oily” Kubanda, 23, shot and killed William Pawlik, 23, in front of a Chicago pool hall a few days earlier. William Andrejko, 21, and Victor Homontowski, 24, were also picked up as associates of Kubanda. (I don’t have articles following up on this, but Kubanda was apparently let go – he was married three years later.)
Bruno Ramazini was arrested for assault and armed robbery on June 18, 1938 and sentenced to two and a half years in the Green Bay Reformatory.
Raymond Ramazini was sent to Waupun prison on July 28, 1942 on charges of assault with intent to commit armed robbery, entry of a building employed for public use and larceny of an automobile. He could have served a maximum of 12 years.
Before sunrise on January 29, 1943, four inmates at Waupun State Prison made an escape by creating a makeshift ladder to climb over a 22-foot wall on the west end of the grounds. The guards (Donald Johnson, Harlan Jeffers and Harold Manley) were quick and shot at them, killing one – burglar Frank Anthony Kopjar, 23, of Milwaukee. Two others were wounded – kidnapper Charles Bennett, 22, of Hope Springs, North Carolina and car thief Wendell Fowler, 22, of Memphis, Tennessee. Bennett was shot in the head but prison doctors said he may pull through.
The men felt it was a good day to try because Warden John Burke was away at Fort Custer to attend to war prisoners, but Deputy Warden WJ Hinkamp was ready. Before scaling the wall, they cut switches to the lights, making the interior rather dark. Their ladder was stored in the tailor shop, unseen behind material that was to be used for building a partition. It resembled junk with rungs made from plumbing.
Fowler made it a block with a bullet in his leg, hiding under a barn owned by Louis Walker. Hinkamp told the press, “We knew he was hiding there, but we couldn’t see him. I ordered him to come out and he wouldn’t, so I ordered some tear gas. Fowler surrendered when he heard the order.”
The fourth man, Ray Ramazini, 26, was recaptured without being shot four blocks away. By the strangest coincidence, he was hiding under a car in the garage of Harold Manley – one of the guards chasing him. Ramazini was put in solitary confinement while an investigation was being done – Ramazini claimed he built the ladder himself and was able to hide it because it was not very long unless the pieces they made were connected by four bolts which could be slid in last minute. He denied any outside help or that anyone outside the prison was waiting for them.
Exactly when the Holiday House opened I’m not sure, but John Volpe and friend Bruno Ramazini ran the Holiday House in the 1940s through the 1960s. It was later described as a classy supper club on the corner of Clybourn and Van Buren Streets, the place in town to take in a Dean Martin show and enjoy a nice meal. While not necessarily an “Italian restaurant,” being owned by two Italians and standing in the Third Ward meant it was popular among the Italian community. (The building is long gone and that corner is now primarily freeway.)
Early 1948, Ray Ramazini was paroled from Waupun (he could have been kept until 1954) but couldn’t stay out of trouble. In May 1948, he was caught stealing an automobile and was suspected of a $4,000 grocery store (Hathaway Food Store) holdup in Racine. Ramazini’s accomplice in these crimes was Howard A. Lueckfeld. Judge Herbert Steffes gave Ramazini ten years for the car theft. On June 1, they both received 30 years for the holdup. Ramazini did not serve 30 years.
October 1, 1953: Ray Ramazini and Leonard Joseph Scherado were arrested for burglarizing a cleaning shop in Milwaukee. (Scherado’s connection is unclear, as he was from South Dakota.) Mid-burglary they were surprised by a patrolman. Following charges, Ramazini fled and was picked up weeks later in a Chicago basement by the FBI and held on the charge of “unlawful flight.” (This is typically a charge that gets dropped and is merely used to hold people.)
How long did he serve for the 1953 crime? I do not know, but in July 1956 he was arrested in Milwaukee for armed assault on Jerome L. Leipzig of Wauwatosa. Wearing a mask, Ramazini pulled a gun on Leipzig in his driveway. The case got special media attention because Leipzig was the chairman of the Milwaukee Sentinel Typographical Union. In August, Ramazini was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Bruno and Verna Ramazini were to face divorce proceedings for the sixth time on January 6, 1958. Just prior to the hearing, the couple met in a conference room with their attorneys — John Craite for Verna and Dominic Frinzi for Bruno. They asked the court to remove the hearing from the calendar.
Verna Ramazini filed for divorce against her husband, Bruno, for the seventh time on Thursday, November 15, 1961. She was seeking alimony and support for their two children.
February 8, 1962: Sergeant John Lavin of the MPD told the FBI that Ray Ramazini gave a note to another convict in the Waupun Prison and that convict was released. He was to give the note to Bruno Ramazini, Ray’s brother and co-owner of the Holiday House. The note said to give $1,000 to Louis Fazio, who would give it to Frank Balistrieri, who would give it to an unidentified public official to help get Ramazini out of prison.
Milwaukee Police Department Special Squad detectives overheard Joseph Gurera, Frank Balistrieri, Steve DiSalvo and Buster Balestrere at the Holiday House on February 15, 1962. Gurera was talking about opening up an asphalt paving business in Milwaukee.
Two Milwaukee detectives observed Frank Balistrieri in the Red Lion Room at the Knickerbocker Hotel on August 9, 1962, meeting with Felix Alderisio, Joseph Gurera, Buster Balestrere, Steve DiSalvo and John Molle. After the meeting broke up, Alderisio and Molle continued on to the Holiday House.
On the evening of October 1, 1962, Joseph Gurera, Frank Balistrieri and Steve DiSalvo were at the Holiday House. After midnight, Gurera used the pay phone to make a long distance call. A check revealed that at 1:03am (October 2), he had called the Leonard Produce Company of St. Louis, which was owned by Leonard Kaufman and John Joseph Vitale. Vitale was a top-ranking mobster in St. Louis, possibly the boss at this time (I do not know much about St. Louis). He was also distantly related to the Cianciolo, Sansone and Palmisano families. In the same building as Leonard Produce was Midwest Leasing, owned by Vitale associate Sam Roth. Vitale had numerous connections throughout the country, and his close associate Anthony Lopiparo had previously been arrested with Milwaukee mobsters as part of the “hot meat” case.
February 20, 1964: An informant said the Outfit was now collecting weekly payoffs from the Holiday House, Fazio’s on Fifth, Fazio’s on Jackson, and gamblers including Tony Petrolle.
July 15, 1964: An informant told the FBI that he knew of no current shakedowns by the Mafia. He said that any successful Italian businessman over the age of 45 had probably paid off at some time or other. He described Frank Balistrieri as “shrewd” and mentioned one time an entertainer was supposed to appear at his club, but due to some mix-up or double booking was instead at the Holiday House. Although it turned out Frank would not have needed the entertainer anyway, he used this opportunity to be owed a favor. (The name of the entertainer is redacted.)
August 1964, rumored circulated that the Holiday House was going to be torched for the insurance
A gathering was held at the Holiday House on August 28, 1964 with hoodlums from Milwaukee and Chicago. Frank Balistrieri arrived just after midnight, stayed a short time, and then left alone.
February 1, 1965: An informant said the Holiday House had been paying off to Frank Balistrieri for over a year, and Frank allowed them to have rock and roll bands because of this. The bands were competition to his own bands at gallagher’s, but the payoff made it alright.
July 5, 1965 – Ray Ramazini escaped from the prison at Union Grove (near Brookfield) and despite 25 officers and even bloodhounds looking for him, he was still not picked up over a month later. With Ramazini at the time of escape was thief Delbert Curl. Ramazini was not caught until December 18, and by then was in Winnipeg, Canada, where he was arrested for forgery. Time served… unknown, but he was out again three years later.
On July 20, 1968, Ramazini was arrested for armed robbery. His accomplice was Jain Syler, a woman who faked car trouble and lured in men to help her. When she found one that looked wealthy, she invited him back to her room at the Holiday Inn in Milwaukee. Then, Ramazini would burst in and rob the man. (It’s unclear how many times they tried this trick – presumably the idea was that men would not report being robbed while in a woman’s hotel room.) Syler was usually connected to another major criminal, Arnold Lehtola.
March 22, 1969, Ray Ramazini (somehow out on bond awaiting trial) and Harold Lester Simpson (of Calumet City, Illinois) went to the home of John Nauracy in East Chicago, Indiana, next door to their Roxana supermarket. Nauracy and his wife were sprayed with a chemical and it was assumed they would next go for the supermarket safe. However, 14-year old Joseph Leonard Scibor (a nephew of the Nauracys) saw the men enter and alerted his uncle George Almason, 43, who also lived nearby. Almason grabbed a shotgun and looked in the Nauracy window, where he saw the couple being tied up – these were his mother and father-in-law. Almason fired through the window, taking down one of the burglars – Simpson, who stumbled into the basement and died. The other ran and began firing his own gun, hitting Almason in the face and hand, luckily not seriously. Almason fired again and hit the second burglar – Ramazini ran off, but was found dead four blocks away in a field the next day by some children. A third man, the getaway driver, escaped – he was not named in the press, but police suspected a Milwaukee man with a history of armed robbery.
John Nauracy, 79, and Mary Nauracy, 70, were treated for shock but had no lasting effects from the chemical sprayed at them.
Mostly Unrelated Post-Script…
On Monday, August 27, 1990, at 12:50am, Stevei Ray Vaughan played an all-star encore jam session at Alpine Valley in East Troy, Wisconsin. They then left for Midway Airport in a helicopter, the most common way for acts to enter and exit the venue, as there is only one road in and out, heavily used by fans. The helicopter crashed into a nearby ski hill shortly after takeoff. Vaughan and the four others on board—pilot Jeff Brown, agent Bobby Brooks, bodyguard Nigel Browne, and tour manager Colin Smythe—died.
Donna Marie Ramazzini (Bruno’s daughter) was catering director at Alpine at the time. She had no idea she was feeding Vaughan his last meal of steak tenderloin and double-baked potatoes. She met with him earlier in her trailer. “I had to go through his entire menu to make sure that none of the ancient Chinese herbs he was taking in his tea would have any reaction with his food. Everything was fine. He shook my hand, and he had a great show,” the Bay View woman said.