(Note: These are show notes from the podcast, and thus are only about 4 printed pages long. The entire Maniaci homicide file is 100s of pages long. At this time, May 2026, I have not written a longer version of the murder and investigation. Maybe I never will.)
Maniaci started working at Prize Steak Products on March 1, 1971, for his friend, Mafia associate Tony LaRosa. Maniaci worked as a janitor and set his own hours. (When questioned later, LaRosa told police he did not known Maniaci on a personal level, which is unlikely.)
On June 11, 1973, an informant told the FBI that August Maniaci might be kicked out of the Milwaukee Family because he committed a minor violation. Maniaci had spoken with Charlie Vince about the problems he had with Frank Balistrieri. It was a violation to discuss Family business with a member of another Family (Vince was a member in Rockford, not Milwaukee).
August Maniaci and Joseph Gumina were planning to go to Fond du Lac on November 27, 1973 to see about getting reinstated in the Milwaukee Family. Whether or not the trip occurred and who they met with is unclear.
On the night of June 19, 1975, a gunman (suspected of being Butch Blasi) entered Sam Giancana’s kitchen in Oak Park, Illinois and shot him in the back of the head as he was frying sausage and peppers. After Giancana fell to the ground, the gunman turned him over and shot him six more times in the face and neck. This would mark a turning point for the Maniaci brothers in Milwaukee, as Giancana was seen as their protector (despite his falling out of favor with the Chicago Outfit).
In the summer of 1975, August Maniaci’s daughter got married. Maniaci invited Frank Balistrieri, but Balistrieri did not respond and went so far as to tell other mob members not to attend the wedding.
On September 11, 1975, August Joseph Maniaci, an informer, was murdered by five gunshots to the head (along with one to the left arm and one to the left shoulder) in an alley outside his Milwaukee home at 2121 North Newhall Street. The gun was a .22 with a silencer. The hit took place around 7:10 or 7:20am as Maniaci was preparing to go to work as a salesman for Prize Steak Products at 4264 South 27th Street, Milwaukee.
Backing up, Maniaci found he had a flat tire, and was apparently shot as he emerged from the car to check on it.
Maniaci was moved to his garage. Augie’s wife, Mary, was hysterical, kneeling in his blood and shouting “Wake up! Wake up!” Vincent Maniaci, who rushed to the scene, was overheard by reporters muttering, “That son of a bitch. That son of a bitch.” The gun that killed him would later be found by a sanitation worker in a storm drain near the Milwaukee River. The morning of the killing, the Milwaukee Journal spoke with a confidential source who claimed, “Maniaci isn’t the only guy who was supposed to drop. There might be others, at least that’s the word on the streets. Bigger fish than Augie, that’s for damn sure. He was small time and always was.”
At the morgue, Augie was identified by his brother Edward.
The next day, Geraldine and Carlton Carter (1518 East Windsor Place) were shown photographs to see if any resembled a man they saw driving on the morning of the murder. Based on their pick, Weezer Covelli was picked up for the murder but cleared when he could not be identified by the Carters in a 6-person lineup. (The police file is the first I’ve heard of Covelli being picked up – this does not appear in the FBI files. Although he was a suspect in the 1963 Tony Biernat murder, he’s somewhat of an odd suspect this time around – his record was only for gambling, not violence, and it’s my impression he had distanced himself from Frank Balistrieri for some time.)
The only eyewitness to the actual shooting was 15-year old paperboy Neal Andrew Packard (1916 North Bartlett). He not only saw the shooting, but was the first to call 911 by running to a nearby Open Pantry and alerting owner Roger. He told Mary Maniaci to call, but she stayed at her husband’s side. Packard was in the alley at the time and saw the whole thing, but claimed he never heard a shot. For the next few days, he had a police escort when doing his paper route. Packard said the shooter was a white man, 6’2” 200 pounds, with blue jeans, tennis shoes and a t-shirt. The police report described Neal as “well-mannered” and “intelligent,” and he was instructed not to repeat what he saw to anybody (presumably to keep the description secret).
A witness, under hypnosis, claimed to have seen Chicago Outfit member Charles Nicoletti near Maniaci’s home moments after his murder. In 1977, Nicoletti received three .38 slugs to the back of his head while waiting in his Oldsmobile in a suburban Northlake, Illinois, restaurant parking lot. He was brought to the hospital where he died six hours later.) Another witness, under hypnosis, picked out a photo of Paul John Schiro. However, when later asked to pick Schiro out of a lineup, could not do so.
A 1964 black Ford seen in the alley minutes before Maniaci’s death bore a license plate (B86-268) that traced back to a 1971 Lincoln owned by Triangle Wholesale Company, a Kenosha Mafia-owned business rumored (falsely) to be connected to the murder of Edward Minkowski.
Few Milwaukee hoodlums attended August Maniaci’s wake, with the exception of his brother Vincent. Attending were Tony Guardalabene, Santo Marino, Peter Sciortino, Jimmy Jennaro, Joseph Maniaci and Sam Cefalu. An informant told the FBI that Augie had been close friends with Sam Giancana, and it was interesting they were both killed by .22s with silencers.
An informant spoke with August Palmisano about the Maniaci murder on September 16, 1975, and Palmisano told him that he was very “shook up” about the murder, which he knew was a professional job. Although Palmisano did not know who did the killing, he suspected “it was an old vendetta that came out of Kenosha.”
A .22 Browning automatic with a silencer was found in a catch basin on the North Avenue Viaduct on November 20, 1975. The gun was matched with the murder of August Maniaci. The gun, a .22 Browning automatic with serial number 74829U-7 and a silencer, had been purchased from Bob John Inc (doing business as Tamiami Gun Shop) in Miami in 1967. From there it went to the Duome Import-Export Company, but was soon passed on to an unidentified owner. Not long after this, the Duome Company went out of business. FBI and ATF investigations of Duome found that the company had purchased over 100 guns from Tamiami in 1967, but the company was never registered with the state, and inventory records of where the guns went when Duome shut down could not be found. The FBI strongly suggested that Duome was a false company for fronting weapons for the Lebanese government.
On April 25, 1977, Geraldine Carter, a witness to the August Maniaci murder was shown a photo of Charles Nicoletti by Agent Richard Hunt and positively identified him as a man she saw sitting in a black Ford. Unfortunately, Nicoletti had been killed a month before.
A special agent went to Fox Lake State Prison on April 26, 1977 to speak with Anthony Pipito about various murders. Pipito said the night of the Maniaci murder he had gone to Chicago with a friend to get some tools relative to his job at the Publix Garage (Green Bay at Capitol). He first heard of the killing over the radio. Pipito said he had heard news stories saying there was a series of murders being committed with silenced .22s, and he had solid alibis for all of them. When asked if he knew Charles Nicoletti, he said he knew a Chuck in Chicago, but not Nicoletti. When asked, Pipito said there was no Mafia in Milwaukee. He said he was “in good standing” with the Balistrieri family, and hoped to work at Snug’s when he got out of prison.
A special agent interviewed Vito Aiello in Aiello’s 1969 Cadillac parked on Maryland Avenue several blocks from his home on May 13, 1977. Aiello was asked about August Maniaci’s murder, and said he knew nothing but speculated that Maniaci owed a gambling debt to “those people”. When pressed about who he meant, Aiello responded that the agent “knew the people I’m talking about”. Aiello said he was a friend of the Maniaci family and knew most of the Italian hoodlums from social gatherings, but insisted he was not personally involved in any criminal activity.
An arrest warrant was issued for (redacted) on October 20, 1977 for the murder of August Maniaci. The charge was dismissed, however, when the witness could not positively identify him in a line-up.
In contradiction to this, Robert D. Hardin later (1990) testified during the trial of Albert Tocco and Clarence Crockett that he helped Nick D’Andrea murder Maniaci. Maniaci apparently was skimming “numbers money” and the hit was handed to D’Andrea by Chicago gangster Albert “Caesar” Tocco. (Nick D’Andrea was later killed by another Chicago mobster, Nick Calabrese, in August 1981. His body was mutilated and placed in a burning car. Hardin had started talking with the FBI around June 13, 1989 and his agent contact (Paul Schumacher) asked to see Milwaukee PD’s homicide file to compare notes.
Hardin’s testimony was that he drove D’Andrea from Chicago to Milwaukee on the morning of September 1, 1975. D’Andrea was dropped off at the murder site and picked up a block away. The gun was .22 automatic and was disposed of on the way out of town. The car used was a former squad car and they had attached stolen Wisconsin license plates to throw off any witnesses. Hardin said he and D’Andrea had met with Frank Balistrieri some time before the murder to get Maniaci’s address. Balistrieri told them not to kill Maniaci near his house, but when that proved too challenging, Balistrieri told them in a follow-up meeting they could “whack” him anywhere.
The Milwaukee Police Department found this story convincing and consistent with the facts, and cleared the case. On November 27, 1990, Detective William Vogl told Vincent Maniaci what happened and said they would not be pursuing it further. (I would ask: why was Balistrieri not prosecuted? If Hardin was willing to testify, it sounds like Balistrieri could be shown to have ordered the murder and was actively involved in the planning.)
(In December 1989, Tocco was convicted of 34 counts of racketeering, extortion, interstate travel in aid of racketeering, filing false income tax returns and obstruction of justice. Tocco was sentenced to 200 years after a trial in which his wife, Betty, testified against him. Clarence Crockett, Tocco’s chief bag man, was convicted on 23 similar counts.)
Suspects: Frank Stelloh, Richard Heidelbach, and “hitman” James Davis of Atlanta. Heidelbach will get his own write-up sooner or later.
Loosely intersects with murders of Frank Frye, Eddie Lazar (Phoenix, 1975), Patricia Wisniewski, Sam Giancana, and Edward Minkowski.
Weird things about police file: few Mafia members spoken with – did police not have informants? Also, no mention of Maniaci being an informant for the FBI. Very surprised this never comes up, even when developing a motive.
Others questioned include burglars like Gary Olson and Gary Gorecki, who had fenced things through Maniaci. That angle is excluded here because it’s a dead end. Gorecki’s wife Marie, at the time of the murder, was represented by Joseph Balistrieri in an accident lawsuit. (There’s almost nothing in the newspaper archive on Gary Gorecki, or I’d do a write-up on him.)
An angle looked into and found unrelated was that of 28-year-old Guy A. Hermann, a known maker of .22 silencers in West Allis. (His designs were different – the Maniaci weapon used a gas-suppression system, whereas Hermann’s apparently did not.)