The funeral for former bootlegger Jack Iannello was held January 3, 1965 at the Strouf-Sheffield Funeral Home at 1101 High Street in Racine. Visitors included Frank Balistrieri, Peter Balistrieri, Benny DiSalvo, Steve DiSalvo, Dominic Principe, Albert Albana, John Aiello, William Covelli, John Rizzo and August Maniaci. An informant identified Iannello as a Racine member of the Milwaukee Family, although he had not been active for a long time. He had been a bootlegger, but after Prohibition worked for a foundry. His wife had already died, one son worked for Chrysler in California and the other two worked in Racine. An informant also said that Albert Albana and Benny DiSalvo were good friends and that Albana’s connection to Racine was counterfeiter Marty King, now deceased. At the funeral home Albana and DiSalvo embraced.
This is the first and last time Iannello comes up in FBI files aside from a mention of his daughter attending a Mafia wedding in December 1965. At no time the FBI asked for member names from informants was he mentioned. There was no call to or from Iannello when law enforcement ran checks on other mob guys. There are also no mentions, to my knowledge, of Iannello in the newspaper during Prohibition. He was, for my purposes, practically a ghost… so who was he?
Giacomo Iannello was born in Palermo, Sicily on March 29, 1887, the son of Nicola and Marianna Iannello. Around 1921, he married Vita Palermo in Italy, who would have been about 17. Neither Giacomo or Vita had close family or in-laws in the Mafia, to my knowledge, nor were they related to any of the known Sicilian families in Milwaukee. They had at least two children in Sicily, Anna Rose and Nick. Around 1924, the family came to the United States.
Later sources said Jack was a veteran of World War I. For this to be accurate, he would have either had to come to the United States earlier and then returned to Socily after the war, or had served in the war as part of the Italian military. I am unsure which is more likely.
Once in Wisconsin, Jack and Vita had at least two more children, Joseph and Anthony. They settled in Racine and Jack worked in a foundry. According to the informant mentioned above, Iannello was active during Prohibition and would likely have been made a Mafia member at this time (1920s). I could find no mention in the newspaper of an arrest for bootlegging. Further, in my Milwaukee Mafia book I have a chapter on Racine mob connections and Iannello is not mentioned. He surely would have known the Mafia-affiliated bootleggers in Racine, but his name did not come up during the publicity of violence in that era.
Vita died in Racine on November 20, 1934, at only 30 years old. Her obituary does not mention a cause of death and I did not personally visit the register of deeds to check. There’s no indication it was anything other than natural causes.
By 1937, Jack remarried to Louise Biscardi; she was a Wisconsin native, and her parents were from the Marano region of Calabria – the primary place the Italians of Kenosha were from, as opposed to Sicily. She, too, had no obvious mob connections by blood or marriage. On December 20 ,1937, they had a son, Fortunado, known as James.
As the informant said, Louise predeceased Jack on January 30, 1959 at 50 years old. Again, apparently of natural causes. All of Jack’s children were respectable members of the community, as near as I can tell.
Question: what’s the difference between a “sleeper” mafioso who is never called upon and someone like a bookie who is never “made” but is actively involved in low-level Mafia activity?