In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins welcomes author Ray Franze to discuss his historical fiction novel The Heights, a story inspired by the real-life mob figures who controlled Chicago Heights and Northwest Indiana for much of the twentieth century.
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Drawing on FBI files, family stories, and historical research, Franze explores the rise of Frank LaPorte and the Chicago Heights crew, one of the most influential factions associated with the Chicago Outfit.
The conversation begins with the famous 1928 photograph showing Al Capone and several future participants in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Franze explains the long-standing belief that members of the Chicago Heights crew may have been involved in planning the infamous gangland murder and discusses the crew’s close relationship with Capone and his associates.
Gary and Ray examine the unique position of Chicago Heights, located south of Chicago near the Indiana border, and how the area developed its own powerful criminal organization before eventually becoming part of the Chicago Outfit. They discuss the role of the Union Siciliana, the Beer Wars of Prohibition, and the alliance between Capone and local leaders such as Dominic Roberto, Jimmy Emery, and Frank LaPorte.
The discussion also covers the expansion of organized crime into Northwest Indiana, Calumet City, and Joliet. Ray explains how gambling, vice, and bootlegging operations flourished in these territories and how Chicago Heights became a major power center within the Outfit structure.
The conversation explores Frank LaPorte’s leadership style and his remarkable ability to avoid publicity and law enforcement attention. Unlike many notorious gangsters, LaPorte remained largely unknown to the public while building a powerful organization through trusted family members, loyal associates, and strategic insulation from criminal activity.
Gary and Ray also discuss the Outfit’s transition into seemingly legitimate businesses, including jukeboxes, vending machines, and cigarette distribution, as federal investigators increased pressure on traditional gambling operations. The evolution of mob-controlled businesses reflects the Outfit’s efforts to adapt to changing law enforcement tactics.
Click here to get Ray’s book, The Heights.
Another fascinating topic is the legendary Villa Venice nightclub, opened by Sam Giancana with appearances by Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack. Ray shares family memories of the grand opening and explains how these firsthand accounts became one of the most authentic scenes in his novel.
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Transcript
[00:00:00] welcome all you wiretappers. It’s good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I am talking to a man in Chicago. You can see his book behind him, The Heights. It’s Ray France. Ray, welcome to the show. Thank you, Gary. Now Ray, this is a historical fiction, but it’s based on real live mob or Outfit people out of Chicago Heights.
Is that correct? That’s correct. It is historical fiction. It is quite historical, and it takes place from about 1913 till about 1971. H- oh, another thing, guys, you’ll be interested in this. All you guys who are on the Chicago Outfit Facebook pages, you’ve seen the photo of Al Capone on the lawn, and so Frank LaPorte is one of the people in that photo, right?
Do you know anything more about that photo? So from what I’ve been told from Luzi and John Binder, it was taken in the late fall of ’28, [00:01:00] just months before the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. And if you look at that photo and who’s present, there’s a lot of Valentine’s Day Massacre guys involved in that.
So it’s been alluded to that photo was actually a planning meeting leading up to the massacre. And it was always rumored that the Chicago Heights guy played a part in that event. All those rumors, unsubstantiated, they kinda had floated around the Heights- … during the decades. But based on who was in that photo and the fact that it was just taken a few months prior to the Valentine’s Day Massacre, I kinda feel like the guys in the Heights were involved in that planning.
So yeah, there was definitely ties from the Valentine’s event to the guys in the Heights. No doubt, because Fred “Killer” Burke, when he was arrested, they found one of the machine guns in his possession that they linked ballistically to the St. [00:02:00] Valentine’s massacre. So there’s no doubt that he was one of the men that day at the St.
Valentine’s Day Massacre, plus he was the kinda guy that could do that. Yeah, and Capone trusted LaPorte’s family to hide… they hid- LaPorte hid Capone himself after the McSwiggin’s event. Fred Burke hid out in the same house. Interesting. So now Ray, tell me, and a lot of people that don’t know Chicago, geographically, what is Chicago Heights?
Geographically, where is that from, say, down from the Loop? Yeah, from the Loop I’d say you’re about 30, 32 miles almost due south. S- it’s southwest, just south of Calumet City, I believe- … and really close to the Indiana border. And the Heights guys controlled Northwest Indiana for decades as well. Okay, down to- So that was part of their territory
down to Gary, Indiana. There was a lot of vice and rackets going on down that Northwest Indiana or, yeah, Northwest Indiana, wasn’t there? Yeah. They controlled the big [00:03:00] floating gambling game. Cal City was a big stronghold, and Chicago Heights, of course. They controlled out to Joliet. And in the turn of the early 1900s though, Chicago Heights was not part of the Chicago Outfit.
They had their own boss controlled by the Sicilians, the Union Siciliana, and that’s kinda how the boys in the Heights became friends with Capone. Yeah. They had a mutual enemy, yeah. You’re leading me right next to my next line of questioning here, and that is about prohibition. And Al Capone was, of course, was not Sicilian.
He was Neapolitan, , and I know he had problems with the guys in the Union Siciliana. I struggle with saying that. But he formed a relationship with, I assume it was through bootlegging and bringing, getting the booze, bringing it, brought in. ‘Cause Al Capone wanted to line everybody up.
He wanted to get everybody on board in that bootlegging business to make money. So talk about that a little bit. Johnny Torrio, and I know in your book I noticed that there was a lot of [00:04:00] talk about them. Yeah, there had been some research that Torrio and Capone had been making their way out into the Heights territory in the early ’20s.
When they were not running the show there, they were still a separate Calabrian-led crew under the Sicilian rule of Chicago Heights. And it was early in the bootlegging days of prohibition, and Capone and Torrio were coming out, Dominic Roberto and Frank LaPorte would often meet with Capone when he would come out in the Heights area.
They would also go to Chicago, and they discovered they had this mutual enemy of the Union Siciliana. And somewhere in the mid-’20s when Capone was getting ready to go to war, he basically asked Dominic Roberto, Jimmy Emery, Frank LaPorte crew [00:05:00] to join forces with them, go to war with him, take over the Heights- And if they would do then Capone said he would make Roberto one of his lieutenants, which is what they did.
The Beer Wars, when Capone was at war in Chicago, the boys in the Heights were at war at the same time. How much they really helped each other, I’m not really sure about that. I think they had their hands full, and they were just taking care of their own business. There’s no evidence of Capone helping out the boys in their Heights with their dirty work or vice versa really.
But once those Beer Wars were over, that Calabrian-led crew of Dominick, Roberto, Jimmy Emery, and Frank LaPorte took over the Heights. But Gary, they couldn’t have done that without the help of a very popular and very powerful Sicilian crew in Chicago Heights at the time, who… I’m gonna leave their name out of it, but they controlled the confectionery in the ’20s, which meant they controlled all the [00:06:00] sugar.
And so even though they were Sicilian, LaPorte and Roberto kept going back to them to get them to align with them, saying “Are you getting busted? Are you happy with your protection? We can do better.” And eventually, they did convince that Sicilian family to join forces with them. So even though they fought the Sicilians, they were a Calabrian-led crew with Sicilians in their crew, but fought the Union Siciliana to take control of the Heights in the late ’20s.
And so that’s kinda how Chicago Heights became part of the Chicago outfit. Interesting. Now, as you move forward, get on into prohibition, everybody’s making money, and then you get into World War II, and Capone’s gone, and Nitty is taking over, but Accardo’s coming up, who will be- Yeah … now the next. So how did they deal with Accardo from down there?
Did they always get along with him? What was their [00:07:00] relationship with Accardo? From what I’ve read, during COVID I read Ovid Demaris’s book, Captive City. Yeah. And I think it’s page three, he names Frank LaPorte on Accardo’s board of directors. That’s I think that book came out in ’68. I think that from what I’ve read historically, that they were close with LaPorte, and those guys in the Heights were close with Capone going back to the ’20s.
And so they also had good relationships with Accardo, Ricca, Aiuppa. And then from reading some files during research, it seemed like LaPorte, as of like the ’40s, he was going down weekly to meet with those guys in Chicago As I was reading the book, I noticed that you used the jukebox business as a tool.
And so I know I, I researched into that a little bit, and it’s a pretty interesting story [00:08:00] up there in Chicago in the jukebox business. And- Yeah … so what, how did that fit into Frank LaPorte? It had the jukebox businesses in Western and the south suburbs, and it was called the Co-op Music and Vending.
And I think they just knew they had to get some legitimate machines into legitimate businesses, right? Slot machines weren’t gonna work anymore, so I think that was their first foray into we need to get into legitimate businesses. And so a vending business, right? No cigarettes are getting sold anywhere without their mob getting a hand in it.
No music is getting played in a bar without the mob getting their hand in it. So I think the FBI was catching up in their knowledge of what they were up to. Coming into the mid-60s, I wanna say, from what I’ve read, they really started catching up to what was going on. And I feel like in the ’50s they felt the heat, and they started getting into this [00:09:00] legitimate businesses of vending and
‘Cause, slots were just attracted too much attention. Now, how do you think Frank LaPorte, and how’d you deal with this in your book, he really stayed out of the public view, shall we say. A good mob boss will stay back out of the public view. The better ones I’ve seen throughout the United States and throughout history are the ones that stay back and let somebody else go out front.
That’s why Accardo had Sam Giancana out there and in IUPA, ’cause he stayed back, and Ricca stayed back. How did LaPorte do that, and did you deal with that in your book? I did. I think he had a lot of relatives working for him. Not a lot. He had some brother-in-laws working for him, and they were in positions of trust and money.
And then he had a lot of family and a lot of people. He had social capital that wouldn’t tell on him, and I think he insulated himself. He gave people [00:10:00] promotions, I think, of, “You’re in charge of this.” And yeah, sure, they were making more money, but it’s further insulation, and that was part of me fictionalizing some things.
But- … when you go through a few thousand pages of FBI files on someone who didn’t go to jail, and instantly I think he just saw the mistakes that other people were making around him, too, as far as attention. Yeah, and no one knows who Frank LaPorte is still, and that’s really the way everyone and the family wanted it.
In the dawn of the internet I wanna say it was around 1998, Gary, I kinda bought one of my first big, powerful computers and- I start doing internet searches on guys in Chicago Heights, and it was a new LA Times article about an Al Capone autobiography put out by Lawrence Bergreen. And in this article, [00:11:00] Lawrence says, “No one dared write a movie about Frank LaPorte, for he avoided publicity with the zeal that Capone sought.”
And that actually kinda served somewhat as a motivational tool for me to get some story out there. And then in the early 2000s, John Binder and Matt Luzi had put out some nonfiction books about Chicago Heights. But I really felt like I wanted to tell a story. I wanted to write a movie. I wanted to write a series, and so I fictionalized what’s out there.
And because Frank LaPorte died in 1972 from a heart attack, it’s one of those things where you wanna tell the story and you wanna get it out there, but there’s still a lot of people in Chicago Heights and family who don’t wanna tell that story, even if it’s entertaining and very ancient history. My father worked for Montgomery Ward for f- [00:12:00] 40 years, or a subsidiary of.
My dad was 100% legitimate, and my parents instilled nothing but honesty and integrity in their kids. So even though I wrote this fictionalized book, my parents aren’t happy about it. Okay. But my dad just had such great stories. My parents had great stories. And I just kinda decided I wanted to write my Goodfellas.
I wanted to write my Boardwalk Empire. And so I just decided to do it, and I don’t wanna step on too many toes, which is why I fictionalized it. All the names in Chicago Heights have been changed and changed again. But yeah, I… It was very fun for me to do, but at the same time, there were days I was done writing and I had guilt.
Interesting, yeah. I can- You know, ’cause a lot of these stories have been held close to the family since the ’30s and the ’20s. Some of the blunt truth about the Chicago Heights crew [00:13:00] has put out there, but I kinda put some personalized stories to it, and I try to humanize it a little bit because it is a novel and you wanna keep your readers engaged.
And I did try to write it from the first person. It’s kinda like a memoir flashback. But there’s a lot of that stuff is true to a certain extent, but because it happened so long ago, yeah, I just created stories around it. Speaking of that, yeah, seemed Didn’t I read something in there about some action he Frank LaPorte or your Sal had out in Los Angeles in the movie industry?
Was he part of that? I know the Outfit had a lot of action going on out there in the movie industry. Did, So through an FBI file, I read about Johnny Roselli’s death. I had never heard or through family or through any research that Frank LaPorte was involved in any of the Hollywood stuff. But based on FBI file, it is my understanding that Accardo and some other [00:14:00] gentlemen, Iupa, Rico, wanted LaPorte to report back to them on what Roselli was doing.
And Roselli was avoiding LaPorte from what I had read in the file, and that really upset Frank LaPorte, and reported that back, and we all kinda know what happened to Johnny Roselli. Yeah. Interesting. If someone’s looking for you, you should probably answer their call. Yeah, that’s for sure in that world.
That is for sure. What about Calumet City? You mentioned Calumet City, and I notice a lot of references, and Calumet City is in the geographic area of Chicago Heights. So would they have a lot of action going on down there? I think that’s where a majority of their action was. Of course, Chicago Heights had their taverns and saloons, but I also read that Roberto, Emery, and LaPorte wanted to keep a lot of the seedy stuff out of their town, and so they just pushed it into Cal City.
Cal City, from what I read, had 15 [00:15:00] policemen, a police chief, and a mayor, and all of them were on the payroll. And that was 100% a protected town. So Cal City ran pretty much untouched from the ’30s all the way into the early ’60s. Owl Club, Vagabond. Yep, that’s where all the big gambling… Yeah. Interesting.
Interesting. They wanted to keep it away from their town, so they put more out there stuff. Sex, vice kind of activities where you needed the open city. Yeah. Totally open city down to Cal City. That is really interesting. Yeah. I’m not saying there, there wasn’t that in Chicago Heights, but I am saying that they pushed most of that seedy stuff to Cal City.
And out of Chicago Heights, we have a saying about that, said, “Never shit where you eat.” Yep, that’s true. Yep. So to put it bluntly. Now talking about personal stories, you had some great stories, and I saw them in the book about the opening of the [00:16:00] Villa Venice in- Yeah … up in Chicago. Those were great stories.
Yeah. Let’s end with that. Tell us about what your relatives reported to you about the opening of the Villa Venice, ’cause guys, if you don’t know, I’ll give you a little lead in here. Sam Giancana built this huge big club. I believe, when it Sam Giancana, or was it Accardo? Giancana. Giancana. He built this huge big nice club, and they had a moat or something.
You would get in a gondola and go into the club, and they opened it with the Rat Pack. They made the Rat Pack- … come and do the opening. So tell us about that. Sure. I think Chicago Outfit called in their favor to Sinatra after the Kennedys declared war on the mob. That’s the way I interpreted it.
Yes, this Villa Venice was in the north suburbs of Chicago, and it was on the Des Plaines River. And Frank LaPorte had a very good friend who owned a macaroni company, totally legit [00:17:00] businessman, and this guy would do a lot of importing for his ma- macaroni company from Italy, and Frank LaPorte asked if he would be willing to import gondolas for Giancana’s opening, and they did.
There was gondola rides going back and forth. And then inside the Villa Venice, I do believe that there was gambling going on, from what I’ve read in some files and newspaper articles. But it was five nights of shows, the Rat Pack.
My parents, bought tickets. My dad is 80, my mom is 77, and they remember the night vividly. So that part of the book, I sat down with my parents, and that is probably one of the truest parts of the entire book.
That is almost written down from my notes word for word. Everything else has been changed a fair amount, but that is what they smelled, what my parents saw, and some of the jokes that Sinatra was telling are… They’re in there. Yeah, I [00:18:00] read some of that, and that was a really vivid depiction of that night.
It really put people in the Villa Venice that night, which I thought was fascinating. Yeah, my dad… And they get into the whole chemistry between Sammy Davis and Sinatra and- The jokes they were telling, and some guy in the audience kept telling Sinatra to sing … It was not My Way. That song had not even been released yet.
I can’t remember what song it was. Sinatra got aggravated with him, and he’s “Buddy, I don’t tell you how to deliver your milk. Don’t tell me what to sing.” That’s a good one. So … And then I think there was maybe a joke that they told with Sammy. I can’t remember. I don’t wanna mis-tell it.
But yeah, that night and what happened there is pretty much down to the truth. Yeah. Interesting. It was quite a time in Chicago up until the Family Secrets trial. It was wide open then. Now, was there much about, … Did you learn many stories about more details about the [00:19:00] political corruption in that southern part of the city, or?
Not really. All I really was able to find through my research during the Roberto-Emery-LaPorte days was that their political capital tied in with the outfits from the- Okay … city. I just think they were at, by that point, by the ’50s and ’60s, their ties were Accardo’s, Enrico’s ties, and Aiuppa’s ties.
Okay. And I think it just went all the way up to judges, and that went in that Graylord case, Operation Graylord, I believe it was, in the ’80s. Yes. That was when that started. That was the beginning of it, yeah. I tell you, that was one huge, powerful organization up there. It’s so amazing how much they controlled that city and every nook and cranny of it, and clear up into the surrounding counties even.
It just- Oh, yeah … it is amazing. Yeah. It is amazing, and it’s also amazing that how [00:20:00] quickly things kinda deteriorated for Chicago Heights crew as well after LaPorte passed away in ’72. Things got handed over to a couple other gentlemen, and one of them was Al Plato, who’s deceased and was part of Chicago Heights crew going back to the ’30s.
But that crew in Chicago Heights was quite powerful from the ’20s until the ’70s, but that seemed like the Chop Shop Wars and- Yeah … the Spilotro debacle. So that Chicago Heights crew was pretty much gone with about 15 or 17 years after the old school leadership passed away. That crew was one of the most powerful crews in the outfit, and probably after Dominic Roberto got deported back to Italy, there’s pictures with him and the chairman of the board, Luciano, in Rome at a [00:21:00] racetrack.
The boys in the Heights were still doing business nationwide. They were very powerful- But by 1986, it was over- Yeah … it seemed yes, it was. Thanks- Yeah … RICO and improved technical surveillance, shall we call it? The RICO laws. Yeah it was really amazing. The FBI files were… It was amazing, like in the ’50s and early ’60s, their information on Chicago Heights was horrible, and then somewhere in the mid-’60s, I don’t know if their informants or something changed, and their information was accurate.
Yeah. Yeah, interesting. What happened was Apalachin happened, and then Hoover started the hoodlum, they called it the hoodlum squad, I think, and Bill Roemer, and they put a bunch of aggressive agents up there to do nothing but work on the outfit, and that’s all they did, and where they hadn’t really been doing much before.
And then the wiretap laws came in, and that gives you even better [00:22:00] information. That happened in 1968. They didn’t really start using them until ’69 and ’70, ’71, along in there. It took a year or so for them to really get into it, but boy, you put aggressive FBI agents and wiretap laws in place and hidden microphones, it just is a whole different ballgame than what they’d been playing for a long time.
Yeah. That’s the way it seemed. Okay. Ray France, and the book is The Heights, the fictionalized story of Frank LaPorte and the Boys from the Chicago Heights. I believe that’s the name of your cousin’s book, right? Yeah, The Boys from the Heights. Boys from the Heights. Yeah, his book. Yep. So the Chicago Heights crew, it was one heck of a powerful crew, as you can tell, and Frank LaPorte is what you said, Ray, that he was a smart mob boss or crew boss or whatever, capo.
I don’t… they’re not… Chicago’s not really like Sicilian mobs where you have that same kind of organization directly, but he was smart. He stayed out of the [00:23:00] limelight, but ran things with an iron fist, too, it sounds to me like. Yeah. I don’t think you get to that position without- Yeah … being ruthless, unfortunately.
Yeah. Breaking a few eggs along the way, yes. Yeah. That’s true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What I found in that game is everybody buys their ticket, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I thank God every day my dad worked for Montgomery Ward. Yeah, I bet you do. I do. I bet you do. I talked to children of mob guys, and believe me, they wish that their dad had not- Done what he’d done.
Yeah. I know this one pretty good friend of mine, and he spent about 10 years away pretty much 10 years of his son’s life from the time he was, like, about eight or nine till the kid- … was just out of high school, and you never get that back, and he just- Yeah … it’s not a good life for any members of the family.
Yeah, I was raised that it’s a bad thing before I became aware of family history [00:24:00] and that’s the reason why I have reservations even talking about it, but- Yeah … it’s history. Yeah, it is. It’s history. All right, Ray, thank you a lot, and- Thank you, Gary … guys, I know you all know, but I like to ride motorcycles, so y’all watch out for motorcycles when you’re out there on the road.
I had somebody just about pull out in front of me today. Happens all the time. It’s amazing. A lot of distracted drivers out there. Now, if you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, go to the VA website and get that hotline number, and if you have a problem with drugs or alcohol, the reformed gangster Angelo Ruggiano has a hotline on his website and his YouTube page, and he is a drug and alcohol counselor down in Florida.
So get ahold of him, and you go down to Florida and get in recovery and have a ex-mob guy be your counselor. You… What a story. When you get back doing that- What could go wrong? What could go wrong? When you get back and you get some sobriety, give me a call. Let’s talk about your journey down there with the former Gambino [00:25:00] man.
And I interviewed him, Ray. He was a good guy. He is really, I listened to it … oh, did you? He’s really sincere. Yeah. You can tell he is really sincere, which I appreciate that. He was bluntly honest. Yes, he was. Yes, he was. Thanks a lot, guys, and thanks a lot, Ray. Thank you, Gary. Have a great night. All right.
You too.