Винсент Дружи: Интриган из Чикагской мафии эпохи Сухого закона.

American mobster

Vincent Drucci (born Ludovico D'Ambrosio; January 1, 1898 – April 4, 1927), also known as "The Schemer", was an American mobster during Chicago's Prohibition era who was a member of the North Side Gang, Al Capone's best known rivals. A friend of Dean O'Banion, Drucci succeeded him by becoming co leader. He is the only American organized crime boss to have been killed by a policeman.

He was known by the nickname "The Schemer", in part because of his penchant for inebriated rumination about outlandish plans; in reality he operated by intimidation in activities such as extortion of money from legitimate businesses. One female shop owner who refused to pay was beaten up by a husky woman as Drucci looked on. Drucci, whose practical jokes including making salacious comments to couples on the street while dressed as a priest, performed in a 1923 pornographic film called Bob's Hot Story. Drucci was believed to have been responsible for a November 30, 1926 incident at a Chicago North Side garage. In what the Chicago Tribune described as a "serio comedy", Drucci, along with North Side Gang members Bugs Moran, Frank Gusenberg, and Pete Gusenberg, are alleged to have entered the garage where two Chicago police officers were securing fifty cases of seized beer. Claiming to be a federal agent, Drucci ordered the others to handcuff the officers and confiscate their guns, showing no interest in the seized beer, and left with the officers still handcuffed. The incident humiliated the Chicago police department, which was already more sympathetic to the North Sider's rivals the Capone organization.

The North Siders found themselves undercut on the price of alcohol by rivals the Genna crime family, which was allied to the Italian American South side gang led by Johnny Torrio, who had pretensions of citywide overlordship. O'Banion at first tried to get Torrio to rein in the Gennas. When Torrio failed to do so, O'Banion started hijacking the Gennas' shipments. The Gennas wanted to kill O'Banion but Sicilian politician Mike Merlo, head of the Chicago chapter of Unione Siciliana and an underworld power broker due to his political influence, vetoed the killing. On November 10, 1924, days after Merlo had died of an illness, Torrio men John Scalise and Albert Anselmi arrived at O'Banion's Chicago flower shop ostensibly arranging floral tributes for Merlo's funeral, and murdered O'Banion. The North Side gang then moved against the Gennas and the South Side gang in retaliation. As a result of O'Banion's death the leadership fell to Hymie Weiss, who initiated a string of retaliatory attacks on the Gennas and Torrio. On January 25, 1925, Drucci, Weiss, and Moran ambushed Torrio's bodyguard lieutenant, Al Capone, shooting up his car, but failing to kill him; his bodyguard was then kidnapped, tortured and murdered. On January 27, Drucci and the two other North Siders ambushed Torrio while he was shopping with his wife. While severely wounded, Torrio survived the attack. At one point, police brought Drucci and Weiss to Torrio's hospital bedside, but Torrio refused to identify them as the shooters. After his recovery and a short jail term, Torrio relinquished control of the South Side Gang to Capone and returned to Italy. On May 25, Drucci, Weiss, and Moran killed South Side ally Angelo Genna. On July 8, Drucci and a second gunman murdered Tony Genna. On November 13, they murdered Genna gunman Samuzzo Amatuna in a barber shop. The owner of his favorite restaurant was also kidnapped and murdered, and Capone began referring to Drucci as the "bedbug".

On August 10, 1926, Drucci and Weiss were ambushed by Capone gunmen on a Chicago street and shot their way out. Five days later, Drucci and Weiss exchanged shots with Capone's men in a re run assassination attempt at the same location. The North Side Gang responded with an even more high profile assassination attempt, using a ploy to lure Capone to the front of the Cicero, Illinois hotel in which he lived, and then firing hundreds of rounds through the windows. Capone was shaken, but unhurt. On October 11, Capone's men killed Weiss outside the Holy Name Cathedral as he walked from his car to the gang's headquarters. Drucci and Moran now assumed leadership of the North Side Gang. After Weiss' shooting, Drucci and Moran attended a peace conference with all the Chicago gangs, including the South Siders. Although Moran wanted to keep fighting, Drucci persuaded him to accept a ceasefire. In 1927 William Hale Thompson at the head of his powerful Cook County machine that included strong support among African American districts, attempted to return as mayor. Thompson's campaign statements were interpreted as an indication that if he won the city would have a relaxed attitude to law enforcement, and he was seen as Capone's man. There were complex interactions between the political and ethnic aspects of the rivalries. Irish American politicians attempted to paint Thompson as an anti Catholic Anglo Saxon chauvinist, despite his Capone influenced Italian first ward support. However, Thompson's perceived beholdenness to African American voters also led to shifting of allegiance among voters, which partially nullified his political machine. Capone resorted to an escalation of violence to ensure the political contest would be decided in Thompson's favour. A citywide gang war erupted at the prospect of Capone getting a mayor inimical to all his rivals. On April 3, 1927, Drucci decided to take the offensive by ransacking the office of Dever supporting alderman Dorsey Crowe. The Chicago Police Department Chief then ordered his men to arrest all North Side gang members on sight.

On April 4, 1927, Chicago police arrested Drucci and found a concealed .45 pistol. One of the arresting officers was Detective Dan Healy, who had shot an armed robber dead a few months earlier. Exploits such as a near fatal beating of Capone rival, Joseph Saltis, during a November 1926 saloon raid, had gained Healy a reputation for apoplectic violence against criminals, though not always in the line of duty. The North Side gang was finished as a force in the underworld by the 1929 Saint Valentine's Day massacre. However, the massacre led to public disquiet about Thompson's alliance with Capone; a factor in Anton J. Cermak winning the mayoral election on April 6, 1931. A remnant of the North Side persisted alongside the similarly weak Roger Touhy, but got eliminated during Capone's push back against the allies of Cermak.