Detroit Mob’s Beloved ‘Uncle Dom’ Cashes In His Chips, One-Time Consigliere Succumbs To Heart Issues

Highly-respected Detroit mafia elder statesman Dominic (Uncle Dom) Bommarito died of a heart attack this week. He was 82 and had served as deceased longtime Godfather Giacomo (Black Jack) Tocco’s last consigliere. Tocco died of natural causes in the summer of 2014.

Bommarito allegedly helped oversee the transfer of power in the Tocco-Zerilli crime family from the Black Jack Tocco regime to an administration reputedly headed by Jack (Jackie the Kid) Giacalone, who took the reins from Tocco in the late winter of 2014 in a top-secret inauguration ceremony said to have been conducted somewhere in historic Eastern Market. Per sources, Bommarito, the consummate gentleman wiseguy, stepped down from his consigliere post into retirement sometime in early 2015.

“Everybody really liked Dom, he was very trusted and admired by a lot of people,” said one source familiar with Bommarito’s role in Family affairs through the decades. “He knew how to deal with things smoothly, he knew how to talk to people and make them think business first.”

According to FBI and Michigan State Police records, “Uncle Dom” was made into the mob in the late 1950s by then-don and National Commission member Joe Zerilli, sponsored by his dad and fellow button man Benedetto (Benny the Bomber) Bommarito and put to work in the gambling wing of the Family. In 1963, he was implicated by law enforcement as a mid-level leader of a large policy lottery operating on Detroit’s lower eastside and named as a confirmed foot soldier in the Motown mafia clan in testimony in front of a U.S. Congressional committee during the widely-publicized McClellan Hearings on organized crime in America.

Bommarito’s brother-in-law is Joseph (Joe Hooks) Mirabile, another reputed mob elder statesman and former confidant of Jack Tocco’s. Mirabile and Bommarito were named by Tocco as his underboss and consigliere respectively, in the late 2000s, per sources. Mirabile, the Detroit mafia’s alleged pornography king for years and reportedly a contact to mob syndicates in New York and California , married Bommarito’s sister.