After decades of denying his affiliation to the mafia, Giacomo (Black Jack) Tocco was finally indicted and eventually convicted under the federal RICO statute of being the long-sitting mob boss of Detroit in the 1990s. The Feds’ epic Operation GAMETAX bust came down in March of 1996, naming almost the entire administration of the Motor City crime family that Tocco’s dad, William (Black Bill) Tocco, founded in 1931. Jack Tocco was convicted at a jury trial in 1998 and sent to prison for a meager two years, a sentence (originally one year, but after prosecutorial appeals, lifted to two) that led to anger and frustration from the FBI and U.S. Attorneys’ Office and internal government allegations of judicial misconduct.
Jack Tocco and GameTax from al profit on Vimeo.
Tocco died this week at the age of 87, the nation’s longest-tenured mafia don, serving four decades atop the Detroit mob.
Below is Tocco’s appeal from his conviction on racketeering charges at his March 1998 trial:
Watch the entire documentary “Detroit Mob Confidential”
United States of America, Plaintiff-Appellee/Cross-Appellant
v.
Jack William Tocco, Defendant-Appellant/Cross-Appellee.
Nos. 98-2312/2426; 99-1003
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
Argued: June 11, 1999
Decided and Filed: January 5, 2000
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Michigan at Detroit.
No. 96-80201–John Corbett O’Meara, District Judge.
United States of America, Plaintiff-Appellee/Cross-Appellant (99-1003),
v.
Jack William Tocco, Defendant-Appellant (98-2312/2426)/ Cross-Appellee.
Nos. 98-2312/2426; 99-1003
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
Argued: June 11, 1999
Decided and Filed: January 5, 2000
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Michigan at Detroit.
No. 96-80201–John Corbett O’Meara, District Judge.
COUNSEL: ARGUED: Frank D. Eaman, BELLANCE, BEATTIE & DeLISLE, Harper Woods, Michigan, for Appellant.
Kathleen Moro Nesi, OFFICE OF THE U.S. ATTORNEY, Detroit, Michigan, for Appellee.
ON BRIEF: Frank D. Eaman, BELLANCE, BEATTIE & DeLISLE, Harper Woods, Michigan, for Appellant.
Kathleen Moro Nesi, OFFICE OF THE U.S. ATTORNEY, Detroit, Michigan, for Appellee.
Before: WELLFORD, NELSON, and GILMAN, Circuit Judges.
OPINION
HARRY W. WELLFORD, Circuit Judge.
A. Background2
B. Voir Dire
Mafia Hit List – Top Cleveland Mob Murders
SCOTT BURNSTEIN’S ‘HIT LIST’
Top 5 Cleveland Mob Murders of All-Time
1 Danny (The Irishman) Greene – The brash, fearless and media-friendly boss of Cleveland’s short-lived Irish mob, Greene was killed on the afternoon of October 6, 1977, blown up by a car bomb outside his dentist’s office in suburban Lyndhurst after declaring war on the city’s traditional Italian mafia and Ohio Godfather James (Jack White) Licavoli a little over a year earlier. Greene came up as a strong arm under high-raking Mafioso Frank (Frankie B) Brancato and Shondor Birns, the city’s most-recognized Jewish racketeer, and he made his name in the local press as a brutish, yet magnetic labor union leader on the Cleveland waterfront. When the region’s longtime don, John Scalish died of heart failure on the operating table in the spring of 1976, Greene teamed with seasoned independent gangster and Teamsters union power John Nardi, to go after the city’s mob kingdom and the criminal empire Licavoli inherited. Misfiring on seemingly countless opportunities to clip the feisty Irishman, gangland veterans Ray Ferrito and Ronald (Ronnie the Crab) Carabbia were finally imported from outside the area and given the contract. In the midst of their getaway from the office plaza parking lot they detonated the bomb that killed Greene in, a witness jotted down the license plate of the car they were in and a spot-on sketch of Ferrito’s face, leading to Ferrito flipping and the case being cracked.
Mafia Hit List – Top Rochester (NY) Mob Murders
SCOTT BURNSTEIN’S ‘HIT LIST’
Top 5 Rochester (NY) mob murders of all-time
1 Salvatore (Sammy G) Gingello – After dodging a half-dozen assassination attempts in the early stages of a bloody gangland war for supremacy in the Rochester mafia, the charismatic underboss was finally blown to pieces in a car bomb that exploded outside a social club on April 23, 1978. Gingello, 39, was the heir apparent to the city’s mob throne and him and his mentor, Rochester don Salvatore (Red) Russotti, had their power challenged by Thomas Didio, who was named ‘acting boss’ while Russotti and Gingello were behind bars and refused to relinquish the reins when they got out.
2 Jake Russo – The Rochester crime family’s ‘acting boss’ from 1958-1964, Russo was a top lieutenant-turned-enemy of the city’s first Godfather, Frank Valenti, and vanished in December 1964, after butting heads with Valenti in the wake of the Rochester mafia’s founding father came home from a six-year prison stint.
3 Thomas Didio – A former driver and bodyguard of Sammy Gingello’s, Didio got too big for his britches when he was appointed ‘acting boss’ in 1977 and was machine-gunned to death at the Exit 45 Motel on July 6, 1978, less than three months following his ordering of Gingello’s slaying. Didio forged an alliance with deposed and imprisoned don Frank Valenti and “went to the mattress” for control of the crime family.
4 Vincent (Jimmy the Hammer) Massaro – One of Frank Valenti’s proteges and a ferocious, highly-feared enforcer and professional arsonist, Jimmy the Hammer, fell out of favor with Valenti’s replacement, Red Russsotti, by haggling over money and was shot to death at a construction company garage on November 23, 1973. Massaro was lured to the hit by his close friend and partner in crime, Angelo Monachino, allegedly on orders from Russotti and Gingello, both of whom were tried, convicted and jailed on the murder, but eventually had the case tossed due to police and prosecutorial misconduct in the investigation.
5 Dominic Chirico – Frank Valenti’s No. 1 hit man, Chirico was shot-gunned to death on June 5, 1972 as he got out of his car in front of his girlfriend’s apartment building, punishment for his boss Valenti’s misdeeds. Valenti was forced to step down as boss of the Rochester mob in the spring of 1972 for his secret stashing of “off-the-books” criminal proceeds and his reported ordering the murder of Russotti and Gingello, in response to them confronting him about it.
Honorable Mention; Billy Lupo (1970), John Fiorino (1981)
Mafia Hit List – Top St. Louis Mob Murders
SCOTT BURNSTEIN’S ‘HIT LIST’
Top 5 St. Louis mob murders of all-time
1 James (Horseshoe Jimmy) Michaels – The high-profile leader of the city’s Syrian mob faction and influential labor union boss was blown up in his car while driving on a St. Louis expressway (I-55) on the afternoon of September 17, 1980. Michaels’ killing set off a two-year gangland war and came less than three weeks after the death of St. Louis mafia don, Anthony (Tony G) Giordano, a longtime ally of his who died of cancer in August. Giordano’s death prompted the Lebanese-Italian Lesisure family (brothers Paul and Anthony and cousin David), a trio of mob strong arms that had been mentored by Horseshoe Jimmy, but held bitterness toward him for protecting the man that killed Richard Leisure, Paul’s and Anthony’s older brother and sought control of his labor union (LIUNA Local 42) and rackets for themselves, to strike immediately after Tony G was in the ground. The 75-year old legendary Missouri underworld figure had got his start during the Prohibition Era with the “Cuckoo Gang” and died a suspect of a number of gangland slaying dating back over five years. The Leisures were convicted of Michaels’ slaying at trial in 1985, with David, the person that planted the bomb underneath Horseshoe Jimmy’s car, put to death in 1999, the only modern-day mob figure killed via capital punishment.
2 Elmer (Dutch) Dowling – A right-hand man of notorious East St. Louis mob chief, Frank (Buster) Wortman for several years, Dowling was convicted alongside his boss in February 1962 on federal income tax evasion charge and six days later on March 4, 1962, Dowling and his bodyguard Melvin Beckman were found shot to death, both sprawled across a desolate peace of road, near Belleville, Missouri. Inside Dutch Dowling’s pants pocket police found phone numbers of jurors from his and Wortman’s trial, eventually allowing Wortman to get his conviction overturned. Dowling’s murder has never been solved. Authorities at the time told the press that they believed the man that killed him was the same man that had previously promised Dowling and Wortman he would fix the jury at their trial and secure an acquittal.
3 Michael Kornhardt – One of the Leisures’ top lieutenants and casualties of the early 1980s St. Louis mob war, Kornhardt was murdered on July 31, 1982 while out on bail awaiting trial for the October 1981 car-bomb slaying of George (Sonny) Faheen, the nephew of Horseshoe Jimmy Michaels. Faheen was killed in retaliation against the Michaels’ faction for a car-bomb attack that Paul Leisure survived weeks earlier. Worrying that Kornhardt would begin cooperating with the FBI, Leisure put a contract on his head and gave it to his cousin David, who farmed it out to henchman Bobby Carbaugh and Steve Wougaman. Carbaugh shot Kornhardt twice in the back of the head after Kornhardt was lured to a rural piece of property in St. Charles, Missouri.
4 Mike Palazzolo – Longtime St. Louis mafia underboss, short-tenured Godfather and FBI informant, John (Johnny V) Vitale, is alleged to have “made his bones” with the May 1934 slaying of Mike Palazzolo. In the months leading up to his murder, Palazzolo was feuding with mob associate Walter Mushenick and was last seen alive leaving his parents’ house with Vitale in Johnny V’s Cadillac. Palazzolo was found in a ditch hours later, shot in the head and neck, a crime Vitale would be charged with, but never convicted of.
5 The LIUNA Local 42 murders – In 1965, a group of St. Louis gangland figures, Louie Shoulders, George (Stormy) Harvill and William (Shot Gun) Sanders, fought the area’s Italian mafia for control of Local 42 (LIUNA), setting off a decade and a half power struggle punctuated by extreme spats of violence. In the forthcoming years, Harvill (1966) and Shoulders (1972) are both murdered. By 1979, the flames of discontent still burned and when the Chicago mafia-backed Raymond Flynn challenged the St. Louis Syrian-mob staked John (Sonny) Spica to replace T.J. Harvill, Stormy’s brother (died of natural causes) as the Local’s President, the tensions boiled over to the point of Spica being blown to pieces in a car bomb in the weeks leading up to the election in November of that year.
Detroit Godfather dies, Motor City mob mourns loss
Detroit Mafia Boss Jack Tocco Dead
The don is dead.
Legendary Detroit mob boss Giacomo (Black Jack) Tocco died of natural causes early this week at 87 years old, the longest-serving mafia Godfather in the United States.
Tocco assumed the reins of the family from his uncle Joseph (Joe Uno) Zerilli, on an acting basis around 1972, and then finally in an official capacity in June 1979, at an inauguration banquet held in Dexter, Michigan (a suburb of Ann Arbor) attended by both a who’s who of rustbelt mob chiefs and the FBI, present snapping photos of the top-secret coronation.

Zerilli and Black Jack Tocco’s father, William (Black Bill) Tocco, are considered the “founding fathers” of the Detroit mafia, winning a bloody street war for control of the city’s rackets in 1931.
Sent to college to receive his business degree (University of Detroit-Mercy, graduated 1949), Black Jack is alleged to have “made his bones” with the 1947 strangulation of Greek wiseguy Gus Andromulous, an unsolved murder the younger Tocco has always been the prime suspect in, alongside his first-cousin Anthony (Tony Z) Zerilli, Joe Uno’s son.
Both becoming capos in the 1960s, Black Jack became the heir apparent to the elder Zerilli’s throne when Tony Z was pinched and sent away to prison for skimming six million dollars and holding hidden ownership in the Frontier Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
Operating out of Melrose Linen Supply in Northeast Detroit and owning the Hazel Park Raceway for several decades, Tocco was suspected to have helped coordinate the Jimmy Hoffa murder. Hoffa, the former Teamsters president and mafia ally-turned-enemy, was kidnapped and slain in July 1975, disappearing from a Bloomfield Hills restaurant in broad daylight never to be seen again.
Black Jack and Tony Z ran the Motor City mob empire their father’s built side-by-side, with Tocco boss and Zerilli, his underboss, for two decades, before they were both arrested, convicted and imprisoned on a RICO bust from 1996.
Upon their release, the pair butted heads, leading to Tocco demoting and shelving his first-cousin, who he blamed for the whole indictment, and Zerilli debriefing with the FBI and pointing them to property in suburban Detroit once owned by Black Jack to search for Hoffa’s remains – a fruitless endeavor.
Respected and feared, but far from beloved from his troops, Tocco was a boardroom Mafioso, preferring a three-piece suits to jogging suits and real estate portfolios to getting his hands dirty overseeing traditional day-to-day mob rackets. His willingness to delegate authority to the infamously-fearsome Giacalone family and rule from afar, prevented any internal bloodshed and kept his more blue-collar underlings in-line and content.
Anthony (Chicago Tony) La Piana, a Tocco protégé and nephew via marriage, is suspected to be taking over Black Jack’s underworld interests and, along with Jack (Jackie the Kid) Giacalone, stepping into the leadership void created by Tocco’s passing.
Detroit Mob Boss Jack Tocco and GameTax indictment from al profit on Vimeo.