JOHNNY TORRIO served as boss of the Chicago Outfit from 1920 to 1925. A true visionary, his organizational genius, along with his uncanny aptitudes for business and diplomacy, made him one of the most influential and respected organized crime figures in American history.

Young Johnny helped make ends meet for his family by earning cash running errands for a local gang, and before long, the charismatic teenager had taken over as the gang’s leader. With his ambition and knack for enterprise, the group expanded from petty crimes to sophisticated criminal operations, supplemented with a network of legitimate businesses. 

Torrio moved his lucrative criminal enterprises to the Midwest in 1909 after his Chicago-based crime boss uncle “Big Jim” Colisomo reached out for help. Merging his substantial operations with Big Jim’s brothel empire, Torrio was now second-in-command to a powerful new Outfit. Many of Torrio’s men came with him, including his young protege Al Capone.

The partnership flourished until Prohibition, when Big Jim refused to allow the group to go into bootlegging. Torrio, foreseeing new heights of profits and power in the illegal booze trade, refused to see his vision of prosperity held back, and Big Jim was shot to death by Capone on the orders of Torrio. Torrio was now boss of Chicago’s largest organized crime group, and Capone had ascended to his right-hand man. Their lucrative empire was grossing $70 million a year (the modern equivalent of over a billion).

In 1925, Torrio was shot multiple times outside his home by a rival gang. Somehow surviving his wounds, he decided to retire from the mob to live peacefully in his native Italy, handing over full control of the Outfit to Al Capone, who was just 26.

A few years later, Torrio returned from Italy and in 1929, he masterminded the creation of the National Crime Syndicate, a confederation of organized crime groups throughout the country united under central leadership, which forever changed the mob.

This mug shot is from Torrio’s 1936 arrest for tax evasion, for which he served two years in federal prison. Aside from that conviction, Torrio managed to lay low in his later years, dying of a heart attack in 1957 at age 75.