La Famiglia Nostra

La Famiglia Nostra (translated simply as 'Our Family', sometimes referred to colloquially as 'The Family' ) is a criminal organization in Chicago largely composed of Italian immigrants and Italian-Americans. La Famiglia Nostra originally split off from the Sicilian mafia in the 1880s - when founder Vincentio Calabrese immigrated with his family from Sicily to Chicago. La Famiglia Nostra is composed of the Calabrese crime family working alongside several cadet families and smaller criminal organizations. Their criminal enterprises are wide and varied - including everything from dogfighting to extortion to drug dealing, rum-running, and prostitution.

Organization
La Famiglia Nostra operates on a system similar to a feudal monarchy -- with a dynastic leadership system tied to a singular bloodline. The Calabrese family sits at the head of La Famiglia Nostra and all the cadet families must swear fealty to them in the form of an omerta. The omerta is an eternal oath of servitude and loyalty, not unlike the oath a knight might make to his liege lord. To break one's omerta is punishable by death and death alone. In La Famiglia Nostra, there is no forgiveness to those who shatter the bonds of blood. The Calabreses and the cadet families also tend to intermarry with one another - which further strengthens the ties between them and ensures absolute loyalty. These marriages are usually arranged in advance when the children involved are young. The relationship between the Calabreses and their cadet families tends to be warm and, well, familial. La Famiglia is more than a criminal organization, but also an extended family. Holidays, vacations, family gatherings, and other such things are fairly common for them.

Close familial ties aside, however, La Famiglia's organization is very similar in structure to the Sicilian Mafia. The Don (or Donna, if female) is the undisputed leader of the mob. When the Don passes away or steps down, leadership is passed to the oldest, eligible, male adult in his immediate family - usually his oldest son, but not always. Leadership can be passed to a woman if there are no eligible men available (as was the case with Claudia Calabrese, the current Donna). The Don / Donna provides direction to the families beneath him or her - and sets the main objectives for the family to follow. The cadet families pay a portion of their profits to the Don / Donna and pledge to follow him / her in battle if necessary - and to protect him / her and the Family with their lives.

Directly beneath the Don / Donna are the underbosses -- the leaders of the individual cadet families. Each cadet family tends to focus on its own branch of crime. For example, the Bianchis are known best as cocaine dealers, whereas the Fiorentinos handle money laundering and grand theft. The underbosses are usually the Don / Donna's closest friends, family members, and most trusted advisors -- individuals that he or she has known and trusted for years.

Beneath the underbosses are their 'Capos' - Captains - who control squads of soldiers and associates. The soldiers and associates are typically the ones on the front lines, fighting the wars and doing the dirty work. As well as taking the fall so that the higher-ups don't get caught red-handed. Prosecuting La Famiglia has proven extremely difficult for city hall, since the most powerful members of the Family tend not to be involved in the day-to-day dirty work of the mob. They're insulated by dozens upon dozens of loyal men willing to take the fall and go to jail if need be. La Famiglia provides for its own. Even if a soldier is forced to go to jail, it's all but guaranteed he'll get a good lawyer to fight for him and won't have to serve his full sentence.

History
The history of La Famiglia Nostra is also the history of its founder, Vincentio Calabrese. Vincentio was born in the 1850's in Sicily, just a few years prior to Italy's annexation of the kingdom of Sicily and the transition from feudalism to capitalism. The transition was hardly a smooth one and lead to increasing social and political strife upon the Mediterranean island. Rising food prices and the loss of feudal commons badly affected the peasantry, forcing many to resort to banditry for survival. Combined with a severely lacking police force on the island, many farmers and landowners were forced to hire small companies of mercenaries to defend their citrus and cattle farms - and this is where Vincentio Calabrese, the son of a rural peasant, got his start. Vincentio's father died young and he was forced to care for his mother and sister. Sensing an opportunity, he gathered up a small group of friends - men who would later become his underbosses - and they began hiring themselves out as security for local landowners.

Vincentio and his friends quickly proved to be much more effective at preventing theft and recovering stolen cattle than the anemic Sicilian police force. The fledgling mafia saw an opportunity to increase their profts by collaborating with groups of peasant bandits. Vincentio would offer protection services to local farmers. If the farmers did not want to pay the Mafia's steep rates, they would find themselves targeted heavily by bandits. The vandalization and theft of their property would encourage them -- and all farmers around them -- to submit to the Mafia's demands. The Mafia would then, in turn, kick a small portion of their profits to the bandit groups. Vincentio's group of friends soon found themselves making a small fortune. Vincentio met and married his first wife, Antonia, during this time. The couple decided to take an extended honeymoon in America and, upon arriving in Chicago, decided to put down roots permanently.

Vincentio started off as a garbage collector for the City of Chicago and soon found himself drawn into the Sabbatini Crime Family. He sent money back to his sister Gabriella in Sicily to support her and their mother. As he began to make more and more money with the Sabbatinis, he sent word to his friends and family in Sicily, who soon began immigrating to join him in the land of opportunity.

The Sabbatinis began to grow wary of Vincentio and his popularity in Chicago's criminal underworld. And they were right to have mixed feelings about him. With his mafiosos at his back, Vincentio soon orchestrated a coup and killed Don Lorenzo Sabbatini as well as several other influential members of the Sabbatini family, thus crowning himself as Chicago's most powerful gangster. He christened his new organization La Famiglia Nostra and wasted no time in making his old Sicilian friends into his powerful underbosses.

La Famiglia Nostra quickly spread out into various criminal enterprises, including drugs, prostitution, extortion, burglary, money laundering, smuggling, and gambling. The Family's spread was sudden and swift, taking Chicago by storm in only a few years. Just like in Sicily, the lazy and incompetent police force could seemingly do nothing to halt the growth of La Famiglia. As Vincentio approached his thirties, he began looking to ensure his power for the future. The organization of his crime syndicate was based upon family bloodlines - inspired by feudalism - and Vincentio would need sons to take over the mafia after he stepped down. He and Antonia had their first son, Enrico, and their other two sons Ceasario and Alphonsus in the following years.

Antonia, a devout Catholic, never approved of her husband's criminal enterprises. At nineteen, she thought she had married a charming rural boy with ambitions to become a farmer. Now, in her mid-thirties, she realized she had married a monster. Wanting to protect her young sons from their father's criminal empire, Antonia reached out to the Chicago Police Department to try and report her husband. However, Antonia abruptly disappeared following the call -- and it's widely thought that Vincentio murdered her. Thanks to some clever legal work from his lawyer friend Daniel Sullivan, Vincentio managed to exonerate himself of the murder. Regardless, business proceeded smoothly from there on out. In the years following Antonia's death, Vincentio promised to marry Carlotta Endrizzi, the sister of his longtime friend Alfredo. Vincentio was known as a lady-killer and a playboy with several women on the side, however. He unexpectedly got one of his girlfriends, a small-time actress named Claudia Van Der Burg, pregnant. He shocked his friends and family by breaking the engagement to Carlotta and instead marrying Claudia in 1898 - an insult that would turn into a long-festering grudge held by the Endrizzi cadet family.

La Famiglia Nostra maintained dominance over Chicago's North Side and Lake Side for a number of years during this period -- which many now regard as the height of their power. They faced some competition from Francis de Pierrot and the newly emerged Steel Chip Gang in the West Side, but nothing the Family could not handle.

However, La Famiglia's fortunes took a sudden turn upon the election of Mayor John Michael Hadewich. On the campaign trail, Hadewich promised to clean up crime on the streets of Chicago. Though La Famiglia invested heavily in his competition, Hadewich still won the election and implemented his notoriously brutal Streetsweeper program. La Famiglia suddenly found itself in a fight for its very survival. The Italian Mafia was one of the Streetsweepers' primary targets and they began to dismantle La Famiglia with brutal efficiency. La Famiglia offered huge bounties to anyone who could reveal the identities of those involved in the Streetsweeper program, but the Sweepers' identities were kept top-secret and managed to avoid leaking to the public.

One by one, the original underbosses of La Famiglia fell to the Sweepers - either killed outright or arrested and placed in prison. Among those killed were Diano Bianchi, Christian De Luca, and (allegedly) Vincentio Calabrese himself. Those arrested included Alfredo Endrizzi, Samuele Esposito, and Paolo Fiorentino -- as well as Vincentio's three oldest sons Enrico, Ceasario, and Alphonsus. The leadership of La Famiglia Nostra was dismantled completely. Claudia Calabrese, Vincentio's widow, was the only adult member of the Calabrese family left alive and out of prison.

La Famiglia fell into a year and a half period of inactivity following their losses at the hands of the Streetsweepers. Claudia Calabrese, though technically the official Donna of La Famiglia, chose not to exercise her powers. She denied all knowledge of her husband's criminal dealings to the police. Following her husband's death, she struck a deal with the police that she would be allowed to continue owning and operating her businesses so long as she cooperated with the authorities and stayed out of any criminal enterprise. Claudia complied.

However, the Streetsweepers disappeared after the sudden assassination of Mayor Hadewich. Cautiously, Claudia began seeking to rebuild her husband's fallen criminal empire. Her efforts to rebuild La Famiglia brought her into immediate conflict with the Steel Chip Gang, who had managed somehow to escape the notice of the Streetsweepers. After a months-long violent clash against the Steel Chips, however, La Famiglia managed to dominate and drive them out of Chicago's lucrative West Side -- cementing themselves as the dominant force in Chicago's criminal underworld once again after a long period of suffering.

Calabrese
The Calabrese Family is the ruling family of La Famiglia Nostra - equivalent to the royal family of a feudal kingdom. La Famiglia Nostra was founded by Vincentio Calabrese in the early 1880s and he was the organization's first Don. Vincentio and his three eldest sons oversaw La Famiglia for roughly forty years before his sudden disappearance. He's now presumed dead -- and his three oldest children in jail. With all of the adult male Calabreses dead or in prison, leadership defaulted to Claudia Calabrese, Vincentio's widow.

All the cadet families are asked to swear an oath of loyalty and fealty to the Calabreses. Members of the cadet families pledge to protect the Calabreses with their lives and to serve them until death. Like a royal family, the Calabreses also often intermarry with their vassals in order to strengthen ties. The Calabreses have direct marriage ties with the Bianchis, the De Lucas, and the Espositos -- as well as indirect marriage ties to the Fiorentinos and the Endrizzis.

Notable members of the Calabrese family can be found here.

Bianchi
The Bianchis consider themselves the most loyal among the cadet families. The patriarch of the Bianchi family was Diano Bianchi, who was a childhood friend of Vincentio and immigrated with him from Sicily. They more or less founded La Famiglia together -- and they also died together in the sting operation by the Streetsweepers. With Diano gone, the leadership of the Bianchi family has passed to his younger brother Luis. Luis is no less loyal than Diano and is committed to the protection of La Famiglia at any cost.

The Bianchis are primarily drug runners and dealers. Prior to the Streetsweeper era, they had a supply line for cocaine and absinthe running from South America through Louisiana and up the length of the Mississippi. However, their supply lines were disrupted by the Sweepers, who killed a lot of their dealers and arrested many of their mules. Upon assuming leadership of the family, Luis Bianchi decided to take their drug dealing in a new direction. He began to oversee the production and distribution of drugs "in house" -- that is, in Chicago itself -- rather than trying to import.

Notable members of the Bianchi family can be found here.

Esposito
The Esposito cadet family possess a loyalty nearly on par with the Bianchis. The Espositos are lead by Stefan Esposito, who is the nephew of Vincentio Calabrese. Vincentio's sister, Gabriella, married into the Espositos shortly after they arrived in Chicago. While Gabriella is sadly no longer living, the ties between Esposito and Calabrese are still strong.

The Espositos focus their efforts on rum-running and smuggling - using their legitimate company (Esposito Grocery, Farms, & Trucking) as their front for illicit operations. Sadly, since the Streetsweeper era, the Espositos have been struggling to find decent smugglers willing to import to Chicago. They found some minor success with the Dead Rabbits, but that alliance collapsed under the strain of the gang war with the Steel Chip Gang. However, they were able to seize some resources and contacts after the Steel Chip gang collapsed, which helped to shore up the holes in their business and keep booze flowing into the White City.

Notable members of the Esposito family can be found here.

Fiorentino
The Fiorentinos are known as the kingmakers of Chicago's art scene. To be featured in a Fiorentino galleria is a ticket to widespread fame and success for young starving artists. What most don't know is that the Fiorentinos are expert money launderers who inflate the prices of artwork to a ridiculous degree in order to help cover up La Famiglia's ill-gotten gains. The Fiorentinos are also shockingly competent thieves who specialize in high-value targets.

After Paolo Fiorentino ended up in jail for tax evasion, the leadership of the family defaulted to his mother Vittoria. Vittoria is perhaps one of the most terrifying members of La Famiglia -- not for what she's done, but merely her powerful and intimidating presence. She is a woman in her 70's, involved in a criminal enterprise where people usually do not live that long -- which speaks to her expertise.

Notable members of the Fiorentino family can be found here.

Bascher
Bascher is a new and unusual cadet family underneath the Calabreses. This family has only one official member - city councilman William Bascher. Bascher met Claudia shortly after the death of Mayor Hadewich. He quickly and immediately fell in love with her, swearing an omerta just two days after meeting her in person for the first time. Sensing the Family's weakness and wanting to protect Claudia, Bascher has used his clout as a popular politician to gather up soldiers for Claudia's use. He proved instrumental in the war against the Steel Chip Gang -- and thus he was promoted to the position of underboss.

Bascher leads a group of soldiers loyal only to him, which he has dubbed the Cuirassiers. The other loyalist families are still somewhat wary of William Bascher, even after all the help he's provided to La Famiglia. Mostly because he and his men do not have blood ties to the Calabreses or the other families (in spite of William's romantic relationship with Claudia). However, they have chosen to accept him -- for now. As long as he continues to be faithful to Claudia, there shouldn't be a problem.

Endrizzi
The Endrizzi family - lead by Eduardo Endrizzi - served as the extortionists and enforcers for La Famiglia. The Endrizzis were the soldiers on the front lines, making sure that no one else dared to muscle in on La Famiglia's turf. The Endrizzis were known for their violence, brutality, and cruelty -- and their name was feared throughout the White City. The Endrizzis were also known for their dogfighting rings. They had a legitimate front as Chicago's Animal and Pest Control business - which they used to kidnap animals for their dogfights, as well as to steal and resell valuable dogs and cats to wealthy owners.

The Endrizzis were unfortunately never fond of Claudia -- and Vincentio's abrupt death put a strain on their relationship with the rest of the Family. They did not want to swear fealty to Vincentio's Polish widow. The reason they disliked Claudia was fairly simple. When Vincentio chose to marry Claudia, he snubbed a potential bride that the Endrizzis had offered. The Endrizzis held onto that old grudge and it leaped out once more into the light when Claudia assumed control of the Family. The Endrizzis used James Chapel, the man suspected of being the Triple Cross Killer, and his relationship to Claudia as an excuse to splinter off from La Famiglia.

However, their hatred of Claudia proved to be their downfall. After splintering, Eduardo Endrizzi ordered his men to kidnap Mattheo and Giulietta, Claudia's two children. The kidnapping had massive consequences for the Endrizzis. Eduardo Endrizzi ended up dead at the hands of Henry Scaglione, the Calabrese family's bodyguard. Most of the remaining Endrizzis were forced to flee Chicago after breaking their omerta, fearful that they might be murdered at the hands of La Famiglia loyalists.

Notable members of the Endrizzi cadet family can be found here.

De Luca
The De Luca cadet family ran La Famiglia's brothels, human trafficking, and prostitution rings. They owned a large number of cabaret clubs, cigar bars, and seedy hotels where they offered loose women to anyone willing to buy. Many of their prostitutes were downtrodden women forced into debt by drug use or alcoholism. Still more were immigrants who were promised good jobs in exchange for work if they came to America. The De Luca pimps had a way of isolating vulnerable women and men who needed help, only to force them into indentured servitude as prostitutes in their brothels. Some De Luca prostitutes joined the profession willingly, but those were few and far between.

Christian De Luca -- the former patriarch of the De Luca family -- was a close friend of the Endrizzis. When Christian lost his life in a Streetsweeper raid, his leadership went to his oldest son Bartolomeo. Though the De Lucas had marriage ties with the Calabreses through Bart's sister Angelica, Bartolomeo's first and foremost loyalty was to his beloved uncle Eduardo. When the Endrizzis split from La Famiglia, it did not take much convincing to make the De Lucas split as well.

Bartolomeo died alongside Eduardo, though his brothers Isidoro and Sansone managed to escape, as well as his sister Angelica.

Notable members of the De Luca cadet family can be found here.

Related Pages

 * Claudia Calabrese
 * Vincentio Calabrese
 * The Calabrese Family
 * The Bianchi Family
 * The Esposito Family
 * The Fiorentino Family
 * The De Luca Family
 * The Endrizzi Family
 * William Bascher
 * James Chapel