Marco “The Mover” D’Amico died this week aged 84. D’Amico was consigliere to Chicago Outfit don Johnny “No Nose” DiFronzo who died two years earlier from complications of his dementia.
For years, D’Amico was most remembered for a bad mugshot showing him with thick glasses that magnified his eyeballs making them appear bulging.
Chicago Outfit history however, shows that D’Amico was far from being blind and was quite smart and ambitious.
Marco D’Amico’s mugshot showing him with thick glasses that magnified his eyeballs making them appear bulging.
In 1983 D’Amico had a memorable run-in with the police. He had been stopped in northwest suburban Palatine under suspicion of driving under the influence. According to the police report, D’Amico asked the police officer “do you know who I am?” The officer didn’t recognize D’Amico at all and told him he “didn’t know and didn’t care”. Obviously not happy with this answer, D’Amico bit off one of the officer’s fingers. Of course, in true mob-style, no jail time was served for this incident.
D’Amico’s nickname “The Mover” was an apparent reference to his skill at getting things done. D’Amico always got results when trying to convince businesses it would be in their best interest to pay the “street tax”.
Even though D’Amico was over 84 years old when he passed away, multiple sources have said that he was still consigliere of the Chicago Outfit. A title previously held by infamous mobsters such as Anthony “Joe Batters” Accardo who rose through the ranks from being Al Capone’s driver to running the entire operation.
Marco D’Amico mugshot from 1979
Over the years The Chicago Outfit has been gutted by deaths, prosecutions, and prison sentences. The biggest hit to the outfit and D’Amico came two years ago when the reigning boss John “No Nose” DiFronzo died. D’Amico and DiFronzo learned together in the same West Side Outfit crew.
At one Chicago Outfit meeting in 2009, D’Amico and DiFronzo met for lunch, unaware they were being followed and surveilled by an ABC7 news crew.
D’Amico’s criminal career began about 60 years ago with illegal gambling, drunken run-ins with police and, street fights. However, in 1944, things got much more serious when he was indicted by federal prosecutors in a racketeering case.
The FBI had a very strong case against D’Amico thanks to secret recordings by his ex-attorney Robert Cooley. D’Amico pleaded guilty and not only admitted his role in the racketeering case but also his position in The Chicago Outfit. He was sentenced to over 12 years in prison.
Marco D’Amico
Long-time Chicago organized crime expert and former professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, John Binder said: “With the death of Marco D’Amico, another of the Outfit’s old guard, along with John DiFronzo and Joey Lombardo, has passed away.” But the organization continues to roll on, although it is nothing like what it was at its height in the early 1960s. The Outfit will find someone else to fill his spot at the highest rungs of their organization chart, and they will continue to do what they are doing at the present time. Which is certainly a great deal less than they once did, given how their world has changed over the last several decades because of law enforcement efforts against them and a long list of other factors.”
