Angelo J. LaPietra

Angelo J. "The Hook" LaPietra (1920–1999) was a Chicago mobster and member of the Chicago Outfit, involved in extensive loansharking operations in the city's First Ward during the 1970s and 1980s. He earned his nickname "The Hook" due to the way he murdered his victims—those that did not, or could not pay up. He would take his victim—bound and gagged—and hang him on a meat hook, (piercing the victim's rib cage with the meat hook) and then torture him to death with a blow-torch. The torch would not actually be the cause of death. The victims most often died from suffocation.

He was born to first-generation immigrants from Sicily, Italy. A high-ranking member of the Chicago Outfit, LaPietra had an extensive criminal record stretching back to 1939 that included murder, kidnapping and narcotics. He was involved in criminal operations in the suburb of Cicero, Illinois, as well as in Chicago's First Ward, LaPietra was a top enforcer under Outfit boss Joseph "Joey Doves" Aiuppa for Cicero criminal operations. As the result of a five-year federal investigation into organized crime following the murder of a small-time Kansas City, Missouri mobster, LaPietra was indicted along with Aiuppa, Jackie "The Lackey" Cerone, and other fifteen mobsters from five cities.

LaPietra was later accused by a Kansas City grand jury with skimming an estimated $2 million from syndicate-controlled Las Vegas casinos. Federal authorities further charged that, by using money from the Teamsters Union Central States Pension Fund, the mobsters were able to consolidate their control over Las Vegas casinos during the 1950s and 1960s. Federal agents had also recorded at least 12,000 hours of phone conversations through wire taps from organized crime figures in Kansas, Missouri, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Illinois and Nevada, over a period of four years.

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