JOHN SERPICO
THE LABORERS’ INTERNATIONAL Union of North America (LIUNA) held several weeks of trusteeship hearings at Chicago’s Midland Hotel in 1997 in an effort to purge seven Chicago locals and the Chicago District Council of Mob influence that went back to the days of Al Capone.
Interestingly, the Laborers’ International executives who are staged the internal house-cleaning of Chicago Mob figures, were themselves inextricably tied to several East Coast Mafia families. Laborers’ International President Arthur Coia, for example, was alleged to have been a long-time pal of the Patriarca, Luchese and Gambino families of Boston and New York.
Nevertheless, Coia assembled an impressive team of squeaky-clean ex-FBI agents and former government prosecutors who painted a picture of the Chicago Laborers’ power structure as a gang of political hustlers, greed-driven thieves and blood-soaked killers.
In 1999 Coia agreed to resign, and in 2000 he plead guilty to several schemes to cheat his home state, Rhode Island, and the town of Barrington, R.I., out of sales taxes in the purchase of several Ferraris.
Peter Vaira was the Hearing Officer who oversaw the quasi-judicial proceeding, which was much like a Criminal Court trial, but allowed hearsay evidence and was nowhere near as rigid as the Criminal Court requirement that evidence be beyond a reasonable doubt.
Vaira had a distinguished career in criminal prosecutions, including a stint as head of the Justice Department’s now-disbanded Chicago Strike Force. In 1982, Vaira labeled the Chicago District Council of the Laborers’ Union as being a “captive” of organized crime. Now, 15 years later, he found himself sitting in judgment on charges that the very same group of union officials were tied to the Mob.
Ex-FBI-Agent W. Douglas Gow, Inspector General for the LIUNA, testified that:
“The scope of activities involving the Syndicate or the Mob or the Outfit in Chicago is truly pervasive. Organized crime in Chicago touches practically everyone’s life or livelihood. The evidence shows that tentacles of Mob activity in this city reach into Government, law enforcement, unions and other legitimate political, social and economic functions,” Gow declared.
Gow also cited former FBI agent, Bill Roemer who, according to Gow, had developed a list of Chicago Laborers’ officials who were either made Mafia guys or associates of the Mob. That list included the late Vincent Solano, Frank Caruso, Dominick Palermo, Frank DeMonte, the late Sal Gruttaduro and James Caporale.
Then, citing a Presidential report on organized crime, Gow listed several other Laborers’ officials as Mob guys including the late Al Pilotto, former head of Laborers’ Local 5 in Chicago Heights and John Serpico, one-time boss of Laborers’ Local 8.
Serpico, prior to being ousted from his Laborers’ post two years earlier because of his mob ties, was one of the best politically-connected Laborers’ Union Mob guys in the Chicago area, counting former Illinois Governor James Thompson, then Governor George Ryan and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley among his cronies.
It was the Serpico connection that prompted LIUNA President Arthur Coia to originally admit that there might be something to the age-old rumors that organized crime figures dominate the affairs of the Laborers’ Union. In May of 1995, Coia told an internal union investigating panel—created under threat of Justice Department sanctions—of a meeting he had at O’Hare Airport with Vince Solano and John Serpico.
Coia said he was told by Serpico to fly into O’Hare for the meeting. Once there, Solano told Serpico to take a walk and then, in a matter of minutes, Solano told Coia that the Mob had determined that Serpico was to become the next LIUNA President, period.