The Violent Years Read Online Free PDF

States would seem to indicate that the Licavoli brothers had already developed very good political connections.
    In late 1923 or early 1924, Yonnie began working with Francesco “Frank” Cammarata, who was born in Sicily on March 16, 1898. He immigrated to the United States in 1913, arriving in New York and later settling in St. Louis, Missouri. Cammarata was active in the St. Louis underworld for no more than five or six years before moving to Detroit around 1920. He probably began a long association with the Licavoli brothers in the “Hammerhead Gang” of St. Louis and would eventually marry the Licavolis’ sister Grace. Once Cammarata settled in the Detroit area, he worked as a hired gunman and bank robber before joining forces with the River Gang in the mid-’20s. After relocating to Detroit and before joining forces with the River Gang, Cammarata and Yonnie Licavoli became partners in the bank robbing and hijacking rackets.
    Thomas “Yonnie” Licavoli was always the more aggressive of the two Licavoli brothers. He soon earned a reputation in the Detroit underworld as a ruthless hijacker and strong-arm man. It would be Yonnie Licavoli who would be instrumental in organizing the Moceri/Licavoli River Gang into a force to be reckoned with on the upper Detroit River.
    Aside from his rum-running and hijacking activities, Yonnie was interested in several underground saloons, known as blind pigs, and other underworld resorts in the Detroit area. Alvin C. Hoyle and another unidentified man were partners with Yonnie in the ownership of a popular Detroit blind pig known as the Subway Cafe. The Subway Cafe was located in the basement of a building in downtown Detroit. The cafe had been raided and closed several times by Detroit police for gambling and Prohibition law violations. Finally, the owner of the building in which the cafe was operated notified Hoyle and his partners that they would have to move. Licavoli had evidently told Hoyle to wait until they could get together and decide upon an equitable division of the equipment in the cafe, before moving it out. For some reason, Licavoli decided that he was being double crossed by Hoyle, believing that he was taking jointly owned property out of the blind pig without his okay. In an effort to set up Hoyle, Yonnie made arrangements with him to assist in moving the remaining equipment out of the Subway Cafe one night in the late summer of 1926. A young man names Charles Phillips, who had worked at the Subway as a bouncer, was hired by Hoyle to help the men move their equipment. According to testimony that was later given to the Detroit police by Phillips, Hoyle said that Licavoli called and told him that he had arranged to borrow a truck which the men could use to move the equipment. Hoyle asked Phillips to come along and drive the truck for them. On the night they had planned to move the equipment, Licavoli came by in a car and picked up Hoyle and Phillips. According to Phillips, Hoyle got into the front seat with Licavoli, and Phillips sat in the back seat next to a man who had accompanied Licavoli. Phillips told police that he had never seen this man before. The four men drove to a dark street on Detroit’s east side near the Elmwood Cemetery. Licavoli pointed to a dark driveway where he told the men that they could find the truck. As the four men walked up the driveway, the shooting began. Hoyle was killed instantly. Phillips was shot 14 times but somehow managed to survive. He described to police how a gunman had stood over him as he lay writhing from pain on the ground from wounds he had received only moments before. The gunman emptied his pistol into Phillips’s hat. The killer’s poor aim was the only reason why Phillips was still alive. There were five furrows in Phillips’s scalp and five bullet holes in his straw hat. Of the other nine wounds, none was deeper than a flesh wound. Yonnie Licavoli was not wounded and denied that he had been with Hoyle and Phillips