Revisiting Rocco
History says Hamilton's legendary gangster bootlegger met a violent end and lies beneath Hamilton Harbour. But credible information in a soon-to-be-released book suggests history is wrong.

Paul Legall
The Hamilton Spectator

Legendary gangster Rocco Perri had a secret rendezvous with his mistress four years after he was supposed to have been murdered and dumped into Hamilton Harbour. In 1949, five years after the oft-reported demise of Canada's richest bootlegger, his name turned up in an FBI report linking him to criminal activities in Mexico. In June of the same year, he wrote a cryptic note to a cousin, saying he was alive and in good health and to ignore any rumours to the contrary.
With these revelations in his soon-to-be released biography of Perri, Toronto author Antonio Nicaso hopes to effectively debunk one of the most enduring legends of Hamilton crime history.
Ever since he disappeared in April 1944, it's been commonly accepted that Perri was assassinated by rival gangsters, weighted down with concrete boots and dumped in the harbour. The story has generated gallows humour, such as the line, "Remember when the water in Hamilton Harbour was so clear you could see Rocco Perri?"
But the story never sat well with Nicaso, who has written 11 books about the mob and lectured all over the world about organized crime. "I don't believe in legends. I believe in facts," he said, while poring over galleys of his biography, Rocco Perri: The Story of Canada's Most Notorious Bootlegger, due for release next month.
"I always thought the Perri biography had two holes in it," he said, referring to Jim Dubro's book King of the Mob. "There is a hole for the first 18 years of his life before he came to Canada and at the end, after he disappeared."
In his book, Nicaso also tried to put a "human face" on the notorious gangster by talking to relatives and former associates as well as poring over police and other official documents.
He got his first break when he visited the small village of Plati in the province of Calabria, Italy, where Perri was born in 1887. It was there he discovered the letter that convinced him Perri had escaped from Hamilton and was still alive on June 10, 1949. "I'm writing to tell you I'm in excellent health," the handwritten letter stated. "Let everyone know I'm fine, if you hear any different."
One of Perri's relatives discovered the letter in Plati in 1992. But Nicaso believes it was probably sent to someone in Hamilton and later found its way to Italy. There is no envelope or return address. Nicaso also got a handwriting analyst to ascertain the identity of the writer and to look for personality traits in the script.
His research also took some unusual and humorous turns. Many of Perri's descendants in Plati believed he had become the richest man in Canada through his criminal activities and he left a large unclaimed fortune when he died. They had the impression Nicaso had been sent by the Canadian government to track down heirs to his estate.
This may explain why so many helped him with his research and sent him hundreds of e-mails from around the world. "I had to explain I was looking for relatives, not heirs," he laughed. While in Plati, Nicaso obtained Perri's birth and baptismal certificates and school records. He was considered a good student, attaining Grade 5 at a time when most of his friends and relatives couldn't read or write. At 16, Perri left Italy for the United States and spent five years with relatives in Massena, N.Y., before moving to Montreal in 1908. After a stint as a waiter in Montreal, he moved to Ontario where he worked at menial jobs before gravitating to petty crime.
His criminal career started to blossom after he met Bessie Starkman at a Toronto rooming house. She abandoned her husband and two children and moved to Hamilton with Perri, where they built one of the biggest criminal enterprises in Canadian history.
During prohibition, they were the most prosperous bootleggers in the country and numbered Al Capone and Joseph Kennedy among their customers. They also had a hand in prostitution, drug dealing, gambling and extortion while enjoying the good life at their 19-room mansion on Bay Street South and Hunter Street. But bootlegging was a cut-throat business and there were several murders, bombings and beatings as other gangs tried to take over their turf. With a few killers and bombers in their own employ, Starkman and Perri were able to stand their ground and control the rackets throughout the 1920s.
But Perri's influence and morale took a sudden nosedive in 1930 when Starkman was ambushed and gunned down in the garage of their mansion. After her death, he linked up romantically with another strong Toronto woman, Annie Newman, who also assisted in his scaled-down criminal activities.
Perri hit rock bottom during the Second World War when he was shipped off for three years to an internment camp in Petawawa. Although nonpolitical, he was interned along with other Italian Canadians as a "Fascist sympathizer." When he got out late in 1943, the Hamilton criminal landscape had shifted dramatically. Stefano Maggadino, a powerful Mafia boss from Buffalo, had replaced Perri as the main man in southern Ontario and brought many of Perri's former henchmen to his side. "He took advantage of Perri's internment and exerted his influence in southern Ontario, thanks to the help of Perri's former associates," Nicaso said.
At the time of his disappearance in April 1944, Perri had been invited to attend a meeting with a number of former associates who were plotting his death. "At the last minute, he got a tip. He was advised, 'don't go,'" Nicaso said.
Fearing for his life, he got a trusted associate to spirit him across the border to Massena, where he lived with relatives and kept a low profile for a few years. Two days after he left, his cousin Mike Serge reported his disappearance to Hamilton police. He claimed Perri had gone to the drugstore near his home to get medication for a headache and never came back.
Nicaso has also learned that Perri came back to Canada in 1948 for a secret rendezvous with Annie Newman, who was still living in the Bay Street mansion at the time. He was told about the secret meeting by the 71-year-old daughter of a deceased bootlegger and Perri associate. "He came to visit Annie Newman. They met at a cottage on a lake far away from Hamilton. I believe it was a social thing," he said.
A year later, according to an FBI document prepared by director J. Edgar Hoover, Perri had moved to a small village in Mexico where he was involved in criminal activities. The nature of the enterprise isn't mentioned in the memo. But Hoover -- who appeared to be swapping information with Mexican police -- said he based his information on four reliable sources.
After 1949, the elusive Perri slipped off the radar screen again. Nicaso has information he may have lived until 1953. But he can't say for sure how or where he died or where he may be buried. "The most important thing is that Rocco was not killed in 1944. That's the new story. We can say without doubt, he was not killed and dumped in Hamilton Bay. I have the evidence," Nicaso concluded.
Oct. 16, 2004.