Mobster not swimming
with the fishes after all?
Most assumed he was killed in '44

By Eric Volmers
The Guelph Mercury

Until roughly a year ago, Rocco Perri was believed to have met the sort of violent death that befitted his role as one of the country's most notorious gangsters.

Canada's so-called "king of the bootleggers," most assumed, had ended up at the bottom of Hamilton Harbour with a concrete block tied to his feet after running afoul of rival mobsters in the 1940s.
Perri, who was commonly referred to as Canada's Al Capone, is regarded as one of the country's most infamous mobsters. A poor immigrant who came to Canada in the early 1900s, he built a criminal empire with his common-law wife that eventually included prostitution rackets and drug trafficking. He disappeared in 1944. No body was ever found.
Now a new book by organized crime expert Antonio Nicaso suggests Perri didn't die in 1944 at all, but fled to the U.S. after being tipped off by a Guelph mobster named Tony Silvestro that there was a price on his head. Perri, Nicaso argued, was warned to avoid a planned meeting with a rival family. He was transported by a friend in a casket across the border to New York State, where he stayed until his death in 1953.
"It was a Guelph man that advised Rocco not to show at the meeting and practically saved his life," said Nicaso, in an interview from his Toronto home. "He (Rocco Perri) found a way to leave Hamilton and move to Massena in New York State. It was a place where he had relatives and friends. The book solves the half-century mystery about the fate of Rocco Perri." Set to be released later this week, Rocco Perri: The Story of Canada's Most Notorious Bootlegger, reveals that the mobster had a soft spot for Guelph, a key city during his rise in the world of bootlegging, gambling and drug trafficking.
"Guelph was important," Nicaso said. "He always had a strong connection with Guelph. After Hamilton, I would say it's the most important place in the history of Rocco Perri." In fact, when Perri was sentenced to four months for perjury in 1928, he was granted a request to serve his time in Guelph.
The book traces the story of Perri, from his birth in a small village in southern Italy to his days of hobnobbing with Al Capone and the Kennedy family. And while Perri was undeniably a criminal, the book paints a rather flattering picture of a man who railed against prejudice and oppression in the 1920s and became a folk hero to many during Canada's eight-year fling with prohibition, beginning in 1916.
"The book is a portrait of Canada at the time of prohibition," Nicaso said. "Had it not been for this unpopular act, few people would have heard of Rocco Perri. It was unfair legislation and it turned the mobster into public servant. Prohibition empowered the criminal gangs." Nicaso said he has been interested in Perri since he immigrated to Canada from Sicily in 1989.
Regarded internationally as a leading expert in organized crime, Nicaso has written a dozen books on the subject. Nicaso came to Canada after his car was bombed for writing a story on the Italian mafia. But he makes no apologies for portraying Perri in a sympathetic light. His desire to put a "human face" on the man endeared him to Perri's surviving family, including a nephew in Hamilton and others in Italy.
"In some ways, he was very different," Nicaso said. "He was always talking to reporters, very flamboyant but also very generous and open." Over the last decade, Nicaso uncovered documents that suggested Perri did not perish in 1944. Among his evidence is a letter from former FBI head J. Edgar Hoover questioning Canadian officials about Perri long after he was believed to be dead. But it was an Italian cousin of Perri's who convinced Nicaso that the bootlegger was alive in 1949 -- five years after most thought he had been killed. The man produced a letter apparently sent to him from Perri in New York State.
In the letter, Perri tells his cousin that rumours of his 1944 demise were greatly exaggerated. Perri lived out his life, Nicaso believes, in Massena and died in 1953, probably of a heart attack. Nicaso hopes his book, published by U.S-based Wiley Publishers, will give readers an inside glimpse of not only Perri as a man, but also the time in which he lived. "I never rely on a police report only," he said. "I always try to have both sides of the story. Obviously, when you deal with criminals, that's not always possible. They don't send press releases. But my idea was to put a human face on this character."

December 6, 2004