Rocco Perri was a criminal kingpin
MY UNCLE: KING
OF THE BOOTLEGGERS
Gambling, drugs and prostitution built a $1 million empire in the 1920s

By Dan Nolan 

Giuseppe and Serafina Perri never got to meet their infamous relative Rocco Perri, but the elderly couple certainly felt the imprint the King of the Bootleggers left on Hamilton. Police suspected the infamous gangster was involved in the murder of 17 people during the Roaring Twenties before his supposed death in 1944. But when the Perris arrived in Hamilton five decades ago, they met people who recalled the smiling gangster's generosity, especially to those who helped him in his criminal pursuits.
They don't recall anyone saying a bad word about Rocco, who was a power in the southern Ontario underworld from the end of the First World War to just before the outbreak of the Second. Giuseppe Perri, 83, recalled in an exclusive interview with The Spectator the time he was having a drink in his local tavern -- the long gone Wilson House on York Boulevard -- and a patron found out he was Rocco Perri's nephew. "He grabbed me and kissed me and then he called his two daughters on the phone and told them to come over," the retired Dofasco worker said, as he sat around the dining room table of his Magill Street home with his wife and son Joseph Perri, 46. "He told me that Rocco used to buy his family groceries and coal. He said, 'If somebody talks badly about Rocco, I'll kill him.'"
Giuseppe also suspects his uncle's reputation helped him stay in Canada after he emigrated here in 1949. While he says another uncle's work on the campaign of a federal Liberal MP played a part in getting his working papers extended in 1950, he also noted that an immigration official he met knew of his relation to Rocco and commented, "He was a good man."
Rocco Perri's legend is still alive. Joseph and his brother Frank work at the MacNab Grape Company, which imports grapes and grape juice from California. Joseph recalled his brother was delivering a couple of cases of specially labelled wine seven years ago to a party in St. Catharines that just happened to be attended by members of a motorcycle gang. Police pulled Frank over and took pictures of the bottles and even confiscated one. They let Frank proceed, but one of the officers remarked that he knew Frank was the grandnephew of Rocco Perri. Frank was surprised and asked how police knew that.
"We get paid to know that," the officer replied. Rocco Perri has reappeared on the local scene this month with the launch of a new book about his life, Rocco Perri: The Story of Canada's Most Notorious Bootlegger. The Spectator will run excerpts from the book starting Jan. 3. Written by crime author Antonio Nicaso, the book explores speculation that Perri was not rubbed out by rival mobsters in 1944 and dumped in cement shoes in Hamilton Harbour. Rather, it says he survived for another decade, living and working in upstate New York and Mexico. Serafina -- who came in 1956 -- and Giuseppe are featured in the book and add tales told within the family. And what a story it is.
Born into poverty in southern Italy in 1887, Perri and his common-law wife, Bessie Starkman, built a multimillion dollar bootlegging enterprise after the Ontario Temperance Act was passed in 1916. The enterprise grew to include prostitution, drugs and gambling, and it was said that by the mid-1920s -- when a construction worker earned $42 a week -- the couple's criminal enterprise generated sales of about $1 million annually and they employed 100 people. He had contacts with Chicago gangster Al Capone and bootlegger Joseph Kennedy, father of President John F. Kennedy. Ernest Hemingway wrote about Perri's bookie network in the 1920s and, in 1939, Windsor lawyer Paul Martin Sr. defended Perri in a corruption trial. Martin went on to become a federal Liberal cabinet minister and an unsuccessful Liberal leadership candidate. His son is now Canada's prime minister.
Along the way, Perri hooked up with two tough-as-nail women who helped run his criminal enterprise, and he also had two children with a mistress -- who killed herself out of despair in 1922 when Rocco wouldn't marry her.
The Perris say they heard tales over the years about Rocco from Angelina Sergi, an aunt who worked for Perri, and from Frank (Shorty) Di Pietro, his chauffeur (he got his nickname when he lost three toes in an 1938 explosion that destroyed Rocco's car). Giuseppe is the son of Domenic Perri, Rocco's youngest brother.
The couple's tales include:
* Di Pietro once took a suit of Perri's to the cleaners. He found $5,000 in a pocket.
* Perri liked to dress well and also liked manicures.
* Perri was in love with Al Capone's sister and wanted to marry her after his wife, Bessie, was gunned down in 1930 in the garage of their Bay Street mansion by unknown assassins. Nothing came of the love affair because Rocco had many other girlfriends.
* The bootleggers used to put balloons in cases of liquor they were smuggling into the United States across Lake Erie. The couple were told Bessie used to go on these trips. If pursued by police, the smugglers would toss the cases overboard and go back for them later because they would be brought to the surface by the balloons.
* Perri hired a German contractor to install a floor in his Bay Street mansion that would flip over with the press of a button to reveal a bounty of liquor cases for a customer.
* The contractor also installed a tap in Perri's kitchen that contained a special button. When pressed, the tap poured whisky instead of water.
* Perri had a German shepherd at his Bay Street mansion which would bark three warnings if police were paying an unannounced visit.
While the couple have heard of Rocco's links to murder, they don't believe it. "He did not kill anybody," said Giuseppe, who worked at Dofasco for 34 years, retiring in 1985. "He was never in jail (for murder)." Rocco was never charged in any murder linked to him. He faced manslaughter charges in 1926 when poisonous booze killed some people, but he was acquitted.
The couple say Perri was revered in his Italian hometown of Plati. "They were proud he was from Plati and he was doing well in Canada," Giuseppe said. "The way they feel is he did a lot of good. At that time it was dry and he was bringing whisky to people over here."
Nicaso's book says Rocco sent enough money home to his parents that they became rich landowners. The land is still lived on by the family of Rocco's sister. The couple have always believed Perri did not die in 1944 when he disappeared after leaving his cousin Joe Sergi's house on Murray Street East to buy Aspirin for a headache.
Giuseppe was in Plati at the time and word came Rocco had been killed by a rival and dumped in Hamilton Harbour. He said many people discounted it. "Rocco's not dead," he recalled being told. "He's too smart for that."
He said the story that he wasn't dead persisted when he moved to Canada. He said he spoke to Joe Sergi about the night his uncle disappeared, but Sergi was tight-lipped. "He never told anybody anything," Giuseppe recalled. "He did not trust anyone." Giuseppe said he heard Rocco's number came up in 1953 or 1954 when he was spotted in a gambling house by a "a snitch" working for a powerful crime family in Buffalo that took over Perri's Ontario territory during the war. He had changed his face, but it was not enough to fool the snitch and he told the Buffalo crime family. They dispatched an assassin. Rocco was killed and his body torched.
Nicaso's book says Perri sent a letter to his mother in 1943 from an interment camp in Petawawa promising to send her money once he got out. He never wrote to his mother again. Serafina recalls Rocco's elderly mother "would cry everyday" about Rocco and his fate. That doesn't sound like the way of the generous mobster, but Giuseppe doesn't think that means his uncle died in 1944.
"He was scared," he said. "He didn't want anything traced back to him. They'd arrest him right away." The name Rocco Perri almost continued in the family. The couple say Rocco's mother wanted them to name their first son Rocco, but they declined. It wasn't, however, because of a bad connotation over the name, but because they wanted to follow tradition and name their son after his grandfather. Their first son was named Domenic.
Hamilton Spectator - December 26, 2004