For Rocco Perri, crime paid well:
From Niagara to Hamilton, old time bootleggers delivered

By Tony Ricciuto
Niagara Falls Review, April 7, 2005, page A5

NIAGARA FALLS - At a time when people were earning about $42 a week, Rocco Perri, Canada's most notorious bootlegger, was bringing in $1 million a year.

He oversaw a payroll that included more than 100 names - police, politicians and judges among them.

Perri's name has largely faded from memory in Canada. But he has been compared to Al Capone, the American gangster who ruled Chicago during the Prohibition. With his common-law wife, Bessie Starkman, Perri ruled a crime empire that stretched from Niagara to Hamilton until the mid-1940s, controlling gambling, extortion and prostitution.

"I'm not justifying his criminal behaviour," said author Antonio Nicaso. "Rocco was a criminal and I'm convinced of that. But people never seen Rocco Perri as a criminal because the prohibition law was unpopular and unfair because it only outlawed the consumption."

Nicaso, an internationally recognized expert on organized crime, has learned that organized crime doesn't just endanger the criminals. It's also risky writing about it. He left Italy years ago after surviving a car-bomb attack and now works as a co-editor of Corriere Canadese, a Toronto daily newspaper.

Nicaso first heard about Rocco Perri through Cal Millar, a veteran crime reporter for the Toronto Star. It was an interesting story, but Nicaso didn't want to simply rehash what had already been written. Digging deeper, he visited Italy, eventually finding some of Perri's relatives there and in Canada, and uncovered new information about his fate.

"When I was convinced that I had enough evidence to strip away some of the mythology about Rocco Perri, I decided to write the book," said Nicaso.

In Rocco Perri: The Story of Canada's Most Notorious Bootlegger, Nicaso tells a fascinating true crime account not only of Perri's life, but what it was like growing up in an era when jobs were hard to find, people were poor and there were few opportunities, especially for immigrants.

Little is known about the first 16 years of Perri's life. Born in 1887 in a little town of Plati, in the province of Reggio Calabria, Italy, he came to Canada via the United States in 1908 and worked in construction around southern Ontario, in places like St. Catharines, Merritton, Thorold and Welland.

The Ontario Temperance Act, which came into effect Sept. 16, 1916, prohibited the sale of distilled spirits such as whisky and rum. While many residents in Ontario believed consumption of alcohol had a detrimental effect on society, others opposed the law and were willing to deal with people like Perri to buy their booze.

"I don't believe prohibition turned honest men into bootleggers," said Nicaso. "I believe that prohibition turned criminals into public servants.

"Rocco Perri made his money by providing a public demand, and there was no shortage of demand for his bootlegging service."

Perri's and Starkman's lifestyle proved deadly, when Bessie was gunned down at her Hamilton home. After a number of brushes with the law - and surviving several attempts on his own life, including the time five sticks of dynamite exploded under the veranda of his Hamilton home and the time a bomb blew up his car - Perri just disappeared in 1944.

Stories have circulated he had been killed, moved to Mexico, smuggled in a coffin across a Niagara bridge into New York State, or simply took on a new identity and went into hiding until his death.

Through research, Nicaso was able to obtain letters, some written in cryptic language, from Perri's relatives that shed light on his life and disappearance.

Perri was a mobster before prohibition, but was mostly involved in street level crime limited to his own neighbourhood. The prohibition law, though, gave criminals the "golden opportunity" that allowed them to build networks. Perri took full advantage of it.

The book also points out how society treated immigrants. They were forced to do work no one wanted to do at that time, and there was discrimination.

Nicaso, who is a regular consultant and lecturer to universities, governments and law-enforcement agencies in Canada, the United States and Europe, has also written Bloodlines:The Rise and Fall of the Mafia's Royal Family; Global Mafia; and Deadly Silence.

He said the Canadian crime scene is changing. It appears the mafia in southern Ontario no longer answers to anyone in Buffalo, as it did for years.

Since mobsters don't issue press releases, information on their illegal activities is often gathered one small piece at a time, most often from sources on the street who provide a piece or two of the puzzle.

"Someone tells you a few words, and when you work at something seven days a week, you realize something is changing," said Nicaso. "You end up being a crime reporter seven days a week."