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Death Revealed. Johnny Torrio, 75, compact (5 ft. 5 in.), button-eyed dean of Chicago's Prohibition-era gang leaders, (e.g., Dion O'Bannion, Hymie Weiss) who brought Al ("Scarface") Capone from Brooklyn as a $75-a-week mug, tutored him, later (1925) bequeathed him his underworld empire and title of Public Enemy No. 1; of a heart attack; on April 16, in Brooklyn. Dapper Torrio, a topnotch organizer, executive and marksman (tagged by colleagues as "Terrible Johnny" long before police got anything on him), joined Big Jim Colosimo in Chicago as chief triggerman in 1910, gathered the reins of vice (bribery, brothels, bootleggers) into his own hands when Colosimo was rubbed out (in 1920, perhaps by Torrio), escaped erasure (but lost part of his chin) in a 1925 bullet riddling, and left for New York, where he later ran an outfit acquiring Government revenue stamps for bottles of cut whisky. In 1939 Torrio was jailed for 2½ years for income-tax evasion, settled in Brooklyn after his release and lived until the end in obscurity as a real-estate agent.
