Childhood and Early Criminal Career
John Dioguardi was born on April 29, 1914, on the Lower East Side of New York City and brought up on Forsyth Street in Little Italy. He had two brothers, Thomas and Frankie. His father, Giovanni B. Dioguardi, was murdered in August 1930 in what police called a mob-related execution. Dioguardi's uncle, Giacomo "Jimmy Doyle" Plumeri, was a member of the gang run by Albert Marinelli and his patron, Charles "Lucky" Luciano, head of the rapidly forming Genovese crime family. Dioguardi was introduced to organized crime at the age of 15 by his uncle. At the time, labor racketeering in the garment district was controlled by Luciano and Gaetano "Tommy" Gagliano, head of the Lucchese crime family. Plumeri, John Dioguardi, and brother Tommy were working for both gangs. He also associated with hitmen and labor racketeers Louis "Lepke" Buchalter and Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro.
With Plumeri and another gangster, Dominick Didato, Dioguardi established and ran a protection racket in New York City's garment district. He was arrested several times between 1926 and 1937, but never brought to trial. For a time in 1934, Dioguardi was executive secretary of the Allied Truckmen's Mutual Association, an employer association, and represented the employers during a strike by 1,150 Teamsters in September 1934. In March 1937, Dioguardi was arrested on charges of extortion, conspiracy, and racketeering, He pled guilty and received a three year prison term in Sing Sing.
After his release from prison, Dioguardi moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he established a dress manufacturing plant. He later sold the plant (taking a $11,200 bribe to ensure that it remained non-union before he sold it), and set up a dress wholesaler operation in New York City. Dioguardi also dabbled in stock investing, real estate, and trucking.
Dioguardi later returned to New York to live again on Forsyth Street. He married the former Anne Chrostek, and had two sons (Philip and Dominick), and a daughter (Rosemary), who passed away. Philip ("Fat Philly") later was a soldier in the Colombo crime family. Dominick becaome a soldier in the Lucchese family.
Read more about this topic: Johnny Dio
Famous quotes containing the words childhood and, childhood, early, criminal and/or career:
“Adolescence is a border between childhood and adulthood. Like all borders, it’s teeming with energy and fraught with danger.”
—Mary Pipher (20th century)
“I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“They circumcised women, little girls, in Jesus’s time. Did he know? Did the subject anger or embarrass him? Did the early church erase the record? Jesus himself was circumcised; perhaps he thought only the cutting done to him was done to women, and therefore, since he survived, it was all right.”
—Alice Walker (b. 1944)
“A criminal trial is like a Russian novel: it starts with exasperating slowness as the characters are introduced to a jury, then there are complications in the form of minor witnesses, the protagonist finally appears and contradictions arise to produce drama, and finally as both jury and spectators grow weary and confused the pace quickens, reaching its climax in passionate final argument.”
—Clifford Irving (b. 1930)
“Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)