On September 9, Pete Carlino drove from Denver to Canon City to visit a cousin. He was murdered on September 10 or 11, and his bullet-riddled body was stuffed beneath a bridge. Two days later, the killers returned to move the body to a place where it could be more easily discovered. Years later this murder would be the only one outside of the New York / New Jersey area that could be linked to the fictitious "Night of Sicilian Vespers" killings. The second Carlino brother's death left Roma as the organized crime leader in Colorado. Nicknamed "Little Caesar" due to his five-foot-one stature, Roma continued as crime boss until his murder on February 18, 1933.
Another prominent family involved in Denver's organized crime history was the Smaldone Family. The three brothers, Eugene "Checkers," Clyde "Flip Flop," and Clarence "Chauncey," were involved in bootlegging, during the 1920s, and gambling into the 1980s. The brothers owned and operated Gaetano's Italian restaurant, a popular spot in north Denver, for years. The rise of the family began in 1933 after a north Denver bootlegger was found riddled by 14 bullets. The Smaldones were questioned but not charged.
Eugene was recognized as Northern Colorado's leading crime figure and described as the patriarch of the Denver Crime Family. Although suspected of taking part in, or being behind, several killings, Eugene was never indicted for murder. Eugene's arrest record showed entries for auto theft, bootlegging and income tax evasion. A local law official described Eugene as "the schoolteacher type. He wore glasses. Very polite. Very civil."
His final prison sentence was in 1983. The charges were for operating a loan shark business out of Gaetano's. Eugene along with Clarence, and a nephew, Paul Clyde "Fat Paulie" Villano, pled guilty to the charges which also included illegal gun possession. Eugene Smaldone died in March 1992 of a heart attack at the age of 81. After Eugene's funeral, a relative wrote to the Denver newspapers complaining of the pain the media had caused the family and pleaded to be left alone.
Clyde Smaldone was born in 1906; his lengthy criminal record began with a burglary charge in 1920. He served 18 months in Leavenworth for bootlegging in 1933. Three years later he served time for the attempted bombing murder of a local man named Leon Barnes. Paroled in 1949, he confessed to paying protection money for his Central City gambling enterprises.
In 1953 Clyde and Eugene made headlines after a publicized raid of one of their gambling dens in Brighton, Colorado. Later that year both brothers were found guilty of jury tampering, fined $24,000 each, and sentenced to 60 years in prison. After spending 13 months in jail the brothers received a new trial. Clyde pled guilty to a lesser tampering charge and was sentenced to 12 years and fined $10,000. He was paroled in 1962. In 1967, Clyde and several others, including Eugene's son were arrested on gambling charges and for running a $100,000 a week bookmaking operation.
Clyde died at the Cedars Nursing Home at the age of 91, in January 1998. His son told reporters that despite his father's criminal past, he had a soft side and donated to local orphanages, churches and schools.
Another organized crime figure was James Colletti who attended the Apalachin Conference in 1957 (not to be confused with the James Colletti murdered in 1931). Colletti was born in Italy in 1897. After arriving in the United States he had several arrests in the New York City / New Jersey area before moving west and settling in Pueblo, Colorado. At one time listed as a member of the New York Bonanno Family, this confusion may have been due to his being involved in the ownership of the Colorado Cheese Company with Joseph Bonanno. In a Life Magazine article in 1967 he was named as the boss of Colorado. Colletti, in some publications, has been listed as having run the family until 1972, with James Spinuzzi taking over the family leadership until 1975.
As of January 1999, Clarence Smaldone is still alive and considered the underboss of a two-member mob family. In 1991, Clarence was released from a Fort Worth prison hospital after serving eight years for the 1983 loan sharking conviction. The FBI had no one listed as boss at this time. In 1992 Eugene Smaldone died, and the colorado's La Cosa Nostra died with him.