With the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, gambling again became the lucrative activity of the underworld. With Kansas City being a wide-open town there were tremendous profits to be earned. After Lazia�s murder in 1934, political leadership in the North End was assumed by Charles Binaggio, but a group of gambling lords also wielded power in the Kansas City underworld. In Ed Reid�s Mafia, published in 1952, he refers to these bosses as the "iron men" and identifies them as James Balestrere, Peter and Joseph DiGiovanni, Joseph DeLuca, and Anthony Gizzo. Except for Gizzo, the others were known for being part of the Mafia.
During the days following the murder of Binaggio in April 1950, there were several St. Louis Post-Dispatch articles that mentioned the "big five." The articles refer to "the principal gang figures immediately below Binaggio in rank." They identify those figures as Charley "Mad Dog" Gargotta (murdered with Binaggio), Charles Carollo, James Balestrere, Gaetano Lococo, and Anthony Gizzo.
In Sen. Estes Kefauver�s, "Crime In America," his synopsis of his 14-city crime investigation tour, he states that Max H. Goldschein, a special assistant U.S. attorney, testified in 1950 that, "the Five Iron Men" were Binaggio, Balestrere, Gargotta, Gizzo, and Lococo.
While Balestrere has already been discussed and Binaggio will be talked about in depth later, Carollo, Lococo, Gargotta and Gizzo will be focused on here.
Charles Vincenzo "Charley the Wop" Carollo was born in Santa Ristino, Italy and never became a naturalized American citizen. He may have been considered first among equals in the gambling business after Lazia�s murder. Carollo had been the closest to Lazia, his loyalty extending back to the 1920s when he "took the rap" for Lazia after he was indicted in a liquor conspiracy.
Carollo kept a low profile until the fall of 1933 when a crusading judge, Allen C. Southern, began a grand jury investigation. The probe not only targeted the gambling rackets, but also the monopoly the gangs enjoyed in the beer and beverage distribution business. When the grand jury went to work looking for slot machines, the slots disappeared with "phantomlike" speed into storage for the duration of the investigation. In addition to Carollo and Lazia being called before the grand jury, a pending tax-evasion case against Lazia, which Pendergast had worked hard to suppress, was reopened.
In June 1934, two minor hoodlums from Los Angeles received permission to open a gambling den in Kansas City that they named the Fortune Club. Carollo met with the two men six months later to let them know he was now a half-owner in the club. He figured the protection he provided for the pair was at least worth that much. In March 1938, he notified his "partners" that he was buying them out for $5,000 each. By then the club was making, by conservative estimates, $60,000 a month. When the authorities launched a cleanup campaign in January 1939 they were surprised to find out that Carollo was the secret owner of the club.
While local investigators believed that Carollo became the leader of the Kansas City mob after Lazia�s murder, federal authorities considered him to be only a front for an "even bigger man, another Italian" who they did not name, although speculation was that it was Charles Binaggio.
Carollo was indicted on income-tax evasion charges after the revelation of his ownership of the Fortune Club. District Attorney Maurice M. Milligan �the same man who brought down Tom Pendergast � prosecuted the case. While Carollo�s actual position in the underworld was always in question, his trial revealed that his chief function was as a collector of the "lug." The "lug" was the tax charged to the gambling houses in Kansas City to remain in operation. The investigation revealed that from 19 gambling houses targeted the "lug" had gone from $53,000 annually in 1935, to almost double, $103,000 by 1938. Carollo admitted during testimony that he, "collected the lug for Pendergast, among others, making direct payments to the Boss and his secretary."
At Carollo�s sentencing, Milligan made the following statement:
"The investigation into the background of this defendant reveals the fact that after the death of Lazia this defendant took over the authority exercised by Lazia in his lifetime, relative to gambling and rackets carried on in Kansas City, Missouri; that he grew in power even greater than his predecessor; that he had a full entr�e into the offices of the high officials in the city administration. According to the testimony, he was seen going into and out of the private office of the former city manager; that he had full entr�e into the police headquarters, and almost daily was a visitor at the office of the director of police."
Carollo was sent to prison at Leavenworth. His sentence consisted of one year for mail fraud; three years for income-tax evasion; and four years for perjury. Prison life didn�t exactly put Carollo on the straight and narrow. Shortly after he arrived at Leavenworth he got involved in a smuggling operation bringing contraband articles into the prison. For these offenses he was transferred to Alcatraz. After his release from prison, Carollo was deported on January 7, 1954.