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Unpacking Detroit’s strong ties to the Mafia

By Britteny Dee

January 31, 2025

Many crime families and mafia members have called Detroit home over the years. Learn about the Motor City’s mafia connections and ties to organized crime. 

Boston had James “Whitey” Bulger, Chicago had Al Capone, and New York City had “Lucky” Luciano. And while the mafia members who called Detroit home may not be as notorious as those in some other major cities, the Motor City has a deep history of organized crime. 

Keep reading to learn all about Detroit’s strong ties to the mafia, its most notorious organized crime leaders, and more. 

The Adamo Mob

Brothers Salvatore and Vito Adamo immigrated to Detroit from Sicily in 1900 and formed what’s believed to be one of the city’s first examples of what we now consider organized crime. 

“Starting around 1905, the Adamo brothers were leaders of a mafia gang on Detroit’s lower east side that preyed on the Italian community and that most likely constituted the first semblance of modern day organized crime in the Motor City,” Scott Burnstein, a Detroit organized crime expert, told Downtown Newsmagazine.

The Adamo mob participated in a slew of illegal activities, including extortion, but the group’s dominance in Detroit was relatively short-lived. The Adamo brothers were both murdered in 1913 by a rival group that came to be known as the Triumvirate of Terror.  

After a war started by Triumvirate of Terror’s Gianolla brothers left more than 100 people dead, a peace conference took place, presided over by Salvatore “Singing Sam” Cattalanotte, and territory was divided up between two groups that would become known as the Eastside and Westside Mobs. The Eastside and Westside Mobs were two factions of the Detroit mafia, which we cover further below. 

Detroit Partnership 

The Detroit Partnership—an Italian-American mafia crime family also referred to as the Detroit mafia, the Detroit mob, the Detroit crime family, and the Detroit Combination—was formed in 1908. Membership peaked in the 1960s at around 100 men, and while it’s dwindled significantly since then, the organized crime unit is still believed to be in operation today. 

Joseph Zerilli, known as the mafia’s godfather in Detroit, got his start with the Detroit Partnership and led the group from the 1930s to the 1970s. Zerilli succeeded William Tocco, another Detroit mafia icon. Tocco was considered the first official boss of the Detroit Partnership, though there were other influential leaders before him. 

In its heyday, the group was involved with everything from heroin distribution and horse race betting to extortion rings and illegal sports betting. It’s believed that the Tocco-Zerilli crime family still maintains a powerful leadership position within the Detroit Partnership. 

Murder Row

Murder Row, an African-American crime family modeled after the Italian mafia, was formed in Detroit in 1974. The group’s leader, Francis “Big Frank Nitti” Usher, was mentored by the Tocco-Zerilli crime family’s Giacalone brothers. Usher built an empire of drugs, gambling, extortion, and prostitution, and according to DEA records, Murder Row was used by the Giacalone brothers to do muscle work into the 1980s. 

Purple Gang

The Purple Gang was active during the 1920s and 1930s and led by Burnstein brothers Raymond, Joseph, Isadore, and Abraham. The gang, which was made up of immigrants residing on Detroit’s lower east side, started as a small group consisting of the Burnstein brothers and their friends who got noticed by another local gang, Oakland Sugar House Gang. The brothers and their friends became students of Oakland Sugar House Gang leaders and, for a while, were called the Sugar House Boys or Sugar House Gang.

During Prohibition, gang members stole alcohol from smugglers who were bringing it into the U.S. from Canada. The Purple Gang also played a prominent role in the Cleaners and Dyers War, a years-long battle between Detroit’s cleaning industry and the gang-controlled labor union. Gang members harassed laundry companies that refused to join the union (dues were used to help support the gang’s criminal activities), and the war eventually came to an end in 1928 when multiple gang members were charged with extortion. 

The end of the Cleaners and Dyers War didn’t mark the end of the Purple Gang, though. In fact, the gang became even more powerful. For several years following the war, the Purple Gang controlled Detroit’s drug, liquor, and gambling trade, and with witnesses too afraid to testify against members, the city’s police struggled to defeat them. 

The downfall of the gang began in 1931 with the Collingwood Manor Massacre, an event during which the Purple Gang murdered three of its members. Several of the men involved in the massacre, including Raymond Burnstein, were convicted of third-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. 

Jimmy Hoffa

Jimmy Hoffa is one of the biggest names in Detroit crime history, largely due to the decades-long, multi-state search for his body after he disappeared in 1975. Hoffa wasn’t a mafia member—he was, for many years, president of a union called the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT)—but he had strong ties to the mafia.

In his early years as a labor leader, Hoffa worked with gangsters to expand trucking unions and stay connected to organized crime groups as he climbed the ranks at IBT. In 1957, the members of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations voted to expel IBT from the group, citing Hoffa’s corrupt leadership. In the years that followed, Hoffa was convicted of a slew of crimes, including jury tampering, conspiracy, and fraud. 

After being released from prison, Hoffa wanted to regain control of IBT, but many mafia members objected. On the day he went missing, Hoffa was supposed to meet with Anthony Provenzano and Anthony Giacalone, capos in the Genovese crime family and Detroit mafia, respectively, at a restaurant in Bloomfield Township. Hoffa was never seen again and declared legally dead in 1982—presumably murdered by the mafia.

Chaldean Organized Crime

The Chaldean mafia, also known as Chaldean Organized Crime, was formed in Detroit in the 1980s. Louis Akrawi, known as the godfather of the Chaldean mafia, settled in Detroit after an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Saddam Hussein forced him to flee Iraq in 1968. He ruled the group—which, according to the DEA, was involved with crimes ranging from murder and kidnapping to weapons trafficking and armed robbery—from the 1980s until he was convicted of second-degree murder in 1996. 

The Chaldean mafia also had outposts in other U.S. cities with large Chaldean populations, including Phoenix and San Diego. The group had ties to the Detroit Partnership, Mexican Mafia, Sinaloa Cartel, and other major crime syndicates. 

Akrawi made headlines again in 2017 as one of the many Metro Detroit Iraqi immigrants who were targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation.

This article first appeared on Good Info News Wire and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.Unpacking Detroit’s strong ties to the MafiaUnpacking Detroit’s strong ties to the Mafia

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CATEGORIES: LOCAL HISTORY
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