McClellan Part 33: testimony of Virgil W. Peterson, Chicago Crime Commission (8 July 1958)

Peterson gave chief counsel Robert Kennedy background on the Capone group's move into Chicago unions, calling Frank Nitti 'the successor to Al Capone as the leader of the Capone syndicate or gang' and citing 1956 Crime Commission information naming Accardo 'the head of the Capone syndicate.'

Date

1958-07-08

Kind

hearing

Source

Internet Archive, scan of the printed hearings (Boston Public Library copy)

Retrieved

2026-10-12

Rights

A work of the United States Congress, printed by the Government Printing Office. Public domain in the United States under 17 U.S.C. § 105.

Part 33 of the McClellan Committee’s hearings covers the restaurant industry in the Chicago area, July 1958. Virgil W. Peterson, operating director of the Chicago Crime Commission since April 1, 1942 and an FBI agent from 1930 to 1942, testified on 8 July 1958 (pp. 12510-12514, resumed at pp. 12531-12546).

He gave chief counsel Robert Kennedy background on the old Capone group’s move into Chicago unions. He called (p. 12511) Frank “The Enforcer” Nitti “the successor to Al Capone as the leader of the Capone syndicate or gang,” described the 1940 Chicago police raids on union offices, said a man he called a Capone gangster, Danny Stanton, was slain on May 5, 1943, and said Crime Commission information in 1956 named John Lardino as an aide to Tony Accardo, “the head of the Capone syndicate.”

Peterson spoke from the Crime Commission’s records; the characterizations are his, not findings. His account of Claude Maddox and Local 450 is filed as a separate passage. Quotations follow the Internet Archive’s OCR of the printed volume. Page numbers are the printed running heads and can be off by one near a page break.