Sam I Was

Twenty-eight year old Sam Cilluffo, started in the Detroit booze racket at the on set of Prohibition. He had been arrested five times since 1922, and did a stretch in Leavenworth for bootlegging. Cilluffo worked for East Detroit mob boss Angelo Meli, who during the summer of 1930, was at war with the West Side's Chester LaMare.

After the murder of two of LaMare's boys on July 7, the West Siders struck back by eliminating Cilluffo. At about 12:25 AM on July 12, Cilluffo was driving along in his coupe when a sedan containing three men swung up along side him. One of the men blew out Cilluffo's rear tires with a shotgun blast, forcing the gangster to stop. When he did, the sedan drove past and another hoodlum raked Cilluffo's coupe with a Thompson machine-gun, hitting the gangster eleven time.

Sam Cilluffo

A Boss Buys It In The Kitchen

In the wee hours of this date (or possibly the late hours of the previous day) in 1931, Detroit Mafia boss Chester LaMare, known as the "King of Hamtramck" was gunned down in the kitchen of his Detroit home. Having the orchestrated the murder of some rival gangsters, he had been dodging both vengeful gangsters and the law for a number of months.

He returned to Detroit on the evening of February 6, and had a visitor to his house. At around 9:30 that evening, his wife left the house to give the visitor a ride home. When she returned after midnight, she found Chester on the Kitchen floor with two bullets in the back of his head. Since LaMare knew he was a marked man, his house was a virtual arsenal with at least one gun in every room, it was assumed that he killed by a trusted associate.

Chester LaMare