Jack On The Spot

Jack Costa AKA Angelo Spano was, depending on which paper you read, either a member of the Northside Moran gang or was a with Joe Aiello, a Moran ally at the time. Since Aiello was at war with Capone at the time chances are Costa was aligned with the latter.

The New York Daily News stated that Costa was a transplant from Brooklyn. In Chicago, it was reported that Costa owned a number of cabarets that used Moran booze and beer. The details behind his demise are a bit murky. He was living in an apartment with his 23-year old girlfriend Margaret Reardon. According to Reardon, she threw party that she didn't want Costa to attend so rented a room for him and a confederate of his named Fred in the same complex for the evening. After the party, in the wee hours of September 14, 1930, Reardon called Costa in the room and told him the party was over and he could come back. Costa left the the room and as he was crossing the courtyard, he was cut down by shotguns fired from the apartment above the one he had just vacated. He died later that day.

Jack Costa

Taxi Driver

Chicago- Just before 8:30 pm on this evening back in 1930, cab driver James Ruane pulled up to an apartment building where he was supposed to pick up a fare named "Mr. Presto". He entered the vestibule but there were no names listed. He knocked on the ground floor apartment but nobody answered. Walking back to this cab, he shone his spotlight on the building and saw four or five guys peaking out the window. Annoyed, he went back up and kicked the door.  This time Mr. Presto stepped out.

Ruane headed back to his cab a few steps a head of Presto and opened the rear door of his cab. Something across the street caught Ruane's eye, a man in a second story apartment across the street was lifting the window. Then he placed something big on the sill. That something began to spit fire and bullets sprayed the area. Mr. Presto let out a groan, his body jerking as a number of bullets slammed into it.

In an attempt to save himself, Mr. Presto staggered around the apartment he just vacated and found momentary relief in an alley. However, a second machine gun nest, came alive and another volley slammed into Presto's body and he collapsed.

Their job complete, the group of assassins fled their nests. Ruane ran up to his fare, whose life was slipping away. An off duty cop who lived nearby ran over and they placed Presto in the cab for an unnecessary ride to the hospital. He was dead.

Mr. Presto was in fact, rival gang leader to Al Capone, Joe Aiello. For years Aiello, who had allied himself with Capone's other arch enemy Bugs Moran, had tried to kill Capone. Aiello had fled Chicago a number of times but always returned in his hopes to displace Capone as Chicago's top gangster.