Giuseppe Lolordo, also known as Joe Low, was born in the little town of Ribera in the Agrigento province of Sicily in 1897.
There are conflicting reports as to when exactly he moved to Chicago with his family as a child. But the family did migrate to Chicago, where he and his older brother Pasqualino or Patsy became top members of the Al Capone mob.
Pasqualino became a recognized top mafia member and racketeer in the Chicago area. He was also documented as attending the 1928 national summit of Sicilian mafia leaders at the Hotel Statler in Cleveland, Ohio.
Several incidents would encourage Joe Lolordo to head back east permanently.
The first was the machine-gun attack on him and two of his closest associates in broad daylight on a Chicago street. The next was the murder of his brother Patsy. The third was the infamous 1929 Saint Valentine’s Day massacre of seven members of the Irish – Bugs Moran gang.
One of the gunmen behind those ‘Chicago Choppers’ that fateful morning in that damp Clark Street garage was alleged to be Joe Lolordo.
It’s believed that Lolordo pled with Al Capone to go on that bloody assignment so that he could avenge his brother’s killing which was thought to have been the dirty work of the Moran Gang.
Supposedly, Capone gave him that ‘honor’ to exact revenge on his brother’s killers.
After the massacre, Joe Lolordo became a prime police suspect so he took it ‘on the lam’ back to New York City. But after an intense months-long manhunt for the three alleged killers, Lolordo turned himself into the authorities.
The Chicago Police repeatedly grilled him about the mass homicides but he eventually beat the case on a ‘lack of evidence’ and was released.
Lolordo was said to have originally gotten his start under the auspices of Capone and the Chicago mob. He was also the personal bodyguard of Mob boss Tony Lombardo.
In fact, Joe Low was one of two bodyguards who accompanied Lombardo one day in Chicago when assassins opened a volley of machine-gun fire on the three hoods.
Lombardo was caught in the head and died instantly. The other bodyguard, Tony Ferreta was shot twice in the back.
Lolordo ended up getting arrested by the police as he chased the killers down the street shooting at them. He was charged with gun possession and jailed.
Shortly thereafter Joe’s brother Patsy was also murdered.
These two incidents are what drove Lolordo to kill those seven members of the Moran Gang.
After all this drama, Lolordo decided to leave the Windy City for good, relocating back to New York City. In 1969, Lolordo was named on a U.S. Senate hearing chart as being one of seven ‘captains’ in the Simone DeCavalcante Family.
