Somewhat of a Mafia phenomenon has to be the Carlo Caputo Family was said to have existed for nearly sixty years in Madison, Wisconsin.
If, in fact, it was even a formally recognized borgata and not just a satellite regime of the larger Balistrieri Family in nearby Milwaukee, which has been suggested by some, the Carlo Caputo Family was, without a doubt, the smallest mafia Family to ever exist in the United States.
Carlo Caputo was born in Bagheria on the outskirts of Palermo, Sicily back on September 21, 1903.
After immigrating to the United States in 1919 at age sixteen, he seems to have first migrated to Chicago where he was said to have quickly affiliated with a Sicilian Mafia faction in that city. Along the way, he got married in 1930 to an Italian girl named Rosemarie.
The “official” mafia leader in the Windy City was Antonio (Tony) Aiello who headed a small faction of “true” inducted Sicilian-born mafiosi. He was an ally to the future “boss of all bosses” and leader of the Castellammarese faction, Salvatore Maranzano of New York City.
By the mid-1930s Caputo, Aiello’s brother Giuseppe (Pizza Pie Joe) Aiello, and several other Sicilian “amici” were said to have fled Chicago after Tony Aiello’s murder during a purge of the Sicilians by the much larger multi-ethnic Capone gang.
