Rico Giordano

Federico "Scarthroat" Giordano (1896 - 1982) was a Sicilian mob boss who ran the Giordano Crime Family in Sheldon, North Carolina.

Biography
Born in Sicily, Italy in 1896, Federico Giordano came to the United States (particularly Sheldon, North Carolina) after World War 1 to work for another Italian crime boss called Antonio Falcone after he "accidentally" popped off another crime boss in Sicily. Around the mid-1920s, Federico, later known by his friends as "Rico", and a bunch of his friends decided to make their own crime family and eliminated Falcone via a sabotaged train accident.

After Falcone's death, Rico and many of his cronies took over many of Falcone's operations which involved Extortion, Prostitution, Gambling, Smuggling, Murder, Bootlegging, Bribery, and Kidnapping. Because of this, he was known as "The King of Sheldon" in the Criminal Underworld. In 1932, Giordano went to prison for an unpaid parking violation and was sentenced to 3 months in prison. While he was in the washroom, a fellow inmate attempted to cut open his throat, only for that inmate to meet his fate when Giordano bashed his head into the wall. Because of this incident, he was nicknamed "Scarthroat".

It is believed that Giordano had connections with Al Capone, Mickey Cohen, Frank Costello, and Lucky Luciano (whom of which owed $20.00 to Giordano).

Downfall
In the summer of 1945, Sheriff Sean Mulligan was gathering evidence to put Giordano behind bars. Unfortunately, Giordano heard about this from one of his informants and ordered his best hitmen to take out Mulligan. After the death of Mulligan, he used his "puppet", Joe Ross, a captain in the State Police, to run for the Sheriff's position since it was an election year. He figured if Ross won the election, he could get more power.

However, Giordano didn't count on the other candidate, a young 22-year-old returning G.I. by the name of Frank T. Beaudry. Beaudry, who happened to be an old friend of Sean Mulligan, got suspicious about his friend's death and decided to run for Sheriff. Giordano figured that Beaudry might throw a wrench into the works and decided to send his best hitmen (the very same ones he hired to whack Mulligan) to eliminate Beaudry. However, it was apparent that Beaudry was too much for those two hitmen to handle.

Furious, Giordano kept sending all of his hitmen (even hiring some men from his rival, Kingsley Nash of the Dixie Mafia) to take out Beaudry. But like the first 2 hitmen, it wasn't until too late when the other hitters found out what they were up against. Giordano, seeing he was running out of options, decided to team up with Kingsley Nash, in order to get rid of Beaudry, even as far as trumping up some charges against Beaudry's behavior. But Luckily for Beaudry, those charges were soon dropped due to the lack of evidence.

One by one, all of Giordano and Nash's operations fell. Even Joe Ross, seeing that it was only a matter of time, decided to drop out of the race and turn rat against Giordano. On August 15th, 1945, Beaudry cornered both Nash and Giordano in the Railroad hotel near the K&A depot with not only the other deputies, but also the FBI, the U.S. Army, and the State Police with him to apprehend the mob bosses. After a large gunfight (with Nash losing his life), Giorando finally surrendered and was arrested. Giordano was sentenced to life in prison without parole and Beaudry got elected Sheriff.

Death
Rico Giordano died of Kidney Failure at Possum Hollow Penitentiary in 1982 at the age of 84.

Trivia

 * Rico Giordano is based on several Sicilian mobsters of the 20th century. Al Capone, Mickey Cohen, Machine Gun Kelly, and Lucky Luciano.
 * Giordano is rumored to have a kill count of over 230, but this claim couldn't be authenticated due to the fact records weren't kept when he had a newspaper editor beaten to death when he wrote an unfavorable story about him in 1938.