Monday, August 28, 1933

Rita Mae and I went to Clay. Got some candy. Henry and Newt and Emmett and Melvin came down and we all had watermelon.

Giuseppe "Joe Scarface" DiGiovanni
Joined a Kansas City Black Hand gang upon his 1912 arrival in Kansas City
His nickname came from scars he received from an arson fire he supposedly set

Criminal Activities: Extortion, Bookmaking, Drug Trafficking, Loan-sharking, Gambling,
Racketeering, Labor Racketeering, Conspiracy, Street Tax, and Murder

Sicilian mafioso "Joe Scarface" joined his brother Peter DiGiovanni in Kansas City in
1912. It wasn't long before they began making money from a variety of rackets. Their
fortunes improved greatly during Prohibition when their gang became the sole bootleggers
in Kansas City. When Prohibition ended in 1933 the family, although already involved
in various other rackets, began extorting the now-legal bars by selling them liquor from
their recently-established Midwest Distributing Company, which had the exclusive
franchise to distribute Seagram products in Kansas City and Western Missouri.

Joe is believed to have died in 1965.