A month shy of 60, Sam DeVito strolled the second green of the White Bear Yacht Club golf course on a spring day in 1955 with his twin 15-year-old daughters, Phyliss and Patricia.
Tony DeVito was killed by cronies 70 years ago. His body is still missing.
"It was bootlegging and and breadlines in those days."
For the Minnesota Star Tribune
March 5, 2022 at 8:00PM
But this was no daddy-daughter golf outing. They watched as authorities used a bulldozer in an effort to locate the body of Sam's son and the twins' older brother.
It was one of at least 80 unsuccessful searches for 24-year-old Anthony "Tony" DeVito, who was last seen about 1 a.m. on Sept. 28, 1953, at Jack's Chicken Shack on W. 7th Street near downtown St. Paul. His remains have never been located.
Tony DeVito had been arrested along with four crooks from the Twin Cities and Chicago for exploding a bank-style vault in a general store in Aynor, S.C., the month before he vanished. They made off with about $5,000 and a $1,700 diamond ring.
After the suspects were released on bail, DeVito confessed in writing and was prepared to testify against the others. So they kidnapped and strangled him, burying his body in a swampy area east of St. Paul, according to court records and newspaper stories. His killers sprinkled the fresh grave with lye to hasten the corpse's decay and added red pepper to discourage dogs from digging up the body.
The case was never a whodunit. Despite DeVito's body never turning up, prosecutors were able to send two longtime criminals from northeast Minneapolis — Salvatore "Rocky" Lupino and Joe Azzone — to the federal penitentiary at Alcatraz for kidnapping DeVito and fleeing to avoid prosecution in his kidnapping and murder. They also did time in Stillwater.
"DeVito's father, Sam DeVito, was a spectator throughout the trial," the Minneapolis Tribune reported when Lupino and Azzone were convicted in federal court on the fleeing charge, three years after that fruitless golf course search.
Born in Italy in 1895, Sam DeVito emigrated to America at 12, served as an Army private in World War I, had 11 kids and worked as a laborer and railroad repairman when he could find employment.
A week into Tony's disappearance in the fall of 1953 — when his family in St. Paul's Payne-Phalen neighborhood was already convinced he was dead — his mother, Mary, told a reporter: "It's just killing his father. He says he doesn't want to live anymore." Sam ended up outliving his son by 21 years, dying in 1974 at age 79.
Mary DeVito said Lupino and his accomplices had lured her son and other young guys into crime with talk of big money — and by scaring them with threats.
"Once, Lupino told him you'd better watch your step because someday you're going to step on your starter and your automobile is going to blow up," Mary said.
Tony DeVito told his mother he would "tell the truth" in South Carolina instead of go to prison for Lupino. His cut from the safe burglary amounted to only $28 for the use of his car. "That's what they took Tony along for," his mother said.
In the end, Lupino's attempt to silence witnesses failed. Another of the kidnappers, Alex DeGoode, testified against the others and gave jurors details of DeVito's final hours.
DeGoode said that they waited in a car for DeVito to leave Jack's in St. Paul. DeGoode then put a pistol to DeVito's back while another accomplice, Sam Cimin, gagged him with a sash cord.
After driving east out of the city, they dug a ditch and ordered DeVito to disrobe. "Then Cimin, at the end aided by Lupino, tightened a rope around his neck with a twisting stick, thus terminating [DeVito's] life," according to a 1964 Minnesota Supreme Court opinion rejecting Lupino's appeal.
Cimin avoided prosecution, apparently because he never fled Minnesota and had cancer and heart disease. Lupino, who was arrested by Minneapolis police more than 20 times for safecracking, robbery and burglary, ended up apparently hanging himself in a Missouri jail cell in 1982 while awaiting extradition to Indiana for another trial involving a murdered jeweler.
Authorities said Lupino fitted a rope of torn bed sheets around his neck and jumped from a stack of books, but relatives and acquaintances in northeast Minneapolis insisted his hands were too arthritic to rip up and tie sheets. They suspected he'd been killed behind bars.
Lupino turned to crime while growing up during the hard times of the Great Depression, according to Azzone.
"It was bootlegging and and breadlines in those days," Azzone told Minneapolis Star columnist Jim Klobuchar after Lupino's death, acknowledging that "most people didn't go around robbing other people." Or worse.
"Rocky was bad, I guess. And tough," said an elderly man waiting for a bus in Lupino's Northeast neighborhood, after the career criminal died. "But they were different times, you know."
Staff researcher John Wareham contributed to this report.
Curt Brown's tales about Minnesota's history appear each Sunday. Readers can send him ideas and suggestions at mnhistory@startribune.com. His latest book looks at 1918 Minnesota, when flu, war and fires converged: strib.mn/MN1918.
