On this day in 2003 a high-ranking member of the Chicago Outfit, John Caifano who later became known as John Marshall, died of natural causes at the age of 92.

In 1951 after the death of his brother Caifano headed up the mob-controlled casinos in Las Vegas, which would eventually be taken over by Tony Spilotro in 1971. It was around this time he changed his name to John Marshall.

During his time in the mob he was suspected of 10 unsolved homicides, including Estelle Carey who was mobster Nick Circella’s girlfriend, and had been identified as an FBI informant. The cocktail waitress was informing the FBI on the Chicago Outfit’s extortion rackets. Her body was found badly beaten, tied to a chair, and set on fire.

Estelle Carey 1909 – 1943

In 1980 Caifano was sentenced to two concurrent sentences of 20 years for transporting stolen securities across the country, which amounted to some $2 million. He only served 10 years and was released in 1990.

Marshall Joseph Caifano was one of the most feared and ruthless enforcers the Chicago Outfit ever produced, a man whose name alone was enough to make hardened criminals think twice. Born in 1911, Caifano rose through the ranks of one of America's most powerful criminal organisations at a time when the Outfit still carried the long shadow of Al Capone across its operations. On this day, the 6th of September 2003, Caifano passed away from natural causes at the remarkable age of 92, outliving many of the men he had terrorised throughout a long and violent career.

Caifano operated for years under his given name before reinventing himself as John Marshall, a change that came around the time he assumed greater responsibility within the Outfit's sprawling Las Vegas interests. Following the death of his brother in 1951, Caifano stepped into a significant role overseeing the mob-controlled casinos that the Chicago Outfit had carefully cultivated as its golden goose in the Nevada desert. He held this position until 1971, when the notoriously volatile Tony Spilotro was dispatched to take over the Outfit's Las Vegas operations, a transition that would eventually spiral into the chaos depicted in popular culture decades later.

Throughout his career, Caifano was suspected of involvement in no fewer than ten unsolved homicides, a grim tally that underscored his value to the Outfit as a man willing to handle its most unpleasant business. Among the most notorious of these was the 1943 murder of Estelle Carey, girlfriend of mobster Nick Circella. Carey had been identified as an FBI informant, feeding investigators information about the Chicago Outfit's extensive extortion rackets. Her death was characteristically brutal — she was beaten, bound to a chair, and set alight. The case was never officially solved, but Caifano's name was firmly attached to it by investigators and mob historians alike.

The law eventually caught up with Caifano in 1980, when he was sentenced to two concurrent twenty-year terms for transporting stolen securities valued at approximately two million dollars across state lines. He served ten years before his release in 1990, walking free at the age of nearly eighty, having never broken the code of silence that defined his generation of organised crime figures.

Caifano's legacy is that of a quintessential Outfit enforcer — loyal, lethal, and utterly unrepentant — a living link to an era of American organised crime that has long since passed into history.