On this day in 2011, Jimmy Caci, who was a capo in the Los Angeles Crime Family died at the age of 86.

He started off his criminal career in New York but in his 40’s he was sentenced to an 8 year spell behind bars after being charged with armed robbery. Jimmy spent the 8 years in Attica prison, a maximum security facility in New York. It was during this time he met with Stephen Cino, and upon his release he would go on to join the Los Angeles Crime Family, run by mob boss Peter Milano.

It wasn’t long until Milano promoted Caci to a capo in the family, and it was due to him that the connection and ties between the LA family and Buffalo family grew tighter.

By the mid 1980’s he was arrested with over 20 other LA family mobsters when they attempted to take over a $1 million a week bookmaking operation, but there was not enough evidence to actually charge him.

In the late 80’s he spent a short time as street boss for the family, before spending the next 20 years in a out of prison on conspiracy and RICO charges.

He died in 2011 at the age of 86 at the Eisenhower Medical Center.

On this day in 2011, James "Jimmy" Caci, a long-serving capo in the Los Angeles Crime Family, passed away at the age of 86 at the Eisenhower Medical Center. His death marked the end of a criminal career that had spanned decades, crossing coasts and connecting some of America's most powerful organised crime organisations.

Caci began his criminal life on the streets of New York, the same breeding ground that had produced countless mob figures during the golden era of American organised crime. It was there that he first developed the instincts and connections that would define his life. His early career, however, came to an abrupt halt when he was convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to eight years in the notorious Attica Correctional Facility, one of New York's most fearsome maximum security prisons. Rather than breaking him, Attica proved to be a pivotal turning point. It was behind those walls that Caci forged a relationship with Stephen Cino, a connection that would ultimately reshape the direction of his life entirely.

Upon his release, Caci made the significant move west to California, where he fell in with the Los Angeles Crime Family, then under the leadership of boss Peter Milano. The LA family, though smaller and less prominent than the New York Five Families that had dominated American organised crime since the days of Lucky Luciano's Commission, was nonetheless a serious operation with deep roots across Southern California. Milano recognised Caci's experience and street credentials quickly, and it wasn't long before he elevated him to the rank of capo. In that role, Caci became an instrumental figure in strengthening the ties between the Los Angeles family and the powerful Buffalo Crime Family, cementing alliances that gave the LA outfit greater reach and credibility within the broader national syndicate.

By the mid-1980s, Caci found himself among more than twenty LA family members arrested in connection with an attempt to muscle in on a bookmaking operation generating an estimated one million dollars per week. Authorities, however, were unable to gather sufficient evidence to bring charges against him. He briefly served as street boss of the family in the late 1980s before spending much of the following two decades cycling in and out of prison on conspiracy and RICO-related charges, a familiar fate for mob figures of his era.

Jimmy Caci's enduring legacy lies in his role as a bridge between the old-world mob traditions of the East Coast and the more freewheeling operations of the West Coast underworld. He remained a committed and resilient figure in American organised crime until the very end.