Heres one quite old and interesting article regarding Vince Moretti written by Andy Murcia.
Encounter With Vincent Moretti
"During the 1970s, I was a Chicago Police Detective working VCD (Vice Control Division). We were only 17 strong and covered the entire City of Chicago. We operated out of Police Headquarters and reported near directly to the top man, the Superintendent of Police. On behalf of the superintendent, we were to make sure that the district station officers did their best to stomp out vice within their districts. We had a decent expense account and often used either rental cars or our own automobiles. We were most definitely a covert unit and, as such, got to infiltrate numerous fronts that were run by the Chicago Outfit.
It was an eye-opening experience working undercover in this unit. I tended bar, boxed with a mob enforcer once and, when I was single, dated a gangster’s daughter. I was an actor and didn’t know it, playing the part of everything from a taxi cab driver to an executive on convention.
I also moonlighted as a hotel detective at the swanky Ambassador East Hotel, home of the world famous Pump Room. This hotel catered to the high society folks, both locally and internationally. It was where the show biz stars came to be seen. Chicago Sun-Times gossip reporter Irv “Kup” Kupcinet was in attendance there nightly in “Booth One” of the Pump Room.
When disco music was in vogue during the 1970s, the hotel put in a high-class nightclub called the “The Buttery” catering to the disco crowd. It took off like wild fire. “The Buttery” became the number one “in” place for everyone who was anyone. This also brought with it the Chicago Outfit gangsters who also wanted a taste of this new high life. My path would cross with many of these gangsters as a result of my employment at this hotel, perhaps more than from my work on the police department. At the time, I had no idea who most of these Outfit gangsters were. All I knew was that they were causing a disturbance and I’d get the call to put them out of the hotel.
I met these bums at various stages of their careers. Some were young toughs with no respect for anyone unless they had a gun pointed at their testicles and some were just old men who had lost most of their power. Some of these guys were really just cowards hiding behind their “Outfit” power base, but some were in fact really tough guys.
There was also another group of known gangsters who just wanted to enjoy themselves. They acted like gentlemen and were well-mannered. These fellas were no problem for me and, in time, knowing what each other did for a living, we would nod as a sign of recognition. On rare occasions I had to talk to these guys about problems like someone clipping their overcoat out of the hat check stand or something about the tabs they were running. Most were very cordial. Guys like Marshall Caifano, who came in often, never gave me any trouble. He was always polite and well-dressed. His expensive, tailored suits often put to shame the best of the swells who frequented this most fashionable establishment. Perhaps he bought his stylish clothes in Las Vegas as he traveled there often in those days.
But many of the older wiseguys didn’t forget how to be mean spirited. Like Albert “Obie” Frobotta, they just couldn’t do much about anything anymore. They were sneaky and knew better than to draw attention to themselves.
The “Young Turks,” on the other hand, were by far the most dangerous of these gangsters. They were drunk with their youthful power to intimidate legit people yet always seemed surprised when someone stood up to them. Even other gangsters feared them because many refused to be controlled by the sitting outfit boss. They lacked discipline and hardly ever played by the rules. This is how I met up with Vincent Moretti, an Outfit crew boss who specialized in burglary. Meeting up with Moretti would eventually lead to meeting up with Marshall Caifano, a top Chicago Outfit/Vegas mob lieutenant of sorts.
I met Vincent Moretti at the Ambassador East Hotel after he had angered Mark Freedman, who owned the hotel in those days. Moretti was an ill-tempered white guy who used the “motherf-----” word more often than the worst low grade rapper today. He enjoyed abusing people in general and our hotel customers at the bar specifically. The hotel "security director" gave me the task of getting Moretti out. Seemed the “security director” knew of Moretti’s vicious temper and of his Outfit affiliation, so he wisely delegated the job to me, since I was the new guy.
I had no idea who Moretti was. All I saw was a tough-looking guy with a half-crazed look on his face. He was wearing an unbuttoned shirt that exposed his gorilla-hairy chest and too many gold chains. Moretti was bald on top and appeared to be in excellent physical condition. He was holding court at the hotel bar with a bunch of high society types and had most of them too scared to even leave. He had a young lady in shock as he described to her, in detail, what he was going to do to her sexually. The handsome Hollywood actor, George Hamilton, and some other show biz people were at the other end of the bar doing their best not to let on there was “trouble in Dodge City.”
I sidled up alongside Moretti at the bar, making sure he felt the snub-nose revolver in my pocket pressing against him. I muttered in his ear that I was a Chicago Police Detective and he was going to pay his tab and leave like a gentleman--now. I kept my eyes on his hands and hung in close to him in case he tried to crush a glass in my face.
Moretti and I were eyeball to eyeball. His maniacal grin was gone. For a few seconds (that seemed like an hour to me), I saw his thought process at work. I’m positive he was thinking, “should I try this guy or not?” I gave him my best badass face back. He decided to do as I ordered. He paid his tab, slowly pulled his collar up with both hands and did his super slow best gangster strut out of the bar to the lobby. From the lobby he walked through the revolving hotel front door and outside to the sidewalk. I was close behind him.
Once outside he said to me, ‘You're a big man tonight, but I’ll be back.”
He used a few of his favorite “mother” words before the doorman closed his taxi door.
The next night I asked my “security director” where he'd been while I faced up to Moretti. He said his wife was ill and he had to go home fast. I later found out why he split on me. I was eating at Milano’s with my friend Tony, who said a “friend” wanted to know why I threw Vince Moretti out of my hotel the other night. I explained Moretti’s disorderly conduct and the hotel owner’s order. Tony asked me if I would do him a personal favor and come into the kitchen to meet a guy. In the kitchen was a short man, very well dressed, and in trim shape. I recognized him as a steady customer of the hotel. It was Marshall Caifano. Seems that Moretti had complained through channels to Caifano about me and wanted to get Caifano’s permission to “hurt” me, even though I was a cop. After Caifano and I spoke, he said that he believed me. He also said he would admonish Moretti, but that he often did not listen to reason. He said Moretti could be very rude and was “his own worst enemy.” Caifano said Moretti was at times “uncontrollable.” Then he thanked me for speaking with him and left.
At the time I had no idea who Caifano was. I’m sure if anyone had snapped a photo of me with him by the pizza oven it would have looked like I was an “associate” of an organized crime figure. They would never have believed me if I told them Caifano was showing me how he made his “sauce.” I did make a verbal report of this contact to a Gang Intelligence Division detective as soon as I learned who Caifano was. But I treated people how they treated me and he was always a gentleman to me.
I went back to my “security director” and asked him if he knew who Moretti and Caifano were. His Irish face got even redder and I got my answer, as he chuckled. He knew, all right. He thought it was funny that I didn’t. I laughed, too, after the fact, but he could have gotten me hurt. The hotel owner soon fired him anyway and gave me the job of “Director of Security.”
About two months after the Moretti incident, I was at the hotel checking on my security men when I passed a guy whose face looked all too familiar. I eyeballed the guy awhile longer and soon realized it was none other than Vince Moretti again! He was now wearing a hairpiece. He was at the Pump Room bar in the company of a much younger guy, and they were romancing two young dolls. I tapped him to get out. The younger guy started to intervene, but Moretti wisely held him back and discreetly said to me, “Listen, Murcia, don’t embarrass me, man. We’re wit these babes. I’m gonna leave nice-like, soon as I pay my tab. Cool?” He left quietly as promised. The younger man gave me the fish eye and he seemed insulted. I thought to myself, “Too bad.”
I must admit, I was still careful starting my car after those Moretti incidents, but come January,1978, I had little to worry about with all thanks to Moretti himself. They say he and his crew of burglars had picked the wrong home to burglarize. They selected mob boss, Tony “Joe Batters” Accardo’s home at 1407 N. Ashland Ave. in the Chicago suburb of River Forest, IL.
Over the next eighteen months not only did Michael Volpe disappear and has not been heard from since, but Vince Moretti and all of his associate burglars would turn up dead.
Vince Moretti’s body was found frozen in the back of a Cadillac. His throat had been cut from ear to ear. Moretti had been tortured, he had been castrated and disemboweled, his face severely burned with an acetylene torch. Authorities thought the torture was due because he was the only Italian in this burglary crew. He had insulted Italian Tony Accardo not once, but twice."
