Anatomy of a Mafia hit (Part 1)
Ken “Tokyo Joe” Eto, alias Joe Montana, a Japanese-American gambling boss nicknamed “Tokyo Joe” by the media and “Joe the Jap” by mobsters, is remembered as one of a handful of persons ever taken for a “one-way ride” by Mafia hitmen who survived.
Ken Eto’s near-death experience can be reconstructed from detailed testimony he gave before the President’s Commission on Organized Crime on April 22, 1985. As he testified in front of that crime-investigating committee, the man he says ordered his murder two years before, Vincent A. “Vince Innocence” Solano Sr., then head of Chicago’s North Side rackets and Eto’s so-called “boss in the Outfit,” sat in the back of a courtroom in Chicago’s Dirksen Federal Building waiting for his own turn to testify.
Unlike his former underling, Vince Solano invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination to every question he was asked except his name. His scheduled testimony immediately followed Eto’s. So the feared Mafia leader had to sit there and listen as Eto recalled how he (Solano) set him up for a hit.
Eto served the Outfit loyally for nearly 30 years before his life in the Outfit began to unravel overnight due to Solano’s paranoia. ...
Click here on the highlighted text to be redirected to GanglandChicagoHistory.com, where this story has been transferred as “Botched: The Ken Eto Hit.” Sorry for any inconvenience.
Editor’s Note: While comments have been disabled for this story here, after reading the redirected story at “Gangland Chicago - A History of the Outfit” you still have the opportunity to comment on it at the Gangland Chicago Research Center.
Copyright © 2010, 2011 | J.P. Rich Off The Cuff. All rights reserved.
3 Comments
1/17/13 
3 Comments:
He got wacked not because of the gambling but his involement in the drug trade
That's what Daniel Bradi claimed. He said Eto said he would become a government informant if he didn't back off from trying to collect the drug money he owed Bradi and his brother. He says he went to Vince Solano, Caesar DiVarco, and Jay Campise and told them about it. And he believed that's why he was killed. This story I wrote a couple years ago and was originally a lot longer. In fact, two other stories on Eto on this blog were culled from that longer story as well. I had to edit or shorten this part of the story considerably or it would have ended up six or seven posts instead of three. So I decided to cut that part out because there was only Bradi's take on it. Bottomline, Solano thought Eto was going to flip, so Solano wanted Eto dead. Whether it was over the federal gambling case or the drugs will never be known. Only Solano and Eto know for sure, and they're both dead now.
LOL Great Fiction
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