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Concept
Rocco Perri
Summary
Rocco Perri (ˈrɔkko ˈpɛrri; born Rocco Perre; December 30, 1887 – disappeared April 23, 1944) was an Italian-born organized crime figure in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He was one of the most prominent Prohibition-era crime figures in Canada, and was sometimes referred to as "King of the Bootleggers" and "Canada's Al Capone."
Born in the Italian town of Platì in Calabria, Perri immigrated to the United States, and later to Canada, in 1908. In the early 1910s, he started work in construction and in a bakery. Perri and his common-law wife, Bessie Starkman, began a business in bootlegging when the sale and distribution of alcohol was prohibited in both Canada and the United States. Starkman dealt mainly with the finances of the business.
In 1928, Perri was charged with perjury after a Royal Commission testimony, and served five months of a six-month prison sentence. In 1930, Starkman was ambushed in her garage and killed; no one was charged with her murder. In 1940, Perri was arrested and sent to internment at Camp Petawawa as part of the Italian Canadian internment; he was released three years later. Perri disappeared in Hamilton on April 23, 1944, when he went for a walk; his body was never found, and this caused speculation surrounding his purported death.
Rocco Perri was born in Platì, Calabria, Italy, on December 30, 1887, and immigrated to the United States in 1903, then to Canada in 1908. In 1912, Perri met Bessie Starkman, a Polish Jew who had immigrated to Canada circa 1900, while he lived as a boarder in her family home in The Ward, Toronto, Ontario, with her husband Harry Toben and their two children. Shortly after, Perri began an affair with Starkman, and when he got a job working on the Welland Canal in 1913, she left her husband and children to move in with Perri in St. Catharines and begin a common-law relationship.
When the Canadian government cut funding to the Welland Canal project due to World War I, Perri became unemployed. After working in a bakery, he was hired as a salesman for the Superior Macaroni Company.
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