The Untold Stories of Alderman Don Parrillo

What's fascinating about it? Do tell.

Question for the author of this piece (in case he happens to stop by):

This guy says some wild things. How on earth can he be taken as a credible source? Or should we take everything with a grain of salt and a chuckle? With all the talk about his "book deal," he sounds a bit to me like someone looking for attention near the end of his life.

Excerpt from story about gangster Sam Giancana wanting to see Parrillo:

"Tomorrow afternoon at 2:00 o'clock, go and visit your father's grave," Parrillo was told. Asking why never occurred to him. "Being from the old neighborhood, you learn not to ask," he says.

"So the next day I drove out to Mount Carmel Cemetery...It was late October I think."

"All the while there my mind was racing. I just could not understand what The Cigar could possibly want from me...I owed The Cigar nothing.

Well, everything is quoted, so it is would mean that it is true Parrillo said all of this. The author also mentioned there was a lot of work needed in verifying the information. So he recognized a need to be sure there was truth in all this, which makes me doubt it would be published without fact checking.

What makes this stuff so freaking appealing? Passages like these.

"I happen to be in the unfortunate position of knowing these guys," he said. "They were friends of my dad. I know them from the old neighborhood."

Apparently a tough place. "Three guys from my neighborhood died in the electric chair before they were 25," Parrillo says.

"So my wife and I went home, and we both had a little too much to drink...As I was making love to her, I said, 'Honey, is it alright with you if I run for First Ward alderman? And she said yes. "

"We had about 30,000 voters and at least 8,000 of those were on the payroll - either city, state, county or through the Municipal Employees Union, which the First Ward also controlled," says Parrillo. "Each job we put out was worth at least three votes, so we had about 24,000 votes to turn anyway we wanted...We could have elected Attila the Hun."

And the Ed Sullivan Show story at the end. Reads like a scene from a movie. What a character.