James Vincent "Turk" Torello (December 15, 1930 – April 13, 1979 Woodridge, Illinois) was an Italian-American mobster who became a caporegime and leading enforcer for the Chicago Outfit during the mid-to-late 1970s.
In the late 1960s, Torello sent Robert "Bobby the Beak" Siegel to Las Vegas to help collect $87,000 from an associate of Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, the Outfit agent at the Stardust Hotel & Casino.
[citation needed] On another occasion, an angry mob boss Sam Giancana dispatched Torello and mobster Jackie Cerone to kill Outfit member Frank Esposito, in Florida.
According to tape recordings, Torello and his killers had planned to murder Esposito, cut him up in small pieces and feed them to the sharks off the Florida coast.
In the late 1970s Torello bought a home in Palm Springs, California,[1] and in April 1979, he died of cancer at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago at age 48 .