Classic mafia trope of 'cement shoes' may have a dark origin in Ontario
The classic mob movie trope of 'cement shoes' is one we've seen time and time again on the silver screen, but it turns out that this seemingly made-for-movies method of corpse disposal may actually have a tie-in to Ontario's organized crime underbelly.
According to folklore, it might not be too far-fetched.
Rocco Perri, who has earned a legendary reputation as "Canada's Al Capone," was a prominent bootlegger in Hamilton who ran what was, at the time, the most powerful crime ring in the country during the first half of the 20th century.
And as it turns out, his life of crime isn't the only part of his storyline that seems like it was pulled straight out of a mobster movie.
In 1944, the notorious mob boss disappeared, leaving virtually no trace behind. It's said that his dramatic fate involved being fitted into what are colloquially known as 'cement shoes' and then being thrown into the depths of Hamilton Harbour.
The question today remains: was this Hollywood-style ending far from the truth, or did it really happen, right here in Ontario?
A life of crime
Perri was born in Calabria, Italy, and initially immigrated to the U.S. before moving to Canada in 1908. Upon arriving in Canada, Perri first settled in Quebec and later relocated to Ontario.
He found work quickly, first working at the Dundas stone quarry and then as a construction worker on the Welland Canal. Nearly a decade later, he boarded with a family in The Ward, a densely packed neighbourhood in Toronto known for both its cultural melting pot of new immigrants and notorious reputation as an overcrowded slum.
There, he began an affair with the woman of the house, Bessie Starkman, a Polish-Jewish woman who eventually left her family to live with Perri in St. Catharine's.
When the Canadian government cut funding to the Welland Canal during the First World War, Perri found himself out of work. However, the dawn of the prohibition era would give Perri a new career path.
Under the 1916 Ontario Temperance Act, the sale and distribution of alcohol were made illegal in the province, resulting in a dramatic supply/demand imbalance that created a lucrative business opportunity for Perri and many others.
Prohibition began to expand nationwide in Canada in 1918, and in the United States, it was fully implemented just two years later. Perri found an abundance of opportunity in smuggling alcohol through the 1920s.
His operations were bolstered by previous organized crime ties, according to Antonio Nicaso, author of Rocco Perri: The Story of Canada's Most Notorious Bootlegger.
Perri was able to grow his criminal enterprise well beyond his local community, explained Nicaso.
"They could move outside their ghetto, outside the district of their community and provide a service that everyone was looking for," he tells blogTO.
By this point, Perri and Starkman had established themselves in Hamilton, operating a fleet of boats on Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, and the Niagara River. Most of their runners were ordinary fishermen who hoped to make some extra money by helping to smuggle booze across the border. At his peak, Perri had around 100 men working for him, said Nicaso.
Luckily for Perri and other smugglers like him, prohibition rules had a unique loophole in Ontario: while buying and selling alcohol domestically remained illegal, manufacturing it and exporting it abroad wasn't.
Perri, with the false front of exporting purchases, bought alcohol from major distilleries like Toronto's Gooderham & Worts and funnelled it illegally into Ontario markets via Hamilton Harbour. When Prohibition was enacted in the United States, Perri used his fleet of boats to expand his bootlegging operation internationally.
"They would produce alcohol in Canada and ship to the United States, too," according to Nicaso.
"They had to put in place an organization, they had to corrupt people at the border, corrupt police officers. For the first time, many criminals moved from an economy of survival to an economy based on the accumulation of capital. And that was a new age for criminals."
It was during Prohibition that Perri experienced his most tremendous success, with reports indicating that he and Starkman earned approximately $1 million each year from illicit alcohol sales.
According to the Bank of Canada's inflation calculator, $1 million in 1920 would be worth approximately $13.93 million in 2025.
Some of that income went to paying off police officers and politicians, which could explain why he openly boasted about his illegal business to anyone who would listen.
In 1924, he told the Toronto Star, "I only give my men fast cars, and I sell only the best liquor, so I don't see why anyone should complain, for no one wants Prohibition."
Ontario repealed Prohibition in 1927, but in the United States, it remained in effect until 1933, which only aided Perri's smuggling operation. Perri was able to illegally export alcohol across the U.S. border into the early 1930s, but his power began to wane when his partner in crime, Starkman, was murdered in 1930 by rival mobsters.
His deadly end
Perri faced multiple brushes with death after Starkman died. His rivals attempted to kill him twice: once by placing dynamite under his veranda and another time by putting a bomb under his car.
Perri was also arrested several times as law enforcement sought to cut his reign short.
However, no attempts to eliminate him were successful.
Things took a turn for the worse for Perri in 1940 when he was arrested by the RCMP and interned by the Canadian government. Authorities alleged that he was involved in fascist activities, and he was held without charge for two years at Camp Petawawa, near Ottawa.
Perri was just one of hundreds interned by the RCMP, although his arrest might've had ties with his criminal behaviour under the surface.
After he was released, Perri was no longer the top dog: the empire he had built was weakened after Prohibition ended, and his absence gave other mafia members a chance to establish leadership in Hamilton.
His last known whereabouts were in Hamilton in 1944, where he was reportedly employed as a doorman. Perri disappeared forever after leaving his cousin's Hamilton house and was last seen on April 23, 1944.
Cement shoes
While no body was ever found, a leading theory is that Perri died after being fitted in cement shoes and thrown into the water, but that tragic ending is still debated to this day.
Cement shoes, also known as concrete shoes or a Chicago overcoat, are probably a trope you've seen in mafia movies or books. But for the uninitiated, the practice involves murdering or incapacitating the victim and then placing their feet in a container filled with wet concrete, allowing it to dry around their feet to form a fitted weight, and disposing of the concrete-laden victim in a body of water.
One popularized cement shoes plot occurred in the E. L. Doctorow novel Billy Bathgate, where a teenage boy from the Bronx watches the murder of a man thrown into a river with his feet encased in cement. Movies, like the 1984 film Johnny Dangerously, also feature a prank where a character gets fitted with cement shoes, alluding to the famous mafia tactic.
Despite widespread depictions in media, there has actually only been one documented case of a victim suffering this fate, with a homicide victim found in Brooklyn, New York, in 2016.
But before that case, Rocco Perri was perhaps the only possible murder victim believed to have been disposed of using this method.
However, not everyone is convinced Perri met this watery fate.
Competing theories
Other theories about Perri's disappearance are that he fled the country, while some think he was murdered by mobsters Antonio and Johnny Papalia, and Stefano Magaddino of Buffalo, to take control of the alcohol market in Canada.
If you ask Nicaso, he says the lack of evidence debunks the cement shoes theory. At one point, Nicaso was in touch with Perri's relatives, who say Perri fled to Messina, New York, under another name. They also shared a letter, dated and signed by him, alleging that he was in good health.
"I believe that Perri may have chosen to disappear to avoid threats from rival crime figures," said Nicaso. "Particularly the Papalia family and the Magaddino family in Buffalo."
Even if we never know where Perri's body ended up, around Hamilton, locals still remember an old saying: "Remember when the water in Hamilton Harbour was so clear you could see Rocco Perri?"
St Catharines Museum
