It was the late 1920s when an open-air roadster rambled away from Miami, through Homestead and over the Card Sound Bridge. Two men occupied the vehicle.
After the bridge, the car rolled over State Road 4A, the original path of the Overseas Highway, and down Key Largo. While still traveling across North Key Largo, the roadster came to a stop at a roadside motel and restaurant called the Key Inn.
In those days, traffic was light and the establishment’s proprietors, Ed and Fern Butters, heard the car before it pulled into their place. Fern watched her husband approach the roadster as the driver stepped out and stood up. He said to her husband, “This is Al Capone. We are going to pull into your dock with our loads, and we will give you $25 a load.”
Ed declined the offer.
The associate replied, “But this is Al Capone, and he is pulling into your dock.”
“I don’t care if he is the Lord himself,” Ed said. “No one is pulling into my dock, and that’s final.”
Ed turned and walked away. Fern watched, thinking she was about to watch her husband be shot in the back. Instead, Mr. Capone’s associate sat down in the car, closed the door and continued driving down the dusty, bumpy road.
The Key Largo excursion was not Capone’s only Monroe County dalliance. It is rumored that he maintained a mansion on the mainland, in an Everglades outpost community called Pinecrest, that was used as a brothel. Once found on the old Loop Road, Pinecrest was home to about 200 people who lived without electricity, running water or telephone lines. Hurricanes and the Great Depression took their toll on Pinecrest.
Capone’s move to South Florida seems to be the beginning of his end. For all his bad deeds, it was tax evasion that put Capone in jail. He was incarcerated, for the last time, for seven years, six months and 15 days. Al was not in good shape and was suffering from diminished control of his voluntary motor skills as a result of contracting syphilis. His mental faculties deteriorated during his imprisonment, too. His state of mind was likened to that of a 12-year-old boy.
Released from prison on Nov. 16, 1939, he spent the remainder of his life in relative seclusion at his Palm Island home in Miami. After a stroke and a bout of pneumonia, Al Capone died of heart failure in his home on Jan. 25, 1947. Organized crime in South Florida did not pass with his death. People, including members of his former group combined with a new guard, became recognized as the New Capone Gang.
Angelo Labriola was regarded as the head of the new guard, though Capone’s people were still involved and might have disagreed. The New Capone Gang was linked to the Florida Keys, if not before, then for certain on or about Feb. 20, 1948, when the attempted robbery of a café in South Miami went bad. Police shot one of the gang members, Bruno Tassione, in the stomach several times.
What happened next brought the crime to the Keys. The following events were recorded in several newspapers, including the Miami Herald on Feb. 21, 1948. At about 3 a.m., Sigmund Stocki, manager of Key Largo’s Caribbean Club, received a phone call informing him that “a good friend had a beef with the fuzz.” Stocki told the caller to find a doctor in Key West who would “forget reporting the wounded man.”
Stocki and an unidentified associate proceeded to steal a blue 1947 Lincoln four-door sedan and drive it to 3090 N.W. 77th St., where they found Tassione bleeding from his wounds on a couch in the property’s guest house. They helped him into the sedan and drove him to Key West, where they were unable to find a doctor to treat Tassione. Frustrated and fearing for Tassione’s life, they decided to leave him on a section of the old Overseas Highway on Stock Island. He was dressed only in shorts, but they covered him with a blanket, anonymously phoned the hospital and informed them of his whereabouts and condition. He arrived in critical condition.
After police investigated the shooting, three people connected to it were arrested. Among them was Stocki, 37, of 2226 Monroe Ave., Hollywood, Florida. He was identified as the driver of the stolen sedan. It was not his last run-in with the law. In 1951, he was charged with running a gaming house at 1749 Cleveland Ave., Hollywood, Florida. There were other arrests, but that is not why the man is remembered.
Stocki was born on Oct. 20, 1910, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was there that he met Tom Hanley, who eventually brought him to the Florida Keys. He worked for Hanley, managing the Caribbean Club and was there when John Huston and his writer, Richard Brooks, stayed at the club to work on the script for the Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall movie, “Key Largo.” The Ziggie in the film is said to have been named after Stocki.
Ziggie is the name people in the Florida Keys remember, still. When Hanley moved to Marathon, Ziggie went with him and managed Hanley’s Place and the Sombrero Beach Club. Both establishments were known for gaming. Stocki parted ways with Hanley, moved to Islamorada, and opened a small restaurant at the Olney Inn. When Hurricane Donna struck in 1960, the Category 4 storm left a wake of damage behind, including the Olney Inn. The property has since become home to Cheeca Lodge.
After the storm, he left his biggest footprint. In 1962, Stocki bought a small restaurant on Upper Matecumbe Key and opened Ziggie’s Conch. The building is still there, his name is still attached to the restaurant and the old neon sign that used to hang in the original Ziggie’s is still glowing. Did gambling once occur on the property? Maybe. Ziggie was certainly affiliated with the New Capone Gang and was practiced in running gaming operations.
Sigmund Bernard Stocki – Ziggie – died on Nov. 8, 1977.
