Smaldone: the untold story of an American crime family

I just finished reading a book about the Smaldone family. If you are from Colorado, you have probably heard of the Smaldone family. I remember hearing of them in my younger years. My dad told me that one of my uncles worked for them during prohibition. They were involved in bootlegging, gambling, bookmaking and loan-sharking; interesting that three of the four are now legal. They would have been great in the check cashing business.

The book was written with a lot of help from Clyde Smaldone’s two sons, who never were involved in the family “business”. They spoke of the other side of their father, a man who gave away a lot of money and helped out people in need.

An interesting thing in the book was the attitude of the family towards Checkers Smaldone’s son, young Eugene (Clyde also had a son named Eugene). Young Eugene got involved in drugs and drug dealing. The family looked down on this. I guess every family has their black sheep.

In reading the book I learned a lot about organized crime in the Denver area. Now it seems that a lot of similar things are done by street gangs.

A bright spot in the book was finding out that Clyde Smaldone became a Christian in his later years. A woman named Dee Claxton led him to Christ. Sometime later he called her and said, “Y’know, until I met you and your sister, I didn’t know that Jesus loved me.” I guess we should never be surprised at the work that God does.

Very interesting book.

Philip