Nick Bosa’s Great-Grandfather Was A Ruthless Mobster Who Once Got 10 Men Killed As Revenge

May 3, 2019, 5:33pm EST (Updated: January 13, 2023, 6:15pm)By Darrelle Lincoln

Last week, Nick Bosa heard his name called as the 2nd overall selection to the San Francisco 49ers, making him the seventh member of his family to make it to the National Football League.

Being in California is a very familiar place for the Bosa family, especially for Tony Accardo, who is Nick’s mobster great-grandfather.

Accardo was such a bad ass in his time that he was actually once part of Al Capone’s crime organization. His ruthlessness was displayed as early as the 1970s where he orchestrated a hit that got 10 men murdered.

Tony Accardo didn’t get the mob handle Joey Batters for his proficiency at baking muffins. And the same ruthlessness that earned Accardo his nickname and a place on Al Capone’s org chart was on full display a half-century later. In early 1978, Accardo was in California to escape the Midwest’s biting cold when robbers broke into his suburban Chicago home. The 71-year-old Accardo seethed, less for rage over property lost than over the breach of respect.
At the time, he passed his days playing with his grandkids, including his daughter Marie’s thick-shouldered son, Eric, then 12. Still, Accardo wasn’t beyond demonstrating who was boss. Using his connections to identify the thieves, he betrayed no mercy. Within the year, 10 men were dead. According to the Chicago Tribune, “Each was found with his throat cut; one was castrated and disemboweled, his face removed with a blow torch, a punishment imposed, presumably, because he was Italian and should have known better.” As another account in The Guardian put it, Accardo “avenged insult with interest.” (via SI)

That same article also dove into how Nick Bosa’s great-grandfather possibly had something to do with the infamous Valentine’s Day Massacre and how he got his nickname Joey Batters:

Accardo would not only take bullets for Capone, but also deliver deadly blows. By some accounts he helped plan the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, when Capone’s soldiers, dressed as police, killed seven members of Bugs Moran’s rival bootlegging gang. Days later Accardo figured prominently at a dinner that had been arranged both to celebrate Capone’s consolidation of power and to deal with two troublesome capos. In a scene later bastardized in the 1987 film The Untouchables, Accardo took the men out back before the main course was served and bashed their skulls in with a baseball bat. “Boy, this kid is a real Joey Batters,” Capone allegedly enthused about his protégé. The nickname stuck.
Despite these acts of violence, Accardo was, really, more brain than muscle. His specialties: understanding legal loopholes, expanding the mob’s reach and prospecting for new revenue streams. He was particularly involved in the gambling racket around Chicago, at one point overseeing an estimated 7,500 mob-controlled businesses that offered games of chance.