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Her coronation as “Queen Louise” did not come by divine right, but via the power of the pen. Enraptured local reporters crowned her queen with their ginned-up headlines for more than fifteen years. My aunt’s face graced the front pages of every newspaper within 200 miles of Omaha throughout Prohibition and beyond. As the yellow journalists’ anointed one, her near-constant criminal exploits sold many a copy of the Lincoln Evening Star, Daily Nonpareil, and Omaha World-Herald. Louise reveled in the attention of the press, her customers, and even the feds. She reigned over them all; a bootlegging, gun-toting, judicial escape artist—a vainglorious delinquent.
And I want to be just like her.
As a kid, I often hid under the kitchen table, listening to my parents and grandparents chit-chat after Sunday dinner. That was my favorite place to eavesdrop on the world of adults — a world I loved to pretend to be in. Their post-meal conversations were equal measure mind-numbing business talk and tantalizing family gossip. These under-the-table spy missions were my earliest attempts at adult cosplay. (In fact, I loved playing pretend so much, I made it my job. I’m a professional actress.) I first heard Louise’s name during a grisly retelling of Grandpa’s trip to Arizona to identify a body. Something about dental records that were “burned beyond recognition,” a phrase my ten-year-old brain couldn’t quite decipher. Regardless, my imagination was piqued. Piecing together the family lore with historical research from periodicals, court records, and family interviews, the details of Louise’s life began to emerge.
My grandpa’s sister, Louise Vinciquerra (nee Pirruccello), lived a life that played out in courtrooms and headlines. And while her illegal comings and goings fed the public gossip mill, our family did not so much as mention her name once she died. On the rarest of occasions, if Louise’s name did come up, it was in hushed tones. Like any respectable family, my grandparents buried the dark chapters of her life along with her. Louise was over a decade older than my grandfather, and I suspect his silence on the subject of the queen was born of protectiveness. As he built his life and business, who could blame him for wanting to distance himself and his family from the chaos and notoriety of his big sister? But despite his silence, the whispers of Louise’s extraordinary life reverberated through the years. And once I heard about her, I needed to know more. As her story crystallized, I felt a question begin to tug at my brain:
"Could the story of Louise’s past hold the key to my future?"
Over the past decade, I’ve asserted more control over my career by delving into the world of writing and producing. It has paid dividends as I’ve leveled up within my industry. Yet, even having expanded my skill set, I find I am feeling smaller each year. I imagine my place and sway in the world have diminished. And boy, oh boy, do I hate that feeling of not being tall enough, pretty enough, famous enough,fill in the blank enough for a role/director/casting agent. It’s getting old—much like I am getting older. Perhaps it’s a function of middle age, but lately, when I see memes declaring how women over 40 “have zero F*CKS left to give,” I feel envious. That liberation eludes me.
One of the professional hazards of being an actress is the constant need to understand motivation; the "why" of what a character does and feels. So, being who I am, I cannot let these feelings of diminishment lie unexplored. As I’ve drilled down on these pesky emotions, I’ve uncovered a truth about my life that I need to face: Being good isn’t good enough.
I’ve always been a rule-following, midwestern pragmatist who believed that if I did good work and didn’t toot my own horn, people would reward me. But over time, it’s become clear: “That ain’t showbiz, kid.” So, why am I still running this outmoded “Good Girl” playbook? Well, the truth is simple. I’ve never tried any other way. But I’m ready for a different approach, so I’m looking to Aunt Louise for inspiration. Her life offers lessons that I need to learn. Although we could not be more different, she and I are connected. Despite a century of years between us, I stand here today as a beneficiary of her bad-girl legacy.
And it’s time to make good on the inheritance.
Born in 1900, Louise immigrated with my paternal great-grandparents from Carlentini, Sicily and went on to build the most successful booze-running enterprise in Nebraska. Despite her future windfalls, her early life of poverty held no clue as to what she would go on to become. Like many young, poor immigrant women, Louise was married off as soon as possible. Her abusive husband brutalized her, and she became a mother to two boys by her fifteenth birthday. Although her early life was an exercise in powerlessness, Louise refused to be confined by gender, class, or era. Eventually rising to Omaha’s zenith of wealth and power, Louise replotted a trajectory on her terms.
After a disenfranchised childhood in North Omaha, Louise made up for lost time once she got a foothold in bootlegging. Money and notoriety became the building blocks of her new reality. By 1921, she dominated Omaha’s illegal liquor game but was constantly arrested and fined. Fed up with it all, she called a press conference at her home in Little Italy, declaring to a crowd of rapt reporters that she was done with her criminal career. Now that she was twenty-two, it was time to “retire” and raise her young sons peacefully. Spurred on by her enchanted audience, Louise crowed about the tens of thousands of dollars she had earned from her crimes. And while her bragging exposed Louise’s abundant ego, it also underscored a severe lack of legal counsel. Once the articles from the presser hit newsstands, she was immediately arrested on suspicion of income tax evasion. But once in court, she pled poverty. All the money was gone, she said. Giving it her best Meryl Streep, Louise tearfully recounted how she’d spent all the money trying to build a new, respectable life for her darling sons. Now, the family mythology of this melodrama climaxes with the tearfully sympathetic judge dismissing all charges. But whether this family version of the saga has been embellished or not, the newspapers don't lie. Reports published in The Omaha Bee the following day described Louise’s exit from the courtroom as "a free woman bedecked in a mink coat and multiple strands of pearls.”
Upon learning this story, I realized where I’d inherited my penchant for drama. And while I feel comfortable saying that I am proud to have given some convincing performances in my time, none were as career-defining as this Oscar-worthy turn from Louise. I admit that I am awed. How did she pull it off? She shed a few crocodile tears and transformed from a tax evader to a bastion of motherhood. Turning public perception on a dime, from criminal to saint in a single day, was Louise’s modus operandi. With this feat of prestidigitation, Louise bent fate to her will through sheer audacity.
I struggle to feel in control of my own fate every time I wait to hear if I’ve gotten a role or if a studio wants to take a meeting. But Louise created her destiny rather than waiting for it to be revealed. And that is a useful skill to possess. Delving deeper into Aunt Louise’s life and exploits, I began to see her as an anti-hero. I came to think of her as possessing a toxic superpower: a mix of unrelenting ambition, quick wit, brashness, and an elastic relationship with the truth. This was this alchemy that helped her redefine her reality. Louise didn’t care about being good, and that was “good enough.”
And it was her unique definition of being good that once saved her life. Later in Louise’s “reign,” her ex-husband snuck into her house and fired five bullets into her pillow as she lay there sleeping. Not much of a marksman, he missed all five shots, and Louise survived. Grabbing her gun from her nightstand, she chased him down the street in her marabou slippers, feathers and bullets flying. Besides the obvious takeaway — that marabou slippers need to make a comeback — Louise, once again, came out a winner. Defying vilification, the press feted her as a hero rather than brand her a vigilante. And once more, Louise’s ghost compelled me to confront an uncomfortable truth, not about stand-your-ground law, but rather about the power of fighting back. She didn't care what the world would say about her, she simply refused to take it lying down. Literally.
The most impactful case of her defiant nature is when she broke a cycle of sexual abuse within our family. Louise knew that her close cousin had been molested as a young girl. She held her secret throughout their childhood. Years later, Louise overheard her cousin’s rapist, an uncle to her through marriage, drunkenly brag to a room full of people about the assault. Louise approached him, only to be met with death threats. Undeterred, Louise went directly to her cousin. Together, they checked in on the cousin’s younger sisters still living in the rapist’s home. Sadly, they found out that he had since begun to abuse them. Determined to end it, Louise and her cousin confronted the man. Knowing his violent nature, Louise had brought along a gun. When things escalated quickly, Louise’s cousin shot and killed him. Fully aware that she was the sole witness to murder, Louise took control once again. This time, by disappearing. When she was nowhere to be found and unavailable to testify, the jury had no choice but to acquit Louise’s cousin of all charges. Several weeks after the acquittal, lo and behold, Louise reappeared in Omaha, just as quickly as she had gone.
I have chewed on these stories for over a decade, trying to extract the larger wisdom. In my understanding of the world, you play by the rules to get ahead. But ostensibly, Louise’s “bad girl” exploits gave her more control over her life with every sordid event. So, where does that inconvenient truth leave a “good girl” like me?
Honestly? It leaves me uncomfortable.
Louise’s legacy is one of practical, albeit unpalatable, truths. And while I reject the aspects of her legacy that would point me to lying or cheating to achieve that level of control over my life, I do embrace the larger lesson she’s taught me. I see now that her greatest gift was not her bootlegging prowess, peacocking ego, or brash fearlessness. Her truest talent was in understanding that perception is inextricable from reality. Things are as we perceive them because truth is subjective. And that truth correlates directly to our experience of reality.
Criminal empire notwithstanding, I’ve embraced Louise’s legacy. Despite her moral ambiguity, she was a force of fearless self-determination, and I deeply admire her for that. I have followed all the rules of an industry that dictates who to be, what to do, and how to behave if you want to succeed, and I have felt myself shrink with every acquiescence. But Louise’s extraordinary life illuminates a truth of my own that I had not seen clearly. Those walls I feel closing in are of my own making. I am not obligated to perceive the business and my place within it by someone else’s rules.
My truth is by my definition. Just as Louise’s was by hers.
And should I doubt my fortitude to live boldly within this new philosophy, I’ll remind myself that I can do it, too. Because, after all, the same blood runs through our veins.
This article originally appeared in the May 2025 issue of Omaha Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
