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| - John Stompanato, Jr. was born in Woodstock, Illinois. His father, John Sr., owned a barber shop. His mother, Carmela, was a seamstress. Both parents were born in Italy, but were married in Brooklyn. The family moved to Woodstock in 1916. Johnny was the youngest of four children and grew up with two older sisters, Grace and Teresa; and older brother, Carmine. Six days after John's birth, his mother died of peritonitis. Johnny's father soon remarried a woman named Verena Freitag.
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| - John Stompanato, Jr. was born in Woodstock, Illinois. His father, John Sr., owned a barber shop. His mother, Carmela, was a seamstress. Both parents were born in Italy, but were married in Brooklyn. The family moved to Woodstock in 1916. Johnny was the youngest of four children and grew up with two older sisters, Grace and Teresa; and older brother, Carmine. Six days after John's birth, his mother died of peritonitis. Johnny's father soon remarried a woman named Verena Freitag. In 1940, after Stompanato's freshman year at Woodstock High School, his father sent him to Kemper Military School for boys in Boonville, Missouri, from which he graduated at the age of 17. In 1943, Stompanato joined the U.S. Marines serving with the 1st Service Battalion, 1st Marine Division. He served in the South Pacific theater, in Peleliu and Okinawa, and then served in China with the Marines. Stompanato left the Corps in March 1946; being discharged in China. In China, Stompanato claimed he ran nightclubs and went bankrupt in the process, though in truth he was only a civil bureaucrat. It was in China, that Stompanato met his first wife, Sarah Utish; a Turkish girl living in China, and converted to Islam in order to marry her. The two married on May 1946 and moved to Woodstock, where they had their first son, John III. Stompanato's son, John Stompanato III, by his sole legal marriage, was born in Woodstock. Stompanato worked as a bread salesman for a few months before leaving for Hollywood, California.
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