Chicago’s front man in the Stardust, and it was a mob gold
mine.
At first the outfit was excited at the prospect of having
John Factor as its head man. He was, at least by mob standards, trustworthy. He
was smart enough to know the outfit would kill him in a heart-beat if he tried
anything creative.
The problem with Factor was that he, like Cornero, couldn’t
get a liquor license. As Hank Messick wrote, “...much to the disgust of the
Chicago boys. The Barber tried everything he could to get a license but there
was no way it was going to happen. He finally bowed to reality and announced
that he would lease to the Desert Inn Group....It took a western Appalachian to
solve the matter.”
In a meeting held in mob lawyer Sidney Korshak’s Beverly
Hills office, Meyer Lansky, Longy Zwillman, Doc Stacher (representing New York
and New Jersey), Moe Dalitz and Morris Kleinman decided that Dalitz would lease
the casino operation. Dalitz represented the Desert Inn. All involved agreed that
Dalitz’s Desert Inn would pay $100,000 a month—a low figure for the second
largest money maker in Las Vegas—to operate the casino part of the Stardust.
Factor would, at least on paper, still own the building, the grounds and the
hotel operation.
Dalitz, who was one of the founding members of the national
crime syndicate, would run the day-to- day operation and Johnny Rosselli—Brian
Foy’s old pal—would be off in the shadows, representing the true owners of the
Stardust: Paul Ricca, Tony Accardo, Sam Giancana and Murray Humpreys.
Everybody was making money off the Stardust. Carl Thomas,
the master of the Las Vegas skim, estimated that the Chicago mob was skimming
$400,000 a month from the Stardust in the early sixties, and that was only for the one arm bandits.
Blackjack, craps, keno, roulette and poker yielded a different skim.
It was more money then they had ever dreamed of and nothing,
absolutely nothing, was going to pre¬vent them from taking it.
And then Roger Touhy was released from prison. The
ringleaders of those who were making money hand-over-fist at the Stardust in
the early sixties had all grown out of the old-time Chicago syndicate.
Virtually all of them had been players in Capone’s mob and its war against the Touhy
organization.
When Roger entered prison in 1934, there was some question
as to whether the Chicago syndicate, then under Frank Nitti’s control, would
make it into the next decade. The end of prohibition had taken away its beer
money. Additionally, the Great Depression, which hit Chicago extremely hard,
had hurt its traditional rackets like white slavery and prostitution. To top it
off, the war with Touhy for control over labor unions had cost them dearly.
But when Touhy was defeated, Nitti did take control over
most of Chicago’s labor unions and even joined the New York and New Jersey mob
in an ill- fated move on the Hollywood entertainment locals. That collapsed in
1942, when federal indictments locked up virtually all of the leaders of the
Chicago mob. The indictments even caused Frank Nitti to fire a bullet through
his own brain. But by 1959 the mob was under the firm leadership of Paul Ricca— the man who
had murdered Matt Kolb—and Tony Accardo, who was just a small-time hood when
Touhy had been locked away.
For appearances anyway, the outfit’s official leader was Sam
“Momo” Giancana, a merciless thug who had fought the Touhys as part of the 42
Gang under Rocco DeGrazio’s command back in 1932.
But Giancana was nothing more then a lightning rod to keep
the government away from Accardo and Ricca. The fact was that Accardo was the
boss. In fact, he remains to this day the most powerful, suc¬cessful and
respected boss known by the Chicago syndicate, or probably any other criminal
syndicate for that matter. He also had the distinction of being the mob leader
with the longest-lived career. During his tenure, Accardo’s power was
long-reaching and frightfully vast.
He was so respected and feared in the national mafia that in
1948 when he declared himself the arbitrator for any mob problems west of
Chicago— in effect proclaiming all of that territory as his—no one in the
syndicate argued.
He was the boss pure and simple. Unlike Torrio, Nitti or
Ricca, Tony Accardo looked exactly like what he was—a mob thug who could and
did dispatch men and women to their death over money or disre¬spect. He was a
self-professed peasant. But he was a reserved man and a thinker, unlike Colosimo,
Capone, Giancana and all those who came after Giancana.
Unlike the other bosses, Accardo knew his limi-tations. He
consulted often with Ricca, Murray the Camel Humpreys and Short Pants Campagna
because he recognized their intelligence and wisdom and liked to use it.
He admitted lacking the crafty thinking ability of Ricca,
Nitti or Torrio and the flair and self depre-cating wit of Capone or Giancana.
Despite his short-comings, it was Accardo who expanded the outfit’s activities
into new rackets after the end of the pro-hibition era. It was Accardo who,
recognizing the dangers of the white slave trade, streamlined the old
prostitution racket during the war years into the new call girl service which
was copied by New York families even though they laughed at the idea at first.
Two decades after prohibition was repealed Accardo
introduced bootlegging to the dry states of Kansas and Oklahoma, flooding them
with illegal whisky. He moved the outfit into slot and vending machines, counterfeiting
cigarette and liquor tax stamps and expanding narcotics smuggling on a
worldwide basis.
Watching someone as clever as Paul Ricca and as smart as
Frank Nitti go to jail over the Bioff scan¬dal, Accardo pulled the organization
away from labor racketeering and extortion. Under Accardo’s reign the Chicago
mob exploded in growth and became increasingly wealthy.
The outfit grew because aside from the Kefauver committee,
there wasn’t a focused attempt on the part of any law enforcement agency to
break it up. The FBI was busy catching Cold War spies and denied that the Mafia
or even organized crime exist-ed at all.
Under Accardo’s leadership, the gang set its flag in Des
Moines, Iowa; downstate Illinois; Southern California; Kentucky; Las Vegas;
Indiana; Arizona; St. Louis, Missouri; Mexico; Central and South America.
Accardo’s long reign highlighted a golden era for the Chicago syndicate. But it
also ushered in the near collapse of the outfit as well. In 1947, as Tony
Accardo took the reigns of power from Paul Ricca, the outfit produced an
estimated $300 million in business per year, with Accardo, Humpreys, Ricca and
Giancana taking in an estimated forty to fifty million each per year.
Accardo pensioned off the older members of the mob and gave
more authority to its younger sol-diers, mostly former 42 Gang members like Sam
Giancana, the Battaglias and Marshal Ciafano.
The money poured in. Hundreds of thousands of dollars rolled
in everyday from all points where Chicago ruled. The hoods who had survived the
shootouts, gang wars, purges, cop shootings, nation-al exposes and the federal
and state investigations now saw rewards for what they had so dilligently
hustled for.
By 1959, the Chicago outfit was stealing millions of dollars
from the Teamsters’ pension fund, which they had more or less turned into their
own piggy bank. The outfit was pouring much of that money into Las Vegas
casinos, including The Stardust which Jake the Barber fronted.
It was all so easy, and then Roger Touhy announced that he
intended to pursue a $300,000,000 lawsuit against John Factor and all the
others—Ricca, Humpreys, Accardo—who had helped railroad him to prison for
twenty-five years.
The bosses, Ricca and Accardo, watched and worried. They
thought they had buried Touhy alive in Statesville but Johnstone got him out.
This proved to the syndicate that Touhy’s lawyer was no hack. When he sued, he
meant business.
Worse yet, the word on the street was that Touhy was working
with Ray Brennan, an investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Brennan
was somebody to worry about. He knew what he was doing and he was honest.
Brennan kept turning up asking the wrong questions about Teamster loans to the
Stardust.
The way Ricca and Accardo saw it, there was only one answer.
Roger Touhy had to die.
A few days before Roger was released from prison, retired
Rabbi Harry Zinn walked the few blocks from his home to the rental apartment
build-ing he owned, directly across the street from Roger’s sister’s house.
Zinn was there because one of his tenants said that she had
seen a rough-looking man loitering in the building over the past several days
and the Rabbi should come over and investigate. He walked around the property and
then went down into the building’s basement to check the boilers. As he rounded
a corner in the dark cellar, he spotted a rough-looking man, with a dark
complexion, staring out of a basement window at Touhy’s sister’s house. Zinn
noted the expensive fur-lined tan-colored win¬ter waist coat and knew it wasn’t
a street bum who had come in out of the cold.
Sensing Zinn’s presence the man spun around, glared at the
old rabbi and said, “What are you doing here?”
Zinn asked, “Who are you?”
The stranger was flushed. “I’m just checking on my kid, my
son, he’s running around with some broad in this neighborhood.”
Even as he spoke, the stranger was walking toward Zinn and
then suddenly brushed past him, almost knocking the old man over as he ran up
the stairs to the front door of the building with Zinn in pursuit. By the time
Zinn made it to the street, the stranger had disappeared. If the hit men had learned anything from watching Ethel’s house, it was that
killing Roger Touhy wouldn’t be easy. The old bootlegger had taken precautions.
He refused to leave home unless he had one of his two “watch-dogs,” as he
called them, with him, and both of those watchdogs were cops.
Ethel’s son, Mike, was a twenty-three-year-old policeman and
part-time law student who traveled around town with his uncle when time
allowed.
The other problem was the other cop—Walter J. Miller—then
sixty-two years old. Back in 1932, Tubbo Gilbert assigned Miller to guard
Factor for three months after Jake appeared on the streets of LaSalle.
So if they were going to kill Touhy, they would probably
have to kill one of the two cops with him, the old one would be easier, but if
they had to kill the young one, well so be it. But still, even for the Chicago
outfit, cop killing was more or less a forbid-den act. Touhy’s suit threatened
the whole casino operation and his death warranted bringing down the risk of
killing a cop.
Roger never feared for his life; that wasn’t why he had the
two men travel with him. “If I have Mike and Walter with me,” he told Ray
Brennan, “they won’t be able to pin a phoney parole violation on me. They’ll never hit me. They’ll try to frame me
for a parole violation probably, but they’ll never hit me.”
• • •
December 1959 would be Roger’s first Christmas as a free man
in twenty-five years and he was upbeat despite the reality facing him. His
health was gone and so was his money. His two sons had matured without a
father. He was virtually a stranger to them and his wife of almost four decades
was in fragile health.
The state parole board refused to lift the gag order placed
on him after he told the board that he wanted to go on the record and reply to
the charges that Factor was making against him in the press. The Board told him
he would have to wait for at least another year before they would lift the gag.
But they also told Touhy that they didn’t care what he said about Factor. The
gag order wasn’t about protecting Factor, it was about protecting the State of
Illinois from looking stupid and corrupt for toss-ing innocent men in jail.
Despite his failing health and depleted bank account, Roger
began to prepare to face John Factor in court. This was no easy chore. Factor
had grown rich, very rich, over the years. Apart from his inter-ests in the
Stardust, he had considerable holdings in real estate, commercial insurance and
stocks, and with that kind of war chest behind him, Factor could afford the
best legal talent in the world. To prove it, Factor was suing Touhy and Ray
Brennan, his col-laborator, for libel over The Stolen Years, the book Roger had
written about his life, claiming that it injured his reputation as a civic
leader and philanthropist.
Roger had used his spare time while in prison to write his
life story. After a first draft, he decided that he would need a professional
writer’s help and called in Ray Brennan. Brennan was the archetype of the
tough-edged, hard-drinking, newsman with a heart as big as the city he loved so
much. A mid- western Irishman, he got his first big break in 1933 when Arthur
Brisbane, the most influential editor in the Hearst newspaper empire, went to
the Cook County jail to interview A1 Capone. Capone told Brisbane that if he
were released, he would help find the Lindbergh baby.
Brisbane sat on the story
and the next morning Capone spotted Brennan walking through the jail and said,
“Hey kid, you want a good story?” Brennan took Capone’s story and ran with it.
The Hearst organization followed with Brisbane’s story a day later and Brennan
was the new star crime reporter in Chicago. A while later, when John Dillinger
escaped from the Crown Point jail, Brennan called the jail just to check with
the warden.
“So how’s your star prisoner doing?” Brennan asked.
“Well, I don’t know,” came the jailers reply, “’cause that
slippery son of bitch just escaped.”
Brennan kept all of the jail’s lines tied up and grabbed the
year’s best exclusive story.
Brennan had sat through the Hamm and Factor kidnapping
trials, fascinated by the characters involved. Later he would write several
stories about the case which brought him to Touhy’s eye. What intrigued Touhy
about Brennan was his relentless pursuit of the classified testimony that Tubbo
Gilbert had given to the Kefauver committee when it arrived in Chicago in 1950.
That year, Gilbert— who was still the central power behind the States
Attorney’s Office—was a candidate for Cook County Sheriff. He began his
campaign despite the fact that most Chicago crime reporters considered him a
full- fledged member of the syndicate—one who answered directly to Murray
Humpreys.
Fascinated with Gilbert, Brennan wrote: Gilbert’s name came
up during the hearings and he was requested, as opposed to ordered, to testify
before the committee, which he did but from behind closed doors, a most unusual
thing and the tran-script was later impounded.
Since it was just before the election and Kefauver was a good Democrat he agreed to the terms that
Tubbo Gilbert had set up.
Gilbert was questioned for two hours behind closed doors. When
it was over Estes Kefauver gave a briefing that left more questions than
answers.
Brennan tried everything he could to find out what Gilbert
had told the Committee, but was unsuccessful and had more or less given up and
retired to his favorite watering hole for a drink “when inspiration struck.” He
flew to Washington, posed as a member of the committee’s staff, went to the
stenographer’s office saying that he had dropped by to pick up a copy of “some
guy named Gilbert’s testimony.”
Remarkably, they handed him a bound copy of Gilbert’s secret
testimony. Gilbert’s statements before the committee were riveting. He admitted
to gambling in mob-run joints while enforcing the city’s no gambling laws. He
also admitted winning more than $7,000 in 1948, by wagering on football,
baseball, prize fights and elections. His wealth was estimated to be in the
millions12—an amazing sav-ings accomplishment for a civil servant who never
earned more than $40,000 in one year.
Gilbert admitted to the committee that it was true that his
personal records were missing from the police department and that he was a
frequent guest of gangster Owney Madden in Hot Springs. The most shocking
admission was that while he was in charge of the States Attorney’s Office,
justice was doled out on a “cash and carry basis.”
The Kefauver committee secretly concluded that Tubbo
Gilbert’s administration when he was Chicago’s top cop, “was neglect of
official duty and shocking indifference to violations of the law.”
He would later deny this figure, instead estimating his own
worth at "just over $300,000."
The Sun Times printed the testimony that Brennan dug up and
Cook County voters turned out in record numbers for an off-year election to
vote against Tubbo Gilbert. His opponent won by a remarkable 400,000 votes. A
few days later, Gilbert retired from office and announced that he would take a
position as chief of security at Arlington and Washington race tracks where his
brother Maurice was a lieutenant.
The Gilbert story continued to unravel when
Brennan discovered that though Maurice Gilbert was drawing a salary from the
track, he had officially been out on sick leave from the Chicago police
department since 1948. After that, Gilbert packed up his millions and moved to
California where he said he planned to open a detec-tive agency in Los Angeles.
Shortly after arriving in Los Angeles he suffered a heart attack and went into
semi-retirement.
Tubbo Gilbert never held a grudge against Brennan for
bringing him down. In fact, in one of Tubbo Gilbert’s last tirades against the
Chicago press, he jabbed his finger into a reporter’s chest and barked, “All of
you are a pack of rats. The only one of youse who has any class at all is Ray
Brennan...and he’s a rat too.” Brennan understood the back-handed compliment.
President Harry Truman, however, did hold a grudge.
He threw
a fit over the Democratic party’s loss in Illinois, and he held Brennan
responsible. As a result Brennan was indicted for posing as a fed¬eral official
and, if convicted, he could have been sentenced to six years for stealing the
transcript. The Justice Department brought him before sever¬al federal
hearings, actually handcuffing him once, before it dropped the case with the
ruling that his actions had “no criminal intent as we generally understand it.”
Roger Touhy had followed this entire story from jail. After
the case against Brennan was dropped Touhy wrote to him and asked him if he
wanted to help write his life story. This brought about the $3,000,000 libel
suit from Jake the Barber.