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 tossing 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
interests 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 collaborator, 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 transcript
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 savings 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."
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 detective
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
federal official and, if convicted, he could have been sentenced to six years
for stealing the transcript. The Justice Department brought him before several
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.
12. He would later deny
this figure, instead estimating his own worth at "just over
$300,000."
