September 7, 2007
The Chicago Outfit Makes Its Move
by
Ron Chepesiuk
Editor's Note: "Policy" is a form of lottery in which a
ticket is purchased and numbers selected, with the winning numbers announced at
a drawing. No one knows for sure how the policy game began, but the Sixteenth
century European countries were using the lottery to raise money for the state.
In the United States, Virginia first introduced a lottery game in the
Seventeenth century, and it spread across the country during the next century.
The policy game first appeared in the 1880s in New
Orleans, and then spread to New York, Chicago and other cities with large
African-American populations. Some historians believe that the name "policy"
derives from the practice of blacks playing the game with money meant for
insurance policies.
In the policy game, 78 numbers (1 to 78) are wrapped in
special containers and dropped in a drum-shaped container or "wheel" from which
numbers are drawn. The player selects a certain amount of numbers, the most
common being three numbers, or a "gig," betting that the combination of numbers
chosen will "fall" or win in the next drawing of winning numbers. The policy
operator was known as a "banker" and the games they ran as "banks."
Once back on the streets,
Sam "Mooney" Giancana wasted no time pursuing his take over plan for the Black
Belt policy racket. He followed up on Ed Jones's jailhouse offer to help set him
up in policy and arranged a meeting with Ed's brother, George, at the family's
Ben Franklin store. The following evening, he met with Paul Ricca and Jake
Guzik, two leading members of The Outfit, Chicago's powerful white mafia.
Giancana was confident that the mob bosses would see the
light. "Once those guys see there's money in this. Money…big money…Well, shit.
I'll be on my way," Sam told his brother Chuck.
During the 1940s and 1950s, Ricca and Guzik were part of
the so called "Big Six" who ruled The Outfit. The other heavyweight godfathers
included Joe Adonis, Frank Costello, Meyer Lansky and Longy Zwillman. As a young
and ambitious gangster, Guzik developed a close relationship with Al Capone, who
came to depend on him while organizing the Chicago underworld. Guzik was the
Chicago mob's financial wizard for nearly two decades, and his role in arranging
payoffs to police and politicians was so valuable that his mob colleagues
nicknamed him the "Greasy Thumb."
Estes Kefauver, the chairman of the U.S. Senate's Special
Committee on Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce – the Kefauver Committee –
that held hearings in Chicago in 1951, described the Greasy Thumb at 64 years of
age as "a pouchy-eyed little man – with a ravaged face that looks as if it were
made of wax left too long near a hot fire."
Guzik's boss, the handsome, square jawed Paul Ricca, was a
slick operator whose smooth style cloaked a history of violent criminality. Born
Felice DeLucia in Italy in 1897, Ricca was sent to prison in 1915 for killing
Emilio Perillo, his sister Amelia's boyfriend, for dishonoring his family. The
insult: the Perillos did not approve of Amelia and told Emilio to stop seeing
her. When DeLucia was released from prison, he killed the only witness to the
crime and then fled to the U.S., leaving behind in Italy a trail of least two
dozen murders.
DeLucia ended up in Chicago, where he took the name of
Paul Ricca and went to work for gangster Diamond Joe Esposito, running moonshine
and working as waiter in Esposito's Bella Napoli restaurant. This humble
employment gave Ricca the nickname "The Waiter." As Ricca climbed the organized
crime ladder, he aligned himself with Al Capone and eventually worked as
Scarface's emissary on the East Coast, that is, until an IRS investigation sent
Capone to Alcatraz for tax fraud 1931.
With Al Capone in prison, Frank Nitti appeared to be The
Outfit's "boss of bosses." At least that is the way it looked to the public.
Nitti later became famous as the criminal adversary of FBI agent Elliott Ness in
the popular TV series, "The Untouchables." In December of 1932 two police
officers raided Nitti's office and shot the godfather, but Nitti survived. Mayor
Anthony Cermak was suspected of ordering the hit because he wanted more
malleable gangsters in place as he pursued his political agenda. Less than two
months later, Italian marksman Guiseppe Zangara shot Cermak in the chest at a
public appearance he made with President-Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in Miami.
Cermak died three weeks later.
Nitti became a legend. In reality, though, Frank Nitti was
just a figurehead, and by the mid 1930s, Paul Ricca was actively involved in
running The Outfit's affairs, often traveling to the East Coast to meet and
discuss business with the Commission, La Cosa Nostra's board of directors, and
doing it without Nitti's knowledge.
Mooney told his brother that The Outfit propped up Nitti
as part of its clever ruse to keep the likes of Elliott Ness confused as to the
mafia's true power structure. "Those on the inside knew better," Mooney told
Chuck. "Paul Ricca ran the show."
At the time Giancana met with Ricca, the godfather was
overseeing The Outfit's day-to-day operation with the help of his close ally,
the swarthy, bear-like, Frank Accardo. Like his pal Ricca, Accardo worked his
way up the mob's ranks, beginning as a vicious enforcer for Al Capone at the
tender age of 16. In the mid 1920s, Accardo earned the moniker of "Batters' or
"Joe Batters" from his skillful use of a baseball bat on those who displeased
his mob bosses. He became so reliable an enforcer that Capone made him one of
his personal bodyguards. During his long criminal career, Accardo ran up a
string of arrests for murder, extortion, gambling and kidnapping.
Accardo, police believed, played a key role in the St.
Valentine's Day Massacre, helping to set it up and renting the car that the hit
men used. Nothing, however, was ever proven, although by 1931, the Chicago Crime
Commission had identified Accardo as one of the Windy City's top 25 mobsters.
During the 1930s, Accardo continued to gain power, as The Outfit's leadership
died off or retired. The mobster was known for the flying dove tattooed in the
crease between his thumb and trigger finger of his right hand. When Accardo
squeezed his finger, it looked as if the dove was flying.
Fortunately for Giancana, he was in tight with Ricca,
Guzik and Accardo, who liked the young hood, even though he was volatile and had
a trigger temper. Giancana was a loyal mafia soldier, who would do as he was
told and do it well. He was particularly valuable as a wheelman known to have
nerves of steel and for being adept at escaping the scene of a crime or avoiding
a hit.
In arranging the meeting with Ricca and Guzik, Giancana
knew that a major problem was consuming their time and energy. The U.S.
government had uncovered extensive corruption involving the mob shakedown of the
movie industry. Starting in the mid 1930s, The Outfit had been extorting money
from the Hollywood studios. If a studio did not pay up, the mob controlled movie
industry union would go on strike and shut down their operations until it did.
In 1943, William Morris "Willie" Bioff, a one time pimp who headed the movie
industry union, was indicted for tax evasion, extortion and racketeering. Rather
than take the rap, Bioff agreed to testify against his co-conspirators, which
led to the indictments of Nitti, Ricca and several other mobsters.
Ricca, now in complete control of The Outfit, devised a
scheme to take the heat off him and his associates. "Frank, you are going to
plead guilty and take the rap," Ricca ordered Nitti. "You will go to prison and
be out in a few years."
But in the early 1930s, Nitti had spent 18 months behind
bars for tax evasion and the thought of going to the slammer again actually made
him stammer. Nitti balked; Ricca pushed. On March 19, 1943, the day after Ricca
gave Nitti his marching orders, Nitti was last seen walking along the railroad
tracks in Chicago. Soon after, the mobster pulled out a gun and blew his own brains out.
Nitti's suicide did not prevent the inexorable. In
October, 1943, Ricca and several other Outfit mobsters were convicted in the
Hollywood studio scandal and each received 10 years in prison. Tony Accardo
became the acting boss of The Outfit and then permanent boss in 1946. The
Accardo-Ricca relationship was such that Accardo regularly visited Ricca in
prison by posing as his lawyer. Later, Accardo stepped down and accepted Ricca
as The Outfit's chairman of the board, or consigliere, after Ricca's release
from prison in 1947.
Ricca was still out of prison at the time Giancana came to
him with his proposal to move in on the Black Belt policy racket; Ricca and The
Outfit were looking for new ways to expand their lucrative gambling interests
across Chicago. Giancana got the green light and was told to see what he could
do for The Outfit in the Black Belt policy racket.
It was a good time for Mooney Giancana to make his move.
Grand jury investigations had led to indictments of several leading Black Belt
policy kings, and the racket was under increasing pressure from community
leaders. Those indicted included Ed Jones, who was still in prison; his brothers
McKissack and George; Ily Kelley; and Big Jim Martin. On Feb. 2, 1942, 26 of
Chicago's major policy operators turned themselves in to authorities and posted
a $5,000 bond.
Big Jim Martin, Ed Jones's old friend, was the biggest
policy king on Chicago's Westside, and, together, they controlled gambling in
black Chicago. Born on March 8, 1883, in Stanton, Tenn., Martin migrated to
Chicago at age 14. Fired by ambition and drive, Martin became a real estate
magnate in 1920s and acquired extensive holdings in apartment buildings and
commercial properties. By the 1930s, Martin was running his own gambling
business from his café, Martin's Corner, at 1900 Lake Street. Customers could
either play cards, craps, roulette and the slot machines on the ground floor or
climb one floor and see if the policy wheels had spun their numbers.
Being a high profile, big-time policy king in Chicago like
Jones or Martin, though, did have its risks. In October, 1940, police officers
found a bomb hidden under a newspaper in front of Martin's tavern at 1904 Lake
Street. The officers dropped the bomb in a pail of water, and waited for the
police bomb squad to arrive. In opening the bomb, the squad found six sticks of
dynamite. The subsequent investigation revealed that a bomb had destroyed the
home of Charles Bartels, Martin's political associate, the month before, and
that Big Jim had received kidnapping threats.
Police picked up 52-year old Joseph Murray, a white ex-con
who had served a nine-year sentence for shooting a sheriff. Murray confessed to
planting five homemade dynamite bombs in an attempt to extort $20,000 from Big
Jim. He did not know Martin, Murray said, but he had learned that the policy
king was wealthy. Martin said he firebombed Bartel's home because "I wanted some
of the political leeches near Martin to put pressure on him and force him to pay
the money."
The following May, three gunmen, posing as police
officers, forced Martin's car to a curb near his Maywood home. The gunmen
disarmed Ike Knox, Martin's chauffer, and then drove Martin's car to a safe
house. They threatened to kill Martin's wife, who was in the car with him, and
demanded $50,000. They ended up stealing $300 from Martin before releasing him.
Martin was able to identify one of his three kidnappers, Harvey Rogers, from
police photos.
Kidnapping and violence were not the only threats facing
the policy kings in the early 1940s. They were under increased community
pressure. The Chicago Urban League and the National League of Justice petitioned
the Chicago Crime Commission to help them stamp out Chicago's policy racket,
which they claimed was corrupting the public's morals and taking millions of
dollars from black families on the Southside, many of whom were on welfare.
Those were familiar charges, but the anti-vice movement was gaining momentum.
The Rev. Joseph Evans, the pastor of one of Chicago's most influential black
churches, joined with the two civic groups, and they created an umbrella
organization that eventually included more than 100 ministers and civic leaders
The group printed a brochure which provided some "amazing'
facts about policy on the Southside. There were 38 policy wheels and 400 policy
stations and blacks spent approximately $600,000 on policy racket each month,
with between 17 to 20 percent of that amount coming from welfare and relief
funds. The pamphlet stated: "The taxpayers of Chicago have a legal weapon
whereby they can get justice over the heads of the dormant law enforcing bodies.
The answer is the grand jury."
Under community pressure, the authorities began convening
grand juries to investigate the policy racket. It was mainly the testimony of
Ezra Leake, the gambler who had a long running feud with the Joneses,
which convinced the grand jury to vote for the indictments of 26 alleged members
of the policy racket. Leake wrote a letter to the court asking that he be
allowed to speak before the grand jury and give testimony that would prove
beyond a doubt that Ed Jones and the other indicted individuals entered into a
conspiracy to "circumvent" the law.
The court granted Leake's request, and he testified that
he once paid bag man Billy Skidmore $250 in the presence of a well known
Southside politician. Leake also claimed that he made payments to Skidmore
sometimes twice daily. As the defendant, Skidmore, who would soon join Giancana
and Jones in prison, sat through the trial. When Leake asserted that that he
paid huge sums for protection, Skidmore leaned over to his lawyer and said in a
hoarse whisper: "Why he never has as much as two dollars in his life."
But when 12 of the defendants went to trial, Leake stunned
the court by refusing to testify on the grounds that he could incriminate
himself. "I expected Leake to fire a cannonball when he took the stand, but
instead he only blasted a cap pistol and took the state by surprise," said
William Crawford, Illinois State Attorney General. In May 1943, charges against
the 12 people that Leake was to testify against were dismissed for a lack of
evidence. Leake was fined $500.
In the wake of this setback, angry Southside
leaders demanded that the authorities do something. After the Chicago Sun
published an expose about the "$10 million a year policy racket," G.W. Lambert,
a former Pullman porter and head of the Citizen's Crime Commission, urged more
grand jury action, complaining that civic organizations had been fighting the
policy racket for more than seven years. "We are accustomed to opposition and
the efforts of the authorities had come to no avail…apparently because of the
alliance of crime with politics," Lambert charged.
Lambert, however, did concede that some progress had been
made. Only nine of 28 major policy wheels were still doing business and less
than 400 stations were open and accepting gigs. After the Chicago Sun
expose, the authorities were indeed putting pressure on the racket. Chicago
Police Commissioner James Allan issued an order closing, at least temporarily,
all the policy wheels and stations in the Black Belt.
That situation would change, though, if Giancana and The
Outfit could get their way. When Ed Jones got out of prison, Giancana continued
to cultivate their relationship, and they met several times at Jones's Ben
Franklin store and at his home, where the rough-edged, white mobster was
impressed with the rich black policy king's lifestyle.
In 1944, tragedy struck the Jones family when McKissack
"Mac" Jones died in a freak accident after leaving a party with friends. His car
was hit by a drunk driver speeding on the wrong side of the road. In one of
Chicago's largest funerals, 15,000 people attended the service for Jones at
Monumental Baptist Church, and Sam Giancana sent flowers. Jones's estate was
worth an estimated $150,000 at the time of his death, but in March 1948 it
closed in probate court at $444, 826.77.
Ed Jones not only kept his promise to help Giancana enter
the policy racket, he also went into business with him. As Giancana biographer
William Braschler described the arrangement. "Eddie bankrolled Giancana with
$100,000, ostensibly to branch out in the vending machine and the juke boxes and
musical record racket. His (Giancana's) plan was to place vending machines and
juke boxes in taverns and clubs throughout the (Chicago) suburbs and then go
into the city (Chicago) itself."
With the backing of Jones, Giancana now had enough money
to move up the criminal ladder, from small time hood to criminal entrepreneur.
World War II was raging, and he was already making a lot of money counterfeiting
gas and food rationing stamps.
Giancana's stature in The Outfit was growing, so he needed
an under boss or right hand man. Giancana chose Fat Leonard Caifano, a happy go
lucky 400-pound, fifth-grade drop out, who played a key role for the mob as an
accountant and already had some experience in the policy racket. In the past few
months, he had moved in on some of the smaller wheels on the edge of the
Southside.
Giancana and Fat Leonard started buying vending machines,
and within six months they had 12,000 of them. They did so well that they had
500 employees citywide. While the machines were legal, the products they sold
out of them – the records, candy, soda and cigarettes – were stolen from
warehouses and delivery trucks around Chicago. Eventually, the racket brought in
a staggering $8 million annually. Giancana had the books fixed so that it looked
as if he was repaying the loan to Ed Jones, but there is no evidence the mobster
made any payments.
Giancana had his way with the Jones brothers, but that was
not the case with one of their major allies: Teddy Roe, a brash and cocky policy
king who operated his wheel in alliance with Ed Jones. Like many policy
operators in the Black Belt, Roe did not like or trust the white mob. He was
often on Ed Jones's case about his close ties with Giancana and could not
understand why the policy king was always kissing the Italian American mobster's
behind. He regarded Giancana as a snake who had been thrown into the backyard of
the Black Belt to cause harm.
Born on August 26, 1898, in Galliana, La., the son of a
tenant farmer, Teddy Roe moved to Little Rock, Ark., as a young boy. It's
unclear whether he served in World War I, but by the 1920s, it is certain that
he was still in Arkansas working as a bootlegger. In 1923, Roe married and moved
to Detroit to work in the auto industry. After losing his job, Roe migrated to
Chicago where he settled in the Southside and got a job working in a tailor shop
that the Jones brothers owned. In reality, the shop was a front for their
Harlem-Bronx policy wheel where Roe worked as a full-time book keeper while,
pulling numbers on the side at a drawing held at another policy wheel five
blocks to the south on South Indiana.
In one way, Teddy Roe was a lot like Ed Jones; he, too,
had a fondness for the finer things in life. He wore custom made suits,
monogrammed silk shirts, alligator shoes, painted ties and wide brimmed hats. By
the early 1950s, Roe was doing so well as a policy king that he could spend
$50,000 to decorate his flat at 5239 South Michigan.
"Lavish," explained the Chicago Defender, was the
only word to describe the apartment. Dominating the living room was a fireplace
made completely of mirrors and a six-foot-high television set, which sat on a
turn table that could be made to face any part of the room with the mere touch
of a button. The large kitchen had all the modern conveniences, as well as a
cooler for rare liquor and fine champagne. One could get lost in the master
bedroom or almost intoxicated smelling the beautiful flowered patterned rugs or
the wallpaper above the twin beds that displayed pink roses.
But Teddy Roe was a tough guy, the type of ally the more
easy-going Jones needed. Roe had a short fuse and was mouthy, but he could back
his rap with his fists. And he never backed down from a fight. Giancana got
frustrated when he realized that sweet talk and intimidation, the carrot and the
stick, would not work on the brash policy operator. He could not manipulate Roe
the same way he did Jones. In 1945, Giancana tested Roe's mettle by trying to
shake him down, warning him that Giancana had the full weight of The Outfit
behind him. But Roe just laughed at him, vowing never to knuckle under to any
white gangster.
Roe and Giancana butted heads several times, and on one
occasion, an incident almost led to fireworks. It happened at an old storefront
building on Roosevelt near Paulina on the Westside black district, in a bar that
Giancana owned and called the Boogie Woogie. The nightclub became a popular
destination for Roe and other members of Chicago's black criminal elite, who
came to hear Nat King Cole and other popular black musicians.
One night, as he was leaving his bar, Giancana almost
bumped into Roe as the policy king entered with his entourage.
"What are you doing in a black bar?" Roe asked Giancana.
"I own it." Giancana replied. "And one day I'm going to
own you. Tempers flared and Roe turned into a raging bull, grabbing Giancana's
coat lapels and shouting: "Why you dirty motherfucker, I'll fuckin' kill you!"
But before Roe could follow up on his threat, Sam's
brother Chuck and Jimmy New York, the bar manager, stepped up and put their guns
into Roe's ribs, "You're over your head," Sam Giancana told Roe, as he swaggered
out of the bar.
Giancana finally had enough of Roe's stubborn bravado. One
night, he told Chuck. "I've had it with Roe; he is a no good son-of-a-bitch."
"And Eddie (Jones)?" Chuck asked. Sam replied: "He's seen
his day, too. Shit. I kind of like the guy. I don't want to take him out, but he
won't move over and let us in. I got to do something about him."
That something happened in 1946 when Giancana master
minded what has been described as "the first major kidnapping of a Negro in
Chicago history." On May 11, 1946, at about 11 p.m. Eddie Jones, along with Mrs.
Frances Myles, his accountant, finished tallying the daily receipts at the Ben
Franklin store. Then Jones, together with his wife, Lydia, and his chauffeur
Joseph Brock, drove Mrs. Myles to her home at 4338 South Parkway. The chauffer
pulled the car up to the curb in front of Myles house, getting out with Mrs.
Myles and escorting her to the door. Nobody notice the two cars parked across
the street.
Brock returned to the car and was about to drive off when
two white men from one of the cars across the street came up to Jones side of
the car and jerked open the door. They wore hats and long overcoats; white
handkerchiefs covered the lower parts of their faces. Each man carried a sawed
off shot gun.
"Is this Ed Jones?" One of the strangers asked.
"Yes, I'm Ed Jones. Why?
"Come on, get out. We wantcha? They commanded.
Jones hesitated, then demanded. "Why are you doing this?
The gun men ignored his question. "Come on, get out. We
are in a hurry. We mean business."
Lydia, who was seated in the back seat behind her husband,
leaned forward and threw her arms around her husband's neck. Then she screamed:
"You're not going to take my husband." In desperation, she lunged at one of the
gun men, but he shoved her away.
The kidnappers struck Jones on the back of the neck with a
gun as they dragged him from his car. Picking him up bodily, the kidnappers
threw Jones in the back seat of their car and slammed the door.
Lydia Jones screamed again: "They're kidnapping my
husband! She bravely tussled with one of the gun men, but he pushed her away.
The kidnappers jumped in their car and sped off.
Lydia's screams attracted the attention of a police
cruiser that happened to be passing. Policemen Michael Durrance and William
Barber took up the chase, while Jones's car followed close behind. The
kidnappers smashed the rear window of their speeding vehicle and let loose a
volley of shot gun blasts that wounded Officer Durrance. Barber gave up the
pursuit, but radioed ahead to let their fellow officers know that the
kidnappers were traveling west on 46th Street. Still, the
kidnappers got away.
The days passed and the kidnappers made no ransom
demands, nor did it appear that they had tried to contact the Jones family.
Speculation about the kidnapping was rampant, and the incident dominated the
front pages of the newspapers. Inquiring Chicago minds wanted to know: Was
Jones kidnapped because he failed to pay off some mobster? Was Jones's
kidnapping done for revenge because of some promise Jones had made to some
gangsters, but failed to keep them? Or was Jones kidnapped because he was
trying to move into the musical record vendor racket, a no-no, since the
Outfit considered that racket its exclusive territory? The press revealed
that Jones had recently invested $100,000 in a musical record vending
company to help an ex-con he met while serving a prison term in Terre Haute,
Ind.
The ex-con was obviously Sam Giancana, whom the Chicago Defender newspaper described as a mobster with "a prison record
as long as your arm." Sources told The Defender that Jones new
business partner was known among associates as the "worse type of double
crosser."
The police brought Giancana in for questioning, but he
revealed nothing and was released. George Jones and his mother, who were at
the family estate in Mexico, flew to Chicago and went into seclusion. If the
family knew anything, it was not going to share it with the police.
Then on May 24, the kidnappers released Jones after
the family reportedly paid $100,000 ransom. Later, it was revealed that the
kidnappers had actually demanded a $250,000 ransom, but George Jones
negotiated the amount down to $100,000. George Jones eventually released a
list of serial numbers for $15,000 of the alleged $100,000 ransom, but a
question arose as to whether any ransom was paid at all. Immediately, the
Chicago police and the FBI began a nationwide man hunt for two suspects in
the Jones kidnapping: Grover Duliard, a suspect in the killing of Harry
"Red" Richmond, a West Side bookie and a former bodyguard of mobster Bugs
Moran, and Virgil Summers, who was wanted in a series of bank robberies.
Both had prison records.
After meeting with his attorney Aaron Payne, Jones told
the press: "I'm the happiest man in the world." He was treated well, Jones said.
The kidnappers had blindfolded him with adhesive tape and plugged his ears with
cotton, but otherwise they had kept him in a room that had a bed and other
conveniences.
Eventually, the true story of the kidnapping got out. Sam
Giancana had planned and executed the kidnapping. He sat in the second car while
the men from the first one carried it out. The mobster's prime objective was not
to extort money, but to scare the hell of Jones and send a message to him and
the other policy kings in the Black Belt. The kidnappers took Jones to
Giancana's recently purchased home in Oak Park, Ill., and got word to the Jones
family that they had him. The family was to follow instructions and keep quiet.
Then Giancana gave Ed Jones this blunt ultimatum: "Cooperate or die."
According to Chuck Giancana, "Jones didn't have to be
convinced" and agreed to turn his entire policy operation over to Giancana and
The Outfit. Exasperated by Ed Jones lack of cooperation and the inability to
make headway in the case, Virgil Peterson, the operating director of the Chicago
Crime Commission, threatened to call a grand jury to investigate.
Meanwhile, the IRS got interested in the case because if a
ransom had been paid, George Jones, who made the alleged payment, would have to
fill out the special form number 1099, in which he had to identify to whom he
made the payment, or else describe the person or persons to whom he paid it. An
interesting process, given that George never admitted paying a ransom.
About two weeks after the kidnapping, the Jones family
boarded the Golden State Limited train for Texas and then traveled to their
Mexico estate. Ed Jones days as the Policy King of the Black Belt were over: He
lived in Mexico for the rest of his life, and reportedly, as part of his
agreement with The Outfit, he drew an annual sum of $200,000 in return for
staying out of policy permanently.
The Chicago Defender told its readers. "Those in
the know stated that in so far as the policy racket is concerned, the Jones
brothers are definitely ousted. They are branded as ‘too hot' and their presence
in the city will only serve to attract ‘police heat.'"
Many blacks involved in the policy racket were happy to
see Ed Jones leave Chicago. By dealing with the white mob, Jones had brought a
veritable plague on the Black Belt. Many policy kings now feared for their
future; others wondered if they had any future at all.
The Black Belt's policy kings had every reason to worry.
It was open season on them in the weeks and months following Jones's flight. The
opening salvo came when assassins shot Robert Wilkins, a leading figure in the
policy racket in the back of the head in mid September 1946. Wilcox operated the
Wabash Electric Welding and Auto Repair Company, but he serviced policy
wheel operators as a sideline. Wilcox was reportedly a partner of Teddy Roe in
the Boston Club, a gambling establishment located on the second floor of a
building at 4234 Wabash Avenue.
At the time he was murdered, Wilcox was manufacturing a
wheel for the Belmont and "Old Reliable" policy books. The police found some
slips with imperfections in the spelling of "Belmont" on the machine and
surmised that Wilcox was trying to correct them.
Every Chicago newspaper had it own theory about why Wilcox
was killed. The Chicago Defender reported that the black policy kings
killed Wilcox because he was going to sell policy equipment to The Outfit. The
Sun Times, on the other hand, wrote that The Outfit had murdered Wilcox
because he refused to sell equipment to mobster Paul Labriola. The Daily
Tribune, however, reported that Wilcox made the ‘grave error of talking to
the investigators about the mob's encroachment into policy." It was a lot wild
speculation, but one thing remained certain: Wilcox murder was never solved.
Police Sergeant Carl Nelson, who headed the murder
investigation, said he believed robbery was the motivation. "Wilcox was not a
high powered racketeer," Nelson explained. "He was simply a machine operator and
probably his only connection with any racket was as a repairman of the machinery
used in the game. No guy would have to rub him out or try to muscle in. We are
working on the stick-up theory.
Rumors swirled that Teddy Roe, Wilcox's alleged policy
partner, had narrowly escaped a kidnapping. The alleged attempt came a week
before Wilcox's murder. Those in the know said Roe left the Boston Club at 8
p.m., got into his Cadillac and drove south toward Wabash. As he approached 47th
St., he noticed a car was following him. He turned east and floored his car's
accelerator.
Roe screeched his car to a halt near 47th and Vincennes
Avenue, got out and started running. The sedan following him pulled up the curb.
Four men jumped out and gave chase, but Roe managed to escape through an alley.
Roe later denied that any such incident occurred." I can
walk down any street, day or night, without fear of being bothered by hoodlums,"
he told anybody who would listen. But a confidential source told the Chicago
Crime Commission that four shots were fired at the fleeing Roe. According to
sociologist Robert M. Lombardo, ‘the informant predicted the end of the black
control of the policy racket in Chicago. Chicago was the only city left in the
nation that allowed blacks to continue to control the game."
Blacks were not the only policy kings the Outfit was
after. On April 23, 1947, a dynamite bomb blasted white policy king Leo
Benvenuti's home at 3311 Loomis Boulevard; five days later, a bomb exploded in
front of the home of Leo's brother Cesar at 511 South Christiana Avenue. Later,
a rumor circulated that The Outfit took the Erie-Buffalo policy wheel; Accardo
and Guzik made $280,000 profit on it in the first year.
Wheel after policy wheel in Chicago was taken down either
through intimidation or persuasion. The Outfit offered a standard shakedown
arrangement. It would get 40 percent "off the top of the policy," meaning the
gangsters would get a percentage of the wheel's gross income before payment was
made to winners, workers and corrupt officials and to cover other expenses.
Historically, Gary, Ind., had a close association with
Chicago's policy racket, and the mob flexed its muscles there as well. On June
18, 1948, Gary policy King Louis Buddy Hutchens had stopped by Jack Doyle's
Casino to make his regular bet on the horses. Jack Doyle, the owner, told
Hutchens something that made him real nervous, according to police witnesses.
Hutchens looked desperate as he tried to call Charles Cole, an associate who was
at the Pershing Hotel, but Cole was not there. Hutchens left the casino and
headed for his policy station at Washington and Adams.
A man wearing sunglasses traveling in a Dodge Roadster
called out: "Hey Buddy." Hutchens turned to look and saw a man pointing a .38
pistol at him. The policy king tried to run away, but Sunglasses emptied his gun
into Hutchens's back. The killer then strolled to his car and reloaded his .38
before he walked back to Hutchens's body and pumped four more rounds into his
head. An estimated 20,000 people attended Buddy Hutchens's funeral.
In 1950, Big Jim Martin became the next big policy king to
be toppled. Martin was a political power in the 28th ward as long as
anyone could remember, even though the ward was mostly white at this time. He
was one of the most effective workers for George D. Kells, a Democratic alderman
and ward committeeman. His political position and connections would protect
him. Or so Martin thought.
On November 15, 1950, at Central Avenue and Washington
Boulevard, shotgun pellets ripped into Martin's shiny Cadillac, wounding him in
the arm, shoulder and neck. He was lucky to live. John Philip Cerone, an up and
coming soldier in The Outfit, carried out the hit.
In the early 1960s, the FBI caught Cerone on tape bragging
about his violent exploit:
"When I banged the guy (Jim Martin), I caught him full
load…but it had to go through a Cadillac. I blasted him twice. Joe says, ‘Is
this guy dead?' And I said: ‘Sure. because when I nailed him, his head went like
that, you know.
The next morning, the headlines are in the paper... The
guy is still living – this double-ought-buck (his shotgun) was 10 years old. It
wasn't fresh, so the guy lived. That guy was a big nigger. He left the country
and went to Mexico. That's what we wanted anyway. We grabbed up all his policy
games. The next day I'm on the corner where he was shot. I went to the place all
dressed up. The police squads are all around I'm right there. And everybody is
talking and I say, 'Oh, isn't that terrible!' But them fucking niggers are
always fighting each other, you know."
Martin did retire and left for Mexico where his old
friend, Ed Jones, had resided for more than five years. In January 1951, Kells
announced that he would not run for re-election as alderman. Informed Westside
sources attributed Kells's decision to the shooting of Martin and the violence
threats made against his workers.
Now there was one. The Outfit had control of almost every
important policy wheel in Chicago, except Teddy Roe's. He must have felt as
lonely as the Maytag repair man of the famous TV commercials. After Jones fled
Chicago, Roe became the Policy Man, and he took over all of the gambling between
Roosevelt and Halsted streets. He was making more than $1 million annually, and
Chicago's black community loved him for his brave stand against the white mob;
it made him a folk hero. He had no intention of cutting and running. The Outfit
tried to work out a deal with him, but he refused, even after his men started
showing up dead in alleyways, shots were fired that put his wife and kids in
danger and his house was bombed.
At the time Martin left for Mexico, Roe, the street
brawler, was still fighting back against the powerful mob. But how long could he
hold out?
Editor's Note:
Black Gangsters of Chicago will be
published by Barricade Books in September, 2007.
Ron Chepesiuk, a South Carolina journalist and Fulbright
Scholar in journalism, is author of
Drug Lords: The Rise and Fall of the Cali
Cartel (Milo Books, 2005),
Gangsters of Harlem (Barricade Books,
2007) and the forthcoming
Superfly: The True, Untold Story of Frank Lucas,
American Gangster (October 25, 2007).
