Organized Crime

The rise of the Annenbergs. The great Annenberg publishing dynasty that controlled the Daily Racing Form, The Philadelphia Inquirer and TV Guide for decades produced the fortune that allowed Walter Annenberg to establish and endow the prestigious M. L. Annenberg Schools of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California in honor of his disgraced father, a major player in Capone’s underworld.
by Allan May

M. L. Annenberg and the Growth of the Race Wire

The Annenbergs came to Chicago via a remote, desolate village in East Prussia where Moses Louis Annenberg was born in 1878 during a period of brutal persecution of the Jews. On Christmas Eve 1881, anti-Semitic feelings reached a height in nearby Warsaw when several hundred Jews were beaten to death by Christian mobs claiming revenge on "Christ killers." Moses’ father, Tobias, had seen enough. In 1882, he took the small savings he had and traveled alone to America with plans to send for his wife and eight children later. He settled in Chicago and rented a storefront building on State Street where he opened a small grocery store. By 1885, Tobias Annenberg was able to send for his family.

The Annenberg grocery store was located in the "Patch." At the time it was a tough, predominantly Irish neighborhood, which would spawn future race wire service owners James M. Ragen and Arthur B. "Mickey" McBride. Although Tobias tried to raise his children in the Orthodox Jewish religion with its traditional values, the boys – Jacob, Max and Moe -- would have no part of it. Moe came to "despise all religions as traps to keep poor people docile," according to John Cooney, in his book The Annenberg’s. At an early age, he developed a love of gambling from the card and dice games played on the sidewalks of the neighborhood. He would remain a gambler all his life.

The conclusion of Allan May's three part series on the rise and fall of the notorious race wire service.

by Allan May

Part Three: Ragen and McBride and the End of the Race Wire

U. S. Sen. Estes Kefauver once called the Continental Press the nation’s Public Enemy Number One. "In my opinion, the wire service keeps alive the illegal gambling empire which in turn bankrolls a variety of other criminal activities in America."

When Moses Annenberg, under pressure from Capone, disbanded Nation Wide News Service in 1939, Arthur B. "Mickey" McBride established the Continental Press. Born in Chicago in 1888, McBride had a long career in the newspaper business. Recalling an incident as a child, he said he once purchased 50 newspapers for 50 cents, "I sold the batch of papers for $1, and I’ve been making business deals ever since." McBride learned the newspaper circulation business by working for William Randolph Hearst. In 1911, McBride became Hearst’s circulation manager for the Chicago American which took on the Chicago Tribune in a bitter circulation war.

September 7, 2007

Salvatore Giancana

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."

February 20, 2007

Frank Mathews

by Ron Chepesiuk

 In May of 1969, detective Joe Kowalski, a seven-year veteran with the New York Police Department, was living at 130 Clarkson Avenue in a quiet, low-to-middle income neighborhood in Brooklyn. One day, the apartment building's parking lot began to look like a luxury car sales lot, as people began streaming into the building at all hours of the day to see a new resident who had moved into a three-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor. "I didn't like him the first time I saw him," Kowalski recalled in reference to his new neighbor. "He was loud and flashy, drove fancy cars and had no visible means of support. His friends would block the driveway with their cars and park in other people's parking spaces. Some of them carried paper bags that looked as if they might contain money. As a cop, I knew I needed to pay attention to them."

Kowalski put the new neighbor and his visitors under surveillance and began taking down license plate numbers. As a detective in the NYPD's Intelligence Division, Kowalski had no problem doing background checks. When he put the license plate numbers through Motor Vehicles, he was not surprised to learn that many of the cars were registered to known drug dealers living not just in the Big Apple but also in cities throughout the eastern U.S., including Philadelphia, Baltimore, Atlanta, and in Durham, N.C.

Downtown Pacific MO

Lawyers don't always confine their differences to the courtroom. Attorney Joseph Langworthy's murder was a cold-blooded execution paid for by an attorney so well connected that the chief of police "lost" all the evidence in the case for over a year.

by Ronald J. Lawrence

Prologue

Joseph H. Langworthy Jr. was a man of strong convictions and unshakable principles. A lawyer with a practice in Pacific, a community on the southwest fringes of the St. Louis suburbs, he tolerated no abuses of his profession and of the law.

He often was the center of controversy he sometimes created. He had been city attorney of nearby Times Beach, his hometown, but was dismissed when he charged that municipal officials had violated state laws in their administration of the police department. In Pacific, he sent tremors through the local political establishment when he challenged the qualifications of the newly elected police judge.

An unpretentious man of candor, Langworthy's rigid standards were reflected in his personal appearance. His hair was trimmed in crew-cut style and he wore a bow tie. Almost symbolically, he was an avid musician and played the tuba in a Dixieland jazz ensemble that entertained fans during Cardinal baseball games at Busch Stadium.

That his law practice was successful was evident by the long hours he worked. He often was in his office until late at night with clients. His office was on the second floor of a downtown Pacific drug store. The first floor door to his office always was unlocked and a sign invited people to "Walk In."

There was nothing ambiguous about the 58-year-old Langworthy. He was quick to speak his mind and he was not averse to challenging those he believed were wrong, the higher and the mightier the better.

It perhaps explained why by the summer of 1976 Langworthy had a police escort when he left his office late at night. He had reason to be concerned. He had made a powerful enemy and his life was worth only $7,000.

Spica car bombing

Sonny Spica, the rash protégé of St. Louis Outfit boss Tony Giordano, was a marked man. Nick Civella in Kansas City wanted him dead and so did Ray Flynn, the most violent labor racketeer in St. Louis. The car bomb that killed Spica in 1979 ignited St. Louis' infamous "Leisure Wars."

by Ronald J. Lawrence

"You got a man we want. Either you take care of him or send him to us."
- Nick Civella

John Paul "Sonny" Spica was walking on the edge. By late October, 1979, it was inevitable that his life would end violently. It just was a question of when, how and by whom.

Spica was wedged between two inexorable forces of death. On one side was the Kansas City Mafia, which demanded his execution for violating sacred mob protocol. On the other was the most dangerous, devious labor racketeer in St. Louis and a gang of cutthroat hoodlums who settled their disputes with bullets, bombs and mayhem. Spica stood in their way and he had made unpardonable threats.

The underworld waited and watched to see who would kill him first.