Ronald J. Lawrence

Ronald J. Lawrence’s reporting career began at the Edwardsville, Ill. Intelligencer in 1954 when he was 20. One of his first assignments was to cover a gangland killing on St. Louis’ East Side. The body had been in the trunk of a car for three days in July. "It left a lasting impression," he says. Not long after, he was threatened with jail by the sheriff after he wrote a story that gambling equipment seized in a raid by state police had been returned to the owners without a court order.

From there, he worked for the Alton, Ill., Telegraph, the Rockford, Ill., Morning Star and the Delaware County, Pa., Daily Times, mostly reporting police news. In 1961, he won first place in the Public Service Series Category in the annual competition of the Pennsylvania Press Conference for a series of stories on vote frauds.

The following year he was hired by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The next 10 years were spent covering the city police beat. He considers it one of the most rewarding aspects of his career. Not only did he learn police techniques, but he began his education in organized crime and developed invaluable sources.

In the early 1970s, he became an investigative reporter for the Post-Dispatch, specializing in organized crime and criminal matters. In 1975, he was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for an extensive investigation of corruption by a former Missouri governor and his administration.

He retired on disability in 1988.

A Set-Up for Murder. All Jesse Stoneking had to do was be himself -- look tough and menacing -- to earn the easiest $25,000 that had ever come his way. For the right-hand man to St. Louis mobster Art Berne, the job seemed too good to be true. And it was.

The Sodom and Gomorrah of the Midwest Rising from the hills of the Ozarks in south central Missouri, Saint Robert, a hamlet of 1,500 residents, had the appearance of a prototypical small town in rural America. But looks can be deceiving. With the Army’s sprawling training center at Fort Leonard Wood nearby, Saint Robert was home to hundreds of prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers, gamblers, corrupt politicians, organized crime and hit men. And it liked it that way.

The Beauty of White-Collar Crime: Do the Crime Not Much Time Could a Midwestern resort town with a struggling economy be bamboozled out of $25 million by a chain-smoking, fancy-dressing New Yorker? Yes. So how much time did this flimflam man get? Six months.

Phantom of the Ozarks: The Slicker War. John Avy, the "Phantom of the Ozarks," was a "godfather" a century before his time. His criminal exploits in the 1830s – wholesale thievery, counterfeiting, murder-for-hire and the political corruption to make it all possible – marked the most lawless period in Missouri history, making Jesse James’ gang a few decades later seem mild and inept by comparison. It took a vigilante group known as the "Slickers" to bring him down.

Murder For Hire. 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.

Murder by Mistake. The car bomb that killed Philip J. Lucier – the president of the Continental Telephone Co. and the father of 11 children – was meant for an attorney whose clients had swindled a minor New Orleans Mafioso. The FBI misread and mishandled the case from the beginning. Subsequent federal investigations never produced a single indictment. Now, 30 yeas later, it seems certain no one will ever be charged in Lucier’s tragic death.

Stoneking -- Before Jimmy Fratianno made ratting out mob bosses fashionable, Jesse Stoneking’s testimony against St. Louis mob figures was the most damaging ever heard in a courtroom. It helped send more than 30 gangsters to prison. Stoneking was a respected and feared wise guy, a lieutenant to St. Louis Outfit boss Art Berne and an accomplished thief. When Stoneking was packed off to prison in 1981, Berne failed to take care of Stoneking’s family as promised. That disloyalty quickly turned Stoneking into an FBI informant.

Part I of the Leisure Wars: A Reason to Die. 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."

Part II of the Leisure War: The Killing Fields. Paulie Leisure wanted to control St. Louis’ underworld and he was prepared to kill anyone who stood in his way. In using car bombs to take out Tony Giordano protégé Sonny Spica and then Jimmy Michaels, the venerable head of the Syrian-Lebanese faction, he touched off a bloodbath known as the "Leisure War."